The Doctrine of Scripture
An Introduction to the doctrines of
Revelation and Scriptural Inspiration
from the
Protestant Perspective
by
Rev. Allen Vander Pol
MINTS 14401 Old Cutler Road Miami, FL 33158 [email protected] Website: www.mints.edu 2
Doctrine of Scripture
PREFACE
COURSE INTRODUCTION JUSTIFICATION OBJECTIVES REQUIREMENTS BENEFITS CLASS RECORD
LESSON ONE: GENERAL AND SPECIAL REVELATION
INTRODUCTION 1. A Story 2. A Tendency 3. This Lesson A. REAL REVELATION 1. God’s Incomprehensibility 2. Questions about Revelation from God 3. Real Revelation about God B. TWO KINDS OF REVELATION C. GENERAL REVELATION 1. Psalm 19:1-4 2. Romans 1:19, 20 3. Romans 2:14, 15 D. SPECIAL REVELATION 1. Special Revelation and the History of Salvation 2. Various Forms of Special Revelation and Us Today a. Special Revelation in History b. God’s Appearances c. God’s Miraculous Works d. God’s Words 3. A Summary of Special Revelation a. Definition of Special Revelation b. Our Need for Special Revelation c. The Effects of Special Revelation SUMMARY QUESTIONS
LESSON TWO: THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE
INTRODUCTION A. THE BIBLE’S INSPIRATION 1. 2 Peter 1:20, 21 3
2. 2 Timothy 3: 16, 17 3. A Definition of the Inspiration of Scripture B. DIFFERENT VIEWS OF INSPIRATION 1. The Mechanical View of Inspiration 2. The Dynamic View of Inspiration 3. The Organic View of Inspiration C. THE EXTENT OF INSPIRATION 1. The “Limited Inspiration” View 2. Our Response to the “Limited Inspiration” View 3. Scripture’s Response to the “Limited Inspiration” View D. THE RESULTS OF INSPIRATION SUMMARY QUESTIONS
LESSON THREE: THE STORY OF SCRIPTURE
INTRODUCTION A. THE SPIRITUAL DECLINE OF THE HUMAN RACE (Genesis 3-11) B. GOD’S PROMISES OF SALVATION TO THE FOREFATHERS OF HIS PEOPLE (Genesis 12-50) 1. God’s Promises to Abraham 2. The Lives of Abraham’s Immediate Family C. GOD’S ESTABLISHMENT OF HIS PEOPLE AS A NATION (Exodus – 2 Samuel) 1. Israel’s Establishment through Moses 2. Israel’s King through David 3. Important Developments during the Rule of Kings D. THE SPIRITUAL DECLINE OF GOD’S PEOPLE (1 & 2 Kings, Ezra, Nehemiah) E. GOD’S FULFILLMENT OF HIS PROMISES IN THE COMING OF CHRIST (Matthew – John) F. GOD’S ESTABLISHMENT OF HIS PEOPLE AS THE CHURCH (Acts – Revelation) SUMMARY QUESTIONS
LESSON FOUR: THE RELIABILITY OF BIBLICAL MANUSCRIPTS
INTRODUCTION A. THE MAKING OF ANCIENT BOOKS 1. Ancient Writing Surfaces 2. Ancient Forms of Books 3. Ancient Writing Styles 4. The Production of Ancient Manuscripts 5. Causes of Errors in Copying the Ancient Text B. THE PRACTICE OF TEXTUAL CRITICISM 4
C. GENERAL FINDINGS OF TEXTUAL CRITICISM 1. Thesis 1: “We have good reasons to think that the original text is preserved (somewhere) in the overall textual tradition.” 2. Thesis 2: “The vast majority of scribal changes are minor and insignificant.” 3. Thesis 3: “Of the small portion of variations that are significant, our methodology can determine, with a reasonable degree of certainty, which is the original text.” 4. Thesis 4: “The remaining number of truly unresolved variants is very few and not material to the story/teaching of the New Testament.” SUMMARY QUESTIONS
LESSON FIVE: THE INERRANCY OF SCRIPTURE
INTRODUCTION A. INERRANCY AND INFALLIBILITY 1. The Meaning of Both Words 2. Our Approach to Defining Inerrancy B. SUSPECTED ERRORS IN THE BIBLE 1. Suspected Errors in Stories a. Jesus’ trip through Jericho (Matthew 20:29-34; Mark 10:46-52; Luke 18:35-43) b. The Order of Events surrounding Jesus’ Calling of the Disciples (Matthew 10:1-5; Mark 3:13-19; Luke 6:12-16) c. The story of the Rich Young Ruler (Matthew 19:16-20; Mark 10:17-31; Luke 18:18-30) 2. Suspected Errors in Dates 3. Suspected Errors in Citations a. Mark 1:2-3 b. Acts 15:14-18 SUMMARY QUESTIONS
LESSON SIX: THE PERFECTIONS OF SCRIPTURE
INTRODUCTION A. THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE 1. The Evangelical View 2. The Traditionalist View 3. The Subjectivist View 4. The Scriptural View B. THE NECESSITY OF SCRIPTURE 1. Definitions of the Necessity of Scripture 2. Scriptural Proof of the Necessity of Scripture a. We need the preaching of Scripture to know the gospel of Christ. 5
b. We need Scripture to maintain the Christian life. c. We need Scripture to know our future. C. THE CLARITY OF SCRIPTURE 1. Clarifications on the Clarity of Scripture 2. The Bible’s Teaching concerning its Clarity 3. Historical Evidence of Scripture’s Clarity D. THE SUFFICIENCY OF SCRIPTURE SUMMARY QUESTIONS
LESSON SEVEN: THE CANON AND THE APOCRYPHA
INTRODUCTION A. THE MEANING OF CANON B. THE RECOGNITION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON C. THE RECOGNITION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON 1. The Dates of the Writing of the New Testament 2. Heretical Attempts to Determine the Canon 3. Orthodox Attempts to Determine the Canon 4. The Spirit’s Guidance in Determining the Canon D. THE CANON AND THE APOCRYPHA 1. The Contents of the Apocrypha 2. The Roman Catholic Church’s Acceptance of the Apocrypha SUMMARY QUESTIONS
LESSON EIGHT: BENNY HINN’S VIEW OF THE WORD OF GOD
INTRODUCTION A. HISTORICAL INFORMATION 1. The Names of the Movement 2. Names within the Movement 3. Origins of the Movement a. E. W. Kenyon b. Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland B. CENTRAL WORD OF FAITH TEACHINGS 1. The Word of Faith’s Beliefs about God a. Tritheism b. Deism 2. The Word of Faith’s Beliefs about Christ a. Jesus Before His Incarnation b. Jesus During His Incarnation c. Jesus in Hell 3. The Word of Faith’s Beliefs about Salvation 4. An Important Misunderstanding C. THE WORD OF FAITH’S BELIEFS ABOUT REVELATION 6
1. Word of Faith’s View of Revelation a. Two Underlining Teachings b. Revelation and Two Kinds of Knowledge c. Benny Hinn’s “Use” of Revelation 2. Evaluation of Word of Faith’s View of Revelation. SUMMARY QUESTIONS APPENDIX TO LESSON EIGHT
CONCLUSION
SUPPLEMENT TO THE COORDINATOR’S MANUAL
1. HOW TO USE THIS SUPPLEMENT 2. THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS COURSE 3. GENERAL MATERIALS FOR COORDINATORS 4. LESSON QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 5. STUDENTS’ EXAM – THE DOCTRINE OF SALVATION 6. EXAM ANSWERS
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED 7
PREFACE
The Doctrine of Scripture discusses a basic topic of the Christian faith. Throughout the centuries Christ Himself has remained the cornerstone or foundation of the church (Ephesians 2:20). Yet, without Scripture we would know nothing reliable about Christ. We might guess who Christ is; we would speculate about what He came to do. But without the Bible we could never know for sure. We know about the way of salvation in Christ only because God inspired this book.
The course begins with a general introduction of God’s revelation. Then it begins to narrow its focus. Lesson One presents the Bible’s teaching about two ways by which God reveals Himself to us. We call the two ways General Revelation and Special Revelation. Lesson Two begins our focus only on Scripture. This lesson presents the Bible’s teaching on the inspiration of Scripture.
Lessons Three through Six present some of the effects of inspiration. First, we possess an inspired presentation of the story of God’s saving work which reaches its highest point in the coming of Christ (Lesson Three). Next, since God inspired the Bible, He has also preserved Scripture over the centuries. We can have confidence that we still read God’s Word today when we read the Bible (Lesson Four). Also, God’s inspired Word possesses the qualities of inerrancy and infallibility (Lesson Five). And a final implication teaches us that God’s complete, inspired Word speaks to us with authority, necessity, clarity, and sufficiency.
The last two lessons compare this teaching of Scripture with views which Protestants do not usually accept. Lesson Seven explains why we do not believe that the books of the Apocrypha belong to the Bible. This topic points to a significant difference between Protestants and Roman Catholics. Lesson Eight describes another opposing view of Scripture. The Word of Faith movement, which includes Benny Hinn, preaches this alternative view. So Lesson Eight presents several important parts of Word of Faith theology to give the context of its view of God’s Word.
We believe that each lesson presents important teaching or clarification about Scripture. We pray that the Lord will use this course to encourage students to preach and teach God’s Word carefully and faithfully. 8
COURSE INTRODUCTION
JUSTIFICATION Most of the students who take this course also present the Scriptures to others. This course on the Doctrine of Scripture teaches students that they must respect the Bible as God’s Word. Therefore they should handle the Bible with the care and urgency which God’s Word requires. But students also need warnings concerning false teachings about Scripture. This course presents historic and contemporary warnings against false views.
OBJECTIVES 1. Students will learn about the two ways by which God reveals Himself to mankind. 2. Students will learn Scripture’s teaching about its inspiration. 3. Students will learn positive results of the doctrine of inspiration. 4. Students will learn about two views of Scripture which Protestants have historically rejected.
REQUIREMENTS
1. Attendance (15%) Students will attend at least 15 hours of class.
2. Class Homework (15%) Students will complete the home work at the end of each lesson.
3. Reading (30%) Students must read 300 pages for BA or 600 pages for MA studies and write a review of the reading. Students must read from the following list of assigned writings. Each student will present in class a written report of one page per 100 pages read. The course gives a form for students to use as they write their reading reports. We recommend the books on top of the list over the books at the bottom of the list. a. Understanding Scripture: An Overview of the Bible’s Origin, Reliability, and Meaning. Ed. Wayne Grudem, et. al. (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012). 190 pages. Available for Kindle. b. James Montgomery Boice: Standing on the Rock. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994) 180 pages. c. R. C. Sproul. Knowing Scripture. (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1977). 115 pages. Available for Kindle. d. Steven J. Nicols and Eric T. Brandt. Ancient Word, Changing Worlds: The Doctrine of Scripture in a Modern Age. (Wheaton: Crossway, 2009) 160 pages. Available for Kindle. e. Leland Ryken: How to Read the Bible as Literature. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984). 195 pages. f. Edward J. Young: Thy Word is Truth. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1957). 268 pages. 9
g. The Infallible Word: A Symposium by the Members of the Faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary. Ed. N. B. Stonehouse and Paul Wooley (Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 1946) 301 pages. h. John Frame: The Doctrine of the Word of God. (Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 2010). 640 pages. i. Audio and Video Recordings on the Internet. Students may listen to the following internet recordings. Students may receive credit for up to 100 pages by listening to and reporting on these recordings. Two minutes of recording equals one page of reading. Students must include the normal information for reading reports when they report on these recordings. 1) Peter Eldersveld: “Commercial Religion.” Audio. 6 September 2012
4. Essay (20%) Bachelor’s level students must write a 10-page essay. Master’s level students must write a 15-page essay (In addition, include a title page, and bibliography). The project provides students an opportunity to add to the knowledge which they receive in this course. They can also learn more how to apply this knowledge to ministry in the church. The essay should follow this procedure: 1) Choose one of the letters of the New Testament (Romans – Jude). 2) Show how the letter claims that God inspired it (that the author’s words came from God). 3) Show how the author refers to this inspiration when he tells stories, corrects people of error and sin, or encourages Christians in their faith.
5. Final Exam (20%) Students will take a final exam. 10
BENEFITS 1. Students will learn about the important doctrine of revelation which Scripture proclaims. 2. Students will learn about how the doctrine of Scripture affects church ministry. 3. Students will perform theological work in which they study in scripture the doctrine of Scripture.
CLASS RECORD
Name of Level of Attendance Homework Readings Project Final Exam Final Student Study (15%) (15%) (30%) (20%) (20%) Grade (100%) 11
LESSON ONE
GENERAL AND SPECIAL REVELATION
INTRODUCTION
We begin this course with a story. Then we describe a tendency which appears in church history. No theme or idea connects the two. But they help us understand why we need to study the topic of this course.
1. A Story
Pastor and scholar James Montgomery Boice tells the following story that took place when he attended a seminar in California: Early in the morning, before the meetings were to start, I turned on the radio and heard a program the likes of which I had never heard before. It was a call-in show, which began with church bells. It was called “Have You Had a Spiritual Experience?” While I listened . . . a girl . . . explained how she had felt a sudden urge to leave her home in the northern part of the state and hitchhike down the coastal road. Halfway to Los Angeles she sensed that “this was the place.” So she had the driver stop the car, got out, and went down the hill to the shore where she found a cave and camped out for a couple days. Then—because she thought God (or something) was leading her to do this—she went down into the water and mingled with the rocks and seaweed as if she were at the dawn of creation. Finally an animal came by, and she took this as a sign that it was time to go. She climbed the bank and hitchhiked back to northern California. This was her “spiritual experience.”1
Boice responds to this story by asking: “Is this the way God speaks to people? By feelings? Intuition? . . . Does God’s Spirit lead us apart from the objective standard of his written word?”2 This story makes us ask how God reveals His commands to us.
2. A Tendency
In church history quite a different tendency in some makes us ask other questions about God’s revelation to us. For centuries some scholars in the Christian church have developed what they call “Natural Theology.” We can define natural theology as, “The body of knowledge about God which may be obtained by human reason alone without the aid of Revelation and hence to be contrasted with ‘Revealed Theology’.”3 Natural theologians do not agree on whether or not natural theology relies on revelation to study God. But this definition expresses the belief of many that some theology does not need to rely of God’s revelation.
1 James Montgomery Boice, Standing on the Rock: Biblical Authority in a Secular Age,” (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994) 27-8. 2 Boice 28. 3 “Natural Theology,” The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd. ed., 2005. 11 12
Philosophers who promote natural theology often begin with an idea or assumption that every effect in the world has a cause. Then, by the use of reason, they conclude that the universe in which we live must have a First Cause whom we call God. They reach other conclusions which they believe reason also tells them about God. This development in church history makes us ask, “Do we always need revelation from God to know about God?”
3. This Lesson
This course presents the Doctrine of Scripture. But we begin with this introductory lesson on God’s revelation of Himself. This lesson will not completely answer the questions which we have already raised. However, at the end of this lesson we will have a good idea concerning how to answer them.
That foundation consists of Scripture’s teaching about how God reveals Himself. As we explore God’s Word, we will see how Scripture teaches three truths: 1) God gives us real revelation of Himself; 2) God gives general revelation of Himself; and 3) God gives special revelation of Himself. As we unfold the meaning of these statements, we will get ready to study the basic topic of this course, the Doctrine of Scripture.
A. REAL REVELATION
1. God’s Incomprehensibility
Sometimes the Bible stresses that God’s greatness vastly outdistances what our minds can fathom. Scripture tells us about God’s surpassing greatness and majesty. We present just a few verses which give this teaching:
Such knowledge [of God’s presence everywhere] is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Psalm 139:6
Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom. Psalm 145:3
Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit. Psalm 147:5
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8, 9
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Romans 11:33, 34
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Theologians sometimes refer to this divine majesty of God’s thoughts and personality as “the incomprehensibility of God.” The phrase suggests that our human minds will never fully understand (comprehend) God’s thoughts, deeds, character and power. The Westminster Shorter Catechism teaches this truth of God’s divine greatness. It describes Him as “infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.”4 We can understand human wisdom and power. Yet we cannot comprehend God’s infinite and eternal wisdom and power fully. Theologian Wayne Grudem explains the meaning of God’s incomprehensibility with additional emphasis: “It is not only true that we can never fully understand God; it is also true that we can never fully understand any single thing about God.”5
In a similar way, facts about the sun remain incomprehensible to us. Imagine a person who has travelled around the world many times. He can understand the earth’s size. Yet he cannot comprehend the size of the sun. The sun vastly surpasses the space of anything the man has ever come to know. Similarly, the majesty of God surpasses anything that we have ever studied or known on earth. The infinite Creator remains incomprehensible to man, a finite creature. So, God’s incomprehensibility describes His limitless divine majesty in contrast to the limits of our human ability to understand Him.
2. Questions about Revelation from God
This incomprehensibility of God has prompted some theologians to ask whether we can really know God at all. Or, we can look at their question from a different viewpoint: they ask whether God can truly reveal Himself to us. If God’s thoughts go deeper and higher than our thoughts, can we know God’s thoughts in any way? If God’s presence everywhere surpasses our ability to comprehend it, can we know anything about His presence? Does God’s incomprehensibility make revelation about God impossible?
Religions of many sorts have claimed that we cannot really know the incomprehensible God. Centuries before Christ Greek philosophers said that a person cannot know anything about the gods. For example, the Greek philosopher Protagoras reportedly wrote, “Concerning the gods I am not able to know whether they exist or whether they do not exist. For there are many things which prevent one from knowing; for example, the obscurity of the subject and the shortness of human life.”6 This Greek thinker believed that the limitations of human experience keep us from knowing anything about the divine.
Theologian Herman Bavink found a similar hesitancy to speak about the divine in other religions. He referred to the beliefs of Gnosticism, which misled many in the Christian church shortly after the time of the apostles. According to Gnosticism, “For the creature the highest god was absolutely unknowable and unattainable.”7 Bavink mentioned similar tendencies in Hinduism and Islam:
4 “The Westminster Shorter Catechism,” The Westminster Confession of Faith (Glasgow: Free Presbyterian Publications, 1971) 287-8. 5 Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994) 150. 6 Quoted by Herman Bavink, The Doctrine of God, trans. William Hendriksen (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1951) 19-20. Bavink cited this quote of the Greek philosopher Diogenes. 7 Bavink 19. 13 14
For the Brahmans God is Unknowable, without names and attributes, known only by him who knoweth not. The Koran frequently resorts to grossly anthropomorphisitic [using human qualities to describe God] descriptions of Allah, but among the disciples of Mohammed many arose who interpreted these passages spiritually, and refused to ascribe any attributes to God.”8
Within neo-orthodox theology (a movement which peaked and then declined in the 20th century) some refer to God as “wholly hidden” or “wholly other.” The neo-orthodox theologian Karl Barth, for example, said that talking about God with human language attempted to control or manipulate God. According to Barth, we misrepresent God when we claim to describe Him. He said that, in fact, we have no knowledge about God which we can put into words.
All of these beliefs stress God’s transcendence or “otherness”. They deny that we can truly know God in any way. They deny the possibility of receiving revelation which lets us know about Him.
3. Real Revelation about God
Yet the Bible refers to people who know God (Romans 1:19, 20). In his prayer to His heavenly Father, Jesus said, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God” (John 17:3). Theologians who believe the Bible answer the objections of those who believe that we cannot know God. For example, Wayne Grudem wrote: Even though we cannot know God exhaustively [absolutely completely], we can know true things about God. In fact, all that Scripture tells us about God is true. It is true to say that God is love (1 John 4:8), that God is light (1 John 5:8), that God is spirit (John 4:24), that God is just or righteous (Rom. 3:26), and so forth. To say this, does not imply or require that we know everything about God or about his love or his righteousness or any other attribute. When I say that I have three sons, that statement is entirely true, even though I do not know everything about my sons, nor even about myself. So it is in our knowledge of God: we have true knowledge of God from Scripture, even though we do not have exhaustive knowledge.9
Presbyterian theologian John Frame agrees. He adds that, in all of our knowledge about God, we know incompletely: Paul . . . prays that the Christians at Ephesus “may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge” (Eph. 3:18-19). Even after we have grasped the dimensions of Jesus’ love, it still surpasses our knowledge. So God is incomprehensible even in his revelation. When God reveals himself to us, he does not thereby decrease his incomprehensibility. Mature believers understand this principle well. The more deeply one understands the love of God, the wisdom of his plan, and his mighty power, the more amazed one is.10 8 Bavink 20. 9 Grudem 151. 10 John Frame, The Doctrine of God, A Theology of Lordship, vol. 2 (Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 2002) 201-2. 14 15
So God’s revelation of Himself makes us confident and humble. His revelation gives confidence because we know that He reveals precious and real truth to us. So, in John 17 Jesus prayed, “Your word is truth” (John 17:17). His revelation also makes us humble. Even when we understand what God teaches, we must recognize that we do not understand God’s Word as deeply as God understands it. With confidence and humility, let us proceed in our study of God’s revelation.
B. TWO KINDS OF REVELATION11
Many theologians agree that God reveals Himself to mankind in two basic ways. Yet they do not agree on how to describe these two ways. The two columns of words below demonstrate the variety of ways by which theologians have made the distinction:
unwritten revelation written revelation natural revelation supernatural revelation general revelation special revelation12 non-saving revelation salvation revelation.
The words in the left column all attempt to describe the same thing. Similarly, the words in the right column all seek to name the same kind of revelation.
Yet each attempt to describe the two kinds of revelation fails in some way. Notice first the distinction between unwritten and written revelation. Theologians call God’s communication to His prophets, special revelation. Yet God did not always give them written revelation. God often spoke to them through visions and dreams (Numbers 12:6). Most probably the prophets did not write all that God showed them in visions. So we should not conclude that God moved men to write all special revelation. Similarly John 1:14 says that when the Word became flesh, “We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Special revelation certainly included the appearance of Christ. Yet, when Christ came, He did not first appear in written form.
Or, consider the distinction between natural revelation (what comes through nature) and supernatural revelation. Since God’s first commands to Adam did not come through nature, they belonged to special revelation.13 Yet we cannot call these words of God salvation revelation. Adam had not yet sinned. So these names for the two kinds of revelation may help us. But usually we can find an exception which does not fit in these definitions.
For the students’ general information we should add that some theologians do not believe that we should speak of only two kinds of revelation from God. John Frame, for example, believes that we should refer to three kinds of revelation: 1) general revelation, God’s revelation
11 See Neal Hegeman’s MINTS course on “Practical Hermeneutics,” Lesson Four, First Principle, which deals with revelation. 12 See Louis Berkhof, Manual of Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1933) 24-5; William G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, ed. Alan W. Gomes (Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 2003) 85. 13 I.e. Genesis 1:29-30; 2:16, 17. 15 16 which we receive from His creation; 2) special revelation, God revelation which we receive from His written Word; and 3) existential revelation, an inner work of God which gives believers the ability to perceive that the other kinds of revelation come from God (see Matthew 11:27; Ephesians 1:17).14 We mention his view only to illustrate the point that theologians disagree over how many kinds of revelation God has given us.
In this course we will refer to two basic kinds of revelation which God gives. We will call them General Revelation and Special Revelation. We follow this approach because we believe that most theologians use these two names when they speak about revelation. Yet we need to remember that these two names may not help us on every topic of revelation.
C. GENERAL REVELATION
We may define general revelation as God’s use of the creation to reveal his divinity, wisdom and power personally to all people, made in His image. This definition stresses several basic parts of our understanding of general revelation: 1) that God reveals Himself through the creation which He made and through His daily rule over it; 2) that God uses the creation to make each person know Him; and 3) that mankind can understand general revelation because God made us in His image (A dog, for example, cannot know God by looking at the creation.). We will see these points as we look at various passages of Scripture.
1. Psalm 19:1-4
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.
This psalm teaches us about the message of God which flows to us through His creation. The whole creation declares God’s glory. The creation also declares that God made it because it proclaims “the work of his hands.” So the creation shows us that everything exists due to the lordship of God over creation.
According to the psalm, the creation declares this message continually—day after day, night after night. God’s creation informs our minds; it does not merely inspire our feelings. Creation continually pours forth speech and displays knowledge. So, even an atheist—a person who says there is no God—continually witnesses the message of creation which disproves his atheism.
Also, the creation declares God’s glory to every human being. No one can speak a language which every other person in the world can understand. Yet every person in the world can understand the speech of creation. Creation declares God’s glory to people of every
14 John Frame, The Doctrine of the Word of God: A Theology of Lordship, vol. 4 (Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 2010) 330-1. Frame seems to refer to what his teacher, John Murray, called “The Internal Testimony” in: John Murray, “The Attestation of Scripture,” The Infallible Word, ed. N. B. Stonehouse and Paul Woolley, 2nd ed. (Phillipsburg: P & R, 1967) 42-54. 16 17 language and in every village or city. So Psalm 19 tells us that God’s creation reveals His glory and majesty to everyone.
The Bible also teaches that God reveals Himself through His continual rule over creation. God’s mighty acts in creation display his divinity and power. Psalm 150:2 says, “Praise him for his acts of power; praise him for his surpassing greatness.” Psalm 145 says, “One generation will commend your works to another; they will tell of your mighty acts” (:4). It also says that God’s people speak of God’s might “so that all men may know of your mighty acts and the glorious splendor of your kingdom” (:12). So, by His general revelation, God reveals to mankind in general that He exists, that He possesses divine glory and power, and that He rules over every event which takes place.
2. Romans 1:19, 20
What may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
These verses tell us what men who rebelliously deny the voice of creation actually know about God. The verses emphasize the clarity of God’s revelation which comes through creation. Verse 19 says that God has made “plain” or visible what the creation reveals about God. The creation does not speak only to scientists who study it. It gives a clear message to every man, woman, and child concerning God’s power and authority.
Furthermore, people clearly understand God’s revelation from creation. Verse 20 says that men clearly see God’s eternal power and divine nature when they look at the things which He made. Since they clearly understand the message of creation, they understand that they resist Him when try to deny the voice of creation. So men panic with terror when lightening comes too close during a storm. They may say that they fear the demons. Yet they also fear God Himself who reveals His power in the storm.
3. Romans 2:14, 15
When Gentiles who do not have the law, do by nature the things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.
These verses come from the Apostle Paul’s teaching (in Romans 2:1-16) that everyone deserves God’s judgment. The Jews in Paul’s day deserved judgment because they disobeyed God’s law which they had received. Here the apostle tells us why Gentiles who never heard God’s law also deserve judgment. They know something about God’s law which they disobeyed.
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When God created the human race in His image with dignity and honor, He placed His law on every man’s heart. God did not place a full list of His laws on a man’s heart. But God did give mankind a sense of right a wrong. People demonstrate this by their moral behavior. At times people without God’s written law actually do what the law commands. Many non- Christian cultures, for example, value honesty and show respect for parents. The law on the non- Christian’s heart shapes his conscience. So, people want to excuse themselves when they have done wrong because the conscience makes them feel guilty. Or they recognize the wrong that they have done. God reveals something of His character and honor to us through the way that he made us. This also belongs to God’s general revelation, His revelation of Himself to mankind in general.
So we have seen that God reveals Himself to the whole human race. Using His creation and continuing rule over it, God gives us evidence of His majesty and divine nature. By making this revelation in the creation clear, God personally reveals His character to us. By creating us to reflect His holiness, God gives everyone an understanding of the obedience and humility that God requires. We call this general revelation.
D. SPECIAL REVELATION
1. Special Revelation and the History of Salvation
Before we look at special revelation itself, we need to understand the history of salvation. Immediately after mankind sinned, God approached Adam and Eve with curses and a promise. He promised that one of Eve’s descendants would destroy the devil and rescue God’s people from sin (Genesis 3:15). This promise regarding Christ began a history of God’s speech and actions which prepared the way for Christ to come. The Bible reports this history of salvation.
God’s words and actions usually followed a specific pattern. First, God said what he would do; second, God did it; and finally God explained what He had done. We can see an example of this in the captivity of Israel. As early as the time of Moses, God promised to remove His people from the promised land if they disobeyed Him. God said in Deuteronomy 30:17, 18: “If your heart turns away and you are not obedient . . . I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.” Many years later God continued to warn His people through the prophets. For example, Amos said to the rich who did not want to obey God’s Word, “The time will surely come when you will be taken away with hooks, the last of you with fishhooks” (Amos 4:2). Eventually God carried out what He had promised. He brought the Assyrians and Babylonians to invade the promised land and take the people captive. Then, the prophets explained what God had done (2 Kings 17:7-23; Lamentations; Ezekiel 1-24). So, the exile provides an example of how God 1) promised what He would do, 2) carried out what He promised, and 3) explained and applied what He did.
The Bible as a whole follows this same pattern concerning the coming of Christ: 1) the entire Old Testament contains God’s promise of Christ’s coming; 2) the gospels show that God kept His Word; 3) the rest of the New Testament explains and applies the coming of Christ. We
18 19 call this history of the interaction between God’s saving Word and His saving actions “the history of salvation.” So, God’s saving Word belongs to this history of salvation.
2. Various Forms of Special Revelation and Us Today
Surprisingly, many theologians refuse to define special revelation as a whole. The ways that God used to explain how He would save His people seem more dissimilar than one definition can include. We referred to this (four pages before) when we showed how different attempts to give names to general and special revelation don’t completely apply. It will help us to limit our discussion of special revelation only to the special revelation that we possess today.
As we will see, the special revelation that we have today reports the history of salvation. God has kept a record of His saving words and saving actions for us in the Bible. The Bible tells us as much of the history of salvation as we need to know. We hope to show in this section how the Bible presents the various saving words and actions of God. We will look at this special revelation in history, God’s appearances, God’s miraculous works, and God’s words.
a. Special Revelation in History
God’s saving works belonged to His revelation of salvation. For example, when God led Israel through the Red Sea, the people sang, “The nations will hear and tremble” (Exodus 15:14; Joshua 2:10-11). God’s saving deeds revealed His greatness and the majesty of His grace to His people and to other nations. Similarly, the history of Jesus’ life, crucifixion, and resurrection reveals God’s salvation. Yet, today our knowledge of what God did at the Red Sea and Calvary comes from the Bible alone.
b. God’s Appearances
In the Bible God appeared personally to people many times. We call these appearances, “theophanies.” Two Greek words stand behind this English word. They mean “God” and “appear.” So God appeared to men in theophanies.
The Bible tells us about God’s visible appearance to Abraham in a vision (Genesis 15:1) and as a visitor (Genesis 18:1). God appeared to Jacob in a dream near Bethel (Genesis 28:13) and when they wrestled (Genesis 22:25-28). God appeared to Moses in a burning bush (Exodus 3:1ff) and on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 33:23; 34:6-7). Isaiah, God’s prophet, saw God in a vision (Isaiah 6:1-5). We could mention similar experiences of many others in the Bible.
But the greatest theophany which the Bible reports took place when Christ came. The Apostle John tells us about the Word, who was with God and was God. John wrote that eventually “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). According to this, Jesus’ coming revealed God’s glory, grace and truthfulness. In God’s plan, God the Son had to appear to men, since He came to stand in our place and to endure the penalty for our sins. The Bible alone tells us about this theophany, when God appeared and saved us from our sins.
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c. God’s Miraculous Works
The Bible reports many amazing things that God did for His people. We think about Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, when God opened up the Red Sea (Exodus 13:17-14:31). God also miraculously fed the people in the desert (Exodus 16); He gave them water from the rock (Exodus 17:1-7). He defeated the enemies of His people as Moses lifted his hands (Exodus 17:8- 16). God performed other miracles in the times of Moses, Elijah and Elisha, Daniel, Christ and His apostles. These miracles displayed the power of God which He used to save His people.
God performed His greatest miracle when He raised Christ from the dead. Christ’s resurrection proved that His sacrifice paid fully for all our sins (Romans 4:25). The resurrection of Christ guarantees that the Christian will rise from the dead. As sin and death entered the human race through Adam, forgiveness and resurrection entered the human race through Jesus Christ’s resurrection. We learn about these mighty acts of salvation by God only from the Bible.
d. God’s Words
At the beginning of the Old Testament, God spoke with His own voice (such as when He spoke to Abraham) or through His representatives (such as Moses). As God prepared Israel for kings to rule over them, God also appointed prophets to speak to the people and their kings. The prophets spoke the words of God (Jeremiah 1:9). Therefore, the prophets repeatedly said that the mouth of the Lord had spoken what the prophets declared (for examples, see Isaiah 1:20; 40:5; Jeremiah 49:13; Micah 4:4).
God spoke most gloriously when Christ came. The gospel of John calls Jesus the Word (John 1:14-8). During his public ministry Jesus identified His words as the Father’s words. He said that He spoke “just what the Father has taught me” (John 8:28). “The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work” (John 14:10). Before Christ God spoke through the prophets. But when Christ came, God spoke as a man to men. Hebrews 1 summarizes this truth: “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets in many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son” (Hebrews 1:1, 2). Only the Bible tells us what Moses, the prophets, and Christ said.
