The Bible is Gods Word and its meaning is clear. Explain what different kinds of Christians might say about this statement.

Another group of Christians which might take this statement in a different way are the conservatives. They believe that the Bile is the Word of God, through the words of the authors who interpreted it. This means that the Bibles authors were inspired by God, therefore the Bible should be important. They also believe that there is human error in the Bible e.g. cultural influences mean that we can discount some passages, like slavery is wrong, or pork is fine to eat.

Finally there is the Liberal view. They believe that the Bible contains or carries the Word of God, but it is also the word of men who sometimes got things wrong. They believe that we have to interpret the Bibles words carefully, because it was written by human beings, and human beings are not exactly the perfect image of God, so cannot get everything right. There are strengths and weaknesses to this view. Their strengths are: They do not blame error in the Bible on God, but on the humans who wrote it, they do not see advances in science as a threat because they are strong believers in God and they accept different interpretations of the Bible. However, there are many weaknesses. For example, they can choose whether or not to accept or reject parts of the Bible, so if it does not fit in with their world view they can choose to reject it. This means that the Bible loses its absolute authority.