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All Scripture is given by inspiration of God,
and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction,
for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God
may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 TIMOTHY 3:16-17
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%a@§ti©in§ iim 1M§ Sections:
How do you know the Bible is true?
How were the books of the Bible selected and compiled?
What was the process the church councils went through in deciding
what manuscripts would be included in the Bible? What criteria did
they use in deciding which books to put into the Canon?
We talk of the Bible as being the inspired Word of God. Would the
men who chose the books to be included in the Bible also have been
inspired by God?
How does the resurrection of Jesus validate the authority of the New
Testament Scriptures?
How can we know that the Bible is the true Word of God after so
many interpretations?
Why do Christians—people filled with the Spirit of truth—disagree
about what the Bible says?
There are so many different interpretations of what the Bible is
saying. How do I know which one is right?
When I discuss biblical concepts with my friends, I'm often met with
the reply "That's your interpretation." How should I respond?
I recently obtained a Living Bible arranged for daily Bible readings.
Do we need to be wary of this version?
Does the Bible claim authority over the life of a believer?
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Does the Bible claim authority over the life of an unbeliever?
What can a Christian learn from the Old Testament? Is it as pertinent
to my growth as the New Testament is?
How does the Old Testament apply to Christians today?
What should Christians think about evolution?
Does the Bible tell us how old the earth is?
As a Christian educator, what are some of your frustrations in your
efforts to teach the Word?
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How do you know the Bible is true?
That's an excellent question because so much is at stake in
the Christian faith in terms of the truthfulness of Scrip-
ture. The Bible is our primary source of information about
Jesus and about all of those things we embrace as elements
of our faith. Of course, if the Bible isn't true, then profess-
ing Christians are in serious trouble. I believe the Bible is
true. I believe it is the Word of God. As Jesus himself
declared of the Scripture, "Your word is truth." But why am
I persuaded that the Bible is the truth?
We need to ask a broader question first. How do we know
that anything is true? We're asking a technical question in
epistemology. How do we test claims of truth? There is a
certain kind of truth that we test through observation,
experimentation, eyewitness, examination, and scientific
evidence. As far as the history ofJesus is concerned, as far as
we know any history, we want to check the stories of Scrip-
ture using those means by which historical evidence can be
tested — through archaeology, for example. There are cer-
tain elements of the Scripture, such as historical claims, that
are to be measured by the common standards of histori-
ography. I invite people to do that — to check it out.
Second, we want to test the claims of truth through the
test of rationality. Is it logically consistent, or does it speak
with a "forked tongue"? We examine the content of Scrip-
ture to see if it is coherent. That's another test of truth.
One of the most astonishing things, of course, is that the
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Bible has literally thousands of testable historical prophe-
cies, cases in which events were clearly foretold, and both
the foretelling and the fulfillment are a matter of historical
record. The very dimension of the sheer fulfillment of
prophecy of the Old Testament Scriptures should be
enough to convince anyone that we are dealing with a
supernatural piece of literature.
Of course, some theologians have said that with all of
the evidence there is that Scripture is true, we can truly
embrace it only with the Holy Spirit working in us to over-
come our biases and prejudices against Scripture, against
God. In theology, this is called the internal testimony of
the Holy Spirit. I want to stress at this point that when the
Holy Spirit helps me to see the truth of Scripture and to
embrace the truth of Scripture, it's not because the Holy
Spirit is giving me some special insight that he doesn't give
to somebody else or is giving me special information that
nobody else can have. All the Holy Spirit does is change
my heart, change my disposition toward the evidence that
is already there. I think that God himself has planted
within the Scriptures an internal consistency that bears
witness that this is his Word.
How were the books of the Bible selected and
compiled, and how were the decisions made as to
what would be distributed as the Word of God?
Even though we think of the Bible as being one book, it's
actually a collection of sixty-six books, and we realize that
there was a historical process by which those particular
books were gathered together and placed in one volume
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that we now know as the Bible. In fact, we call the Bible the
canon of sacred Scripture. Canon is taken from the Greek
word canon, which means "measuring rod." That means it
is the standard of truth by which all other truth is to be
judged in the Christian life.
