I am AMAZED......

Could you be more specific about where the Bible says that every word in the book we call "the Bible" is "God's word"?

The only things I could think of would be 2 Timothy 3:16, which only says that if we add the word "is" to it (it's not there in the original), or John. No, wait... John says the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, not that it became paper and sat on our bookshelves.

Seems to me the Bible is pretty clear that the "Word" is not the same as the "words".

The Word became flesh... The meaning of this is the Word which God has given us (that being the Bible) became flesh... the promises and writings of the Saviour have become reality, in the flesh. Not only the Word of old, but the entire Word of God, that being the Bible.

"Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away" (Matt. 24:35).

The Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35).

Until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Word until everything is accomplished" (Matt. 5:18).



One text in which the Bible speaks about itself is 2 Timothy 3:16. "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness." In the Authorized (King James) Version the words "God-breathed" are rendered "given by inspiration of God." In the Revised Standard Version the words are "inspired by God." But these do not have quite the right idea. The English words "inspired" or "inspiration" have come down to us from the Latin Vulgate through the translation of Wycliffe - they suggest men somehow being given extra insight - but the idea is actually what the New International Version fortunately suggests, namely, that the Scriptures are the direct result of the breathing-out of God. The difference is important. In the one case, the translation suggests that the Bible is composed of human words written by men, whom God has perhaps somehow "inspired." In the other case, the stress is on the fact that the Bible is God's Word and therefore is characterized by his truthfulness and authority.

One of the great Bible scholars of an earlier generation, B. B. Warfield, has written of this verse:

The Greek term has ... nothing to say of inspiring: it speaks only of a "spiring" or "spiration". What it says of Scripture is, not that it is "breathed into by God" or that it is the product of the Divine "inbreathing" into its human authors, but that it is breathed out by God .... When Paul declares, then, that "every scripture, or "all scripture" is the product of the divine breath, "is God breathed, " he asserts with as much energy as he could employ that Scripture is the product of a specifically divine operation.

Next to this verse from 2 Timothy may be placed a double series of passages, collected by Warfield, that show as clearly as can be done that the New Testament writers identified the Bible which they possessed with the living voice of God. In one of these sets of passages the Scriptures are spoken of as if they were God (Matt. 19:4, 5; Heb. 3:7; Acts 4:24, 25; 13:34, 35). In the other God is spoken of as if he were the Scriptures (Gal. 3:8; Rom. 9:17). This shows that the biblical writers identified the two. Moreover, the mixture of the Scriptures and God is made so casually that we can only conclude that the unique and divine character of the sacred books was by no means an invented or abstract idea of the writers, but rather a basic, almost unquestioned assumption which was inevitably expressed whenever they taught or wrote. Warfield said, "The two sets of passages, together, thus show an absolute identification, in the minds of these writers, of 'Scripture' with the speaking God."

Several verses show that the teaching of the New Testament about the Old Testament applies for the New Testament writings too. In 1 Thessalonians 2:13 Paul writes of the gospel which he preached, saying, "And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe." Similarly, in 2 Peter 3:15, 16 Peter writes in a way which puts Paul's letters in the same category as the Old Testament books: "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 people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction."

Of course, the New Testament does not speak of itself with the same frequency and in exactly the same way as it speaks of the Old Testament, for not all the New Testament writers knew of the other New Testament books. The New Testament books were not collected to make an authoritative volume during the lifetime of the writers. Nevertheless, when the New Testament writers do speak of their writings they do so in the same terms Jews used for the Old Testament.

In 2 Peter 1:21 Peter writes, "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 word translated "carried along" is used by Luke in the second chapter of Acts to describe the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. He says it was like the "blowing" of a violent wind (Acts 2:2). Again he uses the word to describe the effect of the great wind that ultimately destroyed the ship that was taking Paul to Rome. He says that the ship was caught by the storm and so was "driven along" (Acts 27:15, 17). Clearly, Luke wished to say that the ship was at the mercy of the storm. It did not cease to be a ship, but it did cease to have control over its course and destination. In the same way, Peter teaches that the writers of the Bible were borne along in their writing to produce the words which God intended to be recorded. They wrote as men, but as men moved by the Holy Spirit. The result was an inerrant revelation.

