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Bibliology: Doctrine of the Bible · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to Reform Thinking. I am so glad you have decided to
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join us again. We have a subject on the table
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today that is well, it's the absolute ground floor of
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everything we believe. It really is.
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It is the sort of topic that if you get it wrong, the entire
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House of Cards just, you know, tends to fall down.
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Absolutely. We are talking about the Bible.
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Yeah. Not just what is inside the
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book, but the book itself. It is the starting point for all
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Christian doctrine. Today we are looking at
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bibliology, that is the formal theological term for the study
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of the Bible. Bibliology.
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We are going to examine what it is, where it came from, and you
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know why we trust it. You know, for most of us, the
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Bible is just a given. It sits on the night stand, or
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it is an app we open on our phones during church.
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We read it and we try to apply it, but we rarely stop to ask
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the massive question. The big one.
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How do we actually know this book is from God?
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Why should I trust this ancient collection of writings over any
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other? It is the central question of
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the faith. I mean, if this book is just a
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collection of human wisdom or some good moral advice from
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ancient history, then we can take it or leave it.
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We can edit it, we can critique it.
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But if it is actually the word of God, that changes the entire
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calculation. Oh, complete.
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It means we're dealing with absolute authority.
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Exactly. Our mission today is to look
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under the hood. We are going to examine the
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claims the Bible makes about itself.
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We're going to look at its origin.
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And since this is Reformed thinking, we're going to look at
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why Protestants who adhere to the Westminster Confession hold
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to such a high view of Scripture.
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And we are basing this discussion on the Moody Handbook
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of Theology by Paul NS, a great resource.
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It is a fantastic resource. NS does a great job of
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synthesizing complex doctrines and I want to mention right up
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front that we are going to use some academic terms.
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Today. We will talk about inspiration,
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inerrancy, canonicity. Don't let the word scare you.
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Right. Please do not tune out.
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The goal here is not to be academic for the sake of being
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smart. The goal is to see the practical
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reality that God has spoken to his people.
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OK, let's start at the very beginning.
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The word itself Bible. Where does that come from?
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It is not a word you find inside the text of the scriptures.
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No, it is not. The history of the word is quite
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interesting. The English word Bible comes
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from the Greek word Biblian. Biblian which means book or
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roll. But that word traces back even
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further to Biblose, which was the name for the Pyrus.
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Plant. The plant that grew along the
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Nile in Egypt. The Reeds.
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That is the one. In the ancient world, before we
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had paper mills and punching presses, the papyrus plant was
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the primary technology for writing.
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It was a high tech material of its day.
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It was, and the process of making it was actually quite an
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art form. So how did they turn a plant
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into a scroll? Well, they would harvest the
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papyrus Reed. Then they would take the pith,
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you know, the soft spongy center of the stem, and cut it into
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thin strips, usually about a foot long.
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And they would lay these strips out in the sun to dry.
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So you just have a bunch of dried plants.
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Now what? Right, but here is the
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engineering part. They would lay the strips in
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horizontal rows. Then they would take another
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layer of vertical strips and glue them across the horizontal
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ones. Oh wow.
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Think of it like how we make plywood today.
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You cross the grain. You cross the grain to create
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strength and durability. That is fascinating.
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I never thought about the physical construction of it.
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It was really a manufactured product.
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It absolutely was. The horizontal rows were
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smoother, so that became the writing surface, the side you'd
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write on. Then they would glue these
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sections together to form a long scroll.
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How long are we talking? Some of these scrolls could be
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30 feet long. Wow.
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And eventually Latin speaking Christians started using the
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plural form biblia to refer to all the books of the Old and New
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Testaments. Biblia So the Bible literally
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just means the books. Essentially, yes, it is a
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library. And what about the word
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Scripture? Well, scripture comes from the
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Greek craft, which which simply means writing.
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But in the New Testament, they're using graph to talk
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about a grocery list or a letter to a friend.
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Are they? No, and that is a key
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distinction. The verb form is used for
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writing in general, but the noun graph appears about 50 times in
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the New Testament. And when it does?
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Almost exclusively, it refers to Holy Scripture.
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When the New Testament writers use that word, they were putting
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a fence around a specific, authoritative set of writings.
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They were setting it apart. So we have this collection of
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writings, but there are a lot of religious texts in the world.
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What makes this one different? Why do we think this specific
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collection is the one that matters?
