God Speaks to Us Through Scripture Part 3
[00:00:00] Cody: Hi. Thank you for tuning into the Logic of God podcast. I'm Cody.
[00:00:17] Gina: I'm Gina.
[00:00:17] Ben: And I'm Ben. If you're returning, thank you for coming back and if you are a new guest, welcome.
[00:00:40] Gina: I do wanna start this episode just by saying that we all love each other and even if we do not always agree. We still leave these episodes united and friends, so, and also married, me and Cody, so. But I want to start there because it can get heated, and sometimes we may not agree, and sometimes we just want to test each other, but ultimately this is one of those issues that, that we may not agree on, and that's okay.
[00:01:07] Ben: So what exactly is the doctrine of inerrancy?
[00:01:11] Cody: When people discuss biblical inerrancy, they're discussing the Chicago document that was signed. So the statement of biblical inerrancy that was, I think it was 1978 that it was decided. So when most churches you see that they affirm biblical inerrancy, they're actually referring back to that original statement that was signed and there's been a couple revisions and updates to it since then.
[00:01:35] Gina: My understanding is that the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy was really a response to non literal interpretations of the Bible from like a more liberal movement. R. C. Sproul was involved with that, I guess.
[00:01:49] Cody: Liberal doctrine was overtaking America, so they decided to act and that's what came out of it, but with pretty much anything.
[00:01:57] I think the pendulum swung a little bit further than it needed to in that document. And
[00:02:02] Ben: well, let's not get too deep into the woods just yet because we haven't actually addressed what it said. So broad strokes, not without going into the nitty gritty, what exactly was the assertion that they made?
[00:02:14] Misrepresenting it. Yeah. No,
[00:02:15] Gina: that's okay. So I am using the website defendinginerrency. com and it is a website that features the historical timeline of the debate about the reliability and inerrancy of the Bible. And it is in favor of biblical inerrancy. So in 1977, there was a conference on the authority of scripture at Mount Hermon, California.
[00:02:40] J. Grimstead and R. C. Spruill recruited John Gerstner first, J. I. Packard second, Norman Geisler third, and Greg Banson fourth, and it would form the core of what would grow into the ICBI, and it was here that they laid plans to establish the ICBI. And then in 1978 they held the ICBI Council on Biblical Inerrancy.
[00:03:06] So the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, CSBI, was produced at an International Summit Conference of Evangelical Leaders in Chicago of 1978. And their statement says, we affirm that the Holy Scriptures are to be received as the authoritative word of God. We deny that the scriptures receive their authority from the church, tradition, or any human source.
[00:03:33] We affirm that the scriptures are the supreme written norm by which God binds the conscience and that the authority of the church is subordinate to that of scripture. We deny that church creeds, councils, or declarations have authority greater than or equal to the authority of the Bible. We affirm that the written word in its entirety is revelation given by God.
[00:03:55] We deny that the Bible is merely a witness to revelation or only becomes revelation in encounter or depends on the responses of men for its validity. We affirm that God who made mankind in his image has used language as a means of revelation. We deny that human language is so limited by our creatureliness that it is rendered inadequate as a vehicle for divine revelation.
[00:04:18] We further deny that the corruption of human culture and language through sin has thwarted God's work of inspiration. We affirm that God's revelation within the Holy Scriptures was progressive. We deny that later revelation, which may fulfill earlier revelation, ever corrects or contradicts it. We further deny that any normative revelation has been given since the completion of the New Testament writing.
[00:04:42] We affirm that the whole of Scripture and all of its parts, down to the very words of the original, were given by divine inspiration. We deny that the inspiration of Scripture can rightly be affirmed of the whole without the parts or some parts but not the whole. We affirm that inspiration, was the work in which God, by His Spirit, through human writers, gave us His Word.
[00:05:03] The origin of scripture is divine. The mode of divine inspiration remains largely a mystery to us. We deny that inspiration can be reduced to human insight or to heightened states of consciousness of any kind. Should I continue?
[00:05:17] Ben: I think we're pretty good.
[00:05:19] Gina: Yeah.
[00:05:19] Ben: So yeah, the gist of it is that God revealed certain information to people.
[00:05:25] The people wrote it down. They wrote it down exactly the way that God revealed it to them, without any error, without any inconsistency, without fail. Almost as if God had possessed them, and they put everything down exactly the way that he told them to. And that, as it is, is exactly scripture. It is exactly the way that God said it.