All these verses indicate that the authors of Scripture considered the Bible as a whole and in its individual parts to have come from God. The Bible does not contain men's words about God, but God's words about man and to man. Because the Bible has its source in God, because it is the Word of God and not the words of mere men, the biblical writers everywhere regard the Scriptures as being an absolute and infallible authority. To hear the Bible is to hear God. To obey the Bible is to obey God. To disobey it is to rebel against him.

Jesus affirmed inerrancy.
Jesus appealed to the Bible as an infallible authority. When tempted by the devil in the wilderness, Jesus replied three times by quotations from Deuteronomy (Matt. 4: 1-11). He replied to the question of the Sadducees about the heavenly status of marriage and the reality of the resurrection, first, by a rebuke that they did not know the Scriptures, and second, by a direct quotation from Exodus 3:6 - "In the account of the bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord 'the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.' He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive" (Luke 20:37, 38). On many occasions Jesus appealed to Scripture in support of his actions - in defense of the cleansing of the temple (Mark 11:15-17), in explanation of his submission to the cross (Matt. 26:53, 54).

Jesus also saw his life as a fulfillment of Scripture and consciously submitted to it. He began his ministry with a quotation from Isaiah 61:1, 2. "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor" (Luke 4:18, 19). He taught that this prophecy was fulfilled in his ministry. Again, he said that he had not come "to abolish the Law or Prophets" but to "fulfill them" (Matt. 5:17). He foretold the scattering of the disciples on the night of his arrest because, he said, "It is written: 'I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered' " (Mark 14:27, a quotation from Zechariah 13:7). He told the religious leaders of his day, "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me" (John 5:39). Even after the Resurrection he chided the disciples for being "foolish . . . and . . . slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and enter his glory?" Then we are told, "Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself" (Luke 24:25-27).

These passages and others show us that Jesus regarded the Old Testament highly and constantly submitted to it, as to an authoritative revelation. He taught that the Bible bore witness to him. Because it is the very Word of God, Jesus assumed its total reliability even to the smallest point of grammar.

Until relatively modern times the church has believed in inerrancy.
This argument is not of as great weight as arguments 1 and 2, for the church has no special guarantee of being right. In fact, the church has often erred. But it is still of some weight, for we would be arrogant indeed to think that we automatically know better than all the Christians who have gone before us and can therefore disregard their testimony. What did earlier believers think?

Irenaeus, who lived and wrote in Lyons, France, in the early years of the second century, said that we should be:

Most properly assured that the Scriptures are indeed perfect, since they were spoken by the word of God and His Spirit.

Cyril of Jerusalem , who lived in the fourth century, argued:

We must not deliver anything whatsoever, without the sacred Scriptures, nor let ourselves be misled by mere probability, or by marshalling of arguments. For this salvation of ours by faith is ... by proof from the sacred Scriptures.

In a letter to Jerome, the translator of the Latin Vulgate, Augustine said:

I have learned to hold the Scriptures alone inerrant.

In his "Preface to the Treatise on the Trinity" he wrote:

Do not follow my writings as Holy Scripture. When you find in Holy Scripture anything you did not believe before, believe it without doubt; but in my writings, you should hold nothing for certain.

Again, in what is perhaps his most famous letter to Jerome (number 82), Augustine wrote of the Scriptures:

I have learned to pay them such honor and respect as to believe most firmly that not one of their authors has erred in writing anything at all ... (Therefore) if I do find anything in those books which seems contrary to truth, I decide that either the text is corrupt, or the translator did not follow what was really said, or that I failed to understand it.

Luther wrote of the Old Testament:

I beg and faithfully warn every pious Christian not to stumble at the simplicity of the language and stories that will often meet him there. He should not doubt that, however simple they may seem, these are the very words, works, judgments, and deeds of the high majesty, power, and wisdom of God.

In another place the great Reformer says:

The Scriptures, although they also were written by men, are not of men nor from men, but from God.

In his Table Talk he declared:

We must make a great difference between God's Word and the word of man. A man's word is a little sound, that flies into the air, and soon vanishes; but the Word of God is greater than heaven and earth, yea, greater than death and hell, for it forms part of the power of God, and endures everlastingly.

John Calvin, the Genevan reformer, wrote similarly:

This is a principle which distinguishes our religion from all others that we know that God has spoken to us, and are fully convinced that the prophets did not speak at their own suggestion, but that, being organs of the Holy Spirit, they only uttered what they had been commissioned from heaven to declare. Whoever then wishes to profit in the Scriptures, let him, first of all, lay down this as a settled point, that the Low and the Prophets are not a doctrine delivered according to the will and pleasure of men, but dictated by the Holy Spirit .... We owe to the Scripture the same reverence which we owe to God; because it has proceeded from him alone, and has nothing belonging to man mixed with it.

The same is true of more recent writers. J. Gresham Machen wrote that the Bible is:

Not partly true and Partly false, but all true, the blessed, holy Word of God.

Francis Schaeffer says:

The Bible is without mistake because it is God's inspired Word and ... God cannot lie or contradict himself.

J. I. Packer has written:

Only truth can be authoritative; only an inerrant Bible can be used ... in the way that God means Scripture to be used. ... Its text is word for word God-given; its message is an organic unity, the infallible Word of an infallible God, a web of revealed truths centered upon Christ.

He writes of our only proper approach to Scripture:

The only right attitude for us is to confess that our works are vile and our wisdom foolishness, and to receive with thankfulness the flawless righteousness and the perfect Scriptures which God in mercy gives us. Anything else is a conceited affront to divine grace. And evangelical theology is bound to oppose the attitude which undervalues the gift of Scripture and presumes to correct the inerrant Word of God.


God's character demands inerrancy.
Basic to each of the statements above is the argument that if every utterance in the Bible is from God and if God is a God of truth, as the Bible declares him to be, then the Bible must be wholly truthful or inerrant. Jesus said of God's utterances, "Your word is truth" (John 17:17). The Psalmist wrote, "All your words are true" (Ps. 119:160). Solomon said, "Every word of God is flawless" (Prov. 30:5). Paul wrote to Titus, "God . . . does not lie" (titus. 1:2). The author of Hebrews declared, "It is impossible for God to lie" (Heb. 6:18). In the final analysis, then, an attack on the Bible is an attack on the character of God. Can God lie? Some may say so. But every true Christian will join with Paul in saying rather, "Let God be true, and every man a liar" (Rom. 3:4).

Come from God, in the normal English sense of insipration, sure. Beyond that, I think you're stretching, and using a modern reinterpretation invented by people who had finally realized just how much of a struggle it was going to be to understand God's Will, and wanted to make it easier.

Actually it would be you who is using a reinterpretation. historically and Biblically the Bible has been held as inerrant. Of course when making your assertion you do not go to God's Word, because to you, God's Word is falible and thus not trustworthy. how can you trust something if it lies? Answer to the Word of God, not man.


"Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away" (Matt. 24:35).

"The Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35).

Until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Word until everything is accomplished" (Matt. 5:18).

"And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe." 1 Thessalonians 2:13

"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 people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction." 2 Peter 3:15, 16

Because the Bible has its source in God, because it is the Word of God and not the words of mere men, the biblical writers everywhere regard the Scriptures as being an absolute and infallible authority. To hear the Bible is to hear God. To obey the Bible is to obey God. To disobey it is to rebel against him.

For we know...
"God . . . does not lie" (titus. 1:2).
Yet...
"Let God be true, and every man a liar" (Rom. 3:4).

You do not answer to man, but speak against God's Word, that being the Bible.

Inerrant, yes, but not in the word-for-word sense. All you're doing is taking passages out of context to make them sound like they support your position. The idea of word-for-word literal inerrancy is not found much before 1900. Some of those translations are fairly questionable.

Searching through translations to make passages line up with a desired doctrine isn't a very good way to study the Bible. Recognizing the ambiguities and difficulties we face in understanding the Bible is a necessary first step in getting anything out of it but a mirror of what we've already chosen.

Today at 06:33 PM seebs said this in Post #127 (http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?postid=686020#post686020)

Inerrant, yes, but not in the word-for-word sense. All you're doing is taking passages out of context to make them sound like they support your position.

Click to expand...

So give me Bible passages that support your position instead of man-made ideas and emotions.

But you can't because IF the Bible was fallible then you could not trust even the words to take to support your position.

