There is one final matter that must be established before proceeding to explore the various doctrines which I hold to be true, and that is the matter of Scripture. As it is to Scripture I shall turn to verify and validate those truths I am laying out, I must first establish that Scripture is a valid source of Truth in itself. So, continuing down the series of requirements I have pursued thus far, if Scripture is a valid source of Truth then it must necessarily, like Truth itself, remain consistent and non-contradictory. It will not tell me on the one hand that God is thus and so, and on the other that He is the exact opposite given the same predicating circumstances. It will not tell me that one thing is True, and tell another that said thing is false, and what is True is actually some other thing. It will not, then, be subject to interpretation, although it will most assuredly require interpretation.
A. Authorized Revelation
I shall state up front that I account the Scriptures to be texts which whose writing was authorized by God for the very purpose of setting down a verifiable, incontrovertible record of those doctrines He saw fit to make available to man. This authorization by God applies, certainly, to the original writing of those texts by their various authors, and sets His stamp of validation upon the things they have written. I would further assert that His authorization applies to the lengthy process of determining which writings composed the Scriptures, and which did not.
Such assertions on my part are rather difficult to establish as more than mere opinion. Yet, such assertions are utterly necessary to the task I pursue. If these texts are not so authorized, then they are not in any way authoritative. They are reduced to little more than witticisms, so far as the truths they espouse, clever tales so far as the history they present. But, we have this much already in our favor: They do present a historical record. It is a record which has been assailed from every quarter, with seemingly every detail brought into question by supposedly better informed minds. And yet, for every claim of historical inaccuracy, it turns out that archaeological efforts have consistently demonstrated the veracity of the biblical record.
There were periods when it was thought that the sundry Canaanite tribes noted in the Old Testament included some fictional peoples that never actually existed. That view, however, turned out to be no proof that the Bible was full of falsehoods, but rather that our historical understanding was incomplete. There was the suggestion that Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth placed people in government who had never been there, such as Quirinius, or that the census that led to Jesus being born in Bethlehem rather than Nazareth had not actually transpired. But, again, the evidence is in, and the evidence supports the biblical record.
Now, I have titled this section “Authorized Revelation”, but thus far I have only addressed the authorized aspect of the matter. As to the revealed nature of Scripture, this is equally important, but even more difficult to establish by any means but reference to the Scriptures themselves. That said, I must hold that these texts, having been authorized by God, reveal much about God which it is not possible for naked reason to ascertain. There is much, to be sure, that we can learn of God by considering the created order in which we find ourselves. There is much we might surmise by simply contemplating our own composition. But, far more remains which is not discernable by the powers of human reason alone.
At this juncture, I shall have to insist that neither is it discernable by the powers of human imagination alone, if at all. We shall find, in its pages, occasions wherein that which was revealed was in fact revealed through the vehicles of dreams and visions, as well as by divine visitation and what were apparently audible oracles from on high. Yet, at the same time, we are given severe cautions against assuming these as normative acts. We are not given license to suppose that every dream is some heavenly pronouncement, if only we could understand it. We are not given license to chase after every oracular claim, else we should have embraced the pagan mythologies alongside Christian faith, rather than insisting that these pagan mythologies were in fact the product of demons.
What I am saying, then, is that while these may have been the vehicles used in some cases, in many others it was not. We have no cause to suppose, for example, that the record of the gospels came about due to any dream or vision, but rather men of God sought to record that which had transpired in real life before real eye-witnesses. We find occasion to recognize that men such as Moses and Paul did in fact experience significant revelatory moments, although I find no dreams or visions per se in their record. Rather, they had direct experience of a revelatory nature, with God or His representatives directly presenting that which He would have them teach, that which He would have them write down and preserve for posterity.
My point is this: However each individual writer came by the knowledge they were given to reveal and record, it was indeed revealed knowledge. It was not philosophical musings. It was not the opinions of a man seeking to be aggrandized by claims of divine inspiration. There is plenty about and always has been, which would fit that definition, but Scripture is something else entirely.