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This brings us to what's called the argument from continuity.
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OK, this is one of those observations that once you see
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it is impossible to ignore. It is, I think, objective is
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evidence of something supernatural going on.
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Give us a comparison. How does the Bible stack up
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against other religious books? Well, let's look at the Quran as
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a comparison point. The Quran was compiled largely
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by one individual, Zaidiv and Thabit, under the guidance of 1
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leader Abu Baker. It all happened in a relatively
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short period of time. It was written in one language,
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Arabic. It was written in one
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geographical region. So it's a very controlled
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environment. Very controlled and didn't they
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have a very strict editorial process?
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Yeah, the text mentions that around 8650 the actually
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destroyed variant copies to force a unified version.
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Right. So you have a controlled
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environment, One author, one editor, one language, one time
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period. You would expect Unity in that
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scenario. Of course it's going to be
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unified, no? Contrast that with the Bible.
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The Bible is the complete opposite.
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It was written by about 40 different authors. 40 That is a
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committee, a huge committee. A very large committee and they
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wrote over a period of 1500 years.
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That is a staggering amount of time.
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I mean, think about how much language and culture changes in
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just 100 years, right? English from 400 years ago is
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hard for us to read. 1500 years is an eternity in terms of
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cultural shift. Exactly.
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And look at the authors themselves.
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It was not just a group of scholars sitting in a library.
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You had Moses, who was a political leader trained in the
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courts of Egypt. You had Joshua, a military
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general. You had David, a shepherd who
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became a king. And Amos was a herdsman, right?
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A farmer. A herdsman and a grower of figs.
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Then you jump to the New Testament and you have Peter, a
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rough fisherman who probably smelled like the sea for sure.
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Matthew, a tax collector after working for the Roman
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government, Luke, a highly educated medical doctor, and
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Paul, a brilliant rabbi. It is the ultimate mix of
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vocations, all walks of life. And locations.
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It was written on three different continents, Europe,
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Asia and Africa. It was written in dungeons, in
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royal palaces, in the desert and on the island of Patmos.
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So. Logically, if you take 30 people
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from that many different backgrounds, separated by that
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much time and geography, and ask them to write about highly
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controversial subjects like God, humanity, sin and salvation, you
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should. Get a mess, you should get a
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chaotic jumble of contradictions.
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So chaos one guy. Says God is the Son.
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Another says God is a spirit. 1 says we are we're saved by
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works. Another says we are saved by
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grace. It should be a train wreck.
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But that is the aha moment with the Bible, isn't it?
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Right. You don't get chaos, you get a
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completely unified theme of redemption from Genesis to
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Revelation. There is 0 contradiction in the
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core message, the. Morality stays the same.
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The character of God stays the same.
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The solution to the human problem stays the same.
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Which suggests that behind those 40 human authors.
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There was one divine author. That is the only logical
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explanation for that kind of continuity.
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That brings us right to the concept of revelation.
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If there is a divine author, he has to communicate.
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So let's unpack this term. What do we actually mean by
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revelation? The Greek word is apocalypsis.
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It sounds dramatic, you know, like apocalypse, but it
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literally means an unveiling or a disclosure.
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So pulling back the curtain on something, yes.
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Theologically, it means God unveiling troops about himself
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that mankind could never discover through reason alone.
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She could. Just figure this stuff out.
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No, if God did not speak, we would be in the dark.
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We cannot find God just by thinking really hard.
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He has to reveal Himself to us. And the source material breaks
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this down into two categories, general revelation and special
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revelation. Let's start with the wide lens.
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What is general revelation? General revelation is God
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revealing himself through nature, through Providence,
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which is how he governs history, and through the human
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conscience. OK, let's look at nature first.
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I love the examples the text gives here.
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Psalm 19 is the classic text, right?
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The heavens declare the glory of God.
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It is, it says that day after day the creation pours forth
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speech. It is a wordless revelation, but
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it is loud. And the source mentions the
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precision of our universe. Yes.
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Take the sun for example. It is 93,000,000 miles from the
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earth. Which sounds like a random
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number until you realize the physics of it.
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It is not random at all. If the sun were significantly
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closer, the earth would be too hot for life.
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We would burn up. If it were farther away, we
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would freeze. It's in the Goldilocks zone.
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It is exactly where it needs to be.
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Or tick moon. It is 240,000 miles away.
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If the moon closer, the gravitational pull would create
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tides that would submerge the continents.
