A Question with Many Facets
Just like a precisely cut diamond or ruby has many reflective sides to it, so also does the question posed immediately above have several facets. Interestingly, even the blade of a two-edged sword has four distinct facets. Like diamonds and swords, because of the facets, they have greater value. Without these facets, a sword is simply a piece of iron and a diamond is no different than a piece of gravel. But with facets, a sword is used for war, a diamond is used for beauty, and this question is used to discover truth. This question then, is a valuable question, because in its very nature, it seeks to discover truth.
For instance, one facet might be that there are many different and seemingly conflicting interpretations within the biblical Christian community, such as the New Revised Standard Version, the New King James Version, the New International Version, the English Standard Version, and the recent Christian Standard Bible, just to name a few popular translations. These are all different translations of the text, but all claim to be pointing to the same person: Jesus. It is often the assumption that they all have something different to say about Him and that the different translations cannot agree on what the Koine Greek New Testament says.
Another facet is that there are different interpretations among Christian Cults. These are called such because they have Christian subject material, but are severe distortions of what is considered to be biblical Christianity. There are even several examples of this, such as the well-known New World Translation, which is the translation of the Bible that Jehovah’s Witnesses claim is the true interpretation of the Greek New Testament. There is the also the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible, which is what those who are formally known as Mormons[1] use as a sacred text in their religious cult.
Also, we could mention the Thomas Jefferson Bible, which is a translation of the Bible where Thomas Jefferson basically used a hobby knife in order to cut out all of the miracle passages listed in the Bible, and had other passages rearranged in order for the Bible to fit Jefferson’s beliefs.[2] On top of these things, there are even sects of people today who are King James Version only, which means that these people believe that only the King James Version of the Bible is the only correct version for today’s world, and all other modern versions fall short of what the King James Version teaches. The thing about this is that it might not so much be a Christian cult, but that the issue is the attachment to the King James Version. In other words, some King James onlyists are so extreme in their beliefs that some rationality concerning interpretation has lost its strength. This is not to say that the King James Version is a detestable translation by any means, but that the issue lies in the person’s attachment to the translation itself. The King James Version of the Bible will not be deeply discussed in this article, but I wanted to remind the reader of the issues within the different translations. So, the question remains, yet we continue our journey, gazing intently at these and other facets of this question throughout this paper, seeking to better understand the truth concerning the Bible, with having so many available options.
Why are there So Many Different Interpretations of the Bible?
The fact that some people believe that this is a great stumbling block for one’s faith is worth considering. A brief discussion concerning metalinguistics is in order to better understand why there are so many evangelical Christian translations of the Bible.
Language changes slightly through time, and from culture to culture. I once had a conversation with a Rabbi while working in a Hasidic Jewish Synagogue who explained that Yiddish was always meant to be a universal language. It was as if German and Hebrew were smashed together to create a new language. The problem with this is that it did not work how it was meant to because of the nature of language changing slightly through time. If the reader will consider, think of the King James Version, mentioned above. The question could be asked, “Is this version of the Bible in English?” of course it is, but which English, seems to be an appropriate designation. The point is, no one alive today speaks the way the King James Version reads, unless it is at a Shakespearian high school play or something of the like. This is often the kind of change that people refer to when considering different interpretations.
The reason that the above mentioned historical English language is no longer spoken is because language changes through time. This change in language partially explains why there are so many English translations: because modern interpreters want modern readers to understand what the original hearers understood. Modern times are always changing, therefore modern translations should change as well. Interpreters want the reader to understand what the Bible says in his or her own language.
The interpretation of the New Testament from the Greek into English is a lot like looking at a painting. Everyone is looking at the same thing, but there might be some slight differences in how we interpret what we are looking at.[3] This also helps us understand why there are so many different popular translations of the Bible in English. When a person translates from one language into another, there is never a “literal” translation. Bill Mounce, a Greek scholar and Bible translator writes, “One of the truths that I have learned since coming on the CBT is that the word, ‘literal’ should never be used in a discussion of translation because it is so readily misunderstood.”[4] Anyone who knows more than one language understands that an idea cannot be exactly translated from one to the next because the idioms and culture and such are different between speakers.