[00:05:44] It's that way forever, and it hasn't changed at all, and Like, for the most part, everything that you've read, Gina, I actually agree with. There's one or two points, though, that have been a bit contentious. And it's the idea that it's down to the words themselves. That the exact words have been exactly preserved in exactly the way that they were revealed.
[00:06:06] And it's the word, because it gives a bit of, a bit of holy reverence to the exact words themselves. And this has actually been Something that's been debated quite a bit over the years. And it's not just in Christianity that this is the case. The translation of the Tanakh and the Apocrypha specifically, along with, I think, maybe a couple other things, but I can't remember exactly.
[00:06:30] But essentially those writings into Greek from Hebrew was specifically put off for so long because there was the concern, okay, well this was revealed to us in Hebrew, in these languages. And it may be a sin, it may be a horrendous error for us to translate them because there's going to be some things that are lost in translation.
[00:06:49] We're going to have to think very hard about how it is we want to address this. But eventually, because the practice of speaking Hebrew was dying out, they were like, okay, well, So, soon, there are not going to be that many people who can actually read this, so we're going to translate it into Greek, so that at the very least, the meaning is carried on.
[00:07:06] So, you can see, already, without going into the argumentation, there's some issue with looking at the words themselves as holy, as the important thing. Because if you do, you run into an issue very similar to what the Muslims have, where they It's not the meaning behind the words, it's the words themselves.
[00:07:23] And so, if you don't learn Biblical Greek, then you're not going to actually know what the true scripture is. You can't truly, accurately represent it because it's not the word that God presented. It's not the meaning behind the words, it's the words themselves. And also, you can't have translations, and you can't have different kinds of translations.
[00:07:40] So you could, arguably, have a direct English translation, where you have specific words in Greek, And then, okay, so this word in Greek roughly would translate to this phrase in English, and literally. So you're not conjugating, you're not going, okay, this is what it would mean if I were to say it in English.
[00:07:59] No, you're going, okay, this is directly what this would translate to in English, and it's not going to make any sense. But that's what you do because the words themselves are important. We have different types of translations of the Bible. So we have like the KJV, it was one of the, not the first translation of the Bible, but it was one of the most widely accepted, one of the more widely accepted ones fairly early on.
[00:08:18] And then we have the NIV, and we have the NASVB, and HIJK element. Like we got a ton of different Bible versions out here. But the reason we do is in part because The KJV is tough for people to read. It's got the ye olde English in it, and it's a bit tough, but there are people who will say that you need to read the original KJV or nothing.
[00:08:40] If you're gonna quote, quote from the KJV or nothing. Because they hold very much to this feeling of, okay, it's the closest thing to the original, it's one of the oldest translations, therefore it's the right one. Rather than the meaning behind the words and whether or not a translation of the Bible accurately reflects the meaning of the words, It doesn't matter.
[00:08:57] As long as it's close to literal word for word, or it's farther back and so closer in time, then we're good. So yeah, I'd be curious to hear, before I go too much farther into my feelings about this, what are your guys feelings on inerrancies?
[00:09:12] Cody: No, I think that covers it and I think it is one of those things that people don't study the true definition or put too much time into what they mean when they say the Bible is inerrant because the first time anybody from an atheistic or different viewpoint poses attacks or questions of the faith, usually it is around scripture and it's inerrancy and you can easily put out mistakes that were either in translation or grammatical errors from scribal errors or additions that they've made, as well as just some places that translations kind of just miss the mark on even portraying the appropriate terms.
[00:09:54] I can't think of any off the top of my head right now, but Just had this conversation with a KJV only person who admitted that it's hard and confusing at times, but still recommends everybody reads out of that one because we didn't have a good English translation until the mid to late 1600s.
[00:10:15] Interesting.
[00:10:16] Ben: Well, what do you think Gina?
[00:10:19] Gina: I kind of intentionally am keeping myself in the realm of answering, I don't know what I believe specifically, because I believe that the Bible is morally perfect. I don't believe that it has been corrupted in the sense of like God's meaning or intended meaning was messed with.
[00:10:40] But I also know how old the Bible is. And I struggle a little bit with some of the ways that it was canonized. And so,
[00:10:49] Ben: well, what specifically, what issues do you have about the way it was canonized?
