Why I Believe the Bible is the Word of God

I could answer this question by appealing to evidences such as:

• Prophecy - supernatural predictions of the future that are precise, detailed, and accurate. Sum: supernatural predictions.
• Unity - Diversity of authors, settings, and topics yet converging on a unity of testimony. Sum: supernatural unity.
• Answers the big questions in a way that is consistent with the way we experience and perceive the world and in a way that is internally cohesive. Sum: supernatural insight.
• Historical accuracy - Consistent with archaeology and history; gives unimpeachable testimony; tremendous amount of manuscript evidence. Sum: supernatural events.
• Changed lives - The Bible transcends time and culture to radically transform sinners into saints. Sum: supernatural impact.
• Survival through time and persecution. Sum: supernatural survival.⁽¹⁾

However, I prefer to answer this question with a question. What truth verification scale will you use to weigh my answer? Or, by what ultimate criterion for truth will you accept or reject my answer? This is the real issue. The issue of epistemology (one's theory of knowledge). Is it the testimony of God as revealed in the self-authenticating Scripture? Or is it autonomous reasoning? Which one do you appeal to as the final arbiter of truth?

How do you justify your position to question the self-attested Word of God? From what vantage point do you stand in judgment of God's Word?⁽²⁾ If you cannot answer, then you have no way to verify the claims of Scripture and you must simply repent of your autonomous use of reason and rely on God's interpretation of reality as found in His Word and think God's thoughts after Him.

Now, allow me to give you a bit more explanation of my response to this question. The reasoning method I'm using is indirect rather than direct and does not allow for common ground in its presentation of arguments and evidences for Bible. The method I'm using is called the presuppositional method. This method was taught by Cornelius Van Til, the late professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary. He wrote: "Every bit of historical investigation [historical apologetics], whether it be in the directly Biblical field, archaeology, or in general history, is bound to confirm the truth claims of the Christian position. But I would not talk endlessly about facts and more facts without ever challenging the non-believer's philosophy of fact" (The Defense of the Faith, p. 199).

What I'm arguing for here is called the transcendental argument. A transcendental argument is one that transcends normal patterns of thought and speaks to the possibility of intelligible thought or rationality. It is a clash of ultimate starting points in reasoning. This approach to apologetics is what I like to call worldview apologetics because we're not simply debating a fact or two in isolation from all other facts. I'm arguing for the biblical Christian worldview in contrast to the non-believer's worldview. Facts only have meaning in relation to all other facts. Therefore, we must not discuss facts apart from their interpretation in relation to one's worldview.

One of the main arguments for the Christian worldview is the impossibility of the contrary. This argument states:

• If Christianity is not true, then nothing is true (Prov. 1:7).
• Without the Christian worldview, no position is possible; nothing makes sense.
• The Bible is the precondition of all rational thought
• Unbelievers need God to account for the laws of logic, inductive reasoning, uniformity in nature, predication, human dignity, rationality in the world, ethics, an invariant moral code, science, mathematics, and everything that underlies all their thinking. They contradict themselves.
• Unbelievers use what God gave them to ridicule Him (Ps. 10:4; Isa. 45:21; Hos. 2:8; Acts 17:28). This is their unacknowledged dependence upon suppressed truth (Rom. 1:18-20).
• The unbeliever has rejected God with foolish pride (Ps. 14:1).

So in using the transcendental argument, I'm not answering your question in a direct, "simple" manner. I'm moving the discussion to the undeclared assumptions or presuppositions that the questioner holds and that govern all of his thinking about facts. You see, I can't just give you "brute" facts as if the believer and unbeliever see the facts in the same way. Again I quote from Van Til, "This is tantamount to saying that those who interpret a fact as dependent upon God and those who interpret that same fact as not dependent upon God have yet said something identical about the fact" (The Defense of the Faith, p. 203). So rather than just give a pile of facts, I'm challenging the unbeliever's undeclared assumptions. I'm calling the unbeliever to epistemological self-consciousness. This means to become aware of your ultimate source of knowledge (i.e. God or self).

This method is consistent with all we know from Bible doctrine. In fact, one of my favorite passages affirms that the way Christians defend the faith is not by using the conventions of debate that the world dictates: "For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ" ( 2 Cor. 10:3-5, NIV).

So it is actually immoral to feign neutrality in the realm of epistemology. We are commanded by God's Word to "take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ." Our thinking is either righteous and aligns with the truth according to God's Word, or it is wicked and follows "the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient (Eph. 2:2, NIV).

If you want a simple answer to the question of why I believe the Bible to be the Word of God. Here it is: The Bible's own testimony (in innumerable passages the Bible declares or assumes itself to be the Word of God). Sum: supernatural testimony.

Notes:

1. These evidences are summarized from a teaching outline by Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason (www.str.org).

2. You only have two choices: (a) Man is the final or ultimate reference point in human predication (the logical affirmation or assertion of something about another—to affirm, give ground or relationship, or to found a proposition). (b) God, speaking through Christ by His Spirit in the infallible Word, is the final or ultimate reference point in human predication.

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