No Foundation Upon Which To Build Their Faith

And without a strong view of Scripture as a foundation, we will not be ready for the hard days to come. Unless the Bible is without error, not only when it speaks of salvation matters, but also when it speaks of history and the cosmos, we have no foundation for answering questions concerning the existence of the universe and its form and the uniqueness of man. Nor do we have any moral absolutes, or certainty of salvation, and the next generation of Christians will have nothing on which to stand. Our spiritual and physical children will be left with the ground cut out from under them, with no foundation upon which to build their faith or their lives.

- Francis A. Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster

(HT)

Don't Believe The Newsweek Hype About Jesus

Melinda at STR.org writes:

Bart Ehrman wrote the cover story in this week's Newsweek magazine.  It's classic Ehrman, raising points that many Christians and non-Christians may not be familiar with, suggesting there is a problem that calls into question the historical reliability of the biblical text, and failing to mention that these are long-recognized observations that have straightforward answers.

Ehrman opens his article mentioning the Coptic fragment revealed this past Fall that mentions Jesus' wife.  (You can read about it here and here.)  He uses its mere existence (not its authority) to point out that there are a variety of extra-biblical documents that give information missing from or contradictory to the Bible.  Many of these have been known since the early centuries of the church.  None date as early as the Gospels.  None can be traced to an eyewitness.  The church knew this and rejected them as non-authoritative for those reasons.  So what?  Ehrman hopes to sow the seeds of doubt with old news.

As Michael Kruger documents in his excellent books and blog, none of these alternative accounts dates earlier than the late second century.  Most are later than that, far removed from Jesus' time and the writing of the authoritative Gospels. (You can find radio interviewswith Kruger on April 10, 2011, and July 25 2010.) 

Ehrman also cites the differences in Matthew's and Luke's genealogies of Jesus, calling them "apparent contradictions."  But he doesn't indicate that there is a pretty simple explanation for this and it isn't a contradiction.  They are easily reconcilable differences, not "discrepancies" and "contradictions."  Matthew and Luke are citing different lines of Jesus' ancestry because they were writing to different audiences for different purposes.  You can read an excellent explanation here.

Ehrman also talks about the features of the Nativity story we all think we know that aren't mentioned in the Gospels.  Once again, so what?  Many times, questions about the Bible can be resolved simply by reading what the text actually says, rather than believing what we think it says.  An example of this Ehrman raises is the birth account in Luke and supposed historical problems with it.  I've got a post about that tomorrow.

Here's a Solid Ground Greg wrote a couple of years ago about the misinformation Ehrman has given on the historical reliability of the New Testament.

This is a good site providing answers to Ehrman's mistaken claims.

Conflict With The Bible Points To It's Veracity

Melinda, writing for STR.org summarizes a recent sermon from Tim Keller. Here is a helpful section.

He also addressed people who want to cherry-pick from the Bible. Some people say the Bible is a good book, then choose what they consider good and reject what they think is bad. He challenged this view of the Bible as a "Stepford" idea. He likened our relationship to the Bible to marriage. Disagreement and conflict is inevitable unless someone is passive or dead. It's the conflict that changes people in marriage. If we stand as the authority over the Bible cherry-picking, it can't change us because we reject what conflicts with our views. But if the Bible is from God, of course it will conflict with us because that's what changes us. Without that, it has no power to improve us.

Read the rest.


Books by Tim Keller:
The Prodigal God
King’s Cross
Gospel in Life: Grace Changes Everything
The Reason for God 
Counterfeit Gods 
Generous Justice

"Yes, My Translation of the Bible Does Have Errors"

Jonathan Dodson:

Yes, our Bible translations do have errors—let me tell you about them. But as you can see, less than 1% of them are meaningful and those errors don’t affect the major teachings of the Christian faith. In fact, there are a thousand times more manuscripts of the Bible than the most documented Greco-Roman historian by Suetonius. So, if we’re going to be skeptical about ancient books, we should be a thousand times more skeptical of the Greco-Roman histories. The Bible is, in fact, incredibly reliable.

Read the rest.


Recommended resources:

• Can I Trust the Bible? by R. C. Sproul
• Understanding Scripture: An Overview of the Bible’s Origin, Reliability, and Meaning, edited by Wayne Grudem, C. John Collins, and Thomas Schreiner
• The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, by B.B. Warfield
• Text of the New Testament, by Bruce Metzger and Bart Ehrman

What to Say When Someone Says “The Bible Has Errors”

Jonathan Dodson writes in the conclusion to his post:

So, when someone asserts that the Bible has errors, we can reply by saying: “Yes, our Bible translations do have errors, let me tell you about them. But as you can see, less than 1% of them are meaningful and those errors don’t affect the major teachings of the Christian faith. In fact, there are 1000 times more manuscripts of the Bible than the most documented Greco-Roman historian by Suetonius. So, if we’re going to be skeptical about ancient books, we should be 1000 times more skeptical of the Greco-Roman histories. The Bible is, in fact, incredibly reliable.” 

Contrary to popular assertion, that as time rolls on we get further and further away from the original with each new discovery, we actually get closer and closer to the original text. As Wallace puts it, we have “an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the biblical documents.” Therefore, we can be confident that what we read in our modern translations of the the ancient texts is approximately 99% accurate. It is very reliable.

Read the rest.

Is The New Testament Reliable?

Craig Blomberg:

The New Testament (NT) contains four biographies of Jesus (the Gospels), one history book of the early church (Acts), twenty-one letters (Romans to Jude), and an apocalypse (Revelation). While the letters and the apocalypse contain references to historical events, the Gospels and Acts are written as straightforward historical narratives. These are the NT books about which it makes particularly good sense to ask the question, "Are they historically reliable?" Twelve lines of evidence converge to suggest strongly that the answer is "yes."

Read the rest for his list of reasons.

Can The Bible Have Authority in an Age of Uncertainty?

Biblical Authority in an Age of Uncertainty from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

Why The Reliability of the Bible is Crucial

[1:1] Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, [2] just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, [3] it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, [4] that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught. 

(Luke 1:1-4 ESV)

What was true for Luke was doubtless true of the others who compiled what we now hold in our hands in the New Testament. Indeed, Richard Bauckham has argued with enormous scholarly research and conviction that the impact of contem- porary eyewitness testimony on the documents of the New Testament is far greater than many imagine. Certainly he explodes the popular caricature that all the stories about the life and sayings of Jesus were embroidered by years of free-flowing oral imaginings before they were ever written down.

All our witness to the Lord Jesus Christ and the saving power of the gospel is dependent on the trustworthiness of the Bible. The Scriptures point to him. Indeed Jesus himself used the language of witness to speak of the Scriptures that we now call the Old Testament: “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you possess eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me” (John 5:39). The Old Testament bore its witness to the one who came to fulfill God’s promise. The New Testament bears witness to him through those who were, as Peter put it, “witnesses whom God had already chosen – by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead” (Acts 10:41).

The mission of God’s people, then, is a witnessing mission–bearing witness to the Lord Jesus Christ. But all our witnessing is authenticated by the witness of those who were God’s own chosen eyewitnesses. And their testimony is in our hands – God’s Word through their words – our Bible.

- Christopher Wright, The Mission of God's People: A Biblical Theology of the Church's Mission (Biblical Theology for Life), p. 175