[00:10:53] Gina: I have some issues with people deciding when, like you have the book of Enoch, it's mentioned multiple times.
[00:11:00] in scripture, but we don't have it in the Bible. And there's different people in the Bible that talk about books that we don't have in our Bible. And so I do struggle with that a little bit. And I'll admit I haven't explored the book of Enoch because I'm not sure how I feel about that. And that's a whole other issue, but I just struggle a little bit.
[00:11:17] And there's like old wives tales, like, well, King James Jesus changed the guy's name to James in the Bible, and I don't know, I struggle with some of those stories because then, if that, if the Bible really is truly inerrant, then how is it possible that a king changed somebody's name in the Bible? And at that point, I would consider that an error.
[00:11:37] Ben: Well, first off, is Jesus's name Jesus? No. What is his name?
[00:11:42] Gina: Yeshua.
[00:11:43] Ben: There we go. We've changed his name.
[00:11:46] Gina: Yeah.
[00:11:46] Ben: Would you consider that to be a biblical error?
[00:11:49] Gina: I, like I said, it's morally perfect, but.
[00:11:53] Ben: I think we need to establish exactly what we mean by an error or by something that's misleading.
[00:11:58] Gina: Right.
[00:11:59] Ben: So, for instance, I believe that if you call on the name of Jesus, you will be saved.
[00:12:04] Now, that's not the name that he has in Hebrew. It would be pronounced Yeshua. But when you call on the name of Jesus, Jesus knows who you're talking about. And his name is pronounced differently all across the world.
[00:12:17] Ben: And he's actually represented. It's, uh, there's a song that says the children in each different place will see the baby's Jesus face like theirs, but touched with heavenly grace and filled with holy light.
[00:12:26] And And I don't think you need to see him exactly the way that he was. People see him as part of them. And that's a beautiful thing. If you were talking about the boy who was born in 1st century Palestine, who grew up and sacrificed his life to save yours. I don't think God is going to send you to hell over pronunciation.
[00:12:45] Gina: No, but there's a difference between language translation for Jesus name and a king deciding that he was so vain he wanted to put his name in the Bible.
[00:12:54] Ben: Well, and that's assuming that's a correct story. Right, yeah.
[00:12:56] Gina: And there's no way to prove that.
[00:12:58] Ben: We don't have to go so far out of the weeds yet. Let's first focus on a couple of different objections that people frequently bring up.
[00:13:05] And I think this is something Cody can probably help me with. So, Cody, let's do a little bit of role play real quick.
[00:13:11] Cody: Yes.
[00:13:11] Ben: All right. I will, I will pretend I'm an atheist coming to you, and I will present you with a very common argument than an atheist would do, being very pleased with himself because he knows this.
[00:13:21] So, Cody, do you believe that the Bible is inerrant?
[00:13:24] Cody: Yes.
[00:13:25] Ben: Well, what if I were to tell you I can prove right now that it isn't?
[00:13:30] Cody: Really?
[00:13:31] Ben: Yes. You see, how many words do you think are in the New Testament?
[00:13:35] Cody: Words? I do not know how many words. About
[00:13:38] Ben: 180, 000, give or take. The Bible was written a long time ago, New Testament specifically, about 2, 000 years ago, roughly.
[00:13:46] So about how many words do you think are off? How many errors per word do you think there would be?
[00:13:53] Cody: Thousands. Millions, even.
[00:13:55] Ben: Oh, well that's good. I don't know how, why you would think that it's inerrant at that point, but I'll tell you about 400, 000 variances.
[00:14:04] Cody: Oh no. I know, your faith has just been destroyed.
[00:14:07] Ben: There are only 180, 000 words in the Bible. That's close. That's over two per word, roughly. Roughly, if my math is correct. So I'm sorry, Bible's disproved. That's so many variances.
[00:14:23] Cody: So many variances.
[00:14:24] Ben: across all these Greek versions of the New Testament writings that we have, starting from roughly the first and second century and going all the way up until after the printing press was invented, because they were still writing by hand at that point.
[00:14:37] 400, 000 variances. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Your faith is just stupid.
[00:14:41] Cody: It is. Not. What? It's my turn
[00:14:45] Ben: to be shocked, what do you mean? I said 400, 000 variants, you're supposed to be crying right now.