So God gave special revelation in various ways—historical deeds, personal appearances, miracles, and words. He used all of these ways to reveal the plan, actions, and relevance of His saving work in Jesus Christ. The Bible provides the only place today were we can learn this special revelation.
3. A Summary of Special Revelation
a. Definition of Special Revelation
We base our definition of special revelation on the understanding we have just presented. We may define special revelation as God’s words and actions which he used to reveal His salvation for sinners. He reveals these words and actions to us today only in the Bible.
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b. Our Need for Special Revelation
We need special revelation because of our sins. Sin deceives us. Therefore, we do not interpret the message of creation correctly. Also, general revelation does not tell us God’s full message. It does not teach us about escape from God’s judgment due to our sin. We need a work of God besides creation to save us. So, we need revelation from God beyond what creation shows. God provided rescue for sinners by sending Christ. He calls us to repentance and faith in Christ by giving us special revelation, the Scriptures.
c. The Effects of Special Revelation
Special revelation reveals the redemption which God achieved for sinners. God also applies special revelation with power to give life to our dead hearts and faith to our doubting hearts. In Romans 1:16 the Apostle Paul spoke of special revelation when he wrote, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” So God uses the revelation of His saving work to save men from their sins.
SUMMARY
This lesson has given the background for our study of Scripture. We began by noting that many religions believe that mankind cannot know God in any way. They stress God’s incomprehensibility. So they believe our limited minds cannot truly know anything about infinite God. Yet we saw in Scripture that God gives us true, though incomplete, knowledge of Him. We can know Him.
Next we referred to two kinds of revelation from God. Though we cannot find completely acceptable names for them, we call them general and special revelation. God reveals Himself generally to all mankind through the things that He made and the way He rules over them. He reveals Himself specially to a part the humanity who come in contact with the prophets, apostles, His divine son in His written Word. By His general revelation God clearly reveals His power and divinity. Due to general revelation everyone knows God in some way. In former times God gave special revelation through His personal appearances, His miraculous deeds, and His words which He spoke personally to the prophets and apostles. Today we have His special revelation in the Bible. By His special revelation God tells us the law and the gospel of Christ.
At this point, let us return to the two examples which we mentioned at the beginning of this lesson. The young woman, who decided to live in a cave on the beach, and then in the ocean water, did not understand how God speaks verbally to us today. She did not begin her search for a spiritual experience with the Bible. So she should not have thought that the experience she received came clearly from the true God. If she had known the message of the Bible, she would have looked for a spiritual experience by going to the Christ of the Bible instead of going to the beach.
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Those who pursue natural theology try to study God without revelation. They base their theology on the way events normally take place in daily life. It seems to them that, by looking at the causes of events, they do not look at revelation. Yet they fail to see that even the pattern of cause-effect, which occurs daily in the universe, reveals the power and activity of God. This predictability of events demonstrates God’s faithfulness and wisdom as He governs the universe.
So everyone receives God’s general revelation. But for salvation everyone needs God’s special revelation. Scripture alone guides us to faith in Jesus Christ, the only one who can save us from our sins.
QUESTIONS
1. What do we mean by natural theology?
2. What do we mean by the incomprehensibility of God?
3. What conclusion do many religions reach when they call God “wholly hidden” or “wholly other”?
4. What do theologians mean when they say we can have real knowledge of God?
5. What do we mean by general revelation?
6. List three things that Psalm 19 tells us about general revelation.
7. List two things that Romans 1:19, 20 teaches about general revelation.
8. What do we mean by special revelation?
9. What has God used to give mankind special revelation?
10. Why do we need special revelation?
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LESSON TWO
THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE
INTRODUCTION
We begin this lesson with a question about one particular passage. The Apostle Paul wrote to Titus, a pastor on the island of Crete. In Titus 1 he told this pastor to tell some people to stop spreading lies. They did not believe their own lies. But their followers believed what they said. It seems that these followers gave their lying teachers financial support. Then the apostle wrote, “Even one of their own prophets has said, ‘Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.’ This testimony is true” (Titus 1:12, 13). This comment by the apostle leads us to our beginning question. Did the Apostle Paul believe that these prophets of Crete spoke the Word of God? We ask that because Paul quoted them in the Bible. He also calls their statement true.
In various places the Bible’s human authors used what other people wrote or told them. Luke, for example, gave us history when he wrote the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts. Sometimes Luke wrote about events which he did not witness. For example, Luke himself did not see the angel who told Zechariah about the birth of Zechariah’s son, John the Baptist (Luke 1:5-25). Someone must have told Luke about that event. When did this story become God’s Word? Did God inspire the person who told Luke about the angel? Similarly, Genesis includes different lists of genealogies (see Genesis 10 which has several examples). If Moses, the author of Genesis, quoted these records of generations, when did these records become God’s Word?
These questions make us think about an important point. They ask whether the Bible possesses uniqueness as God’s Word. Or did the Bible’s human authors quote many other writings which had equal authority? Since the Bible directly interacts with other writings, do those writings have the same importance as the Bible has?
The Bible does not directly answer these questions. But the Bible does tell us about its origins. It claims God the Holy Spirit as its primary Author. Its claims will help us answer the questions we have raised.
This lesson will explore the inspiration of the Bible. First, we will see where the Bible teaches this doctrine. Next, we will describe and evaluate different views of inspiration. Thirdly, we will see how the Bible demonstrates that God fully inspired every part of the Bible. Finally, we will see that inspiration guarantees that God speaks to us throughout every part of Scripture.
A. THE BIBLE’S INSPIRATION15
We will discuss two important—perhaps the two most important—passages where the Bible tells us about its origins.
15 See Neal Hegeman’s MINTS course on “Practical Hermeneutics,” Lesson Three, Third Principle, which deals with the Spirit’s inspiration and illumination.
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1. 2 Peter 1:20, 21
Verse 20 creates difficulties for interpreters. The question which they ask about this verse concerns whether it refers to the interpretation of the prophets or the interpretation of the present- day reader. So, one translation says, “. . . no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation.” Here the NIV has supplied the words, “the prophet’s,” to provide the sense which the translators believe the verse gives. But another translation says, “. . . no prophecy is a matter of one’s own interpretation” (NASB; the translation provides the italics to show that it added these words). It adds “a matter” to show what these translators believe the verse means. So, does this verse say that the prophets did not write merely their own interpretation of what God did? Or does it teach that no reader may interpret Scripture by himself?
We need to look at the context of verse 20 to understand it correctly. We believe that the context supports the NIV’s translation, that the prophets did not give only their own interpretation. We find the most direct support for this understanding in the next verse: “For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man.” The Greek word, ginomai, (translated “came about” by the NIV and “is” by the NASB) usually refers to the beginning or origins of something.16 Simon Kistemaker concludes that this view [which we have called the NIV’s translation] harmonizes with the elaborate description of prophetic activity that Peter provides in his first epistle (1:10-12). Furthermore, this view fits the immediate context of verse 20, which speaks of the origin of Scripture. In verses 16-19, Peter discusses the origin of the apostolic message; verse 21, which flows forth from the preceding verse and is closely connected with it, reveals the divine origin of Scripture.17 So, we conclude that verse 20 and 21 refer to the origins of the prophets’ understandings and thoughts. They did not write only their own ideas.
Verse 21 continues by telling us about the origins of Old Testament prophecy. Prophecy did not come from man, “but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” The Greek for “carry,” phero, often includes the idea of moving something by carrying or blowing it. This verse provides one important part of the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture. It tells us that the Holy Spirit created an effect on the human writers. He did not merely move their pens. Rather, He moved them to speak and write the Scriptures.
2. 2 Timothy 3:16, 17
Whereas 2 Peter 1:21 tells us about the Spirit’s effect on the writers, these verses tell us about the Spirit’s effect on the text of Scripture. These verses stress that God had equipped Timothy to serve as a pastor because God had entrusted the Bible to him. Since infancy Timothy had learned the scriptures (:15). With Scripture Timothy could equip others for every good work (:17). Timothy could equip others because God had inspired Scripture to enable Timothy to
16 Simon Kistemaker, New Testament Commentary: Exposition of the Epistles of Peter and of the Epistle of Jude (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1987) 272. 17 Kistemaker. 24 25 teach, rebuke, correct and train them in righteousness (:16). So these verses present the usefulness of Scripture itself for the child of God.
One important word in verse 16, the word “inspired,” combines two words. Together they mean God-breathed. The word describes Scripture as the product of the breath—or Spirit— of God. Just as we send our words forth with the force of our breath, so God sent His Word forth by the power of His Spirit. We may think of the Bible as God’s breathed-out Word which He spoke to us. This verse provides a second primary part of the doctrine of inspiration. It tells us that the Spirit affected the human authors of Scripture so that they wrote the Word of God.
3. A Definition of the Inspiration of Scripture
We define the inspiration of Scripture as the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit by which He moved men to write the Word of God. We emphasize two important points from this definition. First, sinful men wrote the Bible. Second, as men wrote, the Holy Spirit actively worked so that they wrote God’s Word. 2 Peter 1:21 stresses that the Holy Spirit moved the human authors of Scripture. 2 Timothy 3:16 tells us that God inspired the text of Scripture.
B. DIFFERENT VIEWS OF INSPIRATION
Though many theologians will agree that God inspired the Bible, they may also disagree on what that means. Berkhof has summarized these differing viewpoints by listing three ways theologians have understood inspiration. We will explain each viewpoint as he describes them.
1. The Mechanical View of Inspiration
This view says that “God literally dictated what the human authors of the Bible had to write . . . as if they were purely passive like a pen in the hand of a writer. This means that their minds did not contribute in any way to the contents or form of their writings.”18 According to this viewpoint, God inspired the text of Scripture but not its human authors. Very few leading theologians have supported this view of inspiration. However, many church members assume that this view best explains the Bible’s inspiration.
We should give a brief evaluation of the mechanical view. We agree with this view that God has inspired the text of Scripture. As we will see later in this lesson, the Bible treats each word of Scripture as God’s Word. However, the Bible’s human authors wrote with their individual styles. We believe the mechanical view of inspiration does not acknowledge the influence of the authors’ personalities when they wrote God’s Word.
2. The Dynamic View of Inspiration
Berkhof describes the supporters of this view: Others thought of the process of inspiration as affecting only the writers, and having no direct bearing on their writings. Their mental and spiritual life was strengthened and raised to a higher pitch, so that they saw things more clearly and
18 Louis Berkhof, A Summary of Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1938) 19. 25 26
had a more profound sense of their real spiritual value. This inspiration . . . was a permanent characteristic of the writers and affected their writings only indirectly.19 According to his understanding, individuals whom we might call inspired people wrote the Bible. In this view, inspiration describes the authors but not the text of Scripture.
This view comes close to what liberalism and neo-orthodoxy teach about the Bible. Liberalism, which (like other forms of naturalism) denies the miraculous activity of God, may agree that unusually gifted people wrote the books of the Bible. But it believes that we may discredit and contradict what they wrote. Liberalism denies that the Bible has authority over us. Neo-orthodoxy, which denies that God reveals Himself through the printed pages of Scripture, agrees that God left a powerful impact on the Bible’s human authors. But Neo-orthodoxy does not believe that God uses what these authors wrote to change us.
In response to the dynamic view, we must express our agreement that God moved the human authors of Scripture. Yet we disagree with this view of the text of Scripture. As the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, “All scripture is God breathed.”
3. The Organic View of Inspiration
The word “organic” usually describes something which has life. Since we cannot define life merely by listing its parts, we often use the word “organic” to refer to the whole structure—not just one part—of the life of a living plant or animal. Similarly theologians speak of “organic inspiration” because they want to include the whole reality—not just one part—of the Bible’s inspiration. Berkhof describes this view of inspiration in the following way: The Holy Spirit acted on the writers of the Bible in an organic way, in harmony with the laws of their own inner being, using them just as they were, with their character and temperament, their gifts and talents, their education and culture, their vocabulary and style. The Holy Spirit illumined their minds, aided their memory, prompted them to write, repressed the influence of sin on their writings, and guided them in the expression of their thoughts even to the choice of their words.20 According to this view, God inspired both the human authors and the text of Scripture.
Perhaps we can explain the relevance of the organic view of inspiration. Most biblical theologians agree that the human writers of the Bible all wrote in their own ways. God used each writer as the writer wrote in his own style, used his own words, and relied on his own background. So we can read the New Testament writings of the Apostle John and notice how they differ from the Apostle Paul’s writings. Without contradicting each other, John and Paul sometimes used the same word (such as “glory”) to stress different parts of God’s truth about Christ. The human authors of the Gospels tell the same stories about Jesus differently because each author wrote for a different original audience and with a distinctive emphasis. Each gospel writer gives a unique view of Jesus’ character and work. By acknowledging that God inspired
19 Berkhof, Summary 19-20. 20 Berkhof, Summary 20. 26 27 the writers and their writings to make unique contributions to the Bible, we become better able to interpret the different parts of the bible.
Only the organic view of inspiration helps us in this way. The mechanical view of inspiration gives almost no attention of the human authors of the Bible. So it tends to deny that knowing about the different styles in the Bible can help us interpret it. The dynamic view of inspiration stresses that God moved the authors. So it sees the different styles in Scripture as proof that God did not care about the specific words which they used. People who hold to this view believe they can disregard words and sentences in the Bible which they don’t fully accept. But the organic view of inspiration emphasizes, more than the others, the miraculous work of God in the Bible’s inspiration. While He used the human abilities, experiences and personalities of the writers, the Holy Spirit also guided them to write exactly what He wanted to say.
The organic view of inspiration shows us the pattern of the incarnation which exists in Scripture. Usually we use the word “incarnation” to refer to the way God the Son entered the human race. This Christian teaching says that God the Son, by the work of the Holy Spirit, added to Himself our human nature. He did it by putting on human flesh (John 1:14). As a result, though Christ remained one divine person, today He possesses two distinct natures—one divine and one human.21 In a similar way God’s Word put on our humanity when the Holy Spirit inspired Scripture. Like the human nature of Christ, the Bible exhibits the features of human writings—human languages, literary forms, unique styles. Like the divine nature of Christ, the Bible possesses the features of God’s Word—God authority over us and God’s truthfulness. The Bible consists of God’s Word in the form of human words. It seems to this author that the organic view of Scripture attempts to remain most faithful to these truths of Scripture.
C. THE EXTENT OF INSPIRATION
1. The “Limited Inspiration” View
Many scholars hold to a view which we call “limited inspiration” or “partial inspiration.” They claim to believe the Bible due to the fact that it presents God’s work of salvation for sinners. They say that they believe the gospel of Christ. So, they go to the Bible primarily because God inspired it to reveal the gospel of Christ to us.
Yet, as they see it, the Bible mentions many topics in addition to the gospel. For example, it gives dates as it reports when Israel’s kings ruled. It claims to give geographical information, such as the distances between cities. It gives strange explanations of what took place, such as why Jacob inherited so many of Laban’s sheep (Genesis 30:29-43). People who believe in “limited inspiration” do not believe that the Holy Spirit inspired all of these details. They believe that many of the Bible’s dates and explanations of events and much of its geographical information came only from men. These details do not belong to the Bible’s main purpose, the purpose of revealing salvation in Christ. So, they say that the Bible contains many mistakes which do not affect its message of salvation.
21 See the author’s MINTS course, “The Trinity and the Cults,” Lesson Two. 27 28
As they see it, God inspired the kernel of Scripture but not its husk.22 This means that the Spirit inspired only the main points of Scripture. We can trust the Bible primarily when it tells us about God’s saving grace. So they say, for example, that historical sources outside the Bible (such as ancient historians who wrote about emperors in their day) do not merely clarify the Bible’s comments about the emperors. Rather, these sources sometimes correct the Bible’s mistakes about the emperors. The supporters of “limited” or “partial” inspiration describe the Bible as “inspired as it speaks to redemption.” They mean that the Holy Spirit inspired only the Bible’s message of salvation, but not it’s other parts.
2. Our Response to the “Limited Inspiration” View
We agree that God inspired the Bible primarily to reveal to sinful mankind our hopelessness in sin, God’s gift of eternal life in Christ, and God’s instruction concerning how Christians should hope and live. Christ showed this when He explained to His disciples that He fulfilled the law, the writings, and the prophets—the entire Old Testament—when He suffered, died, and rose again (Luke 24:44-27). Jesus also said to His opponents, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me” (John 5:39). Since the Spirit inspired the Bible to be God’s book of salvation, the Bible speaks primarily about Christ.
But we disagree with the view that we can easily separate parts of the Bible which present the truths of salvation from parts of the Bible which do not. The Bible uses facts about geography and history to tell us the story of the gospel. Often, for example, the Bible tells us about when kings and emperors ruled as it tells us about God’s judgment on Israel’s sin. When it tells us in Luke 2 about the decision of Caesar Augustus to tax the Roman Empire, it also tells us how God fulfilled prophecy concerning Christ’s birth in Bethlehem. Or, consider the story of Jacob in Genesis 30 which tells us about his sinful dependence on himself to get the blessing. It does not actually say that Jacob’s schemes affected the outcome—as Genesis 31:9 makes clear. Rather, the story in Genesis 30 lets us know about the sinfully independent heart of the man whom God appointed as an ancestor of Christ. The perfect Christ came from a sinful family. So the Bible includes many parts to tell its story of man’s sins and God’s work of salvation. If we disregard as uninspired the details which seem not to relate to salvation, we will discover that we have removed God’s story of salvation as well.
3. Scripture’s Response to the “Limited Inspiration” View
Scripture does not mention the modern view of “limited” or “partial” inspiration directly. Yet it makes claims about itself which disprove the view. We will summarize the claim which the Bible makes as we watch how Christ and the Apostle Paul used the Old Testament to defend their teaching.
Christ claimed that God inspired the Bible’s letters and words. We can see this, for example, in Matthew 5:17, 18 where Jesus said,
22 This comparison insists that Scripture includes both important and unimportant parts—like corn which has an edible kernel and a leafy husk around it which many people do not eat. This view might also attempt to compare Scripture to rice which includes edible grain and the uneatable husk around it. 28 29
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. In these verses Jesus said that He came to fulfill every detail which God’s Word had promised about him.
We want to notice especially His references to “the smallest letter” and “the least stroke of a pen.” The American Standard Version (1901) shows how older English translations present what Jesus said. It refers to “jot” and “tittle.” The “smallest letter” or “jot” refers to the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet, the yod, which looks like the apostrophe (’) in English. The “least stroke of a pen” or “tittle” probably refers to a pen stroke which distinguishes one letter from another (such as the mark which distinguishes the English upper case letters R from P). Jesus refers here to very small details in written Hebrew. God remembers the smallest detail of what He inspired. Christ came to fulfill even the smallest detail of what the Old Testament scriptures said about Him.
This demonstrates Jesus’ commitment to what we call “verbal inspiration” today. We may define verbal inspiration as “the Holy Spirit’s inspiration of all the words which the original human authors wrote.” We hold to this view of verbal inspiration instead of the “limited” or “partial” inspiration view. We also say that we believe in “plenary inspiration.” Plenary refers to fullness. This name means that the Spirit inspired the Bible fully, in all of its parts. So “verbal inspiration” highlights the truth that the Spirit inspired each word and letter. “Plenary inspiration” stresses that He inspired the Bible fully. These two terms teach the same truth with slightly different emphases. Both deny the view of “partial inspiration.”
In responding to Matthew 5:17, 18, E. J. Young advances verbal inspiration in the following way: If, therefore, the inspiration of the Bible is plenary, it should be evident that it is one which extends to the very words. It is, to state the matter baldly [plainly], a verbal inspiration. . . . It would, of course, be impossible to divorce the thoughts of the Bible from its words. The thoughts are indeed “God-breathed” thoughts, and to them we are to give our entire soul’s obedience. The doctrines and the teachings of the bible are to be our very rule of life and faith. In what manner, however, has God seen fit to reveal those thoughts to us? To ask the question is to answer it. He has revealed them through the media of words. It is just about impossible for us to conceive of any other satisfactory manner of communicating information. . . . We cannot have the blessed life-giving doctrines of Holy Writ apart from the words in which they are expressed. Our purpose at present, however, is not to defend this doctrine of verbal inspiration. For the present we are merely pointing out that, whether modern man likes the doctrine or no, the Bible teaches it.23
In another place the Apostle Paul relies on verbal inspiration to make an important point about God’s promise to Abraham and his seed. Galatians 3:16 says, “The promises were spoken
23 Edward J. Young, Thy Word is Truth (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1957) 48-9. 29 30 to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say ‘and to seeds,’ meaning many people, but ‘and to your seed,’ meaning one person, who is Christ.” The Apostle Paul teaches in Galatians that God’s promise to Abraham belonged to Christ—one Seed, not many seeds. The promise did not belong to all of Abraham’s physical descendants. Rather, God will extend His promise to Abraham to all who belong to Christ by faith. We notice, for our purpose here, that Paul based his point on one word in Genesis. (Christ also based one of His claims on one word in John 10:34; compare Psalm 82:6).
Christ and His Apostle Paul relied on the Old Testament with the confidence that each word in the Old Testament had God’s authority. They did not always reason from the general story of the Bible, the Gospel. They also based their claims on individual words. This forms our reason for rejecting the view of “Limited Inspiration.” We will say more about this topic in the lesson which concerns infallibility.
D. THE RESULTS OF INSPIRATION
Since we believe in verbal inspiration, we can expect the Bible to call itself God’s Word. The Bible, in fact, does this repeatedly. We will mention three ways in which the Bible calls itself God’s Word.
First, the Old Testament refers to itself as God’s Word. Its writers repeatedly call their writings God’s Word. We give only a few examples:
Every valley shall be raised up, and every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it. For the mouth of the LORD has spoken. Isaiah 40:4, 5
The word of the LORD came to him [Jeremiah] in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah. Jeremiah 1:2
The word of the LORD came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, by the Kebar River in the land of the Babylonians. There the hand of the LORD was upon him. Ezekiel 1:3
When the Word of God came to the prophets, they spoke the Word of God. Calvin Knox Cummings summarizes: “Throughout the bible, God testifies time and again that he, not man, is speaking and writing. In the Old Testament alone, the expression “thus says the Lord” or its equivalent occurs some 2,000 times.”24 This shows us one way the Old Testament identifies itself as God’s Word.
Second, the New Testament calls the Old Testament God’s Word. We demonstrate this by comparing statements in the Old Testament with quotations of them in the New Testament. Students should notice where we have added bold print. We will state our conclusions afterwards.
24 Calvin Knox Cummings, Confessing Christ (Suwanee, GA: Great Commission Publications, 1992) 10. 30 31
Old Testament Statements New Testament Quotations
For this reason a man will leaven his father Haven’t you read . . . that at the beginning and mother and be united to his wife, and the Creator “made them male and female,” they will become one flesh. Genesis 2:24 and said, “for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh”? Matthew 19:4, 5
The LORD . . . said. . . “I will bless those The Scripture foresaw that God would who bless you, and whoever curses you I justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced will curse; and all people on earth will be the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All blessed through you.” Genesis 12:1, 3 nations will be blessed through you.” Galatians 3:8
The Lord said to Moses, “Get up early in Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up the morning, confront Pharaoh and say to for this very purpose, that I might display him, . . . ‘I have raised you up for this very my power in you and that my name might be purpose, that I might show you my power proclaimed in all the earth.” Romans 9:17 and my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’” Exodus 9:13, 16
Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden So the Holy Spirit says: “Today, you hear your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did that day at Massah in the desert. Psalm did in the rebellion, during the tie of testing 95:7, 8 in the desert.” Hebrews 3:7
He makes winds his messengers, flames of In speaking of the angels he [God] says, fire his servants. Psalm 104:4 “He makes his angels winds, his servants flames of fire.” Hebrews 1:7
This comparison shows how the New Testament readily quotes of the Old Testament as God’s Word. Sometimes the Old Testament merely makes its own claims without naming a speaker (Genesis 2:24). Or an Old Testament psalm gives words for God’s people to sing (Psalm 95:7, 8; 104:4). Yet, as the words in bold show us, the New Testament often labels these quotes as words of God or of God’s Spirit (Matthew 19:4, 5; Hebrews 1:7; 3:7). Sometimes the Old Testament quotes the LORD God (Genesis 12:1, 3). But the New Testament might say that Scripture says those words (Galatians 3:8). When God told Moses what to say to Pharaoh (Exodus 9:13, 16), Romans 9:17 claims that Scripture told Pharaoh. So, God says what Scripture says. Scripture says what God says.
Speaking in this way, the New Testament readily shows that it understands Scripture’s words as God’s words. B. B. Warfield gives many examples from the Bible of this in his famous article, “‘It says:’ ‘Scripture says:’ ‘God Says.’”25 After examining nearly all of the New
25 Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, “’It says:’ ‘Scripture says:’ God Says,’” The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Philadelphia: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1948) 299ff. 31 32
Testament’s quotations of the Old Testament, he concludes that the human authors of the New Testament saw no difference between saying “God says” and “Scripture says.”26 For this reason we may say that the New Testament calls the Old Testament the Word of God.
Third, the New Testament indirectly calls itself God’s Word. The authors of the New Testament could reflect on what the Spirit did as He inspired them. We see this when the Apostle Peter mentioned the Apostle Paul’s letters. Peter comments on how foolish men had treated Paul’s letters. He wrote: Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear bother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. 2 Peter 3:15-17
Significantly, Peter includes Paul’s letters in the Scriptures. The apostles often called God’s inspired Word, the Scriptures. Here Peter assumes that Paul’s letters have the same inspired authority. He indicates that God’s Word includes Paul’s letters. This demonstrates the New Testament author’s conviction that God inspired His Word again in their lifetime.
So we have shown the most important result of inspiration. The inspired writings together form God’s Word. The Old Testament teaches this about itself. The New Testament teaches this about the Old Testament. And the New Testament teaches this about itself. So the entire Bible possesses God’s authority over us. God the Holy Spirit inspired this entire book.
SUMMARY
We have explored the Bible’s teaching about itself. First, we showed what the Bible says about inspiration. We saw from 2 Peter 1:20, 21 that the Holy Spirit inspired its human authors. We learned from 2 Timothy 3:16, 17 that the Spirit so inspired that Bible that each word of Scripture comes from God Himself.
Next, we summarized the different views of inspiration. The mechanical view believes that the Spirit inspired only the text of Scripture. The dynamic view says that He inspired only the human authors of Scripture. The organic view, based on the Scripture passages that we mentioned, says that the Spirit inspired both the authors and text (words) of Scripture.
We explored, thirdly, the question of how extensively the Spirit inspired Scripture. The limited or partial view says that the Spirit inspired the Bible in the places where it presents the gospel of Christ. But we learned especially from Jesus in Matthew 5:17, 18 that He claims to fulfill even the smallest letters and details of God’s Word. This shows that He held a view of the extent of inspiration which we call plenary or verbal inspiration.
Finally, we asked about the results of inspiration. We learned that the inspiration of Scripture requires us to call all parts of the Bible God’s Word. Both the Old and New Testament make this claim of the Bible.
26 Warfield 348. 32 33
Before we end this lesson, we should return to the questions with which this lesson began. Did the Spirit previously inspire the false prophets of Crete before the Apostle Paul quoted them? When God did inspire the stories which Luke researched? Does the Bible have a unique authority? Or do other writings and words which the Bible’s human authors quoted also present God’s Word?
Though the Bible does not explicitly answer these questions, we believe the Bible’s teaching directs us to an answer. We have concluded that God the Holy Spirit inspired both the words and the authors of Scripture. This also means the Spirit inspired the authors when they chose what to include. So the Apostle Paul made an inspired choice to quote the prophets of Crete. God inspired Luke to choose, from the information he collected, what to include in his gospel. Since the books of the Bible possess qualities which other human literature possesses, the Spirit moved the human writers of the Bible along the entire process of writing. Therefore, God did not inspire the prophets of Crete. He inspired only Paul when Paul quoted them.
QUESTIONS
1. What does 2 Peter 1:20, 21 teach about the inspiration of the Bible?
2. What does 2 Timothy 3:16, 17 teach about the inspiration of the Bible?
3. List and explain the three different view of Inspiration.
4. What does the lesson mean when it says that the inspiration of Scripture shows us the pattern of the incarnation?
5. What does the view of “limited” or “partial inspiration” teach?
6. Explain what Jesus said in Matthew 5:17, 18 and how it contradicts the teaching of limited inspiration.
7. How does the Apostle Paul demonstrate his belief in verbal inspiration?
8. How does the Old Testament often claim to be God’s Word?
9. How does the New Testament call the Old Testament God’s Word?
10. Where does the New Testament show that it also belongs to God’s Word?
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LESSON THREE27
THE STORY OF SCRIPTURE
INTRODUCTION
The inspired Bible tells us many stories. Both adults and children get excited when someone reads the stories of Jacob wrestling with God, of David and Goliath, or of Saul’s conversion on the way to Damascus. The Bible tells many stories about how Jesus performed miracles. Possibly the readers of this lesson have read all of the stories which appear in the Bible.
Yet the Bible also presents only one story. The Old Testament and New Testament together form one story. The descriptions of God’s creation in Genesis 1 and of the new creation in Revelation 22 belong to the same story. The life of King David and the life of Christ belong together. God appears as the main character in each of the Bible’s short stories. As Christ appeared, He developed the one story which will come to a close when Christ returns.
This lesson attempts to emphasize the one majestic story of the Bible. We emphasize this for a couple reasons: First, students need to think about the main story of the Bible. Perhaps students have read the different stories of Jacob, David and Saul without seeing a connection between them. Perhaps the Bible seems like a collection of short stories which lead nowhere. But students need to comprehend how the parts of the Bible belong to one whole. Second, students need to know the grand story of the Bible to begin to understand why God inspired Scripture. We need to know the main point before we can understand the smaller stories which contribute to it. So we hope that this lesson helps students understand the inspired Bible as a whole.
The Bible reveals primarily what God accomplished through Jesus Christ to save sinful mankind. But the Bible does not begin with the birth of Christ. It begins millennia before to tell us of mankind’s first sin against God. It relays how God promised to send the Savior for sinners. It also tells us how God used symbols and representations to show, centuries before Christ came, what Christ would eventually do. It shows us from the lives of people and nations why we need Christ. Then, after Christ came, the New Testament applies the gospel of Christ to the lives of those who follow Him. Though the Bible covers a long history which includes many people, its central story concerns one Person who fulfilled God’s plan of salvation, our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Bible consists mostly of two basic forms of literature.28 First, it tells us stories, which we call narratives. Second, it gives instruction, which we call discourse. Discourse includes God’s instructions to Moses concerning how to build the tabernacle, the messages of the prophets which told Old Testament Israel to love and obey God, and the letters of the apostles
27 See Neal Hegeman’s MINTS course on “Practical Hermeneutics,” Lesson Three, Second Principle, and Lesson Three, Fourth Principle which deals with Christ-centered revelation and the History of redemption respectively. 28 Daniel Doriani, ”Interpreting the Bible: An Introduction,” Understanding Scripture, Ed. Wayne Grudem, C. John Collins, and Thomas R. Schreiner (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012) 15, 16. 34 35 which address the New Testament church. Though the Bible also contains other types of literature, such as poetry, we plan here to follow God’s story in the narratives of the Bible.
The discourses in the Bible always belong to the story of the Bible. For example, God told Moses how to build the tabernacle within the story about Moses’ life and service. The Apostle Paul wrote 1 Corinthians to a first century Christian congregation as it lived through events which took place in its life. So the Bible’s narratives and discourse continually interact with each other. We cannot understand the Bible’s instructions well if we do not understand it stories also.
The story of the Bible features several main developments. After the creation of the universe, the Bible tells us about: 1) the spiritual decline of the human race, 2) God’s promises of salvation to the forefathers of His chosen people, 3) God’s establishment of His people as a nation, 4) the spiritual decline of God’s people, 5) God’s fulfillment of His promises in the coming of Christ, and 6) God’s establishment of His people as the church. Though every scholar would choose to summarize the story of Scripture in his own way, this lesson will follow the outline which we have just given.
A. THE SPIRITUAL DECLINE OF THE HUMAN RACE (Genesis 3-11)
The people of the world quickly declined morally after Adam and Eve fell into sin. We can see this already when Adam and Eve hid from God (Genesis 3:8). Yet their children soon committed more alarming deeds. Their son, Cain, killed his brother, Abel in Genesis 4. In the seventh generation of Cain’s family, polygamist Lamech boasted that he killed a man who had merely injured him (Genesis 4:23, 24). In Genesis 5 the seventh generation in the family of Seth, Enoch, walked with God (Genesis 5:24). Yet the children of righteous Seth married the children of evil Cain. As a result of these intermarriages, almost no one in the human race resisted evil. “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time” (Genesis 6:6). Due the violence and determined sin of the human race, God destroyed mankind with the flood.
