# True or False...the bible is inerrant



## ReformedWretch (Feb 16, 2005)

Why or why not?


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## C. Matthew McMahon (Feb 16, 2005)

The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man, or church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God.[9]

9. II Peter 1:19-20; II Tim. 3:16; I John 5:9; I Thess. 2:13; Rev. 1:1-2

Now the confession is not so foolish to stop there. 

How do we prove the Bible is the Word of God because it says so? There is ONLY one basis for accepting Scripture for Scripture's sake: assertion for assertion's sake. But is this "a book must be waht it says?" Hope not.

As Gerstner once said, "If everything is to be beleived simply because it says it is to be beleived, then Histler was a Messiah, the devil is an angel of light and antichrist is Christ." 

Matthew 24:23 "Then if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or 'There!' *do not believe it*."

What then?

God > Message > Miracles > Messiah

John 14:12 Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the *works* that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.

Matthew 11:2-4 and said to Him, "Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?" 4 Jesus answered and said to them, "Go and tell John the things which you *hear and see:*

John 3:2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, "Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can *do these signs* that You do unless God is with him."

Matthew 9:5-6 "For which is easier, to say, 'Your sins are forgiven you,' or to say, 'Arise and walk'? 6 "But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins" -- then *He said to the paralytic, "Arise, take up your bed, and go to your house."*

[Edited on 2-17-2005 by webmaster]


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## ReformedWretch (Feb 16, 2005)

I made this thread after reading this article;

http://www.internetmonk.com/archives/2005/02/019857.html#more


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## ReformedWretch (Feb 17, 2005)

No I didn't, but I am now. 

Thanks Josh.


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## cupotea (Feb 17, 2005)

I can appreciate that the Bible is God's word, because of the verses Matthew noted. But what I don't understand is how we know which books are God's word, and which aren't. I mean, yeah, Paul wrote that God has given us His word, but he obviously didn't mean the New Testament per se, because there wasn't one yet!

What I can't get my head around are the other first/second century gospels (Gospel of Thomas, especially). What can you say to those? How can you discredit them? Should you? I mean, are they credible historical sources?

One reason I've even considerred them is that for one class I had to buy a Bible with "apocrypha", which are a bunch of books in between the Old and New Testament that aren't in any of my other Bibles! How the heck could that happen?!


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## Mrs.SolaFide (Feb 17, 2005)

We know that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, becaus God is sovereign and inerrant. Thinking that fallible man could somehow thwart the will of the Almighty is removing his sovereignty. God gets EXACTLY what he wants, so the books that are in the Bible are in there for a reason. The ones that didn't make the cut were left out according to his sovereign plan & are to be regarded as unispired by the Holy Spirit. The (Protestant) canon of scriptures are the ONLY authoritative voice of our God. I would look to the first chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith for a more detailed explanation.


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## daveb (Feb 17, 2005)

True.

The nature of God (being truth) and the nature of the Bible (the words of God) require that we view the original manuscripts as truthful and without any error. The fact that Bible is God-breathed and written under the superintendence of the Holy Spirit ensures lack of error. Errors happen because of mistakes and God does not make mistakes.


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## C. Matthew McMahon (Feb 17, 2005)

Remember, though, prudence played a huge part in determining the canon. For exmaple, writers had to either be an apostle or someone hwo accompanied an apostle. They had to be witnessess of te resurrection. The written material could not contradict the OT or other books accepted. Etc.


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## daveb (Feb 17, 2005)

http://www.graceonlinelibrary.org/etc/printer-friendly.asp?ID=131

Here's an article by Bahnsen on canonicity. He addresses why the apocrypha is not accepted as canonical.


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## cupotea (Feb 17, 2005)

Then what's with Luther? You might remember I posted a thread asking where he criticized James. I found it later; it seems he more than once referred to the Book of James as "the epistle of straw". I don't know what his justification was--his reason was that it contradicts Paul's letters since it says works are important for justification--but I'm not sure how he can just throw a book of the NT out the window. 

Matt: How do you know how they put together the NT? Is there a link for writings from the Council of Nicea?


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## cupotea (Feb 17, 2005)

> _Originally posted by MissSolaFide_
> The ones that didn't make the cut were left out according to his sovereign plan & are to be regarded as unispired by the Holy Spirit.