When one translates from the Greek language into English (or from any other language for that matter), there is some difficulty in getting the precisely exact ideas across that the original recipients of the letter understood. Also the words themselves often have several different definitions in Koine Greek, just like there are several different definitions in a single English word today. Think of the word, run or set. A person can run papers through a machine, can rundown the road, and can see water run down the road while his car is running. Likewise he can set something on his television set after setting his clock. The overall task of an interpreter proves to be difficult in some respects.
There is also something to be said for the ingredients of communication. There is at a basic level: a message; a giver of the message; and a receiver of such a message. When a person describes a painting then, the way that the receiver of the message (description of the painting) processes information might come to an understanding in a slightly different fashion what another receiver of the same message would come to understand. The different cultural backgrounds and different presuppositions seem to play a small part on the understanding of the one receiving the message.
Similarly, there are many interpretations because as the Koine Greek New Testament is examined, one interpreter might see an emphasis (in the text) where another interpreter might see an emphasis elsewhere (in the text). With this in mind, just like in the painting analogy, an interpreter seeks to be true to what he or she is looking at, which may have slightly varied results because the instruments used to interpret are different (i.e., people). These results have extremely little effect on what the Bible teaches as we will continue to discover.
Koine Greek once had a similar agenda as Yiddish. It was meant to be a universal language. Every country claiming a coast on the Great Sea (now, the Mediterranean) knew this traders language (Koine Greek), which is what the New Testament was ultimately written in, and because of such, this likely made it a second language for most people who understood it. What is interesting is that Koine Greek is by-and-large a phonetically lost language. If the New Testament did not exist, we have at least some reason to believe that Koine Greek would be a completely lost language, because it is no longer spoken, much like at one time was the status of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics, Ugaritic, and Runic Germanic languages.
The New Testament Has Not Changed
The thing is, however, if Koine Greek were still spoken, it would likely change because of anthropological and sociological influences alluded to above. Therefore, the fact that it is unspoken makes it timeless because it does not change through cultural influence or the like. There are over twenty-five thousand, hand-written manuscripts of the New Testament from the old world, with about six thousand of that number being in Koine Greek.[5] With this high number of manuscripts, they can be hypothetically placed side by side in order to be examined. When side by side, every word can be compared to one another from manuscript to manuscript. There are slight differences in the manuscripts that are from the old world, but none of these variants, as they are called, make a difference in any of the doctrinal material that is in the New Testament.[6] The New Testament, then, as much as it has been copied, has proof that it has not changed because we can see these documents laid out before us through the span of time, so to speak, and analyze the manuscripts from the second century forward, and because of such, we can know that it has not been changed since the original autographs with up to “99.9 percent accuracy on anything of real concern.”[7] We can see from beginning to end, in a sense, these manuscripts which span time and see that the New Testament itself does not change through time. This is significant because we have a solid foundation to work from in translating the original language into our own modern language, namely, English, as well as that there are no doctrines in Christianity that have been altered since the beginning of Christianity. In order for Jesus to be the same yesterday, today and forever, it would also mean that His Word would have to be the same, yesterday, today and forever.[8] Therefore our foundation, the Word of God, is infinitely strong because it does not change. It is noteworthy at this moment to point out that Jesus says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”[9] He us the ultimate authority of canonicity. The Bible is true because He is the truth.[10]
So the differences in interpretations do not change the overall message of the Bible, at least in the most popular Evangelical Christian translations as some of them are mentioned above. Therefore, the different interpretations do not really matter all that much as long as they communicate the message of the Word of God accurately, even having minor superficial differences, and having no differences, doctrinally speaking.
Translations from Christian Cults
A second facet, briefly mentioned above, is the idea that there even translations of the Bible written from the perspective of Christian cults. We will look at a comparison of John chapter one, verse one, in the Koine Greek translation of the New Testament and the popular modern translation of the New Testament, English Standard Version, which is a more formally equivalent translation of the New Testament as opposed to a more functionally equivalent translation, such as the New International Version. In the Koine Greek New Testament, in John 1:1, we read: Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.[11]
The English Standard Version translates this same verse as “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”[12] This is a faithful translation according to this author because it is concise and accurate. A word-for-word translation of the Koine Greek of the same verse would not read very differently than what the English Standard Version reads: “In beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word.”[13] Both my word-for-word translation and the English Standard Version of John chapter one, verse one, contain the same idea in them. Primarily, that the Logos is God. This verse both directly and indirectly claims that the Word (Logos) is God. We have already seen how this verse directly states that the Word is God, and indirectly, through the beginning clause of the verse makes the claim that the Word (Logos) existed before the beginning. In other words, this verse says that the Word (Logos) already existed before time began.