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So the very fact that we aren't underwater or burning up is
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evidence of a designer. It is evidence of order, harmony
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and power that is general revelation.
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It shows us God exists, that he is powerful, and that he is
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glorious. What about conscience?
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You mentioned that as part of general revelation.
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Right. Paul talks about this in Romans
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2. He says that even people who do
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not have the Bible have the law of God written on their hearts.
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The inner monitor. Yes, or a legal prosecutor
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living in your soul. When you do something wrong,
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even if no one sees you, you feel guilt.
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You feel judgement. That moral response suggests we
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are accountable to a righteous power.
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But, and here's the kicker, General Revelation is not
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enough, is it? It can't save you.
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No, and this is a crucial distinction and reform, the
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general revelation is enough to condemn man.
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It leaves us without excuse, as Romans one says.
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So you can't say I didn't know. You can't.
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We can look at the stars and know there is a God, and we can
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look at our conscience and know we have failed Him.
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But nature does not tell us how to be saved.
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The stars do not preach the gospel.
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For that, we need special revelation.
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Exactly. Special revelation is the narrow
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focus. It is restricted to Jesus Christ
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and the Scriptures. This is where God speaks with
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words. Now I want to pause here because
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the text brings up a really interesting theological debate
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regarding a guy named Karl Barth.
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This is the Reformed critique of Neo Orthodoxy.
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Can you explain what Barth's view was and why we disagree
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with it? Sure, Karl Barth was a very
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influential theologian in the 20th century.
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He is the father of what is called Neo Orthodoxy.
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He agreed that man was sinful and could not find God on his
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own. But he argued that because man
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is so sinful, we cannot trust human language to hold divine
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truth. So he did not believe the Bible
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was the word of God. Is that what he was saying?
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Not in the way we do. He believed Revelation was an
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encounter. He thought the Bible was a
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witness to Revelation and and it becomes the word of God to you
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only when you have that existential experience when it
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hits you. So it's subjective.
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Very he denied propositional truth.
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Propositional truth, meaning actual factual statements about
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God. Like God is holy, right?
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Barth would say God reveals himself, not facts about
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himself. But the orthodox Reformed view
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rebuts that we see in Scripture that God speaks specific words.
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It's not just a feeling. No.
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Exodus 20.1 says God spoke all these words.
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Deuteronomy 29 says these are the words of the covenant.
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It's specific content. So it is not just a feeling or a
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subjective encounter. No.
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And think about the implications.
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If revelation is just an encounter, it becomes
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subjective. It depends on you.
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If you don't feel it, is it still true?
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But if revelation is propositional, if God spoke
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actual words and truths, then it is objective.
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It is true whether you feel it or not.
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And that is why we need special revelation.
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It gives us the specific plan of salvation in Jesus Christ
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written down in black and white. That leads us perfectly into the
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mechanism of how we got this special revelation we have
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established. God spoke.
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Now how did it get written down? This is the doctrine of
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inspiration. Right.
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And this is one of the most misunderstood concepts in the
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church. We use the word inspired so
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loosely today. We say, oh, Shakespeare was
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inspired or that song is inspired.
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Yeah, meaning they were really creative or in the zone.
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But the biblical definition is radically different.
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The key verse is Second Timothy 3.16.
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All scripture is inspired by God.
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The Greek word there is theob nustos.
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Theos meaning God, Numa meaning breath.
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Yes, God breathed, but here is the correction.
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Many people think it means the writers wrote something and then
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God breathed into the writings to make them holy.
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Like he zapped it with holiness after the fact.
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Right, but the word actually means breathed out.
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It emphasizes the source. The scriptures are the
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exhalation of God. Some scholars suggest spiration
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is a better term than inspiration.
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OK so it comes from God, but humans wrote it.
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How did that work? Did God just grab their hand and
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move the pen? That is called the dictation
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theory, and generally we reject that.
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The writers were not robots or passive machines.
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You can tell, of course, if you read the Bible, you can see the
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personality of the authors. John writes very simply.
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Luke writes with complex academic Greek.
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Paul writes like a logician. So how do you get God's exact
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words through a humans unique personality?
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Second, Peter 1.21 gives us the mechanics.
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It says men spoke from God as they were carried along by the
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Holy Spirit. Carried along, what does that
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mean? The Greek word is for Amanoy.
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It is used of a ship being driven by the wind.
