Have you ever seen anything perfect and flawed at the same time?
While you try to unravel that conundrum, someone already declared, “The Bible is Flawed and Inspired.” (1)
We live in amazing times. In the Bible – Culture Wars, culture boasts an amazing win percentage. Culture wins again. Bible compromise begins.
According to many, including professing Christians, the Bible must conform to the culture for it to have any impact upon society.
They say that the Bible contains errors, condemns too many culturally accepted practices, e.g., homosexuality and adultery, and “approves” slavery, genocide, etc. Therefore, the Bible fails to sustain any belief in its inspiration, inerrancy, and infallibility. The Bible has lost all credibility in the culture, and Christians must take action to preserve its relevancy.
Bible compromise on these popular, accepted errors predominate religious dialogues today, even in the professing evangelical community of believers. Many elevate erroneous ideas, formulated in casual discussion groups, to sacred doctrine and reject teachings formulated by the prayerful study of generations of Biblical scholars under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Take a few minutes and consider the following implications of Bible compromise that, if accepted, will produce the premature death of the Bible.
Culture > Divine Inspiration of the Bible?
A divinely inspired and flawed Bible cannot exist. This oxymoron smells of the noxious fumes of hell. Start with a definition of Biblical inspiration:
“Inspiration may be defined as the inward work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts and minds of chosen men who then wrote the Scriptures so that God got written what He wanted.” (2)
Those who put God’s words into human language served as vehicles of divine expression. They wrote the truths that God by the Holy Spirit inspired them to pen.
Therefore, to assume errors in the Bible eliminates divine authority and inspiration throughout every part of sacred scripture, restricting divine authorship only to those parts of the Bible other than the alleged errors.
The Bible makes no such distinctions between inerrant and fallible parts. How, then, can finite humans distinguish between these diverse parts?
Those who attempt such divisions rely upon their own intuitions, desires, and cultural pressures to identify them. Scholars defend the ‘inspired with errors’ fallacy by saying that God merely accommodated Himself to the cultures of Bible times. These critics assert taht knowledge since those times reveals certain parts as flawed and error.
Think for a moment of the implications of those statements.
- It calls God and the Holy Spirit, Whom Jesus called “…the Spirit of Truth…,”the authors of error, since God by the Holy Spirit authored the whole Bible. (3) HERESY!
- It aserts that, contrary to the promise of Jesus that the Holy Spirit would “…guide you into all truth…,” the Holy Spirit guides us into error. (4) HERESY!
- It implies that God deliberately deceived and misled centuries of people with errors which only lately became known. HERESY!
The failure to accept the divine inspiration of the entire Bible produces incontestable death to the Bible. The failure of any one of the legs of the three-legged stool upon which the Bible rests destroys the stool. Then, the Church needs to hold a funeral for the Bible.
God by His Holy Spirit divinely inspired the entire, self-authenticating Bible, or none of it. No other choice exists. Biblical compromise with culture must cease.
Superseding The Christian’s Proper Basic Belief
Proper basic belief(s) sit(s) in the central position in a person’s life. Individuals hold it/them with the greatest possible conviction. They provide the basis upon which a person’s mind apprehends and determines beliefs, knowledge, and understanding. (5)
Many possible basic beliefs exist. Some use science, others rely upon culture, still others trust individuals, e.g., philosophers, scientists, self, etc. Biblical compromise affects one’s proper basic belief(s).
Too often, science, philosophy, and culture displace the Bible from its central role in primary basic beliefs. Critics, even among professing Christians, then analyze the Bible through the lens of science, philosophy, and culture. As a result, they modify the Bible to fit their primary basic beliefs.
Instead, humanity, particularly Christians, must establish God and His self-revelation as the primary basic belief(s) and evaluate all other competing ideas through His revelation. God’s self-revelation in creation, the Bible, and Jesus Christ comes to humanity in ways suitable to our nature so that we know Him. (6)
The divine inspiration of the Bible from God Himself by His Holy Spirit makes it inerrant and infallible in all of its parts. Because of its divine inspiration, inerrancy, and infallibility, the Bible provides an objective, crucial, and trustworthy standard in a person’s life.
Therefore, we must evaluate all competing beliefs, knowledge, and understanding of creation, mankind, God, and Jesus Christ through the Bible’s revelation. We interpret science, philosophy, etc. from a Biblical perspective.
The same approach holds true for the myriads of issues a person confronts in life:
- religious concerns;
- health;
- wealth; and
- employment, to name a few.
We must evaluate and interpret all of life’s concerns by the divinely inspired, inerrant, infallible, and self-authenticating Bible, God’s self-revelation to His creation.
11 Catastrophes Of The Removal Of The Bible As Proper Basic Belief
Inserting another foundation to supersede the inspired, inerrant, infallible, Bible causes disastrous consequences. The following list highlights the catastrophic implications.
- It elevates humanity to transcendence.
- It questions the Bible’s veracity, reducing it to the status of another book, undermines it, and eliminates its authority.
- It replaces Biblical authority with human authority.
- It permits everything in the Bible as fair game for its/their rejection.
- It eliminates the cognitive authority of the Bible.
- It denies the clarity of the Bible.
- It makes the Bible fallible.
- It leads to reliance upon secularism, naturalism, and liberalism instead of the Bible.
- It produces skepticism re God’s self-revelation in creation, Jesus Christ, and the Bible.
- We believe a lie.
- It dismisses Jesus Christ.
Summary
Two intersecting lines that have only 1° of separation at the point of intersection continue to deviate from each other in ever widening fashion. In a similar manner, even a small distortion of a flawed, compromised Bible produces innumerable errors.
Appraisal of the Bible by accepting human theories, postulates, and presuppositions as ultimate certainty destroys the divine character of the Bible and eliminates it as God’s self-revelation to mankind.
Therefore, the divinely inspired, inerrant, and infallible Bible provides the only certain foundation upon which Christian faith rests with Jesus Christ as the Chief Cornerstone. We must demand that the Bible retain its position in primary basic belief(s) and that we evaluate all human theories, postulates, and presuppositions from a Biblical perspective.
References
- Flood, Derek. “The Bible is Flawed and Inspired.” Available at this link:http://www.therebelgod.com/
2015/05/the-bible-is-flawed- and-inspired.html - Lindsell, Harold. The Battle For The Bible. Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI 49506. 1976. p. 30.
- John 16.13; 14.16-17; 15.26.
- John 16.13.
- Grier, James. I profited from frequent one-on-one meetings and seminars with Dr. Grier who emphasized this truth.
- Grier, Ibid.