Is the Bible Really the Word of God

Is the Bible really the Word of God The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia states the following:

 “That the Scriptures regard themselves as a sure, unfailing, certain, and trustworthy Word of God cannot be doubted. While specific proof texts are of limited number, the Scriptures in their entirety present themselves as the true and, therefore, reliable Word of God. It is true, and it should be recognized, that the Scriptures, for reasons that derive from their very nature as the Word of God, do not indulge in an apologetic effort to demonstrate their reality and truth as God’s Word by reference to something other than themselves. The scriptures no more attempt to prove the existence of God apart from His Word than they attempt to prove the authority, infallibility, and reliability of His Word apart from His Word. For this very reason, the Word of God in the Scriptures presents itself throughout as possessing these qualities without any special, introductory, self-conscious demonstration that it is what it asserts itself to be, namely, the Word of God. It merely speaks in terms of what it is: the Word of God.”

Did you understand all of that? It is actually pretty standard Christian thinking and very much circular reasoning.

1. Scriptures regard themselves as the Word of God, it cannot be doubted.
2. Limited evidence
3. The evidence is that the scriptures in their entirety present themselves as the Word of God.
4. It is true that Scriptures are by their nature the Word of God, no evidence needed
5. Repeat above claims.

Kind of makes you wonder doesn’t it? Let’s test the above with a text from Paul’s writings.

(1 Cor 7:25-27 NIV) Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy. 26 Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for you to remain as you are. 27 Are you married? Do not seek a divorce. Are you unmarried? Do not look for a wife.

Is that the Word of God? It specifically says it is not from God yet if the Scriptures claim to be the Word of God it therefore has to be the Word of God, instructions from God to Paul who denied them as being from God yet they must be from God because Scriptures declare themselves to be the Word of God.

In fact the Bible is filled with some pretty terrible stuff, should we really be calling it this the Word of God.

(Psa 137:8-9 NIV) O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us-- he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.

God’s Word declares that happy are they who kill infants of Babylon. You begin to see the problem here when we refer to the Bible as the Word of God. We strip it of context, we strip it of the human component, the very writers experience and expressions. And we do all that with limited reasons; more accurately no reason other than tradition, the factor the International Bible Encyclopedia ignored completely and used exclusively.

What does the Bible actually refer to as the “Word of God”. Pretty simple really, something that God said, thus it is a reference to God or in the New Testament a reference to Jesus Christ the Word made flesh. Take some time to look those up I won’t list them here. Instead, let’s look at some examples of the limited evidence that is put forward to back up the idea of the Bible being the Word of God.

Witness Of Jesus

Any honest person who studies the historical evidence will conclude that Jesus Christ rose from death -- giving Him unique status. Jesus acknowledged the Old Testament, which was all of the Bible written at that time, as the Word of God.
MATTHEW 5:18 NKJ
18 "For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. The Bible bears the seal of Jesus' authority. He quoted the Old Testament dozens of times and referred to it as the Word of God. For example, in Matthew 22:32, Jesus quotes from Exodus 3:6 and 15.
MATTHEW 22:29,31-32 NKJ
29 Jesus answered and said to them, "You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. 31 "But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, 32 `I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living."

http://www.believers.org/believe/bel191.htm

As with the Interpreters Bible Encyclopedia, this article asserts something that is not true. They say Jesus referred to the Old Testament as the Word of God. They even quote the text to prove what they are saying is incorrect. Jesus in the text does quote God but He does not say that the scriptures are the word of God.

The website Got Questions.Org is our starting point for part 2. Their article is entitled: Is the Bible truly God's Word?

Answer: Our answer to this question will not only determine how we view the Bible and its importance to our lives, but also it will ultimately have an eternal impact on us. If the Bible is truly God’s Word, then we should cherish it, study it, obey it, and fully trust it. If the Bible is the Word of God, then to dismiss it is to dismiss God Himself.

