More than thirty-five years ago, over the door of a small brick chapel, I first saw the sentence “Thy Word is Truth” (John 17:17). The chapel belonged to the Stony Brook School on Long Island. Here, as a religious but agnostic teenager, I had been sent into social exile by my parents. It was not that they wanted to isolate me from society (for Stony Brook School was far from such an isolation), but simply that they wanted me to be disciplined in both intellect and will. And what better place could I be sent, they reasoned, than to a school that had as its motto “Character before Career”?
It was at Stony Brook School (then, as now, a bastion of evangelical Christianity) that I first came to know Him “of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth . . .” (John 1:45).
It was necessary for me as part of my education at Stony Brook to study the Bible, which I had always regarded with respect but never in the light of absolute spiritual authority. With the brash skepticism of youth and inexperience, I questioned everything I read and plagued my teachers, including the learned headmaster Dr. Frank Gaebelein, with literally hundreds of questions. The end product of this quest was a journey from doubt to faith, accompanied by the fruit of genuine faith – an enduring experience with God.
It is therefore possible for me to understand the mind of the skeptic, the agnostic, and the professional scoffer, since I have worn all their boots at one time or another and have followed the same old arguments to their dismal and fruitless conclusion – the absurdity of life and the purposelessness of existence apart from the living God. In the brief span of this chapter it is impossible, of course, to treat in depth the subject of Biblical inspiration. In the final analysis, “He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him” (Hebrews 11:6). No amount of argument or evidence conjured or amassed by the human mind can convince a skeptic that God has spoken, until God has been permitted to speak to him. If, as the Bible teaches, the soul of man is a locked door, the handle being inside, so that the knock of God must be responded to from within, then ultimately it will be His grace alone which enables us to turn the key and the handle so that the light of heaven may illumine the darkness of our sins.
What I am saying here is not intended to be an exhaustive apologetic for the inspiration or authenticity of the Bible. Rather, it is an attempt to answer some questions which are frequently asked about the Scriptures, and to set forth in clear, nontechnical language precisely what the Christian church means when it speaks about the authority and inspiration of divine revelation. Many excellent works have been written which point out the historical accuracy and prophetic validity of Biblical data.1 The science of archeology has in the last hundred years confirmed in startling detail what patient scholars of the Bible have always believed – that it is an enormously reliable book, completely trustworthy, and remarkably relevant.2
What do we mean, then, when we say, “The Bible is the Word of God”? It is obvious that we are asserting that the Bible is a revelation from God – that it does not just illumine our thinking but reveals to our minds things which God knows and which we are incapable of learning apart from His communication with us.
What we mean when we talk about the Bible as the Word of God is that it is a compilation of 66 books which span a period of more than 5,000 years and were written by multiple authors, all of whom testify to the fact that they had an experience with a spiritual Being whom they described as “the Lord” or “the Eternal One.” It therefore cannot be asserted logically that the Christian is arguing in a circle because he allegedly quotes the Bible to prove the Bible, as some critics maintain. The Bible is not one book but many, written by people of different time periods, all of whom bear witness to their relationship with an ultradimensional Being who lives outside our time-space continuum – a Being who wishes us to know that He is our Creator and desires to be our loving heavenly Father.
The error arises when we think of the Bible as one book, since in reality it is a collection of books. The testimony of the authors must be accepted as independent evidence unless it can be shown conclusively that there was either collusion or deception on their part. It should be strongly emphasized that such collusion has never been proven – in fact, quite the opposite is the case.
Since the Bible is a collection of books, it contains quotations from men (Acts 17:28), angels (Matthew 1:20), demons (Mark 5:9), Satan (Job 1:9), and God Himself (Exodus 20:1 ff.). However, the Bible is called the Word of God because the whole transcript is an inspired, faithful, and infallible record of what God intended us to know about Himself, the cosmos in which we live, our spiritual allies and adversaries, and our fellow man. The Bible, then, was produced by men whose recording of events was divinely supervised and preserved from all the frailties of human error and judgment which are so common in all other religious literature.
