Why I believe the Bible

I believe the Bible because I believe in the Church.

I grew up in the Church.  The Church introduced Jesus to me.  The Church introduced the Scriptures to me.  The Church has provided me tools and a worldview to interpret the Scriptures and respond to Jesus.

Right now I am in a seminary class studying the gospel accounts and Acts.  Of course, the first couple weeks we discussed the origins Scripture.  Interestingly enough, it dovetailed well with a conversation on the relationship between the Church and Scripture I had recently had with some good friends.  I thought perhaps I would discuss my views to some of the issues that came up in our discussion and see what my blog readers think.

Perhaps I should first define my definition of Church.  In my writing, I use Church (with a capital ‘C’) to refer to the fellowship of baptized Christ followers (both living and dead) throughout time and geography who intentionally gather[ed] together in local congregations for fellowship and ministry.  I guess some may instinctively understand the Church as necessarily being some rigidly defined organizational structure (read denomination), but this is not my belief.  I use church (with a lowercase ‘c’) to refer to the fellowship of living baptized Christ followers as a local body in a particular geography.

Within the Evangelical circles I often run, I find the tendency to view the Scriptures as originating from outside the Church.  I think perhaps this offers us Protestants a bit of pride that we don’t have to thank the traditions of our Orthodox and Roman Catholic brothers for canonizing and preserving our Scriptures.  We can instead look to our hero Martin Luther as rediscovering an inherent truth of a canon.  Without getting into a discussion on the Protestant Reformation that I am unable (and currently unwilling) to engage fully, I submit that as Evangelical Christians, we should both affirm and thank our ancient Catholic and Orthodox brothers for their canonization and preservation as well as Luther for his call to re-engage with Scripture.

Through looking again at the process that Scripture was written and canonized, I am reminded just how much God relied on human intellect and discernment.  The text didn't come through some supernatural and audible dictation, but rather through careful study, consultation, reflection, and prayer.  Luke, in the opening verses of His gospel account, speaks of this careful process.  As these gospel accounts and letters were shared among the churches, some became generally accepted as authoritative and some were not.  By the time the Third Council of Carthage was held in 397 A.D. (more universally formalizing what books are included in the canon), the list had been generally accepted for quite some time by early Church leaders and members.

I’m reminded that we interact with the Holy Spirit in much the same way these biblical authors compiled and canonized Scripture.  I am very skeptical of ideas and statements that come through some ‘liver quiver’ moment that have not been tested through the careful process of study, consultation, reflection, and prayer.  In this same way I think my confidence in Scripture would be greatly diminished if it was born out of this type of ‘liver quiver’ without being carefully tested.

I am very confident the scrutiny the early Church gave the Scriptures did well to test their accuracy, validity, and usefulness for edifying the Church and ultimately testifying to the true “Word” Jesus Christ.  I think it is an important distinction to note that it was those early Christians, bonding together as the Church—the Body of Christ—that wrote and scrutinized our texts.  We are not forced to rely on one person’s subjective ‘liver quiver’ as the foundation of our revelation of who God is.  I believe godly and wise decisions were made through the quite human processes of prayer, consultation, and reflection.  Likewise, I am confident the Holy Spirit continues to bless the Church with the gift of spiritual discernment for how we are to interpret Scripture as we study, consult, reflect, and pray.