What is the Bible?
For some, the Bible is a compellation of books written by many authors over thousands of years that contains wisdom. For others, the Bible is a outdate, superstitious, and offensive collection of books that needs to be rejected.
However, for Christians, the Bible is the very word of God. While Christians recognize that the Bible does contain wisdom, history, unusual events and was penned by many human authors, the primary reason Christians affirm the Bible to be the word of God is because of how the Bible speaks about itself.
The Scriptures
In 2 Timothy 3:16 the Apostle Paul writes, “all Scripture is breathed out by God.” The term “Scripture” could also be translated “sacred writings.” The word is used in the New Testament fifty-one times.
Every use of the word is in reference to the Old Testament. However, there are two places in the New Testament where the term “Scripture” is not only referencing the Old but also New Testament.
For example, 2 Peter 3:16 warns about an “ignorant and unstable” group of people that “twist” the writings of the Apostle Paul “as they do the other Scriptures.” The text clearly teaches that Paul’s letters are viewed in the category of “Scripture.”
In addition, Paul cites two verses in 1 Timothy 5:18: Deuteronomy 25:4 and Jesus’ words from Luke 10:7. In the text he calls both “Scripture.” Again, the verse is clear: the words of Moses and Jesus found in these two books are in the category of “sacred writings.”
Therefore, for Christians, the “all Scripture” in 2 Timothy 3:16 is the Old and New Testament. That is, all thirty-nine books of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven books of the New Testament are “Scripture.”
God-Breathed
The reason all sixty-six books of the Bible are considered Scripture is because the Bible teaches that they are “breathed out by God” or “God breathed” (2 Tim. 3:16). The phrase comes from one single word in the Greek: theopneustos.
The Greek word does not teach that God breathed into an already existing Bible. Rather, Paul uses theopneustos to teach that God breathed out the Scriptures themselves. That is, the word denotes God’s action to make the Bible. Put another way, the Bible is very much the literal word of God just as this article is the very word of myself.
More significantly, Paul’s use of theopneustos denote origin and source. The great Princeton theologian and scholar B.B Warfield concluded:
“From all points of approach alike we appear to be conducted to the conclusion that [theopneustos] is primary expressive of the origination of Scripture, not of its nature and much less of its effects. What is theopneustos is “God breathed,” produced by the creative breathe of the Almighty… What [theopneustos] affirms is that the Scriptures owe their origin to an activity of God the Holy Ghost and are in the highest and truest sense His creation. It is on this foundation of Divine original that all the high attributes of Scripture are built.”[1]
Conclusion
Christians affirm that the Bible is God’s word because the Bible teaches that its ultimate origin comes from God himself. The belief that the Bible is God’s word is a common confession of Christianity since the beginning. While this article only looked at 2 Timothy 3:16, Christians recognize that Paul’s teaching through the use of the Greek word theopneustos is consistent with the entire revelation of God.
[1] B.B Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1948), 296.
