by Jacob Ninan
Most believing Christians recognise the Bible as the word of God which He has gifted to us for showing us things we need to know about Him and His ways. Through it He also reveals His plans for us, and uses it for correcting or rebuking us when we go wrong, and for showing us how we can become increasingly like Him (2Tim.3:16,17). But many Christians recognise the Bible as being much more than a natural book, as a supernatural medium in relation to our access to God. It is not just that we get to read and understand Him and His ways, but we also get a chance to, in a sense, 'hear' from Him as we read His word. This is why we recognise this as a 'living word' which is very different from religious books that are merely the products of human imaginations and ideas. As a 'living word', the Bible imparts spiritual 'life' to us as we hear from God and apply it in our life.
Since the Bible is a means through which God communicates with us, it cannot be understood by people merely by using their natural, intellectual abilities alone, because spiritual truths can only be understood, in the right way, through supernatural revelation from God (1Cor.2:14). God gives us this ability to receive revelation from Him only when we are regenerated or born again, we have our connection restored to Him and our spiritual ears and eyes have been opened. Those who have experienced being born again through faith in Jesus know how suddenly we became able to understand things in the Bible which we had read earlier but which we had not really understood. Many Christians describe this experience as the Bible suddenly becoming an altogether new book or as the words suddenly becoming alive! Calling the Bible the word of God is not using a flowery language, but a factual description of it being a medium through which God communicates with us.
The Bible under attack
The Bible has been under attack from different sides from the time it became available. Attacks coming from religions are understandable when we see that God makes an exclusive place for Himself (Deut.4:39;Jn.14:6). Swami Vivekananda of India once made a big impact on the world when he spoke at the World Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893 saying that just as all the different rivers finally flow into the same sea through different paths, all religions would also lead finally to the same God even though they use different names and routes. This may have an appearance of enlightenment or even humility. But if we carefully examine what different religions teach about God, it will not be difficult at all to see that they are not all talking about the same God in terms of character, nature, values, or history. Also, it can be understood that the ways different religions teach about how man can get to know God are also so very different from one another. Therefore, the differences between religions are not immaterial. So, when Christians claim that the God of the Bible is the one and only God, and that Jesus is the only way to Him, it is only natural that people fight against it.The Bible tells us that this is God reaching out to us from His side, because He knows that no matter what we do, we cannot qualify for His acceptance. The Bible reveals to us God who created us and to whom we are accountable for the way we live. Many people reject the Bible because they do not want this accountability. They want to be able to run their own lives and do whatever they like without being responsible towards anyone. They do not want to hear that what they are doing is wrong because they do not want to give up their practices. This is one of the common reasons people have for resisting the biblical revelation of God, even though many try to hide behind intellectual arguments or philosophical questions and try to appear to be wise, respectable and reasonable. But the Bible says that it is a fool who says there is no God.
When the apostle Paul went to Ephesus preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, a man called Demetrius who was running a large business making idols gathered people together to oppose Paul and to run him out of the place (Acts.19:24,27). There are other businessmen who oppose Christianity for fear of losing their business or having to give up hidden, unrighteous practices. It has commonly happened that when the Gospel takes hold of communities, businesses such as bars have closed down due to lack of customers.
For Jewish religious leaders at the time of Jesus, the reason to oppose Jesus was not because they thought Jesus was misleading people, as they claimed on the surface, but because they were afraid that as people followed Jesus and saw the hollowness of these leaders, they would lose their political power (Jn.11:47,48). We see that in the course of history, several attempts have been made by religious organisations and governments to completely destroy the Bible. The early attempts to translate the Bible into languages that common people could understand were opposed by governments, and translators and publishers have been put to death. But we must realise that God has supernaturally preserved the Bible through all this opposition, and now it is easily available to people in print in their own language, and also widely on their phones and the Internet.
