On the Scriptures

This material is excerpted from a series of lessons I taught at my church last summer and includes information from other sources that I have not referenced here. I will post those references as soon as I track down my main notes. This is by no means a comprehensive treatment of the issues but I believe it to be fairly thorough for its brevity.

ON THE HOLY SCRIPTURES

The doctrines regarding the nature and origin of the Scriptures are very controversial these days. What is the importance of it? Many would say that the Bible of today is merely a moral guide for how we should live our lives and that its precepts are not hard and fast rules for us to live by today. Others claim that in its pages are written the very words of God. So who is right and why does it matter? It is critical for Christians to know not only the truth of the inspiration of the Scriptures but the importance this doctrine has in the life of every believer. An examination will be made of the view of the early Church as well as the philosophical ideology that began to undermine this original view. To start with, let us take a look at why we even need Scripture.

The Need for Scripture
Prior to the Fall man had complete, unhindered access to God. The Lord spoke to Adam face to face and the creature had perfect fellowship with his Creator. But with the sin of Adam came a change in that relationship. Adam was cast from the Garden and no longer had direct access to God. The glory of God was concealed from mankind (otherwise man, being in a state of sin, would have been consumed [Exodus 33:20]) and therefore God had to make a way to reveal Himself and His will to His special creatures. This revealing, or “revelation”, takes two forms: general revelation and special revelation.
General revelation (sometimes called “natural” revelation) is that evidence given by God through what He has created as well as through the conscience of men. Psalm 19 states:
The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, And night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language Where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth, And their words to the end of the world.
(Psalm 19:1-4; NKJV)

What this passage states is that every person on the face of the earth is given, through the wonders of the creation, clear evidence of the existence of God. Yet this type of revelation is not sufficient to inform man of God’s will nor to give a saving knowledge of God to those who heed it. It is possible to see God in the created order and not be saved. This is demonstrated in the book of Romans:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.
(Romans 1:18-23, NKJV)

So, it is seen here that general revelation is not sufficient to save, it is only sufficient to condemn. For this reason God gave a special revelation of Himself that clearly demonstrates His will for mankind as well as the way of salvation. This special revelation is found in the pages of Scripture. One children’s catechism asks, “Where do we learn to love and obey God?” and the answer is, “In the Bible alone.”
The importance of the doctrine has been evidenced throughout the history of the Church in that nearly every book on systematic theology has this doctrine either first or second in the order of doctrines addressed (second only to the doctrine of God). The reason for this is that all other doctrines rest on this one. There must be a high view of the Bible in order to have an objective basis for any other teaching. God has condescended to reveal Himself to mankind in the pages of Scripture and so any teaching regarding God must begin there. There are many other books men have written since the beginning of time but only the Bible has the very words of God given to man so that he would know how to be saved from judgment. In the same way that a person would not use a Kansas roadmap to find out how to get from St. Louis to Chicago, one cannot use any book but the Bible to find the way of the Lord.

The Origin of the Modern Bible
A common argument against the Bible is that it is merely a book written by imperfect men and that the Bible did not even reach its present form until the A.D. 400’s. On the surface this may seem like a valid argument. But one must look at the process of putting the Bible together in order to truly evaluate this argument. A brief mention will be made here of the rules used to determine if a writing was to be considered the inspired word of God.
In the early Church, what we call the Old Testament was immediately accepted as Holy Scripture simply due to the fact that it had been recognized as such by the Jews for centuries. It was written from the time of Moses up to about 400BC. This was the same Scripture used by Christ when He preached during His earthly ministry and He did not refute it’s validity as the word of God (and would have been in a unique position to do so, Himself being God!) As the apostles began preaching and teaching, they and their immediate companions wrote gospels and letters to be shared among the churches of the ancient world. There were probably hundreds of such letters circulating, so how did the Church determine what was inspired? The basic rules for canonicity were:
1) The writing had to bear apostolic authority. That is, it had to be written by or under the guidance of an apostle who had witnessed the risen Christ;

2) The writing had to conform to the “rule of faith.” That is to say it could not contradict what had already been recognized as Scripture; and

3) The writing had to be accepted as inspired by the Church at-large.

