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Biblical Essay
Vinh Truong
THEO 201: Introducing Christian Doctrine
September 28, 2017
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For long time ago, Bible was created for the account of God’s actions, purposes, and messages to
the human kind in the Earth. Therefore, it is important for people who believe in God possess a
book of Bible. With the Scripture, people can understand deeply what God has done for human
being. In general, nowadays, people can easily access to the Bible which includes several
versions that written by many authors in different countries. There were around 40 authors who
wrote 66 books of the Bible in approximately 1600 years from Moses (began writing in 1400
BC) to John (finished writing in AD 100.) (Town, 2011, p.8) 1. However, people all acknowledge
the same lessons and messages because all the information in all versions of Scripture are
uniform. In other words, people cannot find any contradictions between divine Authors and God
and Himself and the unity of content in the Bible can provide a lot of valuable messages for
mankind comprehensively and smoothly.
The First Creation
The Bible is the set of narrative stories of human throughout the time. Although there are
many concepts exist to explain the question how the Earth and humankind were created, we can
see that the story of the First Creation are similar in every first line in all of the book of Bible. To
elaborate, both the King James Versions (KJV) and New International Version (NIV) all started
with: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the Earth” 2 or it was reworded a little bit in
International Standard Version (ISV): “In the beginning, God created the universe” 3. Overall,
people can see that the first line of any books of Bible all portrayed and claimed one important
fact that human and other living species in the Earth are originated from God. In addition, the
unified nature of Bible demonstrate apparently the love of God for people. Initially, He decorated
beautiful living places for human with “waters under the heaven” 4 (KIJ, Genesis 1:9), “seed-
1. Town, Argument that the Bible is The World of God (2011), 8.
2. Genesis 1:1 (New International Version).
3. Genesis 1:1 (International Standard Version).
4. Genesis 1:0 (King James Version).
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bearing plants and fruit trees, each kind containing its own seeds” 5 (NIV, Genesis 1:11). He
provided us everything for our basic needs. In addition, all versions of Scripture mentioned that
we are created under the image of God. As Erickson said in the “Introduction to Christian”,
“Genesis contains two accounts of God’s creation of human. The first, in 1:26-27, simply records
(1) God’s decision to make humans in his own image and likeness, and (2) God’s action
implementing this decision” 6 (365). God blessed the humans by creating the human race with
love to love and serve Him and enjoy the relationship with Him. Without the unity of words and
contents in the Scripture, people cannot understand these meaningful things God made for them
and cannot know their derivation and how they could live to dedicate their lives for God.
Continuing on the uniformity of the stories in the Bible, God was telling us about our
sins. At the beginning, Adam and Eva disobeyed God said not to eat the prohibited fruit: “You
must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or
you will die” 7 (Genesis 3:2, NIV). At first, readers can realize that God was really angry with
them but in later chapters, the fall of Adam and Eva led to other sins and ignorance of human
being. In other words, God foreseen our mistakes and He wanted to prevent it from the start
point. Indeed, we can see the God love for human. Then, after the Fall is His sacrificed for our
sins. In NIV, it said: “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our
justification” 8 (Roman 4:25) or the KIV put it in another way: “Who was delivered for our
offences, and was raised again for our justification” 9. Akin also mentioned the God’s sacrificed
in his book: “Salvation is the work of God that delivers us from sin and its penalty, restores us to
a right relationship with him, and imparts to us eternal life” 10. Afterward, He returned as His
5. Genesis 1:11 (New International Version).
6. Erickson, Millard, Introducing Christian Doctrine (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 2016), 365.
7. Genesis 3:2 (New International Version).
8. Roman 4:25 (New International Version).
9. Roman 4:25 (New International Version).
10. Daniel L. Akin, Theology for the church (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2007), 500.
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resurrection but He never forgot thinking about human beings. Then, he created a new Heaven
and new Earth which are impressively beautiful. He would love to let us live with each other in
peaceful places without evils. Indeed, to emphasize, if the Bible is not unified in many versions,
people cannot acknowledge all the messages God wanted to convey to them with His love.
Conclusion
The unity of the message of Scripture is showed up obviously in every single page of
every different kind of versions. The Bible is the world of God so all the contents in Bible are
similar and familiar for the readers to acknowledge and understand deeply the God’s messages.
Besides the mentioned examples on the above, there are more evidences to prove the uniformity
of the Scripture throughout the narrative stories which altogether demonstrate God’s love for
human kind.
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Bibliography
Akin, Daniel. Theology for the church. Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2007.
Erickson, Millard, Introducing Christian Doctrine (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 2016),
365.
Town, Argument that the Bible is The World of God (2011). Retrieved from
https://learn.liberty.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-18698786-dt-content-rid-
170150388_1/courses/THEO201_B27_201740/Arguments_that_the_Bible_is_the_Word
_of_God%281%29.pdf