After the flood mankind rebelled against God again. People decided to make a name for themselves by building a tower that would reach into the heavens (Genesis 11:4). They wanted to replace God and to glorify the human race instead. So God ended this effort by confusing the people as they built the tower. He gave them different languages which kept them from working together. Soon, families and tribes abandoned the building project to begin separate lives of their own. The existence of different languages forms one of God’s testimonies to the human race to our natural tendency to worship man instead of God.
During this spiritual decline of the human race, God gave two notable promises which offered hope to sinners. First, He promised the serpent that the seed of the woman (Christ) would destroy the seed of the serpent (those who follow the devil). The devil will strike Christ’s heal. But Christ will crush the serpent’s (Satan’s) head (Genesis 3:15). Though sin had entered the human race, God promised that Christ would rescue people from their sins. Second, after the flood, God promised never to destroy the human race again with a flood. God gave the rainbow as a sign of this covenant, His sworn promise. God had promised that the Savior would come
35 36 from the human race, from the woman’s offspring (Genesis 3:15). So, by promising to preserve mankind, God assured the human race that Christ would indeed come.
B. GOD’S PROMISES OF SALVATION TO THE FOREFATHERS OF HIS PEOPLE (Genesis 12-50)
1. God’s Promises to Abraham
After God scattered the families of the earth from the tower of Babel, He began to prepare the way for Christ to come through one man and his family. Through Abraham God began a community of his own people. This people eventually became the nation to which Christ belonged when He was born.
When God commanded Abraham to leave his native country, He gave Abraham several basic promises. He promised Abraham a land for his people (Genesis 12:7; 13:14, 15). God also promised to bless all the nations of the world through Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3). Furthermore, God promised to give Abraham countless descendants (Genesis 15:5). The rest of the Bible shows how God kept these promises.
The New Testament helps clarify what God’s promises to Abraham actually included. Hebrews 11:15, 16, for example, shows us that saints in the Old Testament understood the promise of the land to refer to a heavenly country. Hebrews 11:10 says that Abraham looked “forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” This means that the earthly land which Abraham’s descendants received represented something greater: the believer’s inheritance in heaven (see 1 Peter 1:3, 4). So, the Apostle Paul wrote, “Our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20).
God also promised to bless all the nations through Abraham. In Genesis 22:18 God said that He would bless the nations through Abraham’s seed. God meant that He would save people from all nations by Abraham’s descendant, Jesus Christ. “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say ‘and to seeds,’ meaning many people, but ‘and to your seed,’ meaning one person, who is Christ” (Galatians 3:16). So God’s promise to make Abraham a blessing to all nations focused on Christ. In Christ, Abraham’s descendant, God would offer salvation to men and women around the world.
The book of Galatians teaches that Abraham’s countless descendants include all those— Jew and Gentile—who repent of their sins and trust in Christ. God did not limit Abraham’s offspring to his physical descendants. Galatians 3 says: You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. Galatians 3:26-29 Ephesians 2 stresses this also when it says that Christ has united into one people both Gentiles and Jews who believe in Christ. “Consequently, you [Gentile believers] are no long foreigners
36 37 and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household” (Ephesians 2:19). God’s one household of believers forms the family of Abraham which no one can count.
2. The Lives of Abraham’s Immediate Family
Genesis also reveals enough of the lives of Abraham’s immediate descendants to teach us about all of his promised descendants. For example, the miraculous birth of Isaac (Genesis 21:1-7) points us to the miraculous birth of Christ (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:21) and the Spirit-given birth which all who trust in Christ have received (John 1:12, 13; 3:3, 5-8).
God’s choice of Jacob over Esau did not occur because of Jacob’s good character or life. God chose Jacob despite his sinfulness. Only later did God make Jacob a holy man.29 God’s choice of Jacob helps us comprehend His choice from eternity of each individual who comes to Christ by faith (Romans 9:10-13, 19-21; Ephesians 1:3, 4).
The life of Joseph also teaches us about what would occur later in Christ’s life. Both Joseph and Christ suffered under the rejection of their people, their brothers. But God planned these rejections to accomplish deliverance for the people of God (Genesis 50:20; Acts 4:27, 28). The deliverance which Joseph accomplished for his brothers foretold the truth that one of our brother in the flesh, Jesus Christ, would save the entire family of God from total destruction (Hebrews 2:14-18).
So God revealed something about the coming of Christ in the lives of the patriarchs. When the patriarchs fell into sin, God demonstrated that we need a greater descendant of Abraham to trust in for deliverance from sin. God’s promises to the forefathers and dealings with them prepare us for the coming of Christ.
C. GOD’S ESTABLISHMENT OF HIS PEOPLE AS A NATION (Exodus – 2 Samuel)
1. Israel’s Establishment through Moses
Beginning with Moses and continuing through the life of King David, God gradually built up the nation of Israel as His Old Testament people. Through Moses God delivered the people from slavery and taught them with His law. God also established the priesthood and sacrificial system. God had the people build the tabernacle, a simplified version of the temple which Solomon built many years later. Through Moses God laid the foundation of the nation or Israel.
In each of these accomplishments during Moses’ life God led the people to anticipate the coming of Christ. Before the exodus out of Egypt, God sent plagues of judgment on Egypt. But He spared His people by passing over them when He saw the sprinkled blood of the sacrifice which took their place. This demonstrated that the sacrifice of Christ, the Lamb of God, separates God’s people from the people of the world. The law which God gave eventually proved that the people possessed rebellious hearts. None of them completely obeyed God’s law. Only Christ, the man without sin, kept the law of God completely. The ministry of the
29 Francis Breisch Jr., The Kingdom of God (Grand Rapids: National Union of Christian Schools, 1958) 30- 31. 37 38 priesthood offered many pictures of the work that Christ eventually achieved. The Day of Atonement provides a primary example (Leviticus 16). Just as the High Priest entered the most holy place only once each year, so Christ needed to die only once to save His people forever (Hebrews 9:11, 12). Also, on that day the high priest placed his hands on the head of a goat while he confessed all the people’s sins. This symbolized that God would place His people’s sins on Christ. Then someone led the goat into the wilderness where no one saw it again. It taught the truth in Christ that “as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12). In the tabernacle God symbolized the fellowship which Christ later established between God and His people. The two main rooms of the tabernacle— the most holy place and the holy place—symbolized that God lives with His people. Christ fulfilled this when He tabernacle with us (John 1:14) and when He send His Spirit in the Church to make it the temple of God. So the ministry of Moses presents many features of the ministry of Christ.
2. Israel’s King through David
After Moses, Joshua led the people into the promised land (Joshua 1-12). Then, after his victories, Joshua assigned each family its place in the promised land (Joshua 13-24). This teaches, among other things, the power of God and the personal care of God in giving us our heavenly home through Christ.
But Israel’s establishment remained incomplete. The book of Judges demonstrates why the people needed a godly king. After Joshua the people hesitated to conquer the remainder of the land. Also, their sinful tendency to follow idols and abandon God’s Word became increasingly obvious. Judges repeats the observation that “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit” (Judges 17:6; 21:25; cf. 18:1; 19:1). They needed a king to lead them in battle and to lead them in faithfulness to God.
When Israel received its first king, God provided the king which the people wanted. They wanted a king that would impress the world. But King Saul’s rule brought disaster to the nation. Saul did not follow the Word of God. After taking matters into his own hands and relying on his own wisdom, Saul lost the kingdom. During the last part of Saul’s reign, he led the people to destruction. In the battle in which Saul died the Philistines overran Israel so that only the mountainous regions remained in Israel’s hands. As a result Israel controlled a very small portion of the land that God had promised to Abraham. Saul’s failure proved that God’s people need a king who possessed God’s Spirit and followed God’s Word, as Christ later would.
After Saul God gave His people the king which they needed. The book of Ruth tells us how God worked behind the scenes already in the time of the judges to arrange for the coming of King David (Ruth 4:18-22). When God commanded Samuel to anoint David, God gave His Spirit to David to supply him with wisdom to serve as king (1 Samuel 16:1-13). (At that time God also removed His Spirit from disobedient and proud Saul (1 Samuel 16:14)). David demonstrated some of the skill and holiness which Christ possessed nearly 1,000 years later.
God caused David to grow in godliness and effectiveness as King. When David eventually became king of God’s people, the people enjoyed the peace and favor of God.
38 39
Admittedly David sinned terribly. He and the nation suffered significantly as a result. But David expressed his sorrow and repentance in some of his Psalms (e.g. Psalm 6, 32, 38, 51, and 143). They give words for sinners today who possess the mind of Christ yet fall into sin. The good pattern of David’s rule cannot cancel that fact that David and the rest of God’s people need Christ to rule their hearts and forgive their sins. David’s sin showed that the people should look ahead to a better King, the perfect King, Jesus Christ, Whom God eventually sent.
3. Important Developments during the Rule of Kings
During the first phases of Israel’s history under its kings, we should notice two important developments. First, God made a covenant with David. With a sworn promise God told David that David’s son would always sit on the throne (2 Samuel 7:11-16). Because of David’s Son who would rule forever, God told David, “Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:16). This promise refers to the rule of Jesus Christ, Whom God put on the throne when Christ ascended. Throughout the rest of the Old Testament God showed unusual patience with David’s royal family. However, even David’s family finally received God’s punishment because of its great sinfulness. Yet God continued to preserve David’s royal family, as He promised.
As a second development during the rise of Israel as a kingdom, God sent prophets. God called each prophet to receive His Word and declare it to the people. The Bible mentions the idea of a prophet before the kings ruled. For example, God called Abraham a prophet in Genesis 20:7. He also told the people through Moses that he would communicate to the prophets through visions and dreams (Numbers 12:6-8). But the Bible begins to refer to groups, or schools, of prophets existing in the time of Samuel (1 Samuel 10:5). At that time God prepared the nation for its first kings. It seems that God raised prophets up especially to guide the kings who ruled God’s people.
Sometimes scholars speak of the former (earlier) prophets and the latter (later) prophets. The messages of the former prophets do not appear as books of the Bible. Rather these earlier prophets spoke to warn the kings and the people of the dangers of sin and to call for repentance and faith. They emphasized the need to return to God. But the later prophets had a different emphasis: In the eight century B.C. [700s BC] a new type of prophetic activity came to the foreground. This type is found in those prophets who wrote their messages as well as spoke them. Here we find a change of emphasis. There is still an urgent call to repentance. But these later prophets do not really expect that their call to repentance will be heeded. We find in their prophecies an increased emphasis on the judgment which will fall on the people of God. And they point beyond the judgment to a wondrous work of mercy. . . . Instead of preserving the existing order, the later prophets look forward to the establishment of a new and better order. More and more the finger of prophecy points to the coming of Jesus Christ.30
30 Breisch, Kingdom 145. 39 40
God’s gift of a king to Israel both advanced God’s plan for His people and showed their constant sinful condition. During the same time God gave both kings and prophets. Through Kings God gave a representative of His rule over His people. Through prophets God gave spokesmen of His Word. Kings and prophets joined priests to serve as God’s representatives to His people. Each of these three offices performed a ministry which Christ later performed perfectly and completely when He came.
D. THE SPIRITUAL DECLINE OF GOD’S PEOPLE (1 & 2 Kings, Ezra, Nehemiah)
After David, God’s people and their kings tended to advance in the direction of spiritual decline. Even the very wise Solomon eventually seemed to value gold more than wealth. Also, he let his pagan wives influence him in the sinful way (1 Kings 11:97-10). So God promised to tear the kingdom away from Solomon, just as He did to King Saul.
After Solomon the nation of Israel split. Ten tribes followed Jeroboam. Judah and Benjamin followed Solomon’s son Rehoboam. None of the kings of the ten tribes of Israel received God’s approval. The kings and people replaced worship at the temple in Jerusalem (which pointed to worshipping God only through Christ) with worship of the golden calves. Increasingly the lives of the people in Israel resembled the lives of the pagan nations. Finally God sent the Assyrian army to take them captive. 2 Kings 17 explains why God punished them. They worshipped idols as the surrounding nations did. They rejected the commands in God’s Word. They worshipped the stars. They sought guidance from the stars and practiced witchcraft. As God did to Adam and Eve after their sin, God removed the ten tribes of Israel from their promised land.
The people of Judah had the same rebellious hearts that the people of Israel had. Yet, unlike Israel which had no obedient kings, Judah had some kings who faithfully trusted in God’s promises. So God preserved Judah longer because of His faithfulness to His promise to David. Already to King Solomon God said that, for sake of David his father, God would not take the kingdom away in Solomon’s lifetime (1 Kings 11:12). Though Judah’s King Abijah committed the sins of his father Rehoboam, God preserve Abjiah for the sake of David (1 Kings 15:4). When the Bible describes Judah’s evil King Jehoram, it says, “Nevertheless, for the sake of his servant David, the LORD was not willing to destroy Judah. He had promised to maintain a lamp for David and his descendants forever” (2 Kings 8:19). So Judah’s longer history demonstrated God’s faithfulness to His commitment to His promise to David. David’s sons continued to rule. Though Judah eventually fell to the Babylonian empire, God would make sure that David’s Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, would sit on the throne to rule forever.
During the spiritual decline, especially of Judah, God’s prophets spoke to the kings and His people. Hosea and Amos preached against the sins of Israel. Obadiah preached against the pride of Edom. Most of the other writing prophets preached against the sins of Judah. They urged the people to return to God’s Word and to trust in Him for mercy and deliverance. But God’s Word had become out-of-date as many people viewed it.
Some prophets preached God’s Word during the captivity. Jeremiah’s ministry continued during part of that time. Ezekiel prophesied while in captivity in Babylon. Daniel, not officially
40 41 a prophet, received visions from God and revealed them to assure God’s people of the LORD’S promise to keep His people safe and eventually to send the Savior.
Eventually a remnant of the Jews returned from captivity. Under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah the people rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem and Jerusalem’s city walls, which the Babylonian armies had destroyed. God gave success to the ministries of Ezra and Nehemiah. Yet the people’s hearts remained far from God. They carefully kept themselves free from the sins which had caused their captivity. They avoided the worship of idols and the construction of the pagan high places. But it seemed that most did not genuinely give their hearts and lives to God. They publicly claimed to love God. Yet Malachi, the prophet, shows how they privately avoided God’s command to love Him above everything else. During the time after the return God spoke to His hypocritical people through the prophets Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. The story of Esther also took place then.
So the Old Testament ends with the people who returned to the promised land. They exhibited the spiritual death which characterized most of the history of Israel as a nation. But as God had promised that Christ would come to write His law on the hearts of his people (Jeremiah 31:33), through Malachi God promised to return the hearts of His people to the LORD (Malachi 4:5, 6).
E. GOD’S FULFILLMENT OF HIS PROMISES IN THE COMING OF CHRIST (Matthew – John)
We will not summarize the life of Christ in this section. We assume that the reader of this lesson either knows the life of Christ as the Bible reports it or has access to it. We will focus, rather, on the truth that Christ fulfilled the promises of God in the Old Testament. Since He fulfilled these promises, He constitutes the main point of interest in both the Old and New Testaments.
The New Testament teaches that God kept His promises in the events of Jesus’ life. For example, the Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 1:20, “No matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through Him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God.” In other words, in Christ’s coming, life, and atoning work God kept the promises that He had made long before in Scripture. Galatians 4:4 says, “When the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.” God’s promises pointed to a time when He would keep them. He did keep them when He sent Christ. Additionally, the gospels—especially Matthew—stress that what took place in Christ’s life fulfilled God’s promises in the Old Testament (Matthew 1:22, 23; 2:2:15, 17, 23; etc.).
The New Testament letters frequently refer to the Old Testament to prove that the Old Testament taught what the New Testament proclaims. Galatians provides an example of reliance on Old Testament teaching to proclaim the gospel of Christ. The Apostle Paul quotes the Old Testament (e.g. Galatians 3:6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 16). At times he makes analogies based on the Old Testament (Galatians 4:21-31). He makes the point repeatedly that his preaching of the Gospel conformed to the teaching of the Old Testament. The Old Testament formed the basis of His claims.
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The last chapter of Luke provides perhaps the most convincing argument of the New Testament that Christ fulfilled the promises and prophecies of the Old Testament. The story there describes two men walking from Jerusalem after Jesus rose from the dead. Reports of Jesus’ empty tomb confused them. Then Jesus joined them. He began to explain that what took place in His own suffering, death, and resurrection occurred just as the Old Testament had said it would. Jesus told the two men that they were “slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (Luke 24:25, 26). After the men recognized that Christ had spoken to them, they said to each other, “’Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures?’”
Later, Jesus revealed himself to most of His disciples. He said, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms’” (Luke 24:44). Jesus refers to the three sections of the Old Testament as the Jews categorized them. By “the Law of Moses” Jesus meant the first five books of the Bible, most of which Moses wrote. By “Prophets” Jesus referred to all the books of the Old Testament which prophets wrote. Many prophets wrote the books which contain their messages. But “Prophets” also includes Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. The Jews believed that anonymous (unnamed) prophets wrote these historical books. Jesus mentioned the “Psalms,” the largest book in the final section of the Old Testament. Often Jews called this last section “the Writings.” We point out these three sections of the Jewish Old Testament because Christ claimed that He fulfilled all of them. The Bible’s story, from beginning to end, presents Christ’s coming, achievement of salvation, and teachings to His followers.
F. GOD’S ESTABLISHMENT OF HIS PEOPLE AS THE CHURCH (Acts – Revelation)
The evidence we have just provided demonstrates that the entire story of the Old Testament and Jesus’ life in the gospels feature Him at the center of the story which they join in telling, Then, Acts reports what Christ continued “to do and to teach” (cf. Acts 1:1) through His apostles. The ascended Christ remains the focus of Scripture in Acts.
In the book of Acts the apostles served as Christ’s witnesses (Acts 1:8) as they preached the gospel of Christ. Through their preaching Christ added to the church those whom God had chosen for salvation (Acts 2:47; 18:9, 10). Acts tells us the story of how Christ moved ahead with the gospel from Jerusalem—the center of Judaism and the place of the temple—to Rome— the capital at the time of human power and emperor worship. As Christ’s apostles travelled amazing distances, Christ gathered Gentiles and Jews into His one church. Therefore, throughout Acts Christ reversed the breakup of the human race which began at the tower of Babel.
While the apostles preached, they began to write the letters which now appear in the New Testament. For example, the Apostle Paul probably wrote 1 & 2 Thessalonians soon after he preached there, on his second missionary journey. Most scholars believe that he wrote these
42 43 letters from Corinth, where Paul preached for some time (cf. Acts 18). Paul wrote 1 Corinthians from Ephesus (cf. Acts 19), where he stayed for three years during his third missionary journey. He probably wrote 2 Corinthians from Macedonia, on his way to Corinth. Also, he probably wrote his letter to the Romans sometime near the end of his third missionary journey. He wrote Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon probably during his first imprisonment in Rome (cf. Acts 28:17ff). This writing activity of Paul demonstrates that the Bible’s discourse (Paul’s letters, in this case) belonged to the story of the Bible (Paul’s missionary journeys). As the Apostle Paul—and the other apostles—preached and wrote, Christ established His followers as His church.
The letters of the apostles also focused on Jesus Christ. We should not think of them merely as letters about doctrine and morality. The letters in the New Testament constantly refer to what Christ achieved on the cross as the basis for the doctrine and morality which they promote. So, Romans 5:9 tells us that we were justified through the blood of Christ. And Romans 12 says that in view of God’s mercy, His followers should offer their bodies as living sacrifices to God (Romans 12:1, 2). Also, 1 Peter 4:13 tells suffering Christians that they participate in Christ’s sufferings. Readers of the New Testament should give special attention to how frequently it mentions Christ as the Christian’s Savior, Example, and Lord.
SUMMARY
This lesson summarizes the story of Scripture. The Bible includes more than its basic story, of course. But the main story of Scripture forms the skeleton which makes the whole Bible stand together. We analyzed the story of Scripture in terms of six phases or steps in the story. We tried to show that the story of the Old Testament Scriptures tells us about promises, rituals, and offices which reveal the majesty and work of Christ who eventually came. The New Testament shows us how Christ fulfilled the promises, rituals, and offices of the Old Testament. It tells us about the coming and ministry of Christ and about teaching which He gave the church through His apostles. We can understand the Bible only if we recognize Christ’s coming as its main event and His accomplishment of salvation as its main message. Once Jesus told His opponents, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me” (John 5:39).
We said in the introduction that knowing the story of scripture will help us understand why God the Spirit inspired Scripture. He inspired Scripture to reveal Christ, the Savior and Lord of repentant and believing sinners. Before He died on the cross, Jesus told His disciples that the Spirit would come to guide them in all truth (John 16:13). He would come to glorify Christ by “taking from what is mine and making it known to you” (John 16:14). The Spirit did precisely that for us when He inspired Scripture. Throughout the whole story of Scripture, the Spirit convinces us of the world’s need for Christ, the Father’s plan to send Christ, the way God prepared for the coming of Christ, the arrival of Christ Himself, and people whom Christ formed by His death, resurrection, and ascension. So Christ could say, “Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms” (Luke 24:44).
QUESTIONS
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1. What do we mean when we say that the bible consists mostly of two basic forms of literature: narratives and discourse?
2. What two events, involving the whole human race, demonstrate the spiritual decline of humanity in the beginning of Genesis?
3. How did God’s promises to Abraham refer to Christ?
4. How did the lives of Abraham’s immediate descendants teach about Christ and His followers?
5. What did God give during the ministry of Moses to teach about what Christ would do?
6. What promise did God give David which spoke about Christ?
7. What differences existed between the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah. How did these teach about Christ?
8. How did the ministries of the former prophets and the latter prophets differ from each other?
9. How did the New Testament teach that Christ came to fulfill the Old Testament?
10. How did the ministry of the apostles establish the church in Christ?
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LESSON FOUR
THE RELIABILITY OF BIBLICAL MANUSCRIPTS
INTRODUCTION
How much can we trust the Bibles which we read today? This course has summarized the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture. The teaching says that the Holy Spirit inspired holy men to write God’s holy Word. The early church recognized the unique writings of these men as God’s Word. But we do not have those original writings today. We have only copies of copies of the original writings. What guarantee do we have that we can trust these copies?
Many people throughout the history of the church have claimed that we should not trust our present Bibles. For example, Bart Ehrman wrote in 2005 that we cannot know what Matthew, Mark, Luke and John actually wrote. He says that we have only copies of copies of what the gospel writers wrote. He argues that, in the process of copying, scribes accidentally filled their copies of Scripture with many errors and mistakes. As a result, we cannot possibly know what the gospel writers really wrote.31 Many other scholars have given essentially the same argument for not trusting our Bibles today.
Yet we should understand more about most writers who reason in this way. Most who say we cannot trust our Bibles (we do not know about Mr. Ehrman) do not believe that God inspired the Bible’s original authors. They do not accept the doctrine of inspiration. So they use arguments similar to Ehrman’s to prove the uselessness of the doctrine of inspiration. They hope to show the foolishness of people who call the Bible an inspired book. Their opinions about our present Bibles seek also to reject the original manuscripts of the Bible.
This lesson will answer the argument which Ehrman and others have raised. We deal with this topic to encourage Christian believers. Christians need to know why Ehrman’s argument should not convince us. We need to know that he based his point of view on falsehoods. So, we hope in this lesson to help the reader trust in God’s Word despite attacks which people make against it.
This lesson will take a few steps to reach its goal. First, we will summarize how ancient authors and publishers produced ancient books. This first step will explore how scribes made copies of manuscripts of the Bible. Second, we will summarize the practice of textual criticism, the science which analyzes and compares ancient copies of the Bible. Third, we will summarize findings of textual criticism. It gives evidence of the amazing agreement which exists between ancient copies of the Bible. This finding of textual criticism disproves the argument which Ehrman and others with his view have made.
31 Michael J. Kruger, “Textual Criticism: The Achilles Heel of Inerrancy?” Modern Reformation: 19.2 (2010) 41. Kruger comments on Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2005) 7.
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A. THE MAKING OF ANCIENT BOOKS
Perhaps students should learn a little about the making of ancient books. It will help students understand the process which book-making required. Ehrman correctly states that hand-written copies of the Bible include mistakes. Learning about the making of ancient books will help students understand how scribes made mistakes when they copied the Bible. We follow Bruce Metzger as we summarize some of the facts about the ancient making of books.
1. Ancient Writing Surfaces
The people of ancient times wrote their books by hand. They hand-wrote both their original manuscripts and every copy which they made of them. A scribe who wrote copies attempted to reproduce each letter from an existing book. As a result, the production of new copies took a very long time. Also, in the process of hand-copying, scribes made mistakes.
By the time of the New Testament authors, writers used primarily papyrus and parchment as surfaces for their writing. Almost all manuscripts of the New Testament exist as either papyrus or parchment.32 These facts greatly influenced the history of the text of the Bible.
People made papyrus from the papyrus plant, which grew alone the delta of the Nile River. They took fibers from the center of the papyrus stem. They cut the fibrous material into thin strips and placed them side-by-side so that all the fibers lay in the same direction. Then they placed a second layer of fibers at right angles to the first layer. They pressed the two layers of fibers together. In this way they produced a brittle but strong paper-like papyrus.33
People made parchment from the skins of cattle, sheep, and goats. They preferred to use the skin of young animals. First, they scraped the hair from the skin. Then they washed and smoothed the skin. Finally they dressed the skin with chalk.34 Scribes usually wrote on parchment with brown or black ink. They used parchment (or vellum, a finer form of parchment) until the Middle Ages (generally the years of 500-1500 AD), when scribes began to use paper.
Both papyrus and parchment eventually deteriorated. So scribes needed continually to write more copies of manuscripts for scholars to use. The possibility of mistakes increased as scribes wrote copies of copies.
2. Ancient Forms of Books
Scribes wrote their books on long rolls, called scrolls. They glued sheets of papyrus together to form scrolls as long as 10.7 meters (35 feet). But a scroll made it difficult for scholars to go back
32 Bruce Manning Metzger, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968) 3. 33 Metzger 3-4. 34 Metzger 4.
46 47 and forth in a manuscript. Eventually, near the year 100 AD they sewed folded papyrus sheets together to form something similar to our books. We call a sewn papyrus book, a codex. Christians found that this form had a number of advantages over the roll: (a) it permitted all four Gospels or all the Epistles of Paul to be bound into one book, a format which was impossible so long as the roll was used; (b) it facilitated the consultation of proof-texts; (c) it was better adapted to receiving writing on both sides of the page, thus keeping the cost of production down.35
3. Ancient Writing Styles
Scribes used mostly two styles of writing when they wrote Greek manuscripts. When they wrote informal documents, they used the cursive or “running” hand. In cursive writing the writer’s pen connected the letters. When they wrote more formal documents, they used disconnected letters, similar to English capital (upper case) letters. These letters required scribes to write more carefully and more slowly. We call the manuscripts written with larger disconnected letters “uncials.” Scribes wrote earlier manuscripts of the New Testament as uncials.
However, beginning near the year 800 AD, handwriting changed. Writers wrote smaller connected letters. We call these documents “minuscules.” This form of cursive writing became popular. It required less parchment, made documents which weighed less, and took less time to write.36 This combination of factors made minuscule manuscripts more affordable. As a result, we have many more minuscule manuscripts compared to the number of available documents with the uncial script. The miniscule manuscripts of the New Testament outnumber the uncial manuscripts by more than ten to one, and although one must make allowance for the greater antiquity of the uncial style (and consequently the greater likelihood of the destruction of uncial manuscripts through the ravages of time), very much of the disparity in the number of the survivors must be due to the increased ease with which the minuscule copies could be produced.37
4. The Production of Ancient Manuscripts
The Christian church received official endorsement from the Roman government in the fourth century (300s AD). As a result the production of copies of Scripture greatly increased. Scholars increased the production of Bibles in scriptoria, workrooms for writers. A lector, or reader, slowly read the text aloud. Trained scribes in the room each wrote a copy of what the lector read. In this way a group of scribes produced many copies at one time. However errors in copying could easily enter into a scribe’s writing. A scribe might miss what the lector read due to an unexpected sound in the room. Or a scribe might write a homonym (a word which sounds like another word, such as the English words “their” and “there”) of what the lector read.38
35 Metzger 6. 36 Metzger 9-12. 37 Metzger 12. 38 Metzger 14-16.
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In the centuries which followed, monks living in monasteries began to produce copies of the Scriptures. Since they worked under less pressure to write quickly, they did not make the kinds of mistakes which scribes often made in the scriptoria. However, copying a manuscript with no one nearby gives a person other kinds of stress. The combination of reading a manuscript, remembering it, saying it to oneself, and moving the hand with the pen exhausted the monk greatly. Also, those who copied manuscripts often stood; or they sat down with the scroll or codex on their knees. These body positions tired the scribes very quickly.39 The exhaustion of the isolated scribe made him prone to make mistakes. Whether scribes copied the Scriptures in groups or alone, they could make mistakes as they attempted to write down exactly what a copied manuscript of the Bible said.
To reduce mistakes correctors often read the copies. If they found mistakes, they indicated this with comments in the margin of the new manuscript. This helped reduce the number of mistakes which a scribe made when he used that manuscript to write another copy. It helped preserve God’s Word.
5. Causes of Errors in Copying the Ancient Text
Bruce Metzger has listed additional reasons why errors appeared in the copies of Scripture. Sometimes scribes wrote errors without intending. These errors arose from a variety of reasons: poor eyesight, poor hearing, failed memory, or a mistaken conclusion concerning what a correction in the margin meant. So, due to human limitations, some errors appeared in copies as scribes wrote.40
At other times men who copied made deliberate changes from the manuscript which they copied. Some of their purposes included the following: to correct spelling or grammar, to make one verse agree with another, to clarify by adding a missing detail, and to explain the geography or history which the text implies.41 Metzger gives examples of these copying errors to demonstrate that scholars have found them in the copies of Greek manuscripts.
We have presented enough information to show that God entrusted His Word to human beings. They did not always copy God’s Word with complete precision. However, this should not discourage us. God has provided other factors in the History of the Bible’s text which protect us from much that seems, so far in this lesson, to have gone wrong.
B. THE PRACTICE OF TEXTUAL CRITICISM
For centuries students of the Bible have used textual criticism to try figure out what the original inspired manuscripts of the Bible said. We want at this point to clarify that “criticism” and “critic” are used at least two different ways in theology. “Higher criticism” studies whether the human writers of the Bible relied on earlier human sources.42 Many higher critics use this activity to try to prove that the Bible merely had human sources—that God did not inspire
39 Metzger 16-17. 40 Metzger 186-94. 41 Metzger 195-9. 42 “Higher Criticism,” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 1984 ed.
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Scripture. But textual criticism seeks only to find out what the text of the Bible originally said. We believe that we can conduct textual criticism in faithfulness to God and His Word.
We can define textual criticism as “the science and art that seeks to determine the most reliable original wording of a text.”43 The textual critic relies primarily on three kinds of materials to uncover the Bible’s original text. He studies copies, manuscripts of the Bible. He also analyzes ancient translations of the Bible into other languages. Finally he studies ancient quotes of the Bible. For example, the Septuagint (LXX), the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, sometimes helps scholars know the original Hebrew words of the Old Testament. Scholars hope that the combination of these materials—manuscripts, translations, and quotations —will give them a clear picture of the Bible’s original wording.
In analyzing ancient manuscripts of Scripture, textual critics look for “variants,” differences in details between different manuscripts. For example, manuscripts of Romans 1:7 say, “To all who are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints” (translated by the NKJV). However several ancient manuscripts read, “To all who are beloved of God, called to be saints.” One group of manuscripts includes, “in Rome;” another group does not. We call these different wordings, “variant readings.” Textual critics compare the manuscripts where variant readings appear to determine which wording probably came from the Apostle Paul himself.
We have already explained that scribes made copies of copies. This became necessary because the original writings of Scripture and their first copies have probably disintegrated completely. As a result, we have only copies of copies of copies of the original authors’ writings. So a long history has gone on when scribes wrote many generations of copied manuscripts.
Let us assume, as most scholars believe, that Romans 1:7 originally included “in Rome.” Yet, at some point in time, a copy existed which did not include “in Rome.” A scribe failed to include the words. Later, as scribes made copies of copies, a “family” of manuscripts did not include “in Rome.” At the same time other “families” of manuscripts continued to include the phrase. So today scholars study which ancient manuscripts include “in Rome” and which do not. Their general knowledge of each manuscript tells them what tendencies the manuscript has. Based on their knowledge of manuscripts they seek to make a conclusion about what the Apostle Paul probably wrote in Romans 1:8. But textual critics do not study merely the manuscripts. They also look at the ancient translations and ancient quotations of Romans 1:7 to see if these support the conclusion which they reach.
