Survey of the New Testament - Lesson 2

I. Passing on Information During Jesus’ Life

So the topic this morning is how we got our Bible. Let me historically walk through the process. During Jesus’s life, there probably was not a lot of note taking. We know from rabbinic sources that the teaching was all oral, it was by word of mouth, and the rabbis got into the habit of repeating themselves over and over and over again.

It was also a culture that valued memory a lot more than our culture. They were expected to remember things exactly and precisely. I’m told that you can still go to the Middle East, to two different locations that there has simply never been any physical contact between the peoples for generations, and you can hear word for word exactly the same story being told. You know, they’re old folk tales, but they were taught to repeat them precisely. That’s just part of Middle Eastern culture, part of the biblical mindset.

Papyrus was expensive; you couldn’t carry around leather or other writing things very easily; and so the teaching was all oral. And also the church believed (not because they were taught it, but because they made an assumption from their Judaism) that Jesus, after he left, was coming back again pretty quickly. In Acts 1:6 they go, “Is it now that you’re going to return the kingdom to Israel?” So they still didn’t get it that Jesus was going to be gone or even gone very long, so there really wasn’t a need to take notes. But anyway, there was this three and a half years of Jesus’ ministry as he was teaching.

II. Period of Oral Transmission

When Jesus died, we entered into a period of what’s technically called the “oral transmission.” That just means people told the stories of Jesus by word of mouth. (And by the way, if I use the word “stories” or “traditions,” it doesn’t mean that they’re not true; that’s just the technical language that I’m used to using from school, so excuse me.) But there was this period of oral transmission where the things that Jesus did and the things that Jesus taught were passed on orally from person to person. And not all of those stories made it eventually into the Gospels, did they? John says precisely the opposite: “If I told you everything that Jesus did the world couldn’t hold all the books.” But even in a passage like Acts 20, Paul is saying, “Remember, Jesus said it’s more blessed to give than to receive.” You look in vain in the Gospels, but it’s not there. So there were a lot of stories about what Jesus did and said that were floating around.

A. Examples

And it appears that the church started formulating its theology. For example, it appears that at times Paul is quoting someone. In the Pastoral Epistles he calls them “faithful sayings.” They are hymns—they were sayings that were said in the church that were memorized.

Some people, for example, think Philippians 2 was something that was said in the church as a teaching tool. “Jesus was in the form of God, but did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped”—you probably know the passage. It’s rhythmical; it reads like poetry. And so the church had not only all the stories of what Jesus did and said, but it also started to formulate its own understanding and using its own words, and that’s fine to do.

And then you also had the apostles. So in other words, you had more information. Paul tells the Corinthian church, “Now I don’t have any traditions from Jesus about what to do in this situation, but here’s what I say you should do.”

In other words, you had this whole mix of information is what I’m trying to say. Stories of Jesus, stuff the church is kind of formulating, new information from the apostles. And one of the questions that comes at this point is: how accurate is all of this? This is one of those questions that everybody needs to think through, and for most Christians, at least evangelical Christians, our answer is, “Well of course it’s accurate.” But it’s really important that you think through why it’s accurate. I mean, people are telling stories; it’s not written down; there’s no central database of all this information. How do you know they got it right? How do you know they didn’t change it? So there’s this whole question of accuracy.

III. Was the Early Church Accurate? (Jesus Seminar)

How many of you have heard of the Jesus Seminar? Okay, about half of you, a little more than that. I think it’s done now; I think they’ve finished all their voting with all their different cute little colored cards. The Jesus Seminar is a good example of why this is an important question. It’s composed of a bunch of scholars, (so of course that means they’re right…no). But it is some amazing technical scholars who got together with all their different colored cards. It’s headed by a guy named Robert Funk, and they voted their way through the Gospels. “Could Jesus have said this or could he not have said this?” And so, for example, they threw out most of the Lord’s Prayer, although they said a few pieces probably were from Jesus. But they say things like, “Well since Jesus never wanted to create the church, anything he says about living in community can’t be original because he didn’t want to create a following.” Or, “Jesus obviously wasn’t a supernatural being because there are no such things as supernatural beings.” And so when the New Testament talks about Jesus being the Son of Man coming to judge, “Oh no, Jesus would never do anything like that; the church must have made that up.” And they have their filter that they went through the New Testament, and basically what they’re saying is that during this period of oral transmission, the church made up a whole bunch of stuff and changed the message of Jesus. And in many of these people’s minds, Paul is the really bad guy because Paul came in and he changed everything.

Let me just give you a few answers to the Jesus Seminar, the kinds of answers that perhaps you could use in talking to someone. If you want more information on any of this stuff, just ask me after class, and if I don’t know of a book, I’ll dig one up for you.

