"Anything Written by Men Must Be Flawed"

You may have heard it stated, “Why should I believe the Bible? It was written by men, and anything written by men must be flawed.” Notice two problems with this argument. First, this argument overlooks the fact that the Bible claims to have been written by men under God’s influence. Second, to believe this argument, one would be forced to disregard every historical fact one has ever read in a book. After all, humans have written every history book, every math book, every science book, and every other kind of book. Imagine a student standing up in her math class and proclaiming, “I cannot believe the Pythagorean theorem because it came from a book written by a man!”

— Voddie Baucham, The Ever-Loving Truth
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2 thoughts on “"Anything Written by Men Must Be Flawed"

  1. It’s especially interesting when Christians adopt this view and therefore react against the Bible having any origin whatsoever within the sphere of humanity. For example, if it is shown that Moses (or whomever) used the genre of Ancient Near East Creation Epic to convey the actual truth of God’s creating the universe, this would mean that the text is flawed and not from God by default. However, just as Jesus was fully human yet not tainted by sin, what’s to say that Scripture cannot speak God’s Inspired truth through a fully human text?

    Of course this is a whole ‘nother debate in and of itself, but I’ve found it useful in challenging many of the presuppositions often unknowingly embraced by Evangelicals.

    JMS

    ps: Peter Enns’ book “Inspiration and Incarnation” is an excellent treatment of this subject.

  2. That’s definitely true; we can end up with a docetic view of Scripture that way. Although Enns goes a lot further than I think he should. I’m more inclined to the view that Moses and other authors used some of the genres of the Ancient Near East with a polemical purpose– to argue against other ANE views.

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