The Bible—God Was In Charge of the Words

NICOLE STEVENSON

This week on the Former Adventist Podcast, Colleen and I discussed the Seventh-day Adventist fundamental belief about the Bible. Before discussing the specifics of their beliefs we briefly talked about Christianity’s orthodox position on the inspiration, inerrancy, and attributes of Scripture. You can listen here: INSPECTING ADVENTISM’S BELIEFS—THE WORD OF GOD.

In preparation for that episode I re-read a book that had been instrumental in helping me understand the evangelical doctrine of Scripture. The book is titled, Taking God at His Word and is written by pastor and theologian Kevin DeYoung. In eight brief, highly engaging chapters, DeYoung lays out a clear and compelling case for the Christian orthodox doctrine of Scripture. He also responds to various neoorthodox views on the text. The book is available in various formats (including audio) on Amazon, or can be ordered through your local Christian book store. 

On the heels of this week’s podcast I’d like to share a bit more from this book and hopefully inspire you to pick it up or share it with someone you think may benefit from it. Learning to approach Scripture on its own terms is a bit of a process for us who were once Adventist, but it’s one of the most important things we’ll do as believers on this side of Adventism. 

How do Believers Relate to God’s Word?

In the first chapter of Taking God at His Word, Kevin DeYoung uses Psalm 119 to show how a believer will trust in, feel about, and obey the Scriptures. When I was a new former Adventist, this psalm often made me feel tense and confused about the role of the Mosaic law in the life of believers. The psalmist’s proclamations of love for God’s law were still overlaid with the lenses of Adventism, and I often felt guilt for not responding in worship as I read them. When I understood that the psalmist is referring not merely to the decalogue but to all of God’s words and ways, and as I grew in my understanding of the attributes of Scripture, I found myself easily resonating with the psalmist’s praises.            

At the end of his first chapter, after DeYoung expounds on the psalmist’s proclamations of trust, delight, and obedience to the law, he writes, “Now don’t panic if you seem to fall short in believing, feeling, and doing. Remember, Psalm 119 is a love poem, not a checklist. The reason for starting with Psalm 119 is that this is where we want to end. This is the spiritual reaction the Spirit should produce in us when we fully grasp all that the Bible teaches about itself,” (p 22).

The Origin of Scripture

Orthodoxy claims that what the Bible says about itself is what we are to believe about the Bible; the Bible is self-authenticating. In my past this argument would have sounded like circular reasoning. If you find yourself thinking that way, I urge you to not abandon the discussion but to press into it and search these things out. Through the faithful teaching of others I’ve come to see and believe the overwhelming amount of irrefutable evidence for this claim. Reading DeYoung’s book would be a great place to begin. 

Let’s just look at two passages of Scripture that tell us about the origin of the text:

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16,17).

“And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shinning in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1).

These passages tell us that Scripture is the word of God given by the will of God to men who were carried along by God. While orthodoxy claims that Scripture is God’s word, neoorthodoxy places itself over the text and determines by human reason what can and cannot be considered inspired—as well as what it even means to be inspired.

Kevin DeYoung summarizes neoorthodox thought in chapter two of his book, “Neoorthodox thinking says the Bible contains the word of God, or becomes the word of God, or the event in which God speaks to us through the Bible is the word of God.” DeYoung goes on to say that  “Neoorthodox thinking attempts to distance claims of inspiration from the written words on the pages of Scripture.” 

If this sounds familiar to you, it’s because Adventist doctrine argues that the words themselves are not inspired, but rather the writers were inspired and wrote according to their best interpretations. This argument creates space for error within the text which logically demands that human reason stand over the Bible when determining what is and is not authoritative or accurate.

DeYoung continues, “This distinction, however, would have been foreign to the apostle Peter…No Jew would make a distinction that some parts of Scripture were truer parts than others. Whatever is true of the law is true of the prophets, and visa versa. The ’prophetic word’ is simply a way of referring to inscripturated revelation… All of this matters because it means the authority of God’s word resides in the written text— the words, the sentences, the paragraphs— of Scripture, not merely in our existential experience of the truth in our hearts” (pp. 35,36).

This “existential experience of truth” was all I had in Adventism. I didn’t understand how to think about the Bible let alone how to read it. When I was a student at La Sierra University, my questions about Scripture only grew as I was pressed to consider what I thought about inspiration as it related both to the Bible writers and to the writings of Ellen G. White—“The Spirit of Prophecy.” In order for Ellen’s writings to be considered as prophetic authority, I had to have a picture of Scripture that allowed for error within its pages.

The Inspiration of Scripture

“The Word of God is no less divine because it is given through human instrumentality.” 

Kevin DeYoung

In his discussion of the inspiration of Scripture, DeYoung begins by addressing a straw man argument hurled at conservative Christins by those of neoorthodox thought—among them are Ellen G. White and other Adventist scholars. This argument states that conservatives “hold to a mechanical dictation theory of inspiration”, meaning the human brain essentially shut off and God gave Scripture by dictation. DeYoung explains that while older theologians did use the metaphor of dictation to express the flawlessness of Scripture (which he admitted was not entirely helpful to the discussion), this metaphor was never meant to communicate the position of evangelicals related to the inspiration of Scripture. 

