THE BIBLE
Before I dive into the chapter, I’d like to take a moment to focus your attention on where we’re going. People often think the Bible is not relevant to their lives, is out of touch, or perceive it as something too big or complicated to grasp. It’s a problem of expectation because people either suppose something the Bible isn’t (for example, a roadmap to a stress-free life), or assume little to nothing about it because they fail to realize what the Bible really is.
What Christians should know is that the Bible offers a new way of looking at and understanding the world. This fresh perspective ultimately leads to life, peace, joy, and the completeness so many are searching for.
The Bible awakens a dormant imagination within all of us; this consciously and unconsciously forms our identity and, therefore, determines how we perceive and interact with the world.
Walter Brueggemann labels the Biblical example a covenantal-historical model of contemplating our existence and our faith in God. This model implies “an enduring commitment between God and God’s people based on mutual vows of loyalty and mutual obligation through which both parties have their life radically affected and empowered.”[81] As a result, the meaning of our lives is not rooted in ourselves so that we just get out what we put in. Rather, there is Someone greater than us all, and through grace, despite what we “having coming to us,” God trusts in and takes humanity so seriously that in spite of our depravity because of sin, we can all be saved. The Word of God reveals there is something timeless, better, and more powerful than what this world has to offer. The Bible gives everyone a genuine, fresh identity that refuses to allow us to forget who we truly are, demands obedience to expectations, and will not allow us to settle for the false identities the world would have us adopt.
The Bible is much more than a good idea or an ideology that has an alternative end. It is a concrete and unchanging fixed point of reference in an ever-changing world characterized by identity crises, displacement, and burden. From that fixed identity, we derive our life’s mission and calling. The Bible locates us in fellowship with God and therefore in fellowship with other servants of God. Thus, we all belong to a community of believers and all have a responsible and caring family in one another—we are, therefore, not all alone and have definite meaning and purpose in each other through Christ. The Bible teaches us that we all have a unique prospect for the future where those in the front will be in the back and those on the bottom will be on top.
As Walter Brueggemann so eloquently says in The Bible Makes Sense, “The Bible provides us with an alternative identity, an alternative way of understanding ourselves, an alternative way of relating to the world. It offers a radical and uncompromising challenge to our ordinary ways of self-understanding. It invites us to join in and to participate in the ongoing pilgrimage of those who live in the sharing of history… The surprises of the resurrection concern the emergence of expected new life in persons, in institutions, in social arrangements. And they come just when we think there are no more reasonable expectations.”[82]
The Bible teaches us that when the world says “No” God says “Yes.” The Bible teaches us that when the world says, “You’re not” God says, “I AM.” The Bible teaches us that when you thought you were destined to be enslaved to death, Christ sets you free to live.
I. What is the Bible?
The Bible is the Word of God. It is pure,[83] perfect,[84] and true;[85] it is the perfect guide for our lives,[86] nourishes us,[87] and is the lamp that guides us in the darkness.[88]
This Word is a person, Jesus (John 1). The Word is God’s speech, for example, when God decrees, “Let there be light” (Gen 1:3).
The Word is a personal address to a group of people or to an individual, as seen when God comes down and speaks to Israel gathered at Mount Sinai in Exodus 20. Another example is seen when God speaks from heaven at the baptism of Jesus and says, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased” (Matthew 3:17).
The Word is speech through a human vehicle. Deuteronomy 18:18 says, “I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him” (emphasis added).
The Word is in written form to preserve it accurately: anyone can refer back to it and inspect it, study it, recite it, use it, and apply it. The written word also makes the Bible accessible to anyone who wishes to read it. In Exodus 31:18, God wrote the Ten Commandments on stone tablets Himself before giving the tablets to Moses: “When He had finished speaking with him upon Mount Sinai, He gave Moses the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written by the finger of God” (italics mine). In other instances, people inscribed what God told them. Moses wrote down additional laws God gave him.[89] Other examples of people writing down and inscribing what God had told them include Joshua,[90] Isaiah,[91] and Jeremiah.[92] The Holy Spirit brought remembrance of Christ’s words to the disciples so they could faithfully remember and record what Jesus told them.[93] In his letter to the church at Corinth, the apostle Paul wrote, “the things which I write to you are the Lord’s commandment” (I Corinthians 14:37).