We have simplified the practice of textual criticism very much. But we believe that we have explained enough for the purposes of this course. We explained how mistakes appeared in hand-written copies of God’s Word. We mentioned the science of textual criticism to let students know that the activity exists. We believe that mentioning this will help students understand the answer which Bible-believing scholars give to the arguments of Ehrman and scholars who hold similar opinions. .
43 Paul D. Wegner, “The Reliability of the Old Testament Manuscripts,” Understanding Scripture, Ed. Wayne Grudem, C. John Collins, and Thomas R. Schreiner (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012) 106.
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C. GENERAL FINDINGS OF TEXTUAL CRITICISM44
New Testament scholar Michael Kruger referred to Bart Erhman in an article on textual criticism.45 After summarizing Erhman’s viewpoint, Kruger answers it with four theses (statements which he attempts to prove). These theses tell us about the general findings of textual criticism. We will list Kruger’s four theses. We will also add information to them from other authors.
1. Thesis 1: “We have good reasons to think that the original text is preserved (somewhere) in the overall textual tradition.”
In the History of the text of the Bible, the Lord preserved an abundance of manuscripts of Scripture. Scholars have access to very many Old Testament texts. Paul Wegner points out that “At present there exist over three thousand Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament, eight thousand manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate, over fifteen hundred manuscripts of the Septuagint, and over sixty-five copies of the Syriac Peshitta [a translation of the Bible in a language close to Aramaic].”46 John Skilton, also a scholar who studied Old Testament criticism, affirmed the wide spread agreement between these many manuscripts: “It does appear that we may rightfully say that the singular care and providence of God has kept the text of our Old Testament in an essentially and remarkably pure condition.”47 In other words, many manuscripts exist to make scholars nearly certain concerning what the Old Testament originally said in all its details.
Daniel Wallace indicates that we similarly possess many copies of the New Testament. He wrote that more than 5,700 manuscripts which contain at least part of the Greek New Testament still exist.48 Also, many translations of the New Testament into a variety of languages appeared early in the church. Then Wallace adds, “All told, there are between twenty thousand and twenty-five thousand handwritten copies of the New Testament in various languages.”49
Furthermore, many quotations of the Bible exist. Textual scholar, Bruce Metzger wrote: Besides textual evidence derived from New Testament Greek manuscripts and from early versions, the textual critic has available the numerous scriptural quotations included in the commentaries, sermons, and other treatises written by early Church Fathers. Indeed, so extensive are these citations that if all other sources for our knowledge of the text of the New Testament were destroyed, they would be sufficient alone for the reconstruction of practically the entire New Testament.50
44 See Neal Hegeman’s MINTS course on “Practical Hermeneutics,” Lesson Four, Fifth Principle. 45 Kruger 41-4. 46 Wegner 101. 47 John H. Skilton, “The Transmission of the Scriptures,” The Infallible Word: A Symposium by the members of the Faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary, Ed. N. B. Stonehouse and Paul Woolley, 2nd. ed. (Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 1967) 158-9. 48 Daniel B. Wallace, “The Reliability of the New Testament Manuscripts,” Understanding Scripture, Ed. Wayne Grudem, C. John Collins, and Thomas R. Schreiner (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012) 112. 49 Wallace 112-3. 50 Metzger 86.
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Yet we have an even more impressive story to report. To emphasize the unusual abundance of manuscripts of the Bible, Wallace adds, “The copies of the average ancient Greek or Latin author’s writings number fewer than twenty manuscripts!”51 This demonstrates that the Lord abundantly preserved His Word as He preserved thousands of copies of His Word. Furthermore, the church possesses incredibly early manuscripts of the New Testament. Wallace states, “Of [New Testament] manuscripts produced before AD 400, an astounding ninety-nine still exist. . . . . By comparison, the average classical [Greek or Latin] author has no copies for more than half of a millennium [500 years].”52 So the Lord preserved His Word beginning when He inspired it.
Let us return to Thesis 1. Scholars stress that “surely the original reading in every case is (somewhere) present in our vast store of material.”53 Kruger adds, Due to the vast number of manuscripts, the challenge of textual criticism is different from what we might expect—it is not that we are lacking in material (as if the original words were lost) but rather we have too much material (the original words, plus some variations).54
2. Thesis 2: “The vast majority of scribal changes are minor and insignificant.”
Some scholars estimate that all the manuscripts combined may provide 200,000 variants. Some scholars estimate a higher number.55 This means that in the many thousands of manuscripts of the Bible there may exist a total 200,000 differences in details.
However, most variants do not differ significantly from what other variants say. We should understand that even a slight difference in spelling or punctuation gets counted as a variant. Wegner lists the most common kinds of copyists’ errors in Old Testament manuscripts: confusion of similar letters, homophony (substitution of similar sounding letters or words), haplography (omission of a letter or word), dittography (doubling a letter or word), metathesis (reversal in the order of two letters or words), fusion (two words being joined as one), and fission (one word separated into two).56 These variants consist mostly of mistakes in spelling and word order. Textual critics can easily identify most of them. Most variants in New Testament manuscripts belong to a similar list. Skilton comments on this pattern: Although these variants are very helpful in textual criticism, in enabling us to form judgments about relationships among documents and about the merit of different individual manuscripts, and of groups and families of manuscripts, the great majority of them are trivial.57
51 Wallace 113. 52 Wallace 113. 53 Kruger 42. Kruger quotes Eldon Epp. 54 Kruger 42. 55 Kruger 42. 56 Wegner 107. 57 Skilton 161.
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3. Thesis 3: “Of the small portion of variations that are significant [and change the meaning], our methodology can determine, with a reasonable degree of certainty, which is the original text.”
This thesis speaks about variants which do not consist merely of spelling mistakes or incorrect word order. It deals with changes in manuscripts which form acceptable Hebrew or Greek. Yet these changes affect the meaning. Often scholars can discount these mistakes with good reasons.
Wallace clarifies what this thesis means. He says that less than one percent of all variant readings both make sense and change the meaning to some degree.58 However, not all of these variants make as much sense as the others. Furthermore, many variants lack solid textual probability. Kruger gives an example of a variant which lacks a solid basis in the manuscripts:
One of the most commonly mentioned “significant” variants [a variant which changes the meaning] is found in 1 John 5:7-8. . . . The italicized portion of the following verses is found in only a handful of manuscripts: “For there are three that testify: in heaven: the Father, the word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. And there are three that testify on earth: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree.” Out of the thousands of Greek manuscripts, only eight contain this variant reading—and four of those have the variants added by the scribe into the margin—and the earliest of these is tenth century. Moreover, the variant is attested by none of the Greek Fathers and is absent from almost all our early versions. In the end, despite the fact that this variant found its way into the Textus Receptus (and thereby the King James translation), the text-critical evidence is decidedly against it being original to John’s Epistle. What then do we make of this variant (and ones like it)? No one can doubt it is “significant” in that it affects the theological understanding of this verse. However, it simply has no claim to originality and therefore does not impact our ability to recover the original text of the New Testament.59
This lengthy quotation illustrates the third thesis. Some variants make sense. Yet they lack significant textual support. Therefore textual critics do not regard these variants as words which the inspired authors wrote.
4. Thesis 4: “The remaining number of truly unresolved variants is very few and not material to the story/teaching of the New Testament.”
According to Kruger only a rare instance occasionally exists where scholars cannot ascertain what the original author wrote.60 Furthermore, these rare instances do not affect our understanding of what God did. Also, they do not affect any important doctrine of Scripture. Wallace agrees: “In the final analysis, no cardinal doctrine, no essential truth, is affected by any viable variant in the surviving New Testament manuscripts.”61 This disproves the claim of
58 Wallace 116. 59 Kruger 43. 60 Kruger 43. 61 Wallace 117.
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Ehrman, who said that the manuscripts contain so many disagreements that we cannot know what the original authors actually wrote.
Reflecting on these conclusions of textual criticism, John Skilton wrote: We have . . . observed that God’s Word has been preserved throughout the ages in an essentially and remarkably pure form. It is incumbent on us to acknowledge that the praise for the preservation of the Scriptures belongs to God. We are not to attribute the preservation of the Scriptures in a pure form ultimately to circumstance or to the will of man. We are to attribute it ultimately to the design and the working of him whose kingdom ruleth over all.62
SUMMARY
We began this lesson by raising an important question which many scholars have raised. They point to many variants which exist in the manuscripts of the Bible. Therefore, they say, we cannot meaningfully speak of the Bible’s inspiration. If God inspired the Bible, we cannot know the words which He inspired. So we attempted to answer this objection to the doctrine of inspiration.
To begin answering this challenge, we partially explained how ancient scribes and publishers produced ancient books. They used materials which broke apart. This fact required the continual hand-copying of manuscripts. Copying manuscripts by hand produced mistakes in the copies. We explained some kinds of mistakes which scribes made. So we acknowledge what many critics of inspiration want us to see. We acknowledge that manuscripts of the Bible include mistakes.
Second, we summarized some parts of the practice of textual criticism. Textual critics use ancient manuscripts, translations, and quotations to determine the most reliable original wording of the Biblical text. By studying the History of the text of the Bible, they have reached conclusions about the original wording of the inspired Scriptures.
Finally, we stated and explained four theses of New Testament scholar Michael Kruger. These theses explain why we believe that we have the original text of Scripture in our midst. Though many variants exist, scholars have enough good reasons to make sound conclusions concerning the original wording of nearly every verse of the Bible. Furthermore, concerning the questions which still exist, differences in details do not significantly change the teaching of Scripture.
This information disproves what some say about the irrelevance of the doctrine of inspiration. We agree that manuscripts include variations of details. Yet God preserved His word so that we know virtually all the words that He inspired.
QUESTIONS
62 Skilton 164.
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1. What have Bart Ehrman and others written about the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture?
2. What two writing surfaces did ancient writers use? Explain why scribes needed to write copies of their manuscripts.
3. What two kinds of writing styles did scribes use to write New Testament manuscripts? What advantages did one of them have over the other?
4. Explain why mistakes in copying could take place in the scriptoria.
5. What causes for errors did Metzger give in his list of reasons?
6. Write the purpose of textual criticism.
7. What three kinds of sources do textual critics rely on to make their judgments about a variant in a manuscript?
8. Why do textual critics believe that “in Rome” belongs in Romans 1:7?
9. What does Kruger mean when he wrote that “the original text is preserved (somewhere) in the overall textual tradition?”
10. What does Kruger (and many other scholars) say about the vast majority of the variants in Scripture?
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LESSON FIVE
THE INERRANCY OF SCRIPTURE63
INTRODUCTION
In Lesson Two we summarized the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture. According to Scripture the Holy Spirit inspired the human authors to write. He also inspired the words which they wrote so that we must call the Bible “God’s Word.”
We also presented the view which we called Limited Inspiration. This view says that God inspired the main message of Scripture, the gospel. However, according to this view, God did not inspire all the details. For example, some say that the Bible gives mistaken dates for some of the stories in the Bible. According to this view, we should limit our understanding of inspiration to the Bible’s main message.
Scholars who do not believe in the plenary inspiration of the Bible wish to disprove our claims about the inspiration of every detail of the Bible. They believe they can provide examples of mistakes which writers of the Bible have made. Furthermore, they believe they can show that the Bible contradicts itself. If two statements from the Bible disagree, at least one of them contains a mistake. As they see it, God did not inspire the mistakes and contradictions which they find in the Bible.
This lesson attempts to respond to claims that the Bible contains many errors. We will take two steps as we give our response. First, we will examine two words which show up when theologians discuss the subject of this lesson. We want to explain what we mean by the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture. Second we will provide examples where some scholars believe they have found contradictions. We will attempt to show that, in fact, no contradictions exist in these examples. We cannot prove this in every case where people find problems. We do not know all the relevant facts about the situations which some verses describe. However we believe that we can discuss enough so-called errors that student can have confidence in the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible.
A. INERRANCY AND INFALLIBILITY
1. The Meaning of Both Words
Some scholars believe that the two words, infallibility and inerrancy, mean the same thing. So, many theologians often use them interchangeably. However, this occurs when people who use the words don’t understand their precise meanings.
John Frame believes that the two words demand different definitions. He summarizes his findings: “To say that a text is inerrant is to say that there are no errors in it. To say that a text is infallible is to say that there can be no errors in it, that it is impossible for that text to contain
63 See Neal Hegeman’s MINTS course on “Practical Hermeneutics,” Lesson Four, Second Principle, which teaches the absolute truthfulness of Scripture.
55 56 errors.”64 In other words: “inerrant” means without error; “infallible” means without the possibility of error.
The well-known Old Testament E. J. Young expressed essentially the same view. Young wrote, “By the term infallible as applied to the Bible, we mean simply that the Scripture possesses an indefectible [lasting and flawless] authority. As our Lord Himself said “it cannot be broken” (John 10:31). . . . By . . . [inerrant] we mean that the Scriptures possess the quality of freedom from error.”65 So infallibility refers to the Bible’s divine authority. Inerrancy refers to the Bible’s perfect record of what took place.
Inerrancy remains an important issue in the church today. In evangelical churches some reject the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy. However, they accept the doctrine of infallibility. They say that the Bible’s infallibility guarantees that “the Bible makes no false or misleading statements about matters of faith and practice.”66 In other words, the Bible remains an authority concerning what the Gospel says and requires. But many believe that the Bible contains errors which do not affect our faith and Christian morality.
However, this view prompts many questions. We believe, for example, that Jesus rose from the dead. But must we also believe that Christ rose on the third day? Does the phrase, “the third day,” relate to a matter of faith or practice? Or does the day of Jesus’ resurrection stand outside the gospel? As another example, according to Malachi 2, God says, “I hate divorce” (Malachi 2:16). Does this say merely what Malachi thought God hates? Or does God really hate divorce? Does Malachi govern our faith and practice? If you claim to accept infallibility but deny inerrancy, you will never know for sure which statements of the Bible govern your faith and practice and which do not. You will not know what God inspired.
In the remainder of this lesson we will discuss inerrancy. Lesson Two has already proved the doctrine of infallibility from Scripture. We say this because inspiration means God gave the Bible as His Word. God exercises His authority over us through the Bible. Inspiration should mean for us that Scripture cannot lead us in the wrong way. But we need to answer those who believe an infallible Bible has errors. So we should pursue the topic of inerrancy further.
Christians around the world meet challenges from non-Christian religions. These religions challenge our belief in the uniqueness of the Bible. In trying to make us doubt God’s authorship of the Bible, people will try to convince us that the Bible makes mistakes. So we believe that discussing inerrancy can help Christians maintain strong Christian faith while they face a non-Christian society.
2. Our Approach to Defining Inerrancy
We need to know how we will define the Bible’s inerrancy. We might decide to follow an approach which defines—before we look at the Bible—what inerrancy ought to mean. So, some might rely on man-made definitions of inerrancy. They might say, for example, that inerrancy
64 Frame, Word 169. 65 Young 113. 66 “Bible, Inerrancy and Infallibility,” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 1984.
56 57 means that the Bible has a perfect style (meaning, it has no grammatical errors). Others may say that inerrancy requires the Bible to possess the same style throughout. They might also say that the Bible should have a style which no human author has ever used. Or, some may say that no copied manuscripts of the Bible have errors. According to one author, Muslims include all these ideas in their definition of the inerrancy of the Koran.67 Many Christians might want to use the same approach to define the Bible’s inerrancy.
One century ago James Orr said that inerrancy refers to “hard and fast literality in minute [small] matters of historical, geographical, and scientific detail.”68 As we will see, this approach also rests on man-made expectations of what inerrancy must mean. We need to ask if Orr’s understanding matches what we find in the Bible.
In fact, the Bible does not match many man-made definitions of inerrancy. For example, the Bible has grammatical errors. Rules of grammar describe how people who use a language normally speak it. The Bible’s authors do not always follow these customary patterns.69 Also, the Bible does not display one style from beginning to end. As we learned in Lesson Two, different authors of the Bible wrote in different styles and with different vocabularies. Furthermore, we learned in Lesson Four that scribes made mistakes sometimes when they copied the Bible. So the Bible’s inerrancy does not match many man-made expectations for inerrancy. The Bible possesses a majestic style. But its content—more than its style—gives it beauty and majesty.
E. J. Young insists, correctly we believe, that the Bible must show us what its inerrancy means. Using the approach of letting the Bible define and display its own inerrancy, he wrote: The doctrine of inerrancy for which we contend does not demand the literal interpretation of all parts of Scripture. It does not demand that the writers of the Bible were regarded as mere automata [robots]; it does not insist that the writers, whenever they happen to record the same event, must be in actual verbal agreement with one another. It does not necessarily require that events be narrated in the same order. Sometimes, for reasons of emphasis, where the order is not intended to be chronological, that order may vary in differing accounts of the same events. Inerrancy does not demand that when two writers translate from another language, their translations should be in verbatim agreement. It allows them freedom of expression, as long as they represent accurately the thought of the original. Inerrancy does not insist that each writer should give the details, or even as many details of the same event, as another writer. It does not demand that each writer must view the same event from precisely the same standpoint. Inerrancy, in other words, allows for the full employment of the gifts and talents with which God endowed the human writer. All that it [inerrancy] postulates is that each writer who was borne of the Holy Spirit has recorded accurately that which the Spirit desired him to record. The Bible, in other words, is a true
67 Young 114. Young quotes Henry Preserved Smith, “Biblical Scholarship and Inspiration,” Inspiration and Inerrancy, 1891, 197. 68 Quoted by Frame, Word 167. 69 Young 117.
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account of those things of which it speaks. This is the claim that Bible-believing Christians make for it, and this claim is taught by the Bible itself.70
John Frame explains the Bible’s inerrancy by stressing that the Bible normally uses ordinary language rather than technical language.71 As a result, he observes that the Bible gives truth but not always precision. We understand what this means in daily life. Professor Frame writes: “When I stand before a class and a student asks me how large a textbook is, say that I reply, ‘400 pages,’ but the actual length is 398. Have I committed an error, or told the truth? I think the latter.”72
Also Frame stresses that the type of literature helps determine how the Bible guides us in truth: In reading the Bible, it is important to know enough about the language and culture of the people to know what claims the original characters and writers were likely making. When Jesus tells parables, he does not always say explicitly that his words are parabolic. But his audience understood what he was doing, and we should as well. A parable does not claim historical accuracy, but it claims to set forth a significant truth by means of a likely nonhistorical narrative.73
Perhaps Frame says it most clearly when he wrote: Error arises from two sources: deceit and ignorance. Deceit is intentional error, lying. Ignorance may lead to unintentional error. But God does not lie (Num. 23:19; 2 Tim. 2:13; Titus 1:2; Heb. 6:18), and he is ignorant of nothing (Ps. 33:13-15; Heb. 4:12-13). If Scripture is his Word, therefore, it contains no errors. It is inerrant.74
We will proceed by using the approach to inerrancy which we have summarized here.
B. SUSPECTED ERRORS IN THE BIBLE
At this point we begin to discuss what some call errors in the Bible. People have accused the Bible of reporting a great variety of errors. They say that many other historical sources disprove what the Bible says. We, however, will limit our presentation to places where people say that the Bible contradicts itself. We believe that responding to the accusation of errors in this way will give students an idea of how to explain other suspected errors.
1. Suspected Errors in Stories
People have tried to prove that the Bible contains errors in it stories. For example, they compare two different places where the Bible tells the same story. They try to show contradictions between the two passages in the Bible. The Bible gives more than one report of some stories
70 Young 139. 71 Frame, Word 172. 72 Frame, Word 172. 73 Frame, Word 174. 74 Frame, Word 169.
58 59 especially in the four New Testament gospels and in the Old Testament books of Kings and Chronicles. We will study a few examples. We will also follow E. J. Young as he gives possible understandings of the “errors” which others claim.
a. Jesus’ trip through Jericho (Matthew 20:29-34; Mark 10:46-52; Luke 18:35-43)
This story includes both Jesus and a blind man with the name of Bartimaeus. The blind man called out to Jesus as Jesus walked by. Jesus stopped and asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” Bartimaeus said that he wanted to see. So Jesus healed him.
As the gospels tell this story, at least two major differences show up in their reports. Matthew and Mark say that it took place as Jesus departed from Jericho. But Luke says that the healing occurred as Jesus came to Jericho. Also Matthew alone says that Jesus healed two men. Do these differences prove that the gospel writers made mistakes?
E. J. Young agrees that this example presents difficulties for us. However, he believes that possible solutions exist. For example, Herod the Great (who ruled when Jesus was born) had enlarged a city called Jericho slightly north of the place where Joshua destroyed Old Testament Jericho (Joshua 5, 6). Possibly Matthew and Mark—both Jews—referred to the Jericho which existed in the Old Testament. Possibly Luke—a Gentile—referred to the city which existed in Jesus’ day. In this case, we cannot accuse the gospel writers of writing errors. Maybe Jesus walked from on Jericho to the other when the story occurred. E. J. Young says that a second possibly explanation also exists. Possibly Bartimaeus heard about Jesus as he approached Jericho. So he began to shout for Jesus. Then, Jesus may have actually spoken to Bartimaeus when He left the town. We can comment also on Matthew’s reference to two blind men. Though Mark and Luke mention one man, two men could have met Jesus.75 As Matthew Henry wrote, “If two blind beggars were present, there surely was one.”76 We do not claim to have given the only possible answer to the accusation of errors. But we believe we have proved the possibility that the gospels agree.
b. The Order of Events surrounding Jesus’ Calling of the Disciples (Matthew 10:1-5; Mark 3:13-19; Luke 6:12-16)
The three listed references all tell us of the time when Christ appointed the twelve as His apostles. These essentially give us the same information. However, we use them here as reference points to other events which the gospels present nearby. Matthew, for example, tells us of a series of three stories: 1) the appointment of the apostles (Matthew 10:1-5), 2) Jesus’ rebuke against the Pharisees for following their traditions concerning the Sabbath (Matthew 12:1-8), and 3) the miracle of healing of the man with the withered hand (Matthew 12:9-14). Mark and Luke, however, report all three stories close together and in a difference order: a) Jesus’ rebuke against the Pharisees (Mark 2:23-28; Luke 6:1-5), b) the healing of the man with the withered hand (Mark 3:1-7; Luke 6:6-11), and c) the appointment of the apostles (Mark 3:13-19; Luke 6:12-16).
75 Young 133-2. 76 Cited by Young 133.
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Since the gospels do not report these stories in the same order, has at least one of them made a mistake?
Possibly we can answer this question by looking at the sermon which Christ gave in Matthew 10. In this sermon Jesus sent His disciples out with authority to cast out demons and heal the sick. The gospel of Luke does not duplicate this commissioning sermon which Jesus gave the apostles. However, some of the thoughts of Matthew 10 show up in Luke in other sermons. For example, part of Matthew 10:20 appears in Luke 12:12. Luke 21:19 resembles part of Matthew 10:22. Luke 21:18 resembles the thought of Matthew 10:30. Possibly Jesus said the same things more than once, on different occasions. Or Matthew may have taken various statements of Jesus and put them into one sermon.
In one case we find a different sequence when the Gospels report stories of what Jesus did. In the other example we find a different sequence when the Gospels report what Jesus said. Yet the gospels agree on what took place. Therefore, we may conclude that these examples do not reveal errors in the Bible.
We believe the gospel authors each tell the story of Jesus’ ministry with different audiences and purposes in mind. As a result, they joined stories differently to form specific impressions of Jesus. We cannot say that the gospel authors made mistakes. Instead, we believe that each tells the story of Jesus in a unique way. Inerrancy does not require us to believe that God’s Word always tells stories consecutively.77
c. The story of the Rich Young Ruler (Matthew 19:16-20; Mark 10:17-31; Luke 18:18-30)
The conversation between Jesus and the young ruler does not appear the same in these three gospels. For example, in Matthew the rich young ruler says, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life.” In Mark and Luke he says, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Notice the different use of the word “good.” Then, in Matthew Jesus replies, “Why do you ask me about what is good?” In Mark and Luke Jesus says, “Why do you call me good?” It seems that at least one of the gospel writers has recorded the conversation wrongly.
As we look at these verses, we should note that differences concern quotations. When we discuss quotations in the gospels, we need to remember two important points. First, gospel writers did not use quotations marks to tell us when they report conversations word for word. We do not contradict the teaching of inerrancy when we say that the Bible often gives summaries of what people said? Second, the Greek language of the Gospels probably translates the conversations which Jesus had in the Aramaic language. This feature of translation will almost guarantee that each gospel will use different words in their stories of conversations.78 These two factors may help explain why the gospels quote conversations differently.
Furthermore, possibly all three gospel writers gave abbreviated forms of the conversation. E. J. Young suggests a fuller conversation which may have taken place:
77 Young 135-6. 78 Young 130.
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In all probability, the full question was, “Good teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may possess eternal life?” To this the complete answer of the Lord may have been, “Why callest thou Me good and why askest thou Me concerning that which is good?”79 This suggestion assumes that the gospel writers often shortened conversations. They highlighted that part of the discussions which matched the theme about Christ which they wanted to emphasize. So we cannot say that they wrote errors. “All that the Bible-believing Christian asserts when he declares that the Bible is inerrant is that the Bible in its statements is not contrary to fact.”80
We learn from these attempts to explain the differences in the Bible’s stories. Certainly we cannot easily explain some differences between how writers told stories. Different writers report differently concerning whether Jesus approached or left Jericho. They report stories in different orders. They quote Jesus and others differently. Yet these examples do not prove that the Bible makes mistakes. Usually we do not know all the facts about a story. Possibly the factor of translation explains why the gospels quote people differently. The biblical writers had the freedom to arrange stories and sermons in different orders according to the themes which they pursued. With these considerations in mind we cannot say that the stories of the Bible contain errors.
2. Suspected Errors in Dates
Another area of difficulty arises when we study the Bible’s dates for the reigns of Old Testament kings. We think especially of the dates which the Bible gives for the kings of Judah and Israel when they existed as separate kingdoms. The numbers do not seem to match very well.
We give an example of what we mean. According to 2 Kings 9:14-20, Jehu killed both Israel’s king Joram and Judah’s king Ahaziah in one attack. This probably means that the rulers who followed Joram and Ahaziah—Israel’s king Jehu and Judah’s queen Athaliah—began to rule on approximately the same date. Nine chapters later 2 Kings 18:10 says that the kingdom of Israel—also called “Samaria”—fell in the sixth year of Judah’s king Hezekiah. According to this information, we conclude that the time from the beginning of Jehu’s reign to the end of the nation of Israel equals the time from the beginning of Athaliah’s rule to the sixth year of Hezekiah. Yet, when we add the lengths of the reigns which 2 Kings gives for the kings of Israel and Judah in that period of time, we get very different results. The reigns beginning with Jehu to the end of the nation of Israel add up to 143 years, 7 months. At the same time, the reigns beginning with Athaliah to the sixth year of Hezekiah add up to 166 years. This forms a difference of over 22 years. The numbers don’t seem to add up. If we looked no farther, we would conclude that 2 Kings made mistakes when it reports how long the Hebrew kings ruled.81
We can also mention the example of Israel’s king Nadab. 1 Kings 15:25 says that Nadab began to rule in the second year of Judah’s king Asa. 1 Kings 15:28 says that Nadab died in the third year of Asa. This would mean that Nadab ruled for one year. However 1 Kings 15:25 says 79 Young 131. 80 Young 136. 81 Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, New Revised Edition (Grand Rapids: Kregal Publications, 1983) 37.
61 62 that Nadab reigned for two years. Many similar examples of confusing numbers about the reigns of kings exist in the Old Testament.
According to Edwin Thiele all the suspected contradictions actually fit together. We need to understand the dating systems which Israel and Judah used when they recorded the history of their kings. Since their systems changed, we will discuss only the different systems which governed Israel and Judah early in their separation. What we learn about that period will help us see that numbers which seem to disagree do not always contradict each other. Several features of each dating system help resolve the difficulties.
First, Israel’s calendar year began with the month of Nisan, sometime in March or April. But Judah’s year began in the month of Tishri, sometime during September or October. So, the second half of a first year in Judah marked the first half of the second year in Israel.
Second, during the beginning of their separation the two nations counted a king’s years differently. Each used its new year to measure how long its king had ruled. Israel counted the time when a king began to rule until the time of its new year as his first year. But in Judah a king’s first year did not begin until the next new year.
We can illustrate these two features in the following way. Suppose Israel and Judah coexisted in modern times. Suppose both Israel and Judah received a new king in February, 2000 AD. Suppose both kings died 18 months later, in August 2001. The first year of Israel’s king lasted approximately one month. In Israel the month of Nisan (March/April) 2000 marked Israel’s new year and, according to their system, the beginning of the king’s second year. The king’s third year began in Nisan 2001. So historians in Israel would record that their king died in his third year. But, Judah did not start counting the king’s first year until after its new year in the month of Tishri (September/October) 2000. The king died in August 2001, before his first year came to a close. So Judah’s historians would say that their king died in his first year. The two kings ruled the same length of time. But their historians would differ by two years when they report the year of their kings’ deaths. According to Thiele, understanding the differences in counting years helps modern historians immensely in resolving the apparent conflict of dates in the Old Testament.82
Another feature of Hebrew systems of dating involves coregencies. Coregency refers to the fact that two kings ruled at the same time. For example, 1 Kings 16:21 says, “Then the people of Israel were split into two factions; half supported Tibni son of Ginath for king, and the other half supported Omri.” In this case opposing kings ruled at the same time.
Knowing this fact helps us understand some numbers which might seem to contradict each other. For example, 1 Kings 16:23 says that Omri became king during the thirty-first year of Judah’s king Asa. 1 Kings 16:29 indicates that Omri died in the thirty-eighth year of King Asa—when Omri’s son Ahab began to rule. This would lead us to believe that Omri reigned for seven years. However, 1 Kings 16:23 says that Omri reigned for twelve years. But we can explain this difference with the coregency. Omri ruled first over part of Israel, then over all of
82 Edwin R. Thiele, A Chronology of the Hebrew Kings (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1977) 14-17.
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Israel, for a total of twelve years. However, he came to the throne (unopposed) in Asa’s thirty- first. He ruled as Israel’s unopposed king for approximately seven years.83
Thiele calls the practice of dating the beginning of a king’s rule from two different starting points “dual dating.” He believes that the combined history of Israel and Judah had a total of nine coregencies. He shows how extensively dual dating appears in the Old Testament when coregencies existed.
With the patterns which we have just explained (different months for a year’s beginning, different ways to count a king’s first year, coregencies, and dual dating) Thiele believes he has explained nearly all of the difficulties which scholars have said exist in Old Testament’s numbers concerning the reigns of kings. Many have claimed that the numbers which measure the length kings’ reigns clearly demonstrated mistakes. They say these mistakes disprove the idea of Biblical inerrancy. But Thiele has demonstrated at least that the supposed inconsistencies which we seem to find may go away when we know more background to the Bible.
3. Suspected Errors in Citations
Perhaps we should deal briefly with the New Testament’s practice of mentioning Old Testament statements but not always quoting them precisely. Here also critics of the Bible claim that it makes mistakes. We will summarize the comments of Young on two examples.
a. Mark 1:2-3
These verses say, “It is written in Isaiah the prophet: ‘I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way’—‘a voice of one calling in the desert, “prepare the way of the Lord, make straight paths for him.”’”
The first difficulty which some scholars have involves the name of Isaiah. Mark claims to quote Isaiah. Yet his first quote comes from Malachi 3:1. A quotation from Isaiah 40:3 appears only after the quotation from Malachi. Some scholars call this a mistake.
Instead of “Isaiah” some Greek manuscripts have “the prophets.” However, Young believes with many other scholars that this change illustrates an attempt to change the text in order to correct it, a practice which Lesson Four mentions. Textual critics believe that “Isaiah” appears in the better ancient manuscripts.84
Young believes we can resolve the problem in a different way. Mark wants to introduce us to John the Baptist in the wilderness. Isaiah 40:3 specifically describes the preparer of Christ in the wilderness. But Mark also wanted to introduce the quotation from Isaiah. For him Malachi 3:1 provided a suitable introduction to what Isaiah said.85 So we cannot say that “it is
83 Thiele, Chronology 34. 84 Young 150-1. 85 Young 151.
63 64 written in Isaiah” misleads us in any way. Rather, “it is written in Isaiah” refers to the message of the messenger whom Mark introduces to us when he includes words from Malachi.86
b. Acts 15:14-18
These verses belong to the speech of James during the council of Jerusalem. The council discussed whether the Christian church should accept Gentile believers if they do not observe the complete law of Moses, which included circumcision. After others spoke, James gave additional reasons to believe that God has included Gentiles to belong to His own people. As proof, James summarizes what the Old Testament prophets said on the matter: “After this I will return and rebuild David’s fallen tent. Its ruins I will rebuild and I will restore it, that the remnant of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things” that have been known for ages. Acts 15:16-18
Young compares the beginning of James’ speech with what Jeremiah wrote. Young appears to give his own translations: JEREMIAH JAMES And it shall come to pass after after my uprooting them these things I shall return I shall return and have mercy upon them. and build up.87 When we look at how James treats the words of Jeremiah, we might ask whether James made mistakes in how he summarized the prophet.
