Is the Bible the Word of God?
One night I woke up at 3AM, my mind being flooded with questions and thoughts from the scripture related to challenges that have been made to my understanding about the scripture. I could not go back to sleep until I recorded them. These are offered for your consideration:
Is the Bible the Word of God?
These days I have been hearing that the Bible is not the Word of God, because Jesus is the Word of God. The statement that Jesus is the Word of God made flesh is actually found in the Bible. But did Jesus Himself believe that the Bible is not the Word of God? When being tempted of the devil for 40 days, Matthew and Luke record for us how Jesus resisted temptation.
Satan challenged Jesus's sonship to God by telling Him He could satisfy His hunger by changing stones into bread. Jesus answered by quoting scripture:
"It is written, 'MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ALONE, BUT ON EVERY WORD THAT PROCEEDS OUT OF THE MOUTH OF GOD'."
Matthew 4:4 NASU
To what was Jesus referring? Was He saying that He would satisfy His hunger by eating Himself, since He was the Word? Or is He saying that everything that God has and is communicating to us is our spiritual bread?
Consider Hebrews 1:1-3:
"God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power."
God spoke through His prophets, as recorded in the Hebrew Bible, which to Christians is the Old Testament. At the very least, the writer claims that the Bible is the record of what God spoke through the prophets. But both the Hebrews and the Early Church believed that even the record of His statements were breathed by the God the Holy Spirit as they were recorded.
God communicates both through the spoken word and through His actions. Psalms 33:6: "By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth." The very act of creation communicates to us the nature of God. (Romans 1:20). Certainly God is not limited to communicating to us in writing alone, but writing is to be included and is to our benefit. (2 Timothy 3:16, Romans 15:4).
In this example from Matthew 4, Jesus used the scripture as a weapon against temptation, "the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." (Ephesians 6:17, Hebrews 4:12).
Yes, Jesus is the Word of God, eternally. It was He who created all things, saying "let there be light." (John 1:3, Colossians 1:16). So why do we find it difficult to see that Jesus, the Word of God spoke through Moses, Samuel, Isaiah, David, and others when the Spirit of Christ was in them? (1 Peter 1:10-11). Just get out your concordance and see how many times you can find the phrase, "the word of the Lord came to Samuel, Jeremiah, Amos etc." every time God had something to say to His people.
That is why Jesus Himself called the scripture, the Word of God. (Mark 7:13)
In Acts, Luke calls the Gospel the Word of God:
Acts 6:7: "And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly;"
See also 8:14, 11:1, 12:24, 13:5,7,44,46, 17:13, 18:11, 19:20.
So was Jesus increasing and growing? Or was the message He told the apostles to preach spreading?
To recap, both the things God has said, and His gracious and mighty acts as recording in the Bible, communicate God's Word to us. Jesus is the Word of God in eternity, and also as revealed in a human being who lived 2,000 years ago, the full and complete revelation of the person and nature of Almighty God. (1 Timothy 3:16)
In these modern times, fewer people believe as they did a generation ago, that the 66 books we have today are the authentic message from God which testifies of who Jesus is. Could it be because they are uncomfortable with the truth it contains, concerning our situation, and our need to totally depend upon Someone greater than us?
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I've been challenged with that same statement by someone I came to love and respect. "The Bible is not the Word of God, Jesus is". It was someone who knew the Scriptures well, though, and quoted them often.
I think the statement is really a reaction to the way the Scriptures have been used (misused) to promote various propositions, divisions, and power structures over the person of Christ himself.
Personally, I don't like the way we talk about the Bible as a single book - all nice and neat in one cover. I think cannonization was one of many historical rabbit trails that did far more damage than good. Before that, believers just had to dialog together about their various writings to test them and think them through. Most believers have no idea how or why the books of the Bible were selected, or how messy and controversial that process really was. The result is that people forget how to listen to the Spirit of Christ in patient fellowship with one another as they test all things together.
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Hey brothers, good to see you guys.
Jess, you must have gotten my message... :) Thank you for stopping by again.
This is a fascinating subject which we can casually explore over time. Thank you Dan for opening it. Somewhere beyond the extremes and reactions must be the truth. Agree or not, we can respect the views of others as best we are able.
Jess, I can understand what you mean by "nice and neat". Haha. "Messy" would be a little more like it with regard to the canon of scripture, especially the New Testament. Does not mankind usually make a mess of things? True, God could have given us golden plates instead of paper and ink. But he didn't. Lucky Mormons.
