Westminster Presbyterian Church

Conversations: Sharing Our Faith with a Skeptical World
Can We Really Believe What the Bible Says?
Rev. Richard H. Thompson, October 25, 2009

Luke 1:1–4; John 20:30–31

The following email came in from a freshman in college:

"One night I was doing homework at my favorite coffee shop when I found myself in a conversation with a complete stranger. As we talked, it came out that I considered myself a Christian and there was an immediate change in the young man's face. We hit on a subject he obviously wanted to talk more about. I was a little taken aback...What followed was one of the most memorable conversations of the like I have ever had. When it came to the existence of some sort of God we could agree, but the conversation reached its climax in the person of Jesus. Basically, when he asked something to the effect of, 'Why should I believe this man Jesus to the exclusion of the other prophets like Mohammad or Buddha?', my response was, 'Because he is completely different in what he taught, especially in that he claimed to be God.' That led us to the Bible, which the young man claimed he could not believe in. He then went on to highlight all sorts of inconsistencies and irregularities between the gospel accounts of Jesus. The man was well read. I had nothing to say to him. This, unfortunately, was not my shining moment. I had no facts off of the top of my head to argue why one could believe in the Scriptures. I just did. I think I responded with something that included faith and the Bible being inspired. With that the conversation was over. I made the jump from reason to faith because I couldn't reason any further with this man who obviously knew more about Bible criticism than I did. Of course, it ultimately takes faith to trust the scriptures as inspired by God, I believe that wholeheartedly, but I left that night feeling ashamed that I had had to pull faith out like a card. I said before that this was one of the most memorable conversations I have had. This was because it opened my eyes to how little I knew about the dependability and the history of the Scriptures, and was the catalyst for a crucial season of doubt and searching."

This is a big question: Can we really believe what the Bible says? Maybe you've experienced "conversation stoppers" such as:

A recent poll of young people shows increasing skepticism about the Bible. People from 18 to 25 and 26 to 44 see the Bible as less sacred, less accurate, that it teaches pretty much what other sacred texts teach. They are doubtful about the original texts. But there is also slightly above average interest in learning more about the Bible. So, it's not too late for some conversation.

I wonder what's behind the skepticism? Remember this is how I began this series some weeks ago - we need to try and understand why people are skeptical. So here are some opening thoughts on why people are skeptical about the Bible:

We live in a time that questions all the Big Stories, not just the Bible, but all Big Stories, including the myth of progress, enlightenment. Any claim to truth is called into question. In fact, any claim to truth is suspected to really be a power play. It's all a matter of the stronger one's point of view dominating the weaker. It's really all a matter of opinion. You really can't know anything to be "true". There is a large body of biblical scholarship that holds that the Bible is really about dominant points of view that have to be taken apart, or "deconstructed". What you end up with are fragments and contradictions, anecdotes, stories and poems.

It reminds me when I was a kid my parents would give me an old radio to take apart on the workbench in the garage. I ended up with a box of very interesting parts, but I had no clue how they all went together.

Is there any thread that pulls the various parts of the Bible together? Or is it just parts? Is it just the Bible "as literature"?

Underlying much skepticism about the Bible is the view that miracles can't happen, at least not miracles understood as "supernatural" events that happen in history. So the Resurrection of Jesus couldn't have happened because no one around here has ever seen such a thing happen. Therefore the New Testament claim that this is what happened, a priori, is false. I want to come back to the question of science and faith in a couple of weeks - suffice it for now to say that this last skeptical belief confuses what can be known in the disciplines of science with what can be known in the disciplines of history.

Another cause for skepticism is ignorance of history, especially first and second century history. A good example was all the confusion generated by The Da Vinci Code a few years ago that stimulated questions about the Bible, Jesus and the Christian movement in general. Wasn't the New Testament put together in the fourth century? Short answer, "No, most of the New Testament was already in circulation by the end of the first century." The Da Vinci Code also asked, "Weren't there lots of writings left out for political reasons?" Again, the short answer is, "No, documents that were not included were later and strange - like stories of Jesus walking without leaving footprints, or as a boy changing stones into birds. These writings are called "gnostic" and are virtually all from the second century, with one possible exception, the Gospel of Thomas, which may date late first century and seems to contain some parallel texts to the New Testament mixed in with some strange stuff.

Maybe the deepest, most honest reason for skepticism (and cynicism) about the Bible is simply that if what the Bible claims to be true is true, then there are going to be implications for our lives. We could call this issue, "the question of the authority of scripture".

How shall we engage in conversation about the Bible's believability? I propose we begin with Jesus. The reasons are perhaps obvious, but let me just state at least some of them:

So let's get to the question of the reliability and believability of the Bible with this simple assumption: that the entire New Testament was written and collected in response to something that happened, what we call the Resurrection of Jesus.

I'm assuming it is reasonable to accept that if something monumental happens, we will remember it, and remember it in detail.

After a monumental event there is much to say, and recall. Accuracy is very important. I mean you don't get to mess with the details of how my daughter was born. I was there! First come the oral accounts that eventually get written down. There would be various vantage points too, some up close, even very close, some at a greater distance. These different vantage points might account for small variations in description of what happened.

So, now, take a Bible and open it to Luke 1:1-4:

"Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed."

Luke's gospel was written somewhere between 80 and 90, about 50 to 60 years after the event of Jesus' Resurrection. The writer is not himself an eyewitness, so as he says, he conducts an investigation using the method of medical writers and historians in his day. There is a lot of material to draw on - both written and oral. He also has the Gospel of Mark, which was written around 65, about 32 years after the Resurrection.

