"The Bible is the watershed for Evangelical Christianity ... and true in all it affirms.." (Francis Schaeffer)

In our era there has risen a faction of evangelical - theologians who are in reality  "liberal" in their approach to the Bible. They hold that the Bible is only true in its affirmations of faith, but is erroneous on all matters pertaining to science or  history.  The debate rages on:  the conservative camp holds that the Bible is totally inerrant; the liberals, only partially inerrant.

I am a conservative believer, as you can see if you have spent any time studying these writings.  This theological treatise is addressed to you, dear Reader, so that you may see that logically, historically, and textually the Bible is fully inerrant. The  Bible must be without error, or else Christianity is indeed another passing fad.

Through God's Spirit I will show you that the consequences of accepting an errant Bible into the Christian faith.

C.S. Lewis ... "The Scriptures cannot be legends.  They are not good enough to be legends: no prose, no art in fact, no explanation of where God came from.  If they are legends and not historical, then they are realistic prose fiction of a kind which actually never existed before the 18th century..."
 

Because the authenticity and the inerrancy of the Scriptures were never seriously challenged, the early Church never debated at-large on this subject.  In the period of the Reformation dogma on the integrity of Scripture was not seriously considered, for the major theme was "Justification by faith alone".  The Reformers were basically in agreement with the Roman Catholic Church on the matter of the integrity of the Scriptures.

Even so, there are many quotations and creeds (which we will see later) which more than show the hard truth that the early Church fully accepted a totally inerrant Scripture.

IN JEWISH HISTORY

Josephus, the famous Jewish Historian, wrote: ".. There are no discrepancies in the facts recorded. The prophets learned their message by reason of the inspiration which they received from God ... they compiled accurately the history of their own time."

The Jewish faith is built upon the concept of the absolute inerrancy of the Scriptures.  As God's chosen people, their duties were to carry their faith untarnished, to preserve the Scriptures free from error as documents from the hand of God.

IN ROMAN CATHOLIC HISTORY

Clement of Rome .. "You have carefully studied the sacred Scriptures which are the true utterance of the Holy Ghost. You know that in them there hath not been written anything that is unrighteous or counterfeit.."

Justin Martyr .."The writers received from God the knowledge which they taught .. Men whose sole foundation was to present themselves pure to the energy of the Divine Spirit, in order that the Divine Plectrum itself, descending from Heaven, and using righteous men as an instrument like a harp .. might reveal the knowledge of things Divine .."

Augustine .."His members gave out the knowledge which they had received through the diction of the Head; whatsoever He willed us to read concerning His own words and acts, He bade them write, as though they were His very own words .."

In addition to the above Catholic scholars, Polycarp, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Chrysostom, and Athanasius all believed in the totally inerrant Scripture. All of these men are revered Church Fathers, all Great Theologians.

THE REFORMATION FATHERS

Martin Luther .."The Scriptures have never erred, the Scriptures cannot err .. It is certain that Scripture cannot disagree with itself .."

John Calvin .. When Calvin admitted error in the Scripture, he always attributed it to his own neglect, or that of a copyist. He believed the Scriptures to be inerrant in their Autographa, the original texts. Calvin held that if a Scriptural book recorded a man's name as the author, then he was the one whom God used to write the text.

THE CONFESSIONAL CREEDS

The Westminister Confession of Faith, in speaking of the Holy Scriptures, states: "It is the only infallible rule of faith and practice.."

The New Hampshire Confession of Faith stated of the Bible, "..it has God for its Author, salvation for its end and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter .."

JESUS AND THE APOSTLES

Both our Lord as well as the Apostles frequently referred to the Scriptures in their ministries. In the Gospels alone Jesus referred to the Old Testament Scriptures 33 times, frequently using the Bible to rebuke the Devil or witness to His own prophetic reality as Messiah.

Jesus, the Living Word of God (John 1), as a member of the Trinity of God understood the integrity of the Scriptures. If the Scriptures were errant, would our Lord have misled us by quoting errant Scripture? This I cannot believe! Jesus, as God in the flesh, knew that the Holy Texts were without error, and as an Orthodox Jew studied and trusted the same.

John 16:13  "Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come."

