Basic Theology Part II

Basic Theology Part II

Bibliology

God has revealed Himself in the context of general revelation. In General revelation we learn God is all powerful, intelligent, holy, loving, merciful, and a being who has a plan. But such revelation is indirect. That is, this information is much like understanding something of the character of an artist from a sculpture. It is true we can learn a great deal about an artist by examining his or her art. But to actually know the artist as a person, we must have direct contact with him or her. In order to know the artist you must enter into a direct relationship with that person. General revelation shows God as the master artist. It proves his existence, some of His attributes, and to some degree His plan. But in order to know Him we must have a personal relationship with Him. We must have information communicated directly from Him to us. This is special revelation. Special revelation is the information about God that God communicated directly to man by supernatural means. 

I. The Scriptures: Proof the Scriptures are The Word of God

    A. The A Priori Argument: A Priori means that which comes before. In definition it means going from a known or assumed cause to its necessary effects. In this case it means God being what He is, and man being what he is, we assume that God will reveal Himself to mankind. We further expect this revelation to be a reliable and infallible source of divine truth. 

    It would make no sense for God to create man in His own image, with the capacity to communicate. For God to disclose the information about Himself that is resident in general revelation, and then to abscond and refrain from communicating Himself to man. An all powerful, intelligent, loving, merciful and holy Creator (all of which is shown in general revelation) will surly reveal Himself and His will directly to man.

    The fact however, that it is reasonable to expect the Creator to communicate Himself to mankind is not lost on the those steeped in the false religions of mankind. There are ever competing holy books: The Upanishads of Hinduism, the Koran of Islam, the teachings of the Buddha, The book of Mormon. 

    B. The Congruity of the Scriptures: If we were to pass around a one sentence story around this room to each person, what are the chances of the story being the same when it got back to me? Not real good. But not so with the Bible. The Scriptures have not changed in their entire history. The text of Scripture has not changed in its transmission to us in its 4500 year history. It is one book with one story that has never changed.

    C. The Bible as a book in history: When we judge the truthfulness and veracity of books in history there are usually two tests. Assuming there are no original copies the test are: How many copies of the book in its original language exist? And what is the time interval between the time of writing of the original and the earliest extant copy?

        1. By comparison to another early document Homer's Illiad is an ancient document in Greek (the same language as the N.T.). There are roughly 600 copies extant today. 

        2. The earliest copy is dated at least 1000 years after the original.

        3. But we possess over 5000 copies of the N.T. in Koine Greek.

        4. The earliest extant copy is the John Ryland's papyrus fragment dated around 125 AD. About thirty years after the original writing.

    This makes the N.T. the best attested to document in all of ancient history.

    D. The argument from fulfilled prophecy:

        1. In Ezekiel 26:3 God says "therefore thus says the Lord GOD, 'Behold, I am against you, O Tyre, and I will bring up many nations against you, as the sea brings up its waves." About 5 to 10 years after the prophecy Nebudchadnezzer came up against Tyre. The people of Tyre escaped to an island just off its coast so as to avoid being destroyed by the the enemy. God then goes on to say "They will destroy the walls of Tyre and break down her towers; and I will scrape her debris from her and make her a bare rock. She will be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea, for I have spoken,' declares the Lord GOD, 'and she will become spoil for the nations." vv. 4-5. In 332 BC Alexander the Great laid siege to the city of Tyre. Once again the residents tried to escape to the island off the coast as they had done previously. But this made Alexander angry. So he ordered his men to scrape the stones and debris of the city (just as the prophecy foretold) to make a causeway out to the island where he killed all the people of the city with the edge of the sword. Do you know what you will find if you go to the site of the ancient city of Tyre today? You will find a fishing village. It has literally become a place for the spreading of nets just as God said it would three hundred years beforehand. 

        2. On the day Jesus was crucified alone, on that single day He fulfilled over 33 O.T. prophecies...The state of Texas filled with silver dollars, just one with a red x, the chances that one man fulfilled all those prophecies by chance is the same as if you were blindfolded and on the very first try you chose the silver dollar with the red x.

    Fulfilled prophecy shows that the Bible is the one and only book that is the revelation of God. It shows that all competing books claiming the same are simply false.

    

   E.  Lets review: General revelation (information about God that He has revealed in nature, conscience, and history) proves God exists and is: All powerful, intelligent, loving, merciful, holy, and One who has a plan for humanity. It also leads us to expect that He will reveal Himself directly to us by means of special revelation. 

    Special revelation is the information about God that God communicated directly to man by supernatural means. The Scriptures are the special revelation of God to mankind and can be proved to be such by the above given proofs. 

