2 Tim. 3:16-17 (ESV) All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
So, by what Paul says here, Scripture is our source for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. What do people do who either don’t have the Bible or have rejected the Bible as uninspired?
In their book, An Introduction to Christian Philosophical Theology, Davis and Yang give four probable outcomes of a society without the Bible should they wish to understand salvation and how to arrive at salvation without Scripture:
“Legalism: A religious system that consists only of a set of rules that must be stringently followed.
“Ritualism: A religious system that prescribes ceremonial practices, perhaps to placate the gods or to engage in a trade in goods or services – for example, sacrifices for plenty of rain and crops.
“Relativism: The view that no particular set of beliefs or practices is correct or privileged – as long as you are sincere in what you believe and how you live, you are doing well.
“Nihilism: There is no answer to the question or no way of knowing the answer, so there is no hope of salvation – it is merely wishful thinking.” (Davis and Yang, p. 29-30)
As most of you know, there are two divine sources for information about God: creation and the Bible. These are called general revelation and special revelation respectively. We can learn a lot about God through His creation: God is orderly, creative, logical, caring, greater than the universe He created, and so on. It is our dependence on God’s Word which teaches us about God’s chosen people, their interaction with Him throughout their history, and, of course, the sacrificial death, burial, and resurrection of His Son in order that we might be offered eternal life.
Special revelation is not necessarily Scripture, though. It can also be dreams, visions, any sort of direct communication from God to man. Of course, these communications must be compared with the Scriptures themselves and discarded if they do not align.
We do seem to have evidence of some direct divine contact with men as long ago as perhaps 3000 b.c. Some of the names found in the ruins of Ebla, a city which thrived between 3000 and 2000 b.c., contain the name Ya, perhaps Yahweh. Names such as mi-ka-ya (“Who is like Yah”) and ish-ma-ya (“Yah has heard”) were found on tablets in the ancient city and may point to a public knowledge of Yahweh. The abbreviation of God’s name, “Yah,” is used throughout the Bible in the term “Hallelujah” where the “j” is pronounced as a “y.”
This might indicate God had contacted us through some sort of special revelation prior to Moses in order to guide men in righteousness even then. It could also have been passed down to their descendants by Adam and Eve through word of mouth.
Why is this important?
We see the need for some sort of contact whether written, as in the case of the Bible, or some sort of direct communication from God in the form of dreams or visions, for us not to wander off into some of the errors listed above by Davis and Yang. Scripture is the standard, the one true and reliable source for our knowledge of God and His will in our lives. It tells us specifically what God has done for us and how we please Him through obedience and displease Him through sin.
If there were no Bible, so much of what we know of God and of ourselves might never been realized.
Believers Armed and Dangerous 