“THE FOUNDATION -- That the book currently known as the Bible, consisting of the Scriptures of Moses, the prophets, and the apostles, is the only source of knowledge concerning God and His purposes at present extant or available in the earth, and that the same were wholly given by inspiration of God in the writers, and are consequently without error in all parts of them, except such as may be due to errors of transcription or translation.”
Including the phrase, “are consequently without error in all parts of them”, means that we can compare what this statement expects from the Bible with what we find in the Bible and the world around us. If the Bible is without error in all parts then I would expect to find:
- A consistent message so that comparison of different passages does not show any contradiction
- That the history contained in the Bible is confirmed by external evidence such as archaeology
- That the detailed prophecies the Bible makes are written before their accurate fulfilment takes place
The three bullet point criteria above can be used to make predictions about what is found in the Bible and used to determine if the ideas they contain are true, and consequently whether this understanding of the Bible is accurate.
If we are to be successful in this endeavour we need to follow the advice of John Thomas (the founder of the Christadelphian religion) who wrote six rules for Bible study. This advice includes the following:
- Never be afraid of results to which you may be driven by your investigations, as this will inevitably bias your mind and disqualify you to arrive at ultimate truth.
- Investigate everything you believe – if it is truth it cannot be injured thereby; if error, the sooner it is corrected the better.
These sentiments are also found in 1 Thessalonians 5:21: “But examine all things; hold fast to what is good”.
I used this as the basis to discover whether my hypothesis for Biblical truth was accurate or needed to be modified. Along the way I turned up all sorts of unexpected evidence that has resulted in me changing my view of God. This website provides a window into some of the research I carried out while trying to validate my ideas about God.
I also note at this point that the understanding of what “without error” means covers a spectrum of views that can broadly be divided between “inerrancy” and “infallibility”. In the jargon, “inerrancy” is the more fundamentalist and refers to those who believe everything in the Bible is absolutely true including, for example, history and science. This group includes most Christadelphians. While “infallibility” refers to those people who believe that the Bible is wholly accurate in spiritual things but may contains errors in other areas, like history and science.
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