I like Mervin’s answer to your question, which is one I have as well. One another level, I think the Bible became considered the Word and God and we got into the whole inerrency argument because it is our nature as people to desire legalism and rules. Thus we become the older brother in the prodigal son story, feeling righteous in our good behavior and our adherence to rules, preferring the sharp thorns of legalism and self reliance than the brokeness of the younger son, and not knowing we are more in need of grace and repentance than he.
As mentioned, Luke had no pretense about being inspired, and even Paul’s letters, while written no doubt as inspired, had no indication that he considered them more than just advisory letters, and requests for someone to bring his coat. One might argue the that gospel of John, and Revelation are a bit more indicative of being inspired at the time of their writing.
Before there was a New Testament, there were: Matthew’s Novel; Mark’s Novel; Luke’s Novels; and John’s Novel. “Tom, Dick, and Harry’s Novels” are “Ho-hum” Collected Novels. “Holy Scripture” and “Word of God” are worth paying more attention to and money for".
I’m not asking anyone to defend anything (at least not yet!) I’d just like someone who considers the Bible to be the Word of God in a literal sense to explain why they do so.
For my part, like many, I was brought up to think of the Bible as the Word of God. But when I came to question why, the main reason I came up with was that I’d been taught it - that it was, or at least had become, an evangelical tradition; but I’m far from sure what the basis is for believing it. And whilst the NT might be the major source of information about Jesus, if our claim for the truth of that info is a special status of the Bible, then surely we have to ask what that belief is based on.
I’ve come (or on the way) to share the view of some that God has revealed Himself primarily in what He has done - in nature and in history – and the Bible bears witness to the latter, rather than being a verbal revelation per se. (Of course it claims to include some direct revelations, such as Revelation and some OT prophecies. (Phil – why do you suggest John’s gospel might claim to be inspired?)) It seems to me that this is what the Biblical writers claim (if/when they claim anything) such as Luke, 1John1.1-3.
So it seems to me to be more satisfactory to see the Bible as a collection of historical docs and weigh them as such. (And of course part of the historical evidence is the weight given to them by the 1st century Jews and the early church.) I think Richard Bauckham makes a good case for the gospels being based on eyewitness accounts (Jesus and the eyewitnesses). And Gary Habermas makes a point of arguing for the truth of the resurrection based on NT passages taken as merely historical documents, not inspired / revealed in any way.
I think it’s also a stronger stance apologetically. Christianity claims to be based on actual historical events, the truth of which can be supported on historical grounds. If the claim for truth is based on a claim to special verbal revelation, then what’s to distinguish it from eg the Qur’an (I’m sure this point must have been made many times).
Finally (I sound like a preacher, but I’m not) I think Phil is right that belief in the Bible as the Word of God is maintained partly out of fear. We’ve been taught to be ‘Bible-believing Christians’, so if the absolute truth of the Bible is questioned it feels like the truth of Christianity is being undermined. What we need, and taught from the pulpit, is a sound doctrine of what the Bible is. No doubt some (maybe including me) will fear a slippery slope (unravelling all the threads). But I think I’d rather be struggling to find a ‘right’ position on the slope than trying to keep to what looks like an untenable position at the top. Of course, if there is good reason to think the Bible is the Word of God in a revealed / literal sense, then let’s hear it.
Largely my perspective, but from the first it is written not as a historical account, but as a theological revelation, somewhat mystic in its content, and not giving the impression of originating from John, but from outside of him. Sure, it could be argued he just got hold of bad mushrooms, but that is what faith is for.
As many here might expect, my mind quickly (inasmuch as my mind does anything quickly ; - ) goes to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s hermeneutic:
We had a long, somewhat productive but eventually not so productive discussion about this a while back where people dug up some of the history of calling the canon “God’s Word” or the “Word of God.” It’s a tradition that predates English.
The texts that make up the Christian canon were not “the Bible” when they were written, so of course references to God’s word in Scripture mean something other than “the Bible” and an oblique reference to Scripture that existed at the time as “God-breathed” is not a full-fledged doctrine of inspiration of the canon. Formal theology around the idea that the Bible is the inspired word of God came into Christian tradition much later.