That's another thing that spooks me: all these new (well, ancient) Christian writings that have been turning up. Obviously, God chose for them to come to light, else they would've remained buried. How are we supposed to respond to them? What are they supposed to mean to us?


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## Mrs.SolaFide (Feb 17, 2005)

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "new (well, ancient)" works, but my view is unchanged. There were specific guidlelines for the canon of scripture which God in his sovereignty orchestrated. You could just as easily say, "God has allowed heresies x, y, and z to come to light. How do we deal with them? What do they mean to us?" We determine heresy by the Scriptures that God has given to us. We measure EVERYTHING by the Scriptures that God has given to us. The Bible we have is the Bible God wants us to have. Anything outside of this collection cannot be regarded as authoritative because God left it out for a reason. He didn't want it in there. :bigsmile:


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## Puritanhead (Feb 17, 2005)

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.... -2 Timothy 3:16 NKJV



Because, the Bible says so--- is that circular enough reasoning for you?

:bigsmile:

[Edited on 2-17-2005 by Puritanhead]


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## Puritanhead (Feb 17, 2005)

> _Originally posted by Cottonball_
> Then what's with Luther? You might remember I posted a thread asking where he criticized James. I found it later; it seems he more than once referred to the Book of James as "the epistle of straw". I don't know what his justification was--his reason was that it contradicts Paul's letters since it says works are important for justification--but I'm not sure how he can just throw a book of the NT out the window.



James White does a masterful exegesis In my humble opinion of the epistle of James in his book _The God Who Justifies_. Indeed, faith without works is dead as a geniune saving faith inevitably yields fruits of obedience. There will be forensic evidence of a living faith and ascertainable by one's good works in the eyes of other men (Eph. 2:10).

[Edited on 2-18-2005 by Puritanhead]


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## Mrs.SolaFide (Feb 17, 2005)

It is my understanding that James describes works that justify our faith before men, not before God. From genuine faith, good works naturally come - works that can be observed by men. God does not require faith+works to be justified before him, because faith + works = works.

Also, as a presuppositionalist, I think that "because the Bible says so" is a great answer !


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## cupotea (Feb 17, 2005)

Guys, I wasn't saying Luther was right. Calvin didn't dismiss James because he interpreted "works" to mean works that spring from faith. What I'm asking is HOW Luther justified calling a book of the NT "straw" when he knew it's the word of God.

As for the new/ancient texts, I meant primarily the Nag Hammadi texts. In the 1920s or 30s, I don't remember the exact year, a library from about 400 was found in Egypt containing all these old manuscripts of early Christian texts. The manuscripts were from 400 but the texts were probably even older. In my opinion, this discovery IS a big deal.


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Feb 17, 2005)

Are you referring to this:



> The Nag Hammadi Library, a collection of thirteen ancient codices containing over fifty texts, was discovered in upper Egypt in 1945. This immensely important discovery includes a large number of primary Gnostic scriptures -- texts once thought to have been entirely destroyed during the early Christian struggle to define "orthodoxy" -- scriptures such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Truth.


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## cupotea (Feb 17, 2005)

Andrew: yup.


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Feb 17, 2005)

This link explains (and advocates) the gnostic documents that make up the Nag Hammadi Library:

http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html

It should be evident by the description of these documents that they promote heresy. This is an error that the early Church had to battle from the beginning, hence the origin of the Apostles Creed and the exclusion of these false gospels from the canon. Gnosticism was one of the earliest heresies in the Christian era, but it hasn't gone away. It serves the purposes of gnostics today to promote false gospels.


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## heartoflesh (Feb 17, 2005)

One of the amazing things about the formation of the New Testament Canon is the slow and almost imperceptible way in which it was formed. The books that were eventualy "canonized" were simply the books that the church was already using as Scripture. In other words, the canon formed the church, not the church that formed the canon (as Roman Catholics would maintain). The formation of the canon wasn't a miraculous intervention of God, like man would expect. We would expect God to drop the canon out of the sky with his official stamp on it (like the Mormon Scriptures). This is man's way of thinking. But God's way of forming the canon was much more......"organic"?


