Equipped: Defending Scripture from Its Critics

Summary

White Horse Inn — Equipped: Defending Scripture from Its Critics
Date: March 2, 2025 | Hosts: Michael Horton, Justin Holcomb, Bob Hiller, Walter R. Strickland II

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Overview

This episode kicks off the “Equipped” series, aiming to provide Christians with intellectual and spiritual tools to defend the faith. The main theme centers on the reliability, necessity, uniqueness, and clarity of Scripture, particularly addressing common critiques and misconceptions. Using historical, theological, and practical arguments, the hosts unpack why the Bible stands apart from other sacred texts and how Christians can be confident in its truth.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Necessity of Scripture

• General vs. Special Revelation
  • Natural revelation allows people to know about God (through creation or conscience), but gives no saving knowledge or gospel (04:42–05:21).
    • Michael Horton: "The gospel is not written in the stars. The gospel is not to be discovered out on a yacht. The gospel is not seen in a beautiful sunset. That's God's handiwork. But that's coming off." (04:42)
    • Justin Holcomb: “General revelation does tell us some information about God. But listen to what it says in Romans 1... this natural knowledge of God does not come with good news, with an announcement. It is actually a burden in itself…” (07:13)
  • The law is innate (“law is a mirror... It just shows that we are [sinners]”), but only Scripture reveals the gospel and good news (08:32–09:39).
  • Need for eyewitness testimony, as contained in Scripture after the apostles (06:06).

What’s Unique about the Bible?

• Historical Grounding & Verifiability
  • Scripture narrates real events and historical acts of God, unlike mythological or moralistic religious texts (10:06–11:21).
    • Bob Hiller: “It’s a verifiable text. It’s a verifiable thing. And so our claim to faith is grounded in events in history, which makes I think our text rather unique from other religions.” (10:52)
  • Inclusion of “embarrassing” details (e.g., women discovering the empty tomb—11:21–12:13) increases authenticity.
  • Cohesive narrative across millennia: “One mosaic, all these pieces... a mosaic of Christ.” (12:39–14:20)
• Living and Active
  • Not only historical but spiritually alive—Scripture “does something to us” through the Holy Spirit (12:12–12:39).
• Revealed, not merely Invented
  • Christianity’s claims depend on God's real acts and words, not just timeless ideas or ethical codes (15:41–16:11).

The Gospel: Law vs. Gospel Distinction

• Law is common to all religions and our default mode; the gospel must be announced/revealed (05:22–06:06).
  • Michael Horton: “People turn the Bible into a text that is all law and no gospel. And we have to remind people that we need the Bible more than any other reason to know how God feels about us, to know whether we are up a creek or we have a Savior...” (16:11)
  • Martin Luther, quoted by Justin Holcomb: “It is the supreme art of the devil that we can make the law out of the gospel.” (17:24)

The Reliability of Scripture: Manuscripts & Canon

• Embarrassing Abundance of Manuscripts
  • Compared to other ancient works (e.g., Josephus, Tacitus), we have far more New Testament manuscripts, dated much closer to the events (18:43–20:55).
    • Michael Horton: “Bruce Metzger...said that compared with the manuscript evidence for any other classic from the past, we have an embarrassing number of manuscripts...” (18:43)
    • Manuscript transmission (just decades vs. centuries for others), 20,000+ manuscript pieces, and additional evidence from Church Fathers’ citations (22:06–23:25).
    • Metzger via Holcomb: “If all other sources for our knowledge of the text of the New Testament were destroyed, they would be sufficient alone for the reconstruction of practically the entire New Testament.” (22:26–23:25)
• The Canon Was Recognized, Not Created
  • "The church fathers did not authorize the canon. They recognized the canon. It presented itself as a canon to the early Church fathers. They welcomed it. They recognized it." (23:45)

Responding to Critics & Alleged Contradictions

• Variations and Scribal Errors

  • Most textual variants are minor—typos, word order, spelling, etc.—not doctrinal changes (26:53–27:35).
    • Bart Ehrman (critic), quoted: “Most of the changes found in our early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology...” (25:52–26:54)
    • Walter Strickland: “[T]he variations are these slips of the pen. They're not, did he rise from the dead or did he not rise from the dead?" (27:35)
  • Debated endings (e.g., Mark, John’s woman caught in adultery) are transparently acknowledged and do not undermine the resurrection or core beliefs (28:08–29:46).
  • The embarrassment of riches—more manuscripts means more variants but better ability to reconstruct the original (31:49–32:09).
    • Bob Hiller: “The more manuscripts we have, the closer we can actually get because we can do a lot better comparative work.” (31:49)
    • Michael Horton: “Wallace has done the homework to show that...what we hold in our hands, a Greek New Testament...is an approximation of the original texts. To 99.99%.” (29:59)

• Archaeology

  • Time and again, archaeology has confirmed details previously doubted (e.g., existence of Caiaphas, Pool of Siloam, etc.) (33:51–36:58).

