By Colleen Tinker
A few weeks ago I read a question on an online forum. The writer, a former Adventist who has been out for a few months, asked how we can know we can believe the Bible. What about all those books that were “left out”? After all, “based on logic”, we can see that the Bible leaves out details that other books include. Therefore, why shouldn’t we consider those books to be as authoritative as the ones included in the Bible?
As I responded to the question, I realized again how as Adventists we were taught to use our own analysis and logic to determine truth. First of all, I wrote, former Adventists have to settle the question of authority. We were taught the Bible was God’s word, and that Ellen White was inspired exactly as the Bible writers were. Because we believed that our prophet was inspired the same way Isaiah and Paul had been, then it fell to us to use our logic to figure out what parts of both the Bible and of EGW we could believe. After all, if the prophet was full of contradictions and errors (and we knew she was), then the Bible, inspired exactly as she was, must also be open to our logical questioning and interpretation, our own decisions about whether its words were true.
This belief is wrong. The Bible makes claims for itself no other work makes in any religion. It states it is God’s own word, God-breathed, living and active, able to pierce even between our souls and spirits, joints and marrow, and able to discern the thoughts and intentions of our hearts (Heb. 4:12-13). If the Bible is what it says it is, we absolutely cannot ignore it or change it. God has spoken. Peter (1 Pet 1:23) tells us we are born again through the living word of God, and Hebrews 4:12-13 explains that we cannot separate God’s word from God Himself. God’s omniscient power works in and on us through His living word. How does God’s word work in us so personally? I have no idea, but it does as its Author, the Holy Spirit, applies it to our lives.
If we decide, “based on logic”, that the Bible is incomplete, that other works give details the Bible leaves out, we have just made our own heads the “last word”. We have put ourselves in the position of deciding what constitutes eternal truth. We have essentially just done a version of what Ellen White did: we have added to the Bible and subtracted from the Bible. We have decided that we know better than God what is real and true.
For example, the Book of Enoch was not written by Enoch. Scholars can date it, and it is a much later book than Enoch. Second, the books that were “left out” do not bear the marks of the books in the Bible. They teach different ideas, have different emphases than Scripture, and the books dating from post-cross times that were not included lack apostolic connection: they were not written either by an apostle or by a person who knew and worked with an apostle. They are not eye-witness, immediate books.
Ultimately, the question of Scripture is the ground on which we live out our faith. If we do not believe the Bible is what it claims to be, what the Lord Jesus claimed it was when He, God the Son, told his disciples post-resurrection (Lk. 24:44) that everything written in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms had to be fulfilled by Him, then we are claiming we, not God, have the knowledge of reality. We have made our own heads our own last word.
We are finite and unable to know or see eternity and truth. We have to be made alive and given the mind of Christ, and we are asked to believe Him and to trust His word. If we distrust His word, we are guilty of the oldest sin: the sin of unbelief that caused Eve to question and discuss God’s word instead of obeying it. Our marching orders are to believe, not to decide whether or not God and His eternal word are believable. He reveals Himself to us, we don’t discover Him—but He asks us to trust Him. If we don’t trust Him, we will not be able to trust His word, and if we distrust His word, we are back to square one. We have only our own heads and the deceptions of this dark world into which we are born (Eph. 2:1-3).
There will always be questions which will tempt us to doubt. God’s word, however, reveals the truth and reality of who God is, who we are, and how we can be freed from the tyranny of our unbelief. God has given us His word, and His word—unlike our own logic—cannot fail.
I would rather stake my eternal destiny on what He has said than on anything my head can rationalize.
For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do” (Heb. 4:12-13).
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The fact that the Bible makes the claim to being divinely inspired in certain places should not be sufficient reason for us to accept that claim without asking for evidence. After all, Ellen White’s writings made similar claims, as did the Book of Mormon and the Quran.
Furthermore the Bible is not a monolithic whole. The fact that claims are made in certain books, even if they were true does not mean that all the individual writings were inspired. In some cases other books were written at a later date than these statements about inspiration were made, and then even later added to the canon.
