08 Inerrancy and the Teaching of Christ

Inerrancy and the Teachings of Christ (1) A deduction consists of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. We looked at the deductive evidence for inerrancy in chapter 5: God is true, God breathed out the Bible, therefore the Bible is true. Of course, any deduction is only as good as its premises. In that particular deduction, both premises are good and true simply because they are clearly stated in the Bible itself. So the deductive evidence for inerrancy is as strong and conclusive as the authority of the Bible itself. But there is also another line of reasoning, the inductive. In an induction one reasons from parts to the whole, from particulars to the general. A conclusion is thus drawn from the evidence. An induction is only as good as the completeness of the evidence studied. If the first five typewriters one saw were all electric, one might conclude that all typewriters were electric. Of course, the first nonelectric typewriter observed would invalidate the conclusion. But not all inductions run that high a risk of being invalid, for if one can examine as much evidence as possible, he can be assured of a very reliable conclusion.

We can examine all of the recorded teachings of Christ. We do not believe that there is any likelihood that some unrecorded teaching of Christ will turn up to invalidate the evidence we find from His teachings in the gospels. If we can investigate all that He said concerning the reliability of the Bible, then we can draw a valid conclusion about Christ’s view of the Bible.

If we find that He only used or taught in a general way about the Bible, then we may conclude that He believed in its reliability generally. If, on the other hand, we find that He relied on the minutiae of the Bible as accurate, then we must conclude that He believed it to be inerrant down to its details.

Let us consider the evidence of Matthew 5:17-18 : “Do not think I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke [jot or tittle, KJV] shall pass away from the Law, until all is accomplished.”

First, what is the promise? It is that the law and the prophets will not be abolished, but fulfilled. Abolish means not to accomplish something, and fulfill means to accomplish the promises. Christ is guaranteeing something about promises not failing.

Second, what is encompassed in the promise? “Law and prophets” included all of the Old Testament, our Lord’s Bible. “Law” in Matthew 5:18 means the same thing (compare the use of “law” in John 10:34, where it includes more than the Mosaic law).

Third, in what detail will all the promises of the Old Testament be fulfilled? The Lord said you can count on the Old Testament promises being fulfilled down to the very jots and tittles. The jot is the Hebrew letter yodh. It is the smallest of all the letters in the Hebrew alphabet. It would occupy proportionately about the same amount of space that an English apostrophe takes up in a line of English type. Actually, the Hebrew letter looks very much like an English apostrophe. Though it is the smallest of the Hebrew letters it is as important as any other letter, for letters spell words, and words compose sentences, and sentences make promises. If you spell a word one way, it is a specific word; if you spell it another way, even only a single letter differently, it is a different word. Tough means strong. One letter changed spells touch. One letter added spells though. Single letters spell different words. Our Lord promised that not one jot would fail. Every promise will be fulfilled just as it was spelled out.

Observe that Christ does not start with concepts and then allow for optional words to be used to convey those concepts (as concept inspiration teaches). He begins the other way around. The promises are based on the words as spelled, and those words can be relied on fully and in detail.

Neither did our Lord say that the promises would be fulfilled provided they were culturally relevant at the time of fulfillment. In some circles today promises are culturally reinterpreted, thereby actually invalidating the original promises. But Christ taught that we could count on plain fulfillment of the original promises as spelled out in the Old Testament. A tittle is even more minute than a jot. Whereas a jot is a whole letter, a tittle is only a part of a letter. The presence of a tittle forms a certain letter, but its absence causes that letter to become a different one. For example, the Hebrew letter beth looks like this: b . The letter kaph looks like this: k . Obviously they appear to be very similar. The only difference between the two letters is that the bottom horizontal line on the beth extends slightly to the right of the vertical line, whereas no extension appears on the kaph . That extension-not the entire bottom horizontal line but only the part of it that extends to the right of the vertical line-is a tittle. If it is present, the letter is a beth ; if it is absent, it is a kaph . And whether you see a beth or a kaph will result in your spelling different words. As another example, the Hebrew letter daleth looks like this: d . The resh looks like this: r . Again the tittle is only that part of the horizontal line that extends to the right of the vertical line. But a word spelled with a daleth is different from one spelled with a resh. The Lord’s promise was that not one jot or tittle will fail to come to pass of all the promises of the Old Testament. They are precisely spelled and thus precisely fulfilled. In English we might illustrate a tittle this way: suppose I invite you to my house to have some Fun. You might rightly wonder what I consider fun. If I put a tittle or small stroke on the F, then you might conclude that I like to Pun. Punning is fun to me. There is nothing like a fast repartee of puns with someone. But you may not enjoy making puns, so I put another tittle on the letter. Now I have spelled Run. To run is fun for some, but not for me. So I add another tittle and now I am inviting you over to have a Bun. The difference between Fun, Pun, Run, and Bun is just the addition of a tittle in each case. But four entirely different words result, and with them, four distinct invitations!

