Book Review: Why Believe the Bible? By John MacArthur

The cover image for this book was taken from its Amazon buy page for review purposes under Fair Use doctrine.

Why Believe the Bible by John MacArthur, MacArthur uses a debate format, asking questions and then providing answers.

I liked the format. One can skip straight to a question they have or want a better answer (apologetic) for. A lot of the content is information you could find in other parts of MacArthur’s work. That’s mostly because there are really only two necessary arguments in apologetics.

There is a God.

The Bible is the authoritative word of God.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t more questions to ask or moments of satisfaction when archeological studies continuously prove the Biblical record. What I’ve come to see as a trend in any apologetic writings is that those two main points are the lynchpins of any apologetics. If one comes to believe those two assertions, he may wonder how things align or how things worked, but he can’t do less than fall to his knees in worship.

This writing does build off the above premise. Some of the questions I hear a lot are covered in this book. Who “decided” which books were part of the Bible? The answer isn’t just some group of people. There was a process that relied on specific criteria, and that started with the authority of God and Jesus, who then granted authority to His apostles. Naturally the next question that comes is how can we trust the words of men (those very same apostles)? For me, it was enough that Jesus granted them authority, but the more important answer is the distinction between mortal author and inspired word, which this book also covers.

While I continue to look for more archeological books to sate my curiosity, this book is absolutely valuable for those who are new to the faith or those who just have questions about Christianity.

Thanks for reading,

Matt