Isn’t the Bible full of errors?

Here’s a little outline from the talk I did at Medical Christian Union at Sussex 2 weeks ago…

Isn’t the Bible full of errors?

The short answer is NO!

If the Bible is God’s word as it says (2 Tim 3:16), then it will be true.

That is a massive circular argument, BUT it has to be – just like the American Constitution!

God’s word must be ‘self-authenticating’, but we can look to other evidence to expand this circle of argument.

Expanding the Circle

Textual Errors?

• Eyewitnesses still around when words are committed to paper
• Huge number of copies to compare with one another for errors (see manuscript table)

Factual Errors?

• Written when eyewitnesses were around, starting around 15 years after Christ
• Early Church and historians have no problems with so-called errors
• Eyewitnesses are named (Mark 15:21), 500 at one time (1 Cor 15)
• Secular history is not 100% accurate – see Hittite example where the Bible was right from the start
• If the Bible is fabricated then it’s a bad job – women witness the resurrection, first church leader denies Jesus, and the movement is based on a crucified leader

Social / Cultural Errors?

• Different cultures are offended by different bits of the Bible (see Mark 14, example from Tim Keller – Reason for God)
• We are arrogant when we assume our culture is more progressive than others!
• The Bible should contradict us (see Keller, ‘Stepford God’)

4 Main Points of Christianity

We shouldn’t ignore possible errors in the Bible, we need to think, discuss and research.

But we shouldn’t use possible errors to dismiss the Bible completely or to avoid addressing the central claims of the Bible…

1. We were created by God, for God
2. We’ve been happy to live in God’s creation, but without God, we deserve to die because of this rebellion
3. Jesus Christ, God-as-man, died. His death acts as a substitution, he dies where we should have died.
4. When we face God in judgement, we can take the punishment for our rebellion on ourselves or trust in Jesus that his death in our place restores a right relationship with God.

There was about 15 people at the MCU meeting – I was going to talk about how we as Christians ‘make our own errors’ in the Bible by poor theology or poor handling of the Bible, and how we can best respond to non-Christians. However, there were I think 4 non-Christian guests, so I went more evangelistic, there was good discussion afterwards, although this inevitably focused more on Genesis 1 than on those 4 central claims of the Bible. But it was a good discussion anyway!