[00:14:51] Cody: Yeah, but how do you think that there would not be any errors as far as punctuation and word variance? Well, so
[00:14:58] Ben: how many of those 400, 000 are accounted for by just those kinds of variances?
[00:15:03] Cody: Most of them.
[00:15:04] Ben: What do you mean most? Like how many? Percentage wise.
[00:15:07] Cody: 90. At least
[00:15:09] Ben: a little, a little, actually closer to 99.
[00:15:11] Cody: 9. Yeah.
[00:15:14] Ben: So most of those variances actually do come down to the, it's not quite the same because Greek is a different language. But if I were to write down, it was like, I was looking at an apple tree and instead, when someone is listening to me say that they write a apple tree instead.
[00:15:31] There you go, that's a variance. And that's what most of them effectively are. It's punctuation, it's slight variances by like A versus N, or misspellings, things like that.
[00:15:41] Cody: Yeah, which I don't even know if you've looked at original Greek text, but it's kind of just all shoved up and together in itself. Yeah,
[00:15:48] Ben: it is.
[00:15:49] I don't know how people read Biblical Greek. Most of the people who copied it were just random people who really loved the stuff and they didn't really have many opportunities to get it. And they come across the letter that's been sent to the church like, Holy cow, this is amazing. I'm not going to get another chance to do this.
[00:16:05] I'm going to write this down as fast as I possibly can. And like, I don't know if all of them were dyslexic or something, but
[00:16:12] Cody: Oh, it's funny if you look into some of the main translators or scribes, they'll even have opinions about other people's translations in there and kind of take digs at so and so is a little liberal on this text.
[00:16:26] A
[00:16:26] Ben: little
[00:16:27] Cody: bit.
[00:16:27] Ben: So yeah, as far as initial variance and transmission through time, this actually gives us a lot of confidence in the gospel that we have, because like I mentioned, we do have writings going as far back as second century. Now we don't have full texts. As in, like, full copies of the New Testament.
[00:16:45] But, we have lots of snippets of individual letters. We have quotations from the early church fathers that we can compare to. And even if we didn't have those, we actually do have a number of fragments, very old fragments, that we have from those churches that wrote at that time. As well as fragments that are compilations, and actually list the various books that they have, or the various letters.
[00:17:05] I can't remember one particular one which is actually really good, like a lot of Bible nerds were really excited when it was discovered. Was
[00:17:11] Gina: it the Deuteronomy one last year?
[00:17:13] Ben: There's the, I don't even know about that one. Oh, it proved that
[00:17:16] Gina: Israelites could read.
[00:17:18] Ben: That just tickles me. They could read. Oh, that's just, God bless them.
[00:17:23] Oh, that's amazing.
[00:17:24] Cody: They couldn't because they were stupid. Because
[00:17:28] Ben: all people born prior to 2020 were stupid.
[00:17:32] Cody: Yeah.
[00:17:33] Ben: But yeah, so that's the transmission over time. But, all that's kind of moot if we don't have the right books. So, do we have the right books? How did we get the books? And, you kind of alluded to a canonization process.
[00:17:48] So, a lot of people will say, Well, there was the Council of Nicaea in the year 300, and that happened, and then we got our canon. Because a bunch of people in white hats decided that those were the things we were going to have in our Bible. So, Gina, is that more or less what you're thinking?
[00:18:05] Gina: Well, no, Cody and I actually studied canonization in school last year.
[00:18:10] So like we were talked through the process and this was not just a one time, like they all sat down and decided. And I know that this has been reliable for thousands of years, but it was multiple generations of men in white hats deciding what goes in the Bible. No,
[00:18:26] Ben: it wasn't even that. It's because prior to these, canonization meetings or whatever.
[00:18:32] Well, first off, I should probably should preface for all of those people who are screening right now that the council of Nicaea had nothing to do with canonization. That that thing came from Dan Brown. And for those of you who don't know, he made that up. Like he completely made that up that council of Nicaea did not address canonization.
[00:18:49] at all. Like the main thing that the Council of Nicaea addressed was the divinity of Jesus Christ. But that does bring up an interesting point in that it seems like when you look at the earliest church fathers, when you look at the writings of Clement, there seem to be references to scripture. Like we talked about that last week.
