Though being the most reprinted and most translated book many people doubt the authority of that bestseller of all times.
End page of the Lübeck Bible (1494), showing the end of the book of revelation and the printer de:Steffen Arndes’ kolophon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Not all people are convinced it has something to say for them. Even lots of Christians never took the time to read the Bible from A to Z. Lots of people do think it is from the old times and as such ‘passé’. They have no idea how the Bible is still best for contemporary use. Much more people should come to see that it is really a book to cherish because it offers many lessons for life and sustains future hope, bringing meaning and power to the present.
In the previous message we said already that Western civilization is in a severe “authority crisis” which is not confined solely to the realm of religious faith, nor is it specially or uniquely threatening to Bible believers.
We should be much aware that our look at the bible can influence our society very much. Too many people do forget that regard for the Bible is decisive for the course of Western culture and in the long run for human civilization generally. People should come to recognise that there is more behind the human writers who scribbled down many words, not of their own. Many wise words they never claimed to be their own. They even say that what they wrote down is not written down from their own inspiration but form the Higher Being which directed them.
Let us therefore have a look at what an encyclopedia of the Bible says about this library of books its own view.
(KJV) 1631 Holy Bible, Robert Barker/John Bill, London. King James Version (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Bible’s View of Itself
The intelligible nature of divine revelation — the presupposition that God’s will is made known in the form of valid truths — is the central presupposition of the authority of the Bible. Much recent neo-Protestant theology demeaned the traditional evangelical emphasis as doctrinaire and static. It insisted instead that the authority of Scripture is to be comprehended internally as a witness to divine grace engendering faith and obedience, thus disowning its objective character as universally valid truth.
Somewhat inconsistently, almost all neo-Protestant theologians have appealed to the record to support cognitively whatever fragments of the whole seem to coincide with their divergent views, even though they disavow the Bible as a specially revealed corpus of authoritative divine teaching. For evangelicalorthodoxy, if God’s revelational disclosure to chosen prophets and apostles is to be considered meaningful and true, it must be given not merely in isolated concepts capable of diverse meanings but in sentences or propositions. A proposition — that is, a subject, predicate, and connecting verb (or “copula”) — constitutes the minimal logical unit of intelligible communication. The OT prophetic formula “thus saith the Lord” characteristically introduced propositionally disclosed truth. Jesus Christ employed the distinctive formula “But I say unto you” to introduce logically formed sentences which he represented as the veritable word or doctrine of God.
The Angel Appears to John. The book of Revelation. 13th century manuscript. British Library, London. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Bible is authoritative because it is divinely authorized; in its own terms, “all Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Tm 3:16 NIV). According to this passage the whole OT (or any element of it) is divinely inspired. Extension of the same claim to the NT is not expressly stated, though it is more than merely implied. The NT contains indications that its content was to be viewed, and was in fact viewed, as no less authoritative than the OT. The apostle Paul’s writings are catalogued with “other scriptures” (2 Pt 3:15, 16). Under the heading of Scripture, 1 Timothy 5:18 cites Luke 10:7 alongside Deuteronomy 25:4 (cf. 1 Cor 9:9). The Book of Revelation, moreover, claims divine origin (1:1–3) and employs the term “prophecy” in the OT meaning (22:9, 10, 18). The apostles did not distinguish their spoken and written teaching but expressly declared their inspired proclamation to be the Word of God (1 Cor 4:1; 2 Cor 5:20; 1 Thes 2:13).
Elwell, W. A., & Beitzel, B. J. (1988). In Baker encyclopedia of the Bible (p. 298). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.
Concerning the authority of the Holy Scriptures there has bean much debate. Let us have a look on what is written about the Power of God’s Word and its authority in a well-known encyclopedia of the Bible.
The Power of God’s Word.
