The question that composes the title of this essay is important, but only relative in its importance. There are whole disciplines on “textual criticism,” and “how we got the Bible,” and as significant as they are, in one sense, they miss the point.
The most important question in ALL of human history—number one, above any other question that a human being could ever ask—is, “Did Jesus of Nazareth come out of that tomb? Was He raised from the dead?” THAT is the all-consuming question, more vital than any other query mankind could ponder.
You see, if Jesus came out of that tomb, as He predicted He would and as eyewitnesses claimed He did, then Jesus is exactly Who He (and they) said He was—the Savior of the world (John 3:16), the ONLY way to God (John 14:6), He Who has all authority in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18). We will be judged by His words (John 12:48). Our eternal destiny—eternal—rests totally on our response to Him. We will go to heaven or hell, based upon how we respond to the historical fact of Jesus’s resurrection.
If He indeed WAS raised from the tomb.
If He wasn’t resurrected, if He is still in the ground somewhere like happens to all people who die, then He was a fraud, a liar, or a nut, and we owe Him absolutely no obedience. If He was raised from the dead, He was everything He said He was—God incarnate and man’s only Savior. If He wasn’t raised, then we don’t need to pay any more attention to Him than we do any other now-dead and buried human being. Yes, the question of the resurrection of Jesus is indeed the most crucial every human faces.
So, what does this have to do with the question of the title of this article? If Jesus was raised from the dead and is truly the Savior of mankind; and if God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance (II Peter 3:9), then we can have reasonable assurance—in fact, we can be very confident—that God would provide us the information necessary in order to be saved. That is what the Bible is for. God controlled the process of revealing His word (“holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit,” II Peter 1:21), and He would make sure that His message was correctly revealed to mankind. This is an argument based on God’s providence and plan, but also based on reason—the God Who raised Jesus from the dead is fully capable of guiding the process that would give us His completed revelation for the salvation of man—the very reason Jesus died and was resurrected.
If Jesus didn’t come out of that tomb, then the Bible isn’t the Word of God, it is simply the words of man, and we don’t need to pay any more attention to it than we do the words of any other group of humans. It might be good, and interesting, literature with some nice ideas about life, but ultimately, it is no more authoritative than any other work of man. If it isn’t God’s Word, it is the words of fallible humans.
So, “which books belong in the Bible” only becomes an important query if Jesus was truly resurrected from the dead. The books that are there would have been guided by the God Who miraculously raised Jesus. We can look at the historical process of how which books came to be in the Bible, but we can ultimately reason that—if Jesus was raised from the dead—they are there because they are the books God WANTED to be there. If Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead, then...
Who cares which books are in the Bible?