In response to a previous post, a friend of mine asked, “How can you know that the Bible is true, that it is inspired by God, or that it is inerrant, without appealing to the Bible as the source for these claims?”

My friend was pointing out that Christians tend to make a circular claim: We know the Bible is true because it is God’s word–We know it is God’s word because it says it is–God wouldn’t lie.

Of course, this answer fails to address the unbeliever’s question: “What if someone else wrote the Bible and only claimed it was from God?”

I surveyed the Bible to find its position on the status of knowledge. Does the Bible say knowledge/certainty is impossible to the unbeliever? Actually, I found that sinners can know many things. What they can’t know is the deceit of their own heart. But they can know good and evil. In fact, it is for knowing the good, yet choosing the evil, that people are condemned (Romans 1-2).

Below is a set of verses to help combat the mystical approach to knowledge (presuppositionalism). We see the common-sense view of knowledge: we learn by observation and reasoning. People come to faith because they see evidence; seeing leads to believing.

Knowledge plays a huge role in Scripture. In these verses we find a treasury of insight about what knowledge is possible to man and about how knowledge works. Enjoy!