Communication may be defined as the transportation of messages from one person or entity to another. This always involves channels and protocols. Channels are what physically carry the information from the sender to the receiver, and protocols are what interpret that information into meaningful messages. For example, in a typical conversation the pressure waves in the air form the basic channel, and the English language is the basic protocol.
God uses many different channels to speak with man (Hebrews 1:1). He spoke with Moses face to face (Exodus 33:11). For a few short years, the twelve Disciples and thousands of others were similarly privileged to hear His voice directly in the person of the incarnate Lord Jesus Christ. He also speaks through creation (Psalm 19), conscience (Romans 2:15), ordinary people (Acts 18:26), and many other channels.
These various communication channels are not all used to convey the same information. They generally carry messages that differ in the kind of information communicated, and also in the importance and depth of meaning of that information. For example, God uses nature and science to reveal many things that are not communicated through any other channel. This may well include more than we will ever realize about His character and power. However, these are not the channels that He uses to reveal the details about the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
The fact that God uses different channels to send different kinds of messages is an important way in which all channels of communication are not equivalent. This does not imply that God's messages on one channel can conflict with His messages on another. God is true and honest, and thus all the messages He sends are totally error-free, and in complete harmony with each other. However, most channels can carry information from other sources besides God. This other information is obviously error-prone, whether it is in the form of a well-intentioned message from another believer, a deliberately false message from Satan, or even just a bit of unintentional random "noise" from any number of sources. Thus, the various communication channels differ not only in the kind of information carried, but also in how much of that information is from God and therefore ultimately reliable.
Good communication systems generally make use of protocols that can deal with noise and other false information on the channel. God's methods of communication are no exception. He uses a variety of protocols (such as language) on the lower levels, just as He uses a variety of channels. But for His deepest and most meaningful messages, the Holy Spirit is always involved as a kind of highest-level protocol, filtering out the raw information and interpreting it into the spiritually meaningful messages God intended. The Holy Spirit is obviously more than just a protocol, but His function does seem comparable to that of a protocol in this regard. It is the Holy Spirit who reveals to us the deep meanings of the thoughts of God (1 Corinthians 2:10-11). Natural man cannot understand the things of God, because they are spiritually appraised (v. 14). Only when we have the Holy Spirit can we really know the things given to us by God (v. 12).
The Holy Spirit is also similar in function to a protocol in that He apparently makes use of the information received to interpret and apply God's messages. That is, we cannot just sit back and wait for the Holy Spirit to reveal God's messages to us; we must receive the information God sends us in order for the Holy Spirit to have some data to work with. For this reason it is important to study and become familiar with the various communication channels God uses and the nature of the information they carry.
The Bible clearly stands out as an extremely important channel for receiving God's communication. But what makes the Bible so special? It is obviously not the simplest communication channel. Most of the doctrines taught in the Bible can be explained in simpler and clearer terms by a good preacher or commentator. Neither does it contain all of the information that tends to interest us or pique our curiosity. Simply put, it leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
Furthermore, the Bible as we know it, meaning in its manuscripts and translations available to us, is clearly not error-free. The number of errors it contains is very small, but it is not zero. Any knowledgeable apologists will admit that there are some discrepancies in the current manuscripts of the Bible. As just one example, the current manuscripts of 1 Samuel 13:1 have a clear numerical error, literally stating that Saul was only one year old when he became king, which is obviously inconsistent with the facts.
However, the errors contained in the Bible were not present in the information originally transmitted. Unlike the messages of preachers, commentators, and other humans, the original message of the Bible is from the mouth of God in totality, not mixed with useless or false messages from created beings. Any and all errors were introduced on the channel itself. The Biblical channel includes the work of scribes, copyists, and translators who were and are prone to error.
The Bible itself acknowledges this. It does not make the claim that any present manuscript of the Scriptures is inerrant, but only that each passage of Scripture was inerrant as originally given. Jesus was expressly speaking of those "to whom the Word of God came" when He said "Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35). In other words, He was interested in Scripture as it was originally given, not necessarily as it appeared in the current manuscript. Similarly, the divine inspiration of Scripture is expressly applied to the original authors, not the later copyists and translators. "Men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God" (2 Peter 1:21). Every word of Scripture as originally written is directly from the mouth of God.
