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Question One: How do we know the Bible is true? (Hebrews 4:12) According to the Bible, all Scripture is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16). Peter confirmed this when he said that those who wrote the Bible were not speaking on their own but spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21). Many parts of Scripture are directly attributed to God through use of phrases like This is what the Lord says (e.g., Exodus 4:22). Finally, Jesus often quoted from the Old Testament and affirmed it as being God’s Word. Prophecies that were later fulfilled...

The foundational rupture in the tectonic plates of Western civilization is the breakage along the fault line of truth. The very concept of truth as we have known and inherited it is a Judeo-Christian concept. Germany became a post-Christian nation after its seminaries and universities rejected the Scriptures as God’s perfect, revealed truth. The United States has become a post-Christian nation after its best seminaries and universities—founded as teaching centers for the Word of God—rejected Scripture as God’s perfect, revealed truth. As American culture drifts further and further from anything Christian, the pressure to abandon the authority of the Bible...

God’s truth is far more resistant to mixing with error. And yet today, even among conservative believers, there are many preachers, teachers, and scholars who are working hard to make the church and the Bible more accommodating to contradictory worldviews. While they might outwardly affirm the inerrancy and authority of Scripture, their actions betray a lack of confidence in God’s Word. Intimidated by cultural agendas and eager to find favor with the unsaved world, these men and women capitulate to blending truth with all sorts of error—evolution, feminism, psychology, and ecumenism, just to name a few. Are these people heretics?...

LATROBE, PA: Anglican Patriarch J.I. Packer Still Going Strong at 87 An exclusive interview with the Rev. Dr. J.I. Packer. By David W. Virtue www.virtueonline.org June 28, 2014 The Rev. Dr. James I. Packer is the Anglican Communion’s most widely known, most respected evangelical Anglican author, theologian, churchman and scholar. He was a speaker at the recent Anglican Church of North America’s 2nd Annual Assembly meeting at St. Vincent Archabbey and College in Latrobe, PA, on the occasion of the induction of a new archbishop of the ACNA and a farewell to the Most Rev. Robert Duncan, the ACNA’s first...

This is the third and final installment of my (limited) review of A.E. Harvey’s book, Is Scripture Still Holy? Coming of Age with the New Testament. Prior installments can be found here and here. As we have seen in prior posts, Harvey’s book is designed to critique the traditional Christian doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture. After arguing that (a) Scripture isn’t revelation anyway, only Jesus is God’s revelation; and (b) since humans were involved in writing and transmitting Scripture, then it is unreliable and likely corrupted, one might wonder whether Harvey tries to salvage any authority for the Bible...

If all Scripture is breathed out by God (2 Tim. 3:16), then there is a unity to be found across the pages of the Bible. Without minimizing the differences of genre and human authorship, we should nevertheless approach the Bible expecting theological distinctives and apparent discrepancies to be fully reconcilable. The unity of Scripture also means we should be rid of, once and for all, this nonsense about being red letter Christians, as if the words of Jesus are the really important verses in Scripture and carry more authority and are somehow more directly divine than other verses. An evangelical...

What to Say When Someone Says "The Bible Has Errors" By Jonathan Dodson Most people question the reliability of the Bible. You’ve probably been in a conversation with a friend or met someone in a coffeeshop who said: “How can you be a Christian when the Bible has so many errors?” How should we respond? What do you say? Instead of asking them to name one, I suggest you name one or two of the errors. Does your Bible contain errors? Yes. The Bible that most people possess is a translation of the Greek and Hebrew copies of copies...

A note from Modern Reformation: We do not allow reposting an article in its entirety on the Internet. We request that you link to this article from your website. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ Against the repeated claim that the doctrine of inerrancy, unknown to the church, arose first with Protestant orthodoxy, we could cite numerous examples from the ancient and medieval church. (1) It was Augustine who first coined the term "inerrant," and Luther and Calvin can speak of Scripture as free from error. (2) Down to the Second Vatican Council, Rome has attributed inerrancy to Scripture as the common view of the...

The Catholic blogosphere was recently set on fire by word of a document issued by the bishops of England, Wales, and Scotland entitled The Gift of Scripture. The firestorm was triggered by an October 5 article in The Times of London carrying the inflammatory headline "Catholic Church no longer swears by the truth of the Bible." The Times article contained a number of errors and distortions, but it also contained a number of quotes from the British bishops' document that were of concern to faithful Catholics. For example, the document is quoted as saying that "we should not expect...

