Dena Davidson [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the Bible study pod. This is Dena Davidson. Not, this is. I am Dena Davidson and I'm so excited to join you. Unfortunately, we were going to have Curt and Jason Caine on with us, but they got called away into a meeting. We're planning some incredible things here at Bayside coming up, so I get the privilege of sharing with you my thoughts on why you can trust the Bible. So. So this is part two of a conversation we started last week.
Dena Davidson [00:00:29]:
So last week we had Cam Wells on and we talked about why we personally trust the Bible, but also about the fact that the Bible can be trusted because it corresponds to reality. So I'm going to give you a second reason to trust the Bible and to understand. I want to picture it for you in this illustration. So imagine you have a puzzle box, right? Like, I don't know if any of you are major puzzlers. I am not. Like, I don't know what it is about puzzles. I, I cannot do them. Like, every single puzzle piece is a tiny frustration.
Dena Davidson [00:01:03]:
I cannot figure out how they look the same or how they fit together. It just, it drives me bonkers. But some of you, that's your jam. So imagine you got a brand new puzzle, right? And you open up the box and you start piecing the puzzle together and every single piece perfectly slides into place. Place. And it creates this beautiful image of a forest. And so you perfectly complete this puzzle and you are like, way to go. I completed this thousand piece puzzle and I have this beautiful picture now of a forest.
Dena Davidson [00:01:37]:
Then all of a sudden you think to yourself, what's going on here? There's like, where's that box that this puzzle came from? So you go and you grab the puzzle box and you realize, okay, that's what's off. See, this is a picture of a forest, but the picture on the box is actually a picture of the planets. Like, they must have put the wrong puzzle in the box. So that kind of susses out for you two theories of knowledge, the correspondence theory and the coherence theory. The correspondence theory of knowledge is that what makes something true is when it corresponds to reality. So that would be, is if you built this puzzle and all of the pieces matched the picture on the box, right? So like you saw the picture of the planets and you built the puzzle and what you ended up with is a picture of the planets. The planets correspond to the picture of the planets. It would be an accurate representation of reality.
Dena Davidson [00:02:34]:
That's the correspondence theory. And if you want to hear more about how the Bible corresponds to reality, Go back to the previous episode of the Bible Study Pod, because Cam and I dove deep into that. But today, we're going to talk about the coherence theory. Correspondence is the most important because we want our beliefs to actually match the reality of the world around us. But it's not the only test of truth. Another test of truth is whether the pieces of our worldview, the pieces of our beliefs, actually fit together. So the question before us is, can we trust the Bible in terms of its coherence? Does it present one unified picture of reality? Or is it like a frustrating mishmash of different puzzles that just puzzle pieces that got thrown into a puzzle box? And if you can imagine trying to build a puzzle, this is, I feel like, is what happens every time I try to build a puzzle. But if you're a competent puzzle builder and you're trying to build a puzzle and the puzzle pieces simply aren't fitting together well, then, you know, there is a problem.
Dena Davidson [00:03:43]:
So the question before us, is the Bible coherent? Does it tell one story from beginning to the end? And I will say to you that as someone who loves the Bible and has been reading it deeply, I believe that the Bible tells one coherent story from beginning to end to end. So a lot of times people will bring up, okay, Old Testament versus New Testament, right? Like, that's got to be an example of where the Bible just simply does not cohere, right? Like the. The Old Testament, what it says does not fit together with what the New Testament says. But as I've deeply studied this question, I've come to find that one of the greatest reasons that we think the Old Testament and the New Testament are so far apart is because we're just reading them too far apart from one another. The Old Testament, I won't lie to you, friends. It is a difficult read. But if you read the Old Testament really, really fast, and then you read through the New Testament, you will understand that they are telling the same story of a good God who is constantly pursuing his people. You see the God of the universe in the Old Testament, he created everything.
Dena Davidson [00:05:01]:
And when he created human beings, he entered into a relationship with them. And he gave them the gift of choice. To choose to trust and obey him, or to distrust and disobey him. Over and over again. In the Old Testament and the New Testament, human beings make the tragic choice to distrust and disobey God. And then from the Old Testament to the New Testament, not not only do we see humans again, time and time again, making that same choice to distrust and disobey we see the very same response on the part of God. The first response that he has is he pursues evildoers, right? He looks at his children who have sinned and he pursues them. We see this all the way in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit that God told them not to eat of.
Dena Davidson [00:05:53]:
And we see that God comes and he walks through the garden and he calls to them, he pursues them. He says, where are you? So the first thing that God does in response to sinners is he pursues them. The next thing that he does is he punishes them. And I think the best way to understand punishment in terms of Old Testament and New Testament is simply a limit. God is saying, I am limiting your freedom. I am limiting your ability to do harm to yourself, to do harm to others, and to do harm to the creation that I have made you a steward over. God pursues them, but then he punishes them. And that punishment looks like setting a limit for them, right? So in the Garden of Eden, we see, you know, cursed is the ground because of you.
Dena Davidson [00:06:39]:
Now, your days are not going to be spent, you know, just working and producing from the land with ease. So that leaves you with more time to think up how to do evil. No, now you, your work is going to be toil. It's going to be hard. And then we also see God casting them out of the garden and saying that you're not going to be able to live forever. We see God pun. We see God pursue, we see God punish. But then we also.
Dena Davidson [00:07:03]:
The final thing that God does in response to sin from Old Testament to New Testament is we see that he covers over in the Garden of Eden. We see that he takes clothes and he clothes, clothes them, and he makes sure to cover their sin. So Old Testament to New Testament, I hope that gives you just a little bit of a coherence for how the Bible actually tells one story. Because it is this same God who pursues us in the New Testament, who takes his son from heaven. Jesus leaves his throne and he comes to earth. Why? To pursue evildoers and sinners. And what does he do? He. He takes the punishment on himself.
Dena Davidson [00:07:48]:
God directs that punishment onto his Son so that we did not have to bear it. And that punishment becomes the ultimate covering for our sins. So every ounce of God pursuing, punishing, and eventually covering over sin in the Old Testament, it kind of casts a. It foreshadows what Jesus was going to do in the New Testament. So in summary, the Bible tells one coherent story From Old Testament to New Testament. That's the first objection that I usually hear when people are talking about does the Bible offer one coherent picture of reality? Another one that I often hear is, you know, aren't there contradictions in the Bible? Like, aren't there, aren't there parts of the Bible where it says one thing in this gospel and then it says another thing in that gospel? Probably the most infamous is the whole question of how many angels were at the scene of Jesus's resurrection. In Matthew, he says that there's one, and in John it says that there are two. Well, as a good philosophy major, a contradiction is where we say A and not a.
Dena Davidson [00:08:56]:
And so Matthew is not saying there were no more than one angels. And. And John was not saying there were nothing, there were only one angels. He's saying there's two angels. And where there are two angels, there's obviously one. So there's no contradiction here. Anytime you run into a supposed contradiction in Scripture, the best thing to do is just to slow down and to avoid making a strawman argument and rejecting the Bible for a strawman argument reasons. But basically to say, is there any, any possible way can we can resolve this contradiction? When you apply that principle and that thinking, it honestly becomes so easy to resolve all those supposed contradictions in the Bible.
Dena Davidson [00:09:44]:
So what you want to do is you want to read it in context, you want to harmonize with other parts of Scripture. And I will say this, there are absolutely difficult passages in scripture, passages where you're like, okay, God is saying to people, do this here. And then you flip forward and you're like, okay, now he says to do something completely different. What is the best way to harmonize this? What is the best way to approach this? Friend, I promise you, you can find those problematic, challenging passages. But I need you to know that you are not the first person to run into that supposed contradiction or that supposed lack of coherence between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. I want to point you to my two all time favorite resources that will help you to resolve any of these contradictions or seeming lack of coherence. The first one is called gotquestions.org I love this because it's constantly updating, like whatever is the latest thing trending on TikTok about I have to reject the Bible because there's this contradiction. They keep up tabs of what's going on in popular culture and they're constantly updating it.
Dena Davidson [00:10:57]:
So if you see it on TikTok, if you hear about it from a coworker, go and put it into their search bar, and you will find an expertly researched, reasonable answer that resolves that apparent contradiction or lack of coherence in scripture. So gotquestions.org is my first and favorite. And then the Second one is str.org stands standtoreason.org so I hope those are two incredibly helpful resources. The last thing that I want to bring up to you is just to ask the question, is the Bible morally coherent? Because this, this was a really big challenge for me, to be entirely honest. I specialized in ethics as a philosophy student and I spent a lot of time deeply thinking about what makes right things right, what makes wrong things wrong. And I, through all of that, I came to realize that I really just didn't understand how certain actions of God and certain concepts in the Bible, how that could be morally coherent with what God says about Himself being a God of love and a God of justice. So I want to give you an example of one way that I personally have sought to resolve the tension between what is written about God in one of his attributes and what I see taught theologically in the Bible in other parts. And that is as regards the doctrine of hell.
Dena Davidson [00:12:28]:
So I don't bring up the doctrine of hell lightly. I hope we never do bring up the doctrine of hell lightly. I think Christians should always take it very, very seriously. Two of my favorite people that I met as a philosophy student, this was their biggest hurdle. The reason that they simply couldn't accept the God of the Bible is they didn't understand how Christianity could be morally coherent. They didn't understand how God could be good, but also damn people to hell for eternity. And so we had really incredible conversations. The first realization that really helped me is realizing that the whole problem of hell is actually a question about the internal consistency or coherency of Christianity.
