Is the Bible trustworthy?
2 Timothy 3:14-17
14But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17So that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
The Necessity of the Bible
How can we know what God is like? How do we know what He thinks? How do we know about the afterlife and the spiritual world? When it comes to questions like these, you are left with basically three options:
- That there is no reliable guide to knowing God and God is therefore unknowable, or
- You must accept by faith that your own intuition and judgment are reliable guides to knowing God, or
- You can know God through revelation.
God is unknowable - "There is no way to know what God is like"
Some people will claim that it is impossible for anyone to know with any degree of certainty what God is like. In fact, this is probably the majority opinion in our culture today. We see this conviction most clearly in response to anyone who claims that they do know the mind of God.
Anytime anyone makes the claim that their religious position is the "right" religious view, they are charged with intolerance and bigotry. People will say to them, "How dare you make such a claim. How arrogant of you to say that your way to God is the only way. You cannot say such a thing." The underlying assumption is that you cannot claim to know the truth about God and spiritual matters.
We are going to talk more about the charge of bigotry and tolerance next week, but if you say, "no one can claim that their religious view is the correct religious view," then what are you doing? You are claiming that only your religious view is the correct religious view. You are guilty of the same arrogance and bigotry that you accuse others of. You are claiming to know what others cannot know.
Yet, how can you make such a claim? Based on what authority can you say either that all religious views are equal or that no religious views are valid?
To say that no one can be certain about who God is tantamount to claim to omniscience. You are saying that God is unknowable, but how do you know that? By what authority do you make that claim? What proof do you have that no one can be certain that their religious position is correct?
It is logically possible to say that "I don't know what God is like" but it is not logically possible to say "No one can know with certainty what God is like." So, you cannot be certain of your doubts. You cannot be a convinced skeptic. You must always be open to the possibility that God is knowable.
Yet, as modern people, we don't think of God as being knowable. We think of religious and spiritual matters as being claims that are not subjected to standards of truthfulness like right and wrong.
For example, a few years ago students on several college campuses were asked what God is like. A student from Michigan State gave this typical answer. "God is everything each person thinks of him/her." Another from Haverford College wrote:
"God exists in each individual, and the form which their God takes is entirely up to them. To say there is one God, or dictate a God or concept of God to someone other than yourself, is denying them the chance to experience God for themselves, and therefore I think it is unfair. Yes, God exists, but to each his or her own."[1]
Yet, is that possible? Is it possible to design your own God? In other words, are claims about God truth claims or are they merely preferences? To say that you can conceive of God anyway you want is the same thing as saying there is no God. Because, only if there is no God.
If there is a God at all, if the spiritual world is real, then the truth claims about God and the spiritual world must be either right or wrong, just like any claim about reality.
"I know in my heart what God is like" –
You
can know God through your intuition
This position is usually stated, not in this way, but by simply saying, "I believe God is …."
In that same survey that I mentioned moments ago among students at Michigan State University, "At least forty limited their description of God solely to those aspects highly favorable to us. God is said to be "all love," "flexible and understanding," "all forgiving," "a very kind man," "a good spirit," "nice" and so on. Missing here was any sense of a God who might be holy or righteous, who might call his creatures to be holy and righteous or hold them responsible for their deeds."[2]
My question to these students would be, "How do you know? On the basis of what authority have you constructed your theology?" To have any view of God, at least any credible view of God, you must be able to support that view with some sort of authority other than wishful thinking. Unless you can claim divine revelation for your view of God, as the Apostle Paul does, you have no authority.
To say anything meaningful about God, that information would have to be revealed to you by God in some way. Otherwise, you are simply spouting off your opinion. Let me put this as bluntly as I know how, but when it comes to God and the ultimate issues of life, your opinion and my opinion don't mean diddly.
People make claims all the time that God is this or that, that the Bible is unreliable, that God does not exist or that we cannot know that God exists. People make statements like this all the time and my question is, "How do you know?"
Authority is an important aspect of anyone's credibility. People are believable when they have the authority to say what they say. For example, if I were to tell you that the Apostle Paul wrote 13 of the 27 New Testament books, you would probably believe me because you would figure that preachers know that kind of thing. However, if I were to tell you that Toyota Corollas are the best made cars, you might not believe me. You might reason, "Mark is a nice guy and I doubt that he would lie intentionally, but I happen to know that Mark doesn't know a thing about cars." I would be speaking outside of my area of expertise and therefore have no authority. Now, if I said, "Road and Track Magazine says that Toyota Corollas are the best made cars," then, suddenly, my claim would have authority because they are recognized as the experts on cars.
What you are I think God is like, our opinions about God, sin, salvation, meaning, purpose—all of these big issues of life are insignificant because only we really don't know. The only way we can know is if we have information from an true authority on the subject.
You can know God through revelation
Here we find that the Apostle Paul claims the highest authority for the Bible. The reason why the Bible should be our only standard for what we are to believe and what we are to do is because it is inspired by God.
Literally, Paul says that the Scriptures are "God-breathed." That does not mean that the Bible was given by dictation. The Bible is composed of 66 books written over at least a 1500-year period by about 40 different writers. In each of these cases, God used the language, vocabulary, education, and experience to communicate His Word to us. Yet, even though the Bible is a book written by human authors, ultimately, it is a divine book because all of it was written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
The Apostle Peter explains this in his second letter, when he writes:
2 Peter 1: 20-21 - 20Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. 21For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
So, what both Paul and Peter are saying is, we should listen to the Bible because the Bible is God's Word. It is His authoritative voice declaring who He is. It is our only infallible guide for what we are to believe and do.
When it comes to knowing about God and the ultimate issues of life, there are two possible sources of authority. There is God or there is man. Either what you believe about God comes from God or is of human origin. If it is purely of human origin, then it is just a set of people's opinions that has no more authority than your own speculative opinion.