The word Bible derives from the Greek work biblia, or book. Essentially, God wrote it by revealing it to human authors (about 40) who faithfully recorded what the Holy Spirit inspired them to write. The words are God’s but the vehicle used to transcribe those words is a select group of humans. This process of divine revelation for Biblical transcription is called verbal plenary inspiration.[94] (Note that this term, like “Trinity” is a human construction intended to describe a Biblical phenomenon. The word does not appear in the Bible). II Peter 1:20-21 says, “But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” In addition, because God is truth,[95] He inspired the authors to write what is wholly true.[96]
The Bible is more than a mere book because the Holy Scriptures pre-existed their physical and tangible forms. In essence, the Word of God is eternal and timeless without equal in the realm of human existence. At the start of John’s gospel, the text reads, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” Further on, in 1:14, it reads, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” “The Word became flesh” refers to Christ. Therefore, in the same way God is timeless and eternal, so is His Word; and if His Word transcends our existence, we ought to pay full attention and listen to what God wants us to hear.
Hebrews 4:12 speaks of the Word as “living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit.” Certainly, when God repeats or reiterates a message, we have to pay special attention.
The Bible has 66 books (39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament). The Old Testament (OT) takes us from creation to a time before the coming of Christ, and the New Testament (NT) begins with the birth (0 AD), life, death, and resurrection of Christ. In fact, the first four chapters of the NT are four different perspectives of Jesus, including details about the things He did and the things He said. The NT continues by giving Christians and Christian churches instructions on how to think, live, and act appropriately.
The OT makes up the overwhelming majority (more than 75 percent) of the entire Bible. In fact, the OT has 929 chapters and 23,214 verses. The NT has 260 chapters and 7,959 verses. Keep in mind that the chapters and verses in the Bible are human constructs added in the second millennium simply for organizational purposes. The original writings of the OT were written on papyrus, an old form of paper that often consisted of long scrolls. The original writings of the NT were written on parchment, or specially prepared animal skins. The OT spans a history of thousands of years and the NT spans a history of less than 100 years. The OT is written in Hebrew (some small parts are written in Aramaic) and the NT is written in Greek.
One way to think about the OT is that it describes how God initiated and developed a relationship with humanity. It began with individuals, and then grew into a much larger family and later an entire nation of people. The OT describes a God who establishes a series of covenants with a people who, despite all His warnings, fail to follow directions, which results in adverse consequences. Hence, because the people failed to follow commands and were incapable of obedience, a ‘new way’ had to exist. That ‘new way’ is described in the NT, with Jesus.
The Old Testament is revealed in the New Testament, and the NT is concealed in the Old. To understand truly the NT, one must first read the OT, as the NT is essentially a fulfillment of what was said before.
What Christians should know is that the Bible, above everything else, serves as a theological statement with a primary aim of revealing exactly Who God is, what He has done, and how we, as God’s servants, are to engage in a relationship with Him.
Thus, while the Bible (or the Scriptures) does proceed through historical events with different people and places, its goal is always to give us theological meaning through the context of human history. If you need an exact play-by-play of how the universe went from this to that, you will not find it in the Bible, nor does it claim to provide that information. If you need to know how the power of Christ’s atoning sacrifice frees you from the grip of sin, you’re in the right place. The Bible contains authoritative truth, but non-contradictory truth can be found elsewhere.
Two Latin slogans summarize this idea. Sola Scriptura (“by Scripture alone”) means the Scriptures alone are the highest form of authority. The phrase prima Scriptura means there are sources secondary to the Scriptures that allow us to know and understand God better, or guides we can follow, but these guides ultimately are judged and tested by the Scriptures. An example of such guides would be revelation through creation[97] or our consciences.[98] Therefore, the Bible is the ultimate source of truth by which all other sources are judged, but not the only source of truth. This is why I don’t open a Bible if I need to figure out what antibiotic to use to treat a complicated skin infection.