There have been many different theories set forth over
the history of the church as to exactly how God's hand was
involved in this selection process. Skeptics have pointed
out that over three thousand books were candidates for
inclusion in the New Testament canon alone, and only a
handful (twenty-some books) were selected. Doesn't that
raise some serious questions? Isn't it possible that certain
books that are in the Bible should not be there and others
that were excluded by human evaluation and human judg-
ment should have been included? We need to keep in
mind, however, that of those not included in the last analy-
sis, there were at the most three or four that were given
serious consideration. So to speak in terms of two or three
thousand being boiled down to twenty-seven or something
like that is a distortion of historical reality.
Some people take the position that the church is a
higher authority than the Bible because the only reason
the Bible has any authority is that the church declared
what books the Bible would contain. Most Protestants,
however, take a different view of the matter and point out
that when the decision was made as to what books were
canonical, they used the Latin term recipemus, which means
"we receive." What the church said is that we receive these
particular books as being canonical, as being apostolic in
authority and in origin, and therefore we submit to their
authority. It's one thing to make something authoritative,
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and it's another thing to recognize something that already
is authoritative. Those human decisions did not make
something that was not authoritative suddenly authorita-
tive, but rather the church was bowing, acquiescing to that
which they recognized to be sacred Scripture. We cannot
avoid the reality that though God's invisible hand of provi-
dence was certainly at work in the process, there was a his-
torical sifting process and human judgments were made
that could have been mistaken. But I don't think this was
the case.
What was the process the church councils went
through in deciding which manuscripts would be
included in the Bible?
The church met in various historic councils, in which the
representatives of the church examined the documents that
were up for possible inclusion. I might mention that a few of
those that were not to be included involved one of the early
letters of Clement of Rome, who was the bishop of Rome
around a.d. 95. One of the reasons Clement's letter was not
included in the Canon was that Clement, in his own writing,
acknowledged the superiority of the apostles' writings.
By what criteria did the church councils evaluate those
candidates for admission into the church canon? One was
apostolic origin; that is, if it could be shown that a book
was written by an apostle ofJesus Christ, that book was
accepted into the Canon. For example, we see that the
Gospel of Matthew was written by one of the twelve disci-
ples and a member of the apostolic body, so his book was
accepted as canonical from the very beginning. It didn't
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take until the final council at the end of the fourth century
for Matthew to be included. It was there from day one.
You also have books like Mark. Mark was not an apostle,
but Mark was the writer for Peter, and we know that
Peter's authority stood behind Mark, so Mark's Gospel was
accepted very early in the Christian church. Paul's letters
were accepted from the very beginning; even Peter's let-
ters call Paul's letters "scripture."
Another criterion was a book's acceptance in the early
church community. Also required was conformity with that
core of books about which there was never any doubt. The
handful of books that were debated went against what was
already clearly established as Scripture.
We talk of the Bible as being the inspired Word of God.
Would the men who chose the books to be included in
the Bible also have been inspired by God?
This is one important point of dispute between historic
Roman Catholic theology and classical Protestant theology.
The Roman Catholic Church has gone on record, particu-
larly at the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, to
declare that not only were the individual authors inspired
in the writing of the individual books but that the church
operated and functioned infallibly in the sifting and sort-
ing process by which the canon of the New Testament, for
example, was established.
To put it briefly, Rome believes that the New Testament
is an infallible collection of infallible books. That's one
perspective. Modern critical scholarship, which rejects the
infallibility of the individual volumes of Scripture and like-
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wise the whole of Scripture, would say that the canon of
Scripture is a fallible collection of fallible books.
The historic Protestant position shared by Lutherans,
Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and so on, has
been that the canon of Scripture is a fallible collection of
infallible books. This is the reasoning: At the time of the
Reformation, one of the most important issues in the six-
teenth century was the issue of authority. We've seen the
central issue ofjustification by faith alone, which was cap-
tured by the slogan the Reformers used: sola fide, "by faith
alone [we are justified]. "Also there was the issue of author-
ity, and the principle that emerged among Protestants was
that of sola scriptura, which means that Scripture alone has
the authority to bind our conscience. Scripture alone is
infallible because God is infallible. The church receives the
Scripture as God's Word, and the church is not infallible.
That is the view of all Protestant churches.