As you can see the article begins with an all or nothing response. That is if it is the word of God, to dismiss it is to dismiss God. But what if it was not the word of God but contained some words of God and some words of men and some teachings about history or then current events and peoples ideas about God? In other words in some aspects inspired by God such as leading people to Christ and salvation and some great ideas about dealing with people that God inspired someone to write. A useful book that God helped people put together for them to learn from in various ways. Could God not inspire such a book? Could not such a book be inspired and yet not be the Word of God? After all God really did not write it, may not have inspired all writings included in it and the book is the product of human beings?

It is interesting to see the polls on the subject. In 2007 Gallup polled on the subject:

About one-third of the American adult population believes the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally word for word. This percentage is slightly lower than several decades ago. The majority of those Americans who don't believe that the Bible is literally true believe that it is the inspired word of God but that not everything it in should be taken literally. About one in five Americans believe the Bible is an ancient book of "fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by man."

Most Americans believe in the inspiration of the Bible but not that it is the word of God, this is in spite of the long tradition of people calling it the word of God. They are still able to see past the logical fallacy of calling something the word of God when that something makes no such claims for itself, either in individual books nor of course as a combined whole. Since people had to seek out the books and through a process of church acceptance decide which books they thought belonged for use by Christians it is understandable that that assemblage of books could not make the claim to be the word of God. Which kind of explains why tradition does what logic could not do.

As we look at the list of external in internal evidence that the GotQuestions.org site gives the first question to ask is do their evidence point to inspiration or to the Bible being the word of God. How would you tell the difference? We already know the answer from the very first paragraph that GotQuestions.org uses. They won’t even consider the belief that the majority of Americans hold. Let’s look at a few examples:

One of the first internal evidences that the Bible is truly God’s Word is seen in its unity. Even though it is really sixty-six individual books, written on three continents, in three different languages, over a period of approximately 1500 years, by more than 40 authors who came from many walks of life, the Bible remains one unified book from beginning to end without contradiction. This unity is unique from all other books and is evidence of the divine origin of the words which God moved men to record.

Well unity maybe a little flimsy considering that people did put the compilation together. Jews compiled the Old Testament and Christians adding the New Testament. We won’t talk about the Apocrypha, once accepted by Protestants and now mainly accepted by Roman Catholics. But you can see the problem of claiming unity of something that was made by selecting the books that people thought assisted their religion the best. Of course, there actually are contradictions and really who can say that Ecclesiastes really agrees with the teachings of the New Testament.

That one does not work to well for being the word of God but it does work for inspiration. Because people can really pick out inspirational ideas and compile them and even when the ideas are totally different such as Ecclesiastes inspiration can be comprehended as God dealing with people where they were and stimulating ideas to create growth in understanding. It could even be termed inspiration that when we read about those people we learn what they thought about things.

We will quickly go over the next one:

Another of the internal evidences that indicates the Bible is truly God’s Word is the prophecies contained within its pages…

Again the prophecies were given to men so they speak of inspiration not the word of God, though certainly a prophet could at times actually record the words God used or the words they attributed to God. But again that does not make the entire document the word of God.

A third internal evidence of the divine origin of the Bible is its unique authority and power. While this evidence is more subjective than the first two, it is no less a powerful testimony of the divine origin of the Bible. The Bible’s authority is unlike any other book ever written.

This one does not count; the authority comes from the belief of the people involved, it is not really any kind of evidence.

There are also external evidences that indicate the Bible is truly the Word of God. One is the historicity of the Bible. Because the Bible details historical events, its truthfulness and accuracy are subject to verification like any other historical document.

How this applies to making the Bible the word of God I am not sure. That it records history is true, maybe not all the history is accurate, but a recording of history does not necessarily indicate either inspiration or being the word of God. Current events quickly become history and common knowledge can record history hundred of years after the fact or 5 years after the fact. It does not require divine inspiration for this one.

Another external evidence that the Bible is truly God’s Word is the integrity of its human authors. As mentioned earlier, God used men from many walks of life to record His words. In studying the lives of these men, we find them to be honest and sincere. The fact that they were willing to die often excruciating deaths for what they believed testifies that these ordinary yet honest men truly believed God had spoken to them.