Number one: one of the reasons that I believe that the New Testament Church got it right is because of the presence of eyewitnesses. You had a lot of people who watched Jesus; it wasn’t just the 12. There were many, many more people that followed Jesus; they just weren’t part of the inner circle, and they are all still around.

You remember that passage in 1 Corinthians 15 where it talks about Jesus appearing to different people after the resurrection? “And at one time he appeared to more than five hundred people at one time.” So you have this large group of people who have followed…actually, after Judas killed himself, and they were going to get a new 12th apostle, one of the requirements was he has to have been with us from the beginning and been a witness to the resurrection. So there’s this large group of people, not just the 12, that followed them around. And those people would have exerted real control. If somebody said, “Well, Jesus said…” and then made up something, there were enough people around that had been with Jesus the whole time that would have said, “No, he never said that, no, no.” If someone says, “Well, Jesus says, ‘You don’t forgive someone unless they beg for forgiveness.’” Someone else would say, “No, he didn’t say that at all; he said ‘Father forgive us our debts as we forgive those who have sinned against us,’” from the Lord’s prayer. So you had the presence of eyewitnesses which is a controlling factor.

Secondly, you have the promise of the Holy Spirit. It comes up several times in John—once John 14:26. Jesus says, “But the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” Now sometimes that verse is used that somehow the Holy Spirit is going to illumine me, and that’s not what it’s saying. It’s a promise to the 11 disciples in the Upper Room that God is going to supernaturally watch over their memories, and that the Holy Spirit is going to help them to remember things correctly, what Jesus did and what Jesus taught. Now you’re probably not going to convince an atheist, but a lot of these kinds of arguments are good to know in case you have questions. “Did they really get this right?” Jesus promised that God, the Holy Spirit, was going to work in the lives of the apostles, making them remember exactly what Jesus did and what Jesus taught. Is that reasonable? Sure it’s reasonable. So I think (more for a believer) that’s a very valid argument that we can trust it.

Thirdly, these people were getting persecuted for their faith pretty quickly. At first, people received them and liked them, but pretty quickly you have the leaders being killed, the church being dispersed. And not many people die for a lie. I remember when I was a kid, Josh McDowell used to make this point all the time. A lot of people in history have died for things that are not true, but very rarely will you find someone who is willing to die for something they know to be a lie. And so the fact that the church was being persecuted and would not change direction, continued to assert, “No, this is what Jesus said, this is what Jesus did, I’m going to hang in there until death,” suggests that they were not willing just to make up stories willy-nilly about Jesus. But as faithfully as they could, as they were inspired by the Spirit, to be able to recount what Jesus actually did and said.

And fourthly, just in terms of, “Was the church accurate at this stage?” A lot of this just has to do with presuppositions. The people in the Jesus Seminar are not smarter than you or me, no dumber than you or me. They just have a whole different set of presuppositions like you and I have. We have presuppositions; they have presuppositions. We have filters, we have ideas that we push things through. Many of their presuppositions is that there is no such thing as the supernatural; there’s no such thing as the miraculous. So obviously when you hit the Gospels, and you push it through, you can’t have Jesus waking on water and calming the sea because that stuff just doesn’t happen. So that’s their presuppositions, and it’s their presuppositions that lead them to the conclusion that the Bible isn’t accurate. It’s not the text itself (that’s a very important point).

Now there are some problems in the Bible; there are some places that look like they contradict each other. We’re going to talk about that the next time we’re together. But in terms of presuppositions, it’s their presuppositions that drive them to these wild and crazy conclusions sometimes.

IV. Period of Writing: Authorship & Authority

So anyway, there was this period of oral transmission. I don’t think the church created stuff; I think it had every reason to be as truthful as it can, persecution being a big part. Eventually then, they decided though that they had to start writing these things down. We don’t know how early the Gospels were written, certainly by the 50s you’ve got Mark being written, so it really didn’t go that far during this oral period.

And the thing to stress during when the Gospels and the New Testament started to be written is that the authority of the documents are all bound up in the authority of the writers. In other words, Paul writes his letter to the Roman church; it’s received instantly as fully authoritative, no question, Paul’s right. How come? He’s an apostle. We all know he’s an apostle. He does the works of the apostles. The church has recognized it. So Romans was picked up right away.

There are other writings by other apostles. When they were writing things down, they would have been accepted instantly by the church. The Gospel of Mark is the memoirs of Peter. According to church tradition, it’s Peter authority lies behind the Gospel of Mark. Mark was accepted as authoritative. It was accepted as getting it right right away because, well, it’s Peter. Obviously Peter knows what he’s talking about.

Matthew accepted instantly. Interestingly, John had some trouble; both his Gospel and his letters had trouble being accepted because some of the heretics were using it to try to prove their point, and so the church was a little leery about the writings of John. And we’re going to talk more about this whole issue of what’s called canonicity later. But because it was John behind it, the beloved disciple. Ultimately they said, “It’s got to be correct; we just simply have to accept it even if these people are misusing it.”

