How can we know that the Scriptures alone are inspired? What about other religions? Don't they have books that claim to be inspired? Is there any way to verify that God wrote the Bible? Important questions that most Christians are not prepared to answer. Most would just give an honest but insufficient answer, I believe because the Holy Spirit convicts me to believe. Upon completion of this session, the student will have been exposed to a strong logical defense for the evangelical understanding that the Christian Scriptures alone are the word of God. The student should become more confident in his or her claim that the Scriptures are indeed inspired through discussion about the various tests that the Scriptures must pass before a claim to inspiration can be trusted. Much attention will be given to a defense of the historicity of Scripture, using the resurrection of Christ as a test case. As well, students should become aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the subjective arguments for inspiration such as “the testimony of the Holy Spirit,” since all religions can and do claim these for their writings.

Why are there so many different interpretations of Scripture? How did the apostles interpret Scripture? Are they to be our model? What about the early Church? Should we look for a hidden meaning in Scripture? During this session, the student should come to a basic understanding of what is involved in the hermeneutical processes, by looking at biblical hermeneutics as practiced through the centuries. The primary goal of this session is to introduce the students to the most common mistakes that people make in their hermeneutic—devaluing the human element of Scripture. The concept of biblical docetism will be further explained and illustrated. By the time this lesson is complete, the student should be convinced that a proper understanding of the authorial intent with regards to the Scriptures is just as basic as a proper belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures. The history of interpretation will be briefly covered in order to learn from both the successes and failures of the past so that we might approach interpretation with more integrity and a healthy fear. In the end students should understand that true application cannot be taken from the Scriptures unless we use a historical-grammatical hermeneutic.