Can We Trust Our Bible?

Sometime ago there appeared a picture in a religious magazine. Its purpose was to convey a truth. An elderly man and his wife were shown seated at a table reading the Bible. Underneath were the words which the wife spoke to her husband: “Read it again, where it says, ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’”

An elderly couple, knowing that their time upon this earth would not last much longer, were finding comfort in the words of Christ. They were facing the future, looking even beyond the grave with hope, for they were placing all their confidence in the truthfulness of what Jesus Christ had spoken.

“At what time I shall speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy.

If that nation against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.

And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it. If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then will I repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.

… Thus saith the Lord; behold I frame evil against you and devise a device against you; return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and doings good.

Jeremiah 18:7–11

Can the Bible be trusted today? Did Jesus Christ really speak the words which brought such consolation to this elderly couple? And, if He did speak those words, how do we know they are trustworthy? How do we know that the accounts of Christ in the Bible have been accurately transmitted to us? Has not modern science and scholarship generally shown that the old-fashioned view of God as Creator of the world is one that can no longer be held by thinking people? Is not the Bible filled with unscientific statements?

Questions such as these are constantly being raised, and they have had a share in creating doubt and uncertainty in the minds of men.

There are some who flatly assert that the Bible is nothing more than a human book, subject to the limitations that accompany everything human, and that the traditional view of the Bible as the infallible Word of God simply must be abandoned. There are others today who tell us that the Bible is the Word of God, but they go on to assert that we cannot trust all of its statements. When it speaks of spiritual matters, they assure us, we may trust it, bu we cannot expect to find scientific accuracy in matters of detail. In the realm of faith and practice, the Bible, we are told, is a trustworthy guide, but in questions of history, geography and the like, it contains its share of errors.

To say the least, these are not comforting assertions. If the Bible is like every other book, in that it is merely a human production, it follows that there is no point in turning to the Bible to hear the voice of the living God. And if the Bible is trustworthy only in matters of faith and life but not in historical points, then the question immediately arises, “Who is to decide what is a matter of faith and life?”

Furthermore, even a cursory reading of the Bible makes it clear that Christianity is an historical religion, based upon what God has done here upon this earth in history. If, therefore, we begin to assert that the Bible is not completely trustworthy in historical matters, it is pertinent to ask where his trustworthiness begins and where it ends.

The resurrection of Christ, for example, is an historical fact. There are some, however, who think that we can have Christianity without the physical, bodily resurrection of the Lord. Are they correct when they tell us that a scientifically-trained mind cannot accept the doctrine of the resurrection? What is to be the position of the every-day Bible-believing Christian as to these many questions constantly being raised?

One thing is clear. If we are to be earnest Christians we cannot ignore these questions. Nor need we ignore them. We can give to every one that asks us a reason for the hope that is within us (see I Pet. 3:15). And we may turn to the Bible to learn what claims it makes for itself. One need not search far in the Scriptures to discover the claim that they make as to their nature and origin, but we shall confine ourselves to the consideration of just two passages.

In writing to Timothy, Paul makes two assertions about the Scriptures (II Tim. 3:16). He speaks of all Scripture as being inspired and profitable. Scholars have discussed the meaning of this text, and while there are differences of opinion and much has been written on the subject, nevertheless, we may say that all Scripture is “inspired of God.” Paul, of course, wrote in Greek, and the Greek word which he uses at this point is theopneustos. The rendering “inspired of God” is an unhappy one, for inspiration is the breathing into something, and that is not what the Greek word here means. A much better and more accurate rendering is “God-breathed.” When Paul asserts that all Scripture is God-breathed, what he means is that all Scripture was spoken by God. To put it simply, all Scripture is God’s Word.

There are passages elsewhere in the Bible which say the same thing. For example, we read phrases such as “And God said,” “And God spake all these. words, saying,” “The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.” These all attest the great fact that the Scripture is the product of the divine breath.

This emphasis, we may note, is quite contrary to that of men today. Today men speak about the human side of the Bible but say comparatively little about its divine origin. And when they do speak of the divine origin, they very often do so disparagingly, suggesting that the Bible did not drop down from heaven.

Paul, however, thought that the important thing for Timothy to know was that the Scriptures are from God, for when he declares that they are “God-breathed,” he is asserting their divine origin about as clearly as can be done.

What a strange statement this utterance of Paul’s is! He says not a word about the human writers of the Bible nor about the situation in which the writings came into existence. Nor does he concern: himself about the types of literature and writing that are found in the Scriptures. His one concern is that Timothy should know that the Scriptures are of divine origin; they are God-breathed.

In the second place, Paul declares that the Scriptures are profitable. This also is an emphasis not heard often today. Paul does not tell us that only Certain Scriptures are profitable, nor that only those parts of the Bible that are immediately connected with the plan of salvation are profitable. Instead, Paul declares that all Scripture is profitable.