Here’s the point I’m trying to make. At a very early date, within 20 years probably of when Jesus died, you had people that were absolutely trusted. They were fully authoritative. They were recognized by the church as a whole (not just a little church in this city or a church in that city) as being people with ultimate authority to speak for God. It’s their authority that lies behind the Scripture; it’s their rightness that lies behind the rightness of Scripture.

So that is the process from Jesus talking up to it getting written down. There are, of course, some books that are written by non-apostles, right? Luke was not an apostle and wrote a third of the New Testament: Luke and Acts. We don’t know who wrote Hebrews. James wasn’t an apostle; he was a half brother of Jesus, but not an apostle. So there are some writings that we have that are not from apostles. But the bulk of the New Testament was written by people who were seen to be totally authoritative because…

What I’m trying to do is lay a foundation for helping you understand why you can trust it; that’s where I’m going in all this.

V. Writing of the Synoptics

Specifically, when it comes to writing, we need to talk about something called the “synoptic problem,” or the Synoptic Gospels, because much of the discussion that you hear over the water cooler at work, that kind of stuff, has to do with the synoptics.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the Synoptic Gospels. And they’re called that because they are so similar; that’s what the word synoptic means, synoptic.

A. “Synoptic Problem”

There are many, many places in which Matthew, Mark, and Luke that are very similar in wording and in order. The problem comes about more when they are different because even in the same paragraph they can be very, very similar, and yet there can be significant differences among the three Synoptic Gospels. So the synoptic problem, as we call it is, “How do you explain the similarities and differences that exist among the Synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke?”

In one sense this isn’t that big of a deal to me, but in another sense it is, because we’re in an area— Can you trust your Bible? That’s why it’s important to understand how Matthew, Mark, and Luke got put together, because if you can see it, then you can understand that they’re trustworthy.

When I was a teacher, if I had asked for a term paper on the life of Christ, and if I had gotten Matthew, Mark, and Luke, I would have flunked all three of them and sent them to the dean; because you can’t copy, you can’t come out word for word, and yet significant differences without there being an issue of trust or honesty or something like that involved. So, I’m going to go into some detail about the Synoptics, but the point is that I want you to see that you can really trust them. That’s my goal. All right?

Let me give you some examples. In fact, in your notes, it’s at the end of this section, you can see that I gave you two passages: it happens to be Matthew 3:7-10 and Luke 3:7-9. The underline on the slide is where they’re different. The first sentence is a little different, “But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them,” or, “he said therefore to the crowds that came up to baptized by him…” In other words, Matthew, for whatever reason, wanted to be a little more specific as to who was in the crowds. Evidently Luke didn’t think it was very important, so he left out some of those details. One has the singular “bear fruit” the other has the plural “bear fruits.” One says “do not presume to say to yourself” while the other, “do not begin to say to yourselves.” Those are differences that are reflective of the Greek; they are not just English differences. But the rest is exactly the same, word-for-word. Now how does that happen? How do they get word for word, exactly the same?

And yet, there’s also significant differences in wording if you compare stories. In one of the Synoptics, it says Jesus was crucified between two thieves and they reviled him. In Luke, you have the story of one of those reviling thieves that converts (the verses are in your handout). And he converts, and you can look at that and say, “But that’s so different.” One says they reviled him and the other one, evidently, found out more about Jesus and repented of sins and were going to see him in heaven. But there are these kinds of differences, similarities and differences of wording.

There’s also similarities and differences of order. The Synoptics all have the same basic structure. Jesus spent most of his time in Galilee. He went on a long trip outside of Israel and eventually ended up in Jerusalem and died. There’s a basic similarity of order.

And yet there are some significant differences. For example, if you go to the story of temptation in Matthew 4, the devil says, “Turn the stones to bread, jump off the temple, worship me.” In Luke, the order is different—it’s stone to bread, worship me, jump off the temple. You go, “Wow, that’s pretty different, isn’t it?” So the question is how do you explain these similarities, and how do you explain the differences? I’ll come back and explain these to you in a second.

VI. What Do the Synoptics Say About Themselves?

If we’re going to see how the Synoptics were put together, it’s best to let the Synoptics tell us how they were put together; and there’s three passages that are very, very important to understand.

A. Luke 1:1-4

The first is Luke 1, the first 4 verses. As I read this, you tell me what Luke is telling you about how he went about writing his Gospel. He says, “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.” There’s a lot in those four verses that tell us what Luke is up to, aren’t they? What are some of the things that he tells us about how he went about writing the Gospel?

Student: He’s not the first one.

Dr. Mounce: Okay, he’s not the first one; there’s other accounts out there.

Student: He’s trying to make it orderly.