This one actually only speaks to inspiration, not at all to being the word of God as it refers to the people who were inspired to write some things. Inspiration of course is a wide subject; something can be a very important piece of inspirational thought at a particular time and generations latter be little more than a footnote to history. A story can be inspiration to hearers even if it is not literally true. And inspiration can be found in the writers as well as the hearers where ever in time they may be.

A final external evidence that the Bible is truly God’s Word is the indestructibility of the Bible. Because of its importance and its claim to be the very Word of God, the Bible has suffered more vicious attacks and attempts to destroy it than any other book in history.

Again that would not necessarily be the case, even if the book and all its components were not the word of God it is possible for God to prevent its destruction. I am also not so sure that it has had more vicious attacks as there were certain Gnostic books which we now only read about in the writings of the Christian apologists writing against the Gnostic books. So some books were viciously and successfully wiped out. Some of those were only discovered in the 1800’s as what is termed the Nag Hammadi library, but still some are likely gone forever. In fact in the ancient world where everything was hand written it appears a lot of books were lost with the destruction of the Ancient Library of Alexandria. It may seem kind of funny but in some respects the preservation of the Bible may well be tied to the empire of Rome when they made Christianity a state religion. What some people may think as the worst thing to happen to Christianity may have been one of the methods God used to preserve the Bible.

After all the evidence is looked at we arrive back where we started. Some will look at the Bible as the word of God because that is what they choose to believe and some see the inspiration in the book but do not feel it is appropriate to call it the word of God. Rather they look for God’s revelation in the book and like any book we have to weigh the statements against reality, both history and science and cultural knowledge help us to understand more about God and ourselves and that after all is really what inspiration is all about. Because God is really able to draw us closer to Himself as we seek to understand what He is like, what love is like and what we as people are like.

Then the LORD said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, 'You must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the LORD, who makes you holy. "'Observe the Sabbath, because it is holy to you. Anyone who desecrates it must be put to death; whoever does any work on that day must be cut off from his people. (Exodus 31:12-14 NIV) 

How do you interpret the above verse? Is it inerrant, God said it, I believe it word of God? How you answer that question will decide your view of the Bible. Most however won’t be asked that question. They will refuse to even allow themselves to ask that question even as they read the similar verses which are also spoken as the instructions of the Lord. For example we could ask the same question of the following verse:

(Exodus 20: 22)  Then the LORD said to Moses, "Tell the Israelites this: 'You have seen for yourselves that I have spoken to you from heaven: (Exo 21:17 NIV)  "Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.

Granted it is pretty nasty to curse your parents but is it deserving of being put to death? I would think most people would think of that as overkill, but what do you do when that is a command from God? Did God ever take back these commands? If He did, which I can’t find anywhere, what would that say about God? Most will say that those are just commands to the theocracy of ancient Israel they don’t apply today. Why don’t they apply today, does not the word of God stand forever, is not God the same today and yesterday? With this introduction; with it’s thought questions in mind let us look at what a couple of prominent Christian organizations say about the inspiration of the Bible. I will use two websites. The first is a study by a noted conservative Bible teacher John MacArthur Our God-Breathed Bible and the other a popular apologetics website: CARM Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry

The CARM site article would be designed to counter my first half of this article. The title in fact goes against my conclusion “The Bible isn't the word of God. It contains the word of God”, well almost as I would say it contains some of the words of God. Here is how the article begins:

One of the objections raised by critics of biblical inspiration is that the Bible is not the word of God but that it contains the word of God.  Is this accurate?  No.  First of all, this doesn't fit what the Bible says about itself.  The collection of 66 books that the Christian Church recognized as being inspired speaks as the very words of God in many places.

1. "Thus says the Lord" occurs over 400 times in the Old Testament.

2. "God said" occurs 42 times in the Old Testament and four times in the New Testament.

