2 Timothy 3:16-17 declares that “all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” It is clear that the early church regarded the Old Testament as inspired Scripture. As 2 Peter 1:20-21 explains, “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
The question when analyzing the New Testament, is whether or not is can be classified as scripture too. In 2 Peter 3:15-16; Peter writes, “Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable men distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.” Clearly, Peter regarded the writings of Paul as inspired Scripture.
A further indicator that the New Testament can be considered as Scripture is in 1 Timothy 5:18; where it says, “For the Scripture says, ‘Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain,’ and ‘the worker deserves his wages.’” While the first reference is taken from the book of Deuteronomy (25:4), the second is derived from the Gospel of Luke (10:7). Clearly, Luke’s writings are being viewed as similar in authoritative value to the Pentateuch. Luke’s writings are also here referred to as “Scripture.”
While it can not be proved emphatically that the New Testament can be called “scripture,” we must proceed further and ascertain what is the real question of the one asking whether it is scripture or not. If the point of the question is to call into question the truth of the New Testament, then we must come at this from a different angle. My personal favorite query when one calls into question the truth of the New Testament is: “Which verses in the New Testament aren’t true in your opinion?”
This should be the basis of any discussion regarding the veracity of the New testament. It’s actually a great place to begin. Of course, in order for there to be any common ground, both parties must at least presuppose that the Bible contains truth. If both parties can agree on this, then it’s back to deciding which portions are true and which are not. Again there is a good basis for discussion. If both parties can not agree that the bible contains truth, then there is no common ground for a discussion and it will be fruitless.
For the believer, if we say that some parts of scripture (the Bible) are true and other are not. Then we must make a case as to the criteria in identifying the difference. I for one, believe that the entirety of the Bible is scripture and that with the exception of a few minor passages that have historical questionability, it is also all true. But, that’s just my opinion. If your opinion differs, I welcome any discussion to the contrary.
So, and as always, a few questions:
1. Do you believe the whole Bible may be referred to as scripture?
2. If you believe some is scripture and some is not, then how do you distinguish the two?
3. Regardless of whether you agree that the New Testament may be called “scripture,” do you hold it to be true?
Missionary in the Andes Mountains Cloud Forest Region of Ecuador. My last name, "Labrador," is the word that's used for "Vine Worker" in the Spanish Bible, and it's OK with me. 
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I believe the original Greek and Hebrew text that are contained in the English Protestant Bible are inspired by God without error. Beginning with the KJV, and most subsequent English translation Bibles have significant intentional errors, in support of the institutional churches of all modern denominations.
”To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her.”
(1 Corinthians 7:12 ESV)
”Now concerning the betrothed, I have no command from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy.
(1 Corinthians 7:25 ESV)
Is Paul’s own opinion scripture? Some have used this as a weapon to denigrate the inspiration of scripture, but in my opinion it strengthen’s the inspiration of scripture, because Paul is careful to tell us when what he is saying is his own opinion, so we will know what is inspired and what isn’t.
Wow! Two replies and already you have KJV-only and Paul’s opinions. How about the folks who apply “that which is perfect” to mean the completed cannon (and thus saying that the sign gifts are done with), or the other question of the relative roles of the Old and New Testament in the life of the (Gentile) Christian believer? You certainly can get into hot-button questions in this area!
If you start to pick and choose as to what is “Scripture” you start down the “quest for the historical Jesus” slope and, in my opinion are rapidly approaching anarchy. I just finished a book, “The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus” by Charlotte Allen and was intrigued by the author’s concluding observation that successive generations of such study always ended up producing a new “Jesus” who remarkably reflected the life view of the scholar!
I think to hold that some of either testament is not fully “Scripture” (and hence authoratative in its original meaning and context) is to move into an area where I would hesitate to attach the “Christian” label to you and would find that we have no common ground for discussion.
Tom..interesting, if you read Marc’s statement grammatically, it actually says KJV is the first translation with intentional errors
I’m not sure Mare was saying KJV was error-free, reading her post closely. And, assumes there is only ONE “Greek and Hebrew” text, when of course there were several, with variant readings. (I for one do believe in Scriptural inspiration and authority, but I also think you have to dig into the original text and understand the variants.)
I like this. I hope you will come back to it after a few comments and let us know what you conclude then.
The first point/question that occurred to me was what the meaning and origin of the word ‘scripture’ is. What was the original word and why was it translated as such. The reason is that I studied a degree in Religious Studies, and it was quite common to hear the books of every religion referred to as ‘scripture’; so, I wondered what the word originally meant. I figured that it couldn’t mean ‘what God said’, as then the Timothy verse wouldn’t make sense. It is a tautology to say ‘what God said’ is God-breathed, so I was then thinking that it meant something along the lines of ‘what we accept as authoritative’.
My answers to the questions are 1)Yes, 2)N/A, 3)I’m not sure that this is quite accurate. The Bible is not made up of just propositional statements. A point worth a separate post?
it was men, much later than Paul or John, who presumed to select the “books” and close a canon of Scripture (sacred writings). English translation comes later still. These things were done in the absence of unanimity and in the shadow of a large religious system. Inspired?
If the Acts of the Apostles is to be regarded as Scripture, then so also we may regard Acts chapter 29 — still being written, as we would each & together “speak as the oracles of God”.
Nevertheless, early believers seem to have regarded the New Testament writings somewhat differently than torah. Possibly if we would be led by the (living) Word AND Spirit, our use of the writings would be more effectual and less divisive?
I’ll give my two cents, then leave it at that as I don’t think us arguing — excuse me, “gingerly discussing” — will prove fruitful, or that anyone’s minds will be changed.
I wrote an article a few years back entitled “Is Everything In The Bible True?” — it’s available for reading in its entirety at the website above. The premise is what the title asks; the punchline is basically that we usually answer what we think is being asked rather than what actually is being asked, saying unequivocally “yes, of course it is.” But the better way to state it would be “I believe that everything contained in the pages of Scripture are accurately recorded for our understanding and instruction.
Because no, of course everything in the Bible isn’t true, and we know it’s not — Satan will NOT be like the Most High, nor did God deliver Israel into the hands of Rabshakeh. There ate many, many things that are accurately recorded as having been said or done, even though some things people said were in fact untrue. And if we think about it, we’ll recognize that is the case.
But hopefully it also makes us come to terms with the fact that we have every toil necessary to read and understand what God’s trying to say in a passage. It seems like a lot of times we allow ourselves to get sucked in to really stupid arguments about semantics or word choice our some other equally unfruitful subject simply because we don’t think about what we’re being into. The classic “the word homosexual wasn’t even in the Bible until_____, so it’s a recent addition” argument used by many pro-gay groups is a great example, since most of the time we angle for “the concept of ‘a man who lies with another man as he would with a woman’ is there regardless of the word choice used to describe the concept” (which is true, of course), rather than going more basic and pointing out the obvious “none of the Bible was written in English anyways, it’s simply a translation of the original languages intending to convey the concepts of the original texts” point.
The biggest problem is that there are many people who have studied so much, they cannot conceive of the possibility that they’re often times chasing rabbit trails or making mountains out of mole hills rather than just letting the Word speak to and change their hearts. No, it’s much more fun to spend hours studying the etymology of “second” in the original languages just to discover for ourselves that it means “after the first, before the third”. Creating divisions in the Body because we’d rather fight over syntax and semantics instead of rejoicing over similarities and substance is something that I don’t think the Lord will hold us guiltless of if we continue in it.
(Forgive the few auto-corrected words scattered throughout…writing a response on a small screen is hard enough to get through, much less properly proof.)