How Do I Know That The Bible Is True?

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Blake Hudson

Introduction

How do I know that the Bible is true? Is it just a matter of probability, or can I know that the Bible is in fact the word of God? The apostle John tells us that he has “written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13, emphasis mine). That I, as a Christian, can know that the Bible is true is not to say that there is a silver-bullet argument to convince every skeptic; we should never underestimate the ability of man to “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18).

So how can I know that the Bible is true? I believe our confidence in the truth of the Bible can be built on four broad categories: Eyewitness Testimony, Historical Attributes, Divine Attributes, and Internal Testimony. While we will look at each category individually, they are not truly independent of each other. These categories reinforce one another and together they build a self-affirming model of Scripture.

Eyewitness Testimony

The first reason I know that the Bible is true is from eyewitness testimony. In the New Testament we have records of eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection and if these eyewitness accounts are true, then the whole Bible is established as true: the OT is trustworthy because Jesus found it trustworthy, and the NT is trustworthy because Jesus tells us that the Spirit would guide the apostles as they established the church. Now, we all know that just because someone claims to be telling the truth doesn’t mean that they actually are. So do we have reason to think that the writings of the New Testament are trustworthy witnesses to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection?

Indicators That the NT Account is Trustworthy

  • Why would the apostolic group create a lie and die for it? It is one thing to die for something you believe to be true, it’s unheard of for a group of people to create a lie and then to suffer and die for it.
  • There are multiple eyewitnesses testifying to the truth of the resurrection. These witnesses are from diverse backgrounds and tell the same story from different perspectives.
  • Women are key eyewitnesses. While this doesn’t seem like a big deal to us today, women were not considered to be very reliable witnesses at the time. The fact that women play a crucial role as witnesses in the gospel accounts is another indicator that the truth is being recorded.
  • The NT was written within living memory of the events. It is true that events can become legends as time passes, but when an account is written shortly after the event it is much more difficult to embellish the record because there are plenty of people around to verify the truth or falsity of the claims made.
  • We find a record of successes, failures, and embarrassments. The fact that the apostles’ failures are not glossed over is another indication that the truth is being recorded.

For these and other reasons we can have confidence in the testimony of the New Testament. Certainly in a court of law these eyewitnesses would be considered trustworthy. For more on this topic I encourage you to check out Cold Case Christianity by J. Warner Wallace.

Historical Attributes

The second reason that I know the Bible is true is its historical attributes, both internal and external.

Internal Historical Attribute: Details

When a writing claims to be recording historical events, one test to check for accuracy is to determine if the details in the account are accurate. If the details are accurate then that is a good indicator that the account as a whole is accurate. Not all facts are historically verifiable, but repeatedly the Bible (especially the New Testament) has been shown to get the details correct. Names of small towns, descriptions of travel, proper names1, the unique government titles in different regions, and other details have often been shown to be accurately described in the Bible.2

There is also the puzzle-like agreement of small details across different books of the Bible which are known as “undesigned coincidences”.3 In these undesigned coincidences the seemingly inconsequential details from one account fit perfectly with details in other accounts. These coincidences form a web of interrelated confirmations of the accuracy of the accounts. The more coincidences there are, the more likely that the accounts are giving accurate and truthful information.

External Historical Attribute: The Church

The church is a historic reality, and we have to consider the question, “why did the church come into existence?”. If the record of the New Testament is false, then the birth and rapid expansion of the church is very difficult to explain. If the resurrection never happened, if the miracles attributed to Jesus and his apostles didn’t happen, if the record of the New Testament was all made up, then why did the church grow so immediately and rapidly? Especially without the use of violence and in the face of persecution? Unlike most other religions Christianity is founded on historical events, on things that were physically felt and seen (1 John 1:1). It is extremely difficult to explain how a religion based on historical events could grow immediately after the founding events if those events never happened.

The simplest answer to the existence of the church is that the New Testament is telling the truth. Certainly, skeptics have tried to provide answers (primarily in the form of conspiracy theories), but outside of the account given in the New Testament there is not an adequate answer to the existence of the church.

Divine Attributes

The third reason I know that the Bible is true is the divine attributes found in it. These are attributes that are best (or only) explained by God overseeing the writing of the Bible. The two most convincing to myself are fulfilled prophecy and the cohesive, overarching meta-narrative of the Bible.

Fulfilled Prophecy

Throughout the Bible we find many examples of prophecies that are later fulfilled. Since man, without supernatural revelation, cannot know the future, the fact that there are several examples of the future being correctly predicted points to supernatural revelation. Some examples of these prophecies are:

  • The destruction of cities such as Tyre (Ezekiel 26:1-21), Babylon (Jeremiah 50:17-18; 51:8, Isaiah 21:9; 47:1), and Jerusalem (Matthew 24:1-2)
  • The accurate depiction of political history in Daniel 114
  • The mention of Cyrus and the role he would play in Isaiah 44:28-45:5
  • The timing and place of Jesus the Messiah’s birth in Daniel 9 and Micah 5:2 respectively5

Other examples could be given, but this small sampling will suffice to make the point. Skeptics will say that these prophecies were simply written after the fact, but this rejection of the biblical account is based completely on an a priori rejection of anything supernatural and not on any convincing argument.