Now that we have this information established, we can look at a translation of a popular Christian cult, called the Joseph Smith Translation, named for the founder of the Latter-Day Saint Movement which began in the nineteenth century. It reads, in John chapter one, verse one: “In the beginning was the gospel preached through the Son. And the gospel was the word and the word was with the Son, and the Son was with God, and the Son was of God.”[14] As the reader can clearly see, there is a great deal of difference between this, and for instance, the English Standard Version of the Bible.
Not only are the words drastically changed, but also the idea is very different as well as confusing: “In the beginning was the gospel preached through the Son.” To whom was the gospel preached? To God? What exactly is the word, word, referring to, that is mentioned in the translation of this verse? It is clear what it refers to in the Greek and other modern translations, but not in this one. On top of this, The Joseph Smith translation says that the Son was of God. It seems safe to assume that Joseph Smith had a version of Jesus in his mind when he refers to the “Son.” But the problem is, the earliest manuscripts do not teach that the Word (λόγος) was of God but that the Word was God. Being of God opens a whole other world of definition to what that can mean exactly. This seems to be a pragmatic translation for Joseph Smith. It works for him to be able to not only change meaning of the true text, but also to manipulate his future followers. The text continues in verse four and clarifies some things about the first verse in the Joseph Smith Translation: “In Him was the gospel and the gospel was the life, and the life was the light of men.”[15] So now we know better about what the “gospel” is, which is different than the Son, but not from the word. Then the Son and the word are two different things, but not necessarily the word and the gospel. This gives Joseph Smith more room to confuse his readers. It makes his use of Jesus more manipulating.
For instance, if Jesus, the Son, is not the ultimate authority, which is what this translation teaches, then he is of less authority and power than the Father, ultimately making the Mormon Jesus not Deity. There are several issues with Jesus not being God. Number one, the Bible teaches that He is,[16] and also, theology and logic teach that if Jesus was not very God, then He would not be sinless, and therefore, would not be a sufficient sacrifice for human sin. Third, If Jesus was not God, He would be an insufficient Savior. Fourth, if Jesus is not Deity, then who exactly is He? These issues among other show us that the Mormon Jesus is insufficient for salvation. Paul teaches us that there is no other gospel, but only one.[17]
Another translation that we will consider is the New World Translation. This translation is the main sacred text among everything else that the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of the Jehovah’s Witnesses produces, and as a translation of the Holy Scripture, which is what it claims to be, is in serious error. We will look at three verses in this text, in the beginning of the Gospel of John, in order that we might not be guilty of taking anything out of context (which is a common accusation against Evangelical Christians from Jehovah’s Witnesses).
In the New World Translation, John chapter one, verses one through three, reads as follows: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was a god. This one was in the beginning with God. All things came into existence through him, and apart from him not even one thing came into existence.[18] With this translation, it begins like what the actual Greek teaches. “In the beginning was the Word.” Now, this clause flies in the face of the Witnesses because it teaches that Jesus was already there in the beginning. That He already existed before the beginning started. The problem is that this clause indirectly states that Jesus is God. But the major problem arises at the end of this verse which says: “The Word was a god.”[19] This explicitly disagrees with the beginning of the verse.
This verse teaches that Jesus was “a” god. There are several problems with this, and the first one we will discuss is that this “a” is not found in the Koine Greek translation of the New Testament. As mentioned above, a word-for-word reading of the Koine Greek reads, “…and God was the Word.” Jehovah’s Witnesses make the claim that the definite article (τὸν θεόν) is not used with the word, θεὸς, and therefore, it must mean “a” god. But the problem with this is when we look at other passages in the Bible to see how they are rendered. “To be consistent in this rendering of “a god,” Jehovah’s Witnesses would have to translate every instance where the article is absent as “a god” (nominative), “of a god” (genitive), “to” or “for a god (dative), etc.”[20]
What this means is that in considering everywhere else in the Bible, the New World Translation is unfair (and blatantly false) in translation to this verse because it goes against their theology. In order to teach that the Trinity does not exist, this verse (and others) must be changed. Yet the problem is, that it only makes it more confusing at a first reading.
