Hard Questions: The Bible

Welcome! Today we begin a new series – the topic is hard questions. We will start with a question so big that at first glance most people don’t know where even to begin. Here is the question:

How do you know that Christianity is true?

The first thing to think about, and apologist Dr. William Lane Craig has pointed this out, is that there is a profound difference between knowing Christianity to be true and showing it to be true. The most important reasons a believer has for knowing that the Bible is true may be totally inadequate, even frustrating or “useless,” to an unbeliever.

Most Christians may struggle for words, but they would say that they just know it, or that it rings true, or that they experience things in their lives that confirm it for them. I think that all of these things, to one degree or another, and whether or not the person fully understands it, are really the active work of the Holy Spirit in that believer’s life. Christianity is not just a set of beliefs; it is a relationship with God, and it is a two-way relationship. God may not answer us audibly or perform astonishing miracles with regularity in our lives; He may not do these things at all. But that does not make God’s work in our lives any less real; it just makes it different.

In fact, the work of the Holy Spirit in a believer’s life is often so “behind the scenes” that the believer himself does not even realize the half of what is going on. Sometimes believers can become disappointed with the lack of a certain type of experience, or with their own lack of excitement or other emotions, or perhaps with what they perceive as unanswered prayer, that they feel that God is completely uninvolved in their lives. But they really have no idea – the quiet, unassuming, but unwavering work of the Spirit is growing them, preserving them, even making them unsatisfied with their own un-involvement or hypocrisy or superficiality with God. If God really were to completely disengage from them, they would be overwhelmed with the shock and extremity of the change, with the hugeness of the loss, the emptiness that would be felt, and the depravity that would return. The work of the Holy Spirit is a valid and essential way to know that Christianity is true.

Galatians 3 and 4 says that believers become in a very real way sons (and daughters) of God. And Galatians 4:6 says:

Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father." – Gal. 4:6

And in Romans 8 we have this:

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by Him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. – Rom. 8:15-16

The Spirit testifies that we are God’s children. This means we know that Christianity is true. We know. Both verses use that phrase “Abba, Father” – we might translate this, “Daddy.” This is intimacy. This is familiarity. This is family. Nobody doubts the existence of their parents or whoever it is that lives with them and loves them day in and day out helping them to grow up.

Look also at I John 2.

But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. – I John 2:20

The Holy One is the Holy Spirit. That knowing is an intimate knowing, a familiarity. An “Abba, Father” knowing. And in the Old Testament, an anointing was a pouring of oil, fragrant oil, on the head. A person who was anointed knew he was anointed because he had a greasy, smelly head. And the people around him also knew he was anointed, for the same reasons. Keep that in mind as we read verse 27:

As for you, the anointing you received from Him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as His anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in Him. – I John 2:27

This anointing, unlike just some oil, doesn’t fade, it doesn’t wash out. It remains. It teaches us “about all things.” It gives us confidence. We know.

We accept man's testimony, but God's testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which He has given about his Son. Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in his heart. – I John 5:9-10

What does John mean by man’s testimony? He means the testimony of the other witnesses; for us, this means the gospels, the Bible. John here says that the testimony of the Bible is trustworthy, but even as important as this is, for a believer an even greater testimony is the testimony in his heart, that is, the testimony of the Holy Spirit.

And we have Jesus’ own words in John 14:

And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him, for He lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see Me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you. – John 14:16-20

That word “realize” is to know. Christianity is not only relationship, but relationship with God is an essential part of the Christian life. And this relationship is one key way we know that Christianity is true.

But as this passage points out, this doesn’t convince the “world,” that is, people who are not yet Christians, because they don’t experience any of this. They neither see Him nor know Him. And so when believers share with unbelievers about Christ, it is as if they are doing it with one hand tied behind their backs. There is indeed a profound difference between knowing Christianity is true and showing it is true.

Does this mean that the Holy Spirit has no role in showing an unbeliever that Christianity is true? Not at all! Consider Jesus’ words in John 16:

When He [the Holy Spirit] comes, He will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: in regard to sin, because men do not believe in Me; in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see Me no longer; and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned. – John 16:8-11

There are three related aspects to the work of the Holy Spirit in unbelievers: He convicts them of their own sinfulness, He convinces them of God’s righteousness, and He shows them that they stand condemned before God. In other words, the Holy Spirit helps them to know such truths as “There is such a thing as sin and I am a sinner,” “God exists and is righteous,” “I am guilty before God.”

If it weren’t for the work of the Holy Spirit, no person would ever come to God.
No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him. – John 6:44

I believe that this means that when a person refuses to come to Christ, it is not just because of lack of evidence or unanswered “hard questions,” although these things can certainly be a factor. Because God desires that none would perish, but that all would come to Christ, we can say that also at work is the fact that the person is either not recognizing or actively rejecting the Holy Spirit drawing him, the Holy Spirit pulling at his heart. I know that I experienced this pulling for some time before I became a Christian; my questions, my intellectual concerns were adequately satisfied, but I did not yet want to bend; and that period of my life, which was blissfully short, was the most miserable I have ever been in my life.

Now an unbeliever may hear all this and say, “You’re just deceiving yourselves. Adherents to other religions also base their beliefs on feelings, impressions, just knowing. You’re no different.” Muslims, for example, claim to have a witness of God’s Spirit, and Mormons talk about a “burning in the heart” that tells them what they believe is true. So this leads to the next hard question:

How do you know your experience isn’t self-delusion?

The answer, which will certainly frustrate non-believers, is that we know. The fact that other people, even in sincerity, falsely believe that God’s Spirit is testifying to them doesn’t make our experience false. Should it make us cautious? Absolutely! Scripture warns repeatedly about testing the spirits, searching the scriptures for verification, and so on. The Holy Spirit will never testify anything that is contrary to the Bible.

By the way, it is interesting to talk with people who were Muslim or Mormon and have since come to an authentic relationship with Christ. They discount their previous experiences; they say that now they really know Christ and His personal love, whereas before they were self-deluded. Now you can probably find some people who grew up in a Christian environment and then converted to other faiths who say similar things. But the reality in those cases is that they were not previously really in a relationship with Christ. His sheep know the sound of His voice.

Now, I’m not saying these arguments will convince unbelievers. We are talking about how we know Christianity is true, not how we show it to unbelievers. So let me now directly tackle that question.

How do you show unbelievers that Christianity is true?

I want to talk about the thought process that brings someone to the point where they seriously begin to consider the claims of Christianity. For this I am going to rely on the outline of Glenn Miller, a guy who has a website called christian-thinktank.com. (Don’t go there unless you have a few days to kill; the website has incredibly detailed discussions rebutting a thousand specific claims against Christianity.) I am using his outline because he thinks like I think. His approach is to argue the reasonableness, not the proof, of the following statements (which I have paraphrased):

1. There is something beyond the physical universe, something that caused this one. The vast majority of humanity has always believed this, and still does. He also talks about how modern science has even moved towards beyondness explanations for things they cannot explain any other way, from multidimensional particles in physics, to new models of consciousness, to even evolution arguing life came from beyond our solar system. And it matches our experience; if you see a ball on a hiking trail, you assume there is a cause; somehow it got there. And if it were a big ball, 100 feet tall, or 100 miles tall, this doesn’t make the belief in a cause go away; so why should the size of the universe invalidate this thinking? At a minimum this belief is reasonable, and reasonably you could say it is probable.

2. This cause has to be at least as complex as this universe. If it caused us, it must be at least as personal as we are.

3. This Person created a universe/reality that has an incredible amount of diversity and beauty in it. This Person could have made a universe without color, music, the amazing variety of tastes, flowers, life forms, and people that it has.

4. This Person created us to have hopes, dreams, fears, and to question. “Why am I here?” “What’s the point of it all?” “How can I be happy?” “How can I make a difference?”

5. This Person made humanity with the ability to impact his world, for good or ill.

6. We have left these marks, both good and bad, on everything. On ourselves. (Self sacrifice. Addiction.) On our world. (Saving other species. Nuclear war.) On our relationships. On our relationship with this Person.

7. We are not able to repair the bad. For every good thing it seems like we create two more bad ones. Look at the history of our world. It’s not Star Trek, where we solve all of society’s problems, and it’s not going to be.

8. We definitely need reliable, clear, and sufficient information on what to do. And we probably also need help in doing it. Even if we knew, that would not be enough. We cannot figure out what to do on our own. We cannot even agree on how to run our own country! We are therefore critically dependent on some communication/instruction from the Person.

9. What would this communication look like? It would have to be in history, recorded, linguistic and translatable, in everyday language, probably not trusted to oral transmission, probably religious, probably stretching credulity, probably sounding authoritative, probably affecting us strongly.

