God Reveals Himself Through a Book

How do we know all these things? They are recorded on the printed pages of our Bibles. Thus the Bible itself is a means by which God reveals himself to us, since it is by reading the Bible that we find him confronting us.

But we must be careful here. There is a difference between God and statements about God. The statements in the Bible have come out of the historical events which the Bible describes, and these statements have been gathered together, written down, pieced together, and translated, by men. We believe that these men were moved by the power and spirit of God in a singular way, but this did not make them cease to be men. We will therefore hear the word of men within the Bible as well as the word of God.

Perhaps a couple of illustrations can make this clear. Imagine that you have bought a victrola record. On the label you see the slogan "His Master's Voice." Listening to the record, you can hear the voice of a great master -- a Caruso, a Flagstad, or even a Bing Crosby. And yet, it is not just the master's voice. There are also other noises -- scratches which are the result of the fact that the record has been made by human beings. This does not mean that we fail to hear the master, but simply that we must be careful to distinguish between the noises that are the master's voice and those which are the surface noises of the record. So with the Bible, we are always faced with the responsibility of distinguishing between the sounds that are the Master's voice, and those that are the result of the human situation in which men wrote down the words we now have.

Or imagine that you are standing in front of a solid brick wall. Only if there is a window in the wall can you see through it. Even then, if you look at the windowpane, you cannot focus on the view beyond. So you must look through the windowpane and focus your attention on what lies beyond. Similarly, the Christian does not so much look at the Bible as through the Bible to the encounters between God and man which are described on the printed page, and which we could not see at all if we did not have the printed page. If we just look at the Bible, its statements and propositions, the image beyond may be blurred; we have not come to know God as fully as we should. But if we look through the Bible, it serves as a kind of window by means of which God and Christ are brought into true focus. Thus the Bible is the means by which God can make his impact upon us today.