[00:19:07] Canonization hadn't happened yet, but the early church fathers and the disciples themselves and Paul All referenced scripture, as in the New Testament, as in the things they were writing. There wasn't actually a canonization process that was needed. Essentially, the canonization that happened was more a recognizing of what everyone already had recognized.
[00:19:27] When you look and track the actual compilations of the New Testament, more or less what happened is that there were different groups of people who had access to different writings. So, like, Paul would send off his letters, and then certain people would get those letters. And some people would send those letters to other people, and then they would compile them as best as they could.
[00:19:46] Which was a very difficult process, because I had to hand write and hand copy everything. And it's a miracle that we actually have the number of copies that we have, and we have the reliability of the transcription from those. Because it is amazing. Legitimately, it is a miracle in and of itself, how well all of this was preserved.
[00:20:03] But from these different fragments that we have from the time and from the writings of the earliest of the Church Fathers, so we're talking like Polycarp, we're talking Clement of Rome, we're talking Justin Martyr, those guys, when we look at those writings and the things that they reference, we actually have a pretty complete look at the New Testament.
[00:20:20] We do see that there are certain things that aren't referenced super often. For instance, the book of Revelation is not referenced very often. And the main reason is actually because there were a number of cultists who were kind of taking that and as it turns out, when you write stuff about the end of the world, people kind of go crazy with it.
[00:20:37] So the church, it's not that it didn't recognize it, it's that they were kind of nervous about talking about it. Churches now that are nervous about talking. I was gonna
[00:20:45] Gina: say they still are. Yes, we're still
[00:20:47] Ben: nervous about talking about Revelation. Lord willing, we'll get to that at some point.
[00:20:50] Gina: I think we're also nervous about talking about Genesis, but that's a whole other thing.
[00:20:53] Ben: Oh, yeah, I love Genesis. But yeah, so when you look at all that together, actually, the New Testament was more or less compiled within a century. And in fact, well before then. All of the individual books we knew of. Now, there are different things like what you mentioned, specifically the book of Enoch. Now, Just because Jesus references or Jude references a writing that is outside the Bible, it doesn't mean that the entire writing should be biblical.
[00:21:21] It does mean if, depending on the context, so like if Jesus specifically talks about the devil, Fighting over the body of Moses. If he references that specific story, yeah, absolutely, we can say that specific story more than likely happened. If he were to reference, say, a scientific document, if he were to talk about, oh, well, see, as it says in this specific document, doesn't it say that the moon goes around the earth?
[00:21:44] So, okay, well, does that mean that the entire scientific document is now scripture?
[00:21:48] Gina: Well, and that's why for the book of Enoch specifically, I understand why it's not counted as scripture. I've never read it. I've read about it. So like I haven't taken that step, but I do understand that canonization is like basically authenticating things as scripture or not scripture.
[00:22:08] And that's, that's true. Understandable, but it's still a little confusing when you don't take the time to study the difference between what is scripture and what is not scripture and why somebody in the Bible would mention something that's not also in the Bible that's not also very accessible. So my perspective is more geared towards like people who do not do the level of study that you and Cody do.
[00:22:30] And even some of the level of study that I do. So I've actually made a list of questions that I think might be useful. So did the apostles know that they were writing scripture when they wrote their letters in the New Testament?
[00:22:44] Ben: So we actually kind of addressed this in the last episode. And that there are a number of points where Paul, as well as Peter's letter, does specifically state that what he wrote, as well as what the other apostles were writing, are scripture.
[00:22:58] So yeah, at the very least Paul did, and at the very least Peter did, and that's most of, I mean, that's a lot of it. And as far as the four Gospels are cited as script, like, that's the least controversial thing. Like, everyone's gonna be like, oh yeah, the four Gospels, okay, yeah.
[00:23:12] Cody: Those were definitely written in a style that was for archive and production.
[00:23:18] The argument for the letters, maybe, because certain, like, Paul writes specifically to, what was it, Philemon? I don't know. And that's more directly to him, so the argument can be made more for that one, but not his major power punching ones.
[00:23:35] Ben: And when you look at the adoption of Paul's different letters, I think they specifically split Paul's writings into two separate categories for the life of him.
[00:23:45] I wish I actually bothered to remember the stuff for these talks that we got. It's like, I know they're coming up, why don't I bother writing anything down? But yeah, there are two separations. Like two separate groups that they put Paul's writings in. So there's, if I remember right, Romans, 1st Thessalonians.
