Theology

Theology

Theology finds its scholars pursuing the understanding of, and providing reasoned discourse of, religion, spirituality and God or the gods. The origin of the word theology comes from late middle English (originally applying only to Christianity) from French théologie, from Latin theologia, from Greek: theologia, from theos or God or logos, "words", "cause", "sayings," or "discourse" + suffix, "state of", "property of", "place of". It is widely understood to mean literally the study of God.

Theologians use philosophical analysis and argument to understand, explain, test, critique, defend, or promote any of a myriad of religious topics. Theology might be undertaken to help the theologian understand more truly his or her own religious tradition, understand more truly another religious tradition, make comparisons between religious traditions, defend a religious tradition, facilitate reform of a particular tradition, assist in the propagation of a religious tradition, or draw on the resources of a tradition to address some present situation or need, or for a variety of other reasons.

The word theology has classical Greek origins, but was slowly given new senses when it was taken up in both Greek and Latin forms by Christian authors. It is the subsequent history of the term in Christian contexts, particularly in the Latin West, that lies behind most contemporary usage, but the term can now be used to speak of reasoned discourse within and about a variety of different religious traditions. Various aspects, both of the process by which the discipline of "theology" emerged in Christianity, and the process by which the term was extended to other religions, are highly controversial.

Classical Apologetics for the Existence of God

Since theology is widely understood to literally be the "study of God", such a study would obviously require the acceptance of God's existence as a truth. And if we are honest in our approach to examining the existence of God, through the disciplines of classical apologetics (non-suppositional apologetics), we need not fall victim to, or be guilty of pre-supposing that God exists through any pre-suppositional apologetic method of reasoning. There is enough rational reasoning available to compel us to accept the existence of God as fact, out of shear necessity, as well as obvious observation of design, rather than out of any assumptions. (See the "Origins" page for a detailed breakdown of this reasoning.) The reason that this is important is because any study of God must be based on the necessary existence of such a being. After all, if God doesn't exist, then what would be the point of studying God or any subsequent communications to mankind from God? It is not enough to merely "assume" or "pre-suppose" God's existence because there exists a rational and reasonable way of justifying His necessary existence through linear logic that doesn't require a pre-suppositional approach to His existence. Besides, if we just look around and are honest in our evaluations of what design can be clearly seen in everything, simple logic is really all that is required for the acceptance of God's existence. For where there is design, there is an obvious designer!

(Romans 1:20)
For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Biblical Inerrancy and Authority

God's Communications to His Created Creatures
Since God must exist necessarily, it would therefore be rational to conclude that He would most certainly reach out to His created creatures in a manner that is necessarily accurate and authoritative. Since it is understood that God is the Author of everything in existence, outside of Himself, including mankind, it would be reasonable to conclude that some form of communications to His created creatures would be in order. Would God even consider the possibility of keeping Himself hidden from everyone or keeping His creatures in total ignorance as to His purpose for creating them without some instruction? Why would God create intelligent, purpose driven beings, only to keep them blind and ignorant to wander aimlessly in life with no direction, purpose, or knowledge of Himself? So if we are to accept as a truth that God exists necessarily, and that He has indeed provided mankind with knowledge about Himself, where else could we possibly turn to, in gaining access to credible knowledge of His nature outside of the Biblical Scriptures? Where else could we learn the detailed attributes of such a Mighty, All-Powerful Being, such as His omnipotence, His omniscience, His omnipresence, His holiness, His love, His justice, His grace, His forgiveness, His patience, His desires, etc.? Some may suggest that the natural world around us is enough, or refer to some obscure texts from other ancient writings, but none of it uncovers all of these aforementioned attributes like the Bible does!

Even though I haven't proven anything here about the inerrancy and authority of the the Bible, I wanted to point out the necessity of God's existence and the necessity of His accurate and authoritative communications to mankind. The Biblical Scriptures are an extremely compelling source for validating these communications from God. Surely, God, being God, would see to it that His authoritative Word to mankind would be kept in tact and accurate through His providential and supernatural guidance, directing His message through His inspired human agents of His divine revelation throughout the ages, if indeed the Biblical Scriptures are the inerrant and authoritative Word of God. There are, of course, some other obscure ancient and modern documents that exist that talk about God's will and purpose for mankind, but none of them pass the scrutiny and litmus tests that our Bibles have been submitted to, regarding their literary authenticity and historical accuracy, not to mention its astonishing record of a 100% accuracy rate of all given prophecies that have been fulfilled. Many in history have tried to minimize, disprove, or even destroy the Biblical works, only to fail at the attempt and/or be ultimately converted to Christianity in the process as a result of their investigations for truth!

