Can the Bible be proven wrong?

Some professing Christians reject a dogmatic commitment to the inerrancy or inspiration of Scripture. In some cases they actually reject the inerrancy and/or inspiration of Scripture, while in other cases they regard the inerrancy/inspiration of Scripture as a dispensable doctrine. I have in mind people like Michael Patton, F. F. Bruce, and Craig A. Evans.

Their justification for this position is that if your Christian faith is founded on the inerrancy or plenary-verbal inspiration of Scripture, then it only takes a single mistake to destroy your faith. There’s no give in your belief-system.

From their viewpoint, that’s a very brittle, precarious faith. One hairline crack in the granite façade and a moment later the entire edifice crumbles in a heap of dust.

And they’d say, in defense of their position, that this isn’t just a hypothetical danger. They can point out that in real life, you have devout Christians who lose their faith when they become disillusioned with the inerrancy of Scripture. One mistake, however trivial, and their whole faith came crashing down.

Therefore, it’s more prudent to have some expendable beliefs. Have something to throw over the back of the sled to distract the wolves. That includes inerrancy, inspiration, the historicity of Gen 1-11, perhaps the historicity of the Exodus, vaticina ex eventu (e.g. Dan 11; Isa 40ff.).

It’s sufficient for Christian faith to treat the Bible like any other generally reliable historical witness. That’s a safer position.

Notice that this isn’t a question of apologetic method or evangelistic strategy. This isn’t a question of how to witness to unbelievers. Rather, this is about how we should frame the Christian faith for ourselves.

Now, I’ll grant you that this concern points to a genuine danger, although I’d draw some distinctions. There are professing believers who commit apostasy because they had a very crude understanding of what inerrancy entails. Likewise, there are professing Christians who commit apostasy because they because they invested their lifesavings (as it were) in a particular interpretation of Scripture. And I do think Christians need to take precautions against simplistic defeaters like that. They need to distinguish between infallible Scriptures and their fallible interpretations. They need to develop a more sophisticated model of inerrancy. They need to appreciate the limitations of archeology.

However, the position I’m examining goes well beyond that. And it’s time to examine the operating assumption that undergirds that position. It assumes, in theory or practice, that we might discover some evidence which falsifies a Biblical claim. The question then is, how should we brace ourselves for that eventuality before it happens, assuming it ever happens, so that our faith won’t be reduced to rubble?

But what about that presupposition? Should we grant that presupposition?

Let’s begin with a question:

Can the Bible be proven false?

Some professing Christians take that possibility for granted. Given that Scripture can be proven false, we need to loosen or decouple the connection between the Bible and the Christian faith so that if the former takes a hit, the latter doesn’t suffer collateral damage.

But should we answer the question in the affirmative? Let’s explicate the question by rephrasing the question:

If the Bible is the word of God, can the Bible be proven false?

Which amounts to asking:

Can God be wrong?

Another variant:

Can God be shown to be wrong?

Now, if you’re an open theist, you could answer that reformulated question in the affirmative. Ditto: if you’re a pagan. But if you’re a classic Christian theist, then an omniscient God can’t be wrong.

To prove God wrong, you’d have to have some standard of comparison that’s superior to God. But if there is no higher standard, or even comparable standard, then there’s no benchmark against which to measure God, and conclude that God comes up short.

By the same token, if Scripture is the word of God, then how could Scripture be proven wrong? By what standard? Is there something more certain, more trustworthy than the Bible, which we can use to gauge the Bible?

Now at this point, some people might be getting nervous about where my argument is going. To preemptively immunize the Bible from possible disproof is special pleading. Fanatical or fideistic. The last-ditch refuge of desperate Christians on the run.

