The Authority & Inspiration of the Scriptures

Transcription

1 The Inspiration of Scripture Notes & Observations In a recent interview, British preacher and Christian statesman John Stott was asked: What are the top five most influential books in your life? Stott began with Revelation and Inspiration by B. B. Warfield a collection of essays concerning biblical authority. Stott said, This book is marked by the careful exegesis for which Warfield was renowned, and lays a solid foundation for an acceptance of biblical authority. The argument is compelling; I do not believe that it has ever been answered. The Authority & Inspiration of the Scriptures by Benjamin B. Warfield ( ) The following short essay was originally published in the Westminster Teacher, Sept The electronic edition of this article was scanned and edited by Shane Rosenthal for Reformation Ink. It is in the public domain and may be freely copied and distributed. Christianity is often called a book-religion. It would be more exact to say that it is a religion which has a book. Its foundations are laid in apostles and prophets, upon which its courses are built up in the sanctified lives of men; but Christ Jesus alone is its chief cornerstone. He is its only basis; he, its only head; and he alone has authority in his Church. But he has chosen to found his Church not directly by his own hands, speaking the word of God, say for instance, in thunder-tones from heaven; but through the instrumentality of a body of apostles, chosen and trained by himself, endowed with gifts and graces from the Holy Ghost, and sent forth into the world as his authoritative agents for proclaiming a gospel which he placed within their lips and which is none the less his authoritative word, that it is through them that he speaks it. It is because the apostles were Christ's representatives, that what they did and said and wrote as such, comes to us with divine authority. The authority of the Scriptures thus rests on the simple fact that God's authoritative agents in

2 founding the Church gave them as authoritative to the Church which they founded. All the authority of the apostles stands behind the Scriptures, and all the authority of Christ behind the apostles. The Scriptures are simply the lawcode which the law-givers of the Church gave it. If, then, the apostles were appointed by Christ to act for him and in his name and authority in founding the Church--and this no one can doubt; and if the apostles gave the Scriptures to the Church in prosecution of this commission-- and this admits of as little doubt; the whole question of the authority of the Scriptures is determined. It will be observed that their authority does not rest exactly on apostolic authorship. The point is not that the apostles wrote these books (though most of the New Testament books were written by apostles), but that they imposed them on the Church as authoritative expositions of its divinely appointed faith and practice. Still less does the authority of the Scriptures rest on the authority of the Church. The Church may bear witness to what she received from the apostles as law, but this is not giving authority to that law but humbly recognizing the authority which rightfully belongs to it whether the Church recognizes it or not. The puzzle which some people fall into here is something like mistaking the relative "authority" of the guide-post and the road; the guide-post may point us to the right road but it does not give its rightness to the road. It has not "determined" the road--it is the road that has "determined" the guide-post; and unless the road goes of itself to its destination the guide-post has no power to determine its direction. So the Church does not "determine" the Scriptures, but the Scriptures the Church. Nor does it avail to say in opposition that the Church existed before the Scriptures and therefore cannot depend on them. The point is, whether the Scriptures are a product of the Church, or rather of the authority which founded the Church. The Church certainly did not exist before the authority which Christ gave the apostles to found it, in virtue of which they have imposed the Scriptures on it as law. Apostolicity thus determines the authority of Scripture; and any book or body of books which were given to the Church by the apostles as law must always remain of divine authority in the Church. That the apostles thus gave the Church the whole Old Testament, which they had themselves received from their fathers as God's word written, admits of no doubt, and is not doubted. That they gradually added to this body of old law an additional body of new law is equally patent. In part this is determined directly by their own extant testimony. Thus Peter places Paul's Epistles beside the Scriptures of the Old Testament as equally with them law to Christians (2 Peter iii. 16); and thus Paul places Luke's Gospel alongside of Deuteronomy ( 1 Tim. v. 18). Thus, too, all write with authority (1 Cor. xiv. 37; 2 Cor. x. 8; 2 Thes. ii. 15; iii. 6-14)--with