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The sailors are active, they are on the boat, they're hoisting
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sails, but the wind is determining the course.
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Enz uses a great analogy in the text the escalator.
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I like this one, break it down. Imagine a man walking up an
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escalator. He is walking.
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He is active. He is using his own muscles.
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But the escalator is the primary force moving him upward.
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It's guiding him to the top floor.
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So the author is active, using his vocabulary, his style, his
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mind, but the Holy Spirit is the escalator, ensuring he gets to
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the correct destination, the right message.
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Precisely. The Spirit superintended the
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process so that what they wrote was exactly what God wanted,
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written without error, yet preserving their humanity.
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That is a helpful image. Now we have to talk about what
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we mean by inspired. Do we mean just the ideas or the
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actual words? Because that seems to be a big
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point of contention. This is the battleground.
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Some people argue for conceptual inspiration.
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They say God gave the guys the idea.
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Like write about love and then let them choose the words.
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Which would allow for errors because humans choose the wrong
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words all the time. All the time.
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But the text argues that you cannot separate ideas from
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words. Ideas are expressed through
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words. If the words are wrong, the idea
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is wrong. You can't have one without the
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other. And the ultimate argument for
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this, for the very words being inspired, comes from Jesus
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himself. It does.
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If we call ourselves Christians, we should have the same view of
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Scripture that Jesus had. And Jesus believed in verbal
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plenary inspiration. OK, verbal meaning, the words,
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plenary meaning, the whole thing, every part.
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Yes, look at Matthew 5.18. Jesus says not the smallest
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letter or stroke will pass away from the law.
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The smallest letter. He is referring to the yad, the
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smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and the serif, the
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tiny little decorative stroke that distinguishes one letter
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from another. He is getting down to the
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typography, the font details. He is.
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He trusts the text down to the brush, but my favorite example
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is the I am argument. This is from Matthew 22, right?
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The one with the Sadducees. Yes, the Sadducees did not
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believe in the resurrection. They were trying to trap Jesus
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with a trick question, and Jesus quotes Exodus 3.6 to prove them
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wrong. What does he quote?
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God says to Moses, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
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And the entire argument hinges on the tense of that verb.
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Exactly. Jesus says God is not the God of
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the dead, but of the living. If Abraham had just ceased to
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exist, God would have said I was the God of Abraham.
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But he said I am. Which means Abraham is alive in
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God's presence. Jesus built a massive
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theological doctrine, the resurrection, on the tense of a
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single verb. That is wild.
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He pinned the whole argument on one word, 1 little verb.
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He did the same thing in Psalm 110 with the word Lord.
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The Lord said to my Lord. The entire argument about the
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Messiah's identity rests on that specific word choice.
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If the specific words are not inspired, Jesus logic collapses.
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So if Jesus trusted the grammar of the Old Testament that much,
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we are on safe ground doing the same.
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We are on the sacest ground possible.
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This leads us to the logical conclusion of inspiration, which
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is inner ANSI. If God breathed it out, and God
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cannot lie, then the book must be true.
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That is the basic syllogism. Major premise, God is true.
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Minor premise, the Bible came from God.
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Conclusion the Bible is true. It's simple logic.
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Well, let's define true, because this is where people get tripped
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up. Does inerrancy mean the Bible is
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a science textbook or that it speaks in like 21st century
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technical language? No, not at all.
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The definition is that in the original autographs, the
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original writings, the Bible is free from error in all it
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teaches. In all it teaches.
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Yes, that includes geography, science, history, and theology.
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Whatever it asserts to be true is true.
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OK, but what about approximations?
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If the Bible says a number is 5000 and an archaeologist digs
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and says it was actually 5012, is that an error?
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No, inerrancy allows for approximations in round numbers.
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If I say I drove 20 miles to work but my odometer says 19.8,
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I am not lying. I'm speaking in round numbers.
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The Bible does the same. What about grammar?
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Yeah, I have heard critics say the Greek in the New Testament
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is not always perfect classical Greek.
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It's more common. That is true, but inerrancy
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allows for non standard grammar, it allows for different styles,
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and it allows for what we call the language of appearance.
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OK, what's that? When the Bible says the sunset,
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it is not making a scientific claim that the sun revolves
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around the earth. It is describing what the human
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eye sees. We still do that today.
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Even NASA talks about sunrise and sunset.
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It's not an error. Right now you mentioned the
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original autographs. We do not have those anymore.