Young points out that several languages belong to this situation. First, Jeremiah wrote in Hebrew. Second the Septuagint translated Jeremiah into Greek. Third, James probably spoke in Aramaic. Finally, Luke wrote Acts in the Greek language.88 Clearly we read in James’ words a free paraphrase of the prophecy of Jeremiah. Maybe James gave a paraphrase in Aramaic of what Jeremiah wrote in Hebrew. Maybe Luke gave a paraphrase in Greek of what James said in Aramaic. Or maybe both took place.
James based his last words, “have been known for ages,” on Isaiah 45:21. This supports our understanding that James gave a summary of what the prophets said. He did not quote Jeremiah verbatim. Rather James summarized what the prophets said about the issue which the council faced. He did not deceive his audience or show ignorance of what Jeremiah wrote. He conveyed the truth.
SUMMARY
86 Young 151-2. 87 Young 155. 88 Young 156.
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We began this lesson with a question about what we mean by infallibility and inerrancy. We also asked whether the Bible has errors and contradictions. We stated that critics of the Bible try to disprove it by claiming to find mistakes in it. This lesson attempted to deal with this issue.
We began by distinguishing between the meanings of infallibility and inerrancy. Many people use these words interchangeably. However we ought to define them differently. Infallibility refers to the Bible’s inability to give error. Inerrancy refers to the fact that the Bible contains no errors. After making this distinction, we focused on the issue of inerrancy.
We asked about the approach we should take to define inerrancy. Should we decide on a definition before we look at the Bible? Some do. They may conclude, for example, that inerrancy requires the Bible always to state matters with exceeding precision. However, we do not always find exact precision in the Bible. So, we advised readers to go to the Bible first to discover what it contains. When we know the Bible well, we will know how to define its inerrancy.
We learned that this approach makes us conclude that Bible never deceives the reader and never demonstrates ignorance concerning what it says. It always states the truth. This forms our definition of the Bible’s inerrancy: it never misleads us in what it says.
Then we examined areas where critics of the Bible claim they have found mistakes. First, we looked at places where critics say the gospels disagree with each other. We attempted to demonstrate either that no real contradictions exist or that we do not know all the relevant facts. Second, we noted the numbers which the Old Testament uses to describe the length of the reigns of the Hebrew kings. Though these numbers seem to conflict, we indicated that different methods of dating events and reigns probably explain all the confusion. Third, we looked at two places where the New Testament refers to what the Old Testament says. Critics accuse the New Testament of misquoting the Old Testament. We concluded that often the New Testament does not quote the Old Testament verbatim. Furthermore, since human authors wrote them in different languages, differences will show up when we read English translations of both of them.
This entire lesson merely suggests solutions to the specific examples which we presented. However, critics bring up many more examples. We believe that we have presented enough examples to suggest to students that critics often give very narrow-minded opinions. Often the appearance of contradictions and mistakes goes away when we know more about specific verses than we often know today.
QUESTIONS
1. How did this lesson define Biblical inerrancy and Biblical infallibility?
2. What approach to defining Biblical inerrancy should we avoid? Which approach should we follow?
3. Frame says that errors arise from two sources. What then does he say about the Bible?
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4. What two issues do critics raise concerning Jesus’ trip to Jericho? How does Young answer their accusations of mistakes in the Bible?
5. How does Young answer the difficulty which scholars have with the different order of events surrounding Jesus appointment of the twelve apostles?
6. What do we learn from the conversation which Jesus had with the rich young ruler?
7. What happens when we add up the years of Israel’s kings from Jehu to the fall of Israel and when we add up the years from Judah’s queen Athaliah to the sixth year of Hezekiah?
8. Why does it seem that the Bible give conflicting numbers concerning the length of Nadab’s reign?
9. What did Edwin Thiele mean by dual dating?
10. Why do we deny that Mark made a mistake in Mark 1:2, 3?
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LESSON SIX
THE PERFECTIONS OF SCRIPTURE
INTRODUCTION
This lesson continues our study of the results of the Bible’s inspiration. We have seen that the Holy Spirit inspired the Bible to tell the story of salvation, that inspiration guarantees the Bible’s reliability, and that the Spirit’s inspiration produced a sure and true book. Now we will see how God’s inspiration of Scripture produced a complete book.
To begin this lesson, we would like to ask a few questions. May ordinary Christians study the Bible themselves? Or, do they always need the church to tell them what it means? Will the Bible fail to help us without the official teaching of church officials?
In the time of Martin Luther (the early 1500s AD), the Roman Catholic Church feared what would happen if ordinary people read and interpreted the Bible. The Church feared that people would come up with interpretations which disagreed with the Church’s official teaching. It insisted that people will always need the church to interpret the Bible for them. Without the Church, people only remain confused by the Bible’s incomplete revelation.
One major point of disagreement between the Protestant reformers and the Roman Catholic Church concerned the church’s relationship to the Bible. The Roman Catholic Church claimed that the Bible needs the Church for the Bible to give God’s grace. It claimed that the Bible by itself remains incomplete. So, the Bible needs the Church to complete it. The Bible can have a proper effect only through the official ministry of the Church.
Protestants objected to the Roman Catholic idea that the Bible lacks something which only the church can provide. In contrast to the Roman Catholic view, Protestants held to the perfection of the Bible. “Perfect” can mean complete or finished. They said that the Bible possessed completeness. Scripture does not depend on the church in order to teach us.
This lesson describes Scripture’s completeness by presenting characteristics which the Protestants called its “perfections.” These perfections include the Bible’s authority, necessity, clarity and sufficiency. Some theologians today have replaced the word “perfections” with “attributes” or “characteristics.” They say that this lesson describes the attributes or characteristics of Scripture. We agree that this lesson will discuss different characteristics, or attributes, of the Bible. Yet we prefer to call them “perfections.” We prefer this word because the issue which this lesson discusses arose in the Protestant Reformation. Each of these points which the Reformation stressed emphasizes the completeness, or perfection, of the Bible.
Berkhof agrees with what we have just said: The Reformed developed the doctrine of Scripture over against the Roman Catholics and some of the Protestant sects. While Rome taught that the Bible owes it authority of the church, they maintained that it has authority in itself as the inspired Word of God. They also upheld the necessity of Scripture as the
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divinely appointed means of grace, over against the Roman Catholics, who asserted that the church had no absolute need of it, and some of the Protestant sects, who exalted the ‘inner light’ or the word of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of the people of God, at the expense of Scripture. In opposition to Rome they further defended the clearness of the Bible. They did not deny that it contains mysteries too deep for human understanding, but simply contended that the knowledge necessary unto salvation, though not equally clear on every page of the Bible, is yet conveyed in a manner so simple that anyone earnestly seeking salvation can easily gather knowledge for himself, and need not depend on the interpretation of the church or the priesthood. Finally, they also defended the sufficiency of Scripture, and thereby denied the need of the tradition of the Roman Catholics and of the inner light of the Anabaptists.89 [italics added]
Berkhof has mentioned the four perfections which the Protestants claimed for Scripture. Berkhof mentions them in this order: authority, necessity, clarity, and sufficiency. We will study each of them in the same order.
A. THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE
We may define the authority of Scripture as the right of Scripture to rule us completely because God rules us through it. The Protestant reformers stressed the authority of Scripture in contrast to the idea that some kinds of human thought had independence (called “autonomy”) from Scripture. Some have said that church tradition should rule us more than Scripture. Others have said that human reason should tell us how much of Scripture to obey.
J. I. Packer refers to this when he describe the places where people in the church look for authority. He asks, “From what source may we gain authoritative guidance as to what God has and has not authoritatively said?”90 Then he gives three rival answers which different branches of the worldwide church have offered. These three answers say that we receive authoritative guidance from “Scripture as interpreted by itself; Scripture as interpreted (in some measure amplified) by official ecclesiastical sources; and Scripture as evaluated in terms of extra-biblical principles by individual Christian men.”91 The first answer believes that God speaks with His final authority in Scripture. But the other two answers believe that either church tradition or human reason have independence (autonomy) over Scripture.
1. The Evangelical View
We need to explain what the three rival answers actually mean. First “Scripture as interpreted by itself” constitutes what Packer calls the Evangelical view. According to Packer, confessional Protestants give this answer. This view claims that “the teaching of the written Scriptures is the Word which God spoke and speaks to His Church, and is finally authoritative for faith and life. . . . Furthermore, the Holy Spirit, who caused it to be written, has been given to the Church 89 Berkhof, Summary 13-14. 90 J. I. Packer, “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1958) 46. 91 Packer 46.
68 69 to cause believers to recognize it for the divine Word that it is, and to enable them to interpret it rightly and understand its meaning.”92 Therefore, the Bible “does not need to be supplemented and interpreted by tradition, or revised and corrected by reason.”93
This view of authority does not forbid us from studying the history of the church or the writings of theologians. We may learn from what Christians in the past have said. Often we learn by observing their mistaken interpretation of Scripture. We learn from history where mistaken interpretations ultimately lead. But we must always evaluate an interpretation and its consequences by what Scripture teaches and commands. No human source has independence (autonomy) over Scripture. Scripture alone remains our final authority because God applies His authority over us uniquely through Scripture.
2. The Traditionalist View
Second, Packer wrote about those who say they yield to “Scripture as interpreted (in some measure amplified) by official ecclesiastical sources.” This refers to what Packer calls the Traditionalist View. Roman Catholics, and some Anglo-Catholics and people of the Eastern Orthodox Church hold to this view of authority. Packer summarizes what Roman Catholics teach about Scripture’s authority: The Bible alone . . . is no safe nor adequate guide for anyone. However, tradition, which is also God-given and therefore authoritative, supplies what is lacking in Scripture; it augments [helps] its contents and declares its (alleged) meaning. (Rome goes furthest in thus supplementing and wresting Scripture, adding the Apocrypha to the canon, treating the Vulgate as an authentic version, and imposing such traditions as Papal infallibility and the Mary-cult; others are less extravagant.) The word of the Holy Spirit as Giver and Interpreter of revelation is thus equated with the pronouncements of the teaching Church.94
Michael Horton summarizes the Roman Catholic Church’s view of its authority: Since the church preceded the canon and the latter evolved within and was finally authorized as such by the church, the conclusion seemed self-evident to Roman Catholic theologians that the church was the mother of Scripture. Furthermore, Scripture has to be interpreted. Would the Sprit inspire the canon without also inspiring its living interpreter, the church?”95 In view tradition has more authority in practice than Scripture because tradition decides what Scripture says. Scripture does not decide what tradition says.
3. The Subjectivist View
Third, “Scripture as evaluated in terms of extra-biblical principles in individual Christian men,” according to Packer, presents the view of authority as Liberal Protestants understand it. Packer explains this view:
92 Packer 47. 93 Packer 48. 94 Packer 49. 95 Michael Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims On the Way (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011) 187
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According to subjectivism . . . the proper ground for believing a thing is not that the Bible or tradition contains it, but that reason and conscience commend [approve] it; from which it seems to follow that faith is essentially a matter of being loyal to such religious convictions as one has.96 Followers of this view hold to what they already believe or want to believe more than they hold to what the Bible says. According to this view a person’s opinions have more authority than what Scriptures says.
4. The Scriptural View
After explaining the three competing views of authority, we need to see what Scripture says about them. We believe that the “Evangelical View” best summarizes Scripture’s teaching about its authority. We believe this because the New Testament often quotes the Old Testament to support what the New Testament says. Furthermore, Jesus often quoted Scripture to support what He said. As the authors of Scripture wrote, they assumed that Scripture possessed God’s final authority. So they relied on the Bible’s authority as they wrote new Scriptures.
Concerning the “Traditionalist View” we can say that it resembles the traditionalism of the Pharisees who lived in Jesus’ day. They added their traditions to Scripture. For example, they added to the commands in the Old Testament about keeping the Sabbath. As time advanced these added traditions became more important to them than the commands of Scripture (ex. Matthew 12:9, 10). The Pharisees accused Jesus and His disciples of breaking the traditions. Yet Jesus spoke against their traditions because the traditions changed their understanding of God’s Word (Matthew 5:21-47). We believe that Jesus’ condemnation of the traditionalists in His day applies also those who hold to a traditionalist view of authority today. Jesus demonstrated that Scripture has authority—not the independent traditions which men add to God’s Word.
Concerning the “Subjectivist View,” we can say that it resembles the unbelief of the Sadducees in Jesus’ day. Like liberalism in the modern era, the Sadducees denied the miracles in the Bible, the resurrection of the dead and the existence of angels and demons. They believed more in the power of nature than the power of God’s Word. They also rejected all of the Old Testament except the first five books. Jesus spoke to them about the resurrection by proving from Scripture that God’s Word declares it (Mark 12:18-27). Jesus demonstrated the authority of Scripture over those who prefer to follow human reason.
We have shown how the Bible claims supreme authority over what people may believe has autonomy: human tradition and human reason. Scripture claims independent authority over everything men do or think. In fact, Christ Himself lived under its authority. Christ said, “I have come to do you will, O God” (Hebrews 10:7).
B. THE NECESSITY OF SCRIPTURE
1. Definitions of the Necessity of Scripture
96 Packer 50-1.
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Protestant reformers insisted on the necessity of Scripture because man’s mind could not have thought up the way of salvation which God accomplished. Many believe that all significant truth comes from man’s mind (a view called rationalism). However, the reformers claimed that only God can reveal Christ and the way of salvation. We will see how a few reformed theologians speak against the idea of rationalism.
According to theologian Wayne Grudem we need Scripture to know the gospel, to know God’s will, and to continue a life of faith in Christ. We do not need Scripture to know that God exists or to know something about His character and moral laws.97 In other words, general revelation reveals something about God’s majesty and holiness. But the creation does not tell us how to find salvation. Only the Bible can provide the message of Christ by which we can receive reconciliation with God. We need Scripture because we cannot invent the gospel in our minds. Scripture alone shows us how to receive salvation from our sins.
But other authors give additional reasons for Scripture’s necessity. Van Til, for example, wrote that Protestant churches say that we need special revelation written down so that “special revelation (1) might remain through the ages, (2) might reach all mankind, (3) might be offered to men objectively, and (4) might have the testimony of its truthfulness within itself.” 98 Van Til agrees that we need the unique message of Scripture, which the creation does not reveal. However Van Til stresses the advantage of having God’s saving words in written form. Sinful mankind quickly forgets and changes what God said to Abraham and the Apostle Paul. (Think of how Adam and Eve changed the command which God spoke to them.) So we need God’s revelation of Christ in a permanent form which men can distribute. We need the message of salvation available outside of us so that we can return to it repeatedly to remember it correctly. So we need Scripture because its written form gives us certainty which endures.
In Berkhof’s description of the perfections of Scripture (near the beginning of this lesson) he says that Protestants stressed the necessity of Scripture because, at the time of the Reformation, Roman Catholics and “some Protestants” (Anabaptists) did not consider Scripture necessary. Roman Catholics relied mostly on the “revelation” which they believed church tradition provided. Anabaptists trusted the “inner light” which they believed the Spirit placed directly in their hearts. One group believed that God gives His changeable Word to its official institution. The other group believes that that God gives His changeable Word to each person’s impressions. Both denied that the faith “was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3). A correction of this denial points to the necessity of Scripture. We need God’s Word because if we trust our own ideas (rationalism) we will always misunderstand our condition before God.
So we may define the necessity of written Scripture as our need for God’s unchanging revelation of Christ and His grace in a permanent written form.
2. Scriptural Proof of the Necessity of Scripture
a. We need the preaching of Scripture to know the gospel of Christ.
97 Grudem, Systematic Theology 116. 98 Cornelius Van Til, “An Introduction to Systematic Theology,” (Unpublished class syllabus, 1971) 134.
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We can see this in the way God gives salvation to sinners. In Romans 10:13-15 the Apostle Paul says: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”
At first these verses seem to demonstrate only the necessity of preaching. Yet Paul does not promote preaching the message of creation. Paul commanded the pastor Timothy to “Preach the word” (2 Timothy 4:2). Romans 1:16, 17 exalts the preaching of the gospel. This gospel did not originate in the creation. Rather, it came from the mind of God. God worked and spoke. Scripture alone tells us what God did and said.
The Apostle Peter stressed that “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). We must trust in Christ to receive salvation. Only Scripture, not the creation, speaks of Him as savior.
The Apostle Peter reminds us that faith comes by the Word of God: You have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For, “All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever.” 1 Peter 1:23-25 All of these verses demonstrate our need for Scripture in order to receive salvation.
b. We need Scripture to maintain the Christian life.
John Frame expresses the idea that we need Scripture to maintain our covenant relationship with the Lord.99 Jesus indicated this when He quoted Deuteronomy 8:3: “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Mathew 4:4). So, Jesus also told His disciples, “If you love me, you will obey what I command” (John 14:15). 2 John 6 says, “And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.” So we need God’s written Word to live in continual fellowship with God.
c. We need Scripture to know our future hope.
God has given His Word about the future to give Christians hope. In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 the Apostle Paul wrote to instruct grieving Christians who’s loved ones had died. He assures Christians that the dead in Christ will face no disadvantage when Christ returns. “According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep” (1 Thessalonians 4:15). In fact, the dead in Christ will rise first. After that believers still living on earth will go up to join resurrected believers along with Christ. “And so we will be with the Lord forever” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).
99 Frame, Word 212.
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Believers need assurances from Christ like this. He gives them this assurance only in His inspired Word. 1 Corinthians 2:9 says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”
We have shown from Scripture the necessity of Scripture. We need it to receive the gospel of Christ, to maintain our Christian lives, and to know our future hope. No other source of revelation which men claim—neither church tradition nor an “inner light”—can infallibly give these helps. Human trust in human thought (rationalism) will always fail to help us know God truly. The Apostle Paul wrote Timothy that “from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15).
C. THE CLARITY OF SCRIPTURE
Sometimes theologians call this doctrine “the perspicuity of Scripture” (perspicuity means clarity or eloquence). The Protestant reformers stressed the clarity of Scripture because the Roman Catholic Church claimed that people need the official clergy of the church to know what Scripture says. We call this elevation of church officials—the clerics—clericalism. The Catholic Church taught that the basic message of the Bible remains unclear unless we learn first how the church interprets it. The reformers stressed the clarity of Scripture itself to oppose this view. We may define the clarity of Scripture as Scripture’s ability to teach us at least the basic truths of God’s Word without the intervention of scholarly or church authorities.
1. Clarifications of the Clarity of Scripture
The doctrine of Scripture’s clarify does not teach that everyone can easily understand every part of Scripture. Some portions of Scripture make us struggle to understand them. The Apostle Peter wrote that Paul’s “letters contain some things that are hard to understand” (2 Peter 3:16). The New Testament book of Hebrews seems very profound. A person can study it for a whole lifetime. But he will never understand it completely. Also the book of Revelation demonstrates how much difficulty we often have in understanding parts of the Bible. If Revelation had no difficulties, more people would agree on its meaning. Despite its clarity people will disagree over what the Bible says in many places.
Also, though Scripture possess clarity, the church still needs teachers of the Word. Ephesians 4:12 reminds us that Christ has given the church some who serve as pastors and teachers. The Apostle Paul tells the pastor Titus what to teach various groups in the congregation (Titus 2:1-3, 7, 9, 15). Paul even encourages the church to pay those who preach and teach the Word (1 Timothy 5:17-18). Grudem reminds us that scholars and teachers of the Bible have an important task in the church. They can; 1) teach us, 2) explore unfamiliar topics in the Bible, 3) defend Biblical teachings against attack, and 4) add to our study of the Bible to give us fuller understanding.100 So the church should have teachers of the Word, even though the Word possesses clarity.
2. The Bible’s Teaching Concerning its Clarity
100 Grudem 110-111.
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The Bible teaches us about its basic clarity. Psalm 19:7 says that God’s Word makes “wise the simple.” This verse uses “simple” to mean the inexperienced and immature person. Even the immature can learn from the Bible. In that way the young man can gain the wisdom which we often associate with older, mature people. So Psalm 119:130 says that God’s Word “gives understanding to the simple.” Psalm 119:105 says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.” This means that God’s Word can guide us. Without clarity the Bible could not guide us.
3. Historical Evidence of Scripture’s Clarity
Some of the most influential Christians in church history came to faith through reading the Bible. When Augustine (354-430 AD) desired relief from his sin, he opened the Bible and read from the book of Romans. The Lord converted him without the intervening interpretation of the Church. Augustine eventually became the bishop of the African city of Hippo. People still read his book, The Confessions, and his other writings to learn what Scripture clearly taught Augustine.
Similarly, Martin Luther (1483-1546) discovered the gospel by going to Scripture itself. In his preparation for academic lectures on the Bible, he struggled with God’s righteousness. He wondered how God’s righteousness would give a sinner salvation. He discovered in Romans that we receive salvation due to a righteousness from God, apart from the law. In other words, Luther discovered that God gives the righteousness of Christ to those who trust in Christ, not to those who merely obey the law. Luther learned Scripture’s important saving truths which contradicted the teaching of the church’s clerics.
Both Luther’s conversion and Augustine’s demonstrate the clarity of Scripture. Their lives provide stories of Scripture alone converting and teaching those who read it. Due to the Spirit’s use of the Bible, the Bible can teach and changed us without the church’s officials telling us how to understand it.
D. THE SUFFICIENCY OF SCRIPTURE
Often, when religious groups significantly misuse the Bible, they rely on other writings or prophets. Cults and sects rely on their “holy” books which they follow in interpreting the Bible.101 The Roman Catholic Church also exhibited this tendency of relying on official church statements as their basis for their views of Scripture. So, the Protestant reformers insisted on the sufficiency of Scripture. They meant that the Bible contains everything necessary for God’s glory and for man’s salvation, faith and life. The Bible openly states the things which we need to know. Or we can make conclusions about them because of what Scripture says.102 The doctrine of the authority of Scripture says that only Scripture has God’s unique authority over us. The doctrine of the sufficiency says that Scripture provides completely what we need to know and follow Christ.
101 See this author’s MINTS course on The Trinity and the Cults, Lesson Five at MINTS.edu. 102 “The Confession of Faith,” I.VI. 4 May 2012.
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The sufficiency of Scripture does not mean that the Bible tells us everything we need to know about fixing a motorcycle or caring for farm plants. John Frame helps us understand the sufficiency of Scripture: Certainly, Scripture contains more specific information relevant to theology than to dentistry. But sufficiency in the present context is not sufficiency of specific information but sufficiency of divine words. Scripture contains divine words sufficient for all of life. It has all the divine words that the plumber needs, and all the divine words that the theologian needs. So it is just as sufficient for plumbing as it is for theology. And in that sense it is sufficient for science and ethics as well.103
What Frame says may require a little more explanation. Certainly a theologian will use Scripture in ways that a dentist will not. A theologian analyzes Scripture for his work. A dentist, on the other hand, analyzes the human mouth and the condition of human teeth. Yet Scripture governs both in their desire to please God in their work. It completely governs their relationship to Him.
The sufficiency of Scripture implies that we may not add to Scripture. Also, we may not subtract from it. The Bible teaches this repeatedly. Deuteronomy 4:2 says, “Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the LORD your God that I give you.” Proverbs 30:5, 6 says, “Every word of God is flawless; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words, or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar.” And Revelation 22:18, 19 says, I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are descried in this book.
So Scripture teaches its own sufficiency. It tells us not to add to it. Also, we may not subtract from it. If God wanted us to go to other places to learn about Him and His commands, He would tell us. But He gives only Scripture for us to know how to become complete in Christ. Every other help we use must explain and apply what Scripture says.
SUMMARY
We began this lesson by asking if ordinary Christians may study the Bible. We also asked whether studying the Bible will help us, even when we do not rely on official church teaching. In the context of these questions we presented the perfections of Scripture. The early Protestants spoke of Scripture’s perfections (completeness) because the Roman Catholic Church insisted on the Bible’s inadequacy. They said that the Bible needs the church before we can properly understand the Bible. So this lesson summarized the four perfects of Scripture which the Protestants stressed.
103 John Frame, Word 220.
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The authority of Scripture teaches that the Bible—not church tradition, nor human reasoning—may tell us what the Bible means. We must rely on the Bible to teach us how to understand the Bible. The Bible possesses full authority over us, even when we study it.
The necessity of Scripture teaches that we need the Bible to learn about the Triune God and the way of salvation which He has accomplished for us. Only in Scripture can we find the gospel, the way God wants us to live, and the truth about our Christian hope. The Bible’s unique information makes it completely necessary for the Christian and the church.
The clarity of Scripture teaches that the Bible can teach us without the church’s intervention. Certainly we will gain insights about the Bible from people who have studied it more than we have and from people how have different insights than we have. But the Bible does not remain a confusing book until the church explains it. The Holy Spirit can use Scripture as He wishes.
The sufficiency of Scripture teaches that the Bible contains enough revelation for us to know what God wants us to believe about Him and how God wants us to live. Every time we get guidance from somewhere else, that guidance must agree with the Bible.
These perfections of Scripture stress the completeness of the Bible. Cornelius Van Til perhaps best summarizes what we mean by each of these perfections: The Reformers thought of this attribute [of sufficiency] particularly in opposition to all manner of sectarianism [trust in other “holy books”], as they thought of perspicuity [clarity] chiefly in opposition to clericalism [trust in the official teachings of church officials], as they thought of necessity in opposition to rationalism [trust in in man’s mind], as they thought of authority in opposition to autonomy [trust in other independent authorities]. All these matters overlap and are involved in one another, and it is well to see that they do. The four attributes of Scripture are equally important because, if we did not have them all, we would have none. The whole matter centers about an absolutely true interpretation that came into a world [which is] full of false interpretation.104 In other words, God came to mankind with His word. He insists that He remain Lord over it and over our response to it. All additions to its authority, message, explanations, and guidance will end up diminishing Scripture, which God inspired with completeness.
QUESTIONS
1. What did Protestants means when they spoke of the “perfections” of Scripture?
2. Summarize the Evangelical and Traditionalist views of Scripture’s authority.
3. Summarize the subjectivist and Scriptural views of Scripture’s authority.
4. List at least three reasons which theologians give for the necessity of Scripture.
104 Van Til 136.
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5. What did Anabaptists believe instead of the necessity of Scripture?
6. Where does Scripture teach its necessity?
7. How would you answer people who say that the clarity of Scripture means everyone can understand Scripture clearly?
8. What do we mean by the sufficiency of Scripture?
9. If God gave us a sufficient Bible, what may we add to it?
10. What trusts do the sufficiency, clarity, necessity, and authority of Scripture guard us from?
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LESSON SEVEN
THE CANON AND THE APOCRYPHA
INTRODUCTION
We begin this lesson by asking which books belong to the Bible. Or, we can ask which books God inspired for the Bible. Did God provide a list of inspired books that we know we can trust?
We need to raise this topic for a couple of reasons. First, sometimes non-Christians challenge Christians about the Bible. They say that Christians have always disagreed over which books belong in the Bible. So, non-Christians say, even Christians cannot really trust the Bible. In another situation, Protestants and Romans Catholics disagree over which books belong to the Bible. Protestants accept the sixty-six books which make up their Bible. Yet Roman Catholics insist that some books of the Apocrypha belong to the Bible as well. So we need to understand why we have the specific list of books in the Bibles which we read.
Before we proceed, perhaps we should point out here that it took time for God’s people to recognize the books which He inspired. After an author completed a book, God did not publicly announce that He had added another inspired book to the Bible. Instead, God guided His people to recognize what He inspired. As a result, sometimes many years went by before the church in the Old and New Testaments recognized what the Holy Spirit had moved holy men to write.
This lesson will discuss the canon, the list of books which God inspired. After explaining the meaning of canon, we will explore the canon in a few ways. We will summarize, when human authors wrote the books of the Bible. We will also discuss the process by which the Christian church recognized the Spirit’s inspiration of these books. Finally we will summarize why the Roman Catholic Church officially included the Apocrypha at the time of the Protestant Reformation.
A. THE MEANING OF CANON
Our word “canon” comes from the Greek word kanon. Greek-speaking people used kanon in several ways. We will demonstrate a variety of uses by looking at two places where kanon appears in the New Testament. But always the meaning of kanon includes some kind of authority.
Kanon appears in 2 Corinthians 10:13, 15, 16. In these verses the NASB and NKJV consistently translate it as “sphere,” the area where God required Paul to serve. This resembles the ASV which consistently translates it as “province,” the region where God called Paul to work. Similarly, the ESV translates the word in these verses as “area of influence.” But the NIV translates the word according to the context of each verse. So it translates kanon as “field” in : 13, “area of activity” in :15, and “territory” in :16. Though each translation approaches the word in a unique way, they all describe God’s assignment concerning where the Apostle Paul must work. Since God decided that Paul would preach to Gentiles, the Apostle will not compare his work with the work of others who preached to Jews. Paul must measure his work by evaluating 79 whether he submitted to Christ’s authority in the specific field where Christ appointed Paul to work.
Kanon appears also in Galatians 6:16. It says, “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation. Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule [kanon], even to the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:15, 16). Paul wrote this at the conclusion of his letter to the Galatians. This letter instructed a church where at least some believed that Gentile Christians should receive the sacrament of circumcision and follow other Jewish customs. Paul emphasized that even Abraham received justification only through faith in Christ, not by observing Jewish rituals. So here, near the end of his letter, the Apostle Paul re-emphasizes the point: “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation.” Then Paul calls it a kanon, a rule with authority over the church. The church must uphold this basic truth at all cost. This canon states God’s rule which will endure throughout the New Testament. When we use “canon” in this lesson, we use it with a meaning similar to Paul’s meaning of kanon in Galatians 6:16.
The Greek word, kanon, probably came from a Hebrew word for reed, a firm stem from a grass plant. Sometimes builders used reeds as measuring sticks. Therefore, the Hebrew word sometimes meant “norm” (something you use to see if other things have the proper length or if people perform the right deeds) or “ideal.”105 Galatians 6:16 uses this meaning of norm, rule, or standard. Christians can evaluate their own opinions by seeing if their views agree with the authoritative canon or rule.
In the History of the Church “canon” came to have at least two basic meanings. Sometimes it refers to truths which control our faith and lives (such as in Galatians 6:16). But increasingly it came to mean the inspired books which regulate our faith and lives.106 It referred to the list of books where God places His authority over us. We must believe what the books in the canon teach. We must oppose teachings which contradict the books in the canon. We will use the word, canon, to refer to this list of inspired books.
B. THE RECOGNITION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON
Before the Old Testament could recognize the canon, God needed to inspire the books in the canon. We do not need to know exactly when Old Testament authors wrote each of their books. Rather, we want to know here the approximate dates when the writing of the Old Testament came to a close. Then we can know when the people of God recognized these writings as God’s Word. The dates we provide will give us a deepened appreciation of the importance and uniqueness of the Spirit’s inspiration of Scripture.
We look, first, at the time when the inspiration of the Old Testament began. Under divine inspiration, Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. According to some interpretations of historical information, Moses died before the year 1400 BC. Other scholars
105 “kanon,” Theological Dictionary of the New Testament: Abridged in One Volume, 1985 ed. 106 Roger, T. Beckwith, “The Canon of the Old Testament,” Understanding Scripture, ed. Wayne Grudem, C. John Collins, and Thomas R. Schreiner (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012) 71. 80 place his death at approximately 200 years later.107 To meet our purposes here, we need only to note that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible sometime before 1200 BC.
Many scholars believe that the last books of the Old Testament include 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Malachi. We believe, based on an introductory study of these books, that their authors completed writing these books before 400 BC. With the dates we have provided, we conclude that the Holy Spirit inspired the Old Testament over a period of 800 to 1000 years.
Some people claim that the Jewish people did not acknowledge a canonical list of inspired writings until much later than 400 BC. According to many critical108 scholars the Jewish people did not begin to acknowledge the existence of canonical books until the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, near the end of Old Testament history. Eventually the Jewish people separated the books of the Old Testament into three sections: the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. As many critics see it, Jews accepted the five books of Moses (“the Law”) as inspired in the 400s BC, during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. But they did not accept “the Writings” as canonical until the so-called Synod of Jamnia in 90 AD.109 This implies that the Jews had no complete list of Old Testament books when Jesus and the apostles lived and preached.
