There is a certain kind of truth that we test through observation, experimentation, eyewitness, examination, and scientific evidence. As far as the history of Jesus is concerned, as far as we know any history, we want to check the stories of Scripture using those means by which historical evidence can be tested—through archaeology, for example. There are certain elements of the Scripture, such as historical claims, that are to be measured by the common standards of historiography.
I invite people to do that—to check it out. Second, we want to test the claims of truth through the test of rationality.
We examine the content of Scripture to see if it is coherent. One of the most astonishing things, of course, is that the Bible has literally thousands of testable historical prophecies, cases in which events were clearly foretold, and both the foretelling and the fulfillment are a matter of historical record. The Bible provides that foundation. According to the biblical worldview, God has chosen to uphold the universe in a consistent way for our benefit.
He has promised us in places such as Genesis that the basic cycles of nature will continue to be in the future as they have been in the past. Although specific circumstances change, the basic laws of nature such as gravity will continue to work in the future as they have in the past. Interestingly, only God is in a position to tell us on His own authority that this will be true.
According to the Bible, God is beyond time, 6 and so only He knows what the future will be. But we are within time and have not experienced the future. The only way we could know the future will be in certain ways like the past is because God has told us in His Word that it will be.
Apart from the Bible , is there any way we could know that the future will be like the past? So far, no one has been able to show how such a belief would make sense apart from Scripture. The only nonbiblical explanations offered have turned out to be faulty. For example, consider the following.
Some people argue that they can know that the future will be like the past on the basis of past experience. That is, in the past, when they had assumed that the future would be like the past, they were right. They then argue that this past success is a good indicator of future success. However, in doing so, they arbitrarily assume the very thing they are supposed to be proving: that the future will be like the past. They commit the logical fallacy of begging the question.
Any time we use past experience as an indicator of what will probably happen in the future, we are relying on the belief that the future will be in basic ways like the past. So we cannot merely use past experience as our reason for belief that in the future nature will be uniform, unless we already knew by some other way that nature is uniform.
If nature were not uniform, then past success would be utterly irrelevant to the future! Only the biblical worldview can provide an escape from this vicious logical circle. And that is another very good reason to believe the Bible is true. Since only the Bible can make sense of the standards of knowledge, it may seem perplexing at first that people who deny the Bible are able to have knowledge.
We must admit that non-Christians are able to use laws of logic and the methods of science with great success—despite the fact that such procedures only make sense in light of what the Bible teaches. How are we to explain this inconsistency?
How is it that people deny the truth of the Bible and yet simultaneously rely upon the truth of the Bible? The Bible itself gives us the resolution to this paradox. In Romans —21 the Scriptures teach that God has revealed Himself to everyone. People go to great lengths to convince themselves and others that they do not know what, in fact, they must know.
They are denying the existence of a God who is rightly angry at them for their rebellion against Him. So the fact that even unbelievers are able to use logic and science is a proof that the Bible really is true. When we understand the Bible, we find that what it teaches can make sense of those things necessary for science and reasoning. God has designed us so that when believers read His Word, we recognize it as the voice of our Creator John The truth of the Bible is inescapably certain.
It turns out that the worldview delineated by the Bible is the only worldview that can make sense of all those things necessary for knowledge. The truth of the Bible is obvious to anyone willing to fairly investigate it. The Bible is uniquely self-consistent and extraordinarily authentic.
It has changed the lives of millions of people who have placed their faith in Christ. It has been confirmed countless times by archaeology and other sciences. It possesses divine insight into the nature of the universe and has made correct predictions about distant future events with perfect accuracy. When Christians read the Bible, they cannot help but recognize the voice of their Creator. The Bible claims to be the Word of God, and it demonstrates this claim by making knowledge possible.
It is the standard of standards. Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry , dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. Donate Now. View Cart. Apologetics Web Series. Apologetics by Dr. Audio Version. Share: Email Using: Gmail Yahoo! Outlook Other. Some Typical Answers A number of Christians have tried to answer this question.
A Subjective Standard Some Christians have argued for the truth of the Scriptures by pointing to the changes in their own lives that belief in the God who inspired the Bible has induced. Textual Consistency and Uniqueness Another argument for the truthfulness of the Bible concerns its uniqueness and internal consistency. Even so, this move from physical to spiritual warfare in the Old Testament does not carry with it a critique or rejection of what went on the in the Old Testament.
As a matter of fact, the warfare against evil humans and dark spiritual powers come together in the picture the Bible gives us of the final judgment for instance, in Rev.
That said, I have to admit that there are matters in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, that I too find hard to understand. Perhaps, as others suggest, Jericho at this time is a military garrison with few, if any, children, but even if one child died, it is still troubling.
Perhaps—and this view is most likely, in my opinion—Canaanite culture was so thoroughly corrupt that it needed to be totally eradicated. In the final analysis, I find myself, like Job at the end of the book of Job, bowing before God in spite of his unexplained suffering.
For others, the picture of God killing or allowing the death particularly of non-combatants will continue to be an obstacle, but I believe we should resist the temptation to explain it away.
The Bible is not at odds with science in its descriptions of nature and natural history. Biblical truth and scientific truth will never conflict as a matter of principle because, as past theologians have told us, God has given us two books to reveal who he is, namely the book of nature and the Bible. While these two books will never truly come into conflict, our interpretations of one or the other, or both, may be wrong, which brings the appearance of conflict.
Genesis , the main biblical account of cosmic and human origins, describes these events using figurative language, which should be obvious to all readers and has been obvious to most through the ages. Church fathers like Origen and Augustine recognized that real days with evenings and mornings must have a sun, moon, and stars.
When Genesis describes the formation of the first man as God blowing on dust, that too is figurative language. After all, does God have lungs? And through the tools of science, we see that natural history is best understood as a long, slow process of cosmic and biological evolution, leading to the creation of human beings.
This presents no real threat to the teaching of the Bible. The Bible was written by ancient people, to be sure. The earliest writings come from the second half of the second millennium BC and the most recent parts from around BC. The New Testament is more recent, but even those books were written almost years ago. They were written in ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek by people who were culturally different from us. Even without taking into account the claim that these authors speak on behalf of God, such a charge would be the height of our own cultural arrogance.
Yes, ancient people did not have computers, cell phones, video games, or even electricity or cars, neither did Shakespeare or Plato, and would we also say that these writers are too ancient to say anything true or meaningful? We have made remarkable advances in our understanding of natural world since biblical times, and the biblical authors often reflect their ancient worldview that, say, the world was flat and perhaps at the center of the cosmos.
But the Bible does not intend to teach us about cosmology, and the faulty cosmology that it assumes does not affect its intended message.
God moved and guided the authors of the Bible as they wrote. At the same time, this process allowed the writers to use their own styles and personalities. The Bible is authoritative in every subject it addresses and without error in the original manuscripts, since the words ultimately came from God who knows everything and is without fault. The Bible is unique among all the books in the world, and its message is unified throughout all 66 books.
It was written by over 40 different writers , including shepherds, kings, priests, scholars, fishermen, and prophets, over a span of 1, years. However, the Bible remains unified in its message even though it displays a wide variety of genres and its authors wrote for a variety of purposes and exhibited a broad range of emotions.
Accuracy was ensured by a number of safeguards , including the counting of letters in a line and on a page.
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