Why Don't We Just Believe the Bible?

James 1:22 tells Christians to be “doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving yourself. (ESV) Christians are to read God's word and obey it. 2 Timothy 3:16 says that “all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” There are a lot of New Testament and Old Testament verses that extol the benefits of reading and obeying God's word. Yet a new movement has infiltrated evangelical Christianity. It is called text criticism.

Text criticism is a process of discovering the best ancient manuscript of the Bible. It is also called lower criticism. Since, unlike higher criticism, lower criticism claims to believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God. The major expert in text criticism is Bruce Metzger, head of Princeton theological seminar, and author of Texts of the New Testament. Text criticism has questioned the authenticity of several sections of the New Testament. The two major sections are John 8 and Mark 16. John 8 tells the story of the woman caught in adultery. Mark 16 talks about snake handling. While non KJV and NKJV do contain these sections, the usually put a disclaimer about it or put it in a foot note. If you've ever read Metzger's book, you can't help but have doubt about Biblical inspiration. Metzger claims to be evangelical. Lee Strobel even considers him his go-to guy on matters of interpretation. People's character is determined by the company they keep. What company does Metzger keep?

Bruce Metzger's protege and prize pupil is Bart Erman. Metzger allowed Erman to coauthor his 4th edition of his Texts of the New Testament. Erman is a professor of theology at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ermann is a self proclaimed agnostic who wrote Misquoting Jesus. His book questioned whether Jesus' words were accurately translated into English. He also wrote the Gospel of Judas. Why would an evangelical allow this man to write a book with him. This is tantamount to John MacArthur coauthoring a book with Richard Dawkins. To me this sheds doubt on Mr. Metzger.

Is text criticism good for Christians? Let's look at history? In the 1800s text criticism was very popular in America. When Darwin published origin of the species, the church was paralyzed and unable to mount a defense. The church really made no official defense of the Biblical account of creation until the 1980s, when Answers in Genesis took off.

Another problem with Biblical interpretation is the idea of cultural context. This fad involves commands in the New Testament, especially the epistles. The debate is over if a command by Paul is cultural or universal. The principal adopted by many scholars is that if Paul is answering a specific issue in the church, then the command only applies to that church. Many controversial passages have been said to not be for today.

These include 1 Timothy 2:9-14, where women are commanded not to use gold braided hair or makeup. They are also commanded to keep silent in the church. First Corinthians 11:1-16, commands women to pray or prophecy only if their head is covered. In 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, Paul, under the topic of spiritual gifts and tongues commands women to keep silent in the church and to have any questions they have answered by their husbands at home. God asks us to do hard things. In my flesh, I don't like many things that are in the Bible, but that is in my flesh. Shall not the God of heaven do right? Yes he will. The old hymn says “Trust and obey, for there is no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” Why don't we just believe the Bible? I am so tired of provisions, provisos and exception clauses. The Bible asks us to do difficult things, but which is better, doing it our way or God's way. Let's believe the Bible.