Why We Believe
Christian faith is sometimes presented as though it rests upon a single assumption: first believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and then believe everything else simply because the Bible says so.
That is not really how Christian faith works.
Certainly, we believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and therefore receive what it teaches as true. But our reasons for believing are not a fragile chain in which every belief depends upon first proving another. They are more like many witnesses speaking together.
Creation testifies to God. Reason testifies to God. Conscience testifies to God. The human soul testifies to God. Christ testifies to God. Scripture testifies to God. And these witnesses do not stand separately from one another. They meet and reinforce one another.
This is often how faith develops in practice as well. A person may first be struck by the person of Christ, by His teaching, His death or His resurrection. He may recognise the truth of what Scripture says about the human heart, or feel the force of its moral teaching. He may begin to understand his need for redemption. As he reads further, he discovers that one part of the Christian message illuminates another.
So there are two fundamental questions behind what we believe.
First, why do we believe in God?
And second, why do we believe that the Bible is His Word?
Why God?
Before we ask whether Christianity is true, there is a more fundamental question: why believe that God exists at all?
The most fundamental reason for believing in God is also the simplest:
Something exists.
There is a universe. There are matter and energy, time and space, stars and planets, living creatures and conscious minds.
Before considering any particular feature of the universe as evidence for God, we therefore have a more basic fact to account for:
Why is there something rather than nothing?
The universe consists of a particular amount and arrangement of matter and energy, governed by particular laws and existing under particular conditions.
But none of those things explains why the universe has that amount of matter and energy, why those laws obtain, why those conditions exist, or ultimately why there is a universe at all.
The universe is what it is, but it does not contain within itself the complete explanation for why it is so.
The Universe Does Not Explain Itself
Nor would an infinite chain solve the problem.
Imagine an endless series of self-copying books, each copied from another before it. Even if that series stretched backwards without beginning, we would still not have explained why there is an infinite series of books rather than no books at all.
The same is true of the universe.
Even if our universe came from an earlier universe, and that universe from another before it, continuing without beginning, the question would remain: why does this infinite series of universes exist at all?
An infinite chain may explain how each member comes from another. It does not explain why the chain itself exists.
The Ultimate Explanation Must Be Self-Existent
If there is to be an ultimate explanation, therefore, we must eventually arrive at something fundamentally different.
The final explanation for reality cannot itself depend upon something beyond itself. If it did, whatever it depended upon would be the deeper explanation.
The ultimate reality must therefore possess the reason for its existence within its own nature.
It must be self-existent.
The Ultimate Reality Must Be Timeless
This also tells us something about its relationship to time.
Time is itself part of the reality requiring explanation. The ultimate explanation for time cannot therefore depend upon time already existing.
It must exist independently of time.
This does not simply mean that God has existed for an infinitely long period. God is not merely older than the universe.
Time itself ultimately depends upon Him.
Only God Can Be Self-Existent
But self-existence tells us something further.
The ultimate reality cannot receive its power from anything else. If another reality gave it the power it possesses, that other reality would be more fundamental.
Its power must therefore belong to its own nature.
But if that power were limited, we could still ask why it possessed that amount of power and no more.
A limited degree of power would itself require explanation.
The ultimate reality, however, cannot depend upon something else to explain what it is. It is the final explanation.
Its power must therefore be unlimited.
This is what we mean when we say that God is omnipotent.
This Is What We Mean by God
This does not yet establish everything Christianity teaches about God. We have not yet established the truth of the Bible, the Trinity or the divinity of Christ.
But reason has already taken us somewhere remarkable.
God is not merely one more object within reality, differing from us principally by being older, larger or more powerful.
He is the ultimate reason there is a reality at all.
Everything else possesses existence dependently. God exists of Himself.
Everything else ultimately receives its power. God's power is His own.
Everything else exists within time and space. God is the explanation upon which time and space themselves depend.
And this is why the name by which God revealed Himself to Moses is so profound:
"I AM THAT I AM." - Exodus 3:14
God does not merely say that He exists.
He says, I AM.
He is not caused by something else. He is not made from something else. He is not sustained by something else. His existence is not explained by something more fundamental standing behind Him.
He is.
This is the great I AM: the self-existent God, the God of being.
Everything Testifies To God
Before we point to anything particular within creation as evidence, creation itself is evidence.
Every star is evidence because it exists. Every atom is evidence because it exists. Every living creature is evidence because it exists. We ourselves are evidence because we exist.