Biblical Moral Standards of Human Behavior
The Biblical Scriptures are filled with moral standards for human behavior; the standards of true love, codes of ethics, justice, fairness, the concept if sin, the rebelliousness of man, etc., especially within "The Law" known as "The Ten Commandments" given to us by God through Moses on Mount Sinai. I find that most people who reject the inerrancy and authority of the Bible, reject the very notion of God Himself because they do not want to be accountable to anyone for their moral misbehavior. The great irony here is that anyone who tries to conceal their moral misbehavior, (sin) are unwittingly admitting that a standard of behavior, or moral code, exists within and/or beyond themselves to begin with, whether it be from a moral source transcendent to man received from God as communicated in the Biblical Scriptures, or by a secular source of the human justice system imposing their moral will against them. Either way, there is no escaping the standards of morality, a.k.a. right and wrong, despite whether God or the Biblical Scriptures are accepted or rejected. Additionally, if it were not for God and His Word to mankind, who would determine moral standards as to what is right and wrong to begin with? Do any humans have the authority to determine this for all other humans? And if so, why? The point here is that without God being the source of morality, as communicated in the Biblical Scriptures, there could never be a universal and just moral standard of right or wrong about anything! Therefore without God, true justice could never be righteously served! I find it interesting that those who reject God and/or the Biblical Scriptures, still expect and demand justice and compensation when they have been wronged in some way. Without relying on God's perfect and righteous system of morality and subsequent justice as a higher authority beyond mere human wisdom, they would have to rely on purely human systems of justice, based on relative and ever-changing standards of right and wrong, tainted and filled with human bias, greed, and corruption to determine the outcome of their grievances. Good luck with that!

Can the Biblical Scriptures be Trusted as the Inerrant and Authoritative "Word of God" as our Ultimate Source of Truth and Guidance?
To begin with, it is important to know what the Bible claims about itself;

(2 Timothy 3:16,17 - NIV)
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

While these verses of scripture do not prove anything in and of themselves regarding the authenticity and authorship of the Bible being from God, they do at least proclaim a bold self-statement as to the origins and authority of the Biblical Scriptures. On ninety-two recorded occasions, Jesus and his apostles supported their position by saying "it is written" (or the equivalent) and then continued on quoting the Old Testament. Jesus and his apostles considered the Old Testament Biblical Scriptures to be the written Word of God, and therefore the ultimate authority for life. There are some who would argue that the Biblical Scriptures are nothing more than a collection of creative writings by humans over the span of centuries and that its narratives and teachings are merely the result of human opinion, human wisdom, and human imagination, never intended to be taken seriously or literally. Sadly, there are even many Christians who hold a very low or even dismissive view of the Biblical Scriptures and to the subsequent theological doctrines of the Bible using their own human opinions and secular dogma to formulate their Christian views and beliefs. This is an extremely serious and dangerous problem with many unrecoverable implications and theological consequences! If the Biblical Scriptures are nothing more than the result of merely human ideas, and not the accurate and authoritative Word of God, we would be left with absolutely nothing useful in the Bible, in terms of any divine direction from God! There would be no reason for the Christian Church and its teachings to exist, because there would be no basis for it. Everything that is taught about Judaism and Christianity is solely based and dependant on the reliable and accurate transmission of truth, spoken by God through His chosen divinely inspired men as they penned the Biblical Scriptures under His sovereign and supernatural guidance.

What is meant by Biblical "Inerrancy" is that errors of truth have not been found. What is meant by Biblical "Infallibility" is that errors of truth will never be found! Some may claim that part or most of the Biblical Scriptures are reliable, but accept the idea that some parts could be in error or is not one hundred percent reliable due to human error. If that were true, then one would have to ask themselves which parts are truth and which are in error... How could we ever know for sure which parts we could trust? We would find ourselves picking and choosing what parts we want to believe based on our biased and prejudicial view of our own dogmatic opinions. Either the Biblical Scriptures are one hundred percent true and accurate or totally worthless as any standard of truth! Why should we believe anything God’s Word says if we cannot trust everything that it says? This is an "all or nothing" proposition because truth and error cannot co-exist in the same context. Some may find this "black and white" perspective too rigid or inflexible, but truth should never be flexible with error, or it is no longer truth.

