Sin and the Sinner
nature, which in fact are the laws of God. There's no dis-
obedience. If you add water to dirt, you get mud— -just as
you're supposed to. We're also told to consider the ant,
who is diligent where we are slothful. We're told that the
ox knows his cradle and his master's crib, and we don't
even know our Creator. Again and again we find these anal-
ogies drawn from Scripture in which we're actually called
to emulate the elements of nature in their obedience
rather than practice the persistent type of disobedience for
which we are known.
Why does suffering afflict innocent nature? In creation,
when Adam and Eve were created as the federal head of
the human race, God gave them dominion over the entire
earth. The first job or task that was assigned to our original
parents was to name the animals. The very act of naming
was a symbolic indicator of man's authority over the ani-
mal kingdom. There's a sense in which nature is described
in Scripture as that which God has made to serve the
needs of humanity.
In the New Testament Jesus talks about the fact that
every time a sparrow lands, God notices it and his eye is on
it. He is concerned about the animals in this world. Yet
Jesus says, "These things are sold for a farthing," indicating
that we are so much more valuable in God's sight because
man alone is given the stamp of the image of God.
Unfortunately, when we sin, those who are under us suf-
fer the consequences of our fallenness. They suffer inno-
cently, and that's why they groan, waiting for our
redemption. Just as they participate in the consequences of
our fall, so nature will participate in the consequences of
our renewal.
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Faith and Philosophy
But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts,
and always be ready to give a defense to everyone
who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you,
with meekness and fear.
I PETER 3:15
Faith and Philosophy
©uaestioins in Tlhis Sectioin:
Is there a distinction between Christianity and religion?
What type of philosophical developments in today's society should
we, as Christians, be prepared to deal with?
Are other world religions and other philosophies a threat to
Christianity?
What is existentialism, and how should I respond to it?
Could you comment on some of the heresies in the New Age
movement that a Christian should be aware of?
How should Christians respond to the belief in reincarnation?
What is narcissism, and what impact is it having on our society and
the future of our children?
What would you recommend we do about secular humanism?
How are Christians to view the Masons and other fraternal
orders
7
Doesn't science disprove Christianity?
Can something happen by chance7
How can I reason with a friend about the existence of God?
171
How does one convince a nonbeliever that the Bible is the Word
of God?
How do you explain the discrepancies in the Scriptures, such as those
between the four Gospels?
Faith and Philosophy
Is there a distinction between Christianity and religion?
In the first chapter of Romans, the wrath of God is
revealed against distortions of God that culminate in vari-
ous religious practices called idolatry. God is by no means
always pleased with the operations and functions that we
call religion. I would say that Christianity first and fore-
most is not a religion, even though we use that term to
describe it from a sociological perspective.
The term religion describes human practices — practices
of worship, of cultic involvement, of belief in a god, and of
obeying certain rules that come from the god or gods.
There are various kinds of religions in this world.
There is a religious aspect to Christianity. We do wor-
ship, and we are involved in certain human activities, such
as prayer and Bible studies and devotions. Our religious
practices are similar to the practices of other religions. But
Christianity is much more than a religion; it's life.
The very fact that a person is religious does not necessar-
ily mean that he is pleasing God; the primordial sin of man
is idolatry, and idolatry is the worship of something that, in
fact, is not God. The worship of idols involves the practice
of religion. This is exactly what Romans 1 is speaking
about; God is not pleased by any and all types of religious
activity. Our religious activity may at times be insulting to
God. Christianity itself can degenerate into being merely a
religion; that is, it can have the external formal activities
and sociological practices without the substance that moti-
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vates all these things — a profound love and devotion to
God himself and a profound trust in Christ's work.
There have always been philosophical developments
infiltrating our culture, but what type of philosophical
developments should we, as Christians, be prepared to
deal with in our present society?