Everything which possesses being, but does not possess the ultimate explanation of that being within itself, points beyond itself.
"For in him we live, and move, and have our being." - Acts 17:28
But there are many further witnesses.
Once we have asked why the universe exists at all, we can ask why the universe that exists has the character it does.
It is ordered. It is intelligible. It behaves according to remarkably consistent laws. Its fundamental properties permit matter to form into shapes necessary for complex chemistry, and life to exist.
This extraordinary suitability of the universe for life is commonly called its "fine-tuning". It does not constitute the whole case for God, nor does Christian belief depend upon any single scientific argument concerning it. It is another feature of creation, which is remarkably consistent with creation being the work of an intelligent Creator.
But creation does more than make us reason.
It makes us wonder.
"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork." - Psalm 19:1
There is something about looking into a clear night sky, standing before a mountain, hearing the sea, contemplating the complexity of a living creature, or simply considering the immensity of the universe that produces more than an intellectual conclusion. It produces awe.
We can describe the physical processes taking place inside a star without explaining what happens within us when we look upon a sky filled with them. We can explain how mountains were formed without explaining why their magnificence affects us. We can describe the wavelengths of light in a sunset without saying very much about why it is beautiful.
The heavens testify to God, but so does the heart that looks upon the heavens.
There are moments when the natural response to existence is not merely analysis, but wonder and thankfulness. And thankfulness itself seems to reach beyond the gift towards a giver.
The Christian does not substitute these things for reason. They accompany reason.
We know things in several ways. We reason. We observe. We experience. We possess intuition and moral conscience. We recognise beauty. We love. We grieve. We distinguish between good and evil.
And remarkably, these different faculties do not lead us away from God. They testify to Him.
Our Conscience Testifies To God
Human beings do not merely observe what people do. We make judgements about what people ought to do.
We believe that some things really are good and some things really are evil.
Cruelty is not merely behaviour we personally dislike. Justice makes a claim upon us. So do mercy, honesty, faithfulness and love.
There is an important distinction here.
Reason and observation can tell us that certain kinds of behaviour are beneficial. We can study which actions contribute to human flourishing, which produce stable societies, which promote happiness, and which cause suffering.
But conscience tells us something more.
It tells us that some things are right and some things are wrong.
Those are not quite the same statement.
To say that cruelty causes suffering is an observation. To say that cruelty is wrong is a moral judgement. To say that honesty helps relationships is an observation. To say that we ought to be honest, even when dishonesty would benefit us, is something more.
The word "ought" is remarkable.
Our conscience does not speak to us merely in the language of preference. It does not tell us that justice is something we happen to like, in the way that we might prefer one kind of food to another. It tells us that justice is right.
And when we ourselves act wrongly, conscience turns its judgement upon us.
We experience guilt.
That experience is difficult to explain if morality is ultimately nothing more than personal preference or social usefulness. We may regret a foolish decision because it harmed us. But moral guilt is different. In guilt there is the consciousness not merely that we have made a mistake, but that we have done something we ought not to have done.
Conscience therefore seems to testify not merely to a moral feeling within ourselves, but to a moral law above ourselves.
And a moral law naturally raises the question of a moral Lawgiver.
For if good and evil are realities which make a genuine claim upon us, their authority cannot finally rest merely upon our own desires. We cannot be the ultimate authors of a law which judges us even when we wish it would not.
Conscience behaves almost like a witness to a judgement greater than our own.
It accuses us when we have done wrong. It excuses us when we believe we have done right. It tells us that there are things we ought to do even when we do not want to do them, and things we ought not to do even when doing them would be to our advantage.
There is something within man which seems to know that he is accountable.
This is precisely how Scripture describes the conscience:
"Their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another." - Romans 2:15
Conscience does not give us a complete knowledge of God. Nor does it mean that every person's moral judgement is equally clear or equally correct. Conscience can be ignored, distorted and hardened.
But the existence of conscience itself is significant.
We are creatures who find ourselves living under the sense of moral obligation.
And that obligation seems to point beyond us.
There are other movements of the human heart which point in the same direction.
Consider thankfulness.
There are moments when we experience something profoundly good - life itself, the birth of a child, recovery from danger, unexpected kindness, extraordinary beauty - and the natural response is gratitude.
But gratitude is personal.
Thankfulness reaches beyond the gift towards someone to be thanked.
At such moments the human heart can seem to recognise something before the mind has finished putting it into words: that life is not merely a possession, but a gift.
