Mistakes Critics Make In Misjudging The Bible (Part 1)

MISTAKES CRITICS MAKE IN MISJUDGING THE BIBLE

Note: These are summarized compilations from the book, “When Critics Ask”, authored by Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe.

While the Bible is the Word of God and as such, cannot have errors, nonetheless, this does not mean there are no difficulties in it. However, as St. Augustine wisely noted, “if we are perplexed by any apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, the author of this book is mistaken, but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood.”

The Bible is without mistakes, but the critics are not. All their allegations of error in the Bible are based on some errors of their own.

MISTAKE (1) Assuming that the Unexplained is not Explainable

No informed person would claim to be able to fully explain all Bible difficulties. However, it is a mistake for the critic to assume, therefore, that what has not yet been explained never will be explained. When a scientist comes upon an anomaly in nature, he does not give up further scientific exploration. Rather, he uses the unexplained as a motivation to find an explanation. No real scientist throws up the hands in despair simply because he or she cannot explain a given phenomenon. He or she continues to do research with the confident expectation that an answer will be found. And, the history of science reveals that their faith has been rewarded over and over again.

Scientists, for example, once had no natural explanation for meteors, eclipses, tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes. All of these mysteries have yielded their secrets to the relentless patience of science.

Likewise, the Christian scholar approaches the Bible with the same presumption that what is thus far unexplained is not therefore unexplainable, He or she does not assume that discrepancies are contradictions. And, when he encounters something for which he has no explanation, he simply continues to do research, believing that one will eventually be found. In fact, if he assumed the opposite, he would stop studying. Why pursue an answer when one assumes there is none. Like his scientific counterpart, the Bible student has been rewarded for his faith and research. For, many difficulties for which scholars once had no answer have yielded to the relentless pursuit of truth through history, archaeology, linguistics, and other disciplines. For example, critics once proposed that Moses could not have written the first five books of the Bible because there was no writing in Moses’ day. Now we know by research that writing was in existence a couple of thousand years or more before Moses. Likewise, critics once believed that the Bible was wrong in speaking of the Hittite people since they were totally unknown to historians. Now, all historians know of their existence by way of their library that was found in Turkey. This gives us the confidence to believe that the biblical difficulties that have not yet been explained have an explanation and that we need not assume there is a mistake in the Bible.