I suppose you are familiar with Dr. Bart Erhman over in the next big town in NC. He's a famous skeptic, author, and university professor. He rightfully shows how non-simplistic some of these issues really are and therefore rejects the whole thing himself. He's a skeptic with atheistic leanings, so he claims.
Thankfully, he does acknowledge that Jesus Christ really existed and that the Scriptures are the best attested works in ancient literature!
But the Gospel is to believe in Jesus - not to believe that the Bible is 100% free from any sort of error. Therefore, the faith of some of his students is "lost" because... it was a mis-placed faith to begin with. That's sad.
The church was built upon Christ and the apostles. Therefore I am interested in what Christ and his apostles have to say. Most, like their Master, died a martyr's death which gives their writings serious credibility and authority. I am also touched by the fact that they were not trying to profit from the Story. Paul could say: We do not seek yours - but YOU. Where are those kind of preachers today? Instead, too many popular preachers expect us to send them money so that God can make us rich. Smile.
Me, I don't see a contradiction that Jesus and the written truth are the word of God, in some real sense. From the point of a human being, I don't understand why the scriptures and the church itself were not more perfectly preserved - but they were not. Thankfully, no major doctrines of faith are affected, at least in my understanding.
Jesus could pray to his Father: Sanctify them through your word. Your word is truth. Me, I want more Jesus and I want more truth AND more "patient fellowship", as Jess mentioned above.
Have a good weekend, every one.
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David, thanks for adding these thoughts. I appreciate your willingness to respect the convictions of others. I would like to add that I did not come by my beliefs about the bible without years of careful and thoughtful consideration. However it was the work of God in my heart that was the most convincing.
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I would love to know more about how the early Christians "viewed" or "handled" writings such as the Gospel of Mark (probably the first of the gospels, written very early on), or Luke/Acts written by "Dr. Luke" the physician. We know these were not written by apostles - although the apostles were likely available to the authors as resources. They are not written by eyewitnesses of all the events - but by men who perhaps felt compelled to write down what was probably being told and retold in the church gatherings through oral tradition. We know very little about the skills and practices of oral tradition in our electronic "Google it" information age. I imagine it required a lot of patience, listening, and reciting in the group gatherings with careful attention to detail - all of which would fail our modern-day tests for a good church meeting, right? But that's part of our problem - which I'll come back to in a minute.
In the Old Testament era(s), there were signs and wonders to confirm the validity of God's prophets to the immediate audiences, so that their messages carried the weight of "thus saith the Lord". In the New Testament era, where signs and wonders were performed through the "common" worshippers by the Spirit that has been poured out on all flesh, there seemed to be a sense that the Lord himself could speak at any moment through any believer. However, the message still had to be tested against what God had already revealed (1 Thess 5:19-22). That testing wasn't originally by a council, but by every fellowship and believer - all of whom had access to the same Spirit and Lord.
My point about the "neatness" of our concept of the Bible today is this. Wrapping a subset of writings inside one leather cover, giving the collection a name (The Bible), and declaring it (by the authority of church history) to be the Word of God is not what makes it so. What makes it so or not so is whether or not it truly came from God. The requirement to ask that question did not magically end after the 1st century. I believe we are just as responsible for testing and retesting the writings as the earliest churches were. Don't worry - those writings have passed a lot of generations of testing. But that doesn't mean we can stop thinking about it - because EVERY generation needs to rest on a firmer foundation than "church history says so". Now granted, the testing is hard work - but well worth the effort. By patiently reading, comparing, thinking, praying, teaching, discovering, arguing, debating, and wrestling together in community over the teachings that were written down, we find God masterfully and sovereignly revealing Himself with a unified message that travels in and through the messy lives and languages of human beings. So coming back to our church meetings - how will they look differently if we are doing that work together?
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Jesse, something I might have failed to mention in the original article is the testing process. Paul wrote in an letter in the bible that we should test all things. My personal journey of questioning and testing the bible, book by book started in my childhood.
Much of why I believe what I believe is from trial and error. When I ignored what God was teaching me through the bible I learned much from each experience. Later, through dialog with others as you have mentioned I continued in the process.At 70 years of age I am now to the point of allowing the words of the bible to test me.
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This post is two years old, but I felt the need to comment for others who might read. Sir Isaac Newtown said, "Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, not in the multiplicity and confusion of things." The bible has been found to be without error(with miniscule grammatical errors that do not change the overall message) over the last two thousand years. There are over 5000 original Greek manuscripts. The Word is TRUTH. The Bible is God's Word. The Word or Logos refers to the bridge between the transcendent and material universe. Why this confusion? Satan is the author of confusion. The only thing that needs to be questioned is denominational doctrine--this needs to be held up against the light of Scripture.
