VERITAS
"The Breath of God"
By Craig Branch
January 2002

“Jesus loves me this I know. For the Bible tells me so.” The most crucial issue in apologetics, and for Christianity as a whole, is whether the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments are the true revelations from God—whether they are the “breath of God.” Every apologetic question, every issue of life, ultimately comes back to the revealed truth of the Bible. Either truth ultimately is autonomously determined by mankind or a sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient and personal God reveals what is true.

Before He was betrayed, Jesus prayed to the Father, “I have given them Your Word. . . . Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth" (John 7:14, 17). Speaking of the Old Testament, Jesus declared, “Until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. . .” and “The Scripture cannot be broken” (Matt. 5:18; John 10:35). And Paul also declared, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16).

But God has a powerful adversary. The Bible reveals that he, Satan, is a deceiver. And this deceiver has many allies: fallen human beings—“the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). Therefore it is his manifest preoccupation to persuade the world that the Bible is not trustworthy, or to twist the Scriptures unto everyone’s destruction (2 Peter 2:1-3; 3:16; 2 Tim. 4:1-4; Titus 1:9-11; 2 Cor. 4:2). Indeed, this undermining of God's gracious and merciful revelation is at the heart of the original temptation. Satan tempted Eve by the question, “Did God say?” And later as Christ consistently met the temptations of Satan in the wilderness with the authority of Scripture, “It is written,” Satan then tried to employ a twist of Scripture to undo Jesus (Gen. 3:1; Luke 4:1-13).

The defense of the inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy of the Bible has never been more urgent. Researchers George Barna and George Gallup have consistently demonstrated that the percentage of solid evangelicals in America is only 7%. People with “no religion” in America doubled between 1990 (8%) and 2001 (14% or 29.4 million). Skepticism has dramatically increased across the board. By 1999, 67% of America’s population did not believe in absolute moral truths. Such unbelief is increasing exponentially. By November of 2001, the denial of absolute moral truth increased to 78%. Incredibly, 56% of “born again” Christians and 40% of “evangelicals” could not say that absolute moral truths exist!
A staggering 91% of “born-again Christian” teenagers are not certain of absolute truths corresponding to 96% of the total teenage population! All the relevant combined data led Barna to announce that “substantial numbers of Christians believe that activities such as abortion, homosexual sex, sexual fantasies, cohabitation, drunkenness, and viewing pornography are morally acceptable.” He concludes,

Without some firm and compelling basis for suggesting that such acts are inappropriate, people are left with philosophies such as “if it feels good, do it,” “everyone else is doing it” or “as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else, it's permissible.” In fact, the alarmingly fast decline of moral foundations among our young people has culminated in a one-word worldview: “whatever.”

The result is a mentality that esteems pluralism, relativism, tolerance, and diversity without critical reflection of the implications of particular views and actions.1

Why this dramatic decline in belief in absolute truth and shift in moral/cultural beliefs? There are two major reasons. One is man’s own nature which is inclined toward rebellion against God and self-centeredness. The result is more and more accommodation and conformity to our materialistic, hedonistic, narcissistic, postmodern and new age culture. Without a radical belief commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and to a transformation process of studying and applying the truth through his word, by His Spirit, this slide is inevitable (Rom. 12:1-2, Eph. 4:17-24). But, secondly, the temptations to not believe the Bible are becoming more and more manifold through the many attacks on the unique authority of Scripture from both within and without the church. This underscores the need to defend the authority of Scripture.

But does the validity of the Scripture need defending? The noted English Baptist preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon responded to that question, “I would as soon defend a lion.” The Word of God carries with it the signature and power of God. But, he also said, “Many modern critics are to the Word of God what flies are to the food of men: They cannot do any good, and unless they are relentlessly driven away, they do great harm”2

Over the past century, the “flies” have come in the form of social Darwinism and theological liberalism. The German Higher Critics embraced a form of scientific rationalism in their view of the Bible. These theories took on various mutations such as: Literary criticism, Source criticism, Form criticism, Redaction criticism—all based on the presupposition that the books of the Bible were purely human constructs based on cultural, social and political environment, and man’s attempts to contact the existential.

Theologians like Rudolph Bultmann concluded that the Bible was so full of myths and scientific and historical errors that no enlightened, educated person could possible take it seriously. These views evolved to dominate our seminaries and, unfortunately, were the catalysts that caused the reactionary “fundamentalist” retreat into isolation and anti-intellectualism. There are still vestiges of this liberalism around today.

This was followed by a movement led by Karl Barth, called neoorthodoxy. Briefly stated, these theologians believed that the Bible, though not inerrant, became the inspired word of God as the reader experienced a life changing encounter with God through the Scripture. This remains a popular view in many seminaries, and thus in the pews of many churches. It resonates with our growing postmodern culture—relativism, subjectivism, experientialism as the criteria for “truth.”