Hi Leyton.
Others have made good comments, but I think 2 Timothy 3:14-17 need a little more comment.
Have you read the passage in a Bible that puts the added words in italics? Those added words and added punctuation change the meaning considerably.
Taking a fairly literal translation (the NAS) and removing an added “is” and replacing the added “.” with a colon and changing two uppercase letters to lower case yields this:
14 You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus: all scripture inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work
You are correct that the passage becomes circular about the entire canon with the translator-supplied punctuation and case choices and added words.
Very minor changes (especially the deletion of a word not found in the original text) completely change the meaning. And neither the punctuation nor the upper/lower case differentiation were in the original text.
In the text that I posted above:
- the passage is not about the Bible as we know it, rather it is about the sacred scriptures that Timothy knew from his youth (the Old Testament)
and - all inspired scripture profitable…for every good work, not all scripture is inspired.
One additional point: we may be misled by the term scripture. When 2 Timothy was written, the Koine Greek word graphe did not mean “holy writings/documents,” it simply meant writings and referred to secular and religious writings. A literal reading of “all scripture (every document) is inspired would say your grocery list is inspired, so that added “is” can be quite misleading.
We don’t believe in Jesus because we have a perfect book. We believe in Jesus because we have the expert testimony of eyewitnesses (Peter and John and James) and the report of those who had discussions with eyewitnesses (such as Luke and Paul).
May God bless you.
I would give another answer, a simple one: we believe it because we heard it from someone we trust.
There is much we believe because someone told us. For example, how did God create the world? Very few Christians have the competence and knowledge to try to answer the question based on facts. All the rest have an opinion they adopted from someone they trust. Often an opinion that is a very much simplified version and possibly distorted one because the person telling it had heard it from someone (s)he trusted, that person heard it from someone, etc.
I do not believe in the Bible. I do not even see any reason why I should believe. I believe in the God that the biblical scriptures tell about. Biblical scriptures just happen to be the most reliable source of information about God and His will.
I agree and bear witness to that.
I no longer “believe and know that Jesus loves me because the Bible tells me so”. I believe and know because the Spirit of Truth bears witness to that Truth in the core of my being.
@Christy Thanks for drawing my attention to the earlier discussion on whether the Bible should equal the Word of God, which I’m working through. It seems a bit unfair to question you on what you said 3 years ago, but with that apology …
I completely agree with you that in common usage the Bible and the Word of God are synonymous (although, of course the latter has other meanings, and I’m not wanting to go over that old ground again).
However I’m not so sure about
‘Calling the Bible God’s Word doesn’t have anything to do with how people view the Bible.’
In my experience – predominantly in evangelical churches / groups – the ‘Word of God’ is not just another term for the Bible, but for most who use it (so far as it seems to me anyway) there is a real sense in which they think of the Bible as God’s words to us. And I think for many that conveys an authority, typified by the statement of faith of the Evangelical Alliance
The divine inspiration and supreme authority of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, which are the written Word of God – fully trustworthy for faith and conduct
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
I would probably go along with much of this, except that I probably (again!) reckon only parts of it are inspired, notably where the writers are claiming to bring a particular message from God. But even there I wouldn’t assume that all claims are correct (even if entirely sincere), and that would go for some of the apostles’ (esp Paul) words.
For me the question remains: if I am right that many Christians regard the Bible as the inspired Word of God (and I think some of the responses to these threads indicate there are at least some who consider it to be normal Christian belief), then what is the basis for that? There seems to be a reasonable consensus that the belief has developed over time.
I’ll read at least one of the books recommended in that earlier thread – but probably not for a while.
I honestly believe, this is an issue of conscience for every believer to decide for themselves
I think I disagree with this. I think it’s important to know what the status of the Bible really is (objectively, how does God see it?!) so that we can have an appropriate attitude toward it. (And of course different statuses may apply to different parts.)
Thanks to all for your comments.
