By Pastor Dave Farmer

Topic #2 The Focus Of A Relentless Attack

The study of the character and nature of Holy Scripture is important because it is the focus of attack. Attack, you say! Yes! And we must understand the issues that are raised in the Bible today. Have you heard the study of the foolish frog? If you have a pot of boiling water and drop the frog into it, he will jump out immediately. He instinctively knows the danger. However, if you put a frog in warm water and gradually raise the temperature to Boiling, the frog will not notice the danger and jump out of the water to save himself from being boiled. A brief study of history will show how belief in the Bible has changed. We, like the foolish frog, have not noticed.

The Focus of Attack

It used to be that one could say," I believe the Bible is the Word of God." It was very simple. You either believed the Bible to be the Word of God or you didn't. Then it became necessary to say, " the inspired Word of God." This was to answer the attack of liberalism that said, "the Word of God was the product of fallible men." Then someone suggested that God gave men the thought and they wrote the Bible expressing in their own words what God wanted to be written. So we had to state that the Bible was the verbally inspired Word of God. Just when you think the battle is over, someone dreamed up the idea that only certain subjects are covered by inspiration. We had to correct this error by adding ‘the plenary ¹ and verbally inspired Word of God."

At this present moment because of another attack against the Scriptures, we must say the plenary, verbally, infallible, inspired and inerrant-in-the-original-manuscripts Word of God. Today the debate rages over inerrancy. Who knows where it will end? One thing is clear, the Church of Jesus Christ by weakening and lowering its view of the Bible has caused Christ's Church to experience a power failure. The salt is losing its savor, and the light on a hill is now very dim^{. 2}

The Early Church

Belief in the Bible as the Word of God was not always a problem. It is a recent problem. We know this because we have the writings of the Church Fathers ³ and they held that the Bible was the Word of God. It was their firm and steadfast belief. They quoted extensively from the New Testament, and this is one of the evidence's that we have to determine what Books were considered part of the New Testament Canon.

We have the writings of Clement, AD 95; Ignatius of Antioch, AD 116; Polycarp of Smyrna, AD 150, to name a few pastors. Irenaeus fought against Gnostic heresy and quoted from every New Testament book except Philemon and III John. He never suggests or even hints that anyone believed that the Bible was not the Word of God.

This was never an issue to the Church Fathers. Origen, AD 185-254 used the Scriptures to prove the deity of Christ in his controversy with Celsus. He constantly called upon Celsus to give up his heresy and to accept as final authority the Word of God. Augustine, AD 354-430 said, "For I confess to your charity that I have learned to defer this respect and honor to those Scriptural Books only which are now called canonical, that I believe most firmly that not one of these authors has erred in any respect in writing." ⁴ At that time there was no debate in the Church over the Scripture being the Word of God.

The Reformation

The Protestant Reformation began a period where the Word of God became an issue. Real attention for the first time in the Church Age was given to the doctrine of the Scriptures. But even here, it was not an attack upon the Scriptures themselves, but a reaction to the position of the Roman Catholic Church that regarded itself as having authority over the Word of God. So the nature of the debate between Protestants and Catholics in that era was not "Is the Bible the Word of God?" but "Who has greater authority - the Roman Church or the Word of God?" Calvin refers to the Scriptures as the "sure and infallible record" and the "unerring standard." Luther declared, "The Scriptures have never erred, and it is impossible that Scriptures should contradict itself; it appears so only to the senseless and obstinate hypocrites." ⁵

The Modern Age

What we find when we search Church history is that the challenge to the Scriptures has come in our lifetime. It began at the turn of this century with Modernism and Liberalism. The basic tenet was that the Bible was a fallible witness. The revelation was perfect when it left God, but it was corrupted by the time it was recorded in the Bible.

Currently, the issue is whether we accept the Bible as infallible and inerrant. Many today want to separate the two. They can't, but they try. One hears, "I believe the Bible is inspired, but I cannot believe that it is without error." Another says, "I confess the infallibility and inerrancy of the Scriptures in accomplishing God's purpose for them; to give mankind the revelation of God in His redemptive love through Jesus Christ." This is the inspired purpose view of the Bible. The Bible has factual errors, unsolvable discrepancies, but it does have doctrinal integrity. In other words, when the Bible speaks on the subject of salvation, it is infallible and inerrant; but when it gives factual information; such as history, it is fallible and capable of error.⁶

Do you see the destructive heresy of this belief? Let me illustrate. If we went back 150 years and as we were reading the Book of 2 Kings we came across a nation called the Hittites. The archeologist would say to you, "we have no archaeological findings to help us date, place, or give the nature and history of these people. The Bible is wrong. They never existed. Nevertheless, people of faith believed that archaeology would find a record of this missing civilization. They believed that the Hittites existed because the Bible declares their existence and the Bible is the infallible and inerrant truth.

But someone who does not believe the Bible is inerrant would say, "The Hittites do not exist! There is no evidence from history or archaeology. What we have here is a common scribal error. Remember folks the Bible was repeatedly written and some overzealous scribe miscopied this name or added this name. This is a corrupt text. It is history, so it is not protected by inspiration.

But What happened? To his embarrassment and the embarrassment of all those great generations of Cambridge historians, the Hittite civilization was unearthed, and they had to rewrite an entire volume of Ancient History. Who was right? The Bible! Why was there any doubt?

Man is going to tell us what things are inspired and what things are not. For example, if there are 1,000 facts of history in Scripture and if the historian verifies the accuracy of 750 of those facts, they are infallible and inerrant. What about the other 250 facts of history? They are fallible.

The scientist operates in much the same manner. The key issue in the creation versus evolution debate is, "Is the Bible the Word of God?" The scientist is given authority over the Scripture. When he says, "Evolution is supported by scientific evidence," then the creation story must be relegated to a myth, an error, a fallible record of origin not to be believed. This scissor and paste method of interpreting Scripture is going to destroy everything we believe. Inevitably, the denial of the full integrity of Scripture will give way to doubts about every doctrine we hold. Either the Bible is the Word of God and has authority, or it is not. There is no middle ground. So this doctrine is very important because it is the focus of a tremendous attack.

Standing Firm In The Faith

Have you ever had this experience? You mention the Bible, and you get a look that says "Are you crazy?" Well, if believing in the Bible is being "crazy" then I am as crazy as they come. And if you are as crazy as I am, then you should enjoy this study. I hope that this study will provide clarity about the true nature of Holy Scripture and that the Spirit of God may use that which we learn to give a reason for the hope that is within us.

Philippians 1:27

Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I will hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel;

ENDNOTES

^1. PLENARY means full, complete, or absolute. It means every part of Scripture is inspired.

^2. The ideas in this paragraph were stimulated by Dr. Charles Ryrie's excellent chapter "In So Many Words." Ryrie, Charles C. What You Should Know About Inerrancy. Chicago: Moody Press, 1981.

^3. The Church Father’s are the pastors of the first six centuries who quoted extensively from the New Testament in their sermons and books.

^4. Ryrie, Charles C. The Bible: Truth Without Error. Rev. Ed. Dallas: Dallas Theological Seminary, 1972.

^5. Ibid. p2

^6. Ibid. p 3,4