So, we are left with only one option. If God is to we are to say anything meaningful about God, then we must have the authority for what we say. The Bible claims to be inspired, and therefore claims to be the authority on who God is and what we are to believe about Him.
The Reliability of the Bible
[3]That raises the question: How do we know that the Bible is reliable? Just because someone claims to be an authority, that does not mean that they are. Just because the Bible claims to be God's Word, that does not mean that it is.
Before I go on, I should mention that much of the following material I received from a friend. It is not original with me, but I have checked out the facts in various sources. One source you might find helpful is The New Testament Scriptures: Are they reliable? by FF Bruce. For some of the facts in this, you can even get the old book, Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell. He does a good job of citing sources.
A key reason we should believe the Bible is trustworthy is because Jesus believed the Bible was trustworthy. Throughout the Gospels, we see Jesus quoting the Bible as the authoritative source for truth. In his debates with the religious leaders of His day or even in instructing his followers, He appeals to the authority of the Bible. So, Jesus obviously trusted the Bible.
You may say, "Wait a minute, Mark. You are asking me to trust the Bible because Jesus trusted the Bible. Yet, the only way we know that Jesus trusted the Bible is because the Bible says that He did. How can we know that Jesus really trusted the Bible?
We can know because the four gospels, which are records of what Jesus did and taught can be trusted as reliable history. Again, you might object, "We don't even have copies of the original gospels. All we have are copies of copies. How do we know that what we have as the four gospels are really what the four original writers wrote?"
Any scholar will tell you that we have far more evidence that the gospels we have today are essentially the same as the Gospels as they were originally written.
For example, at around 50 BC, Caesar wrote his account of the Gallic Wars. No one doubts this. No one questions what he wrote? How do we know what Caesar wrote? Because we have 10 copies of it. Yet, the oldest copy we have is from 850 AD. The oldest copy we have was written 900 years after it was originally written. Yet, no historian debates its authenticity. The same is true for most ancient writings.
Compare that to the New Testament. We have thousands of copies of the Bible, some within a few decades of its composition. Some might say, "Well, the Bible is really a collection of legends written long after the events happened. So, there is no way we can be sure that they reflect accurately first person memory."
Some scholars used to believe that in the 19th century, many scholars insisted that the Bible was written over 100 years after the event, but archaeology and scholarship has forced the consensus that all the Gospels were written 65-95 A.D., or 30-60 years after the life of Jesus. (And St. Paul's letters, which contain much information about Jesus, were written just two decades after his death.)
That means that all the claims of the New Testament, such as Jesus' claim to be God, his miracles, and people's testimony to the resurrection—all of these claims were circulating in the lifetime of thousands of people who would have lived through these events. So, the testimony of the gospels could easily have been contradicted by people living at the time if their claims were not true.
Imagine a book coming out that claims that on a a day 45 years ago, in a remote town of 5,000 in Canada, a flying saucer landed in full view of all the town. Certainly someone would go to that town and ask for corroboration. But what if none of the 1,000 residents still alive, who were there on that day, denied any such memory. What if the thousands of residents who were related or who knew the thousands of now deceased residents report that they never had heard anything about it in all those years? Surely, the author of the book could insist that people were lying, or that some miraculous "memory loss" had happened. But the number of believers in the book would be exceedingly small. In the same way, it would have been impossible for Christianity to have gained such widespread support if its critical historical claims were bluntly contradicted by the numerous witnesses who were still alive.
"Well," you might say, "didn't the authors simply embellish the story of Jesus to bolster their authority and meet the needs of the early church?"
There are a couple of problems with this view. One is that we have four gospels that affirm one another. Furthermore, we have the writings of Paul and the other letters of the New Testament that reference the events of the gospels. The consistency of their testimony is evidence that it is true.
Furthermore, A.N. Sherwin-White, an Oxford historian, studied the rate at which legend accumulated in the ancient world and wiped out the core of historical fact. According to Dr. Sherwin-White, it took at least three full generations. The essential claims of Christianity were publicly circulating within too short a time for that to happen. The gospels have none of the literary characteristics of myth or legend nor did it have the necessary time to develop as a legend?
Again, you might respond, "Mark, you say that the consistent testimony of the Gospels is evidence that they are true, but aren't the Gospels full of contradictions?"
This is a misconception. There are no true contradictions in the Gospels. Although there are apparent contradictions. For example, Luke 24 seems to say that Jesus ascended on the same day that he rose from the dead (thus contradicting the other Gospels). But in Acts 1 (also written by Luke) we see that Luke did know about the 40 days between the resurrection and the ascension. Many other apparent discrepancies are explained similarly.
From all of this we can see that the Gospels are reliable history. As such, they give evidence to the claim that Jesus is the Son of God. If we decide that Jesus is the Son of God, then you will be able to embrace the entire trustworthiness of the Bible, because Jesus taught the entire trustworthiness of the Bible. If we do not accept his claim to be the Son of God, then you are not going to accept the whole Bible (nor will you need to).
So, the bottom line, when all is said and done, it all hinges on who do you believe Jesus is? That really is the center of our discussion. All hinges on the answer to this question, "Who do you say that Jesus is?" There can be little doubt that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. Do you believe Him? Either He is the Son of God, or He is a liar, or He was terribly deluded. If He is not the Son of God, then we are all fools for being here. If He is the Son of God, then we are left with only one option, and that is to worship Him. Who do you say that Jesus is?
[1] Sire,
James W. Why Should Anyone Believe Anything at All?,
p. 53.
[2] Sire, James W. Why Should Anyone
Believe Anything at All?,
p. 50, 52-53.
[3] Much of this point came from a document sent to me from Freddie
Harrell. I believe it was part of a document that he received from
Tim Keller.