Dena Davidson [00:13:19]:
Can we say that God is just and loving and also that hell exists? Because the Bible clearly teaches all three of those things. The Bible teaches clearly that God is a God of love. He's slow to anger, abounding in mercy and compassion. It says that God is a God of justice, that he treats people fairly and accurately based on what they deserve. And it also says that there will be people who are eternally separated from Him. How is this possible? How can we hold this all together? Well, I'm going to offer you no easy solutions, but I just want to say that the, the best way I've had this conversation with God is to simply ask him to help me understand what those attributes of love and justice really mean, because I know my concept of love and my concept of justice truthfully has been warped by my own human experience and my own human sinfulness. So I have my concept of love and I have my concept of justice. And to me, the love and justice seem to be at war with each other.
Dena Davidson [00:14:35]:
And the concept of hell, like, how could a God that is loving allow someone to eternally suffer in Hell? Without going into all the. What I think are legitimate Christian conversations about whether Hell involves conscious, eternal suffering and all that, I think it's fair to say that the doctrine of hell is meant to horrify us. Like, we're not meant to think of hell and be comforted because, you know, for whatever reason, perhaps because they're not consciously suffering, I think we're meant to be horrified by this concept that humans, which are created in the image of God and are intended for eternal relationship with him, are going to find themselves eternally separated from Him. So as. As I came to that horror of hell and I, like, rightly grappled with it, and I saw that it was this doctrine that was causing two people I cared about in my life to not be able to fully embrace Christianity, I came to this crossroads moments where I was like God. I don't know if I can fully trust and rely on the Bible because I don't see how it tells a coherent story of how you are who you say you are. You are this loving God, and. And yet you are also this just God.
Dena Davidson [00:15:54]:
The beginning of a journey towards an answer was first allowing God to ask me back some questions. And the first question, I will never forget it. I was upstairs in my room and I was crying out to God, and I was saying, God, how? Like, how could you let this happen? How. How could you let hell exist? And I remember so clearly there are not many times in my life where God has spoken to me, but he spoke to me directly and clearly. And he said, dina, what have you ever done about hell? Honestly, like, what have you done about hell? Shed some tears, read some books, had some hard conversations. I remember gently but firmly, he asked me that question, what have you done about hell? And that question just absolutely stopped me in my tracks. It arrested me. And I never forget coming to the realization that as much as I hated the concept of hell, so much greater was the hatred that God felt towards Hell, that those that he created and that he loved enough to send his own son to die for that they would spend eternity there.
Dena Davidson [00:17:09]:
So my. My journey began by Allowing God to ask me back the hard questions. Because it revealed to me that while my questions were wonderful and important, my heart posture was one of accusation towards God. And see, instead of coming to him as a humble learner saying, God, help me understand, I was coming to him in a demanding fashion of saying, you better explain yourself. So if that's where you find yourself, if there's any aspect of God's word where you just do not understand how the God of the Bible can be who he says he is in the Bible and yet have these stories in the Bible or these theological themes in the Bible be true, if that is where you are at, I invite you to enter into a humble learning posture towards the God of the universe and say, God, you are an excellent communicator. I am a flawed interpreter. Help me to rightly divide your word. Help me to rightly appreciate and understand what you have written so that I may accurately know you, accurately love you and understand that what you say in one part of the Bible perfectly fits with what you say in other parts of the Bible.
Dena Davidson [00:18:30]:
It is a lifelong journey, friend. I won't raise my hand and be like, oh, my questions about the Bible are completely answered. And I have no, you know, no problems trusting the Bible. I'm still on this journey with you. But I can say with absolute joy that God has met me in that journey of being a humble learner. And time and time again, as I've pursued Him in each hard question where it did not seem like the Bible fit together with other parts of the Bible, he has shown me that the Bible is in fact one coherent story of a good God that loves people and is constantly pursuing them, limiting their ability to do harm to his world, to themselves and to other people. And ultimately it is the story of a God that is covering over sin and keeps on chasing down sinners in order to love them. So I'm going to close out by praying for you that the God of the universe would meet you right where you're at in your questions and he would give you hope as you figure out how the Bible coheres together.
Dena Davidson [00:19:40]:
God, I pray for the person listening that has deep doubts. Lord, when they read a story in the Old Testament and it just completely shakes up the way they visualize you and the way they think of you. I pray that they would bravely enter into that journey of submitting themselves to you so that you can teach them. You can teach them about why you included that story, what it tells them about the world they're living in. What it tells them about humanity, and most importantly, what it tells them about you. I pray that you would give us the ability to really, truly read your Word as you intend it to be read. And God, for every question that we have, every doubt, every way that we cannot possibly see how you, the God of the Bible, wrote certain parts of the Bible. I pray you would make it clear and help us to keep on reading and keep on understanding.
Dena Davidson [00:20:38]:
In your name we pray. Amen.