The church has a rich tradition, and we respect the
church fathers and even our creed. However, we grant the
possibility that they may err at various points; we don't
believe in the infallibility of the church. I will say that there
are some Protestants who believe that there was a special
work of divine providence and a special work of the Holy
Spirit that protected the Canon and the sorting process
from mistakes. I don't hold that position myself. I think it's
possible that wrong books could have been selected, but I
don't believe for a minute that that's the case. I think that
the task the church faced and did was remarkably well
done and that we have every book that should be in the
New Testament.
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How does the resurrection ofJesus validate the
authority of the New Testament Scriptures?
The only way that the resurrection ofJesus can validate the
authority of the New Testament Scriptures is indirectly.
Some New Testament authors claim that what they are writ-
ing is not composed out of their own insight, but is actually
written under the supervision and superintendence of the
Holy Spirit. That is a radical claim to truth that requires
some form of verification for most people.
The only way the Resurrection would verify the
Scriptures is this: The Resurrection validates Jesus. The Res-
urrection, as the New Testament claims, shows Jesus as one
who does miracles and is seen to be vindicated as an agent
of revelation by the very fact that God gives him the power
to perform these miracles.
For example, Nicodemus came to Jesus and said,
"Teacher, we know that you are a teacher sent from God or
you would not be able to do these miracles." Nicodemus
was thinking soundly at that point. His line of reasoning
went like this: He couldn't conceive of God granting the
power to perform bona fide miracles to a false prophet.
The very presence of miracles indicated the authorization
of what we would call the credit of the proposer. It showed
God's endorsement of this particular teacher.
No higher endorsement could have been given than
that Jesus was raised from the dead and vindicated and
shown to be the Son of God, whom he claimed to be
fulfilling the very predictions he had made. In Acts, Paul
makes the statement that God has proven Jesus to be the
Christ through the Resurrection. What does that have to
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do with the Scripture? If indeed Christ is proven by resur-
rection to be the Son of God and then we discover that
Christ, who is the Son of God, a prophet of God, a true
teacher verified through the miracle, teaches that the
Bible is the Word of God, then his verification of the Bible
is what verifies the claims of the apostles.
The only way we know of the resurrection ofJesus is
through the Bible. If the resurrection ofJesus proves Jesus,
and Jesus proves the Bible, how do we get to the resurrec-
tion ofJesus except through the Bible? We don't have to
have an inspired Bible to be persuaded of the evidence of
the historical activity of the Resurrection. I don't believe in
the Resurrection because an infallible Bible tells me about
a resurrection. I believe that the Bible is infallible because
the Resurrection authenticates Jesus as an infallible source
about the Bible.
How can we know that the Bible is the true Word of
God after so many interpretations?
The multiplicity and variety and even contradictory inter-
pretations of Scripture really have little or nothing to do
with the question of its origin. Let me give you an analogy.
We've seen all kinds of interpretations of the United
States Constitution, but even though political parties and
different judges have different views of what the Constitu-
tion says and means, and what it intended, none of that
difference of opinion casts a shadow on the source of the
Constitution. We know who wrote the Constitution. We
know where it came from and what it is.
People get dismayed by the differences of opinion as to
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what the Bible teaches. If we establish that the Bible is the
Word of God, only half the battle is over. The next thing
we have to figure out is, What does it say? Can we agree on
what it teaches? The assumption is, if I can convince you
that what I think the Bible teaches is in fact what the Bible
teaches, and you agree, then you will change your view
because you believe that that is the Word of God.
Many people are troubled by the fact that the Bible has
been interpreted in so many ways and, as a result, have
fallen into a view of relativism, which completely destroys
the real significance of Scripture. It may be extremely diffi-
cult for us to find the proper interpretation, and we may
be discouraged by all the disagreement about it, but part
of the reason we fight so much among ourselves on mat-
ters of biblical interpretation is that we all agree that it's
crucial to understand the Word of God correctly.
Why do Christians—people filled with the Spirit of
truth—disagree about what the Bible says?
In an earlier book I wrote titled Psychology ofAtheism (later
released under the title If There Is a God, Why Are There
Atheists?), I had a whole chapter about why scholars dis-
agree. Not only do we find Christians disagreeing about
what the Bible teaches, but some of the greatest minds in
history disagree on some very significant points. I would
say that there are three primary reasons great minds dis-
agree on fundamental issues.
