Apologetics Session 2

As followers of Jesus Christ, we have the sacred Word of God as the foundation for our faith and practice. In fact, one of the marks of a baptist is the Bible is our authority for faith and practice. That is to say, what we believe and how we conduct ourselves comes from the Scriptures.

London Baptist Confession of Faith: “The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience, although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and his will which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord at sundry times and in divers manners to reveal himself, and to declare that his will unto his church; and afterward for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan, and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing; which maketh the Holy Scriptures to be most necessary, those former ways of God's revealing his will unto his people being now ceased. ( 2 Timothy 3:15-17; Isaiah 8:20; Luke 16:29, 31; Ephesians 2:20; Romans 1:19-21; Romans 2:14,15; Psalms 19:1-3; Hebrews 1:1; Proverbs 22:19-21; Romans 15:4; 2 Peter 1:19,20 )”

Baptist Faith & Message 2000: “The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy. It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.

Exodus 24:4; Deuteronomy 4:1-2; 17:19; Joshua 8:34; Psalms 19:7-10; 119:11,89,105,140; Isaiah 34:16; 40:8; Jeremiah 15:16; 36:1-32; Matthew 5:17-18; 22:29; Luke 21:33; 24:44-46; John 5:39; 16:13-15; 17:17; Acts 2:16ff.; 17:11; Romans 15:4; 16:25-26; 2 Timothy 3:15-17; Hebrews 1:1-2; 4:12; 1 Peter 1:25; 2 Peter 1:19-21.”

These two statements provide the generally held beliefs of baptists for several hundreds of years. They offer a brief treatment of what we hold to as we understand the Written Word of God.

We are examining the Scriptures in light of apologetics, or to answer why we hold to the Word of God. We have several answers in these two verses of 2 Timothy.

I. The Bible claims supernatural origin—All Scripture is God-breathed

Different translations render this phrase differently. Some have breathed out by God, inspired by God, or God-breathed. They all convey the same truth: all Scripture comes from God.

In his wonderful little book, Know Why You Believe, Paul Little describes the process of inspiration like this,

“God worked through the instrumentality of human personality but so guided and controlled the people that what they wrote is what he wanted.”—Paul Little

Peter gives us a word picture in 2 Peter 1:21, “For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” The picture is like a ship upon the currents of the ocean. The ocean moves the ship, but the ship is still its own entity.

II. The Bible is practical—All Scripture…is useful

Scripture is practical for four uses: teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. Jay Adams provides a succinct way of understanding Paul’s message,

“In II Timothy 3:17, Paul mentions four things that the Scriptures do for the believer. First, they teach what God requires. Secondly, they convict of sin by revealing how one has fallen short of those requirements. Thirdly, they ‘set us up straight again.’ Lastly, they train or discipline in righteousness.”—Jay Adams

Rather than simply being a collection of stories, it is a remarkably broad and practically useful gift of God.

III. The Bible is purposeful—that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work

The Bible is purposeful, it shapes us and equips us to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the goal of the fourfold use of the Word.

Now, we all hold to these teachings, and we should. The question is, why? How can we trust the Bible? What reasons can we give for claiming to believe the Scriptures and base our entire lives upon them?

Consider the words of Richard Dawkins who wrote, “To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted, and ‘improved’ by hundreds of of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries.”

While people may not articulate it like that, his words nevertheless convey the sentiments of many. Perhaps that float around in your own head at times. What answers do we give?

IV. Answers to common objections

Dawkins words will provide a rough outline of our answers. Please understand these will be extremely brief, but will give us enough structure that I think it will bolster our confidence in the trustworthiness of Scripture.

A. The Bible is weird

I will be honest, there are portions of the Bible that are weird. The dietary laws, the festivals and sacrifices, the incest, the odd accounts such as the Levite’s concubine (see Judges 19), those are weird stories!

The problem with this objection is that it fails to consider the context in which the Scriptures were written. They were written at particular times to particular peoples with different cultures. We make enormous mistakes when we look upon the past with the judgments of today.

Dawkins admits this in that same book, writing, “It is a commonplace that good historians don’t judge statements from the past by the standards of their own.” The fact that it is weird in no way implies that it is not possible.

B. The Bible is chaotically cobbled-together

This is a common objection to the Bible. They are stories pieced together over centuries. A popular theory of this connected to the Pentateuch is that various individuals (JEPD, the Wellhausen Reconstruction).

While there is certainly some construction of the text along the way, the truth is that God’s Word is not chaotically cobbled-together, but is rather wonderfully constructed by the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, archaeology has proven the truthfulness of Scripture over against these theories.

Gleason Archer, in his book A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, refutes four allegations with proof after proof, in addition to a brief discussion of the Ebla tablets. Archer effectively destroys Dawkins’ views, piece by piece.

C. The Bible is pieced together over a long period of time

Through the works of Bart Erhman, many Christians have struggled with this aspect raised by Dawkins. The argument goes, there are a variety of manuscripts available with many differences, how can we trust the Bible?

Again, there is much we could say at this point, but ultimately the Scriptures have proven trustworthy again and again.

The majority of the “contradictions” are simply matters of interpretation, not of actual contradictions. Regardless of the objections, the Scriptures have proven themselves reliable, accurate, and trustworthy time and time again.

V. Why are there so many different denominations and interpretations of Scripture?

The majority of denominations hold to the same Bible for their views of faith and practice (Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Pentecostals, etc.).

Catholics and Baptists are about as different as they can be. How can they have the same Bible and yet come to so many different beliefs? To take it another step further, how can Christians hold to the same Bible and yet have differing views on homosexuality?

The root issue in all of this is how we interpret and apply Scripture. For example, the Catholic church teaches that the Scriptures are interpreted through the Church (the Magisterium of the Church). The CCC states, “The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living, teaching office of the Church alone.” (Dei Verbum)

Another statement from Dei Verbum helps us understand this view even better, “Tradition and Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the church.” This helps us understand how they can take the same passage of Scripture and interpret it differently.

The same ideas are found, though presented different, in the acceptance of homosexuality, though for centuries has been condemned on the basis of Scripture.

Rather than using tradition and a Magisterium to interpret Scripture, experience, love, acceptance are placed alongside of the Scriptures, and thus affect their interpretation.

This question of interpretation also colors our differences on theological visions. For example, you have Reformed theologians and Arminian theologians, and those within those broad strokes.

CONLCUSION

As followers of Jesus, we do not have to worry about the authenticity of the Word of God. Archaeology, history, prophecy have all, time and time again, demonstrated its trustworthiness.

Here are a few resources that help bolster the faith with regards to God’s Word:

William Lane Craig, resonablefaith.org

Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry

Apologetics Resource Center

Answers in Genesis

Institute for Creation Research

Josh McDowell

Veritas Forum