To disprove this critical theory, Roger Beckwith gives a list of truths that we know about the Old Testament canon. His list includes these facts: a) that the Jews understood that “if revelation was to be preserved, it needed to be written down (see Ex 17:14; Deut. 31:24-26; Ps. 1-2:18; Isa. 30:8); b) that Israel showed unique reverence for some writings by reading the law on national occasions (Ex. 24:7; 2 Kings 23:2; Neh. 8:9, 14-17; etc.) and placing Deuteronomy in the temple sanctuary (Deut. 31:24-26); c) that uninspired Jewish writings (such as 1 Enoch and Sirach) acknowledged the uniqueness of books in our Old Testament; d) that before 143 BC rival Jewish religious groups all held to the same canon, the books in our Old Testament (If no agreement existed on the list of canonical books, we would expect these groups to dispute the issue openly. This did not happen.); e) no indication exists that Jesus and the Jewish religious leaders disagreed over which books belonged to the inspired canon; f) Jesus and the New Testament authors quote the Old Testament nearly 300 times as God’s Word; though they quote other writings (e.g. Acts 17:28; Titus 1:12, 13; Jude 8-10, 14-16), they do not introduce these other writings as inspired by God; g) in Jewish opinion, other writings which existed were “not . . . worthy of equal credit” with the Old Testament Scriptures.110 These facts, and others which Beckwith lists, disprove the idea of the critics. This history shows that the Jews reached an agreement on the Old Testament canon long before Jesus and His apostles lived.
Beckwith also says that the meeting at Jamnia in 90 AD did not issue a decision concerning which books belong to “the Writings.” Rather, in a discussion, Jewish leaders expressed their agreement that two books in particular—Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon—
107 Scholars have reached these conclusions based on their views of the dates of the exodus from Egypt and Israel’s entry into the promised land. 108 “Critical” here refers to scholars who do not believe that the Holy Spirit inspired the text of Scripture. So they look to human explanations of the origins of the Bible—often based on the theory that Israel’s religion resulted from the process of evolution. 109 Beckwith, “Canon” 72. 110 Beckwith, “Canon” 76-9. 81 belonged to the inspired canon as Judaism had already maintained for over 200 years. This point, along with the points in the previous paragraph, reveals the mistaken understanding which the critics have had concerning the history of the Bible. Beckwith’s careful study proves that the Jews acknowledged as inspired the list of books of our Old Testament since before 143 BC.
We want to pause briefly to notice the importance of what we have summarized. The New Testament has much to say about the inspiration of the Old Testament (e.g. 2 Timothy 3:16, 17; 2 Peter 1:20, 21). We showed in Lesson Two how New Testament authors assumed that “Scripture said” means “God said.” However, if no clear list of inspired scriptures existed when the apostles wrote, we might conclude that they could not have distinguished inspired books from uninspired books. But, in fact, a unique list of inspired books already existed when they wrote. And the New Testament authors referred to those books with unique reverence. Therefore the New Testament’s treatment of the Old Testament teaches us the uniqueness of inspired Scripture.
C. THE RECOGNITION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON
1. The Dates of the Writing of the New Testament
F. F. Bruce gives his informed estimates concerning when the Spirit inspired large parts of the New Testament. He believes that Paul wrote his first letter, Galatians, in 48 AD. Others, however, believe that the Apostle wrote Galatians later in his ministry. In that case Paul may have written 1 Thessalonians as his first letter. Bruce suggests that Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians in 50 AD.111 He believes that Paul wrote most of his letters in the next ten years. Paul probably wrote his pastoral letters, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus, before the end of 65 AD. The Holy Spirit gave the gospels to the church mostly after Paul wrote his letters. Bruce estimates that Mark wrote near 65 AD; Luke wrote between 80 and 85 AD; Matthew wrote his gospel between 85 and 90 AD; and John wrote between 90 and 100 AD.112
The Holy Spirit inspired the New Testament in a much shorter time than He took to inspire the Old Testament. We could have explored the great diversity of opinion between many New Testament scholars over the dates of each New Testament book. However, we merely wish to give the reader an impression of what took place. The Holy Spirit inspired the writing of the New Testament over a time period of approximately fifty years. We may conclude that John probably wrote the last book of the Bible before 100 AD.
We said in the introduction of this lesson that a period of time existed between the inspiration of many books of the Bible and the church’s recognition of that inspiration. We do not mean that the church tended to deny that God gave inspired books. Rather, it took time for God’s people to recognize the list of inspired books. The Lord made the list of the canon clear to the church both when heretics attempted to list them and when believers discussed them.
111 F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1943) 14. 112 Bruce 12. 82
2. Heretical Attempts to Determine the Canon
In 140 AD Marcion made the first attempt that we know of to draw up a list of inspired New Testament books. His heretical theology motivated him thoroughly. Marcion distinguished the inferior Creator-God of the Old Testament from the God and Father revealed in Christ, and believed that the Church ought to jettison [throw away] all that appertained to the former. This ‘theological anti-Semitism’ involved the rejecting not only of the entire Old Testament but also of those parts of the New Testament which seemed to him to be infected with Judaism. So Marcion’s canon consisted of two parts: (a) an expurgated [shortened or “cleansed”] edition of the third Gospel, which is the least Jewish of the gospels, being written by the Gentile Luke; and (b) ten of the Pauline Epistles (the three ‘Pastoral Epistles’ being omitted). Marcion’s list, however does not represent the current verdict of the Church but a deliberate aberration [departure] from it.113
At first Marcion’s form of Christianity seemed to succeed. Fifty years after Marcion first published his list, Tertullian, the African church father, wrote a five-volume refutation (argument) against of Marcion’s teachings.114 This demonstrated that Marcion’s teachings still had significant influence in the church. Marcion’s influence lasted for several centuries.115
We should note, incidentally, that the Gnostics also rejected the Old Testament. Gnostics used argumentation which resembled the thinking of Marcion. They saw the Old Testament god as tyrannical, evil and deceptive. Gnostics rejected the goodness of the creation. This encouraged asceticism (denial of physical pleasures) which existed already in the early church.
We need to notice here the theological motivations behind these early attempts to limit severely the biblical canon. The question of whether the Old Testament should be treated as Scripture was connected with the larger questions of who the Christian God is, whether the creator-deity and creation itself are to be seen as good or evil. . . . Is the physical creation the cruel act of the creator-deity, a tyrant, and is salvation thus deliverance from this creator and his creation? . . . Is Jesus to be seen as the true fulfillment of Old Testament and Jewish messianic hopes, and is the gospel the further fruition of divine purposes inaugurated in ancient Israel? Or is the Old Testament irrelevant for Christian faith, and is the Christian gospel to be defined as the totally new message of a previously unknown deity who has now broken into the domain of the evil creator-god to deliver the souls of the elect from his tyranny?116
When we understand the motivations of these heretical attempts to reshape the Bible, true Christians can see that they should not seriously consider these views of Scripture. 113 Bruce 22. 114 L. W. Hurtado, “The Formation of the Christian Bible,” Modern Reformation 19.6 (2010) 34. 115 “Marcion,” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 1984. 116 Hurtado 34. 83
3. Orthodox Attempts to Determine the Canon
The New Testament church showed concern for the limits of the canon partly because of the church’s practice of worship. In the first two centuries or so, before canon lists or other more formal indicators, the key signal that a text functioned as Scripture is that it was read as part of the liturgical action of the gathered church. We know that the apostle Paul wrote letters to churches and that these letters were read out in/to the gathered congregation (for example, see the directive in 1 Thessalonians 5:27 and the reference to the circulation of Paul’s letters in Colossians 4:16). It is not so surprising, therefore, that the earliest reference to any Christian writings functioning as Scripture concerns Paul’s letters.117 This means that the church did not seek a list of inspired writings only to form the basis of appropriate doctrinal instruction. Rather, it also wanted to know what Christ wanted church leaders to read during worship.
According to Bruce two collections of trustworthy writings appeared in the church at the beginning of the second century (the years 100-200 AD). The four gospels appeared together as one collection. Sometimes people called the collection, “The Gospel.” In 170 AD the Assyrian Christian, Tatian, turned the four-fold collection into a “Harmony of the Gospels.” This attempted to merge the four gospels into one work to give one continuous story. 118 Within ten years the church seemed to embrace it in most of its parts. This “Harmony” left Acts out, separating it from the gospel of Luke. However, since it shared the same status which the gospel of Luke had, the church continued to receive Acts as inspired.119
The church quickly recognized another collection of inspired writings, the collection of Paul’s writings. Already in the first century the Apostle Peter included Paul’s writings with the Scriptures (2 Peter 3:15, 16). By the beginning of the second century leaders in the church listed the writings which Christians recognized then. Scholars do not agree on whether the church recognized Paul’s pastoral letters (1 & 2 Timothy, Titus) as quickly as the rest of his letters.120 However near the end of the second century the church acknowledged all of Paul’s letters as divinely inspired.
By the end of the second century the whole church recognized as inspired all but six of the books which appear in our New Testaments today. The six in question included James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude.121 The church never rejected them. It only withheld its assessment concerning them.
117Hurtado 35. 118 Bruce 23. 119 Bruce 24-5. 120 Hurtado 3 121 Charles E. Hill, “The Canon of the New Testament,” Understanding Scripture, ed. Wayne Grudem, C. John Collins, and Thomas R Schreiner (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012) 85. 84
However, other factors partially complicated the situation. For example, we must add that the Eastern church took longer than the church in the West to accept Revelation as inspired.122 This occurred partly because of Montanists, who attracted a wide following in the East. Montanism promoted a “New Prophecy” which the Spirit supposedly prompted in the second century. This “prophecy” encouraged the church to prepare for Jesus’ immediate coming.123 We can understand why the church in the east might take time to consider this book of prophecy when claims about new prophecy existed in its midst. We must add also that writings appeared in the second century which paralleled or imitated the New Testament books. Some of them claimed apostolic authority. Some gained popularity in parts of the church.124 The church had to discern how to regard these books. So, as a consensus emerged in the church over the books which we now find in the New Testament, the church faced new questions about other writings.
Then, a resolution began to form. Beginning with Origin (185-254) a church-wide agreement consensus emerged. He mentioned all twenty-seven books of the New Testament and four other writings. He wrote that the four and James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude remained disputed.125 Approximately sixty years later, Eusebius listed only the twenty-seven books of our New Testament. Yet he reported that some in the church disputed James, Jude, 2 Peter, and 2 and 3 John. Eusebius named five other writings (The Acts of Paul, The Shepherd of Hermas, The Apocalypse of Peter, The Letter of Barnabas, and The Didache). According to Eusebius most in the church believed that people had forged [written in order to deceive others] these writings.126 Finally in 367 Athanasius “in his Easter letter, gave a list of the New Testament books which comprised, with no reservations, all twenty-seven, while naming several others as useful for catechizing but not as scriptural.”127 In the next decades other church leaders wrote similar lists which agreed with the list of Athanasius. Also, three African Synods expressed agreement with the list. Jerome used this list when he translated his Latin Vulgate. So the church reached wide-ranging agreement concerning the content of the New Testament.
4. The Spirit’s Guidance in Determining the Canon
So far, it may seem that the church had supreme authority to decide which books to place in the Bible. So, before we close our discussion of the recognition of the canon, we need to discuss the relationship between the church and the canon.
Allistar McGrath says, “Three theological approaches to the issue of the relation of community and text, church and Bible, have emerged in the history of Christian thought.”128 We will summarize the three views which have emerged in the history of the church: 1. The church has authority over Scripture. Today the Roman Catholic Church holds to this view. Its Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “It was by the apostolic Tradition that the church discerned which writings are to be included in
122 Hill 85. 123 “Montanism,” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 1984. 124 Hill 85. 125 Bruce 25. 126 Hill 86. 127 Hill 86. 128 Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction, 5th ed. (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) 127. 85
the list of the sacred books.”129 This view claims apostolic authority for the church today. According to this view, the apostolic authority of the church gave it the right to decide which books belong to the bible. 2. Scripture has authority over the church. This expresses the classic Protestant view. John Calvin “spoke of the secret (or internal) testimony of the Holy Spirit, which alone can authenticate inspired Scripture in the hearts of believers.”130 According to this view the Holy Spirit persuaded the church concerning the writings that He inspired. 3. The church and Bible belong together. McGrath does not name groups which hold to this view. He merely explains that some find it impossible to allocate authority to either the Church or Scripture. This view “locates the issue at their intersection: ‘people and book.’”131
We believe the second understanding best explains what occurred when the church recognized the canon of Scripture. Christ promised that the Spirit would lead His followers into all truth (John 16:13). This explains what occurred when God gave the Scriptures to the church. The Spirit inspired holy men to write holy Scripture. The Spirit also moved the church to recognize holy Scripture. As Hill wrote, The church did not sovereignly “determine” or “choose” the books it most preferred . . . . Rather, the church saw itself as empowered only to receive and recognize what God had provided in books handed down from the apostles and their immediate companions.132
Some might argue that the church used criteria to choose the inspired books. These criteria include: 1) apostolic authorship or apostolic endorsement, 2) an early acceptance by the church, and 3) agreement with the rest of the Bible. A list of such criteria gives the impression that the church labored primarily to see which books passed a test, which conformed to criteria.
Such a list may have influenced the church. Yet we believe that a deeper interaction occurred. The church did not merely interact with the writings. Rather the Holy Spirit interacted with the church through the writings. The Spirit used this interaction to lead the church to recognize His Word. Significantly the church did not find itself under any human coercion to accept some books over others. No major conflict split the church over this issue. Amazingly, hindsight shows us that the Spirit guided the church through a peaceful process. As Hurtado wrote, The process that led to a closed canon began surprisingly early and went on for a few centuries. The final list of canonical writings was not the decision of a church council but the result of a long period of Christian usage, reflection, and discussion.133
D. THE CANON AND THE APOCRYPHA
129 Quoted by McGrath 127 130 McGrath 128. 131 McGrath 128. 132 Hill 84. 133 Hurtado 33. 86
The Roman Catholic Church also includes some books of the Apocrypha in their list of biblical books. The Old Testament Apocrypha includes a list of twelve, fourteen or fifteen books. The number of books depends on whether editors combine some of the shorter writings. Though a list of New Testament Apocryphal books appeared during the second century and after, the Apocryphal books which the Roman Catholic Church accepts all belong to the Old Testament Apocrypha. Nearly all of these writings existed when Jesus lived. The authors of two (2 Esdras and The Prayer of Manasseh) possibly wrote these writings in the first century AD. But Christ and His apostles did not quote Apocryphal books as inspired Scripture. We will summarize how books of the Apocrypha ended up in Roman Catholic Bibles.
We will cover two topics which pertain to the Apocrypha. First, we will provide a summary of the books which the Roman Catholic Church included in the canon. Second, we will summarize how and why Apocrypha eventually appeared in Roman Catholic Bibles.
1. The Contents of the Apocrypha
We chose here to rely exclusively on scholar Roger T. Beckwith, whose summary provides a brief review of the Old Testament Apocrypha. Since the Roman Catholic Church does not accept three books of the Old Testament Apocrypha (First Esdras, Second Esdras, and The Prayer of Manasseh), we will omit Beckwith’s summary of them. 3. Tobit is a moral tale with a Persian background, dealing with almsgiving, marriage, and the burial of the dead. 4. Judith is an exciting story, in a confused historical setting, about a pious and patriotic heroine. 5. The Additions to Esther are a collection of passages added to the LXX [Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament] version of Esther, bringing out its religious character. 6. Wisdom is a work inspired by Proverbs and written in the person of Solomon. 7. Sirach, also called Ecclesiasticus, is a work somewhat similar to Wisdom, by a named author (Jeshua ben Sira, or Jesus the son of Sirach). It was written about 180 BC, and its catalog of famous men bears important witness to the contents of the Old Testament canon at that date. Its translator’s prologue, written half a century later, refers repeatedly to the three sections of the Hebrew Bible. . . 8. Baruch is written in the person of Jeremiah’s companion, and somewhat in Jeremiah’s manner. 9. The Epistle of Jeremiah is connected to Baruch, and sometimes the two are counted together as one book (as in the King James Version, which there lists fourteen books rather than fifteen). The Additions to Daniel consist of three segments (10, 11, and 12 in this list): 10. Susanna and 11. Bel and the Dragon are stories that tell how wise Daniel exposed unjust judges and deceitful pagan priests. 12. The Song of the Three Young Men contains a prayer and hymn put into the mouths of Daniel’s three companions when they are in the fiery furnace; the 87
hymn is the one used in Christian worship as the Benedicite (in the Church of England’s services). . . . 14-15. First and Second Maccabees relate the successful revolt of the Maccabees against the Hellenistic Syrian persecutor Antiochus Epiphanes in the mid-second century BC. The first book and parts of the second book are the primary historical sources for a knowledge of the Maccabees’ heroic faith, though the second book adds legendary material. The LXX also contains a 3 and 4 Maccabees, but these are of less importance.134
2. The Roman Catholic Church’s Acceptance of the Apocrypha
The story of the Roman Catholic’s acceptance of Apocryphal books as Scripture followed a series of steps. First, evidence clearly shows that books from the Apocrypha did not belong to the list of books in the Old Testament. In Jesus’ day the canon of the Jewish people included only the thirty-nine books of our present Old Testament. The oldest writings which list the books of God’s Word mention only the same thirty-nine books. Furthermore, The New Testament seems to reflect knowledge of one or two of the apocryphal texts, but it never ascribes authority to them as it does to many of the canonical Old Testament books. While the New Testament quotes various parts of the Old Testament about three hundred times . . ., it never actually quotes anything from the Apocrypha (Jude 14-16 does not contain a quote from the Apocrypha but from another Jewish writing, 1 Enoch.) In the second century, Justin Martyr and Theophilus of Antioch, who frequently referred to the Old Testament, never referred to any of the Apocrypha.135
Second, sometime between the Old and New Testaments Jewish scholars translated the Old Testament into Greek. We call this translation “the Septuagint” (often, LXX—the Roman numeral for 70—because many thought that 70 translators performed the work of translating). At some point in time which we cannot date, the LXX appeared with additional books and parts of books which did not belong to the Old Testament.
Third, the Old Latin translation of Scripture translated the LXX when it translated the Old Testament into Latin. Since, by then, the LXX included books from the Apocrypha, the Old Latin translation did too.
Fourth, Jerome (345-420 AD) desired to produce an improved Latin translation of the Bible. He translated the Old Testament from the original Hebrew. However, he followed the practice of the Old Latin translation by including books from the Apocrypha. But he “added prefaces at various points to emphasize that they were not true parts of the Bible.”136 Jerome gave much emphasis to the distinction between canonical writings and other writings. Instead of referring to the additional works as biblical books, he called them “Apocrypha,” which means
134 Roger T. Beckwith, “The Apocrypha,” Understanding Scripture, ed. Wayne Grudem, C. John Collins, and Thomas R Schreiner (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012) 94-6. 135 Beckwith, “Apocrypha” 92. 136 Beckwith, “Apocrypha” 90. 88 hidden. Scholars disagree over why Jerome used this word. We note only that Jerome referred to many other non-canonical writings with the same word.137
As centuries passed, many Christian scholars lost contact with the Jewish origins of the Old Testament. At the same time only a minority of them during the Middle Ages (approximately 500-1500 AD) continued to emphasize the distinction between canonical and apocryphal books as Jerome had maintained. Before the time of the Protestant Reformation the Roman Catholic Church practiced acceptance of the apocryphal books. It also followed teachings which only the Apocrypha contained.
We can give examples of distinctive teachings of the Apocrypha. Beckwith lists these: 1. In Tobit 12:15 seven angels are said to stand before God to present the prayers of the saints. 2. In 2 Maccabees 15:13-14 a departed [dead] prophet is said to pray for God’s people on earth. 3. In Wisdom 8:19-20 and Sirach 1:14 the reader is told that the righteous are those who were given good souls at birth. 4. In Tobit 12:9 and Sirach 3:3 readers are told that their good deeds atone for their evil deeds. 5. In 2 Maccabees 12:40-45 the reader is told to pray for the sins of the dead to be forgiven.138
The teachings and practices which the Apocrypha promoted produced bad results. The Old and New Testaments do not encourage prayer to the saints who have died or the idea that good deeds atone for evil deeds. Yet the Romans Catholic Church encouraged its followers to accept these ideas. It based these errors on the Apocrypha.
When the Protestants protested various practices of the Roman Catholic Church, they objected to the importance which the Church had given to the Apocrypha. Protestants insisted on the great distinction between canonical books and apocryphal books—as Jerome had. In response, the Church’s Council of Trent (1545-1563 AD) declared that most of the books of the Old Testament Apocrypha had the authority of Scripture. Instead of listening to the Protestants who first attempted to purify the Church of its false practices, the Roman Catholic Church took the further step of adopting officially the errors which the Protestants had hoped the Church would forsake.
But the Council of Trent had reasons for believing that it could make its decree: (1) Rome’s exalted doctrine of oral tradition [the doctrine that Church tradition carries authority equal to Scripture’s], (2) its view that the church creates Scripture [see in this lesson: the first theological approach which McGrath lists], and (3) its acceptance of certain controversial ideas (especially the doctrines of purgatory, indulgences, and work-righteousness as contributing to justification) that were derived from passages in the Apocrypha.139
137 Beckwith, “Apocrypha” 91. 138 Beckwith, “Apocrypha” 96. 139 Beckwith, “Apocrypha” 93. 89
So, nearly 1200 years after the church recognized the inspired canon of Scripture, Rome declared the right to add more writings to God’s Word.
SUMMARY
This lesson discusses which books we believe belong to the canon, the list of inspired books. As part of the canon, these books express God’s authority over us. So this lesson explores where we go to find God’s will for our lives and God’s instruction for our minds.
We discussed, first, the Old Testament—when men wrote it and when the church recognized the inspired Old Testament books. We mentioned the view which says that even in Jesus’ day the Jews had not reached an agreement over what belongs to the Old Testament. However, we gave much evidence which shows that God’s people recognized the Old Testament in its present form long before Christ lived. Both Christ and the New Testament authors quoted only the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament as God’s inspired Word.
We also discussed the New Testament—when men wrote it and when the church recognized the New Testament canon. We concluded that John wrote the last book of the Bible before the 100 AD. We learned that some groups acknowledged only parts of the New Testament as their Bible because they rejected the view of God which the Old Testament presents. However, those who believe the whole Bible reached a consensus concerning the full extent of Scripture sometime in the middle 300s AD. Amazingly the Christian church reached this consensus peaceably and uniformly. We explained this acceptance in terms of the Spirit’s work in the church. The church did not create the canon. Rather, the Holy Spirit led the church to recognize His authorship of His inspired Word.
Finally we discussed the Apocrypha—whether some of its books belong to the list of inspired books. As the church lost sight of its beginnings in the Old Testament, it more readily placed greater confidence in the Apocrypha. Eventually the Roman Catholic Church officially accepted books of the Apocrypha as inspired Scripture because the Apocrypha promoted some practices which had found their way in the Church. Also, the Council of Trent accepted the Apocrypha to assert authority over the Protestants who protested the church’s reverence for these books.
Christ promised that the Spirit would lead His followers into all truth (John 16:13). We believe that He has. Therefore we thank the Lord for His fully defined Word which He has given us.
QUESTIONS
1. What do we mean by canon in this lesson?
2. Roger Beckwith gives reasons to believe that the Jews agreed on which Old Testament books God inspired long before the time of Jesus. Give some of those reasons. 90
3. How do the New Testament’s quotations of the Old Testament show us that a complete list of Old Testament books existed in their time?
4. In what years did the human authors write the New Testament?
5. Why did Marcion accept only a short list of books of the Bible?
6. How did the church come to agree on which books the Holy Spirit inspired?
7. What evidence exists that the Apocrypha does not belong in the Bible?
8. Why did Jerome include the Apocrypha in his Latin translation of the Bible?
9. Name some Roman Catholic teachings or practices which come from the Apocrypha.
10. Why did the Roman Catholic Council of Trent accept the Apocrypha as scripture? 91
LESSON EIGHT
BENNY HINN’S VIEW OF THE WORD OF GOD
INTRODUCTION
We conclude this course on the Doctrine of Scripture by comparing what it teaches with the views of Benny Hinn. We mention Benny Hinn because he has become very influential in the last two decades. Hinn, however, belongs to a growing group of preachers who agree with each other on their understanding of the “gospel.” In this lesson we plan to summarize some of the central teachings of the movement to which Hinn belongs. These teachings include a view of Scripture. In the process we will show how Benny Hinn also promotes the same teachings about Scripture.
This lesson follows a very simple plan. First, we will provide background information concerning the movement. Second, we will list and explain some of the central doctrines of the movement. Finally, we will summarize and evaluate this movement’s teaching (including Hinn’s teaching) about the Bible.
A. HISTORICAL INFORMATION
1. The Names of the Movement
The theology which Hinn promotes seems to have no official name. Yet we list a few names which people have given to the movement. These names include: the “Prosperity gospel,” “Faith theology,” the “Name-it-and-claim-it” gospel, the “Positive confession movement,” and— probably most accurately—the “Word of Faith” gospel. As these names imply, the movement proclaims the power of faith. It promises that those with true faith will receive power, wealth, and healing.
2. Names within the Movement.
We cannot give a complete list of Word of Faith preachers. The movement has outlasted its early leaders. As time has moved on, the list of its major spokesmen has changed.
Nevertheless, understanding the limitations of a list, we provide a list which Hank Hanegraaff, who studied the Word of Faith movement thoroughly, gave in 2009.140 His list includes the following: Essek William Kenyon,141 Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, John Hagee, Creflo Dollar, T. D. Jakes, Rod Parsley, Frederick K. C. Price, John Avanzini, Robert Tilton, Marilyn Hickey, Charles Capps, Jerry Savelle, Morris Cerullo, Paul Crouch, Juanita Bynum, Paula White, and Todd Bentley. A look at the Internet will keep one informed concerning names which have appeared after Hanegraaff wrote his book.
140 Hank Hanegraaff, Christianity in Crisis: 21st Century, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009) 15-74. 141 Kenyon did not call himself a Christian. He appears in this list because his teachings became highly influential in the Word of Faith movement. 92
Also, The Trinity Foundation has investigated Word of Faith’s prominent leaders due to their suspected dishonest use of money. Therefore, the Foundation’s website will inform the reader about some of the new people in the movement.142
Besides individuals, the movement includes worldwide television networks. The Trinity Broadcasting Network, for example, has promoted Word of Faith theology.143 It has broadcast the sermons of Word of Faith preachers in many countries around the world. Surprisingly, Trinity Broadcasting Network and the Trinity Foundation have no association with each other. Rather, The Trinity Foundation investigates Trinity Broadcasting Network just as it investigates significant individuals of the Word of Faith movement. Undoubtedly other television and Internet broadcasters give their support to the Word of Faith movement.
3. Origins of the Movement
a. E. W. Kenyon
The Word of Faith movement did not arise within of the Christian church. Rather, its central teachings came from E. W. Kenyon who attended Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts at the end of the nineteenth century (the late 1800s).
At that time Charles Wesley Emerson led Emerson College. He liked to investigate the beliefs of religions and philosophies. So, throughout his life, Emerson’s theology changed— from Congregationalism, to Universalism, to Unitarianism, to New Thought. Nearly five years before he died Emerson joined Christian Science,144 one of the major cults which originated in the northeast of the United States during the nineteenth century.145 The founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy,146 also followed some of the philosophies which Emerson College promoted. This explains a similarity between the theology of Emerson College, Christian Science, and Word of Faith preachers.
McConnell summarizes the education which Kenyon received at Emerson College by telling us the following: New Thought was a system of cultic belief that taught that true reality is spiritual, that the spiritual is the cause of all physical effects, and that the human mind through positive mental attitude and positive confession has the power to create its own reality: either health and wealth, or sickness and poverty.147 Kenyon promoted these views which he learned at Emerson College by writing at least twenty books.
b. Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland
142 The Trinity Foundation, 28 August 2012
Many think of Kenneth Hagin as the father of the Word of Faith movement. However, Hagin did not create the theological system of the movement. That theology came from Kenyon. McConnell gives four pages of quotes from Hagin’s writings which he plagiarized (copied without acknowledging the source) or stole from Kenyon’s writings.148 But Hagin did not copy merely a few selected sentences. His way of thinking came from Kenyon, who received his ideas from non-Christian philosophies. So the Word of Faith movement, which Hagin “fathered” promotes the ideas of some anti-Christian cults and philosophies.
Historians of the Word of Faith movement generally agree that Kenneth Copeland made the teachings of Hagin popular in many churches. Numerous preachers followed Copeland as they joined the Word of Faith movement. They claim to preach from Scripture. Yet they do not acknowledge that basic ideas of their theology originated more in non-Christian cults than in Christianity.
With this introductory information before the reader, we proceed to summarize important teachings of the Word of Faith movement.
B. CENTRAL WORD OF FAITH TEACHINGS
Most biblical Protestant scholars who have studied the Word of Faith movement call it a heretical movement. This means that the movement promotes heresy. Heresy consists of exceedingly serious error which attacks the gospel itself. D. R. McConnell points to some the heresies in the Word of Faith movement: There are many peculiar ideas and practices in the Faith theology, but what merits it the label of heresy are the following: (1) its deistic view of God, who must dance to men’s attempts to manipulate the spiritual laws of the universe; (2) its demonic view of Christ, who is filled with “the satanic nature” and must be “born-again” in hell; (3) its gnostic view of revelation, which demands denial of the physical senses and classifies Christians by their willingness to do so; and (4) its metaphysical view of salvation, which deifies man and spiritualizes the atonement, locating it in hell rather than on the cross, thereby subverting the crucial biblical belief that it is Christ’s physical death and shed blood which alone atone for sin.149
We will summarize each of these four teachings. Since the third heresy concerns the topic of this lesson, we will discuss it last. As we begin our summary of each these heresies, we will refer students back to this statement of McConnell.
1. The Word of Faith’s Beliefs about God
a. Tritheism
148 McConnell 8-11. 149 McConnell 185. 94
Word of Faith preachers hold to a different view of God from what historic Christianity has taught. We can see this in the fact that Word of Faith preachers deny the doctrine of the Trinity.150 For example, Jimmy Swaggart, whom some theologians include in their list of Word of Faith preachers, once wrote, I believe that in this divine Godhead there are three separate and distinct persons —each having His own personal spirit body, personal soul, and personal spirit. . . . Many people conclude that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all one and the same. Actually, they are not. . . . The word ‘one’ in this passage means one in unity. . . . You can think of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit as three different persons exactly as you would think of any three other people—their oneness pertaining strictly to their being one in purpose, design, and desire.151
Benny Hinn also believes in tritheism (belief in three gods). Once he said, “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost—three separate individuals, one in essence, one in work—and may I add, each one of them possesses His own spirit-body.”152 Like Swaggart, Hinn denies the historic Christian interpretation of the Bible.
The Athanasian Creed expresses the historic Biblical understanding by saying: 1. Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith; 2. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. 3. And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; 4. Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance. 5. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit. 6. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the .Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal. 7. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit. 8. The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Spirit uncreated. 9. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible. 10. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Spirit eternal. 11. And yet they are not three eternals but one eternal.153 So leaders of Word of Faith theology have dared to challenge this foundational teaching of the Christian church
b. Deism
150 To read about the Biblical doctrine of the Trinity, the reader may wish to read the author’s MINTS course on The Trinity and the Cults, Lessons 1-4. 151 Cited in The Agony of Deceit: What some TV Preachers are Really Teaching , ed. Michael Horton (Chicago: Moody Press, 1990) 277-8. 152 Cited by Hanegraaff 146. 153 “The Athanasian Creed” 28 August 2012
Word of Faith preachers disagree with historic Christianity in another way. We already quoted McConnell, who wrote, they hold to a “deistic view of God, who must dance to men’s attempts to manipulate the spiritual laws of the universe.” We need to understand what this means.
Deism denies “any direct intervention in the natural order by God.”154 In other words, deists say that God became the First Cause of the universe. According to deism, when God began the world, He placed laws in it which would govern it. He pushed the universe into motion. Then, God ended His personal control of the universe. So, today God does not personally govern what happens. Rather, the laws which He placed in the universe govern everything. This view contradicts the Biblical doctrine of providence. This doctrine says that, at every moment, God personally keeps and guides everything which He made so that it will reach His good goal for the world (see Genesis 50:20; Amos 3:6; Acts 4:27, 28; Colossians 1:17).
Word of Faith preachers promote a unique kind of deism. Deism originally described how people thought the physical world works. But Word of Faith preachers apply this understanding to the spiritual world. They say that the spiritual world does not exist under God’s personal control. Rather, laws for spiritual reality control the spiritual world. These laws limit what God can do. They hold to a deism which describes how spiritual reality works.
According to this view, one law which has existed since the world began says that our words have power to bring things into being. Believing this, Joyce Meyer wrote: Words are containers for power. They carry creative or destructive power, positive or negative power. And so we need to be speaking right things over our lives and about our futures if we expect to have good things happen. Because what you say today is what you’ll probably end up having tomorrow.155 Benny Hinn also said, “Words create reality” and “Faith is released when I speak the Word of Faith.”156
So God formed the spiritual world to obey what we declare. The world came into being when God spoke. Similar amazing things will take place when we speak them into existence.