Jesus promised His disciples (and the Church) that the Holy Spirit would come to guide you into all truth. This same Spirit has guided the Church from the beginning, leading all those who came before to believe in a fully inerrant Scripture. This Spirit witness of those who came before is a powerful testimony: would the Holy Spirit allow the Church to believe the Scripture to be inerrant for nearly two thousand years if it were not so? Has the Holy One failed in His calling? Or are we, via liberal theological thought, transforming the Truth of the Ages into what we believe is a higher truth, but in reality trading the truth for a lie?
 

The key to this text is the use of the word all. All means that which it is speaking of is fully inclusive, no part withstanding.  Alford speaks of this text by saying:

"The meaning, unquestionable, both grammatically and textually, means every Scripture, i.e. every part of the Scripture.. "

The liberal theologian states the Bible is errant except in matters of the faith, yet the Bible in a matter of faith declares itself to be true in all ways historically, scientifically, and religiously.  Even here the liberal theologian is opposed in his quest to destroy the foundation of our faith.

The matter of Scriptural inerrancy is one of an all or none proposition.  Either we believe the Word of God to be fully inerrant, or fully errant, full of error.  Either we believe it to be written free of human impulse, or written by human impulse. The Bible itself leaves us no other options.

2 Peter 1:21  "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."

We either believe its contents to be true in all it affirms, or else we disbelieve it entirely.

1 Thessalonians 2:13  "For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe."

1 Corinthians 14:37  "If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord."

Galatians 1:11-12 "But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ."

Either the Scriptures are true or false: the Bible, in its own text, cuts off any possibility of a halfway point.

There is yet another reason for believing in the absolute inerrancy of the Scriptures, the fact of the Sovereignty of God:

Isaiah 46:9-11 "Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country: yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it."

It is written, "holy men of God wrote as they were moved by the Spirit".  If we believe that God controls all creation within His Plan of the Ages, the following things must be true: 1.  If God wrote the Bible, then no human frailty would be allowed in His Divine work.  Can God communicate or fellowship with sin?  2.  If God did not write the Book, then why did He allow such a devious work to be completed and preserved throughout the centuries?  Did God purposely allow His people, whom He loves, to be so deceived?  Did He allow Israel to guard a lie with their very lives? I cannot believe this.

Through a period of 1500 years God chose out over 40 authors, covering a time span of 60 generations.  The Old Testament of our Bible is peppered with over 2000 phrases like "thus saith the Lord", a clear indication of God's hand in the writing.  The God chosen writers came from three continents: Africa, Asia, and Europe.  The Bible was written in four languages: Chaldean (Assyrian), Aramaic, Koine Greek, and Hebrew.  God took this mix and, in His holiness, created a beautiful work, a work whose words flow like living water from paragraph to paragraph, chapter to chapter, book to book, with a fluidity which no other human work possesses.

Why this amazing phenomena?  The answer is simple: the Book, our Bible, is of God, not of men.  God in His omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence  persuaded the chosen authors to write as He so decreed. This is why such an ancient and venerated writing has stood the test of time for thousands of years.
 

I must credit the discovery of this material to Josh McDowell.  The material is found in the "Documentation of Classical Literature", located in all complete university libraries.
 
 

When you compare the above manuscripts to one another to determine accuracy to the original, you really don't have much to work with. So, how do the Biblical texts stand up when compared to the classics?
 
 

As Textual Criticism is a science of comparison, we can see that Christianity has more textual reliability in its Bible than any other 10 pieces of classical literature put together.  In most of the passages in the Bible, there is a majority of agreement over any given verse.  In only a few cases are there left-handed or right-handed texts.  Yet even in these verses, the discrepancy has little effect on the underlying message.

Even if you did away with all the manuscripts of the Bible in their entirety we would still have the Holy Scriptures.  By piecing together all the verses that the early Church Fathers quoted in their writings, we could literally reform the Bible from these texts.  By quotation of the verses commented on in the Talmud we could literally reconstruct the Old Testament.  God may have allowed the originals to be destroyed, yet He has not left His children without His Word.
 

The situations which may cause alleged Bible discrepancies are:

THE METHOD OF RECORDING TIME:  The Jews had two chronological dating methods, a sacred calendar and a civil calendar.  Among the Latin Christian nations there were around 7 different calendars.  The Romans also had an entirely different method of recording time.