I think you and I would get along well Herr Dietrich.
Certainly calling it God’s Word is not entirely inappropriate
Sure, I think that view of the Bible has a long tradition in Protestantism and throughout church history. The word of God in Scripture refers to God’s revelation and our doctrines about the Bible position it as God’s revelation, so it makes sense to link the ideas.
The part you quoted I believe was in response to people who were asserting that if you called the Bible the Word of God you were ascribing the Bible something like worship and making it a god. Which I don’t think is the case. Lots of people throughout histroy have called the Bible the word of God for the reasons you state (believing it is God’s revelation, believing it is inspired and authoritative) and not because they idolize the Bible.
Yes, I think it is a normal Christian belief, and yes, the canon itself and the doctrines around Scripture developed over time, but have a long history in the church and Christian thought. It certainly wasn’t invented by 20th century evangelicalism.
Thanks for your thoughts, Leyton, always happy for people to disagree with me. In defence of my point: I would suggest that Christian traditions haven’t historically agreed, and don’t seem likely to agree any time soon, on whether the Bible is or is not the Word of God, what that term means, and/or the proper usage of it. Where such divergent views exist, with no obvious right or wrong option outlined in the Bible, there is only one course left to a believer. Namely, to weigh the options and decide for themselves according to their conscience, trusting in the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. Thus, it is, I believe, an issue of conscience.
What is the BioLogos position (if any) re the Bible? What does it mean by referring to it as God’s Word?
Apologies if you’ve already been referred here - but just in case you haven’t: The Biologos ‘what we believe’ page is the best place to find official Biologos positions.
Points #1 and 2 are where scriptures are addressed.
The normal Christian meaning that it is God’s revelation of who he is and what he wants from people. Actually, Word of God capitalized in the first statement is referring to Jesus, the Word (Logos) a concept used in John 1. Jesus is God’s ultimate self-revelation.
An interesting way to phrase it. I wonder if there is anything in the cosmos that is not a self revelation of God understood in that way. Perhaps Jesus is the ultimate one from our point of view as through it we begin to see our own short comings but also what is possible. It also allows us to use our powers of empathy to understand God better since it is primarily with other humans that those come into play.
I think that is it.
Your question (I think) totally anticipates what Richard Rohr expresses in his recent book “The Universal Christ”
This is obviously nonsense, whether taken literally or not. Literally it is demonstrably incorrect – there are plenty of questions which people have which nobody would claim the Bible has any answer to. Less literally you might simply try to say that it answers the only questions which are important, but that is the same kind of nonsense we see in naturalism which simply excludes all questions that science cannot answer. That is willful ignorance plain and simple.
And other attempts to fix this will lead to worse problems, like the idea the Bible has what we need for salvation. But this is contrary to the teachings of Jesus, in both John 5:39 and Matthew 19. No the Bible does not make it possible for us to save ourselves, and thus any attempt to restrict the work of God to the Bible alone is even more inconsistent and preposterous.
It speaks to me and to many others, but it demonstrably does not speak to many people.
And this is not only because some people do not see any value in what the Bible says, but also because some people have taken the Bible as justification for the most horrendous things. So clearly God does not always speak to people in the Bible.
Some like to make this a matter of objective fact, but there is no objective way to make that claim work, because even the Bible makes it clear that the text of the Bible comes from people. So even while I believe that God wrote the Bible using events and people as His writing instruments, that is clearly a subjective perception, and there is no basis for expecting other people to agree with such a claim.
The problem I have with this is that the implication that the inspiration is confined to the Bible, when I think God’s inspiration rains down upon us in a torrent in everything we see. God is everywhere and involved in all the events of our life. As God speaks using the people who wrote the text of the Bible, God also speaks to us using other people as well.
I like the idea of authority nailed down to a written form as we have in the law – for authority in the hands of human whim is too prone to abuse. And in this case it would be an authority for the the meaning and teachings of Christianity. To this I would add that God has the proprietary rights over the Bible meaning we should not be changing it as we see fit – not if we would be honest and true to Christianity.