3. "God spoke" occurs 9 times in the Old Testament and 3 times in the New Testament.

4. "The Spirit of the Lord spoke" through people…

We should first correct the ever-present condescension that such articles use to try and persuade people who don’t read carefully. The objections are not those of critics of biblical inspiration, they are critics of the fundamentalist form of biblical interpretation. You notice by the title it is not addressed to an atheist critic because they would not hold to the part about containing words of God. So the article begins by assuming their view to be correct and it is based upon some faulty thinking because of course, the Bible does not say of itself that it is the word of God, not any particular book or the later collection of books we call the Bible makes the claim. Even the claim to the number of times the Lord is said to have said something does not make the whole Bible the word of God. But if one assumes that it does and that the whole Bible is the word of God where does that leave you when you are answering the introductory questions in this article? Much of the CARM article then goes into the claims that were already dealt with in my previous articles so we will move on to John MacArthur.

In this lesson we examine the subject of inspiration and we begin by considering the meaning of the term. The English word  Inspire is derived from the Latin  inspirare, which means "to breathe in." Second Timothy 3:16 says, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God" or, as it is translated in the New American Standard Version, "All scripture is inspired by God." The term,  inspiration, does not reflect the exact sense of  theopneustos, which is the term in our passage.  Theopneustos means "God-breathed"; the Scriptures are breathed out by God, not breathed in. So we may say that the Bible is the product of God breathing out His words so what He wanted written got written. In other words, the Scriptures are the product of divine breath assuring us that the sixty-six books of the Bible are the very words of God. 

This is the most popular verse used to claim the inspiration of the Bible thus the Bible is the word of God. It is a good verse dealing with inspiration but does not claim the Bible as the word of God. In fact when we read the whole text in its context we see that the inspiration is very broad.

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:14-17 NIV)

The scriptures are inspired to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus, they are useful for teaching, rebuking, and training in doing right so we can do good work. That says nothing about the Scriptures being inerrant or literally true in all statements or historically or scientifically accurate. No, it says God gave the scriptures to make us wise for salvation. God is involved in the process of helping us understand salvation; to help us understand ourselves and God better so that we could come to faith in Jesus Christ. Stories which are what most of the Bible is; are wonderful techniques for instructing with ideas of how to behave and how not to behave. What causes trouble and what gets a person out of trouble. Does a story have to be literal or historical to teach a lesson? Well of course not we know that plainly from our own experience with the books we read. Myths like George Washington chopping down a cherry tree can bring lessons out of their fiction, as we have all heard the tale and can quote fictional George Washington, “I cannot tell a lie”. Stand up and take responsibility, a powerful concept from a simple fictional story.

MacArthur later in his article states:

So the men who wrote the Old and New Testaments were commissioned by God to write His words. Paul's words to Felix reinforce the fact that we can trust the Bible as the Word of God: "This I confess unto thee that, after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets" (Acts 24:14).

2. It includes all Scripture 
The Greek term  pasa can be translated "all" or "every." However, when Paul wrote 2 Timothy 3:16 the New Testament canon was not closed. Therefore some believe "all" can refer only to the Old Testament. But that interpretation places a time restriction upon "all" that is not warranted by the text. All Scripture is inspired of God whether it precedes or follows Paul's second epistle to Timothy. 

Jesus said "the scripture cannot be broken" (John 10.35). That includes Scripture that had been written, was being written, and would be written.

I really like the juxtaposition of this part of his article. MacArthur concludes one section with the quote about Paul believing all things which are written in the law and the prophets. But does he really? Think about what Paul says about circumcision.  He says several places that circumcision is nothing (1 Cor 7:19, Gal 5:6, Gal 6:15) and he even warns of those who cling to it:

Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord! It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you. Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh.  For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh-- (Philippians 3:1-3 NIV) 

What Paul believed about the law and the prophets was much different then his ancestors believed because Paul did not hold to literal verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, he reinterpreted them in the light of his relationship with Jesus Christ. Paul writes:

Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision" (that done in the body by the hands of men)-- remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. (Eph 2:11-12 NIV) 

In the Bible, we have to be very careful with the word “all” or “every”. Today educated people know that when people say “all” or “every”; they are making a generalization. Because if the use of “all” or “every” is meant to be taken literally the statement can be disproved with merely one example that contradicts the statement. The Bible actually has numerous contradictions of facts. The believer in inerrancy gets by these contradictions by saying that in the original manuscripts the errors don’t occur. This is however a faulty use of logic because the originals no longer exist so it is merely a gratuitous assertion.  

