Christian Manifesto II & III: Inerrant & God-Breathed

Declaration II

Scripture Is Inerrant

I believe Scripture in its original autograph form or first copies is inerrant. When I say inerrant it simply means that the Bible always tells the truth about what it talks about. If God is sovereign and in perfect control we know that any book written by Him can and would have to logically be inerrant. A book with His words (the Bible) would be an outflowing of His Will. A will and mind that is perfect and infinite.  If correctly interpreted it is entirely true and never false in what it affirms. This includes morality, doctrines and ethics. It can also apply to the social, physical, or life sciences. In this way I adhere to the 1978 statement on inerrancy in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1

Proof of this inerrancy is shown within the text itself. Regardless of the accusations leveled against Scripture, the Bible contains no errors nor contradictions. Many will state that they believe it most certainly does contain errors, contradiction or inconsistencies but I challenge anyone to post one of them to refute this declaration. It has nearly always been my experience that the supposed contradicts are most often failure to properly interpret the passage in question. It is not a matter of error in the text it is error in the reception or person reading and drawing the meaning out of the text. In this way I suppose you could say that the Scriptures may be inspired but the reader might not be inspired or led of God. That is because many of the things in Scripture are spiritual and spiritual things cannot be discerned by the natural or unbelieving sinful man.

1 Corinthians 2:14-16 ~ “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.

To properly understand why Scripture is inerrant I must make a third declaration.

Declaration III

Scripture Is Inspired By God

I believe Scripture is Inspired by God. When I say inspired I am establishing unequivocally that the Bible is a divine output directly from God through man.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 ~ “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”

In other words, God actively worked through the writing process and had his hand in the outcome of what Scripture would say. Additionally, the perpetuity of Scripture over the last few millennium since it was written, its accuracy has been maintained in its transcription. Not only would God inspire the writing of the original text, He would also preserve the doctrinal and theological accuracy since its inception until now or the accuracy of the original autographs and manuscripts become a moot point. Inspired Scripture is simply written revelation. Scripture is man's word, but also and equally God's word either spoken through man's mouth or written with man's pen/quill.

The term inspired/inspiration is actually  θεοπνευστος / theopneustos which is a compound of God/theo and breath/pnuema. So that is why we have the terms “God-breathed” in some English translations because it is a literal translation from the original Greek text. In is interesting to note that in the very manner that God breathed the vital breath into man in Adam so too he breathed life into His holy Word...the Bible. That is because the Bible is the logos of Christ.