Marcian only included books in the New Testament that fostered and championed his idea

of a distinction between the loving God of the New Covenant and the mean and nasty God of the Old Testament.

So Marcian gave us the first scissors and paste version of the Bible, where he actually tried to play around with the

writings of the apostles and dismiss what he didn't like and keep what he did like and doctor

up the sources.

Throughout church history, there have been those who would pick and choose which parts of the Bible they would accept and which parts they would reject, whether it was Marcion in the second century, liberalism in the 20th century, or preachers today who cherry-pick proof texts in an attempt to make the Bible say what they want. You're listening

to renewing your mind, and this week we'll consider the important topic of the Bible and its

authority in our lives. Since there have been those throughout church history who have disagreed

about which books should be in the Bible, how can you and I trust and have confidence that the books we have today should be there?

Well, today, R.C. Sprawl will explain how it is

that the books of the New Testament came to be recognized as the revealed word of God.

Here's Dr. Sprawl.

In our last segment of our study of this theme of the authority of Scripture, we looked

at those claims that the Bible makes for itself. Now, I mentioned in Paul's second letter

to Timothy, Paul made the statement, all scripture is given

by inspiration. Notice that he didn't simply say scripture is given by inspiration, but he used

the term all, as if to indicate that there would be more than one scripture. Well, literally, in the Greek,

all the graphe means all of the writings or all of the sacred writings. It gives us our first clue

that the Bible is really not a Bible, in the sense that the Bible is not a Bibliots

or Biblione, from which we get the word Bible, which means book.

It's not a book.

Well, it is a book, but it's not a book.

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