Paul tends to use “all” in the generalization way for example:

At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me. May it not be held against them. But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was delivered from the lion's mouth. (2 Tim 4:16-17 NIV) 

Or consider Paul saying:

…if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant. (Col 1:23 NIV) 

The gospel had not then and probably even now been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, it is an exaggeration, an exaggeration in the Bible. As the following article says of this verse:

(2) It must be recognized as well that the passages cited above are hyperbolic in nature. The word “hyperbole” derives from a combination of two Greek terms that signify “to throw above.” A hyperbole, then, is a figure of speech that contains an obvious exaggeration (with no intention of duplicity) for the purpose of emphasizing a truth. The Bible abounds with this figure, which, in most contexts, is perfectly obvious and draws no criticism.

For example, it was said of the pagan peoples east of the Jordan that “their camels were without number, as the sand which is upon the sea shore for multitude” (Judges 6:5; cf. 1 Samuel 13:5). That’s a lot of camels for a few Bedouin tribes!

Jehovah promised Abraham that his “seed,” i.e., offspring, would be “as the dust of the earth,” i.e., numberless (Genesis 13:16; cf. Galatians 3:29). But the earth could not possibly contain as many people as there are specks of dust upon the planet. This is obvious hyperbole. http://www.christiancourier.com/articles/929-was-the-gospel-preached-throughout-the-whole-world-in-the-first-century

As with all information the Bible calls for interpretation and the presuppositions with which we come to the Bible will either make us see it for what it is and derive the important principles or they will call us to make unrealistic claims about how the book came to be and how it must be interpreted. As a final example this is what MacArthur says about the exegesis of the Bible:

Many seminaries and churches teach that God gave thoughts and not specific words to the writers of Scripture. This would mean, for example, that when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 13 the only thing God gave to Paul was some general thoughts on the subject of love. The words of the text we owe to Paul. This view is sometimes referred to as thought or concept inspiration.

Now this position denies not only verbal inspiration, but inerrancy as well. Of course that makes exegesis futile. There would be no reason to do a word-by-word exposition if you're convinced that the words are merely human and not divine.

This is, as with most of the fundamentalist approaches to the Bible foolish. First the Bible was written in one of three languages and when translated the words used translate into various English words and even in the original language one word could have multiple meanings. But this is what verbal inspiration beliefs lead to and the confusion multiplies by all of these various assertions which are incorporated into the Bible to become the presuppositions fundamentalists and traditionalist use to interpret the Bible. There comes a time when we need to realize that we have to be reasonable in our approach to the Bible and see that it does exaggerate and make claims that cannot possibly be true. That even the perception of God changes through it pages as people learn more and knowledge increases. We can’t go back to the primitive concepts and literalism that was once used to understand the Bible. And yes it calls for human intelligence and reason and understanding just as everything else in life calls for us to think. That is not a bad thing however, and let’s be glad that even though in the stories God called for rather nasty things we don’t have to carry them out as if they are the enduring word of God that never changes because really otherwise we would all have to end up killing each other just over our breaking the Sabbath. The subject of keeping the Sabbath reminds us of the old Jewish prophecy which as quoted in this article

"Rabbi Judah said in the name of Rav: If all Israel had observed the very first Sabbath, no nation or tongue would have ever ruled over her…Rabbi Yohanan said, following Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai: Were Israel to observe two Sabbaths punctiliously, they would be redeemed immediately [BT Shabbat 118b]." MyJewishlearning.com