Jesus’ View of Scripture
By Dr. Gary McCall
Pastor; degrees from Southeastern Bible College, Dallas Theological Seminary and Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary.
Did Jesus believe in the ‘inerrancy’ of the Scriptures? Some contend Jesus would not have used that term. This does not argue greatly against the concept which in its simplest form recognizes that it “. . . is a corollary of inspiration inasmuch as it is unthinkable that God should inspire that which is fraudulent, false, or deceitful.”[1]
Dan Kent in an article on equality in the Priscilla Papers lists nine views of inerrancy as identified by David Dockery here summarized:
1. Naive which corresponds with the mechanical dictation view of inspiration.
2. Absolute claims the Bible is accurate and true in all matters, and the writers intended to give a considerable amount of data on such matters as history, science, and geography. He identifies this as the view of Harold Lindsell.
3. Critical holds the Bible true in all it affirms, to the degree of precision intended by the biblical author. This view does not try to harmonize every detail of Scripture. It realizes that the authors had different purposes—Matthew and Luke, for example, . . . This is Dockery’s position.[2]
In my opinion, the second and third are valid views of inerrancy in all parts of Scripture while the first is only valid in passages that quote God as speaking, such as certain parts of the Law (Ex 19:3-6) and prophets (Jer 11:2-5).
4. Limited holds the Bible inerrant in matters of salvation and ethics but possibly contains “errors” of science or history expressing common understandings of that day. I. Howard Marshall is a proponent of this view.
5. Qualified believes inerrancy can be maintained if we qualify what is said as a faith statement. Donald Bloesch is cited as an example.
6. Nuanced makes the level of inerrancy depend on whether God dictated the content as in the Ten Commandments or whether He spoke through the author’s creativity as in poetry. Kent identifies this view with John Goldingay.
7. Functional maintains the Bible “inerrantly accomplishes its purpose” whether or not it is accurate in its view of history or science. Kent identifies this view perhaps with Augustine and the Baptist theologian, E.Y. Mullins.
8. Errant yet authoritative considers the whole argument on inerrancy irrelevant, distracting, and concerned with theological minutia that inhibits serious biblical research. This is the position of David Allan Hubbard.
9. The Biblical authority view does not see the Bible as inerrant, nor as a revelation from God. Rather, the Bible “is a pointer to a personal encounter with God. Questions of truth or falsity are of little concern.” Dockery identifies William Countryman with this view.[3]
I would not consider views four through eight to be inerrant views and nine clearly is not. I believe that Dockery’s view, critical inerrancy (#3 above), is one that would conform to the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy.[4]
The fact that the Chicago Council’s Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is about 4,000 words long does not necessarily speak to the difficulty of defining the doctrine, but instead to the need to address the problem of so many misinterpretations of the Scripture. This has led some to conclude that the Bible is not inspired and therefore not without error.
The Approach
For our purposes, we will approach this issue by confining ourselves to the Gospel of Matthew to answer the question: Were there things in the Old Testament Scriptures Jesus thought were in error and He needed to correct?
On what is meant by the term “Scripture” in the New Testament, I commend Warfield’s excellent study on the concept:
“The Jews possessed a body of writings, consisting of ‘Law, Prophets and (other) (K’thubhim),’ though they were often called for brevity’s sake merely ‘the Law and the Prophets’ or even simply ‘the Law.’ These ‘Sacred Scriptures’ . . . —or, as they were very frequently pregnantly called, this ‘Scripture’ . . . or these ‘Books’ . . . or, even sometimes, in the singular, this ‘Book’—were looked upon as all drawing their origin from divine inspiration and as possessed in all their extent of divine authority.” [5]
The canon of Scripture from which Jesus drew and to which He directed His hearers, both friend and foe, was already established by others and well-known by the 1st century. It is the Hebrew Scriptures that we commonly call the Old Testament. I believe that this is confined to the thirty-nine books of the Protestant Bible.
Nolland says there are sixty quotations from the Old Testament in Matthew.[6] By consulting David Philipps in Old Testament Quotes in the New Testament, I was able to identify thirty-five specific quotes of forty-seven Scriptures by Jesus Himself, plus one very clear usage of Scripture in 8:4.[7]
Jesus’ use of the Scriptures to refute the devil during His wilderness temptation shows His belief in inspiration and inerrancy.
