Reliability Bible Quotes

If the Old Testament were a reliable guide in the matter of capital punishment, half the people in the United States would have to be killed tomorrow.

If one discards the Bible as unreliable historically, then he or she must discard all the literature of antiquity. No other document has as much evidence to confirm its reliability.

People may break your heart and drive you crazily. God is the only dependable person you should rely on.

Reliance on God is relying on the fact that to rely on anything else is to rely on nothing reliable.

I choose to believe the Bible because it is a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and they claim that their writings are divine rather than human in origin.

In learning and argumentation, the quality brain is similar to a facility of maximum security. What passes the logic test, free of fallacy and pretense, then must pass the test of biblical accuracy in order to proceed as an adopted, reliable truth.

Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide; it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith is, above all, open-ness—an act of trust in the unknown. An ardent Jehovah’s Witness once tried to convince me that if there were a God of love, he would certainly provide mankind with a reliable and infallible textbook for the guidance of conduct. I replied that no considerate God would destroy the human mind by making it so rigid and unadaptable as to depend upon one book, the Bible, for all the answers. For the use of words, and thus of a book, is to point beyond themselves to a world of life and experience that is not mere words or even ideas. Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.

1 Cain lifts Crow, that heavy black bird and strikes down Abel. Damn, says Crow, I guess this is just the beginning. 2 The white man, disguised as a falcon, swoops in and yet again steals a salmon from Crow's talons. Damn, says Crow, if I could swim I would have fled this country years ago. 3 The Crow God as depicted in all of the reliable Crow bibles looks exactly like a Crow. Damn, says Crow, this makes it so much easier to worship myself. 4 Among the ashes of Jericho, Crow sacrifices his firstborn son. Damn, says Crow, a million nests are soaked with blood. 5 When Crows fight Crows the sky fills with beaks and talons. Damn, says Crow, it's raining feathers. 6 Crow flies around the reservation and collects empty beer bottles but they are so heavy he can only carry one at a time. So, one by one, he returns them but gets only five cents a bottle. Damn, says Crow, redemption is not easy. 7 Crow rides a pale horse into a crowded powwow but none of the Indian panic. Damn, says Crow, I guess they already live near the end of the world.

The primary leaders of the so-called founding fathers of our nation were not Bible-believing Christians; they were deists. Deism was a philosophical belief that was widely accepted by the colonial intelligentsia at the time of the American Revolution. Its major tenets included belief in human reason as a reliable means of solving social and political problems and belief in a supreme deity who created the universe to operate solely by natural laws. The supreme God of the Deists removed himself entirely from the universe after creating it. They believed that he assumed no control over it, exerted no influence on natural phenomena, and gave no supernatural revelation to man. A necessary consequence of these beliefs was a rejection of many doctrines central to the Christian religion. Deists did not believe in the virgin birth, divinity, or resurrection of Jesus, the efficacy of prayer, the miracles of the Bible, or even the divine inspiration of the Bible. These beliefs were forcefully articulated by Thomas Paine in Age of Reason, a book that so outraged his contemporaries that he died rejected and despised by the nation that had once revered him as 'the father of the American Revolution.'... Other important founding fathers who espoused Deism were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, James Madison, and James Monroe. [The Christian Nation Myth, 1999]

Although there was no reliable way of dating periods, there was no shortage of people willing to try. The most well known early attempt30 was made in 1650, when Archbishop James Ussher of the Church of Ireland made a careful study of the Bible and other historical sources and concluded, in a hefty tome called Annals of the Old Testament, that the Earth had been created at midday on 23 October 4004 BC, an assertion that has amused historians and textbook writers ever since.

If the Bible and other holy books were at all reliable sources of morality, good and bad religious people wouldn’t both be able to point to their holy books as guidance and inspiration to support their positions.

Bible debunkers and Bible defenders are kindred spirits. They agree that the Bible is on trial. They agree on the terms of the debate, and what’s at stake, namely its credibility as God’s infallible book. They agree that Christianity stands or falls, triumphs or fails, depending on whether the Bible is found to be inconsistent, to contradict itself. The question for both sides is whether it fails to answer questions, from the most trivial to the ultimate, consistently and reliably. But you can’t fail at something you’re not trying to do. To ask whether the Bible fails to give consistent answers or be of one voice with itself presumes that it was built to do so. That’s a false presumption, rooted no doubt in thinking of it as the book that God wrote. As we have seen, biblical literature is constantly interpreting, interrogating, and disagreeing with itself. Virtually nothing is asserted someplace that is not called into question or undermined elsewhere.

By the word genuine I mean biblical, for only in the Bible do we have truth that is indisputably reliable. For this reason, the Bible must be the guide and test for all of our experiences in the spiritual life, for biblical spirituality is the only genuine spirituality.

Suppose that members of a religious movement, such as Christianity, maintain that the existence of some powerful god and its goals or laws can be known through their scriptures, their prophets, or some special revelation. Suppose further that the evidence that is available to support the reliability of those scriptures, prophets, or special revelations is weaker than that God is hypothetically capable of producing. That is, suppose that Christians maintain that Jesus was resurrected on the basis of the Gospels, or that God’s existence can be known through the Bible, or Muslims insist on the historical authenticity of the Koran. Could God, the almighty creator of the universe, have brought it about so that the evidence in favor of the resurrection, the Bible, or the Koran was better than we currently find it? I take it that the answer is obviously yes. Even if you think there is evidence that is sufficient to prove the resurrection, a reasonable person must also acknowledge that it could have been better. And there’s the problem. If the capacity of that god is greater than the effectiveness or quality of those scriptures, prophets, or special revelations, then the story they are telling contradicts itself. 'We know our god is real on the basis of evidence that is inadequate for our god.' Or, 'The grounds that lead us to believe in our god are inconsistent with the god we accept; nevertheless, we believe in this god that would have given us greater evidence if it had wished for us to believe in it.' Given the disparity between the gods that these religious movements portend and the grounds offered to justify them, the atheist is warranted in dismissing such claims. If the sort of divine being that they promote were real and if he had sought our believe on the basis of the evidence, the evidential situation would not resemble the one we are in. The story doesn’t make internal sense. A far better explanation is that their enthusiasm for believing in a god has led them to overstate what the evidence shows. And that same enthusiasm has made it difficult for them to see that an all powerful God would have the power to make his existence utterly obvious and undeniable. Since it’s not, the non-believer can’t possibly be faulted for failing to believe.

