God’s Word is the means by which He speaks to us, and offers us grace through revelation. In order for us to receive the value of Scripture, we first have to believe that it is valuable. Not just valuable, but we have to trust that the Bible is truly God-breathed (2 Timothy 3.16). There is a reason why many attacks on the Christian faith are aimed here; to cast doubt on Scripture casts doubt on everything that God has given us. Without His Word, God becomes unknowable.
The attack on Scripture has become the most effective means of creating confusion and doubt for Christians. This usually comes in one of 3 forms:
1. To deny the inspiration of Scripture | the WORD is not God’s
2. To deny the inerrancy of Scripture | the WORD is not perfect
3. To deny the inclusion of Scripture | the WORD is not defined
I want to look at all 3 of these very briefly to give clear description of why we can trust the Bibles we hold in our hands.
Deny the inspiration of Scripture | the WORD is not God’s
The first argument levied against Scripture is that God can not be contained in words and would never attempt to. It rightly assumes that God is bigger than any metaphor can explain, but it fails to see God as relational. Hebrews 4 gives us a BIG description of not only God, but of the very word He gives us:
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. | 12-13
This active Word is passed to us, not simply through experiences and miraculous events, but through words given from God to us through the saints. As Jude 3 says:
I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
The truth of the faith was delivered to the saints, but this process of inspiration is a not entirely straightforward. The way that God gets His truth from heaven to the page is never fully outlined. Which leads to our second challenge:
Deny the inerrancy of Scripture | the WORD is not perfect
This was the big discussion in the first half of the 20th century. It was asking the question: When we read the Bible how can we be sure what parts are God’s and what parts are the author? The result of this question was a lessening of all authority of the Scripture. If the Bible has human parts and God parts, who is to say which parts we actually have to submit to?
Once again, the Bible speaks into this for us. in 2 Peter 1, the apostle makes it clear that ALL scripture is true and authoritative:
knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. | 20-21
In other words, because God is the orchestrating the lives of the authors and informing their writing through the Spirit, EVERY word of Scripture is to be read as from God. Which puts a lot of weight into every word that is confirmed as Scripture. So who gets to choose what is Scripture? This leads to our third attempt to undermine Scripture:
Deny the inclusion of Scripture | the WORD is not defined
The most repeated argument against Scripture today has to do with the cannon (the books that have been accepted as the inspired Word of God). Many things have been written to paint the selection of books as nothing more than a vote of a group of men at some time a few hundred years after the death of Jesus. The truth is, the first list that we have of the complete cannon dates to 367 and it is not fully accepted by the whole church for another 30 years. How they got there matters.
The collection of the cannon was not some hotly debated issue. The reason that it took 300 years was not because it took that long for them to be recognized. It was instead because until then there had not been dissension about which books belonged. As John 10.27 says: My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. When Athanasaius penned his list of the cannon, there was not a huge explosion across Christendom resulting in arguments and battles. It was just accepted. It was right. God’s sheep heard his voice.
This is not enough for many people and so I have included more information for those who are interested as well as a list at the bottom of some books that go in far more detail. The big question for us is not whether we are willing to believe all of the historical data and arguments, but whether or not we are willing to interact with the Word. Let it prove itself. Make a plan to read Scripture on a regular basis; hear God through His Word.
Good Books on the Cannon
The Canon of Scripture // F. F. Bruce
Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books // Michael J. Kruger
Can We Still Believe the Bible? An Evangelical Engagement with Contemporary Questions // Craig Blomberg