Another problem with this John chapter one verse in the New World Translation is that it teaches that there is another existing god. Yet, the Bible consistently teaches that there is no other god.[21] On top of this, the First Commandment teaches that there shall be no other Gods before Him.[22] So then, not only does the Bible consistently teach that there is only one God, but that it is a crime against God to have other gods before Him. This goes to show another inconsistency in the New World Translation and the teachings of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
On top of the first clause in these three verses under discussion, there also lies a similar issue in verse three. In the English Standard Version, this verse reads: “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.”[23] Looking at this next to John chapter one, verse three, in the New World Translation does not reveal much difference: “All things came into existence through him, and apart from him not even one thing came into existence.”[24] So not only is the New World Translation inconsistent with the first verse in its translation, but is also inconsistent in what it teaches. For instance, if what verse three says is true, as the English Standard Version confirms, then Jesus created everything, and nothing came into existence without Him. The problem is, this could not include Him, because He would have had to already exist in order for everything (all things) to be created through Him (He did not create Himself). It would seem then, that this verse needs to be changed as well, in order to line up with what the Jehovah’s Witnesses erroneously teach, which is that Jesus is a created being. So the Bible remains to be true, even though there are several issues of translation coming from inconsistent cults. We can therefore see the unchanging nature of the Bible, even through a purposely distorted interpretation of the text.
Of these four translations of John chapter one (verse one in particular), just discussed (the English Standard Version; the author’s word for word translation, the Joseph Smith Translation; and the New World Translation) two of them say that Jesus is God and two do not. As we will soon discover below, both of these claims cannot be true: Either Jesus is God or He is not God.
How Can the Bible Be True?
Another facet of the question posed above that needs to be addressed in this is the question, how can the Bible be true in light of other so-called sacred texts? The Bible is exclusive in what it teaches. This means that there are no other options. Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me.”[25] This teaches exclusivity in soteriology. The issue is that there are other religions that also teach exclusive soteriology.
Concerning the Book of Mormon, for instance, Joseph Smith teaches that “I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.”[26] Yet the Book of Mormon teaches that a person is saved by works, and not by faith: “For we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.”[27] This is about as direct an act of plagiarism and disagreement as one can get. The English Standard Version of the Bible says in Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”[28] Therefore, Mormonism teaches that it is an exclusive religion as well; that Mormonism alone has the answers to the questions of life. On top of this, if the Book of Mormon is the most correct book of any on earth, then why does it incorrectly teach that a man who had his head cut off, tried to take a breath (?), even after doing a push-up (also while headless)?[29] As far as archeology is concerned, why also does the Book of Mormon mention wars with millions of people and nothing evidential has ever been found to verify its claims? The reason is because the Book of Mormon is a false writing. If it were true, there would be archaeological evidence in the State of New York, where a majority of the Book of Mormon takes place.
In any event, we just discussed two examples of exclusive religions: Christianity and Mormonism. The nature of the existence of religions implies that they are exclusive. Exclusivity does not need to be spelled out for all religions because religions are all essentially making the claim that they have the answer to the problems and questions of life, therefore all are exclusive, even Hinduism, which is polytheistic and postmodern to an extreme.
The idea is that not all religions can be true, but there can only be one that is true, if even any at all. The Law of non-contradiction teaches that A cannot equal –A. In other words, contradictory statements cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time. For instance, a woman cannot be both pregnant and not pregnant at the same time and in the same sense; nor can the claim that Jesus is God be equal to the claim that Jesus is not God (A ≠ –A). Likewise, all religions claim to be exclusive by their very nature, and so they cannot all be correct. We examine the claims of each and rule out the ones that are wrong, absurd, or simply lies, and we hold fast to that which is true.[30]
Since we ruled out that there cannot be more than one ultimately true religion, we can know that the Bible is true through an examination of the scriptures. We look at it historically, archaeologically, and logically, for a few reasons. Logically, we can examine the scriptures and see that the stories in the Bible do not appear to be embellished: there are no talking crosses and heads that reach up to heaven.[31] The stories of the Bible play out naturally, and where the miracles are communicated in the Bible, we do not find them to be illogical. For instance, in comparison to Matthew chapter 14 where Jesus walked on the water, we do not find elsewhere in the Bible that Jesus made square circles or that He explained the smell of the color of red. The things mentioned in the Bible are as if someone witnessed these things and recorded them naturally.
