Expert: John Fields - 1/13/2011

Question
Why is the bible the infallible word of god? Does it just boil down to faith? This question was ask to me by a young teen.I fill I give him a good answer but I am not sure it was good enough. I would be interested on what you have to say on this topic?

Answer
The Bible is infallible because of who wrote it. God is perfect. This means that in every good quality that He is perfect. He is perfect in justice, perfect in mercy, perfect at loving, etc. Deuteronomy 32:4 " The Rock! His work is perfect, For all His ways are just; A God of faithfulness and without injustice, Righteous and upright is He.

Among these traits is the fact that God is perfectly truthful. We have verification of this in Hebrews 6:18, where it says "so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us."

So it is a given that since God cannot lie, since it is impossible for Him, that He is perfect in every way and perfect in truth. Could God be perfect and infallible and His Word NOT be? This would not make sense. This is why so many skeptics and outright unbelievers go to such lengths to find legitimate discrepancies and contradictions in the Bible. If one proves the Bible full of error, how would one reconcile that with God who is perfect truth and cannot lie as well as all powerful? If God was these things, an atheist might ask, how could He allow His Word not to reflect that by exercising His power?

In 1947 a startling find was made in some Middle Eastern caves. They found several thousand scrolls and fragments of scrolls. Among these writings, to become known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, was a FULL version of the book of Isaiah. It was written about 100 years before Jesus was born and about 600 years after the original and is 1100 years older than the second oldest existing copy known as the Masoretic Text. What was found there was that there were VERY minor variations which amounted to missed brush strokes or minor miscues. What does this show? The level of detail and painstaking care that was taken when copyists were re-writing by hand was breath-taking! In 1100 years of writing and re-writing and copying, each group copied from someone else's copy. When a minor miscue or copyist error occurred it was copied by the next copyist who may have made a mistake or two on their own.  In 1100 years only minor differences were present which did not in ANY way affect or change any of the meaning. This shows we have can have a HUGE amount of trust in the consistency and integrity Of God's Word.