Article 2: The Bible

We believe that God has spoken in the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, through the words of human authors. God, his work and his ways are revealed through the Bible truly though surely not exhaustively. As the inspired Word of God, it is without error in the original writings, the complete revelation of his will for salvation, and the ultimate authority for what we believe and how we live. Therefore, the Bible is to be believed in all that it teaches, obeyed in all that it requires, and trusted in all that it promises.

God’s gospel is authoritatively announced in the Scriptures

Statement of Faith - Commentary

(This commentary is based on a book, entitled Evangelical Convictions: A Theological Exposition of the Statement of Faith of the Evangelical Free Church of America. The exposition I have adapted from that book is shorter and re-drafted to fit the Statement of Faith we are proposing at LAC. I am thankful to my theologian friends—Mike Andrus, Bill Jones, Bill Kynes, David Martin, Ruben Martinez, and Greg Strand—both for the work together and for the opportunity to post this material. Though many contributed to the commentary, the writing was done mainly by Dr. Greg Strand and Dr. Bill Kynes. Your pastor accepts responsibility both for the abridging and for the re-focusing of the commentary now being made available to us.)

The God we believe in (see Article 1) cannot be known unless he reveals himself to us. In the opening scene of the Bible, we find God introducing himself to us, and one of the repeated characteristics about God is that he speaks. And, he has spoken to us specially and specifically through Scripture. The gospel message we proclaim is “according to the Scriptures,” Paul said (1 Cor. 15:3-4). God himself revealed it to us authoritatively.

I. God Has Spoken

God’s first act recorded in the Bible was a speech act: “God said, ‘Let there be light,’and there was light” (Gen. 1:3). The creator continues to speak through his creation, as “the heavens declare the glory of God…. Day after day they pour forth speech” (Ps. 19:1–2; cf. Rom. 1:20).

God spoke to create, but from the beginning, God also spoke personally to communicate with those creatures uniquely created in his image. He blessed the first human beings in the good world he had made, appointing them as his vice-regents to rule over his creation (Gen. 1:28–30). He commanded them not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and when they did, he spoke a word of judgment, casting them from the garden. As a result, free and direct communication with God ceased. Henceforth, God spoke most often through the prophets, his ordained “spokesmen.”

Through the prophets, God spoke words of judgment and grace to his people. Some of those words were preserved in writings (“Scriptures”) that we now know as the Old Testament. But in Jesus Christ, that prophetic word took a new turn. The Word of God became flesh! God spoke in the most personal way possible—in the person of his Son dwelling among us.

God’s gospel is the good news of his saving work in Jesus Christ. That message was entrusted to the apostles of Christ, and through them it has come to us in the New Testament.

II. God Has Spoken in the Scriptures

A. The Bible Consists of Both Old and New Testaments

God's Word is composed of the sixty-six books of the Bible—both Old and New Testaments. This collection constitutes the canon of Scripture—those books recognized as having divine authority by Jesus and by the early church.

The books of the Old Testament were categorized by Jesus as the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms (Luke 24:44), and all were authoritative for him. There seems to have been little dispute about which books constituted the Old Testament canon among the Jews of Jesus’ day, and they commonly held the conviction that God’s speaking through the prophets had ceased after the time of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.[1]

The canon of the New Testament developed over time as the early church came to recognize the unique authority of those writings that came from the apostles (or those closely associated with the apostles) and were used widely in the churches in the context of worship. Already in his second epistle, Peter designated letters of Paul as Scripture (2 Pet. 3:15–16), and within the first two centuries, a high level of agreement was reached concerning most of the New Testament books, despite the great cultural and geographical diversity of the scattered congregations from Britain to Mesopotamia.

As the church faced the challenge of heretical views such as Gnosticism, rival revelations such as the prophecies of the Montanists,[2] competing lists of authoritative books such as that of Marcion,[3] and persecution in which protecting sacred books could result in martyrdom, it became necessary to delineate more clearly which books were considered “Scripture.” The first list of the canonical books of the Bible naming the 27 books of the present New Testament came from Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria in his Thirty-Ninth Festal Epistle of A.D. 367. This list was nearly universally accepted.

It would be wrong to assert that the authority of the church stands over the canon of Scripture, as if the church “created” the Bible. The second generation of church leaders recognized that the Word of God came to them through the apostolic witnesses whose authority exceeded their own.

Thus we affirm that the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments are the Scriptures through which God has spoken to us.

B. God Has Spoken Through the Words of Human Authors

Though we understand the Bible to be the Word of God, we also affirm that God spoke “through the words of human authors.” This is important for our hermeneutical (i.e., way of interpreting) method, for it means that in interpreting the Bible we seek the intent of the human authors as the primary means by which to discover the meaning God intends for us in the biblical text.[4] We ask, “What did the writer mean when he wrote these words?” In seeking the original intent of the human author, we must take into account the entire range of the historical, cultural, religious, linguistic, and literary factors that help us arrive at that intention.

Do we interpret the Bible literally? Yes, if that term is rightly understood. Literal interpretation involves a determination of the meaning of the text as the author intended it, taking into account all of the factors just mentioned. In this sense, the literal meaning must be determined literarily, and an appreciation of literary genre is important in interpretation. In poetic passages, words are often used metaphorically. Apocalyptic passages are filled with symbols and vivid imagery. Our interpretation must wrestle with the way words are used in the literary context in which they are found.

While affirming that the Bible is a human book, we must remember, however, that the Bible is also a divine book. As part of a book fully inspired by the Holy Spirit (which we discuss below), the various biblical books all reflect one divine mind, and the history it recounts is guided by one divine hand. Therefore, we assume that the truth the Bible teaches is united and harmonious within itself, as is the story it tells.As a consequence, Scripture is its own best interpreter.[5]

This principle of the unity of Scripture has been appliedin two ways. First, “the analogy of Scripture” is a principle affirming that Scripture must be interpreted in the light of other Scripture. Though sometimes harmony is difficult to discern, this principle of the ultimate consistency of the biblical message is important if we are to understand the Bible rightly.

Second, “the analogy of faith” principle affirms that since Scripture has a unified message, captured in what we call “the faith” —that is, the central “gospel truths” of our faith—individual passages should be interpreted in a way that is harmonious with that faith.[6]

Certainly, we must be careful about our human description of “the faith.” Our theological synthesis of the Bible’s message should never take preeminence over the Bible itself. It must be tested by the Bible in a dynamic relationship such that our biblical (exegetical) work directs our theological formulations. Our Bible study may at times force us to make adjustments to our theological formulations if the exegetical results are clear enough. The Bible is our authority —not our creeds. But the analogy of faith is still a helpful approach as a general principle of hermeneutics.

We believe that the gospel is God’s good news, and to be good news, it must be intelligible. The very notion of the gospel requires the possibility of communication. God has good news to communicate with his people, and the Bible communicates this “word of truth” (Eph. 1:13; Col. 1:5) in a way that his people can understand. Therefore, though there is much in the Bible that is not immediately evident or clear, we believe that God’s saving message of the gospel recorded in the Bible can be grasped by believers.[7]

C. The Bible is the Inspired Word of God

What do we mean when we speak of the Bible as the “Word of God”? In a central passage on this theme, the Apostle Paul declared that “all Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Tim. 3:16). From this we speak of the Bible as“inspired” by God. Understood in the light of Paul’s statement, however, the emphasis is not so much on the inspiration of the writers as it is on the divine source of what is actually written. The focus is not on the process but on the product. All Scripture comes as if breathed out from the mouth of God.[8]

With this understanding, divine inspiration does not imply that the Bible was given to us by divine dictation, as is claimed for the Koran or the Book of Mormon, though in some parts God did communicate in a direct way to the biblical writers. Instead, divine inspiration allows for the full engagement of all the faculties of the human authors. Luke, for example, began his gospel by referring to his careful investigation of the facts, which he intended to set forth in his book. When we believe and say that the Bible is an “inspired” book, we mean that God has worked by his Holy Spirit through the instrumentality of the whole personality, life experiences, and literary talents of its human authors to produce the very words that God desired to be written to reveal himself and his purposes to human beings. Peter described this process as men speaking from God “as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:20–21; Heb. 3:7; cf. Jesus’ reference to David “speaking by the Holy Spirit” in Ps. 110 [Mark 12:36]).