[00:24:05] Then there's 1st and 2nd Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. So it's the letters to Titus, Philemon, and Timothy are set aside because those are two specific people and not the churches. Which makes sense. However, just because they weren't referenced as often doesn't mean that they were never referenced. And there were a number of compilations that did specifically have those.
[00:24:25] So, I think it can be safe to say that the early church was like, Okay, we're going to take the stuff that he wrote to the churches generally, and aren't private letters, and we're going to teach that. And then there were other people who were like, Well, yeah, but also his private letters, and those are written with authority as well.
[00:24:41] and the people who receive them are sharing them with us. And because Paul is writing with authority, and these letters do still have his stamp of authority, and they are teaching doctrinal things, oddly enough still, why don't we include them? And so they did.
[00:24:56] Gina: So you, it sounds like you would agree that Paul and Peter's awareness of their authority is the equivalent of foreknowledge that they were writing scripture.
[00:25:07] Okay. Cody, do you agree with that?
[00:25:10] Cody: Yeah, I mean, I think that's fair.
[00:25:12] Gina: Okay, so then, my next question is, for the word inspiration, do you believe that the apostles were fully possessed by the Holy Spirit when writing these letters and books?
[00:25:25] Ben: The question, more or less, were they literally possessed? Were their hands not moving on their own behalf?
[00:25:30] God literally making it so that each individual word was being written out exactly the way that he wanted it. I don't know that actually has to be the case in order for roughly the same effect to happen. I'll give an example of what I mean. There's a story In, I think, a few of the Gospels, I don't remember which ones all have this.
[00:25:50] There's a story where the Pharisees attempt to set up a trap, as they often do for Jesus. And they say, okay, there's this woman and she's got a bunch of brothers. She marries the oldest one and then the brother dies. And then she marries the next one, that brother dies. And she marries the next one, that brother dies.
[00:26:02] Goes all the way down until eventually all the brothers are dead. Now the brothers are all up in heaven and finally the woman dies. Which one is he married to? And he says, you're very gravely mistaken in your reasoning. What does the Lord say? The Lord says, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.
[00:26:18] I am. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are gravely mistaken. When Jesus references the Old Testament, he does reference it word for word, the way that it's written. And he does reference the actual individual words. Specifically for their meaning. Now, I don't think that the person who wrote the first five books of the Bible was possessed by God to the point where he didn't have control over his own hands.
[00:26:44] And yet, Jesus specifically mentions the individual words and calls out an individual word, am, as being important. This is something that still works with translation, and it's something where even if you misspell it or you abridge it, It still works, but ultimately, he still chose the specific word. The words mattered to him.
[00:27:05] The individual words mattered to him. And when you look throughout the New Testament, very much the same thing happens. Now, an interesting thing is that a lot of the times they will abridge, It's actually kind of frustrating at times because then you're like, Oh yeah, they're referencing this part of the Bible.
[00:27:20] What are you talking about? These are, well, they kind of abridged it a little bit. They kind of just said everything together, or sometimes they'll quote the Septuagint for their individual audiences who only know that, but there are times where they will quote, let's say the Psalms, you will not let your Holy one see decay.
[00:27:35] It was very important that those words are used because. That's specifically about Jesus, and Jews will argue, well, no, it isn't. It's not at all about Jesus. David was specifically talking about himself. But by the spirit of what's written and by the letter of what is written, you can actually see that it's about Jesus.
[00:27:51] Because yes, if you look at it, David is writing, yeah, my line is going to continue on. God had promised that my line is going to continue on. And Jesus is the ultimate continuation of David's line. He is the King forever. He will not allow his Holy One to see decay. And, Jesus himself didn't see decay. The spirit and the letter of what was written is fulfilled.
[00:28:12] Even if you don't think it's a prophecy. Even if you think that David was just talking about himself. The spirit and letter about what David wrote about himself was fulfilled there. If the words aren't God's words, why even bother bringing that up? So, to answer the question, I don't think God possessed these people and forced them to write the words.
[00:28:31] But God knew what words were going to be written by these people. And so effectively, I think the words matter.
[00:28:37] Gina: Would you consider biblical inspiration the same as artistic inspiration? No. Okay. Would you say that Noah was inspired to build the Ark in the same way that the apostles were inspired to write?