For this reason, when we judge the Bible, we first have to ask ourselves what the book claims to present. Hence, the Bible seemingly lacking a piece of data does not tarnish its reputation. If I need help with my taxes, I don’t open a book on home improvement, nor does this query negate the authority of the latter. If you consult the Bible with a tax question, you won’t find a direct answer, but it will say that God gives humanity intellect and wisdom,[99] and those attributes, being from God and therefore good, can be used to seek and discover other forms of truth.
II. How can I trust the Bible?
The fundamental scripture verse that validates the authority of the Bible comes from II Timothy 3:16-17: “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” In the book of John, Jesus said, “Scripture cannot be broken.”[100]
All the OT prophets recorded what God directly told them, either by themselves[101] or through a scribe.[102] The frequent and repetitive use of the phrase “Thus says THE LORD”[103] is an example of such revelation. As mentioned previously, the apostle Peter said that in regards to all the OT, “No prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”[104]
The Bible, or the Word of God, is tested and tried,[105] and something that is timeless,[106] meaning it is as applicable then as it is now and as it will be in future. The Word can be trusted because it is more than a book; it’s a viable, living organism whose trustworthiness is evidenced by the fact that it changes the person who reads it.[107] Because the Bible is complete and everlasting, it specifically says that Jesus is the final word of God revealed to humanity,[108] no other books are to be written after the Bible’s final book, Revelation,[109] and we will all experience Scriptural silence until the second coming of Christ.[110] Finally, nothing is to be added to the Bible.[111]
In practical terms, this means the Bible is complete, and anyone proclaiming to have something new to add to the Scriptures after the Scriptures were finished is a heretic who contradicts the Bible itself. If ‘god’ allegedly revealed himself to someone and directed them toward new ‘scripture,’ or if a divine messenger revealed new scripture for recital, then both instances are blatant fabrications contradictory to the Word of God.
Here is a very valid question: if human beings “wrote” the Bible, then why should I believe it’s the inspired Word of God and not some fabricated human concoction?
There are actually four ways to answer this question. The first three look around from the inside and help to formalize a Christian’s belief using what he or she has already discovered to be true. The last method looks around from the outside and is purely objective. It not only validates Christianity’s truth claims but can also help the reader disprove many of the so-called “truth” claims of other religions.
(1) The first is to believe the repeated declarations of the Scriptures themselves to be the infallible Word of God, as already mentioned. The authority of Scripture pertains to the fact that all of the words in the Bible are God’s words, so to obey those words means you obey God; to disobey those words means you disobey God. Because the Bible is the ultimate authority, it claims its supreme authority by its own words because no other authority can exceed it. Moreover, the Bible is self-attesting because if it needed to appeal to a higher authority for validation, it could not be the ultimate authority.
(This debunks the fallacy that Biblical authority is a circular argument: we believe the Bible is the Word of God because it claims to be the Word of God, and those words come from God Himself. Of course I believe it’s true, because it’s God Who said it! In the same way, circular arguments are used all the time in the world but are perfectly legitimate. For example, how do you know you are reading these words? Because you’re using your eyes, of course! However, do you not use your eyes to validate what your eyes see? So how do you know it’s there if only your eyes see it?)
Thus, when God spoke through a prophet,[112] the human being was being used as a mouthpiece for THE LORD Himself. The Bible’s authority is also evidenced in the fact that the Bible has the power to change people for the better, and the Holy Spirit moves people when reading its words.[113] Since God cannot lie,[114] all of Scripture is refined, tested, true,[115] and is not only truthful but truth itself.[116] It is impossible for God to lie.[117] Hence, the Bible is inerrant, which means it is incapable of being wrong. The denial of inerrancy stems from one of the most dangerous phenomena in our modern world—the rejection of an ultimate, absolute truth in favor of a truth judged to be real only by personal experience.
Furthermore, the Bible has clarity, which means that anyone who earnestly seeks to know and understand God’s teachings will be able to follow the Scriptures. In fact, even children can understand the Bible,[118] and it imparts understanding to the simple.[119] Yet, this does not dismiss the fact that some passages of the book are indeed difficult to understand.[120] The reader should be aware, however, that since the Bible is the incarnate Word of God, it requires an open heart and mind to receive the gifts of the book; of course, someone with a closed heart will never be able to fully embrace the Word.[121] The Bible is also necessary because without it, we would not know about God, Jesus, faith, salvation, grace, sin, the prophets, the covenants, the gospel, or all the other wonderful things contained within it.