So if the Biblical Scriptures are not one hundred percent the authentic Word of God, and merely human narrative, even in part, it would be nothing more than human dogma, worthless to anyone and everyone seeking to find the accurate will and desire of God. Everything that we have learned about God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ, The Holy Spirit, Heaven and Hell, marriage and divorce, right and wrong, angels and demons, sin, forgiveness, grace, etc., has its roots and basis in the Biblical Scriptures. It's also a historic treasure-house, as the Biblical Old Testament Scriptures includes a meticulously detailed historical lineage from Adam to Noah, from Noah to Moses, from Moses to David, and from David to Jesus. Biblical doctrine and history has permeated our lives more than we can even imagine! Our twenty-four hour a day, seven days a week time references started as a result of the book of Genesis and even our calendar year references (BC and AD) are based on the birth of Jesus. (Note: Modern versions of BC and AD have been changed to BCE and CE respectively, but still have their time references based on Jesus.) There is no other recorded documentation that I know of that even deals with the origins of the universe like the first book of the Bible (Genesis) does, because no one else but God was there during this time! In the book of Genesis, God gives us a detailed account of His creative time-line of cosmic beginnings that can be found nowhere else but in the pages of the Bible! So, for anyone interested in honestly and seriously investigating the truth claims of the Biblical Scriptures, there is overwhelming evidence to compel us to trust the Biblical Scriptures as being our ultimate source of truth and guidance from God.

The Dead Sea Scrolls and their Significance to Biblical Accuracy
"The Dead Sea Scrolls, in the narrow sense identical with the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of ancient Jewish manuscripts from the Second Temple period. They were discovered over a period of ten years, between 1946 and 1956, at the Qumran Caves near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the northern shore of the Dead Sea. Dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE, the Dead Sea Scrolls include the oldest surviving manuscripts of entire books later included in the biblical canons, including deuterocanonical manuscripts from late Second Temple Judaism and extrabiblical books. At the same time, they cast new light on the emergence of Christianity and of Rabbinic Judaism. In the wider sense, the Dead Sea Scrolls also include similar findings from elsewhere in the Judaean Desert, of which some are from later centuries. Almost all of the 15,000 scrolls and scroll fragments are held in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum located in Jerusalem."
(Source: Wikipedia)

Recent scientific studies suggest that parts of these scrolls may be even older than first believed, dating back even more than 2,000 years! These manuscripts contain material now considered to be part of the Hebrew Bible. Every book is represented among the Dead Sea Scrolls, except the book of Esther. These are the oldest known copies of Biblical works.

The major impact of the Dead Sea Scrolls is that it validated the accuracy of the Hebrew Old Testament Biblical Scriptures. Prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament were dated around 920 A.D. The Dead Sea Scrolls date back to around 100 B.C. With this gap of about a thousand years, some supposed there would be massive changes uncovered. This was not the case however, as the variances were of no significance. There have been opponents of Christianity that made allegations that Christians had perverted the Old Testament text, introducing and rewriting prophecies to make it appear that there were Messianic prophecies which Jesus fulfilled. Prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Christians had a difficult time proving that this did not happen, even though the reality of such an undertaking would have been rejected by Jewish people everywhere and would likely be recorded in history. Therefore, the major significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls is that it verifies the stability of the Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts from well before the birth of Jesus and Christianity, and on through modern times. We can be confident that the Old Testament that we read today has been accurately transmitted throughout history from at least a hundred years before the birth of Jesus!

So the conclusion from the Dead Sea Scrolls is that the Old Testament in our Bibles is reliable. The Old Testament in our Bibles is translated from the Masoretic Text which dates to about a thousand years AFTER Christ. But the Dead Sea Scrolls are a full thousand years older. Comparisons of the Masoretic Text to the Dead Sea Scrolls have demonstrated the unusual accuracy of transmission over that thousand-year period. The chief differences have to do with the spelling of words. That means that we now have proof that the Old Testament, and by implication, our Bibles, has been accurately transmitted (copied) for more than two thousand years. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that the Old Testament has also been accurately copied before the time of the Qumran community as well. This would therefore suggest that God's divine direction and preservation has been at work all along to ensure the accurate and inerrant transmission of His Word, despite human copying and translating. Humans, without sovereign and divine direction from God, are simply not capable of such accurate and inerrant transference of this magnitude! It's very evident that the Bible has been supernaturally kept in tact because it was divinely inspired, therefore infallible, therefore inerrant, therefore true and trustworthy!

