How do we know the Bible is inspired?

[fhansen]

Here’s the full outline of the process:

1. We begin by treating the Bible not as an inspired text but simply as any other historical text such as the works of Homer or the accounts of war by Julius Caesar.
2. Using textual criticism, we are able to conclude that today, we have a text the accuracy of which is more certain than the accuracy of any other ancient work.
3. Next we take a look at what the Bible, still considered merely as a historical text, tells us, focusing particularly on the New Testament, and more specifically the Gospels. We examine the account contained therein of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
4. Using what is in the Gospels themselves and what we find in extra-biblical writings from the early centuries, together with what we know of human nature (and what we can otherwise, from natural reason alone, know of divine nature), we conclude that Jesus was either:

a. a liar,
b. a lunatic,
c. or Lord (that is, just what he claimed to be—God).

The one thing we know he could not have been was merely a good man who was not God, since no merely good man would make the claims he made.

We are able to eliminate the possibility of his being a madman not just from what he said but from what his followers did after his death. Many critics of the Gospel accounts of the resurrection claim that Christ did not truly rise, that his followers took his body from the tomb and then proclaimed him risen from the dead. According to these critics, the resurrection was nothing more than a hoax. Devising a hoax to glorify a friend and mentor is one thing, but you do not find people dying for a hoax, at least not one from which they derive no benefit. Certainly if Christ had not risen, his disciples would not have died horrible deaths affirming the reality and truth of the resurrection. The result of this line of reasoning is that we must conclude that Jesus indeed rose from the dead. Consequently, his claims concerning himself—including his claim to be God—have credibility. He meant what he said and did what he said he would do.

1. The Bible, still only considered to be historically accurate book, records that Jesus, who is God, said he would found a Church. Both the Bible and other ancient works attest to the fact that Jesus established a Church with the rudiments of what we see in the Catholic Church today—papacy, hierarchy, priesthood, sacraments, and teaching authority.
2. Thus, beginning with the historical data alone, we conclude that Jesus founded the Catholic Church. Because of his Resurrection we have reason to take seriously his claims concerning the Church, including its authority to teach in his name. Teaching in His name and with His authority requires infallibility, and that, too, is evident from the recorded teachings of Jesus.
3. The infallible Catholic Church tells us the Bible is inspired.

Only after having been told by a properly constituted authority—that is, one established by God to assure us of the truth concerning matters of faith—that the Bible is inspired can we reasonably begin to use it as an inspired book.

+++

So, the historically accurate Bible tells us that God founded a Church authorized to teach in His name. Since logic dictates that such a Church cannot teach error while doing so, we accept the Church’s infallible judgment that the Bible is not only historically reliable but also inspired.

For me it’s just a matter of like being attracted to like. I hear a kindred spirit, the voice of truth behind the truth that created me, truth that I’m separated from but drawn to nonetheless because I recognize it as the source of my own integrity or wholeness. Or sumpthin’ like that.

 

[rinkevichjm]

Fr Most of Happy Memory in Free from All Error wrote:
(Chaper 2)
There is really only one way to accomplish what we are asking for: let the Church decide which books are inspired. Professor Smith dismisses that approach as one that holds only if one believes in the authority of the Catholic Church. Of course, he did not.

Let us pursue this method, taking great pains lest we, too, find ourselves in the vicious circle of proving the authority of the Church by inspired Scripture, and proving the inspiration of Scripture by the Church.

Let us use the method of looking upon the Gospels, not as inspired books, but simply as documents from ancient times, works on a par with those of writers such as Caesar, Tacitus, Thucydides, and others.

First, with the help of the science of textual criticism, we check to see if our copies are at least substantially the same as the originals. This is needed since our oldest manuscripts are separated from the originals by about three centuries. But that is no great problem. There is a gap of nine hundred to a thousand years between Caesar’s original and our earliest manuscripts. Further, we can partly bridge the gap in the case of the Gospels by using translations that go back to within about a hundred years of the originals. These translations were made independently of each other, into several languages, in different parts of the Mediterranean world. …

The Gospel writers had the opportunity to get the facts. And we know that they would be careful and honest, for their own eternity depended on facts, not on fancy. As St. Paul told the Corinthians, “If Christ is not risen, your faith is vain” (1, 15:17). Or think of St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was eaten alive by beasts in Rome in about 107 A.D. He wanted to be eaten, to be more like Christ! If anyone thinks that he was indulging in fancies, let him take a copy of the letter of Ignatius to the Romans and stand by the lion cage in a zoo and read it!