Dr. Mounce: He’s trying to make it orderly; that’s really important. He’s not claiming to make it chronological. I know one of the translations out there basically says that, but it’s a virtually impossible translation of the Greek word. He’s claiming to do an orderly account.

Ancient writers were not nearly as concerned about sequence as we are. For example, the temptation narrative: Matthew says turn stones to bread; and then the temptation was jump off the temple; and then the temptation was worship me. In Luke, it says temptation one is turn the stones to bread; and there was a temptation, worship me; and there was a temptation, jump off the temple. When we hear and, we hear sequence. That’s our culture; that’s not the biblical culture. And so there is a very strong theme in Luke that a prophet dies only in Jerusalem, and it appears that Luke changed the order; doesn’t claim to be telling us chronologically, but he’s trying to make a point. So he just says and this happened, and this happened, and this happened; no claim to chronology, though.

But there are other things there, too. He’s a Christian. 

Student: He’s writing to corroborate other testimonies.

Dr. Mounce: Yeah, historical. Veracity is very important to him, isn’t it? He wants Theophilus, the guy who’s probably paying for all of this, to know with certainty the things that he’s been taught. So for example, you find in Luke a tremendous emphasis on historicity. “It was when Quirinius was governor of Syria that Augustus ordered the world to be taxed.” When you get especially into Acts and he starts recounting all the places that Paul traveled in this trip, he almost ad nauseum tells us every little hole in the wall that Paul stopped at on his trip to Rome. “Come on Luke, I don’t really care.” Well, Luke does care because he wants us to understand these things really happened.

So there’s even a broader issue there too, and that is Luke’s writing with purpose. It’s not simply to tell us everything he could possible drum up about Jesus, but he has certain goals in mind, and he’s writing and he’s choosing certain stories of Jesus and he’s doing it with intent.

The reason that’s so important is that you might just kind of read it… Well, let’s take the thieves, for example. Is that an error when Matthew says he was crucified between two thieves on the cross who reviled him? Luke says one of them converted. Did Matthew make an error? No, because Matthew is not claiming to tell us everything. That’s really important. It’s kind of one of those foundational things: Matthew makes no claim to tell us absolutely everything about Jesus. John, in fact, denies it; he says “I can’t…the world couldn’t hold all the books.” They didn’t have memory chips back then. So Luke tells us the story that Matthew doesn’t. It’s a great story. I have no doubt that both thieves started by reviling Jesus, and what do you think Jesus did? For the first time in his life sat there and didn’t say anything? No, I’m sure he witnessed to the thieves. I’m sure he talked about who he was and what he was there to do. And one of the thieves was converted on the cross. Matthew is not wrong by not telling us about that; he just didn’t want to tell us about it. So you have picking and choosing going on. You also have the fact that Luke is a Christian, “accomplished among us, the growth of the Gospel.” Anyway, there’s some good stuff in there. But, this is a research paper; Luke went out and researched his stuff. There’s a lot of other source material out there, but he has certain goals in mind and he picked the material that was important to him.

B. John 20:30-31

If you go to John, near the end of John, chapter 20:30, John writes: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” Again, John is writing with purpose, isn’t he, and it’s a highly evangelistic book. That’s the whole point of John. “This is my goal. I went out and I know all these stories about Jesus, but I’m going to pick and choose the ones that will help me accomplish my purpose, and that is to help you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.” So there was purpose.

C. John 21:25

And again, I’ve said it before, but in the end of John 21, “Now there were many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” There’s selection going on. They don’t claim to tell us everything.

Now this is really important, because if you look at that passage that we looked at earlier about the crowds coming to John the Baptist to be baptized, one says that there were Pharisees and Sadducees. The other one doesn’t specify. Is that an error? There are people who will say that’s an error because they have some convoluted definition of what the Gospel writers are trying to do. They’re not claiming to tell us absolutely everything. They’re not claiming to tell us everything in chronological order. But they have purposes; they have a mission for writing, and they are going to pick those stories of what Jesus did and said to accomplish their goals. It doesn’t make it wrong; it doesn’t make it untrustworthy. That’s just the way they did it. Okay?

VII. Reconstruction

Okay, having said that, let me give you the standard reconstruction of how the Gospels were written. And again, this may be more than you want to know, but I’ll tell you anyway. And of course, all these things, there’s always controversy about everything, but this is the standard explanation.

Most people think that Mark was written first, that he was the first of the Gospels to get written down; and it’s generally believed that Mark was written when Peter was in Rome. There’s a lot in Mark that would especially appeal to the Roman way of thinking. We don’t translate it because it’s such horrible English, but the first chapter of Mark has got 40 (I think) “immediately"s. “Now Jesus did this, then immediately he did this, then immediately…” It’s immediately, immediately. And you’re translating it…come on! But he’s presenting Jesus as a man of action, which is something that would have been very appealing to the Romans. Interestingly, all of Mark, except for basically one passage, is replicated in Matthew and Luke. So if you’ve read Matthew and Luke, except for one passage, you’ve read basically all of Mark. But anyway, Mark was the first one written.