3 an authority which is above that of angels (Gal. i. 7, 8), and the immediate recognition of which is the test of the possession of the Holy Ghost (1 Cor. xiv. 37; 2 Thess. iii. 6-14). In part it is left to be determined indirectly from the testimony of the early Church; it being no far cry from the undoubting universal acceptance of a book as authoritative by the Church of the apostolic age, to the apostolic gift of it as authoritative to that Church. But by one way or another it is easily shown that all the books which now constitute our Bible, and which Christians, from that day to this, have loyally treated as their divinely prescribed book of law, no more and no fewer, were thus imposed on the Church as its divinely authoritative rule of faith and practice. Now it goes, of course, without saying, that the apostles were not given this supreme authority as legislators to the Church without preparation for their high functions, without previous instruction in the mind of Christ, without safeguards thrown about them in the prosecution of their task, without the accompanying guidance of the Holy Spirit. And nothing is more noticeable in the writings which they have given the Church than the claim which they pervasively make that in giving them they are acting only as the agents of Christ, and that those who wrote them wrote in the Spirit of Christ. What Paul writes he represents to be "the commandments of the Lord" ( 1 Cor. xiv. 37), which he therefore transmits in the name of the Lord (2 Thess. iii. 6); and the gospel that Peter preached was proclaimed in the Holy Ghost (1 Peter i. 12). Every Scripture of the Old Testament is inspired by God (2 Tim. iii. 16), and the New Testament is equally Scripture with the Old (1 Tim. v. 18); all prophecy of Scripture came from men who spake from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost ( 2 Peter i. 20) and Paul's Epistles differ from these older writings only in being "other"; that is, newer Scriptures of like kind (2 Peter iii. 16). When we consider the promises of supernatural guidance which Christ made to his apostles (Matt. x. 19, 20; Mark xiii. 11; Luke xxi. 14; John xiv and xvi), in connection with their claim to speak with divine authority even when writing (1 Cor. xiv. 37; 2 Thess. iii. 6), and their conjunction of their writings with the Old Testament Scriptures as equally divine with them, we cannot fail to perceive that the apostles claim to be attended in their work of giving law to God's Church by prevailing superintending grace from the Holy Spirit. This is what is called inspiration. It does not set aside the human authorship of the books. But it puts behind the human also a divine authorship. It ascribes to the authors such an attending influence of the Spirit in the process of writing, that the words they set down become also the words of God; and the resultant writing is made not merely the expression of Paul's or John's or Peter's will for the churches, but the expression of God's will. In receiving these books from the apostles as law, therefore, the Church has always received them not only as

4 books given by God's agents, but as books so given by God through those agents that every word of them is God's word. Let it be observed that the proof of the authority of the Scriptures does not rest on a previous proof of their inspiration. Even an uninspired law is law. But when inspiration has once been shown to be fact, it comes mightily to the reinforcement of their authority. God speaks to us now, in Scripture, not only mediately through his representatives, but directly through the Scriptures themselves as his inspired word. The Scriptures thus become the crystalization of God's authoritative will. We will not say that Christianity might not have been founded and propagated and preserved without inspired writings or even without any written embodiment of the authoritative apostolic teaching. Wherever Christ is known through whatever means, there is Christianity, and men may hear and believe and be saved. But God has caused his grace to abound to us in that he not only published redemption through Christ in the world, but gave this preachment authoritative expression through the apostles, and fixed it with infallible trustworthiness in his inspired word. Thus in every age God speaks directly to every Christian heart, and gives us abounding safety to our feet and divine security to our souls. And thus, instead of a mere record of a revelation