“The importance of this study is indicated by the Bible’s being the basis of Christian belief and conduct as well as the special means by which God makes Himself and His will known to mankind. One’s belief about the Bible fashions one’s view of God and the Christian faith” (Barackman, 21).
There are two types of revelation in which God reveals Himself to mankind: natural revelation and special revelation. Natural revelation is what can be known about God by looking at creation. Special revelation is God’s Word. God uses the Scriptures to tell us everything we need to know about Him.
There are several different meanings attributed to the phrase “The Word of God” in Scripture. The first is “The Word of God” as a person, Jesus Christ. We see this demonstrated in John 1:1 and in Revelation 19:13. John 1:14 states that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory.” This is clearly speaking of Jesus Christ.
The second usage of “The Word of God” is as speech by God. We see this all throughout Scripture. We see God’s decrees (Gen. 1:3, 24; Ps. 33:6), God’s words of personal address (Gen. 2:16-17, 3:16-19; Ex. 20:1-3; Matt. 3:17), God’s words as speech through human lips (Deut. 18:18-20, Jer. 1:9), and God’s Word in written form (Ex. 31:18; Deut. 31:9-13; Josh. 24:26; 1 Cor. 14:37; 2 Peter 3:2) (Grudem, 47-50).
We will be focusing on the Word of God as it relates to the written Word of God, the Bible. The Bible is our primary resource and our basis for studying theology.
The position of First Family Church with regards to Scripture is, “The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy. It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation” (Faith and Message).
As we focus on the doctrine of inspiration we will look at the key text, 2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.”
The inspiration of Scripture is “verbal-plenary” meaning, God appointed writers to write the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit was a major part of this process as He acted on each one of the writers to ensure that while the writer wrote his own words they were concurrently the words of God.
The Bible is also completely inerrant meaning that the Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact. Inerrancy does not mean that the Bible tells us EVERY fact, but it tells us that everything the Bible tells us is definitely true.
As Christians we must uphold the authority of Scripture. The authority of Scripture means that all the words in Scripture are God’s words in such a way that to disbelieve or disobey any word of Scripture is to disbelieve or disobey God.
The Bible is our absolute authority. There is no way to appeal to a higher authority to determine if the words of Scripture are indeed the Words of God. If there were an authority to appeal to, then it would be the absolute authority. The Bible is therefore, “self-attesting.”
The Bible is written in such a way that its teachings are able to be understood by all who will read it seeking God’s help and being willing to follow it (Grudem). This is the idea of the clarity of Scripture. This idea should be encouraging to us as believers. We see in Scripture (1 Cor. 2:14) that the ability to understand Scripture is not so much an intellectual aptitude, but a moral and spiritual one. Scripture is able to be understood by those who accept its truth and are willing to receive its teachings.
The necessity of Scripture means that the Bible is necessary for knowing the gospel, for maintaining spiritual life, and for knowing God’s will, but is not necessary for knowing that God exists or for knowing something about God and moral laws (Grudem).
Human beings are not capable of being saved apart from the gospel. In order for us to know the gospel we must have the Word of God. Romans 10:13-17 demonstrates this in that the preaching of Christ (the gospel) is necessary for salvation. “The Bible is necessary for salvation then, in this sense: one must either read the gospel message in the Bible for oneself, or hear it from another person” (Grudem, 118).
The sufficiency of Scripture means that Scripture contained all the words of God he intended his people to have at each stage of redemptive history, and that it now contains everything we need God to tell us for salvation, for trusting him perfectly, and for obeying him perfectly.
That is a summary of the ideas and topics we will be covering regarding the doctrine of Scripture. Below are some definitions to the bolded terms as well as some resources for additional information/reading.
Definitions
Special Revelation – God’s words addressed to specific people, including the words of the Bible. This is to be distinguished from general (natural) revelation, which is given to all people generally (Grudem)
Divine Inspiration – the activity of the Holy Spirit whereby He enabled certain people to receive God’s special revelation and to speak it or to write it without error or omission in their language and style as the very words of God (2 Peter 1:21) (Barackman)
Verbal Inspiration – divine inspiration extended to every word of the Scriptures and to its grammatical form (Barackman)
Plenary Inspiration – every part of the sixty-six canonical books of the Bible was the product of divine inspiration to an equal degree (2 Timothy 3:16) (Barackman)
Inerrant – Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact (Grudem)
Self-attesting – the self-authenticating nature of the Bible by which it convinces us that its words are God’s words (Grudem)
Resources
- Systematic Theology – Wayne Grudem
- Practical Christian Theology – Floyd H. Barackman
- First Family Church’s “Faith and Message”
- For some extra deep reading and information you can check out the series that John Piper did with his church on Why We Believe the Bible. It has a ton of great information.