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So does inerrancy apply to my copy of the Bible on my desk?
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Technically, the formal doctrine of an inerrancy applies to the
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original writings. However, because of the
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preservation of Scripture, which we will get to, our translations
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are incredibly reliable, but the claim of absolute perfection
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rests with what the apostles and prophets originally pinned.
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I want to look at one specific problem passage the text
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mentions because it helps illustrate how we handle these
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things, the Centurion narrative. This is a classic 1A favorite of
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skeptics. So in Matthew 8 it says the
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centurion came to Jesus and asked for healing, right?
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But in Luke 7 it says the centurion sent Jewish elders to
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ask Jesus. So the critic says uh huh.
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Contradiction. Did he come or did he send
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someone? Which is it?
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But this is not an era. It is a cultural understanding
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of authority. The centurion is a man of
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authority in the ancient world and even today, legally.
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What a representative does on your behalf, you have done.
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Key facit per allium facit per SE.
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What's that? It's a legal phrase.
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He who acts through another acts himself.
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If my lawyer makes a statement in court, it's as if I made it.
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Exactly. Matthew is condensing the
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account, he's giving the summary.
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Luke, the detailed historian is giving the step by step process.
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Both are true. One focuses on the ultimate
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agent, the Centurion, the other on the immediate agents, the
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elders. It is not a contradiction, it is
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a difference in perspective. OK, so why is this hill worth
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dying on? Why can't we just say OK the
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Bible is true about Jesus and salvation but maybe got the
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history of Adam wrong or the geography of Jericho wrong?
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That is the slippery slope, and it's a dangerous one.
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If you cannot trust the Bible when it talks about earthly
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things like history or geography, things you can in
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principle check, right, why in the world should you trust it
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when it talks about heavenly things, about salvation, heaven,
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hell, things you can't check? If it is wrong about the stuff
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we can check, how can we trust it on the stuff we can't check?
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Precisely. And there is a theological cost.
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Take Adam and Eve. If you say well, Ayant says
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evolution is true, so Adam wasn't a real historical person,
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it's just a myth, then you have a massive problem.
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In Romans 5, Paul argues that just as sin and death entered
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the world through one man, Adam, so righteousness and life come
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through one man, Christ. The analogy breaks down
21:04
completely. If the first Adam is a myth, the
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logic for the second Adam Jesus crumbles.
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You cannot neatly separate history from theology in the
21:13
Bible. They are interwoven.
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And ultimately, it comes back to the character of God.
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That is the bottom line. To say the Bible airs is to say
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that God who breathed it out either did not know the truth or
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could not communicate it clearly.
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It impugns his character. OK, moving on.
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We have this inspired inherent book, but how do we get these
21:31
specific books? Why 66?
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Why not include the Gospel of Thomas or the Apocrypha?
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This is the question of canonicity.
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The word Canon is a Greek word that means a measuring rod.
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It is the standard, the list of books that measure up.
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And there is a crucial distinction here regarding the
21:46
Church's role. Did the church decide which
21:49
books were inspired? Did they just vote on it?
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No, that is a very common misconception.
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The church did not make the books inspired.
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The church recognized the books God had already inspired.
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That is a big difference. It's a huge difference.
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It's like a jeweler recognizing a diamond.
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He does not make it a diamond, he just acknowledges what it
22:06
already is. That's a perfect analogy.
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The authority is inherent in the book because God wrote it.
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The Church just has the task of discerning that authority.
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So how did they do that? How do they recognize it?
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Let's start with the Old Testament.
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The Jewish people had a clear Canon long before Jesus.
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They divided into 3 parts, the Law, the Prophets and the
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Writings. And Jesus acknowledges this.
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Yes, in Luke 24.44 when he speaks of what was written about
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him in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms, with
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Psalms being the first book of the writing section.
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And the Council of Jamia comes up a lot here.
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What was that? Right around 80, 90.
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But again, Jamnia did not create the OT Canon.
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It was the place where the Jewish leaders publicly
22:49
confirmed would have been accepted for centuries.
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It was a reaction to the destruction of the Temple.
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Now the New Testament seems trickier.
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You had letters circulating everywhere.
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How do they filter them? What were the tests?
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They had specific tests they applied.
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The 1st and most important was apostolicity.
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Was this written by an apostle or someone close to?