Historically and archaeologically speaking, among other things, one can read the Bible and know that it is true because many of the names of the cities in the Bible still exist today, and he can even go and visit them. The Bible records the accounts often in such detail that it would not make sense to record them in such detail unless these things were actually a part of the experiences of the biblical writers. The authors of “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist” make a lot of sense: “Now, why would Luke be so accurate with trivial details like wind direction, water depths, and peculiar town names, but not be accurate when it comes to important events like miracles?”[32] The point here is that if all of the cities names are found to be correct and details surrounding these things, why would we not assume that the author is telling the truth on the other details of what he has written.
Archaeologically speaking, unlike the claims of the Book of Mormon as mentioned above, there are archaeological artifacts in museums all over the world excavated from biblically described times and places. There are artifacts and evidences ranging from tombs, to inscriptions,[33] to weapons, to boats, to clothing, to tools, and pottery (let alone manuscripts), to name a very small number of things. One can see these things at a museum, often in his own town. The fact that a person can go visit these cities that are mentioned in the Bible and see these things from the time of Jesus and see that they corroborate with the claims in the Bible gives strong support for the veracity of the Bible.
Complications of Postmodernism
Postmodernism is the idea that truth is relative. It teaches that whatever is true for a specific person might be different for another person. But the problem with this teaching is that one cannot test the truth of certain claims because they often begin as untrue and irrational. They are frequently inconsistent and self-refuting. For instance, if someone were to say, “Yes, Christianity is true, and so is Islam” they would be invoking the Law of Non-contradiction as mentioned above, and therefore be in violation of a natural logical law. If something is true for one person, then it is true for that person and everyone else. For instance, if Reginald feels cold living in Alaska, then it is also true for Jasper, living in England that Reginald feels cold, even if it is summertime in England. The truth is in the object, not the subject. This is one great confusion concerning truth in modern times.
William Lane Craig says, “In my opinion this sort of thinking could not be more mistaken. The idea that we live in a postmodern culture is a myth… Nobody is a postmodernist when it comes to reading the labels on a medicine bottle verses a box of rat poison.”[34] The point is clear: No one actually lives as if relativism were true. This continues to hammer down the idea that truth is not only knowable, but is also discernable from what is not true. Because we can discern the truth, we can know beyond a reasonable doubt which, if any, religions are ultimately true.
What is unfortunate is that even from within the Christian community, people make the claim that there are so many Christian Bible interpretations, that we cannot possibly know which one is true, then proceed to write them alloff. Many people believe that because the Book of Mormon is a sacred text, and because the Bhagavad-Gita is a sacred text, and the Necronomicon is a sacred text, and we know that all of these are mostly comprised of illogical and unfounded gibberish, then because the Bible is also a sacred text, it must also be comprised of gibberish. This is an erroneous conclusion.
The major problem here is not only that these types of claims come from ignorance, but that they employ the fallacy of association. This is in the hasty generalization family, which assumes the same truth for a group of things that are in a similar category somehow. “It confuses typical and atypical evidence, or ignores atypical evidence entirely, then jumps to a conclusion. It concludes too much from too little, choosing only the evidence it wants.”[35] For instance, if someone is making the claim that the New World Translation of the Bible or the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible is equal in holiness, or truth claims, or in being sacred as the English Standard Version or other popular evangelical translations of the Bible, then they are associating the Christian Bible with translations that are disastrously inaccurate translations of the Koine Greek New Testament and the Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament. The issue with making this hasty generalization is that just because all of these other so-called sacred writings are found fallacious, does not mean that all sacred writings are found fallacious.
It seems that this fallacy is on the rise because of postmodernism. From an atheistic perspective, this might seem like a good argument at first (that all sacred books are erroneous, therefore none of them are true), but as people bring their presuppositions to the table before examining the text, they fall short in the long run and are in error from the beginning. Fortunately, people can often come to see that it is possible to discern the truth and examine these texts one by one and discover which of them they should continue to examine.
A True Faith from a True Text
One is a Christian because Christianity is true. Not because his parents were Christians or because he was born in the United States of America or because it is true for him, but because he knows that there is something rather than nothing, that God exists and, and that there is sin in his life, and because we can know that the greatest miracle (creation) provides the possibility of all other miracles, which many of them are recorded in the Bible.[36] Therefore, we can look at what the Bible says and know that the human authors who wrote such things down were not out of their minds but actually were eye-witnesses to the events. We discover many truths about reality through the text.
