In this excerpt from a message at Ligonier’s 2010 National Conference, that Mary Magdalene, the mother of Jesus, and Salome was there. And John, not to be outdone, says Mary Magdalene was there. He doesn’t say only Mary Magdalene was there, but he does say Mary Magdalene was there but doesn’t mention anyone else. But then says that when Mary Magdalene went to the tomb it was still dark.

Contradictions—age-old, tiresome, weary contradictions.

If Mary Magdalene, and another Mary, and Salome were there, Mary Magdalene was there. So what John is saying isn’t contradicting anything. If they left their home when it was still dark and arrived at the tomb when the sun was coming up, there’s no contradiction here.

Or, 2 Samuel 24 says God provoked David to number the people. But Chronicles says Satan did it. Ok, Chronicles was written probably a long time after Samuel. God did it in Samuel, Satan did it in Chronicles. Maybe the author of Chronicles didn’t know what was in the book of Samuel? No. God did it, Satan did it.

Wait just a minute, didn’t the prince of preachers last night tell us from Acts 2 of Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost, with a huge crowd, and everything that he was saying was being written down and recorded because it was going to go into Scripture, and didn’t he say about the crucifixion of Jesus that “you,” pointing to Jews in Jerusalem, “you,” by wicked hands took him and slew him, but it was all by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. You did it; it was all by God’s divine decree.

Who did it? Doesn’t Paul say in Philippians, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure”? You do it; God does it. God moved David; Satan moved David. God moved David using Satan as His tool.

Sam Storms both of which, I believe, are true. The first comes from Andrew Wilson and the second from J. I. Packer.

Here is Wilson’s explanation, originally found at his blog (www.thinktheology.co.uk) under the title, “Why Accept the Authority of the Bible? A Twelve Step Argument.”

I saw an intriguing exchange on Twitter the other day. My friend Mike Betts had written something very innocuous – the Bible says we should trust God, or something like that – and someone responded, in a series of tweets that quickly degenerated into expletives and accusations of idiocy, that it is ridiculous to base our lives on an Iron Age text. What evidence is there, they demanded, that the Bible is true? After a few helpful questions, Mike wisely suggested that 140 characters might not be the best medium with which to argue for biblical authority, and said he could point them to some useful resources if they wanted. His interlocutor, apparently satisfied that “I can’t explain all that in a tweet” meant “I have no reason to believe it whatsoever”, immediately left the discussion, no doubt even more entrenched in their view that all Christians are idiots who are simply too stupid to have thought about whether the Bible can be trusted. Sigh.

That exchange made me wonder: how would I explain the argument for biblical authority, to a secular person, as quickly and logically as possible? Obviously I wouldn’t assume someone could be persuaded by a few hundred words – and in my experience, people who fire expletives around on Twitter are not usually looking to be persuaded of anything anyway – but I thought it might be helpful to lay out the argument, at least as I see it, both to give an example of how a Christian might respond, and to help a sceptic identify the point in the argument at which they differ. (Usually, it comes down to the resurrection. If I believe Jesus is alive, I probably accept biblical authority, even if I nuance it differently from other Christians; if I don’t, then I don’t. On the basis of 1 Corinthians 15:12-19, I think Paul would be with me on that).

So here’s my argument for biblical authority in twelve steps. Continue reading →