The Gutenberg Bible displayed by the United States Library of Congress, demonstrating printed pages as a storage medium. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Bible remains the most extensively printed, widely translated, and frequently read book in the world. Its words have been treasured in the hearts of multitudes like none other. All who have received its gifts of wisdom and promises of new life and power were at first strangers to its redemptive message, and many were hostile to its teaching and spiritual demands. In every generation its power to challenge persons of all races and lands has been demonstrated. Those who cherish the Book because it sustains future hope, brings meaning and power to the present, and correlates a misused past with the forgiving grace of God, would not long experience such inner rewards if Scripture were not known to them as the authoritative, divinely revealed truth. To the evangelical Christian, Scripture is the Word of God, given in the objective form of propositional truths through divinely inspired prophets and apostles, and the Holy Spirit is the giver of faith through that Word.
View that the Bible is the Word of God and as such should be believed and obeyed.
Image from the Book of Kells, a 1200 year old book. Category:Illuminated manuscript images (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Western civilization is in a severe “authority crisis” which is not confined solely to the realm of religious faith, nor is it specially or uniquely threatening to Bible believers. Parental authority, marital authority, political authority, academic authority, and ecclesiastical authority are all being deeply questioned. Not only particular authorities — the Scripture, the pope, political rulers, and so on — but the concept of authority itself is vigorously challenged. Today’s crisis of biblical authority thus reflects the uncertainties of civilizational consensus:
Who has the power and the right to receive and to require submission?
Revolt Against Biblical Authority.
As the sovereignCreator of all, the God of the Bible wills and has the right to be obeyed. Judge of men and nations, the self-revealed God wields unlimited authority and power. All creaturely authority and power is derived from that of God. The power God bestows is a divine trust, a stewardship. God’s creatures are morally accountable for their use or misuse of it. In fallen human society God wills civil government for the promotion of justice and order. He approves an ordering of authoritative and creative relationships in the home by stipulating certain responsibilities of husbands, wives, and children. He wills a pattern of priorities for the church as well: Jesus Christ the head, prophets and apostles through whom redemptive revelation came, and so on.
The inspired Scriptures, revealing God’s transcendent will in objective written form, are the rule of faith and conduct through which Christ exercises his divine authority in the lives of Christians.
Revolt against particular authorities has in our time widened into a revolt against all transcendent and external authority. The widespread questioning of authority is condoned and promoted in many academic circles.
Philosophers with a radically secular outlook have affirmed that God and the supernatural are mythical conceptions, that natural processes and events comprise the only ultimate reality. All existence is said to be temporal and changing, all beliefs and ideals are declared to be relative to the age and culture in which they appear. Biblical religion, therefore, like all other, is asserted to be merely a cultural phenomenon. The Bible’s claim to divine authority is dismissed by such thinkers; transcendent revelation, fixed truths, and unchanging commandments are set aside as pious fiction.
In the name of humanity’s supposed “coming of age,” radical secularism champions human autonomy and creative individuality. Human beings are lords of their own destiny and inventors of their own ideals and values, it is said. They live in a supposedly purposeless universe that has itself presumably been engendered by a cosmic accident. Therefore human beings are declared to be wholly free to impose upon nature and history whatever moral criteria they prefer. In such a view, to insist on divinely given truths and values, on transcendent principles, would be to repress self-fulfillment and retard creative personal development. Hence the radically secular view goes beyond opposing particular external authorities whose claims are considered arbitrary or immoral; radical secularism is aggressively hostile to all external authority, viewing it as intrinsically restrictive of the autonomous human spirit.
Any reader of the Bible will recognize rejection of divine authority and definitive revelation of what is right and good as an age-old phenomenon. It is not at all peculiar to the contemporary person “come of age”; it was found already in Eden. Adam and Eve revolted against the will of God in pursuit of individual preference and supposed self-interest. But their revolt was recognized to be sin, not rationalized as philosophical “gnosis” at the frontiers of evolutionary advance.