We need to examine the first three Gospels, the Synoptics, for just six facts-facts that are not entangled with ancient cultural patterns, which would make it necessary for us to reconstruct those patterns. No, what we need are things the original onlookers could easily observe and accurately report.

FACT 1: There was a man called Jesus.
FACT 2: He claimed to be a messenger sent by God.
FACT 3: He did enough to prove that He was such a messenger.
Now the mere fact of working miracles would not prove that Jesus was a messenger sent from God. It is probable that God at times worked miracles even for good pagans. But Jesus often appealed to His miracles as proof of His mission and teaching (see, among these, Matthew 11:2-5, Luke 7:20-22, Mark 2:9-11). Now God is the ultimate source of the miraculous power; but He, being Truth, cannot provide such power as proof of a falsehood. So Jesus’ claims were proved true. In fact, He proved that He could even forgive sins. A most remarkable messenger!

Many of Jesus’ miracles could not be explained away as being the result of suggestion. No suggestion will multiply loaves and fishes or cure a man who was born blind. There is a hysterical kind of blindness that can come on later in life, which can be cured by suggestion. Nor would suggestion call out from the tomb a man dead for four days. And there have been many modern miracles, for example at Lourdes, that have been checked to the hilt by science. These miracles are in continuity with His miracles. Often they occur during the procession of the Blessed Sacrament, thus showing His Real Presence there. The Real Presence is proclaimed only by the Catholic Church, through continuity of ordination, going all the way back to Jesus Himself.

FACT 4: Crowds followed Christ. But He had an inner circle to whom He spoke more intimately. This is merely what we would expect.
FACT 5: He told His followers to continue His teaching.
FACT 6: Jesus gave the message that God would protect that teaching: “He who hears you hears me; he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Luke 10:16).

In summary then, we see a group that is commissioned to teach by a messenger sent by God, and promised God’s protection for that teaching. These observations are made without treating the Scriptures as inspired. Now we not only intellectually may but are intellectually driven to believe what the body teaches. That body can then assure us that those ancient documents, used without knowing they are inspired, really have God as their author. And that body, the Church, can also tell us that the messenger sent by God is really God Himself. And, of course, it can guarantee countless other truths for us.

It is true, the Gospels seldom use the word church. But the reality is important, not the word. We have seen that there is a body commissioned to teach, and that is all we need.

We should add this: As we will see in chapters 20-23, many critics think there is a gap between what Jesus was (Jesus of history) and what the early Church said He was (Christ of faith). They say it is not possible to know much on the early side of that gap. We reply: First, they ignore the fact that information was available on Jesus, as we saw in the above sketch, and that getting the basic facts right was vital to the eternity of each one. Hence the assumption of neither care nor knowledge is false. Secondly, we have a bypass in the six facts we have just sketched. We need to establish only the above six points, all very simple and obvious. Then we can let that body, commissioned by God’s messenger, tell us all we need to know about who Jesus really was.

 

[paziego]

If we treat the gospels as any other historical text we have to account for the possibility of errors, exaggerations and lies. There is also the fact that there are different kinds of literature with different purposes: perhaps the gospels aren’t like a bureaucratic state document or the work of a professional historian. It is likely that they are writings intended to convey a theological message, and even if they are based on facts they relate a highly modified version of those. It is also possible, as was usual in those days, that the words of wisdom and actions of other similar figures at the time were ascribed to Jesus.

 

[Randy_Carson]

But you’re here already presupposing the historical reliability of the texts as a witness to Christ’s own teaching. You definitely haven’t proven this! In addition to what I’ve just written above, you have claimed in (2) at most that we can be reasonably certain that we have the original text (or something like it) or the Bible. This is very different to either (a) demonstrating that the original text was historically informed, e.g. by eyewitnesses, or by other reliable historical documents; or, (b) that a historically informed portrayal of Jesus would necessarily give us his ipsissima verba, of the kind needed (on your model) for a strong exegesis of the primacy citation in Matthew 16.

This depends on your claim above: “his claims concerning the Church, including its authority to teach in his name. Teaching in His name and with His authority requires infallibility, and that, too, is evident from the recorded teachings of Jesus”. This has not been demonstrated by your argument, or even by exegesis of the text itself. I’m sure you could offer the exegesis, but I’m not sure you can fit it into your argument.

Question: can this point work if the properly constituted authority is not infallible?

Second question: on the basis of the model of revelation you’ve outlined in your argument so far, what is the Bible actually for? What authority can we say it possesses in itself?

+++

You avoid proper circularity, but your argument definitely isn’t watertight. Interesting and thought-provoking, and elements of it were useful, but it doesn’t achieve what it sets out to achieve.

Good analysis, Novocastrian. I, too, believe all of the conclusions presented by the original author, Randy Carson, but by no means do many of his reasonings provide a solid case for doing so. Lots of holes to patch.

The argument provided was presented by Karl Keating, founder of Catholic Answers, in his book, Catholicism and Fundamentalism, on pages 126 & 127.

Interestingly, however, I just came across a variation of the argument by Bill Pratt, an Evangelical who was taught it while working on his Master’s degree at Southern Evangelical Seminary - an anti-Catholic institution. You can read his version here:

toughquestionsanswered.org/2014/04/25/what-is-a-step-by-step-argument-showing-that-christianity-is-true/?utm_content=bufferb1ec5&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Of course, I disagree with Pratt’s last two steps because he omits the role of the infallible Church founded by Jesus and substitutes a vague claim that Jesus has told us precisely what constitutes the Bible. However, the first 10 steps are almost identical to those employed by Keating.

 

[ericc]

Is there perhaps some circularity? We know the bible is inspired because the church tells us so, and we know the church has the authority to tell us this because the bible tells us so.

There can never be circularity because the Bible is a product of the Catholic Church. During the first few decades, the apostles preached orally. There was no Bible in existence. The NT is the documentation of what was preached. What the Bible said about the Church should be viewed as oral knowledge committed to writing. The word Bible is never mentioned in the Bible. One can not give oneself more credence by writing/compiling a book and saying the book said so. What you have are documentation of what was said/preached by the apostles. One way of stating this without appearance of circularity for example St Paul/Luke/John/etc said/wrote this/that, and that all these statements have been collected by the Church and declared to be true accounts of what happened. The Church has the authority because Jesus said so ( put yourself back during non-Bible times). The Church survived because it preaches truth, not because it has a book. Many would love to see Christianity die an early death.

 

[ericc]

Is there perhaps some circularity? We know the bible is inspired because the church tells us so, and we know the church has the authority to tell us this because the bible tells us so.

There can never be circularity because the Bible is a product of the Catholic Church. During the first few decades, the apostles preached orally. There was no Bible in existence. The NT is the documentation of what was preached. What the Bible said about the Church should be viewed as oral knowledge committed to writing. The word Bible is never mentioned in the Bible. One can not give oneself more credence by writing/compiling a book and saying the book said so. What you have are documentation of what was said/preached by the apostles. One way of stating this without appearance of circularity for example St Paul/Luke/John/etc said/wrote this/that, and that all these statements have been collected by the Church and declared to be true accounts of what happened. The Church has the authority because Jesus said so ( put yourself back during non-Bible times). The Church survived because it preaches truth, not because it has a book. Many would love to see Christianity die an early death.

 

[paziego]

There can never be circularity because the Bible is a product of the Catholic Church. During the first few decades, the apostles preached orally. There was no Bible in existence. The NT is the documentation of what was preached. What the Bible said about the Church should be viewed as oral knowledge committed to writing. The word Bible is never mentioned in the Bible. One can not give oneself more credence by writing/compiling a book and saying the book said so. What you have are documentation of what was said/preached by the apostles. One way of stating this without appearance of circularity for example St Paul/Luke/John/etc said/wrote this/that, and that all these statements have been collected by the Church and declared to be true accounts of what happened. The Church has the authority because Jesus said so ( put yourself back during non-Bible times). The Church survived because it preaches truth, not because it has a book. Many would love to see Christianity die an early death.

I’m not arguing for sola scriptura or anything like that. I know that the bible is “tradition written down”. I am arguing that in the days before the bible (or the canonisation of scripture, if you prefer) people were persuaded to convert and trust the church in a variety of ways, without necessarily having satisfactory proof of the validity of the message or of the churches authority. After the canonisation of scripture is when the circularity was created. Nowadays in apologetics, all the proofs for the authority of the church are taken from scripture, and the authority of scripture is said to be guaranteed by the church.

You say the church has authority because Jesus said so - prove it without referring to scripture (imagine I am back in non-bible times).

 

[paziego]

Just to clarify my point: I am arguing that the pre-bible church preached a message without proof; those who accepted it did so despite the lack of proof. Then, after the canonisation of scripture, proof was offered based on this new infallible text which retroactively validated previously unsupported claims (and therefore the text validated the authority which validated the text).

