"Who's To Say?"
Pretend you're walking down the street and find a strange object lying on the ground. You're not sure what it does, or how it works, but it's got lots of fun looking levers and gears all over it. How would you find out the purpose and nature of this object? You could attempt to figure it out for yourself through a laborious effort of trial and error. Another option would be to ask all your friends and see what they think about it. In this more modern age, you'll most likely just Google it. But what if this item was so unique that even the almighty internet lacked an explanation. What if at the end of the day, all you had were all these conflicting conjectures about this mysterious object. Some parts may be obvious to you and there may a general consensus among your friends, but there are other parts of this strange relic that you just can't figure out. The next step should be fairly straightforward: find out who made it and just ask them how it works. Seems simple enough, but what if you finally managed to get a hold of this person and he tells you that he would love to help you, but unfortunately, he can't make it to you to explain it. Your heartbroken curiosity is soon excited again as he tells you that he has the instruction manual and will send it out to you free of charge.
Okay, so I'm sure you've made the connection by now, but in the pragmatics of discourse I'm bound by necessity to spell it out anyway. If we have a universe, that we can't completely explain or discern the purpose of, we need to ask the creator. By the simple virtue of being the author of the object, the one who created it therefore is the ultimate source of authority for that object (see what I did there?). I realize I'm skipping over the debate about whether or not there even is a personal, transcendent creator of the universe, but for the moment let's at least accept it as a mere possibility 2 . If this was indeed a loving god, it would naturally follow that he would provide us with this instruction manual to the world we inhabit. Especially if that manual contained information not only on this finite side of the scale, but also on the vastly more important and impactful infinite side to come. This shouldn't come as a surprise to many people because what we find at the core of almost every major religion is a religious text of some fashion or another claiming to be the definitive Word of God. But if that's the case, how can we judge which of these books is truly endorsed by the highest source of authority?
Why a Book?
At this point you may be wondering why this creator bothers with an instruction manual rather than just coming down and talking to us face to face. There are actually many good philosophical and theological reasons as to why this would be the case. One of my person favorites is touched on in C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters, as the senior demon instructs his nephew, "Merely to override a human will (as His [God's] felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. 3 " An entire post could be devoted to this topic, but for now I'd like to just leave you with a more practical reason. If you've been following the line of thinking that led here, the importance of an objective source is paramount. If God visited everyone at one point, we would all have varying individual experiences that would change over time. If He merely spoke to certain individuals, the nuances of the message could get "lost in translation" and become merely subjective (as semiotics illustrates). Also, it would then be easy for free will agents to distort this word as they saw fit for their own personal gain. The solution? An objective document that contains meaning and messages that can then be referred to by everyone and endure through various cultures and times. Again, this should not come as a surprising concept, as even our founding fathers saw the necessity of writing down a declaration that would then become the foundation that this country rests on. So now we come back to the main problem; that almost every major religion claims the sole authority of a true text. How do we then discern which is correct?
Why Should I Trust the Bible?
Okay, since it would impossible (and tedious) to go over every religious text on a blog, I'm gonna focus on the one that seems to be the most influential. After all, it makes sense that we should start at the top of list and the Bible is arguably the most accepted and/or critized religious script of all time. Also, because this blog is already running long, I'm merely going to lay out the basics of each point and a little bit of information to support why the Bible meets the criteria. You could spend a whole college semester or write an entire book (and many have) on any one of these topics, but my goal here is just to inform you that the arguments are out there. Please refer to the reference section below for links to check out the sources for yourself.
1. Is the book we have today what was originally written?
This one is kind of important. After all, we're claiming that this book came from God and was written by people who were lead by Him to deliver His word to everyone else. If later on down the road, the text is changed, then we would have no idea what the correct instruction manual should look like. Like many other works of literature from the ancient world, we do not have the original manuscripts that comprise the Bible. I happen to think that this is actually good thing, but there are those who then question how we can support the belief that what we have now is accurate when we no longer have an original document to compare it to. There are two major criteria that historical scholars use to verify the accuracy of an ancient work where the original is no longer available. Let's take a look at how the world's three best accounted works of ancient antiquity hold up under these standards. These are the writings of Sophocles (496-406 B.C.), Homer's Illiad (900 B.C.) and the New Testament (NT) (50-100 A.D.). The first criteria is the time frame between when the original document was actually written compared to our earliest known copy. In the case of Sophocles, there's a gap of 1400 years. Homer's Illiad runs laps around that one to come to a final time span of 500 years. Sitting at the finish line waiting on the others to catch up, we have the NT manuscripts having a gap of only 50-100 years (there's some dispute over the earliest possible date, but 100 years is the general consensus of the latest possible time). This is still within the potential lifetime of the some of the original authors! The second criteria is the number of manuscripts that we have for each. Again, at third place we have Sophacles with 193 surviving manuscripts. The next contender, Homer, slides in with 643 copies. This is an amazing amount of surviving texts when you think about it. So how does the NT fare? We have over 5, 686 copies with which to verify the accuracy of the text 4 . That's almost 10 times more than the next best accounted work of literature in the ancient world. Many of these original manuscripts can even be viewed online at the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, whose made it their goal to digitally photograph this work. When compared to other ancient works, if we discredit the bible that we have today as being accurate to the original texts, then we must also consider all other ancient works as laughably insufficient and discredit much of our early history department.
