Can we really trust the Bible?

NothinsGonnaStopIt! is based on the viability and vitality of the biblical message for every human being on earth. In order to establish the foundation for these assumptions we now want to begin a blog series to explore the reliability of the Bible. We are going to start with asking the important questions as to whether the Bible could be a truth source, perhaps THE truth. Once that foundation is laid, we will then move to the question about how one could consider the words of the Bible as inspired by God, thus making it different from other books. From there we will broach the problem of canon (which books should be in the Bible?), text (which manuscripts should be used to make up the Bible?) and translation (which Bible should I read?).

Hold on to your hats then, here we go! Oh, I should warn you that this first piece is a bit “heady” but hang tough. Asking questions about knowledge is a necessary starting point.

Can we really trust the Bible?
The Bible purports to be a record of God’s dealings with human beings in various stages of ancient history. As such the Bible has been seen by God’s followers throughout the ages as his authoritative message to the world he has made. But how can we really know for sure if this is the case?

The basic question here has to do with knowledge. Is there truth that can be known and if so, how can it be known? In philosophy this subject is known as “epistemology.” When we come to the Bible we then need to ask whether the Bible could be a/the source for truth.

The search for truth
Anthropologists tell us that all human beings tell themselves a set of stories that form the basis for our views about how the world works. These stories have been handed down to us from our family and our culture. On the basis of the stories we tell we form a set of beliefs about life. This set of beliefs is called our “worldview” and is the lens through which we assess all sensory data. This data is then filtered through our worldview categories so we know where to mentally put things. Newton, for instance, saw an apple fall from a tree but his medieval worldview had no category or explanation other than a supernatural one (e.g., an angel did it) to explain how this was so. Through hypothesis and experimentation he then added an alternative category called gravity to explain why things fall that has been adopted into the modern worldview.

Our worldview beliefs are based on probability, not proof. Assumptions can’t be proven, only tested, because they are things assumed to be true. Newton tested his theory of gravity and concluded that it is the most probable explanation as to why things fall. If we hold onto the supernatural in our worldview then we are presented with the possibility of dual causation: an occurrence could have either a natural law or supernatural explanation. Unfortunately with the advent of teh Enlightenment the new, modernist worldview rejected the idea of dual causation and all we have been left with for the last four hundred years are natural law explanations for all phenomena.

All this to say that we interpret all sensory data through our provisional worldview system based on our beliefs about life culled from the stories we live out of. We constantly test our worldview, whether consciously or unconsciously, to see if it makes sense of our experience.

Can truth be known inside ourselves?
Renee Descartes hypothesized that in order to pose answers to these kinds of questions, called in philosophy “ontology.” our natural starting point is within ourselves, thus his famous dictum, “I think, therefore, I am.” If we use this as our point of departure then we intuitively use a twofold test called “systematic consistency” to assess the viability of our assumptions. Are our starting points about life systematic i.e., are they truly rational in that they make sense to the mind? Secondly, are our rational assumptions consistent with what we experience in life? If truth is real it should be rationally pleasing and experientially viable. Systematic consistency, then, constitutes our internal authority (reason and experience).

But what if our assumptions don’t make sense of our experience? This is what happened when Newton’s medieval worldview was no longer rationally pleasing as the only explanation for the falling apple. What happens when certain sensory data does not fit the stories we tell or the beliefs we hold? One of our choices would be to ignore what we saw. I remember when I saw a deaf woman hear out of one of her ears for the first time in her life after prayer. I had read about that kind of thing in the Bible but I had not personally experienced something like it or seen it in my life experience. What should I do with data? It would have been hard to ignore it. You should have seen the lady’s face! Apparently I was going to have to (gulp!) alter some things in my worldview (called a "paradigm shift"; see below).

Another possibility would be to put the data into what I call the Bermuda Triangle of the mind, the mental place where we put the stuff we experience that does not fit within our worldview. We all do this, but how much can we do it? When there is too much unexplainable data in that place in our minds it produces what is called “cognitive dissonance,” a kind of mental and emotional pain that I like to call “brain fry.” When the cognitive dissonance gets too painful we are forced to either numb the pain or, if we are truly living consistently with our worldview, conclude that life is inexplicable and live accordingly, often a road that leads to either agnosticism or atheism. For some the pain has been so great as to lead to ending life altogether. This epistemology thing is serious business.

But wait! There is another alternative. We can courageously seek to find new a new story that explains the data in that mental room. This, however, would mean that we would have to admit that we were wrong about aspects of our worldview and this is very painful to admit, prideful creatures that we are. It is, as Scott Peck has noted, the “road less traveled.”

To find other stories, however, human beings have to explore the possibility that there are truth sources outside ourselves to put out the raging fire Blaise Pascal (Thought 250) has called “the infinite abyss.”

Can truth be known outside ourselves?
General revelation
As we continue our search for truth, our starting point at this point is still within ourselves, but we are now looking outward, not inward. The first place to look for truth is nature. When the order and consistency of the natural order is studied, most have concluded that nature points to something greater than itself but, alas, that all it does…it points. One does not know to what (Darwinism) or to whom (Theism) it points, nor does it tell us how to get there.

Some have continued the search for truth outside of ourselves by positing certain universal morals: some things are generally right (loving one’s child), and some things are generally wrong (murdering one’s child). Those that affirm that such universals point to a truth outside us are still left with questions because even here all this data does is point to something or someone “out there.” Nature and universal morals hang the proverbial carrot in front of humankind, promising to fill the infinite abyss but never delivering the goods.

Secular philosophy is forced to stop here because one of its basic assumptions is that there is no supernatural, thus no knowledge from the outside is possible. It asserts that we live in a closed system and we are on our own with natural laws to govern us. But if all truth must come from within humanity or nature, then the search for truth is still on, but without a possibility in sight.

