No other group of people have exalted the authority of the Bible alone in matters of faith and practice so consistently as churches of Christ, pleading “where the Scriptures speak, we speak: where the scriptures are silent, we are silent.” However, when this plea is made in our modern world, the question is often raised, “Why do you believe the Bible to be God’s word and completely authoritative in religion?” There are many that reject its authority. Modern Protestantism has largely given up its allegiance to the Bible and has spent much of its effort in trying to discount the absolute authority of God’s word. Roman Catholicism has discredited the Bible’s authority while professing to be its friend, by claiming that it is not the complete authority, nor even final, for the final and absolute authority in the Roman Catholic church is the living voice of the church expressed primarily through the pronouncements of the pope.
Read MoreWhen a man acknowledges there is a God, he acknowledges that God is the ultimate authority whose will is binding upon human beings. But, where is this authority to be found and how is his will conveyed to us as men? The answer is that God has drawn back the curtain and shown (revealed) himself through his mighty saving acts for man’s redemption and spoken that men might know the meaning of those acts and understand his will for men (Hebrews 1:1-2). While nature may tell something of God’s divinity and power as its author (Romans 1:20), and the moral experience of men may give some witness to a righteous God hidden from men (Romans 2:14-15), only as God shows himself in saving deed and word can men behold the entire plan of salvation and know how it relates to them. This is what the Bible claims to present to us.
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