How The Bible Is True

Someone asked me what it means to say the Bible is true. I responded that it is true at different levels, and I alluded to the zooming in and out model I included in one of my books, which might interest some of you with a similar question of that nature.

“The interfacing between the physical and the metaphysical is merely a case of zooming in and zooming out, rather like how a photographer zooms in and out with a camera lens. Zooming in gives you a better perspective of local, select details, but on its own it would be too narrow a focus to see the wider picture. Zooming out gives you a comprehensive look at the wider picture, but on its own it lacks the finer details of the perspective of the local picture.”

For example, we can look at a painting and consider its effects in terms of aesthetics, and its investment of meaning, and its evocation of emotion. Or we can consider it in terms of its physical constitution, which can be reduced to paint particles, atoms and smaller sub-atomic constituents. The first is a zooming out with an artistic, creative lens, and the second is zooming in with a scientific, empirical lens (with opportunity for overlap in either). Similarly, the lenses through which we view nature as a whole are variable; we can see it as an object of empirical study but also as a wondrous creation and a grand narrative, choreographed by the Divine, of which we are a central part. A tsunami can be assessed in terms of plate tectonics and the Earth's crustal deformation, or it can be assessed in terms of human suffering and issues surrounding theodicy. The particular lens of reality is the one chosen by the beholder depending on what he or she is trying to describe. 

Similarly, you can think of the Bible as being true in terms of zooming in and zooming out, where it is true at different levels - at the level of the paragraph, the chapter, the book, and the whole, and how the more we zoom out to discern the complete, interconnected panorama of revelation, the truer it gets. The reason the Bible becomes truer the more we zoom out is because scripture can be understood as nested sets: the paragraph is a subset of the chapter, the chapter is a subset of the book, the book is a subset of the whole. This means that the set of truths at each level expands as we zoom out further, so each zoomed out set encapsulates the truths of the sets it contains, until we get to the whole, which encapsulates the entirety of Biblical truths.

This also means that at the most zoomed in level there may well be verses that come across as difficult to reconcile - even appearing inconsistent, contradictory or morally short-sighted at times, especially out of context. But the more we zoom out into the expanse of chapters, books, and ultimately the entire canon, these tensions will find their place within a larger Divine narrative, showing how individual statements contribute to a coherent, unified truth. In other words, because God entrusted the writing of scripture to flawed humans under the guidance of His Spirit, apparent difficulties in the texts at the micro-level dissolve into the broader, deeper narrative at the macro-level, where the richness, profundity, and interconnection of the whole Bible reveal the awesome love, grace, and sovereignty of Christ.

Think of it this way - as we zoom out, the set of truths expands, capturing not only the local truths of individual passages but also the patterns, themes, and overarching purposes that emerge across chapters, books, and ultimately the entire canon. At the level of the whole, the Bible’s truth is fullest, because all the smaller subsets - the paragraphs, chapters, and books - are integrated into a unified vision that reveals its deepest meaning and coherence.