{"id":332,"date":"2025-03-01T04:53:10","date_gmt":"2025-03-01T04:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cssigniter.com\/demos\/coastline\/?p=88"},"modified":"2025-04-24T21:29:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T01:29:09","slug":"palabra-de-dios","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beta.church\/en\/palabra-de-dios\/","title":{"rendered":"I. Word of God"},"content":{"rendered":"

#Values<\/a>: Values are definitions of what we hope will identify us. These articles are primarily intended for those who wish to join us in this project\u2014whether through prayer, donations, or collaboration.<\/p>\n

The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is the Word of God inspired by the Holy Spirit and therefore our supreme authority in faith and practice. We do not read it merely to acquire knowledge but to encounter the Triune God, reading it in light of His person and the history of salvation, and to be transformed both individually and in community.<\/p>\n

Beta Value #1: The Word of God<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

Saying that the Bible is the Word of God can be difficult to explain until one experiences it personally. The apostle Paul wrote, \u201cFaith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ\u201d (Romans 10:17). Throughout history, millions of people have experienced God speaking to them through this ancient book. They have not believed merely due to sound reasoning\u2014though such reasoning certainly exists\u2014but because through its witness they have encountered Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

The faith Paul speaks of is not a mere acceptance of abstract ideas, but a transformative response to the reality of God. As biblical scholar N. T. Wright notes, faith responds to our deepest longings: the desire for a restored world, for authentic spirituality, to make sense of the world\u2019s beauty, and for meaningful relationships. This truth can be perceived, as theologian John Calvin said, through a sensus divinitatis<\/i>, an innate awareness of the divine. We all possess this sense, which allows us to recognize a deeper reality that answers our essential longings.<\/p>\n

Jared Ortiz, drawing on a 2nd-century theologian named Irenaeus of Lyon, says that the faith revealed in the Bible introduces us into this reality. It is not a quest that excludes reason, but a knowledge that transcends and complements it. Just as our senses allow us to perceive the material world, faith allows us to know spiritual truth. Similarly, Blaise Pascal affirmed that only the God revealed in the Bible can fill the human heart\u2019s existential emptiness\u2014that absence which only He can occupy. Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, claimed that in God we find life\u2019s true meaning\u2014our deepest need.<\/p>\n

To affirm that the Bible is the Word of God inspired by the Holy Spirit is to recognize that, although written by human authors in different contexts, its message is divine. We affirm this not only through the experience of millions of believers throughout history but also because of the profound harmony of its writings. Despite being composed over different times, in various places, and by multiple authors, the Bible tells a unified story.<\/p>\n

That great story is the story of a God who seeks to relate to us, even when, time and again, we have turned our backs on Him. Jesus illustrated this reality through the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11\u201324): we are like children who, in our self-sufficiency, want to live as if God does not exist\u2014thus falling into a self-destructive existence. This has affected not only our personal lives but also our relationships, society, and connection with creation.<\/p>\n

However, this was not God\u2019s original intention. He created us to live in relationship with Him, growing in love by reflecting Christ. Despite our rebellion, His love remains unchanged. He has not abandoned us but continues to wait for us with open arms, going out to meet us in order to restore us and return us to the life for which we were created.<\/p>\n

This is the heart of the story of salvation\u2014the story that runs through the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation: a God who not only seeks us but who, in His love, chose to walk among us and come to rescue us.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Christian story claims to be the true story about God and the world and presents itself as the explanation for the voice whose echo we hear in the quest for justice, the desire for spirituality, the longing for relationship, and the hunger for beauty.\u201d<\/i><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2014 N.T. Wright, Simply Christian<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