Minutiae do make a difference. Toward the end of His earthly ministry the Lord again reaffirmed His total confidence in the minute reliability of the Scripture. At the Temple celebration of the Feast of Dedication, or Hanukkah (instituted in 165 B.C. to commemorate the cleansing and reopening of the Temple after its desecration by Antiochus Epiphanes three years earlier), the Jews asked Jesus to tell them plainly if He was the Messiah (John 10:25-39). His answer was, “I and the Father are one.” The word “one” is neuter; “one thing,” not “one man.” In other words, He did not assert that He and the Father were identical, but that He and the Father possessed essential unity, that He enjoyed with His father perfect unity of nature and of actions. The Jews had asked if He was the Messiah. His answer was more than they had bargained for, for in it He claimed also to be equal with God. That was certainly the way they understood His claim, for immediately they prepared to stone the Lord for what they considered to be blasphemy. In order to restrain them the Lord appealed to Psalms 82:1-8. He called that portion of the Old Testament “the law” (John 10:34), as He did on two other occasions (John 12:34 andJohn 15:25). In that law, He said, the judges of Israel, human beings, were called “gods” by virtue of their high and God-given office. Then, He concluded, if that psalm can apply the term “gods” to human beings, then certainly the term “son of God” may be rightly applied to the one whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world. In other words, if elohim is applied to men, how much more appropriate it is to apply it to Himself, since He does possess essential unity with the Father.

Though the argument is highly sophisticated, certain claims Christ made about the Bible are crystal clear. The Bible is verbally inspired. He pointed the Jews to what had been written. God’s Word came in written propositional statements, not merely in concepts, thoughts, or oral tradition. It is the written record that was inspired and that can be relied on. The Bible is minutely inspired. Psalms 82:1-8 is not what would be considered a major Old Testament passage. It is neither a psalm of David nor a messianic psalm. That is not said to demean in any way the psalm (for, of course, it is equally inspired with all other parts of the Bible), but to emphasize that the Lord did not pick an outstanding passage on which to base His argument. Indeed one might say, without being disrespectful, that He chose a rather ordinary, run-of-the-mill passage. Of course, He could not have done so if He did not believe that God’s inerrant inspired Word included such passages. Furthermore, from that ordinary passage He focused on a single word, “gods.” He could not have done so unless He believed in the minute inspiration of the Bible. He rightly assumed He could count on any part of the Bible and any word in any part. The Bible is authoritatively inspired. In the midst of His sophisticated arguing, the Lord threw in almost incidentally the statement “And the Scripture cannot be broken.” What does that mean? Simply that the Scripture cannot be emptied of its authority. The only way it could fail to have complete authority would be if it were erroneous, but Christ said here that it was both authoritative and inerrant. Some translations place that phrase in a parenthesis. It may be better to regard it as depending on the “if” that begins the sentence. That “if” introduces a first class condition, which means certainty and is better translated “since.” Thus the Lord was saying that two things are certain: the psalm called them gods, and the Scripture cannot be broken. Remember that Christ was here staking His life on the reliability of the Scripture, for His enemies were about to stone Him. Even further, He was banking on the accuracy and authority of one word of that Scripture.

Christ banked on the inerrancy of the Bible because He believed in its inerrancy. That is the only way its authority in details could be relied on. And He did rely on details-jots, tittles, and single words.

If He did, so may we. Indeed, so must we. For how can one fully follow Christ without also following His attitude toward God’s Word?