I urge not that we assume that love will provide a reliable foundation for knowledge but that we nonetheless keep the requirements of love of neighbor foremost in our interpretations of Scripture. We should consider, for example, love to be a necessary criterion (a minimum) when defending an interpretation of Scripture even if it cannot be a sufficient criterion that will guarantee ethical interpretation.

For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

I found myself listening to Walter Bjork's fascinating radio program Bible Questionnaire (WFME, Orange, N.J.), and a caller asked where in the Bible one would find the statement "Neither borrower nor lender be." The poor host flipped like mad through his concordance without success. Naturally, since the quote is not from the Bible at all, but from Shakespeare's Hamlet! But it sounded biblical, so caller and host alike attributed it to scripture. Can it have been much more difficult to naively attribute wise sayings to Jesus?

HEBREWS 2 Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. 2For since  athe message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and  bevery transgression or disobedience received a just  cretribution, 3 dhow shall we escape if we  eneglect such a great salvation? It was  fdeclared at first by the Lord, and it was  gattested to us  hby those who heard, 4 gwhile God also bore witness  iby signs and wonders and various miracles and by  jgifts of the Holy Spirit  kdistributed according to his will.

HEBREWS 2 Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. 2For since  a the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and  b every transgression or disobedience received a just  c retribution, 3 d how shall we escape if we  e neglect such a great salvation? It was  f declared at first by the Lord, and it was  g attested to us  h by those who heard, 4 g while God also bore witness  i by signs and wonders and various miracles and by  j gifts of the Holy Spirit  k distributed according to his will.

But the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Corinthians 2:14). God and His Word, in essence or essential nature, is truth (Deuteronomy 32:4; Psalms 5:5; 33:4; 105:5; 119:151, 160; John 1:17; 14:6; 16:13). Many Christians consider all truth as God's truth, yet they will look to other sources beyond the Bible. However, the only reliable source of truth is God's inerrant Word, the Bible (Psalm 18:30; John 8:31-32; 2 Timothy 3:16-17). All other sources are fallible and cannot be used as the measure for truth.

But enslaved people were not uncritical or gullible in their appropriation of the biblical text. John Jea, already quoted as an example of early black reverence for the Scripture, also illustrates the ability of some slaves to distinguish between the reliability of the Bible’s content itself and the unreliable teaching of the Bible in the hands of some white masters. Jea recalls: After our master had been treating us in this cruel manner [severe floggings, sometimes unto death], we were obliged to thank him for the punishment he had been inflicting on us, quoting that Scripture which saith, “Bless the rod, and him that hath appointed it.” But, though he was a professor of religion, he forgot that passage which saith “God is love, and whoso dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” And, again, we are commanded to love our enemies; but it appeared evident that his wretched heart was hardened.8 Jea’s account and others like it teach us that African-American Christians trusted the Bible while they suspected the self-serving motives and Scripture-twisting actions of white preachers and slave owners. It’s fascinating to consider that a highly oral people revered the Scriptures they could not read even while they rejected the oracles of co-opted preachers they could hear. One could say that African-American Christianity began with an unread Bible placed on the center of the church’s ecclesial coffee table.

One of the crucial pennies to drop in the minds of those who find their way to faith in their adult years is often the realization that, if there really is a God such as the Bible reveals him to be, then he is smarter than I am and his judgement is more reliable than mine: if he and I differ on a matter, and if he is really God and I am really a creature, then it is more than reasonable to assume that he is correct and I am mistaken. To reach any other conclusion would require a bizarre routine of epistemological gymnastics. Either God is God and I am not, in which case his judgement is to be trusted over mine, or else God is not God, in which case there is no reliable way of satisfactorily arbitrating at all between what is reasonable and what is not.

The inconsistencies of Christian people, who while professing to believe their Bible were yet content to live just as they would if there were no such book, had been one of the strongest arguments of my skeptical companions; and I frequently felt at that time, and said, that if I pretended to believe the Bible I would at ay rate attempt to live by it, putting it fairly to the test, and if it failed to prove true and reliable, would throw it overboard altogether. These views I retained when the Lord was pleased to bring me to Himself; and I think I may say that since then I have put God's Word to the test. Certainly it has never failed me. I have never had reason to regret the confidence I have placed I its promises, or to deplore following the guidance I have found in its directions.

think of that story when people question the reality of Satan. If the devil isn’t real, then someone else like him is continually assaulting us. How else can we explain the extent of evil in the world? Make no mistake. Satan is real. He may rarely be recognized, and his existence may often be denied, but he is real. The Bible is full of references to him, and God’s Word is our only reliable source for information about Satan, demons, and spiritual warfare. As E.M. Bounds notes, “The Bible is a revelation, not a philosophy or a poem, not a science. It reveals things and persons as they are, living and acting outside the range of earthly vision or natural discovery. Biblical revelations are not against reason but above reason.”2 Biblical revelation unveils the reality of an evil being named Satan.

In John 9, Jesus healed a blind man on the sabbath. The leaders of the people, proud of being Moses’ disciples (v. 28), “knew” that Jesus could not possibly be of God because he did not observe their restrictions on working during the sabbath (v. 16). They just “knew” that this man Jesus was a sinner because they “knew” the Bible. And they “knew” that the Bible said you were not supposed to do the kinds of things Jesus was doing on the sabbath. Therefore, since this man Jesus did these kinds of things on the sabbath, he was a sinner. These leaders had good, reliable general knowledge of how things were supposed to be. For his part, the man healed could only report, “I do not know whether he [Jesus] is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see” (Jn 9:25). But that was not in the Bible, in the law. The leaders had their own guidance, and they thought it was sufficient. But it was not sufficient, though it was very respectable and generally accepted. For it allowed them to condemn the power and works of love in Jesus himself: “We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from” (v. 29). “We don’t know!” That is perhaps the most self-damning statement they could possibly have made. They looked at what Jesus did and said, “We don’t know what this person is doing. We don’t know where he is coming from. We don’t know that he is of God.” Why didn’t they know? What they were really confessing was that they did not know who God is or what his works are. In their own way they shared Nicodemus’s problem of not being able to see the kingdom of God—though they were sure that in fact they did. Many stand in that same place today. They could look at the greatest works of love and righteousness and if those works did not conform either to their legalistic ideas of what the Bible or their church teaches, or to what their own subjective experiences confirm, they could condemn those works without batting an eyelid, saying, “We know that this is wrong!” We all need to be delivered from such knowledge! When facing the mad religionist or blind legalist, we have no recourse, no place to stand, if we do not have firsthand experience of hearing God’s voice, held safely within a community of brothers and sisters in Christ who also have such knowledge of God’s personal dealings with their own souls.[18]

