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A solid Basis for Biblical Inerrancy

Having dealt with the common "bad" arguments, we look at a good
one. Again, we cannot make a mathematical, bullet proof justification.
This argument will be most helpful to those who generally agree that
the bible is reliable and written in "good faith" but not
necessarily inerrant. If you think the bible is a complete fiction,
then no human reasoning without concomitant divine intervention will
make you think otherwise.

As an example, I recently had an exchange (yes, on Panda's Thumb)
with a bible-denier who claimed no New Testament scripture could have
been written before the second century. (This he stated
matter-of-factly, with no evidence.)

I argued:
That is utter, revisionist nonsense for many reasons, including
circumstantial.

For example, there is no mention (except prophetically) of the
destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by Roman legions in AD 70. This
means that these Jewish writers didn't think it important to mention,
even in passing, the massacre of about a million Jews and the
enslavement and relocation of 200,000 others. Not to mention the
desecration and destruction of their center of worship.

This would be akin to multiple Jewish writers penning a history of the
twentieth century without mentioning the Holocaust.
When others joined in (not on my side) my regrettable snarkiness got
the better of me, and I wrote:
But to assume the gospels and the epistles, even if they are fiction,
were written around AD 100 and (the writers) didn't bother to weave
in the destruction of Jerusalem, an event known from independent
accounts to be factual, (well) the only argument you could make is that
the writers conspired thusly:
Let's write a (fake) history of events from seventy (or more) years
ago, so that we can have cushy ecclesiastical jobs, all that pesky
persecution being little more than an annoyance.

Oh, let's not mention our holocaust of AD 70 so that it will look
like we wrote these before that event.

Oh, just for kicks, let's put fake prophecy about AD 70 into the
mouth of our invention, Jesus.

Oh, but lets be very clever and make (the bulk of it) it vague. Not in
the sense of the Oracle of Delphi, but so that in the distant future,
many people will think it refers to a still future event, so that our
descendants can continue to milk the same prophetic text as referring
to a rapture and great tribulation.
And then you'd have to get Clement of Rome, just for another example,
to insert into his writings of that era fictional references to
Paul's nonexistent letters to the Corinthians.

And of course, the failure to mention the events of AD 70 is just one
reason why the late date is nonsense.

As you might have guessed, this approach didn't work, because the
response was generally along the lines of: yeah, that sounds about
right.

(Aside to my fellow Christians who do believe the prophecy to which I
am referring, the Olivet discourse (Matt. 24) is indeed about a future
Great Tribulation--well that's a separate issue that we have looked at
in the past and will look at again in the near future.)

So keeping in mind that the target is (for the most part) the believer
who wants to learn why he can be confident in biblical inerrancy,
let's move forward.

The Testimony of Jesus
Our approach is to appeal to the testimony of Jesus. Jesus himself
expresses the highest view of Scripture, saying that "not the
smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen" in the law shall
disappear or fail to be accomplished. (Matt. 5:18) We also know that
Jesus was prone to use scripture in his arguments, often beginning
sentences with "It is written" and to proclaim that he is the
Messiah (Luke 4:21). And of course, Jesus used scripture alone when
tempted by Satan.

In short, Jesus asserts that all of Scripture is inspired, inerrant,
infallible, and authoritative to the letter. Therefore, the proper view
of biblical inerrancy affirms not only the general events and doctrines
taught in Scripture, but it affirms that God has infallibly caused to
be written the very words used in the Bible. To deny this or to affirm
anything short of this is to call Jesus a liar.

By now you should be screaming: yes all that is fine and good but you
are appealing to the bible as evidence for what Jesus said, and so it
cannot be proof of inerrancy. You are correct. It is just background.

Bootstrapping
We will use a bootstrapping approach. Here the idea is to build a
logical chain from the least controversial claim to the conclusion,
that the bible is the inerrant Word of God. The "proof" is then as
strong as the weakest link.

Sproul uses a Christ-based bootstrapping argument based on this chain:
The Bible is a basically reliable and trustworthy document.

On the basis of this reliable document we have sufficient evidence to
believe confidently that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

Jesus Christ being the Son of God is an inerrant authority.

Jesus Christ teaches that the Bible is more than generally trustworthy;
it is the very Word of God.

The word, in that it comes from God, is utterly trustworthy because God
is utterly trustworthy.

Conclusion--On the basis of the inerrant authority of Jesus Christ, the
church believes the Bible to be utterly trustworthy; i.e., inerrant.
We will use a similar chain:
Jesus is a real historic figure

The gospels are, at least, reasonable historic accounts

Jesus performed miracles

Miracles are a sign from God that the person performing them is a
prophet

As a prophet, Jesus would speak the truth

Jesus affirmed the bible as the word of God
Conclusion--Therefore, the bible is the word of God


Jesus is a historic figure
This receives very little criticism, even in secular circles.
Non-Christian historians such as Josephus discuss Jesus. (Note:
references to the resurrection in Josephus' Antiquities were probably
redactions by misguided Christians. However, the core reference to
Jesus is generally considered reliable.)

The Roman historian Tacitus (ca. 56-ca. 117) wrote, describing
Rome's burning under Nero:
Nero fastened the guilt... on a class hated for their abominations,
called Christians by the populace. Christus (Christ), from whom the
name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of
Tiberius at the hands of... Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous
superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in
Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even Rome... (Tacitus, Annals
15.44, cited in Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ, 82.)

