At Grace United Reformed Church we have recently started our exploration of the Belgic Confession. Articles 2 – 7 speak of the purpose, source, authority, and sufficiency of Scripture (the Bible). It is critical to the Christian faith that the Bible, as God’s word, is infallible and inerrant. To use the Latin phrase, the Bible is the “norma normans non normata” (the “norm of norms that cannot be normed”). It is the ruler by which all other things are measured and it cannot be measured or judged by anything more accurate or authoritative.
If we disregard parts of the Bible as irrelevant or wrong then we’ve just walked away from that foundation. It’s all or nothing. That’s not to say we shouldn’t dig into the origins of Scripture or how the canonical books came to be recognized by the church. Do your prayerful research. It may be a little scary to someone who’s grown up in the church to look into these things, perhaps with the fear that what one finds may not be up to scrutiny and thus one’s faith may be shaken. In my experience it’s been the opposite – God has give us many practical reasons to trust that the Bible we have today is indeed true.
There’s one reason I find very compelling, that I don’t hear mentioned much: God chose to reveal Himself through the Bible. In the past He revealed Himself in various ways, such as by speaking to prophets and in visions. But the canon is closed now and the writings in the Bible are the primary and binding authority for God’s direction for mankind. If the all-knowing, all-wise, and all-powerful God deemed the written Bible to be the best way of handing us absolute truth for close to two thousand years now, then it seems reasonable that He is also working through history to ensure His Word to us remains accurate and uncorrupted.