..."facts" properly speaking are always and never more than interpretations of the data... the Gospel accounts are themselves such data or, if you like, hard facts. But the events to which the Gospels refer are not themselves "hard facts"; they are facts only in the sense that we interpret the text, together with such other data as we have, to reach a conclusion regarding the events as best we are able. They are facts in the same way that the verdict of a jury establishes the facts of the case, the interpretation of the evidence that results in the verdict delivered. Here it is as well to remember that historical methodology can only produce probabilities, the probability that some event took place in such circumstances being greater or smaller, depending on the quality of the data and the perspective of the historical enquirer. The jury which decides what is beyond reasonable doubt is determining that the probability is sufficiently high for a clear-cut verdict to be delivered. Those who like "certainty" in matters of faith will always find this uncomfortable. But faith is not knowledge of "hard facts"...; it is rather confidence, assurance, trust in the reliability of the data and in the integrity of the interpretations derived from that data... It does seem important to me that those who speak for evangelical Christians grasp this nettle firmly, even if it stings! – it is important for the intellectual integrity of evangelicals. Of course any Christian (and particularly evangelical Christians) will want to get as close as possible to the Jesus who ministered in Galilee in the late 20s of the first century. If, as they believe, God spoke in and through that man, more definitively and finally than at any other time and by any other medium, then of course Christians will want to hear as clearly as possible what he said, and to see as clearly as possible what he did, to come as close as possible to being an eyewitness and earwitness for themselves. If God revealed himself most definitively in the historical particularity of a Galilean Jew in the earliest decades of the Common Era, then naturally those who believe this will want to inquire as closely into the historical particularity and actuality of that life and of Jesus’ mission. The possibility that later faith has in some degree covered over that historical actuality cannot be dismissed as out of the question. So a genuinely critical historical inquiry is necessary if we are to get as close to the historical actuality as possible. Critical here, and this is the point, should not be taken to mean negatively critical, hermeneutical suspicion, dismissal of any material that has overtones of Easter faith. It means, more straightforwardly, a careful scrutiny of all the relevant data to gain as accurate or as historically responsible a picture as possible. In a day when evangelical, and even Christian, is often identified with a strongly right-wing, conservative and even fundamentalist attitude to the Bible, it is important that responsible evangelical scholars defend and advocate such critical historical inquiry and that their work display its positive outcome and benefits. These include believers growing in maturity • to recognize gray areas and questions to which no clear-cut answer can be given (‘we see in a mirror dimly/a poor reflection’), • to discern what really matters and distinguish them from issues that matter little, • and be able to engage in genuine dialogue with those who share or respect a faith inquiring after truth and seeking deeper understanding. In that way we may hope that evangelical (not to mention Christian) can again become a label that men and women of integrity and good will can respect and hope to learn from more than most seem to do today.

If one could prove from established and reliable histories that the events in Judith really happened, it would be a noble and fine book, and should properly be in the Bible. Yet it hardly squares with the historical accounts of the Holy Scriptures, especially Jeremiah and Ezra. For these show how Jerusalem and the whole country were destroyed, and were thereafter laboriously rebuilt during the time of the monarchy of the Persians who occupied the land. Against this the first chapter of Judith claims that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon was the first one to set about conquering this territory; it creates the impression that these events took place before the captivity of the Jews, and before the rise of the Persian monarchy. Philo, on the contrary, says that they happened after the release and return of the Jews from Babylon under King Ahasuerus, at which time the Jews had rebuilt neither the temple nor Jerusalem, and had no government. Thus as to both time and name, error and doubt are still present, so that I cannot reconcile [the accounts] at all. Such an interpretation strikes my fancy, and I think that the poet deliberately and painstakingly inserted the errors of time and name in order to remind the reader that the book should be taken and understood as that kind of a sacred, religious, composition. It may even be that in those days they dramatized literature like this, Just as among us the Passion and other sacred stories are performed. In a common presentation or play they conceivably wanted to teach their people and youth to trust God, to be righteous, and to hope in God for all help and comfort, in every need, against all enemies, etc. Therefore this is a fine, good, holy, useful book, well worth reading by us Christians. For the words spoken by the persons in it should be understood as though they were uttered in the Holy Spirit by a spiritual, holy poet or prophet who, in presenting such persons in his play, preaches to us through them. Next after Judith, therefore, like a song following a play, belongs the Wisdom of Philo, a work which denounces tyrants and praises the help which God bestows on his people. The song [that follows] may well be called an illustration of this book [of Judith].

If one could prove from established and reliable histories that the events in Judith really happened, it would be a noble and fine book, and should properly be in the Bible. Yet it hardly squares with the historical accounts of the Holy Scriptures, especially Jeremiah and Ezra. For these show how Jerusalem and the whole country were destroyed, and were thereafter laboriously rebuilt during the time of the monarchy of the Persians who occupied the land. Against this the first chapter of Judith claims that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon was the first one to set about conquering this territory; it creates the impression that these events took place before the captivity of the Jews, and before the rise of the Persian monarchy. Philo, on the contrary, says that they happened after the release and return of the Jews from Babylon under King Ahasuerus, at which time the Jews had rebuilt neither the temple nor Jerusalem, and had no government. Thus as to both time and name, error and doubt are still present, so that I cannot reconcile [the accounts] at all. Such an interpretation strikes my fancy, and I think that the poet deliberately and painstakingly inserted the errors of time and name in order to remind the reader that the book should be taken and understood as that kind of a sacred, religious, composition. It may even be that in those days they dramatized literature like this, Just as among us the Passion and other sacred stories are performed. In a common presentation or play they conceivably wanted to teach their people and youth to trust God, to be righteous, and to hope in God for all help and comfort, in every need, against all enemies, etc. Therefore this is a fine, good, holy, useful book, well worth reading by us Christians. For the words spoken by the persons in it should be understood as though they were uttered in the Holy Spirit by a spiritual, holy poet or prophet who, in presenting such persons in his play, preaches to us through them. Next after Judith, therefore, like a song following a play, belongs the Wisdom of Philo, a work which denounces tyrants and praises the help which God bestows on his people. The song [that follows] may well be called an illustration of this book [of Judith].

Archaeological research done in Bible lands has amazingly confirmed the reliability and historicity of the Scriptures in so many areas. Every part of the Bible that could be checked by archaeology now provides the most positive proofs for the accuracy of the Bible.

The price of a slave specified by the law (Ex 21:32, subsequent inflation notwithstanding); it was also the wage paid to the reliable shepherd of God’s people in Zec 11:12–13 (recalled in Mt 27:9–10

Most people live unprepared for death. But those who are wise will go to a reliable source to investigate what’s on the other side. And if they discover that the choices they make during their brief stay in this world will matter in the world to come, they’ll want to adjust those choices accordingly.

