I am only going to scratch the surface here and tell you what I think you need to know for the time being. For a more in depth look at the Inspiration and Inerrancy of Scripture, click this link.

     We believe the Bible to be the Inspired and Inerrant Word of God. Inspiration, simply put, is 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.”

     There has been many debates and theories as to HOW God inspired the writers. Did the writers transcribe word for word what the Lord told them (Dictation Theory)? Were the writers simply guided but in the end they chose how to convey certain ideas (Dynamic Theory)? Did the Holy Spirit use the abilities and personalities to communicate through their individual styles (Organic Inspiration)? Is the whole Bible Inspired (Plenary Theory) or just parts of the Bible (Partial Theory)? Or perhaps the Holy Spirit guided the exact words of the authors so to communicate exactly what it desired to (Verbal Inspiration)? This may look a little confusing but in reality, it’s not that complicated. Christianity maintains that the Bible is both fully inspired and verbally inspired (Plenary-Verbal Inspiration). There are many progressive and liberal scholars and theologians who will choose other forms of Inspiration so as to read into the text what they want it to say. The less Inspired the Bible is, the more room for the twisting and mythologizing of Scripture.

     Coupled with the Doctrine of Inspiration is the Doctrine of Inerrancy. This doctrine simply holds that the Bible is without error because it was fully-verbally inspired. If God wrote it, and God is perfect, then it must also be perfect. When we say the Bible is Inerrant, we mean the original manuscripts. Now, don’t interpret this to mean that the Bible we hold in our hand today is full of errors, because it’s not. The Bible today is 99.8% without error. The only errors are transcribal errors, meaning misplaced punctuation and so forth. There is not a single error that affects any of the doctrines of the Christian faith. So when the critic if the Bible comes to you and says the Bible has been translated hundreds of times throughout thousands of years, it is impossible for it to have been maintained this long, you simply need to take our newest copy that we have today and compare it with the oldest manuscript that we have and you will see they are identical.