Why Christ, not Scripture, is Our Ultimate Foundation

foundation

If the reason you believe is anchored in your confidence that Scripture is �God-
breathed,� then your faith can�t help but be threatened every time you encounter a
discrepancy, an archeological problem, or a persuasive historical-critical argument
that a portion of the biblical narrative may not be historically accurate. Your
faith may also be threatened every time you encounter material that is hard to
accept as �God-breathed� � the genocidal portrait of Yahweh I discussed in my
previous blog, for example. When biblical inspiration is made this important,
people are forced to go to extreme and sometimes even silly lengths to explain each
and every one of the �encyclopedia� of �difficulties� one finds in Scripture (I�m
alluding Gleason Archer�s apologetic book, New International Encyclopedia of Bible
Difficulties).

As has happened to so many others, throughout my seminary training this foundation

became increasingly shaky and eventually collapsed. I know a number of former-
evangelicals who completely lost their faith when they experienced this. One is
Bart Ehrman, who I�m sure many of you recognize as one of Christianity�s most well-
known contemporary critics. He and I were in the doctoral program at Princeton
Seminary at the same time, and we fell through our crumbling Scriptural foundation
at roughly the same time and for many of the same reasons. But while Bart gradually
fell into agnosticism, I fell onto a different and much more firm foundation. I
fell into Christ.
Christ: A Firm Foundation

For a number of reasons (none of which have to do with the inspiration of

Scripture) I believe the crucified and risen Christ is the definitive revelation of
God�s character, and the definitive revelation of what God is up to in this world.
Many of the reasons I have for believing in Christ are historical in nature. I find
there are compelling historical-critical reasons for concluding that the Gospels
are generally reliable, for example. (I and Paul Eddy address some of these in The
Jesus Legend). Some of my reasons are philosophical in nature. The story of the God
revealed in Christ that is centered on the cross makes better sense of the world to
me than any other competing story, for example. And some of my reasons are rooted
in personal experience. The story of the God of unsurpassable love who gave up
everything to save a race of hopeless rebels �rings true� in the deepest part of my
being. Moreover, I sometimes experience Christ in ways that make it hard to deny
his reality.

I have a lot of reasons for believing in Christ, but the inspiration of Scripture
is not one of them. I don�t deny that there are a handful of fulfilled prophecies
about the coming Messiah that are rather compelling (e.g. the suffering servant of
Isa. 53 and the pierced Lord of Zech. 12:10). But I also think evangelical
apologists are misguided when they try to use this as the rational foundation for
the Christian faith. When Gospel authors say Jesus �fulfilled� an OT verse, they
don�t mean that the OT verse predicted something that Jesus did or that happened to
Jesus. If you check out the OT verses Jesus is said to have �fulfilled,� you�ll
find there is absolutely nothing predictive about them. The Gospel authors are
rather using a version of an ancient Jewish interpretive strategy called �midrash�
to simply communicate that something in the life of Jesus parallels and illustrates
a point made in an OT verse.

In any event, if the intellectual credibility of your faith is leveraged on the

prophecies that Jesus is said to have �fulfilled,� I�m afraid your faith will be
literally incredible. I would instead advise you to anchor the plausibility of your
faith, as well as your identity, your core sense of well-being, and your ultimate
security and hope in Jesus and in Jesus alone.
 Jesus is the center and culminating point of the entire biblical narrative, and
it�s impossible to understand who Jesus is, and what he was up to apart from this
story. Not only this, but historical-critical considerations have led me to
conclude that the Gospels are generally trustworthy, as I said above, and these
Gospels consistently present Jesus equating the Hebrew Scriptures with God�s Word.
They also give some indication that Jesus expected the Holy Spirit to inspire some
of his followers to bear witness to him in a way that would allow the world to
believe on him through their word (e.g. Jn 14:26; 15:26-27; 17:20).

Along similar lines, Jesus promised that that he would be present in his corporate
body by the power of the Spirit to continue to guide it (Mt 28:20; Jn. 14:18, 26).
Under his guidance, this community has always acknowledged that both the Old and
New Testaments were �God-breathed.� As part of this community, I feel compelled to
do the same. And even apart from these considerations, I have trouble believing
that the God who consistently inspired a written witness of his interactions with
people leading up to Christ would not continue this pattern following Christ. Why
would the One who always taught his community to rely on a written witness now
suddenly lead his community with no written witness?

Because I believe in Jesus, therefore, I am led to confess that all Scripture is

�God-breathed.� Yet, because it is Jesus and not Scripture that serves as the
ultimate foundation for my faith, my faith is no longer threatened by the
�encyclopedia� of �difficulties� one finds in Scripture. In fact (as I�ll attempt
to show in my next blog) if we ground our faith in Christ alone, and begin all our
theological reflections with Christ alone, things such as the discrepancies in
Scripture and persuasive historical-critical arguments suggesting that sections of
Scripture may not be historical cease to be difficulties at all.