    • Bob Hiller: “Wasn’t it they said like there was no such person as Caiaphas...and then they found his tomb.” (34:50)
    • Walter Strickland: “In the 1940s, 1950s, the Dead Sea Scrolls were found and they predated previous manuscripts by almost a thousand years, showing this remarkable consistency...” (36:58)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Holcomb, on reliability: “We have 20 times the number of manuscripts than any other comparable type of text.” (23:26)
• Horton, on canonical recognition: “The church fathers did not authorize the canon. They recognized the canon.” (23:45)
• Luther, via Holcomb: “It is the supreme art of the devil that we can make the law out of the gospel.” (17:24)
• Mark Twain (quoted by Hiller): “It’s not the parts of the Bible that are confusing to me that I find trouble accepting, it’s the ones that are clear.” (41:00)

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The Clarity of Scripture & Varied Readings

• Clarity in the Main Message
  • While not all passages are equally clear, the core message is: “God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son.” (38:02–39:17)
    • Horton: “It is clear on its main message... Any child can understand that. It really is that simple.” (38:02)
• Why Differences in Interpretation?
  • Interpretive challenges stem from reader assumptions, cultural biases, or reluctance to accept difficult teachings (39:17–41:00).
    • Strickland: “What this does is that it challenges some of our sort of contemporary assumptions about what it means to be a reader and that we don’t assert ourselves... we allow it to interrogate us...” (39:45)
    • Hiller: “Sometimes the claim that the scriptures aren’t clear might be an indication that you just don’t like what they say.” (40:41)
• Scripture Interprets Scripture
  • Difficult passages should be understood in light of clearer ones, and learning within local church community is essential (41:00–41:53).

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Final Summary Segment

• Holcomb: “The Bible tells us who God is and who we are. And ultimately the Bible is about how God created and is redeeming the world through Jesus Christ... The Bible is a series of divinely inspired interpretations of redemptive acts of God.” (41:54)
• Hugh Latimer (quoted by Holcomb): “The books of the Bible should be constantly in our hands, in our eyes, in our ears and in our mouth, but most of all in our hearts... It is a more excellent jewel or treasure than any gold or precious stone.” (44:23)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Necessity of Scripture — General vs. Special Revelation: 04:08–09:39
• Uniqueness of Scripture: 09:53–16:11
• Law and Gospel Distinction: 16:11–17:39
• Reliability: Manuscript Evidence: 18:01–24:48
• Addressing Textual Variants & Canon: 25:52–32:31
• Archaeology & Bible Affirmation: 33:51–37:19
• Clarity and Interpretative Differences: 37:19–41:53
• Concluding Theological Summary: 41:54–44:23

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Tone & Style

The conversation is scholarly yet accessible, pastoral, and at times witty—with the hosts leveraging both robust academic sources (Metzger, Ehrman, FF Bruce, Warfield) and classic theologians (Luther, Latimer) for authority and encouragement. Humor and personal anecdotes make the defense of Scripture approachable for listeners at any level of familiarity.

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Endnote:

The hosts assure listeners that the Bible remains the most scrutinized yet substantiated book in history—unique in its historical rootedness, divine message, and transformative power. They encourage listeners not to be derailed by critiques, but to engage critically, confident of the trustworthy foundation of Christian faith.

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Transcript

[Michael Horton]

This year marks 1700 years after the Council of Nicaea and the mystery of the Trinity remains at the heart of the Christian faith. Recovering orthodoxy in our modern context is vital to the unity of the Church worldwide. Which is why I'm so excited that we here at sola, in partnership with credo, are hosting a special two day conference on the Trinity. Please join US in Washington, D.C. this may as we bring together leading Trinitarian theologians for keynote messages and interactive breakout centered around the Nicene Creed. Just go to solamedia.org trinityconference that's solamedia.org Daniel Wallace is another person who's really engaged in debates. He's had debates with Bart Ehrman, he's responded several times to this whole thing of all these discrepancies in the texts and manuscript evidence, so forth, and Wallace has done the homework to show that it's 99.99%.

[Bob Hiller]

That's amazing.

[Michael Horton]

And of course there, there are these scribal errors. But here's the thing too. You can't say there are scribal errors in the Quran. You get in trouble if you say that in Christianity. It's fine to criticize. What we're trying to do is not criticize the Word of God. We're trying to find out historically what is the word of God. Applying the riches of the Reformation to the modern church. This is White Horse Zen, a weekly roundtable discussion about theology and culture.

[Justin Holcomb]

We are excited to start a new series called Equipped, a five part series designed to equip you with the tools to defend the Christian faith. We'll delve into crucial topics like the reliability of Scripture, controversial doctrines, the relationship between faith and science, the nature of the Church and the significance of the Reformation. Whether you're a seasoned believer or just starting out with the Christian faith or having questions and curious about it, this series will help you strengthen your understanding and confident engagement with the people around you and the world around you and the ideas around you. In this first episode on Defending Scripture, we will dive deep into why the Bible is necessary to know God and his plan of salvation and why it is reliable against the variety of accusations. And we want to make two claims simultaneously. First, the Bible does not misrepresent the facts. It is vital and easy to defend that the Bible is trustworthy and reliable. Second, and at the same time, as Charles Spurgeon said, quote, the word of God is like a lion. You don't have to defend a lion. All you have to do is let the lion loose and the lion will defend itself, End quote. We're going to put those two together and in this episode we'll explore the unique nature of Scripture, its reliability and its importance and relevance in today's world. From the earliest manuscripts to modern day challenges, we'll examine why the Bible continues to be a source of truth, hope, and most of all, good news. And to have this conversation are my friends and you know them. Michael Horton, professor of theology and apologetics at Westminster Seminary, California. Walter Strickland, professor of theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and elder at Imago Day Church. Bob Hiller, pastor of Community Lutheran Church and author of a great book on James called Finding Christ in the Straw. And I am Justin Holcomb and I serve as the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida. And I teach apologetics and theology. I Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando. Gentlemen, let's get started on defending scripture with a very wide open question. Why do humans need something like the Bible at all?