DeYoung explains that the phrase concursive operation more accurately describes the orthodox view. He writes, “God used the intellect, skills, and personality of fallible men to write down what was divine and infallible…The Bible is, in one sense, both a human and a divine book—but this in no way implies any fallibility in the Scriptures. The dual authorship of Scripture does not necessitate imperfection any more than the two natures of Christ mean our savior must have sinned,” (p 37).

If you have an Adventist background you might be able to imagine how the two natures of Christ wouldn’t have cleared up the mystery of Biblical inspiration for me until my heretical understanding of the incarnation was cleared up as well! Orthodoxy says that the Lord Jesus was 100% God and 100% man. There was no risk of error or sin in the Lord due to His incarnation, and in the same way there is no error in the Scriptures in their original language.

Understanding that we can trust God’s word in spite of human involvement isn’t that difficult when we understand what is true about God Himself. The perfect all powerful, all knowing sovereign God who created all things (including the ability of humans to communicate in languages and with alphabets and grammar) is fully capable of handling the details needed to produce an inerrant and authoritative, timeless book—not merely in spite of human involvement but sovereignly purposed to include human involvement! Our limitless God is not impeded by our limits.  

The Bible is Without Error

When we understand that our perfect God who is incapable of error is the very author of Scripture, it changes our relationship to it. By God’s grace we approach it humbly and with reverence, knowing that it’s the holy words of God’s self-revelation containing the authority of God Himself who looks on as we read and who bears our own hearts to us, convicting us and drawing us deeper into relationship with Him. When we trust and submit ourselves to God’s Word that’s when everything begins to change! The Holy Spirit illuminates Scripture and begins to work in us like a skilled surgeon, changing us in powerful and surprising ways for the glory of God as we “receive with meekness the implanted word,” (James 1:21a). 

DeYoung writes, “Inerrancy means the word of God always stands over us and we never stand over the word of God. When we reject inerrancy we put ourselves in judgment over God’s word. We claim the right to determine which parts of God’s revelation can be trusted and which cannot. We deny the complete trustworthiness of the Scriptures— in its claims with regard to history; its teaching on the material world; its miracles; in the tiniest jots and titles of all that it affirms— then we are forced to accept one of two conclusions: either Scripture is not all from God, or God is not always dependable. To make either statement is to affirm a sub-Christian point of view…This kind of compromised Christianity, besides flying in the face of the Bible’s own self-understanding, does not satisfy the soul or present to the lost the sort of God they need to meet,” (p 39).

Four Essential Attributes of Scripture

Based on the facts we’ve just considered—that Scripture originated from God, that human involvement does not compromise it, and that it’s without error in the original languages—we can know certain things about the text to be true. During the next several chapters of his book, DeYoung discusses four attributes or characteristics of the Scriptures embraced by orthodox Christianity. He points out that these attributes can easily be remembered by using the acronym SCAN: Sufficiency, Clarity, Authority, and Necessity.

The attribute of Sufficiency means “the Scriptures contain everything we need for knowledge of salvation and godly living. We don’t need any new revelation from Heaven.” There ought to be no need for me to detail why this particular attribute is incompatible with Seventh-day Adventism. Nevertheless, let me assert that if Adventists believed that the Scriptures are sufficient for salvation and for godly living, Ellen G. White would be irrelevant as would the entire organization with its “last day message”.

The attribute of Clarity (or the perspicuity of Scripture) means that “the saving message of Jesus Christ is plainly taught in the Scriptures and can be understood by all who have ears to hear it. We don’t need an official magisterium to tell us what the Bible means,” (p 44). “God communicates to reveal, not to obscure,” (p 63). 

On this subject the Westminster Confession of Faith states, “All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation, are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.” (WCF 1.7)

I love that this statement clarifies that Scripture is to be understood in “due use of ordinary means”. This relates to one’s hermeneutic. How we read the Bible is very important, but it’s not complicated. We read the Bible by ordinary means with ordinary rules of reading and literature. We do not need a papal authority, a General Conference, or a self-appointed last day prophet to tell us what the Lord has written. As DeYoung pointed out, God communicates to reveal, not to obscure. So often, as an Adventist, I felt that God obscured the way of salvation in such a way that only the brightest and the most faithful would ever find it.

The attribute of Authority means, “the last word always goes to the word of God. We must never allow the teachings of science, of human experience, or of church councils to take precedence over Scripture,” (p 44). “To trust completely in the Bible is to trust in the character and assurances of God more than we trust in our own ability to reason and explain,” (p 82). 

When teaching on the attribute of authority, DeYoung spends some time explaining that it’s on this matter where we see the splitting off of so many denominations. Whether it be Evangelicalism, Roman Catholicism, Liberal Protestantism, Greek Orthodoxy, or any other mainline denomination, it is to whom or what they give the final word that tends to be what separates them. While I won’t go into this here, I do highly recommend that you read or listen to the book for more on this topic! 

In clarifying the evangelical position on the authority of Scripture DeYoung cited again the Westminster Confession of Faith which states that, “The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture” (WCF 1.10).