 

[littlestsouls2]

We *know *very little, but there are many reasons to accept the Scriptures as inspired. Here is a brief, but compelling writing on the Divinity of Christ, written by a Benedictine monk:

clairval.com/lettres/en/textes/JecroisenJC_en.htm

I would add that the lives of the Saints constitute a powerful testimony to the inspiration of the Bible (for various reasons which I cannot be bothered to go into haha).

 

[spina1953]

I would like to start off by saying that the phrase Inspiration of Scripture means many things to different people. For the Catholic, the inspiration of Scripture is an indisputable fact. It has been solemnly defined by the teaching authority of the Church. How exactly inspiration works is another question. This is an open ended issue and has been explained by many theories throughout the centuries. Scholars continue to develop and refine their theories.
I think it important that any student of the Bible appreciate all the problems facing scholars in trying to explain the very complex problems of inspiration. No human being will ever explain fully the process involved in the divine-human authorship of Scripture. God has played a part in the composition of the Bible. These Books contain God’s word in human form. In the end all scholars and students of the Bible must submit to the mystery that no prophetic message ever came just from the will of man, but men were under the control of the Holy Spirit as they spoke the message that came from God.
Those who search out the intention of the sacred writers must, among other things, have regard for literary forms. For truth is proposed and expressed in a variety of ways, depending on whether a text is history of one kind or another, or whether its form is that of prophecy, poetry, or some other type of speech. The interpreter must investigate what meaning the sacred writer intended to express and actually expressed in particular circumstances as he used contemporary literary forms in accordance with the situation of his own time and culture.
Sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted according to the same Holy Spirit by whom it was written, no less serious attention must be given to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture, if the meaning of the sacred texts is to be correctly brought to light. The living tradition of the whole Church must be taken into account along with the harmony which exists between elements of the faith. It is the work of exegetes to work according to these rules toward a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of sacred Scripture, so that through preparatory study the judgment of the Church may mature.
Vatican II said Holy Mother Church relying on the belief of the Apostles, holds that the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because, having been written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church. Dei Verbum, Ch.3, par.11

 

[ericc]

Just to clarify my point: I am arguing that the pre-bible church preached a message without proof; those who accepted it did so despite the lack of proof. Then, after the canonisation of scripture, proof was offered based on this new infallible text which retroactively validated previously unsupported claims (and therefore the text validated the authority which validated the text).

In those days, claiming to be an eyewitness amounts to proof. The apostles were eyewitnesses to Jesus resurrection or ministry. Secondly, they were able to perform miracles to show the power of God. From timid men pre-resurrection to bold men speaking fearlessly post-resurrection. Lastly, they were prepaid to die for their faith.

Paul had a different problem because he was previously known as a persecutor of Christians. He wasn’t one of the original twelve. So he relied on his conversion testimonial, cross checked his teachings with some of the twelve, and he does his share of miracles too and his death attested to his beliefs. His letters often quoted living eyewitnesses to support his statements 1 Cor 15:6 , meaning, you can checked with them to see if he is telling the truth.

Conclusion: I think it is easier to believe these preachers during those days without a book rather than now ! The Bible is not proof in itself.

 

[spina1953]

In those days, claiming to be an eyewitness amounts to proof. The apostles were eyewitnesses to Jesus resurrection or ministry. Secondly, they were able to perform miracles to show the power of God. From timid men pre-resurrection to bold men speaking fearlessly post-resurrection. Lastly, they were prepaid to die for their faith.

Paul had a different problem because he was previously known as a persecutor of Christians. He wasn’t one of the original twelve. So he relied on his conversion testimonial, cross checked his teachings with some of the twelve, and he does his share of miracles too and his death attested to his beliefs. His letters often quoted living eyewitnesses to support his statements 1 Cor 15:6 , meaning, you can checked with them to see if he is telling the truth.

Conclusion: I think it is easier to believe these preachers during those days without a book rather than now ! The Bible is not proof in itself.

Hi ericc: I agree with your statement. When Jesus preached to the people no all or everyone believed Him. The Apostles taught and preached the Good News and not all or everyone believed what they said. The Apostles were as you said eyewitnesses but as you may know being an eyewitness is not always believed as people will believe what they want to believe. It then comes down to having faith to believe what can’t be proved with certainty. Some people will have faith or gain faith and some people will not have faith to believe or do not want to believe or have faith in what they themselves can not see or understand.