How do you know that the Bible is true?
The Presbyterian Layman, January 19, 2000
“How do you know that it’s true?”
The question was itself a response to a question. After our Sunday school class read Mark’s account of Jesus’ transfiguration (Mark 9:2-8), I asked if there was anything that jumped out at class members from Jesus’ mountain-top transformation and conversation with Elijah and Moses.
The first response, “How do you know that it’s true,” sparked significant discussion. I was grateful for the question, and the frank comments that followed, because many contemporary Christians seem reluctant to ask such pointed questions about the truth of Scripture and our ability to know that truth.
Transfiguration and truth
The reluctance differs according to the congregation’s theological outlook. In many mainline congregations, Scripture is approached from the perspective of modern liberal theology, which is rooted in the Enlightenment emphases on autonomy and rationalism and believes religious truth can be determined by unaided human reason.
“Enlightened” explanations of the transfiguration include: that the disciples were partly blinded by the snow on the mountain and reported what they thought they saw; that the account is pure fiction, invented by “Mark” to serve his personal theological agenda; and that it actually describes a (fictional or hallucinatory) post-resurrection appearance of Jesus, which Mark mistakenly placed before the crucifixion. To ask “Did the transfiguration happen as Mark described it?” in a modern liberal congregation is thus to risk being branded naïve, uneducated, or worst of all, “fundamentalist.”
The prospect of asking about the truth of the transfiguration in evangelical congregations evokes other concerns. First, since evangelicals accept the truth of divine revelation, some may assume that voicing such a question would evidence a troubling lack of faith. In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. Disbelief, not doubt, is the opposite of faith. Neither Gideon nor Thomas was rebuked for lack of faith.
Revelation and reason
Moreover, evangelicalism is not entirely uninfluenced by the Enlightenment doctrines of individualism and rationalism. In properly insisting that human reason is compatible with God’s self-revelation, evangelicals may at times sound as if they believe that reason can prove the truth of revelation.
It cannot.
The truth of God’s self-revelation, in Scripture and supremely in the person and work of Jesus Christ, does not depend on its conformity to philosophers’ rules of logic or to the Jesus Seminar’s critical criteria. God makes truth known to his human creatures for their benefit (John 8:31-32). That which God reveals is true because God himself is truth (John 14:6).
Certainly, reason plays a role in Christian faith and life. Reason can show that God’s self-revelation is not irrational or incoherent. For example, with the advent of quantum physics and the collapse of the Enlightenment worldview, science and philosophy no longer claim that Biblical accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration and resurrection violate Newtonian “laws of nature,” only that they are low-probability events.
But human reason does not, as modern liberal theology demands, determine the truthfulness of God’s revelation. The often unexamined assumption that it can and should do so is a legacy of Enlightenment rationalism, not an article of Christian faith.
How do we know?
If reason does not judge revelation, how can Christians know that the Bible is true, that Jesus was transformed and spoke with Moses and Elijah?
First, Scripture testifies to its own truthfulness. The fulfillment of prophecy, Jesus’ use of Old Testament, and Paul’s teaching that “All Scripture is God-breathed” (II Tim. 3:16) are internal witnesses to the truthfulness of Scripture. Those who reject this self-attestation do so not because the Bible’s testimony is unreasonable. Rather, their uncritical acceptance of an alleged authority, or their prior commitment to a human principle or practice that contradicts God’s revelation, leads them to conclude that Scripture must be untrue.
Second, Christians know that what the Bible says is true because the Holy Spirit teaches us, reminds us of, and guides us into truth. (John 14:16-17; 15:26; 16:13; I John 4:6). As John Calvin recognized, “the testimony of the Spirit is more excellent than all reason. For as God alone is a fit witness of himself in his Word, so also the Word will not find acceptance in men’s hearts before it is sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit” (Institutes, I.vii.4).
Our faith does not forbid asking hard questions, which have been asked since the time of the apostles. Writing to faithful believers who were struggling with doubts raised by false teachers among them, the apostle John declared, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life” (I John 5:13).
The nature of God, the witness of Scripture, and the testimony of the Holy Spirit together assure us that truth exists, that it can be known, and that what the Bible teaches is true.