The Bible has its source in God, and for that reason, we can conclude that what the Bible says, God says. This is certainly the way Jesus treated the Scriptures in his day. In quoting a passage from the book of Genesis that in its context was a statement of the human author, Jesus spoke of it as something God said (Matt. 19:4–5, citing Gen. 2:24). Equally, Paul declaredthat what the Scripture said to Pharaoh was what God said (Rom. 9:17; cf. also Gal. 3:8, 22). As the Bible’s ultimate author, God speaks to us in the Scriptures.

Further, as the inspired Word of God, we affirm three essential qualities of the Bible—that is it true, it is complete, and it is authoritative.

1. The Bible is True

When we say that the Bible is without error, we mean that the Bible is true in all it affirms to be true and true in all it affirms to be false. God is a God of truth. God is both all-knowing and all-good. He is free from all ignorance and all deceit. He never lies; he is completely reliable in all that he says and does (cf. Num. 23:19; 1 Sam. 15:29; Isa. 45:19; Titus 1:2; Heb. 6:18). Because the Bible is the Word of such a God, we affirm that the Bible is wholly true and without error. It can be trusted in all that it teaches.

The basis for our confidence in the truthfulness of the Scriptures lies supremely in the authority of Jesus himself. Jesus’ life was shaped by the Scriptures and is inexplicable without it. He came not to abolish but to fulfill the Law and the Prophets (Matt. 5:17). The Scriptures were the basis of his teaching (cf., e.g., Matt. 9:12–13, “But go and learn what this means…” citing Hos. 6:6). They provided a source of authority in his controversies with the Jewish leaders (“Have you not read….” Matt. 12:1–8; Matt. 19:3–6; Matt. 22:23–32). The Scriptures as the Word of God were to stand over all human traditions (Matt. 15:1–6). The Word of God“cannot be broken” (John 10:34–35). “Your word is truth,” Jesus said to his Father (John 17:17).

But isn’t the Bible also the product of human authors? Isn’t error inextricably bound up with humanity? We contend that just as Jesus was fully human and yet was without sin, so the Scriptures can be a fully human product yet still be a fully divine product, kept from error. In a mysterious yet wonderful way, the Bible is God’s Word expressed in and through the words of human authors.

This view of the Bible has been the orthodox position of the church through the ages. Among the early church fathers, Irenaeus in the late second century wrote, “The Scriptures are perfect, seeing that they are spoken by God’s Word and His Spirit.”[9] Augustine in the early fifth century affirmed, when referring to the canonical Scriptures in a letter to Jerome, “[O]f these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error. And if in these writings I am perplexed by anything which appears to me opposed to truth, I do not hesitate to suppose that either the manuscript is faulty, or the translator has not caught the meaning of what was said, or I myself have failed to understand it.”[10]

During the sixteenth-century Reformation, Martin Luther added that since the books of Scripture are to be assigned to the Holy Spirit, they cannot err.[11] John Calvin agreed,“For our wisdom ought to consist in embracing with gentle docility and without any exceptionsall that is delivered in the sacred Scriptures.”[12] Eighteenth-century revivalist John Wesley put it even more strongly: “If there be any falsehood in the Bible, there may well be a thousand. If there be one falsehood in that book, it did not come from the God of truth.”[13] Our LAC SOF stands in this historic tradition of affirming the truthfulness of Scripture.

a) Two Qualifications

When we affirm that the Bible is true, we do so with two qualifications in mind. First, we maintain that though the Bible is without error, we can know its truth only when it is properly interpreted in accordance with the purpose for which it was written. As discussed earlier, the Bible must be understood in its intended sense. That is, the Bible is true in all that the writers intend to affirm to be true and true in all its writers affirm to be false.[14] This understanding sets us free to study Scripture using all available interpretive tools to determine what it is affirming.