given in the past, we have the ever-living word of God; instead of a mere tradition however guarded, we have what we have all learned to call in a unique sense "the Scriptures." A Remembrance of Warfield When I returned from Germany in 1906, I entered, as instructor in the New Testament department, into the teaching staff of Princeton Theological Seminary...Warfield was Professor of Systematic Theology (or "Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology," as the chair was then more sonorously and vigorously called). And what a wonderful man he was! His learning was prodigious. No adequate notion of its breadth can be obtained even from his voluminous collected works. Consult him on the most out-of-the-way subjects, and you would find him with the "literature" of each subject at his tongue's end and able to give you just the guidance of which you had need. Now and then, in wonderfully generous fashion, he would go out of his way to give a word of encouragement to a younger man. The old Princeton was an environment in which a man felt encouraged to do his very best. J. Gresham Machen

5 Taken from "Reasons Skeptics Should Consider Christianity." Tyndale House printing. Copyright 1981 by Campus Crusade for Christ. All rights reserved. All Scripture references are taken from the New American Standard Bible (NASB) unless otherwise noted. Q. What does it mean, the Bible is inspired? A. The inspiration of the Bible is an extremely crucial topic in today's world. Many talk about the Bible being inspired. But when asked to define what they mean by inspiration, they give a variety of definitions. Some contend the Bible is inspired in the same way as all great literature. "It challenges the human heart to reach new heights," they say. However, this does not make the Bible unique. In other words, they see the Bible as only a human literary masterpiece, not as being of divine origin. Others believe the Bibles is inspired because it contains the Word of God along with myths, mistakes, and legends. These people hold that it is wrong to identify the Bible as the Word of God; rather, it is a witness of God speaking to mankind. Putting it another way, the Word of God can be found in the Bible, but the Word of God is not synonymous with the Bible. Two important verses speak to the heart of the matter: 2 Timothy 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:21. The former reads, "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness." The word inspired is a translation of the Greek word theopneustos, meaning God - breathed. Thus the origin of Scripture is God, not man; it is God-breathed. The second verse, 2 Peter 1:21, says, "For no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God." This also confirms that the writers were moved by God to record that which God desired. Mechanical dictation was not employed as some claim. Rather, God used each individual writer and his personality to accomplish a divinely authoritative work. The process of inspiration extended to every word ("all Scripture"), refuting the idea of myth and error. Since God is behind the writings, and since He is perfect, the result must be infallible. If it were not infallible, we could be left with God -inspired error. It is important to understand this concept, for the entire Christian faith is based upon the premise that "God is there and He is not silent," as the late theologian Francis Schaeffer so often said. Sometimes it is easier to understand the concept of inspiration when it is compared with revelation. Revelation relates to the origin and actual giving of truth (1 Corinthians 2:10).Inspiration, on the other hand, relates to the receiving and actual recording of truth. Inspiration means that "God the Holy Spirit worked in a unique supernatural way so that the written words of the Scripture writers were also the words of God." The human authors of Scripture wrote spontaneously using their own minds and experiences, yet their words were not merely the words of men but actually the words of God. God's control was always with them in their writings with the result being the Bible the Word of God in the words of men. Q. How could fallible men produce an infallible Bible? A. One of the most frequent arguments leveled against the infallibility of the Bible is based upon the fact that the Bible was written by human authors. Human beings are fallible. Since the Bible was written by these fallible human beings, it necessarily follows that the Bible is fallible. Or so the argument goes. As Roman Catholic theologian Bruce Vawter writes, A human literature containing no error would indeed be a contradiction in terms, since nothing is more human than to err (Biblical Inspiration, Philadelphia, Westminster, 1972).

