What Must be True for the Bible to be Reliable?
In a previous post, we discussed the deal of the Gospel offered in John 3:16: if you believe in Jesus, then you will be saved. In this post, we begin our analysis of the reliability of John 3:16, and of the Bible, by listing the necessary assumptions required to proceed with the analysis. An assumption is a statement that must be true for an argument but you can’t prove. When crafting an argument, or a model, it is necessary to first list the assumptions, then you begin to build the argument. In this post, we list and analyze the assumptions must be true if John 3:16 is a good deal.
If you remember in a previous post, we discussed the gospel as described in John 3:16 and we questioned whether it was a good deal. Paraphrasing John 3:16, if you believe in Jesus, then you will live forever, but if you don’t believe in Jesus, you will be judged.
There are a lot of implied assumptions in those few verses, so we need to break them down. Certain statements about God and the Bible must be true in order for John 3:16 to be a good deal. These statements are necessary assumptions for our analysis: we can’t really prove (or disprove) them, but if they aren’t true, then John 3:16 cannot be a good deal. However, just because we list the assumptions doesn’t mean we won’t analyze them in throughout the blog, we just need to identify them up front.
The first assumption required for John 3:16 to be a good deal is the supernatural must be possible.
Assumption 1: The Supernatural is Possible
The supernatural is any event or entity that is outside the laws of nature. The very definition is found in the name: super, or above, nature. Another way of defining the supernatural in more modern terms is it is anything that can’t be studied scientifically: observed, measured, and tested.
The problem is the Bible is chock full of supernatural events and beings. God, the Holy Spirit and Jesus are all supernatural. Their divinity can’t be studied or measured. Demons and angels are also supernatural, and there are plenty of them in the Bible. Miracles, events that are beyond explanation by the laws of nature, are abundant in both the Old and New Testaments. The very act of creation, in the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, is supernatural.
Because you cannot study the supernatural, it is impossible to prove or disprove its existence. However, if there is no supernatural, then there is no point in studying the Bible. Another way of stating this is if the supernatural elements of the Bible are not real, then the Bible becomes a collection of myths. While it may have intrinsic value as ancient literature, it has no great meaning. It cannot guide our lives, and it cannot guide us to truth, because it’s fiction.
Let’s return to John 3:16 and the offer of eternal life. Eternal life is supernatural; the ability to live forever is outside the current understanding of the laws of biology. If the supernatural doesn’t exist, then eternal life is not possible, then John 3:16 is a worthless offer. If we want to proceed further in our study of the Bible, then the supernatural must be real. Therefore, our first assumption must the supernatural is not only possible but does exist.
One of the claims in John 3:16 is Jesus is the divine son of God. That leads us to our second necessary assumption: God must be real.
Assumption 2: God Exists
In the Bible, God is kind of a big deal. You might even argue he is the main character. If he doesn’t exist, then the Bible quickly becomes irrelevant. More importantly, John 3:16 says God gave his only son, Jesus, to the world. An important foundation of the Gospel is Jesus is divine and is able to offer us salvation. If God does not exist, then Jesus cannot be his son, which means he cannot offer salvation and eternal life. This makes John 3: 16 a bad deal, so our second assumption must be that God exist.
Our next necessary assumption begins to talk about the authorship of the Bible. We propose that in order for John 3:16 to be a good deal, the Bible must be influenced, or inspired, by God.
Assumption 3: The Bible is Divinely Inspired
Divine Inspiration is the idea that God is the ultimate source of the Bible. It doesn’t mean God directly wrote the Bible, but it does mean God is responsible for its content. The exact mechanism of divine inspiration is not fully understood, but it does mean God was able to influence the authors in such a way that Bible is used by God to communicate with humans.
To understand why this is important, let’s assume God was not involved in the writing of the Bible. This means it was written entirely by humans, and since men are not perfect, their writings are almost guaranteed to contain errors. The authors may have been trying their best to understand and write down what they thought God wanted, but without divine inspiration, there is just no way that can get it all correct. While some, or most, of the Bible might be true, all of it cannot be true. Humans just aren’t smart enough and honest enough to get everything correct!
Logically, if some of the Bible is false, then how do we know which parts are true? How do we know what parts to trust? Is it up to us to decide what is true and what is false? If this is then case, then it follows that you can’t truly trust any of the Bible. And if you can’t trust them Bible, then you can’t trust John 3:16, which makes it a bad deal. Therefore, in order for John 3:16 to be trustworthy, our third assumption must be the Bible is divinely inspired.
The fourth necessary assumption follows directly from divine inspiration. The Bible cannot have any errors in it.
Assumption 4: The Bible in Inerrant
The fourth assumption is very similar to the third, but it still needs to be stated. Inerrancy means without errors, so Biblical Inerrancy means the Bible contains no errors. This is important to clarify, because just because God inspired the Bible, he may have allowed errors to be included. Inspiration doesn’t mean God dictated the Bible word for word, but it does mean he used humans to write the various books.
The Bible consists of 66 books written in three languages by more than 40 authors over a period of at least 500 years. Each book of the Bible is unique and each author chose his own literary style, words, and structure. This allows for a great deal of variety within the Bible. It is conceivable that while still divinely inspired, there was enough latitude for the authors to include something that was not factually correct. The author may not have known it was not correct at the time of the writing, but it is incorrect nonetheless.
The argument for Biblical inerrancy is the same as the argument for divine inspiration. If parts of the Bible are incorrect, then it becomes impossible to know what parts are true and what parts are false, which means it is impossible to determine what to trust in the Bible, which means John 3:16 is not a good deal.
Of all the assumptions, this last one is probably the easiest assumption to test, but it doesn’t take very much study to find the topic is much more complex than we would first imagine. Does inerrancy apply to all copies and translations of the Bible or just the first, original copy? How do literary genres and metaphorical language affect inerrancy? How about scientific understanding at the time of writing versus today?
In fact, each of the four topics is much more complex than I have made them appear above, and they all get very complicated very quickly once you start to dive into the details. We hope to explore each of them further in future posts. Again, the purpose of this post is not to accept these assumptions without further questions, it’s only to lay out the assumptions I feel must be true for John 3:16 to be a good deal.
I am sure many will not agree with my analysis, and I think that’s a great point to start a conversation! Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