In spite of this emphasis on Scripture in its original form, it is clear that Christ and the apostles considered the current manuscripts as a generally reliable reflection of what Scripture actually said. There is usually no reason to distrust the current manuscripts. The copyists and translators were generally honest and well-intentioned. The basic narrative and meaning of the Bible is not at all likely to be mangled by such people. A copyist finding a smudge or simple error in his source manuscript could generally use contextual clues to correct the problem. The most common exceptions to this are errors in names and numbers, where context often provides no such clues. A simple smudge can drastically alter a Hebrew number, for example.
With this in mind, we should not be greatly surprised or disturbed at the possibility of numerical or other simple errors in the Bible. Such errors do not affect the fundamental meaning of the passage. Still, we need to be open and frank about this. We should welcome the work of textual critics who attempt to scientifically determine which manuscript variations are correct. We should not treat any current version of the Bible as somehow above such difficulties.
Most importantly, we should not let the fact that there are minor errors in our versions of the Bible make us lose sight of the significance of the fact that Scripture is completely inerrant in its original form. This gives us tremendous confidence in the message of Scripture. The Holy Spirit can make use of information that is tainted with human error even at the source, but how much better is it when we know that the original message is directly from God?
The main problem with our understanding of God's messages to us is not the possibility of errors in our Bibles, it is the fact that we are very poor receivers. We have a tendency to bypass the interpretation of the Holy Spirit and substitute our own high-level protocol. This is true for all communication channels, but is especially dangerous for channels that are very prone to error, since our own protocols are often very poor at separating the true signal from the noise.
These deficiencies on our part make the Bible stand out all the more. We are all susceptible to using our own interpretation instead of that of the Holy Spirit, but listening to the Bible is one way of tuning ourselves in to the Holy Spirit, since the Bible is completely from the Holy Spirit at the source. We can't trust our own hearts, but we can trust the Bible. We can know that every word of it came directly from the mouth of God:
"All Scripture is God-breathed..." -- 2 Timothy 3:16 (NIV)
Furthermore, the kind of information contained in the Bible is exactly what we need to learn about God, the problem of sin, the way of salvation, and how to walk in a manner pleasing to Him:
"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness..." -- 2 Timothy 3:16 (NIV)
Finally, the volume of this information content in the Bible is so great that no other channel of this kind of information is really needed. In this respect the Bible contains the complete revelation of God; He is never going to modify its teaching or add some new holy revelation to it (Revelation 22:18). The Bible is fully sufficient for our needs:
"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." -- 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NIV)
If the teachings in Scripture are able to thoroughly equip us for every good work, then any teaching that cannot be confirmed by Scripture is therefore not needed to equip us for any true good work, or service of God. This does not mean that the Bible contains all knowledge, or that the kinds of information not found in the Bible are necessarily useless. We all recognize the practical need for at least some of these other kinds of information, such as whatever information we need to perform our day-to-day jobs. And there are many cases where such "non-Biblical" information can actually help us in our understanding of the context or meaning of the Bible, or perhaps in our appreciation of the God of the Bible. But the value of these other kinds of information is still secondary in nature, not primary. They are a means to an end, rather than an ultimate end in themselves.
The Bible, on the other hand, contains all the information that is needed to directly equip us, through teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, for the true service of God. This cannot be said of any other source of information, even those that contain the same kind of information and are very helpful in our Christian walk. For example, God often uses preachers or commentaries or other human sources to show us teachings from the Bible that we didn't see on our own. But those teachings are already in the Scriptures, and after they are pointed out to us we should be able to see them in the Scriptures. If not, we should reject them. Otherwise we would have to assume that the Scriptures were incomplete and not able to thoroughly equip us for every good work, in contradiction with the above passage.
These things combine to prove the authoritative level of the Scriptures above all other communication channels. The issue is not whether things like church dogmas, traditions, creeds, or commentaries can be helpful. The issue is whether we ever use these things in place of Scripture. To do so is to denigrate the Bible and deny its trustworthiness and sufficiency. We all need to be very careful that we don't do that.
