How to Answer "You Can't Use the Bible to Prove Christianity"
“Prove Christianity is true, but you can’t use the Bible, because I don’t accept it.”
How should you respond to this challenge?
First, Consider This.
Before you answer, think about your approach very carefully. Before you give a reply—any reply at all—ask yourself this: “As a Christian, what is really the foundation of my faith?”
If you say, "The way we can really know Christianity is true Christianity is because of facts and evidence," what are you really saying is your foundation? The evidence. If you say, "We can know Christianity is true because it agrees with reason—the judgment, thinking, and comprehension of the mind,” then what are you saying is your foundation? Reason. What if you say, “We can know Christianity is true because it is so deeply, emotionally satisfying.” What then are we saying is our foundation? Emotion.
Now, Christians appreciate evidence, reason and emotion. We ought to use them all the time and thank God for the opportunity to do so. But reason is rooted in the mind, and evidence is analyzed by the five senses, and emotion is an expression of the soul. These three are all rooted in man. But as a Christian, you don’t believe man is the foundation of true knowledge. Reason, senses, and emotion, and every other faculty we have, are good gifts, but corrupted by sin. They can mislead us—and they often do. Instead, Romans 3:4 states, “Let God be true, even though everyone is a liar, as it is written: That you may be justified in your words and triumph when you judge.”
As a Christian, the word of God is our foundation. It is in the Bible that we learn about the importance of evidence and the benefit of using our reason. Reason and evidence can help corroborate (confirm) our biblical belief, but that belief is not based on reason and evidence. We can trust evidence and reason are valid because of the Bible.
So our answer should reflect this fact. We must not give up the Bible in order to defend why we believe it.
All that being said, we seem to be in quite a predicament. Your skeptical friend has said that you can’t use the Bible, because he doesn’t accept it as an authority. Yet you, being a Christian, have no better foundation upon which to base your argument. What do you do?
Second, Don’t Do This.
Let’s talk about what you should not do. First, you should not pretend like you have a more fundamental reason for believing in Christianity than the Bible itself. The Bible is your foundation, and you shouldn’t disguise that fact. If you’re going to defend the truth of your Christian beliefs, it won’t do you any good to lie about what you actually believe.
Second, you should not pretend to be neutral. You aren’t neutral. And by the way, neither is your skeptical friend. He might claim to be neutral. He might say he just wants the facts, and that he is impartial. However, that's not really true, is it? After all, what has he already told you? He has said that he doesn’t accept the Bible. He hasn’t told you why he won’t accept it, only that he won’t accept it.
Third, you should not presume that you know why your friend doesn’t accept the Bible. At this point, you don’t know why he won’t accept it. Maybe what you think is his reasoning actually has nothing to do with what his reasons actually are. So why would you accept his claim at face value and assume that he has a good reason for rejecting the Bible? Don’t do that. You don’t yet know where he is coming from.
And fourth, do not just start giving him reasons. Yes, there is plenty of evidence to support the truth of Christianity, from science, to archaeology, to textual criticism, to history. There are untold numbers of philosophical arguments, and many of them are sound, and ought to be convincing to anyone. And yes, real Christianity is deeply, existentially and emotionally satisfying. But remember, you don’t know where he is coming from yet, and those things aren’t your foundation anyway.
Now, Get More Info
The fact is, you need more knowledge about what your non-Christian friend is thinking. And the only way you can get that knowledge is by asking questions.
For starters, you could ask questions like, “Why don’t you accept the Bible?” or “How did you arrive at the belief that the Bible is not authoritative?” or “If you don’t believe the Bible, what do you believe,” or “For me, the Bible is the highest authority when it comes to truth. When it comes to truth, what is your highest authority?”
In short, you need to clarify just what your friend believes and invite him to talk about why he believes it. It is important to keep in mind that Christianity is not the only worldview under scrutiny here. He has a worldview too. You might not yet be able to attach a label to it—and he might not either—but he has one nonetheless. No one is neutral; everyone has a worldview.
Then, Compare Worldviews
By now, you can see that the way to answer this challenge is not to simply throw facts and reasons at your friend, without first seeking to better understand his position. Once you do gain a better sense of his beliefs and reasons, now you are ready to compare his perspective with your own.