The claims of each individual book should be examined separately. For example take 1st and 2nd Chronicles. They are essentially records of the kings’ court. There does not appear to be any suggestion that they were inspired, and I seriously doubt that the Jews considered them to be inspired.
Many people have the mindset that somehow the Bible was essentially delivered direct from heaven. They never stop to realize that there were some very fallible and perhaps corrupt human beings who made the decisions on which writings to include and which to exclude and even destroy.
Many of the books in the Bible are of unknown authorship. Even the gospels did not contain the names that we know them by until well over 100 years after they were written. We don’t really know who wrote them or whether they were disciples or even eye witnesses. A number of the writings commonly ascribed to Paul are thought to have been written by other people fraudulently claiming Pauline authorship to gain credibility.
The passage in Hebrews 4 refers to ‘the word of God’ as a ‘He’ who is living and can judge the thoughts, etc.. Most likely it is referring not to a ‘book’, but to a ‘person,’ the same person who is being referred to in John 1:1-4. The idea that the Bible should be called “The Word of God,” is most likely folklore that has grown up around a misinterpretation of Hebrews 4.
If we are going to be seekers for truth we must not stop with asking questions about Ellen White and and the SDA Church, but be willing to keep digging and ask the hard questions.
We must be willing to follow the truth no matter where it leads and no matter what it costs.
I pray someone gifted in writing will answer this. I do believe nothing will help this person, Alan, accept the Bible as God’s Word because could be he is missing the heart and relationship that is a must in order to “see” what he is missing. To me, after reading the entire Bible several times and portions more times than i can remember, it is just unmistakable and there can be no argument. To those who do not want to accept it for whatever reason,, no proof or explanation will suffice. It is a mystery of sorts, yet there is incredible proof in many ways. I totally get wanting proof, especially after EGW! But they are nothing alike. The Bible does not contradict itself, and EGW contradicts herself AND the Bible often! If you will study the Bible’s authenticity, you will find it to be the most authenticated ancient document(s) there is, and prophecy alone is incredible proof. The Heart and Harmony are proof. The Apostles, primary resources, are proof. There is more than enough proof. What is missing, it seems, is your own personal relationship with the God of the Bible. I pray that you Double check that first. God bless.
Lenore, I spent 36 years as a very devout, Ellen White believing, Seventh-day Adventist. But when I found problems with Ellen White, I felt that it would be wise to investigate the validity of the Biblical claims as well. I found things are not as most people believe, as mentioned in several examples in my earlier post. I don’t ask for ‘proof’ that the Bible is actually wholly from God. But answers to simple questions would be nice.
And yes the Bible does contradict itself many times, just as Ellen White did. For example Matthew 2:1 says that Jesus was born in the days of Herod the King. Herod died in 4 BC. Luke 2:2,7 says that Jesus was born when Quirinius was governor of Syria, which I believe was from AD 6-9. There is a minimum gap of 9 years between the two dates.
Matthew 2:14,15 says that Joseph, Mary and the Child fled Bethlehem to Egypt and stayed there until Herod died. Luke 2:21,22,39 says that Jesus was circumcised the 8th day and Mary was purified (on the 40th day) in the Temple in Jerusalem and then they went back to Nazareth. Which is it? Did they go from Bethlehem to Egypt or did they stay around 40 days for Mary’s purification and then go to Nazareth?
Was Joseph’s father Jacob (Matt. 1:16)? Or was it Eli (Luke 3:23)?
The accounts of the trial, death and resurrection of Jesus are vastly different in the four gospel accounts. Which one is accurate, if any. Does it matter?
Sadly I can give you hundreds of similar contradictions, between different accounts throughout the Bible as well as many contrasting theological statements that have given rise to the many differing belief systems within Christianity.
There have been hundreds of major religions other than Christianity throughout recorded history, each claiming to be the one true religion. Would you not agree that the adherents of these other religions past and present would be wise to carefully investigate whether their own religion is really true?
Should we do any less?
John 8:47 sums it up very well. Read all of John, it is simply marvelous!
Alan, the Bible is one of the most verifiable books in the history of writing. There are more manuscripts extant of books in both Testaments than there are of Homer’s Oddessey and Iliad by FAR. The fact is that, when one submits to Scripture and becomes increasingly familiar with it, it contains no theological arguments. It does not present an incongruent whole.