Why then do some people not receive health, wealth, or power when they demand that God give these things? Michael Horton summarizes the Word of Faith answer. “Though they [Word of Faith preachers] cite a number of explanations, two are most frequent: a lack of knowledge and a lack of obedience.”157 We will discuss this lack of knowledge later. However, we should take note of the idea that the laws which govern spiritual reality will produce results when we use them correctly.
Benny Hinn also holds to this form of deism. For example, he explains why some people do not receive healing when they ask for it. He gives several reasons for unanswered prayers: 1)
154 “Deism,” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 1984 ed. 155 Joyce Meyer quoted by Hanegraaff 41. 156 Quoted by Hanegraaff 32. 157 Michael Horton, “The TV Gospel,” The Agony of Deceit, 125. 96 those who asked do not believe, 2) they do not think correctly, or 3) they do not follow his three principles, four laws of healing, or his seven guidelines.158 In other words, a person can receive certain healing but only when he correctly calls them into being. The laws which God made for spiritual reality determine the correct way for this.
Hinn, along with others in the movement, believes that Hebrews 11:3 says that by faith God created the world. In other words, God followed the laws of faith in order to create everything. So Word of Faith followers speak of “The God Kind of Faith,”159 the kind of faith we must also have. Remember that Joyce Meyer said, “Words are containers for power.” This describes how God Himself created the universe—and how we create what we want. So, according to this view, we can demand that God give us power, wealth, or health. God must give these things if we seek them in the correct way.
We believe we have explained what McConnell meant when he wrote that Word of Faith preachers hold to a “deistic view of God, who must dance to men’s attempts to manipulate the spiritual laws of the universe”
2. The Word of Faith’s Beliefs about Christ
Most Word of Faith preachers have views about Christ which shock almost every Christian who hears them for the first time. The second heresy which McConnell mentions provides an example of this. The Word of Faith movement proclaims a demonic view of Christ, who is filled with “the satanic nature” and must be “born-again” in hell. We will explain this by summarizing the movement’s view of the life and work of Christ.
a. Jesus Before His Incarnation
Word of Faith theologians do not clearly say what they think of Jesus before the incarnation. We cannot know whether they claim that Jesus existed as the uncreated eternal Son of God Who shared divinity and eternity with the Father and Spirit, as Scripture teaches.160 So we will proceed to their teaching concerning the next stages of Christ’s existence.
b. Jesus During His Incarnation
According to Word of Faith preachers Jesus came as a man, not as God. Kenneth Copeland wrote that “This man Jesus was a carbon copy of the one [Adam] who walked through the Garden of Eden.”161 According to Word of Faith preachers Jesus never claimed that He was God. Also, they say that Jesus became a wealthy man and that His apostles, including Paul, prospered greatly.162 They say that the man Jesus could not perform miracles until he received the Holy Spirit’s baptism.
158 Hanegraaff 28. 159 Hanegraaf 119-120. 160 Rod Rosenbladt, “Who Do TV Preachers Say That I Am?” The Agony of Deceit 113-4. 161 Quoted by Rosenbladt, 114. 162 Hanegraaff 5. 97
Perhaps we should mention momentarily the Word of Faith’s view of Adam. The movement says that God created Adam to have a divine nature. God reproduced Himself when He made man in God’s image. God has reproduced Himself so that billions of god persons may exist today. God created man with the supreme purpose of recreating himself. 163 So Copeland said, “You don’t have a god in you; you are one.”164
But Adam sinned. Word of Faith preachers proclaim that, at the moment of sin, Adam lost his God-nature and received a Satan-nature. The nature of Satan entered Adam and Eve.165 This change from a divine man to a satanic man occurred when Adam and Eve doubted God; they viewed the tree’s fruit as good. As Copeland once said, “Fear activates Satan the way faith activates God.”166 As a result, “Adam was the first person to be born again; he was ‘born’ with the nature of God and ‘born again’ with the nature of Satan.”167
Word of Faith preachers often think like this. They attribute every spiritual change in a man to a change that person’s existence. They do not acknowledge the possibility of a man keeping his created human identity while God changes him.168 Rather, they virtually believe only in two Spirits who give us identity. We possess either God’s Spirit or Satan’s spirit. Believing that true reality is only spiritual, they also say that only spiritual reality can explain what we are.
This understanding of mankind becomes very important when we learn the interpretation which Word of Faith preachers give to Jesus’ death on the cross. On the cross Jesus became sin. This means that, like Adam, He received a Satan-nature. So Benny Hinn interprets John 3:14 (Jesus’ comment about Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness) this way: . . . The serpent is a symbol of Satan. Jesus Christ knew that the only way He would stop Satan is by becoming one in nature with him. You say, “What did you say? What blasphemy is this?” No, you hear this! He did not take my sin; He became my sin. Sin is the nature of hell. Sin is what made Satan. . . .He [Christ] became one with the nature of Satan, so all those who had the nature of Satan can partake of the nature of God.169 So, on the cross, Jesus surrendered to Satan’s lordship and “accepted the sin nature of Satan.”170 Word of Faith theologians call Christ’s becoming satanic, just as all mankind became satanic, Christ’s “identification.”
c. Jesus in Hell
According to Word of Faith preachers, Jesus accomplished His saving work in hell. Jesus did not save sinners by His physical death. On the cross Jesus merely received the satanic nature of sinners. Jesus actually paid for what ours sins deserve during His spiritual suffering in hell. On
163 Hanegraaff 113. 164 Quoted by Hanegraaff 134. 165 Hanegraaff 151. 166 Quoted by Hanegraaff 152. 167 Hanegraaff 3. 168 Hanegraaff 152-3. 169 Quoted by Hanegraaff 172-3. 170 Copeland, quote by Rosenbladt 117. 98 this point, Word of Faith theologians basically agree with Mary Baker Eddy and her cult, Christian Science.171
While He suffered in hell, Jesus met all the obligations which Satan required. Then God declared that Jesus had met all the demands of justice. God gave Jesus a new nature again. He went to hell as a demon-possessed mortal man, and emerged from hell as a born-again, resurrected man. So Jesus experienced a second transformation as a man. First, He became satanic. Later He became a deified man.
We believe we have demonstrated how Word of Faith preachers proclaim a Christ who became demonic on the cross but received a new birth in hell. They go wrong in two basic ways. First, they deny the importance of Christ’s physical suffering for sinners. Second, they claim that Christ identified with sinners by becoming sinful, not by representing them.172
3. The Word of Faith’s Beliefs about Salvation
McConnell’s list of heresies in the Word of Faith movement mentions the “metaphysical view of salvation, which deifies man and spiritualizes the atonement.” When “metaphysical” describes a religion, it usually means that the religion uses the personal words of religion to refer to impersonal things or forces. So, in the case of Christian Science’s founder, Mary Baker Eddy, “God is ‘All-in-All’; he is mind; he is the divine principle of all existence, not a person. As the only cause of existence, god is reality and nothing apart from him can be real.”173
McConnell points to an impersonal ultimate power in Word of Faith theology. For example, Kenneth Hagin says that “God had faith in His faith, because He spoke words of faith and they came to pass.”174 We have learned about the power of words in Word of Faith theology. In spiritual reality words carry creative power. McConnell explains: The god in which the metaphysical cults believe is not a personal god who sovereignly governs the universe. Their god is an impersonal force: “the Infinite Power,” “the Spirit of Infinite Life,” and “the Infinite Intelligence.” This infinite, but impersonal, force rules the universe indirectly through “immutable laws” rather than directly through his presence and wisdom.175
So the “god” to which Hagin refers “is the slavish puppet of anybody who knows the ‘formulas’ and ‘spiritual laws’ of how to control him.”176 The greatest power in Hagin’s understanding consists of the laws which supposedly govern god and all spiritual reality. We cannot call these almighty laws the personal God.
This helps us understand the meaning of faith within Word of Faith theology. Faith gives power to the demands that we make of God. According to this movement faith includes
171 McConnell 118. 172 Students may wish to read the author’s MINTS course on “The Doctrine of Salvation,” Lesson Four. Students should read what the course says about imputation when it presents the topic of Justification. 173 “Eddy, Mary Baker,” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 1984 ed. 174 Quoted by McConnell 132. 175 McConnell 134. 176 McConnell 133. 99 knowing that in Christ you are a god and that in Christ you have the right to claim power, health, and wealth. If one truly believes these things, he can make a “positive confession.” He can claim what he desires, and he will receive. But if one does not really believe in the possibility of receiving abundance, one will not receive it. Kenneth Hagin said, “What we believe is a result of our thinking. If we think wrong we will believe wrong. . . . If we believe wrong, our confession will be wrong. In other words, what we say will be wrong and it will all hinge on our thinking.”177 This shows how we, with correct thinking, can become gods--with almighty power--as much as God is. So Benny Hinn once said, “Don’t tell me you have Jesus. You are everything He was and everything He is and ever He shall be.”178
We have seen in this the Word of Faith’s deification of man and spiritualization of the atonement. It spiritualizes the atonement because it removes the significant work of Christ from physical reality. In general, it denies the importance of the physical world. It makes human beings gods because it gives divine power to man’s words.
4. An Important Misunderstanding
As we look at these heresies so far, we can see how Word of Faith thinking has replaced Christ, the God-man, with an overall spiritual reality. The Bible teaches that in Christ all things hold together (Colossians 1:17). This means that Christ himself keeps everything together. He keeps everything from turning into confusion. But Word of Faith teaches that laws which govern spiritual reality control everything. Scripture says that Christ came to pay for our sins through His sacrifice which included His body. Afterwards he defeated death by rising bodily from the death. But Word of Faith teaches that He needed only to submit to a spiritual death and receive a spiritual resurrection. The Bible says tells us to place our faith in Christ to receive salvation. But Word of Faith theology tells its followers to trust in the spiritual reality which makes them gods.
We turn finally to the Word of Faith’s understanding of revelation.
C. THE WORD OF FAITH’S BELIEFS ABOUT REVELATION
1. Word of Faith’s View of Revelation
Finally, McConnell points to another heresy of the Word of Faith movement. It holds to a “gnostic view of revelation, which demands denial of the physical senses and classifies Christians by their willingness to do so.” Many Gnostics promoted the idea of revelation which consisted of secrets which God reveals to Christians in a secret way. According to McConnell Word of Faith theology has a similar understanding of revelation. We will look at the movement’s view of revelation and how Word of Faith preachers classify Christians according to it.
a. Two Underlining Teachings
177 Quoted by McConnell 135 178 Quoted by Hanegraaff 26. 100
To understand the movement’s view of revelation, we should notice two parts of Word of Faith teaching. First, Word of Faith preachers hold to a trichotomist view of man. 179 Trichotomy says that man consists of three parts: 1) body, which gives a person physical life; 2) soul, which gives a person a mental or intellectual life; 3) and spirit, which gives a person a life of fellowship with God. According to this view a person relates to God only with his spirit. Though a Christian studies and understands the Bible with his soul (mind or intellect), God makes Himself known only to the human spirit. So, by reading the Bible a person will not get to know God better. Rather, Trichotomy implies that we should seek revelation which God mysteriously gives —directly from His heart to our hearts, from His Spirit to our spirits.
Second, Word of Faith preachers make a distinction between “sense knowledge” and “revelation knowledge.” Sense knowledge comes through the five senses (sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell). It forms the basis of the physical sciences. The human soul analyzes what the senses perceive. As this intellect detects patterns, it forms scientific hypotheses. It tries to organize knowledge. But sense knowledge cannot help us know God. Revelation knowledge, on the other hand, has nothing to do with the five senses. God reveals Himself only through this revelation knowledge.
b. Revelation and Two Kinds of Knowledge
This distinction between two kinds of knowledge shows up in Word of Faith preaching. Kenneth Hagin expressed this viewpoint when he wrote, “One almost has to by-pass the brain and operate from the inner man (the heart or spirit) to really get into the things of God.” 180 When he refers to by-passing the brain, Hagin means receive revelation knowledge. He does not mean the knowledge which we gain reading the Bible. He means an inner knowledge which God must communicate directly from His heart to a man’s spirit.
Faith healers demonstrate what they mean by revelation knowledge when they talk about healing. At times quoting Kenyon, McConnell summarizes the view of Word of Faith thinking: People with Sense Knowledge faith “do not believe they are healed until the pain has left their body.” Real faith would deny the “physical evidence” of pain and listen only to the Word. This practice of the denial of physical symptoms has been the source of much controversy in the Faith movement. Many have practiced such denial to the point of death.181
In other words, people who claim healing simply because they believe that they received it often deny the pain which they still feel. When they finally conclude that a physical problem still troubles them, they find out that their illness has advanced beyond the possibility of medical treatment.
Word of Faith preachers also show their distinction between sense knowledge and revelation knowledge also when they speak of perfect knowledge. According to them one can receive perfect knowledge of God in this life. Sense knowledge has imperfections. But when a 179 The reader may wish to read the author’s MINTS course on the Doctrine of Man, Lesson Two where it presents and responds to the doctrine of Trichotomy, 180 Quoted by McConnell 104. 181 McConnell 104. 101
“human spirit opens itself to revelation, it becomes ‘unerring, absolutely unerring, in its guidance.’”182 This revelation knowledge goes beyond the limitations of the physical senses. With it a person has direct knowledge of God and spiritual reality.
Word of Faith theologians distinguish Christians who possess revelation knowledge and those who do not. Those who possess it have become “supermen.” They belong to the “miracle class.” Revelation knowledge enables Christians who have it to become gods. They possess the privilege of belonging to the supreme class of Christians.183
c. Benny Hinn’s “Use” of Revelation
Benny Hinn makes claims like these for himself. For example, he has often claimed that God has spoken directly to him. God told him to begin monthly crusades in 1990.184 The Holy Spirit revealed to him that God originally created women to give birth out of their sides.185 He customarily talks with the Holy Spirit, and that the Holy Spirit begged Hinn to continue talking with Him for five more minutes.186 In 1990 the Spirit told him that Fidel Castro would die in the 1990s.187 Also, “the Lord also tells me to tell you in the mid-90s, about ‘94, ‘95, no later than that, God will destroy the homosexual community of America. . . . He will destroy it with fire.188
We could continue with more “prophecies” from Hinn. But we need to understand the viewpoint which claims to give Hinn his authority. He claims to receive knowledge revelation directly from God. He claims that this revelation places him in super class of Christians who have become gods. He does not rely on Scripture as his basis for much of what he claims.
2. Evaluation of Word of Faith’s View of Revelation.
Tragically, Word of Faith theology contradicts Scripture in its understanding of revelation knowledge. For example, John 1 declares that the Word became flesh and the apostles “have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The gospel of John emphasizes that God revealed himself through the physical, incarnated Son of God.
1 John 1:1-4 makes clear that the apostles declared what they had heard, seen and touched (a reference to three of the five senses). The Apostle John means the apostles reported what they had seen and heard while they lived physically with Christ. Furthermore, their reports of physical events in Jesus’ life can give the fellowship with God which Word of Faith preachers say comes only through revelation knowledge. “We proclaim to you what you have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3).
182 Ralph Waldo Trine, quoted by McConnell 105. 183 McConnell 106. 184 Hanegraaff 27. 185 Hanegraaff 29. 186 Hanegraaff 30. 187 Hanegraaff 32. 188 Hanegraaff 32-33. 102
1 Peter 1 includes these remarkable statements: For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For, “All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever.” And this is the word that was preached to you. 1 Peter 1:23-25
The Apostle Peter describes God’s Word in ways that Word of Faith preachers might describe revelation knowledge: imperishable, living, enduring. But he explains that this “word . . . was preached to you.” In other words, God did not communicate His imperishable Word through miraculous visions. Peter’s listeners did not need to by-pass their brains. Rather God spoke to them through the foolishness of preaching (1 Corinthians 1:21) which Christians heard and saw.189 God does not reveal Himself primarily through unseen and silent revelation knowledge. He does not separate from each other the workings of the body, soul and spirit. Rather, the Holy Spirit uses what the apostles heard, saw and touched. He uses the inspired Word which we read. He uses the words which God’s people speak. He uses these things, which we receive through our senses and understand with our minds, to change our hearts and lives. In this way He gives eternal life and fellowship with God.
SUMMARY
We began with the name of Benny Hinn because vast numbers of people around the world follow him. But we immediately connected Hinn to a movement which includes many preachers. We explained how the movement to which Hinn belongs originated with non- Christian roots.
We looked at the Word of Faith movement more carefully. We explained four heresies which the movement proclaims. First it holds to a deistic view of God. According to this the laws which God gave to spiritual reality presently have more power over that reality than God himself does. Christians need to learn how to treat those laws correctly in order to receive what they would like. Second, the movement makes startling claims about Christ. It says that Christ received a demonic nature on the cross. Then, in hell He suffered in his Satan nature until He met all of Satan’s demands. At that point God gave Christ a divine nature. Then Jesus rose from the dead. Third, we learned what the Word of Faith “gospel” promises those who follow it. Followers can become gods. Like God whose words carried power, Christians can have the same power through “positive confession.” Finally, the Word of Faith’s teaching about revelation denies the importance of physical revelation. It promotes a “revelation” which comes directly from God’s Spirit to man’s spirit. This understanding encourages Word of Faith preachers, like Benny Hinn, to promote saving “revelation” outside of the Bible.
We criticized Word of Faith theology primarily on two points. First it replaces the role of Christ with impersonal spiritual reality. Whereas the Bible teaches that Christ keeps all things in
189 Readers may wish to study the means of grace further by reading the author’s MINTS course on The Doctrine of the Church, Lesson Five. 103 the world together, Word of Faith preachers point to laws which govern spiritual reality as the unifiers of everything. Secondly, Word of Faith theology fails us understand how God uses the physical world to reveal Himself to us. He revealed Himself and His salvation when Christ became flesh and when He inspired a printed book, the Bible.
QUESTIONS
1. As the lesson begins, it lists many names. Write down the names that you knew before you read this lesson. Names of the Word of Faith movement: Names of Word of Faith preachers:
2. What ideas did New Thought regard as most important?
3. How did the writings of Kenyon become influential in churches?
4. What does the Word of Faith’s deistic view of God teach about God?
5. What did Joyce Meyer mean when she wrote that “Words are containers for power?”
6. How does Benny Hinn explain it when people who ask for healing do not receive it?
7. According to Word of Faith theology, what changes did Jesus’s nature undergo?
8. According to Word of Faith theology, what does faith do?
9. Describe the two kinds of knowledge which Word of Faith preachers talk about.
10. According to this lesson, how does God reveal himself? 104
APPENDIX TO LESSON EIGHT
TURNING TRUTH INTO MYTHOLOGY190
The following tale is a composite of the erroneous teachings of individuals such as Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, Creflo Dollar, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagin, Frederick Price, Myles Munro, T. D. Jakes, Paula White, Juanita Bynum, John Hagee, and many others. While not all the Faith teachers hold to every aspect of this tale, they have all made substantial contributions to both the production and proliferation of these aberrations [unusual teachings] and heresies.
Once upon a time, long, long ago on a faraway planet, there lived a good God. This God was very much like you and me—a Being who stands about six feet two inches to six feet three inches tall, weighs a couple of hundred pounds, and has a hand span of about nine inches. This God’s wisdom and power were so great that He literally had the ability to speak things into existence. In fact, this God could actually visualize beautiful images in His mind and then turn them into reality by utilizing a special power called the “force of faith.” One day, this God had a cosmic brainstorm. He decided to use the force of His faith to create something superb and special. He decided to bring a whole new world into existence. This was not going to be just any old world; it was going to be the most fantastic world imaginable. In fact, this world would become so wonderful that it would actually feature an exact duplicate of the mother planet where God lived. After carefully visualizing every detail of this wonderful, wonderful world, God went into action. Releasing the force of His faith like a whirlwind, God spoke into existence the planet He saw in His mind’s eye. And boy, was God excited! Looking down with fondness on this classic new creation, He named the planet “Earth.” And this was only the beginning. Suddenly, a host of brilliant new ideas began to flood into God’s creative consciousness. He began to visualize vast oceans and springs abounding with water. He saw magnificent mountains and fertile fields. His mind produced flashes of thunder and lightning. Plants, flowers, and trees blazed in rapid succession through His thoughts. Now on a roll, God began to visualize life replete with beautiful birds and creatures of every size and shape imaginable. Yet this was merely the beginning. For after five days of vivid visualizations, God’s mind moved into yet another dimension. On day six, His imagination went wild and, in His mind’s eye, God saw the crowning jewel of His creation. Throwing all caution to the wind, God spoke, and suddenly, out of the pristine soil of planet Earth, there arose another god—a god spelled with a small
190 Hanegraaf wrote this story, but he substantiates with 55 footnotes even many of the phrases in this story as accurate representations of what Word of Faith preachers say and write. 105
“g” but a god nonetheless. As the image of this little god took form, God saw that He had literally outdone Himself. For there, before His very own eyes, stood another god—an exact duplicate of Himself, including size and shape. God had finally done it! He had thought the unthinkable and, by His word of faith, God had created a creature that was not even subordinate to Himself. And boy, was God ever glad. For now He had a colleague whose nature was identical to His own—a god who could think like Him, be like Him, and do almost but not quite everything that He could do. God called His carbon copy “Adam,” and He gave him dominion and authority over the entire creation. As a matter of fact, this creature had so much power that his Creator could do nothing in the earth realm without first obtaining his permission. Adam was truly a super being! He could fly like the birds and swim under water like a fish. And that’s not all. Without a space suit Adam could literally fly through the universe. In fact, with just one thought, he could literally transport himself to the moon! Yet even after creating a super being like Adam, God was not fully satisfied with His accomplishments. Somehow, He just knew that a piece of the puzzle was still missing. So putting His mind into overdrive, God began brainstorming once more. And then, in a flash, it dawned on God! Why hadn’t He thought of it before! Adam was made in His image, so obviously he was as much female as he was male, right? So, why not double His pleasure and double His fun? Why not separate the male part from the female part? Not wanting to waste a single moment, God charged into action! Causing a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, God opened him up, removed the female part from the male part, and made a being of surpassing beauty. He made woman— man with a womb—and He called the womb-man “Eve.” This time God had clearly gone too far: He had actually brought into existence the very beings that would one day get Him kicked off of the very planet He had created. As incredible as it may seem, these super beings would one day turn on their Creator and relegate Him to the status of the greatest failure of all time. You see, long before God had visualized planet Earth into existence, He had also created a whole other world full of beings called angels. One of these angles [sic] was a being of such breathtaking beauty and brilliance that he was named “Lucifer,” the Morning Star. Lucifer had great ambitions. In fact, he wanted to take control of everything God had ever visualized into existence; he wanted to become exactly like the Most High. Well, because of his treason, Lucifer was cast out of heaven and renamed “Satan,” the deceiver. Tumbling down from the mother planet where God lived, Satan landed on the replica that God had spoken into existence. He landed on planet Earth, the very planet on which Adam and Eve would one day live. There, he lay in wait for the opportunity of the ages, the opportunity to get back at God. 106
And then, one day, the opportunity came knocking. Not long after God had spoken Adam and Even into existence, Satan spied them standing naked in the middle of the garden of Eden. Satan instantly transformed himself into a serpent and cunningly tricked the two little gods into committing cosmic treason. For just the price of an apple, Adam and Eve sold their godhood to Satan. The devil, through Adam, became the god of this world. Alas, not only did Adam and Even lost their nature as gods, but they were actually infused with the very nature of Satan himself. Adam had become the first person to be born again; he was “born” with the nature of God and “born again” with the nature of Satan. In one blinding instant, the first man and woman who had ever lived were transformed from divine to demonic. Immediately, they became susceptible to sin, sickness, suffering, and, more importantly, spiritual death. In fact, Eve’s body, which like Adam’s was originally made to give birth out of her side, underwent a radical transformation—from that moment on, she and her female offspring would bring forth children from the lower region of their anatomies. In that fateful moment, Adam and Eve were summarily barred from Eden, and God was banished from the earth. Satan now had legal rights to the earth and all her inhabitants, and God was left on the outside desperately searching for a way to get back in. God, in a flash, had become the greatest failure of all time. Not only had He lost his top-ranking angel, as well as at least a third of His other angels, but now, in addition, He had lost the first man He had ever created, the first women He had created, and the whole earth and the fullness therein! But as they say in baseball, “It ain’t over till it’s over!” God was not yet ready to throw in the towel. He had that winning attitude and refused to let go. Realizing that He needed man’s invitation to get back into the earth, God immediately went to work. And after thousands of years God finally found an “old boy” named Abraham, who took the bait and became the vehicle through which God, if He was lucky, may one day win back the universe He had lost. You see, through Abraham would eventually come a Second Adam who would reverse the consequences of Satan’s deception. This Adam, if all went according to plan, would return to man his godhood and to God His good earth. Well, in time, God got Abraham to strike a deal with him. In fact, God and Abraham became blood brothers and forged a covenant that would gain Abraham health and wealth, and regain for God a foothold in the world He had created. God’s plan was to make Abraham the father of all nations and to produce from his seed another Adam who would regain the turf that was lost by the first Adam. In keeping His word, God made Abraham very, very wealthy. And then, once again, He proceeded to visualize. Through God’s mind raced images of a brand-new Adam—a man who would one day restore to Him His rightful place in the universe, and who would forever banish His archrival, Satan, from the kingdom. 107
And then it happened! One fine day, the image of this Savior coalesced in God’s mind. Without hesitation, God began speaking into existence the picture of the redeemer He had painted on the canvas of His consciousness. Excitedly, God positively confessed, “The Messiah is coming, the Messiah is coming!” As God’s Spirit hovered over a little woman named Mary, the confession began to take shape before His very eyes. The spoken Word became legs, arms, eyes and hair. And then, presto! There, before God’s very own eyes, emerged the body of the Second Adam. The Second Adam was named Jesus. And as Abraham’s descendent, Jesus was wealthy and prosperous. He lived in a big house, handled big money, and even wore designer clothes. In fact, Jesus was so wealthy that He actually needed a treasurer to keep track of all His money. Jesus, who was a whiz at speaking things into existence, showed His disciples how to master the art of positive confession. Thus, they, too, experienced unlimited health and unlimited wealth. The fact is that some of His followers caught on so well that they became rich beyond comprehension. The apostle Paul, for example, had so much money that government officials would work feverishly to try to get a bribe out of him. Jesus also overcame every trick and temptation that Satan could throw His way. Despite the fact that He never claimed to be God, Jesus succeeded in living a life of sinless perfection. When all was said and done, Jesus passed the test that the first Adam had failed. And then, at the prime of His life, Jesus entered a garden—a garden much like Eden, where the first Adam had lost his godhood. In this garden, called Gethsemane, Jesus moved into the final stages of a process that would transform Him from an immortal man to a satanic being and would, in turn, re-create men as little gods who would no longer be subjected to the scourge of sin, sickness, and suffering. As part of the process, Jesus would have to die a double death on the cross. He would have to die spiritually as well as physically. If physical death had been enough, the two thieves on the cross could have atoned for the sins of mankind. No, the real key was spiritual death and suffering in hell And then, one day, upon a cruel cross, the crystal Christ—the paragon of virtue—was transformed into a defiled demoniac. The lamb became a serpent and was ushered into the very bowels of the earth. There, Christ was tortured by Satan and his minions. And all hell laughed. Little did Satan know, however, that the last laugh would be on him. For just as Adam had fallen for Satan’s trap in Eden, now Satan had fallen for God’s trap in hell. You see, Satan had blown it on a technicality. He had dragged Jesus into hell illegally. The truth is that Satan had completely forgotten to take into consideration that fact that Jesus had not actually sinned. You see, Jesus had merely become sin as a result of the sin of others. Alas, Satan and his demonic hosts had tortured the emaciated, poured out, little wormy spirit of Christ without legal rights. 108
And this was exactly the opening God had been looking for. So seizing the moment, God spoke His faith-filled words into the bowels of the earth. Suddenly, the twisted, death-wracked spirit of Jesus began to fill out and come back to life. He began to look like something the devil had never seen before. There, in the sinister presence of the evil one himself, Jesus began to flex His spiritual muscles. As a horde of whimpering demons looked on, Jesus whipped the devil in his own backyard. He snatched Satan’s keys and emerged from hell as a born-again man. God had pulled off the coup of the ages. Not only had He tricked Satan out of his lordship, using Jesus as the bait, but He had also caught Satan on a technicality through which Jesus could be born again. But that’s not all! You see, because Jesus was re-created from a satanic being to an incarnation of God, you too can become an incarnation—as much an incarnation as Jesus Christ of Nazareth! And, as an incarnation of God, you can have unlimited health and unlimited wealth—a palace like the Taj Mahal with a Rolls Royce in your driveway. And if I could shock you (and maybe I should), you, my friend, are a little messiah running around the earth! All it takes now is to recognize your own divinity. You, too, can harness the force of faith. Never again will you have to pray, “Thy will be done.” Rather, your word is God’s command. By simply using your tongue, you can literally speak whatsoever you desire into existence; and then you can live happily ever after on this planet of prosperity. The End191
191 Hanegraaff 1-6. 109
CONCLUSION
This course on the Doctrine of Scripture consists of three basic sections. First, it presents basic biblical teaching about how God reveals Himself to us. So, the course introduces the topic of God’s revelation (Lesson One). Despite our inability to name adequately God’s ways of revealing Himself, Scripture refers to God’s revelation through the creation and through His Word. Then we introduced more carefully the topic of special revelation, which sends us to Scripture (Lesson Two). We saw in the Bible itself the teaching of the Bible’s inspiration. No other book possesses this quality of inspiration by God.
Next we explored some of the consequences of Inspiration. We discussed the story of the Bible (Lesson Three). God inspired the Bible to tell us perfectly the story of His acts which save His people from their sins. This story focuses on the life and saving work of Jesus Christ. Even the parts which do not directly present Jesus’ life and work make us understand Him with greater clarity. We also learned about that God has preserved His inspired Word over the centuries (Lesson Four). We summarized very briefly the work of textual criticism. Despite the many methods by which people have handled God’s Word for many years, we have God’s inspired Word today. We looked at the reliability of God’s Word (Lesson Five). We explained the meaning of the Bible’s infallibility and inerrancy. We acknowledged that many do not agree with infallibility and inerrancy. So we answered some of the reasons people have used to say that the Bible has errors. We hope that the way we have answered some of the arguments against the Bible will encourage students to distrust other arguments against it which we did not have enough space to mention. We also explored the implications of inspiration which theologians have called the Bible’s perfections (Lesson Six). They include authority, necessity, clarity, and sufficiency. We looked at the history which prompted Protestants to insist on these perfections.
Finally we explored attempts to view the bible differently from the historic Protestant position of this course. We described the Apocrypha and gave some reasons why the Roman Catholic Church has added Apocryphal books to their list of the canon (Lesson Seven). We summarized reasons from history for rejecting this Roman Catholic addition to Scripture. We also summarized the teachings of Word of Faith theology (Lesson Eight). This distorted view of spiritual reality indirectly attacks the Bible usefulness. We showed from Scripture how God gives salvation through the incarnated Christ. Also the Bible, as a physical book, reports how Christ’s apostles met Christ physically. God’s story of salvation and His method of giving us that story include His use of the physical creation.
We believe that this course on Scripture has addressed many of the questions about Scripture which they will face as they read about the topic of Scripture. We pray that God will use this course to strengthen the faith of students in God’s Word and in God’s Son. 110
SUPPLEMENT TO THE COORDINATOR’S MANUAL
1. HOW TO USE THIS SUPPLEMENT
This Supplement differs from Coordinator’s Manuals which have appeared at the end of other MINTS courses. Since MINTS designs all of its courses to include the same basic features, each Coordinator’s Manual has duplicated much of the material found in others. So this supplement provides only the material which this course uniquely needs. We will inform coordinators concerning information they will need to find from the coordinator’s manuals of other courses. Possibly MINTS will provide one General English Coordinator’s Manual in the near future.
2. THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS COURSE
The preface f this course stresses the importance of the course. We hope coordinators will also understand the importance. Christians need a balanced understanding of General and Special Revelation. When we understand that creation reveals the glory of the sovereign God who created it, we protect ourselves from the constant danger of pantheism which identifies that creation as God. If we understand the difference between General Revelation and Special Revelation, we will remember that Scripture alone can teach us infallibly about our sin and Christ’s gift of salvation.
Christians also need a balanced understanding of the inspiration of the Bible. When Christians do not see the personal styles of the human authors in the books of the Bible, they can miss and important element of the meaning of a passage. Also, history shows us that when theologians and churches lose confidence in the words of Scripture, eventually they preach another gospel—a human gospel—which the Apostle Paul forbids (Galatians 1:6-10). So a Biblical understanding of Scripture will keep the church in the historic Christian faith. It will help insure that the church will preach the only gospel which rescues sinners from their sins.