How could such faithful recording come about? By what method could God bring such a thing to pass? Such questions can be answered simply by pointing out an illustration from the late Donald Grey Barnhouse. Dr. Barnhouse maintained that, even as the Holy Spirit came upon the womb of the Virgin Mary and, despite her sinful nature, imperfections, and limitations, produced the sinless and perfect character who is called the Son of God, so He moved upon the minds and spirits of the recorders of Scripture that, despite limitations in language, culture, and even scientific knowledge, He produced His perfect message to mankind. Both phenomena were miraculous; both were perfect births – one of the Son of Man and the other of a Book, the Word of God. When we speak of the inspiration of the Scriptures, then, we are talking about the process that God used to convey His message. This process is described by the Apostle Paul as a type of spiritual “breathing.” In fact, the Greek word theopneustos literally means “God- breathed.”
The inspiration of the Bible and the concepts just mentioned refer only to the initial “breathing” of God upon the authors of Scripture to produce a copy of His thoughts for man. It is for this original text of Scripture, revealed by God and faithfully recorded by His servants, that the Christian church claims infallibility. Through the centuries God has preserved literally thousands of copies and fragments of these initial manuscripts with only minor transmissional mistakes made by scribes over the years. Historic Christianity affirms the plenary or “full” inspiration of the Bible, and it further holds that inspired concepts can be communicated only by inspired words. Thus, the church’s belief in the verbal inspiration of the Bible is logically inseparable from the doctrine of plenary inspiration.
To illustrate, the label on all RCA records contained a picture of a dog listening to an old Victrola with the caption “His Master’s Voice.” Dr. Eugene Nida of the translation department of the American Bible Society has pointed out that the dog listening to the Victrola will hear an imperfect transmission of his master’s voice because the needle scratches the surface of the record. However, no matter how scratchy the record sounds, the needle cannot obliterate the sound of the master’s voice – the message still comes through.
Expanding on this concept a little more, we can see that the Bible is represented by the record and that the imperfections of human nature and the limitations of human knowledge are represented by the needle. The passage of time is represented by the turntable. Just as any record becomes scratchy in time through wear, so is this true (though in a lesser degree) with the copies of Scripture. But in spite of these limitations (the direct product of human freedom and its resultant sin), we can still hear our Master’s voice, just as the dog does on the record label. The “scratches” are also being “erased” as time goes on by archeology, by older and better texts, and by scientific discoveries. More of the “original” is thus being “dubbed” back into the copies, so that year by year we are getting closer to the “master tape” from which all the duplicates (copies of manuscripts) were recorded. Thus the accuracy of our Bible copies increases rather than decreases. The clarity of the message improves steadily with the passage of time, and the fidelity of our Master’s voice is now growing clearer and clearer.
Let us never forget the fact that a hundred years ago the percentage of “questionable” textual material existing in the then-available copies of the Bible was approximately five times greater than that which raises questions for critical scholarship today. This is positive proof that the situation is not static but is very much alive and is moving in the direction of resolving textual and critical problems instead of multiplying them. Because of advancing knowledge about the Bible and its times, great gains have been made in solving problems which a hundred years ago were considered by some reputable scholars to be “insoluble.” Thus it would be foolish indeed to abandon faith in the authority of God’s initial revelation simply because there remains a relatively small percentage (less than 1⁄2 of 1 percent in the New Testament) of questionable material about which we do not yet have enough data to properly evaluate and understand. Those who gave up their faith in the absolute authority of Scripture a hundred years ago (as well as their disciples today) would do well to remember that advancing truth confirms rather than diminishes the accuracy and authority of the Bible. God has a long record of blessing those who believe Him and who believe in the integrity of what He has said. He has yet to raise up a great evangelist, Bible teacher, or pastor from the ranks of those evangelicals who maintain that human error exists in the original documents of Scripture.
Two other questions are perennially raised regarding copies of the Bible, and they are worthy of a studied answer. First, if copies of the Bible reveal error, why can we not infer that the originals contained the same errors? There is, of course, a sound answer to at least part of this question. Since no one has the original autographs or “master tape” of the Bible, we can just as logically infer the opposite – that the apparent errors we now observe were not errors in the original at all, but were errors of inaccurate transcription. Both positions are essentially arguments from silence, and the solution probably lies elsewhere. However, one note should be made – the argument that as- sumes error in the original manuscripts is based on the belief that what exists in a copy will also exist in the original, if found. This is a negative faith, since its conclusion includes doubt of the prophets and the apostles. The position which maintains by faith (and with steadily mounting evidence) that the original manuscripts are errorless exemplifies positive faith in the complete reliability of the prophets and the apostles and in the trustworthiness of their initial transcription of the data they received from God.