PROVIDENTISSIMUS DEUSENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII  ON THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE  To Our Venerable Brethren, All Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, and Bishops of the Catholic World, in Grace and Communion with the Apostolic See.Venerable Brethren, Health and Apostolic Benediction.[...] The Authority of Holy Scripture; Modern Criticism; Physical Science17. To prove, to expound, to illustrate Catholic Doctrine by the legitimate and skilful interpretation of the Bible, is much; but there is a second part of the subject of equal importance and equal difficulty - the maintenance in the strongest possible way of its full authority. This cannot be done completely...

In January 2009, ICR received a copy of a recent ministry letter published by television personality Dr. John Ankerberg. For many years, Dr. Ankerberg has skillfully tackled tough issues related to the church, society, the Middle East, and other topics of interest to believers. Christians everywhere need to be informed, challenged, and also taught sound doctrine—there is no substitute for the Bible. However, the January letter from Dr. Ankerberg’s television ministry reveals a dangerous trend toward subjugating the accuracy, understandability, and authority of the Bible to the foolish musings of men—namely, scientists who deny that God’s revelation in the book...

The inaugural issue of Christianity Today, dated October 15, 1956, featured an article by Billy Graham entitled, "Biblical Authority in Evangelism." The thrust of the article was clear – without an unhesitant "thus saith the Lord" authority in preaching and evangelism, the message lacks all authority. The only authority that matters, Dr. Graham insisted, was the authority of the Bible as the Word of God. Indeed, this confidence in biblical authority was, at least in part, the reason for the establishment of Christianity Today as the flagship journal of American evangelicalism under the editorship of Carl. F. H. Henry. Now,...

(Ventura, CA) - Americans may be skeptical about the claims of politicians, but they remain confident that some of the most amazing stories in the Bible can be taken at face value. A new nationwide survey conducted by The Barna Group shows that six well-known Bible stories are accepted as literal truth by an average of two out of three adults. How People Read the Stories Survey respondents were asked if they thought a specific story in the Bible was “literally true, meaning it happened exactly as described in the Bible” or whether they thought the story was "meant to...

A majority of Americans believe in God's power and miracles, according to a new survey. Furthermore, most accept well-known Bible stories as literal truth, including the biblical account of Jesus Christ rising from the dead, The Barna Group found. Three out of four adults (75 percent) said they interpreted the crucifixion, death, burial and resurrection of Christ as literal truth. An earlier study also found that 75 percent of Americans who do not identify as born-again Christians believe Jesus literally resurrected, according to the Center for Missional Research of the North American Mission Board – the Southern Baptist Convention’s domestic...

Not surprisingly, the Bible Belt region lives up to its name with states like Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee and West Virginia containing the highest percentage of those who believe the Bible is literally true. Alabama and Arkansas came out on top as 75% say they believe the Bible is literally true. West Virginia (70%) and Tennessee (68%) are close behind. The northeast region of our map represents the other extreme. In Vermont and Massachusetts, only 22% of those respondents believe the Bible is literally true—the lowest percentages in all states surveyed. Earlier this summer, a national survey found that 54% of...

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THE hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true. The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they should not expect “total accuracy” from the Bible.

2.What is Fundamentalism? We find in the Gospel of Saint Luke (chapter 9) a typical and interesting case of a concrete fundamentalist attitude. We read: “They (Jesus and the disciples) went to a Samaritan village to make preparations for him, but the people would not receive him because he was going for Jerusalem. Seeing this, the disciples James and John said: ‘Lord do you want us to call down fire from heaven to burn them up?’ But he turned and rebuked them, and they went on to another village” (Lk 9:51-55).The two disciples indeed show in this incident a concrete...

An encounter with a Bedouin robber in a desert valley has led to what one Israeli archaeologist described as one of the most important biblical finds from the region in half a century. Professor Chanan Eshel, an archaeologist from Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv, said yesterday that the discovery of two fragments of nearly 2,000-year-old parchment scroll from the Dead Sea area gave hope to biblical and archaeological scholars, frustrated by a dearth of material unearthed in the region in recent years, that the Judean desert could yet yield further artefacts. "No more scrolls have been found in the...

Modern spirituality invents its own standards and rituals, but the Bible stands as an authority over all traditions. Throughout history human beings have been incurably religious. Religion has continued and even flourished under atheistic regimes such as those imposed by Marxism. Despite the secular mood of our day, religion has not disappeared, it has surfaced again often under the guise of ‘spirituality’. Contemporary spirituality retains its popularity and it is so often undemanding. It is more interested in whether spirituality meets a felt need rather than the truth. We can invent our own rituals and standards of behaviour. In particular,...