Today at 06:33 PM seebs said this in Post #127 (http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?postid=686020#post686020)

The idea of word-for-word literal inerrancy is not found much before 1900. Some of those translations are fairly questionable.

Click to expand...

Really??

Irenaeus, who lived and wrote in Lyons, France, in the early years of the second century, said that we should be:

Most properly assured that the Scriptures are indeed perfect, since they were spoken by the word of God and His Spirit.

Cyril of Jerusalem , who lived in the fourth century, argued:

We must not deliver anything whatsoever, without the sacred Scriptures, nor let ourselves be misled by mere probability, or by marshalling of arguments. For this salvation of ours by faith is ... by proof from the sacred Scriptures.

In a letter to Jerome, the translator of the Latin Vulgate, Augustine said:

I have learned to hold the Scriptures alone inerrant.

In his "Preface to the Treatise on the Trinity" he wrote:

Do not follow my writings as Holy Scripture. When you find in Holy Scripture anything you did not believe before, believe it without doubt; but in my writings, you should hold nothing for certain.

Again, in what is perhaps his most famous letter to Jerome (number 82), Augustine wrote of the Scriptures:

I have learned to pay them such honor and respect as to believe most firmly that not one of their authors has erred in writing anything at all ... (Therefore) if I do find anything in those books which seems contrary to truth, I decide that either the text is corrupt, or the translator did not follow what was really said, or that I failed to understand it.

Luther wrote of the Old Testament:

I beg and faithfully warn every pious Christian not to stumble at the simplicity of the language and stories that will often meet him there. He should not doubt that, however simple they may seem, these are the very words, works, judgments, and deeds of the high majesty, power, and wisdom of God.

In another place the great Reformer says:

The Scriptures, although they also were written by men, are not of men nor from men, but from God.

In his Table Talk he declared:

We must make a great difference between God's Word and the word of man. A man's word is a little sound, that flies into the air, and soon vanishes; but the Word of God is greater than heaven and earth, yea, greater than death and hell, for it forms part of the power of God, and endures everlastingly.

John Calvin, the Genevan reformer, wrote similarly:

This is a principle which distinguishes our religion from all others that we know that God has spoken to us, and are fully convinced that the prophets did not speak at their own suggestion, but that, being organs of the Holy Spirit, they only uttered what they had been commissioned from heaven to declare. Whoever then wishes to profit in the Scriptures, let him, first of all, lay down this as a settled point, that the Low and the Prophets are not a doctrine delivered according to the will and pleasure of men, but dictated by the Holy Spirit .... We owe to the Scripture the same reverence which we owe to God; because it has proceeded from him alone, and has nothing belonging to man mixed with it.

The same is true of more recent writers. J. Gresham Machen wrote that the Bible is:

Not partly true and Partly false, but all true, the blessed, holy Word of God.

Francis Schaeffer says:

The Bible is without mistake because it is God's inspired Word and ... God cannot lie or contradict himself.

J. I. Packer has written:

Only truth can be authoritative; only an inerrant Bible can be used ... in the way that God means Scripture to be used. ... Its text is word for word God-given; its message is an organic unity, the infallible Word of an infallible God, a web of revealed truths centered upon Christ.

He writes of our only proper approach to Scripture:

The only right attitude for us is to confess that our works are vile and our wisdom foolishness, and to receive with thankfulness the flawless righteousness and the perfect Scriptures which God in mercy gives us. Anything else is a conceited affront to divine grace. And evangelical theology is bound to oppose the attitude which undervalues the gift of Scripture and presumes to correct the inerrant Word of God.

Today at 06:33 PM seebs said this in Post #127 (http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?postid=686020#post686020)
Searching through translations to make passages line up with a desired doctrine isn't a very good way to study the Bible. Recognizing the ambiguities and difficulties we face in understanding the Bible is a necessary first step in getting anything out of it but a mirror of what we've already chosen.

Click to expand...

Do you know how we come up with different translations of the Scriptures? The original greek and hebrew manuscripts are studied dilligently by many scholars for months at a time. then they find the correct modern english words to coordinate with the greek or hebrew. The great thing about the Bible, in fact the most encouraging and the best evidence that the Bible is inerrent is that over 1900 years the Bible has been transcribed. Then in 1943 the Dead Sea Scrolls were found by a shepard boy inside an old cave near the Dead Sea. It was realized that these scrolls were the pen of the apostles! But even more amazing than that is when they were translated they matched the Bible EXACTLY!

The only way not to get a mirrior into what we think is by using radical biblicalism: by setting aside you presuppositions and opening God's Word without bringing your own ideas to the table. For more on radical biblicalism, click here: http://www.antithesis.com/features/appealforradical.html

Today at 08:22 PM jseek21 said this in Post #128 (http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?postid=686122#post686122)

So give me Bible passages that support your position instead of man-made ideas and emotions.

But you can't because IF the Bible was fallible then you could not trust even the words to take to support your position.

Click to expand...

Except I rather can: 2 Peter 3:16, and the eunuch in Acts, both testify that we can't reliably understand the Bible.

I think you're missing the point: Your argument is totally circular. Unless the Bible is *already* known to be 100% literally word-for-word perfect and impossible to misunderstand, all the quotes in the world won't prove your position.

Everything you've quoted has been out of context.

Irenaeus, who lived and wrote in Lyons, France, in the early years of the second century, said that we should be:

Most properly assured that the Scriptures are indeed perfect, since they were spoken by the word of God and His Spirit.

Click to expand...

And yet, what he meant by "perfect" isn't what you mean by it. The idea that "perfect" means "you can grab any passage you want, in whatever translation comes to hand, and take it at face value" is a new one.

The early thinkers believed that the Bible was "perfect" in a very different way.

If it's out of context it's because you believe there is no context.

"And yet, what he meant by "perfect" isn't what you mean by it. The idea that "perfect" means "you can grab any passage you want, in whatever translation comes to hand, and take it at face value" is a new one."

Clarify. You cannot grab any verse and say this is what it's talking about. That is how we end up with such things as mormon doctrine. You muct take a verse in context, but still the Bible is inerrent because it is exactly right in the exact way it was written. So in the thought that you cannot just grab a verse, you are right. The idea of grabbing a verse is wrong.

Seebs, do you affirm the "solas"?

sola Scriptura, which means "Scripture alone";
solus Christus, which means "Christ alone";
sola gratia, which means "grace alone";
sola fide, which means "faith alone"; and
soli Deo gloria, which means "glory to God alone."


And/Or do you affirm The Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy

Article I
We affirm that the Holy Scriptures are to be received as the authoritative Word of God.
We deny that the Scriptures receive their authority from the Church, tradition, or any other human source.

Article II
We affirm that the Scriptures are the supreme written norm by which God binds the conscience, and that the authority of the Church is subordinate to that of Scripture.
We deny that Church creeds, councils, or declarations have authority greater than or equal to the authority of the Bible.

Article III
We affirm that the written Word in its entirety is revelation given by God.
We deny that the Bible is merely a witness to revelation, or only becomes revelation in encounter, or depends on the responses of men for its validity.

Article IV
We affirm that God who made mankind in His image has used language as a means of revelation.
We deny that human language is so limited by our creatureliness that it is rendered inadequate as a vehicle for divine revelation. We further deny that the corruption of human culture and language through sin has thwarted God’s work of inspiration.

Article V
We affirm that God’s revelation in the Holy Scriptures was progressive.
We deny that later revelation, which may fulfill earlier revelation, ever corrects or contradicts it. We further deny that any normative revelation has been given since the completion of the New Testament writings.

Article VI
We affirm that the whole of Scripture and all its parts, down to the very words of the original, were given by divine inspiration.
We deny that the inspiration of Scripture can rightly be affirmed of the whole without the parts, or of some parts but not the whole.

Article VII
We affirm that inspiration was the work in which God by His Spirit, through human writers, gave us His Word. The origin of Scripture is divine. The mode of divine inspiration remains largely a mystery to us.
We deny that inspiration can be reduced to human insight, or to heightened states of consciousness of any kind.

Article VIII
We affirm that God in His Work of inspiration utilized the distinctive personalities and literary styles of the writers whom He had chosen and prepared.
We deny that God, in causing these writers to use the very words that He chose, overrode their personalities.

