Systematic Theology Part V: Trustworthy Words?

"The Bible is was written by men over 2000 years ago!"

This is a classic argument against the validity or trustworthiness of scripture, but is it a valid argument?

There are two major problems posed by this argument that have to be answered if we are going to defend the trustworthiness of scipture:

1. The Bible is Old...
a. so it can't be trusted because mistakes MUST have crept in over the past 2000 years.
b. so it is irrelevant to us today.

2. The Bible was written by men and men aren't perfect so you can't trust it's fully true.

Can we trust that a 2000 year old is not significantly different from the original?

Much work and research has gone into the area of textual criticism and the recreation of the original text of the New Testament from the available copies and fragments of handwritten manuscripts. Norman Geisler in A General Introduction to the Bible dedicates several chapters and hundreds of pages to this topic. He also recommends a book by F.F. Bruce titled The New Testament Documents, Are they Reliable?

For our purposes I will briefly give a reasons why we can trust the ancient manuscripts of the New Testament. If you would like a more in-depth scholarly look at this topic refer to one of the above books.

The number of existing manuscripts of the New Testament is overwhelming compared to other readily accepted ancient texts. There are at least 5366 fragment to full copy hand-written manuscripts of the New Testament. Comparably there are only 643 of Homer's Illiad, 19 of Livy's History of Rome and 10 of Caesar's Gallic Wars.

The earliest known fragment of the New Testament is dated within 50 years of the original autograph. For Livy's and Caesar's work the earliest know manuscript is 1000 years removed from the original. All this is to say that the evidence supporting the transmission of the text of the New Testament through the ages without change from the original autographs is overwhelming. In this case the fact that the Bible is 2000 years old is not a good enough argument to say that it's content is different today than it was when it was first written.

Is a book that was written 2000 years ago relevant to us today?

To answer this question we must first understand the purpose of the Bible. Here are two quotes dealing with the purpose of the Bible:

"To place men and women in a right standing before God and to enable believers to seek God's glory in all of life's activities and efforts." (Dockery and Nelson, A Theology for the Church, p130)

"The climax of God's special revelation is Jesus of Nazareth, the personal incarnation of God in the flesh; in Jesus Christ the source and content of revelation converge and coincide." (Carl F.H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority)

Sin is what separates us from that relationship with God, so it would stand to reason that, if sin is the same today as it was 2000 years ago, then the purpose of the Bible is still relevant to deal with the sin problem.

Genesis 8:21 and Jeremiah 17:9 both are clear that the condition of man's heart is wicked and evil. This fact has not changed since the first sin. Lust, murder, hatred, anger, jealousy, theft, idolatry, greed, and more have existed in the heart of man since the fall. The bible still answers the problem of sin and therefore remains relevant and will remain relevant even thousands of years from now.

If the Bible was written by men, and men are not perfect, then how can there not be error in the Bible?

To answer this question there are 3 words that have to be defined:
Inspiration-"God-breathed" (2 Timothy 3:16)
Inerrancy-there are no errors in the text
Infallibility-It does not mislead us if rightly interpreted

Inspiration

How was the Bible written? Was it written by men or by God? We call it God's word but it's written in the language of men...how does that work?

2 Peter 1:20-21 and Hebrews 1:1-2 are very clear that both man and God had a role in the writing down of special revelation. This is called double-sided authorship. The question is to what extent? Did God whisper the exact words in the ears of the writers or control their hands to write exactly what he would have them write? Did the writers just have a general influence from the Spirit but full freedom to write about what they wanted?

The Holy Spirit protects believers from error and leads us into Truth (John 14:26 and John 16:12-15) but it is also clear that individual books or sets of books in the Bible have different personalities and perspectives behind the writing. The personality and perspective of the writers comes through in the Truth the Holy Spirit led them to write about. There is both a divine fingerprint and a human fingerprint on the Bible.

(again...this goes SO MUCH DEEPER than space allows here. Much has been discussed and written on various views of inspiration. I challenge you to pick up some good books that I've mentioned in this series of posts for a more in-depth and complete study of the issues presented here)

The human fingerprint on the Bible is important to the discussion of inerrancy/infallibility. If man wrote the Bible then it must have errors in it because men aren't perfect...right?

When looking at a passage of scripture and determining whether it is contradictory or "wrong" in a scientific or historical sense don't lose sight of the perspective of the writers. The writers wrote within the context of their community and addressed scientific and historical matters from their perspectives and from the historical and scientific accuracy expectations of the day.

For instance some would argue the Bible is wrong because it refers to the sun as rising and setting. But this is the way the sun is observed and communicated about even today. For the biblical writers to communicate in this way does not mean they erred. If a biblical writer estimated the number of troops in a battle or the circumference of a lake does not mean that they erred. Their intent was not to be exact to the 30th # of pi but to describe something with regard to their cultural expectations.

We also need to remember the infinite nature of God when critiquing passages of scripture that try to communicated great truth about the attributes of God. Sometimes human language and analogies fall short of full understanding of God's nature. God doesn't change but from a man's perspective it may appear he is repenting. We know he doesn't really repent, but that's the best way our language can describe it. This is not an error, just the best way we can describe an infinite God.

The fact is that we can TRUST the Bible, as we have it today. We can trust that it is accurate to the original text. We can trust that it still communicates truth about sin and salvation because man's heart condition has not changed. We can trust that it is accurate in all matters it discusses. We can trust the Holy Spirit will help us interpret it truthfully in the context of the original writers. We can trust that, as Christians, we do not have to blindly accept the truth of the Bible just because that's what we've always been told. It has received much attention and much support.