Week of 06/28/26

• The Clarity of the Bible
  • The Bible has parts that are very clear, and parts less-so
  • We are commanded multiple times to study the Bible, and understand it
  • The Bible itself verifies its own clarity, in agreeing with itself
  • For those not willing to hear and “recieve” the Bible’s teachings, the Bible will be difficult, if not impossible to understand
  • Why do we misunderstand then?
    • Scope: often, lacking scope, or perspective, leads to misunderstanding
    • The Bible doesn’t specifically address the topic, so we draw conclutions from elsewhere, and try to fill in gaps left intentionally by God
  • No matter what, All Scripture is able to be understood
  • Just because people have been arguing about things for centuries, doesn’t mean we don’t have the answer in front of us
  • Don’t just hand the hard searching for answers to scholars, do it ourselves

Week of 06/21/26

• Authority
  • The OT is most easily verified to be God’s Word by the NT.
  • The NT is verified by itself, in defining all scripture as from God.
    • This isn’t just book A verifing itself, but book A verifing book B and vise versa. (e.g. 2 Peter 3:16 and 1 Timothy 5:18)
    • These books cite Jesus’ words, which obviously fall into the catagory of from God.
    • We also have cultural references and signs that the Church of the time recognized the NT writers as that times authority from God.
    • Paul has some parts where he specifically calls out that what he is saying is NOT from God. (see 1 Cor. 7:12)
  • This is generally a difficult thing to argue at all, as proving absolute authority is inheriently hard. This applies to last week too.
    • This is the basis for setting the Bible as the “Ultimate Standard of Truth” - Wayne Grudem
  • All of this means that the written word of the Bible are the the Final Authority.

Week of 06/14/26

• “The Word of God”:
  • A Person - see John 1:1
  • Literal words from God. - often in four flavors:
    • decrees - words that cause things to happen
    • addresses - words for us humans
    • from prophets
    • written - the Bible, even written by human hands
  • The modern-day focus is on the last one - the written word in the Bible
    • We can study the effects of decrees
    • addresses are uncommon and difficult to reliably study
    • similarly, prophets have ceased
• What is Canon, and why?
  • OT:
    • Basically we trust that the Old Testement we have is accurate, because the people at the time of the NT believed it.
      • Not just this though, early historians and teachers also validated it.
    • The things not quoted or referenced are not included, as they are not provably the Word of God.
  • NT:
    • Most of the New Testement is written by primary sources; the apostles.
    • The apostles verify each other
      • 2 Peter 3:16 - Peter verifies Paul
      • 1 Timothy 5:17–18 - Paul references Luke
    • The rest, and these, were methodically reviewed.
      • “In A.D. 367 the Thirty-ninth Paschal Letter of Athanasius contained an exact list of the twenty-seven New Testament books we have today.” - Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology