Book Review: Can We Still Believe the Bible?

An Evangelical Engagement with Contemporary Questions by Craig L. Blomberg

My pastor recently asked me to purchase this book for the church library because he thought there were people in my church who would benefit from it. He also suggested that I review it for the church newsletter. This is the review I wrote. If I had been reviewing it just for my blog, it would have been a different review. For one thing, I would have had no word limit! And the readers of this blog are different than the general membership of my church (and yours, too, probably!). If I had been reviewing for the blog only, I would have mentioned a few places where I disagree with certain remarks Blomberg makes. He’s an egalitarian, for instance, and a bit combative in his approach to the egalitarian/complimentarian issue. But it seemed inappropriate for me to get into those issues in the newsletter, and they have very little bearing on the arguments he makes for the reliability of the Bible, anyway. 

I also would have mentioned that this is not an easy read, something I took out of the review because I needed to shorten it. 

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As you might expect from the title and subtitle, this book addresses several specific recent objections to the reliability of the Bible. You may have seen or read some of these arguments against the Bible’s trustworthiness in television documentaries, magazine articles, or books written by skeptics. In each of the six objections Craig Blomberg tackles, he shows that “new findings, or at least more intense study of slightly older discoveries, have actually strengthened the case for the reliability or trustworthiness of the Scriptures, even while the most publicized opinions in each area have claimed that there are now reasons for greater skepticism!”

The first chapter addresses the reliability of the biblical text we have now, nearly 2000 years after the last of the books of the New Testament were written. Is it true that all we have are hopelessly corrupt copies of the original New Testament writings, copies so full of variants—400,000 is the number some give—that it is impossible to know what the authors originally wrote?

Blomberg’s answer is no. The 400,000 figure for the number of variants comes from counting all the differences in 25,000 New Testament manuscripts in Greek and other ancient languages. Do the math: That’s an average of sixteen variants per manuscript. We have hundreds of thousands of variants in our New Testament texts because we have thousands upon thousands of ancient copies, ten times more than any other ancient text.

This abundance of manuscripts actually works to our advantage by giving scholars more information from which to reconstruct the text. That there are so many ancient copies should increase your confidence that the New Testament you have is faithful to what the New Testament authors originally wrote. 

In chapter two, Blomberg considers objections related to the canon of scripture, particularly the notion that fourth-century power politics was the deciding factor in the selection of books for the New Testament. The claim is that the winning faction in a previously diverse Christianity chose the books of the New Testament in order to control what people believed.

In response, Blomberg counters that most of the books in our New Testament were accepted as scripture very early on because they met the criteria for scripture. The canonical books were all apostolic in origin, had a wide distribution in the early church, were faithful to the teaching of Jesus and the apostles, and possessed the qualities of inspired books. There just wasn’t all that much dispute over the New Testament canon.

Next, Blomberg focuses on the reliability of our English translations, listing the strengths and weaknesses of the various translation policies. He concludes that while there are editions of the Bible that we should use with more caution—paraphrases, for instance, or sectarian translations—all the major translations available to us “are more than adequate for teaching God’s people everything God wants them to know that really matters.”

In chapter four, Blomberg tackles contemporary criticisms of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. His first step in defending inerrancy is explaining what this doctrine does and does not claim about the nature of scripture. The doctrine of inerrancy does not, for example, require that the Bible meet modern standards of accuracy. Inerrancy is not called into question, for instance, when the writers quote people according to ancient quotation practices, summarizing and paraphrasing what was said rather than quoting verbatim. Once the doctrine of inerrancy is correctly defined with all the necessary caveats, many objections to it disappear. 

Blomberg then offers strong rebuttals of a few specific attacks on the inerrancy of scripture, like the argument that the existence of so many different interpretations of scripture makes the question of inerrancy irrelevant, and the assertion that attempts to harmonize seemingly contradictory details in scripture are dishonest. To conclude this chapter, Blomberg notes that the biggest deterrent to belief in the doctrine of inerrancy is the intuitive understanding that if the Bible is inerrant, there is an obligation to believe and obey it. 

The next chapter moves to the related (and complicated) topic of the literary genres of scripture. Knowing the genre of a passage of scripture helps us know how to interpret it. It helps us determine the truths a passage is intended to convey. Blomberg warns that sometimes an interpretation of a text of scripture is said to conflict with the doctrine of inerrancy when the real disagreement is not about the inerrancy of the text, but the literary genre.  

The final chapter discusses the problem of the miracles recorded in scripture. Aren’t the miracle stories even more reason to consider the Bible unreliable? And aren’t the biblical miracles just copies of pagan myths and legends, anyway?  Blomberg argues that the first objection arises from an irrational prejudice against the supernatural. To rebut the second, he demonstrates the remarkable differences between ancient legends and the miracle stories told in the Bible. What’s more, the Gospel miracles most often pre-date the pagan parallels they supposedly copied. 

This book’s most notable shortcoming, as I see it, is Blomberg’s tendency to be a bit contentious in his responses, especially when he’s refuting Christians who are more conservative than he is, with whom he seems to have less patience than with unbelieving skeptics. His points don’t become stronger because he questions his opponents’ motives and character, and this book would be better if he hadn’t.

Overall, Can We Still Believer the Bible? is an excellent defense of the trustworthiness of scripture. Have recent objections to the reliability of the Bible caused you to doubt it? Or maybe it’s a friend who has questions. Either way, this book should help resolve the doubts—your own or those of others you know.  

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Craig L. Blomberg is distinguished professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary and the author or editor of numerous books, including A Handbook of New Testament Exegesis, Jesus and the Gospels, and The Historical Reliability of the Gospels.