[00:28:52] Ben: I mean, in the idea that God revealed something to him. But yeah, I would say that actually, there probably are a number of similarities there deeper than that, because God revealed to him exactly how he was supposed to do it. He was revealed exactly the length. He was revealed exactly the style. And if God hadn't told him the exact way to do it in the exact order, in the exact manner, with the exact construction, then it wouldn't have fallen apart, or the animals would have starved to death, or any number of things would have happened.
[00:29:17] So yeah, I could say that whether you're writing a book or constructing something that God tells you to build, even the tabernacle itself, everything is meant to be a representation of something that exists. I think the big thing is that when God reveals something to people, there's actually A thousand different layers of meaning in what he's saying.
[00:29:34] And when you are transcribing that, if God is really talking to you, and if you are really writing down the thing that God said, obviously it's going to be different than if God had literally told it to you directly. But yet, in the same way, we do consider it the same way. It's like when, I know I reference Nabeel all the time, but when Nabeel Qureshi talks about when he was reading Matthew, and he's reading the Beatitudes, And he's almost having a conversation with God where he's like, but my family is going to, I'm going to destroy their hearts.
[00:30:04] I'm going to completely destroy them. And immediately he reads the part in Matthew where it says, whoever loves their mother or their father more than me is not worthy of me. He's having a conversation with God, literally through the Bible. And God knew that was going to happen. So again, I don't think God possessed a hand and made him write them, but God knew the words that were there.
[00:30:24] And he uses those words. And he lives in those words. He is the word. He was the word in the beginning.
[00:30:30] Gina: Thank you.
[00:30:31] Ben: No problem. Sorry. Cody, what do you think?
[00:30:34] Cody: Do I think that they were possessed by the Holy Spirit and had no idea what they were doing? No. And I think the way that Paul differentiates himself or what God has said versus what he, his own opinion is.
[00:30:49] is proof of that. And I believe in it's in Galatians. He also, in multiple places, references his divine commission from Jesus of the road to Damascus incident that he had. And that's really his only, like, face to face inspiration that he got, so do I think that he was possessed? No. But do I think he was commissioned and had the mystery or the scales removed from his eyes more so than most?
[00:31:21] Yes.
[00:31:22] Gina: What do you think the involvement of baptism in the Holy Spirit has to do with the authorship of the Bible? Do you think that idea of being baptized in the Holy Spirit is what led to them being spirit filled enough to write scripture, or do you think that it was the other way around and that it was just The way that God planned it and they weren't necessarily possessed but it was just God's inspired word
[00:31:46] Ben: Six of one half a dozen of the other
[00:31:48] Gina: okay
[00:31:49] Ben: I think that God knew what these people were going to write and thus he could trust them to write it And it needed to be correct And he uses the words that were written even today.
[00:31:58] And I think that's, oddly enough, I think that's the strongest proof for God's authorship in that it can continue to affect people today. And he can speak to people using these words. Now, as far as whether or not someone had to be Specifically anointed with the Holy Spirit, or it's just that God knew what they were going to write.
[00:32:15] I think it's both. I think he knew what they were going to write, but I do think that simultaneously the people who wrote, especially in the New Testament, it's tougher to argue the Old Testament since there is some argument about who wrote what there, but going with the New Testament and then briefly touching on the Old from what we do know about it.
[00:32:32] We know that the people who wrote were people filled with the Spirit, and I don't think we would trust it nearly so much if it was people who weren't. I think we know Luke was a constant companion of Paul, and he was a man who was filled with the Spirit, and he loved the Lord, and he loved Paul. And that's why he spent so much time writing the, the, the letter of Luke and the letter of Acts.
[00:32:52] And as far as Mark, the gospel of Mark, well, Mark wasn't specifically, you A disciple of Christ. He was a disciple of Peter, and he loved Peter and he himself was filled with the spirit. And even if he wasn't, Peter was, and so he took the words that Peter gave and he wrote those down. And you can make an argument about whether or not, okay, so if it's the anointed speaker but not an anointed scribe, does it still count?
[00:33:14] This is where I say six of one, half a dozen of the other. I don't think that an anointed scribe has to be used. I think that the words themselves, God will still work.
[00:33:22] Gina: Okay.
