Is The Bible True? / Part 1

Is The Bible True?
PART 1

What would you say about someone who trusts his life to a theory he knows is not true? What if he knowingly entrusts the lives of hundreds of others to this theory? And what if he does this repeatedly?

I am such a person. By profession, I’m a structural engineer. Many times a day, I design steel and concrete structures on the basis of two big assumptions – that steel and concrete are homogeneous and isotropic. In other words, they are the same throughout, and in all directions. Stress is proportional to strain.

Anyone who has looked at a piece of concrete knows the first assumption is not true. Concrete has lumps in it; it is not the same all through. At a microscopic level, the same is true of steel; it has tiny impurities, and the iron forms crystal grains in all different orientations. Because of the inclusion of these impurities and different grain orientations, stress is not proportional to strain, but varies.

So both assumptions are false, and I know it. But the final structure behaves as if the theory is true. So I use it, and entrust hundreds of lives to it. It has proved reliable, even if it is not literally “true.” But I don’t tell you this in order to make you distrust engineers. Only to show you that the word “true” is not as simple in meaning as we often imagine.

Two Types Of Truth
We moderns are the cultural children of the scientific worldview, begun by the ancient Greek philosophers. We tend to think that a proposition (a statement like “gold will not float on water”) is either true or false. Truth is something that can be objectively measured, analyzed, and tested. In this sense, my design assumptions are false, no matter how well they work. The Greeks call this perspective gnosis – our word is “knowledge.”

But to the ancient Hebrews, “truth” was not so much about an objective, external, impersonal proposition. The Hebrew word for “true” is emeth. This has four meanings in my concordance. The primary meaning is “firmness, stability, security.” Something was “emeth” if it provided a firm and secure basis for your decisions, your actions, and your life.

The second meaning is “faithfulness, fidelity, reliability.” A man is “emeth” if he can be depended upon to keep his word, and fulfill his obligations. When we talk about “the True God,” we mean “the God who really exists” as compared to gods that do not. This is the Greek meaning. But when the Old Testament uses this word, the primary meaning is “the God who can be relied upon,” compared to the false gods of the nations around, who could not save those who called upon them. English still has a shade of this meaning when we talk about “true friends,” or a right angle being “true.” It is even more obvious in German, where “true” also means “loyal.”

The third meaning is “probity, uprightness, integrity.” Typically this means “hating covetousness” or “establishing righteousness.” In other words, maintaining or restoring right relationships in which people behave in accordance with “emeth” in the second sense given above.

Only the fourth meaning is “truth as opposed to falsehood.” But even here, the concept of “false” is based on something being unfaithful, untrustworthy, unreliable, or unstable. To the Hebrews, “truth” wasn’t about what you thought or believed; it was about how you lived. This distinction is vitally important when we talk about the truth of the Bible.

Which Applies To The Bible?
To most moderns, “truth” is understood in the Greek, or scientific sense of conveying accurate knowledge. If we talk about the truth of the Bible only in these terms, we are stripping it of the moral, ethical, personal and relational perspective that lies at the heart of “emeth.” We have accepted the atheists’ definitions at the start of the debate. As soon as we do this, we have agreed to talk about “truth” in a way that forbids ethics, justice, and faithfulness being considered. Under these rules, truth becomes a sterile search for knowledge, not a seeking for righteousness.

But the Bible warns that this is a false perspective. It’s not “knowledge” that’s important when it comes to “truth,” but “faithfulness.” Psalm 19:9 says, “The judgments of the Lord are true (emeth), and righteous altogether.” Similarly, Paul warns against the Greek perspective. “Knowledge (gnosis) puffs up, but love edifies. If anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know” (1 Cor. 8:1-2 NKJV). The truth of the Bible does not aim to give us information about the world. It is more concerned about giving us guidance in righteousness, and a stable basis for a faithful life. It wants to give us Hebrew emeth, not Greek gnosis.

This is why Moses says repeatedly that the statutes, judgments and ordinances are given so that Israel may not just “know” them, but also live by them (Dt. 4:1). Similarly, Paul tells Timothy that Scripture is inspired. But this is not just to tell us facts to satisfy our curiosity or enable us to argue fine points of theology, but “that the man of God may be ... equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:17). In other words, both Old and New Testaments are very much like my engineering design assumptions. They are not meant to describe what is really going on in the steel or concrete; their purpose is to help me design a structure that stands up to the loads.

Some Christians agree with this, but go further. They tell me that not only is the Bible true (emeth) or reliable for my life; it is also true (gnosis) in that it is historically and scientifically accurate. They point out that if it is untrue in any respect, then this creates doubt about its truth in every respect. I understand their position, but see seven objections to it.

In this column next month, we consider each of these seven objections.

By Bob Springett

Look for the conclusion to this series next month.