When I was young, my dad presented a basic argument for the inspiration of the Bible that is simple but effective.
Bad men did not write the Bible. For one reason, evil men could not have put together a volume that is so inherently moral and upholds the highest moral standards of any document. As an ancient proverb said, “Out of the wicked comes forth wickedness” (1 Samuel 24:13). Jesus said it this way, “So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit” (Matthew 7:17-18). Evil men cannot put together such pure moral teaching.
Secondly, evil men would not have put together a collection of writings that consistently condemned the very actions the evil men delight to practice: murder, adultery, lying. Murder is found 61 times in the ESV; adultery, 42 times; liar, 20 times. All you have to do is look at the religions of men (like Greek and Roman mythology) to see what types of gods men devise – the types of gods that mimic men’s immorality. No, evil men did not put together the Sacred Writings.
On the other hand, good men would not have put together such a volume that purports to be from the hand and mind of God. Even if they could (which they could not, see the second paragraph), they would not have lied about the works being inspired, being from the mind of God, revealed through the work of the Holy Spirit. How could such a man (or group of men) hoist on the world the greatest hoax ever and still write: “But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8). No, good men did not put together the Sacred Writings.
To put it briefly, what we see here is an illustration of a legal principle called declaration against interest. The declaration against interest, according to Wikipedia, occurs when “a person’s statement may be used, where generally the content of the statement is so prejudicial to the person making it that he would not have made the statement unless he believed the statement was true.”
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“Evidence of a statement by a declarant having sufficient knowledge of the subject is not made inadmissible by the hearsay rule if the declarant is unavailable as a witness and the statement, when made, was so far contrary to the declarant’s pecuniary [relating to money, p.h.] or proprietary [relating to ownership, p.h.] interest, or so far subjected him to the risk of civil or criminal liability, or so far tended to render invalid a claim by him against another, or created such a risk of making him an object of hatred, ridicule, or social disgrace in the community, that a reasonable man in his position would not have made the statement unless he believed it to be true.”
Would the New Testament writers have preached and written what they did and faced the hatred, ridicule, and social disgrace they faced if they had not been moved by the Holy Spirit (see 2 Peter 1:20-21).
Declaration against interest, it seems to me, is a valid argument for the inspiration of
–Paul Holland
