The Bible and You - Part 2
8th October 2011
The Bible teaches us about God our Father, about Jesus Christ our Lord, and about the Holy Spirit. It teaches us about man, and about the relationship between God and man. It teaches us about right and wrong, good and bad, heaven and hell, and about how our sins can be forgiven. In particular, the Bible teaches us almost everything we know about Jesus Christ.
Jesus began studying the Bible when he was a child: Luke 2:41-50. He was dedicated to scripture. He trusted it absolutely. He was convinced that all that was prophesied in it would come to pass. He often quoted the scriptures. He often said "it is written", meaning "it is written in the Old Testament", quoting it as absolutely authoritative, the end of the discussion, something that could not be argued against. And in John 10:35 Jesus said:
... the Scripture cannot be broken
That expression, "it is written", indicating confidence in the infallibility of scripture, is also used by Peter, Paul, Mark, Luke, John, James and the writer of the letter to the Hebrews. The writers of the New Testament also quoted the Old Testament scriptures on many occasions, and clearly trusted them to be true. Paul said:
2 Timothy 3:14-17
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those
from whom you learned it,
and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation
through faith in Christ Jesus.
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Peter said:
2 Peter 1:20-2:1
Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation.
For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by
the Holy Spirit.
But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you...
This teaches us about how the Bible was written. It was written my men but it is not just a human document. Rather, "men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit". That is, The Holy Spirit inspired the scriptures - they were God-breathed. This passage also shows us that the church contains false teaching and false prophecy - not all prophecy is inspired by the Holy Spirit, but all the Bible is. Since the entire Bible was inspired by the Holy Spirit, The Bible is completely trustworthy and it contains no factual errors. The theological terms for this are that the Bible is infallible and inerrant. Some churches - including some within my denomination - do not teach this, but I, and many more learned than I, continue to believe and declare it to be absolutely true. The Bible is infallible and inerrant. Every word of it is God-breathed. Of course, this doesn't mean that every (or any) modern-day translation is infallible or inerrant - only that the original God-breathed manuscripts are.
Clement of Rome wrote (around 90-100): "(in) the Holy Scriptures which are given through the Holy Spirit... nothing iniquitous or falsified is written"
St Augustine (354-430) wrote: "I believe most firmly that none of these (canonical) authors has erred in any respect of writing."
The writers of scripture weren't perfect, they weren't always right. We can see that from the disagreements they had with each other. But, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the scriptures are perfect. Martin Luther wrote this about the early church leaders: "everyone, indeed, knows that at times they have erred as men will; therefore I am ready to trust them only when they prove their opinions from Scripture, which has never erred."
According to the Westminster Confession, Article 1.IV, "The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, depends not upon the testimony of any man, or Church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God".
We don't have to understand and explain every line of scripture before we can believe it is the perfect written word of God. The Holy Spirit himself confirms scripture to us. As John Calvin wrote, "those whom the Holy Spirit has inwardly taught truly rest upon Scripture, and that Scripture indeed is self-authenticated; hence it is not right to subject it to proof or reasoning. And the certainty it deserves with us, it attains by the testimony of the Spirit... we believe neither by our own nor by anyone else's judgment that Scripture is from God; but above human judgment we affirm with utter certainty... that it has flowed to us from the very mouth of God by the ministry of men."
B. B. Warfield wrote the book, "The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible" to defend the Bible against the idea that it was not divinely inspired. He wrote that the "church-doctrine of inspiration differs from the theories that would fain supplant it in that it is not the invention nor the property of an individual, but the settled faith of the universal church of God" and "this church-doctrine... looks upon the Bible as an oracular book, - as the Word of God in such a sense that whatever it says God says, - not a book, then, in which one may, by searching, find some word of God, but a book which may be frankly appealed to at any point with the assurance that whatever it may be found to say, that is the Word of God". Warfield reminds us that "this attitude of entire trust in every word of the Scriptures has been characteristic of the people of God from the very foundation of the church".
In our generation, there's tension between what the Bible teaches and what many scientists, archaeologists and others tell us (on various subjects, notably creation and evolution). When all the facts become known, they will demonstrate that the Bible - in its original manuscripts and correctly interpreted - is entirely true in everything it says, whether that relates to salvation, morality, science or anything else.