How can you possibly trust a book that is full or errors, contradictions and confusion? The simple answer is that you cannot. That is why we have to respond to such dismissive treatments of the Bible.
There has been a popular Islamic tract, ‘101 clear contradictions in the Bible’, doing the rounds recently. An atheist group has produced a poster diagram of 439 contradictions in the Bible. These lists of alleged errors, fired off with the rapidity of an automatic machine gun, can sound impressive. But, on closer inspection, they indicate the weakness of the case against Scripture.
Christians believe the Bible to be free of error because it is the word of God (2 Timothy 3.16; 2 Peter 1.20), just as Jesus affirmed (Matthew 5.18; John 10.35). For a full explanation of Jesus’s view of Scripture, I’d recommend John Wenham’s Christ and the Bible. But it would be a circular argument to use this with a non-Christian. They may simply reply: ‘So you believe the Bible is the reliable word of God because it says it is the reliable word of God? That doesn’t help me, I don’t trust what the Bible says in the first place’. Furthermore, our friends do not have to accept that the Bible is free of all error to recognise its historical value and consider the claims of Christ.