This is why in Romans 10:13-17, Paul says, “For ‘Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things!’ However, they did not all heed the good news; for Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed our report?’ So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (italics mine). Thus, it is necessary to read the Bible to obtain knowledge of the gospel, maintain a spiritual life, and obtain knowledge of God’s will to live a life that is more Christ-like.
The Bible is also sufficient meaning in that it contains everything God wanted us to know. In other words, we don’t need anything else besides the Bible to be saved, trust in Him, and live a life of obedience.[122] This doesn’t mean God can’t add to His words; it means we can’t. In the time after Moses’s death, for example, all Israel had was five books (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). That was sufficient for them at that time, and God added to it over time, stopping by the end of the first century. The sufficiency of the Bible is a very important concept for our modern time because it means that any problem or question we have has an answer in the Bible. The answer may not be specific to your question, but the timeless Biblical principles satisfy all queries.
(2) The second answer attempts to determine what possible malicious and unifying reason any Biblical writer would have to fabricate a story to his own detriment. Moses, for example, who wrote the Bible’s first five books, could have stayed in Egypt and lived the high life as a member of privileged society. However, he believed in a God that led him out of Egypt into a less-than-privileged life, to lead hundreds of thousands of grumblers and complainers in the desert for 40 years, to die before he arrived where he wanted to go. If all the apostles of the New Testament were fabricating a grand scheme, why did they deceive and what did they gain? All the apostles lived lives of ridicule and were killed mercilessly and prematurely. Peter, for example, was crucified upside down. To top it all off, the apostles died for the truth—all they had to do was recant, but they didn’t. All Jesus had to do was say, “I am not God” and He would have been left alone, but He never recanted.
(3) In contrast to any other religious authority, the Bible describes people from many different times and in different geographic areas making and fulfilling prophecies all pointing in the same unified direction. It would be easy, for example, for me to state that I went up a mountain, into a cave, or to a field and received ‘divine revelation’ when I am the only barometer for my experience. But if multiple people unconnected to one another received the same revelation that not only reinforced what others heard but also accurately predicted what would happen hundreds of years in the future and the cost of declaring that word was death, separation from society, ridicule, and anguish, you have to begin paying attention.
There is an internal consistency in that the books of the Bible refer to themselves and other books as authoritative.[123] Jesus repeatedly referred to the OT Scriptures as authoritative and quoted many of them.[124] Also, the Bible repeatedly describes the fulfillment of prophecies often made hundreds of years earlier. For example, David prophesized that Jesus would be crucified hundreds of years before crucifixion existed.[125] More than 500 years before Jesus was born, both David and Isaiah prophesized that Jesus would resurrect from the dead.[126] In addition, hundreds of years before the events came to fulfillment, Zechariah stated that Jesus would be betrayed for thirty pieces of silver,[127] Isaiah said Jesus’s mother would be a virgin,[128] Micah said Jesus would be born in Bethlehem,[129] Hosea said Jesus’s family would flee to Egypt,[130] and Malachi predicted that Jesus would enter the temple in Jerusalem.[131]
(4) The fourth approach is both historic and academic. A large chunk of this material is derived from Craig A. Parton’s Religion On Trial, which is a marvelous book on how to objectively evaluate the validity of different religious truth claims.
Many things can be simultaneously false, but they cannot be simultaneously true given the contradictory claims they make. There can only be one truth, and being able to answer the question, “What is true?” requires the ability to objectively test religious claims with a system that is not derived from the authority you are investigating. Experience does not determine truth because some people can, for example, have a “life-changing” and “religious” experience with enough Prozac. Faith by itself does not determine truth because it only becomes valid when the object of that faith is clarified. What we are left with are the facts, or the “final arbiters or judges of all competing interpretations.”[132]
So, most religious claims are in fact hocus-pocus because they are not religious truths. Why are they not truths? Because they can’t be verified. It is only Christianity—whose credibility stems from the historical events of Jesus’s life and resurrection—that can indeed be legally confirmed. The truth claims of Christianity are not only based upon verifiable facts, but those facts do not require pre-existing belief, they will never have 100% certainty (as is true for the present and history), and its truth remains regardless of whether or not people accept it as true.
