Questioning the Bible=Questioning Jesus

As a student at a secular institution of higher learning, it has never surprised me that the Bible is not taken seriously by most of the faculty and students. Even the most conservative religion professors on campus don’t believe the Bible to be God’s Word, holy, inspired, and infallible. What has surprised me, however, is how many people, professors, and students who claim association with a Christian denomination actually don’t believe the Bible to be fully infallible, historically and scientifically accurate, and inspired. Rather, I hear things like “the Bible isn’t God’s Word, but it contains God’s Word” or that the Bible is a “good book written by inspired people, but with some historical errors here or there” or that it simply “wasn’t meant to be taken literally.” Coming from non-believers, this would not be surprising. As a matter of fact, for a non-believer to say things like this, we should be excited. But coming from a Christian, this is clearly not acceptable. Let me show you why.

Most Christians, both theologically liberal and moderate, retreat to a lower view of the Bible out of the best of intentions. After studying the Bible for many years, they claim to have come across inconsistencies, errors, contradictions, and things that just don’t fit historically or scientifically. Therefore, they claim that these are just minor human errors or confusions that don’t distort the overall message of the Bible. I don’t have the time or space here to try and prove that these supposed “contradictions” are not contradictions but rather fit together quite nicely in the inerrant record of Scripture, but I will show that a Christian cannot logically hold that the historical accounts of the Bible are incorrect, because in doing so, they claim to know better than Jesus.

You see, the problem that the moderate-liberal Christian faces is that many of the stories and facts they deny are actually confirmed by Jesus in the Gospels. For example, Jesus actually believed that our first parents were actually Adam and Eve (Mat. 19:4). Consequently, Paul’s whole doctrine of justification is based upon the historical existence of Adam (Rom. 5). Jesus also believed that the flood of Noah happened just as it happened in the Old Testament (Mat. 24:37-39). Jesus believed that the story of Jonah is accurate and that he was in the belly of a whale for three days as told in the Old Testament (Mat. 12:39-41). Jesus believed that Cain killed Abel just as it was told (Luke 11:51). And there are so many more examples. Jesus the Messiah believed literally in the Old Testament histories, even in those stories that seemed the most farfetched and contradict our limited knowledge of the world. If Jesus took the Bible and its histories and science literally, then we should too.

Why? Because when we claim that Jonah wasn’t really in the belly of a whale or that Adam and Eve didn’t really exist in a real Garden of Eden, we claim to know better than Jesus. When we say that the Bible has inaccuracies or contradictions, we pretend to have more insight and wisdom than the actual Author of the Bible Himself! The people who have the real pride and sin about the Bible aren’t the ones who think its inerrant…it’s the ones who think it isn’t! The sad thing is that for most liberals and moderates, this argument doesn’t work because they simply view Jesus as just a good man who wasn’t God, and therefore we can presume to know more than Him. Without the historical and scientific accuracy and infallibility of the Bible, however, the whole message falls apart. What sense is there to listen to a book that tells you not to lie when the book lies about or misrepresents some things? Jesus obviously took the Bible literally and seriously, so should we. A Christian must either believe the Bible in its entirety, or not at all. There is no middle ground. We would do well to remember that.

*For more source material, try this website