The Bible is the only book that actually claims to be the word of God. No other religious book claims that for itself. Nevertheless, one cannot understand Scripture unless one is willing to know what is true. God reveals Himself to those who want to know Him. When we read Scripture to critique it, we are putting our minds OVER God’s word.
Try an experiment; ask God to show you what He wants you to know about the Bible, and be willing to submit yourself to discovery. I agree with Lenore: begin with the book of John. Ask God to show you what He wants you to know. He will not force you; He is truthful, however, and He will never trick us. Give it a go!
And one more thing: we don’t figure out the Bible’s truthfulness by studying its critics. We discover its true nature by studying IT!
Colleen, I know you are a very conscientious and dedicated person, and I appreciate the effort you have put into this ministry, along with Dale. So what I say is not meant as an attack on you in any way. But I am seeking truth, and as Ellen White said, “the truth can afford to be fair,” and “the truth can stand up to investigation.” We have nothing to fear from asking honest questions. If the Bible is not what we think it is, the sooner we find out, the better. Agreed? At least that is how you now feel about your former belief in Ellen White.
It is true that there are over 5000 copies of parts of the New Testament. Most are copies of copies of copies, ad infinitum. The fact that there are billions of copies of the Bible in print does not add to its authenticity. Nor does the fact that there were thousands of hand copies of the Bible from the last 1500 years, which, by the way contain thousands of variants between them, tell us anything about who the original authors were or when the various books of the Bible were written. Even the proper text of thousands of verses is uncertain, because of all the variants.
You say that the Bible claims to be the Word of God. Where does it say that? And how can that be? It wasn’t even decided which books belonged in the canon until about CE 325. The canon would have to have been formed and then one final book would have to have been written that put its endorsement on the previously canonized writings. And then that book would have had to have been added to the canon by the church. We know that did not happen. There is simply no writing, that you accept as inspired, that lists the 66 book of the Bible and says that they are the Word of God.
The fact that certain passages in the Bible state that they were spoken by God, such as the ten commandments, for example, does not guarantee that it is true. Ellen White, Mary Baker Eddy, the Book of Mormon and the Quran make similar claims, and close to a billion people accept that at least one of them is truly from God.
And who was it that decided which books to accept and which books to reject? A group of Catholic clerics in the time of Constantine. There were about 50 books just claiming to be gospels written by various early Christians. The four gospels that made it into the canon did not originally have any names attached to them. The earliest quotations from the gospels, that we are aware of, were in the time of Irenaeus about 175 CE and the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were first applied at the end of the 2nd Century.
Many Christians assume that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. However archaeologists now know that the most primitive Hebrew alphabet did not even exist until about 950 BCE, about 500 years after Moses would have died.
Things are just not as cut and dried as we have been told all our lives.
Alan, if one does not believe that Jesus is God the Son incarnate, the Substitute who shed His blood as the sacrifice for human sin, then quoting Jesus might seem meaningless. Nevertheless, it is Jesus Himself who validates the authenticity and nature of Scripture. Jesus is the one who quoted the Old Testament time after time, validating what those ancient authors wrote. He even validated the identity and authenticity of Jonah, one of the most doubted characters/books of the Old Testament, and said that the sign of Jonah was the only sign that would be given to an unbelieving generation.
Jesus, eternal God the Son, used Scripture throughout His ministry to explain Himself and His mission, showing the Jews that the traditions and prophecies they knew (which defined them from the rest of the world) were being fulfilled IN HIM.
We don’t believe Scripture because Scripture says we should. We believe Scripture because Jesus Himself validated it, quoted it, and explained the meanings of and “telescoping” revelations of the mysteries hidden before He came.
The Bible is not composed of static words of human origin. As Peter said, believers “have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God” (1 Pet. 1:23). And as Hebrews 4:12–13 states, “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts an intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.”
The Scriptures share the attributes of the Author: He and His word pierce the human heart and judge our thoughts and intentions so deeply and accurately that we may not consciously understand them until God’s word convicts us. We are judged by God’s word, and there is not one of us that is hidden from His sight.
