Bibliology - What's that?! Why should I care!?

Bibliology (1)

Dear Friends,

So after one year at seminary, I'm into the final week of my first year, with only 4 exams left.
One of them is on one of my favorite classes this semester: Bibliology!

It is not the study of the Bible, it is the study about the Bible!
I'm writing this post here instead of studying, because I believe it will help me study!! Hehe

So What is Bibliology and why must we all study it!?! Not just Seminary students!!

What is Bibliology?

• Bibliology is the doctrine of the Bible, the study of the Bible as God's Word. 
• The Bible tells us everything we know about God, Jesus, Salvation and eternity. An improper understanding of the Bible, would lead to clouded and distorted views on these different issues.
• Bibliology really tells us what the Bible is.

Why should we study Bibliology?

I'm going share how studying the Bible has affected me personally. 

Throughout this class I studied different concepts such as Revelation, Inspiration, Canonicity, Textual Criticism, Translation, Application, Communication. 

For some of these concepts, I found that they were a lot more complex that what I originally thought. 

As evangelical Christians, we believe God speaks to us through the Bible, and that is where we go to understand truth. Unless we study Bibliology, how can we defend adequately the authenticity of the Bible, when faced with the questions of skeptics?

Have you ever heard this?

Did God write the Bible?

The Bible is Full of lies/ contradictions

The Bible is a book made by man.

There are so many translations, how do we know which one is accurate?

Anyone can make the Bible say whatever they want to say!

The Church chose which passages it wanted to include in the Bible

The New Testament was written hundreds of years after Jesus died!

The Bible Excluded many documents of same worth as what we find in the Bible (Gospel of Thomas, Judas).

The Bible is outdated!

Bibliology gives answers to these!

Bibliology helps the Believer to reply/address all these questions/issues. It helps to see the Bible in new light, with insight on what the Church has believed throughout the ages about the Bible. It equips us for building up people in the Church, and evangelism. It allows us to have a strong basis for our trust in the Bible, and allows us to feel comfortable in the reasonableness of our faith.

The process of how we got the Bible, taught me a lot about the work of God, and helped me understand even more how great, and big he was. So many of the truths learned during this class have helped me become more confident in the scripture, which has led me to take it more seriously. The brokenness of man is really serious, and has eternal consequences. The Bible comes perfectly together to form God's message of Redemption. 

Man has sinned, and been separated from God (Gen 3), our sins separate us all from God (Is 59, Rom 3). But God has provided a way (Rom 6:3) by sending his Son (John 3:16), but people must place their face in Christ. (Eph 2:8), so they can do this they must hear his message (Rom 10:14), so we must go proclaim it to the world (Mat 28:19-20). We cannot as Christian justify not proclaiming the gospel. Through this semester I've been prompted to share the Gospel with people. Often I found that the truths I've learned through this course were most helpful to give weight to my answers. The strong evidence for the authenticity of the Bible, allowed me to present it to people, who doubted the Bible was accurate so that in turn they could try to dismiss it.