At any given time in a culture, there are all kinds of philo-
sophical developments or philosophical schools of thought
competing for domination. I once read a scholarly essay
that claimed every culture has to have something that uni-
fies it, some kind of viewpoint that brings it together. And
if you study all of the civilizations of history, you will see
that each one had some dominant philosophical or reli-
gious idea that tied the people together. That unifying con-
cept may be a religious one; it may be a philosophical one;
it may even be a mythology. But there has to be some idea
that ties it all together. Scholars understand that. You have
the endless chicken-and-the-egg debate: Do ideas shape
*
culture and events, or do events produce the idea? I think
we would be very foolish to ignore the obvious impact that
ideas have on the shaping of a culture.
I would say that right now Western civilization is up for
grabs. There is not one dominant philosophy, theology, or
religion that has produced a consensus like we had in the
Middle Ages, with the Judeo-Christian faith dominating
the people's understanding of their world. Now, with
people in great masses turning away from the Judeo-Chris-
tian understanding of man and the world, there have been
all kinds of philosophical schools fighting with each other
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to try to fill the void. It's almost like the situation in the
World Boxing Association, where one association has its
heavyweight champion and another association has its
heavyweight champion. There is no one single heavyweight
champion of the world that everybody recognizes. So now
we have a little pragmatism, a little hedonism, a little exis-
tentialism, competing.
I've been arguing that if there is one overarching con-
cept in our culture, it's what I would call secularism. We
hear that word bandied about in the Christian world with
frankly very little understanding of what it means. The
word secularism as an ism means simple this: This time, this
world, is all there is. There is no eternal dimension. There
is the world as we find it. The world in which we live is the
only environment we will ever inhabit — there is no heaven,
or if there is a heaven, we can't possibly know anything
about it. So the emphasis is on the here and now. That, I
think, is the biggest competitor for the allegiance of
people.
I'm a sophomore in college now, and I'm studying
different world religions and philosophies, and I'm
seeing a lot of my buddies embracing these things. Not
only is it frightening to me to see them taking on these
lines of thought, but I'm wondering, are other world
religions and other philosophies a threat to
Christianity?
Let me say something that may totally offend you or violate
your sensibilities. I don't want to do that, but I recognize
that the world in which we live has certain values and views
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in which all of us have been trained. The nineteenth cen-
tury was a time of unparalleled study in world religion. As
the world became smaller and more cultures were rubbing
up against each other, we saw that it was necessary for
people of different religions to get along peacefully rather
than spilling blood all over the world through religious
wars and quarrels. The world had had enough of that. So
the attempt in the nineteenth century was to try to study
all the different world religions and to penetrate to the
essence of what they had in common. This whole science
of comparative religion emerged and with it the very
famous mountain analogy — that God is at the top of the
mountain and that there are different kinds of paths that
lead up the mountain. You know, some go a direct route,
others by more circuitous routes. But all of these roads
ultimately get to the same place, so it really doesn't matter
which road you travel. Let me just say that if that's true,
then I don't think Christianity is one of those roads
because Jesus says that it matters profoundly which road
you're on. The New Testament is on a collision course with
those who say it doesn't matter which road you're on.
God was furious with Aaron and the children of Israel
for embracing the golden calf. The principle in the Old
Testament was exclusive loyalty and devotion to the God of
Israel, and there was to be no syncretism, no mixing of the
elements of the faith of Israel with pagan religions, with
those who followed Baal or the Philistine religion or what-
ever. But the world doesn't take the purity of religious faith
very seriously. One of the traditions of Islam is that it is
virtuous for a zealous Muslim to kill an infidel. That's radi-
cally different from the teaching ofJesus. I've had people
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Faith and Philosophy
come to me and say there's no real great difference be-
tween Islam and Christianity. When people say that, it
indicates to me that they either don't know anything about
Christianity or they don't know anything about Islam. Just
a cursory examination of these religions shows that they
are radically different at important points.
Am I alarmed and concerned about this pluralistic at-
mosphere that's prevailing in our culture? Very much so.
Other philosophies certainly can be a threat to faith when
they prevent people from seeing the truth clearly. But that
happens when we don't believe that the content of religion
is important.
What is existentialism, and how should I respond to it?