[Walter Strickland]

Well, first of all, Justin, I think it's great when you just quote Spurgeon. It just helps me. It just helps me. So I'll go first.

[Justin Holcomb]

Why not.

[Walter Strickland]

As a good Baptist? So it's important for us to know what's been dubbed by Mike Gohan and Craig Bartholomew as a true story of the whole world, the story of redemption, God's engagement with his creation. And through it, we see through God's actions with us. It conveys his character and just all sorts of wonderful truths that we need to know to situate ourselves in light of who God is.

[Michael Horton]

Yeah, I think in all of our confessions we have the statement that we can know God from the light of nature. We can know many things about God. The apostle Paul tells us that God has made his existence and attributes evident to everyone and yet we twist and distort them because we don't have the gospel. So the gospel is not written in the stars. The gospel is not to be discovered out on a yacht. The gospel is not seen in a beautiful sunset. That's God's handiwork. But that's coming off.

[Justin Holcomb]

See how you feel about.

[Michael Horton]

Oh, yeah, especially that. Especially that. It's got to be announced. And the nature of the gospel. See, Adam and Eve had. And we all have it too. It's in our DNA that we're law creatures. That's natural. That's normal. That's why all religion goes to moralism. But the gospel draws us out of ourselves in faith toward God. That's why we need the gospel, because we need good news. It's an announcement that goes against Our natural inclination to think that we can pull ourselves out of this mess.

[Bob Hiller]

The other thing to think about is specifically with the gospels themselves. If we just look at Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, you weren't there, I wasn't there. So we need the Bible to tell us what happened. We need testimony from the eyewitnesses who were present with Jesus to tell us who he was, what he did, to speak of the, the nature of the cross, to speak of what the resurrection experience was like for those guys, the, the actual event of the resurrection in, in what they saw. We need the eyewitness testimony so that we know what actually took place. What's more, we don't have access to, to those people who were there early on in the church, before the New Testament was written. They had the apostles there to show up to church and preach to them about what Jesus had said and done. We don't have that. So as the apostles start to be martyred, they write these things down for us so that we would know the truth. So John can say in his letter, these things are written so that you would believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God. So we need these things so we can know the story, what the actual content of the gospel is.

[Justin Holcomb]

And I think going back to what both of you were saying, but Mike, you were talking about, you start talking about the gospel and we're asking about scripture. And when people talk about scripture, they think about, well, yeah, because we know God. And you're talking about general revelation, revelation in nature and creation, both humans and outside of us, there is revelation. We do know about God. But what you were saying was. And people point to Romans 1. General revelation does tell us some information about God. But listen to what it says in Romans 1. People point to Romans 1 and go, well, why do we need the Bible if we have natural revelation? For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made so that they are without excuse. I mean, that's not like an inviting situation. It's like, okay, you know, there's some law. You said, we're law creatures. And then it keeps going. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks, thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. So this, this natural knowledge of God does not come with good news, with an announcement. It is actually a burden in its, a weight that's important for people to understand that this knowledge of God is not God's disposition toward you as benevolent and gracious and merciful?

[Michael Horton]

Yeah, absolutely. It doesn't get any better until chapter three. Paul is just basically telling us what the law reveals. The law itself doesn't make us sinners. The law is a mirror. It just shows that we are. And by the time you get to the end of his argument in Romans 3:18, he says, now it's obvious then that no one will be justified by the works of the law. And then he says, but behind door number two here, God has found a way to be just and the justifier of the ungodly. Whoever has faith in Jesus. And now you go to gospel. That first part, Paul says, ultimately the only thing the law can do is make you responsible for your guilt. The gospel frees you from it. That's why we need the Bible.

[Bob Hiller]

I got a buddy, Scott Keith over there at 15, 17, he says, people will say to me, I don't need to go to church. I'm just going to go find God in nature. And Scott says to him, boy, I sure you hope. I sure hope you don't find him. That's not going to go well for you.

[Michael Horton]

Right.

[Justin Holcomb]

Let's move to another question, which is why. What is unique about the Bible? Why is it different from other texts, other sacred texts? What, what stands out to, what do people need to know about the uniqueness of Scripture?