Our longing for justice points in a similar direction.
We know perfectly well that justice is not always accomplished in this life.
Good people suffer. Wicked people sometimes prosper. Cruelty can go unpunished. Innocent people can die without vindication. Human courts can fail, evidence can disappear, crimes can remain hidden, and those responsible can escape every earthly judgement.
Yet something within us refuses to conclude that injustice becomes right simply because nobody punished it.
We still say that justice ought to be done.
That conviction is extraordinary.
It suggests that our idea of justice reaches beyond what this present world actually provides. Conscience seems to anticipate a judgement which human society cannot finally give: a setting right of things, in which evil is truly judged and good is not finally forgotten.
In that sense, conscience does not merely point above us.
It points beyond us.
It bears witness to a moral order greater than human society, to an accountability greater than human judgement, and ultimately to a Judge before whom right and wrong are not matters of opinion.
And there is something else remarkable about conscience.
It gives human beings a peculiar dignity.
If moral obligation is real, then human beings are not merely complicated arrangements of matter pursuing whatever desires happen to arise within them. We are creatures capable of recognising that some desires ought to be resisted, that other people possess claims upon us, and that there are things worth doing even at great personal cost.
A man may sacrifice his own advantage because he believes something is right.
He may tell the truth when lying would profit him.
He may show mercy when revenge would satisfy him.
He may give his life for someone else.
Conscience therefore fits remarkably well with the Christian claim that man was made by a personal and moral Creator, in His image, with the capacity to recognise something of the difference between good and evil.
The testimony to God, then, is not merely outside us.
It is within us as well.
Reason tells us that limited existence requires an ultimate explanation.
Creation displays order and power.
Beauty produces wonder.
Conscience testifies to good and evil.
Moral obligation testifies to a law above ourselves.
Guilt testifies to accountability.
Thankfulness reaches beyond the gift towards a giver.
And our longing for justice reaches beyond the imperfect judgements of this world towards a final Judge.
Christianity does not tell us to abandon reason for feeling, nor to distrust every human faculty except abstract reasoning. The God who made the universe also made the mind that reasons about it, the conscience that judges within it, and the soul that wonders at its beauty.
Everything outside us testifies to God.
Everything within us testifies to God.
But that brings us to another question.
If there is a God, has He spoken?
Why The Bible?
There is something contained in the name "I AM" which is easily overlooked.
It is a sentence. God speaks.
The word "I" tells us that God is personal. "I AM" tells us that He communicates. The ultimate foundation of reality is not revealed to Moses as an impersonal force or abstract principle, but as One who knows, wills and speaks.
That does not by itself prove that the Bible is His Word.
But it makes the question perfectly reasonable.
If the God who made human beings gave us reason, language, personality and the ability to communicate with one another, there is nothing strange in asking whether that God has communicated with us.
So why do we believe that He has spoken through the Bible?
Why this book?
Why not another?
The answer cannot merely be, "Because the Bible says it is the Word of God." The Bible certainly does claim divine authority, but a claim by itself is not sufficient reason to believe the claim.
We believe Scripture because of the extraordinary convergence of its testimony.
It speaks to the same realities that creation, reason and conscience have already caused us to perceive. It provides a framework in which the world outside us and the world within us begin to make sense together.
The God whom reason seeks as the ultimate ground of existence reveals Himself in Scripture as I AM.
The power behind creation is revealed as the Creator of heaven and earth.
The moral reality perceived by conscience is answered by a God who is holy and righteous.
Our consciousness that something has gone terribly wrong with humanity is answered by the doctrine of sin.
Our inability to make ourselves what we know we ought to be is answered by the doctrine of grace.
Our need for redemption is answered in Christ.
There is a remarkable correspondence between the world Scripture describes and the world we actually experience.
A Word that Knows Us
The writer to the Hebrews describes the Word of God in remarkable terms:
"For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword... and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." - Hebrews 4:12
"Quick" here means living.
That is a fitting description of Scripture.
We do not merely read Scripture. Scripture seems, at times, to read us.
It speaks not merely about what men do, but why they do it. It distinguishes between outward respectability and inward goodness. It exposes pride hiding beneath virtue, selfishness hiding beneath generosity, and hypocrisy hiding beneath religion.
It turns our attention away from what impresses man and towards what matters to God.
Human beings naturally admire achievement. We admire great buildings, powerful nations, technological advances, military victories and extraordinary wealth.
