Why trust the Bible, according to the Bible

1. History doesn't contradict it, and often confirms it

"when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken" (Deut 18:22)

Under this heading comes most standard apologetics: historical evidences (archeological findings, history of manuscripts), fulfilled prophecies, how the Bible convincingly explains human nature (selfishness, dignity, longing for more etc) and personal testimony (i.e. the Bible says it brings new life and it does - look at the church).

2. It encourages our worship of God in Christ alone

"If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams." (Deut 13:1-3; cf. 1 John 4:2, 12:3)

God says through Moses that the historical evidence is not enough for something to be God's word. Evidential apologetics only gets you so far. The ultimate question is: does it speak of the real Jesus?

For my earlier and different thoughts on the same passages (!) see here.

The security of God's love

Where do we find security in our relationships of love? I'd suggest that there are usually two places:

1. A high view of ourself - we think we've got something so attractive about us that love is the natural way people should relate to us. We are good looking, we're witty we're intelligent or we know the right people. In short we have something to offer.
2. A low view of others - we think that they need us. Perhaps we trust that our girlfriend will never dump us because she can't deal with being alone, or that a friend will always be happy to meet up because they have a constant need to talk to someone... anyone.

I think we apply these human ways of thinking to God. They manifest themself like this:

1. Some kind of legalism. Either human beings in general are basically lovely, or if everyone doesn't merit love, at least we do by virtue of who we are or what we've done.
2. Some kind of doctrine of divine necessity. In order to be true to who he is, he had to love us. Perhaps he needed an object to love, perhaps he needed to display his glory. It is probably less common that legalism, but it is out there as an idea.

In contrast to both of these the Bible says that God loved us totally freely. We don't deserve his love and he didn't need to give it, but still he set his love on us.

As Susanna Wesley says:

[God] is being itself, and as such must be infinitely happy in the glorious perfections of his nature from everlasting to everlasting; and as he did not create, so neither did he redeem because he needed us; but he loved us because he loved us

(cited in p. 61, Fred Sanders, Embracing the Trinity)

That final phrase is almost lifted from Deuteronomy 7 where, if you follow the logic through, Moses says the same thing:

It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers (Deut 7:7-8)

Speaking to a friend today he confessed that there is something slightly terrifying about that. God seems to leave us nothing to grasp hold of in order to give us security of his love. We can't point to something in ourselves or in the rules of logic. He simply asks us to trust him personally.

Except, he does do more than that, as the verse in Deuteronomy suggests. He makes an oath. As the author of the letter to the Hebrews says:

"when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us." (Heb 6:17-18)

He voluntarily ties his love into his unchangeable nature. In the past he wasn't bound to love us, but now he has freely bound himself to love us in his word of promise.

And when you heard 'word' in that last sentence, I hope you know where you need to go!

This promise is supremely found in the incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, who suffers in our place and is raised again for our justification. All so that we can be adopted and joined into the divine life. So now if we are 'in Christ' God cannot cease to love us without denying his own self, and God's love for us is even more secure than the universe.

As Karl Barth says:

He loves them with the same eternal love with which He loves the Son (Jn. 17:23 ["I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me."])." (my bold, CD IV, 2, 758)

Picking up on the distinction I made in a previous post, God the Father's freely placed love-for-the-unlovely church becomes bound, by the Son's mission in the Spirit, to his love-for-the-lovely Son; and that love-for-the-lovely is so integral to his being that it is as secure as his existence!

Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

Testing claims to revelation

How can we know that the Bible is a true revelation of God?

1. It is consistent with what we already know to be true

"If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, 'Let us go after other gods,' which you have not known, 'and let us serve them,' you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams." (Deuteronomy 13:1-3)

For the non-Christian they should come to see that the message of the Bible makes sense of what they already know, and integrates with the knowledge we have already gained about science, history, morality etc. That is not to say that it should not transform how we understand what we already know, and question whether we really knew something to be true in the first place, but we are not inviting people to enter a dream world.

If like me you have recently been challenged by Mormons asking why the Book of Mormon could not also be revelation from God, then at least one thing you would want to ask is: does the Book of Mormon agree with the beating heart of the Bible which we already know to be true? In it's denial of Christ alone, I had to say the answer was 'no'.