These were the basic guidelines that the various Church Fathers and Councils used in order to determine if a particular writing was to be authoritative in the lives of Christians. All this having been said, when Church leaders gathered in Carthage in 397A.D. it was not to decide what would be in the canon of Scripture, but to codify what had already been generally accepted as Scripture for centuries.
The next issue that tends to come up is in the arena of transmission. Of course the exact original documents of the New Testament have long ago rotted away and are no longer in existence. Because of this, the current translations in use today have been developed using copies of copies of copies. So how can it be determined that these copies are accurate representations of the originals? This question can actually be answered very simply. During Old Testament times the Scriptures were kept in the tabernacle or the temple near the Ark of the Covenant. When these copies began to wear out, a new copy would be made. Since this was ages before the printing press these copies had to be made by hand and there was a special class of men whose job it was to copy the Scriptures and they were the Scribes. Scribes took their job very seriously because they recognized that they were dealing with the very word of God. It would be a very grave matter to misrepresent Yahweh by adulterating His word with error so the Scribes made every effort to avoid this. When a copy of a particular book (scroll) was completed the scribes would count the number of letters in the copy and compare it with the number of letters known to be in the book being copied. If the number did not match, the copy would be destroyed and the scribe would have to begin anew. Then the letter in the exact center of the copy would be located by counting. If the center letter of the copy did not match the center letter of the original, again the copy would be destroyed. Measures such as these show the great care taken by the scribes in copying the Old Testament manuscripts in order to faithfully preserve God’s word for future generations. And example of the accuracy of this is seen is the sect of the Massoretes. This was a scribal group who copied Scriptures up to the 900’s. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the 1930’s there was found a complete copy of the book of Isaiah dating to the 100’s BC. When this was compared to the Massoretic copy of Isaiah it was found to be an exact representation even after 1000 years of copying by hand. Needless to say, there can be no real argument that the Old Testament is today what it was at least in the time of Christ.
But what about the New Testament? A different route was taken in copying the gospels and the letters found in the New Testament, yet accuracy was maintained. Before looking at the New Testament manuscripts, writings of various secular authors will be considered. For instance, Julius Caesar’s work The Gallic Wars is undisputed even by liberal scholars as far as its historical accuracy goes, yet there are only ten surviving copies with a 1000 year lapse between the original writing and the oldest available copy. Homer’s Illiad is much better by comparison with 643 copies and only 500 years between the original and the oldest available copy. Yet the New Testament has over 24,000 copies (over 5,000 in Greek alone) and less than 100 years between the actual events and the oldest existing fragment! Through the science of statistical analysis it has been determined that the Bible we have today is a 99.5% accurate representation of the actual original documents.
Now on to the question of what the early Church believed regarding what we have today as our Bible. In the “first generation” of Christianity the apostles merely taught what had been handed to them by Christ. The second generation, who had learned from the apostles themselves, included Polycarp of Smyrna, Ignatius of Antioch and Clement of Rome. It could be said that these men merely passed on what they learned from their mentors, the apostles. It was not until around A.D. 200 that the question arose as to the authenticity and/or inspiration of the apostles’ writings. The Mauratorian canon (A canon being a collection of writings considered to be authoritative. The Bible we have today is our modern canon.) consisted of all the books we have in our current Bible with the exceptions of: 1 John, 1&2 Peter, Hebrews & James (note none of Paul’s writings were in doubt). The Church father Irenaeus made mention of all but Jude, 2 Peter, James, Philemon, 2&3 John & Revelation. The Syriac Canon dating from the 3rd century named all but John’s Revelation. Athanasius of Alexandria called the current 27-book New Testament canon the “only source of salvation and of the authentic teaching of the religion of the Gospel.” and Jerome (who wrote the Latin Vulgate) referenced the current listing of books in his writings. Lastly the current listing of 27 book of the New Testament was confirmed to be Holy Scripture at the Synods of Carthage in A.D. 397 and 418. Please note that the canon was confirmed, not decided. The distinct difference, as recognized by those at the Synods, is that the canon is determined by God and discovered by man; the canon is not determined by man.

Development Over Time of Doctrines Regarding Scripture
Over time the Church got away from the idea that the Scriptures were the final authority in the matters of man. The Roman Catholic church taught that the Scriptures do not represent the full revelation of God and that there are other traditions that were passed down from the apostles and that these teachings were also authoritative in the lives of Christians. As stated in the Baltimore Catechism, the church “does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored….” (C 82). They also held that the canon was an infallible collection of infallible books produced by the Church. The position of the reformers of the 1500’s was diametrically opposed to this position. They stated that the canon was a fallible collection of infallible books discovered by the Church. The reformers also held that the preservation of God’s word was insured by God Himself and not by the Church and that Christians needed only the witness of the Holy Spirit in order to understand the Scriptures and not the authorities of the Church. John Calvin stated in his Institutes of the Christian Religion:
“Let it therefore be held as fixed, that those that are inwardly taught by the Holy Spirit acquiesce implicitly in Scripture, carrying its own evidence along with it, deigns not to submit to proofs and arguments, but owes the full conviction with which we ought to receive it to the testimony of the Spirit. Enlightened by Him, we no longer believe, either on our own judgment or that of others, that the Scriptures are from God; but, in a way superior to human judgment, feel perfectly assured as much so as if we beheld the divine image visibly impressed on it that it came to us, by the instrumentality of men, from the very mouth of God.”

