Can the Bible be trusted?

As it was first written?

The questions friends ask about the Bible are usually a few. Has it changed through centuries of copying? Who chose the books? Does it fit history? Does it contradict itself? Isn't it circular to prove the Bible from the Bible? The answers are set out in Can the Bible be trusted? and the essays named below; this lesson looks at how apologists go about them. The first step is not to dodge.

Now the Bereans were more noble-minded than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if these teachings were true.

Acts 17:11

On that verse Matthew Henry writes, "The doctrine of Christ does not fear inquiry" Matthew Henry.

Start with the manuscripts. No original survives, but the New Testament survives in more copies than any other ancient writing, some on papyri dated to the second or third century. Comparing the copies to work back to the earliest text is called textual criticism. The copies do differ, and scholars are right that copyists sometimes changed the text on purpose and that not every word can be settled. Most differences are matters of spelling and word order; the larger passages missing from the earliest copies, such as Mark 16:9-20, are marked in many translations. So many scholars say that no core teaching hangs on a single uncertain reading. For the Old Testament, the great Isaiah scroll among the Dead Sea Scrolls, from about the second century BC, agrees in substance with the Masoretic text copied about a thousand years later, though with many small differences, mostly of spelling Dead Sea Scrolls. Yet the scrolls also show some books handed down in different forms, and the work goes on. Careful transmission shows that what we read is close to what was first written; it does not show that it is God's word.

To the question "Who chose the books?" the answer is that the church did not make them Scripture but recognised them: the Scriptures Jesus received, and the writings that came from his apostles, received through long use and discernment. The Catholic and Orthodox churches receive some further Old Testament books (The canon: which books are Scripture; What kind of book the Bible is).

History, contradictions and prophecy

Archaeology shows that the Bible speaks of real places and people. There is the ninth-century BC inscription from Tel Dan that many scholars read as naming the house of David, and a stone from Caesarea bearing Pilate's name and title. But no find proves or disproves the Bible. Some questions, such as the dates of the exodus and the conquest, are still debated, and no stone can show that God has spoken.

Faced with passages that seem to clash, the apologist first asks whether the two accounts really cannot both be true, and looks at viewpoint, summary, round numbers and the kind of writing. The church has done this since Augustine wrote The Harmony of the Gospels Augustine, The Harmony of the Gospels. It takes honesty too: a proposal that joins two texts says what could have happened, not what the text says (Does the Bible contradict itself?).

With prophecy, three questions help. Was the word written before the event? Is the event one that no one could arrange? Is it a direct prediction, or a pattern in Israel's story that is filled full in Christ? Honesty does not give every citation the same weight, and Scripture itself tells us to test a prophet's word (Deuteronomy 18:22; Has biblical prophecy been fulfilled?).

Scripture's authority and the circle

The deepest question is whether showing from the Bible that the Bible is God's word is circular (Isn't it circular to prove the Bible from the Bible?). Here the roads part.

Classical apologists first show from reason that God exists; evidential apologists begin straight from history. Both then weigh the Bible as historical sources, establish Jesus' authority from the resurrection those sources report, and move to Scripture's authority because the risen Lord treated the Old Testament as God's word (Luke 24:44) and made the apostles his witnesses. B. B. Warfield held that as right reason weighs the evidences, the Spirit gives faith along with them Warfield, Apologetics.

Presuppositional apologists answer that a final authority cannot be vouched for by anything higher:

When God made His promise to Abraham, since He had no one greater to swear by, He swore by Himself

Hebrews 6:13

Reason too can be defended only by reasoning. Every final standard draws a circle, so the question is which circle makes the widest and most coherent sense of everything. Cornelius Van Til used the evidence of history as evidence God has given, but would not seat human reason as judge over God's word (Presuppositional apologetics). Classical and evidential apologists object that this puts the conclusion in the premise; presuppositionalists object that the other roads grant the unbeliever's starting point. John Frame replies by telling a narrow circle, one verse vouching for itself, from a broad one that takes in all the evidence John Frame, Apologetics to the Glory of God. Reformed epistemologists hold that the Spirit can bring about belief in the gospel's truth directly as Scripture is read, and a cumulative case weighs all these clues together.

The Westminster Confession, the Presbyterian churches' confession, shows the ground all of these stand on. Scripture's authority depends "not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the Author thereof" 1.4, and it goes on:

the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts … are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God; yet, notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth, and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.

Westminster Confession 1.5

The authority is God's, the arguments are real, and assurance is the Spirit's gift. William Lane Craig, a classical apologist, draws the same line: we know that the faith is true by the Spirit's witness, and we show it by argument Craig, Reasonable Faith.

Christians also differ on how to state Scripture's truthfulness. With A. A. Hodge, Warfield argued in 1881 that Scripture in its original writings was inspired and without error A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield, Inspiration, and many evangelicals confess this inerrancy. Other evangelicals, and theologians of many churches, speak of infallibility: Scripture never misleads in what it teaches for faith and life. Both receive Scripture as God's wholly trustworthy word (The inspiration and authority of Scripture).

In conversation

If a friend says the Bible cannot be trusted, ask first what troubles them: the manuscripts, a particular passage, or the Bible's authority itself. Each needs a different answer. Say so when you do not know, and never present a harmonising proposal as though it were the text. Then you might ask whether they would read one Gospel through with you. The Bible leads its readers to the one who speaks in it. The next lesson, Are miracles possible?, takes up the miracles it reports.

Practice