2. What it warns and promises does happen

"if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?’— when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken" (Deuteronomy 18:21-22)

In line with this type of evidence standard Christian apologetic would point to OT prophecies fulfilled in Christ, but not go much further. However, I would say this is one the most important evidences there is.

When Jesus says that people will know the truth of the Gospel by the lives disciples lived, when Paul tells the Galatians that they know they have heard the truth because they received the Holy Spirit, and when 1 John says to his readers that they know they received the truth from him if they love their brothers, the evidence is this one. The Gospel promises to bring salvation, and that salvation breaks into our life in healings and other miracles, but most of all in the new life of supernatural loving service for one another and love for God.

So actually the transformed lives of people (whether drug-addicted convicts, middle-class doctors or persecutors of the church) is testimony to the truth of the Gospel. It is objective and we can raise it with confidence, although to some people resurrection life will actually look like death rather than life, but if so then they are not then rejecting the evidence but the promise (2 Corinthians 2:15-16).

The Theme of the Pentateuch by David Clines

I've just read David Clines's influential work, The Theme of the Pentateuch (1978). It is well worth the read. Short, well written and very persuasive it has a substantial and important point to prove, and you can see why it had the impact it did.

Overview of the Pentatuach

He summarises his proposal (p.29) as:

The theme of the Pentateuch is the partial fulfilment - which implies the partial non-fulfilment - of the promise to or blessing of the patriarchs. The promise or blessing is both the divine initiative in a world where human initiatives always lead to disaster and a re-affirmation of the primal divine intentions for man. The promise has three elements: posterity, divine-human relationship, and land. The posterity element of the promise is dominant in Genesis 12-50, the relationship element in Exodus and Leviticus, and the land-element in Numbers and Deuteronomy.

On Genesis 1-11 he concludes that in isolation it could be considered to have one of two themes: "(a) Mankind tends to destroy what God has made good", whether God responds in judgement or grace sin continues inextricably to spread; or "(b) No matter how drastic man's sin becomes, destroying what God has made good and bringing the world to the brink of uncreation, God's grace never fails to deliver man from the consequences of his sin" (p.76). However, he concludes that the genealogy of Abram makes it impossible to isolate Genesis 1-11 from the rest of the Pentatuach and read in the light of the whole "The patriarchal (or, Pentatuachal) narratives can then function as the "mitigation" element of the Babel story, and what is more, the divine promise to the patriarchs then demands to be read in conjunction with Genesis 1 - as a re-affirmation of the divine intentions for man" (p.78)

Clines concludes by reflecting on the theological function of the Pentatuach and argues that it functions as both story and promise.

Pentatuach as Story

As story it:

1. "highlights the freedom of action enjoyed by men and gods"
2. does not make a "distinction between the real and the unreal. Everything that happens really happens (whether we believe it or not)"
3. "moves through time" but doesn't reach a conclusion instead it "presses beyond itself to a goal that lies still in the future even when its story is over"
4. "is often played out in spatial as well as temporal terms".

Like many stories he explains that the Pentatuach is a travel story where "everyone seems constantly on the move". But it is a travel story that seems to fit with so many other travel stories that spring "from the desire of the unsettled to be settled, and of the settled to be unsettled". We all desire "to be running away and [at the same time] to be heading towards".

The Pentatuach reveals this same tension. In one sense it is a "a homecoming, tortuous and wearisome and rich in experience [to] the land of their fathers (Gen. 48:21; cf. 31:3), the land of the Hebrews (Gen. 40:15)." But at the same time it "is a land that has never really been their own. 'Land of the fathers' it may be called once or twice, but overwhelming it is 'the land of the Canaanites'...which at the return will have to be fought for as if it had never been Israel's at all"

However, in another sense it is "a laborious search for a new home". "But Israel...tells its primal travel story not as a tale of an abandonment of home under the divine impulse to search out a new home... but as the story of an escape from a home that was not a home in order to make for a home that had never been a home. Israel were 'sojourners', and so truly homeless.. They are unsettled in pursuit of the unobtained."