[00:33:23] Ben: Just like, there are people, there's a guy, I think, who worked on the You version, that app. I will. Yeah. I think that guy's actually an atheist.
[00:33:30] And I know there's at least one Bible app that's actually very successful that was put together a program by an atheist, and it's just because the Bible's the most bought book in the world, so why wouldn't you? I don't think that's suddenly a cursed book or that God's influence has left it.
[00:33:44] Gina: So I wrote this question, and I'm really curious what your opinion is, but what is the difference between the way God wrote the Ten Commandments and then the authorship of the New Testament?
[00:33:56] Hmm.
[00:33:56] Cody: It's a good question, because everybody depicts it being written by God's own finger, versus through prophets or apostles or scribes. It's an interesting question. Well,
[00:34:10] Ben: one of the interesting things when you look at the Old Testament is that there does seem to be a degree of separation between man and God, and it's constantly being reinforced.
[00:34:20] That man is sinful and that they're dark and that their every inclination is toward evil and it's that evil that drives them apart and even someone like Moses, like he can't see the face of God. If he sees the face of God, he's going to die. He can see his back. That's about as close as he can get. And he can be in roughly the same room.
[00:34:37] But even then, like, he fills up so much with the presence of God that when he leaves, no one can look at him. When we get to the New Testament, the veil is torn, and suddenly, the Holy Spirit moves freely throughout, like, that's literally the whole point of the curtain being torn. It's symbolic, but it, the big meaning behind it is that the separation between God and man no longer exists, and His Spirit can fully fill everybody and anybody all the time.
[00:35:00] Whether or not that happens, it's possible. So, when we get to the writing, it's a very different experience. It's very intimate. It's a father guiding his son's hand. It's a father speaking tenderly to his children. That's very much the feeling that you get, except for certain points, because God's still God.
[00:35:19] He's unchanging. And when he talks about his justices, justice is thorough. It's complete. And so when you get to certain books like Revelation, it's still terrifying. John himself is terrified at many points. But all the same, it's a very different experience. It's a very intimate experience when you look at it.
[00:35:36] Gina: So taking it in a different direction, I know that there's 2 Timothy 3. 16 that describes scripture as being God breathed. Are there other areas in the Bible that defend scripture as being God breathed or inspired or infallible or inerrant?
[00:35:52] Ben: Well the, the one verse that talks about how scripture is useful for instruction is sharp as a double edged sword.
[00:35:58] That doesn't specifically list it as an errant, but it is setting it aside as something that is powerful. The bigger thing is that people reference the scripture when they are deriving authority in their words. When Jesus is referencing the Old Testament and he's talking to the religious leaders, it's effectively a shut up, this is what it is moment.
[00:36:15] If scripture is not inherently authoritative, that wouldn't be useful. that wouldn't do anything. People would just say, well, that's your opinion, man. And then they'd move on. But whenever the disciples or whenever Jesus, or whenever anyone specifically quotes scripture, and they, you know, that they're quoting scripture when they say as it is written or for it is written, which is another one of the reasons why the book of Enoch isn't typically considered, but that's a different thing.
[00:36:41] When they specifically are quoting scripture to people who know scripture. That's when you see them shut up and they're like what like when Jesus gets up and he reads Isaiah And he says today this has been fulfilled in my reading and everyone is sitting there like
[00:36:54] Cody: what
[00:36:55] Ben: holy cow They're all dumbstruck.
[00:36:57] They're all
[00:37:01] But yeah, even if we didn't have the references to people saying that it is they acted So yeah, I don't know what you're feeling about this, Cody.
[00:37:10] Cody: It's hard because when those verses were written, I don't know if it was encompassing their own authority. I do think the New Testament and those books do have authority, but I do think they were referring to the Old Testament at the time of writing.
[00:37:27] As far as the scripture having authority, usually that was a reference back to the Old Testament. At
[00:37:32] Ben: the very least in the Gospels, though Peter does specifically reference the other writings. And Paul does also reference his other writings, even in Corinthians, which is not contested. So thankfully there's that.
[00:37:42] Cody: But, overall, yeah, I think, and that's another topic, the authority of Scripture and why we put so much authority in it should probably be at the end of the inerrancy and inspiration talk because I think that is the natural follow up to this conversation.
[00:38:03] Gina: Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to our podcast today.
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