As promised, over the next few days, I am going to be discussing my position on Scripture. Today we look at my first premise in the form of a question: How can we be persuaded that the claims of Scripture to actually be God’s Word and that they are true?

This is a two part premise. Let’s look at the first part: the claim that the words of Scripture are God’s words.

First, this is what the Bible claims for itself. There are frequent claims in the Bible that all the words of Scripture are God’s words, particularly 2 Timothy 3:16, which says, “All Scripture is God-breathed…” This is not to say that every word in Scripture was audibly spoken by God himself but that even the quotations of other people are God’s reports of what they said, and, rightly interpreted in their contexts, come to us in God’s authority.

Second, we are convinced of the Bible’s claims to be God’s words as we read the Bible. It is one thing to affirm that the Bible claims to be the words of God. It is another thing to be convinced that those claims are true. Our ultimate conviction that the words of the Bible are God’s word comes only when the Holy Spirit speaks in and through the words of the Bible to our hearts and gives us an inner assurance that these are the words of our God speaking to us. This by the way is what I think Augustine was talking in interpreting the Bible, in particular Genesis. But as I said in the comment section on Henry’s An Honest Question entry yesterday, this conviction does not come apart from the words of Scripture or in addition to the words of Scripture.

Third, the words of Scripture are self-attesting. In other words, for if an appeal to some higher authority [i.e. historical accuracy or logical consistency] were used to prove that the Bible is God’s Word then the Bible itself would not be our highest or absolute authority; it would be subordinate.

Some may object that the premise that Scripture is God’s Word because it claims to be is a circular argument. Admittedly, this is a kind of circular argument. However, this does not make it invalid because all arguments must appeal to that authority for proof, otherwise the authority would not be an absolute or highest authority. This problem is not unique to Christianity; everyone implicitly uses some kind of circular argument when defending their ultimate authority for belief.

So how does anyone choose among the various claims for absolute authorities? Ultimately, the truthfulness of the Bible will commend itself as being far more persuasive than other religious books OR any other intellectual constructions of the human mind, such as logic, human reason, scientific methodology, etc. It will be more persuasive because in the actual experience of life, all of these other candidates for ultimate authority be seen as inconsistent or to have shortcomings that disqualify them.

Let’s move on to the truthfulness of God’s words. [I will deal with this issue more fully when I talk about inerrancy, but I will treat the truthfulness issue here]

First, God cannot lie or speak falsely. Titus 1:2 speaks of “God, who never lies.” Since God never lies, his words can always be trusted. And further, it is not merely that God cannot lie, it is impossible for him to lie; this would be inconsistent with His character.

Second, all the words in Scripture are completely true and without error in any part. Since the words of the Bible are God’s words, and since God cannot lie, it is correct to conclude that there is no error in any part of the words of Scripture.

Third, God’s words are the ultimate standard of truth. In other words, the Bible is not true because it conforms to some higher standard of truth, but rather the Bible is the final standard of truth.

Let’s deal with the obvious question that might arise after reading these statements: Might some new fact ever contradict the Bible?

First, we need to elucidate the word contradict. It any ‘fact’ is ever discovered that is said to contradict Scripture [if we have interpreted and understood Scripture rightly] that ‘fact’ must be false, because God knows all true facts and has taken that into account that ‘fact.’ So no new fact can contradict the Bible.

Second, it must be said that scientific or historical study [notice that theological study is excluded] may cause us to reexamine Scripture to see if it is really what thought it taught scientifically and historically. And when this happens, we can have assurance that this new ‘data’ will be consistent with Scripture and will conform to the accuracy of Scripture.