There is no other religious book which makes such claims. The Bible is difficult for those who believe their own minds are capable of judging it. As God’s eternal and living word, however, no matter how much we critique and analyze it from a distant scrutiny, it ultimately judges us. We cannot escape.
The new birth is not something we imagine. It is real, but it is real only for those who trust the finished work of the Lord Jesus. God is real, and He has revealed Himself to all mankind. He is discoverable!
We may believe that we are our own final authority, but our belief does not determine reality. Reality is outside of us, and it will have the last word, not we ourselves.
It’s worth investigating. Ask God to show you what is real and true. Of course, we have to be willing to be shown…but when one truly desires to know what is true and asks God to reveal truth, He will. He does not trick us. We can trust that there IS truth and reality, an absolute bottom line that is our ground and protection. If we are our own “last word”, we are utterly insecure. We cannot even know our own hearts.
God is absolute. He brings us into life and truth, and He is faithful.
Colleen, that is circular reasoning. You are using something that has not yet been established to prove itself. If you can remember back to the days when we took geometry and we were required to provide geometric proofs on our tests and homework, we would have failed, if we used a non-established fact in our proof. We always had to start with what had already been proven.
Unless we know the Bible writers are reliable, how can we really know what Jesus actually said. There are many cases in which different writers quoted him differently, for example. How would we know which, if any of them were quoting him correctly?
The Adventists make the same mistake with Ellen White. Steps to Christ and Desire of Ages have such a beautiful message and they so speak of the love of God, how dare anyone question that they are inspired?
That is putting the cart before the horse. There are many writings that claim inspiration and sound inspiring. We should always ask where is the compelling evidence that this is from God. What information has been given that could not have been known by humans without divine revelation?
With Ellen White, the ‘critics’ that you don’t want to listen to, pointed out her sources, her conflicting statements, and her misrepresentation of certain Bible verses. We decided that her writings must pass certain tests before being accepted, and in the end they failed.
Why should we not apply the same tests to any writings for which the claim of divine inspiration is being made? Why would the 66 individual books that make up the Bible not have to pass the same tests?
Again, Jesus did not quote from every book of the Bible. The New Testament had not yet been written. How can you trust the Catholic priests and bishops who decided which writings to include in the Bible and which to throw into the bonfires?
Genesis 1 says that God made the sun, moon and stars on the 4th day, presumably about 6,000 years ago; and yet I can see the Andromeda Galaxy, which is 2.5 million light years away with my own eyes. A few months ago astronomers observed a supernova (exploding star) which occurred more than 10 billion years ago and the light from it has just now arrived on Earth. Doesn’t Genesis have to agree with the natural world?
The claim that people before the flood lived nearly 1,000 years is extraordinary. What evidence do we have that that is not mythology?
The statement that a flood covered the highest mountains and destroyed all life not preserved in the ark is extraordinary. That event would have required a billion (yes!) cubic miles of water that did not exist prior to the flood and which do not exist now? There are millions of species that would have had to be reserved in the ark. There would have had to be aquariums to preserve the fresh and salt water fish, etc, from the muddy water. Eight people would have had to feed, water, and remove the waste from tens of thousands of larger animals every day, an impossible task. And yet this stupendous event left no geological evidence. Should we believe it unquestioningly in spite of the evidence which shows a consistent chronological layering throughout the world, and not the jumbled mess you would expect to see if Noah’s flood had occurred.
Joshua claims that there was a time when God made sun stand still for about a day so that the armies of Israel could defeat their enemies. We don’t live in an earth-centric universe such as the Bible writers believed in. The sun doesn’t go around the earth. Physically, how could such a thing happen? The Egyptians who recorded unusual celestial events made no mention of it.
If a person is honestly seeking the truth they can’t just sweep these and the other questions I have raised under the rug and ignore them. The truth does indeed make us free!
I have no desire to argue with you. The fact is that the new birth is real. People who were timid, addicted, helpless, and narcissistic are changed visibly when they encounter the gospel and believe. There is no laboratory proof I can give you, but this is a testable reality.
The fact that we can explain away every astonishing detail of Scripture does not make it untrue. In fact, those are not the ways we discredit extra biblical prophets, either.