Secondly, why would God inspire free of error the original autograph or “master” copy of the Biblical record (from which all subsequent copies are made) and then permit the copies to become even minutely corrupted in transmission? Would this not defeat His whole original purpose – an infallible record?
The answer to this question lies in a correct understanding of the nature of the freedom of the will. Adam was created innocent, and God put His divine stamp of approval on that creation by calling him “the son of God” (Luke 3:38). So in like manner He put His seal upon the Scriptures when He first gave them by calling them “My Word” more than 3,000 times.
Jesus Christ also held the very highest view of Scripture (John 12:44-50; 17:17), for it was He who said, “the Scriptures cannot be broken” (John 10:35). Those who would own Him as their Master cannot in good conscience hold a view of Scripture inferior to His.
Even though Adam was created innocent, by an act of free will he fell into imperfect practices which God allowed so as not to violate the freedom which alone makes it possible for men and angels to choose to love Him. This was extended by necessity and nature to the sons of Adam, some of whom later copied and recopied the divine record. Their errors, however, are not to be considered God’s Word, nor does God extend His divine seal of approval to any human error.
What is truly remarkable is that no transmissional error has ever affected a single doctrine of the Word of God which touches the means of our salvation, the evangelization of the world, our own spiritual maturity, or the church’s ultimate conquest of evil.
The Word of God is God in His Word, speaking to us by His Spirit, through whom the message was initially inspired and infused into the souls and minds of His servants. These “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1:18-21). Speaking through the prophets, God bore record in the Old Testament of the coming Messiah, Jesus Christ the Living Word. In the New Testament God testifies to the apostles and the disciples of the Incarnation of His Word (John 1:1,14). These truths are confirmed experientially by the witness of the Holy Spirit, who carries on the work of confronting men with the written Word, which points them to the living Word. It is the Holy Spirit who validates the witness by transforming those who accept the Bible’s testimony to the risen Christ, our only object of saving faith. Is it any wonder that Peter could proclaim of the Lord Jesus, “To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:43)!
Thus the Holy Spirit, who inspired the written Word and who anointed the Living Word, perseveres in validating all His work of inspiration through the fulfillment of prophecy and the transformation of lives in response to faith in the Lord Jesus. The action of the Holy Spirit in and upon the sons of Adam is a living reminder to the church that our “labor is not in vain in the Lord.”
There are still problems and questions to be answered in both the Old and New Testament. Though small in number, there still exist apparent contradictions and confusing chronologies. One cannot read the synoptic Gospels without becoming aware of the fact that there is an insufficiency of data to solve some of the problems which are raised by literary and textual criticism. We must not forget, however, that insufficiency of data does not at all logically postulate the existence of error. Rather, as we now know, what one hundred years ago was considered to be error by some liberal scholars is today regarded as factual data by even the most liberal Biblical scholars.3
The testimony of archeologists of the caliber of the late William F. Albright, Nelson Glueck, Cyrus Gordon, and Yigal Yadin cannot be ignored in any fair evaluation of Biblical accuracy and reliability. The evidence is in favor of the historic position of the church. When God speaks, there is no “indistinct sound” (1 Corinthians 14:8 NASB)— the Author of the ages does not stutter.
“. . . thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name. . . . The word of God . . . liveth and abideth for ever” (Psalm 138:2; 1 Peter 1:23).
The words of the great Anglican scholar Bishop E. H. Bickersteth sum up the ancient and defensible position of historic Christianity concerning the Bible. We would do well to listen prayerfully to his wisdom and believe in the truth he champions so well.
In its sacred characters God speaks, and man speaks. Who can lay bare the mystery? Who can dissect the mingled shadings of the colours of the rainbow?
But this inspiration of Scripture, though perfectly consistent with the individuality of the several writers, is altogether inconsistent with those rationalistic theories which subvert the faith of some in the present day. It absolutely refuses to allow the existence of anything false, or fallible, or merely human in the Scriptures as first given by God to man. Then should we need yet another revelation to assure us what was inspired and what uninspired, what was fallible and what infallible, what was human and what Divine. Further, it positively resists the theory of human reason, or any verifying faculty in man, being the ultimate judge of God’s revelation. “For the prerogative of God,” says Bacon, “extendeth as well to the reason as to the will of man; so that, we are to obey His law, though we find a reluctation in our will. So are we to believe His words, though we find a reluctation in our reason. For if we believe only what is agreeable to our sense, we give consent to the matter, not to the Author, which is no more than we do to a suspected and discredited witness. Nor ought we to draw down or submit the mysteries of God to our reason, but, contrariwise, to raise and advance our reason to the Divine truth.”