The thing is, it seems that if any person saw what the biblical human authors witnessed, he or she would end up in the same boat, so to speak. What is meant by this is that there is an element of trauma that must have been experienced by the disciples. It is common knowledge that many, if not most of the Apostles of Christ were martyred. Now the question is, why were they martyred? It seems that the cause boils down to the result of the things that they witnessed and experienced. They saw things like people being healed from blindness from birth, that a man made water turn into wine, that a man walked on the water as mentioned above, that this same man raised people from the dead and who Himself they saw die and rise again on the Third Day. Thinking about this from a psychological perspective, one might wonder what effect this would have on a person. I propose to you that one would not be able to stop talking about the things experienced while following Jesus.
Imagine for a moment that if you, the reader, went to a restaurant by a large lake in the summertime and ordered a whole trout for supper. This fish was delicious and you ate all of the meat off of the bones and there was only a fish skeleton left. Now imagine that after eating the meat off of these bones and all of the sudden, as you are enjoying the summer breeze, looking down at your empty plate, you see fish organs materialize and come together inside the ribcage and the heart starts beating, meat starts growing back on the bones before your very eyes and you see the sinews come together and making connections where they are anatomically supposed to be positioned and then you see with your own eyes, a healthy color coming back into the meat (at this point you start thinking of it as muscle and not meat) and flesh covers all of these things and scales start popping out of the flesh and a fish ultimately starts flopping around, causing chaos on your own table spilling salt and pepper shakers and your iced-water and flops into the lake right beside your table and you witness it swim away. Still feeling warmly satisfied from your meal, you stare at the lake with your mouth open.
What affect would this have on a person’s life? It seems likely that the person who witnessed this in today’s world would not be able to stop talking about it. Even after spending 12 years in a psyche ward, one would still not be able to get something like this out of his or her mind. The reason is because it would be an experience like no other, it would be miraculous, and would impact the observer with such force that he would not be able to keep such a thing to himself. It would consume him. This is what happened with the Apostles of Christ. It seems that if anyone were alive at the time of when Jesus’ ministry was taking place that people would not be able to keep in the things that they saw, even at the threat of death. If Jesus took anyone in and he saw the things that the apostles saw, he would be in the same predicament as the apostles; unable to stop talking about what he saw and experienced. The signs that Jesus did were so heavy on humanity that they are not only unforgotten today, but they are remembered and discussed every day of the week in every culture of Planet Earth.
Against Irrational Faith
The Bible is true because the things mentioned in the Bible actually happened.[37] They are historical events that took place and we can read about them today. We can examine the evidence of these historical events archaeologically, philosophically, logically, and rationally. It is not that there are no other truths in other texts comparatively, but the truth about life is found only in the Bible. It correctly and satisfyingly answers the questions, “How did we get here?”, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”, “How are we supposed to live?”, and “What happens when we die?” Other so-called sacred texts are insufficient in explaining the answers to these questions, because other so-called sacred texts are not true.
For instance, in Mormonism, one would have to believe that there is a multiverse, or speaking more true to their scriptures, that the universe existed forever in order to believe that Mormonism is true. The problem with this is that Mormonism teaches that when one dies, he has the chance to become a god of his own planet. This idea alone requires there to be an endless amount of gods, as well as an endless amount of planets in our solar system.[38] For this teaching to work, that there are an endless number of planets or gods, then time would have to go backwards for an infinite amount of time, but this is impossible, because an infinite number of events (time itself), cannot come to an end, but it definitely does in the event of today. Therefore, infinite regress, as it is called, is impossible because we arrive at today, but not yet tomorrow. In Mormonism, then, the teaching that there are an endless number of planets (because the god [Heavenly Father] Mormons now have, comes from a planet called Kolob),[39] which lines up with their official doctrine that “As man is, God once was, and as God is, man may become,”[40] is philosophically impossible because it requires an infinite amount of time, which tomorrow itself proves that infinite regress does not conform to reality. Based on the writings of Joseph Smith, then, we must come to the conclusion that he was either a deceiver (liar), or a lunatic, because he never claimed to be lord (as of his death).[41]
On the contrary, when we look at the person of Jesus as described in the Bible, we see that not only did He perform great miracles, make claims about Himself that no human person in their right mind would claim, and rose from the dead, Himself, we find that He is the way, the truth, and the life.[42]
Moral Correctness of Exploring Other Religions
What makes the idea of exploring other religions and worldviews a part of this argument is that there are so many religious texts that make truth claims. One common argument is that we should always be seeking the truth no matter the source. It has been long understood that the Nazi Party before the Second World War banned smoking tobacco because it is bad for one’s health, but because the source is demonstrably evil, does this mean that they are wrong? The answer is no. To believe that the source has anything to do with the truth of the claim would be to commit the genetic fallacy, which is fallacious because sometimes sources that are evil, ugly, or enemy, actually do teach the truth.
