Who actually wrote the Bible?

At the church where I serve we are spending our time looking at what we believe as a church as it is contained in the doctrinal statement of our church. This week I would like for us to look 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?” So let’s look at this second statement of our doctrinal statement together:

We believe that God has spoken in the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, through the words of human authors. As the verbally inspired Word of God, the Bible is without error in the original writings, the complete revelation of His will for salvation, and the ultimate authority by which every realm of human knowledge and endeavor should be judged. Therefore, it is to be believed in all that it teaches, obeyed in all that it requires, and trusted in all that it promises.

Now you might be here this morning and right about now you are thinking “Well Dave that is a mouthful. I mean that sounds great, but what does all that mean?” So, what I would like for us to do is to break down this statement into parts so that we can come to a better understanding of what is being said here. First, let’s take a minute and unpack the phrase "We believe that God has spoken in the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, through the words of human authors.”

To fully understand what this phrase is communicating, we first need to understand a few things about what the Bible actually is. The first thing that we need to understand is that the word Bible is not found in the Bible. As we will see in a minute, the word Scripture, or the scriptures, is in the Bible. The word Bible simply means “book”. So the phase Holy Bible, just means “Holy Book”.

The second thing that we need to understand is 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.

The Old Testament, which records events of God’s activity in history from creation of the universe until the events surrounding the birth of Jesus, is comprised of letters written by prophets, who individuals who were messengers from God who were sent from God to deliver God’s message to humanity. For example, Moses was a prophet who wrote the Law, which are the first five books that are recorded for us in the Bible today. Another whole section of letters in the Bibles were written by various prophets. And other letters in the Old Testament were written by prophets were prophets by gift, such as Daniel, King David and King Solomon.

Similarly, the New Testament, which records events of God’s activity in history from the events surrounding the birth of Jesus through the birth and expansion of the early church, is comprised of letters written by “Apostles and Prophets.” These Apostles and prophets were individuals who had received specific spiritual gifts that enabled them to communicate God’s message to humanity and help lay the foundation for God’s new movement in history called the church.

We believe that God spoke through these human authors throughout history to communicate His message to humanity throughout history. We see this reality revealed for us in a section of a letter that is recorded for us in the New Testament of our Bible called the book of 2 Peter. Here is what Peter, who was one of Jesus closest followers, had to say about this whole concept of the God speaking through human authors to communicate His message to humanity in 2 Peter 1:20:

But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

Now when Peter uses the word prophecy here, this word refers to new verbal revelation from God. This word refers to God speaking something that was new to humanity that had not been previously revealed to humanity. Now if Peter was writing these verses in the language we use in our culture today, these verses would sound something like this: “You should know first and foremost that the words that make up the letters that you have in the Bible and that we are writing to you was not something that we decided to explain to you on our own. The words that make up the letters that you have in the Bible and that we are writing to you are not something that we just woke up one morning and decided to write on our own. Instead the words that make up the letters that you have in the Bible and that we are writing to you are the result of the Holy Spirit’s activity in our lives that drove us to write these letters to you”.

Now the big fancy church mumbo jumbo talk word for what Peter is referring to here is the word inspiration, which we see in the next phrase of the doctrinal statement “As the verbally inspired Word of God”. When we talk about inspiration, we are talking about a dynamic process that was led by the Holy Spirit where God worked through the personalities and life experiences of the writers of the letters that make up the Bible to place His timeless truths on paper.

We see this dynamic process most clearly in the gospels, which are the accounts of Jesus life that are found in the Bible. We see a tax collector, a doctor, and two fisherman moved by the Holy Spirit to write about Jesus life. Each one of the gospel writers had different levels of education and experiences that God used while inspiring, or moving them, to choose and write His timeless truth of His story of the rescue and redemption of selfish and rebellious humanity through Jesus life, death, and resurrection. One of the best ways to summarize this idea of inspiration is to think of inspiration as the process by which God worked to ensure that what God says the Bible says and what the Bible says God says.

But 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. That is what is referred to in the next phrase of the doctrinal statement “the Bible is without error in the original writings”.

Now the big fancy church mumbo jumbo talk word for this belief is the word inerrancy. The word inerrancy simply means without error. In other words, 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.  

Now a natural question that could arise here is “Well Dave why did you say that the Bible is without error in the original writings? What about the English Bibles today? Are the English translations of the Bible without error? ” If that question is running through your mind, I just want to let you know that is a great question to be asking.

And my answer to that question is this: Modern English translations of the Bible are inerrant and infallible to the extent that they correspond to the accuracy of the original manuscripts. In other words, the English Bible that you are reading today is as totally true and is as totally trustworthy to the extent that it was accurately translated from the original languages and letters that they were translated from.  

And the really good news is that we have so many accurate copies of the original letters and have so many individuals who have dedicated their lives to accurately translating these letters into English that you can have confidence that the Bibles that you are reading today are very accurate to what the original letters actually said.

Now maybe right about now you might be thinking to yourself “Well, Dave while that sounds great, I’m not sure that I am buying what you are saying here. 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, which we will look at tomorrow…