The second source we call “Q” (it’s an abbreviation for a German word). It’s hypothetical, but what it is is that we believe that there was another gospel written that’s been lost, and Matthew and Luke made use of this document. It explains why the story about John the Baptist, why it’s so word-for-word the same, because they are both copying from the same document. So Q is used to describe information that does not occur in Mark, but occurs in Matthew and in Luke. In other words, Matthew and Luke sat down, they had Mark and they copied most of it. Then they had this other source which we don’t have anymore, but they copied from that.

And then the other two sources are called, very creatively here, M and L. In other words, it’s just a way of saying that Matthew has information that no one else has and L (Luke) has information that no one else has. So when Matthew sat down to write his gospel, he had the Gospel of Mark, copied all but one paragraph (why he left that paragraph out I have no idea). He had this other thing that he copied from, and then he had a bunch of other information. So he picked and he chose what he wanted to do. For example, Matthew is written to the Jews (nobody debates this that I know of), because what you’ll find in Matthew is anything and everything that can prove that Jesus is the Messiah, you’re going to find it in Matthew. Constantly, Matthew is pointing out that Jesus fulfilled prophecy. Luke doesn’t care about that because Luke’s written to Gentiles who mostly don’t know the Old Testament, so the fact that Jesus fulfilled prophecy is not important to Luke. It’s important to Matthew. So he picked and chose the information that was important to his audience.

And then there’s Luke, who primarily has Mark and this Q document, and then a bunch of other stuff. And Luke has other purposes. One of the purposes in Luke is to let people know that Jesus cared about the minorities. If there’s a story about a woman, you’ll find it in Luke. If there’s a story about someone who is a social outcast, you will probably find it in Luke and not in Matthew and Mark, because that was one of those real important things to Luke. And Luke is a Gentile, right? So it’s the story of Jesus going outside of Israel and traveling for a while among the Gentiles, among the non-Christians; that’s huge to Luke, because he’s a Gentile. So that section in Luke goes on for some 10 chapters. In the other Gospels, it’s much shorter.

So they are all picking and choosing what they want to accomplish their goals. This is important because you will run across people who will see the differences in the Synoptics, and they will conclude they can’t trust them because they’re so different and yet so similar. “They’ve obviously copied, but they didn’t all get it right,” will be their conclusion. And so you need to understand how these things go together so you understand why you can trust them.

VIII. Harmonization

Let me give you an example of how this goes. You know the word “harmonization”? What I’ve done earlier is called harmonization. Harmonization asks the question, is there any way in which both stories can be correct even though they are different? I did that with the temptation narrative. I did it with the thief on the cross. Is there some way that both thieves could have reviled Jesus and yet one of them became a Christian? Sure. Okay, that’s the process of harmonization.

Let me show how it works with the birth stories. Both Matthew and Luke agree that Jesus was born. Okay. And then they both agreed that the shepherds came that night. But this is where the story changes. If you read it in Luke, he was taken to be circumcised in the temple and then he was given his name. Matthew, on the other hand, has the Magi (the three wise men) come and then he goes to Egypt for two years; and you have the killing of the children. But both Matthew and Luke agree that he ended up in Nazareth. And you can look at that and say, “How could you trust something like that? My goodness, there was a whole trip to Egypt and Luke didn’t get it.” How are you going to put that together? I’ve already given you a hint in terms of how it’s laid out on the screen.

Let me give you some interesting facts. How old is a baby when he’s circumcised? Eight days. So we know that circumcision happened within eight days of the shepherds.

And what’s interesting about the naming…this is when he sees Anna and Simeon, those two people in the temple. If you go and you read what they said about Jesus, they call him “A light to the Gentiles.” For Luke, it’s a tremendously important statement that at the very beginning of Jesus’ life, he is being proclaimed as having a ministry to non-Jews. That’s probably why Luke included them.

Okay. Where was Jesus when the Magi came? He wasn’t in a manager; all those nativity scenes we have are wrong. He was in a house. So whenever the Magi came it wasn’t the night on which he was born. I guess you could say the innkeeper felt sorry for them and let them come in, but there’s no suggestion that happened.

And how old were all the babies that Herod had killed? Two and under. Now we know that Herod was absolutely paranoid. He killed off his own family. But you’ve got to be pretty paranoid to kill two year olds and down in order to get a one-day old baby.

