Skilled in the word of Righteousness (Hebrews 5:13) Part 20

SKILLED IN THE WORD OF RIGHTEOUSNESS (Hebrews 5:13)

Part 20

Written by Yeow Chin Kiong

Up to this point, we have built a prima facie case (i.e. one which is built upon evidence at “face value” and before it is challenged) that, firstly, there exists an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-benevolent God who can communicate with mankind and, secondly, that the New Testament (not yet the entire Bible, including the Old Testament) is a historically trustworthy document.

These two “minimal” propositions have been reached WITHOUT depending on the Bible itself, EXCEPT when determining what the New Testament claims for itself, i.e. that it contains eyewitness and witness accounts of events. We must, of course, take into account these claims but must ascertain their reliability by using universal and intuitive standards of proof.

We are not using the circular,- and therefore invalid,- argument that the Bible is God’s word because the Bible itself says it is Divinely-inspired in 2 Timothy 3:16 in the Bible! Instead, we use worldly methods and standards of proof (such as the criteria of embarrassment and external evidence) to determine the reliability or truthfulness of the contents of any document (eg. such as used in our law courts) that claim to represent truth and reality.

In like manner, we have proven that God exists,- as a Being that is all-knowing, all-powerful and and all-benevolent Who can communicate with man,- without reference to the Bible’s insistance or implication that such a Being exists. We have reasoned that He does exist from the evidence of created things, including life itself, around us as necessarily needing a Creator and Sustainer. We have it only referred to the scriptures to find out whether this method of reasoning aligns with the scriptural way of reasoning, and it does (Romans 1:18-20; Acts 14:17)

Indeed, the whole approach of proving God’s existence and the New Testament’s trustworthiness (as a basis for thereafter proving the entire Bible’s trustworthiness) rooted in earthly methods of reasonably ascertaining the truth about reality IS in agreement to scriptures’ thinking. Jesus Himself is recorded in the scriptures as saying, “If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” (John 3:12). Once confirmed as God’s word (as when miraculous works accompany their original or early speakers) the scriptures themselves are to be believed as truth and authoritative (not needing any further Divine confirmation or authentification) (Luke 16:27-31; John 5:39). Scriptures’ original delivery needed accompanying miracles for their confirmation (as the scriptures themselves admit, in Mark 16:17-20; Hebrews 2:3-4) but not thereafter.

After we have established that the New Testament, at least, is reliable as eyewitness testimony and the written record of such testimony (as it claims to be, e.g. Luke 1:1-4; 2 Peter 1:16-18), we need to determine what it actually testifies about. As a bearer of truth, whatever is recorded in the New Testament must be true.

For the porpose of our prima facie case that the Bible as a whole is Divinely-inspired, we have to ascertain from the New Testament (which has been proven trustworthy) whether, firstly, Jesus is God, or Divine and therefore is authoritative and cannot lie and, secondly, if so, whether Jesus says the entire Bible is God’s word. If the scriptures provide an affirmative answer to both queries (i.e “Yes, Jesus is God” and “Yes, Jesus says the entire Bible is God’s word”), then we have made a prima facie case for the Bible being God’s word. We must thereafter refute challenges to the prima facie case that the Bible is God’s word to close our case that it actually is beyond a reasonable doubt.