[Bob Hiller]

Well, it kind of goes back to something I was saying a little bit ago. It's historically grounded. So if you pick up the Quran, for example, you're not going to read the narrative of Muhammad's life or something like this. You're really just going to be getting a lot of rules and dictates and things like this that sort of come down out of heaven, what the scriptures give us. Or for example, the other one I was thinking of was the. I'll never say it right, but the Bhagavad Gita. The Bhagavad Gita, Gita. But in that book you have, it's, it's narrative, but it's, it's clearly mythological. This is a claim that in history God has acted. He's come down and done something in the world. And so it's, it's grounded historically.

[Michael Horton]

While Quirinius was governor of Syria.

[Bob Hiller]

Exactly right. So there's, there's events that can be, in a certain sense verifiable. Which is a fascinating thing about our faith is we say, look, take the claims of scripture and if things you read there like Jesus is still dead somewhere in a tomb are true, then our faith is in vain. It's a verifiable text. It's a verifiable thing. And so our claim to faith is grounded in events in history, which makes I think our text rather unique from other religions.

[Walter Strickland]

Yeah, I fully agree with that because there's all kinds of ancillary information that's recorded in scripture because it's an actual historical account. And so there's things that are not. Even if you're going to argue for that, Christianity is some facsimile of a faith that's sort of made up. It's like, well, there's things in the story that wouldn't be there culturally. Like the women being the ones that find the empty tomb. Why would they be the ones that find the empty tomb if you're trying to make something up? And so it's actually very powerful in that way. So there's also what Hebrews 4:12 says for the. For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any double two edged sword piercing the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and the intent of the heart. So you're right, Bob, it is a historically grounded book, but it's also a book that's alivened today.

[Bob Hiller]

Does something.

[Walter Strickland]

Yeah. And by the power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit is what makes it alive in doing the work of piercing to the division of the soul and the spirit. So when we open the Bible, it's not like we just want to get lost in historical facts or in some sort of narrative, but it's that it does something to us as well. It's active, it calls us, it beckons us and transforms as well. So I think there's, there's a historical and a contemporary sort of significance of it.

[Michael Horton]

Yeah. The power of God unto salvation. And also historically grounded in the New Testament. But the New Testament historically grounded in the Old Testament. It's remarkable that the early Christians, there was no debate about this. The early Christians wanted the Old Testament. They accepted the Old Testament en bloc, just as a whole, without any changes. And they saw in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, all of these pointers to Jesus. And you're talking about over a few thousand years here. Right. Yet people who never knew each other, spread out over all of these centuries in different places and times, were weaving threads in a common narrative that they could not possibly have colluded in. And yet we open it and we say, look at that. There is a narrative of redemption, a history, an Unfolding drama of redemption from Genesis to Revelation. And yet it has all the fingerprints of human activity, human agency. But there's one picture, one mosaic as church. Father Irenaeus said, one mosaic, all these pieces that are so different, but then you back up and you see it. It's a mosaic of Christ.

[Justin Holcomb]

And this is what's unique is that it's not just the ideas. It's not just ideas that would be comforting or whatever, but they're redemptive acts of God that the Bible claims actually happen. Going back to Bob's point, and this is FF Bruce, who said it might be held, for example, that the Eth of Confucianism have an independent value quite apart from the story of the life of Confucius. The whole point is you could be a Buddhist, a Muslim, you could be anything, where the messenger and the historicity of what's being said doesn't really matter. Because is the idea true or not? And we're saying it's not just is the idea true or not? The Bible's saying, did God act in this way or not? And FF Bruce keeps on going, says the argument can be applied to the New Testament only if we ignore the real essence of Christianity. For the Christian gospel is not primarily a code of ethics, ethics or a metaphysical system. It is first and foremost good news. And as such, it was proclaimed by its earliest preachers. And then you have Warfield saying that the religion of the Bible announces itself not as the product of man, search after God, if happily they feel after him and find him, but as the creation in men of the gracious God, forming a people for himself that they may show his praise. In other words, the religion of the Bible presents itself as a distinctly revealed religion.

[Walter Strickland]

The.

[Justin Holcomb]

The Bible's claiming that the Bible reveals God and God's words and God's redemptive acts and how they go together. So that's. That's pretty unique.

[Bob Hiller]

Yeah, that's going to say that's one of the unique things about it too is not just the nature of the book, but the, the content of what it actually claims, that our God is the one who comes down in flesh to suffer and die for the salvation of the world. This, this work of, of mercy, of grace from God is very unique from every other religious or ethical system that there is.

[Michael Horton]

People have even tried to, you know, for instance, in the Enlightenment, tried to say, well, the Bible is useful and helpful for encouraging obedience among the people and it has good laws. You know, you hear this all the time, Jesus. If we just Followed Jesus, Sermon on the Mount, Everything would be better. This is all law. It's all law. So we not only have non Christian texts that are all law, no gospel. People turn the Bible into a text that is all law and no gospel. And we have to remind people that we need the Bible more than any other reason to know how God feels about us, to know whether we are up a creek or we have a Savior and that we can only be told about in God's word by his prophets and apostles.

[Justin Holcomb]

As Martin Luther says. This one's for you now, Bob. Well, it's for all of us.

[Bob Hiller]

You guys can all have Luther.