One is that we are prone to logical errors. We are given
the capacity to reason, but we are not perfect in our reason-
ing powers. We will make illegitimate inferences. We will
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commit errors that violate the laws of logic. I remember
when I studied the introduction to logic in college and was
given examples of fallacies. The examples printed in our
textbooks were not drawn from tabloid newspapers or
comics but from the writings of some of the most brilliant
people in history: Plato, John Stuart Mill, and David
Hume. These men are universally recognized as some of
the most brilliant people who ever walked the face of the
earth. They made glaring logical errors that served as illus-
trations of how not to reason in an "Introduction to Logic"
textbook. Mental errors are the first reason.
The second reason is empirical errors. Every one of us is
limited in our perspective and field of experience. Not one
of us has been able to survey all of the data. Sometimes
our eyesight or our hearing fails us. We are limited in the
senses we use to perceive reality around us. Limitations of
sense perception add to making mistakes.
And the third great cause for error, whether it's in under-
standing the Bible or in understanding science, is bias.
.
We're prejudiced. Sometimes we come to a problem or to
a study biased against the data. We don't want to believe
what the data will tell us. When we become Christians, we
are not cleansed of the ability to sin. We don't always want
to believe what the Bible teaches, and so we will make
errors of interpretation as a result of our clouded thinking
because of the hardness of our own hearts or because we
don't know the tools of biblical study. We haven't learned
the language sufficiently, or we have not been skilled or
trained in legitimate inferences or the laws of immediate
inferences, and so on.
The main reason Christians disagree on what the Bible
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teaches is that we are sinners. It's a sin to misunderstand
the Bible and to misinterpret the Bible because ultimately
it's a result of our being less than fully diligent in applying
ourselves to seeking the truth of God's Word. We have the
assistance of the Holy Spirit, and we're called to love God
with all of our minds. The person who loves God with all of
his mind is not casual in how he handles the Scriptures.
There are so many different interpretations of what
the Bible is saying. How do I know which one is right?
That's a problem that plagues all of us. There are some the-
oretical things we can say about it, but I'd rather spend
time on the practical.
The Roman Catholic Church believes that one function
of the church is to be the authorized interpreter of Scrip-
ture. They believe that not only do we have an infallible
Bible but we also have an infallible interpretation of the
Bible. That somewhat ameliorates the problem, although it
doesn't eliminate it altogether. You still have those of us
who have to interpret the infallible interpretations of the
Bible. Sooner or later it gets down to those of us who are
not infallible to sort it out. We have this dilemma because
there are hosts of differences in interpretations of what the
popes say and of what the church councils say, just as there
are hosts of different interpretations of what the Bible says.
Some people almost despair, saying that "if the theolo-
gians can't agree on this, how am I, a simple Christian,
going to be able to understand who's telling me the truth?"
We find these same differences of opinion in medicine.
One doctor says you need an operation, and the other
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doctor says you don't. How will I find out which doctor is
telling me the truth? I'm betting my life on which doctor I
trust at this point. It's troublesome to have experts differ
on important matters, and these matters of biblical inter-
pretation are far more important than whether or not I
need my appendix out. What do you do when you have a
case like that with variant opinions rendered by physicians?
You go to a third physician. You try to investigate, try to
look at their credentials to see who has the best training,
who's the most reliable doctor; then you listen to the case
that the doctor presents for his position and judge which
you are persuaded is more cogent. I'd say the same thing
goes with differences of biblical interpretations.
The first thing I want to know is, Who's giving the inter-
pretation? Is he educated? I turn on the television and see
all kinds of teaching going on from television preachers
who, quite frankly, simply are not trained in technical the-
ology or biblical studies. They don't have the academic
qualifications. I know that people without academic qualifi-
cations can have a sound interpretation of the Bible, but
they're not as likely to be as accurate as those who have
spent years and years of careful research and disciplined
training in order to deal with the difficult matters of bibli-
cal interpretation.