One of the more current assaults on the Scriptures began in the Enlightenment of the 17th Century. Philosophers like Descartes and Hobbs began teaching that the only things that can be known are known through sense perception. Immanuel Kant expanded this idea from the fields of science and philosophy into the religious arena by dividing the physical, or knowable, realm from the spiritual, or unknowable, realm. He believed that in order to have any knowledge of the spiritual, one must make a “leap of faith” because the spiritual realm, being unseen, could provide no real evidence for the truth claims made. This trend culminated in the teachings of David Strauss, who outright denied the existence of the supernatural and, thus, the possibility that God may have intervened in this world either through verbal revelation through the Scriptures, miracles or the Incarnation and resurrection of Christ.
The theological beliefs that sprang from this period became very man-centered, or anthropocentric, as opposed to being God-centered, or theocentric. Doctrine and theology became very much about how man can benefit from God rather than what man’s responsibilities are before God. The doctrine of original sin was either significantly weakened or eliminated altogether. Man was viewed as essentially good on his own rather than being tainted with sin in every part of his being. Because of this, the traditional (and biblical) views regarding redemption were replaced with the idea that man didn’t really need to be “saved” from anything and that Jesus was just an example and a great teacher who died either as an example of self-sacrificial love or as a political revolutionary. In either case, the critics say, Jesus was not divine and He was not raised from the dead (some even say His body was thrown in a shallow grave to be dug up and eaten by wild dogs.)

The Orthodox Christian View of the Bible
So what do Christians believe about the Bible? How do we know the Scriptures were inspired by God? It has already been shown that the historical position of the Church has been that the Scriptures are the word of God. In this treatment of the topic an examination will be made of the belief in the verbal, plenary inspiration of Scripture. First, what is meant by inspiration is that God, through the agency of the Holy Spirit, acted upon the authors of the books of the Bible in such a way so as to insure His message was accurately conveyed and recorded for future generations. This can be shown in passages such as 2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (in this passage the word translated as “inspiration of God” actually means “God-breathed.”) and also in 2 Peter 1:20-21: “…knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”
A belief in verbal inspiration means that one holds that the very words of Scripture were given by God (though not through a dictation-type of process). Evidence of this is seen in the gospel of Matthew where Christ states that “…assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.” (Matthew 5:18) In this passage, Jesus is specifically referring to the Old Testament; but, in regards to the New Testament, Christ also promised the coming Holy Spirit in verses such as:
Luke 12:12 – “For the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.”

John 14:6 – “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.”

John 16:13 – “However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.”

Plenary inspiration simply means that the Bible is inspired in all of its parts. The Old Testament is constantly confirmed by Christ in His teachings and none of it is called into question. Again we have the references above regarding Christ’s promise to the Apostles regarding what they would go on to write and there are also passages where the writers of the New Testament refer to one-another’s works (as well as their own) as Scripture such as:
I Thessalonians 4:8 – “Therefore he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us His Holy Spirit.”

I Corinthians 2:13 – “These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.”

II Peter 3:15-16 – “and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation—as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.” (emphasis added)

So the verbal, plenary inspiration of Scripture can be seen clearly from those passages cited. Much better arguments have been made elsewhere by much better authors but the argument presented here should be more than sufficient to indicate that this doctrine is quite biblical in its foundation and, hopefully, it can also be seen that verbal, plenary inspiration is what the Bible teaches about itself.

Summary
As was stated in the opening, the doctrines regarding the nature and origin of the Scriptures are very controversial. But when evaluating the various views one must answer certain questions: 1) Has God revealed any kind of knowledge to man? (2) How? (3) What is the nature of that revelation?
The orthodox position can confidently state that God has revealed Himself to man in the pages of the Scriptures and that those Scriptures are the infallible word of God Himself and are inspired equally in all parts down to the very words used. One must then ask if any of the opposing views can give such a confident answer. If only parts of the Bible are inspired, how are we to know which parts? If the Bible is not inspired at all, how are we to know God properly? The answer is, there is no way to know God in any satisfying way apart from a belief in the inspired, inerrant word of God given to us in the pages of Scripture.