Bible Study Guide Questions
The short answer
Good Bible study runs on good questions. The difference between a study that goes somewhere and one that stalls is rarely the passage itself — it is whether the questions asked of it are real questions, ones that open a genuine issue, rather than prompts fishing for an answer everyone already knows.
Donald McKim's handling of the question "Is the Bible the Word of God?" is a useful model. Instead of rushing to a yes or no, he lays out what the question actually involves: some Christians hold that a single proven error would undermine the Bible's claim to be God's Word, since a perfect God must give a perfect Word. Others refine that position, saying only the original writings were error-free — a necessary qualification, since the Bibles we hold are built from many manuscript copies, and a scribe could slip while copying a word. Notice what a question like this does: it forces the reader to think about inspiration, transmission, and what counts as an error, rather than settling for a slogan.
Shirley Guthrie models a second kind of question — the kind that catches us inserting our own assumptions into a text. Discussing the "image of God," he notes that Western Christianity long assumed the phrase means the ability to reason, following ancient Greek thought. Then he turns to the reader with a pointed aside: when asked who you are, did you actually answer "I am a rational animal"? The question exposes how a definition we inherited from culture can feel biblical without being biblical — Guthrie observes that Scripture never suggests reason is the key to our humanity, even though it respects the intellect. Taken together, the two excerpts suggest a practical rule for writing study questions: ask questions that put your inherited reading on trial before the passage itself.
What scholars say
The first excerpt shows McKim opening up the question of whether the Bible is the Word of God by mapping the real issues behind it — perfection, original writings, and copying errors. The second catches Guthrie mid-argument, using a direct question to the reader to test whether the "rational animal" definition of humanity comes from the Bible or from an assumption carried into it.
“Some Christians believe the Bible cannot properly be called the “Word of God” if it could be proved that even one historical or scientific error is found within its pages. If God is perfect, they argue, then God’s “Word” must also be perfect—a single error casts doubt on the truth of God. A refinement is to say that there can be no such “errors” in the original biblical writings ( autographa ). This qualification is necessary because the Bible as we have it now is a synthesis of a number of manuscripts or copies of texts. So it is possible that some scribe could have made an error in copying a word, and an “error” could creep into a biblical text.”
“We will look first at some of the more popular of these "inserted" views of the image of God and then at what most contemporary theologians believe the Bible itself means by it. Rationality? Western civilization in general has followed the ancient Greek belief that it is the capacity to reason that makes human beings human and like God. It is not surprising, then, that Western Christianity assumed for centuries that "image of God" means ability to reason and act in accordance with what is reasonable and rational. (Whatever you may think theoretically about this, did it occur to you to say "I am a rational animal" when asked who you are?) But although the Bible does not deny that we are thinking beings and shows no contempt for the intellect, nowhere does it suggest that this is the key to our humanity.”
What it means for you
When you prepare questions for a group or for your own reading, try two tests. First, does the question open a real issue — something the passage genuinely leaves you to work through — or does it merely rehearse a conclusion you already hold? Second, does it surface what you brought with you? A simple exercise: before studying a passage, write down what you already assume it means, then ask where that assumption came from. Often, as Guthrie's aside shows, our confident answers turn out to be cultural habits rather than the text's own claims. Questions that expose those habits are the ones that let Scripture speak on its own terms.
In context
Both excerpts come from books built around teaching Christian belief to ordinary readers. McKim's passage appears in a question-and-answer format, where each question is treated as a doorway into a live theological discussion — here, inspiration, manuscript copying, and error. Guthrie's passage sits within a survey of popular views of the "image of God" that he describes as inserted into the text, which he sets against what contemporary theologians believe the Bible itself means. Each author, in his own format, treats questions as tools for testing assumptions rather than confirming them.