6 Although we often hear this accusation, it just is not correct. We grant that human beings do make mistakes, and that they make them often. But they do not necessarily make mistakes in all cases, and they do not necessarily have to make mistakes. For example, several years ago an author was teaching a class on the reliability of the Bible. For it, he had typed up a one-page outline of the course. The finished product was inerrant; it had no typographical errors, no mistakes in copying from the handwritten original. Although the author was human and was prone to make mistakes, he was in fact infallible in this instance. The point is this: It is not impossible for a human being to perform a mistake-free act. It is not impossible for fallible man to correctly record both sayings and events. Thus to rule out the possibility of an inerrant Bible by appealing to the fallibility of men does not hold up. John Warwick Montgomery, lawyer/theologian, illustrates this truth: The directions for operating my washing machine, for example, are literally infallible; if I do just what they say, the machine will respond. Euclid s Geometry is a book of perfect internal consistency; grant the axioms and the proofs follow inexorably. From such examples (and they could readily be multiplied) we must conclude that human beings, though they often err, need not err in all particular instances. To be sure, the production over centuries of sixty-six inerrant and mutually consistent books by different authors is a tall order and we cheerfully appeal to God s Spirit to achieve it but the point remains that there is nothing metaphysically inhuman or against human nature in such a possibility. If there were, have we considered the implications for Christology? The incarnate Christ, as a real man, would also have to err; and we have already seen that error in His teachings would totally negate the revelational value of the incarnation, leaving man as much in the dark as to the meaning of life and salvation as if no incarnation had occurred at all (God s Inerrant Word, p. 33). We also believe that there is sufficient evidence that the Bible is the infallible Word of God. The Scriptures themselves testify, All Scripture is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16). If they contain error, then one must call it God-inspired error. This is totally incompatible with the nature of God as revealed in the Bible. For example, Titus 1:2 says God cannot lie. John 17:17 says, Thy word is truth. Examples could be multiplied. The testimony of Scripture is clear. God used fallible men to receive and record His infallible Word so that it would reach us, correct and without error. Sounds difficult? With our God, it s not. As He said (Jeremiah 32:27, NASB), Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh; is anything too difficult for Me? Q. To what extent is the Bible inspired? A. If a person recognizes that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, he often questions the degree of inspiration. Does it include every book, every word? Does it extend to historical matters? How about scientific statements? Does it include manuscript copies and translations? A classic statement on the extent of inspiration is given by B.B. Warfield, a reformed theologian: The Church has held from the beginning that the Bible is the Word of God in such a sense that its words, though written by men and bearing indelibly impressed upon them the marks of their human origin, were written, nevertheless, under such an influence of the Holy Ghost as to be also the words of God, the adequate expression of His mind and will. It has always recognized that this conception of coauthorship implies that the Spirit s superintendence extends to the choice of the words by human authors (verbal inspiration, but not a mechanical dictation!) and preserves its product from everything inconsistent with a divine authorship thus securing, among other things, that entire truthfulness which is everywhere presupposed in and asserted for Scripture by the biblical writers (inerrancy).

7 The doctrine of plenary inspiration holds that the original documents of the Bible were written by men, who, though permitted to exercise of their own personalities and literary talents, yet wrote under the control and guidance of the Spirit of God, the result being in every word of the original documents a perfect and errorless recording of the exact message which God desired to give man. (The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, p. 173.) Two words describe the extent of inspiration according to the Bible: verbal and plenary. Plenary means full, complete extending to all parts. The apostle Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:16, All Scripture is inspired of God. And Paul told the Thessalonians, For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received from us the word of God s message, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the Word of God (1 Thessalonians 2:13, NASB). The Bible ends with this warning, I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God shall add to him the plagues which are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book (Revelation 22:18, 19, NASB). The entire Bible is inspired, not just certain parts! Inspiration extends not only to all parts of the Bible; it extends to the very words, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words (1 Corinthians 2:13, NASB). Sometimes the biblical writers base their arguments on a particular expression or a single word. For example, in Galatians 3:16 the apostle Paul cites Genesis 13:15 and 17:18 when God said to Abraham, Unto your seed (descendant) will I give this land, not unto your descendants, plural. Paul s whole argument is based on the noun being singular rather than plural. Rene Pache, in The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture (p. 77), gives a pertinent summary of this idea. We may agree with him that very often the meaning of a whole passage rests entirely on one word, a singular or a plural number, the tense of a verb, the details of prophecy, the precision of a promise and the silence of the text on a certain point. It is of monumental importance to identify the extent of inspiration to include every book of Scripture, each part of every book, and every word in each book as given in the original. This does not include any manuscript copy or any translation which is a reproduction. No one manuscript or translation is inspired, only the original. However, for all intents and purposes, they are virtually inspired since, with today s great number of manuscripts available for scrutiny, the science of textual criticism can render us an adequate representation. Therefore, we can be assured that when we read the Bible, we are reading the inspired Word of God. Charles Wesley, one of the founders of Methodism, wrote, The bible must be the invention of either good men or angels, bad men or devils, or of God. Therefore: 1. It could not be invention of good men or angels, for they neither would or could make a book, and tell lies all the time they were writing it, saying, Thus saith the Lord, when it was their own invention. 2. It could not be the invention of bad men or devils, for they would not make a book which commands all duty, forbids all sin, and condemns their souls to hell to all eternity. 3. Therefore, I draw this conclusion, that the Bible must be given divine inspiration. (Robert W. Burtner and Robert E. Chiles, A Compendium of Wesley s Theology, p. 20.) The evidence that the very words of the Bible are God-given may be briefly summarized as follows: This is the claim of the classical text (2 Timothy 3:16). It is the emphatic testimony of Paul that he spoke in Words taught by the Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:13).