When we see two Biblical authors using a different calendars to record a historical event, neither is wrong in his record. They are just using the calendar that their expected readers would use at the time of the writing.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE OF MAN:  As man historically evolved, his phraseology and language evolved with the times.  New words are created.  1,000 years ago Christians did not understand phrases like "the satisfaction of Christ",  yet the concept was fully understood.

THE CHANGE OF CIRCUMSTANCES AND SITUATIONS:  As the situation changes, so changes (1) God's thought toward man, (2) Man's thought toward man, and (3) Man's thought toward God.  All that God created He proclaimed "good".  Yet as man fell into sin, progressively perverting his relationship toward the Creator, God proclaimed mankind evil and destroyed all but a few by a catastrophic flood.

WHO DECLARED WHAT?: The Bible makes record of two things: (1)  That which God stated and decreed and, (2)  That which man or Satan stated.  If God states something, we know it is fact.  Yet if man states it, the validity of the statement must be questioned. Yet, even if the Biblically recorded statement is a lie from man, we can believe that the wording was recorded exactly as it was made. The Bible is historically accurate.

THE VIEWPOINT OF THE AUTHOR: TO WHOM WAS IT ADDRESSED?:  The authors of the Biblical writings had different viewpoints they were writing from, and different audiences they were addressing.  Paul's letter to the Romans was written to Legalists who felt they had to earn their way to acceptance by God.  Thus Paul wrote "works without faith is dead".  John's first Epistle was written to address the Gnostics (who believed that salvation freed you so you could sin), telling the Church "faith without works is dead".  Neither writer disagreed with the other, they merely had differing audiences so wrote from different viewpoints.  The underlying fact they agreed on was that true faith is accompanied by works, and true works are accompanied by faith.  Both go hand in hand.

THE ORIENTAL IDIOMS: Differences in ancient Oriental idioms and phraseology  may often seem to present a discrepancy when there is none.  The Bible often refers to "the four corners of the earth".  When it does so, it does not mean the earth was viewed as having four corners, but rather refers to the four points of the compass.

There are also many statements that confuse newcomers to Christianity such as, "He who loses his life for my sake shall gain it".  The Scripture is really not contradicting itself, as you will see if you read the context around the verse in question.

DISCREPANCIES IN NAMES: According to the place and circumstance, a person's name may be changed in the Bible.  Why?

The early Greek and Hebrew peoples attached a great deal of significance to the name of a person.  The name often reflected the character or motivation of the person.  After a person had close contact or a blessing from God, often his or her name was changed by God. Names of geographical locations also changed to reflect usage, dedication to God, or cursing by God.

The early Greek and Hebrew cultures also had a habit of attaching many names to the same object.  This may cause some degree of confusion in Biblical interpretation, but is not a real discrepancy in the Scripture, merely a clear representation of the culture to whom the Work was written.

HUMAN ERROR: Human error, often directly from Biblical critics, is by far the largest source of alleged discrepancies.  It would be good if we keep in mind the scriptural injunction:

2 Peter 1:20  "Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation."

There are several points which we should remember in Scriptural exegesis:

1.  The context of the verse may not only be in the chapter where the verse in question is in, it may be several chapters before and after that verse.  Thoroughly read the immediate context of the verse you are seeking to interpret.

2.  The context of the verse may only be found when it is compared to all like verses. Do a topical study of the verse you are studying using a good reference work like "Naves Topical Bible" or the "Thompson Chain Reference Bible".

3.  The context of a verse may sometimes be understood only when viewed in the original Greek or Hebrew.  In this case, a Greek or Hebrew lexicon may be needed, like Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, unabridged edition. Often there is no one-to-one correlation of words translated from one language to another.  Often one Greek word may only be fully translated by 3 or 4 English words.

4.  The context of a verse may be influenced by the history behind the verse.  Was the Doctrine for just that era, or is it also for today?  An example of this is the Law of Moses and the Levitical sacrifices, which are no longer pertinent to us today, because we are under the atonement of Christ.

5.  A verse may also be taking out of context by running one context into another.  An example of this is:

Hebrews 10:26  "For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,"

27  "But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries."

By running these two verses together we may misinterpret it to mean:

"If a Christian willfully sins, he shall become a non Christian and shall be punished as a heathen in Hell."

Our legalist friends may use this verse to prove their doctrine of eternal insecurity.  Yet if the verse is interpreted this way, it actually means "once lost, always lost", for the word sin in the Greek means to "miss the mark, to make a mistake".  The answer to this text is:

a.  Commas, semi-colons, hyphens, and periods were not found in the early Greek manuscripts.  The translators of our Bible added these textual punctuation marks because this is what we are familiar with when reading. We cannot allow these man added marks to tell us when to pause or stop within a context.

b. The epistles to the Hebrews were written to Jewish Christians who were still relying on animal sacrifices for the atonement of their sins.

c. Verse 26 is written in first person plural, verse 27 is written in third person plural.  Verse 26 is written to those like unto the writer, verse 27 is written impersonally to the world at large.

Taking the historical contextual evidences of the verses into consideration, the correct interpretation is:

a. Verse 26 and verse 27 are two different separate passages which are in two separate contexts.

b. Verse 26 is making this statement: "After one has accepted Christ as Savior, he no longer needs to sacrifice animals to atone for his sins. The sacrifice of Christ is eternal, atonement forever.

c. Verse 27 is making a statement totally disassociated from Verse 26. A new paragraph is started warning of how God will deal with those who reject the message of the Cross. The second paragraph runs from verse 27 through verse 30.

Christians largely fail in their defense of the inerrant Scriptures out of fear (I want to be part of the acceptable crowd), faithlessness (I have not really studied the Word, so I am not sure), or both.  Often Christians fear the modern-day sciences which have technologically grown immense in the last fifty years.  Yet as Lord Kelvin once stated:

".. Physical science has nothing to say against the order of creation as given in Genesis ...."

Lord Kelvin was being very honest.  Physical science has nothing to say about matters of faith, for science only deals with tangible items.  For something to be studied scientifically, it must:

1. Be observable by the five senses, or by instrumental extensions of these senses.

2. Be observable by repeatable processes to ensure truth and accuracy.

3. Be observable by measuring processes: in other words, it must be measurable.

Science has nothing to say about faith, for faith goes beyond the reality of things seen.  Science has nothing to say about God, for He is a Spirit, immeasurable and unquestionable.  Science has nothing to say about miracles, for they come as God so decrees, and therefore cannot be studied as a repeatable process.
 

C.S. Lewis: "You start arming against the devil when you know and recognize his works.  He doesn't want you to believe in him.  His first aim is to give you an anesthetic to put you off your guard.  Only when this fails do you recognize him."

When we allow Satan to make us believe that there are parts of the Bible which are full of error, then how much harder will it be before we believe the whole Book is full of error?  True, the Bible is not a scientific textbook.  The Father did not create it for this purpose.  Yet the Bible as a whole is written fluidly, the scientific passages flowing to the historic passages which flow into the faith passages.  If we take away a part of the intricate whole, then do we not dam the creek?

If a part of the Book is errant, then who qualified to declare it?  As man is fallible, who will we trust to make such a great decision as to which parts are fallible, which are true?  If the Spirit of God allowed confusion to be written in the midst of the Work, does this not in effect make God a partner to deception?  By accepting an errant Bible a whole chain reaction of problems arise, problems that will certainly hinder our witness to the godless.

Evolutionists speak of man evolving in intelligence.  Yet did man ever "evolve" as these speak of evolution? God gave man creative power.  Within this power lies the ability to improve and grow, yet man in his being has never been unintelligent (as scientists like to represent the so called Neanderthal man).  As C. S. Lewis discovered in his studies:

" .. There has been no progression in intelligence from a thousand years to date.  There is no proof of any advance.  People may not have known what we know today, but how could an unintelligent man invent the wheel?"

The thought that man invented the idea of God to explain the unknown is preposterous.  In Ptolemy's Almagest (a standard textbook in the Middle Ages) we find the following statement:

"The earth in relation to the distance of the fixed stars has no appreciable size and must be treated as a mathematical point .."

There was never any conflict between science and Christianity until less than 100 years ago.  When speculative science rose in popularity many weak Christians ran away.  When you stand on the absolute truth of our inerrant Bible, you do not need to compromise your faith to accommodate scientific truth.  The Christian faith has always been a faith founded on fact.  If we compromise the foundations of our faith, modifying it to suit the current scientific fad, we become, in many ways,  worst than the unbelieving infidels. When we give in to the tangible then, just like doubting Thomas, we trade a solid foundation of truth for a hill of sand. Trust the Father, trust His Word: He and His Word are ever faithful.

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