Consider an ancient monument such as a pyramid. We naturally ask how it was built. How were stones of such enormous size moved? How many years did construction take? What knowledge was required?
Scripture causes us to ask another question as well:
How were the people who built it treated?
That question is more important.
A civilization may build magnificent monuments while being morally corrupt. A king may conquer nations and still be wicked. A rich man may possess everything the world admires and be poor towards God. Meanwhile, a widow putting two mites into the treasury may possess something of far greater value in God's sight.
Scripture repeatedly subjects human greatness to moral judgement.
That is one reason it speaks so powerfully to the conscience.
The Bible Explains the World We Actually Experience
Scripture also gives us an extraordinary account of man.
It tells us that man is made in the image of God. This accounts for his dignity, reason, creativity, moral consciousness and capacity for love.
But it also tells us that man is fallen.
This accounts for something equally obvious.
The same human race capable of extraordinary love is capable of extraordinary cruelty. The same intelligence that cures disease can devise methods of killing. People sacrifice themselves for others, and people betray those who trust them.
Any serious account of humanity has to explain both sides.
Scripture does.
Man bears the image of God, and man is fallen.
The Bible therefore does not flatter us, but neither does it despise us.
It tells us that we possess great dignity because of the One whose image we bear, while also telling us that our deepest problem cannot finally be solved by greater wealth, education, political power or technological achievement.
Our problem is not merely around us.
It is in us.
We need redemption.
And this is where we come to the centre of the Christian message.
Christ
For many Christians, faith begins much closer to Christ than to an abstract argument about biblical inspiration.
A person encounters Christ in the Gospels.
He begins to admire Him.
He reads His words and recognises something extraordinary in them. He sees how Christ treats the weak, the sinful, the sorrowful, the proud and the hypocritical. He hears Christ speak about anger, lust, forgiveness, love, anxiety, pride and the human heart.
And Christ speaks with extraordinary authority.
Those who first heard Him noticed it:
"For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." - Matthew 7:29
There is a difference between someone who has studied a machine and the person who designed it.
Christ speaks about the human soul like its Maker.
He goes beneath behaviour to motive. He takes commandments which men had reduced to outward behaviour and brings them home to the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
And then there is the cross.
The Christian message tells us that our condition is serious enough that we need a Redeemer, but also that God's love is great enough that a Redeemer has been given.
Christ is betrayed, mocked, condemned and crucified at the hands of sinful men, and yet gives Himself for others.
Here is innocence suffering for the guilty.
Here is love answering hatred.
Here is forgiveness answering cruelty.
Here is Christ laying down His life for His people, and a message of salvation that will go out to people of every nation.
Then comes the resurrection: the proclamation that death itself does not have the final word.
These truths possess power before a person has settled every question he may have about Scripture.
This is important.
We do not necessarily begin by proving every proposition about the Bible and only then conclude that Christ must be worthy of our trust.
Often the movement goes the other way.
We encounter Christ, and Christ causes us to take seriously the book that reveals Him.
The living Word leads us to trust the written Word.
"Before Abraham Was, I AM"
And here the two parts of our enquiry meet.
We began by asking why anything exists at all.
Reason led us towards a self-existent, eternal and unlimited God: One who does not receive existence from something beyond Himself.
Then Scripture gives us God's name:
I AM.
And when we come to Christ, we hear:
"Before Abraham was, I am." - John 8:58
Notice what He does not say.
He does not say, "Before Abraham was, I was."
Abraham belongs to the past. Christ says, "I am."
Christ takes to Himself the language of eternal being.
The God towards whom reason points is the God whom Scripture reveals.
And the Christ at the centre of Scripture speaks in the language of the great I AM.
The Fullness of Scripture
As we continue reading Scripture, connections like these multiply.
This is one reason we speak at Sovereign Grace Assembly of the fullness of Scripture.
The Bible was written through many human authors, over many centuries, in different circumstances. Those authors wrote consciously and meaningfully in their own situations.
But if God speaks through them, God's knowledge is not limited to theirs.
God knows every true connection.
He knows the end from the beginning. He knows what Moses writes and what John will write centuries later. He knows Abraham and Christ. He knows the Passover and the cross. He knows the sacrifices and the Lamb of God. He knows Adam and the last Adam.
So Scripture possesses a fullness which becomes increasingly apparent as Scripture is compared with Scripture.
Its great subjects develop across centuries: creation, fall, covenant, sacrifice, law, judgement, mercy, redemption, death, resurrection and restoration.
