Hasn’t the Bible been debunked as reliable? Isn’t it riddled with errors? This seems to be the common assumption for most people. The Bible has either been translated too much or transcribed so many times that there is no way that it can be relied upon as entirely truthful. Sure, there may be some interesting stories and general concepts that are true to life, but authoritative in all it says? Surely not.
But for Christians that is exactly what it is. The Bible is authoritative and truthful in all it says.
First, let’s talk about accuracy. There is a common assumption that the Bible is inaccurate. But when we look at the historicity of the manuscripts of the Bible, we can trace the earliest manuscripts to the first century AD. When we say manuscript, we mean parchment that has the Greek or Hebrew on it. So in order to verify the original content of the Bible you need to have manuscripts, that’s copies of the original to verify what it says. So if you had 3 different versions of the Bible all saying different things, it would be hard to be certain was the Bible says. But we have thousands of manuscripts saying the same thing. The accuracy of the text of the New Testament is accurate almost to 98% of all the text. And I’ve researched the 2% and we’re not talking variations that are determinative of our faith, we’re talking where someone put a comma or a period.
Second, let’s talk authority. If you believe that Jesus rose from the dead, you believe something incredible has been accomplished: that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose from the dead. This is a historical fact. If you believe this, then you should believe what Jesus said and claimed. Jesus said and claimed that the Bible is the authoritative word of God. Paul says this about his writing and the writings of the other apostles - 2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
The Bible claims to be the authoritative word of God. Now if you’re picking up on this, you’re picking up on some circular reasoning. The Bible is true because it says its true. This is fine actually because any claim of truth must be defended by the premise of that claim. If you say that rationality is the way to truth, you’re going to prove that using reason. If you claim that Islam is true, then you’re going to use the Koran to prove that. So we should ask if what the Bible talks about is true. Is the content contained in it verifiable. And the answer is yes. We have extra-biblical sources, those are sources outside the Bible that testify to it’s accuracy such as Josephus and other historians. What we believe is that every word of the Bible was written by people who God was working through to write what he wanted to communicate to us. This goes back to the first point, accuracy.
Third, let’s talk about the activity of the Bible. Many people get skittish about the Bible because they don’t know how to read it. We get obsessed over literal interpretations or how we’re supposed to harmonize the Bible with science. But we have to understand the Bible in context. The Bible is made up of all sorts of genres of literature. You get narrative, poetry, prophecy, songs and each one should be read for what they are. The Bible is not a science textbook. I think this is where many people get hung up. It may not speak to driving cars but one can infer from the text of Scripture the principles and ethics necessary to understand the development of cars and the right way to conduct oneself when driving a car.
In fact, let’s have some fun. The Bible doesn’t talk about A.I. or V.R. does that mean A.I. and V.R. are unbiblical? Not necessarily but from Scripture God can show us all about his understanding of humanity, the limits and boundaries of people. We can begin to understand and draw conclusions regarding the utilization of V.R. and A.I. based on what God has revealed. The Bible has the sufficient information for anyone to come to a knowledge of God but that doesn’t mean that the Bible is exhaustive in that it talks about everything that has ever been.
Based on these three concepts, we can confidently support what Jesus and the disciples said all along, that the Bible is the word of God. These three things, accuracy, authority, and activity, should bolster the faith of all Christians and should be seriously considered by anyone exploring Christianity.