The Bible Nerd

I guess it makes sense the main question that I get asked as a Bible teacher is, “Can you really trust the Bible?  Is it really all true?”  If you can’t make this decision, all of the posts I have written up until now are pretty much useless.  Seriously.  Of course, we can take the approach of many post moderns and New Age’ers today, and say that it doesn’t matter if it is true or not.  As long as it helps you in your own spiritual journey, that is all that is important.  However, if you are trying to decide what to do with your life, or which lifestyle is best, that may not cut it for you.

It used to be in the old days (aka the 70’s and 80’s), that there was only one approach to this question.  You either believed in the whole Bible or you didn’t believe in it at all.  The classic Creation versus evolution debate was the quintessential example of this black and white way of looking at things.  All the hard core Evangelical fundamentalists (like Falwell) and equally hard core atheists (Hitchens) were born out of this era of the debate.  There was a feeling that science and religion were ultimately not compatible.  You have to give it to post moderns though (especially those in the Emergent Church movement) in that they want to provide a space for everyone and their own personal views.  It is cool now to believe in PARTS of the Bible, while rejecting others.  This buffet approach to the Bible has drawn in some, while for others it has only pushed them farther to defining a conservative view of Biblical inerrancy.

I am not sure which view is more dangerous:  the one where people instantly assume that the Bible isn’t true and is just a story book of legends and myths with no historical value, or the one where people see the Bible on equal ground with the Koran and writings of Eastern religion holding guidance without dogma.  For the next few weeks, we are going to be discussing this question of whether we can trust the Bible or not, but we must begin with the more foundational question of CAN we prove that the Bible is true.  My answer may shock you, but intellectually and only relying on human wisdom, we CAN’T prove that the Bible is true.  I am not saying that all of Josh McDowell’s work and that of other great apologetics masters is a waste of time, but no matter how many volumes they write, it isn’t sufficient to prove that the Bible is true.

Paul, who was a brilliant in his apologetics, never shied away from this truth.  To the wisdom loving Greeks of Corinth he wrote, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling,and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”  (1 Cor. 2:2-5) Paul believed that the truth of the Gospel (therefore Scripture itself) rested not on the wisdom alone, but also upon the power of God.  This power was manifested through the miracles of the Holy Spirit, like healing and prophecies. He resisted being drawn into the Greeks thirst for argument, debate, and rhetoric, even in light of being compared to the eloquence of Apollos.

To the Galatians, Paul writes, “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (Galatians 3:1-3)  Paul goes on to talk about the miracles that the Galatians witnessed, and though this is speaking about the dangers of legalism, it also fits into my point about the truth of God being confirmed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

In other words, we need to STOP trying to prove that the Bible is true through history, archaeology, reason, apologetics, and logic alone.  These things have value and we will discuss them in the next posts, but they are not sufficient.  As Paul tells two churches, it is the power of God as manifested through the Spirit that was meant to bring people to belief in the Gospel, and therefore the Bible which professes it.  No, don’t think that I am getting Mormon on you, “Just take the book, and the “light” will show you that the words are true.”  I still remember that line from a Mormon who kept insisting that if I just took the book, God would reward me with enlightenment to it’s authority.

I am simply saying that it is a combination of both truth and Spirit that bring confirmation of the Bible, which is ultimately then an act of faith.  Acts of the Spirit can be interpreted as random acts or ones with a natural explanation.  It takes faith to believe that the God of the Gospel story is the One behind the miracle.  So before we dive into the details of topics like Biblical inerrancy, transmission of manuscripts, supposed contradictions of the Bible, and other such issues, we must remember that it is the power of the Spirit working in people’s lives that ultimately confirms the truth of the Bible and who God is.  Thank God for this, because it if is just up to us, we tend to muck things up pretty quickly.  In our next post, we will talk about what Biblical inerrancy means, especially when it comes to fun passages like 1 Samuel 13:1.