[Justin Holcomb]

Martin Luther said it is. It is the supreme art of the devil that we can make the law out of the gospel.

[Bob Hiller]

Yeah, yeah.

[Walter Strickland]

So, yeah.

[Justin Holcomb]

So, yeah. That we find a way. We're so good at masterful and it.

[Walter Strickland]

Makes us absolutely miserable.

[Michael Horton]

Yeah. And the people were around us.

[Walter Strickland]

Oh, for sure.

[Bob Hiller]

Yeah. I mean, why don't we just follow the. Why don't we just follow the. The Sermon on the Mount? You're right. If you just did all that, everything would be great. And everybody agrees everything would be great. So why isn't everything great? Because there's more to the story than just following the rules.

[Walter Strickland]

We can'.

[Justin Holcomb]

Do it.

[Bob Hiller]

Yes, right.

[Justin Holcomb]

I said early at the beginning that it's vital and easy to defend the trustworthiness and reliability of the Bible. And I said that on purpose because it actually is. When we start looking at some of the facts about the Bible and where it came from, how we got our Bible, and Chuck Hill and Ryan Reeves wrote a book in my series called how we Got Our Bibles and does the history of that and it's a really accessible thing. But when you start looking at the history and the facts of the Bible and the manuscripts help me bolster the claim that it is vital, not only vital, but easy, to defend the reliability and trustworthiness of Scripture. Talk about some manuscripts or the copies we have. Like, where would you go when trying to defend that claim?

[Michael Horton]

Well, for one thing, we have Bruce Metzger at Princeton. The late Bruce Metzger, great textual critical scholar, said that compared with the manuscript evidence for any other classic from the past, we have an embarrassing number of manuscripts close in proximity to the actual events. The earliest manuscripts, for instance, of first century historians like Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, are dated from the 9th to the 11th centuries. That's more than 800 years after the originals were written. Then in terms of the number of surviving manuscripts, there are 200 for Suetonius 133 for Josephus and 75 for Herodotus, written centuries afterward. You can go through. People have done this. You can go through Plato's Republic, you could go through all sorts of ancient texts that if you opened up a critical edition of almost any of these texts today and you just read the introduction, you wouldn't have a lot of stammering about whether this is actually an accurate translation. But there are all sorts of reasons to believe that it has problems. You don't have enough manuscripts. The Bible isn't like that. And yet critical scholars like Bart Ehrman make up things about mistakes and technical errors and so forth, which amount to nothing more than periods and commas and. And so forth. So the Bible, no other book, has had so much criticism and withstood so much criticism in history.

[Justin Holcomb]

Real quick, let's go back to the facts of that. So we have tons of thousands upon thousands of manuscripts. Not like 2370, 125, 200 tons of manuscripts. And the timeframe between those, between the actual date being recorded in the first available manuscript is not five to 800 years, but less than 100, a generation or two. That's precisely. That's a pretty good reason to talk about reliability. Sorry about that.

[Walter Strickland]

Yeah, so just to sort of double down on that, Justin, you know, we never really questioned the Iliad and the Odyssey or Homer's Iliad, let's say. And within 500 years, there's only 643 sort of copies of it. But as you said, within 100 years of the Bible's, you know, you know, being with us, there's over. There's thousands of them. And so we're talking about. There's tenfold, if at minimum, the number of copies in that. And it happened in a fifth of the time. So it just. I love Mike's point that there's been so much criticism and it's withstood that yet there's been so little criticism of the Iliad, Homer's Iliad, and there's so many fewer manuscripts of that in copies.

[Bob Hiller]

The other thing you got is not just the manuscript evidence, but the quotations. So you go to the church fathers and they're quoting the texts and their quotes are matching up with the manuscripts already early second century. So, I mean, there's plenty of evidence both within and without, that these are reliable.

[Michael Horton]

Metzger says that if we'd lost all manuscripts of the New Testament, we could reconstruct the entire New Testament from the quotations of church fathers. The first two Centuries.

[Justin Holcomb]

Let me read to you the quote. I love this because I love reading this in apologetics class. And I believe Metzger did this work with Ehrman. And it was Metzger, Ehrman together. And Mark Roberts in his book Can We Trust the Gospels? Cites it on page 32, if anyone's looking. But he says this. Besides textual evidence derived from the New Testament Greek manuscripts and from early versions, the textual critic has available the numerous scriptural quotations included in the commentary, sermons, and other treatises written by the early Church fathers. Indeed, so extensive are these citations that if all other sources for our knowledge of the text of the New Testament were destroyed, they would be sufficient alone for the reconstruction of practically the entire New Testament.

[Bob Hiller]

Yes.

[Justin Holcomb]

You don't even need the manuscripts to have the entire Bible. And what you see from the quotations is what you see in all of the manuscripts. And so it just doubles down on the reliability. And I think they said, Mark Roberts said, We have 20 times the number of manuscripts than any other comparable type of text.

