Examining the doctrine of Scripture—its inspiration, inerrancy, authority, canon, and interpretation.
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1040. Biblical genre is the single most overlooked factor in careless Bible reading, and identifying it correctly is not an optional refinement of interpretation but a basic requirement of reading any piece of literature responsibly, biblical or otherwise. Nobody reads a newspaper editorial the same way they read a birthday card, and nobody should…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1039. Biblical typology is the study of persons, events, and institutions in the Old Testament that God designed in advance to prefigure greater realities fulfilled in Christ and the new covenant. It is one of the most rewarding areas of biblical study once its rules are properly understood, and one of the most abused…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1038. Allegorical interpretation treats a biblical text as a coded surface concealing a deeper, often quite different, spiritual meaning beneath it, and it has a long and influential history in the church, particularly through the Alexandrian tradition associated with Origen and later through much of medieval exegesis. The question of whether allegorical interpretation should…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1037. Literal interpretation is the single most misunderstood term in the whole discussion of how we read the Bible, mostly because critics and defenders alike often use it to mean something it was never meant to mean. I want to state plainly at the outset what this method actually is, because getting the definition…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1036. Creeds and confessions are summaries, not sources. That single sentence answers most of the confusion I encounter around this question. A creed does not add to what Scripture has revealed, and it does not carry authority independent of Scripture. What it does is state, in careful and tested language, what a body of…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 1035. Scripture and tradition are not enemies, whatever the sharper edges of Reformation rhetoric sometimes suggest. Tradition, rightly understood, is simply the accumulated memory of how the church has read, defended, and lived out Scripture across two thousand years. The question is not whether tradition matters. It plainly does. The question is which one…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1034. Special revelation is not God’s only way of making Himself known, but it is His only sufficient way of making Himself known for salvation, and that distinction answers most of what lies behind this question. God has genuinely revealed something of Himself through creation, through conscience, and through the ordinary unfolding of history….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1033. Scripture interprets Scripture is one of those phrases preachers use so often that it risks sounding like a slogan rather than a method. In practice it names something quite specific. When a passage is unclear, ambiguous, or genuinely difficult, I let clearer passages elsewhere in the Bible set the boundaries for how the…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 1032. When I say Scripture is my final authority, people sometimes hear something I have not actually said. They hear a claim that Scripture is the only source of guidance a Christian ever consults, as though reason, experience, and the accumulated wisdom of other believers count for nothing. That is not the claim, and…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1031. biblical sufficiency is the settled conviction that Scripture provides everything a believer genuinely needs for faith and godly living, and I want to be precise about exactly what that claim covers, because it is regularly misunderstood in both directions at once. Some treat biblical sufficiency as though the Bible should directly answer every…