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One. So Matthew and John were
23:10
apostles. Mark was not, but he was with
23:12
Peter. Luke was not, but he was with
23:14
Paul. Exactly.
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If it could be tied to the Apostolic circle, it had
23:18
authority. The second test was acceptance.
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Was the Church at large receiving it?
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So was it resonating with believers everywhere?
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Yes, the idea is that God's sheep hear God's voice.
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If the global church was rejecting a book, that was a bad
23:34
sign. It meant it didn't have the ring
23:35
of truth. What about content?
23:37
That is the third test. Did it agree with orthodox
23:40
doctrine that was already established?
23:42
For example, the so-called Gospel of Peter was rejected.
23:45
Why? Because it contained weird
23:47
heretical ideas that contradicted the known
23:49
scripture. It had a talking cross in it.
23:51
It just didn't fit. A talking cross?
23:53
Yeah, that would be a red flag. And finally, inspiration.
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Right. Does it reflect the high moral
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and spiritual values of the Holy Spirit?
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When you read the Apocrypha, those extra books in the
24:04
Catholic Bible, they are interesting history, but they do
24:07
not ring with the same spiritual power.
24:10
They do not claim. Thus says the Lord in the same
24:13
way. So by 8170 we have the
24:15
Muratorian Canon, which is a list.
24:17
Yes, an early list from Rome, and it lists most of our New
24:20
Testament books. Which shows that the recognition
24:23
happened very early. It was not some conspiracy in
24:25
the 4th century by Constantine like some people claim.
24:28
Not at all. The Church knew its Scriptures
24:30
from the beginning. So we know which books belong,
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but the next question I always hear is it has been copied and
24:37
recopied for thousands of years. Isn't it like the telephone
24:40
game? Hasn't the message been
24:42
corrupted? This brings us to the doctrine
24:44
of transmission, and honestly, the facts here are astonishing.
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Let's look at the Old Testament first.
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The Jewish scribes, particularly a group called the Mazarets,
24:53
were incredibly meticulous. Calling meticulous is an
24:56
understatement. They were, I mean, obsessed.
24:59
They were. They had extreme rules.
25:00
When they copied a scroll, they did not just write it out.
25:03
They counted the verses, they counted the words, they even
25:06
counted the letters. The source says they knew the
25:09
letter A left occurred 42,377 times in the Hebrew Bible.
25:14
Imagine that you finish copying the entire book of Isaiah, and
25:18
then you have to go back and count every single a left.
25:21
And if the count is off. If the count is off by even one,
25:24
in many cases the entire manuscript was discarded or
25:27
ceremonially buried. They would not tolerate error.
25:31
But for a long time, the oldest manuscripts we had were from
25:34
around AD 900. That is a long gap from when the
25:38
old custom it was originally written, skeptics used to hammer
25:41
on. This they did until 1947, the
25:44
Dead Sea Scrolls. The greatest archaeological
25:46
discovery of the 20th century. Easily A shepherd boy throws a
25:49
rock into a cave at Qumran and finds these clay jars with
25:53
scrolls in them that dated back to 125 BC.
25:56
That's 1000 year jump backward in time.
25:58
It is a massive. Leap and a moment of truth C
26:00
scrolls compared to the manuscripts from 8900, they were
26:03
practically. Identical.
26:05
The Isaiah scroll from Qumran matched the Masoretic text from
26:09
1000 years later, word for word, with only tiny variations in
26:13
spelling that did not change the meaning at all.
26:16
So it's like spilling the word color.
26:17
Versus color exactly. It proved the Mazarets did their
26:21
job with incredible accuracy. Wow it.
26:24
Proves God preserved his word. It does.
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What about the new? Testament we do not.
26:28
Have Masorets for that? No, but we have.
26:30
Volume. We have something far better in
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some ways. We have over 5000 Greek
26:36
manuscripts and that is way more than.
26:38
Any other ancient book, right? Oh, by far it's not.
26:41
Even a close competition for Caesar's Gallic Wars.
26:44
We have maybe 10 manuscripts and the earliest is 1000 years after
26:49
Caesar wrote it. And for the New Testament for.
26:51
The New Testament we have. Thousands of copies and some
26:53
fragments date to within a few decades of the original, so we
26:56
could use textual. Criticism to compare all these
26:58
copies yes and because we. Have so many from so many
27:01
different places we can cross reference them.
