In other words, God is faithful to protect His Word. That is why we have a “Holy Bible” in the first place. God has both inspired and guarded the writing of the Scriptures – at the very least those 66 foundational books – so that we now have something against which everything else can be judged.

Whew. Now we’re back to no controversy, right?

Actually, no. This is where the controversy begins. What about the “everything else” that is judged against the Scriptures? What if it “passes” the standard we have set? Is it then also God’s Word?

 Let me give an example: my beloved NASB (New American Standard Bible) that I have used for the last 40 years. It is not the actual, inspired writings of the Apostles and Prophets; it is only an English language translation of some copies of those writings. And it has some errors – I’ve found a few myself, as I have in every other translation. It is pretty easy to come to the conclusion that every translation is a mixture of the divine with some human input, misunderstanding, bias, and fallibility. Yet it is surely the Word of God, just the same, for I have found much life there – divine life, as communicated to my heart by the Holy Spirit.

I have about twenty other translations or paraphrases of the Bible. Some are, to my mind, more accurate to the original; some communicate better; some have fewer mistakes; yet I insist that all are God’s Word, just the same. They generally line up with the standard I have set, and in every one of them I also find divine life as revealed to my heart by the Holy Spirit. Don’t try to tell me, for example, that the Good News Bible is not God’s Word! When I was a youngster having trouble understanding the King James, I got a Good News for Modern Man New Testament. Through it, for the first time, I heard the Holy Spirit speak, even though it is just a lowly paraphrase with its simplifications, omissions, and mistakes.

But wait. God’s Word is perfect, inerrant, for God cannot make mistakes. I believe that with all my heart and soul. More than that, I believe that God guided the hands of the writers He inspired, so that those original Scriptures were authoritative and foundational, literally word-for-word “God breathed.”

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