“It would have to be in history (for us to have access to it at all), recorded (for us to have access to it regardless of our place in time), linguistic and translatable (for us to have access to it regardless of our language), and in 'everyday' language (for it to have 'more objectivity' than, say, art and for it to be able to talk about global issues--like death, despair, hope, faith, peace, alienation, lack of purpose, self-limitations, forgiveness--as opposed to more 'precise' languages like math or logic with their more restricted vocabularies). It would probably NOT be trusted to simple oral transmission but would be written down and archived as it was communicated. Since it would deal with the 'tough' issues like our moral failures or our post-death experiences, it would probably show up in those areas of life typically called 'religious.' Additionally, it would probably make some bizarre and incredible claims ("this writing is from the Person 'outside' the universe"--as opposed to the wisdom from some meditating monk or something) and would probably offer some evidence or data to support these unusual (to say the least!) claims. If it were motivated by a real concern to communicate important and/or 'urgent' information, it would probably bear an authoritative tone (perhaps even an exclusive one). Finally, a true 'message from this Person' might affect us strongly -- quotations from it may anger our pride, make us very uncomfortable and nervous, or calm our fears.”

10. There is good reason to believe that the Bible, which is all these things, is this communication.

Why should someone believe the Bible?

1. Coherence. The Bible is not one book, but 66. It has not one author, but many. It wasn’t written all at once, but over thousands of years. Yet it has a remarkable internal consistency; it tells one story. Its message about God is clear and seems written from one voice. And there is incredible lining up of details from book to book, even ones written centuries apart. Even the way the letters of the New Testament integrate with Acts is remarkable; there is no way this was made up. There would be no reason to try.

2. No puffing up. There are no heroes in the Bible. The patriarchs: weak, failures in many aspects. The Israelites? Do we even want to go there? Moses? A failure in the end. The prophets? Didn’t obey, had nervous breakdowns, etc. The kings? Wicked and more wicked with only a few temporary exceptions. Even David was a shocking failure. And in the New Testament, those disciples of Jesus – what can we say? Clueless, selfish. Peter the “Rock” of the church? Denied Jesus three times! Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles? A former evil persecutor! And what about Judas? Jesus could have still gone to the cross without Judas. Do you realize what a failure even Jesus looks like for having Judas one of the 12?

3. Embarrassing details. The Bible is filled with embarrassing details, inconvenient details, things that make its case weaker rather than stronger. This lends to its credibility. For example, the fact that Jesus spoke to women, that women saw Him after His resurrection, is awkward; women could not testify in court. Another example: when Jairus pleads that Jesus help his dying daughter, the journey is to his house is interrupted by a woman touching his cloak, a woman who had been subject to bleeding. Jesus stops and asked who touched Him. The whole incident is almost obscenely unmentionable, and it detracts from the flow of the story. Another detail is that the people laughed at Jesus when He told the people that the daughter was not dead but asleep. And then Jesus tells them not to tell anyone what had happened after he raises his daughter from the dead. The only reason any of this makes any sense in this account is that it really happened. If you wanted to “sell” Jesus, the crowds would be impressed, not laughing, the interruption by the woman would be left out, and so on. Even some of the most outrageous-sounding miracles fall in this category. The long ages of the patriarchs in Genesis is stated so matter-of-factly, not as if it is because of their goodness, or power, but just because it is, for me makes it far more credible.

4. Historical records outside the Bible. Historians contemporary to Christ (often non-Christian) confirm key facts of what the Bible says about Jesus. Just a few examples: (a) Tacitus (AD 55-120): [Nero] inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class… called Christians… Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus. (b) Josephus (AD 38-100+): Jesus was a wise man who did surprising feats, taught many, won over followers from among Jews and Greeks, was believed to be the Messiah, was accused by the Jewish leaders, was condemned to be crucified by Pilate, and was considered to be resurrected. (c) The Jewish Talmud: Jesus was conceived out of wedlock, gathered disciples, made blasphemous claims about himself, and worked miracles. These miracles are attributed to sorcery and not to God.

5. Archaeology supports the Bible. In many cases, archaeologists have embarrassed historians who claimed that such and such a place or event in the Bible didn’t happen. (a) Example: People used to teach that Moses could not have written the first five books of the Bible because writing had not yet been invented. Then they found the Black Stele that contained the Laws of Hammurabi. It was not only pre-Moses, but pre-Abraham. (b) Example: The Gospel of John tells of Jesus healing a cripple next to the Pool of Bethesda. It describes 5 porticoes (walkways) leading to the pool. This was found 40 feet below ground, complete with the 5 porticoes. (c) Examples: People believed Ur was a myth. Ur has now been discovered. At Ur there is a column with the inscription “Abram.” People believed Jericho was a myth. Jericho was found and excavated. It was found that the walls tumbled in the exact manner described in the Bible. And people believed the Hittite people were a myth. There have now been found hundreds of references to the Hittite civilization. At the University of Chicago you can now get a doctorate in Hittite studies. (d) By way of comparison, the Book of Mormon has been greatly discredited by archaeology.

