Back to: How We Got The Bible
Authority
Revolt against particular authorities has in our time widened into a revolt against all transcendent and external authority.
Philip W. Comfort, The Origin of the Bible
“In the name of man’s supposed “coming of age,” radical secularism champions human autonomy and creative individuality. Man is his own lord and the inventor of his own ideals and values, it is said. He lives in a supposedly purposeless universe that has itself presumably been engendered by a cosmic accident. Therefore, human beings are declared to be wholly free to impose upon nature and history whatever moral criteria they prefer.”
The historic evangelical position is summed up in the words of Frank E. Gaebelein, general editor of The Expositors’ Bible Commentary. In the preface to this commentary he spoke of a “scholarly evangelicalism [that was] committed to the divine inspiration, complete trustworthiness, and full authority of the Bible.”
Scripture is authoritative and fully trustworthy because it is divinely inspired.
Frank E. Gaebelein
Sufficiency
The sufficiency of Scripture means that Scripture contained all the words of God he intended his people to have at each stage of redemptive history, and that it now contains everything we need God to tell us for salvation, for trusting him perfectly, and for obeying him perfectly.
Grudem, Wayne . Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine
Grudem on Sufficiency of Scripture: https://www.waynegrudem.com/category/christian-essentials
Throughout history, Christians have treated Scripture as sufficient in two senses:
- Scripture provides us with sufficient knowledge to trust God and to live in fellowship with him.
- The biblical texts, as they were originally written, contain every truth that’s needed for us to be saved and to follow our Savior. “Never in church history has God added to the teachings or commands of Scripture… Scripture is sufficient to equip us for ‘every good work’” (2 Timothy 3:15–16).
- Scripture survives in texts that were copied with sufficient accuracy to preserve God’s truth.
- In the minuscule number of instances where questions about original wordings remain, not one textual difference affects anything that we believe about God or his work in the world. The copies of Scripture that survive today preserve enough of the original text to convey the original message that God inspired.