Article IX
We affirm that inspiration, though not conferring omniscience, guaranteed true and trustworthy utterance on all matters of which the Biblical authors were moved to speak and write.
We deny that the finitude or fallenness of these writers, by necessity or otherwise, introduced distortion or falsehood into God’s Word.

Article X
We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.
We deny that any essential element of the Christian faith is affected by the absence of the autographs. We further deny that this absence renders the assertion of Biblical inerrancy invalid or irrelevant.

Article XI
We affirm that Scripture, having been given by divine inspiration, is infallible, so that, far from misleading us, it is true and reliable in all the matters it addresses.
We deny that it is possible for the Bible to be at the same time infallible and errant in its assertions. Infallibility and inerrancy may be distinguished, but not separated.

Article XII
We affirm that Scripture in its entirety is inerrant, being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit.
We deny that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science. We further deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood.

Article XIII
We affirm the propriety of using inerrancy as a theological term with reference to the complete truthfulness of Scripture.
We deny that it is proper to evaluate Scripture according to standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage or purpose. We further deny that inerrancy is negated by Biblical phenomena such as a lack of modern technical precision, irregularities of grammar or spelling, observational descriptions of nature, the reporting of falsehoods, the use of hyperbole and round numbers, the topical arrangement of material, variant selections of material in parallel accounts, or the use of free citations.

Article XIV
We affirm the unity and internal consistency of Scripture.
We deny that alleged errors and discrepancies that have not yet been resolved vitiate the truth claims of the Bible.

Article XV
We affirm that the doctrine of inerrancy is grounded in the teaching of the Bible about inspiration.
We deny that Jesus’ teaching about Scripture may be dismissed by appeals to accommodation or to any natural limitation of His humanity.

Article XVI
We affirm that the doctrine of inerrancy has been integral to the Church’s faith throughout its history.
We deny that inerrancy is a doctrine invented by Scholastic Protestantism, or is a reactionary position postulated in response to negative higher criticism.

Article XVII
We affirm that the Holy Spirit bears witness to the Scriptures, assuring believers of the truthfulness of God’s written Word.
We deny that this witness of the Holy Spirit operates in isolation from or against Scripture.

Article XVIII
We affirm that the text of Scripture is to be interpreted by grammatical-historical exegesis, taking account of its literary forms and devices, and that Scripture is to interpret Scripture.
We deny the legitimacy of any treatment of the text or quest for sources lying behind it that leads to relativizing, dehistoricizing, or discounting its teaching, or rejecting its claims to authorship.

Article XIX
We affirm that a confession of the full authority, infallibility, and inerrancy of Scripture is vital to a sound understanding of the whole of the Christian faith. We further affirm that such confession should lead to increasing conformity to the image of Christ.
We deny that such confession is necessary for salvation. However, we further deny that inerrancy can be rejected without grave consequences, both to the individual and to the Church.

As to the verse 2 peter 3:16
"as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures."

In verse 16 Peter uses the phrase "hard to understand". Since Paul had (since the time Peter wrote) written all of his letters and died, the readers of 2 Peter would have already recieved letters about future events from Paul. Some of Pauls explainations were difficult (yet not impossible) to interpret. Nevertheless, Peter uses Paul as a support for his teaching.
he also uses the phrase "untaught and unstable... twist". In Peter's day, as today, there was a proliferation of foolish and hurtful perverting of apostolistic teaching about the future.
"To their own destruction": The fact that distorting Paul's writings leads to eternal damnation proves that Paul's writings were inspired by God.
"the rest of the Scriptures": This is one of the most clear-cut statements in the Bible to affirm that the writings of Paul are Scripture. Peter's testimony is that Paul wrote Scripture, but false teachers distorted it. The NT apostles were aware that they spoke and wrote the Word of God (1 thess. 2:13) as surely as did the OT prophets. Peter realized that the NT writers brought the divine Truth that completed the Bible (1 peter 1:10-12).



John Wesley's Explanatory Notes on the Whole Bible

Which things the unlearned - They who are not taught of God. And the unstable - Wavering, double - minded, unsettled men. Wrest - As though Christ would not come. As they do also the other scriptures - Therefore St Paul's writings were now part of the scriptures. To their own destruction - But that some use the scriptures ill, is no reason why others should not use them at all.