8 It is evident from the repeated formula, It is written. Jesus said that which was written in the whole Old Testament spoke of Him (Luke 24:27, 44; John 5:39; Hebrews 10:7). The New Testament constantly equates the Word of God with the Scripture (writings of the Old Testament (cf. Matthew 21:42; Romans 15:4; 2 Peter 3:16). Jesus indicated that not even the smallest part of a Hebrew word or letter could be broken (Mt. 5:8). The New Testament refers to the written record as the oracles of God (Romans 3:2; Hebrews 5:12). Occasionally the writers were even told to diminish not a word (Jeremiah 26:2, AV). John even pronounced an anathema upon all who would add to or subtract from the words of the prophecy of this book (Revelation 22:18, 19). Q. Hasn't the New Testament been changed since it has been copied and recopied throughout history? A. A common misconception is that the text of the Bible has not come down to us the way in which it was originally written. Accusations abound of zealous monks changing the biblical text throughout Church history. This issue is of the utmost importance, since an altered text would do grave damage to the credibility of the story. As F. F. Bruce says, "The historical 'once-and-for-all-ness' of Christianity which distinguishes it from those religious and philosophical systems, which are not specially related to any particular time, makes the reliability of the writings which purport to record this revelation a question of first-rate importance." (The New Testimony Documents: Are They Reliable? p.8). Fortunately, the problem is not lack of evidence. There are three different types of evidence that are to be used in evaluating the New Testament text. These are the Greek manuscripts, the various versions in which the New Testament is translated, and the writings of the Church fathers. The New Testament was originally composed in the Greek language. There are approximately 5,500 copies in existence that contain all or part of the New Testament. Although we do not possess the originals, copies exist from a very early date. The New Testament was written from about A. D. 50 to A. D. 90. The earliest fragment dates about A. D. 120, with about 50 other fragments dating within years from the time of composition. Two major manuscripts, Codex Vaticanus (A. D. 325) and Codex Sinaiticus (A. D. 350), a complete copy, date within 250 years of the time of composition. This may seem like a long time span, but it is minimal compared to the most ancient works. The earliest copy of Caesar's The Gallic Wars dates 1,000 years after it was written, and the first complete copy of the Odyssey by Homer dates 2,200 years after it was written. When the interval between the writing of the New Testament and earliest copies is compared to other ancient works, the New Testament proves to be much closer to the time of the original. The 5,500 copies are far and away the most we have of any ancient work. Many ancient writings have been transmitted to us by only a handful of manuscripts (Catullus - three copies, earliest one is 1,600 years after he wrote; Herodotus - eight copies and 1,300 years). Not only do the New Testament documents have more manuscript evidence and close time interval between the writing and earliest copy, but they were also translated into several other languages at an

9 early date. Translation of a document into another language was rare in the ancient world, so this is an added plus for the New Testament. The number of copies of the versions is in excess of 18,000, with possibly as many as 25,000. This is further evidence that helps us establish the New Testament text. Even if we did not possess the 5,500 Greek manuscripts or the 18,000 copies of the versions, the text of the New Testament could still be reproduced within 250 years from its composition. How? By the writings of early Christians. In commentaries, letters, etc., these ancient writers quote the biblical text, thus giving us another witness to the text of the New Testament. John Burgon has catalogued more than 86,000 citations by the early Church fathers who cite different parts of the New Testament. Thus we observe that there is so much more evidence for the reliability of the New Testament text than any other comparable writings in the ancient world. F. F. Bruce makes the following observation: "The evidence for our New Testament writings is ever so much greater than the evidence for many writings of classical authors, the authenticity of which no one dreams of questioning." He also states, "And if the New Testament were a collection of secular