Our Lord’s reliance on verses from Deuteronomy to counter the devil’s temptations were direct quotes given with the formula, “it is written” (Mt 4:4, 7, 10) show that He believed it was to be obeyed as a direct command from God. The quotes from Deuteronomy 8:3; 6:16; and 6:13 are exact quotes from Septuagint translations and accurately reflect the underlying Hebrew text. Jesus made no correction of God’s words which would have defeated the point He was making indicating that what God said was erroneous.
He did correct the devil’s misuse of what God had said by using Moses and the Prophets as equally authoritative (Ps 91:11-12).
“Satan’s deceit lay in misapplying his quotation into a temptation that easily traps the devout mind by apparently warranting what might otherwise be thought sinful. Psalm 91:11–12 refers to anyone who trusts God and thus preeminently to Jesus.”[8]
Jesus’ use in His teaching demonstrates inerrancy and shows no need to correct the Scriptures, but merely their misinterpretation.
Christ confirmed that He did not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfill them (5:17). His view of their authority extended not merely to verbal plenary inspiration, but down to the level of the smallest letter, the jot, or the smallest part of a letter, the tittle. Today this would be considered an “extreme” view of inerrancy more in line with the Chicago Statement.
Matthew contains more of Jesus’ teachings than the other Gospels and much of this is arranged in five large collections (chapters 5-7, 10, 13, 18, 24-25) with more scattered through His interactions with the people and their religious leaders.
In His teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, He introduces each teaching with “it was said” and each correction with, “I say”. A look at the chart below indicates that Jesus never corrected the Law, instead, He corrected the “watered down” teaching they had heard (5:20) and pointed His followers to a higher standard of conduct more consistent with their heavenly Father (5:48).
This usage is consistent with the view that the Scriptures, the Law, and Prophets, were inspired by God and that any error was to be found in man’s interpretation of what God said.
In Matthew 13:13-15, Jesus fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah (6:9-10) through the rejection of His previous teaching. This has shown the dullness of the people. Speaking in parables will preserve them in their unbelief for the coming judgment (Mt 13:40). No one deserves to hear the truth easily explained once they have rejected God’s truth for themselves.
In Matthew 19:3-6, Jesus cites Moses’ statement that God created male and female and therefore marriage as a response to this creation. This Scripture answers whether one should divorce his wife for any reason. If God’s design is for male and female united into one for life, then Moses’ command “to give a certificate of divorce” is God contradicting Himself!
Jesus points out it is not God’s design, but the sinful state of a man’s heart that is the problem. The command was only for those who would not follow God’s way. Divorce was a means of protecting the woman from the charge of adultery. It had become a way for a man to divorce his wife and marry another without being guilty of adultery himself. Jesus is not correcting the Scriptures but correctly interpreting them to accomplish the Law’s purpose of convicting men of sin (Ro 3:20; 7:7).
He used Isaiah 56:7 to rebuke those who were misusing the Temple (21:13). The issue of the authority of what Isaiah wrote is found in the attribution of the words to the Lord God. There would not be a time in the future when God would consider it acceptable to make the Temple a place of merchandise. The similar use of Psalm 8:2 to comment on the praise of the people (21:16) shows that it was considered God’s inspired word and therefore without error. The Scripture was being fulfilled in Jesus’ time.
One area of inerrancy upon which Jesus depended was the doctrine of the resurrection which He supported with a clear reference to Exodus 3:6 (Mt 22:31-32). The Sadducees’ logic was unassailable except mistaken on two points common with people today who want to revise the Bible to suit a materialistic worldview:
a. They do not understand the Scriptures, and,
b. They do not understand the power of God.
When someone interprets the Scripture with a 21st-century view of science, such as “sunrise and sunset” and according to their own culture and values (such as views on divorce) there will inevitably be confusion and contradiction brought on by one’s point of view that are non-contradictions when viewed in the original contexts.
The Bible does not contain errors except for occasional transcriptional errors by scribes and by variants brought about by attempts to “correct” the word of God eliminating perceived contra- dictions or confusion, such as early attempts to harmonize the Gospels. The expression “all translators are traitors” is also true of other interpreters.
Upholding the teaching of inerrancy means we adhere to interpreting as the original hearers (including the prophet himself) would have understood the word. This is informed through the insights given by the Lord Jesus and the men the Spirit chose to write the New Testament.
