The Relationship Between The Bible And Christianity

Many people conflate Christianity and the Bible as if the are one and the same, but there is a key distinction that must be made.  The Bible, when interpreted rationalistically (the only genuine exegesis involves a rationalistic examination of a text to decipher its meaning), is the means of knowing how to define the details of Christianity, but it is not identical with Christianity itself.  One is a book; the other is a set of concepts elaborated upon by the book.

The fact that two are not identical does not devalue the Bible in any way.  This distinction does, however, factor into sound apologetics and theology.  In particular, it needs to be acknowledged when discussing the potential truth or falsity of Christianity and the Bible, as the former can be true even if the latter contains errors (admitting this truth is not the same as claiming the Bible actually contains errors, of course), but the latter cannot be true unless the former is.

All evidence in support of the Bible is, by necessity, evidence for Christianity, but just because Christianity is true does not not mean that the entirety of the Bible is also true.  If entire books of the Bible were thoroughly inaccurate, Christianity itself could still be correct.  After all, the existence of God and the historical resurrection of Jesus do not hinge on the veracity of the Bible!  There is an uncaused cause [1] even if it is not the Christian deity Yahweh, and Jesus could still have resurrected even if there were major factual errors scattered throughout the Bible.

The truth or falsity of Christianity itself does not stand on the accuracy of the Bible, although there would be no way to learn the specifics of Christianity apart from it.  Without the Bible, there would be no evidence that the Christian God prefers one particular moral framework, for example.  However, if the Bible was false (with the exception of the parts that are true by logical necessity [2]), it would not follow that all of the tenets of basic Christianity are likewise untrue.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-uncaused-cause.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2019/01/christianity-and-skepticism.html