When you put all those pieces together and harmonize them, what it appears happened (now I don’t know for sure this happened, but it’s a pretty good guess), that he was born that night the shepherds came. Joseph is in his hometown (he’s in Bethlehem), evidently decided to stay around awhile. Mary just had a baby. They took him to Jerusalem, not very far away, to have him circumcised, and then it appears they went back not to Nazareth, but went back to Bethlehem. It makes sense. He stayed there for a while. The Magi came (we don’t know how long, except that Herod went on his killing rampage after they left). So probably between the naming and the Magi, you’ve probably got about a year or year and a half. The Magi left, Herod went nuts, the angel told Joseph to get out of town, he went down to Egypt for two years, and the babies were killed. And after Herod died, they came back and they went back up to Nazareth.

Okay, that’s the whole process of harmonization. Looking at, in this case, Matthew and Luke, and saying “Is there any way they are both true? How do they fit together?” So you go to the text, you look for hints and pieces, and you fit them together. Now, like I said, this may be overkill for some of you right now, this may be too much information, but you need to understand that there will be people who will attack your faith by saying the Gospels aren’t reliable. And you need to see with relative ease you can start fitting these things together, and they make perfectly good sense.

I’ve got a good friend who teaches at a school in Tennessee, and when he gets to the synoptic problem in class, he sends two people out into the hall. And they sit just 30 feet from each other for about a half hour. And he goes through and he explains the synoptic problem, and then he brings the people back in. And he has each person describe what it was like to sit in the hall for a half hour and what happened. And so the first one goes through all the discussion, and then the second one describes it, and all about 30 seconds into it, the whole class starts snickering and laughing because it’s like, “were you two in the same hall?” I mean…“did you see the same things?” “Yeah, but this is how I saw it.” “This is how I saw it.” And they obviously were sitting in the same hall for the same 30 minutes, but their stories are different, but they’re compatible. That’s all that harmonization does. And we’ll do more of this as we get into the Gospels. But I wanted to introduce it to you here.

What I want you all to understand is that even if, when you’re presented with a problem in the Gospels, even if you can’t explain it, you need to understand that there is a process that you can go through with a little bit of study, with a little bit of learning, so that these Gospels all do go together and make sense. Okay? But that’s the process.

A. The importance of trusting the Bible

Where all of this is going is the simple question of: “Can we trust the Bible?” And I’ve been trying to give you enough background so you can deal with the questions that come up. This is one of the fundamental questions that you will answer in your life, and again it’s so easy in evangelicalism. I mean, I watched this for 10 years when I taught in university, to have evangelical students say, “Oh sure I trust the Bible,” and the next year they were coming in and say, “Is it okay if I sleep with my girlfriend?” “Isn’t the Bible pretty clear on that?” “Well, yes, but it’s just the Bible.” “Oh, so you don’t really believe the Bible’s from God.” “Well I guess not that part.”

I mean, those are conversations I had in a Christian University year after year after year. This whole thing of, “Can I trust my Bible,” you cannot make a snap answer to it. But it’s something that, as you go through the experiences of life, you will kind of remake and remake. We had two children die at birth. You readdress this question: “Do I really believe a Bible that says that God is all good all the time? Then why did my two daughters die?” And so this is not a question to be rushed through; it’s not a question that you can answer once when you’re 10 and that’s it for life. But the whole thing of trusting your Bible is it’s fundamental to your walk.

As a preacher, this is something I have to deal with. The reason I preach the Bible is that I believe it’s true and I trust it. When I hear preachers preach something other than the Bible, my question is, “I wonder if they really believe it or not. Because if you really believe the Bible is true, why are you mixing your ideas with God’s ideas?” Doesn’t make any sense to me.

So no matter who we are or where we are, this, the question of trusting Scripture, is going to be a process. Fundamental questions of life: was Jesus and the writers right? “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many?” Do you really believe that? Do you believe the essence of Christian discipleship, just like the essence of Jesus’ life, is to be a servant? Do the writings accurately portray what Jesus and the others taught, or did the church make up stuff? Do you trust it? Are you willing to bet your life on it?

I talk to some people about Christianity and they say, “Well, I’ll think about it later.” And I’ll go, “Are you willing to bet your life on that—that you’ll be around later?” “Well, I just think, you know, that all roads lead to God.” “Well that’s interesting. Are you willing to bet your eternal life on that? Because you are. That’s exactly what you’re doing.”

Is it your authority? And again, especially for our children, this is something in our family we work on; I’m sure in your families you do as well. Kids have to make their own decisions, right? And all of us who were at one time kids understand that, don’t we? And again, with teaching for ten years in the university I watch people, kids (18, 19 year olds) say, “You know what? My mommy and daddy believe this, but I have to believe it myself, don’t I?” Other than getting married to a non-Christian, that was the second most common question I had in a Christian school…is, “Mom and dad believe it, I’m not sure I do.” So these are fundamental questions that each one of us has to make for ourselves.

