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Short Essay on Inspiration and Inerrancy of the Bible

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David Brenneman
THEO201_D10_201230
Short Essay #1
Short Essay on Inspiration and Inerrancy of the Bible The inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible is a critical topic to our Christian faith. If we are to understand the Bible and its commands on how to live and be saved through faith, we need to be sure that we know how the Bible was written and whether or not the Bible is authoritative.
To say that the Bible has authority is to claim that the Bible is the very word of God. The Bible is the revelation of the Creator to His creation. In this sense, the authority of the Bible comes from God Himself. The word of God came to His people through the writings of Moses and the Prophets, and ultimately, the life of Jesus Christ. The …show more content…

Four main arguments are used to validate the inerrancy of the Bible. The first is the biblical argument. This maintains that the Bible itself implies that Scripture is inerrant and infallible. This is probably the strongest of the arguments; however it relies on the understanding of the divine inspiration of Scripture. Jesus argues in John 10:34-35 that Scripture cannot be broken. In this, He is emphasizing the authority of Scripture, but as Feinberg points out, “Something that contains errors cannot be absolutely authoritative.”2 Here again we see that if we accept that God inspired every word in the Bible, and ultimate authority belongs to Him, then the Scriptures must be inerrant.
The second argument is the historical argument. This argument claims that throughout history the church understood that the Bible was infallible. The early church fathers did not see this as something that needed to be defended. It was simply assumed. The people nearest to the events, and in every period since, have asserted the absolute authority and infallibility of the Bible. This argument is not as strong as the first, but still very influential. The major argument against this idea is that it is a modern invention, but there is clear evidence to the contrary.2
The third argument is known as the epistemological argument. This basically claims that “if the Bible is not inerrant, then any claim it makes may be

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