Nevertheless, Reformed epistemology does not regard belief in God as groundless or arbitrary. Plantinga distinguishes between evidence and grounds, the former being what apologists look for in theistic proofs, while the latter is more straightforward. Direct experience provides grounds to justify belief even without argumentation. One’s experience of God appropriately grounds belief in His existence.33 Reformed epistemologists stress the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit as confirming, for example, that the Bible is the reliable revelation from God. Stephen Evans believes that those who dismiss this Reformed approach as fideism (i.e., irrational faith based solely upon personal experience) try to understand it in evidentialist terms.34 He says that it should be understood in externalist terms, which means that the factors that determine whether or not I am justified or warranted in holding my belief do not have to be internal to my consciousness. At bottom the externalist says that what properly “grounds” a belief is the relationship of the believer to reality.35 For Reformed epistemologists such as Evans, the biblical story is self-authenticating in the sense that “through the work of the Spirit the story itself produces a conviction of its truth in persons, and it is in that sense epistemologically basic.”36

After watching how eagerly my Christian friends studied the Bible, I realized I wasn’t going to have what they had unless I took it seriously as well. I saw the hope they derived from its pages and how much reliable guidance it gave them. I saw how much joy they got from applying it, and I realized it was the key

The issue of the Bible’s reliability is crucial. It is via the Scriptures that the church historically has claimed to understand matters of faith and life, from God’s creation of all things out of nothing to the significance of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ to the ultimate consummation of all things toward which history is moving. If the Bible is unreliable in what it teaches about these things, the church is left to speculate and has nothing of value to speak to the world.

If your sensory and rational faculties are not reliable enough to read, interpret, and understand Scripture, they are also not reliable enough to read, interpret, and understand the claims of the Roman apologists or the claims of Rome. You’re told that having an infallible Bible isn’t enough. You’re told that you need Rome in addition to Scripture as an infallible interpreter. But both of those authorities (Scripture and Rome) are exterior to you. If the only means we have to connect to and understand the exterior world (namely, our sensory and rational faculties) are too unreliable for Scripture to be of any use to us, an additional exterior authority isn’t going to help.

I choose to believe the Bible because it is a reliable collection of historical documents written down by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They reported supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and claimed that their writings are divine rather than human in origin.

discover that it is completely reliable, and that the more we study it, the more consistent and reasonable it turns out to be.

The Bible is the unique written Word of God. It is inerrant in its original form and infallible in all of its forms for the purpose of guiding you into a life-saving relationship with God in His kingdom. The Bible contains a body of knowledge without which human beings cannot survive. It reliably fixes the boundaries of everything God will ever say to humankind.

Research for this book has made me aware of aspects of Christianity I find disturbing. During the past several years, rereading the gospels, I was struck by how their vision of supernatural struggle both expresses conflict and raises it to cosmic dimensions. This research, then, reveals certain fault lines in Christian tradition that have allowed for the demonizing of others throughout Christian history—fault lines that go back nearly two thousand years to the origins of the Christian movement. While writing this book I often recalled a saying of Søren Kierkegaard: "An unconscious relationship is more powerful than a conscious one." For nearly two thousand years, for example, many Christians have taken for granted that Jews killed Jesus and the Romans were merely their reluctant agents, and that this implicates not only the perpetrators but (as Matthew insists) all their progeny in evil. Throughout the centuries, countless Christians listening to the gospels absorbed, along with the quite contrary sayings of Jesus, the association between the forces of evil and Jesus’ Jewish enemies. Whether illiterate or sophisticated, those who heard the gospel stories, or saw them illustrated in their churches, generally assumed both their historical accuracy and their religious validity. Especially since the nineteenth century, however, increasing numbers of scholars have applied literary and historical analysis to the gospels—the so-called higher criticism. Their critical analysis indicated that the authors of Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source from which to construct their amplified gospels. Many scholars assumed that Mark was the most historically reliable because it was the simplest in style and was written closer to the time of Jesus than the others were. But historical accuracy may not have been the gospel writers’ first consideration. Further analysis demonstrated how passages from the prophetic writings and the psalms of the Hebrew Bible were woven into the gospel narratives. Barnabas Lindars and others suggested that Christian writers often expanded biblical passages into whole episodes that “proved,” to the satisfaction of many believers, that events predicted by the prophets found their fulfillment in Jesus’ coming.

Politics is not a sacramental vessel that reveals God, nor is the god of America’s civil religion the God of the Bible. The various systems of modern political philosophy have saved no one, but made a lot of people’s lives worse, including women and people who are part of various minority populations. Modern politics is fundamentally intolerant, and reliably produces all kinds of indefensible discriminations and biases. Modern politics demands total acquiescence to the empire’s grand narrative, lived out as ideological lockstep with the micro narrative of one political party or the other.2

Jesus is shown healing the blind in Mark 8:22-26. This episode is especially remarkable in that it has Jesus employ common magical healing techniques ("Here's mud in your eye!"), something Matthew and Luke did not care for and so omitted. Equally notable is the fact that the healed man does not recover his sight all at once. Jesus has to try again before sight is fully restored. Some critics have understood this detail as symbolic of the two stages of the awakening of the disciples' faith. They see the truth clearly enough to heed Jesus' call to follow, and yet they have no understanding of his divine fate till the end. Their spiritual blindness, then, would have cleared up in two stages. If we accept this interpretation, we are pretty much saying Mark created the detail. [...] My guess is that it is a Markan creation, drawing upon magical techniques that were commonenough knowledge in order to make it seem authentic. He thought no more of having Jesus have to try again than he did of having him repent in baptism. His Christology was not "high" enough for any of this to be an embarrassment [...] Matthew would never have created such a story, true, but Mark saw nothing wrong with it.

Because people inhabit a physical world, they need to measure the height, width, length, volume or capacity, and worth of various items within that world. For example, one does not begin construction of a building without knowing its planned width, length, and height. Likewise, those who grow their own food need to know how much grain their family members require and how much seed is likely to produce that amount of food. This reality was just as true for the world of the Bible as it is today. Readers of the biblical text will encounter numerous references to measurements; some are fairly well understood, and some are obscure. Although we cannot be certain about modern equivalencies in every case, the following tables provide reasonably reliable approximations of the most common biblical measurements.

