During my student days in Basel, my fellow Doctoranden would sometimes accuse me of bibliolatry. I was falsely identifying the words of Scripture with the revelation itself. In the Bible, they would say, we have to do with human attempts to reproduce the word of God in human words. Deus dixit ("God has spoken") can thus never be confused with Paulus dixit ("Paul has spoken").
They were wrong. The Bible is a book unlike other books. It is unique because it has come to us from God himself. The words of the human writers were "breathed out" by him. Inspiration is therefore the indispensable concomitant to any doctrine of revelation. As a result, the Bible is infallible in truth and final in authority.
This can be said of no other book in the world.