Sometimes we underestimate the power of human ideas. We
tend to neglect the ivory-tower scholars who give their lives
to thinking through weighty questions of philosophy, and
we say, "What does that have to do with the practical world I
live in?" I don't know of any philosophy in history, with the
possible exception of Marxism, that has had such a radical
impact, so widely and quickly, on the shaping of human cul-
ture as has the philosophy of existentialism. Existentialism
contains many variations. Its general theme focuses concern
on human existence. That's why its called existentialism.
This philosophy is built primarily upon the question,
What does it mean to exist as a person in this world? Exis-
tentialism, in focusing on the predicament of a human
being, tends to be pessimistic and atheistic, although there
are religious forms of existentialism and more optimistic
forms of existentialism. But the bottom line is this: Existen-
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tialism tends to see man in a mood or an atmosphere of
despair.
Two of the great contributors to twentieth-century exis-
tentialism were Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. They
responded to the Holocaust of World War II, and their
ideas were ones of great despair. For example, they came
to the conclusion that man in his existence is a useless pas-
sion and that human life ultimately is meaningless and
insignificant. In this view, with respect to the things of
God, the idea is that in heaven there is nobody home.
A couple of decades ago, the Greenwich Village advo-
cate of existentialism made this quip to a reporter for Time
magazine: "Hey, man, I looked God up in the Yellow Pages,
but he wasn't listed." The idea is that there is no one home
in the universe and we are left here in our existence in an
atmosphere of ultimate despair.
How shall we respond to existentialism? One thing for
which I'm grateful is that existentialism produces tremen-
dously fertile ground for the preaching of Christianity
because Christianity is so optimistic. We believe that human
existence is meaningful and that it is ultimately meaningful
because Christ has defined the significance of our existence.
So, the answer to how we should respond to existentialism is
simply counter it with the hope of the gospel.
Could you comment on some of the heresies in the New
Age movement that a Christian should be aware of?
First of all, let me say that the New Age movement, like any
broad-based movement, has various dimensions to it. I'll
restrict my remarks to one element.
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One of the most troublesome views of the world that we
find in the New Age movement is the focus of attention on
man's ability to have virtually a magical power over his own
environment. Not long ago I was at the golf course, and my
golf instructor asked me, "R. C, when you hit your wedge
shot around the green, what are your swing keys? What are
you thinking about when you hit it?" I said, "I don't have
any swing keys; I don't have any mechanics that I think
about in terms of where my hands and wrists are and all
that. All I do is go through the same process. Before I hit
the shot I visualize in my mind's eye the flight pattern that
I want the ball to take, and then I sort of send that message
to my body from my mind, and then try to duplicate the
feeling that I've just experienced in hitting the shot."
Now, that can sound very much like New Age-type think-
ing — almost a mind-over-matter type of thing. Almost any
heresy is one that takes a truth to an extreme, to a point of
distortion. It is true that our mental attitude has a tremen-
dous influence on how we experience life. And it is true
that Jack Nicklaus experiences shots before he hits them
because all he's trying to do is program his body to a good
positive image of recollection from shots that he has hit in
the past.
But that's not the same thing as thinking that if I think
about money I'm going to get rich, or if I focus my atten-
tion on some object, I'm going to be able to move it by the
power of my mind alone. We Christians have to be very
careful to understand that Christianity promises the power
and the presence of God the Holy Spirit, but no magic.
There's a sharp line in Scripture between spiritual reality
and wizardry. And in the Old Testament, all forms of
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magic and wizardry were capital abominations to the char-
acter of God. The New Age movement incorporates reli-
gious elements and Eastern mystical elements in a sort of
blend of spiritual truth with a whole lot of magic. I've seen
it invade the evangelical world to the point that I'm very
much alarmed by it.
How should Christians respond to the belief in
reincarnation?
There have been far more formidable advocates of reincar-
nation in the history of the world than Shirley MacLaine
and other recent converts to this belief. For example, the
philosopher Plato, after studying with the Pythagorean
school of philosophers, was persuaded of the truth of what
he called the "transmigration of the soul." There are East-
ern religions that have a tremendous commitment to and
belief in the reincarnation of the soul. This view is not part
of orthodox Christian faith.
