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Short Essay on Inspiration and Inerrancy of the Bible

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Short Essay on Inspiration and Inerrancy of the Bible
David Brenneman
THEO201_D10_201230
Short Essay #1
Short Essay on Inspiration and Inerrancy of the Bible The inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible is a critical topic to our Christian faith. If we are to understand the Bible and its commands on how to live and be saved through faith, we need to be sure that we know how the Bible was written and whether or not the Bible is authoritative.
To say that the Bible has authority is to claim that the Bible is the very word of God. The Bible is the revelation of the Creator to His creation. In this sense, the authority of the Bible comes from God Himself. The word of God came to His people through the writings of Moses and the Prophets, and ultimately, the life of Jesus Christ. The prophets would regularly claim the authority of God, as did Jesus. Therefore, the authority of the Bible comes from the fact that it is God’s own words. To understand this, we must first examine the inspiration of the Bible.
The question of the inspiration of the Bible is akin to asking whether the Bible is just a collection of stories by human authors, or if God was involved in the writing. The inspiration of the Bible can be understood as the Spirit of God influencing and guiding the writers, sovereignly chosen by God, into putting the words of God into writing.1 The Bible itself supports this claim, in 2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” We can see that the Bible is therefore written by man, but through the inspiration of the Spirit, the true author of all Scripture is actually God Himself.
One can naturally deduce that if the authorship of the Bible belongs to God, then the Bible should be completely dependable and authoritative. The inerrancy of the Bible can also be proven by the inspiration of the Scripture. God, and the word of God, is without fault, as seen in Psalm 33:4, “For the word of the Lord is right and true; he is


Bibliography: 1C.F.H. Henry, “Bible, Inspiration of” from “Evangelical Dictionary of Theology” pp. 159-163 2P.D. Feinberg, “Bible, Inerrancy and Infallibility of” from “Evangelical Dictionary of Theology” pp. 156-159 W.A. Elwell, “Evangelical Dictionary of Theology”, (1984, 2001), 2nd Ed., Baker Book House Company The Holy Bible, New International Version, (1973, 1978, 1984) International Bible Society
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