What is Truth?... (continued)

The Bible is an extremely important book. It has been used to convert murderers and thieves, to stop wars and to inspire good and generous acts and, above all, it has stood the test of time. Once, as our family were on a car journey together, one of my sons asked why it is always the old buildings which are marked out as special in travel books and tourist guides (we used to make a practise of pointing out notable sights on journeys when our family was young). I replied that it is the special buildings which become the old buildings; the ugly, the mediocre and the poorly constructed ones simply do not last. Survival, whether we are talking about buildings or literature, is a mark of quality, beauty and strength. Many books and letters, probably including some which had great spiritual significance in their time, did not stand the test of passing generations, needs and fashions and they disappeared or passed into scholarly obscurity. The Bible has passed these tests, and has lasted. But the individual books of the Bible, if made of the gold of true revelation, would have survived whether or not they had become bound together into one book.

The Bible is not a single book, but an anthology. It consists of writings originated over more than 1000 years and only finally brought together between two covers in the second century AD. It is the work of 46 or more different writers, but its subject is one. It is the revelation of the one God and his Son, Jesus Christ, and that clear purpose of revelation dictates and dominates its entire style and contents. Huge areas of history, geography and scientific discovery lie outside the stated scope and purpose of the Bible, and to use it to back arguments in matters outside its scope is to court ridicule, as Bishop Wilberforce discovered when he challenged Darwin's friend T H Huxley in debate (See Note 2). The Bible's importance does not depend on its science or even its detailed accuracy. Many articles and books have been wasted on arguments about whether details of scripture are totally accurate, or internally consistent. A single inaccuracy proved would no more discredit the Bible than a mistake in remembering a car registration number need discredit a trial witness (See Note 3). The key question is whether the testimony is true. On the other hand, if we were able to prove beyond question the absolute historical accuracy and internal consistency of the Bible, that would not be enough to answer the world's needs. It is not written words, but the experience of God's involvement in human lives, which makes revelation a living, personal and effective creative force in the universe.

The historical fact that the Bible has been bound into one volume does not itself prove that it is complete. Remember that large sections of Christendom use differing bibles, some having 66 books and some having 72. The Roman church believes the Protestant Bible to be incomplete. Many arguments are given for rejecting the Apocrypha and I am not making a case for either side, but the existence of those books illustrates that "completeness" is a debatable issue. At the same time, there are many other books which have never been included in the canon of scripture, but which were highly respected in their own time. The epistles of Clement came close to being included, but were left out because he was not one of the original apostles (but neither was Paul!). Over the centuries there have been valuable contributions from mystics like Augustine, Iranaeus, Thomas a Kempis and countless others. Closer to our time, consider what the church has gained by the writing of the "Pilgrims Progress" and many more recent devotional books which have helped and challenged large numbers of people. On the negative side, questions have been asked about the validity of including some of the books that were included in the canon of scripture. Luther, for

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