There has been a steady stream of contemporary skeptics, both inside and outside the Church, who have been feeding their readers with an assortment of attacks on inerrancy, through both academic publications, popular level books, magazines, websites, and television programming. And the average person is not acquainted with the vast and growing conservative scholarship which could refute these charges, and therefore has no discernment. The following are some examples of the kind of diet the masses feed upon:
Scottish theologian James Barr wrote Beyond Fundamentalism in 1983 and in it claims that those who believe in inerrancy have a “pathological condition.” Barr writes about “the key issue” for those who are “escaping from fundamentalism.” He states, “Any realistic approach to the subject [of inerrancy or infallibility] must begin by accepting that the Bible does contain some factual error. It is simply not the nature of the Bible that all its statements are correct.”3

On a more popular level, now retired Episcopal bishop, John Shelby Spong is on tour carrying the message of two of his best-selling books, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism and Why Christianity Must Change or Die. Both books attempt to refute inerrancy and purport to reveal countless contradictions in the Biblical text. Spong comes to the Bible with an a priori assumption that the supernatural cannot be proven, therefore we must subject Scripture to a purely rationalistic, materialistic worldview as criteria for evaluating truth. For example, Spong writes,

If an all knowing God had really made many of the assumptions that the Bible makes, then this God would be revealed as hopelessly ignorant. . . . Sickness, for example, does not result from sin being punished. . . . In our generation, we attack viruses, germs, leukemia, and tumors, not with appeals to an almighty God, but with drugs and chemotherapy, and surgery."4

Predictably, Spong is then left to the slippery slope of finite, sinful human reasoning. He accepts a universalistic pluralism, denies the virgin birth, the unique deity of Christ, the exclusive message of the gospel, the penal substitutionary death and resurrection of Christ. Instead, he adopts a fuzzy, mystical philosophy of panentheism, with man's ultimate destination to be one with the “Ground of Being.”

This view harmonizes well with another popular attack on the Bible, The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels, religion professor at Princeton University. Pagels claims that some scrolls found in the caves near Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945 revealed teachings of Jesus that the early church had to suppress. These scrolls (such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Truth) taught a Gnostic, mystical, worldview that today is popularly called the New Age Movement today. When she lectured here in Birmingham several years ago, the Birmingham News sported the headline, “Gnostic Gospels Survive Time’s Test: Theologians today study gospels early church tried to eradicate.”

The same newspaper, like others around the country, regularly give the headlines to an obscure fringe liberal group called The Jesus Seminar. The headline read, “Group rules out 80% of Jesus' words: Formed to counteract literalist views of the Bible, the Jesus Seminar is a group of mainline Biblical scholars from all over the United States.” This “Seminar,” led by Robert Funk and John Crossan, consists of 70 out of some 6,000 Bible scholars and professors who, like Spong and others, come to the Bible with a priori assumptions about Jesus, and accept or reject his sayings on the basis of their assumptions. Needless to say, the conservative, moderate and even liberal scholars see the Jesus Seminar fellows as spurious. But, the press showcases everything they say to the general public, usually as a fact.

One of the most popular writers of the 80's and 90's, M. Scott Peck, allegedly converted to Christianity after his big bestseller, The Road Less Traveled. In a subsequent book, Further Along the Road Less Traveled, under the section, “The Myths in the Bible,” he wrote, “What is the Bible? Is it literal truth? Is it a collection of myths? Is it merely some outdated rules? What is it? And what relevance does it have in our lives?” Peck answers the questions with ambiguous denials by stating that it is a mixture of all the above.5

Popular news magazines like Time, Newsweek, U. S. News & World Report have run numerous feature stories on the Bible and historicity of Jesus Christ, especially since the 90's. For example, U. S. News ran a major story under their “Science and Society” section titled, “Who Wrote the Bible?”. The article properly begins, “It is the foundation of the Christian faith. On its words rest the very existence of the church and the hope of salvation for believers through the ages.” Then the agenda begins: “centuries of scholarship have turned up little convincing evidence that His 12 closest disciples did much writing either. . . . Increasingly scholars are coming to believe that all the traditions of Biblical authorship have not held up under scrutiny.” The most glaring misrepresentation is the following quote:

today there are few Biblical scholars—from liberal skeptics to conservative evangelicals—who believe that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John actually wrote the gospels.” The article goes on to say that the “majority of scholarly opinion holds” that the gospels were products of repeated editing some 60-90 years after Christ's crucifixion.6 Several other articles of this kind have appeared.7

Perhaps the most effective attack on the authority of Scripture has come from television specials and documentaries. In addition to programs shown on the Discovery and History cable channels in search of the historical Jesus, there was one major program that was by far the most deceptively persuasive. Peter Jennings, on June 26, 2000, hosted a much-publicized 2-hour special, shown on ABC’s national network during prime time. The Special reportedly attracted 16.6 million viewers. ABC’s website had 1.12 million hits, which put it up to number two in all time activity.

Jennings introduced this debacle with a moderating tone, saying that this search for the historical Jesus was intended to be “respectful” of others’ beliefs. He went on to say that they suspected that “reliable” sources would be “hard to come by,” and said they turned out to be right. This was our first indication that the four Gospel accounts, which are the prima facia historical sources of the Person and Work of Christ, are not reliable.