The Christian faith teaches that it is "appointed for man
to die once, but after this the judgment" (Heb. 9:27). The
concept of reincarnation generally carries with it some
notion ofjustification by works; that is, you have to earn
your reward to a higher level in your next incarnation
before you can finally break out of that and into a spiritual
world. Usually the idea is that as you work your way up the
ladder, if you're good enough, you'll be free from an incar-
nation with a body. Christianity believes in a resurrection
of the body, so we're not looking for an ultimately pure
soul-like existence without a body.
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What is narcissism, and what impact is it having on our
society and the future of our children?
The concept of narcissism has its roots in ancient mythol-
ogy. Narcissus was simply a youth, not a minor deity. He
spurned Echo the nymph's love. His pining for his own
image was the punishment of the gods.
This derivation of his name has now been used to
describe a certain syndrome — a cultic mentality of self-love
present in our nation today. We've had unprecedented
numbers of books on self-improvement to treat a great con-
cern for self-esteem and self-image. Some people are con-
cerned that this internal introspection and preoccupation
with our self-esteem is going to end in distortions of
human personality whereby we become so enamored with
our own images and so much in love with ourselves that we
can't really develop community and relate to other people.
People, seeing such pride, will say about us, "There but for
the grace of God goes God."
If you look at the history of theoretical thought in West-
ern civilization and philosophy, you will see that different
subjects attracted the major concern of society's thinkers.
The early philosophers were concerned about epistemol-
ogy, the science of knowing. Philosophy of history was a
dominant motif in the nineteenth century. But overwhelm-
ingly the central motif of contemporary academic and
speculative investigation is, What is the meaning of man?
There's a reason for that. We are in a crisis because God is
no longer at the center of our thinking. If it's true (as
Christianity says it is) that man is created in the image of
God, that means that I can't really understand who I am or
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what I am apart from a prior understanding of the charac-
ter of God. If God is eclipsed in my thinking, then I'm left
with the question Who am I? If people are telling me that I
emerged from the slime and I'm destined for nothingness,
then if I'm thinking at all, I'm going to have a crisis of iden-
tity, and I'm going to read every book that I can on self-
esteem and dignity and all the rest. That's what people are
afraid of, that this preoccupation will end in a narcissistic
complex. I don't think that's our problem. I don't think
people are really falling in love with themselves and their
own images. I think they're feeling the weight of the loss of
God in their lives.
Do you feel that secular humanism is a real threat to
Christianity? How do we deal with it in regard to our
public school system?
I'm not sure how much of a threat it is, but certainly it
competes with Christianity for the minds and hearts of
people. Secular humanism as a worldview is on a collision
course with the value system and beliefs of Christianity.
These two views take radically different positions concern-
ing how God relates to the world and to us.
I'm constantly trying to remind my Christian brothers
that our forefathers, in the writing of the Constitution of
the United States of America, agreed to live side by side in
agreeing to disagree with unbelievers about matters like
this. Christian and non-Christian share the protection of
the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment guarantees us as
Christians the right to the free expression of our faith. It
also guarantees to the non-Christian protection from those
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Christians who would seek to establish Christianity as the
legal religious faith of the United States of America. We
agreed constitutionally not to establish a state religion.
So when we as Christians try to use the courts to insist
that Christian literature be taught in the public school sys-
tem, I think we're violating the First Amendment, just as
we feel some of our rights are being violated on certain
occasions by some of the recent practices in legislation in
this country. Incidentally, for the most part, those who
have sought to have Creation taught in the public school
system do it on the plea that Creation is the authentic sci-
entific explanation for the origin of the universe and not
that it's uniquely Christian. Yet it's certainly perceived as
an attempt to Christianize the school system.
But what about taking "offensive" textbooks out of the
public school system? This question brings into sharp focus
an issue we've been wrestling with in this country for the
last thirty years: What philosophical position does the pub-
lic school system take in its instruction?
