The Bible contains 66 books written by 40 authors over 1,500 years on three continents over more than a dozen different genres. And yet they all tell the same story of the same God. The Bible is a theological book that shares true history, but even when it is telling true historic facts, it doesn’t do so like a 21st century western history text book. It does so like an ancient Middle Eastern theological story.

One of my least favorite reading experiences was reading Beowulf in high school English. Were you subjected to this torture? Beowulf was written sometime between the 8th and 10th century and uses an early form of Old English called West Saxon.[i] Maybe if I re-read Beowulf I would love it, but at the time it felt like it was just one of those books we were reading because of its historic significance. Getting through the language was just brutal. I could barely piece together what a sentence meant, much less a paragraph, and understanding the plot felt virtually impossible. On top of that, this bizarre story of a monster in a faraway land felt profoundly irrelevant to my life.[ii]
Maybe you feel like that about the Bible. I get it. The Bible was written 2,000+ years ago. It seems borderline ridiculous that Christians pick it up and it expect it say something valuable to them about life in a completely different world.
Isn’t the Bible out of date?
The final challenge that is made against the Bible is that it is out of date. The Bible has old-fashioned morality about gender and sexuality. How can we trust a book that is so backwards.
Let me offer two very brief responses to this: first, the Bible is likely much less backward than you might think. In fact, all over the place the Bible breaks cultural expectations regarding gender, socio-economic class, and race.
Second, in those places where the Bible appears to be “on the wrong side of history,” I would ask you first to engage the central question of whether or not the Bible is God’s Word. If it isn’t, then of course the Bible is a skeleton, an artifact, when it comes to morality. But if it does happen to be God’s Word, I would ask you where your objective measure of morality derives from? And how can you be guaranteed that your own morality won’t look extremely dated in mere years? And I would add that if the Bible is indeed God’s Word, wouldn’t you expect that God would disagree with us at points? If we found in the Bible everything we already believed, would it be God’s Word or our word?
Are you willing to read the Bible not to tear it down but to enter in? Would you be willing to taste and see Jesus through the eyes of his followers? It only takes the average reader between an hour and a half to two and a half hours to read each of the four gospels. Pick up Mark or Luke or Matthew or John and encounter the man who calls himself the Son of God and see if you think it is a fable or if it rings of truth.[iii]
MIT professor and atheist Rosalind Picard thought that Bible was “full off fantastical crazy stuff.” But, for the sake of intellectual honesty she felt like she needed to actually read it. And so she did. And when she started to read the Bible, she says, “it started to change me.”[iv] She’s a follower of Jesus now.[v]
I could describe to you what a dark chocolate gelato tastes like from Frost: the rich cocoa flavor with a hint of bitterness, the cold buttery smoothness as it coats your tongue.
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The Bible is not what men define it to be; it is what God declares it to be. Men can believe that or deny that, but they cannot alter that. The premise that the Bible is the inspired, authoritative, infallible, sufficient, and effective Word of God should be the foundation for the study of Scripture. All truth has its source in God and, consequently, His truth is universal and timeless. Although times change, truth is changeless. 

The Bible is unique; there is nothing like it. Sixty-six separate books written by multiple authors over a span of 1,500 years, the Bible is ultimately one book with one Author, God Himself. The Scriptures, therefore, are not what ancient men thought about God or divine matters; they are the very words of God expressing and revealing His mind. By a supernatural operation referred to as inspiration, God breathed out His words (2 Tim. 3:16) to holy men who were carried along in the writing process by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:21). The Bible is God’s Word because it claims to be God’s Word, and faith believes it. That may seem to be circular reasoning, and perhaps it is, but it is reason that rests on God who is incapable of lying (Titus 1:2).
When we view the Scriptures through faith, we do so with a set of beliefs that we take for granted to be true. These presuppositions are essential and inevitable. It is absolutely impossible to come to the Bible with an open mind.1 Liberal scholars often claim they approach Scripture with an open mind in order to evaluate the Word of God and judge its accuracy. In reality they come with the presupposition that human reason is superior to divine revelation. That is not an open mind; it is a closed heart that evidences a mindset predisposed against God and truth. Man cannot stand as the judge of Scripture; Scripture stands as the judge of man. As believers, we must come with an open and receptive heart to receive and believe what God says. The mindset of a believer every time he opens the Bible must be the conviction that whatever the Bible says is true. The believer may not completely comprehend all that he reads, but he does not doubt its truth. We cannot trust our reason to determine what is true or false, right or wrong. By faith we believe in the inspiration of the Bible, and therefore we affirm its authority, infallibility, sufficiency, and effectiveness from cover to cover. Each of these corollaries to inspiration are topics for thorough treatises, but for now simple definition will suffice.2
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Written by Samuel D. James |
Saturday, April 9, 2022
The crisis of modern culture becomes crystal clear. Our relationships, our roles, and ultimately even our bodies lose any objective givenness. They are simply expressions of our current desires, desires which can change at any time and be replaced quickly with the help of technology. I can decide I don’t want to be a husband or Dad anymore. I can even decide I don’t want to be a man anymore. Why? Because sex and gender are bodily expressions. If the body is simply an obstacle to be overcome in other areas of life, why not in this one?

In John Kleinig’s helpful book Wonderfully Made: A Protestant Theology of the Body, he makes the point that our bodies matter because they tie to our identity and our obligations in a concrete way. Knowing who we are (and knowing what we are meant to be and do) is not a purely psychological exercise. There’s a givenness to ourselves, and that givenness is expressed multidimensionally.
Consider this paragraph:
Our bodies were designed to work with others and with God here on earth. They were made to be receptive and active: receptive in obtaining life from God and active in working with God to promote life here on earth. Each body has received different characteristics and abilities because each body has something different to do. Thus, my male body qualifies me to work as a husband to my wife, a father to my children, and a grandfather to my grandchildren. Unlike me, the body of a single woman qualifies her to serve as a female relative, a female friend, and a female caregiver to others…We all have different vocations according to our location in the world and in our society. My location as a man is in my marriage and my family in the city of Adelaide, Australia. That is where God has appointed me to work with him caring for my wife, children, and grandchildren. He employs me to work with him in that location with those people.
Notice how Kleinig ties together things that we might not think to connect. Our male or female bodies (physical givenness) qualify us for certain work (roles) in certain places (location) among certain others (context). This is a particular way of understanding one’s identity. Instead of delving deep into self-analysis and introspection to determine what we want our identity to be, we can receive an identity based on physical realities that are objectively true of us. These realities tie us to ourselves, our work, our place, and our relationships. Right now, because of who and where my body is, I can serve as a husband to a wife and a father to two children in Louisville, Kentucky. I cannot serve as a single man or a wife. I cannot live like a childless man or a man of grown children. And I cannot live elsewhere than where I am.
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