#780 Does the Bible Speak to Us?

Dr. craig’s response

Your characterization of certain people as liars is very uncharitable, Kenneth. Our culture seems increasingly unable to differentiate between a falsehood and a lie. The accusation that someone is lying comes all too readily to our lips. People may be sincerely mistaken in what they say without being liars. To lie one must know that what one is asserting is false. I’m sure that people who say that the Bible speaks to them are quite sincere in their assertions, even if they are wrong.

But are they wrong? I think not. Consider, first, the assertion that the Bible says something. This is ordinary, unobjectionable English usage. We might say, for example, “The Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal.” It would be silly to accuse the person who makes this assertion of lying. When we don’t know the author of a work, it is almost inevitable to say something like, “The book of Hebrews says that. . . .” Similarly, in the case of a multi-author work like the Bible, expressions like “The Bible says. . . .” are unobjectionable.

What about assertions that the Bible speaks? Christians believe that the Bible is inspired and is therefore God’s Word to us (II Timothy 3.16). When Christians say that the Bible speaks to them, that is just shorthand for saying that God speaks to them through the Bible. Christians, around the world and for millennia, have the experience that God speaks to them through the Scriptures. They experience the Scriptures as God’s Word to them. This phenomenon of “experiencing as,” like the closely related phenomenon of “seeing that,” is well-known in other contexts. For example, someone unfamiliar with the rules of baseball, may, like us, see a white ball hit over a fence, but he would not see that a home run has been hit. Someone may experience a trusted person’s action as a betrayal, whereas an ignorant third person would not experience the same action in that way. Similarly, Christians typically experience Scripture as God’s Word. If you think that they mean that a particular book is an animate being, then you have sorely misunderstood them.

Finally, as for the Bible’s talking, I have to say that in my more than 50 years as a Christian, I don’t think that I have ever heard anyone say that the Bible talks. This is not part of the Christian idiolect.

The Bible says (there I go!) that “The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4.12). We should attune our minds to hear what God is saying through His Word to us.