If indeed the proper interpretation of the Old and the New Testaments is designed to enable the modern reader or hearer of the Bible to discern, hear, and heed the Word of God, it now becomes necessary to ask:
Whether and in what sense Christians can and do affirm that the Bible itself is the Word of God
Whether and to what extent the Bible is dependable, reliable, or truthful
I. THE BIBLE AS THE WORD OF GOD#
The statement that the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments are “the Word of God” is more explicitly to be found in the documents of postbiblical Christianity than in the Scriptures themselves. This is true even when the focus is on what New Testament writers may have declared about the Old Testament writings.
The Old Testament prophets repeatedly asserted that “the word of the Lord” had come to them so as to enable them to declare that word to Israel/Judah. But those assertions were not seemingly directed to the written form of the prophetic books. Psalm 119 repeatedly refers to the “word” of the Lord.
In the New Testament,
The largest number of usages of the terms “the Word (logos) of God,” “the word (logos) of the Lord,” and “the word (rhima) of God” apply to the “word of God” in the sense of the gospel, or the preached message concerning Jesus
The second largest number refer to Jesus Christ himself as “the Word of God”
The two passages that may possibly refer to the Old Testament Scriptures as “the word of God” are not indisputably clear.
Hence there are three types of uses of the term “word of God” in the New Testament: the evangelical, the Christological, and possibly the scriptural.
The evangelical usages include both of the Greek terms translated “word”: logos and rhima.
The “word (logos) of the Lord” seems to refer to the gospel as preached by Paul and others in 1 Thess. 1:8; 2 Thess. 3: 1; and Acts 13:44.
The “word (logos) of God” in 1 Pet. 1:23 also refers to the gospel.
In Luke 5:1 the same term refers to teaching by Jesus, and in 1 Tim. 4:5 probably to a blessing before the eating of food.
The term “the word (rhima) of God” seems to mean the gospel in Eph. 6: 17 and in Heb. 6:5
In Heb. 11:3 it refers to the divine word that issued in the creation.
The “word (rhima) of Christ” in Rom. 10: 17 probably means preaching concerning Jesus Christ
“The word (rhima) of the Lord” in 1 Pet. 1:25, a quotation from Isa. 40:8b, appears in a context wherein the gospel has been mentioned.
The Christological uses of God’s Logos 1:1 (“the Word of life”), from which some demur; and Rev. 19:13 (“the Word of God”).
The only New Testament texts utilizing the term “the word of God” that can possibly refer to the Old Testament Scriptures are John 10:35 and Heb. 4: 12, both of which use logos, but the former can also be understood as Yahweh’s pronouncing Israel’s judges as “gods” and the latter can also be understood as a reference to the gospel. 2 Tim. 3: 16-17 and 2 Pet. 1:20-21 do not contain either the term “the word of God” or the term “the word of the Lord.”
The affirmation that the Bible “is the Word of God” was not so common during the patristic and medieval periods as during the Reformation and post-Reformation periods.
When the early Fathers referred to the Bible as the Word of God, according to Robert Preus, such a statement meant that “God is the real author [auctor] of the Scriptures” and that auctor “meant one who produces or effects something.
In his defense before the Diet of Worms Luther equated the Scriptures with the Word of God. For John Calvin no other writings can properly share the title, “the Word of God.”
The explicit confession of the Bible as the Word of God appeared more often in Reformed confessions than in Lutheran, Anglican, or Eastern Orthodox confessions.
According to the First Helvetic Confession (1536), “The holy, divine, biblical Scripture, which is the Word of God, delivered by the Holy Spirit and brought forth to the world through the prophets and apostles, is the most ancient, most complete, and highest of all teaching…”
The French Confession of Faith (1559) declared that “the Word contained in these books has proceeded from God, and receives its authority from him alone, and not from men.”
In the Second Helvetic Confession (1566) one reads: “We believe and confess the Canonical Scriptures of the holy prophets and apostles of both Testaments to be the true Word of God, and to have sufficient authority of themselves, not of men. For God himself spoke to the fathers, prophets, and apostles and still speaks to us through the Holy Scriptures.”
According to the Irish Articles of Religion (1615), “The ground of our religion and the rule of faith and all saving truth is the Word of God, contained in the holy Scripture.”
The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647) in its long article on the Bible stated that the church gives testimony that Holy Scripture is “the Word of God” and that the Bible is called “the Word of God written” because it has God as “the Author.”
During the modem period some usages of biblical criticism have led to the denial of the truth that the Bible is the Word of God and to a consequent conclusion that the Bible is essentially a human document. In response to that trend, some other defenders of the divine inspiration, trustworthiness, and authority of the Bible have almost gone to the opposite extreme by downplaying, if not denying, that the Bible consists of the words of human beings.