If one takes a strictly developmental view, which considers all reality contingent and changing, where is the basis for humanity’s decisively creative role in the universe? How could a purposeless cosmos cater to individual self-fulfillment?
Only the biblical alternative of the Creator-Redeemer God, who fashioned human beings for moral obedience and a high spiritual destiny, truly preserves the permanent, universal dignity of the human species. The Bible does so, however, by a demanding call for personal spiritual decision.
The Bible sets forth the superiority of humans to the animals, their high dignity (“little less than God”—Ps 8:5) because of the divine rational and moral image that all bear by reason of creation.
Print 3330 in volume 27 of the Bowyer Bible in Bolton Museum, England. From page 12 of Volume 1 of “A-Z of Artists in the Bowyer Bible” by Phillip Medhurst. Photo 4 of 117. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In the context of universal human involvement in Adamic sin, the Bible utters a merciful divine call to redemptive renewal through the mediatorial person and work of Christ. Fallen humanity is invited to experience the Holy Spirit’s renewing work, to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, and to anticipate a final destiny in the eternal presence of the God of justice and justification.
Contemporary rejection of biblical tenets does not rest on any logical demonstration that the case for biblical theism is false; it turns rather on a subjective preference for alternative views of “the good life.”
The Bible is not the only significant reminder that human beings stand daily in responsible relationship to the sovereign God. He reveals his authority in the cosmos, in history, and in inner conscience, a disclosure of the living God that penetrates into the mind of every person (Rom 1:18–20; 2:12–15). Rebellious suppression of that “general divine revelation” does not wholly succeed in suspending a fearsome sense of final divine accountability (Rom 1:32).
Yet it is the Bible as “special revelation” that most clearly confronts our spiritually rebellious race with the reality and authority of God.
Title page from the Great Bible published by Grafton and Whitchurch in 1539. It depicts an enthroned Henry VIII receiving the Word of God and bestowing it upon his bishops and archbishops (top third), who in turn deliver it to the priests (middle third). Finally, the laity hear the Word and loyally recite, “Vivat Rex” and “God save the kynge” (bottom third). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In the Scriptures, the character and will of God, the meaning of human existence, the nature of the spiritual realm, and the purposes of God for humankind in all ages are stated in propositionally intelligible form that all can understand. The Bible publishes in objective form the criteria by which God judges individuals and nations, and the means of moral recovery and restoration to personal fellowship with him.
Regard for the Bible is therefore decisive for the course of Western culture and in the long run for human civilization generally. Intelligible divine revelation, the basis for belief in the sovereign authority of the Creator-Redeemer God over all human life, rests on the reliability of what Scripture says about God and his purposes. Modern naturalism impugns the authority of the Bible and assails the claim that the Bible is the Word of God written, that is, a transcendently given revelation of the mind and will of God. Attack upon scriptural authority is the storm center both in the controversy over revealed religion and in the modern conflict over civilizational values.
Elwell, W. A., & Beitzel, B. J. (1988). In Baker encyclopedia of the Bible (pp. 296–298). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.
When we are looking for God and want to find Him are there certain books in which we should belief and follow?
Parinirvana Buddha (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Many people create themselves gods. We can see that in how people have idols and sometimes go so far to worship those human beings. There are also people who take elements from nature as their god and they speak or pray to trees, sun, stars or look for a god behind everything that happens in nature, and as such have a god for the rain, wind, thunder, sky, or even for each day of the week.
But when we look how those gods respond or what they can do we see that something is lacking. It is always questionable what those gods can do and what they really provide.
Though there is One God Who is superior to all those gods and can do much more than they. About Him is a lot written down throughout the years. But one particular library is very trustworthy and should be best referred to. When we consult that library of Books of books we can find the Word of that God of gods, Who is most reliable.
White-collar criminal defense lawyer Joel Cohen questions if the Bible’s factuality is essential to faith.
Many people wonder if one can trust what religious people say about the Bible. Is there reason to believe in the factuality of the Bible’s contents, and that the AlmightyGod Himself was its Author?