That is the key to answering this challenge. You have to think of it not as you giving reasons to a neutral judge, hoping he will accept them, but rather as a comparison of worldviews. Which one gives a better explanation of life, the world, and our experience?
Start With Yours
On the one hand, there is your Christian worldview, based in the Bible. What does that provide you with? It gives you a strong basis for ethics and morality—rooted in the triune God’s good nature (Psalm 34:8; Mark 10:18). It gives you a solid foundation for logic and reason—rooted in the rational mind of omniscient and truthful God (Isaiah 1:18; 2 Timothy 2:13). And it gives you a reliable basis for studying evidence and making scientific inquiry—rooted in God’s omnipotence and promise that Jesus holds the universe together (Hebrews 1:1–3). It even validates emotion and intuition as valid—though not infallible—indicators of reality (Romans 12:15; Romans 2:14–15; Ephesians 1:17).
So, according to your worldview rooted in the Bible, morality, reason, science, evidence, emotion, and intuition all find an explanation and work together well, according to God’s design and purpose. By starting with the Bible, you are able to “reason your way out into the world,” so to speak, and you have an explanation and interpretation of all of life and experience.
You have a good reason to trust in your faculties and understanding, insofar as they are guided by God and in agreement with the Scriptures. This means you also have a good reason to trust in the Scriptures themselves. By starting with the Bible, you can make a big, beautiful circle, out into the world and back to the Bible. Yes, this is circular reasoning—but all reasoning about ultimate authorities must be circular. This is not a vicious circle; it’s a circle that includes all of the world and life.
Move to His
Contrast all this with your friend’s non-Christian worldview. You might still not know everything about it yet, but you do know at least one thing: he rejects the Bible as an authority for truth. What then is his basis for believing that morality, reason, science, evidence, emotion and intuition are meaningful categories at all? By rejecting the Bible, he must substitute some other authority in its place. What is that authority? His own thoughts? Why does he trust those to reveal ultimate truth?
You see, by rejecting the Bible, He has rejected the Bible’s teaching about God. He has lost God as the ultimate source of everything needed to make sense of the world. Without God there is no final authority, there is only what seems best to man. And what seems best to one person may seem worst to another person.
Without God there is no objective way to arbitrate between worldviews. Without God, maybe reason is reliable, but maybe it’s not. God hasn’t told us, and we have no ultimate authority. Without God, maybe our senses are reliable, but maybe they’re not. God hasn’t told us, and we have no ultimate authority. Without God, maybe our emotions and intuition are reliable, but maybe they’re not. God hasn’t told us, and we have no ultimate authority.
How does he know his reasoning is reliable? Because his reasoning tells him. This is circular reasoning, but unlike the Christian worldview, it is viciously circular. The non-Christian worldview collapses in on itself.
Finally, Bring It Home
What we have done is compare two worldviews, one built upon the teachings of the Bible, and the other built upon the arbitrary, self-chosen thoughts of man. The former is, by definition, established upon the highest possible authority, the infinite mind and heart of God, whereas the latter is, by definition, reliant upon the unreliable, changing reason of man.
This is what you want to get your friend to see: he has just two choices: he can continue to reject the Bible as an authority, but in so doing he loses his ability to trust any beliefs at all. His rejection of the Bible was not a necessary choice. He chose it arbitrarily; he might just as easily have said that he does accept the Bible as an authority. There certainly is no good reason to disbelieve the Bible—and (as we have seen) to disbelieve the Bible is to do away with reason entirely.
Or he can repent of his self-reliance, his sinful attempts to exclude God from his life and thought, and he can accept the Bible. When he does that, he will come face-to-face with the Bible’s teachings that will solve his problems. His problem is not lack of evidence or reasons; his problem is the same as all of us: sin. The Bible (the same book that gives us a basis for making sense of the world) says that “all have sinned” (Romans 3:23) and that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). And yet God loved the world in this way: while we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly (John 3:16; Romans 6:6–8).
Tell your friend that the Bible teaches the Gospel. And if the Bible is not true, then you can’t make sense of the world. The only worldview that makes sense of life teaches the only message that saves from death. Invite your friend to repent and believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ.