Is the Bible without error?
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By John Piper
About The Bible
Part of the series Ask Pastor John
In this audio excerpt, listen to John Piper discuss the meaning of the inerrancy of the Bible. For additional points on the issue, we offer the following summary of the doctrine of inerrancy.
2 Timothy 3:16 states that "All Scripture is inspired by God." The term "inspired" here is not used in the sense of "Beethoven was inspired to write great symphonies." It literally means "God-breathed." This applies to the entire Bible, and extends to the actual words, not just the concepts ("all Scripture"). Jesus also affirmed this for the Old Testament (Matt. 5:18) and promised this for the New Testament (John 16:12-15; 14:26).
Since God always speaks the truth, it follows that the Scriptures are without error. Jesus treated them this way, even basing his point in an argument with the Pharisees on the tense of a single word (Matthew 22:31-32; see also Galatians 3:16 where Paul does this as well) and stating "the Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35). This is called the doctrine of verbal, plenary inspiration, which means that the very words (verbal) of the Bible were all (plenary) God-breathed.