According to Saint Irenaeus, faith is not a subjective opinion but is based on objective reality. Faith does not pertain to feelings but concerns both action and morality. Faith is not contrary to reason but is the only path to true understanding. Faith is not a mere personal preference but gives us access to the foundation of all reality, since it recognizes \u201cwhat really is, as it is.\u201d Thus, far from being a deception, faith \u201cis grounded in truly real things.\u201d Faith leads us to the solid foundation of truth, upon which we can stake our lives, for it is faith that enables \u201ca true understanding of what is\u201d and leads to eternal salvation.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Jared Ortiz, The Nicene Creed: A Scriptural, Historical, and Theological Commentary<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cGod relates to his people and enters into his creation to facilitate that relationship. Thus, the Bible begins with God\u2019s presence in relationship with his people in the garden (Genesis) and ends with God\u2019s presence in relationship with his people in the garden (Revelation). This holy, intense, and powerful presence of God appears to Moses in the burning bush and at Mount Sinai, and then enters the tabernacle (and later the temple) so that God might dwell among his people. In fact, God\u2019s presence dwelling among his people is central to his covenant with them, and Israel\u2019s worship relationship with God centers on his presence in the tabernacle or temple. However, because of their sin and disobedience, Israel is exiled from God\u2019s presence. God departs from the temple (Ezekiel), and Israel is exiled from the land. The restoration of God\u2019s presence is promised throughout the Old Testament prophets and fulfilled in the Gospels when Jesus\u2014Emmanuel, God with us\u2014appears. The incarnation climaxes the relational presence of God, the theme driving the entire Old Testament story. In Acts, after Jesus\u2019 ascension, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within each believer, just as the holy presence of God in the Old Testament dwelt in the tabernacle or temple. Paul explains the broad and profound theological implications of the relational presence of the Triune God among his people. In fact, nearly every aspect of Paul\u2019s theology connects to the relational presence of God. The entire story culminates at the end of Revelation, where God\u2019s presence is once again in Jerusalem (the New Jerusalem) and in the garden, relating with his people. This \u2018mega-theme\u2019 drives the biblical story, uniting and providing interconnected cohesion across the canon for all other major themes, such as covenant, kingdom, creation, holiness, redemption, law and grace, sin and forgiveness, life and death, worship, and obedient living. It is, in fact, the cohesive center of biblical theology.\u201d<\/i><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2014 J. Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hays, God\u2019s Relational Presence<\/i><\/p>\n

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\u201cMen of sound judgment will always be sure that a sense of divinity is engraved on the minds of men, and that this cannot be effaced. Indeed, the perversity of the impious, who struggle furiously yet are unable to rid themselves of the fear of God, is abundant testimony that this conviction\u2014that there is some God\u2014is naturally innate in all and is fixed deep within, like in the very marrow.\u201d<\/i><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2014 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion<\/i><\/p>\n

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In his renowned essay Man\u2019s Search for Meaning<\/i> (1945), which recounts his observations in Nazi concentration camps, Viennese psychiatrist Viktor Frankl proposed that all people seek\u2014or must seek\u2014a meaning to their lives. And that we cannot live without that meaning. Certainly, he explains, the total meaning of reality\u2014the meaning of life in general\u2014and of history surpasses us, because we are not God. But we must open ourselves to that meaning through both reason and faith. First, reason, in connection with personal and social experience, leads us to conclude that the most intelligent question is not \u201cwhy\u201d something happens\u2014especially when it is painful\u2014but \u201cfor what,\u201d what life is asking of us through it. Second, faith. To affirm that we need faith is not, for Frankl, to suddenly leap into religion while abandoning human experience; for we all continually live by exercising human faith in others\u2014trusting those who serve us daily in society: the pharmacist and the architect, the train driver and the baker. Christian faith is a response to the search for meaning, as we said. And not only in that it illuminates what other responses leave in darkness; but also in that faith implies responding with one\u2019s whole life to the meaning of events\u2014first glimpsed by reason and then confirmed by Christian revelation. It therefore implies the responsibility<\/i> to accept that in God lies the meaning of life, history, and all things\u2014and the decision and perseverance to act accordingly, out of love for God, others, and the created world, for all of them are God\u2019s creatures.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Ramiro Pellitero, God and the Search for Meaning<\/i><\/p>\n

Finally, reading Scripture is also a covenantal act: we read as participants in the drama of the covenant of redemption. The notion of covenant is one of the most frequently used images in Scripture to refer to God\u2019s saving relationship with creation. The Old Testament speaks of multiple covenants that God makes with creation and his people: with Noah (Gen. 9), Abraham (Gen. 17), Moses and the people of Israel (Ex. 6), and David (2 Sam. 7). God\u2019s covenantal acts are central to the drama of salvation, and these acts find their culmination in the person of Jesus Christ. Christians encounter the covenantal God through the voice of the Spirit in Scripture, who incorporates believers into the covenant in Christ.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Tod Billings, The Word of God for the People of God<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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