This needed carefulness is clearly shown in the example of the Bereans in Acts 17:11. These noble-minded people did not accept what Paul said at face value, but instead carefully (even daily) examined the Scriptures to see if what he said was right. If even the sayings of Paul himself had to be checked out for compatibility with the Bible, then surely there is no human leader, church council, or creed today which should not be subjected to the same care.
Paul's teaching and that of the other Apostles certainly went beyond that of the Old Testament Scriptures that the Bereans subjected them to. But they did not conflict with the Old Testament Scriptures. The Old Testament prophesied the very Messiah that Paul preached. His teaching was not merely his own opinion or understanding of theology, but rather he says:
"I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ." -- Galatians 1:11-12 (NIV)
Having verified that Paul's teaching was compatible with Scripture, his listeners could have confidence in the authority of his message through the further proof provided by God Himself:
"The things that mark an apostle--signs, wonders and miracles--were done among you with great perseverance." -- 2 Corinthians 12:12 (NIV)
No person or organization can truthfully make this claim today. The only way anyone can teach things directly from Christ today is by teaching directly from Scripture. It is theoretically possible that some teaching passed on from generation to generation might ultimately have come from Christ, but unless that teaching is also found in directly in the Bible, the teacher has no right to make that claim. And anything that contradicts Scripture is flat-out wrong, no matter who says it, even if they do have signs and wonders to back them up (hypothetically speaking). Paul included himself in his warning against such contradiction:
"But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!" -- Galatians 1:8 (NIV)
Obviously, all human beings are fallible, even those through whom God has mightily spoken. God can speak through whomever or whatever He chooses, but that doesn't mean He is putting that person or organization on any kind of authoritative level like the Bible. God certainly spoke through Peter, but he still had to be corrected in Galatians 2:14. Keep in mind that God also spoke through the evil high priest Caiaphas (John 11:49), and even through Balaam's donkey (Numbers 22:28)!
The bottom line is that the Bible is a completely trustworthy channel for us to receive God's communication. This is the one channel to which we absolutely must tune ourselves. We cannot expect to grow in our knowledge of God except by diligently studying the Scriptures.
Unfortunately, however, even when we read the Bible we can still miss God's message because of our tendency to misinterpret the information we receive. God has designed the Bible such that we cannot truly understand it if we are not led by the Holy Spirit. And none of us are completely led by the Holy Spirit at all times. We all have the flesh still in us, and:
"The flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please." -- Galatians 5:17 (NASB)
We ought to take this as a serious warning against spiritual pride, in which we think that our interpretation of a particular teaching of Scripture is necessarily the correct one. Only the Holy Spirit can infallibly interpret and apply the Scripture, and we are all prone to relying on our own misinterpretations.
The degree to which we depend on the Holy Spirit to reveal the meaning of God's message seems to be related to the theological content of the message. God has designed us so that even unbelievers who pay no attention to His Holy Spirit whatsoever can still learn many advanced things about His creation, for example. And the basic teachings of the Bible are also stated in relatively clear, non-debatable language. For example, the principle of salvation by grace, through faith, and not of works is set forth quite plainly. Even this can only be fully grasped through the work of the Holy Spirit, but this is not the kind of thing that takes a great deal of spiritual maturity to clearly see in Scripture. As Paul says to the Corinthians:
"I could not address you as spiritual but worldly--mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it." -- 1 Corinthians 3:1-2 (NIV)
Most Christians verbally acknowledge the Bible as the supreme revelation of God, but how many of us really act on that truth? Or are we content with a superficial knowledge of God's message, a knowledge that does not depend on a constant submission to the Holy Spirit? It is a great tragedy to be unable to digest the deeper truths of God's communication to us because we are immature, walking in the flesh instead of in the Spirit.
"But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Therefore, let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity..." -- Hebrews 5:14-6:1 (NIV)
This page copyright © 2001 Edward A. Morris. Created May 10, 2001. Last updated July 2, 2001.