[Questioner] How would you explain, Dr. Craig, to
non-believers, that the Bible is true? This is
just a warmup question. [Craig] I don't try
to convince non-believers that the Bible
is true or generally reliable. I'm
defending what C.S. Lewis called "Mere
Christianity." That is to say, the central
tenants or pillars of the Christian
faith. And it seems to me that there are
two pillars of the Christian faith: the
existence of God and God's decisive
self-revelation in Jesus as evidence by
his resurrection from the dead. And thus
if a person comes to believe those two
truths, I think he should become a
Christian. If that is true that is
sufficient for placing your faith in
Christ as the decisive self-revelation
of God. And so it's no part of my case to
prove things like the reliability of
Noah and the Ark or the exodus of Israel
in the Old Testament or even the virgin
birth or Jesus birth in Bethlehem or the
feeding of the 5,000. Those are all
subsequent, later questions, that can be
discussed. What I'm interested in is the
question, "Who did Jesus claim to be, what
did he say and do, and what happened to
Him after His death?" And I've given
tonight the reasons for thinking that
those facts are true. If you'll remember
I gave multiple lines of evidence under
each of those four facts which have
convinced the majority of New Testament
critics of
the truth of the Bible in that respect -
with respect to those four facts. And
that, I believe, is sufficient for
becoming a Christian. After that the rest
is just all details. [Questioner] So then, is just
following on, because there's a relevant
question: Is it valid, then, to use the
Bible as a
foundation for apologetics? [Craig] I
this is so hard to get across to people.
Listen to what I said, I want to
to quote again from what I said. Suppose
then that we approach the New Testament
writing,s not as inspired Scripture, but
merely as a collection of Greek
documents coming down to us out of the
first century without any assumption as
to their reliability other than the way
we normally approach other sources of
ancient history, do you see the point? We're
not treating the Bible as an
authoritative book and reasoning in a
circle trying to prove the Bible by
assuming the Bible. We're just saying
look at these first century documents
that we've got here, telling this
remarkable story about this man Jesus of
Nazareth. We've got things like the
Gospel of Luke, we've got this letter
from this man named Paul to the church
in Corinth, Greece we've got this thing
called the Acts of the Apostles - sort of
historical account of the early
Christian community and movement. And the
question will be, then,
how reliable are these documents? And
I've given again the evidence which has
convinced most scholars that with
respect at least two those four facts,
they are reliable. And that is certainly
valid I because I'm not using the Bible
as an authoritative divine revelation.
I'm just treating it as you would treat
any other documents of ancient history
and that's certainly valid isn't it?
That's the way you do history.