Why Your Beliefs About the Bible Matter
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The Bible. That conjures up many different things to many different people. A Jew thinks of the Tanakh. A Protestant thinks of the sixty-six book Christian Bible. A Catholic or an Eastern Orthodox think of the sixty-six books plus the deuterocanonical books.
Even those outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition have differing opinions. A Muslim may view the Bible as important but flawed. A Hindu may have reverence for the Bible and Jesus as one of the many revelations of the divine. Many other religions may view the Bible as antithetical to their belief systems. Those who are nonreligious altogether are not in agreeance about the Bible's significance. Many deists (who believe in God but are not bound to a religion), especially those instrumental in the founding of America, drew heavily from the Bible.
Others such as some atheists and anti-theists see religion and the Bible as a poison. Then again, many atheists devote their lives to the studying of the Bible from a scholarly perspective.
One's view of the Bible matters. The Bible is no mere book; no mere collection of documents. It is the most influential set of texts in the world. It is a founding text of the Western tradition. Even if a complete forgery and un-divine, its importance cannot be overstated. Consider this question. Is the Bible true? Keep in mind your thoughts about it. Now, what does truth mean? Well, truth is the opposite of false. If something is true, it is not false. So when asking is the Bible true, I mean "Are the propositions (the meanings of the words) contained within the Bible true (not false)?"
There are basically three possible answers to the above question:
1. Yes, every proposition contained within the text of the Bible is true. There are no errors or contradictions.
2. Somewhat. There is some truth within the text of the Bible, but there are errors and/or contradictions. (This answer represents a wide spectrum of people.)
3. There is no truth in the text of the Bible. The entirely of the text is basically false.
I do not think anyone can seriously hold position 3, that everything in the Bible's text is false. That would mean that even the idea that murder is wrong is false! For our purposes, there are two general answers to the prior question. Either the propositions laid out in the Bible’s text are true in their entirety, or they are not.
Let us switch gears for a moment and consider the field of epistemology. Epistemology is a big word that means ‘the study or theory of knowledge.' How do we know what we know? Do we know anything? What is knowledge? These are heady questions, but don't worry. We aren’t diving too deep into them. I simply would like the reader to acknowledge when dealing with the truth (or lack thereof) of the Bible, we are dealing with epistemology.
With epistemology, there are two main camps. (This is a simplification but sufficient for our purposes.) There are:
Subjectivists who believe truth is subjective to the individual.
They say that the individual determines truth based on his perceptions, his emotions, his beliefs, etc. With the subjectivist, truth is individual-centered.
Objectivists who believe truth is the same despite what the individuals perceive.
The objectivist says that truth is a standard that resides outside the individual. What the subjectivist calls ‘truth’ the objectivist calls perception. What you think is the truth may be different from what actually is the truth. I may ‘know’ that I am 20 years old, but it’s possible I was wrong the whole time. Moreover, I may know my car keys are not in my pocket, but upon my friend telling me to check my pocket, I find my car keys in my pocket! What we perceive to be true is not always what is actually true!
One who believes in God, especially a Christian, must be an objectivist. This is because God is truth. If a subjectivist says he or she believes in God, she then implicitly takes truth away from her individual and bases it in God and becomes an objectivist. Furthermore, note that a subjectivist claims, “There is no objective truth.” This happens to be an objectivist claim. Therefore, subjectivism is self-defeating.
All things need standards or ways to measure. We measure distance with rulers and meter sticks. The meter itself is precisely defined by a governing body. We measure temperature in Fahrenheit or Celsius (or Kelvin, if you prefer chemistry). The list could go on and on as to how we need standards to come up with some attempt at knowledge, but also how we need standards to live. Imagine building a house without accurate measures?
When one says "God is truth," he is saying that God is the standard of truth. (Build your house upon the rock.) Truth either flows from God as part of his nature, or truth is determined by God due to his will (but never contradicts his nature)
This brings us back to the Bible. As stated, God is truth from an objectivist standpoint; the standard of truth. So, now we deal with the Bible as objectivists. We cannot say “this is true to me.” A statement in the Bible is either true or not true, objectively.
As Christians, we get our doctrine and our beliefs from the Bible. Surely beliefs may come from tradition (more or less depending on sect or denomination), and other philosophies are certainly useful, but the text of the Bible is the source. (Or to be more precise, it is the propositional content contained within the text that is the source.)
This is very easy to demonstrate. Imagine Christian doctrine without Paul's Epistle to the Romans or the Ephesians. Imagine if one of the four Gospels was not written down or was lost. Tradition, however correct or incorrect, whatever one’s view, stems from the Bible’s text. Without the text, there would be no tradition about the text.
Let me remind the reader that I am not arguing for or against the complete truth of the Bible. I am trying to show the consequences of believing whether or not the Bible is true. If the Bible is completely true, there is a standard of truth against which all other things can be measured. To be clear, God is ultimate standard of truth who reveals truth through his Scriptures. The Bible can accurately be called God’s revelation to man.
If even one sentence of the Bible is not true, then the Bible is not a standard against which to weigh beliefs. The Bible becomes another opinion. Human minds and thoughts become the arbitrator of whether or not a proposition in the Bible is true. This elevates the human mind over the Bible's text. The Bible is just another book subject to the minds and devices of men. This means other fields of study carry the same weight as the Bible does. Those who deny that the Bible is true in its entirety must discover or make up another objective standard or confess subjectivism. The Bible cannot accurately be called God's revelation to man unless one is willing to admit that falsehood begins with God, who is the truth and not a liar.
Additionally, someone who denies the total truth of the Biblical text must be in constant doubt of doctrine. If one makes the early (or whatever period) church tradition his standard, he will find this to be untenable as the theologians of the church have always drawn from the Bible themselves. You can't deny the truth of the Bible and affirm it at the same time consistently.
Sensory perception is not a good standard either, because what you see, touch, taste, hear, and feel is often mistaken. Any good scientist or philosopher of science will admit that science (which is based on the use of the senses/empiricism) cannot discover absolute truth. The human mind alone is also flawed. The Christian who denied the inerrancy of the Bible will still most likely believe God is truth, but where does he find knowledge of God? He can and should use the Scriptures, but why if they are flawed? The ultimate question for the Christian who denies the inerrancy of the Bible is, “From where do you get truth, and how do you know it is true?”
I do not deny that one who holds to the total truth of the Bible has intellectual difficulties to deal with. There are many apparent contradictions and apparent moral difficulties which require rigorous inquiry.
However, the Biblical Inerrantist has a standard which he believes came from God. (If God is truth, all objective standards must come from him in some way.) Therefore, he who holds to the total truth of the Bible suspends his doubts because he knows the truth of his standard.
This does not excuse one from intellectual duty, but it allows one to have peace. Biblical Inerrancy allows for intellectual faith.
Mitchell D. Cochran is from Midland, Texas and is a graduate of Lubbock Christian University where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. Mitchell currently resides in Lubbock, Texas with his wife Katherine.
