We’ve spent the last 11 Puzzle Pieces moving closer and
closer to the God of Christianity, and it seems reasonable now to conclude that
he exists and that the central message of Christianity, that Jesus died and
rose from the dead, is an actual historical event. But we can’t stop there. Now that we’ve shown Christianity to be a
reasonable faith, we need to start looking at a few key issues from the
uniquely Christian perspective. But in
order to do that, we need a source of Christian teaching that can help us, and
that’s the Bible. In the last two Pieces
we looked at the Bible as a purely historical document, like any other from
antiquity…but is it more than that?
That’s what we want to have a look at today.
TFY’d: The Bible as God’s Word
The Bible is one of two things: it is either God’s words to
men, or men’s words about God. If it is
the second, then can we have confidence that living by its precepts will
actually lead us to God? What if the men
who wrote it got it wrong? We saw over
the last two pieces that we can have confidence that what we have today is what
was actually written many centuries ago, but for a Christian to be confident that
the content of the Bible is actually correct it needs to be more than
that. It needs to be a book from
God. Let’s spend today looking at four
major challenges that are often made about the Bible and its content and see if
we can actually have that confidence:
1. How
do we know the Bible was inspired by God?
2. Hasn’t
the Bible been changed by all the translations it has gone through over the
centuries?
3. Since
men were involved in the writing of the Bible, and men make mistakes, how can
we trust it?
4. Isn’t
the Bible just a matter of your own interpretation?
1) How do we know the Bible was inspired by
God?
This is a very important question for Christians to
answer because the Bible itself claims to be from God. We routinely read in the Old Testament
statements like “Thus says the Lord…”[1] or “The word of the Lord
came to me…”[2]
and in the New Testament statements like “All Scripture is given by inspiration
of God”[3] and we need to see if we
can actually have confidence that those statements are accurately reflecting
the Bible’s origins. At this point, we
will not be discussing the question of HOW God inspired the Bible – that’s an
interesting topic but it would take us too far afield from our focus on IF God
inspired the Bible. If you’re interested
in that question, we recommend a DVD by the late John Stott called The Bible and the Christian Life in
which he discusses the how at length.
The other reason that this topic is so important is that
if the Bible really is from God, if he really is speaking to us, then that
means we have to listen to what he says!
If the creator of the universe has communicated with us, then it would
probably be a good idea to listen!
There are six things that the Bible contains that point
to its divine origins. These are not
things that will be 100% convincing to everyone, but I believe they are enough
to give us confidence that this is not just a mere book about God from
men. In his presentation called The Bible: Has God Spoken apologist and
Christian thinker Greg Koukl outlines these six and links each of them to a
part of your hand to help you remember them.
1. Let’s
start with the pinkie finger – the pinkie
reminds you of prophecy. The Bible is the only work produced in which
detailed prophecies relating to individuals and empires are given with amazing
accuracy. The book of Daniel is a great
example as it gives such accurate prophecies that it looks like it was written
after the events it predicts, but we have copies dating to before the events
themselves proving that it was written earlier.
Also, there are 60 major prophecies that were fulfilled in the life of
Jesus alone! [add from Case for Christ]
2. The
second finger is your ring finger, and when married you wear a ring on that
finger and what is often talked about during weddings is that the ring, as a
circle, implies the unity that will be characteristic of your marriage; so the
ring finger reminds us of unity. The Bible
has tremendous unity from front to back.
It’s comprised of 66 books by about 40 authors of radically different
backgrounds (Luke the historian, David a shepherd who becomes a king, Joshua
the General, Paul a Rabbi) writing in radically different times, places and
social conditions, over a period of more than a millennium. It covers a wide range of topics, many
controversial (like “Who is God?” “What is man’s problem?” “How do we solve the
problem?” “What is right and wrong?” etc), and displays a unique unity in its
answers to these questions. If you were
to take answers to those questions from a range of people just in today’s
culture and society, you would get a massive divergence of opinion on these
questions…but the Biblical authors show striking unity.
