Redefinition Series: The Bible is NOT God!
There, I said it and I stand on it. The Bible is NOT God. The inability of many who call themselves “Christians” or Believers, to grasp this indisputable fact gets them into a world of trouble when attempting to explain, answer, defend, or debate what they believe.
This critical error stems from a flawed premise regarding the doctrine of Scripture, more specifically the doctrine of infallibility and inerrancy. Many zealous Christians assign the Bible the title, “The Word of God”. Consequently, if the Bible is the Word of God, then it follows that it must be infallible and inerrant since God’s word is without error or corruption. The proof text utilized to attribute this grand title to the Bible is 2 Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is inspired by God…” Some translations say, “God-breathed”.
Here are the facts: The Scripture is INSPIRED by God, but WRITTEN BY MAN. Let me be clearer, the Bible contains words that God spoke at sundry times, but all the words written in the Bible were NOT spoken by God. Proof? 1 Corinthians 7:12, where Paul makes sure that a distinction is made between what the Lord says and what he says:
“But to the rest I say, NOT THE LORD…”
While this is clear proof that those particular words were not spoken by God, but by a Man named Paul, this is not the only place where we can show that the words of Man are throughout the Bible. Again, some words have been spoken by God recorded in the Bible, but the entire Bible cannot be accurately called, “The Word of God”.
The Scripture was inspired by God, but Man wrote it. And wherever we find man, we find the potential for error. This error is evident in the TRANSLATIONS of the Bible. Any student of Biblical Studies knows about New Testament Textual Criticism and the knowledge that the discipline brings to understanding scripture. I, like New Testament scholars, reserve inerrancy to the ORIGINAL autographs written by the hand of their authors; those are infallible and inerrant. The message of the Gospel that is presented by the Bible, the person that is the center of the gospel, and the God that sent that person, are all inerrant. The MSS and their subsequent translations are susceptible to error. Simply put, the Bible is NOT GOD.
The Bible is a collection of Ancient Judaic and Christian writings ABOUT GOD and His Son, Jesus Christ. God inspired Man, via experiential revelation, to record his witness and testimony to the Acts of God and His Son, Jesus Christ. It is Man’s greatest attempt to capture a glimpse of the incomprehensible in words. The Father inspired Man to write to Man, in his own language, all about the things he had heard and seen of the Remdemptive Plan of Salvation (Logos) and how it has unfolded in human history.
This declaration, that the Bible not being God, doesn’t negate the authority or infallibility it has in the life of the Church and its members. The Bible still possesses a Divine nature and character that is embedded in its record of history, instruction, and ultimately, its Prophecy. For one, although the autographs are not found or lost, the development of New Testament Textual Criticism has shown its value as an added component of the providential preservation of the central message and point of the Bible. The very history of the Biblical canon and the transmission of the Gospel through the ages testify to that.
But with all of its divine-encompassing character, the Bible is not and could never represent the whole of God. As Apostle John put it:
“And there are also MANY OTHER THINGS which Jesus did, which if they *were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself *would not contain the books which *were written.”
I conclude with this, many unpolished Christians will create elaborate justifications and myths regarding clear human error in scripture, because they have fallaciously ascribed the title, “Word of God” to the Bible. This has given rise to delusional doctrines and corrupted theologies that have done more harm than good. The Bible is a DOOR to the Mind of God, but it could never BE GOD.