Reality is bigger than we can see. Either our own minds are the most enlightened and knowledgable things in our creation, or there is One who made our minds. The question ultimately comes down to this: are we willing to know what we can’t logically prove? It’s not a “blind leap” of faith. It’s quite tested and proven, and it’s not a new thing. Nevertheless, faith is individual and is generated by the God who created our minds.
I am not expecting to change your mind. I merely want to say that when we discount what we can’t explain, we often miss reality. But knowing reality requires being willing to give up second-guessing everything we can’t explain. It requires being willing to know.
In the end, the Lord knows, and He is both just and merciful.
Oh, one more thing: it was not the Catholic church that assembled the canon. That claim is tossed about frequently, but the NT canon was collected long before there was a Catholic church. There were several tests of authenticity for the books included, as well, including the relationship of the authors to the apostles: they had to be either written by an apostle or by an eye-witness to the apostles, as in the case of Mark and Luke. They had to be books which the early church believed were written by eyewitnesses and widely used; they had to pass literary tests that validated the language and styles of writing, and they had to teach the same truths the OT canon taught and the accepted NT books and epistles taught. And Jewish tradition says that it was Ezra who compiled the OT canon. We cannot blame the Catholics for the work done before they existed.
I appreciate your comments Colleen and apologize for being so slow to respond. Can you clarify when you think the New Testament canon was finalized and when you think the Catholic church began?
What are the tests for authenticity of the Bible? Regarding authorship, it is my understanding that the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were not applied to the books until about the year 200. We have no actual way of knowing who wrote those gospels, or when, as far as I have been able to learn. I do not think they claimed to be eyewitnesses. So I don’t know how you would know their relationship to the apostles.
My understanding is that the very earliest known quotation from any of the four gospels is from Iranaeus, Bishop of Lyon in about 175 CE.
Who were the people, and when, that applied these literary and style of language tests and compared the writings with the Old Testament? Does it concern you that Jude quotes from the Book of Enoch as though it were authoritative? Does the book of Jude seem at all strange to you? Are you aware that the language and expressions in 1st and 2nd Peter are much different and several of the church fathers in the 3rd and 4th centuries questioned the authorship of 2nd Peter and whether it should be included? By the way, oddly 2 Peter includes much of the strange language of Jude.
I think the Jews would take issue with the idea that the New Testament teachings are the same as those in the Old, for many reasons. Deuteronomy 6:4 appears to teach monotheism. The Jews would consider the teaching that the godhead is made up of three separate intelligent beings completely foreign.
If you compare the numerous times (18, I think) that Matthew claims that Jesus was a fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy, I do not know even one of them that, in its original context, would have been a prophecy of Jesus.
Take Matthew 2:23, for instance. Where in the Old Testament prophets does it say that the Messiah would be a Nazarene? Or Matthew 27:9. Where does it say in Jeremiah that the Messiah would be sold for 30 pieces of silver? And even if you were to decide to look in Zechariah 11, the whole chapter is a bit enigmatic. It reminds me of those who say the writings of Nostradamus are often fulfilled by modern day events. I can’t accept such claims without looking at them critically.
Do you have a list of the Books that were in Ezra’s canon? I am not aware of any list of Old Testiment writings that includes Daniel, for example, until the Sibylline Oracles which date from the middle of the second century BCE.
In summary, the Bible canon has been a rather nebulous and flexible thing throughout history, and even today there are differences in the books recognized by major church groups. It is just not cut and dried.
Colleen, there have been over a 100 religions over the millennia which had writings whose followers believed were inspired. The Muslims, Buddhists, Mormons and others, who you would probably say worship a different god, experience deep conversion experiences that they fully believe come from their god. Their experiences are just as real to them as yours is to you. As an outside observer I don’t know how to differentiate them. Lives are dramatically changed by Buddhism, Mormonism and many others.
So subjectively I don’t see that there is a way of knowing which religion, if any, is real. You have to examine their writings to see if they have contradictions, historical inaccuracies, moral weaknesses, scientific inaccuracies, etc. On that basis, Ellen White’s writings are some of the best, largely because she wrote in recent times and had talented editorial assistants.