2. Is what was written reliable?
"Okay," you may be asking, "so we have what they originally wrote, but why should we trust these guys?" Many people argue that these authors of the NT were either not intending to recite historical events, or simply created these stories. In situation like this, it's important to understand the value of context and the type of literature these originally documents claim to be. In the beginning of Luke and in 1 Corinthians we see that the gospel writers clearly intended their words to be treated as literal firsthand eyewitness accounts Luke 1:1-4 1 Corinthians 15:15. In this regard, it seems unfair to assert that they must have been writing mythology or merely intended it to be a fictional religious narrative. In addition, due to the early dating, we lack the necessary time gap for a mythology to arise out of the claims of the early apostles. This is especially compounded by the fact that these early accounts reference several specific individuals and places. All the first century skeptic had to do to disprove these accounts would be to ask these people if what the apostles claimed was true. In fact, these early writer's actually encouraged this type of inquiry 1 Cor 15:3-8 . Furthermore, by checking the accuracy of what information we can confirm, this lends credibility to these authors as being reliable witnesses of what they were attesting to. Within the book of Acts, we see a great amount of very specific cultural, political and environmental details that lead to the conclusion that Luke was an incredibly precise and reliable witness of what he reported. Also, by referencing these independent eyewitness testimonies, we can cross examine them to obtain a very accurate accounting of the original events.
3. Is it endorsed by God?
At the end of the day, this is the question we're seeking to answer. Anyone can write a book and claim it's from God, but if the big guy himself wanted to endorse such a text, how would he do it? The only way would be to provide evidence of His approval by layering the texts with some level of supernatural elements. I'm not saying that the Bible is magic or that the scripture can be used to invoke fantastic events. I am saying that by examining the history of the Bible's construction and it's effects, we should see God's influence on every page. For this final point, let's look at six lines of evidence to support God's supernatural stamp of approval. Again, there's too much to explain here, so I'll give them in bullet point form with links to additional material.
- Prophecy - The bible is full of many prophecies that have been fulfilled with incredible accuracy. No other religious text has a tract record as impressive. RtB - Fulfilled Propechies
- Unity - Despite covering a range of 66 books by 40 authors, ranging from peasants to kings, over a span of 1600 years, the Bible can be seen as a cohesive narrative with one central theme that doesn't contradict the core doctrines. ChristianAnswers.net - Biblical Congruency
- Addressing the Big Questions - The Bible doesn't just claim to be an authority of some esoteric knowledge that only affects people interested in that sort of thing. It's a source of incredible relevance to all the questions that have been the concern of every generation and culture.In fact, it's usually at the very center of these debates. Please Convince Me - The Christian Worldview as the Best Explanation
- Historically Accurate - We've already touched on this one, but if God were to give us a book, it wouldn't make sense for that book to be full of errors. The Bible is still one of the leading authorities of ancient culture and is constantly being confirmed by new archeological discoveries. Be Thinking - Historical Reliability
- Changes Lives - I realize that many texts claim to be transformative in peoples lives, and most of them are. This is not a definitive proof, since this alone is not sufficient to show God's touch on the scriptures, but if this were lacking it would be a proof against God's influence. I think it's undeniable that the Bible has had an amazing impact on people's lives. No link is needed here, just ask people.
- Survival - This is one of the biggies. There is no other document that has been more scrutinized, more criticized or more attacked then the Bible. This alone should be a major clue. After all, if it were worthless, why would there be so much fervor to discredit it? Despite this, the Bible is still strong and widely believed. That couldn't happen unless there was a supernatural ring of truth in it's pages.
1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auctoritas
2 - I feel I should note that this is more than just a simple assertion. There are many good reasons to believe in the existence of such a being. For a look at some of these arguments, visit Peter Kreft's Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God.
3 - C.S. Lewis - Screwtape Letters, Chapter 8
4 - By the last account I heard, this number has actually gone up to 5,842 as more manuscripts are discovered. I didn't have a source for this information so I didn't want to post it.
Point 1
http://carm.org/manuscript-evidence
STR Article - Is the New Testament Reliable
Point 2
Please Convince Me - Is the NT Archeologically Verifiable?
Historical Details in Acts - Thomistic Bent
Point 3 -
Apologetics 315 - Articles on Trusting the Bible
Stand to Reason - No Lost Book of the Bible
Today's Recommendations
Cold Case Christianity - J Warner Wallace
A cold case homicide detective takes the skills he learned cracking unsolved mysterious to test the verifiability of the Gospels as eyewitness to the case of the resurrection. A very good defense for many of the common objections to trusting the Bible as the authority of God.
Recommended Listening
The Authority of the Word of God - Amy Orr-Ewing, Ravi Zacharias Ministries
Great podcast on the reliability of the Bible compared to other sources.
Recommended Research
I think I've given you enough websites to check out... happy researching!
Today's Challenge
Look at one of the three points for why we should trust the Bible (or one of the final 6 for point 3) . Pick which one you find most engaging and really study it. Visit the provided links and do some research of your own. Also be aware of the criticism provided by opposition and be ready to address those concerns. You don't have to be an expert in everything, but find a field you enjoy and go a little deeper in that area.
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