[Michael Horton]

And you also have to look at how those church fathers. Now we're talking about people in the next generation from the apostles, right? People who knew the apostles, Clement, Ignatius, and so forth. Just look at. There's no moment when they are not referring to the writings of the New Testament as Holy Scripture. So it's not like it's a big fish story. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger. And eventually people are holding this book up and saying that this is the word of God. The church fathers did not authorize the canon. They recognized the canon. It presented itself as. Warfield said, it presented itself as a canon to the early Church fathers. They welcomed it. They recognized it.

[Justin Holcomb]

Jazz Becker says, you know, science, science didn't just create gravity. It discovered gravity. Similarly, the Church didn't create the canon. Discovered receive the canon.

[Michael Horton]

Yeah. Here at Sola, we're passionate about drawing on historic Reformation theology to equip thoughtful Christians for practical wisdom, connecting the dots between the Bible doctrine, the Christian life, and contemporary culture. All that we produce is free thanks to the many who give monthly as Sola Partners. If you join us as a monthly partner, we'll send you a complimentary copy of Michael Horton's book, Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World. In an age marked by burnout and sensationalism, Horton shows us what it looks like to live a deeply normal yet profoundly meaningful Christian life. To get your copy, simply head over to solarmedia.org partner to join us in encouraging even more people to grow in knowing God and seeing everything in his Light.

[Justin Holcomb]

So let's turn towards some of these critiques because now, here's the thing. Obviously, no one's basing their life and their. Their hope in life and death on Plato, you know, Tacitus. And so we would want to be able to say, yeah, the text is making some pretty significant claims about how you should relate to God, the world, and yourself. And so it is nice that we have so many manuscripts so close to when it happened. Then you have someone like Bart Ehrman who said, most of the changes found in our early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology. Far and away, the most changes are the result of mistakes, a pure and simple slip of the pen. Accidental omissions, inadvertent additions, misspelled words, blunders of one sort or another. Acknowledges someone who's a critic frequently of the reliability that most of the changes are just like, you know, either the copyist got like Jesus Christ and Christ Jesus backwards or, you know, punctuation type of stuff.

[Michael Horton]

And so he's corrected himself.

[Justin Holcomb]

This isn't misquoting Jesus. He said he wrote that on page 55. And then you go to page 90, and then he says this. There are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament. Now he knows better. He totally, There are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament. Which is supposed to imply, man, that Bible's a hot mess. Can you trust anything it says? When we know that. So what do you. How do you respond to that? Because people are hearing this and going, yeah, if you wanted me to base my life on a resurrection and this God's disposition toward me, but it's. There's all these variations. How can I know it's trustworthy?

[Walter Strickland]

And I think what you already said is where I would go, that the variations are these slips of the pen. They're not, did he rise from the dead or did he not rise from the dead? They're not the cornerstones of the faith we're talking about here. It's Jesus Christ for Christ Jesus. And that's a very simple way to respond. And I know there's a lot more rigorous ways, but for the person who's on the street corner or just someone who's asking about this after church, that's what I would say. These are not these massive doctrinal sort of concerns of the faith is very small.

[Bob Hiller]

And there are some. And this is, I think, helpful as well. When you look at John and Mark, there's a great debate about the end of Mark, should that be considered scripture or not? Or when you have the woman caught in adultery in John, chapter, what is it? John, chapter seven six. I can't recall off the top of my head, the woman caught in adultery. And you'll see, probably in your English translation, some, some note there that references the fact that in the earliest manuscripts, these texts weren't part of what we've got. It seems to me that that's actually quite helpful in this conversation to say, hey, we acknowledge that there's. There's some issues, like with these manuscripts. Some manuscripts say something. Some things are a little bit different. But here's what you'll notice. It never goes after whether or not Jesus came back to life. So it's even in Mark. Let's just say for the sake of argument that in Mark Chap. 16, that the long ending is not part of it and the. The text ends with the women fleeing from the tomb, frightened. Let's. Let's just for the sake of argument, say that that's how it ends. Does Jesus therefore not rise from the dead in Mark's Gospel? Not if you, if you've been reading the Gospel, the whole argument the whole time has been, he's gonna go rise from the dead. He's been saying this constantly. And you're left with the question, well, did he? Well, yeah, if you listen to his word, he said he did. So it doesn't undermine the teaching of the faith whatsoever. But we do have to be honest and say there are some manuscript things that are a little bit tough to understand, and we're not totally sure what to do with them. So we'll acknowledge that. But just recognize, again, none of this goes after the core of the faith.

[Justin Holcomb]

We're not being simplistic and saying there's no holes or anomalies that need to be addressed, but there are answers for it. There's books like when critics ask, when skeptics ask that Norman Geisler, did that answer some of these questions or others? I mean, I'm just saying that came to mind.

[Michael Horton]

Daniel Wallace is another person who's really. He's engaged in debates. He's had debates with Bart Ehrman, and he's responded several times to this whole thing of all these discrepancies in the texts and manuscript evidence and so forth. And Wallace has done the homework to show that it's 99.99%. That's amazing that what we hold in our hands, a Greek New Testament, when we hold it in our hands, is an approximation of the original texts. To 99.99%. That's amazing now. And of course there are these scribal errors. But here's the thing, too. You can't say there are scribal errors in the Quran. You get in trouble if you say that. In Christianity, it's fine to criticize. What we're trying to do is not criticize the word of God. We're trying to find out historically what is the word of God. That's what canon studies are all about. So if the ending of Mark isn't there, it's not because a bunch of liberals decided to cut something out of the Bible, but that it shouldn't have been there in the first place.