Do those so-called inspired writings reveal any information that could not have been known by humans at the time. For example the periodic table of the elements or anything that would be the clear fingerprint of a being far more advanced than humans?
So far as I know, none of the sacred writings do that, and all of them have many examples of the negatives listed above.
Once I found several undeniable problems with Ellen White, I couldn’t help seeing similar problems with the Bible.
I think the mistake Adventists make is blindly accepting what the church says about doctrines and Ellen White, without starting with square one and looking at the evidence pro and con.
In the same vein, most Christians were taught in their formative years that the Bible is an inspired message from God and they have never objectively evaluated the truth of that belief.
If one looks at the 66 books in the Protestant Bible with a mind that sincerely desires to follow the truth, no matter where it leads and no matter what it costs, they can easily see hundreds of problems in the Bible in all of the above categories.
I want nothing more than to fully follow the truth and to express love to all thinking, feeling beings in this life.
I had a wonderful experience during my 36 years in the Adventist church. If it could be shown to be true I would be happy to be an Adventist.
By the same token, if I could see evidence that the Bible is actually a reliable, consistent document and see evidence that Jesus actually existed, walked on water, turned water into wine and raised people who were truly dead back to life I would believe it.
But whose are extraordinary claims and as far as I can see there is no corroboration of them outside the pages of the Bible, and we never see them repeated in our own day in spite of the very strong promises of answered prayer in the Bible.
The truth does indeed make you free!
Alan, this blog site is dedicated to the gospel of the Lord Jesus and to telling of His excellencies, as Peter says. We stand on a foundation about which we will not debate: the Bible is what it declares itself to be, Jesus is God incarnate, the Savior of mankind and our Substitute who took God’s wrath towards sin.
The new birth is real, and according to the Lord Jesus (Jn. 3:3-6) it is requisite for seeing the kingdom of heaven. An agnostic view will not change reality. Whether we believe or not—reality IS, and our belief or unbelief will not alter the outcome.
There are only two groups of people: those dead in sin, and those made alive in Christ and transferred out of the domain of darkness into the Kingdom of the Beloved Son. No matter how we believe, reality is absolute. Either we are born again and known by God, or we are dead in sin, and God “never knew us”.
I know I will not change your mind, but for the sake of anyone reading, I reiterate that Proclamation! is dedicated to the gospel of the Lord Jesus and His finished work of atonement. We will not debate here the question of whether or not the Bible is the word of God. Knowing Jesus and understanding Scripture to be the living word are spiritual, not mental processes. To be sure, the mind is involved, but God gives us a new heart and puts His Spirit in those who believe. Christians since the Day of Pentecost who have trusted Jesus can attest to this reality—a reality that is not transferable nor even explainable to one who has not trusted.
I understand your arguments, but they are the reasoning of a human mind grappling with spiritual realities that are spiritually understood. I truly do not mean to sound arch. I do, however, want to say…this is not the venue for arguments about the authenticity of the Bible. There are many evidences and facts about the canon that “higher criticism” does not consider, but I have no desire to debate.
Either Jesus and His word are real and living, eternal and powerful, or they are not. Arguing about it will not change reality. It’s significant, however, that Christianity is the only religion in the world that does not require people to become good in order to be right with God. It is the only religion in which the One we worship died for the worshipers instead of requiring the worshipers to sacrifice themselves for Him.
Good works and sacrificial acts flow OUT of being born again in Christians, but they are not done in order to be reconciled to God. Only the God of Scripture loves humanity and gave Himself for us.
When we fail to honor Him as God and give thanks, our thinking becomes futile and our foolish hearts are darkened, as Paul says in Romans 1. We are more than our bodies; our spirits are real, and spiritual things cannot be comprehended and explained solely by rational arguments. He is God, and He has declared what is real and true. We actually stand in danger when we place our reasoning over our Creator’s revelation and presume that we can declare His ways and word illogical.
Colleen, I appreciate your dedication to your beliefs, but it seems that Christians are making the same assumptions regarding the Bible that Adventists make about Ellen White, Mormons are making about the book of Mormon, and Muslims are making about the Quran. Do you not think that there should be some objective tests that can be applied to all such claims?