    Since this is true mankind is under obligation to believe the truth of God's revealed word and adjust their lives accordingly, which is that very thing that they do not want or will not do "For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed." John 3:20.

II. Special Revelation

    1. Special revelation is the information about God that God communicated directly to man by supernatural means. Turn in your Bibles to Hebrews 1:1. How did God speak to the ancient Jewish fathers?

        - In various portions and ways.

       A.  God's means of special revelation:

    

            I. Theophanies: Theophanies are God manifestations These are supernatural and direct visions of God as opposed to natural revelation of God, they are given at a certain place in the history of God's people and often address a particular need of God's people, they are a partial and not full revelation of God's glory. 

                a. Isaiah 6

    

                b. Ezekiel 1

    

                c. Revelation 4: 1-4; 5:5-7

            II. Direct Communication: Face to face, voice communication

                

                a. 1 Sam. 3:1-10

                b. Exodus 33:11

            III. Dreams and Visions: 

                a. Daniel 2: 1-2; 31-35

                

                b. This revelation can be rejected Dan 3:

            IV. Prophetic Visions (Using prophetic language):

                a. Daniel 7 compared with Revelation 13

            V Incarnation: At a given point in time the Second Person of the blessed Trinity took to Himself a full human nature Hebrews 1:2; John 1:1, 14, Phip. 2: 5-11. The gospels reveal Christ as God in much the same way the O.T. theophanies do:

            I. Matthew 14: 15-21: When the disciples of Jesus do not have enough resources to meet the needs of God's people they need to bring those resources to Jesus and He will multiply those resources so that they are more than enough to meet the need.

            II. Mark 6:45-52: Jesus sends His disciples into the storm to show them that the Christian life is not a stormless life, but in the midst of the storm He will see them straining in the struggle and will come to them transcending and conquring the storm. If they then, in the midst of the storm, invite them into the ship of their lives, He will cause life's storm to cease and see them safely to the other side.

            III Mark 1:21-26 Jesus has come to overthrow, dis-place, and conquer the kingdom of darkness and replace it with the Kingdom of God.

III. Inspiration

    A. What is the means of God's special revelation today?

       I. The Bible.

    B. How did God give us the Bible? By means of inspiration. What is inspiration? 

 

    C. Inspiration means the Holy Spirit so guided and controlled the human authors of Scripture, using their own individual personalities and styles, that they wrote all He wanted them to write without excess or error.

    I. II Tim. 3:16-17: All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.

    II. II Peter 1:20: The human authors were "born along" by the Holy Spirit. The word indicates a stick from a tree being carried by a river

    III. Matt. 5:17-19: The smallest letter in Hebrew is the yod, the smallest stroke is a pin stroke used to distinguish between letters. Jesus here says that inspiration extends to the words of Scripture, even the choice of words and letters.

    D. Wrong theories of inspiration:

    

     I. Naturalistic Theory: The Bible is merely a human writing with no supernatural element at all. It is full of errors and contradictions.

        Problem: This theory does not account for the miraculous preservation or supernatural character of the Bible, nor does it account for the phenomena of fulfilled prophecy.

    II. Intuition Theory: The writers of Scripture had a higher degree of natural insight that all men possess to some degree. This means the Scriptures are to be classed along with other great religious works, the Koran, the Vedas, and literary works like those of Shakespeare. 

        Problem: This is contrary to the claims of Scripture which assert that Scripture alone is God's word in contrast to the works of men and it makes Scripture simply another work of many. Lends to syncratism. 

    III. Illumination Theory: The writers of Scripture had an elevation of the religious perceptions common to all Christians. They were illuminated by the Holy Spirit to understand and record religious truth.

        Problem: This theory confuses the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit which is His work in helping believer understand the word, with inspiration which is His work of recording God's revelation.

    IV.  Partial Theory: The writers of Scripture were inspired to the point that they were able to record those portions of the Bible that had to do with religious and spiritual truth. The rest of what they wrote is subject to error.

        Problem: Who gets to  decide what is inspired and authoritative? Men do. So they will naturally eliminate the parts  they don't like.

    V. Thought or concept Theory: Only the thoughts or concepts of scripture are inspired not the words. God gave the authors His message but left it to them to express this message in their own words.

        Problem: Yes the concepts are inspired. But so are the words. This is the teaching of Christ and the apostles. This also allows for a Bible that is full of errors and contradictions, and for men to simply pick and choose the messages they want to learn from Scripture and reject the rest.

    VI. Dictation: God dictated the Bible. The writers were simply his secretaries.

        Problem: This does not account for the differences in style and personalities of the authors in Scripture.