According to Wayne A. Grudem, in his work, Twenty Basics Every Christian Should Know: Christian Beliefs, "Any responsible look at a single Christian Belief should be based on what God says about that subject. Therefore, as we begin to look at a series of Basic Christian beliefs, it makes sense to start with the basis for these beliefs--God's words, or the Bible." (p.13) I believe this is both fitting and proper, and thus, I shall begin by outlining the core beliefs about the Bible held by most Christians.
Belief: The most fundamental belief concerning the Bible is that it is both authoritative and divinely inspired; it is the direct words and thoughts of God written down by man, who acted as a "stenographer" on His behalf for the good of His people. It is, in its simplest form, an authoritative account of God's nature, as well as an account of His expectations for His people. It is the primary source to which Christians turn to in order to discover the will God has both for the individual, as well as the Church as a whole. According to Pastor Herschel H. Hobbs, in his book Fundamentals of Our Faith, "If the Bible is discarded, Christians are like a ship without rudder or compass." (p.1)
Before I can give an apologetic account of the Bible itself, I would first like to further develop the way in which the Bible was written. I stated that the books of the Bible, of which there are 66 in all, were written inspirationally . In total, it took approximately fifteen hundred years for the entirety of the Bible to be written, and, as it is, the inspiration for its content came from a number of different places, two in particular.
On a number of different occasions, the content of the scriptures was handed down directly from God Himself. Examples of this can be found throughout all of scripture, including the books of Joshua, 1 Samuel, and Isaiah; but the most well known account of God's direct influence upon the content of the Bible is in the book of Exodus where God directly spoke to Moses instructing him to go to Pharaoh, as well as the account of the 10 commandments. Other examples of God's direct inspiration can be found when the scriptures preface or conclude any statement with "thus says the Lord", such as in Exodus 4: 22 where it states, "Then you shall say to Pharaoh, 'Thus says the LORD, "Israel is My son, My firstborn." According to Gudem, "This phrase, understood to be like the command of a king, indicated that what followed was to be obeyed without challenge or question." It must also be noted that those versus not attributed as direct quotes from God Himself, were, and are still, seen as divinely inspired by both early converts to the faith, as well as to those who hold fast to its values today. In 2 Timothy 3: 16 it states, "all scripture is breathed out by God", indicating that all, not just parts, of the Bible were and are divinely inspired.
The other way in which the scriptures were divinely inspired was through the workings of the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit often times moved in the lives of those who wrote the scriptures, bringing to the forefront of their hearts and minds the teachings of Christ, teachings they then put down into written words. In John 14: 26 it states, "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you."
In summation, the Bible was, and remains to this day to be a text inspired by God for the good of his people. The words of the prophets and all other Biblical content, though stated and penned by man, were divinely inspired. Isaiah 1:2, "Listen, O heavens, and hear, O earth; For the LORD speaks." Finally, in 2 Peter verse 1 chapter 21 it says, "for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God."
It is for many, I am sure, difficult to swallow that which I have laid out above; and it is because many disavow the Bible as nothing more than moral rhetoric, ethical stories with no real actual truth or empirical evidence to support its claims. It is to this that I seek to move forward in providing an apologetic case for the Bible itself. It must be understood, that if the bible can be proven, and empirically validated both historically and archaeologically, then it stands as its own authority, and thus, all claims made within, must be nothing more than Absolute Truth.
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