The Supreme Court ruled that humanism is a religion,
and it also said that it's wrong to teach religion in the pub-
lic schools. The problem is, anything that is taught in the
public schools could be construed as a religion. Many
people walk around entertaining the myth that somehow
you can have a neutral worldview taught in a public school
system. There's never been such a thing as value-neutral
education. The irony is that the bottom-line question,
given the struggle we're in, is whether or not it's possible
to have a public school system within the bounds of the
Constitution. That's the struggle, but we need to be careful
not to try to use the law to force our faith on nonbelievers.
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How are Christians to view the Masons and other
fraternal orders?
My father, my grandfather, my uncle, and my father-in-law
were all Masons. I'm a little distressed by all of the conflict
that seems to be going on now about the Masons and
other fraternal organizations. The controversy calls for
some explanation.
First of all, there are different kinds of fraternal organiza-
tions, some of which are strictly social. There's nothing
wrong with people getting together for social reasons. We
call it fellowship in the church, and we recognize that it's a
very important part of our humanity. Other fraternal orga-
nizations are banded together for the express purpose of
being service organizations to alleviate suffering, helping
the blind and orphans, for example. They engage in
humanitarian activities. How should a Christian respond to
that? I think with as much cooperation as possible. I can't
imagine why a Christian would object to that.
You can run into problems with some of the organiza-
tions because their historical origins have strong religious
overtones, having spelled-out creeds and ceremonies.
What happens when a Christian joins an organization that
has a creed that isn't altogether compatible with his own
Christian beliefs? Then he has obvious conflict. That con-
flict can be very difficult for other people to understand.
For example, in America there is this eclectic, pluralistic
view that says it doesn't matter what you believe just as long
as you're sincere. Some of these groups have creeds that
say there's no difference ultimately between Christianity
and Islam or other religions. That's offensive to a Christian
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because there are significant differences between these
religions, the main difference being their view of Christ.
We're devoted to Christ. We're convinced that he's the
only begotten Son of God. So if I confess on Sunday morn-
ing that Christ is the only begotten Son of God and at a fra-
ternal order meeting another time confess something to
the contrary, I have a conflict in my religious profession of
faith. People who are sensitive to that have great struggles.
To be fair to other people, some say that it's just part of
the ritual and the ceremony, that it really doesn't touch on
the essence of what the club is about. I think people are
very sincere when they say that. Christians have to be care-
ful to listen to that and say that the reason these people
are involved in the order is not because they're trying to
make it a substitute religion. These organizations have
creeds, and people are required to recite them, and
whether they want it to be a religious activity or not, it is
still a religious activity that puts pressure on people who
have a different religious persuasion.
Doesn't science disprove Christianity?
There have been obvious conflicts between the scientific
community and the religious community over certain
points. Of course, the most notable dispute historically was
the embarrassing episode of Galileo and the whole theory
of whether the earth or the sun was the center of the solar
system. We know that many bishops refused to even look at
the evidence of a telescope because they had already bap-
tized another scientific tradition that wasn't biblical. This
was a case, incidentally, in which the scientific community
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corrected theological interpretation and misinterpretation
of Scripture because Scripture doesn't teach that the earth
is the center of the solar system, and it took the scientific
community to correct us at that point.
To go further than that and to say that sometimes sci-
ence corrects erroneous ideas is one thing, but actually to
disprove Christianity . . . there are very few points of the
Christian faith that are vulnerable to scientific attack. If a
person says, "Well, we can scientifically prove that people
can't come back from the dead," for example, and if sci-
ence could prove that it's impossible for the God of the
universe to raise his Son from the dead, then obviously
Christianity would be discredited and disproved. I don't
see how a scientist could even begin to approach that. All
a scientist can do is to say that, under normal conditions
and standard procedures, people who die stay dead. Of
course, it doesn't take a twentieth-century scientist to un-
derstand that; first-century people were well aware of the
fact that when people died, they stayed dead. So unless the
scientist could somehow disprove the existence of God or
the resurrection of Christ, I don't see how they could in
any way actually falsify the claims of the Christian faith. Just
because they're not falsified doesn't mean that they're veri-
fied obviously. But I don't see how we have anything to fear
at that level.
