He refuses to be pushed into their little molds. They stand bewildered in his presence. There is only one escape from that bewilderment. It is to accept Jesus after all. Refuse to believe that the picture is true, and all is bewilderment and confusion in your view of the earliest age of the church; accept the picture as true, and all is plain. Everything then ts into its proper place. The key has been found to solve the mighty riddle. The supernatural Jesus is thus the key to a right understanding of early Christian history.
But he is also the key to far more than that. Mankind stands in the presence of more riddles than the riddle of New Testament times. All about us are riddles—the riddle of our existence, the riddle of the universe, the riddle of our misery and our sin. To all those riddles, Jesus, as the New Testament presents him, provides the key. He is the key not to some things but to everything. But if we are convinced by that evidence, we must take the consequences. If we are convinced that Jesus is what the New Testament says he is, then the Word of Jesus becomes for us law.
We cannot then choose whether we will believe him when he speaks. We must believe. On the contrary, the varying personalities and writing styles of the biblical authors do come through in Scripture. The teaching of Jesus shows this principle in action. Think about the way He debated His opponents. The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. So that is the inspiration of Scripture. As a result, the Bible is free from error in what it says. Moody Bible Institute believes strongly in the factual, verbal, historical inerrancy of the Bible.
That is, the Bible, in its original documents, is free from error in what it says about geography, history and science as well as in what it says about God. Its authority extends to all matters about which the Bible speaks. Even though the Bible is God's revelation, it must still be interpreted.
Interpretation has to do with our reception and understanding of that which God revealed and recorded. Interpretation is a human responsibility. Divine inspiration guarantees the truthfulness of God's word but not the accuracy of our interpretation. The Bible is infallible in all it affirms to be true and therefore absolutely reliable. We, however, may be fallible in our interpretation of the Bible. Do we not see the personalities of the writers coming through in what they write?
The answer is clearly indicated in Mark God put into the minds of his spokesmen words that were appropriate and stylistically appropriate for them to utter on the particular occasion of their inspiration, including words that expressed their own personal thoughts. The fundamental presupposition of unbelieving scholarship is that the Bible is the product of natural historical processes, just like any other literature.
And since natural historical processes involve men with limited knowledge and sometimes mistaken ideas, it follows that the Bible should contain limited knowledge and sometimes mistaken ideas.
Evangelicals should be challenging unbelieving scholarship at its presuppositional level, but are unable to do so since they have largely abandoned the biblical doctrine of inspiration. Here is an example. Judging by the variation in style that one could reasonably expect from one writer, unbelieving scholars have concluded that Paul did not write the Pastorals.
But the correct explanation is so simple: the Holy Spirit gave Paul words in different styles at different times. Biblical scholarship will never be truly biblical until it reestablishes its foundation on the biblical doctrine of inspiration and abandons its unholy alliance with naturalistic thinking. The Bible, then, contains not the wisdom and lore of ancient men, subject to all the limitations and errors of human knowledge, but rather the very words of God himself, whose knowledge is unlimited and perfect.
Now if God knows everything Ps. As Jesus said, "Scripture cannot be broken" John And if Scripture cannot err, then it follows that it does not err; that is, it is inerrant. Because God is the author of Scripture, everything written in it is completely true.
Jesus expressed this truth when he prayed, "Thy word is truth" John ; see also Ps. Inspiration is sometimes confused with infallibility or inerrancy. But inspiration is not simply a divine influence on the biblical writers that kept them from making mistakes. True enough, inspiration did keep the biblical writers from writing error.
But this is not merely an abstract doctrine for theologians to fine-tune. This truth is the basis for our use of the Bible. When Paul reminded Timothy that the Bible is inspired by God, he immediately went on to say that it is "profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work" 2 Tim.
Let us read it, study it, believe it, and obey it. The deeper we delve into the Bible with open hearts and minds, the more it will transform our thinking and our lives in conformity to Christ.
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