Proverbs 20:4-6 4 Those too lazy to plow in the right season        will have no food at the harvest. 5 Though good advice lies deep within the heart,        a person with understanding will draw it out. 6 Many will say they are loyal friends,        but who can find one who is truly reliable?

The Bible is the only reliable source for these life-interpreting facts.

The Battle for the Bible. In that little book, Lindsell addressed what had become a huge matter of controversy-the truthfulness and reliability of the Scriptures. In the face of myriad arguments against the inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy of the Bible, Lindsell took a stand and declared that the Bible remains trustworthy.

The Battle for the Bible. In that little book, Lindsell addressed what had become a huge matter of controversy-the truthfulness and reliability of the Scriptures. In the face of myriad arguments against the inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy of the Bible, Lindsell took a stand and declared that the Bible remains trustworthy. It was this same desire to stand

Protestant insistence on the written word in the Bible as the only and sufficient Christian authority for faith and practice relies on an impossible anachronism that artificially projects a modern standard of authority and means of knowledge conveyance retrospectively back into a pre-modern reality that operated by different but reliable and legitimate standards.

The fact that God has chosen to speak to us through the Bible means that human language is sufficient, and so it is possible to obtain reliable and detailed information about God from his verbal revelation.

We have to be careful, however, to distinguish between evidence and artifacts. The testimony of an eyewitness can be properly viewed as evidence, but anything added to the account after the fact should be viewed with caution as a possible artifact (something that exists in the text when it shouldn’t). The Gospels claim to be eyewitness accounts, but you may be surprised to find that there are a few added textual artifacts nestled in with the evidential statements. It appears that scribes, in copying the texts over the years, added lines to the narrative that were not there at the time of the original writing. Let me give you an example. Most of us are familiar with the biblical story in the gospel of John in which Jesus was presented with a woman who had been accused of committing adultery (John 8:1–11). The Jewish men who brought the woman to Jesus wanted her to be stoned, but Jesus refused to condemn her and told the men, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” When the men leave, Jesus tells the woman, “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.” This story is one of my favorite passages in all of Scripture. Too bad that it appears to be an artifact. While the story may, in fact, be absolutely true, the earliest copies of John’s gospel recovered over the centuries fail to contain any part of it. The last verse of chapter 7 and the first eleven verses of chapter 8 are missing in the oldest manuscripts available to us. The story doesn’t appear until it is discovered in later copies of John’s gospel, centuries after the life of Jesus on earth. In fact, some ancient biblical manuscripts place it in a different location in John’s gospel. Some ancient copies of the Bible even place it in the gospel of Luke. While there is much about the story that seems consistent with Jesus’s character and teaching, most scholars do not believe it was part of John’s original account. It is a biblical artifact, and it is identified as such in nearly every modern translation of the Bible (where it is typically noted in the margin or bracketed to separate it from the reliable account).

Understanding the Relational Purpose of the Bible Jesus explained the true purpose of Scripture when he answered a question posed to him by an expert in religious law: “‘Which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?’ Jesus replied, ‘You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22:36–39). Jesus first quotes from Deuteronomy 6:5, which was part of the Shema, a liturgical prayer recited by the religious leaders at the beginning and close of every day: “The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!” (Deuteronomy 6:4 NASB). Then he combines the commandment to love God found in Deuteronomy 6 with a command from Leviticus 19:18 to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus told this inquiring Pharisee that the greatest, most important commandments are to love God with everything we have and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. But Jesus didn’t stop there. He followed up with a most profound statement: “The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:40). In other words, all right teaching and all right living hang on the commandments to love God and love one another. Jesus told this religious expert—and all of us—that Scripture was given to lead us into a deeper love relationship with the One who wrote the book, and then also with everyone around us. The Pharisees and other religious leaders seemingly grasped the doctrinal and behavioral purposes of Scripture. What they failed to understand was the connection between right beliefs, right behavior, and right relationships. From what I’ve observed, many people in our day fail to see that connection as well.

Rather than viewing Scripture as a book that merely teaches us how to believe and how to act, Jesus shows us that everything is rooted in how we ought to love. By distilling all the doctrinal and behavioral truths of the Bible down to a simple two-part statement—love God and love each other—the Lord of the universe showed us that the dual boundaries of what we believe and how we behave are intended to be understood and experienced within the framework of deep, loving relationships with him and with one another.

God gave the requirement for the death penalty in Genesis 9:6 at the beginning of human society after the flood, when methods of collecting evidence and the certainty of proof were far less reliable than they are today. Yet God still gave the command to fallible human beings, not requiring that they be omniscient to carry it out, but only expecting that they act responsibly and seek to avoid further injustice as they carried it out. Among the people of Israel, a failure to carry out the death penalty when God had commanded it was to “pollute the land” and “defile” it before God, for justice had not been done (see Num. 35:32–34).

An ardent Jehovah’s Witness once tried to convince me that if there were a God of love, he would certainly provide mankind with a reliable and infallible textbook for the guidance of conduct. I replied that no considerate God would destroy the human mind by making it so rigid and unadaptable as to depend upon one book, the Bible, for all the answers. For the use of words, and thus of a book, is to point beyond themselves to a world of life and experience that is not mere words or even ideas. Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.

The promises of God hold up long after the promises of the world have blown up.

6 Many will say they are loyal friends,        but who can find one who is truly reliable?

When it comes to the voice of God, the Scriptures are in a class all by themselves.17 God is always speaking clearly and reliably there. Want to hear the Spirit? Open your Bible.

Second, be very careful to think about your audience’s premises. Don’t assume, for example, that everyone listening trusts the Bible. So when you make a point from the Bible, it will help to show that some other trusted authority (such as empirical science) agrees with the Bible. Use it to promote trust of the Bible, saying something like, “See, the Bible was telling us centuries ago what science now confirms.” That will help convince your hearers of that point so you can move on. By the end of the sermon, of course, you will be appealing only to God’s Word, but in the early stages of the sermon you invite nonbelievers along by showing respect for their doubts about the Bible’s reliability.

5Then God will establish a royal throne, in loyal love— the One who rules there will be utterly reliable, With absolute integrity under the auspices of David. With a passion for justice, He will be quick to decide and do what is right.

The most reliable way of determining what a word in a dead language means is to see how the word is used in context. Once

If the Bible and other holy books were at all reliable sources of morality, good and bad religious people wouldn’t both be able to point to their holy books as guidance and inspiration to support their positions. If morality is completely separable from religion, we would expect to see exactly what we do - people making their own moral decisions and then ascribing that morality to their particular holy book. They use their scripture as a shield to both defend their actions and to insulate themselves from criticism.