Scholarship vs. devotion
There is a saying in English that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The appearance of the pudding is important in the sense that it needs to look inviting and appetising. But finally, what must be taken as the ultimate test of its greatness has to be in terms of its taste and nutrition. In a similar way, the proof of the Bible being the word of God is not so much in terms of how it impressive it appears to people but how it meets our need for connecting with God and receiving "teaching, reproof, correction and training in righteousness" so that we can become more and more adequate, equipped for every good work! For this we must have a right view of the Bible, a right way of reading and interpreting it, and a right way of applying it in our daily life. A scholar who has investigated the worldviews presented by leading religions of the world according to eight different basic criteria has demonstrated the philosophical superiority of the Christian belief. So, it is not that Christianity is merely faith-based and which will not stand intellectual scrutiny. But it is easy to see that scholarship without devotion cannot produce 'life' in the readers.Here is where the Bible is being 'attacked' from within the fold of Christians. When people pursue biblical scholarship, it is not always with the right motive or attitude. Unfortunately, due to a watered down preaching of the Gospel, many of the people who assume they are Christians are mistaken. They have not been born again, but they have only made an intellectual decision to follow Jesus. But they too can become scholars and produce impressive books or sermons with their intellect. There are also others who lack devotion to Christ, but who pursue scholarship and accomplishments just as others do in other fields. With teachings coming from such people, the true meaning of the Bible gets buried or distorted.
With an apparent aim to become able to understand the Bible better and more accurately, some Christians are looking at it with a critical eye without a devotion to God. These people do not seem to remember that even with the knowledge of original Hebrew and Greek languages, they can only get to a natural understanding of things, without hearing from God and understanding what He is trying to communicate to us. We can understand how those who are pursuing academic achievements in theology are tempted to look for novel ideas that nobody has thought of before! In that process they may leave the path of being subject to the Holy Spirit and learning from Him, and may end up by going far away from the truths of God. They find ideas that the apostles of Jesus who wrote and taught the truths had no idea about! Just look at the new ideas that are coming out from Christian scholars!
The novel idea of 'deconstructing' one's faith in God and the Bible by virtually taking it apart and examining it minutely for its validity seems to be spreading widely. It looks as if people are doing it right when they want to verify that their faith is genuine and not based on false assumptions. Then it is worth examining it and getting reassured. But then it is also easy to see how if we go too far in that direction, or we go about it in a wrong way, some may get confused and even give up the faith they used to have earlier. Sadly we hear more and more about this actually happening. One thing we must have in mind is the fact we can never find all the answers we want, whether they are about God, people, sin, salvation, earthly life, the heavenly life to come, etc. If our expectation is that we must have all the answers for our questions, that will certainly lead to disappointment. The Bible is also not intended to give us all the answers. But our life is one of faith. Once we get a knowledge of God from the Bible and we begin to experience Him in our life, life becomes a walk of faith in Him. Here we walk trusting in our God, knowing that even when we cannot understand many things, He knows it all, and that our safety is to trust Him. In other words, we should not base our life on the certainty of our knowledge and understanding, but on knowing God as our Father. "Trust in the LORD with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear the LORD and turn away from evil" (Prov.4:5-7). Think over all that this passage exhorts us about, trusting God versus our own understanding, how our path of life will become straight as we always bring God into the picture, and how not to think too much of ourselves and having confidence in our own knowledge or abilities.
God who gave us the Bible is addressing through it the whole of mankind through all times. The essential truths of the Bible do not need the knowledge of Greek and Hebrew for us to understand them. Most of the things in the Bible can be understood by a plain reading. But some Bible scholars are rising up who focus much on the philosophy, culture, folklore, values and the ideas prevailing at the time of writing of the books of the Bible. In order to learn these, they study pagan writings and practices of those days, and extrapolate ideas when such resources are scarce. They assume that the Biblical writers must have believed and written down what the people of those days believed. And now these scholars want to interpret the Bible from those viewpoints, as the pagans of those days would have understood them. In this way, they assert that Moses must have simply copied the stories of the creation and the Flood according to the mythical stories that pagan people believed in that period. This totally overlooks the fact that the Bible was inspired by God to reveal His truths to us, which are, in most cases, contrary to the understanding of pagans! God has emphasised many times that His people should not be learning from the ways of the heathen around them, not to mix with them or to imitate them! But some of these so-called scholars are claiming that biblical authors were writing things following the myths, folklore and beliefs of their days, which these scholars have tried to understand by studying some pagan writings of those times. As a result of this pressure from these expert sounding scholars, the confidence of many readers in the Bible as the word of God is getting eroded. Godly people of the church era since the time of Jesus and the apostles had developed a way of connecting with the heart of God who not only inspired the writers to pen down His thoughts but who also inspires the readers to reveal His truths to them as they read the Bible. There was a time in history when the religious leaders of those days held a monopoly over the Bible and kept it away from ordinary people. Now the interpretation of the Bible is being taken back from the people by the scholars! Those who love God and His word have to be aware of this and protect themselves and others from this onslaught!
Science and the Bible
One major reason for the dropout of young people from the church nowadays is the disillusionment they feel about the church and the Bible as they grow up. They have grown up learning from the Bible about God creating everything and all the miracles He has done for different people. Now in schools and colleges they hear that everything has a natural cause and explanation, and that life came into existence out of a chance combination of certain chemicals and has evolved over billions of years into the forms we now see. Scientists sound very sure of their claims and Christians have gone on the defensive.One glaring mistake scientists have made was when they defined science as "a systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained." While looking at only the physical and natural world, they totally left out the spiritual dimension, including the existence of God, angels, demons and the spirit in man. Now it is easy to see that with this tying of their own hands by elimination of one major dimension of the truth, they can never hope to figure out everything about this world. The conclusions they suppose they have arrived at are not based on the full set of facts.
As a result, they can only make guesses about what might have happened, and when they do that, they call them hypotheses. Hypotheses become laws only if they are validated through consistent observation and experimentation. As we see, these hypotheses scientists are making about the origin of life and subsequent evolution have not been validated, and they get revised every now and then. Still scientists and philosophers claim as if everything is totally clear, giving people the impression that scientists now know everything. But that is far from true. For example, no one really knows at this time how life can come from inanimate chemicals, even though some scientists are giving the impression that life has been already created in the laboratory.
Many people do not realise that Darwin's theory of evolution does not address the issue of how life originated, but only about how simple cell forms may have evolved over billions of years into more complex structures and formed all the fish, animals, birds and human beings. But not even this theory has been actually validated. Even though there is evidence for micro variations within a species, there is no evidence for evolution from one species to another!
But the Bible tells us how the all-knowing, all-wise, almighty God created everything from nothing, the stars and the planets first and then the trees and the living creatures on earth, and finally Adam and Eve, the first human beings from whom all the people were born through the generations. More and more scientists who are honest are beginning to see that what we see now is so complex and orderly that they could not have developed through chance, but that they reveal the work of an Intelligent Designer behind it all. Scientists are also beginning to see the presence of many factors that have been finely tuned so that life could exist and survive in the universe. These could not have happened by accident. If we believe in the spiritual dimension and God who is Spirit, and recognise that all things are possible for God, it will be no longer necessary to confine ourselves to natural phenomena or explanations. Then it will not be difficult to believe that God could have created everything as He says in the Bible, and done all the miracles that are recorded in the Bible. God has not given us any detailed explanations, but if we know Him personally and realise who He is, it is not difficult to trust His word and assume that He has valid explanations for everything. As a matter of fact, many well qualified and experienced scientists who know God personally look at science, and they keep discovering that scientific findings corroborate the Bible!
Once we bring God into the picture, miracles are not a problem for us to understand. The God who created everything including all the laws of nature under which everything works now is Himself free from the bounds of those laws. He is able to make water into wine, make a dry path through the middle of the sea, heal sickness, or raise people from the dead. He is well able to have done all that He has written in His word, including the story of creation, which is an integral part of the story of our salvation. If we can trust Him, even as honest scientists are finding out more about His works, we can also wait for the time when He will show us details of how He did everything. Just because we cannot understand now all that we would like to know, we would be most foolish to give up our faith in God.