Now turn with me to I Corinthians 15, verse 6. Paul is talking about Jesus' appearances after his Resurrection. He says, "Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me." Paul wrote this around the year 50 to 55, about 20 years after the Resurrection. The earliest letter we have from him is I Thessalonians, written around 45, twelve years after the Resurrection.

Let's not forget as well that many of these eyewitnesses died for what they said they saw.

We also know Jesus used a rabbinic teaching style to make sure his followers would remember what he told them. He used picturesque speech, alliteration, rhythmic phrases, and especially parables. Unlike in our culture, committing to memory what was taught, what we call "oral tradition", was a very seriously taken discipline.

I remember our friend Moses Pulei, a former member of our staff, now a professor at Whitworth College, who was raised Masai. He told us how in preparing to become a warrior he had to sit with the elders of the tribe and listen as they told the stories of their people. It was essential to get these stories right because they are traditionally illiterate, though now many young Masai go to school. When the elders decided Moses was ready, they said, "Ok, now, you tell the story..." If Moses got one word wrong, the elders made him start all over, until he got it exactly right. (And we thought "oral tradition" was like playing telephone...)

Finally these oral accounts came to be written down in manuscripts. There is a huge volume, about 5,000, of ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. The very earliest fragment contains John 18: 31-33 (about Pilate and Jesus) and dates to 130, no more than 40 years after John's Gospel is thought to have been written. Compare this with the manuscripts we have of Caesar's Gallic War, originally written around 58 B.C. There are just 10 manuscripts, and the earliest dates 900 years after Caesar!

But if we don't have the original manuscripts, what about errors in the copies we do have? The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrated the care and accuracy of the ancient Jewish scribes in copying the Old Testament. Scholars could compare the Dead Sea Scrolls version with the one they had which was 1,000 years newer. They found they were virtually identical. The one exception was the Dead Sea Scroll did not contain the Book of Esther.

All this to say we can reasonably trust that Luke based his Gospel on reliable testimony. But there's more.

There are many historical references made inside the Gospels that corroborate with external historical evidence, especially around the dates of certain rulers: Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, Galileo, Pontius Pilate, and Joseph Caiaphas, for example. There are references outside the New Testament to Jesus as well - Pliny the Younger (c. 113), Suetonius (c. 110), Tacitus (c. 109), Josephus (c. 90) and Ignatius (c. 110).

Let's also not forget the honesty evident in the New Testament. Tim Keller calls this, "The counter productive content of the New Testament". By this he means the "lousy job of promoting the winner's point of view" which, according to the theory, is all about consolidating power by controlling the message. Instead, we have Jesus' followers, the founders of the Christian movement, acting like children. Peter, the key leader, is portrayed in a number of places as thick-headed and impulsive. The apostles abandon Jesus at his point of greatest need. Women are the first to discover Jesus has risen (this was a problem because women in the first century were not considered credible). And messiahs don't get crucified. Nowhere does Jesus talk about circumcision, a huge issue in the first church. If you were writing a Gospel to consolidate power why would you not have Jesus talk about circumcision? What a wasted opportunity!

There's too much detail in the New Testament to suppose that this is fictional, or just poetry, or legend. Jesus is asleep in the stern of the boat. Peter swims 100 yards to shore to be with the risen Lord. Peter and the others haul in a catch of 153 fish. Why "153"? Because somebody counted them. Why? Because they were blown away by the huge catch. We'd take out our camera and take a picture and send it off to YOUTUBE. They counted them and wrote it down.

We could go on. One of the premier New Testament scholars in our day is Anglican Bishop N. T. Wright, now serving in Durham, England. Dr. Wright has taught for 20 years at Oxford, Cambridge and McGill Universities. Using the disciplines of historical research to study the New Testament in its cultural and historical context, after writing thousands of pages of his peer reviewed findings, he sums up his decades of work like this: that the simplest and best explanation for what the New Testament claims to have happened, is what the New Testament claims to have happened.

The Resurrection of Jesus was a monumental, unforgettable Event that launched a movement. The New Testament is the earliest possible witness to that Event and its first out-workings, complete with wrestling, human failure and questions. It is the witness to how those first followers, swept up in the movement, reflected on the writings of the Old Testament, as well as their relationship to the Greek and Roman world. It shows us how they reflected on their own bodies, and their life together in those first little churches, on their prayer lives, and their sense of the Risen Lord with them. This is why the Bible is more than just interesting literature.

When I was about 12 or 13, the Catholic kid down the street, David Bierbomber, gave me a pocket, paperback New Testament. I thanked him, took it home, tossed it in a drawer and forgot about it. A couple of years late on a rainy day, bored out of my mind, I went rummaging through my dresser and found that New Testament behind the socks. With absolutely nothing else to do, I sat down on the floor in front of my little space heater and opened to the first page, the Gospel of Matthew, chapter one. As I read I found I wanted more. I lost track of time. Finally I came to the last chapter, and the last word. The risen Jesus says, "Remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age..." I don't know what happened; maybe I do. I sat there and wept.

The Gospel of John says this toward the end, chapter 20, verse 30, "Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name."

The Bible does what it was written to do.

We can count on it.

Because we can count on Him.

Questions for Reflection and recommended reading.

Westminster Presbyterian Church
Pastors: Rev. Dr. Richard H. Thompson, Rev. John Burnett, Rev. Jennifer Kates Witten
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