[Bob Hiller]

Right.

[Michael Horton]

It's minuscule, like two. And Bart Ehrman in another place acknowledges there are about two of these, like the ending of Mark, like the woman caught in adultery. There just aren't that many. So can we get on with it? Can we talk now about that? We really shouldn't spend a lot of time trying to address those questions.

[Bob Hiller]

Well, don't you think the. Think of the opposite argument here. Would it be better for us if we had two manuscripts and there was like a discrepancy there between two manuscripts? Then we'd say, well, see, you can never know because we just have. We only have two and there's no way of getting back. Like, the more manuscripts we have, the closer we can actually get because we can do a lot better comparative work.

[Justin Holcomb]

That's exactly what Mark Roberts is doing. Because when Bart Ehrman says there are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament, Mark Roberts says, well, that's because we have so many. That's right. Actually increases the likelihood of our getting back to the original text. And that's actually a very good thing. That's great.

[Michael Horton]

Especially in a day today when we can, you know, computer. Computers have made a huge difference in the workload. People being able to judge, you know, how close we get to these manuscripts. It's really amazing.

[Justin Holcomb]

There was years ago, about 15 years ago, maybe, maybe even longer, Sam Harris, one of the New Atheists, had this chart that he made. And it had, it was called a rainbow chart. What it did is it had a Bible verse here, Bible versus there, and had a line that kind of art. And every line was supposed to be a contradiction in the Bible. And it had like hundreds of kind. It's just like arcs all over the place. And I replied to it. Famous New Atheists don't usually like it when no name theologians chime in and make, make, make fun of their work. And so he kind of came at me, which was funny. And. But the fun part was I went through and showed how they had some things duplicated. Like they actually had the same text or they had a word reversed. And and so the very thing that he was criticizing about the Bible he about like copy errors, he actually did in the very tool he was using how wrong it was. He, he did one of them twice and then he had the wrong text and he had. Yet instead of like Genesis 5:13, it was Genesis 5:31, like things like that, which were hilarious.

[Bob Hiller]

That's funny.

[Justin Holcomb]

Let's go to archeology real quick because I think this is just important for people to hear every time. This is. Simon Greenleaf did some stuff on this. Every time there's an archeological question. And we'll get into this with another episode down the road on faith and science. But this is important here. Anytime something historical in the Bible has been stated and then archeology goes, we're not really sure about that Bible, it doesn't look like that. And then lo and behold, they find some other coin or manuscript. And this happened with Acts with regard to one of the emperors. And when the dating that the Bible would say, science goes no, that's not happening. And then you find a coin that has the insignature thing on there and you're like oh, at time and time again. So I'm going to say a statement and see if you guys are okay with just saying this and moving on time and time again. Anytime archeology has a question about the Bible, lo and behold, the Bible later on there's some evidence saying nope, what the Bible said ends up being true over and over again.

[Bob Hiller]

I'd be curious to see the counter argument to it. I mean, wasn't it they said like there was no such person as Caiaphas or Annas or something like that and then they found his tomb.

[Michael Horton]

And then also, you know, things like places.

[Bob Hiller]

Pool of siloam.

[Michael Horton]

Yeah, yeah, the pool of siloam. So you know why. Here's another thing, back to the historical part. The New Testament really places itself in danger by just having almost every other sentence telling you when, where, what, why. It's easy to have these sort of generalizations. They don't get any kind of historical or archeological criticism. So there's no pool of siloam. I don't know what Jesus is, the gospel writer is saying there about the pool of siloam. There is no pool of siloam. And Then they found it three years ago. So I think it's really important, especially for struggling Christians who are kind of wrestling with what they hear, what they read from critics, to just chill. It's okay. It's okay to ask the questions, but don't freak out. And archeology is a long term discipline. It's a historical discipline. Wait, wait until, you know, we don't have all the facts. But as you say, Justin, for all the times that the theologians have been proved wrong by archeology, it justifies us saying, well, I don't know, I don't know how to handle that. But it's not a, we'll wait and see.

[Bob Hiller]

Yeah, yeah.

[Walter Strickland]

And I think for me, in the last, you know, in the 1940s, 1950s, the Dead Sea Scrolls were found and they're, they predated previous manuscripts by almost a thousand years, showing this remarkable consistency with the, you know, with what we see. So, like, these things, they just keep emerging, you know, and so it's just great to see that.

[Michael Horton]

Yeah.

[Justin Holcomb]

Last topic I think we can cover in this episode is looking at the varied readings of scripture. If this is so important, if God and how God relates to us and God relating to the world is so important that we have the Bible, it doesn't seem really clear. You know, the technical word for that is perspicuity of scripture, the clarity of scripture. And we have all these different readings and interpretations and it just seems, if something is so important and it's so vulnerable to misinterpretation and like, how do we think about that and the reliability of scripture if it's so reliable, why wouldn't it be more clear? And all these readings and have you guys. I've heard that one quite a bit. So any thoughts from you guys on that?