Atheism is also a religious position that requires a kind of a faith that insists that there is no God. There is more than enough evidence for God for people who are looking for it, but nothing enough for those who have chosen not to believe. Many scientists are among human beings who do not want God in their lives because that is the way they can feel independent and without having to give an account of their lives to God.
What is special about the Bible?
Some people treat the Bible as a collection of books written by some ancient authors who were limited by their knowledge and understanding of things and influenced by the culture and practices of the people around them. They say that these authors unwittingly borrowed ideas from the peoples around them including their mythologies, superstitions and assumptions about nature. If this was so, then we can just pick up whatever moral lessons we can learn from them and then rely for the better part on what modern science and other discoveries tell us. This approach has so pervaded the churches that even while the church officially holds to a doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible, for all practical purposes people are secretly not averse to overlooking the Bible. Christian children are growing up thinking that Bible stories are merely 'stories' to be enjoyed, and that science is the best reliable source of information. But actually, the Bible is the word of God, and there are many reasons why we can believe that, and there are millions of people who can testify to the supernatural connection the Bible offers between them and God!1. The most powerful testimony for the Bible is the experience of an uncountable number of people who have come to know God and supernaturally experience salvation through the reading of the Bible. There are, for example, hopeless criminals who happened to read a portion of the Bible, who became convinced of their sins, turned to Jesus and found Him as their Saviour. There is no natural way we can explain the remarkable transformation that has since taken place in their lives. Addicts are supernaturally delivered, people are set free from demonic oppression or possession, the sick are healed, and there are also the number of different types of miracles that have taken place in people's lives when they studied and followed the Bible. The Bible is certainly an extraordinary book.
2. One amazing thing about the Bible that shows the presence of divine power behind it is the number of prophecies written hundreds of years earlier in the Bible about political events, rise and fall of kingdoms, the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus, etc., that were fulfilled at the right time. There were prophecies about the place, time and the family into which Jesus, the Messiah (Christ) would be born, how He would be killed on a cross and how He would come back to life three days later. One particular prophecy that has amazed modern people is how after centuries of having been dispersed all over the world as a punishment from God, Israel was able to return and re-form their nation in the recent past.
3. When we think of it, it is really astonishing that 66 books, written in 3 different languages by about 40 authors from three continents over a period of 1500 years, all carry a cohesive story of God, starting with creation, going on with the fall of man, God's plan of salvation through His Son, and the final culmination of history. This took place because God was the single Author behind all the books, inspiring individual authors.
4. The Bible itself recognises its position as a God-inspired message from God. There are many places where it is specifically quoting the direct words of God. There is the overall claim that 'all' scripture is inspired (God-breathed) by God (2Tim.3:16,17).
5. The 'Bible' Jesus had when He was on earth was the books of the Old Testament which were recognised by the people of Israel as scripture. The number of times when Jesus quoted from them as the final authority on all matters shows how He recognised them as the word of God. As 27 the books of the New Testament were written later and circulated among the Christian churches, they also began to be recognised as 'scripture' (2Pet.1:20,21;3:15,16).
6. Finally think of the sovereign way in which God has preserved His word from destruction, overruling many attempts by evil men and rulers aided by Satan to snuff out the light from spreading out to every part of the world.
What does inspiration mean?
