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This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Ben Poole and Gary Schick.
Ben Poole
All right, so kind of a big question or topic that we're discussing today that maybe a lot of these words you've never heard of, and we'll try to kind of make this understandable and easy for us to walk through. So, they asked if we could take some time to walk through some of the different views of inspiration regarding the scriptures. Views like modernism orthodoxy, Neo orthodoxy, verbal and plenary inspiration. Essentially, what do we believe as to how the scriptures were actually written and what do other people believe as to how the scriptures were written? And then what does that mean for us? And that's really kind of, I think where we need to go with that is, what does this mean for us as Christians, who are Bible believing people, and how do we place our trust in that? And so Gary, I just kind of wanna open up and let you take off with it.
Gary Schick
Yeah, and that's a great question, it's huge. I don't know if we'll get through it today or not, I guess we'll just kind of keep an eye on the clock and see where it goes. But what you believe about the Bible is huge. Is it God's word? Is it not God's word? If it is, you know, how did we get it and even you know, how do we know it's true? So I didn't dig into quite all of the things there, but, I dug into a couple of them a little bit. There are different viewpoints as to the nature of God's word, and there are some big words that are thrown around. Inspiration is one of them, which "to inspire," literally means in breathe. And we get that from Paul's letter to Timothy, where it says all scripture is God breathed. Literally God breathed it out and profitable for teaching, reprove correction, and training and righteousness. So that's, I guess a starting point, and what does God's word say about itself? So I want to kind of define some of this, but then I think that's where we really need to go. What does the Bible say about itself? So in terms of orthodoxy, and I picked up some of this from a website called Got questions, Your answers, Biblical answers. So in terms of orthodoxy, the Orthodox view holds that the Bible is the revealed word of God, given by the inspiration of God. By inspiration both verbal and mechanical, is meant that the holy spirit was in full control of the biblical writer by either verbally dictating everything he was writing or using the person as a vessel through which to work. This doctrine of inspiration comes to the logical conclusion that the original manuscripts are without error or contradiction. In other words, yes, there's a human author, but they are writing what God has given them to write. And God has taken that person with their vocabulary, their viewpoint, their understanding, and gotten His words in print for us. Plenary is this concept that the Bible is complete and sufficient revelation of God, and a couple of passages that would support this are 2 Timothy 3:16--17, which I just quoted from. And also 2 Peter 1:20 and 21, which I'm hoping to get to here in a few minutes. Neo orthodoxy is kind of a semi liberal view. The liberal viewpoint would be, "You know, the Bible's written by a bunch of human authors, it's full of errors, it's basically what different people have believed over time." Neo orthodoxy kind of tries to come at least part way to the Orthodox position. It defines the word of God as Jesus, and so that would appeal to us. John 1:1 "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God," it's Jesus. However, here's where we part ways with the Neo Orthodox. It says, "That the Bible therefore is simply man's interpretation of the word's actions, Jesus actions." And thus the Bible itself is not inspired, it's a human document, various parts of it might literally be true, but various parts might not be. And so, the Neo Orthodox you would be essentially, the Bible contains the word of God, without being the word of God. I happened to have a professor when I was in college, drove me crazy until I figured out this is really where he was coming from. We were in a class called Bible and Culture, and I was like, "Great, and we're gonna talk about Moses and the parting of the Red Sea." And I'll never forget him standing up in front of the class and saying to us, "There are true stories and truth stories. And the Bible is full of truth stories." Well, you know what? Aesop's fables are great stories full of truth, but they're not true, they're fiction. And I woke up in the middle of the night and my roommate's like, "What was going on with you last night? You sat up in bed and you're like, Ryan Arnold will tell you it's a truth story." It's just like choking on this idea. I'm sorry, friends, I have not dedicated my life to teaching people a bunch of truth stories. Yes, God's word is full of truth because it's true. And so with that, first of all, I wanna let you know what my denomination, the foresees, a conservative congregational Christian conference believes. We believe the Bible---consisting of the old and new Testament---referring to the 66 books of the Protestant Bible to be the only inspired inherent, infallible authoritative word of God written. Inspired, God breathed, inherent, without air, infallible. It won't lead us astray, authoritative, it's what we base our Christian life and practice on. Word of God, written down, as opposed to Jesus, the living word this is the written word. What does the Bible say about itself? I think that's the key. I've already quoted 2 Timothy 3:16, "All scripture is, God breathed." 2 Peter 1:21 says, "For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the holy spirit." I think it's important to remember that Jesus quotes from the breadth of the old Testament. If you look at the Hebrew Bible, it consists of three parts, the law, the prophets, and the writings and Jesus quotes from all of them. He never quotes from the apocryphal book. The books that we find in the Apocrypha that's included in the Roman Catholic Bible, but he does quote from the books that we consider the Bible of the old Testament, that the Jews consider the Bible of the old Testament, the Jews also don't include the Apocrypha. And in terms of the new Testament, we have evidence that the new Testament writers knew exactly what they were doing. For example, Paul writes 1 Thessalonians 2:13, "Therefore we never stopped thanking God, that when you received His message from us, you didn't think of it as our words, as mere human ideas, you accepted what we said as the very word of God, which of course it is. And this word continues to work in you who believe." And the Bible's a powerful book, there's so much we can go off into, in terms of what the Bible says about itself. Hebrews 4:12, it's one of my favorites, "For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edge sword. Piercing to the division of soul and spirit, joint and marrow, discerning the very thoughts and intentions of the heart." Psalm 119:105, "Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." The scripture describes itself as a lamp, as a fire, as a hammer, as a sword, as bread, as milk, as honey, as meat. If we had time to look at all those scriptures, it really is complete and without error and good for us. It's not only do we base our faith on it, but we grow in our faith from it. Just so much could be said on this topic.