The program went steadily downhill from there. While Jennings said several times that they had consulted scholars, historians and others in trying to uncover the true historical Jesus, in fact, the sources chosen reflected a clear bias and agenda which was to undermine the authority of the Bible and, thus, the historic Christian faith. The majority of featured “scholars” were leaders of the oft-disputed Jesus Seminar—Robert Funk, Marcus Borg, John Crossan and Marvin Meyer. And this despite the wide-spread criticism of the Jesus seminar in the scholarly community. Dr. Richard Hays, New Testament professor at Duke Divinity School (certainly not the bastion of conservatism) has written a very strong critical analysis of the Jesus Seminar and its product, The Five Gospels. He writes that the seminar was

“sponsored by not one of the major scholarly societies such as the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, or the Society of Biblical Literature.” Also, he observes that “This self-selected group, though it includes several fine scholars, does not represent a balanced cross section of scholarly opinion. Furthermore, the criteria for judgment that are employed are highly questionable.”8

D.A. Carson, New Testament professor at Trinity International Seminary, also notes that “one of the most striking features of the press releases of (Funk’s) Westar Institute” is that “the words ‘scholars’ and ‘scholarly’ are almost always attached to the opinions of the Jesus Seminar and detached from (the opinions of) all others.”9 For more on the Jesus Seminar, visit our website (www.apologeticsresctr.org) to view a lengthy article I have written responding to this ABC special. It is located under “on-line magazine” archives.

Overall, the attacks on the unique authority of the Bible come in the following ways:

1. The Bible is actually only man's finite attempts to explain the mysterious meanings of life and it's events. So, the Bible is full of legends and myths.
2. The Bible is merely a human construction to advance some political or social agendas during the writers’ times.
3. The Bible is one of many alleged inspired or supernatural revelations.
4. There are newer revelations needed for today's understanding, i.e. the Koran, Book of Mormon, A Course in Miracles, or the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus.
5. The transmission is so corrupted that you can't even be sure of what you have today—lost books suppressed or censored books by the early church establishment, etc.
6. There are many demonstrable errors and contradictions in the Bible.
7. There are so many interpretations, no one can claim that his is the right one.
8. Look at all the divisions in Christianity which all hold the same book.

Because of space limitations, we cannot provide an exhaustive coverage of all the issues relevant to defending the authority of the Bible. But, this issue of Areopagus Journal will provide more than an introduction to the apologetic for the Bible, as well as provide recommendations on a good number of excellent books which more than adequately cover the issues. The first article, by David Prince, presents the Bible’s foundational exposition of its own authority. One of the necessary criteria is to answer the question, “What does the book(s) say about itself?”

Next is an article by the noted professor of philosophy and theology at Liberty University, Gary Habermas. He has distinguished himself as a debater and scholar regarding the historical proof of the resurrection of Jesus. Habermas carefully lays out the strong case that if the evidence demonstrates that Jesus in fact confirmed His deity by His resurrection, miracles, and fulfillment of prophesy, what must necessarily follow is to examine how He viewed the Bible.

This article is followed by philosophy professor Douglas Blount of Southwestern Theological Seminary. In his article, he explores the epistemological reasons to believe in inerrancy. He lays the foundation for evaluative criteria for belief or unbelief.

And finally we have ARC’s own journal editor Steve Cowan who expounds on “Ten Guidelines for Dealing with Bible Difficulties.” Steve covers the most frequent or common issues raised against the inerrancy of Scripture, especially the charges of contradictions and real errors of transmission in modern Bibles.

If you have questions about the Bible which are not covered in these articles, you can contact our office for an information packet. Also, you should visit our website for referrals to scholarly books covering various dimensions of this issue and others.

1 See Barna’s article “Americans Are Most Likely to Base Truths on Feelings” at www.barna.org.
2 Chareles Haddon Spurgeon, as quoted by Brian Edwards, Nothing But the Truth (Darlington, England: Evangelical Press, 1993), 334.
3 James Barr, Beyond Fundamentalism (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984), 124.
4 John Shelby Spong, Why Christianity Must Change or Die (New York: Harper Collins, 1998), 6-7. Spong likewise rules out demonic possession and infirmity.
5 M. Scott Peck, Further Along the Road Less Traveled New York: Touchstone, 1993), 107.
6 U. S. News and World Report (December 10, 1990): 61, 63.
7 E.g., “Jesus Christ, Plain and Simple,” Time (January 10, 1994); “In Search of Jesus,” U.S. News (April 8, 1996); “Jesus at 2000,” Time (Dec. 5, 1999).
8 Richard Hays comments can be found in First Things (May 1994), 44.
9 See Christianity Today (April 25, 1994): 30. Carson states that, for the Jesus Seminar to require that Jesus, a first century Jewish man must not sound like his disciples or contemporaries, that his sayings must by nature be idiosyncratic; or to say that Jesus’ sayings must not sound like the older churches views, “is to assume that the most influential man in history never said anything that the church believed, cherished and passed on is blatantly reductionistic” (Ibid., p. 32).

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