Reading Time: 10 minutesQuestion 01068. Biblical inspiration means something far more precise than the loose, everyday sense in which we might call a piece of music or a great novel inspired. It is a technical theological term describing exactly how God produced Scripture through human authors, and getting biblical inspiration right matters enormously, because it determines what kind…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 1030. The word of God makes some remarkable claims about itself, and I think the place to start is simply to listen to them before we start assessing them. That is not circular reasoning. It is the same courtesy you would extend to any significant witness in a courtroom, hearing the testimony in full…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1027. The unity of Scripture across sixty-six books, more than forty authors and roughly fifteen hundred years of composition is, on reflection, a genuinely remarkable fact, and it is worth pausing to ask directly how a collection this large and this diverse manages to read as a single, coherent book rather than a loosely…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 01002. Textual variations exist in the Bible because for some fifteen centuries the Scriptures were copied out entirely by hand, and hand copying, however careful and prayerful, inevitably leaves its small traces behind. When a believer first learns that the thousands of surviving New Testament manuscripts do not all read in exactly the same…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 01000. To say that Scripture is infallible means that it cannot fail, cannot deceive, and cannot lead astray in anything it sets out to teach us. The word itself reaches back to the Latin for that which does not deceive or fall short, and applied to the Bible it makes the bold claim that…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 3. What does it mean that Scripture is breathed out by God? Few verses carry more weight for understanding the Bible than 2 Timothy 3:16, where Paul writes, ‘All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.’ At the centre of that sentence…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 60017 This is a question that comes from two very different directions. Some Muslims argue that the Qur’an confirms the truth of the Bible and even points people toward it. Some Christians argue that the Qur’an, by its own claims about previous scriptures, inadvertently supports the reliability of the Bible. The question is worth…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 60079 The fulfilment of biblical prophecy is one of the most powerful evidences for the divine origin of Scripture. No other religious text in history contains anything comparable in scope, specificity, or verifiable accuracy. When prophecies written centuries before the events they describe are fulfilled with precision, the most natural explanation is that the…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 60078 Sceptics sometimes ask how we can trust that the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels are actually what He said. After all, the Gospels were written decades after Jesus’ ministry. Isn’t it possible that His words were distorted, embellished, or even invented by the early Church? How can we have confidence that…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 60096 The question of whether Jonah was swallowed by a great fish and survived is one that divides those who approach Scripture assuming miracles cannot occur and those who take the text on its own terms. For the reader who accepts that the God who created the ocean and everything in it is capable…