The Inspired Word of God

2 Tim 3:16-17  "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."   If it comes from God then it will nourish us and it will prepare and equip us for the fulfillment of what He has called us to do.  Although delivered through human conduits it is divine in its origin.

I can remember going to seminary in Philadelphia straight out of college.  What shock it was.  I have related here in previous blogs how my college experience challenged me and helped form the basis of my belief system.  Seminary on the other hand was a challenge in another way completely.  Imagine discovering that many of my professors did not believe in the inerrancy of the Word of God.  They believed that maybe in the beginning what the authors received from God was pure but that by using human vessels to write it down, their filters came into play and it began to be corrupted.  Add to that the fact that none of the original manuscripts survive and that what we have are copies of copies and we can't be sure that it is totally accurate and inerrant.  Of course, this opens up the door to a slippery slope where they find ways to call into question just about everything in Scripture as having been corrupted in some fashion or another.

They did not favor "Heilsgeschichte", a German word literally translated "salvation history". Used in OT studies in the 50s, as a theological principle, reading Scripture as the story of God's redeeming acts in history. In essence, it says that not only is God alive, but that He interacts with us humans in supernatural ways in order to affect redemption in the lives of His creation.

 They favored instead "Formgeschichte" (Form Criticism) which was introduced by the Old Testament scholar H. Gunkel (1862-1932), and applied to New Testament studies, notably by Dibelious and R. Bultmann.  It arose out of a synthesis: (1) of literary criticism (originally applied to Old Testament stories and psalms), i.e. the analysis of textual structure; and (2) the study of sources (Quellenkritik), which examines the occurrence and function of the structural units in their original historical settings. Both types of criticism are applied to the narrators' (e.g. the evangelists') adaptations of established genres for a specific purpose. They used this form of Biblcal criticism to disqualify the miraculous aspects of the New Testament as having been added afterwards by religious zealots or to say that sweeping sections of the New Testament do not fit the form of the Apostles' original writings so they must have been written by someone else and are therefore suspect.

OK, so maybe you glazed over while reading the last two paragraphs but here is the point, God is a sovereign God and He is more than capable of protecting His Word so that when it made it into our hands it still has the same power and the authority as the moment when He inspired it in the minds and hearts of the authors of the Bible.

We can't say, "Well, I didn't know," or "I wasn't properly equipped". Everything that is necessary for us has been supplied by the Father through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  Our toolbox is full. He has provided us with all the tools necessary.  It is up to us to learn how to use these tools and then actually use them.  Tools sitting in a toolbox are not much good if we try to use a hammer and a screwdriver to fix everything. 

The Scriptures are not there just to tell a story. They are not there just to fill our minds with knowledge. They are there to grow us, mature us and spur us into action.

Eph 4:11-13 "It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service , so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ."

To attain the "whole measure of the fullness of Christ" we need to read, study and apply His inerrant, God-breathed Word through works of service.