The chronology of John is so totally at odds with that of the Synoptics (not that they always agree among themselves) that we must suppose John's itinerary of Jesus to be governed solely by the theological demands of any particular scene. For example, Matthew, Mark, and Luke have Jesus, by implication, active for about a year's worth of ministry and teaching in Galilee, after which he embarks on the fatal visit to Jerusalem for Passover. But John has Jesus going to Jerusalem and back several times. For Matthew, the Jerusalem crowds on Palm Sunday have to inquire of the Galileans who Jesus is, but John's Jerusalemites know him well enough. And John has Jesus present at three Passover feasts, giving us our traditional estimate of a three-year ministry. But is John just constructing a Passover scene whenever he wants to have Jesus return to Passover themes in his teaching? Likewise, in the Synoptics, the Last Supper takes place on Thursday, the crucifixion on Friday, but not in John, where Jesus must die on Thursday, like the Passover lamb he typologically embodies.

Luke has interspersed with an account of the nativity of John the Baptist (no doubt obtained from the rival sect of John) a parallel nativity of Jesus built on John's model. Not that Luke himself was the one who composed it; it, too, was most likely pre-Lukan material. [...] Though Luke used prior sources, probably in Aramaic, for the nativities of John and Jesus, it appears he himself contributed bits of connective text to bring the two parallel stories into a particular relationship so that John should be subordinated to Jesus, whom Luke makes Jesus' elder cousin. This original, redactional material is Luke 1:36, 39-45, 56. It consists of a visit of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, whereupon the fetus John, already in possession of clairvoyant gifts, leaps in the womb to acknowledge the greater glory of the messianic zygote. All this is blatantly legendary, or there is no such thing as a legend. Luke probably got the idea from Gen. 25:22, where according to the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, Rebecca is painfully pregnant with twins. [...] In this way Luke tries to harmonize the competing traditions of Jesus and John, whose cousinhood is no doubt his own invention.

Matthew has also juggled the most favorable readings from various avail able editions and translations of the Old Testament to arrive at a reading of each prophecy that will best match the "fulfillments"! [...] Matthew quotes the Greek Septuagint translation of Isa. 7:14 ("Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emannuel"), already a complex and redacted passage in Isaiah. In Isaiah's context the oracle evidently means to assure the chicken-hearted King Ahaz that God would intervene on behalf of Judah in a matter of a very few years, no more than required for a child, soon to be conceived, to grow to the age where he can decline baby food he doesn't like. Assyria will by then have wiped the allies Samaria and Syria off the map. Obviously Isaiah cannot have intended this prophecy to predict events in the life of Jesus more than seven centuries later. Matthew cannot have thought that he did. Like the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, he must have imagined the verse contained a hidden message, only newly discernible in light of the advent of Jesus the Messiah. [...] And in this context, it is important to know that the word translated "virgin" in the King James and New International Versions is the Hebrew almah and means the same as the ambiguous word "maiden," not necessarily innocent of sexual intercourse, [...] Matthew, though, chooses to quote not the Hebrew but rather the Septuagint Greek version where the word parthenos is used. This Greek word is usually thought to have the narrower meaning "sexually virginal." Since Matthew seems to want to tell us that Jesus was conceived virginally, miraculously, he prefers using a version of the Bible that seems to contain an appropriate prediction.

As Strauss demonstrated with inescapable lucidity many decades ago, the two nativity stories of Matthew and Luke disagree at almost every point, one exception being the location of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem. [...] Matthew assumes Jesus was born in the home of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem, and that they only relocated to Nazareth in Galilee after taking off for Egypt to avoid Herod the Great's persecution. Luke knows nothing of this but instead presupposes that Mary and Joseph lived in Galilee and "happened" to be in Bethlehem when the hour struck for Jesus' birth because the Holy Couple had to be there to register for a Roman taxation census. [...] For the moment, my point is to suggest that Luke and Matthew both seem to have been winging it, just as they did with their genealogies. They began with an assumption and tried to connect the dots. This time, their common assumption was that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Whence this assumption? Was there historical memory that Jesus was born there? Hardly; if there had been, we cannot account for Mark's utter lack of knowledge of the fact. No, it seems much more natural, much less contrived, to suggest that Matthew and Luke alike simply inferred from their belief in Jesus' Davidic lineage that he must have been born in Bethlehem. [...] Matthew and Luke both placed the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem because they mistakenly thought prophecy demanded it. They went to work trying to connect the dots with narrative or historical verisimilitude, but with limited success.

That is not the only trajectory along which the baptism narrative grew and evolved. The Markan version itself began to afford new embarrassments as Christian history progressed. After all, John's was a baptism for repenting sinners! What on earth was Jesus doing there? [...] Apparently, Mark saw nothing amiss. After all, it is a good thing to repent, isn't it? The same humility that led Jesus to wade into the Jordan that day also bade him deflect the polite flattery of a wellwisher in Mark 10:17-18. "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone!" Needless to say, the thought never entered Mark's head that Jesus might be an incarnation of God. That is a later stage of Christology, and when theologians arrived there, Mark 10:17-18 became a headache for which no cure has yet been found.

The average reader of the New Testament reads Matthew before Mark and then goes on to Luke and John. Matthew gives him the impression that Jesus was born God's Son in a miraculous fashion. Mark begins only with the baptism, but the reader will think little of this: perhaps Mark begins in medias res. With Luke we are back to a miraculous nativity for one born the Son of God. In John the reader learns that Jesus had already been God's Son from all eternity. But suppose one read Mark by itself, as its first readers did. What impression would one receive? Surely in a book where the main character shows up as an adult and, right off the bat, experiences a vision of divine calling in which he and no one else is told that he is God's Son, the natural inference would be that the baptism was the beginning of an honorific Sonship. If he were already God's son, wouldn't he have known it? And then why should God tell him what he already knew? It seems that Mark might believe what others in the early church did, namely, in Jesus' adoptive Sonship. Ebionite Jewish Christians and Cerinthian (also Jewish) Gnostics were adoptionists, rejecting any miraculous generation of Jesus Christ from the deity. [...] Once we know this was a popular, though eventually controversial, option among early Christians, it begins to make a new sense that the earliest gospel, Mark, sounds adoptionist but is flanked and overwhelmed by subsequent gospels that have moved the Sonship further and further back, attributing to Jesus some degree of divine nature in the process.

