This is also true of the very human emotions expressed in the poetry of the Psalms. To explain this individual style phenomenon, there is another theory that Bible truths come from God, but He allowed writers to use their own words and personality in communicating His truth.
In my understanding, God—through a gift of the Holy Spirit—inspired the efforts of people to record his message to the world for all time and to a particular audience for a historic time. At the beginning of the fourth century AD, the Roman emperor Diocletian ordered that all Christian writing be destroyed. This order motivated early Christians to formalize a Bible of accepted scripture—writing inspired by God that would help stabilize the church. The books of the Bible were, therefore, first published under the threat of death.
Bible scholars do not know all the historic details of how the Bible canon was established centuries ago. In the Bible Study Tools article, Matthew Mittelberg discusses apostolic authority, which allows that Scripture authored by an apostle was readily accepted into the Bible canon.
Authors associated with an apostle, such as Mark with Peter and Luke with Paul, also had their writing accepted into the canon of Bible books. Writing associated with a godly person was more readily accepted as part of the Bible. The book of Hebrews, by an unknown author and one of the last books accepted into the canon of the Bible, is an example of this. I heard a minister once say that the best commentary on the Old Testament is the New Testament.
Second, if hearing and studying Scripture leads a person to experience good faith and commit good works, that is evidence that the Bible is divinely inspired. As it says in 2 Timothy , All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. And third, Christian church tradition supports Bible scripture. Again, drawing information from the Bible Study Tools article, Tertullian, a second-century church leader, viewed tradition as vital in the interpretation of Scripture.
Although the controversy over some passages was inevitable—and people have always been able to distort the meaning of verses by taking them out of context—Tertullian believed that tradition would lead to the right interpretation.
In the world in which the Bible was constructed, there were great religious conflicts, as is still true. Therefore, if a writing stood the test of time and continued to be used widely by the church, it retained its standing. Moody Bible Institute believes strongly in the factual, verbal, historical inerrancy of the Bible. That is, the Bible, in its original documents, is free from error in what it says about geography, history and science as well as in what it says about God.
Its authority extends to all matters about which the Bible speaks. Even though the Bible is God's revelation, it must still be interpreted. Interpretation has to do with our reception and understanding of that which God revealed and recorded. Interpretation is a human responsibility. Divine inspiration guarantees the truthfulness of God's word but not the accuracy of our interpretation. The Bible is infallible in all it affirms to be true and therefore absolutely reliable.
We, however, may be fallible in our interpretation of the Bible. Moody Bible Institute N. LaSalle Blvd. By submitting this form, you consent to receive promotional and other communications from the Moody Bible Institute.
Moody exists to Proclaim the Gospel through equipping people to be biblically grounded, practically trained, and to engage the world through Gospel-centered living. Search verses, phrases, and topics e. John , Jesus faith love. Other Searches. Blue Letter Bible offers several daily devotional readings in order to help you refocus on Christ and the Gospel of His peace and righteousness.
Recognizing the value of consistent reflection upon the Word of God in order to refocus one's mind and heart upon Christ and His Gospel of peace, we provide several reading plans designed to cover the entire Bible in a year. Today, when we use the word inspire or inspiration, it has the idea of something challenging to the human heart. Yet when we talk of the Bible being inspired, we are speaking of an entirely different matter. Though millions of books have been written through the ages, and many of them have inspired the human heart, there was only one Book that has been written by divine inspiration, or with divine authority; the Bible.
To begin with, it is important that we understand why we use the English word inspiration to describe the nature of the Bible. The King James Version translates this verse as follows:. The emphasis, however, is that Scripture has been breathed-out by God.
It is God revealing Himself to us. Today, when people use the word inspiration they are usually not referring to the divine nature of the Bible. The problem is that the term inspiration has taken upon itself a specific meaning in Christian circles based upon its continued usage for hundreds of years. It has become part of the vocabulary of Christians. At the same time, we acknowledge that it is not the best term to use.
We now want to consider how the process of divine inspiration occurred. How did God guide these writers to compose the exact words which He wanted written? The Bible says that God guided the writing of Scripture through the inward working of the Holy Spirit in the lives of people whom He chose to infallibly write the books of the Bible.
This guaranteed that the final result would be exactly what God intended. Thus, the Bible is the written Word of God to humanity, and, when originally written, was without error. The divine inspiration of Scripture starts with the God of the Bible. The words of the Bible were not self-initiated by the writers. Peter wrote:. According to this passage, the writers of Scripture, at times, did not understand all of the things that God told them to write.
However, they were obedient and wrote what He told them even though they may not have understood it. God guided the human authors of Scripture in the various things that they wrote or the sources that they used. The author was guided to go where God wanted him to go, not where he wanted to go. Thus the Spirit of God guaranteed the accuracy of every thing that was written.
This process extended until the time the document was written in its final form. The divine author of Scripture is God the Holy Spirit. Exactly how this process worked is a mystery. Scripture asserts that this did happen without explaining exactly how it happened.
In addition, the Lord divinely selected the writers of Scripture—there was no volunteering for the job. He selected the writers and guided their writing. While all Scripture is God-breathed, it is proper to say that the Bible is a book that is both human and divine. Its ultimate source is God the Holy Spirit, yet God used human instruments to compose the books. When one reads the Scriptures, it immediately becomes apparent that the various authors employed different writing styles and different vocabularies.
This gives evidence of the human side of Scripture. While there was no volunteering for the job of composing Scripture, those who wrote did write voluntarily; they were not taken over by some spirit who forced on them what to write. The writers of the Old and New Testament were not merely stenographers who mindlessly wrote what God dictated to them. Their own experiences and personalities were involved when the various books were being composed. Ultimately, however, the final result was supernaturally guided by God.
Indeed, the Bible has all the features of a book written by human beings. However, it also has features like no other book.
This is the biblical teaching on the subject. One result of the divine inspiration of Scripture is that the text is without error. The Bible itself claims to be true regarding everything that it records. Jesus prayed the following to His Father on the night of His betrayal:. The result of divine inspiration is that the Bible is the very Word of God. This includes the words, the ideas and the specific vocabulary of Scripture. Therefore, everything written in Scripture is correct—there are no errors of any kind, since the ultimate source is God Himself.
The authority of Scripture only extends to the original manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments—it does not extend to any translations or any manuscript copies. Having said that, we must emphasize that good translations of Scripture are for all intents and purposes the authoritative Word of God.
These translations faithfully represent what the text says and means. The point here is that if an error is found in the copying of the text or in some mistranslation in a particular version, it does not mean that the original was in error. Copies are not the same as the original. However, this statement about the inerrancy of the originals needs to be qualified somewhat.
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