The usual point of tension, however, has to do with the
origin of the universe and the origin of life. If science
proves that the world was not created, I think that would
destroy the Christian faith. Christianity is committed to the
concept of divine creation — that there is an eternal Cre-
ator before whom we are all responsible and by whom we
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were all created and that all that is made has been made
through him and that the universe is not eternal. If the
scientist could prove that the universe were in fact eternal,
that would be the end of the Christian faith. But I don't
think we have the slightest need to worry about that.
Can something happen by chance?
What are the chances of something happening by chance?
My answer to that question is, "Not a chance." Nothing hap-
pens by chance. If we mean by that that chance can cause
things, it is utterly impossible scientifically, rationally, and
theologically for anything to be caused by chance.
Why would I make a statement like that? It seems so radi-
cal and in fact even bombastic to declare that nothing could
possibly take place by chance. The reason I say it is this:
Chance is not a thing. The word chance is merely a word we
use to describe mathematical possibilities. We say that a
coin flips in the air — we don't know whether it's going to
turn up heads or tails, but we say the chances are fifty-fifty
that it'll turn up heads. But chance doesn't have anything
to do with its turning up heads or tails. Chance has no
power to influence anything — it has no power to do any-
thing. Because chance is not a thing. It is nothing. For
something to have power or influence, it must first be
before it can do. But chance is not an entity. It has no
power, and it can do nothing because it is nothing.
The other side of that question is, Do things that take
place in this world ultimately happen accidentally? Well, we
have to understand that for everything that takes place
there is a cause. Some scientists are baffled by experiments
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of subatomic particles involving what's called in sophisti-
cated circles the Heisenberg uncertainty principle or the
indeterminacy principle. Certain studies show that we have
no idea why these subatomic particles behave the way they
do. Some have jumped to the conclusion that because we
don't know why these particles behave the way they do, noth-
ing is causing them to behave the way they are behaving.
How much knowledge would we have to have before we
could say that nothing is producing an observable effect?
We would have to exhaust every nook and cranny of the
universe and then do it again to make sure we didn't miss
the culprit the first time.
Assuming that I have a good relationship with a friend
who really doesn't believe in God, how can I reason
with him about the existence of God?
We're living in a day during which reason itself is suspect
among Christians, and somehow it is more admirable sim-
ply to affirm our faith and ask people to take what we tell
them strictly on blind faith. Yet the Bible tells us, "Come
now, let us reason together" (Isa. 1:18), and the Scriptures
enjoin us to be prepared to give a reason for the hope
within us (1 Pet. 3:15).
I remember that in grade school sometimes we could
have open-book tests in math class. The advantage of it was
that we could flip to the back of the book, where they had
the answers to the problems. If we didn't know how to get
the right answer, at least we knew what the right answer
was. There's sort of a "back of the book" way that we can
approach our friends on the existence of God.
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The apostle Paul tells us in Romans 1 that God has
revealed himself to every human being and that every per-
son knows that there is a God. The judgment of God is not
that people fail to come to a knowledge of God, but rather
that they refuse to acknowledge what they know to be true.
If that's true, then we come into the discussion armed with
the information — means by which the person already
knows that there is a God, although he or she is not yet ac-
knowledging that. Now, what can we do? Can we just say,
"You're a dirty liar. Why don't you tell the truth and tell
us that you really know there is a God?" That's not the
approach I suggest. Sometimes this knowledge of God is so
repressed or stifled that people have only a vague comprehen-
sion about the character or existence of God. And many of
the questions they ask are honest questions.
It's important that we respect people's questions. The
late Francis Schaeffer had a ministry at L'Abri in Switzer-
land, where he specialized in outreach to intellectuals who
were professed atheists. He felt that it was his obligation to
give honest answers to honest questions. When we discuss
questions like the existence of God, we need to be pre-
pared to explain why we are persuaded that God exists.
I don't have time right now to go over the cosmological
argument for the existence of God, but I think it's valid.
