I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned (Galatians 1:6-9).
All
the arguments we have about Higher Criticism, about Gospel Reductionism, about
Justification; they all have at their central point the same kernel: What is
Scripture?
Either
the Holy Scriptures are the divinely inspired and inerrant word of God, or they
are corrupted. Either the Bible is the product of the omniscient God who
created the universe, and spoke to mankind through men as He moved those men by
His Holy Spirit, or it is just a collection of texts, created by men, out of
which we might be able to extract some kind of significance if we do the right
kind of mental gymnastics. Either the Holy Scriptures are the source of all
Christian doctrine, and the norm for evaluating that doctrine, or they aren’t.
And, if they aren’t, then the only source for doctrine is the devil and the
human heart.
Those
are our options, as I see it. It will do no good arguing about fine doctrinal
points with someone who does not believe that the Bible is divinely inspired
and inerrant. That person, even if he doesn't recognize or admit it, has no
standard for doctrine. He may come up with anything he likes. The only limit to
his creativity is his own intellect. Personally, that terrifies me. I think,
however, that this is what is so attractive about modern theological and
philosophical schools of thought. The higher critics abandoned the things that
limited their thought, and they were free to search out what God really said in
the human work of scripture. But that was the whole point of God giving
scripture to us in the first place. It serves as an objective standard. It is
supposed to be our limiting principle.
And
I am at once suspicious of men who look at the word of God and ask the
question, “Did God really say?”
But
how do we know that scripture is divinely inspired and inerrant? Well, it tells
us that it is. That isn't the simplistic argument that it seems. Scripture
tells us that it is the product of God inspiring human writers to record His
revelation to mankind. It records the movements of
people groups; it describes wars and other events of human history. And we tend
to find the archeological remnants of those people and their activities where
the Bible tells us we will. Alas, secular scholars will dismiss what the Bible
tells them about what they have found simply because the information comes from
the Bible. But the archeological evidence, as Joel Kramer describes it, is like
having five pieces of a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle. The only way to make any sense
of those pieces is to look at the picture on the box. The Bible is, for us,
that picture.[1]
Moreover,
its revelation was accompanied by miracles to confirm the authenticity of its
message. The most important proof to an old “Biblicist” such as myself is that
Jesus taught the divine character and perfection of the word of God, and He
proved that He was God by rising from the dead, so we should pay attention to
what He said.
Jesus
said that the Bible was about Him. He is the center of all Holy Scripture.
After His resurrection when He taught two of His disciples on the road to
Emmaus, Jesus explained this to them:
He
[Jesus] said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe
all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these
things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the
Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning
himself (Luke 24:25-27).
When
Jesus declares to the Pharisees in John 10:25 that the Scriptures cannot be
broken, he is declaring that the Scriptures are true and correct; that they are
the source from which all teachings are derived. In His Sermon on the Mount,
Jesus declares that He came to fulfill the Scriptures:
“Do
not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come
to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and
earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will
by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to
do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever
practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of
heaven” (Matthew 5:17-19).
Jesus
did not set up a new religion. From Genesis to Malachi there is one primary
message: all people are sinful because of Adam and Eve’s disobedience; all
deserve God’s wrath because of our corruption. But God promised to send a
Savior to deliver us from sin and death. Through faith in that promise, of
which Jesus is the fulfillment, people living before the time of Jesus received
God’s forgiveness and salvation.
And
then, Jesus showed up, said that He was God in human flesh who came to die as
the atoning sacrifice for sin, and rose from the dead after He was crucified to
death. I'm going to listen to what He says.
But
the higher critics won’t. My argument is, to them, a quaint remnant of a less
enlightened time. The mere mention of miracles, actions that defy the laws of
physics, would have them laughing in my face. They subscribe to the idea that
nothing supernatural can be taken at face value. That's why you see higher
critical scholars trying to explain Jesus’ walking on the water of the Sea of
Galilee by some anomalous weather event that caused ice to form and provide a
platform for our Lord to deceive the disciples.[2]
And
that means all miracles, including the resurrection of Jesus. Modern scholars
will twist themselves into knots talking about a “spiritual” resurrection. They
will twist the scriptures any way they have to, to deny that Jesus actually
rose from the dead. With St. Paul, however, I say that if Christ is not raised
from the dead our preaching is useless, our faith is useless, all the dead are
lost, we are still in our sins, and we are the most pathetic people of all:
If
there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And
if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.
