So often it's been said that if you argue from the Bible to the infallibility of Scripture
or the inerrancy of the Bible or inspiration of Scripture, you're caught in the bounds,
or the bonds, of vicious circle.
And we know that circular reasoning is an informal fallacy, which invalidates an argument.
Now, if you reason from Scripture this way, and say, "The Bible claims to be the Word
of God," since it is the Word of God, then the claim that it is the Word of God must
be an unassailable truth.
Now that would be traveling in the worst of all possible circles.
That would be vicious in its circularity and would be, in my opinion, an invalid argument.
But at the same time, we argue for the infallibility and inspiration of Scripture, taking into
account that it makes that claim, and that's significant.
If it never made the claim to be the Word of God, then we wouldn't have the burden of
trying to defend that claim.
But we start with Scripture, and I like to start here, and ask the question, "Can we
go to the New Testament, for example, and see it as a basically reliable historical
source?"
If we can…if we can demonstrate that it's generally reliable, as reliable as Suetonius
or Tacitus or any of the other ancient historians, then we don't have to be… dive into radical
skepticism or cynicism.
We say it's a basically reliable, historical document.
It doesn't have to be infallible, it doesn't have to be inspired or anything like that,
just a historical document.
And if on the basis of that basically reliable, historical document, we can get reliable information
about Jesus of Nazareth, information that's reliable enough to persuade us or convince
us that there is sound reason to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was at least, at the very
least, a prophet of God.
And a prophet of God is somebody who teaches the truth of God.
And if we can come to the conclusion from that historical information and data that
Jesus was a prophet and He prophesied about Himself that He was more than a prophet, then
if we take this prophet's prophecy seriously, then we have to take the conclusion that He
draws.
But then we go to the next step where we know, if we know anything about Jesus historically,
we know what His view of the Scriptures was.
Now there are many critical scholars who say, "Yes, we acknowledge that Jesus accepted and
taught the prevailing Jewish view of the Canon and of Scripture as being the Word of God.
However, in His humanity He wasn't omniscient, and so He can be excused for adopting uncritically
this Jewish view of the Bible."
And we hear that kind of arguing frequently.
I've responded that by saying, well, touching His human nature, we don't believe that Jesus
was omniscient.
Omniscience is a divine attribute that's not communicable to a human nature.
Jesus, touching His divine nature, was omniscient, but His human nature wasn't.
So in that regard, He could be capable of not having absolute, perfect knowledge.
However, Jesus claimed that He taught nothing except that which He received from the Father,
and that all that He taught had the imprimatur from the Father.
And He also said that He was the very incarnation of truth.
Now, if I walked into my classroom in philosophy or theology, and I said to my students, "Look,
I want you to know that I'm not going to teach you anything in this class except what God
has revealed to me, and I want you to know that I am the truth."
And then, I give them an incorrect view of sacred Scripture, then I have sinned.
And so what's at stake here in terms of Jesus' testimony to the Scriptures is not His omniscience
but His sinlessness.
And so, Jesus must be correct in all the things that He claims to be true, or He sins.
As the Scriptures themselves tell us that he who…let not many become teachers because
with the teaching comes the greater judgment and so on.
So you see how we've moved from a basic premise of general reliability to a knowledge of Jesus'
historical view that the Scripture is more than general reliable.
And so, the reason why the church believes that the Bible is the inspired Word of God
is that because we're acquiescing to the teaching of our Lord.