It all depends how you want to look at that Book of books. In which way do we have to look at those different writings, and take them as stories or real reviews of what happened at the earlier times? Several people do find that we have to take those Biblical accounts as morality plays or anecdotal narratives, created by human beings without God’s help or involvement.
When you take a closer look at them, you will find strange things, which would shed a light on those writers, they normally would hide for others.
We may choose to believe that God dictated nothing whatsoever to Moses, and merely instructed a spiritually inspired Moses to write of the Creation.
writes Cohen and continues
We may choose to believe that all that God really wants from mankind is for it to live a conventionally moral life based on civility, charity and love of one’s fellow man. That a moral life is not only the sine qua non to a life of faith, but is also its sole prerequisite. We may believe that all of the meticulous laws of animal sacrifice (morphed, upon the Temple’s destruction, into communal prayer), the Sabbath’s sanctity and kashrut were fashioned by man himself in order to nationalistically (if you will) create a “culture.” Perhaps even, a culture that designated this particular Society as having been chosen, while others were not. {Is the Bible’s factuality essential to faith?}
Today we have different media and we always can pick up what is written or filmed before. At the old times there were no sources people could consult and not all where so literate they could read the stones or scrolls. For that reason passing the word form one generation to the next mostly was done in the aural way and history had to be so compressed or said in such manner people could easily remember it.
Orality, the first and still most widespread mode of human communication. Far more than “just talking,” oral tradition refers to a dynamic and highly diverse oral-aural medium for evolving, storing, and transmitting knowledge, art, and ideas. It is typically contrasted with literacy, with which it can and does interact in myriad ways, and also with literature, which it dwarfs in size, diversity, and social function. {Encyclopaedia Britannica}
What is so special about that aural tradition, that not likewise other aural stories, these stories kept the same over centuries.
François-Marie Arouet (1694 – 1778), known by his nom de plume Voltaire, a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and separation of church and state. – Portrait by Nicolas de Largillière, c. 1724
Even Voltaire, who wanted to destroy the Bible and distributed pamphlets against that book, had to confess that he could not imagine that when there would be a watch that there would not be a watchmaker. Looking at mankind and the plants and animals around us, and when you get to know how wonderfully they are made it would be very strange to believe there would be not a Master Inventor or Maker behind them, providing this life. When those people grew up and multiplied from one generation to an other, they carried with them the stories of their families. To their next of kin they brought stories from kings (Solomon) herdsman (David), man who could tell about things which happened many years later and as such were visionaries (Isaiah, Zacharia), fisherman (John) doctor (Luke), publican (Matthew), scholar (Paul) etc..
That collection of stories written on 3 continents: Africa, Asia and Europe, under different circumstances: in desserts, humble homes, palaces, prisons, etc., written in three languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, became the first translated Great Book, and became the most translated and reprinted book in the world, a best-seller of all times.
Voltaire is death. His house and the printing machines became again used, this time to print bibles.
Interesting to note is that those writers also told not such nice things about themselves. Proud being inherited by man you would expect their visions would be contributed to themselves. But more than 3800 times the writers do say that their words do not come form them but from the HigherPowerGod, the AdonaiElohimHashemJehovah.
Every time we read:
Jehovah, god, said to me
or
The word of the Most High, Jehovah God, came to me
Naturally you could assume they were telling lies; But how could they tell about things which had not happened yet and could use names which did not mean anything yet at the time they lived?
Would such liars than be able to produce such special writings which can inspire so many people and can bring forth so much goodness? Bitter sources cannot bring forth sweet waters.
The 40 different writers of the assembly of books, written over a period of more than 1500 years, also never contradict each other. This whilst they wrote about one of the most sensitive subjects on earth: God.
Though many rabbis as well as priests and ministers say it does not matter if the Bible is written under the guidance of God or if their congregants want to read the Bible with skepticism, or see it as somewhat of a work of historical/Biblical fiction.