At the centre of them stands Christ.
The Old Testament anticipates Him. The Gospels reveal Him. The apostles expound Him.
This does not erase the human authors. Scripture is genuinely their writing. But where God speaks through them, He comprehends every true implication and connection contained within what He has caused to be written.
That depth is one of the things that makes Scripture unlike an ordinary book.
The Beauty of the Word
There is another characteristic of Scripture which is more difficult to express in the language of formal argument, but which becomes increasingly difficult to ignore the more one reads it: its extraordinary beauty.
Beauty, by itself, does not prove divine inspiration. Human beings are capable of producing beautiful literature. Shakespeare wrote beautifully. Milton wrote beautifully. Great poets and writers have always possessed the ability to move us through language
But if the Bible really is the Word of God, we might reasonably expect it to possess a beauty worthy of its source.
And remarkably, it does.
The extraordinary thing is not merely that the Bible contains a few celebrated passages of great beauty. Its language rises again and again to heights which seem almost beyond comparison, sometimes in places where we would hardly expect to find them.
Consider the Apostle Paul. He is often dealing with theology, doctrine, disputes within churches and practical questions of Christian living. Yet even in the middle of such writing, his prose can suddenly become magnificent.
Writing to the Colossians, he says:
"For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ.
As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him:
Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving...
For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power...
Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead...
Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;
And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it."
- Colossians 2:5-15
Who writes like this?
The astonishing thing is that this is not even one of the passages usually singled out as the great literary heights of Scripture. It is simply part of Paul's argument in a letter to a church. Yet the imagery, rhythm and movement of thought are remarkable: rooted and built up in Christ; the fulness of the Godhead dwelling bodily in Him; sins blotted out and nailed to the cross; principalities and powers defeated and Christ triumphing over them openly.
And this quality is certainly not confined to Paul.
One might imagine the prophets to be difficult, austere or dry. Yet open Isaiah and we find:
"Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee.
For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the LORD shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee."
- Isaiah 60:1-2
In two verses we move from darkness covering the earth to light breaking upon it, from human gloom to divine glory. The language is simple, but the image is immense.
And Scripture is filled with writing of this kind.
"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork."
"The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want."
"Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts."
"Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God."
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us."
These are not all written by one man, in one century, in one literary form, or even in one language. Scripture was written across many centuries by prophets, kings, fishermen, priests, apostles and others, and yet again and again it possesses a gravity, beauty and memorability which seem peculiarly its own.
There is also something distinctive about the kind of beauty Scripture possesses.
Its beauty is rarely beauty for its own sake. The language serves the truth being expressed. The majesty of the words corresponds to the majesty of the subject.
When Isaiah writes of light rising upon a world covered in darkness, the beauty of the image carries the promise of God.
When Paul writes of the handwriting against us being taken away and nailed to the cross, the beauty lies not merely in the phrase but in the truth it expresses: guilt removed, judgement answered and victory accomplished in Christ.
When John writes, "And the Word was made flesh," the sentence is almost startling in its simplicity. Yet within those few words lies one of the deepest claims Christianity makes: the eternal Word through whom all things were made entered His own creation.
The beauty of Scripture therefore cannot stand alone as a mathematical proof that God wrote it.
But neither should it simply be ignored.
If God has spoken, we might expect His Word to possess a depth and beauty commensurate with the truths it contains. We might expect language which can be read by an ordinary person and yet pondered for a lifetime; language capable of comforting the grieving, humbling the proud, awakening the conscience, illuminating the mind and remaining alive after thousands of years.
That is precisely what we find.
The argument is not simply that the Bible is beautiful, therefore it must be divine.
It is that the beauty of Scripture forms another part of the cumulative case.
Its historical claims, fulfilled prophecy, internal unity, understanding of the human condition, revelation of God and testimony concerning Christ all give us reasons to take its claim to divine authority seriously.
And alongside them stands something which is experienced rather than merely demonstrated: the remarkable beauty of the Word itself.
A Word that Has Shaped History
There is also another kind of testimony: history itself.
Historical influence cannot prove that a book came from God. Many human books have been influential.
But if the Creator of humanity truly gave humanity a message, we should not be surprised if that message left an extraordinary mark upon human history.
The Bible has.
For centuries it was copied laboriously by hand. Then, when movable metal type transformed European printing in the fifteenth century, the first major work produced by Gutenberg using the new technology was a Bible.