There are references to Jesus in the Babylonian Talmud, of which the
earliest period of compilation occurred between AD 70 to AD 200. One
reference to Jesus from this period states:
On the eve of the Passover Yeshu was hanged. For forty days before the
execution took place, a herald . . . cried, "He is going forth to be
stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to
apostasy."
There are also references in the writings of Pliny the Younger, the
Roman governor of Bithynia in Asia Minorca, ca. 112 (where he seeks
advice from Rome on how to prosecute Christians). The Greek playwright
Lucian (AD 120- ~180) mentions (satirically) Christians and Christ
(though not by name). Even the Koran mentions Jesus. There is little
argument that Jesus existed.

The gospels are, at least, reasonable historic accounts

Again, there is little argument here. Both historically and
archeologically, the gospels have proved to be models of reliability.
In particular, no archeological work has ever disproved a claim of one
of the gospels.

In his article The Inerrancy of Scripture Tim Challies writes:
Only a couple of generations ago, scholars pointed to the Bible's claim
that there was a king of Assyria named Tiglath-Pileser as an error, for
archaeological evidence had not proven that any such king existed. But
then archaeologists excavated Tiglath-Pileser's capital city and found
this carved into bricks: "I, Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria..." It is
a fact that "the results of sound scholarship have not tended to
uncover more and more problems...Rather they have tended to resolve
problems and to show that what were once thought to be errors are not
errors at all" (James Boice, Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace,
page 70). R.C. Sproul writes, "The Christian has nothing to fear from
rigorous historical research. Rather, we have everything to gain."


Jesus performed miracles
Given that we know the gospels are reasonable historic writings, and
not subject to wild speculation, we acknowledge that Jesus performed
miracles. We know that not only did his friends attest to and write
down his miracles, his enemies also acknowledged them, although they
attributed his miraculous works to Satan. Furthermore, his miracles
were witnessed by a large number of people, many of whom would have had
ample opportunity to deny the miracles when the apostles began
preaching in Jerusalem. This is no known account of someone claiming
"I was there, I was among the crowd, and that didn't happen."
There is, of course, a great deal of skepticism among even some who say
they are Christians about the truth of the miracles, but most
acknowledge that the writers of the gospels believed that had witnessed
actual miracles, i.e., they were not lying.

Miracles are a sign from God that the person performing them is a
prophet
Miracles are expressions of divine power and as such they bear witness
to the fact that the performer has been marked by God as His prophet.
They are, in fact, God offering proof that the messenger is His
messenger. They do not necessarily imply deity: God has empowered
humans (such as Moses) to perform miracles, or to be the conveyor of
miraculous, divine power. If a human performs a true miracle, we are
confident that he doing so at the pleasure of God, the ultimate power
behind the miracle.

We conclude then, at a minimum, Jesus was a prophet of God.

As a prophet, Jesus would speak the truth
As a prophet of God, speaking as God's messenger, Jesus would speak
the truth. The assumption here is that God would not go to the trouble
of providing the credentials of a prophet, via miracles, without
ensuring that the messenger's message was true.

In fact, the prophet will speak the truth even though he will often not
understand what he is saying. Prophets generally do not understand
their own prophecy. Peter tells us that their prophecy (concerning
Jesus) was not for them or even their contemporaries, but for us (1
Peter 1:10-12). That we may look back and see how the prophecy was
fulfilled. If you believe that the story of Jesus is generally true, it
is useful to go back and study the Messianic prophecies of the Old
Testament. Then you will see how precisely it was filled, which should
give further confidence in biblical inerrancy. (Or, once again, that it
was a carefully crafted fiction.)

This is a crucial point. The bible is so self-referential (across vast
time periods), and so detailed, and so specific, that the only two
rational choices are that it is the truth or it is a pack of lies.

Jesus affirmed the bible as the word of God
As mentioned in the introductory paragraph, Jesus attested to scripture
being of God on many occasions. Again, most liberal scholars do not
dispute that Jesus spoke of scripture as being inspired. However, a
claim is sometimes made that Jesus was mislead by his times-the Jews
of that day also believed in inspiration. Jesus, in his human nature,
it is argued, was not omniscient (Matt. 24:36). This is true, but we do
not rely on Jesus' omniscience but his sinlessness. For He makes bold
claims of doing nothing except the father's bidding-claims that
would be outright lies regardless of His times or the lack of
omniscience of His human nature. Thus Jesus, as truthful messenger,
could not have treated the bible as inspired solely because he was
misled by His times.

Therefore, the bible is the word of God
Since Jesus is a true prophet, and He taught of the authority of
scripture, then scripture must indeed be the word of God.

In summary-the gospels, once we grant their being generally reliable
as almost all scholars do-then bootstraps itself into being the word
of God through the claims of Jesus. The only real alternative, if the
gospel writers were even just mostly reliable, is that Jesus was the
consummate fraud and fakir. His miracles have not been disputed,
including a bold prediction that Jerusalem itself would be destroyed
within a generation. The only hole in this approach is if you believe
that a true prophet could lie, and Jesus lied egregiously when it came
to his view of scripture.

A solid Basis for Biblical Inerrancy

Having dealt with the common "bad" arguments, we look at a good
one. Again, we cannot make a mathematical, bullet proof justification.
This argument will be most helpful to those who generally agree that
the bible is reliable and written in "good faith" but not
necessarily inerrant.

Conclusion--On the basis of the inerrant authority of Jesus Christ, the
church believes the Bible to be utterly trustworthy; i.e., inerrant.
We will use a similar chain:

we cannot make a mathematical, bullet proof justification.