Does the Bible have errors in it?

This week we are looking at the second statement that comprises our doctrinal statement as a church. This second statement addresses what we believe as a church when it comes to Bible. This statement summarizes the answer to the question “How did the Bible come into being? How do we know that the Bible is from God? And is the Bible true and trustworthy?”

Yesterday, we discovered that the Bible actually is not a book. Instead the Bible is a collection of letters that were written by more than 40 authors from every walk of life over a 1,600 year span that have been preserved and collected together in what we refer to today as the Bible. These letters were written in three different languages over the span of over 60 generations and are divided up into two main sections, which we refer to as the Old and New Testament.

God spoke through these human authors throughout history to communicate His message to humanity throughout history. We also talked about the reality that not only do we believe that the Bible is a collection of letters that were written by men who were inspired by God to write the very words of God to humanity. We also believe that the letters that make up what we call the Bible are without error. We believe that the Holy Spirit not only inspired the thoughts of the writers who wrote the letters that make up the Bible, but that the Holy Spirit also led the writers of these letters to use the very word structure into which these letters were written so that the original documents were inerrant as to fact and infallible as to truth. In other words, the letters that make up the Bible are totally true and are totally trustworthy.  

Today, we are going to address the objection that often sound something like this: “Well, Dave while that sounds great, are you trying to tell me that these writers knew that what they were writing was totally true and trustworthy? I mean, what did Jesus think of the Scriptures? Did He believe that they were without error?” That’s a great question. And fortunately for us, Jesus provides the answer to that question in an account of His life in the Bible called the gospel of Matthew. Here is what Jesus had to say about the Old Testament in Matthew 5:17-19:

"Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. "For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. "Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

Here we see Jesus explain that He did not come to earth in order to get rid of the Old Testament. Instead, Jesus came to earth to fulfill all the promises and the predictions that were made in the Old Testament. Jesus came to earth to demonstrate that the Old Testament was about Him and pointed to Him. Jesus came to earth to follow and show that the Old Testament was true and trustworthy. Jesus came to earth to follow and show that the Old Testament was to be followed. Well, What about Paul? Did he believe that the Scriptures were without error? Let’s look at Galatians 3:16:

Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, "And to seeds," as referring to many, but rather to one, "And to your seed," that is, Christ.

Here we see that Paul took the reality that Scripture was without error to the very letter when He wrote to the Galatians about who was the fulfillment of God’ promise to Abraham. “It is not seeds, but seed”. Well what about Peter. Did Peter think that what Paul wrote was inspired by God and without error? This is what Peter said about Paul’s writings in 2 Peter 3:15-16:

and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul,   according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.

Now I don’t’ know about you, but I find this very encouraging. I mean if Peter read some of Paul’s letters and walked away saying “Wow this is pretty deep stuff. Some of this is pretty hard to understand” then that gives us the freedom to feel the same way. But did you notice how Peter referred to Paul’s letters?

Did you notice that Peter placed Paul’s writings as inspired by God and without error? Did you notice that Peter referred to Paul’s letters as the rest of the Scriptures? Peter wrote his letters in 64 A.D., which was within 35 years of Jesus death and resurrection, which means that at an early stage, these letters were being circulated amongst the churches.

Now some of you may be thinking, or have heard others say “Well what about all the contradictions in the Bible, what about the differences in some of the stories of Jesus in the gospels?” Just like the witnesses to a car accident, the letters that make up the Bible record events from the perspectives of the writers observing a scene in the life of Jesus. Now while each writer may describe different aspects of the scene they had witnessed, everything that they write about that scene is without error.

Another objection that you have heard about the Bible is “Well Dave, what about the polygamy in the Old Testament and the adultery of David, or what about Stephen and how he screws up what he says in Acts 7?”  It is important to understand that while the letters of the Bible are true in all that they affirm to be true, the letters of the Bible also records historic events, while not affirming them as true or right. The letters of the Bible records the flaws and the brokenness of the people and of the writers of the Bible. It gives us the brutal and harsh truth of the reality of our selfishness and sin right alongside the grace, mercy, and faithful devotion of God as He pursues us.

Another common objection or pushback to this idea of God inspiring human writers to write the letters that make up the Bible is often made by asking “Well Dave, how do we know that we have all of God’s truth? Who and how did they decide to have 66 books?” What about other books like the gospel of Thomas, and the Apocrypha in Catholic Bibles? What about the books that the Mormon Church views as being equal to the Old and New Testament?” Good questions.

We believe that the 66 books in the Bible comprise God’s total written revelation to us, which is referred to in church mumbo jumbo talk as the Canon.

In other words, the Holy Spirit not only guided the authors of the letters that make up the Bible, but also guided the letters inclusion into the Bible. This is what is meant by the next section of the doctrinal statement, which states the Bible is “the complete revelation of His will for salvation, and the ultimate authority by which every realm of human knowledge and endeavor should be judged.”

Now you might have heard people say that we cannot be sure about whether or not the 66 letters we have in the Bible are the only letters that we should have in the Bible because the church did not establish what letters were to be in the Bible until a bunch of men got together because of the Roman Emperor Constantine hundreds of years after these letters were written.

You see, the Council of Carthage, which occurred in 397, merely approved what was already an accomplished fact generally accepted by the early church for a long period of time. As we have already seen, the letters that make up the New Testament of the Bible were already widely circulated and had been collected together within 50 years after their original writing. Other books, like the apocrypha, provide us with historical information, but we do not believe that they were inspired by God. The Bible talks about the concept of an inspired canon in Jude 1:3:

Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.

Now you may be asking “How did they know and choose which letters were inspired and which were not?” We will address that question on Friday…