3. Your
next finger is your middle finger, your biggest finger, and it reminds us that
the Bible answers the biggest questions of life in a way that fits with our
observations of the world and is internally cohesive. Many worldviews give answers to these big
questions (questions about where we come from, why are we here, why is there
evil and suffering etc) but what’s important is that the Biblical answers seem
to fit the world the way we see it to be.
See all the previous Puzzle Pieces for detailed discussions on these
points. Not only does it provide answers
to these questions, it predicts the problems!
The Biblical story tells us to expect pain and suffering, to expect noble
people to do ignoble things, and offers an explanation for this that makes
sense.
4. Next
is your index finger, and it reminds us that the Bible is an index to history:
it is historically accurate. Why is this
important? Well, if there is a book that
claims to be from God, and it records God acting through history, it seems like
God should get his history right.
Therefore, it’s important that we can go back to the Bible and find the
cities, the cultures, the individuals that are recorded there. Now it’s important to note that not
everything recorded in the Bible has yet been attested to by outside historical
sources. Some of it probably never will
be because some of the people or events it records aren’t the type of thing
that leaves much physical evidence behind.
However, there is a mountain of evidence that supports huge amounts of
the Biblical narrative. For example, in
their work I Don’t Have Enough Faith to
be an Atheist, Geisler and Turek list 59 “historically
confirmed/historically probable details” from the Gospel of John alone![4] Luke, the author of both the Gospel
bearing his name and the Book of Acts, is such a good historian that professor
of New Testament and Archaeology John McRay has this to say:
the general consensus
of both liberal and conservative scholars is that Luke is very accurate as a
historian...he’s erudite, he’s accurate, his Greek
approaches classical quality, he writes as an educated man, and archaeological
discoveries are showing over and over again that Luke is accurate in what he
has to say.[5]
More than this, part
of what the Bible records are the words and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth. As someone who claimed to be God, whose claim
was vindicated by his being raised from the dead, his words have tremendous authority.
This is no ordinary man – this man is
other worldly! This is evidence that he
is who he claimed to be: God in the flesh, come to bring salvation to all
mankind. (See Pieces 10 and 11 for more
on the historical Jesus.) This is a
record of supernatural events!
5. Finally,
the thumb. Remember in Ancient Rome how
the emperor would put his thumb up if he wanted the gladiator to live? What this reminds us of is that when people
apply the things taught in the Bible they live!
They don’t just turn over a new leaf…they find real life! When we respond to the message of the
Gospels, and we put ourselves in God’s hands, he changes us in a way that we
could never change ourselves. We have the
testimony of a transformed life. It
doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, educated or not, of high social standing
or low, of whatever ethnic or cultural background; the truth of Christianity
touches the lives of all human beings.
The Bible supernaturally changes lives!
6. Now
put all these fingers together into a fist and we have number six: this fist
reminds us that the Bible is a fighter.
The Bible has survived through time and persecution. Look at Matthew 24:35 where Jesus says that
“heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words will not pass away” and Paul
tells Timothy (2 Tim 2:9) that the Word of God cannot be imprisoned! In the 18th Century, Voltaire
declared that the Bible would be swept from existence in a hundred years...but
it remains. Ironically enough, 50 years
after he died, the Geneva Bible Society used Voltaire’s own printing press and
house to print stacks of Bibles! (God
does have a sense of humour...) If this book
is not the Word of God men would have destroyed it long ago.
These six things form pretty good evidence in answering
the first question of whether the Bible is merely a book from men about God, or
a book from God to men. It has the stamp
of the supernatural. Now this doesn’t prove that the Bible’s inspired, but
it’s pretty good evidence that the Bible substantiates its own claim to divine
authorship.
2) Hasn’t the Bible been translated and
re-translated?
But this claim really only applies to the originals,
doesn’t it? And we don’t have the originals...so is what we have the real
deal? We’ll refer you back to Piece 10
to look at some of the aspects of the transmission of the Bible through the
centuries, and just look at the issue of translations here. After all, hasn’t the Bible been translated
and re-translated over and over again?
Whenever someone asks you this question, you should always respond by
asking them if they know how many times it’s been translated. Chances are they won’t have the foggiest
idea! Would you like to know? Once.
