Lux Lucet

The Bible alone is the Word of God.  This is the axiom, the starting point, for the whole system of Christian doctrine.  Since all saving knowledge of God is given in Scripture (man has an innate knowledge of God that does not lead to salvation, see Rom.1:18-23 and WCF I.1) it is critical that the church clearly understand and articulate what the Bible has to say about its own origin and authority.  In the early years of the twentieth century the Bible was under attack by liberals, who, by advancing an erroneous doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible, managed to undermine the authority of the Scriptures in the eyes of many.    J. Gresham Machen would have none of this.  Writing in his book Christianity and Liberalism, Machen commented,

The contents of the Bible, then, are unique.  But another fact about the Bible is also important.  The Bible might contain an account of a true revelation from God, and yet the account be full of error.  Before the full authority of the Bible can be established, therefore, it is necessary to add to the Christian doctrine of revelation the Christian doctrine of inspiration.  The latter doctrine means that the Bible not only is an account of important things, but that the account itself is true, the writer having  been so preserved from error, despite a full maintenance of their habits of thought and expression, that the resulting Book is the “infallible rule of faith and practice.”

The Bible alone is the Word of God, and that Word is truth, infallibly communicated by the human authors of Scripture writing under the influence of the Holy Spirit.