The Case For Biblical Inerrancy

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"I want to know one thing, the way to Heaven. God Himself has condescended to teach the Way. He has written it down in a Book. O give me that Book!"-John Wesley
God's Word changes lives!

I, as well as multitudes of others, know this from personal experience. In the pages of the Bible, you can find the solution to anything you may be facing.

That is why I wanted the very first issue I address in these teachings to be a defense of the integrity and reliability of the Scriptures. Almost any theological issue is in one way or another related to this one. In order to properly relate to God, and follow His plan for our lives, we MUST be able to trust that He has given us accurate instructions on how to do so.

The Bible is a revelation, which means, "to uncover or reveal." God WANTS to reveal Himself to us. He loves us passionately, and He desires to have fellowship with us. He wants us to come to Him, and talk to Him, and He wants to talk to us as well. His primary means of doing this is through His Word, the Bible.

This is why we must approach the Scriptures with the proper reverence. God's Word is eternal (Isaiah 40:8,1 Peter 1:25,) it is not to be added to or taken away from(Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32; Proverbs 30:6, Revelation 22:18-19,) and all doctrine and revelation must be tested in light of it (Isaiah 8:20; Romans 16:17-18; 2 Corinthians 11:3-4, 13-15, Galatians 1:6-9, 2 Timothy 4:2-4; 2 Peter 2:1-2.)

Throughout church history, until fairly recently, the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture was a foregone conclusion. Dallas Theological Seminary professor P.D. Feinberg writes;"Biblical inerrancy has been the view of the church throughout its history. As part of the corpus of orthodox doctrine, the position until relatively recently has seldom been questioned and so was assumed and seldom defended through church history. Nevertheless,in each period of the church's history clear affirmations of the doctrine can be found."(The Concise Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, edited by Walter A.Elwell, page 63, copywrite 1991 by Baker Book House co.)

My premise is based on this: I don't believe that a perfect God would inspire error (see Hebrews 6:18; Titus 1:2). I realize that He used imperfect human beings to write it, but if you had a letter of world-changing importance to write, wouldn't you see to it that the person who dictated it for you did it accurately? The integrity of Scripture is a reflection of the integrity of God. After all, if He didn't accurately preserve for us the Truth He was going to judge the world by, then we would have a right to question His justice.

We must understand exactly what is at stake here. If we open the Bible up to the possibility of error, we have no foundation for our faith. What if the plan of salvation contains error? What if the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, or the Lord's Prayer are wrong? How do we know we are living for God at all, if He hasn't accurately shown us how to do it? Remember,the first lie Satan ever told the human race was designed to cast doubt on the Word of God, "Yea,hath God said...?" (see Genesis 3:1-5.)

Let's look at just a few of the reasons God gave us the Bible;