Question of the Week: Is Biblical Inerrancy Necessary for Biblical Authority?

One of the biggest debates going on within the Evangelical community is that of biblical inerrancy and its necessity. For those of you not as familiar with the debate, biblical inerrancy is probably best defined by the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy, recorded in its completion here, but summarized in it's first five points:1. God, who is Himself Truth and speaks truth only, has inspired Holy Scripture in order thereby to reveal Himself to lost mankind through Jesus Christ as Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Judge. Holy Scripture is God's witness to Himself.2. Holy Scripture, being God's own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: It is to be believed, as God's instruction, in all that it affirms; obeyed, as God's command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God's pledge, in all that it promises. 3. The Holy Spirit, Scripture's divine Author, both authenticates it to us by His inward witness and opens our minds to understand its meaning. 4. Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God's acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God's saving grace in individual lives.5. The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way limited of disregarded, or made relative to a view of truth contrary to the Bible's own; and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the Church.A few of the strongest advocates of biblical inerrancy are R.C. Sproul and Norman Geisler, among many others. The recognition and codifying thoughts on inerrancy happened as a reaction against much of the higher criticism permeating academia which discredited the truthfulness of Scripture and the reliability of its content.For a while, the opponents of biblical inerrancy came from the "left" in the theological spectrum and inerrancy held a strong and uncontested foothold in the Evangelical community.That is no longer the case. Over the last five years many evangelicals, including A. T. B. McGowen, have brought the necessity and validity of the doctrine into question. A few of the problems they have with it are:1. The absence of the original autographs (the original copies of Scripture).2. The presence of progressive revelation and authorial intent.3. The faulty logic of auto-legitimizing truth as the doctrine's basis. 4. The equal placement of divinity in the written Word of God with the Living Word of God (Christ).For me, this is an issue that I have been wrestling with for a long time and would love to hear your thoughts on the matter. Two good articles on the debate are Norman Geisler's analysis of McGowen's position and Daniel Wallace's article on Inerrancy.Is Biblical Inerrancy necessary for Biblical Authority? Do we as Evangelicals have to defend inerrancy to have a high bibliology or is inerrancy doing more harm than good?