All About the Bible
7 - The Reliability of the Bible
When you open your Bible and begin to read it, can you be certain that what you are reading is reliable? I believe you can have absolute confidence in the reliability of the Bible.
In our last study we said that the Bible is inspired. Every word of the sixty-six books of the Bible is inspired and every part of those books is inspired. Because of this we must go a step further and say that the Bible is both infallible and inerrant. We cannot arrive at any other conclusion. This is because when Jesus prayed to God the Father in John chapter 17:17 He said, "Sanctify them by your truth; your word is truth". He said in John 10:35, "the Scripture cannot be broken". Jesus had a very high view of Scripture. To Him it was God's word of truth. The inspiration of the Bible demands belief in the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible because God is infallible and inerrant. What do we mean by infallibility? Whatever the Bible states in every part is truthful and can be trusted. God's word will never mislead us or misinform us. The Bible is never wrong. We must be clear that the Bible is not only infallible in its spiritual revelations, but on whatever matter it covers. It is also accurate when it refers to historical and geographical facts. Some have argued that the Bible is infallible in its spiritual and moral teaching, but may include mistakes in other areas. They say that the writers saw things through the lenses of their own culture, or they made historical errors, or they had misconceptions about scientific information. This is a dangerous way to approach Scripture because it undermines the Bible as the authoritative word of God. It makes us selective in deciding which parts of the Bible is God's infallible word and which parts might not be. If it is not Gods inspired infallible word in entirety, then how can we ever be sure that God is speaking to us in a particular verse or passage we are reading?
We also believe that the Bible is inerrant. If the Bible is the very word of God then it follows that it must be inerrant, that is, without error. It must be without error because God is truth. Whatever the Bible speaks about, whether its doctrine, history, morals, or ethics, it is free of mistakes. All the events in the Bible happened. All the people found in the Bible existed. This includes all the stories of the Bible like Noah and the Ark, and Jonah and the Great Fish. Jesus clearly believed in the history contained in Scripture. He said in Matthew 24:37, "as it was in the days of Noah", and in Matthew 12:40 He said, "As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish". These are not fictitious bedtime stories but factual incidents in the history of the world.
Strictly speaking, when we speak about infallibility and inerrancy we are referring to the original manuscripts. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and the New Testament mostly in Greek. We call these the languages of inspiration. Scholars have undertaken a study of the many manuscripts that have come down through the years and confirm that there is very little difference between the originals and their copies. We can be confident that the translations available have been produced with the greatest of care and respect. We must bear in mind that since the Bible is inspired by God He has watched over its transmission and translation so that what we have is a reliable version in our own language.
There are some important implications about inerrancy. We cannot have confidence in the gospel without an inerrant Bible. The view we have about who Jesus was, and what He did, depends on the information we have in the Bible. If the record of Jesus` life in the gospels is nothing more than the ideas of men, then our faith rests on mans speculative thinking and not Gods revealed truth. The life of Jesus, His virgin birth and incarnation, His death and resurrection, the message of salvation, are located in historical circumstances. If these historical events are at best uncertain, and at worst untrue, then we cannot preach with confidence that a unique person, the Son of God, actually came into this world to save sinners like us. Doubt about biblical history throws doubt on the biblical theology behind it. Paul puts it well in when he says in 1Corinthians 15:14, "And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith". Our preaching and faith rests in the historical certainty that Jesus died and rose again. A lack of confidence in the Bible leads to a lack of authority in preaching. It also leads to confusion and uncertainty in those who listen. A woman was often seen going to and from church by her neighbour. The neighbour noticed that every time she passed by her Bible was thinner. One day she asked, "Do you use a different size Bible every Sunday? It seems thinner every week!". "Oh no", she replied, "the Minister tells us every Sunday that we don’t believe this part and that part of the Bible now, so I just tear the pages out that are no longer of any use".
To argue for a Bible that contains error is a reflection on God himself. It suggests that God has deceived us. It implies that it needed modern scholars to sort the mess out and to determine what God said and what He did not say. No, God has spoken in His word in every page, every line, every word! All we need to know about Him, and His purposes in Jesus Christ, is fully declared in scripture, infallibly and without error. The nineteenth century Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon said, "God writes with a pen that never blots, speaks with a tongue that never slips, acts with a hand that never fails".