The Synoptic gospels agree that after being baptized, Jesus was driven by the Spirit, to which he was newly sensitive, out into the desert to be tested or tempted (same Greek word) by Satan. [...] "Satan," originally not a proper name but a title, "the Adversary," was a servant of God, a kind of security chief who occasionally urged the Almighty to take a second look at his favorites about whose character the Satan harbored some doubts. [...] Thus, in the Gospels it seems only natural that Jesus, newly commissioned as God's Son, should be put through his paces by the Satan to determine whether he is really up to the job. That is the point of the taunt, "If you are the Son of God...." Does Jesus understand what that entails? In the same way, Luke will later (22:31-32) portray Satan, again in character, as demanding, as is his right, to sift the twelve disciples like wheat, the same task as the Baptist ascribes to the Coming One, and they fail the test. Peter unwittingly acts the role of the Adversary when he tests Jesus' resolve to go forward with the crucifixion (Mark 8:32-33). Satan becomes the enemy of God and the champion of evil only insofar as he becomes mixed with other ancient characters like Beelzebul the Ekronite oraclegod (Matt. 12:24, 26; 2 Kings 1:2), Leviathan the Chaos Dragon (Ps. 74:13-14; Rev. 12:3 ff.), and Ahriman the Zoroastrian antigod (2 Cor. 4:4; Luke 10:17-19).

As Christians we read Holy Scripture with Christ. He is our guide all the way through it. He indicates to us in reliable fashion what an image is and where the real, enduring content of a biblical expression may be found. At the same time he is freedom from a false slavery to literalism and a guarantee of the solid, realistic truth of the Bible, which does not dissipate into a cloud of pious pleasantries but remains the sure ground upon which we can stand. Our second realization was this: Faith in creation is reasonable.

Mark 9:8, "where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched," comes directly from Isa. 66:24, but whose voice are we listening to in the preceding verses? It might be Jesus, but then again, it might be anybody. Then as now, there were plenty of fire-and-brimstone preachers. And, since the climax of the pericope is a quotation of Isaiah, implying the whole thing is something of a sermonic commentary on it, we must deny it to Jesus. Again, who remembers the great man quoting someone else?

If we are going to interpret the Bible in a way that makes the power of God’s authoritative message consistently and reliably accessible, we should be guided by methods that help us to understand the communication that God gave through the human intermediaries that he chose for the task.

Any time Jesus sounds like a Cynic or Stoic or like Socrates, we may wonder if we have evidence of Gentile Christians coining sayings to distance Jesus from Judaism and thus to legitimate their own preferences. For instance, when Jesus is made to abandon fasting since the kingdom of God has arrived, and one cannot force the new spiritual reality into the outmoded forms of Jewish observance (Mark 2:21-22), we have to wonder: are we seeing here a religious revolutionary breaking with his own culture? Or are we seeing an excuse by Hellenistic Christians for why they do not intend to continue Jewish fasting practices? [...] Surely this is theological propaganda for Gentile Christians repudiating alien Jewish norms. Was Jesus a radical, or has a later faction of his followers rewritten him in their own image? If sayings of Jesus strongly echo Christian belief, practice, or wisdom, we have to wonder if someone is, again, attributing to him what they had come to believe on other grounds, providing a dominical pedigree once debate arose. We will see in the next chapter how this principle disqualifies virtually all the sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of John: they are unparalleled in other gospels, closely paralleled in the Johannine Epistles, and they explicitly state sophisticated Christology that seems to have formed through a complex process of Christian reflection, not just to have dropped from the lips of Jesus himself.

Luke 17:5-6, a Lukan paraphrase of Mark 11:22-24, strikes a surprising note of pessimism: "The apostles said to the Lord, `Increase our faith!' And the Lord said, `If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this sycamine tree, "Be uprooted and planted in the sea!" and it would obey you."' The point is surely that, since such a thing is plainly never going to happen, you can see how little faith any one will ever have. It is like the rhetorical question of Luke 18:8, "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" The same double bind has caught the father of the deaf-mute epileptic in Mark 9:24, "1 believe; help my unbelief!" (How striking that the single most poignant and insightful New Testament statement about faith is made not by the Messiah or an apostle or prophet, but just by ... some guy!)

At first glance the Bible appeared to be a collection of unrelated books of history, poetry, rituals, philosophy, biography, and prophecy held together only by a binder’s stitch and glue. But I only had to read Genesis 11 and 12 to realize that seemingly unrelated and different books of the Bible had a clear plot, a thread that tied together all the books, as well as the Old and the New Testaments. Sin had brought a curse upon all the nations of the earth. God called Abraham to follow him because he wanted to bless all the nations of the earth through Abraham’s descendants.6 It didn’t take long to realize that God’s desire to bless human beings begins in the very first chapter of Genesis and culminates in the last chapter of the last book with a grand vision of healing for all nations.7 The implication was obvious: The Bible was claiming that I should read it because it was written to bless my nation and me. The revelation that God wanted to bless my nation of India amazed me. I realized it was a prediction I could test. It would confirm or deny the Bible’s reliability. If the Bible is God’s word, then had he kept this word? Had he blessed “all the nations of the earth”? Had my country been blessed by the children of Abraham? If so, that would be a good reason for me, an Indian, to check out this book. My investigation of whether God had truly blessed India through the Bible yielded incredible discoveries: the university where I was studying, the municipality and democracy I lived in, the High Court behind my house and the legal system it represented, the modern Hindi that I spoke as my mother tongue, the secular newspaper for which I had begun to write, the army cantonment west of the road I lived on, the botanical garden to the east, the public library near our garden, the railway lines that intersected in my city, the medical system I depended on, the Agricultural Institute across town—all of these came to my city because some people took the Bible seriously.

Our strategic advantage includes two areas. The first, called offensive apologetics, makes a positive case for Christianity by offering reasons that support our view - giving evidence for the existence of God or for the resurrection of Christ or for the inspiration of the Bible, for example. The second area, often called defensive apologetics, answers specific challenges meant to undermine or disprove Christianity - responding to attacks on the authority and historical reliability of the Bible or tackling the problem of evil or addressing the challenge of Darwinian macroevolution, to name a few.

Our strategic advantage includes two areas. The first, called offensive apologetics, makes a positive case for Christianity by offering reasons that support our view - giving evidence for the existence of God or for the resurrection of Christ or for the inspiration of the Bible, for example. The second area, often called defensive apologetics, answers specific challenges meant to undermine or disprove Christianity - responding to attacks on the authority and historical reliability of the Bible or tackling the problem of evil or addressing the challenge of Darwinian macroevolution, to name a few.

for those who are correctly evaluating the evidence, everything in Scripture and everything in nature proves clearly that God exists and that he is the powerful and wise Creator that Scripture describes him to be. Therefore, when we believe that God exists, we are basing our belief not on some blind hope apart from any evidence, but on an overwhelming amount of reliable evidence from God’s words and God’s works.

