Thy Word is Truth: Some Thoughts on the Biblical Doctrine of Inspiration

by Edward J. Young

This book was written to be "a forthright defense of the Bible as the infallible and inerrant Word of God, with explanations of apparent contradictions, based on the evidence of the Bible itself; and a pointed refutation of some modern theories that reject a verbally inspired Bible."

Young sets out on this topic with the ambition of writing "not a technical treatise. It is simply a popular book, designed to acquaint the intelligent layman with the Biblical doctrine of inspiration and to convince him of its importance." Unfortunately, Young writing for the layman is like Seuss writing for a doctoral committee. This book is--or at least it was to me--dry and tedious in many places.

That said, it was a valuable read. While Bruce's New Testament Documents set out to show the authenticity of the Bible from the external, Young's treatise set out to show the authenticity of the Bible from the internal: What does it say about itself? What inescapable conclusions must we draw from this? A reading of this book wouldn't convince an athiest, I'm sure, but it will probably help the believer.

I did have some problems with this book. For starters, Young has almost deified the Westminster Confession of Faith. By the time I was done, I wondered if he considered it canonical. If you care to, you can read this confession as it is appended in this volume.

A lesser problem is that Young repeats himself. I don't know if he's doing it for emphasis, or hoping that saying the same thing in different ways will help the reader understand. Whatever it was, this book could have been cut by at least 25% if Young just made his point and moved on (though, admittedly, retention would be less--but still, if you can find a Reader's Digest condensed version, go for that one!).

His method of dealing with apparent contradictions is one that might strike some as problematic. His refutation method was to go through several other options of how to explain a passage. Essentially, rather than showing the fallacy of the critical viewpoint, he provided a "reasonable doubt" defense, repeatedly citing that 'we can't just judge this passage to be contradictory if there are so many other possible explanations.'

While I'm not to fond of that as a general practice, there are times when it is needed. In some cases, as Young repeatedly pointed out, we just don't have all the answers. And to make a firm stand in either direction would be arrogant and assuming as fact something that we don't know. Faith allows us to accept it and that's where we'll have to make our stand.

All in all, this was a worthwhile read and is recommended to the reader.

The Editors do not advocate everything taught by the authors of the books we review. Like us, these authors are fallible humans and those who choose to read these books should measure them by the bible, the one true standard.