Our Confidence In God’s Word

Recently we have taken a brief look at the very technical and difficult process of textual criticism. So I wanted to take a step back this week to remind us of the confidence we can have in God’s Word that we have in the Scripture today.

We can have confidence in our Bibles because we can have great confidence in the biblical texts that we have. In His Sovereignty, God has preserved an amazing number of early manuscripts of the biblical text. As we have seen no other ancient document can even be mentioned as a worthy competitor to the Bible for either the early manuscripts or the sheer number of manuscripts available today. Furthermore, we have a great number of early translations and quotes that help us discern the original texts that were received and used by the early Church. Finally, while there are differences among the manuscripts we possess, they are almost universally very minor. Not a single major doctrine of the Christian faith is affected by any textual differences. Thus, we have every reason to hold our Bibles with confidence that they are the very Word of God, inspired by the Spirit, preserved by God’s Providence, and transmitted faithfully by the Church through the ages.

Let me conclude with two quotes on the confidence we should have in God’s Word.

“Finally, it must be said that, although there are certainly differences in many of the New Testament manuscripts, not one fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith rests on a disputed reading.” – Philip Comfort, The Origin of the Bible, 189.

“The Christian can take the whole Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that he holds in it the true Word of God, handed down without essential loss from generation to generation throughout the centuries.”  – Frederick Kenyon, renowned paleographer and textual critic, quoted in The Origin of the Bible, 189.

To which we should all say “Amen!”

In Christ,

Bret