The same goes for the Bhagavad Gita, or the Book of Mormon, or the Satanic Bible. Not everything that is said in these so-called sacred texts are fallacious, but their reputation also says something about them. The truth claim that Joseph Smith existed versus the truth claim that Jesus is a created being are very different. We are not looking for simple truths in the Book of Mormon such as Joseph Smith existed. This does not matter much. The real questions are about theology and life: where we come from, how we are supposed to live and what happens when we die. We should weigh every claim of truth that we encounter. Some claims deserve more attention than others. The reputation a text has that is filled with truth claims also seems to speak volumes. How much stock should we place in what a sacred text with truth claims? It appears that we can avoid the genetic fallacy in false religions by considering where they are true, and where it lines up with the truth claims that really weigh heavy on the questions of life.[43]
Conclusion
There is a reason the Bible is the number one best seller, and it is not only because it is the only source of where we find real hope, but also because the truth it contains about reality is not only attractive but also tested. Unlike the teachings of the gods of ancient Rome, Greece, and the Vikings, the Bible stands firm through the tests of time, unlike other sacred texts because it teaches the truth about Jesus, life, God, the afterlife, sin, and ultimate reality.
The Bible, literature that is sharper than any two-edged sword, will lay open all that rests on the butchers’ table for the butcher to see the contents of what is inside. Namely, “piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”[44] With its many facets, the Bible itself reveals to a person what he or she is made of; it brings the message of hope to the hopeless through Jesus; it is a mirror for those who want to see what they look like in the eyes of his or her Creator; and it stands true among all other sacred texts and interpretations.
Written by Nace Howell through the grace of the Lord Jesus
© Nace Howell, 2022
Bibliography
Howell, Nace. The Name Change of the Latter Day Saints. April, 2019. https://apologeticsandevidence.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-church-of-joseph-smith-of-latter.html.
Jefferson, Thomas. Bible. https://americanhistory.si.edu/JeffersonBible/the-book/
Mounce, William D. What I Have learned About Greek and Translation: Since Joining the CBT Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2017.
Geisler, Norman and Joseph M. Holden. The Popular Handbook of Archaeology and the Bible. Eugene: Harvest House Publishers, 2013.
Blomberg, Craig. The Historical Reliability of the New Testament. Nashville: B&H Academic, 2016.
Geisler, Norman and William L. Nix. From God to us: How we got our Bible. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2012.
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Matthew 24:35
Aland, Kurt et al., The Greek New Testament, Fourth Revised Edition (with Morphology). Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1993; 2006.
Joseph Smith Translation: Published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Joseph Smith, I.L. Rogers, E. Robinson, publishing committee, 1867.
New World Translation: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania. Patterson: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York: Brooklyn, 2013.
Martin, Walter Ralston. The Kingdom of the Cults. Bloomington: Bethany House, 2003.
Smith, Joseph. BYU Studies. https://byustudies.byu.edu/content/volume-4-chapter-27.
Smith, Joseph. The Book of Mormon. Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 1989.
The Gospel According to Peter: The Lost Books of the Bible. New York: Gramercy Books, 1979.
Geisler, Norman and Frank Turek. I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. Wheaton: Crossway, 2004.
Howell, Nace. The Erastus Inscription: What does it mean? January, 2015. https://apologeticsandevidence.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-erastus-inscription-what-does-it.html.
Craig, William Lane. Reasonable Faith: Christin truth and apologetics. Wheaton: Crossway, 2008.