More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have
testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise
him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the
dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has
not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those
also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have
hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men (1 Corinthians 15:14-19).
I
do not, however, believe that the ESV Bible in the pew racks at your church is
the divinely inspired inerrant word of God (That would be the NIV 1984, of
course.../joking). It is generally taught that the autographs, those original
copies which the divinely inspired authors produced, are the inerrant copies.[3]
The manuscripts copied from those autographs certainly have errors in them.
They don't, however, have errors as the modernists would like you to believe.[4]
They will tell you that there are thousands of discrepancies, called textual variants,
found between manuscripts![5]
How are we to know the truth! So many differences! This might sound impressive
until you realize that those so-called variants are incredibly minor. They are
things like word order and spelling differences in manuscripts. And the other
thing they won't tell you is that literally none of the thousands and thousands
of textual variants affects a single point of doctrine.[6]
We
have thousands and thousands of manuscript copies of the New Testament going
back to the first generation of the Christian Church. They all say the same
things. All of them. This wasn't some cosmic game of telephone where God told
one guy something, and that guy whispered it to someone else and wasn't allowed
to repeat the message, causing errors to creep in, until the final message bore
no resemblance to the original one.[7] No, they copied the autographs. Then
they checked the copies. Then they copied the copies. Then they checked those
copies against the earliest copies they had. And they continued doing this for
two millennia. Even today, when someone faithfully translates the Bible into
modern language, they go back to the earliest sources available to make sure they
are getting it right.
That’s
not even considering the Old Testament, and how its
text was faithfully preserved.
So,
as far as Christian doctrine is concerned, scripture must be the source of it.
Francis Pieper, another “Biblicist” who repristinates “dead orthodoxy” put it
like this:
“It
is impossible to separate these two functions of Scripture: to be the source of
the Christian doctrine and to be its norm. The Holy Scriptures are the norm of
the Christian doctrine only because they are its only source” (Pieper, 1950).[8]
We
read what Scripture says about creation and mankind,
how we were created perfect by a gracious God, and how we rejected that
perfection by disobedience to His Law. We learn from Scripture the depth of our
corruption by sin; that it is complete; so complete, in fact, that while we
might realize that something isn't right with us, we can't recognize the
problem in its entirety, let alone solve it. We must be taught that we are
sinful creatures, lost and condemned. And, to set things right, God took on
human flesh, was born of a woman, lived a sinless life and died as the
vicarious atonement for the sins of the world.
It
is through the working of the Holy Spirit through the means of God’s word, that
He creates faith in Christ in us, giving us the gifts of His forgiveness, life,
and salvation.
Pieper,
again, says it better than I could:
Every
theologian should be able to see that we are here confronted with an [sic] aut-aut.
Either we accept Scripture as God's own Word and, emphasizing it as the sole
source and norm of theology, teach doctrinam divinam, or we deny that
Scripture is God's infallible Word, distinguish in it between truth and error,
and teach, in God's Church, the “visions of our own heart,” the doctrina
humana of our Ego. The divine authority which we take away from Scripture
we necessarily assign to our own human mind. We are adrift on the sea of
subjectivism. Human opinion occupies the rostrum in the Church. Theology is no
longer theocentric, but has become anthropocentric” (Pieper, 1950).[9]
And,
if we were to do that, we would be doing the devil’s will. ###
End Notes
[1]
Kramer, Joel P. 2020. “Where God Came Down: The Archaeological Evidence.”
Introduction, p. 8. Brigham City: Expedition Bible (an imprint of Sourceflix
Inc.).
[2] Borger,
Julian. “Jesus Was Walking on Thin Ice, Claim Scientists.” the Guardian,
February 22, 2017.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/apr/06/religion.news.
[3]
Koukl, Greg. “‘Misquoting’ Jesus? Answering Bart Ehrman,” n.d.
https://www.str.org/w/-misquoting-jesus-answering-bart-ehrman.
[4]
Ibid.
[5] Barnett,
Tim. “Textual Variants: It’s the Nature, Not the Number, That Matters,” n.d.
https://www.str.org/w/textual-variants-it-s-the-nature-not-the-number-that-matters.
[6]Koukl,
Greg. “‘Misquoting’ Jesus? Answering Bart Ehrman,” n.d.
https://www.str.org/w/-misquoting-jesus-answering-bart-ehrman.
[7]
Ibid.
[8]
Pieper, Francis. 1950. “Christian Dogmatics,” vol. 1. St. Louis: Concordia
Publishing House.
[9]
Ibid.