Just once. Modern versions like
the New International Version, the New American Standard, and the New King
James are translations directly from the original language (Hebrew and Greek)
into English. It hasn’t gone from Greek
to Latin to French to German to Swahili to English! It goes directly from the original to English
– one step of translation. When looking
at how these documents have been preserved over this period of time, the New
Testament turns out to be 99.5% textually pure.
Of the 20,000 lines in the NT, only 40 are in doubt (about 400 words!),
none of which affect any doctrine in a serious way. This takes us back to our sixth point above,
that God has supernaturally superintended the text.
3) The Bible was only written by men, and men
make mistakes
The third objection above is that the Bible was only
written by men and men make mistakes. However,
if we have been successful in demonstrating through the above points that it
seems reasonable to believe that the Bible was not written merely by men, but
by God in some fashion, the fact that humans are involved is no limitation to
God. After all, if I can make my dumb
dog sit, isn’t it reasonable to hold that God can get humans to write what he
wants? It doesn’t matter who God used,
if he’s involved it will turn out the way he wants. But, even more importantly is the hidden
assumption that’s in this objection.
Hidden within is the idea that because men make mistakes they must have made mistakes with the
Bible. But that doesn’t follow. I’ve got heaps of books on my bookshelf that
were written just by men, and I’ve no reason to simply throw them out because
“men make mistakes”!
4) The Bible is just a matter of
interpretation
Finally, the last objection is that the Bible is just a
matter of interpretation. This is often
not a real objection, it’s just a way to dismiss the issue: “Oh that’s just
your interpretation…mine is different.”
This is a strange objection, because basically what the person is saying
is that you can read the text and make up your own meaning, that the author
didn’t have a clear intent when he chose those particular words. But this is not an idea that anyone applies
to any other piece of writing in their life!
When they get a letter from their doctor spelling out the treatment for
their condition they don’t believe they can just interpret those words in any
way they like! Similarly, when reading
any book about any topic, they believe that the author had a specific intent and
they read that book accordingly. Why
take a different approach to the Bible?
The Bible is historical records and personal correspondence (letters)
primarily, so let’s read it like we read those kinds of things.
Let’s just make a comment about certainty at this
point. Has what we’ve offered here shown
with 100% certainty that the Bible is God’s word? No.
But there is almost nothing in our lives that we can say with that
degree of certainty. If we are holding
out for 100% before committing to a course of action we would find ourselves
paralysed! For example, I’m not 100%
sure that the brake pads in my car are going to stop me when I put my foot on
the brake pedal, but my past experiences with my car make it reasonable to act
as though they will. In the same way,
the past 11 Puzzle Pieces give us enough confidence to believe that God exists,
that Jesus was God himself, and that the Biblical material has been accurately
handed down through the centuries. When
we add to this the points above, it seems perfectly reasonable to act as though
the Bible contains more than just the words of men.
One further objection that is sometimes raised against
the authority of the Bible is that there are ‘lost’ books and that the Bible in
its current form is incomplete. In a
piece entitled No Lost Books of the Bible,
Greg Koukl tackles this idea and he says the Bible can be only one of two
things: it’s either God’s supernatural words to men, or it’s a statement of
beliefs of the leaders of Christianity.
If it’s the second, then the leaders at the time have the right to say “we believe in these things, but we don't believe these
other things so throw them out because they don't reflect what we
believe.” Every group has the right to
declare what they believe and what they don’t.
If this is what the Bible is then there are no ‘lost books’ because
those books simply didn’t represent the beliefs of Christianity and they were
discarded. If it’s the first, God’s
supernatural words to men, then it seems clear that God would be able to ensure
that no parts of it are ‘lost’ as it travels through history. Either way, it doesn’t seem that there can
really be any ‘lost’ books.
To finish, let’s offer this parting thought: almost
everything we learn in our lives we learn from some reputable authority. Very little of what we know we have actually
discovered for ourselves. Usually, we
learn something from others and then put those things into practice ourselves
to see how they play out. Spiritual
truths are no different! The Bible has
proven itself to be a reputable source, so start putting its directives into
action and see if they lead you to a transformed life!