IX. Inspiration

A. Definition

What we’re dealing with here is the whole doctrine of what’s called the inspiration of Scripture. The definition of inspiration is that Scripture comes from the mouth of God. The primary verse for this is 2 Timothy 3:16, “For all of Scripture is…” The older translation said “inspired,” the NIV says, “All Scripture is God-breathed,” and I love that translation. But we had to do it something differently in the ESV, so we said, “All of Scripture is breathed out by God and is therefore profitable for teaching, correction, rebuke, and training in righteousness.” The doctrine of inspiration has to do with source, where does it come from, and 2 Timothy 3:16 says it comes from the very mouth of God, and then it spells out the implications of that.

Notice the doctrine of inspiration deals with source, not mode. Where does Scripture come from? It doesn’t primarily deal with how did God do that; how did he speak it out. And sometimes when we’re talking about inspiration we kind of go off into another…to talk about, “Well, did he dictate it, or did he do it some other way?” That’s an important question, but first and foremost the doctrine of inspiration is where do you think Scripture came from. And Scripture says it came from the very mouth of God.

B. Infallibility

There’s two words that are connected with discussions of inspiration that are important to know. The first is the word “infallible,” and in our statement of faith, this is the word that we use. Scripture is infallible. In other words, it’s true in all that it affirms. Everything it says is true. That’s the doctrine of the infallibility of Scripture. Because it comes from the mouth of God, and God cannot lie, then everything it says must be true. Okay, that’s infallibility.

C. Inerrancy

The other word is “inerrancy,” and inerrancy is the doctrine that there are no errors in Scripture—there are no internal contradictions; there are no contradictions between the text and science and history, and whatnot. Now you may look at that and you may say, “Well, in essence infallibility and inerrancy mean the same thing. Well yes, as far as the English words are concerned, yes, they mean exactly the same thing. But historically there has been a debate for the last 30 years around those two different words. So people are going to use these words differently and you need to be aware of what’s behind them.

Inerrancy (I’m an inerrantist), inerrancy is sometimes associated with… Modernism hit the church a hundred years ago; it destroyed large portions of the church. The part of the church that stayed faithful fought for the authority of the text, and inerrancy was one of those words they wanted to use, that it’s true in everything that it says.

When I was in seminary, at Fuller Seminary in the early 70s, we were in the middle of this debate in the church, and Fuller championed the “infallibility” word. By “infallible,” what they mean is that Scripture is true in areas of faith and practice, but it’s not necessarily true in areas of history and science. That was how Fuller divided it. Scripture is true in areas of faith and practice. If it says this is what you believe, this is how a Christian behaves, then that’s true. But if Scripture makes a statement about science or history, it’s not necessarily true. That’s outside the scope of inspiration. Now we’re going to get into that in a second, but that’s historically, over the last 30 years, the difference between those two words. Is everything it says true, or is only some of it true?

I was just talking to a professor at a local school a couple of months ago, and it was interesting to hear exactly that distinction championed again. And this is what he’s teaching: that the Bible says Quirinius was Governor of Syria when Augustus ordered the world to be taxed. “Well, not necessarily, that’s a statement of history; it’s not inspired.” But those are the words that are involved with it. Okay? I’ll get back to talking about them in a second.

D. The method of inspiration

There are three what are called theories of inspiration that do have to do with, “Okay, how did God do this? How did God go about breathing out Scripture?” And on one side of the spectrum (there is no word for it, so I made it up), “inspiring.” Some people think Scripture is inspiring. They may think Doonesbury is inspiring or they may think that Shakespeare is inspiring or Garfield is inspiring or Scripture’s inspiring too, but it’s a totally human book. So that position is over there.

As far away as you can get from that is what’s called “the dictation theory.” The dictation theory says that God simply said every word and the writers wrote down what they heard. In other words, the Gospel writers were nothing more than stenographers. Now there certainly are areas of Scripture that claim that, aren’t there? “Thus saith the Lord, I had a vision and God said to me…” There are certainly places of Scripture that say these are the exact very words that God told me to write down.

One of the problems with the dictation theory though, is that if you were reading Greek (and it comes through somewhat in English), the writers are all really different. They have different sets of vocabulary; they have different ways in which they like to speak. There is a tremendous amount of personal variety in the writing of the New Testament. The Greek of Hebrews, 1 Peter, and Luke is exquisite Greek. It’s hard Greek, too. John is second grade “see Spot see Spot run” kind of Greek. It’s totally, totally different. Now could be that God inspired with different personalities, which is what this position says. But you do have a problem that there is this real definite variety of writing style and vocabulary throughout the New Testament.

The theory that’s in the middle (and you’ll find I normally sit in the middle) is called the “dynamic view” of inspiration. And the dynamic view of inspiration merely makes two affirmations. One is that the writers wrote exactly what God said. In other words, the dynamic view of inspiration holds firmly that these are the very words of God. And yet the dynamic view of inspiration says that God did not override their writing styles and personalities. And it’s a mystery; we simply don’t understand it.