The Bible is an open book for everybody, and everybody
has a fair shot of coming up with whatever they want to find
in it. We've got to see the credentials of the teachers. Not
only that, but we don't want to rely on just one person's
opinion. That's why when it comes to a biblical interpreta-
tion, I often counsel people to check as many sound sources
as they can and then notjust contemporary sources, but the
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great minds, the recognized minds of Christian history. It's
amazing to me the tremendous amount of agreement there
is among Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm, Luther, Calvin, and
Edwards — the recognized titans of church history. I always
consult those because they're the best. If you want to know
something, go to the pros.
When I discuss biblical concepts with my friends, I'm
often met with the reply "That's your interpretation."
How do I respond?
That is such a common response. You labor over a passage
and do your homework, then present the passage, and
somebody looks at you and says, "Well, that's your inter-
pretation."
What do they really mean when they say that? That any-
thing you say must be wrong, and since this is your inter-
pretation, then it must be an incorrect one? I don't think
people are trying to insult us. The real issue here is
whether or not there is a correct and incorrect interpre-
tation of Scripture. When many people say, "That's your
interpretation," what they really mean is, "I'll interpret it
my way, and you interpret it your way. Everybody has the
right to interpret the Bible however they want to. Our fore-
fathers died for the right of what we call private interpreta-
tion: that every Christian has the right to read the Bible for
themselves and to interpret it for themselves."
When interpretation became an issue in the sixteenth
century at the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic
Church took a dim view of it. One of their canons at the
fourth session said that nobody has the right to distort the
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Scriptures by applying private interpretations to them. In-
sofar as that statement is recorded at Trent, I agree with it
with all of my heart because it's exactly right. Though I
have the right to read the Bible for myself and the responsi-
bility to interpret it accurately, nobody ever has the right to
interpret the Bible incorrectly.
I believe there is only one correct interpretation of the
Bible. There may be a thousand different applications of
one verse, but only one correct interpretation. My interpre-
tation may not be right and yours may not be right, but if
they're different, they can't both be right. That's relativism
taken to its ridiculous extreme. When someone says, "Well,
that's your interpretation," I would respond, "Let's try to
get at the objective meaning of the text and beyond our
own private prejudices."
I recently obtained a Living Bible arranged for daily
Bible readings. I have found this version to be very
enjoyable, and I hate for the day's reading to end. .
Do we need to be wary of this version?
It seems that every time a new translation of the Bible
appears in the bookstores, there's a certain degree of con-
troversy that attends its appearance. People tend to prefer
some tried-and-true translation. The first translation of the
Bible from the original languages into the vernacular
became such a controversial matter that those who dared
to translate the Bible into German or English were, in
many cases, executed.
For many years the authorized version in English was the
King James Version. When a more up-to-date translation
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took place, such as the Revised Standard Version, there was
a tremendous cry of protest against it. That protest goes on
even today from those who prefer the King James edition.
There are basically two reasons we have this prolifera-
tion of new translations. One is that in the twentieth cen-
tury we've experienced an explosion of knowledge and
data about ancient lexicography, or word meaning. We've
had so many more discoveries that shed light on the pre-
cise meaning of Hebrew and Greek words that our ability
to translate the original documents accurately has been
sharply increased. When that happens, it calls for a new
translation. When you translate a document from one lan-
guage to another, you run the risk of losing some of the
precision that's in the original. Whenever you have a bet-
ter grasp of the original, you want to reflect that in the
next edition of your translation.
Second, we've discovered many more texts of the Greek
New Testament, and to be very frank, the Greek manu-
scripts from which the King James Version was translated
were not the best Greek manuscripts. Since the King James
was first introduced, we've had great progress in recon-
structing the original manuscripts of the Bible, and that's
another reason for an update.
There's still another reason, and that is that language
changes and words that once meant one thing in a culture
now mean another. Gay meant "happy" twenty years ago;
that's not what it means now. Cute meant "bow-legged" two
hundred years ago; that's not what it means now. Words do
undergo an evolution, and that has to be reflected in new
translations. There are also different types of translations.
Some try to be very accurate, word for word, and others try
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to give more of a paraphrase. I see The Living Bible as an
attempt to simplify and paraphrase and speak in general
terms. People find it a delightful help. I wouldn't recom-
mend it as the most strictly accurate version for careful
technical study, but in simplifying the often arcane mes-
sage of Scripture, I think it has done a tremendous service
to the people of God.
Does the Bible claim authority over the life of a believer?
