There are some things in which being right is helpful but not essential: making pancakes. My kids know the difference between pancakes when I follow the recipe, and when I have to embellish because we’re out of something—“can’t cottage cheese duplicate eggs in a recipe? I think so…” Yet, in other matters, right and wrong are also matters of life and death: heart surgery. Pick the wrong piece to cut and you’re dead.
Thinking properly about the Bible is a matter of life and death.
We’re examining in this series the question whether the Bible contradicts itself. Centuries of orthodox Christians have given the same answer to this question: “No!” It is the word of a single author preaching a single message. This isn’t to wash out the wonderful complexities and intricacies and varieties in the Bible, but is the bedrock on which the house is built.
Here is the summary we’re using as we proceed:
Our goal as Christian readers of the Bible is to use the God-revealed unity of the Bible as the lens through which we see the drama of the diversity of the Bible all in order that we might respond properly to the Bible.
Taking the first phrase, “Christian readers of the Bible,” we’ve looked at what it means that God has revealed himself to us as believers. We are Christian readers of the Bible, and not simply academics or literary interpreters. Then we’ve seen some of the nature of the Bible as revelation from God, as God-breathed. It is called the Bible and not simply a library or an encyclopedia.
Continuing with this theme of the nature of the Bible we saw Jesus’ attitude toward the Old Testament: emphatically, it is the word of God. Now we will briefly look at his attitude toward the New Testament. This step demands more reflection on our part, because, of course, there was no New Testament at the time before the resurrection and ascension of Christ.
We can see in the words of Jesus two important steps in the process of revelation. Firstly, there is that given directly from Jesus to the apostles such that the apostles themselves represent the Word of God, as it were. Thus, to reject them is to reject the Word of God:
Luke 10:16
16 “The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (cf. also Jn 13:20).
We hear Christ when we hear the apostles; we reject Christ when we reject the apostles. And to hear or reject Christ is to hear and reject God the Father. What is left to us in the New Testament is the word of the apostles, those inspired representatives, ambassadors, who speak and act on behalf of Christ. This is why the early church was so adamant to accept all writings left by the apostles, or writings attributed indirectly to apostles (as Mark’s gospel is thought to be more or less dictated from Peter). Books that had a less explicit claim to apostolicity took longer to be accepted in the canon (as Hebrews).
So, the apostles are given the teachings of Christ to pass along. Yet, they are given more besides. This is the second step. As Jesus spoke to the apostles while he was in the flesh, so the Holy Spirit spoke to them after Christ ascended to heaven:
“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (Jn 14:26).
“But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. 27 And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning” (Jn 15:26-27).
The Holy Spirit—the Helper—is said to not only “bring to your remembrance all that I have said,” but he will also “teach you.” We have the “remembrances” in the gospels, as it were, and the “teachings” in the epistles. Thus, these remembrances and teachings are our New Testament.
In other words, Jesus thinks that the New Testament is his word as well as the word of the Holy Spirit given through the apostles. His opinion on the Old Testament is clear: it is the word of God. Now we see that his opinion of the New Testament is no less clear: it is his own word given through the Holy Spirit to his appointed spokespeople.
This is why we look at the Bible as
the “God-breathed” Word,
the inspired, inerrant, eternal,
edifying, instructive, transforming,
renewing, cleansing, comforting,
encouraging, strengthening, sobering,
humbling, energizing, equipping
word of God that speaksas from heaven’s light into our earthly darkness,
as from heavenly air into our earthen smog,
as from heaven’s life into our terrestrial death,
as from heaven’s clarity into our soiled confusion.It is the word that we read, treasure, memorize, and consume with as much vigor as we who are weakened in our flesh can muster.
May Christ help us to see in his word what he saw—God speaking directly to us.
Now we’re ready to dive into the topic at hand, the unity and diversity of the Bible.
DJB