But, Clines asks, "Who wants, in short to view one's own life as neither moving towards a comfortable homecoming nor moving out towards heroic adventure?" "The Pentateuch offers us an unattractive option for our self-understanding... where 'you never reach the promised land; you only march towards it'".

Pentatuach as Promise

As promise it:

1. "binds man to the future";
2. "is more than hope" because it is "the word of the God of the fathers";
3. "indicates that the expected future does not have to develop within the framework of the possibilities inherent in the present, but arises from that which is possible to the God of the promise";
4. "creates a sense for history [because] it binds him to the past"
5. "speaks of what is not now but is only yet to be, the interval between the promise and its redemption is one of tension"
6. will not be exhausted in its fulfilment "because the God of the promises is greater than any fulfilment that cannot be expected" instead "there always remains an overspill

Clines, like the Pentatuach, does not tell us the end of the story, but leaves us there looking forward in anticipation. Thank God, that though we are in still in the midst of the same story longing for the fulfilment of the same promise in us, the future has already been revealed in Christ.

A few notes on not coveting

Listening to: Belle and Sebastian: The Life Pursuit

Mark 10:19 (parallel: Luke 18:20)

The Christianity Explored booklet asks "What did Jesus expect the man to notice about his list of the commandments in Mark 10:19?" I can't remember what it exactly wants to answer to be, but you have commands 5-9 listed - i.e. not the first table and not the command not to covet. I think Jesus was pointing out to the rich young man that while he had not done the external acts prohibited by the second table of the law, he had not obeyed the spirit of them.

I have been challenged before that honouring your father and mother is not an external act but, like coveting, is about the state of your heart. But Exodus 21:15-17 expounds the commandment as not striking or cursing your parents. Deuteronomy 27:16 talks about not dishonouring and Matthew 15:4 (parallel: Mark 7:10) expands on honouring by saying that it is not reviling. All of which suggests it was seen more as an external act.

1 Timothy 1:9-10

the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers [5th commandment], for murderers [6th], the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality [7th], enslavers [8th? cf. Deuteronomy 24:7], liars, perjurers [9th], and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine,

Again the absence of the 10th commandment not to covet is notable. Also interestingly, I believe the Reformers considered this passage to be mainly about the 'civil use of the law'.

Hosea 4:2

there is swearing, lying [9th], murder [6th], stealing [8th], and committing adultery [7th]; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.

... no commandment to honour father and mother, or not to covet.

James 4:2

You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask.

James sees coveting as the cause behind murder. Justifiably you could also quite easily see that it is the cause of breaking all the rest of the second table, or at least commandments 6-9. This is anticipated in part within the 10th commandment itself which lists some of the things we may covet - i.e. wives who we may commit adultery with and possessions we may steal.

Romans 7

When Paul chooses to explain how the law works to bring knowledge of sin, he picks the commandment not to covet. Mark Seifrid commenting on this passage explains this not an insignificant choice:

All other transgressions against other (the dishonouring of parents, murder, adultery, theft and false witness, and so on) have their root in coveting, which is the antithesis of the love commandment. In this commandment the whole weight of the law comes to bear on us.

(p. 117, Christ Our Righteousness)

Mounts of curse and blessing

'That day Moses charged the people, saying, "When you have crossed over the Jordan, these shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin. And these shall stand on Mount Ebal for the curse: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali."' (Deuteronomy 27:11-13)

Do you think it is a coincidence that:

• Those particular tribes were told to stand on those particular hills? I think it is probably because Mount Gerizim was the Southern mountain and those were the 'Southern' tribes, and vice versa for Mount Ebal. But nevertheless the mountain of blessing included the most blessed tribes as well.
• In the previous few verses we are told that the plastered stones with all the words of the law on them should be placed on Mount Ebal from which the curses were announced (vv.1-8)?
• Paul would also talk about two mountains, one that is free and the other that is of slavery to the law (Galatians 4:24-25)?
• Moses only bothers to describe the responsive curses to be declared at this event (27:14-26)?
• In Chapter 28 which seems to be summing up the blessings and curses again, the blessings get 14 verses and the curses 68?