This obedience of faith does not in the very least interfere with the useful and important duty of critical investigation. Though, in better words than my own, “Let us always be cautious that we do not extend criticism beyond its limits. To investigate the merits of copies and versions; to lead us up by a careful process of inquiry to the very text, as near as may be, as it was penned by the various authors; to illustrate what they have said, and to facilitate the understanding of their words—this is the object, this the ample field of sacred criticism. But an awful responsibility is incurred if we elevate it into the judge of prophets and apostles, to censure them for what they have said, and to pronounce what they should have said; to declare their reasoning inconclusive, and their statements inaccurate; to regard them as led astray with false philosophy, and bewildered for want of recollection; to thrust them, in fact, far below a shrewd professor in a German university, who could have taught the world more skillfully than they did—from this the devout mind should intuitively shrink. We are commanded, indeed, to prove all things; we are encouraged by the book itself to search whether the things it tells us be so. But surely the authenticity and general truthfulness of the record being established, its own testimony is sufficient to indicate its highest claims.”
These claims—to sum up what I have said before—are nothing less than the plenary inspiration of Scripture, from Genesis to Malachi, from Matthew to Revelation. Every jot and tittle of the Bible, as originally penned by the sacred writers, is God’s WORD WRITTEN—I repeat, as originally penned, for the truth here affirmed does not ask us to believe in the inspiration of copyists or translators or interpreters. Superficial errors, though we believe them to be few and comparatively unimportant, may have crept in during the lapse of ages. But the autographs were perfect. They may record the ungodly sayings and sentiments of ungodly men, but those sayings are historically true, and it was the mind of the Spirit thus to record them. They may embody earlier uninspired documents; but, if it be so, the fact of the Holy Ghost moving the sacred writers to embody them proves that every word is true, and stamps every sentence thus taken into the canon of Scripture with the seal of God. They do in their various parts bear the unmistakable impress of the individual character of every author (for inspiration is not of necessity dictation), but each one spake as he was moved by the Holy Ghost. So the one inspiring breath of the [pipe] organ gives forth the sound, which the conformation of every pipe impresses on it. It is God speaking to man in man’s language. And as the Incarnate Word was subject to the innocent infirmities of humanity, though absolutely and perfectly without sin, so the written Word is the mind of God, couched in the feeble symbolism of human speech, but yet is pure, perfect, and infallible. This glorious possession – this choicest heirloom of the family of man – we owe to the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.4
By Dr. Walter Martin
1. For further information on prophecy and the historicity of the Bible, see Werner Keller, The Bible as History (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1956, 1964); Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict (San Bernardino, CA: Campus Crusade for Christ, 1972, 1979); and josh McDowell, More Evidence That Demands a Verdict (San Bernardino, CA: Campus Crusade for Christ, 1975).
2. For further information on archaeology and the reliability of the Bible, see E.M. Blaiklock, The Archaeology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970, 1974); William Foxwell Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1957); and Joseph P. Free, Archaeology and Bible History (Wheaton, IL: Scripture Press, 1950, 1962, 1969).
3. See Edwin R. Thiele, A Chronology of the Hebrew Kings (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1977); John A.T. Robinson, Can We Trust the New Testament? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977); and John A.T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976).
4. Edward Henry Bickersteth, The Holy Spirit: His Person and Work (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1959, 1976), pp. 98-101.
For Articles on the Inspiration of Scripture, please click on the following links:
https://www.moodybible.org/beliefs/inspiration-and-inerrancy-bible/
https://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-inspired.html
https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/torrey_ra/fundamentals/20.cfm
https://www.theopedia.com/inspiration-of-the-bible
https://apologeticspress.org/the-nature-of-bible-inspiration-5012/
For videos on the Inspiration of Scripture, please click on the following links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rt0tIOosg8&t=10s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkLRXMyFot0&t=1s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ5QlpsT_G8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vub_ecXRKlA&t=89s