RESOURCES — SHORT ARTICLES

 

SHORT ARTICLES BY TOM ELSEROAD
	2020-09-10	Is the Bible Inerrant or Infallible?
		Why do Christians affirm the Bible to be inerrant which means 'without error'? The bible itself including the speakers of the Bible present their writings as uniquely authoritative and true. When Jesus referred to the Old Testament Scripture in John 10:35 He said, “the Scripture cannot be broken”. Num 23:19  "God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? Moses is saying God's word cannot be broken. Observe the following from the book of Hebrews 3:7 and 4:7. Heb 3:7  Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: "TODAY, IF YOU WILL HEAR HIS VOICE, Heb 4:7  again He designates a certain day, saying in David, "TODAY," after such a long time, as it has been said: "TODAY, IF YOU WILL HEAR HIS VOICE, DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS." Both of these passages quote from Psalm 95. In chapter 3 it says the Holy Spirit says, and in chapter 4 it says David spoke.  The doctrine of inerrancy is recognizing that the words of Scripture are the exact words God wanted written so all things they affirm they are completely truthful. This is because they are God's words. God used human authors to write down exactly the very words He wanted. This affirms the authority of Scripture. The church without fail from the time of the New Testament until the 1600's confidently affirmed the authority and accuracy of Scripture. It is only with the enlightenment that you have people, who call themselves Christian, who would have skepticism toward the complete truthfulness of the Bible. Sometimes college students when they begin to study the Bible in an academic setting, often have a simplistic understanding of inerrancy. And a professor attacks their faith. They are not prepared to respond against such attacks. Ultimately God inspired the Hebrew and portions of Aramaic for the Old Testament, and Greek for the New Testament. And by “inspired” we mean God carried the human writers along to assure the exact wording He intended was written. That would be the original Hebrew and Greek. The wonderful news for us is that we have excellent translations in English. By “translation” we mean taking the Hebrew OT words and turning them into English words. And the same for the New Testament Greek into English. So the authority and inerrancy of the Hebrew and Greek texts is conveyed through accurate translations. So our English translation can be affirmed as fully authoritative. We can say this text is inerrant in so far as it accurately conveys the wording of the underlying Hebrew and Greek. The Old and New Testaments are reliable and truthful, inerrant in everything they assert. This does not mean as we read the Bible questions do not arise. Like what does this mean? Or how does this fit with this text? God is not trying to deceive us. So we can and should explore the questions that come up. In fact, when we find something that seems difficult to explain, and we investigate it further we find out just how accurate the Bible really is. Our heart and our trust is in the Word of God. So when we see things that raise questions we are not afraid to look at resources or pray about it to help discover the answer. Knowing that God is not hiding things from us, we trust He will give us the answers at the right time we need them. Pastor Tom Elseroad

 

An Evangelical Free Church of America

23304 E Wellesley Ave. Otis Orchards, WA 99027 Church Office: 509.926.9552 Church Cell: 509.342.9145 Pastor Cell: 509.828.8843 tomelseroad@gmail.com