Last, the Attribute of Necessity states that “general revelation is not enough to save us. We cannot know God savingly by means of personal experience and human reason. We need God’s word to tell us how to live, who Christ is, and how to be saved.” This attribute clarifies why it’s not enough to “live the gospel”, we must also proclaim it. When we think of our approach to our Adventist families who’ve been denied the gospel of Scripture, we understand that we need to be careful and prayerful, but we also must not be silent. The gospel of Scripture is necessary for salvation. 

How did the Lord Jesus View Scripture? 

One of the most compelling arguments for the origin, inspiration, inerrancy, sufficiency, clarity, authority, and necessity of Scripture is that these are all things that our Lord Jesus Christ believed about it. Christianity claims that the man Jesus is in fact God the Son— the Word made flesh! Christianity claims that the Lord Jesus is the full revelation of God. Jesus told His disciples that if they’ve seen Him they’ve seen the Father. If we believe that Jesus is God, then we know, based on God’s attribute of divine simplicity, that Jesus possesses all of the attributes of God. Therefore, if Jesus knows all, if He is the very author of Scripture, then we know that however He viewed and used Scripture is exactly how we must view and use it. To do anything else would logically counter our claims about Him being God. 

“Jesus answered them, ‘Is it not written in your Law, “I said, you are gods”? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, “You are blaspheming,” because I said, “I am the Son of God”?” (John 10:34-36).  

Here we see Jesus defending His very person by referencing Psalm 82:6. DeYoung writes, “For Jesus, anything from Scripture, down to the individual words and the least-heralded passages, possessed unquestioned authority. ‘According to His infallible estimate,’ Robert Watts once remarked about Jesus, ‘it was sufficient proof of the infallibility of any sentence, or clause of a sentence, or phrase of a clause, to show that it constituted a portion of what the Jews called… ‘The Scripture’” (P 98).

“Not an iota, not a dot will pass away…” (Mat. 5:17-19).

Here Jesus upholds the Scriptural authority of the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet, and the tiny graphical hook or marking that distinguished similar Hebrew letters. This is an incredible statement about the inspiration of Scripture even in the grammar! I love that Colleen Tinker often refers to “the gospel according to grammar”! This is how our Lord viewed Scripture—authority is contained in every aspect of the original text! 

Not only did the Lord Jesus use obscure passages of Scripture to reveal truth and claim the enduring nature of even the grammar in Scripture, He also affirmed the historical accuracy of the accounts in the text. Liberal scholars will often question the reliability of the historical account of Jonah, for example, or they question the authorship of some books of Scripture based on “unlikely” prophetic accuracy, as they do with the book of Isaiah. Look at what Jesus said about these matters, though.

“For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth…” (Mat. 12:38-42).

Here Jesus speaks of Jonah as having been a historical figure and of his experience of being in the fish as being historically accurate! He compares the historical account of Jonah with the reality of His own death, burial, and resurrection which are all clearly historical! 

DeYoung writes that Jesus spoke of, “Abel, Noah, Abraham, Sodom and Gomorrah, Isaac and Jacob, manna in the wilderness, the serpent in the wilderness, Moses as the lawgiver, David and Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, Elijah and Elisha, the widow of Zareohath, Naaman, Zecharaiah, and even Jonah, never questioning a single event, a single miracle, or a single historical claim. Jesus clearly believed in the historicity of Biblical history.” (P 104)

Furthermore, DeYoung points out that in John 12:38-43, Jesus settled the debate as to whether or not Isaiah was written by one man when He said, “…this same Isaiah…” while quoting from a portion of each of the disputed passages. Jesus also attributed authorial narrative given in Genesis 2:24 to God Himself when in Matthew 19:4-5 He said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, ’Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh’”. 

Time and again we see in the gospels what Jesus believed about the source and trustworthiness of Scripture. If no other argument might compel us to trust and submit to Scripture let this be the one that captures our attention and draws us into further study of the nature of the Scriptures according to Jesus.

When we grasp the truth about the Bible, we will begin to sing with the psalmist in Psalm 119. It will no longer be a psalm that causes us to wonder, but rather one that articulates our own love for and dependence upon all of the words of God! We will begin to know what it feels like to stand on an unshakeable foundation while living under the authority of the only tangible inerrant gift we can hold in our hands and trust with our hearts this side of eternity.   

“It is impossible to revere the Scriptures more deeply or affirm them more completely than Jesus did. Jesus submitted His will to the Scriptures, committed His brain to studying the Scriptures, and humbled His heart to obey the Scriptures. The Lord Jesus, God’s Son and our Savior, believed His Bible was the word of God—down to the sentences, to the phrases, to the words, to the smallest letter, to the tiniest specks— and that nothing in all those specks and in all those books in His Holy Bible could ever be broken.” 

Kevin DeYoung

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Nicole Stevenson

Nicole Stevenson lives in Southern California with her husband Carel and her two children, Joshua and Abigail. Nicole graduated from La Sierra University with a degree in social work and is currently staying home to raise their kids. Nicole, with her husband Carel, was on the launch team of Redeemer Fellowship, an evangelical church in Loma Linda, California.

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