Are all Translations and Versions of the Bible Inerrant and Reliable?
Because the Bible is not a single book but a complex arrangement of at least 66 books (Roman Catholic Bibles include another seven books referred to as the "Deuterocanon" or "Apocrypha" that Protestants do not recognize) written over many years by multiple authors, the question concerning versions can be very complicated. There are many ancient manuscripts for each of the texts in the Bible, each needing careful translation into contemporary language. Since the manuscripts we have available are nearly 98% identical (apart from inconsequential spelling differences), we could say that we really only have one version of the Bible. The entire Bible has been translated into more than 700 languages, and parts of it have been translated into over 3,000 languages. Some languages have only one translation of the Bible, while others have many. In fact, there are over 450 known versions of the Bible in English alone! Secular theologians, and even some Christian theologians may argue that while the original Biblical manuscripts may have been without error, errors have crept in through human copying and translation over the centuries, leaving us with modern translations that are not error free. While it may be true that some spelling differences are present in modern translations of the Bible, they are inconsequential in changing any truth transmitted and the core doctrines of Biblical Scriptures have never been altered!

Some versions of the Bible are derived from a literal "Word-for-Word" methodology of translation, (e.g. ESV and NASB) while other versions are derived from a paraphrased "Thought-for-Thought" methodology of translation (e.g. NLT). The NIV and NET translations are excellent examples that sit somewhere in between these two approaches. While all of these methods of interpretation are equally valid, one version of translation may be easier to understand for the common reader than another. While some theologians may argue that certain versions of the English Bible are more reliable or accurate than others, no single version of the Bible will perfectly capture every thought or nuance communicated through the Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic writing in our available translated manuscripts. Translation from one language to another is always a difficult balancing act between word translation, thought transmission, and and equally important, readability. Different versions approach these challenges differently, but this isn't a problem if we are willing to consult multiple versions for a deeper understanding of any given Biblical text in question, as they will all transmit the same core truth in just slightly different ways without compromising the integrity of the intended message.

So How Can We Prove Rationally that the Bible is True?
All of the time and energy spent here referring to Biblical principles have been based on the premise that the Judeo-Christian Biblical Scriptures (The Bible) is the standard by which truth is measured. This of course presupposes that the Biblical Scriptures are indeed the authoritative Word of God, communicated without error to mankind. But how can we trust that the Biblical Scriptures are the accurate source of God's Word? Many have tried to offer a compelling answer to this question but have fallen short philosophically in their methodology of proof. However, if we consider all of the arguments and evidence in total, it becomes, in my view, obvious that it would be irrational to not accept the Bible as the inerrant and authoritive Word of God! With all of the available evidence at hand, in a court of law, it would be a slam-dunk, open and shut case! Here are ten examples of the evidence:

    1.) It’s the most historically verified and accurate ancient document in history!
    2.) The Bible was written and verified within the lifetime of eyewitnesses to its events.
    3.) Despite common misperceptions, science doesn't contradict the Bible. On the contrary—it overwhelmingly confirms it!
    4.) The Bible has led to many important scientific discoveries!
    5.) The Bible is unified in its message despite all of the different authors from different time lines.
    6.) Archaeological finds confirm the accuracy of the Bible.
    7.) Jesus trusted God's Word and personally testified to its authenticity.
    8.) Bible prophecies 100% accurately predicted historical events long before they happened.
    9.) The Bible has undergone multiple attempts to be destroyed or removed from cultures, but has always survived!
  10.) The Bible has transformed billions of lives over the millennias.

For Those Who Still Need More Convincing Arguments for the Authenticity of the Bible
Even though I do not subscribe to the often problematic presuppositional method of apologetics, for the sake of offering an alternate perspective, Dr. Jason Lisle gives a very interesting and compelling presuppositional apologetic summary on the subject that is at least worth a read. Here is a quote from his conclusion...

"The truth of the Bible is obvious to anyone willing to fairly investigate it. The Bible is uniquely self-consistent and extraordinarily authentic. It has changed the lives of millions of people who have placed their faith in Christ. It has been confirmed countless times by archaeology and other sciences. It possesses divine insight into the nature of the universe and has made correct predictions about distant future events with perfect accuracy. When Christians read the Bible, they cannot help but recognize the voice of their Creator. The Bible claims to be the Word of God, and it demonstrates this claim by making knowledge possible. It is the standard of standards. The proof of the Bible is that unless its truth is presupposed, we couldn't prove anything at all."

See his source page for the full apologetics on the subject: https://answersingenesis.org/is-the-bible-true/how-do-we-know-that-the-bible-is-true/

>> PDF version available here <<