Examining the doctrine of Scripture—its inspiration, inerrancy, authority, canon, and interpretation.
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 1102 If Scripture is the Word of God, how can it also be the work of human authors? Does the human element compromise its divine authority? Or does the divine element override the human contribution? This question parallels one of the great mysteries of our faith – how Jesus could be fully God and…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 1103 When we say every word of Scripture is inspired, does that include the chapter and verse numbers? Were they part of the original text, or were they added later? This is a practical question that affects how we read and study the Bible. The Short Answer No, chapter and verse divisions are not…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 1104 When New Testament writers quote the Old Testament, the wording sometimes differs from what we find in our Old Testament. Does this mean there are errors in Scripture? If the Bible is inerrant, should we not expect quotations to match exactly? The Nature of the Question Anyone who reads Scripture carefully notices that…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 1106 If God inspired the Scriptures, did He also promise to preserve them perfectly? Can we be confident that what we have today accurately represents what the original authors wrote? What exactly did God promise about preservation, and what can we realistically expect? The Doctrine of Preservation The doctrine of preservation holds that God…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1036 Walk into almost any church and you will find some statement of faith, whether ancient creeds recited in liturgy or modern doctrinal statements printed in the back of a hymnal. Christians have been summarising their beliefs since the earliest days of the faith. But where do these creeds and confessions fit alongside Scripture…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 1037 How should we read the Bible? This question lies at the heart of everything we do as Christians. Get interpretation wrong and everything else goes wrong with it. One of the most important principles in biblical interpretation is what we call “literal interpretation,” but this term is often misunderstood. Some think it means…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1038 Throughout church history, Christians have debated how to read the Bible. One approach that has attracted both devoted followers and sharp critics is allegorical interpretation. What exactly is this method? Where did it come from? And should we be using it today when we open our Bibles? These are important questions, because how…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1039 One of the most fascinating aspects of Bible study is discovering how the Old Testament points forward to Jesus and the New Covenant. This is not something we impose on the text; it is woven into the fabric of Scripture itself. The technical term for this forward-pointing pattern is “typology.” Understanding what typology…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1040 Open your Bible to any page and you will find yourself reading a particular kind of literature. The book of Psalms does not read like the book of Romans. Revelation is quite different from Ruth. Proverbs communicates differently than Philemon. These differences are not accidental. God chose to communicate His Word through a…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 1031 When we talk about the sufficiency of Scripture, we’re asking a profoundly practical question: Is the Bible enough? Does it give us everything we need for faith and life, or do we need something more? This isn’t an abstract theological debate. It affects how we do church, how we make decisions, and how…