For Virginia

who writes:

Yes, we as Christians know that the New Testament is infallible because God wrote it. But what if you read that to a non-believer, who doesn't believe in God? That doesn't mean anything to them. If that's the only proof we can offer to them, we aren't going to convince them of the Bible's authorship. I wish someone would just give me a good argument to share with non-believers about why the Bible is true.

You've got it exactly right. The belief in the truth of scripture is built upon the belief that there is a truthful God who reveals himself to us, and because he is perfectly truthful, what he reveals can be trusted to be the truth. So you believe your Bible because you believe in God. You believe in Christ, too, and you can see in the historical account of Christ's life that he considered the scriptures to be authoritative and trustworthy.

But you can't make that argument to someone who doesn't believe in God. You can't make any argument at all for the authority or truthfulness of Scripture to someone who doesn't believe in God, because you've got no agreed upon foundation for you to build your argument on.

So you can't start with the authority of scripture. You've got to start way down below that, at the very bottom. You've got to argue first of all for the existence of a God.

See, you are smart enough--smart enough to see the problem with answering "because the Bible says so" to an athiest. That's something a lot of people don't understand.

You're smart enough, too, I'm betting, to see that arguing for the existence of God isn't a piece of cake, either. It's not the sort of thing that can be tackled in a blog post. You can find books, though, although off the top of my head I can't think of any to recommend. Maybe some readers will have suggestions.

You wanted an easier answer, though, didn't you?

[Update: Violet adds her two cents.'