Clarity is an impressive feature in any writings, and perhaps even more so in ancient ones, which are apt to be obscure to modern readers. I don't see clarity as such a wonder that it suggests inerrancy, though. Nor can the Bible really be all that clear, when its meaning has been disputed for centuries.
I'm afraid I also have a hard time following the rest of this reasoning. My question is not about what logical consequences ensue from accepting that the Bible is authoritative, but about why we should ever accept this in the first place. So, as to the other three characteristics you mention besides clarity: If the Bible is God's Word in the sense that you believe it to be, then it may very well follow that the Bible is authoritative, necessary, and sufficient. To assume in advance that it is those three things, however, and conclude from them that the Bible is God's Word in your sense, is a classic case of begging the question. You simply assume the thing you want to support.
I don't see how it can make sense to believe that a book is authoritative just because it says that it is. That's circular. If a book were to deny its own authority, by saying things like, "Once upon a time ..." or "This is just a rumour ...", then that would be good reason to believe that the book was unreliable; but this doesn't work in reverse. I could write a text right now which asserts that it itself is infallible, and in my text I could have a character, based on a historical figure or not, say that the text is infallible. Those wouldn't be reasons to believe in my text.The Bible claims it is God’s Word throughout the Old and New Testaments, ... and the Bible is self-attesting to the fact it is the Word of God. Jesus, the Son of God, also confirmed the Old Testament as the written Word of God, used it as such in His teachings, and confirmed its authority.
Are you sure? There aren't actually many texts in the Bible that have even been claimed to be specific prophecies that have been fulfilled. So even if those handful of messianic so-called prophecies in Isaiah or geopolitical predictions in Daniel were real cases of accurate prophecy, they wouldn't do much to establish the general authority of the whole Bible. If you look closely at those few cases, moreover, they get shaky.fulfilled prophecies validate the Bible as God’s Word ...
Those verses in Daniel look like a pretty good allegory for real middle-eastern history, all right—up to a point. Then they go right off the rails, and the only inerrantist reading of them that I know is to assume—without any indication from the text itself—that the prophecy suddenly jumps thousands of years into the future at that point, to End Times events that still haven't occurred. The obvious simpler explanation is that the point at which the prophecy fails is when Daniel was written, and that the accurate part of the allegory wasn't really prophecy at all, but known history. We have no other good evidence for exactly when the book was composed, after all.
And the messianic prophecies are stretched, if you really compare the Old Testament originals with the purported New Testament fulfillments. It looks rather as though the New Testament writers invented details to try to make Jesus's life match up with prophecies that they knew. Biblical prophecy is not really a good reason at all to believe in Biblical authority. The track record just isn't that good.
I'm not sure about this one, either. There are a few points on which secular history and archaeology seem to corroborate Biblical stories. There's the Pilate Stone, for example, confirming that a guy named Pontius Pilate was indeed prefect in Judea around the supposed time of Jesus. These confirmable points are the exceptions rather than the rule, though. Furthermore, almost by definition, the historical details that can be confirmed in the Bible are mundane things that any ordinary ancient writings would be expected to report accurately. They aren't miraculous enough to be a reason to believe the Bible inerrant in everything that it says.There are many resources documenting the historical reliability of the Bible.
This one might be a reason; it's personal and subjective. If we're honest, I'd say, it amounts to believing in the authority of an ancient book because of one's feelings. What exactly are these feelings, really?the Holy Spirit convicts us to the fact the Bible is God’s Word
Some might be genuine awe, the spooky sense that one has encountered a vaster mind with a vital message for us. Some of those feelings may also just be the wish to be sure about something, and to be part of a group. Being sure that what one feels is really the conviction of the Holy Spirit seems to me to be placing too much faith in fallible human judgement.
Coming back to your first line, I dispute it: I consider myself a Christian but I do not believe this. It seems bizarre to me, in fact, to believe in the major Christian beliefs only because one first commits to believing whatever the Bible may happen to have in it, and then discovers that what the Bible contains is Christian belief. The Bible may be the source from which I first learned of these concepts, but I don't believe them because they're in the Bible. On the contrary, the only reason I have for respecting the Bible at all is that it contains them. In a sense I know that 2+2 is 4 because my kindergarten teacher told me: I didn't know it until I heard it from her. I don't believe 2+2 is 4 because I believe in everything that nice lady said, though. For me, it's the same with the Bible.Christians believe the Bible is the written word of God and is the divine inspiration of God.