We may indeed be thankful that he has so spoken, for we are tempted to pick and choose in the Bible. Naturally some parts appeal to us more than others, and we are likely to concentrate upon those parts. We have our favorite passages, and the result too often is that we allow large portions of the Bible to be neglected. But this is wrong. We neglect the Bible at our own loss.

What Paul says is that all of Scripture is profitable. If we heed his words we shall read all of Scripture, and the strange thing is that, as we do this, we make the discovery that Paul is right. At first sight it may not appear to us that some portions of the Bible are of particular significance and relevance, but the more we read the Bible, the more we realize that all of it, without exception, is for our learning and admonition.

As a companion to the passage in Timothy we may consider briefly Peter’s words in which he tells us about the human writers of the Bible (II Pet. 1:21). Peter speaks of the prophetic aspect of the Bible and tells us that it came not by the will of man. This is a clear-cut rejection of the idea of a merely human origination of the Scriptures. There are times when one must be negative in order that the positive truth may more clearly be understood.

Although the Bible is not of human origination, nevertheless, so Peter argues, it was written by holy men of old, and these holy men wrote not on their own authority but as they were being borne along by the Holy Spirit. The figure is striking, for it suggests that the human writers of the Bible Were actually being carried by the Holy Spirit as they wrote. This, of course, implies that they were completely subject to Him. We may accurately bring out the force of the passage if we say that the writers of the Bible were superintended by the Holy Spirit so that they wrote precisely what He desired them to write.

In the light of these two passages we may assert that the Scriptures are the very Word of God and that they were written down by holy men of God’s choosing who were superintended by the Holy Spirit as they wrote, so that the resultant product was the written Word of God.

In the view of Scripture which we have just presented there is a mystery. The thinking person will ask how it is possible for the Bible to originate with God, and yet for men to write down the Scripture, unless these men were mere secretaries who worked in a mechanical fashion as they wrote what was dictated to them. Indeed, there are those who claim that we who accept the Bible do believe in a “dictation” theory of inspiration. But the Bible itself makes it clear that the human writers whom God chose were not treated as so many typewriters.

In the writing of the Bible, God used their own personalities and characteristics, so that in a very real sense different portions of the Bible may be attributed to them. The style of Paul is certainly unique, as is that of John. These men were not mere robots, but living responsible writers, who, although superintended by the Spirit of God, nevertheless, wrote the passages of Scripture attributed to them. The Bible therefore is the Word of God given to us through the media of human writers.

If, however, the Bible is the Word of God, then it follows that all that God has spoken is trustworthy. We do a man a grave injustice if, when he speaks the truth, we refuse to believe his words. We do God a grave injustice if we refuse to believe His words. It follows as the night the day that if God has spoken a word, that word must be true. To assert otherwise is to fall into the grossest kind of idolatry; it is to exalt the opinion of the creature above the truth of the Creator.

For this reason we speak of the infallibility and inerrancy of the Scriptures, and in so doing we are taking a biblical position. If the Bible is God’s Word, so the Church has reasoned, what it teaches must be the truth and we must believe that truth. The Bible cannot deceive us. Thus, men speak of the infallibility of the Bible. This simply means that the Bible does not deceive. Whatever the Bible teaches is to be believed because the Bible teaches the truth; it is infallible in all that it says. This means that no matter what the Bible says, we may believe it and not be deceived.

If the Bible teaches that Adam was created by God (Gen. 2:7), we may accept that fact with the assurance that we are accepting the truth. If the Bible teaches that Moses wrote (Mark 12:26; John 5:46, 47), we may assuredly believe that fact; if the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ rose from the dead (John 20), we may believe that truth and not fear that we shall later have to abandon it. The Bible is infallible.

The Bible is also inerrant. This means that whatever the Scriptures say they tell the truth, and their statements are to be trusted. When they tell us that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin (I Pet. 1:19), we may rest assured that this is true and that later investigations of men will not prove the contrary. When the Bible speaks of Tirhakah in connection with Sennacherib (II Kings 19:9), we may likewise be sure that it is speaking the truth and that, even though we today may not know as much about Tirhakah as we might wish, what the Scripture says about this ancient king is in strict accord with the fact.

Likewise, when the Bible says that God spoke, “Let there be light” (Gen. 1:3), we need not fear that science will some day make the discovery that this assertion is not true. We simply accept what the Bible says because the Bible is the Word of God.

It has not been our purpose to discuss difficulties involved in certain details of the Bible itself. That there are difficulties no thinking person would deny. But these difficulties seem almost trifling when compared with those that are inherent in any other position than that the Bible is God’s Word.

The Christian may place his confidence in the words of the Bible and he need not be dismayed by the many attacks that are being made today upon it. If the Bible is the Word of God — and because of the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit the Christian is compelled to believe that it is — then it follows that the Bible is infallible and inerrant and that we may repose our confidence not merely in some, but in all of its wondrous declarations. For it is truly the holy Scripture which is able to make one wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus

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