The man of justice correctly looks at the real question
what do the rabbis themselves believe? Do they say aloud “it doesn’t matter” because they recognize that defending the Bible’s stories to moderns simply won’t (or can’t) be effective, leaving congregants to turn elsewhere or pay less attention to what observant Jews tend to believe? Or is it because they, themselves don’t believe in their authenticity? {Is the Bible’s factuality essential to faith?}
In the Catholic Church we can find many examples of people who call themselves “theologian” and do not believe in God. For them being part of an institution which pays for their living is very handy. Also for the other priests we can ask the same question as for the Jewish rabbe or the Muslim imam when they utter either in their sermon or tete a tete that a Holy Scripture account’s authenticity “doesn’t matter,”
do they immediately then mutter to themselves: “But yet it happened”? And, really, does it and should it matter if an observant rabbi/teacher doesn’t himself believe in exacting fashion that the Bible is God’s literal Word transmitted by God to Moses at Sinai? {Is the Bible’s factuality essential to faith?}
If you want to get to know the only real God, in a way it does not matter if you believe it or not that the Bible is God’s Word. But it is essential to come to see and understand what happened to mankind and to get to know Who is behind it all.
Do you want to take it as an allegory or metaphor, that is your good right, but then also dare to take the words written in it to take for what they (literally) say. For example when there is written “the son of God“, do not think in your head “god the son” because that is not at all what is written there. Only by accepting the words like they are written down, saying what they are saying and not what some theologians may want you to believe what should be implemented by that saying.
God is a god of order and clarity who does not tell lies. When those writers claim to have written down what God ordered them to write down, we may expect that they did not write down lies but wrote what was meant to be said. Then we also should not fix our eyes on one phrase but look at all the phases being connected with each other and in unison with each other. As such we should always look at the text in contexts with the sayings at other places in that Holy or put or set apartBook of books.
Joel Cohen asks
Can we, ourselves, determine what the Bible truly means to us? While it may be controversial or provocative to articulate it that way, that’s exactly what’s at stake. And, lest it go unsaid, this decision, dilemma if you will, is not limited to Judaism. How different is it that the Fathers of the Church, years after Jesus’s time, dictated that Jesus is actually part of the Holy Trinity (part of God Himself) , even though the Christian Bible never said that. Yet, would a modern Christian remain in good standing, if he doesn’t believe (or, at least state he believes) in a Triune God? {Is the Bible’s factuality essential to faith?}
Real lovers of God should come to see how certain people prefer to be off this world, instead of being of God, following God His advice and wise Words.
When you shall take the historical books and the Bible, you shall come to see that the idea of a three-headed god does not come from Jesus, nor from somewhere in the bible but from those people who wanted to live in peace with the Roman leaders and came to an agreement with emperor Constantine the Great.
Those people whose lives are steeped in faith – split so that approximately 50% said they accepted the Bible’s account; the other 50% did not, will have it more difficult to see the light and come to the truth.
Then, after everyone had opened their eyes, the moment of truth arrived: I asked those who had only “confidentially” acknowledged that they didn’t believe the Bible’s account to raise their hands in full view of the now eyes-wide-open congregation. Only a handful raised their hands. How does one explain this? For me at least, the overwhelming majority of those “non-believers” of the Red Sea story who sat on their hands were comfortable in their belief, but only privately. They apparently didn’t want their community to know; essentially, they didn’t want their neighbors to think “less” of them. {Is the Bible’s factuality essential to faith?}
Lots of people are afraid to talk openly about what they really believe. Lots are convinced that one’s faith is a very personal thing, and should remain so.
People might believe in only certain things their religion places before them, irrespective of whether the Author is divine. But even if they don’t believe in all of it, they remain believers in God, as well as believers in the importance of faith in their lives. {Is the Bible’s factuality essential to faith?}
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Relating to God 