In this regard, we must have an appreciation for the way the writers use language. Were they writing poetry, prose, prophecy, proverbs, parables, or something else? Did they use metaphor, simile, or hyperbole? We must seek to understand the literary conventions of the writers themselves.

Furthermore, the truthfulness of the Bible does not mean that the Bible always speaks with the precision that we might expect. We may be tempted to decide what truthfulness must mean by our own modern standards for accuracy and then impose those standards onto the Bible. For example, did the gospel writers intend to record the precise words of Jesus, like stenographers in a courtroom? The fact that Jesus probably spoke Aramaic and the gospels were written in Greek suggests otherwise. We believe that the biblical writers gave us precisely the words God wanted us to have to understand the true message of Jesus.[15] Consequently, variations in the way those words are recounted ought not to disturb us, for imprecise citation was conventional and violated no expectations.[16]

In addition, to affirm that the Bible speaks truthfully takes into account the kind of precision in measurements that the authors intended. As is still common in communication, the intent of the biblical authors may have been to give approximations or use round numbers. Sometimes, the biblical writerspresented events or sayings topicallyrather than followed a strict chronology. They also could have spoken in the language of appearances rather than in strict scientific description, as when declaring that “the sun rose” or that “the earth cannot be moved” (Ps. 93:1). The Bible’s assertions are fully true, and we know that truth when its words are properly interpreted in accordance with the purpose for which they were written. Literary and historical studies are helpful in determining what those purposes might be and the conventions used to communicate them.

b) The Bible is Without Error in the Original Writings

A second qualification of our affirmation that the Bible speaks without error limits the complete divine superintending of the process to what the biblical writers actually wroteand not to the transmission of the text through the centuries. The church has never claimed that the New Testament text has been preserved without error. The Westminster Confession, for example, simply speaks of the “singular care and providence” of God in preserving his Word (I. vii). In the last two centuries, through both the discovery of a great number of ancient manuscripts[17] and the careful application of the principles of textual criticism,[18] we can speak of that care and providence with even greater confidence than could those from earlier ages.

In fact, we have far better attestation of the Greek New Testament than any other book from the ancient world. Caesar’s Gallic War, for example, was written about 50 B.C. The earliest Greek manuscript we have of any part of that book dates to about A.D. 900—a span of 950 years after the original, and we only have a total of ten Greek manuscripts. The comparison with the New Testament is telling. Written at the latest by about A.D. 90, the earliest fragment we have from the gospels dates to about A.D. 125—possibly a span of only 35 years from the time of writing to the first known copy. We have almost all of the New Testament preserved in manuscripts from the second century, and at least 48 manuscripts come from before A.D. 300. Altogether, we have over 5,700Greek manuscripts (and counting). And this does not include the 20,000 ancient manuscripts in other languagesor the hundreds of thousands of Greek citations from the New Testament in early Christian writings. Textual critics of the New Testament have a nearly overwhelming wealth of resources to work with in seeking to recover the original text.

It is true that we cannot claim with absolute certainty that we have the original text of the Bible. Does this decidedly human process of textual criticism with its still rather small residue of uncertainty invalidate any claims to the divine authority of the Bible? It would if we claimed that the Bible came directly from heaven. But our position is that the Bible is a very human book. We must appreciate the very human nature of the Bible’s creation, conservation, and canonization. Throughout history, God has not normally worked apart from human instruments but through them.

We should not think that since the Bible is a human book it could not also be divinely inspired. The human authors’ writing out of their very human experiences, emotions, and desires does not exclude the Holy Spirit’s using those same experiences, emotions, and desires to convey divine revelation. This conjunction is at the center of our faith— that the categories of divinity and humanity cannot be so hardened that God could not become man and dwell among usand so redeem us for himself. God has worked through human means to bring to us his holy Word.[19]

2. The Bible is Complete Regarding God’s Salvation

When we speak of the Bible as “the complete revelation of [God’s] will for salvation,” we are referring to what has traditionally been called the “sufficiency” of Scripture. God has spoken all that we need to know for Christian faith and life— for our doctrine and our duty. Since Scripture alone is our ultimate authority of truth, all truth necessary for our salvation and spiritual life is taught either explicitly or implicitly in Scripture.

