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Scriptural Authority

Posted Wednesday, August 30, 2006 by Brian Beers
Categories: Bible  

The furor over the inerrancy of Scripture has been at a fever pitch for decades now. One might get the idea that it is more important to toe the line on inerrancy than it is to believe the deity of Jesus. After all, is it even possible to believe the Messiah without ascribing to The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy?

Collectively, we seem to have forgotten that faith is central to well…our faith. We each trust Scripture to varying degrees, and it is this trust of Scripture that I want to emphasize. We cannot get away from the need to trust scripture. The certainty that is claimed for Scripture is a matter of faith, but it is promoted as though it was established by the scientific method.

There are many different degrees of confidence that a person may have in Scripture. Most of these fall far short of the certainty that many have in the Scriptures, but we must first acknowledge our dependence on the testimony of others.

This list is limited to external reasons to recognize the authority of Scripture. They are organized in order of increasing contribution to our confidence in the trustworthiness of Scripture.

 

1.                  It exists.
Someone wrote these documents, and we are free to consider their thoughts. This is the same level of authority that any book has today.

2.                  It is old.
Old things have a mystique about them. To perceive the thought of a different age can be enlightening. The contrast to modern thought reveals to us that there are vastly different perspectives on life.

3.                  It has endured.
And it has endured actively. This is not some obscure document, once forgotten and only recently unearthed. It has had a continual influence on the thoughts of people from the time that it was written. For this reason it should be considered seriously.

4.                  It is believed.
Thousands of people from different nations, different backgrounds and educations base significant decisions about their lives on these documents. These people attribute a level of authority to these documents. This raises the possibility of personal authority.

5.                  It has been believed.
When multiple generations acknowledge a consistent authority that authority is more trustworthy. The likelihood that these documents are a valid authority is increased.

6.                  It was believed.
In the early days of each book in Scripture people lived who knew the author. These people were in the best position to reject the validity of book as Scripture. Since those who were best equipped to understand the author’s meaning did not reject it, we too may have confidence in its authority.

 

These six reasons to trust the authority of Scripture lead us to the point of considering the claims of Scripture. How does Scripture establish its own authority? This is a question for another day. I hope this list will encourage us to come to Scripture without being afraid of skeptics. Even without the hedge of full, total, absolute, complete, entire, plenary inerrancy that has been cultivated around the Bible we have enough reason to have complete confidence in it.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006 10:50 AM

Ken wrote: 

Hello Brian,

Perhaps you should consider converting to Islam? ;)

These exact same things can be said of the Qur'an.

It exists.
It is old.
It has endured.
It is believed.
It has been believed.
It was believed.

In fact many Muslims will go to the point of killing you to prove it.  That's some serious belief.

What makes the Bible any different from the Qur'an?

They both claim to be true. 

They both claim to be divinely inspired. 

They both provide wisdom for living.

They both teach us how to relate to our fellow man.

They both provide us with a "theology".

They teach us about the afterlife.

They teach right from wrong and give a definition of sin.

They both guide the way to "salvation".

The document you sent is perfectly valid in relation to both the Bible and the Qur'an.  A Muslim and a Christian both believe their documents to be inspired, inerrant, and Holy.

Faith is only as good as the object of its belief.  If your "source" is questionable then so is your faith.

Therefore, if we question the authority of scripture then are we not also questioning the validity of our faith?

Maybe I am misunderstanding you.  Perhaps your question is a matter of semantics or a position of perspective?

-Ken

Tuesday, September 05, 2006 11:00 AM

Brian wrote: 

You are right about the Qur’an.Up to this point there is no difference between the the two documents.The authority that each has is the same by these criteria.

And that, in a way, is my point. It doesn't take divine superintending to write some believable. The self-help section of any bookstore should reveal that. People are willing to trust their lives to all sorts of ideas without the cast-iron inerrancy that we seem to think is necessary.
Don't get me wrong. I want more than just the testimony of others about the Scripture that I have listed here. But we need to acknowledge that we are called on to trust Scripture. Honestly, the ongoing battle over inerrancy seems a lot like trying to prove the existence of God by proving the inerrancy of the Bible. St. Thomas Aquinas would be proud.

Thursday, September 07, 2006 2:33 PM

Ken wrote: 

"Honestly the ongoing battle over inerrancy seems a lot like trying to prove the existence of God by proving the inerrancy of the Bible"

While we cannot "prove" that God exists, we do have proofs. 

We see God revealed in nature (Romans 1:18-20) and God has revealed Himself through the Scriptures.  These "proofs" are open to misinterpretation.  Animists incorrectly interpret the natural revelation.  Others misinterpret the Scriptures.  God's revelation is without error.  The natural revelation is sufficient to leave man without excuse.  The written revelation is sufficient in leading man to a saving knowledge of Christ.

If we are to use scripture as a proof for the existence of God, the question of inerrancy is vitally important.  Our "proof" only has value if the Bible is authentic.  If scripture is inerrant and accurately reflects God's revelation to us then we can trust what it is telling us about Him.  If it is not trustworthy then what it teaches about God is suspect.

"the cast-iron inerrancy that we seem to think is necessary"

Inerrancy is foundational.  Our faith is built upon it.  If you remove that foundation then believing in the Easter Bunny makes just as much sense.  Natural revelation is without errors.  God revealed Himself to us through the natural world leaving us without excuse.  Why would He allow the written revelation to be any less authoritative?

Do you believe that the Bible has errors?  Do we need to establish a council of leading scholars to determine and remove the "errant" parts of scripture?  Would you then claim that the resulting document is the "inspired" Word of God? Would you consider it more authoritative? 

Monday, September 11, 2006 10:05 PM

Brian wrote: 

Ken,

I have broken my reply into two comments just to keep the ideas straight. First I want to deal with the matter of proving the existence of God because we shouldn’t use the Bible as a tool to prove the existence of God. I wasn't clear in my allusion to Thomas Aquinas. Proving the existence of God lies in the annals of imponderable questions such as “Could God make a rock so large he couldn’t move it?”

When it comes to proving the existence of God, Trying to logically prove his existence fails. We can’t even imagine an alternate world without God, but it is so patently obvious that this world was created by him. And so those of us who “believe that he is” are baffled by those who still, petulantly insist, “You can’t make me believe.” They are correct in a childish, non-sequitor way: God decreed that man was not required to have a relationship with him. So by trying to logically prove that the Bible is inerrant (and by extension that God exists) we are fighting against God. He wants people to choose him not because they have to, but because they love him.

Monday, September 11, 2006 10:17 PM

Brian wrote: The time for inerrancy

“Inerrancy is foundational. Our faith is built on it.”

 

If by these statements you mean that we build our lives on the truth in the Bible because it is inerrant, I agree. I believe that the Bible is inerrant. But if you mean that inerrancy is foundational to understanding the Bible, I disagree. Inerrancy is our conclusion after we read the Bible. We should not insist on this conclusion as a prerequisite for understanding the Bible.

The Bible invites us to evaluate the proofs offered for its own validity. We are invited to examine the claims of Scripture. And we can come to believe that it is in fact –and  therefore in truth– inerrant.

The process of coming to this conclusion should not be skipped over nor ignored. In a future post I will catalog some of the ways that the Bible establishes its own authority. It is more powerful than formulations of Biblical inerrancy. It is more powerful for it leads us to faith rather than demanding that we have faith before we read it.

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