There is something fitting about that.
A technology that would transform the transmission of human knowledge began its European history on a grand scale by printing Scripture.
The Bible then travelled further.
It crossed national and linguistic boundaries. It was translated and translated again. People carried it across oceans and continents, sometimes at enormous personal cost. Its stories, language and moral ideas entered literature, art, music, education and public life.
And this is not merely ancient history. Scripture is still being translated into languages which have never possessed it.
The history of the Bible is not simply the history of an old book which survived.
It is the history of a book that has continued to speak.
Kings have read it and prisoners have read it. Scholars have devoted lifetimes to it and children have learned its stories. It has been copied by hand, printed on presses, smuggled across borders, memorised, preached, translated, debated and loved.
Empires have risen and fallen during its history.
The book remains.
None of this proves inspiration by itself. Longevity is not divinity, and popularity is not truth.
But history is another witness.
If the God of history gave a message to mankind, we might reasonably expect that message to enter deeply into history.
The Bible has done precisely that.
Why This Book?
So why the Bible?
Why do we recognise this book as God's Word rather than simply placing it alongside every other book that claims religious authority?
There is no single little trick by which we prove it.
We recognise Scripture through the convergence of its testimony.
It speaks of the God whom reason seeks.
It calls Him I AM.
It gives creation purpose without making creation God.
It gives man dignity without worshipping man.
It accounts for man's greatness and his corruption.
It speaks to our conscience.
It exposes the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
It explains why we feel guilt and why guilt cannot simply be wished away.
It tells us why we need redemption.
It gives us Christ.
Its parts illuminate one another across centuries.
Its message has demonstrated extraordinary power in individual lives and extraordinary influence across human history.
And it has the peculiar quality described in Hebrews: it is living and powerful.
This should not be dismissed merely because spiritual recognition cannot be reduced to a measurement.
There are things we know through reason and things we know through observation. We also possess moral conscience and intuition. We recognise love, beauty, justice and goodness, although none can be placed on a scale and weighed.
The Christian recognises the voice of God in Scripture.
That does not mean every Christian immediately understands every passage, nor that difficult questions do not exist. There are historical questions, textual questions, scientific questions and theological questions. Christians have discussed such things for centuries.
But our faith does not hang precariously upon our ability to answer every objection ever raised against every verse of Scripture.
Nor is Christian faith a tower of blocks in which removing one disputed block necessarily causes everything above it to collapse.
The witnesses are more like many voices speaking together.
A person may first be struck by Christ. Christ causes him to take Scripture seriously. Scripture explains what his conscience has already told him about sin. Its account of sin explains why he needs redemption. Redemption gives meaning to the cross. The resurrection gives meaning to Christ's victory over death. The Old Testament begins to illuminate the New, and the New Testament illuminates the Old.
One truth strengthens another.
That is much closer to the way Christian belief actually works.
Why We Believe
Christian faith, then, does not rest upon a single isolated proof, nor does it begin by asking us to stop asking questions. It arises from the remarkable way in which the questions meet. The existence of the world, the demands of reason, the testimony of conscience, the condition of the human heart, the person of Christ and the testimony of Scripture do not lead us towards unrelated answers. They converge.
We began by asking why anything exists at all. Reason led us beyond limited and dependent things towards a self-existent, timeless and unlimited God. We then asked whether that God has spoken, and found in Scripture not a voice foreign to what we had already discovered, but one which speaks directly to it. The God whom reason seeks is revealed as I AM. The moral reality perceived by conscience is answered by His holiness. The corruption we discover within ourselves is explained by sin, and our need for redemption is answered by grace.
Yet Christianity ultimately brings us to more than a philosophical conclusion about God. At the centre of Scripture stands Christ. The Word is made flesh. The God upon whom all reality depends enters the world He made, speaks with authority to the human heart, gives Himself for His people, and rises from the dead.
This is why Christian faith is not a fragile tower in which everything depends upon one disputed argument. Its truths illuminate one another. Reason leads us towards God; Scripture reveals who He is; Scripture explains the conscience and the human condition we already experience; and all of its great themes - creation, sin, judgement, grace, redemption and resurrection - come together in Christ.
We do not believe because questions are forbidden, nor because every difficulty can be answered in a sentence. We believe because when the questions are followed, the witnesses meet.
We began with the question: why is there something rather than nothing?
We end with more than an abstract answer.
There is a God.
He is the great I AM.
He has spoken.
And the Word was made flesh.