I think it does, obviously, in what the Bible says about itself.
And what the Bible says about itself is very important to
the modern debate about its authority in the life of the
church and in the life of the individual believer.
One of the greatest debates in our age is this question of
biblical authority. Even if the Bible didn't claim authority
over us, the church might still recognize it as a primary
source and say, "This is the original information that we
have of the teachings ofJesus. "Jesus obviously has a claim
of authority over every believer inasmuch as he is the Lord
of the church and the Lord of every believer. And we
might still attribute that kind of authority to the Scriptures.
But the authority of the Bible is not proven by its claim.
It is very significant, however, that it makes the claim to be
the Word of God. Now anything that is the Word of God, it
would seem to me, carries with it automatically nothing
less than the authority of God. The great debate in our day
is whether or not the Bible is inspired or infallible or iner-
rant. These are the kinds of controversies about which
denominations are fighting in the Christian world today.
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And behind all of that debate, really, is the question of the
extent of the Bible's authority.
To illustrate it, let me share a brief anecdote about a
friend of mine who said he had abandoned any confidence
of the Bible's inspiration or of its infallibility. He said, "But
I've still maintained my belief in Christ as my Lord." I said
to him, point-blank, "How does Jesus exercise his lordship
over you?" And he said, "What do you mean?" I replied,
"A lord is somebody who has the authority to bind your
conscience, to give you marching orders, to say, 'You
must,' 'You ought,' 'This is required of you.' How does
Jesus become your Lord? How does he speak to you? Does
he speak audibly, directly, or what?" Finally he realized that
the only message that we ever have from Jesus comes to us
through the medium of the Scripture.
So the authority that the Bible has over me is the author-
ity that Christ has over me, because when he sent out his
apostles he said to them, "Those who receive you, receive
me." And it's the authority of Christ given to his apostles
that we find in Scripture. And if it comes from Christ and
hence from God, then, of course, all of the authority of
God stands behind it and over me.
Does the Bible claim authority over the life
of an unbeliever?
We divide the Bible into two sections, what we call the Old
Testament and the New Testament, or the book of the old
covenant and the book of the new covenant. In one very
real sense, historically, the writings of Scripture are part of
the written documents of a covenant agreement between
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God and certain people. In the Old Testament it is a
covenant agreement between God and the Jewish people.
And the new covenant is called the covenant of Christ for
his people.
Insofar as the nonbeliever has not entered into a cove-
nant relationship with God, there is a sense in which he
becomes an alien to the commonwealth of Israel or to the
new covenant community of Christ and therefore is not for-
mally bound by oath to the stipulations of that covenant
agreement, part of which are the writings of sacred Scrip-
ture. However, we also have to recognize that every human
being is created in the image of God. By virtue of a person's
humanness, he or she is inextricably bound into a covenant
relationship with the Creator. So if I choose not to believe in
God or not to serve God or not to be involved in religion in
any way, that does not destroy God or his existence, or
change the fact that I have been created by God and am ac-
countable to God and am required by God to obey him and
to worship him and to heed his voice. So coming at it from
that angle, we would say that the unbeliever, in spite of his
unbelief, is still responsible to heed whatever God says. And
if the Scriptures are the Word of God, then they carry the
authority of God. If you were to ask, "Does God have author-
ity over the unbeliever?" I would say, "Of course he does."
And anything that God says is authoritative to all people.
What can a Christian learn from the Old Testament?
Is it as pertinent to my growth as the New Testament is?
The Scriptures are not a single book but a collection of
books made up of sixty-six volumes in the particular
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library that we call the Bible. The New Testament covers
a period of time in human history of about thirty-five
years, and all but five of those years for the most part are
covered in the first couple of chapters. So the bulk of the
New Testament covers about a five-year period in human
history. It is the most important period in human history
of God's dealing with the human race because it covers
the earthly ministry ofJesus and the expansion of the
early church.
The Old Testament, beginning around Genesis 11 and
throughout the rest of the Old Testament, covers a period
of about two thousand years of redemptive history. That is
a wealth of information of how God has acted on behalf of
his people and for the redemption of this world.