The sufficiency of Scripture is affirmed most clearly in Paul’s words to Timothy: “from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15). The saving grace of God is revealed in the Bible. What is written there is able to lead us to salvation. Paulcontinued to say that the “God-breathed” Scripture “is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17). The Holy Scriptures is the means God uses to shape our lives.

To clarify, it must be said that our understanding of the sufficiency of Scripture does not mean that knowledge found outside the Bible is not helpful to us. We seek to affirm this when we say, “God’s work and His ways are revealed through the Bible truly though surely not exhaustively.” Knowledge from other realms can help us live wisely in God’s world in all sorts of ways. Specifically, it can help us understand and apply the Bible’s message. We need to know languages, history, and culture as we seek to interpret the Bible rightly. In applying the Bible’s message, knowledge of medicine and human bodily functions, for example, can help us in making bio-ethical decisions.

But when we say that the Bible is the complete revelation of God’s will for salvation, we affirm that it contains all of the divine words we need for all of life. Everything required of us to live a godly life is given in the Scripture.

3. The Bible is Authoritative

A third quality of the Bible as the Word of God, and closely related to its sufficiency, is its authority over us. We affirm that the Scriptures provide “the ultimate authority for what we believe and how we live.” God’s authority is mediated to us through his Word.

In affirming sola Scriptura, “Scripture alone,” Reformerssuch as Luther, Calvin, and Zwingliwere fighting a battle on two fronts. On the one side, some in the Roman Catholic Church held church tradition as an authority equal to Scripture. On the other, some “enthusiasts” accepted immediate prophetic utterances of the Spirit as messages equal in authority to Scripture. In opposition to both, the Reformers declared that the Bible alone held the position of ultimate authority for the Christian.

The authority of the Bible embraces both belief and behavior. Thus, we affirm its authority for what we believe and how we live. It tells us what we ought to think and how we ought to act. And its authority extends over every realm to which it speaks. That means that all that we teach must be judged by the authority of the Bible itself. Thus, we can never claim that our interpretation of the Bible is without error. We are to preach and teach with Bibles open, encouraging people to be like the Bereans of the Book of Acts, who “examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” (Acts 17:11). 

To be clear, our statement about the Bible’s authority does not mean that there is no knowledge outside the Bibleor that the Bible must be invoked to justify every aspect of human knowledge and action. The Bible is authoritative over every realm of human activity, but it does not address every realm. There is much that is not revealed in Scripture, from atomic physics to the chemical activity of the brain, that can greatly enrich human life. But nothing outside of Scripture comes to us with the same universally binding divine authority— not church tradition, not any other religious writings, not prophetic utterances, not inner promptings of the Spirit,not scientific theories, not human reason. All of these can be helpful, and Scripture as our“ultimate authority” does not imply that we should try to understand the world, and even the Bible itself, without using all of the resources God has made available to us. Yet we affirm that all knowledge, from whatever source, must be in service of the Word of God, and that Word provides the necessary norms by which to assess all other knowledge.

III. Our Response to God’s Word

How should we respond to such a revelation? We ought to begin with humble and awe-filled adoration and gratitude. We do not stand over God’s Word as its judgebut under it as those willing to be taught, rebuked, corrected, and trained (cf. 2 Tim. 3:17). “This is the one I esteem,” said the Lord, “he who is humble and contrite in spiritand trembles at my word” (Isa. 66:2).

All that the Bible teaches we ought to believe. All that the Bible requires we ought to obey. And all that the Bible promises we ought to trust. For what the Bible says, God says, and it is all for our good and his glory. For in the Scriptures, God’s gospel of his Son has been authoritatively revealed to us. God has spoken!

To God’s glory alone,

Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor