Inerrancy Of The Bible

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The Inerrancy of the Bible
The Bible is the inspired word of God. It is inerrant and infallible. As a Christian I believe this with all of my heart. The Christian faith, in one form or another, has been basing its beliefs on this fact for nearly two thousand years. The question asked by many people, both Christian and non-Christian alike, is why? Why do we believe this way? What is it that makes us base our very spiritual existence on the words of men and women dead thousands of years? This paper will briefly layout where these beliefs originate and why we are willing to wager our eternal souls on that belief.
What does it mean to say that the Bible is the inerrant inspired word of God? Henry Thiessen defines it as being "inerrant in the original manuscripts….in all that it affirms.” (Thiessen 63). If the Bible is written by men then doesn’t that mean it can contain errors? If this was just a case of man writing a book or letter then that would be so. However, the Bible is no such book. The source of the material in the Bible came directly from God. Scripture itself tells us He is the ultimate source. In Revelations 14:13 John writes “I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, ‘write…..’”. In 2 Timothy 3:16 the apostle Paul tells us “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.” (NKJV)
Throughout Scriptures we are told that God is the source of the writings and the inspiration of such. However, we also know that God did not put his pen to paper and write the actual words we read. So in the sense of actually writing the Bible, where did these words come from? B.A. Robison in an article on ReligiousTolerance.org lists three main theories as to how this inspiration was provided: The Automatic Writing Theory in which human author “becomes possessed by God and loses consciousness of self, surrendering to the divine spirit and its communicatory powers"(Robison); the Dictation Theory in which the...