Bibliology - Part 1
Bibliology - Part 1
Thursday, May 10, 2007
The Doctrine of the Bible, or Bibliology, is one of the most important doctrines since it forms the basis of everything that follows. If I do not have the right revelation, how do I know if I have the right God? And when I say I believe in Jesus, Jesus Who? Is it the Jesus of the Mormon scriptures, the Jesus of the Jehovah Witnesses, or the New Age Jesus?
Getting one’s source of information right is crucial when it comes to truth, and when all of the religious writings of all of humanity are examined, the Bible rises far above all the rest as being the Word of God.
The reasons for this are many, but I list a few here for your consideration.
1. The Bible has been proven to be historically accurate in every detail for which we have archaeological and historical witnesses. No one has discovered any verifiable historical inaccuracy, and in fact every supposed inaccuracy in time has proven to be false.
2. The Bible has been proven to be prophetically accurate. Thousands of years ago the Bible predicted that Israel would exist as a nation at the end of time - and it has. Throughout the Old Testament we are introduced to one prophecy after another that was literally fulfilled hundreds of years later - not one prophecy has been false.
3. The Bible is scientifically accurate. It described the earth as a sphere, hanging on nothing, and revolving on an axis. It described the hydrological cycle thousands of years before science figured it out, and it said that the life of the flesh is in the blood, something medicine only figured out in the last 200 years. Put directly, there are no scientific or factual errors recorded in the Bible.
4. The Bible is life-changing. Those who believe its message and receive Christ as their Lord and Saviour are forever changed. Drunkards are made sober, idolaters are made true believers, and adulterers and pornographers are made pure. God said that His word will not return to him void, but would accomplish what He set it out to do (Isaiah 55). There is a power found in the pages of the Bible that is life transforming, and those who have felt and experienced its power are never the same again.
5. The Bible is consistent. Here is a book written by some forty authors over a period of sixteen-hundred years, and it is amazingly consistent and coherent in its message. In fact, there is not a single, verifiable inconsistency in all of its current sixty-six books.
So that brings me to the first point in my doctrinal statement:
I believe in the verbal, plenary, and inerrant inspiration of the Scriptures by the Holy Spirit as He moved the human authors to write the very words of God.
When I say verbal, by that I mean that the very words of Scripture are God-breathed (2 Peter 1:19-21, 2 Timothy 3:16). When Paul put down his pen after writing Romans, every word in Romans was exactly the word God wanted. That does not mean the personality and style of the author, Paul, was lost, but rather God so moved the heart and mind of Paul that what Paul wrote was exactly what the Holy Spirit wanted written. This is what Peter meant in 2 Peter 1:21 when he said the holy men of God were moved by the Holy Spirit. The word for “moved” was used to refer to the wind filling a sail and bearing along a ship. Even so, holy men were filled with the very presence of the Holy Spirit such that what they wrote was the very breath of God.
Since the Bible is verbally inspired, it necessarily follows that all of it is inspired which is what we mean by plenary. The Holy Spirit and Paul did not take turns writing Romans, Paul verse 1, the Holy Spirit verse 2, etc. Rather the entire text was from the Holy Spirit, and as such has His divine stamp in its very words and phrases.
And finally, because the Bible is verbally inspired, it is also inerrant. That is, it contains no mistakes. Why, because it is the very words of God, and were it to contain errors, then God would either not know what He was having written, or He purposely led us astray. Since God cannot lie, anything He would say is by definition true, and that would especially apply to the Bible.