writings, their authenticity would generally be regarded beyond all doubt" (The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? p. 15). Sir Frederic Kenyon, former director and principal librarian of the British Museum, was one of the foremost experts on ancient manuscripts and their authority. Shortly before his death, he wrote this concerning the New Testament: "The interval between the dates of the original composition (of the New Testament) and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established." (The Bible and Archeology, pp ). Q. How can anyone believe the New Testament account of the life of Jesus, seeing that it was written long after His death? A. There seems to be some type of general consensus among many people that the New Testament documents were written many years after the events took place and hence do not contain reliable information. However, the fact of the matter is that the life of Jesus was written by eyewitnesses or people who recorded firsthand testimony. The writers were all living at the same time these events transpired, and they had personal contact either with the events or with people who witnessed the events. There is strong internal testimony that the Gospels were written at an early date. The Book of Acts records the missionary activity of the early Church and was written as a sequel by the same person who wrote the Gospel according to Luke. The Book of Acts ends with the apostle Paul being alive in Rome, his death not being recorded. This would lead us to believe that it was written before he died, since the other major events in his life have been recorded. We have some reason to believe that Paul was put to death in the Neronian persecution of A. D. 64, which means the Book of Acts was composed before this time. If the Book of Acts was written before A. D. 64, then the Gospel of Luke, to which Acts was a sequel, had to have been composed some time before that, probably in the late fifties or early sixties of the first century. The death of Christ took place around A. D. 30, which would make the composition of Luke at the latest within 30 years of the events.

10 The early Church generally taught that the first Gospel composed was that of Matthew, which would place us still closer to the time of Christ. This evidence leads us to believe that the first three Gospels were all composed within 30 years from the time these events occurred, a time when unfriendly eyewitnesses were still living who could contradict their testimony if was not accurate. This type of evidence has recently led one liberal scholar, John A. T. Robinson, to re-date the New Testament documents much earlier than most modern liberal scholars would have us believe. Robinson has argued in Redating the New Testament that the entire New Testament could have been completed before A. D. 70, which is still well into the eyewitness period. Facts involved in the issue led W. F. Albright, the great biblical archaeologist, to comment, "We can already say emphatically that there is no longer any solid basis for dating any book of the New Testament after A. D. 80, two full generations before the date between 130 and 150 given by the more radical New Testament critics of today" (William F. Albright, Recent Discoveries in Bible Lands, New York, Funk and Wagnalls, 1955, p. 136). Albright's A. D. 80 date might be questioned when it comes to the Gospel of John. There is a strong possibility the apostle John's banishment to Patmos under Domitian was as late as A. D in Revelation 1. There is strong tradition John wrote Revelation there at that time. This is testified to by Clement of Alexandria, Eusibius, and Irenaeus (cf. New Testament Survey, p. 391, by Robert Gromacki). The evidence points out that (1) the documents were not written long after the events but within close proximity to them, and (2) they were written by people during the period when many who were acquainted with the facts or were eyewitnesses to them were still living. The inescapable conclusion is that the New Testament picture of Christ can be trusted. Q. How did Jesus view the Old Testament? A. We could cite many reasons for the Old Testament being God s Word, but the strongest argument comes from the Lord Jesus Himself. As God in human flesh, Jesus speaks with final authority. And His testimony regarding the Old Testament is loud and clear. Jesus believed that the Old Testament was divinely inspired, the veritable Word of God. He said, The Scripture cannot be broken (John 10:35). He referred to Scripture as the commandment of God (Mathew 15:3) and as the