When we read the Bible it is necessary to read it with devotion, and also with understanding. These are two sides that should not be separated. But in reality what happens is that many people read it only with devotion and without proper understanding of what God really means through different passages. The danger here is that these people may take meanings from the Bible which the Lord never meant! On the other hand, many others who do not have a proper devotion to the Lord, use their natural abilities and scholarship to understand and interpret the Bible. These people are also in danger of not hearing from God and then arriving at false conclusions. We must not forget that if it was the Holy Spirit who inspired the authors to write these books for us, it is the same Holy Spirit we need when we read the Bible, to open the eyes of our understanding and heart and to reveal His truths to us (2Cor.11:3;2Tim.2:15). At the same time, it is also good to make an effort to understand what the author meant in his context before we can see if what he has written there is directly applicable to us.On one side, the almighty and all-knowing God had some important truths to be conveyed to people, and on the other hand, the people He had before Him to write them down had many limitations in their knowledge and abilities. Some Christians assume that God sovereignly supervised the writing of the authors so that finally every word that was written down was exactly what God wanted them to write, effectively amounting to an equivalent to a process of dictation. But they claim this accuracy only to the 'autographs', a word they use to refer to the original writing by the authors. They admit that some copying errors may have occurred when the autographs were copied from one copy to another through the years, and also in the process of translation into other languages. Since there are no autographs available to us now, we have to reckon with what we have now, which are copies made over the years from other copies.
When we say the autographs are not available to us any more, some people will have this question, how we can trust in what is available to us right now, to know whether that was what was written earlier. In terms of the New Testament there are thousands of manuscripts available, or pieces of manuscripts available now, which, comparing one to another, scholars have informed us that what we have now practically conveys to us such great accuracy that we can take it for granted that we almost have with us the autographs.
But it is obvious that among the books of the Bible we can notice many variations in writing styles, the vocabulary used and even grammar. Some books are written in a more orderly and precise manner compared to others. Some places are straightforward while others are vague. If God was making sure that every word was as He wanted, why are there such variations of style and clarity? This is explained by the fact that God used human authors with their many limitations, and that it is their styles that we can observe now. Now we have to accept the combination of God's inspiration which is somewhat affected by the involvement of human authors.
We must admit that this makes the situation somewhat complicated. It would have been simple if the Bible was actually written down completely by God or at least dictated by Him. But when there are imperfect human authors involved, we must accept the fact that there is place for some level of imperfection. But we can also believe that as in every other case where God sovereignly accomplishes His overall will while working with human beings, such as when using human leaders, here too God would have made sure that what is essential for our knowledge of Him and our salvation is clear enough. At the same time, we must be ready to deal with different types of human imperfection that we will find in the different aspects of the Bible.
Now we can understand that we ought to be able to make allowances for the writing style of different authors also when we read the Bible. If we go a little further, it also helps us to understand why one gospel writer describing one incident mentions certain elements of that incident, while another gospel writer mentions some others. Take the example of the story of Jesus' resurrection. The four gospel books describe it with different details. But when we realise that they are not contradictions in the Bible narratives but each writer remembering different details of the incident. Another thing that appears as a problem is that there are differences in the chronological order given by the writers. This can be tolerated once we learn from historical sources that writers in ancient cultures were not as meticulous as those nowadays in keeping an accurate chronology, but they were more keen on emphasising their themes. The authors were only human beings. But God managed to bring forth His treasures to us using these earthen vessels! God has given us His word using human instruments, taking care to convey important things as accurately as needed, while tolerating human imperfection where it would not make any difference to what we really need for our salvation.
Guidelines for interpretation
Since we have learnt that everything in the Bible cannot be understood correctly through plain reading, we need to be able to know when we can use plain reading, and how to interpret and understand the true meaning, when the meaning is not so obvious. That is why it is good to look at some rules for interpretation of the Bible.1. The author's meaning. There are three facts we must keep in mind when we read the text of the Bible. We must try our best to understand what the author meant when he wrote it, remembering that he was in a very different place, culture and situation compared to us. What the text appears to mean to us may be somewhat different from what he had in mind. For this, it will help us to refer to the meaning of the words in the original language, knowledge of the culture of his days, etc. The second thing we must keep in mind is that many times the writers of the Old Testament wrote what the Spirit of God inspired them, without really understanding exactly what it would mean in the future. For example, when Isaiah wrote that a young woman would conceive and bear a child, that was the applicable meaning in that context. But the word used for 'a young woman' could also mean 'virgin', and that was how it meant when it was seen as a prophecy about the birth of Jesus as born of a virgin. Like this, many times prophecy had more than one application for different times. The third point is that sometimes, as we read the Bible with devotion, God uses different passages in the Bible to refer to things that are relevant to us or what we are seeking to know from Him. Those who know God's voice can recognise this kind of unusual use of the passage to say something to us. At the same time, others who look at the passage only in a natural way cannot understand this.
