Under which criteria do you decide to believe the bible as opposed to other scriptures?

ssun said:

The first question I wanted to ask in this forum is. As a Christian, what is the criteria you use to choose the bible as the "ultimate truth" and reject others such as the Qur'an, Talmud, Book of Mormon, etc...?

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I'd respond first that I don't believe the Bible is "the ultimate truth". I think Scripture points to the ultimate truth, of who God is as He has revealed Himself, especially and most importantly in and through the Person of Jesus; but the Bible isn't the object of faith, but an instrument which points to the object of faith.

Why the Bible and not some other set of religious texts or literature? Because the Bible consists of the sacred texts received and confessed by the Christian Church. As such this is sort of like asking why Canadians use the Constitution of Canada rather than the Constitution of the United States, it's because they're Canadians and not US-Americans. In one sense it's really that simple.

Christianity does not exist because of the Bible. The Bible exists because of Christianity. Without a Christian community, active historically, there would be no Bible because the Biblical Canon developed precisely within the context of a believing, worshiping community of Christians. The Bible is, in one sense, a liturgical text; in antiquity there were questions as to what books were to be read during worship, in the case of quite a few books there was a rather large and universal consensus (see Homologoumena); but there did exist some disagreements on some books (see Antilegomena). The Canon therefore developed within this context, and not perfectly uniformly either, as there has and continues to be some disagreements among Christians on the matter--the most well known is the difference between the Roman Catholic Canon and the Protestant Canon over the canonical status of those books known as Deuterocanonical.

The point of the Bible, at least historically, in Christianity is that through its hearing we may have our faith nourished as we are directed back to Christ; as we confess that Christ is the Theme and Subject of all Scripture, consider St. Augustine,

"You recall that one and the same Word of God extends throughout Scripture, that it is one and the same Utterance that resounds in the mouths of all the sacred writers, since he who was in the beginning God with God has no need of separate syllables; for he is not subject to time."

The Word of God and Utterance here is Christ. That's important, in Christianity Jesus Christ is God's Word; God's chief revelation and self-disclosure is not a text, but a Person.

-CryptoLutheran

ssun said:

Hello everyone. First of all, I am new here so I am not sure whether this is the right sub-forum to start such discussions, as it is not really a "struggle" but rather mere curiosity from someone who has never been religious.

Even though I am not by any means religious in the Christian sense, I find theology and the psychology behind it quite interesting, as it is rather alien to my way of seeing the world and I keep having questions when I read about it. I think the best way to address them would be to ask religious people directly.

The first question I wanted to ask in this forum is. As a Christian, what is the criteria you use to choose the bible as the "ultimate truth" and reject others such as the Qur'an, Talmud, Book of Mormon, etc...?

I am hoping for answers with arguments as objective as possible and, of course, arguments that are valid in the general sense (for example, not simply "because I was raised that way")

Thank you for taking your time to answer!

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The first criteria is to realize that ALL epistemic destinations are relative to the perceptual, psychological make up of the individual, the conceptual conditioning received in one's culture, and the epistemological framework the individual works within--and this is the case whether or not the individual is aware of his epistemic position.

Peace,
2PhiloVoid

I believe that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is of God because He is God, the Son of God. His basic message is that we are to love God and our neighbor ( Matthew 22:36-40 etc.). That we are treat each other by this standard ( Matthew 7:1-12 etc. ). We are to live this out by charity, prayer, & fasting ( Matthew 6:1-18 ).

This seems to me a common sense for human relations and only God would know this not us. I believe this is what the Lord was trying to tell a rich young man in ( Matthew 19:16-26 etc. ). St. Paul summed this up in Romans 13:8-10.

I also believe the Lord will give all individuals a fair hearing based on their human conduct ( John 3:16-21 , John 5:22-30 , Romans 2 etc. ).

I just want to add that I am a messed up person but I trust in the Lord. ( see Philippians 2:12 , John 16:33 ).

ssun said:

Hello everyone. First of all, I am new here so I am not sure whether this is the right sub-forum to start such discussions, as it is not really a "struggle" but rather mere curiosity from someone who has never been religious.

Even though I am not by any means religious in the Christian sense, I find theology and the psychology behind it quite interesting, as it is rather alien to my way of seeing the world and I keep having questions when I read about it. I think the best way to address them would be to ask religious people directly.

The first question I wanted to ask in this forum is. As a Christian, what is the criteria you use to choose the bible as the "ultimate truth" and reject others such as the Qur'an, Talmud, Book of Mormon, etc...?

I am hoping for answers with arguments as objective as possible and, of course, arguments that are valid in the general sense (for example, not simply "because I was raised that way")

Thank you for taking your time to answer!

Click to expand...

Hi ssun;

I spent the fist 25+ years of my life as a secular agnostic, but I was given a Bible to read one year for Christmas. Now I have always loved to read, but had not thought to read any holy books because I just didn't have any interest in learning about any "god". So I began to read the Bible only because it was a book I had been given and I loved to read. I read it just as a piece of literature at first, so I started at Genesis and read through to Revelation. Like I usually did when I read something I enjoyed or didn't feel like I had grasped it's message (in this case I think both applied), I went back to the beginning and read it cover to cover again. Now at this point, normal procedure for me would have been to shelve the book and find something else to read, but a funny thing happened to me... I felt compelled for some unknown reason to read it again, so for reasons I could not explain, I read it again. And again. And again.

Now at this point I began to get really curious about this book, so I began to look online for information. I also found a radio station that broadcast Bible teaching for most of the day, so I started tuning in to listen to it quite often. I also found some apologetics websites that answered many of my questions, and some I didn't even know I had. Over the course of 2 years I must have read the Bible through a couple dozen times, gaining more and more understanding about it's message as I went along. Another funny thing happened to me, as I read through the Bible I would encounter something I didn't understand or found hard to believe, yet within a week or so one of the pastors on the radio would teach on the very subject I was wrestling with, and they, along with the websites, helped me find answers to my questions.

To make a long story short, I eventually believed and accepted Christ, and God fulfilled Jesus' promise to the believer: "the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life" (John 4:14). I began to feel a clean, pure, liquid white light in my heart whenever I prayed. So you see, for me it was not so much about why I found the Bible more compelling than other scripture, but the fact that God brought me to and met me through the Bible, and I found no reason to continue my search once I found Him.

Hope this helps;
Mike