So you believe when Paul said “bring my cloak from Troas,” that was the Word of God — not the words of Paul? Did God leave his cloak at Troas?
And when Paul said (in my paraphrase from memory), “I don’t know if I baptized others,” that was not the words of Paul — it was the Word of God?
And when Paul said (in my paraphrase from memory), “I wish they would go all the way and emasculate themselves,” that was the not the words of Paul but the Word of God?
And when Luke wrote that he investigated everything from the beginning and decided to write (in Luke 1:1-4), those were not the words of Luke but the Word of God?
And do you realize that the text actually says those are the words of people, not the Word of God?
I encourage you to look at those passages and observe that they never mention the Bible.
Yes, they refer to the Word of God and the Word of the Lord. They do not refer to the Bible.
You seem to have read “Bible” into the text where it actually says “Word of God.” I hope that shows you the harmful nature of assuming “Bible = Word of God.” It has caused you to misinterpret the texts!
Josh McDowell’s website makes a false claim in saying that the Bible claims to be the Word of God. It never makes that claim. His website is fallible, and it is not the first error that I have seen. The last one I saw was corrected after I contacted the website and pointed out the mistake.
Do you seriously think the Bible, as a unit, in its entirety, claims to be the Word of God? If you do, where is that claim?
He quit saying “the Bible says, God’s Word says” in his sermons. The part I quoted shows it is clear he views the two labels as synonyms that can be used interchangeably. And no, nothing in the post objects in any way to God’s Word and the Bible being used in speech synonymously or implies that he no longer calls the Bible God’s Word. It only illustrates the point I have made repeatedly here that you can’t tell squat about a person’s views on inerrancy by whether or not they call the Bible God’s Word or whether or not they capitalize Word when they do. That quote totally proves multiple points I was trying to make about how people use English. Calling the Bible God’s Word doesn’t have anything to do with how people view the Bible.
Words meanings are determined by how members of a speech community use the words. Dictionaries only describe this, they don’t create a reality, and no one consults dictionaries to learn how to speak. You learn your vocabulary in your community. People who think otherwise could explain to me why regardless and irregardless mean the same thing now, and the dictionaries finally just had to catch up to the usage.
I work in Mexico. One of the main modern Spanish translations of the Bible is La Palabra de Dios para Todos (The Word of God for Everyone). In most Spanish translations, John 1 is translated using El Verbo, so their is no confusion between Jesus el Verbo and La Palabra de Dios. I have sat through many long sermons in Spanish and almost every pastor repeatedly refers to the Bible as La Palabra instead of La Biblia. From this I would guess that referring to the Bible as God’s Word probably has a long history in Western Christianity, since it is conventional in both languages.
You seem to be confused about the difference between definitions and referents. A definition is a word’s meaning or meanings. The Word of God is not a definition of the Bible. They are synonyms. That means in some contexts, they can have the same referent. As in “He starts every day by reading the Word of God,” and “He starts everyday by reading the Bible.” Those two sentences are synonymous.
Two words are synonymous when they share a definition. Since words have often have multiple senses, not every definition of a synonym is interchangeable. For example, Bible can mean the Christians scriptures or the physical object that the Christian scriptures are printed on. God’s word is only synonymous with the first sense. I could say, “I just bought a blue leather, red-letter edition Bible.” I could not say, “I just bought a blue leather, red-letter edition God’s Word.” One sense of God’s word is a message from God. I could say “God’s word came to Samuel in a dream.” I could not say, “The Bible came to Samuel in a dream.”
For the last time, I am not “claiming” anything other than that God’s Word and Bible are synonymous in English. That is a fact based on how people use English. The Bible is not an authority on how people use English, so there is absolutely no reason I should defend the claim “People use God’s Word and the Bible synonymously in English” with a Bible verse. I defended that claim by showing you multiple examples of people using the words synonymously to communicate with other English speakers, as was logical.
I think you are confused about what you are even arguing about.
Nope. Why would the individual authors whose works make up the biblical canon make a claim about something that would not come into existence for over 400 years after their death?
I have only ever made a claim about English usage.
Andy Stanley publishes widely and his sermons are available to listen to online. People also talk about “controversial” things he says all over the Christian blogosphere. You don’t have to go to his church to be aware of what his general take on the Bible is.
Why would the authors of Scripture claim “the Bible in its entirety” (i.e. the collection of canonical writings) was the Word of God when it did not exist yet? That makes no sense. I do not believe any reference in NT Greek or OT Hebrew that is translated “the word of God” in English Bible translations refers to the Bible in its entirety.
I don’t understand your questions. My personal view of the Bible, (which I sometimes call God’s Word), is that humans wrote things, inspired by God, and that God uses those human words from the past to communicate with us and relate to us as a Person today through the power of his Spirit. I do not really care much about inerrancy. I think there is plenty in the Bible that is unavoidably constrained by human language, culture, and limited perspective.
The question is… what does this mean? I think it means that God has the proprietary rights and nobody should be altering it to suit themselves. I also think this is the one authority God has put into the hands of sinful human beings for the proper beliefs of Christianity.
Neither the Bible NOR Christianity existed in the time of Jesus. So the claim that Jesus says the word of God equals the Bible is just absurd. Jesus speaks of scripture, the law and the prophets, but He never specifies what these consist of – not in any way whatsoever. Therefore, you cannot claim that Jesus excludes the holy scriptures of other religions from being the word of God. Sorry, no can do. But religions have every right to make their own choices about what to believe and what writings to consider as having come from God. Christianity has chosen the Bible.
The claim that “the Bible in its entirety” is God’s word.
I agree that the writers of the NT did not claim everything they wrote was “God’s word.” Many of them claimed to speak with apostolic authority, and that they believed the gospel they were preaching and the OT scriptures they quoted were indeed “God’s word.”
But all of that is totally irrelevant to whether or not it is a fact that English speakers refer to the Bible with the term “God’s Word.” Do you understand that?
If the writers of the scriptures did not claim the scriptures were, in their entirety, the Word of God, but what authority do you, or others, claim that the Bible is, in its entirety, the Word of God?
Do you, or others, have a special revelation of information that was not available to the NT writers? Has such special revelation been affirmed by prophetic utterances or other supernatural events?
This may seem a harsh question, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Please resist the tendency to be angry when closely held views are questioned.
If you want to delve into this question, you’ll have to look at canon formation - a historical process that the early church undertook in a rather haphazard way, over several centuries. A good start would be my colleague, Craig Allert, and his book on the subject:
I have repeated myself over and over again. I think I’ve been pretty clear. This has nothing to do with “my views.” “My claim” has to do with observable facts of English usage. Peace out.