2. The context. In order to understand what the text means, the first thing to do is to understand the context in which it is placed. Even though the Bible is referred to as the word of God, every word in it is not directly from God and is not necessarily directly applicable to us. Many times the Bible merely gives a report of what happened or what someone said, without approving of them. So we have to look at the context first. Who wrote it? To whom? Under what circumstances? Is it a general instruction from God for all people of all times? To understand this, we must have to look at the verses that come just before and after the verse we are reading. Sometimes it is necessary for us to look at the chapter and the book itself to understand the position of this verse in the overall context. Finally we will have to see if what we seem to see from here is in agreement with what the rest of the Bible says, or how it fits in the overall revelation of the Bible. We must develop the habit of taking the effort to study what the whole Bible teaches, in order to be able to see what position each verse holds in the big picture.
3. Understand the literary style. Much of the Bible is written in the form of a historical narrative, and there we can understand the meaning by looking at what it literally says. But we must remember that there are many places in the Bible where we cannot interpret things literally. We have to take into account the particular genre (literary style) in order to understand the meaning behind the figure of speech used there. There are many styles used, and so there are many examples we need to look at. But here, let us take a few typical examples.
"Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it will eat its fruit" (Prov.18:21). The literal meaning seems to say that the tongue has some supernatural power to make things happen. But actually this is a proverb, which is a way of expressing general truths in a concise way, sometimes using figures of speech. In this case, it is a warning for us to be careful how we speak, because it can have bad consequences. "Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" (Matt.19:24). This is the use of an exaggeration or a hyperbole to say that those who are rich will have a difficult time finding salvation (because of their dependence on their riches). "In His right hand He held seven stars, and out of His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword; and His face was like the sun shining in its strength" (Rev.1:16). Of course, this is not a physical description of Jesus but a use of the apocalyptic style to describe the glory of the risen Jesus.
4. What can we learn about God? Even when we are reading some portion of the Bible that is not giving us some instruction or commandment to follow, there may be something about the character of God which we can learn from looking at how He viewed what other people did and dealt with them. That will, in turn, instruct us about how we ourselves ought to live.
5. What can we see about ourselves? We know that all the problems which we see in the whole world are the consequences of sin, and we know that the whole purpose of God's plan of salvation is to save each of us from sin &ndash the guilt of our sin and the power of sin in our life. Now we need to see our present condition with respect to sin and salvation. Many Christians shrink away from looking at their sins &ndash acts of sin and the sinfulness of their nature &ndash because it is painful to face them. Some others take verses that describe the position that God has prepared for them and insist that by faith they are already there, and refuse to face the reality. But until we see where we are, we cannot really seek God for salvation. But when we seek God like this through His word, He will also show us what He has provided for us and the way we must walk. Honesty is extremely important to God.
6. What must we do? Of course, our reading of the Bible must lead to action. That may be an act of worship and giving thanks for God's love to us and what He has provided for us. It may lead us to repent more deeply than before. It may lead us to set things right with others. It may lead us to care more for the others. But our reading must not be merely coming out of a sense of duty, to increase our knowledge or even to prepare a sermon or a Bible study.
Let God speak to us
Let us emphasise the fact that God has given us a great and invaluable help in the form of the Bible. There are hidden treasures to search for and to be dug up there. Let us read it with diligence and with a devotional attitude, and expect to hear from God as we read it. What a loss for those who take it for granted or neglect it by finding no time for it!
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