Jesus

한

The order this guide follows

  1. Read the New Testament documents as historical sourcesWithout assuming inspiration, checked against outside sources · rings 1–3
  2. Weigh Jesus’ claims about himself and the resurrectionThe earliest sources, and facts that critical scholars also grant · rings 4–5
  3. Jesus’ authority, confirmed by the resurrectionWhere you arrive if you accept every ring
  4. Jesus treated the Old Testament as God’s word and appointed the apostles as his witnessesMatthew 5:17–18 · John 10:35 · John 14:26 · Acts 1:8
  5. Read Scripture as God’s wordGrounded not in Scripture’s claim about itself but in Jesus’ authority · Confess, Gift, Life

The top three rungs stand on the ground of history, the bottom two on the ground of Scripture read as God’s word. Once you read it as God’s word, you read the first documents again with new eyes, so the path is not a circle going round the same place but a spiral that climbs.

The threshold · From history to Scripture

Isn’t this proving the Bible by the Bible?

Method
From inside a dark cave, the rocky mouth opens on bright sky, dry ground and the Dead Sea far off.
G. Eric Matson, Qumran, Caves Where the Dead Sea Scrolls Were Found, the Dead Sea in the Distance, between 1947 and 1961 · Source

The five rings so far did not assume that the Bible is the word of God. They treated the New Testament documents like other ancient documents and checked them against non-Christian sources.

From here on, the steps of confession, gift and life read Scripture as God’s word. This is the language of confession, not of proof. It seemed honest not to hide this turn, so the guide sets a threshold here.

The bridge between the two is Jesus himself. If the one confirmed by the resurrection treated the Old Testament as God’s word and appointed the apostles as his witnesses, then the ground for receiving Scripture as God’s word is not Scripture’s claim about itself but Jesus’ authority.

The Old and New Testaments are used differently

  • New TestamentTwenty-seven documents written within a century of Jesus’ death. Rings 1–5 read them as sources; from the confession on, they are read as God’s word.
  • Old TestamentWritten before Jesus, so it cannot be a source for his life. It is the frame in which Jesus understood himself and the New Testament writers understood him.
  • Dead Sea ScrollsThe Isaiah scroll from Qumran (c. 2nd century BC) shows that Isaiah 53 existed before Jesus (Dead Sea Scrolls). It is independent evidence for the text’s date, not evidence of fulfilment.
ObjectionSince Jesus’ authority also comes from the Gospels in the end, isn’t that circular too?

In part, yes. That is why this guide rests only on the sayings of Jesus that are most secure by historians’ standards (Mark and Paul’s letters), and moves John’s sayings to the place of confession. The dependence that remains is not a vicious circle that writes the conclusion into the premise; it is the limit of a cumulative argument, which builds up many pieces of evidence. Presuppositional apologetics, for its part, holds that every ultimate authority, reason and science included, can only rest on itself, and so it regards starting from Scripture as justified.

Related topics

FaithWord of GodScriptures

Related questions

Isn't it circular to prove the Bible from the Bible?How does God speak?