Ben Poole
Yeah, there really is. And I think if you're listening and part of a church that is in any way really associated with even KCMI, I think that we would all fall on that same understanding of scripture. That we believe and hold scripture to be our beginning and end of our understanding of faith. That we believe that it is perfect in and of itself, we believe that it is God's word. There's times where the writers wrote, like dictations, specifically wrote exactly what Jesus said. You can see that through Jesus' teachings, you can even see that from the gospels. Even in Revelation where John writes and records what Jesus said, to specifically the seven churches. But we also see that they didn't write just verbatim what Jesus was saying, they wrote stories. They wrote, you know, John's seeing this vision of the Revelation and he's writing what he sees. You see Luke who writes the book of Acts, and he's writing about the growth of the church. He's writing a history lesson essentially, of what is taking place. You see Paul, Peter, James, they're writing letters to churches, encouraging them. Paul says, "These people say hello and blessings to you, and I pray for you and I think of you." And so all of that though, we believe is 100% inspired through the Holy Spirit, speaking through the apostles. And sharing God's word from Genesis to Revelation that it is completely God breathed through them. It very well could have been different for each of them. Obviously, John writing Revelation had a very different experience, than maybe Paul did in writing his letters. But, yeah, I mean, this is huge and I would just encourage you to probably try and make a grasp of this, if you don't already, because this understanding can affect our spiritual walk. Because like, if you have a professor like you had Gary, who really doesn't believe. I mean, and what if we take that stance? How does that affect our faith? Well, that can make massive lifelong changes in our world and in ourselves.
Gary Schick
What it really means is, and this is where the liberals and the modernists part ways with us, that means they can pick and choose. They get to be actually the authority of God's word, not God Himself. And so, if they don't like something, you know, like, "Oh, the Genesis. That doesn't match with our views of evolution, so therefore that's just a story with truth in it, it's no longer true." And not just Genesis, although Genesis is foundational to everything. But, you know, we look at all the moral questions of our times and we see how, what we call Biblical churches have parted ways with what we call Mainline and Liberal churches. Well, what what's going on there? The Mainline and the Liberal churches are following the culture and wherever culture contradicts scripture, "Scripture's wrong, scripture's wrong, scripture's wrong. We've moved on, we've evolved beyond that. And so our understanding has evolved." Well, God said it, I believe it, that settles it, and you know what, cultures change, our viewpoints change. What people consider morally right culturally, a hundred years from now, may be radically different from what it is today. But God's word and His view on marriage, sexuality, on so many things, it stays the same. And thank God that it does, because it's a foundation you can build your life on. Jesus said, "Whoever hears my word and puts them into practice, is like a wise man who builds his house on a rock." And every other path is what the other guy built, the fool built on sand. So I'm gonna stick with God's word, I'm not saying it's always easy. You're right, you pointed out there's every kind of, I guess what you'd call genre, in scripture. There's history, there's poetry, there's prophecy, there are parables, which, you know, they aren't things that literally happen when they're parables. But that's different than when we're reading a history that is saying, this is what happened. And so, do we have to kind of understand what we're reading there to get the right interpretation? Absolutely, but the key is, God has given it. It's true and it contains truth because it's true.
Ben Poole
Yep, absolutely. I would encourage if you've never really looked into this, this kind of goes with it, but maybe a history of how we got our Bible. It's a beautiful history actually. There's so many books, I studied one when I was in college. It's simply, How we got the Bible from Lightfoot, I just looked it up on Amazon, it's the first one that pulled up. A phenomenal, just really great view, for me it helped solidify my foundation of my faith. That I can trust God's word, that what we're reading is true and accurate today.