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## cupotea (Feb 17, 2005)

> _Originally posted by VirginiaHuguenot_
> It should be evident by the description of these documents that they promote heresy. This is an error that the early Church had to battle from the beginning, hence the origin of the Apostles Creed and the exclusion of these false gospels from the canon. Gnosticism was one of the earliest heresies in the Christian era, but it hasn't gone away. It serves the purposes of gnostics today to promote false gospels.



The thing is, though, the doctrines in those texts vary. For my religion class I'm comparing John 1:1-18 to Gnostic texts. A lot of scholars have long since concluded that the John prologue is Gnostic hymn derived from the "Trimorphic Protennoia" (one of the Nag Hammadi texts). Obviously, my thesis is that it isn't. Anyway, I've come across a theory that the library probably belonged to someone curious, because the doctrines in the texts are all different. Therefore, it was probably a collection of interesting books for study, rather a collection of Gnostic texts. You can probably tell that just by reading them. I've only read The Trimorphic Protennoia, but I've read about some of the others. "Pistis Sophia" sounds nutty because it's about Eve redeeming herself through Mary Magdalene or something wacky like that. The Gospel of Mary is about Magdalene again and her, ahem, close relationship with Jesus. Then there's the Gospel of Thomas, which, from what I understand, is a biography of Christ, that includes his youth and even has a number of quotations from Matthew and Luke (the Gospel "Q" as it were, dismiss that as a source if you will). And Trimorphic Protennoia is really nutty because, well, for one, God is a woman and she comes down to Earth 3 times and says she came into Jesus' body. Anyhow, you can see how these texts are pretty different. What I wonder is how much credit we can give them. There are the balony ones about Mary Magdalene, but what about the Gospel of Thomas, which is so different?


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## WrittenFromUtopia (Feb 17, 2005)

Let's not forget that the NT doesn't just equate the OT as Scripture, but even itself!

2 Peter 3:15-16 categorizes *Paul's writings* with the rest of Scripture.

1 Timothy 5:18 cites both Deuteronomy 25:4 and *Luke 10:7* as Scripture.

The book of *Revelation* claims divine origin (1:1-3) and employs the term *"prophecy"* in the Old Testament sense (22:9-10; 18).


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## C. Matthew McMahon (Feb 17, 2005)

> Matt: How do you know how they put together the NT? Is there a link for writings from the Council of Nicea?



You want to deal with some of the introductory works ont he issue first. Then some of the more complex books will help. But a good intro to how all that works is "The Canon of Scripture" by FF Bruce. Also "A General Introduction to the Bible" by Geisler and Nix is also helpful.


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## ReformedWretch (Feb 17, 2005)

> _Originally posted by WrittenFromUtopia_
> Let's not forget that the NT doesn't just equate the OT as Scripture, but even itself!
> 
> 2 Peter 3:15-16 categorizes *Paul's writings* with the rest of Scripture.
> ...



Good points!


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## Larry Hughes (Feb 17, 2005)

A key thing to remember is that Luther was not doubting the word of God. That was not his question at all. Luther didn't do this causually. One also has to put it in the context of the church at that time in which works and good deeds salvation was the highest problem, so much that the Gospel had been obscured. Something that is occurring today quite a bit ironically.

His question was, "What makes up the word of God? Do we have an accurate Canon?" A question that even today we spend time defending as numerous scholarly books on the subject bear evidence to. The fact that we ourselves ponder, "How do we know we have the right Cannon?" Betrays the question. Otherwise, why answer it? So, its not an unusual question - we just tend to ask it a bit differently than Luther did. He ultimately accepted the epistle and actually quotes it.

Luther's question was more like the Berean's in which he searched the Scriptures to see if these things were true. The Berean's of course searched the OT to see if these NT claims, which we know have written and assembled, were true. But Luther never questioned the Word of God.


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## larryjf (Feb 17, 2005)

I believe God has perfectly preserved His word, the scriptures.
However, that does not imply that i believe we can perfectly "extract" it.

In other words, the pure and perfect word is out there - But our compiling the manuscripts into families and using different methods of translating and pulling together is not perfect.

[Edited on 2-18-2005 by larryjf]


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## Scott Bushey (Feb 18, 2005)

> _Originally posted by larryjf_
> I believe God has perfectly preserved His word, the scriptures.
> However, that does not imply that i believe we can perfectly "extract" it.
> 
> ...



i.e. Zondervan!


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