3. GENERAL MATERIALS FOR COORDINATORS
We encourage coordinators to consult other courses written by this author. Coordinators will find the following topics helpful: a. Helps for Coordinators Form 1 Responsibilities for Coordinators Form 2 MINTS’ Plan of Course Introduction Form 3 Plan for the Four Follow-up Sessions Form 4 Essay Evaluation Form 5 Class Record Form 6 Pedagogical Evaluation of the Instructor b. Forms for Students Form 7 Form for Reading Reports Form 8 Guidelines for Writing an Essay Form 9 Guide for title Page and Table of Contents 111
Form 10 Course Evaluation by the Students 112
4. LESSON QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Lesson One
1. What do we mean by natural theology? Natural theology refers to the attempt to study God without studying revelation.
2. What do we mean by the incomprehensibility of God? Due to the limits of our human minds we can never fully understand God. Also we can never fully understand any single thing about God.
3. What conclusion do many religions reach when they call God “wholly hidden” or “wholly other”? They mean that we cannot truly know anything about God.
4. What do theologians mean when they say we can have real knowledge of God? They mean that God gives us limited but true knowledge of Himself. Therefore our knowledge of God does not mislead us. Rather, it gives us truth about Him.
5. What do we mean by general revelation? General revelation refers to God’s use of the creation to reveal His divinity, wisdom and power personally to all people, made in His image.
6. List three things that Psalm 19 tells us about general revelation. 1) The whole creation declares God’s glory; 2) God reveals Himself continually through the creation; and 3) God uses creation to reveal Himself to every person.
7. List two things that Romans 1:19, 20 teaches about general revelation. 1) God reveals himself clearly through the things that He made; and 2) People clearly understand God’s divinity and power through the things He made.
8. What do we mean by special revelation? Special revelation refers to God’s words and actions which he used to reveal His salvation for sinners. He reveals these words and actions to us today only in the Bible.
9. What has God used to give mankind special revelation? He has used theophanies (His personal appearances), miracles (works which demonstrated His divine power), and personal words (which he spoke directly to individuals or spoke through prophets and apostles). He gave all of these kinds of special revelation in Christ’s ministry on earth.
10. Why do we need special revelation? 113
Due to sin we misinterpret the revelation which general revelation gives. Also we need special revelation to learn about the only salvation that God offers sinners, the salvation He completed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Lesson Two
1. What does 2 Peter 1:20, 21 teach about the inspiration of the Bible? God the Holy Spirit inspired the human authors when they wrote the books of the Bible.
2. What does 2 Timothy 3:16, 17 teach about the inspiration of the Bible? The Holy Spirit inspired the text of the Bible so that God spoke every word of it.
3. List and explain the three different view of Inspiration. a. The mechanical view says that the Holy Spirit inspired only the text of Scripture. b. The dynamic view says that the Spirit inspired only the authors of Scripture. c. The organic view says that God inspired the whole process so that He moved the authors and insured that the text of Scripture fully presents God’s Word.
4. What does the lesson mean when it says the inspiration of Scripture shows us the pattern of the incarnation? The incarnation teaches that the eternal Son of God added to Himself our humanity. As a result, today He possesses in one divine person with both a human and a divine nature. The inspiration of Scripture teaches that God’s Word put on our humanity. The Bible possesses both the characteristics of human language and divine language. Though the Bible addresses us with words and languages that we can understand, it speaks to us with God’s authority and faithfulness.
5. What does the view of “limited” or “partial inspiration” teach? It teaches that God inspired only the parts of Scripture which reveal the message of Scripture. Usually followers of this view say God inspired the Bible only when it reveals God’s salvation to us.
6. Explain what Jesus said in Matthew 5:17, 18 and show how it contradicts the teaching of limited inspiration. Jesus said that He came to fulfill the smallest letters and every stroke of a pen of the Old Testament. This shows us that Christ viewed every detail of the Old Testament as God’s Word
7. How does the Apostle Paul demonstrate his belief in verbal inspiration? An example: In Galatians 3:16 he says that God made His promise to Abraham’s seed, not seeds. This means that Paul considered every word significant and inspired.
8. How does the Old Testament often claim to be God’s Word? It calls its words the words of God in more than 2000 places.
9. How does the New Testament call the Old Testament God’s Word? 114
It frequently quotes the Old Testament and introduces it by saying “God says,” or the Spirit says.” Sometimes it quotes what God says and introduces it with, “Scripture says.” It assumes that God says what Scripture says.
10. Where does the New Testament show that it also belongs to God’s Word? In 2 Peter 3:15-17 the Apostle Peter calls Paul’s letters “Scripture.” So He includes Paul’s letters when he mentions the Word of God.
Lesson Three
1. What do we mean when we say that the Bible consists mostly of two basic forms of literature: narratives and discourse? Most of the Bible consists of stories and instruction.
2. What two events, involving the whole human race, demonstrate the spiritual decline of humanity in the beginning of Genesis? Two events: 1) the flood, by which God nearly destroyed the human race because of its violence and sin, and 2) the tower of Babel, where God scattered mankind because people had tried to replace God.
3. How did God’s promises to Abraham refer to Christ? We can mention three elements of God’s promises: 1) the promised land represented the heavenly home which Christ gives believers; 2) the many children of Abraham referred to those from all nations who believe in Christ; and 3) God’s blessing all nations in Abraham referred to Christ, Abraham’s offspring, as the source of saving blessing to all believers.
4. How did the lives of Abraham’s immediate descendants teach about Christ and His followers? 1) Isaac’s miraculous birth pointed to the miraculous birth of Christ and all Christians; 2) God’s choice of Jacob points to His choice of true believers; and 3) the life of Joseph showed that a member of God’s people (Christ) endured the rejection of the people in order to spare them from death.
5. What did God give during the ministry of Moses to teach about what Christ would do? The lesson mentions only several examples. They include: 1) the exodus from Egypt when God punished the Egyptians with judgments and spared Israel due to the lamb which took the place of the Israelites; 2) the priesthood, which offered sacrifices for the people’s sins, as Christ offered Himself for His people’s sins; 3) the Day of Atonement, when a goat received the sins of the people and then went into the wilderness where the people never saw it again; 4) the tabernacle which symbolized God’s living with His people, as Christ did when He came.
6. What promise did God give David which spoke about Christ? God promised that David’s son would sit on the throne forever. This promise referred ultimately to Christ. 115
7. What differences existed between the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah. How did these teach about Christ? None of Israel’s kings loved God; some of Judah’s did. Israel declined into sin and captivity. But God spared Judah because He had promised that David’s son would always rule. The greater permanence of Judah’s kings indicated that David’s Son Christ would rule permanently.
8. How did the ministries of the former prophets and the later prophets differ from each other? The former prophets spoke to issues that God had with the people and their kings; they commanded the people to repent. But the later prophets began to write their messages down so that we have them in books of the Bible; they did not expect the people to repent. These later prophets spoke increasingly of the future, when Christ would come and turn people’s hearts to Himself.
9. How did the New Testament teach that Christ came to fulfill the Old Testament? The New Testament does this in several ways: 1) It states that Christ fulfilled God’s promises; 2) The New Testament apostles relied on the Old Testament often to prove their teachings; 3) It contains the story of Luke 24 where Jesus repeats that He came to fulfill all the portions of the Old Testament.
10. How did the ministry of the apostles establish the church in Christ? In Acts the apostles served as Christ’s witnesses when they preached the gospel and formed churches. In their letters they connected both their teaching and commands to the life and sacrifice of Christ.
Lesson Four
1. What have Bart Ehrman and others written about the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture? That it does not help us to talk about biblical inspiration. He gives a couple reasons: 1) we do not have the original writings, and 2) the manuscript copies contain so many errors that we cannot know what the original writings said.
2. What two writing surfaces did ancient writers use? Explain why scribes needed to write copies of their manuscripts. Writers wrote on papyrus (a paper-like page which people made from a plant which grew along the Nile River) and parchment (treated animal skins). These materials deteriorated. So manuscripts which writers wrote on them eventually needed copies to replace them.
3. What two kinds of writing styles did scribes use to write New Testament manuscripts? What advantages did one of them have over the other? They wrote scripture first with disconnected letters, called uncials. Later they wrote in a cursive style (with connected letters) called minuscules. The minuscule had the 116
advantage of taking less space on the manuscript. Therefore, these manuscripts weighed less. Also, a scribe could write the minuscule script more quickly. This combination of factors made minuscule manuscripts more affordable than uncial manuscripts.
4. Explain why mistakes in copying could take place in the scriptoria. In the scriptoria a lector read from an old manuscript; scribes wrote what they heard him read. But a scribe might miss a word which the lector read. Or he might write a word which sounded the same but had a different spelling. These reasons form only two examples of how scribes might make mistakes.
5. What causes for errors did Metzger give in his list of reasons? (Students should write at least 3 of these.) Untended changes due to: poor eyesight, poor hearing, failed memory, or a mistaken conclusion concerning what a correction in the margin meant. Intended changes due to the desire to: correct spelling or grammar, make one verse agree with another, clarify by adding a missing detail, and explain the geography or history which the text implies.
6. Write the purpose of textual criticism. To determine the most reliable original wording of a text.
7. What three kinds of sources do textual critics rely on to make their judgments about a variant in a manuscript? Manuscripts of the Bible, translations of the Bible, quotations of the Bible.
8. Why do textual critics believe that “in Rome” belongs in Romans 1:7? Most manuscripts which include the verse include “in Rome.”
9. What does Kruger mean when he wrote that “the original text is preserved (somewhere) in the overall textual tradition?” That in the great abundance of manuscripts which exist we can find the words which God inspired.
10. What does Kruger (and many other scholars) say about the vast majority of the variants in Scripture? The variants mostly give small and insignificant changes. Scholars can discount most changes which do affect the meaning because of obvious factors. The few cases where more than one variant seems possible do not affect the important doctrines of Scripture.
Lesson Five
1. How did this lesson define Biblical inerrancy and Biblical infallibility? It defines Biblical inerrancy to mean that the Bible has no errors. It defines Biblical infallibility to mean that the Bible cannot contain errors because it comes from God.
2. What approach to defining Biblical inerrancy should we avoid? Which approach should we follow? 117
We should avoid the approach which defines Biblical inerrancy before we know what the Bible says and how it speaks. We should define the Bible’s inerrancy only after we know the way the Bible speaks.
3. Frame says that errors arise from two sources. What then does he say about the Bible? Error comes from deceit and ignorance. But God does not lie. Also, God is ignorant of nothing. Therefore God’s Word contains no errors.
4. What two issues do critics raise concerning Jesus’ trip to Jericho? How does Young answer their accusations of mistakes in the Bible? 1) Matthew and Mark say that the story took place as Jesus departed from Jericho. Luke says it occurred as Jesus approached Jericho. 2) Matthew refers to two blind men. Mark and Luke mention only one. Concerning these, Young says: 1) Matthew and Mark may refer to the Old Testament site of Jericho and Luke may refer to a New Testament site. If they did, maybe Jesus left one place and approached the other place; and 2) though Mark and Luke refer to one blind man, there could have been another as well.
5. How does Young answer the difficulty which scholars have with the different order of events surrounding Jesus appointment of the twelve apostles? Each gospel writer wrote his gospel of Jesus’ ministry differently from the other gospel writers. Sometimes, to help us see their unique perspective on Jesus, an author rearranged the order of the stories which he includes. Inerrancy does not require us to believe that God’s Word always tells stories consecutively.
6. What do we learn from the conversation which Jesus had with the rich young ruler? The lesson makes at least these two points: 1) that often the gospel writers shortened the conversations which Jesus had with people, and 2) that the gospel writers include parts of the original conversation which match the theme which the writer wants to stress.
7. What happens when we add up the years of Israel’s kings from Jehu to the fall of Israel and when we add up the years from Judah’s queen Athaliah to the sixth year of Hezekiah? These two sections of history lasted the same amount of time. Yet when we add up the years, as 2 Kings reports them, Judah had over 22 more years than Israel.
8. Why does it seem that the Bible gives conflicting numbers concerning the length of Nadab’s reign? When we compare two verses, we conclude that Nadab ruled for only one year. However one verse says that he ruled for two years. This apparent disagreement arose because Judah and Israel numbered the years of kings differently.
9. What did Edwin Thiele mean by dual dating? We can define dual dating as the practice of dating the beginning of a king’s rule from two different starting points.
10. Why do we deny that Mark made a mistake in Mark 1:2, 3? 118
Mark claims to quote Isaiah. But first he quotes Malachi before he quotes Isaiah. We believe that he made the quote from Isaiah his primary one. But he introduced it with a quote from Malachi.
Lesson Six
1. What did Protestants mean when they spoke of the “perfections” of Scripture? Protestants spoke against the theology of the Roman Catholic Church, which said that Scripture remained incomplete. It said the Bible needs the church to complete its teaching and clarity. But the Protestants stressed that Scripture has authority over the church. They called Scripture “perfect” which means complete or finished.
2. Summarize the Evangelical and Traditionalist views of Scripture’s authority. The Evangelical view (the view of most Protestants) says that Scripture has authority to interpret Scripture. Scripture has the authority to correct the church’s interpretation of Scripture. The traditionalist view (the view of Roman Catholics and some “High” churches) says that the church is the mother of Scripture. The Bible needs official church tradition for clarity and to enable us to interpret Scripture properly.
3. Summarize the subjectivist and Scriptural views of Scripture’s authority. The subjectivist view (the view of Liberals) says that Scripture has the authority which human reason and belief says it can have. This view elevates the human mind over Scripture as the traditionalist view elevates the church over Scripture. We believe the Evangelical view is the Scriptural view.
4. List at least three reasons which theologians give for the necessity of Scripture. We need Scripture: 1) to know the gospel; 2) to keep God’s Word preserved throughout the generations; 3) to use when we proclaim the gospel to the whole world; and 4) to exist outside our minds so it can remain free from our biases and wishes.
5. What did Anabaptists believe instead of the necessity of Scripture? They followed what they called the “inner light.” They believed that the Holy Spirit speaks directly to a person’s heart and that He does not use Scripture to do this. So the Spirit, in this view, does not need Scripture to guide us.
6. Where does Scripture teach its necessity? Here are several places: 1) in Romans 10:13-15 which says that faith comes from hearing and hearing comes from the Word of God; 2) in Romans 1:16, 17 which says that the gospel manifests the power of God for salvation; 3) 2 Timothy 4:2 where Paul commands Timothy to preach the Word; and 4) 1 Peter 1:23-25 which says that the Word of God causes us to be born again. All of these stress the vital role of Scripture in a person’s coming to faith and new life. We could add Matthew 4:4, John 14:15; and 2 John 6 which tell us that we need Scripture to live in fellowship with Christ. We could also add 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 which shows us that we need Scripture to know about our Christian hope. 119
7. How would you answer people who say that the clarity of Scripture means everyone can understand Scripture clearly? Even the Apostle Peter said that some of Paul’s writings are hard to understand (2 Peter 3:16). Also, if Scripture always spoke clearly, it would not tell us that we need teachers of the Word (see Titus 2).
8. What do we mean by the sufficiency of Scripture? We do not mean that the Bible tells everything we need to know about everything. Rather, if gives us everything that we need to know God and to obey Him.
9. If God gave us a sufficient Bible, what may we add to it? Nothing. We can gain other kinds of knowledge, but we may not call anything outside the Bible, the Word of God.
10. What trusts do the sufficiency, clarity, necessity, and authority of Scripture guard us from? Sufficiency guards us from trusting in other “holy” books; clarity, from trusting in church officials as though they had infallibility; necessity, from trusting in man’s mind; and authority, from trusting in independent authorities.
Lesson Seven
1. What do we mean by canon in this lesson? We mean the list of books which, due to inspiration, have God’s authority over us. Or, we define canon as the list of inspired books.
2. Roger Beckwith gives reasons to believe that the Jews agreed on which Old Testament books God inspired long before the time of Jesus. Give some of those reasons. We list here only those reasons which specifically answer this question: Before 143 BC rival Jewish religious groups all held to the same canon. We have no evidence that Jesus and His opponents agreed on which books belong to the canon. Jesus and the New Testament authors quote the Old Testament books as Scripture; they do not quote other writings in this way.
3. How do the New Testament’s quotations of the Old Testament show us that a complete list of Old Testament books existed in their time? The authors of the New Testament referred only to the Old Testament writings with the reverence that God’s Word deserves.
4. In what years did the human authors write the New Testament? Approximately between 50 and 100 AD.
5. Why did Marcion accept only a short list of books of the Bible? He did not accept the God of the Old Testament. He thought that only the God of the New Testament offered the gospel. So he accepted only some books of the New Testament which he believed offered this message. 120
6. How did the church come to agree on which books the Holy Spirit inspired? The Holy Spirit guided the church. As a result the church came to recognize the books which came from God.
7. What evidence exists that the Apocrypha does not belong in the Bible? In Jesus’ day the Jewish canon did not include the canon. The New Testament and Jesus do not quote the Apocrypha as Scripture.
8. Why did Jerome include the Apocrypha in his Latin translation of the Bible? He did not believe that God inspired the Apocrypha. Rather, he followed the practice of an older Latin translation of the Bible which included the Apocrypha because the LXX did.
9. Name some Roman Catholic teachings or practices which come from the Apocrypha. Prayer to saints. The belief that good works help atone for evil deeds.
10. Why did the Roman Catholic Council of Trent accept the Apocrypha as scripture? It said that tradition has authority in the church; it believed that the church creates the Scriptures; it accepted the ideas of purgatory, indulgences, and work as a basis for justification. These ideas come only from the Apocrypha, not from the Bible.
Lesson Eight
1. As the lesson begins, it lists many names. Write down the names that you knew before you read this lesson. Names of the Word of Faith movement: Names of Word of Faith preachers: (This question intends to have students demonstrate how much this movement may have influence them in the past.)
2. What ideas did New Thought regard as most important? It said that 1) true reality is spiritual, and 2) through a positive mental attitude and positive confession the mind can create health and wealth or sickness and poverty.
3. How did the writings of Kenyon become influential in churches? Kenneth Hagin follows Kenyon’s ideas closely. Kenneth Copeland took Hagin’s ideas and made them popular in churches.
4. What does the Word of Faith’s deistic view of God teach about God? That 1) God placed spiritual reality under the rule of laws and 2) God does not have personal control of daily events because these laws over spiritual reality determine what will happen.
5. What did Joyce Meyer mean when she wrote that “Words are containers for power?” 121
She meant that the laws for spiritual reality guarantee that we can create and have what we want when we command for them with words.
6. How does Benny Hinn explain when people who ask for healing do not receive it? He says, 1) they did not ask with faith, 2) they did not think correctly, or 3) they did not follow the necessary guidelines when a person asks for healing.
7. According to Word of Faith theology, what changes did Jesus’s nature undergo? He received a Satan nature on the cross. He was born again and received a God nature when He rose from the dead.
8. According to Word of Faith theology, what does faith do? Faith gives power to the demands we make of God.
9. Describe the two kinds of knowledge which Word of Faith preachers talk about. By “sense knowledge” they mean the knowledge that we receive with our sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. They believe that the body receives this knowledge and that the soul analyzes it. By “revelation knowledge” they mean a revelation which God gives directly to a person’s spirit.
10. According to this lesson, how does God reveal himself? God uses the incarnation of Christ (when He became flesh), the printed Bible, and the preaching of the gospel which people hear. His revelation of Himself does not by-pass the mind or the physical creation. Rather the Spirit uses His revelation through these things to give eternal life and fellowship with God. 122
5. STUDENTS’ EXAM – THE DOCTRINE OF SCRIPTURE
Student’s Name ______Date ______
_____ 1. What do we mean by the incomprehensibility of God? a. God cannot comprehend what people do. b. Due to the limits of our minds, we can never fully understand God. c. God cannot comprehend the laws which govern spiritual reality. d. God cannot understand Himself.
_____ 2. What do we mean by general revelation? a. God’s use of the creation to reveal His divinity and power to all people. b. The commands of God in the Bible which He did not make clear. c. God’s revelation in the Apocrypha. d. The commands of God which He gives through paganism.
_____ 3. What has God used to give special revelation? a. Only theophanies. b. Plants, animals and Scripture. c. Only miracles. d. Theophanies, miracles, and personal words.
_____ 4. What does the organic view of inspiration teach? a. That the Spirit inspired only the human authors of Scripture. b. That the Spirit inspired only the text of Scripture. c. That the Spirit inspired all people. d. That the Spirit inspired both the text of Scripture and its human authors.
_____ 5. What does “partial inspiration” teach? a. That God inspired only the books of Moses and the New Testament gospels. b. That God inspired the parts of Scripture which most people agree with. c. That God inspired only the parts of Scripture which give the message of Scripture. d. That God inspired only the New Testament.
_____ 6. What do we mean when we say that the Bible consists mostly of narratives and discourse? a. The Bible consists of history and the gospels. b. The Bible consists of stories and instruction. c. The Bible consists of Moses and Jesus. d. The Bible consists of Old and New Testaments. 123
_____ 7. What did God give during the ministry of Moses to teach about what Christ would do? a. The Flood and the Tower of Babel. b. The exodus, priesthood, and tabernacle. c. The creation, fall into sin, and flood. d. The rule of kings.
_____ 8. How did the ministries of the former and latter prophets differ? a. The former prophets all wore camel hair robes; the later prophets did not. b. The former prophets spoke in Hebrew; the later prophets spoke in Babylonian. c. The former prophets did not write their prophecies down; the later prophets did. d. The former prophets spoke about the coming of Christ; the later prophets did not.
_____ 9. What two kinds of writing surfaces did ancient writers use in the time of the New Testament? a. Papyrus and paper b. Papyrus and cement. c. Papyrus and stone. d. Papyrus and parchment.
_____ 10. What purpose does textual criticism have? a. To criticize what the original author meant to say. b. To find the original wording of a text. c. To show similarities between Scripture’s original words and the words other authors. d. To give helpful additions to the original words.
_____ 11. How does the course define Biblical inerrancy? a. The teaching that the Bible has only a few errors. b. The teaching that our translations of the Bible have no errors. c. The teaching that the Bible has no errors. d. The teaching that the Bible and Apocrypha have no errors.
_____ 12. What problem do critics raise about Jesus’ trip to Jericho? a. Matthew refers to two blind men, but Mark and Luke mention only one. b. In one place Matthew says there were two blind men, but in another place he says that none were blind. c. We know there were two blind men, but none of the gospels mention them. d. Matthew refers to one blind man, but Mark refers to a blind woman. 124
_____ 13. What did Edwin Thiele mean by dual dating? a. The practice of dating the reigns of kings from two different nations in the same verse. b. The practice of dating both a king’s birth and his death. c. The practice of dating the beginning of a king’s rule from two different starting points. d. The practice of giving two dates for the beginning of the world.
_____ 14. Which of these belongs to the Evangelical view of Scripture’s authority? a. Scripture has authority to interpret Scripture. b. Scripture needs official church tradition before we can interpret Scripture properly. c. Scripture has as much authority as human reason says it may have. d. Scripture needs government scholars to help us understand it.
_____ 15. What did Anabaptists believe instead of the necessity of Scripture? a. They believed that sensual revelation replaces Scripture. b. They believed that general revelation denies the necessity of Scripture. c. They believed that the Holy Spirit speaks directly to a person’s heart so that the person does not need Scripture to guide him. d. They believed that the authority of Scripture replaces the necessity of Scripture.
_____ 16. What do we mean by the sufficiency of Scripture? a. That Scripture answers every question a person will ever ask. b. That Scripture tells us everything we need to know God and to obey Him. c. That Scripture has sufficient length so that we will read it all our lives. d. That Scripture tells us to read other holy books.
_____ 17. What do we mean by canon in this course? a. The list of all the books which people once thought might belong to the Bible. b. The list of the four gospels. c. The list of inspired books. d. The list of Old Testament books.
_____ 18. Why did the Roman Catholic Church accept the Apocrypha as Scripture? a. It accepted teachings which we can find only in the Apocrypha. b. Luther convinced the Roman Catholic Church to accept the Apocrypha. c. Jesus quoted the Apocrypha in the same way that the He quoted Scripture. d. All of the Apostle Paul’s letters belong to the Apocrypha. 125
_____ 19. What did Joyce Meyer mean when she wrote that “Words are containers for power?” a. Words keep us from getting what we want. b. Only God the Father can speak powerful words. c. We can have power without saying any words. d. We can create and have what we want when we command that we receive them.
_____ 20. How does Benny Hinn explain when people who ask for healing do not receive it? a. They were not really sick. b. They did not ask for healing in the correct way. c. They remain sick because they will surely die. d They did not ask for healing ten times. 126
6. EXAM ANSWERS
1. b 2. a 3. d 4. d 5. c 6. b 7. b 8. c 9. d 10. b 11. c 12. a 13. c 14. a 15. c 16. b 17. c 18. a 19. d 20. b 127
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED
The Agony of Deceit: What some TV Preachers are Really Teaching. Ed. Michael Horton. Chicago: Moody Press, 1990. The book contains chapters which twelve authors have written. They present a unified critique of the Word of Faith movement.
Bavink, Herman. The Doctrine of God. Trans. William Hendriksen. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1951. Bavink produced some of the best Reformed theology of the 20th century. His relates the biblical doctrine of God to the philosophies and theologies of eras both existent before him and in his own day.
Beckwith, Roger T. “The Apocrypha.” Understanding Scripture. Ed. Wayne Grudem, C. John Collins, and Thomas R Schreiner. Wheaton: Crossway, 2012. Beckwith gives a brief but helpful explanation of how Roman Catholicism accepted apocryphal books in its canon.
------. “The Canon of the Old Testament.” Understanding Scripture. Ed. Wayne Grudem, C. John Collins, and Thomas R. Schreiner. Wheaton: Crossway, 2012. 71. The author gives a history of how the church recognizes the books which belong to the canon.
Berkhof, Louis. Manual of Christian Doctrine. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1933. This work presents the material of Berkhof’s Systematic Theology in abbreviated form.
Berkhof, Louis. A Summary of Christian Doctrine. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. 1938. Berkhof’s Summary abbreviates what he has already condensed in his Manual. The Summary provides definitions of theological words for students of theology. It gives a treatment of Scripture which his Systematic Theology does not discuss.
“ Bible, Inerrancy and Infallibility,” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 1984. The article treats inerrancy and infallibility as “virtually synonymous.” It summarizes the basic arguments given for and against the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy.
Boice, James Montgomery. Standing on the Rock: Biblical Authority in a Secular Age. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994. The author explains and defends the Historic Protestant understanding of Scripture and its authority. The book provides as appendices the Chicago Statements on Biblical Inerrancy, Biblical Hermeneutics, and Biblical Application, which an international council of evangelical scholars wrote in the last quarter of the 20th Century.
Breisch, Francis Jr. The Kingdom of God. Grand Rapids: National Union of Christian Schools, 1958. Breisch wrote this as a textbook on the Old Testament for students in their early teenage years. He often follows the approach of his teacher, E. J. Young who wrote An Introduction to the Old Testament.
Bruce, F. F. The New Testament Documents. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1943. Bruce provides much scholarly research to demonstrate the reliability of the New Testament books.
Cummings, Calvin Knox. Confessing Christ. Suwanee, GA: Great Commissions Publications, 1992. Cummings wrote this to help pastors prepare individuals for professing church membership. The booklet gives basic information which makes readers conversant in the theology of a Presbyterian and reformed church.
“Deism.” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. 1984. The article gives basic historical and lexical information concerning English deism.
Doriani, Daniel. ”Interpreting the Bible: An Introduction.” Understanding Scripture. Ed. Wayne Grudem, C. John Collins, and Thomas R. Schreiner. Wheaton: Crossway, 2012. Doriani gives elementary principles which all should follow when they interpret the Bible. 128
Frame, John. The Doctrine of God. Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 2002. Vol. 2 of A Theology of Lordship. Frame uses his own vocabulary to express the historic Protestant understanding of Scripture. As a result readers will enjoy the clarity of his writing.
------. The Doctrine of the Word of God. Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 2010. Vol. 4 of A Theology of Lordship. Frame deals with virtually every issue which theology has raised concerning the Word of God. He gives very helpful responses to these issues.
Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994. Grudem wrote this extensive theological work from a Reformed perspective; he offers much help in understanding the doctrine of the Word.
Hegeman, Neal. Practical Hermeneutics. 17 December 2012. http://courses.mints.edu/bachelors-level/bab-081- practical-hermeneutics-c-hegeman/. Hegeman presents the study of hermeneutics with practical situations in view.
“Higher Criticism.” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. 1984. This article, written by R. K. Harrison, gives a balanced summary of the subject.
Hill, Charles E. “The Canon of the New Testament.” Understanding Scripture. Ed. Wayne Grudem, C. John Collins, and Thomas R Schreiner. Wheaton: Crossway, 2012. Hill very helpfully summarizes the history by which the church recognized the inspired New Testament canon.
Horton, Michael. The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims On the Way. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011. Horton gives an extensive treatment of many topics in systematic theology. It is not as helpful as others for people who want a reference book.
------. “The TV Gospel,” The Agony of Deceit. See bibliographical entry for this book.
Hurtado, L. W., “The Formation of the Christian Bible,” Modern Reformation 19.6 (2010) 33-36. Hurtado gives a brief history of the formation and recognition of the biblical canon.
“kanon.” Theological Dictionary of the New Testament: Abridged in One Volume. 1985 ed. This abridgement of Theological Dictionary of the New Testament often gives clearer, more concise descriptions of words compared to the original work.
Kistemaker, Simon. New Testament Commentary: Exposition of the Epistles of Peter and of the Epistle of Jude. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1987. Kistemaker provides sound interpretation for readers who cannot read the original languages of the Bible.
Kruger, Michael J. “Textual Criticism: The Achilles Heel of Inerrancy?” Modern Reformation: 19.2 (2010). Kruger argues for inerrancy by stating and defending four theses which argue for the continuing reliability of our Bibles today.
“ Marcion,” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 1984. This entry provides a brief and clear description of Marcion’s motivations which prompted him to formulate his canon of Scripture.
McGrath, Alister E. Christian Theology: An Introduction. 5th ed. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Written as a companion volume to McGrath’s Historical Theology, this Theology covers its subject both from the perspective of history and of various loci.
Metzger, Bruce Manning. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration. 2nd Ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. Metzger gives a scholarly, yet understandable, description of the writing of ancient books and the condition of the New Testament text. 129
“Montanism.” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. 1984. This article gives a brief but helpful description of the Montanist movement.
Murray, John. “The Attestation of Scripture.” The Infallible Word. Ed. N. B. Stonehouse & Paul Woolley. 2nd ed. Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 1967. Murray gives thorough biblical evidence concerning the divine source of Scripture.
“Natural Theology.” The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 3rd ed. 2005. The entry briefly summarizes the origins, chief proponents of and opposition to natural theology.
Packer, J. I. “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1958. Packer explains and defends the historic Protestant view of Scriptural authority in contrast to liberal views.
Shedd, William G. T. Dogmatic Theology. Ed. Alan W. Gomes. Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 2003. This edition, published 109 years after the publication of Shedd’s original work, contains addition material which Shedd wrote elsewhere on the subjects which this work treats.
Skilton, John H. “The Transmission of the Scriptures.” The Infallible Word: A Symposium by the members of the Faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary. Ed. N. B. Stonehouse and Paul Woolley. 2nd. ed. (Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing, 1967) 158-9. Skilton affirms the unity of the texts of Scripture and summarizes the process and findings of textual criticism.
Thiele, Edwin R. A Chronology of the Hebrew Kings. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1977. The Chronology serves as a very helpful abridgment of the work which follows in this list.
------. The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings. New Revised Ed. Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1983. This book painstakingly reviews all the relevant details of the Old Testament text to prove that reliability of the Old Testament dating of the reigns of the Hebrew kings.
Wallace, Daniel B. “The Reliability of the New Testament Manuscripts.” Understanding Scripture. Ed. Wayne Grudem, C. John Collins, and Thomas R. Schreiner. Wheaton: Crossway, 2012. Wallace provides a very convincing contrast between how the preservation of New Testament manuscripts compared to the preservation of other ancient texts.
Wegner, Paul D. “The Reliability of the Old Testament Manuscripts.” Understanding Scripture. Ed. Wayne Grudem, C. John Collins, and Thomas R. Schreiner. Wheaton: Crossway, 2012. Wegner gives an excellent brief summary of the textual criticism of the Old Testament.
“The Confession of Faith.” 4 May 2012.
“Westminster Shorter Catechism.” The Westminster Confession of Faith. Glasgow: Free Presbyterian Publications, 1971. This catechism summarizes the basic convictions of Reformed theology with brevity and completeness.
Van Til, Cornelius. “An Introduction to Systematic Theology.” Unpublished class syllabus, 1971. Van Til’s syllabus deals with issues pertaining to God’s revelation of Himself. He relies heavily on his apologetic as he treats most topics.
Young, Edward J. Thy Word is Truth. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1957. Young’s clear and comprehensive defense of Biblical authority continues as a classic orthodox presentation of the doctrine.