A Rationale for the Trustworthiness of the Bible

By Dr. Andrew Corbett, January 15th 2023

Nearly everything we do is built on trust. When we eat we trust that we will not be poisoned by the cook. When we go for a walk we trust that other walkers will not bump us out of their way. When someone tells us something we trust that they are telling us the truth. In fact, there is hardly anything we do in our everyday lives that does not involve trust. While we generally trust those we have come to know, we readily trust some people whom we do not know if they are people possessing appropriate authority such as a policeman, or a medical doctor or an airline pilot. The right authority invites and engenders trust. Christians trust the Bible because it derives from the highest authority – God. In fact, Christians have good reasons (a rationale) for believing that the Bible is divinely inspired and the only infallible and authoritative written Word of God.

The Bible is not the only ‘book’ that God has given mankind. Christians believe that God has given two ‘books’ to mankind – (i) the written, authoritative Word of God, and (ii) the ‘book of nature’ – and that by either, a person may come to know the Creator. But as Article 2 of the Belgic Confession (1559) states, it is only the Bible which is authoritative and reveals the means by which a person can be saved:

We know him by two means: first, by the creation, preservation and government of the universe; which is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are as so many characters leading us to contemplate the invisible things of God, namely, His power and divinity, as the apostle Paul saith, Romans 1:20. All which things are sufficient to convince men, and leave them without excuse. Secondly, He makes Himself more clearly and fully known to us by His holy and divine Word, that is to say, as far as is necessary for us to know in this life, to His glory and our salvation...[READ]

WAS THE DEVIL ONCE AN ARCHANGEL THAT LED A REBELLION IN HEAVEN?

Where did the “devil” (‘Satan’, ‘the Evil One’) come from? Even before any evil had even been thought of, God had a plan to redeem His creation and to vanquish evil (Eph. 3:9; Col. 1:26). The record of Scripture is the story of God’s plan of redemption. The starring role in this story was foreshadowed by God’s introduction of the imago Dei (“image of God”). The initial imago Dei was Adam (אָדָ֛ם, Gen. 1:27; 2:7), but the Scriptures also reveal that God appointed others to further this redemptive role. In fact, God’s eternal plan to vanquish evil from the universe involved each of the phases of the imago Dei…[continue]

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