What about biblical authority? What about inerrancy?!

This is the site’s editor speaking, now (Hi, I’m Joshua, pleasure to meetcha!), and you’ve asked a wonderful question. What about biblical authority? I can’t think of a modern Baptist statement of faith that doesn’t begin with some treatment of the authority or inerrancy of the scriptures. We know that Jesus Christ is the Word, the ‘logos,’ the divinely-spoken reason of God in creating all things. How do we know this? We know it by the word, the ‘graphe,’ the writings!

We’ve reached a chicken-or-egg scenario. Choose the egg. Put it with Jimmy Dean’s sausage from the site’s header and you’ve got yourself a breakfast! In fact, Jesus himself said, “Come and have breakfast” (John 21:12 CSB) and that’s my life-verse. You might think I’m being silly, and I am, but beloved, I was hungry, and now I’ve come to feast on this living meal.

Here on YoungBaptist.com, we whole-heartedly and proudly confess that Jesus is Lord, Caesar isn’t, and, though the light of creation was sufficient to teach us God’s invisible attributes and his divine nature, we needed his words! ‘Man shall not live by bread alone!’ We needed the words he spoke through his messengers, the prophets of old, and through his apostles, preserved by many saints.

His words are confirmed by the accuracy of the prophecies (we believe that what was spoken did come to pass), and through the sacrifices of the apostles (why would anyone die for an untrue book?), but we also see how his words are confirmed day-by-day in our powerful, precious communities.

Therein lies, I believe, the resolution to this chicken/egg conundrum. Jesus the King is Lord of all! And if he is Lord of all, well, we ought to trust what’s in his book. Now, I know, his book has been twisted and perverted to justify a whole stink-load of human wickedness. But that’s where the autonomy of the church and the liberty of every soul comes in, the competency of every man to determine his religion and the importance of communities that sharpen his competencies through careful searching of the scriptures and through contentious debate in good faith.

In my mind, every other western world-view is ultimately circular: ‘I believe because I see’ (empiricism), ‘I believe because I reason’ (rationalism), ‘I believe because I’ve intuited it, experienced it, or felt it’ (transcendentalism)—probe them! Ask, how can you trust your senses or your testing methods? How can you rely on your rational faculties? How do you know your gut-feeling wasn’t just a bad taco you ate that day? Probe them and see that they all ultimately end in, ‘I know because I know.’

Beloved, I know because I was told. I have it on good authority. I choose to trust the one who told me. The one who told me, well, he also died for what was spoken, and what was spoken was a very good word, a word of love for all life, a word of hope against oppression, a word of light in the dark, a word of strength in the fight against sin, and a word of peace in the violent domain.

Allow me to say it plain: If Jesus Christ is truly Lord, all authority ‘problems’ are solved. Love one another and keep the word, best as you can understand it—just like he said—and do seek to understand better and better through careful study. I’ve become convinced that all the bible is inspired by God, though voiced by diverse men, that it’s a tap of pure wisdom good enough for any Baptist to drink from.

– Joshua Thompson

General Editor and Site Admin
(and aspiring Legendary Sausage-Man)