Hence the Bible is at the same time the Word of God and the words of human beings.
II. THE DEPENDABILITY OR TRUTHFULNESS OF THE BIBLE#
To select the terms “dependability” and “truthfulness” for use in reference to this topic means to prefer such terms to the other major alternative terms, namely, “reliability,” “infallibility,” and “inerrancy.”
By such terms is meant that the books of the Bible are able to be depended upon and are worthy of trust with respect to all that God intends in and through the Holy Scriptures.
These terms mean at least that they are fully adequate and altogether sufficient to “make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15b, NIV).
Because so many contemporary theologians insist that the term “inerrancy” must be used for this topic, it will be helpful to examine what representative theologians who employ the term “inerrancy” mean by that term.
Millard Erickson has defined “inerrancy” as “the doctrine that the Bible is fully truthful in all of its teachings.”
According to Roger Robert Nicole (1915-), inerrancy means
that at no point in what was originally given were the biblical writers allowed to make statements or endorse viewpoints which are not in conformity with objective truth. This applies at any level at which they make pronouncement… Obviously, this does not confer a divine endorsement on all statements made by all the individuals who appear in the drama of the Bible… Similarly, some written documents quoted in Scripture would not necessarily receive divine endorsement.
Paul David Feinberg (1938-) has defined the term as follows:
Inerrancy means that when all facts are known, the Scriptures in their original autographs and properly interpreted will be shown to be wholly true in everything that they affirm, whether that has to do with doctrine or morality or with the social, physical, or life sciences.
A. HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE#
Heightened interest in the subject of biblical inerrancy during the last three decades has led to greater curiosity concerning the history of this doctrine. Unfortunately there is still not available a comprehensive study or series of studies covering the entire history of Christian doctrine. There is general agreement that for many centuries Christians have held to the truthfulness of the Holy Scriptures.
Augustine of Hippo in his Epistle 82 can be cited:
Only to those books which are called canonical have I learned to give honor so that I believe most firmly that no author in these books made any error in writing. Holy Scripture in no part is disharmonious.
Martin Luther can also be quoted:
Natural reason produces heresy and error. Faith teaches and adheres to the pure truth. He who adheres to the Scriptures will find that they do not lie or deceive. Scripture cannot err. The Scriptures have never erred.
Biblical inerrancy as a theological issue today is much more controversial among and receives much more attention from Evangelical Protestants than from Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, or Liberal Protestants. This fact alone may account for the lack of intensive research concerning biblical inerrancy or dependability in all the Christian communions. Nor does the citation of the Fathers and the Reformers alone settle all the contemporary questions.
For those who advocate a tightly drawn definition of biblical inerrancy, the doctrine is seen as the “corollary of the doctrine of full inspiration” of the Bible and as “the completion of the doctrine of Scripture.” For those who are more intent to dwell on the problems posed by various biblical texts there is hesitation concerning the necessity for and the propriety of a tightly drawn definition.
B. THE LEVELS ON WHICH THE TRUTHFULNESS OF THE BIBLE MAY BE AFFIRMED#
The question concerning the truthfulness of the Bible may be raised on at least three basic levels, and the affirmations concerning its truthfulness may thus be made on the same three levels.
1. The Reliability of the Present-day Text of the Old Testament and of the New Testament in Respect to Its Transmission as Books from the Hands of Its Human Authors
Textual critical studies of the New Testament have led to an increasingly certain critically produced text of the Greek New Testament, and textual critical studies of the Old Testament, augmented by the discoveries at Qumran, have reached a similar result for the Hebrew-Aramaic text of the Old Testament. Present-day Christians can have a very high level of certitude that the texts of both testaments now available to biblical scholars and from which contemporary translations are being made into various languages are dependably accurate reproductions of the originals or autographs.
There are some who cling to the use of the Textus Receptus. Even so, the question of the reliability of the biblical text constitutes no substantive problem and no theological issue for Christians today, and the problems encountered by biblical scholars seem to be found both in the autographs and in the modem critical texts.
2. The Truthfulness of the Bible in Respect to Its Basic Religious and Moral Message: The Level of Doctrine and Ethics
This is the aspect of the trustworthiness or truthfulness of the Scriptures which has received the greatest emphasis in the past. Reformed and Baptist confessions of faith are replete with affirmations and assurances that the Bible contains the saving truth of God and is the sufficient source for such truth. Evangelical Protestants today give evidence of a high degree of unity on this aspect of biblical reliability.
t is understandable, therefore, how the publication of Paul KingJewett’s ( 1919-91) Man as Male and Female, in which the Evangelical author concluded that the apostle Paul was wrong in teaching the subordination of wives to husbands, would evoke criticism from Evangelicals and be seen as a departure from this canon of biblical dependability in the area of Christian ethics. Daniel Payton Fuller (1925-) offered a “corrective” to B. B. Warfield’s position by suggesting that “verbal plenary inspiration involves accommodation to the thinking of the original readers in non-revelational [paleontological, cosmological, meterological, biological] matters.”
3. The Reliability of the Bible in All Chronological, Geographical, Literary, and Scientific Matters: The Level of Total or Complete Inerrancy
This third level of biblical reliability constitutes the crux of the present-day controversy among Evangelical Protestants. Whereas there is a high level of agreement as to biblical dependability on the first and second levels, there are noteworthy differences as to the nature and extent of dependability on this third level.
Early in the twentieth century B. B. Warfield and James Orr differed on this issue, the former affirming and the latter denying biblical inerrancy on the third level. The issue was pressed even more vigorously during the 1970s and the 1980s
Harold Lindsell (1913-98), Edward Joseph Young (1907-68), Kenneth Sealer Kantzer, Francis August Schaeffer (1912-84), John Warwick Montgomery (1931-), John H. Gerstner, Clark Harold Pinnock (1937-), Carl F. H. Henry, and James I. Packer defended both the term and the concept of total biblical inerrancy as a necessary and true Christian doctrine
Dewey M. Beegle, Jack B. Rogers, Donald K. McKim, and William Sanford LaSor (1911-) advanced arguments against such a position and in favor of a more restricted or limited conclusion about biblical dependability on the third level.
As the debate continued, there was some evidence that among the former group of authors there emerged some differences between strict or consistent inerrantists (Lindsell, Young, Kantzer, Schaeffer, Packer) and qualified inerrantists (Pinnock, Bernard L. Ramm).
The present-day advocates of a strict or consistent biblical inerrancy on the third level have rather uniformly insisted that inerrancy applies only to the autographs, or originals, of the books of the Bible. But Beegle has pointed out that J. A Quenstedt, seventeenth-century Lutheran theologian, taught that the copies of the Old Testament which were used by the apostle Paul were reckoned by Paul as theopneustos (2 Tim. 3:16), inasmuch as the autographs had been lost and yet “careful transcribing had preserved the precise sense and wording of the autographs.”
The most difficult issues connected with the current debate concerning inerrancy focus not, however, on the autographs of the Bible but rather on the various problems, yet not completely resolved, which biblical scholars have cited and discussed in reference to certain texts in the Bible.
C. THE DEPENDABILITY OF THE BIBLE AND THE PHENOMENA OF THE BIBLE: UNRESOLVED PROBLEMS ON THE THIRD LEVEL#
Especially during the twentieth century biblical scholars took note of and made lists of problems, difficulties, or enigmas connected with specific passages in the Old and the New Testaments which, according to those listing such problems, have not been resolved or adequately explained.
At the beginning of the century, Marcus Dods listed some seven “irreconcilable discrepancies between the four [Gospel] accounts of some of our Lord’s sayings and actions.”
These included variations in the title placed over the cross of Jesus, in the accounts of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances, in the anointing of Jesus’ body, as to the stone rolled away from the tomb, as to the date of the Last Supper and the crucifixion, and concerning the “except for fornication” phrase (Matt. 19:9) and the attribution of a text from Isaiah to Malachi and of a text in Zechariah to Jeremiah.
Dewey Beegle in 1963 set forth and discussed in some detail problems connected with ten biblical texts, three in the Old Testament and three in the New Testament, with four problems related to texts in each testament.
The Old Testament difficulties included the span of time for the genealogies of Genesis 5, the length of the reign of King Pekah of Israel, and the dating ofthe reign of King Hezekiah of Judah.
The New Testament difficulties included the number of rooster crowings at the time of Peter’s denial of Jesus, Jude’s quotation of the intertestamental book of 1 Enoch as if the word of the Enoch of Genesis, and Jude’s reporting that the archangel Michael contended with Satan for the body of Moses when the canonical Old Testament did not mention such but the noncanonical Assumption of Moses seemingly did.
The difficulties spanning the testaments included the age of Terah when his son Abram left Haran, the burial place of Jacob, the length of the residency of the Israelite people in Egypt, and Paul’s quotation ( 1 Cor. 3: 19) of Eliphaz in the book of Job by stating “For it is written.”
In 1976 William LaSor cited five difficulties not mentioned by Dods or Beegle: the dating of the Exodus, differences in numbers between SamueVKings and Chronicles, the measurements of the laver in Solomon’s temple, variations in the two genealogies of Jesus, and the number of angels at Jesus’ tomb.
In 1983 Millard Erickson added three more: differences among the Synoptists as to whether Jesus did or did not instruct his disciples to take a staff, verbal variations as to the cry of the multitude at the triumphal entry of Jesus, and the reconciliation of the teaching that God neither tempts nor is tempted (Jas. 1:13) with the report that God sent a evil spirit on King Saul so that Saul attempted to murder David (1 Sam. 18:10).
Prior to the intensification of the debate about biblical inerrancy, Evangelical Protestant authors had written monographs in which they sought to provide explanations or answers to the difficulties or “alleged discrepancies” found in the Bible. In 1980 Gleason Leonard Archer, Jr. (1916), sought to refute in detail the alleged discrepancies cited by LaSor and by Beegle. More often Archer advanced alternative explanations of the data, but sometimes he attributed the discrepancy to scribal or transmissional error.
D. POSSIBLE ATTITUDES OR STANCES CONCERNING PROBLEMS OR DIFFICULTIES IN THE BIBLE VIS-À-VIS THE DEPENDABILITY OF THE BIBLE#
At least five different attitudes or stances may be taken in regard to the difficulties or problems previously cited.
1. Denying the Existence of Such Problems
It is possible to deny the genuine existence of such problems, possibly on the assumption that they have been conjured up by extreme practitioners of biblical criticism and hence ordinary Christians can dismiss these as nonexistent. This seems to be an unrealistic position for serious students of the Bible who are also earnest Christians with a high view of the Scriptures.
2. Ignoring Such Problems While Acknowledging That They Do Exist
Such a posture tends to postpone some responsible consideration of these matters. B. B. Warfield’s stance may be so classified.
To declare that none of these problems is able to overthrow the Christian doctrine of Scripture may indeed be a true statement, but such a statement, made to sanction a refusal to give attention to the various problems raised, may constitute an inadequate strategy.
3. Pronouncing These Problems or Difficulties as Specific “Errors” in the Bible
This position has been commonly taken by representatives of Liberal Protestantism, and Neo-Orthodox Protestantism, by some Roman Catholics, and by a few Evangelical Protestants such as Dewey Beegle.
It tends to finalize critical judgments concerning these problems and to assume that there can be no solutions, either now or in the future. Primarily for Evangelical Protestants, with their teaching about the dependability of the Scriptures and their serious interest in the problems themselves, does this position constitute a major hurdle.
4. Working Out Some Theory of Harmonization between Biblical Inerrancy and the Problems or Difficulties
Erickson has identified at least three types of theories of harmonization.
a. There is “absolute inerrancy,” according to which the Bible is seen as providing “a considerable amount of exact scientific or histori- cal data” and the problems “can and must be explained.” Exponents of this theory include Louis Gaussen, Edward J. Young, and Harold Lindsell.
b. There is “full inerrancy,” or the view that the Bible’s references to historical and scientific matters are “popular descriptions” and “not necessarily exact” and yet “are correct.” This view has been advanced by Roger Nicole.
c. There is “source inerrancy,” or the position that inspiration and inerrancy guarantee “only an acrurate reproducing of the sources which the Scripture writer employed, but not a correcting of them.” Such an explanation could serve as a theory of harmonization. Edward J. Carnell discussed this view.
5. Leaving the Problems Open for Future Study and Added Evidence without Reckoning Them as “Errors” and withou Forced or Dubious “Solutions”
This has been called the posture of “moderate harmonization.” It encourages the resolution of any of the problems that can be truly resolved and is willing to leave for future resolution, especially through archaeological or other discovery and/or historical and philological research, the rest of the problems.
Everett Harrison (1902-99) and Erickson have opted for this approach. This posture can appropriate and put into a different context the words of the pastor-teacher of the Pilgrims, John Robinson (c.1575-1625), who said that “the Lord had more truth and light yet to break forth out of his Holy Word.”
CONCLUSION#
In conclusion, we need to make three statements.
First, the truthfulness of the Bible is an important Christian doctrine worthy of the serious and responsible attention of Christians. It helps to explain why Christians can rightly affirm that the Bible is the Word of God.
Second, none of the problems or difficulties connected with specific biblical texts and posed in relation to dependability/trustworthiness/infallibility/inerrancy on the third level jeopardizes any basic Christian doctrine unless it should be inerrancy.
Third, those who engage in theological controversy and warfare over these matters, insisting on the rightness of their own conclusions and the wrongness of those conclusions advanced by others, stand under the mandate of Jesus Christ concerning love for and among his disciples (John 13:34-35).