In regards to gauging the reliability of the source document of the Bible, we have to look at four independent, first-hand eyewitness accounts at the beginning of the New Testament: the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. We will start here because these four books all detail the central truth claim of Christianity: the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who entered into reality being fully God and fully man (more on that in a later). Three tests will be applied: (1) The bibliographical test, which determines how reliably the ancient documents have been passed down (e.g., if an original manuscript exists, how many copies exist, and how large is the time gap between the event and the recording); (2) The internal evidence test, which explores what the text reveals about itself in order to gauge its reliability (e.g., is the author a first-hand eyewitness or did they have the skill to write about the actual events that occurred); (3) The external evidence test, which looks at information peripheral to the document and questions whether that information supports or refutes the document’s claims. It is rare for ancient documents to have external confirmatory evidence.
In examining ancient secular writers (e.g., Plato, Homer, and Caesar), the bibliographical test reveals that, “much of what we know of the classical world is built upon the very thinnest of evidential or documentary trails.”[133] However, “when we turn our attention to the writers of the four accounts of the life of Jesus Christ that are contained in the New Testament, the difference could not be greater. Even liberal and atheist biblical scholars agree that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the best primary source recorders of the life of Jesus.”[134] The point is this: using the same scale, if one were to reject the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as valid historical documents, then one would also have to essentially reject the bulk of the entire canon of Western literature from Ancient Greece to the modern era (including Shakespeare). Application of the internal evidence test to the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John reveals the following: “The consistent conclusion of legally trained trial lawyers over the last 300 years is that this material comes with the absolute best manuscript tradition possible, that it comes on top of the events that it records, that it is highly unlikely to have been forged, and that it contains the type of stylistic and factual detail you expect from truthful witnesses (i.e., liars love generalities while those telling the truth are not afraid of piling on historical particulars).”[135]
The external evidence test locates several non-Biblical historical works confirming both the claims made by writers of the books of the Bible and historical events referred to in the Bible. For example, Papias of Hieropolis (ca. 155) and Polycarp recorded what the apostle John told them directly and stated that the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written by the authors ascribed to them.[136] Eusebius wrote that Paul and Peter died during the Neronian persecution,[137] and there is also archeological confirmation of Pilate’s existence by the “Pilate Inscription” found in Jerusalem.
Also, numerous non-Biblical sources locate Jesus (and especially the historical event of the resurrection) and Christians in history. Examples include the writings of Seutonius, Pliny the Younger, and the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, as well as accounts of early Christian martyrs who suffered and died at the hands of historical governments because of the reality of Christ and his resurrection. Several examples can be found in part one of Readings in World Christian History and include, for example, The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity, The Martyrs of Lyons, and Ignatius’s Letters to the Magnesians.
I say all of this to make a very important point: the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the central claim upon which the entire Christian faith is based. Without the resurrection, Christianity is null and void. Yet, the objective doubts that can be amassed against Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John illuminate the Bible’s power to resist scrutiny. These books are verifiable based on multiple, independent, legitimate historical sources, and their contents not only pass the three tests, but their messages have real and relevant prescriptions that can change lives.
Trusting the Bible means trusting it in a physical, literal, and spiritual sense. This is why Jesus asked Nicodemus in John 3:12, “If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” One cannot separate the facts of the Bible from its theology, morals, and teachings. For example, Adam cannot be ‘just a myth’ because then the doctrine of the inheritance of sin and the downfall of all of humankind is wrong.[138] If Jesus wasn’t born of a virgin, then his birth would be no different from that of the rest of humanity; he would be predestined to sin and, therefore, unable to atone for humankind through His death. Christ literally hung on a cross, and his blood literally was shed, and His body literally died and rose again three days later. Without the shedding of blood, there could not be any remission of sin.[139]
III. How did the Bible assume its current form?
Wayne Grudem says it best: “[T]he ultimate criterion of canonicity is divine authorship, not human or ecclesiastical approval.”[140]
The Biblical canon is the list of all the books that belong in the Bible. The process by which books were chosen is called