Systematic Theology, Part 5b: Inspiration & Resurrection

 

By Nicholas Piotrowski

I will never forget the first time I was asked, “Has it ever occurred to you that God did not create us in his image, but we created him in our image?”  The less-than-subtle suggestion is that God does not exist (or we do not know if he exists) and so we have invented him to be a slightly better version of ourselves.  To a new believer at the time this was a starling question.  No, it had never occurred to me.  But is it not possible?  This question, while very disturbing at first, has actually been a wonderful stimulus in my life; it set me on a course to ask many more similar questions and to find answers.  Have we created God in our own image?  Or is the image of God in us a reality?  And how can we know?

Not surprisingly, Systematic Theology helps us here.  Let’s think a little bit more about inspiration.  A few of you have commented to me on how you liked last month’s article on how we can have confidence in our Bible, that it is indeed the very Word of God.  It’s because it is inspired, breathed out by God himself.  And since the Bible is given to us by the work of the Holy Spirit and Jesus is the one who sent the Holy Spirit then we can say that in one sense Jesus wrote the Bible.  (I also made an appeal to why understanding the Trinity is crucial in this consideration.  I won’t recap that here; you’ll have to read last month’s article!)

And with that we get to the crux of the matter: Why should the fact that the Bible carries Jesus’ authority make us more confident in it?  Are there not other great religious leaders who have also written holy books?  One needs to think of Mohammad or the Buddha to mention only two.  What makes Jesus so special that he gives the Bible this extra weight that other holy books do not have?  Or in relation to my first question, What makes the Bible differ from other holy books that also speak of God?  Is it not just another human invention that speculates over what God might be like, ultimately shaping him in the mold of our own self-reflections?

Ultimately, the answer revolves around the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.  If Jesus was truly raised to life after three days in the grave, then that puts him on an epistemological plane by himself.  Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with how we know/how we learn.  That is, if Jesus was raised then he has a credibility to know things unlike any other religious leader.  He has epistemological authority.  If, however, Jesus was not raised then why should we believe he offers anything more than his first-century Jewish opinion on things?  In other words, if Jesus has not transcended the grave then we have every reason to believe that we are indeed creating God according to our own imaginations!  And the Bible is merely one expression of that imaginative speculation.  But if Jesus is raised, then he is the locus of knowledge about God.  The means of knowing God is, therefore, listening to the Word that became flesh at his birth, and then claimed all authority in heaven and on earth after his resurrection (cf. Matthew 28:18).

So we are back to where we were last month.  Jesus’ authority stands behind the Bible; we can be sure that it is trustworthy because he is trustworthy.  But what makes him trustworthy?  It’s the fact that he is the only human being to transcend death, indeed to even conquer it.  To pass to “the other side” and to come back validates his claims to know things—like the nature and character of God!—that others simply could never know.  Couple this with the fact that Jesus claimed to be God himself in the flesh, he powerfully backed up that claim with his resurrection.

In the end we have two very unique claims made about Jesus brought together in a powerful way.  For one, only God knows God.  Therefore if we are to know God it will not be by speculating over what he might be like.  He has to tell us himself.  And Jesus claimed to be God.  Mohammad and the Buddha never dared make such a claim.  But some crazy people have.  So this brings us to the second powerful truth: Jesus rose from the grave, impressively vindicating all other claims about himself, including his deity.

So how do we know the God of the Bible is the truth and living God?  How do we know the Bible is not just a creative conjecture as to who God is based on our own deductions?  Jesus has proven through the resurrection that he had unrivaled authority to speak to such otherwise-unknowable matters.  And Jesus wrote the Bible (again, see last month’s Vision).

God be praised that he has not left us in the dark regarding who he is.  And he has not left us to wonder whether Jesus might be right or wrong.  But we can know that the Bible we trust is “not from men nor through men, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead” (Galatians 1:1).