I don't think we can say that one is more pertinent than
the other. There is a widespread feeling that a Christian is
only to be concerned with the New Testament, that the
Old Testament is antiquated, no longer truly relevant. In
fact, there is more and more the feeling that there are two
different Gods. There is the God of the Old Testament and
the God of the New Testament. The God of the Old Testa-
ment is a God of anger, wrath, justice, and holiness. The
New Testament God focuses on love, mercy, and grace.
That, of course, is a radical distortion. There is a continu-
ity between the two Testaments. We can distinguish them,
but we dare not separate them. The same God is revealed
to us both in the Old Testament and in the New Testa-
ment. Saint Augustine said, "The Old is in the New
revealed; the New is in the Old concealed."
The Old Testament is preparation for the coming of
the Messiah and the revelation that we receive in the New
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Testament. It's like asking, "Is the foundation of a house
important? Is it pertinent to the house?" It's essential to
the house. The structure stands upon that foundation, and
that's what the Old Testament does for our faith. There
are many elements of Old Testament history that are not
to be applied directly to the Christian life today, such as
the sacrificial system, but even the dimension of the sacri-
ficing of bulls and goats and the like that we find in the
Old Testament reveals something that points to the com-
ing of Christ and enriches our understanding of what was
accomplished by Christ. About three-fourths of the infor-
mation in the New Testament is either a quotation of, an
allusion to, or a fulfillment of something that was already
found in the Old Testament.
How does the Old Testament apply to Christians today?
One of the great weaknesses of today's church is a ten-
dency to denigrate and neglect the Old Testament. It's a
much more sizable piece of literature than the New Testa-
ment, and it covers an enormous period of history, the
history of redemption from the creation of the world until
the appearance of the Messiah. All of that is a revelation of
God's activity on this planet, and I believe it was inspired
by the Holy Spirit and given to the church for the church's
instruction and for the church's edification.
I also think that one of the great problems in today's
church is an abysmal ignorance of God the Father. We
relate to Jesus. He's our Redeemer. He's God in the flesh,
so we have a way in which we can understand Jesus. It is
more difficult when we look at God the Father and also
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the Holy Spirit. The history of the Old Testament
certainly calls forth something of the Messiah who is to
come, but it is constantly revealing the character of God
the Father, the one who sends Jesus into this world, the
one whom Jesus calls Father, the one from whom Jesus
says he has been sent, that person to whom we are being
reconciled and redeemed. So how can we possibly justify
neglecting such an enormous body of literature that
communicates to us the character, nature, and will of our
Creator and the one who has sent our Redeemer to this
planet?
Saint Augustine is the one who said that the New Tes-
tament is concealed in the Old Testament and the Old
Testament is revealed by the New Testament. In fact,
about three-fourths of the material of the New Testament
is either a quotation from or allusion to what went before
it. I don't think we can really understand the New Testa-
ment until we have made a very serious study of the Old
Testament.
Obviously there are things in the Old Testament that do
not apply to the Christian in our day. For example, we are
not to continue the ceremonies that were required of the
Jewish people; those ceremonies were "types" that antici-
pated the once-for-all fulfillment of them in the work of
Christ. So for us to offer animals as sacrifices would be an
insult to the completion ofJesus' work on the cross. That
doesn't mean that since that part of the Old Testament is
fulfilled we are to neglect it altogether. The Old Testament
is a treasure-house of knowledge for the Christian who will
seek to investigate it.
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What should Christians think about evolution?
There is no single view of evolution out there. We make
one distinction, for example, between macroevolution and
microevolution. Macroevolution claims that all of life
evolved fortuitously from a single cell — one little pulsating
cell of life made up of amino acids and RNA and DNA and
all of that, and then through chance, explosions, or what-
ever, there were mutations. First, a lower, simplistic form of
life came about, and then from that came more complex
things, and we all emerged, as it were, from the slime,
through oozing, into our present humanity. That's the
radical view of evolution that sees life occurring as sort of
a cosmic accident.
This view of evolution — the one I hear discussed publicly
so often in the secular world — is unmitigated nonsense
and will be totally rejected by the secular scientific commu-
nity within the next generation. My objections to it are not
so much theological as they are rational and logical. I
mean, the doctrine of macroevolution is one of the most
unsubstantiated myths that I've ever seen perpetuated in
an academic environment.
