by Shafer Parker

Christians believe the Bible is God’s Word. Well, you say, of course they do. And if you’re feeling a bit snarky, you might add that this statement isn’t just obvious, it rises to the level of a tautology. Like the man who declared that water is wet. To his hearers it came as no great revelation. But there’s more to the story. Consider the following paradox: (1) in the 21st century we have more proof of the New Testament’s trustworthiness and accuracy than ever before, but (2) at the same time its truthfulness is doubted by more Christians than ever, especially those who self-identify as “progressive Christians.” Here, then, is a paradox that deserves exploration.

Let’s begin by asking a question. Can we identify a source for doubting the Scriptures within the Christian world? Well, yes we can. For well over 200 years “Christian” scholars in the academic world have launched various attacks on the Bible, but perhaps none has been so effective as questioning the authorship of the various biblical books by raising doubts about the dates when these books were written. Moses didn’t write the Pentateuch, they declare, because he lived before writing had been invented. Isaiah didn’t write all of Isaiah because much of it must have been written hundreds of years after he lived.

Matthew didn’t write Matthew. John didn’t write John, or the Revelation. Of the letters ascribed to Paul, perhaps only Romans and I Corinthians came from the pen of the great apostle. Moreover, nobody knows the source for Hebrews. And why not? Because the commonly accepted dates for these books are all wrong, they say. Matthew, if there ever was a Matthew, could not possibly have written the first gospel because it likely never existed until long after the apostle was dead. The same is assumed to be true for much of the rest of the New Testament.

A raft of negative notions can be constructed from these foundational concepts. Divine inspiration is denied because, if written in the second or third century, the Bible can be dismissed as a human instrument designed to lend credibility to the origin story of a church already in existence. Casting doubt on the authenticity of Scripture also allows critics to deny key passages on marriage, sexual morality, women’s rights, or even the teaching that Christ alone can reconcile us to God. These truths are relegated to nothing more than expressions of cultural prejudices, including supposed examples in Scripture of xenophobia (intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries or races) and misogyny (hatred of women). Thus the entire Bible is written off as no more than a record of ancient peoples who would think differently were they alive today. The following is a quote from a fictional character, but it can also serve as an excellent summary of much “Christian” scholarship over the past 200 years.

“The Bible is a product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.” The words of Sir Leigh Teabing, a fictional character in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. 

A response to the critics 

What then, is the truth? If you are impressed by arguments based on authority, I can say this. Today it is a fact that the best scholarship has pushed the writing of most of the New Testament, including the Gospels and Acts, back to the middle of the first century (A.D. 50s and 60s). And that places the writing of Scripture squarely within the lifetimes of many hostile witnesses who could have contradicted the NT, had they not told the truth. 

Do you doubt that I’m telling the truth? Then consider that after the late-dating of the NT books by F. C. Baur in the middle of the 19th century (he thought most were published at least 100 years after the events they reported), no other full-length scholarly work was done on dating the NT until 1976, when John A. T. Robinson published Redating the New Testament. Robinson argued that the entire NT had been written and published before A.D. 70, i.e., within the living memories of supporters and enemies of the gospel, and he did so despite being a theological liberal. In other words, he supported a conservative view of the dating of the NT, not because he preferred that view, but because the facts forced him to that position. 

One could wish that Robinson’s efforts would have led to a change in modern scholarly views, but alas, they did not. Liberal, unbelieving scholars have ignored Robinson for much the same reason modern evolutionists ignore the implications of the discovery of DNA; they don’t like how it impacts their worldview. The good news, however, is that last year Robinson’s arguments were reinforced by a new book from Canadian author Jonathan Bernier. And as far as I’m concerned, in Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament: The Evidence for Early Composition, Bernier has definitively demonstrated that late dating is no longer intellectually tenable. The following isn’t proof that he’s right, but the sheer challenge in his tone makes it clear he believes he’s standing on solid ground. “It is the contention of this study that while there are New Testament books that contain material most fully intelligible only if written prior to 70, there are no New Testament books that contain material most fully intelligible only if written after 70.”

But so what? I hear you cry. Why should I care when the New Testament was written, so long as people believe it? You should care because the stronger the argument for the New Testament being written within the living memories of everyone involved, the more believable it becomes. Christianity boasts that its sacred book not only tells us the truth about God, it tells us the truth about God’s world, including historical truth. Early dating of the New Testament greatly strengthens that argument.

You should also embrace early dating for the New Testament because it helps you resist progressive Christianity’s call to doubt God’s Word. Alisa Childers, who, not coincidentally, is the keynote speaker for this year’s Be Ready conference, entitled The Little White Lies of Progressive Christianity, has listed the denial of biblical authority and inspiration as one of its hallmarks. Here’s how Childers puts it:

“In the progressive church, the Bible is viewed more like an ancient spiritual travel journal than the inspired, inerrant, and authoritative Word of God. The Biblical writers are viewed as well-meaning ancient people who were doing their best to understand God in the times and places in which they lived, but they were not necessarily speaking for God. Scripture is also seen as contradictory, not internally coherent, and not authoritative for Christians.”

Ultimately, Christians believe in the inerrancy of Scripture because Jesus promised it would be so (John 14:26). But what a comfort it is to know that logic and evidence have conspired with faith to make it possible to rest secure in the knowledge that when the Bible speaks, God has spoken. As someone has well said, “If you want to hear God speak, just read the Bible to yourself out loud.”

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