To that objection I’d say several things:

i) Seems to me that Christians who take the opposite position are open to the charge of special pleading. When they make preemptive concessions to shield their faith from disproof, why isn’t that special pleading? Why isn’t that last-ditch prepositioning to save face?

ii) If it’s legitimate to consider the possibility that Scripture could be proven wrong, why is it illegitimate to consider the possibility that Scripture could not be proven wrong?

iii) Moreover, my question is not an ad hoc question. The Bible claims to be the word of God. Well, if that’s true, then can the Bible be proven wrong? Seems to be that my question follows logically from an unavoidable premise. Even if you treat the Bible’s claim to be inspired as a hypothetical proposition, you still need to consider the implications of that hypothetical. A critic has to make allowance for whether his objections have any purchase if the hypothetical is true. Even if he lacks a dogmatic commitment to the inspiration of Scripture, he must still take that seriously as a hypothetical option. What if it’s true? Then what? What would follow, given that alternative?

iv) Suppose you say the Bible could be proven wrong by sense knowledge. But in that event, why do you privilege sense knowledge as your criterion? If sense knowledge is your standard of proof, how do you prove sense knowledge? Do you have some independent standard, over and above sense knowledge, to validate your empirical standard? If not, then why isn’t your appeal to sense knowledge special pleading?

And keep in mind that we do think sense knowledge is fallible, even if we regard sense knowledge is generally reliable. Moreover, what preconditions must be met for sense knowledge to be reliable? Does that require theistic preconditions?

Perhaps, though, someone would object that the question is misleading. The real question is whether the Bible is the word of God. If so, then, by definition, the Bible can’t be proven wrong. It could only be falsified if it was false. If not, then the Bible can be proven wrong. To stipulate that the Bible can’t be proven wrong because the Bible is the word of God begs the question.

i) But by converse logic, isn’t the opposing side begging the question? If they think the Bible could be proven wrong, which is why we need a fallback position, then aren’t they prejudging the status of the Bible? If they treat that as a live possibility, then they are striking a preliminary stance in reference to the Bible.

ii) They also seem to be assuming that if the Bible is true, it would always appear to be true. But is that a reasonable assumption? Surely there are truths which have the appearance of falsehood because we lack a larger context. Because we don’t have all the facts. Isn’t that a commonplace of human experience? Aren’t there often situations in life where two things both seem to be true–even though we can’t tell which is which (assuming one is wrong), or tell how to harmonize them (assuming both are right)?

This goes back to the issue of what they are judging the Bible by. What’s their frame of reference? This is a persistent difficulty in epistemology. Cf. Roderick Chisholm, “The Problem of the Criterion”; William Alston, The Reliability of Sense Knowledge; William Alston, Beyond “Justification”: Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation.

Someone might also object that the alternative I’m proposing opens a Pandora’s box. Couldn’t Muhammad, Swedenborg, or Joseph Smith use the same defense?

i) First of all, there’s a difference between verification and falsification. To say the Bible can’t be proven wrong doesn’t mean it can’t be proven right. These are asymmetrical propositions.

Take prophecy. An explicitly short-term prophecy might be quite susceptible to falsification. Likewise, a long-term prophecy might be clearly verifiable–after the fact. Once it happens, you can see how everything falls into place.

However, a long-term prophecy might not be easily falsifiable. If you don’t know how long it’s supposed to take for the prophecy to be fulfilled, how can you know ahead of time if it’s true or false?

ii) If the Bible is true, then whatever contradicts the Bible is false. You wouldn’t have to directly disprove Muhammad or Swedenborg or Joseph Smith.

iii) Keep in mind, too, that both Muhammad and Joseph Smith did condition their claims on external standards. So we’re not imposing an external standard on their claims.

For instance, Muhammad set a trap for himself, then stepped into his own trap, when he made the Bible the standard of comparison.

Likewise, Smith snared himself in a trap of his own devising when he said he translated an Egyptian text. He also said an Egyptologist (Charles Anthon) vouched for his translation. Well, we have the Egyptian text. So we can compare that to the Book of Abraham. We also have a letter from the Egyptologist in which he denies vouching for the “translation.”

iv) There’s also the question of whether God has given us any reason to expect prophets to arise, centuries after the Bible was finished, and add their own revelations to the corpus of Scripture, as a supplementary canon–which effectively usurps the Biblical canon.

One can’t very well invoke passages like Num 11:29, Acts 2:17-18, and 1 Cor 14:5, for those don’t single out a select few prophets who pop up centuries apart. Even if we interpret those passages charismatically, to predict continuing revelation, they’d apply to Christians generally. (Of course, if most Christians don’t have that experience, then that’s a reason to question or qualify the charismatic interpretation.)