Book Review: Why Should I Trust the Bible? by A. Trevor Sutton

Link from the publisher: http://books.cph.org/trustthebible

Books, movies, documentaries, very well-sourced Facebook posts (add sarcasm tag), and easily passed about memes often would have you believe that the Bible is about the least trustworthy book ever assembled.  That its origins are dubious and duplicitous, that its content is make-believe and unimportant, but simultaneously a threat to all mankind on account of its racist, sexist, bigoted language.  That it is riddled with errors and destroyed translation.  That it is the product of a variety of tale-tellers from so long ago, and is anything but “God’s Word.”

You have seen these kinds of assaults on Scripture.  If you have not yet, you will.  I bet you have, at least at times, felt powerless to refute the claims.

A. Trevor Sutton’s Why Should I Trust the Bible? (CPH, 2016) is a well-written, accessible resource to help you not to be overcome by this seeming avalanche of attacks.  Over the course of nine chapters, he takes on a series of popular attempts to undercut the reliability of the Bible, and provides for Christians a response to these attacks.  The average person is unprepared to contend with the accusation that there are errors in the transmission of the Biblical text, because they simply haven’t studied those questions.  This book spends a chapter explaining how that transmission happens, what the actual evidence from history displays about that transmission, and prepares the reader to now be able to better defend the reliability of the Bible, if not in disputes with others, then for themselves. 

Likewise, Sutton’s book does a great job of demonstrating the double standards that exist in treating the “evidence,” and how just about no historical work is treated with the same scrutiny and casual dismissal as is the Biblical text.

Each chapter concludes with a series of study questions that make Why Should I Trust the Bible? an excellent resource for use in Bible study groups that aim to be better equipped to understand issues relating to the reliability of the Bible. 

The text of the book is well written, in a way that is both engaging for the reader and accessible to people who do not have several years of seminary training.  A reader with questions about the Bible and its reliability could pick up this book and follow along with Sutton’s writing with little difficulty. 

However, the book is certainly written for Christian readers.  The text builds some arguments on the presupposition that Jesus Christ is humanity’s savior from sin and death, and that the Bible records the proclamation of that salvation.  In other words, faith in Christ is a building block of the argument that the Bible is reliable.  Those same arguments may be less persuasive (or unpersuasive) to a reader who does not already hold that faith in Christ. 

Still, the book is a helpful resource for the church and individual Christians as we live in an era where the Biblical text and testimony is increasingly marginalized and rejected within the wider culture.  It is beneficial for individual Christians to be equipped to defend themselves against these attacks on the reliability to the Bible, because those attacks can quickly become attacks on a person’s faith in Christ.  In the midst of all these attempts to undermine the reliability of the Bible, Sutton’s Why Should I Trust the Bible? is well worth reading.