An example of this is Jesus’ use of Psalm 110:1 to conclude His conflict with the Pharisees (Mt 22:44). He threw out a softball pitch in asking the question of the sonship of the Messiah, “. . . whose son is He?” They gave the obvious answer, “. . . the son of David.” Jesus presses further to expose a dilemma of their cultural interpretation. A father is always considered greater than his son (Heb 7:3). Yet in the Scripture David calls his son, “my Lord.” This cannot be!
The Pharisees, as did Jesus, believed in the inspiration of Scripture including the Psalms. Because it was inspired, it could not be wrong, but their understanding clearly was in conflict with the biblical idea of the superiority of the father to his son. Jesus left them in their confusion rather than explain the pre-existence of the Son.
In the Olivet Discourse (Mt 24:15), Jesus confirms the inerrancy of Scripture for the end times by quoting an already fulfilled prophecy of Daniel (9:27; 11:31; 12:11). He and his hearers knew it was literally fulfilled in the desecration of the Temple by Antiochus Epiphanes in 156 BC. Jesus instructs His disciples of a yet future time when this will be the sign to flee Jerusalem. Was Jesus correcting an error in Daniel’s prophecy?
This is not a correction, but a confirmation based on the established principle of multiple fulfillments of prophecy. Just as there were and will be many days of the Lord (Am 5:18; Joel 2:1; Mal 4:5; Joel 2:28-31, see Ac 2:16- 21), so also there will be future occasions when the Temple of the Lord will be made desolate by an “abomination.”
As He approached His death, Jesus depended upon the inerrancy of Zechariah’s prophecy (13:7 quoted in Mt 26:31). Zechariah was speaking using the literal meaning of shepherd (2:6) to describe leaders and their people (10:3). It was based on this word from God that He predicted the falling away of His disciples.
Jesus’ quoting of Psalm 22:1 (Mt 27:46) is often taken as a cry of despair rather than as an affirmation of faith by one who believed “all Scripture is inspired by God.” With great difficulty, the Shepherd arose to take in one last breath and make a faith statement that the prophecy of that Psalm was and would be fulfilled literally. Jesus would before He died utter the great prayer of God’s people believing that the inspired Word of God would come to pass without error or failure (Ps 22:24). The evidence was seen on the third day.
The use of the Old Testament Scriptures in the Gospel of Matthew offers ample evidence that Jesus believed in inspiration and therefore in the corollary of inerrancy. God cannot lie and so every word of His would be true down to the level of the jot and the tittle. Jesus did not correct the Scripture but instead quoted it giving it proper interpretation while correcting erroneous views as He did in the Sermon on the Mount. Because the Scriptures are inerrant, they can be believed and acted upon, even in adverse circumstances.
Often when we ask someone for their confidence in a promise, we ask, “Are you willing to bet your life on it?” One last passage pulls together two great prophecies of Scripture (Ps 110:1; Da 7:13) in answering the high priest’s solemn demand, “. . . tell us whether you are the Christ, the Son of God.”
There was no prevaricating, no nuanced wavering. Taking His stand on the inspiration of Scripture, Jesus declared “. . . hereafter you will see ‘the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven’” (Mt 26:63-64). They killed Him for it.
ENDNOTES:
[1] R. C. Sproul, Can I Trust the Bible?, vol. 2 of The Crucial Questions Series (Lake Mary, FL: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2009), 52.
[2] Dan Gentry Kent, “Can You Believe in Inerrancy and Equality?: It Is Important That We Not Confuse Two Different Issues,” Priscilla Papers Volume 15 15.1 (2001): 4.
[3] Ibid., 5.
[4] Sproul, Can I Trust the Bible?
[5] Benjamin B. Warfield, The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield: Revelation and Inspiration (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2008), 115.
[6] John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text; New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle: W.B. Eerdmans; Paternoster Press, 2005), 29.
[7] Mt 4:4, 7, 10; 5:21, 27, 31, 33, 38, 43; 7:23; 9:13; 12:7; 10:35-36; 11:5, 10; 13:14-15; 15:4, 8-9; 18:16; 19:4, 5, 18-19; 21:13, 16, 42; 22:32, 37, 39, 44; 23:39; 24:15; 26:31, 64; 27:46.
[8] D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew, Mark, Luke, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984), 113.
Copyright VOICE Magazine, used by permission.
Issue: May/June 2023.