Let’s assume for a moment that God exists. Let’s imagine that this God is personal, all-powerful, and all-knowing. This God is also the Creator of all that has been created, particularly human beings. If this God is personal, then it only makes sense that he would be a communicating God. A God that possesses even these few characteristics would be so beyond what human beings would be able to comprehend, that in order for humans to be able to know him, he would have to condescend to them in order to make himself known. Given the nature of God and man, it must happen in the way described above otherwise it would be impossible for man to know God if God does not reveal himself to man. There are numerous religions that believe that they can know what God is like by their own striving and imaginations, but these “gods” that they imagine typically end up looking like man himself.

        The question is: Has God made himself known to man? The answer is yes, but how? The “how” requires a bit of explanation. If God (the God described above) is the Creator, then what he reveals about himself would be consistent with how the world really is, which means that his revelation would include an honest analysis of the true nature of humans. God, being all-powerful and all-knowing, has the right to define who man is, not the other way around. As I stated above, when man attempts to define who God is and what the nature of man is, then that “god” looks an awful lot like man and in turn, man looks an awful lot like God (think of Greek mythology to get an idea of what I am talking about).

        The God that I described above is the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible has many more attributes than the four I chose, but he must possess a minimum of the four I described or else he ceases to be God. If God is not all-knowing, then he is limited in some way and events could happen apart from his knowledge and he would not be able to tell how things really are. If God is not all-powerful, then he lacks the ability to be sovereign over his creation or providentially in control over all that happens. If God is not the Creator, then he loses the right to define how things really are, to be sovereign, and it is quite possible that he would have been created by some other being, which would make that being God by definition. If God is not personal, then he cannot relate to human beings. There have been many philosophies and religions that have attempted to deny one of the four attributes that I described but they all end up falling short of the biblical God.

        You may ask: Why am I going through the pains of providing all this background when the title of the post is “What is the Bible?” I know many people that claim that they believe in God, but they define God in ways that contradict the definitions that the Bible provides or they believe that the Bible is full of errors when they have never really read the Bible or they claim that the Bible is just written by men, nothing more. There are also those who claim to be Christians, yet they do not believe the Bible or at least all of the Bible to be true, which is somewhat baffling considering that it is in the Bible that we learn about Jesus. These are all questions or accusations that I plan on dealing with in multiple posts as I attempt to hammer out the issue of what the Bible is. It is my goal to help provide answers to those who claim to be Christians and to show why the gospel of Jesus Christ is true and should be embraced whole-heartedly by those who believe already and those who do not yet believe.