Rebecca Stark is the author of The Good Portion: God, the second title in The Good Portion series.
The Good Portion: God explores what Scripture teaches about God in hopes that readers will see his perfection, worth, magnificence, and beauty as they study his triune nature, infinite attributes, and wondrous works.
Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 6:18PM 
Four recently updated Theological Term of the Week posts:
Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 10:43AM 
I’m thankful for the opportunities to help that I had during the past week. I’ve received some wonderful help from others in the past and I love when I can do a little bit of the same sort of service.
I’m thankful that I got the rest of the garden in on Tuesday when it was still a pleasant job because it would not be nice to be out digging in the garden today.
I’m thankful for my new daughter-in-law. While I’m thanking, I’ll thank God for my regular old sons and daughters, too.
I’m thankful for the new fencing the sons put up across the back of the yard yesterday. It’ll make life with the pup easier if we can just let him out in the yard and know that he’s stuck there. (He had taken to sailing over the old fence whenever he wanted his freedom.) I’m thankful that the perfect fencing was 1/2 price when I went shopping for it yesterday.
I’m thankful that God provides for me in more ways than I can even think to ask for.
On Thursdays throughout this year, I plan to post a few thoughts of thanksgiving along with Kim at the Upward Call and others. Why don’t you participate by posting your thanksgiving each week, too? It’ll be an encouragement to you and to others, I promise.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 8:10PM 
What do Christians mean when they say the Bible is inerrant? The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy tells us what leading inerrantist mean by inerrancy. I’ll be posting a section of this statement each week until I’ve posted the whole thing.
After a preface and a short statement, the Chicago Statement contains the Articles of Affirmation and Denial. (You can read previously posted sections of this statement in by clicking here.) The last section is the Exposition, which “gives an account of the outline of doctrine from which our summary statement and articles are drawn.” This is the very last section of this historic church document.
Inerrancy and Authority
In our affirmation of the authority of Scripture as involving its total truth, we are consciously standing with Christ and His apostles, indeed with the whole Bible and with the main stream of Church history from the first days until very recently. We are concerned at the casual, inadvertent, and seemingly thoughtless way in which a belief of such far-reaching importance has been given up by so many in our day.
We are conscious too that great and grave confusion results from ceasing to maintain the total truth of the Bible whose authority one professes to acknowledge. The result of taking this step is that the Bible which God gave loses its authority, and what has authority instead is a Bible reduced in content according to the demands of one’s critical reasonings and in principle reducible still further once one has started. This means that at bottom independent reason now has authority, as opposed to Scriptural teaching. If this is not seen and if for the time being basic evangelical doctrines are still held, persons denying the full truth of Scripture may claim an evangelical identity while methodologically they have moved away from the evangelical principle of knowledge to an unstable subjectivism, and will find it hard not to move further.
We affirm that what Scripture says, God says. May He be glorified. Amen and Amen.