Geisler, Norman L. and Ronald M. Brooks. Come, Let Us Reason: An introduction to logical thinking. Grand Rapids, 1990.
Smith, Joseph. Book of Abraham, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/abr/3.16?lang=eng#p16, (Salt Lake City: Published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2013.
Snow, Lorenzo. Teachings of the Presidents. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/teachings-of-presidents-of-the-church-lorenzo-snow/chapter-5-the-grand-destiny-of-the-faithful?lang=eng.
[1] Nace Howell. The Name Change of the Latter Day Saints. Apologetics and Evidence: April, 2019. https://apologeticsandevidence.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-church-of-joseph-smith-of-latter.html.
[2] Thomas Jefferson Bible. https://americanhistory.si.edu/JeffersonBible/the-book/.
[3] Though the object, the painting, remains the same.
[4] William D. Mounce, What I Have learned About Greek and Translation: Since Joining the CBT (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2017), 7.
[5] Norman Geisler and Joseph M. Holden. The Popular Handbook of Archaeology and the Bible (Eugene: Harvest House Publishers, 2013), 122; Craig Blomberg. The Historical Reliability of the New Testament (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2016), 613.
[6] Norman Geisler and William L. Nix. From God to us: How we got our Bible (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2012), 243.
[7] Geisler and Holden, 127.
[8] See Hebrews 13:8.
[9] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Matthew 24:35.
[10] See John 14:6.
[11] Kurt Aland et al., The Greek New Testament, Fourth Revised Edition (with Morphology) (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1993; 2006), John 1:1.
[12] English Standard Version, John 1:1.
[13] Author’s word-for-word translation.
[14] Joseph Smith Translation: (Published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Joseph Smith, I.L. Rogers, E. Robinson, publishing committee). 1867. John 1:1.
[15] Joseph Smith Translation. Jn 1:4.
[16] See John 8:58; 10:30; 20:28; Mark 10:18; Colossians 1:19; 2:9; Hebrews 1:8; Revelation 1:8, 17-18; et. al.
[17] See Galatians 1:6-9.
[18] New World Translation: (Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania: Patterson, NY. Published by Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York: Brooklyn, 2013). John 1:1
[19] Emphasis mine.
[20] Walter Ralston Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults (Bloomington: Bethany House, 2003), 109.
[21] Deuteronomy 6:4; Isaiah 43:11; Genesis 1:1; John 1:1; 10:30; et. al.
[22] Exodus 20:3.
[23] English Standard Version, John 1:3.
[24] New World Translation, John 1:3.
[25] See John 14:6.
[26] Joseph Smith, BYU Studies. https://byustudies.byu.edu/content/volume-4-chapter-27.
[27] Joseph Smith, The Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 1989), 100.
[28] English Standard Version, Ephesians 2:8-9.
[29] Joseph Smith, Book of Mormon, Ether 15:31. 518.
[30] 1 Thessalonians 5:21.
[31] The Gospel According to Peter, The lost books of the Bible (New York: Gramercy Books, 1979), 285.
[32] Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Wheaton: Crossway, 2004), 260.
[33] Nace Howell. The Erastus Inscription: What does it mean? Apologetics and Evidence: January, 2015. https://apologeticsandevidence.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-erastus-inscription-what-does-it.html.
[34] William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christin truth and apologetics (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), 18.
[35] Norman L. Geisler and Ronald M. Brooks, Come, Let Us Reason: An introduction to logical thinking (Grand Rapids, 1990), 105.
[36] Though many are not; see John 21:25.
[37] See 1 Corinthians 15:14.
[38] Nace Howell, Joseph Smith was an Elite Atheist. Apologetics and Evidence: October 2017. https://apologeticsandevidence.blogspot.com/2017/10/joseph-smith-was-elite-atheist.html
[39] Joseph Smith, Book of Abraham, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/abr/3.16?lang=eng#p16, (Salt Lake City: Published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2013). Abraham 3:16.
[40] Lorenzo Snow, Teachings of the Presidents. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/teachings-of-presidents-of-the-church-lorenzo-snow/chapter-5-the-grand-destiny-of-the-faithful?lang=eng.
[41] Anyone who makes such gigantic claims as Joseph Smith should probably be similarly examined through the principles of the trilemma of C. S. Lewis.
[42] See John 14:6.
[43] See 1 John 4:1.
[44] English Standard Version, Hebrews 4:13.
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