[Michael Horton]

Well, it is clear on its main message. God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son. That's from Genesis to Revelation. Any child can understand that. It really is that simple. Now, at the same time, not everything in Scripture is that clear. So we interpret difficult passages in the light of clearer passages. But even then, sometimes we have problems. But the basic point of response to that is we are able to understand the basic message of the Bible so much that even non Christians like Celsus could summarize it. Didn't believe it, but he could summarize it. And we can summarize it as we have for 1700 years in the Nicene Creed. That little statement, that little creed that summarizes the whole Bible. Yeah. And Christians have recognized for 1700 years that that summarizes the whole Bible. Yes, it is that simple.

[Walter Strickland]

And there are those things that are very clear to the readers and they're simple. They're about the nature of salvation and how God interacts with us in that way. But there are things that are misreadings that come up because. Or differences in readings that come up because we do read differently sometimes, we sometimes reason differently, we have different, we carry our emotions into the text differently. We have different assumptions or biases as we engage the scripture. But what I.

[Michael Horton]

We read newspapers differently.

[Walter Strickland]

Precisely. So one thing I think that people who are, who are reading the Bible as the word of God, looking for to it as an authority, I think what we ought to have it do is interrogate us as we read it. And I think as we allow it to interrogate us as we read it, we become better readers of Scripture. And so what this does is that it challenges some of our sort of contemporary assumptions about what it means to be a reader and that we don't assert ourselves or assert our assumptions or we don't come in to a reading as if we don't have any thing that we bring to the text. We do, but this text in particular, there's a two way street here. It reads us and then we bow our knee to it. And so I think that really helps us as we're talking about how we might have different doctrinal conclusions at times and how we can come to a more, a more rigorous and greater consensus as we are reading.

[Bob Hiller]

Two thoughts there. One is sometimes the claim that the scriptures aren't clear might be an indication that you just don't like what they say. And that's not true across the board. But sometimes the text is saying and you're like, well that makes it sound like, that makes it sound like God doesn't like what I'm doing. You might actually be reading it. Right.

[Michael Horton]

Mark Twain said, it's not the parts of the Bible that are confusing to me that I find trouble accepting, it's the ones that are clear.

[Bob Hiller]

That's right. Such a good quote. The other thought I had was this. Some of it is unclear and it's a big book, so you don't need to have an outside interpreter tell you what it means. But there's a whole church that received the same book you did and you should be reading it in a group. You should be going to church, learning from your pastor, learning from people who've taken a lot of time to study and learn this stuff. Because yeah, there's a lot of people who have done a lot of valuable and indispensable work to help us understand the Scriptures better. So if you're feeling intimidated by it, that's, that's okay. That's not a problem. The problem is if you don't do something about it and what you have is a local congregation with a pastor who's been educated in this thing and he wants to help you know it better.

[Michael Horton]

Yeah.

[Justin Holcomb]

The Bible is the most significant and influential book in the world because it is the word of God. The Bible tells us who God is and who we are. And ultimately the Bible is about how God created and is redeeming the world through Jesus Christ. God is active. He created all things, delivered his people from bondage in Egypt and took on a human nature to live and die and rise again. Not only does God act in history, but then he interprets his actions by inspiring holy Scripture, divine acts and divine Word to interpret his divine act so we don't misread his actions. God inspires Genesis to interpret his creative actions. God gives Exodus to interpret his actions of freeing his people from bondage. God provides the New Testament to interpret the life, death, resurrection, ascension of Jesus Christ and what it means for him to bring the kingdom of God. The divine author and all of Scripture is given to interpret and reveal. But the divine author inspires the human authors of the Bible to bear witness to the drama of redemption in both the history of Israel and the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Bible is a series of divinely inspired interpretations of redemptive acts of God. This is why Jay Gresham Machen tells us Christianity is based upon an account of something that had happened. And the Christian worker is primarily a witness because Scripture reveals the central climax of history, God's gracious act of bringing salvation through Jesus Christ. So the Bible Therefore, as Article 6 of the 39 Articles of Faith states, contains all things necessary to salvation. Going back to what Mike said about. It's about that this is why it's vital to know that the Bible is trustworthy and reliable and into your point, Bob. I mean, Hugh Latimer, the 16 century English bishop, once wrote that the books of the Bible should be constantly in our hands, in our eyes, in our ears and in our mouth, but most of all in our hearts. And he says the Scripture turns our souls. It comforts, makes glad, cheers and cherishes our conscience. It is a more excellent jewel or treasure than any gold or precious stone.

[Michael Horton]

This year marks 1700 years after the Council of Nicaea and the mystery of the Trinity remains at the heart of the Christian faith. Recovering Orthodoxy in our modern context is vital to the unity of the Church worldwide. Which is why I'm so excited that we here at sola, in partnership with credo, are hosting a special two day conference on the Trinity. Please join US in Washington, D.C. this may as we bring together leading Trinitarian theologians for keynote messages and interactive breakouts centered around the Nicene Creed. Just go to solamedia.org trinityconference that's solomedia.org.