6. Prophecy. There are hundreds of prophecies about Jesus in the Old Testament that point to Christ. These are in Old Testament books, books provably written hundreds or even more than a thousand years before Christ. Even those who are opposed to Christ, such as the Jews, know that these prophecies were written before Christ. They just deny they are talking about Jesus (somehow). Some are general, about His purpose, His nature, and so on; some of these go back even to Genesis. But many more are quite specific, dealing with details in Jesus’ life.

7. Jesus. I don’t know how you can read about Jesus and not come away blown away. His teachings, His wisdom, His life, His love, His sacrifice, it is indeed “the greatest story ever told.”

The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only (Only Begotten), who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. – John 1:14

8. The gospel message. The gospel message is accurately based in the human condition. It starts from a point of the reality of our world, of us. And it speaks of a Creator who made His creation out of love, a Creator who has the highest qualities in man taken an infinity-fold higher. And for those who put their faith and hope and future in Jesus’ hands, the Holy Spirit confirms down to the core of their being that this is true and begins to remake them into the person God always intended.

I have only a little time left, but I want to briefly address 3 additional questions about the Bible.

What about supposed contradictions in the Bible?

Two statements may differ from each other without being a contradiction. Most so-called contradictions fall in this category. Examples include the two creation accounts, the two genealogies of Christ, and the question of whether Judas hung himself or fell headlong and burst open. Some other so-called contradictions come from us imposing a type of precision that didn’t exist in the writings of that day, or idioms of use. (We use these idioms all the time ourselves but don’t notice it. For example: “I spent all day shopping.”)

Studying the context or historical background resolves most contradictions. If you are being bothered by a particular contradiction, talk to me or John or Fred and we’ll look into it for you.

Could the Bible have been corrupted over time?

No; Bible translations aren’t made from translations, but from early sources in the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. We also have a huge number of early manuscripts, over 24,000, that agree with each other more than 99.5% of the time. Most of the disagreements are over spelling, word order, and other minor variations. And Greek is unaffected by word order changes.

For the New Testament, written from AD 50-100, we have portions from AD 114, and complete books from AD 200, with thousands of early copies. By way of comparison, we have 8 copies of Herodotus’ History, and the time gap from the earliest copy is 1350 years. Thucydides’ History? 8 copies, 1300 years. Caesar’s Gallic Wars? 10 copies, 1000 years. Tacitus’ Annals of History? 20 copies, 1000 years.

“In real terms, the New Testament is easily the best attested ancient writing in terms of the sheer number of documents, the time span between the events and the documents, and the variety of documents available to sustain or contradict. There is nothing in ancient manuscript evidence to match such textual availability and integrity.” – Ravi Zaccharias

What about the apocrypha, the gospel of Judas, and the gospel of Thomas?

These books are not in our Bibles because they were not accepted by the early church. The early church accepted the books in our New Testament almost immediately after they were written. The early church was convinced that the authors were who they said they were, and these authors were direct associates of Jesus or His immediate followers. Matthew and John were some of Jesus’ very closest followers; Mark and Luke were companions of the apostles, having direct access to the apostles to get direct accounts of Jesus’ life. James and Jude were half-brothers of Jesus. Peter was one of the 12 apostles. Paul started out persecuting Christians but had an encounter/vision of Christ. He maintained communications and close contact with Peter and the other apostles.

In contrast to this we have the Gospel of Judas, written 130-170AD by the Gnostics, not by Judas who had long since died. The Gospel of Thomas was written around 140AD and was also a counterfeit, not written by Thomas. These books conflict with the known teachings of Jesus and with the Old Testament, and they are also filled with errors.

The apocrypha consist of 14 or 15 books that were written after 200BC (after Malachi) and before Matthew. The Roman Catholic Church included these in their list of inspired (canon) books at the Council of Trent in 1546. Jesus is silent on these books; in fact, in Matthew 23:35 and Luke 11:51 He uses the phrase “from Abel to Zechariah” in the context of how the leaders of the Jews had killed God’s messengers through history. Abel’s murder is in Genesis 4 (the first book of the Old Testament) and Zechariah’s murder is in 2 Chronicles 24 (near the end of the last book of the Old Testament, in traditional Hebrew order). There were other murders in the apocryphal books, but Jesus did not mention them. Thus it seems that Jesus did not place the apocrypha as Scripture.