The Bible is our basis, standard, and norm for faith and practice.  By practice we don’t just mean for church life on Sunday, but for our entire life no matter where we are or what we are doing.  Christianity gives us a basis for making moral and intellectual decisions in every area of our life.  The Bible is the standard of authority we look to for these decisions.

We treat the Bible with such seriousness because it is the word of God.  It is inspired, not just inspiring.  The biblical claim is that it’s more than a book that builds us up emotionally.  It is a book that contains words from God Himself.  Scripture did not come from man’s intuition, reason, or any subjective capacity.  It came to the prophets from God.  Prophecy has never had its origin in the human mind.

2 Peter 1:12-21 gives us some of the Apostle Peter’s last words.  People don’t spend their last words on trivia, but on something important.  What was important to Peter in his last days was for us to know that scripture was brought to us through prophets that were carried along by the Holy Spirit.  They were eyewitnesses to the events they wrote about and were not relating allegorical stories, myths, or fables.

In 2 Timothy 3:10-17, the Apostle Paul tells us that evil people and impostors will go from bad to worse, but we could trust scripture because it was God-breathed.  God did not just breathe into the Bible, but God breathed it out.  It’s origin is from God, not man.  Men wrote it, but the words are from God.

In the second section of this lesson on the Doctrine of Scripture, we will discuss the implications of this belief in the inspiration of scripture for how the revelation took place and for how we should treat scripture. For more on Dr. Bush’s teaching on the nature of Scripture, read his books Understanding Biblical Inerrancy and Baptists and the Bible.

This is the first of a twelve part series on Basic Theology.  Each part is broken into two half-hour sections.  These recordings are part of a series called Theologoumenon.  They were recorded by Dr. Bush so that people in the churches, not just in seminary classrooms, could have easy access to lessons in basic theology.

1. The Word of God (part 1 – part 2)

2. God the Creator (part 1 – part 2)

3. God the Redeemer (part 1 – part 2)

4. Redemption (part 1 – part 2)

5. The Holy Spirit and His Gifts (part 1 – part 2)

6. The Trinity (part 1 – part 2)

7. The Doctrine of Sin Part 1 (part 1 – part 2)

8. The Doctrine of Sin Part 2 (part 1 – part 2)

9. Salvation (part 1 – part 2)

10. Doctrine of the Church (part 1 – part 2)

11. Last Things (part 1 – part 2)

12. How to Recognize Heresy (part 1 – part 2)

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