27:04
We can spot where a scribe might have slipped up and made a typo,
27:07
so the variations actually help. Us they help us reconstruct.
27:10
The original text with extreme confidence.
27:13
The text we have today is a what the apostles wrote that is
27:16
incredibly reassuring. We are not reading a corrupted
27:18
copy of a copy. We are reading the preserved
27:21
word. OK, we are in the home stretch
27:23
here. We have the book.
27:24
It is from God, it is accurate. It's been preserved.
27:27
But I can hand this Bible to a brilliant atheist professor, a
27:31
literature expert, and he will not see Jesus.
27:34
He will not feel the conviction of sin.
27:37
Why is that? This is the doctrine of.
27:39
Illumination and we need to distinguish 3 terms here.
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Revelation, inspiration and illumination.
27:45
They all build on each other. OK, go for it.
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Revelation is the. Content God unveiling truth
27:50
Inspiration is the recording God ensuring the writers got it
27:54
right. Illumination is the meaning, the
27:56
Holy Spirit helping us understand what is written.
27:58
The source quotes. 1st Corinthians 2.14 the natural man
28:03
does not accept the things of the spirit of God because they
28:06
are spiritually appraised because of sin, our.
28:09
Minds are darkened. We have a broken receiver.
28:12
We can read the words, follow the grammar, and understand the
28:15
history, but we cannot grasp the spiritual truth.
28:18
We cannot see the glory of God in it.
28:21
So the Holy Spirit. Who inspired the writers also
28:23
has to work on the reader. Yes, he has to turn.
28:25
On the light that is illumination, it is the Spirit
28:29
helping the believer understand and apply the Divine truth.
28:32
Does that mean we do not need? To study, we just pray and wait
28:35
for a ZAP of insight. No, that is laziness.
28:38
Illumination works with our study, not instead of it.
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This brings us to the final piece.
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Interpretation or hermeneutics, The science of interpretation,
28:48
right? And the source lays out a few.
28:49
Key principles for interpreting the Bible correctly.
28:52
The 1st is literal. Interpretation.
28:54
This means we take words in their normal commutative sense.
28:57
We are not looking for secret codes or allegories behind every
29:01
Bush. So if the text says David picked
29:02
up. 5 stones. He picked up five stones.
29:04
Yes. He did not pick up grace, mercy,
29:06
peace, love and joy. Exactly.
29:09
Unless the genre is clearly poetry or symbol, like in
29:12
Revelation or a parable, we assume the plain meaning.
29:16
Then there is the grammatical principle.
29:18
We pay attention to the pronouns, the tenses and
29:21
conjunctions, just like Jesus did with I AM.
29:24
The details matter. And finally, contextual context
29:28
is king. You have to look at the
29:29
immediate context, the surrounding paragraphs, then the
29:32
remote context, the chapter or the section and the book
29:36
context, the whole intent of the author.
29:39
You cannot just RIP a verse out of the Bible and make it say
29:41
whatever you want. The classic example being.
29:44
Judas went and hanged himself, right?
29:46
Followed by go and do likewise. The classic example.
29:49
Of bad context. We must understand the intent of
29:51
the author within the flow of the argument.
29:54
So let's bring this all together.
29:55
We have covered a massive amount of ground we have.
29:57
Let's just recap the. Flow.
29:59
God spoke origin, He spoke clearly.
30:02
Revelation, He ensured it was recorded correctly.
30:04
Inspiration and inerrancy, The Church recognized it.
30:08
Canonicity, God preserved it. Transmission and the Spirit
30:12
helps us understand it. Illumination.
30:14
It is an unbroken. Chain from the mind of God to
30:17
our hearts. And that is why this is not.
30:19
Just academic data. It gives the believer a sure
30:22
foundation. When you hold your Bible, you
30:24
are holding the very breath of God.
30:26
That changes how we. Approach it.
30:29
We are not just reading a book, we are encountering the divine
30:32
mind. It should make us read it with.
30:33
Confidence and reverence and a whole lot of humility.
30:37
OK, so here is a final. Provocative thought to leave you
30:39
with If God has gone to such incredible lengths over 1500
30:45
years, moving 40 men, preserving text through counting letters
30:49
and sending His Spirit to illuminate our minds, what is
30:52
the consequence of us leaving that book closed on the shelf?
30:55
It is a sobering question. A real challenge to all of us.
30:58
Think about that this week. Thanks for joining us on
31:00
Reformed Thinking.