Word of God (Matthew 15:6). He also indicated that it was indestructible: Until Heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the law, until all is accomplished (Matthew 5:18). When dealing with the people of His day, whether it was with the disciples or religious rulers, Jesus constantly referred to the Old Testament: Have you not read that which was spoken to you by God? (Matthew 22:31); Yea; and have you never read, Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babes thou has prepared praise for thyself? (Matthew 21:16, citing Psalm 8:2); and Have you not read what David did? (Matthew 12:3). Examples could be multiplied to demonstrate that Jesus was conversant with the Old Testament and its content. He quoted from it often and He trusted it totally. Throughout the Gospels, we find Jesus confirming many of the accounts in the Old Testament, such as the destruction of Sodom and the death of Lot s wife (Luke 17:29, 32) the murder of Abel by his brother Cain (Luke 11:51), the calling of Moses (Mark 12:26), and the manna given in the wilderness (John 6:31-51). The list of examples goes on, and the evidence is clear: Jesus saw the Old Testament as being God s Word, and His attitude toward it was nothing less than total trust. Many people want to accept Jesus, yet they reject a large portion of the Old Testament. Either Jesus knew what He was talking about, or He didn t. If a person believes in Jesus Christ, he should be consistent and believe that the Old Testament

11 Q. What does it mean, the Bible is inspired? A. The inspiration of the Bible is an extremely crucial topic in today's world. Many talk about the Bible being inspired. But when asked to define what they mean by inspiration, they give a variety of definitions. Some contend the Bible is inspired in the same way as all great literature. "It challenges the human heart to reach new heights," they say. However, this does not make the Bible unique. In other words, they see the Bible as only a human literary masterpiece, not as being of divine origin. Others believe the Bibles is inspired because it contains the Word of God along with myths, mistakes, and legends. These people hold that it is wrong to identify the Bible as the Word of God; rather, it is a witness of God speaking to mankind. Putting it another way, the Word of God can be found in the Bible, but the Word of God is not synonymous with the Bible. Two important verses speak to the heart of the matter: 2 Timothy 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:21. The former reads, "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness." The word inspired is a translation of the Greek word theopneustos, meaning God - breathed. Thus the origin of Scripture is God, not man; it is God-breathed. The second verse, 2 Peter 1:21, says, "For no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God." This also confirms that the writers were moved by God to record that which God desired. Mechanical dictation was not employed as some claim. Rather, God used each individual writer and his personality to accomplish a divinely authoritative work. The process of inspiration extended to every word ("all Scripture"), refuting the idea of myth and error. Since God is behind the writings, and since He is perfect, the result must be infallible. If it were not infallible, we could be left with God -inspired error. It is important to understand this concept, for the entire Christian faith is based upon the premise that "God is there and He is not silent," as the late theologian Francis Schaeffer so often said. Sometimes it is easier to understand the concept of inspiration when it is compared with revelation. Revelation relates to the origin and actual giving of truth (1 Corinthians 2:10).Inspiration, on the other hand, relates to the receiving and actual recording of truth. Inspiration means that "God the Holy Spirit worked in a unique supernatural way so that the written words of the Scripture writers were also the words of God." The human authors of Scripture wrote spontaneously using their own minds and experiences, yet their words were not merely the words of men but actually the words of God. God's control was always with them in their writings with the result being the Bible the Word of God in the words of men. Additional Resource: This is an excellent 51 minute class that was taught by Dr. Tim Keller at Redeemer Church in Manhattan. It can be downloaded here: "Defeaters" 3; Biblical Criticism by Dr. Timothy J. Keller June 4, 2002 MCM - SOSL Year 7 Duration: 51:17 Message Type: lecture Product #: 846