Special revelation
Perhaps secular philosophy is wrong, and we don’t live in a closed system. To posit an open system, we shift the starting point from humankind to God. If human beings cannot find truth on their own, if there was a truth, it would have to be revealed from the outside. Revealed truth would require the imparting of a message from God in the form of a messenger, person, book or other means of communication.

It is crucial to understand that the Bible presents itself as just such an instrument of communication. It offers a provisional system to be tested. Its probability as a source for truth will be determined by how systematically consistent it is. If it is truth, it will ultimately bear witness to itself by making sense of our experience and offer a set of coherent stories that make sense out of life.

The Bible’s answers to the problem of truth
In our search, God is now the starting point for all truth and knowledge. He has created a world and if there is to be communication with it, it would initiate from a relational, rational, ordered, consistent, and communicative being. As we look at nature, many of those who have studied it have concluded that it reflects his relational nature, his rationality, his order, his consistency, and his communication.

As the Creator, the God of the Bible has created humankind with the capacity to receive communication from him. Human beings have been created in God’s image. As relational and rational beings, then, humans have been created to be able to receive verbal and non-verbal communication. But since we are also spiritual beings, humankind can receive spiritual communication. We have a head and heart capacity. The fall of humanity (entrance of sin) did not shatter rationality, although it did alter our ability to think with accurate spiritual perception. To put is simply, our minds are still rational but fallen, thus explaining why we cannot find truth when our starting point is within ourselves. Although we have the rational capacity for spiritual communication, we need God himself to open our minds to receive and understand it. We need him to speak to us in such a way that we understand it to be God.

The Bible also teaches that human beings are born with innate knowledge of God, right and wrong and common sense, but that that knowledge is suppressed in our wickedness (Rom. 1.18). We are not blank tablets waiting for our environment to condition us to become what we will be, but are fallen beings created in God’s image awaiting redemption so we can think with true rationality and to discover what it means to be human, those who image God by fulfilling his mandate to rule the earth as his coregents.

The human mind, while fallen, is still, however, innately grounded in the essence of God’s mind, which affirms what is called the “law of non-contradiction.” This says that 1 + 1 = 2 every time these numbers are added together. If sometimes they added up to 3, it would shatter the foundation of knowing anything at all. But because their sum always equals 2, certain knowledge is obtainable. It is possible to reason and to follow the path of logic (this is not to deny the discoveries of quantum physics, that has realized that at the atomic level matter is not always predictable; we are only here talking about the basis of rational human communication).

Because it is possible to reason, then, it is possible to communicate. The law of non-contradiction enables one to receive the same message the sender is giving if the sender and receiver can agree on the meaning of their words. A message then can mean what it was intended to mean and not something else.

Not only has the God of the Bible created human beings with the capacity to receive communication from him but he has also given them the desire for communication from him. Human beings are incurably spiritual beings and the history of the world reflects this clearly—men and women have searched incessantly for the meaning of life. The Bible says that this is because God has put it in them. Ecclesiastes 3.11 says that God has put “eternity in the hearts of men, but they can’t fathom the end from the beginning”. The quest for truth is innate, but without revelation from God, the Bible says that truth cannot be known or understood. This is consistent with what we know of the futility of starting within ourselves in the search for truth.

Jesus Christ, the LOGOS, was God’s ultimate communication to Mankind.
In the storyline of the Bible, Jesus is God’s ultimate and final communication to the created order. Jesus, then, is the key to all communication from God. Jesus is the LOGOS, the word of God. God has ultimately spoken through his Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus is the cosmological LOGOS: Without him, the world would not have been made (John 1.1-3; “through him all things were made”). Jesus is also the epistemological LOGOS: Without him, there would be no knowledge (John 1.9; Jesus is “the true light that enlightens every man”). Finally, Jesus is the soteriological LOGOS. Without him there would be no salvation (Hebrews 1.3; “[he] provided purification for sins”).

What this means is that while God is transcendent (unreachable), he has made himself imminent (reachable) in the person of his Son, Jesus. The unknowable has made himself known through his Word, the LOGOS.

The Bible is God’s enduring written communication of his Son, the LOGOS.
Because of humankind’s ability to reason and communicate, a book, then, is a possible means of receiving communication from God. The law of non-contradiction says that the meaning of the words in the book would be the ones God intended. He would mean what he said and not something else. Despite the fact that the message of God in Jesus, the LOGOS, is sent through a book written in a number of cross cultural situations, the words are not culturally bound and can be contextualized into any culture on earth. Ultimately receiving God’s message is a matter of using standard cross cultural communication skills to hear the message embedded in one context and then translate it into another. A book that records case studies and reflections on God’s dealings with his world would then be a viable means for communication with the world.

Conclusion
Regarding the questions about whether there is a truth and how one might know it, we ruled out the possibility of starting within ourselves. All attempts in this direction have proven futile. We also ruled out looking to nature for the answers to life. All nature does in the end is point to a truth outside itself but gives us no road map to get there. Finally, we were left with the possibility that truth may be known outside ourselves via revelation from God. On the basis of the story that the Bible tells, God is both rational and relational. That fact that humans are created in God’s image means that humans are also rational and relational and, as such, have the capacity to communicate not only with one another but with God.

The Bible says that Jesus is God’s ultimate communication to the earth and that both the words written prior to his coming that set the stage for knowing who he was, and the words written after him that open him up to be understood by the world, join together to form written documents that can be translated from culture to culture and the meaning contextualized in each new culture. We conclude, therefore, that the Bible has the capacity to be a truth source from God. In my experience of over fifty years of testing the Bible at the bar of systematic consistency I have found that it is most probable that it is THE source for truth on the earth. I have staked my life on it.