But there are other varieties much less radical that sim-
ply indicate that there is a change, a progression involving
different directions among various species that we can
even track historically. The kind of evolution of the latter
sort is of no consequence with respect to biblical Christian-
ity. The big issue is with the former view, and this is the
basic question: Is man in his origin the product of a pur-
posive act of divine intelligence, or is man a cosmic acci-
dent? In other words, am I a creature of dignity or a
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creature of cosmic insignificance? That's a pretty heavy
issue because if I just sort of popped into being or
emerged from the slime and I'm destined for annihilation,
I can only fantasize that somehow in between those two
poles of origin and destiny I have meaning and signifi-
cance and dignity. But that's wishful thinking of the worst
sort. Obviously if I come from nothing and go to nothing,
I am nothing under any objective analysis.
A Christian cannot believe that he is a cosmic accident
and at the same time believe in the sovereign God and the
creator God. To be a Christian is to affirm not only Christ
the Redeemer but God the Creator. And we have to affirm
both. Let me say, too, before we drop this question, that
some of the biggest objections I have toward this more radi-
cal view of evolution are not the theological problems, as
serious as they are, but rational problems. I think that it is
not only bad theology, it's bad science.
All Christians, Jews, and Muslims historically have made
it a central article of affirmation that this world and all the
people in it are the result of a divine act of creation. As far
as Christianity is concerned, if there's no creation, then
there's nothing to redeem.
Does the Bible tell us how old the earth is?
What does the Bible tell us about the age of the earth? I
remember once opening a Bible that was on the pulpit of a
church. I opened it to the first page because I was preach-
ing from the first chapter of Genesis, and it said, 'The Book
of Genesis," and then underneath "The Book of Genesis"
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in black boldfaced numbers was this: "4004 B.C." Right
there on the first page of Scripture. I laughed.
I thought it was funny because there was a man by the
name of Archbishop Usher a couple hundred years ago
who, in reading the genealogies in the Bible, calculated an
average lifespan of all those mentioned in the genealogy
and came up with a highly speculative figure of 4004 as the
date of Creation and tried to make a case that the Bible
actually called for the creation of the world in 4004 B.C.
What disturbed me was to see that number actually printed
on the page of Holy Scripture. Now if somebody who
doesn't know the origin of that kind of speculation picks
up the Bible and reads on the page of Scripture "4004 B.C."
and their mother or their Sunday school teacher tells them
that the world was created 4000 years before Christ but the
scientific evidence indicates that the universe is billions of
years old, then they get all upset and think that somebody
is attacking the Bible. When the fact of the matter is, the
Bible doesn't give the slightest indication of when Creation
occurred. So we really shouldn't be concerned about it.
As a Christian educator, what are some of your
frustrations in your efforts to teach the Word?
I have lots of frustrations about teaching. But I would say
my greatest frustration is that there is a tremendous anti-
intellectual spirit present in contemporary Christendom.
It's extremely hard to educate people who are opposed to
using their minds. How else can we get educated?
There are reasons for this attitude. Evangelical Chris-
tians, for example, have seen a wholesale attack upon the
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sacred things that they believe and live by — the Bible and
all the rest — by colleges and universities, by professors and
theologians. They've come to distrust serious education.
They want to keep their faith simple lest it be open to
some kind of criticism or attack. I hear it constantly. "You
have to take it on faith," as if seeking to understand some-
thing were evil. And how many times have you heard
people say that they want to have childlike thinking?
What the Bible says, however, is that we are to be "babes
in evil," that we are to be like little children in terms of
being not sophisticated in our capacity for sin. But in un-
derstanding we are to be full-grown and mature. We are to
put away childish things. I am very frustrated with the resis-
tance I encounter in the Christian community against in-
depth study of the things of God.
My second great frustration is that so many Christians,
in order to truly learn the things of God, first have to
unlearn what they've already learned. It's not by accident
that the greatest threat to the integrity of Old Testament
Israel and to the safety of the nation was not the opposing
nations like the Philistines and the Babylonians but the
enemy within — the false prophet. And the false prophet
seduced the people away from the truth of God. Now that
happens today, and it happens on both sides of the camp
the liberals and conservatives. And so what happens is
people are educated with teaching that is not sound, and
that's frustrating.
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