The Bible as "The Word of God in the Words of Men"

Abstract

The Bible, considered from the point of literature, may appear to be just a collection of literary compositions of different authors of various times. But if we take a second look, with a critical mind, we realize that they represent the faith-experience of many individuals and communities of believers. For the Christians, however, these writings represent God's Word to them through the medium of human language. Just as they believe that God became man, they believe also that God's word assumed the outward appearance of human words. The infinitely sublime Word of God lowers itself to the ordi- nary status of human word and thereby subjects itself to all the limitations of human language. But a Christian has an eye of faith to penetrate these layers of human language and see clearly the Word of God enshrined therein, which comes to him anew as a normative force of his life here and now through the Bible. For him, there- fore, the Bible is not like any other literary work by a human author, but it is the inspired Word of God.! In other words, it is not an ordinary book, but a sacred book, the author of which is God and not man.? This aspect of the Sacred Scriptures of the Christians is discussed at some length in this article.