Biblical Meta-Narrative

The other divine attribute is the cohesive, overarching meta-narrative of the Bible. At first the existence of a meta-narrative in the Bible may not seem impressive, but when we consider the process through which the Bible was written this becomes a stronger point. The Bible is comprised of 66 books written over 1500 years by 40+ authors and yet there is a plot that can be traced throughout the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. From the Garden of Eden, to the genealogy lists, to Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, everything in the Bible is tied together. We also observe how the Old Testament points forward to Jesus, yet the Old Testament is fully explained only in the light of Jesus. It all fits together and in it’s divine unity the Bible pronounces itself to be the truth.

Internal Testimony

The fourth and final reason that I know that the Bible is true is that the Holy Spirit leads me to a confidence in the truth of the Bible.6 I am not referring here to any special knowledge or personal revelation, but to confidence and conviction as it relates to my faith in Jesus. Also, I do believe that the Spirit can be resisted (Acts 7:51), so I am not suggesting anything close to the irresistible grace advocated by Calvinism. However, to say that the Spirit can be resisted is to imply that the Spirit is working within individuals. So what do I mean by the Holy Spirit convicting me of the truth of the Bible and why do I believe that to be the case?

What The Bible Says

  • Jesus declares that his sheep will follow him because they know his voice (John 10) and the only place for us to listen to Jesus’ voice today is in the Bible. Jesus does not give details in John 10, but somehow a Christian knows the truth of Jesus’ words and, therefore, the Bible in which those words are found.
  • The Spirit convicts the world of righteousness and sin (John 16:7-11). Where do we learn about righteousness and sin? The Bible. So to be convicted of righteousness and sin requires a conviction of the truth found in the Bible.
  • The Spirit strengthens the faith of Christians (Ephesians 3:14-19) and the Bible is a key tool used to strengthen that faith (Romans 10:17). Part of a Christian’s faith is confidence in the message of the gospel and the promises of God (Galatians 3:5-9), both of which we find in the Bible. So for a Christian’s faith to be strengthened their confidence in the Scripture must also be strengthened. We see a clear connection between strengthening faith, the Spirit, and the Scripture.
  • Scripture is the sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:17). Again, we see that the Scripture is a key tool of the Spirit.
  • “Now may the God of hope fill you with joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13). Again we see the connection between believing (in the gospel and promises of God found in the Bible) and the activity of the Spirit.

The Spirit Provokes the Christian to Confidence in the Bible

With these considerations in mind I believe that it is faithful to the Bible’s own testimony to say that the Holy Spirit instills in me a confidence that the Bible is true. The Spirit is the Author of the Bible and uses the Bible to convict people of righteousness and sin and to strengthen the faith of Christians. A Christian is expected to be able to recognize the voice of Jesus and to make use of the sword of the Spirit. In order for these things to happen it is necessary to know that the Bible is true. How exactly does the Spirit operate in thus provoking my confidence in the truth of the Bible? I don’t know, but I do believe it is what the Bible teaches.

A Short Aside on the Holy Spirit and The Bible

The Spirit’s convicting people of righteousness and sin (and thus in the truth of the Bible) is why a person with no knowledge of history and no access to any external verification can still know that the Bible is true. Can a person in the jungles of Africa, with no access to Cold Case Christianity, hear the message of the Bible and know it to be the truth? Yes, they can. The Holy Spirit, working through the message of the Bible, can provoke a person’s confidence in the truth of the Bible so that they know the message they are receiving is the truth. This person can know that the eyewitness testimony of the NT is truthful and that the divine attributes of the Bible point to God.7

Conclusion

So how do I know that the Bible is true? According to Romans 1:18-23 everyone who denies God is without excuse because God is self-evident in his creation. If God is self-evident in his creation, how much more would we expect him to be self-evident in his Word? I know that the Bible is true because of the four interrelated categories of Eyewitness Testimony, Historical Attributes, Divine Attributes, and Internal Testimony. These four categories reinforce one another and together build a self-affirming knowledge of Scripture. For all of these reasons I know that the Bible is true.

Notes

  1. Peter Williams has a great discussion of proper names in his book Can We Trust the Gospels? ↩︎
  2. An excellent resource for a detailed account of the historical accuracy of the book of Acts is The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History by Colin J. Hemer ↩︎
  3. For more information on this topic see the classic work Undesigned Coincidences in the Writing Both of the Old and New Testament by J.J. Blunt or the more recent book Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts by Lydia McGrew. There are shorter discussions of these undesigned coincidences in Cold Case Christianity by J. Warner Wallace and in Can We Trust the Gospels? by Peter Williams. ↩︎
  4. For a good overview of this prophecy visit https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/1238-faith-building-study-from-daniel-11-a ↩︎
  5. For a good overview of this prophecy visit https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/14-daniels-prophecy-of-the-seventy-weeks ↩︎
  6. Some may argue that it’s circular reasoning to argue from the Bible that the Bible is true. Yes, it is circular, but to prove an ultimate authority requires a certain degree of circularity: to argue for reason requires the use reason; to argue for the Bible requires the use of the Bible. John Frame discusses this point in several places including The Doctrine of the Word of God (pg 7 for example). ↩︎
  7. For a moderately difficult, yet still accessible book on the concept of knowledge from a Christian perspective I recommend Knowledge and Christian Belief by Alvin Plantinga ↩︎