Briefly, if something exists now, something has always
existed from all eternity or there would be nothing. Some-
how, somewhere, someone or something must have the
power of being within himself, and that one who has the
power of being within himself we call God. That's how I
would start the discussion: "How has this world come into
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being? How has this cup come into being? How has any-
thing come into being?" and then focus attention there.
How does one convince a nonbeliever that the Bible is
the Word of God?
Before I try to answer that question directly, let me make a
distinction that is important at the outset. There's a differ-
ence between objective proof and the persuasion or convic-
tion that follows. John Calvin argued that the Bible carries
both persuasion and conviction in terms of its internal testi-
mony — the marks of truth that could be found just by an
examination of the book itself — as well as external evi-
dences that would corroborate that substantial evidence to
give solid proof for its being the Word of God.
Yet the last thing people would want is a book telling
them they are in desperate need of repentance and of a
changed life and of bowing in humility before Christ. We
don't want that book to be the truth. Calvin claimed that
there is a tremendous bias and prejudice built into the
human heart that only the influence of God the Holy
Spirit can overcome. Calvin distinguished between what he
called the undicia — those objective evidences for the trust-
worthiness of Scripture — and what he called the internal
testimony of the Holy Spirit, which is necessary to cause us
to surrender to the evidence and acknowledge that it is the
Word of God.
But I think this is a critical issue upon which so much of
the Christian faith depends. The Bible makes the claim
that it is the unvarnished Word of God, that it is the truth
of God, that it comes from him. God is its ultimate author
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and source, though indeed he used human authors to com-
municate that message.
In speaking with people about this, we have to go
through the laborious process of showing first of all that
the Bible as a collection of historical documents is basically
reliable. The same tests that we would apply to Herodotus
or Suetonius or any other ancient historian would have to
be applied to the biblical records. The Christian should
not be afraid to apply those kinds of historical standards of
credibility to the Scriptures, because they have withstood a
tremendous amount of criticism from that standpoint, and
their credibility remains intact. On the basis of that, we
come to an idea. If the book is basically reliable, it doesn't
have to be inerrent or infallible; it gives us a basically reli-
able portrait ofJesus of Nazareth and what he taught.
We move from there in linear fashion. If we can on the
basis of general reliability come to the conclusion thatJesus
Christ did the things that history claims he did, it would indi-
cate that Jesus is more than an ordinary human being and
that his testimony would be compelling. I would move first
to a study of the person ofJesus and then ask the question,
what did Jesus teach about Scripture? For me, in the final
analysis, our doctrine of Scripture is drawn from the teach-
ing ofJesus and from our understanding of who he is.
How do you explain discrepancies in the Scriptures-
such as those between the four Gospels—in light of
scriptural inerrancy?
Much of the debate on the integrity of the Scriptures
focuses specifically on those problems. When you have par-
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allel accounts of something, you expect them to be consis-
tent, particularly if you're maintaining that these accounts
are inspired by God the Holy Spirit. We know that God
may use different authors to record the same or similar
events, and the authors can describe the event from their
perspective, with their respective languages and literary
styles. But still we would expect agreement in the sub-
stance of what is being taught if all accounts are speaking
under the superintendence of God the Holy Spirit.
That's why it's interesting to me that very early in church
history there were attempts to write harmonies of the Gos-
pels. There are three synoptic Gospels — Matthew, Mark,
and Luke — which give a biographical sketch of the life and
ministry ofJesus. Many events are parallel among those
three authors, though they don't always agree in each
detail — how many angels were at the tomb on the day of
resurrection, what the sign on the cross said, what day of
the weekJesus and the disciples celebrated the Passover
celebration in the upper room, and so forth.
Those things have received a tremendous amount of
careful attention by biblical scholars, some coming to the
conclusion that there is no way to harmonize them and
that we just have to accept that there are contradictions
among the biblical writers, which would then seem to fal-
sify any claim to divine inspiration. Others have felt that
they indeed can be reconciled. For example, one Gospel
writer tells us that there were two angels at the tomb on
the day of the Resurrection, and another mentions only
one. Now the critical word that's absent from the text is
the word "only. " If one writer says there were two angels at
the tomb and the other one comes along and says there
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