Now some people aren’t comfortable with mystery here. They want it more concrete, and so they tend to go to the dictation theory. You know the verse in 2 Peter 1:20, that the writers of Scripture wrote as they were moved along by the Holy Spirit; that’s the verse the dynamic view of inspiration really likes to hang onto. The Holy Spirit superintended the process, didn’t override their personalities, but what was written was exactly what God wanted written. God did not want Matthew to tell the story of the repentant thief; God did want Luke to tell the story of the repentant thief. So those are just to put labels on where you can go with that.

E. The scope of inspiration

Okay, let’s get back to the whole issue of the scope of salvation. I don’t want to leave you hanging too much. The whole historical issue of infallibility and inerrancy raises the issue of the scope of salvation. Is it “all Scripture is inspired,” or as most of the people at Fuller wanted to translate it, “all the Scripture that is inspired” is profitable? How much of Scripture is from God? And the Fuller position, and many others, hold to what’s called “limited inspiration.” They use the word infallible, and by that they mean that the inspiration of Scripture is limited. It doesn’t apply to all of the Bible. Faith and practice, yes, but not necessarily history and science.

Let me tell you some of the problems connected with this position because I really don’t believe it. “Jesus Christ died on the cross.” Is that an inspired statement or non-inspired statement? It’s historical in one sense, but the minute you say, “Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins,” which is what the affirmation of Scripture (not in those words, but that’s what it teaches), is that inspired or not? It’s a totally—I believe—artificial separation because Christianity happened. And if Christianity didn’t happen, then none of it’s true. We’re not like Hindus. In Hinduism, it doesn’t matter whether the different people lived or not—because Hinduism is not grounded in history. Christianity must have happened; that’s why Paul says that if there’s no resurrection from the dead, then everything we believe is just waste.

So the problem that Fuller had, and the people who followed them, is that how do you determine what is history and what is science, what is faith and what is practice? It’s virtually impossible in Scripture to make that kind distinction. All the way through the story of creation, you have historical fact all woven with theology of significance of the creation of human beings, and the supremacy of God, and all these things that are…

Student: Pick and choose.

Dr. Mounce: Yeah, and that’s exactly what happens is people pick and choose. 

It’s also contrary to Scripture, I think. Scripture, the most straightforward, natural reading of 2 Timothy 3:16 is “All Scripture is inspired.” That’s the claim that it makes. And when you start seeing Paul in Galatians say, “Now the Old Testament refers to ‘seed,’ not ‘seeds.’” When he builds a whole theological argument on the fact that it’s a singular and not a plural; when Jesus says “Not a jot or a tittle are going to pass away;” we see this incredible desire to validate every single statement in Scripture. Then you start seeing you can’t really separate Scripture into different parts, some of which is inspired and some which is not.

You can also make the argument that if the Scripture writers can’t get history right, what makes you think they can get theology right? I mean it’s a lot easier for me to date the bombing of Pearl Harbor than it is to talk about things that are… I don’t know why I picked that example, but… Than to talk about what you should believe or how you should behave. And if I can’t get a historical fact right, what makes you think I can get anything right? So there are some very strong arguments against limited inspiration.

What the people are trying to deal with, who believe in limited inspiration…we’ll close with this…there’s two issues. One is, Jesus says, “The mustard seed is the smallest of seeds.” Well, we know that historically now, if you go into other cultures, you can find other seeds that are, in fact, smaller than the mustard seed. That’s been used as an example for decades that the Bible is full of errors because the mustard seed, in a technical sense, isn’t the smallest of seeds.

They’re also trying to deal with the places, especially in the Gospels, where they appear to contradict each other, and how do you handle those apparent (and I say apparent) contradictions. And their solution is to say, “Well, it’s not all inspired; there are mistakes in it.” And that’s how they explain these apparent contradictions.

The other view of inspiration…let me just close with this. I’m sorry, I can’t leave you there… The other one is just the doctrine of “plenary inspiration,” and we’ll go into more detail of this next time. A plenary inspiration view says “No, you can explain the apparent contradictions; there is no contradiction between Scripture and science. And all of Scripture claims to be from the mouth of God, and I believe that all (that’s what plenary means, that it’s full, that it’s complete), that all of Scripture is from the very mouth of God.” We’ll pick up there next time. Hopefully, I gave you something to chew on. 

“Father, again I pray that for all of us, that these not be simply academic questions, but that we understand that our trust in you, and our trust in your revelation, is what’s at stake. Father, may we think through these issues; may we repeatedly come to the right conclusion; and may we be able to teach our children and our friends, and our co-workers and our neighbors that Scripture is a reliable guide as it proclaims the good news of Jesus Christ. In Jesus’ name, amen.”