One might think that with the Bible as the center of Christianity, the unity of Christians could be easily realised. Unfortunately, this has not proved to be true. This inability of Scripture to unify the Lord's people proves that the letter of the Bible cannot really replace the living Christ as the center of our faith

The Bible speaks to us of the life and work of God, and since 'life' is greater than its manifestation, it cannot be expressed completely in any logical or theo-logical form. Therefore, the Bible itself cannot escape being understood in many different ways. Thus we see how, in the Wisdom of God, it is impossible to make the Scriptures the end or final authority in themselves, for they only express God's authority to those who live in fellowship with the Spirit.

On the one hand there are the so-called fundamentalists who, accepting the Bible as the infallible Word of God, believe there is no mistakes in the whole Bible - whatever translation - not even in one phrase or manner of wording. To them it is, in the most literal sense the Word of God from cover to cover and their faith is utterly dependant on its literal infalliblity.

On the other hand there are liberals who try to compromise Biblical truth with science. Denying the spiritual in favour of the rational, or adopting the results of higher and lower critisism, they reject the inspiration of the whole Bible.

There are yet others who take the whole Bible to be the Word of God as do the fundamentalists, but in a slightly different way. They believe that the Spirit acts in the words of the historical records to reveal the Living Word. They recognise the Bible as the record of God's revelation of Himself throughout history, climaxing in Christ.

These people place their dependence on the work of the Spirit to come into a personal relationship with Christ, the Truth Himself. For apart from both the written Word and the quickening Spirit there is little or no real experiential knowledge of Jesus, who is the living Word of God.