On the first level we argue to the reliability of the Bible insofar as it is history. From that we conclude that an infallible Church was founded. And then we take the word of that infallible Church that the Bible is inspired.

(in The Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, 1747) argues that the Bible can fruitfully be approached as Hebrew poetry. He points out that the words for poet and prophet are the same in Hebrew; he treats the Old Testament prophets as the poets of their era—and thus made it possible for modern poets to claim the role of prophet for their era. The concept of the modern poet-prophet runs from Lowth to Blake, to Herder, and to Whitman. If we can approach Homeric poetry as Greek religion and Hebrew religion as Jewish poetry, the result is, on one side, skepticism about the historical reliability of either text, but on the other side, the elevation of the poet as the prophet of the present age, the truth teller, the gospel maker, the primary witness for his time and place.

There seems to be a close connection between robust character and the soil, the hills, mountains and valleys, the pure air and sunshine. There is a very appreciable difference between the physical stamina, the brain vigor, the solidity and the reliability of country-bred men and that of those in the city.

These days, the argument goes, we have God’s Word in the Bible, which is far more reliable than all that other whacko stuff.

Looking to the government to define good and evil, what is wise and profitable and what is not, is a bad idea. Civil law is not a reliable indicator of what God approves or of what he disapproves. The Christian is going to have to dig deeper into God's laws to make such judgements.

1. Truth about reality is knowable. 2. The opposite of true is false. 3. It is true that a theistic God exists. 4. If God exists, then miracles are possible. 5. Miracles can be used to confirm a message from God. 6. The New Testament is historically reliable. 7. The New Testament says Jesus claimed to be God. 8. Jesus’ claim to be God was miraculously confirmed: a. He fulfilled numerous prophecies about Himself. b. He lived a sinless and miraculous life. c. He predicted and accomplished His resurrection. 9. Therefore, Jesus is God. 10. Whatever Jesus, who is God, teaches is true. 11. Jesus taught that the Bible is the Word of God. 12. Therefore, it is true that the Bible is the Word of God and anything opposed

Various other solutions to the problem of induction have been offered, but none has been widely accepted and the issue has proven to be an enduring challenge. At the heart of the problem is the fact that only an omniscient being could possess direct and infallible knowledge of the uniformity of nature across space and time. But this insight also suggests a distinctively Christian solution to the problem of induction. According to a Christian worldview, the God revealed in the Bible is a God of order (1 Cor. 14:33) who created the natural world and exercises sovereign control over it (Gen. 1:1; Isa. 42:5; 45:12; 48:13). God knows that nature is uniform precisely because he is the author of nature and continually sustains it (Jer. 31:35–36). Furthermore, God is the creator of human beings, including our cognitive faculties, which allow us to “think God’s thoughts after him.” As such, our inductive inferences are reliable precisely because God has designed them to be reliable. For those who hold to a Christian worldview, with its robust doctrines of creation, providence, and revelation, the problem of induction need be no problem at all.

Reliable friends who do what they say are like cool drinks in sweltering heat—refreshing!

Biblical hope - that confident expectation of a better future - is rooted in the knowledge of God's justice and faithfulness. Because God is the source and champion of justice, and because God is utterly reliable, there is always hope for positive change.

Montaigne was a French courtier who retired from political life in 1571 to sit in a castle tower and reflect on vanity and happiness, on liars and friendship. While he found comfort in this solitude, pain intruded on his contemplation from time to time, thanks to his kidney stones. One day, Montaigne transformed the stones into grist for an essay. “It is likely I inherited the gravel from my father,” Montaigne guessed, “for he died sadly afflicted by a large stone in the bladder.” Yet Montaigne had no idea how one could inherit a disease, as opposed to a crown or a farm. His father had been in perfect health when Montaigne was born, and remained so for another twenty-five years. Only in his late sixties did his kidney stones first appear, and they then tormented him for the last seven years of his life. “While he was still so remote from the disease, how could the light trifle of his substance out of which he built me convey so deep an impress?” Montaigne wondered. “Where could the propensity have been brooding all this while?” Simply musing in this way was a visionary act. No one in Montaigne’s day thought of traits as being distinct things that could travel down through generations. People did not reproduce; they were engendered. Life unfolded as reliably as the rising of bread or the fermenting of wine. Montaigne’s doctors did not picture a propensity lurking in parents and then being reproduced in their children. A trait could not disappear and be rediscovered, like a hidden letter. Doctors did sometimes observe certain diseases that were common in certain families. But they didn’t think very much about why that was so. Many simply turned to the Bible for guidance, citing the passage telling of God “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.

The quiet aisles of the book store, with the almost-vanilla scent of old paper, distanced him from the event on the sidewalk. This was his familiar world, as if all used book stores were actually one enormous magical building that you could enter through different doorways in Long Beach or Portland or Albuquerque. Always, reliably, there were the books with no spines that you had to pull out and identify, and the dust jackets that had to be checked for the dismissive words Book Club Edition, and the poetry section to be scanned for possibly underpriced Nora May French or George Sterling.

The books which were actively excluded (Chapter 11) were in nearly all cases considerably later and less reliable than those that were accepted.

A modern empiricist historian’s response to ancient (especially Israelite) transcendent historiography might be: “It has not provided information that is reliable since it is so full of deity.” The ancient historian’s response to modern empiricist historiography might be: “It has not provided information that is worthwhile since it is so empty of deity.

the bible is not a reliable source of truth.

God has permitted a flood of light to be poured upon the world in both science and art; but when professedly scientific men treat upon these subjects from a merely human point of view, they will assuredly come to wrong conclusions. It may be innocent to speculate beyond what God’s word has revealed, if our theories do not contradict facts found in the Scriptures; but those who leave the word of God, and seek to account for his created works upon scientific principles, are drifting without chart or compass upon an unknown ocean. The greatest minds, if not guided by the word of God in their research, become bewildered in their attempts to trace the relations of science and revelation. Because the Creator and his works are so far beyond their comprehension that they are unable to explain them by natural laws, they regard Bible history as unreliable. Those who doubt the reliability of the records of the Old and New Testaments, will be led to go a step further, and doubt the existence of God; and then, having lost their anchor, they are left to beat about upon the rocks of infidelity.

At Sinai, Israel made a defining choice. It decided to trust the God who made heaven and earth (Exod. 20:11), to rely on the guaranteed reliabilities of the creation, and to eschew the anxiety that comes from loss of confidence in the sureness of the creator and the goodness of creation.