Can we rely on the Bible?

Michael Keller on October 13, 2009

So why does it matter if the Bible is reliable? Well, if is what it says it is--which is a divinely inspired text--then it is authoritative for all and should be listened to. If it is a bunch of dreamed up legends and socially regressive teachings, then we should chuck it in the food processor with other less than divine teachings. Therefore, it matters if the Bible means anything to us today. Should we read it? Should it impact my life? These questions and others hinge on if the Bible is true. Naturally, there have been many who have tried to show the Bible as less than true.

This past Sunday we looked some of the normal critiques that are levied against the reliability of the Bible. There are three main categories that are normally used in these critiques. They essentially call into question the Bible's trustworthiness in relation to science, history, and culture. The outline we used is:

“We can’t trust the Bible scientifically”
Miracles
Evolution   

“We can’t trust the Bible historically” 
No original Texts
Gospels as Legends
Written to far past the original dates 
Seemingly filled with contradictions  

“We can’t trust the Bible culturally”
Race 
Sexuality

Its important to identify these critiques, pose them in the best possible light, and then analyze each one of them for creditability. If you look at our handout from last Sunday, on the back I try to give a few starting (and I do emphasize starting as these are my no means complete arguments) bullet points. However, many of you guys wanted some other places to go to when it comes to these arguments.

For an overall summary, I recommend dad's book The Reason For God which has a whole chapter devoted to all three of these topics. 

For further analysis about how Science and Christianity are not at odds see W. Christopher Stewart's “Religion and Science” in Reason for the Hope Within, ed. M.J. Murray, (Eerdmans, 1999). To see how today's scientific methodology was actually created through a Christian worldview take a look at Rodney Stark's chapter in To the Glory of God (Princeton, 2004), “God’s Handiwork: The Religious Origins of Science.” Also Francis Collins' The Language of God, written by a scientist, shows how one can be a Christian and a scientist at the same time.

As for the the historical viability of the Bible, a good readable response to The Da Vinci Code  and its view of the Gnostic gospels can be found in Ben Witherington's book The Gospel Code (IVP, 2004). If you would like a very detailed account about how the gospels have to be of a historical genre, see N.T. Wright's book Jesus and the Victory of God (Fortress, 1998). Virtually all historians today agree that the gospels were written between 40-60 years after Jesus' death. This is the case because over the last century manuscript evidence has forced most critical scholars to conclude that they were written much sooner than how many 18th and 19th century scholars dated the gospels. The complete argument  is laid out in F.F. Bruce's book The New Testament Documents: Are they reliable? 

Lastly, for help when it comes to how the Bible is seen culturally its important to note that the Bible never did uphold slavery in how we traditionally think of slavery. See the quote below from Andrew Lincoln. 
 

 “Modern readers [of the Bible] need to free themselves from a number of assumptions about first-century slavery, including the assumptions that there was a wide separation between the status of slave and freedperson…and that all who were enslaved were trying to free themselves from this bondage….There was a broad continuum of statuses between slave and free in both Roman and Greek society. Slaves of Greek owners could own property, including their own slaves, and could obtain permission to take other employment in addition to their duties as slaves. [And] before slaves were manumitted [given their freedom] they had to sign a contract which could require them to provide various services to their former owners….It was frequently in the owner’s interest to manumit them, since their labor could be obtained more cheaply if they were freedpersons….Though there were undoubtedly far too many cases of cruelty, brutality, and injustice, there was no general climate of unrest among slaves.” (Andrew Lincoln, Ephesians Word Bible Commentary, 1990, p.416-417.) 

Furthermore, Rodney Stark says:

 “Of all the world’s great religions, including the three great monotheisms, only in Christianity did the idea develop that slavery was sinful and must be abolished. Although it has been fashionable to deny it, antislavery doctrines began to appear in Christian theology soon after the decline of Rome and were accompanied by the eventual disappearance of slavery in all but the fringes of Christian Europe. When Europeans subsequently instituted slavery in the New World, they did so over strenuous papal opposition, an fact that was conveniently “lost” from history until recently. Finally, the abolition of New World slavery was initiated and achieved by Christian activists….Slavery was once nearly universal to all societies able to afford it, and only in the West did significant moral opposition ever arise and lead to abolition.” (Rodney Stark, To God Be the Glory Princeton University Press, 2003, p. 291.)


As such, we have to be careful not to read back into the Bible our own cultural context (in this case taking 19th century race-based slavery and assuming that Biblical slavery was of the same fiber).