"Why Believe in the Bible?" - Chapter 1 of Know Why You Believe

Know Why You Believe
By K. Scott Oliphint

Why Believe in the Bible? – Chapter 1

Introduction

• Especially in our current cultural climate, people generally approach the Bible with a skeptical mindset.
  
  • How credible are the Bible’s claims?
  • Are there really people who believe it?
  • Can it be proved?
  • What about its contradictions?

Reasons

• There are two kinds of reasons or types of evidences for believing the Bible:
  
  • External Reasons – evidence or reasons that come from outside of the Bible.
  • Internal Reasons – evidence or reasons that come from inside the Bible.

External Reasons

• There are several types of external reasons:
  
  • Historical Reliability
    
    • Historical Records
    • Archaeological Evidence
  • Transmission Reliability
    
    • How can we be sure the manuscripts are accurate?
    • Abundant manuscript testimony in agreement.
  • Canon Reliability
    
    • How can we be sure the books we have are the right books?
    • No councils met to decide on which books to include or exclude because it was never a matter of serious disagreement in the early church.
    • On the whole, the churches were in harmony on recognizing the authoritative books.

Internal Reasons

• External evidence is inconclusive. It can never produce certainty, only probability or plausibility.
• The Bible’s truthfulness runs deeper than just external historical testimony. It begins with a relationship with Jesus Christ.
• Belief in the Bible is personal and relational.
• Belief in the Bible is like a marriage. You cannot experience what marriage is really like without the commitment of marriage.
• Only a personal commitment to Jesus Christ brings to light what Christianity really is.
• The best reasons for believing the Bible come from the Bible itself:
  
  • Its unity in diversity
    
    • The Bible was written by dozens of writers over a period of 1500 years.
    • This diversity results in a collection of books that is amazingly unified in its message.

“the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof.”
--Westminster Confession of Faith—

• In order to discover the internal reasons, one must sit down and read what the Bible says. It requires a familiarity with the content of Scripture.
• But even more than external and internal reasons are needed to bring us to a point of believing the Scriptures.

Divine Reasons

“Yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.”
--Westminster Confession of Faith

• The only way that one can be fully persuaded and assured of the “infallible truth and divine authority” of Holy Scripture is when the Holy Spirit himself testifies of the truth of Scripture in our hearts.
• The Holy Spirit does not do the internal work by himself. He works “by and with the Word in our hearts.”
• We must expose ourselves to what Scripture says. Only then can we hope to see its heavenliness.
• Without that exposure, the best answer to the why question is little more than a historical probability, and the power of what the Scripture says can never be known.

Responses

• Isn’t this reasoning in a circle? Beginning with the Bible to prove the Bible?
  
  • This is a misperception of the Christian understanding of the Bible.
  • Can you prove that your senses are a reliable guide to experiencing the world without using your senses?
  • There are no external sources that establish the reliability of the use of your senses.
  • So it is with the Bible, no outside authority can ultimately prove the reliability of the Bible. It’s authority and reliability are axiomatic.
  • Because the Bible is the ultimate authority for Christians, then there can be no other authority that can establish its authority.
  • If another authority were to establish the Bible’s authority, then the Bible would get its authority from something else and, by definition, would not be the final authority.
• What about all the contradictions in the Bible?
  
  • It all depends on your starting presupposition.
  • Does a doctor detect a problem in the body and assume that the Bible is a collection of parts that don’t work together? No, he begins with the assumption that body is mean to harmoniously work together.
  • The only way to diagnose perceived problems in Scripture is to study Scripture.
  • When Scripture is studied with the commitment that the parts will be coherent because God is the primary author from beginning to end, contradictions disappear.
  • But when Scripture is studied apart from that commitment, one encounters contradictions and problems because one begins with the premise that the Bible is full of contradictions.
  • So, the starting presupposition matters.

Conclusion

• The only way someone can acquire a “full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority” of Scripture is, as in marriage, by first making a commitment to Christ himself.
• This commitment/belief can only come through reading the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit opening our hearts to believe it as God’s Word.
• By believing Christ, we are able properly to see everything else.
• Unless we recognize the truths about the Bible, we will not be able to understand why we believe anything else about Christianity.
• In trusting Christ and believing his Word, we begin to see the world and everything else in its proper light.