MBD-03 The Normative Perspective: The Attributes of Scripture

In nearly every nation, proceedings in courts of law often involve written documents. Things like receipts, letters, contracts, confessions and written statements by witnesses are used as evidence. But everyone knows that it is not enough simply to have such documents available to the court. For them to be used effectively, lawyers, judges, and juries have to know certain attributes or characteristics of these documents. Much time is often spent learning and establishing things like who wrote a particular document, who received it, when was it written, why was it written and what it states. Knowing these attributes is crucial to using these documents properly.

We have some similar concerns when we do Christian ethics. No matter what the ethical question, we always have at least one document that we need to take into account, namely the Bible. But what impact the Bible has on our decision varies from person to person. Some Christians rely almost entirely on the Bible as the unfailing and authoritative source of perfect answers to moral questions. Others value its advice but take its words with a grain of salt. While still others disregard it as irrelevant and out of touch with the modern world. And all these different perceptions of the Bible’s usefulness in ethics have one thing in common: they are all based on an assessment of the Bible’s attributes.

This lesson is the third in our series on Making Biblical Decisions. We’ve entitled it, “The Normative Perspective: The Attributes of Scripture.” As we saw in a previous lesson, God’s own character is our ultimate standard. And his word is our authoritative revealed standard because it infallibly teaches us about God’s character. In this lesson, we’ll focus on the attributes of Scripture in order to see more clearly how the Bible reveals God’s character to us.

In earlier lessons, we established that ethical judgments always involve a person applying God’s word to a situation. This outlook led us to see that there are three essential considerations that we must always take into account as we make ethical decisions: the standard of God’s Word, the particulars of the situation, and the person making the judgment. We’ve identified these considerations as the normative, situational and existential perspectives in ethics. In this lesson we’ll continue to address the normative perspective, looking for the proper standards for ethical decisions.