We know the Lord Jesus said something because it’s in the Bible, then we say that the Bible is true because Jesus is the Son of God. Is this circular reasoning?

This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘Where Did the New Testament Come From?’ (2006).

Yes, logically as you say, that is circular reasoning. You say you know the Lord Jesus said this because it's in the Bible; so you believe that he said it because it's in the Bible. Then on the other hand you turn around and say that the Bible is true because Jesus is the Son of God. So it sounds to people like circular reasoning.

My first answer to that is—yes it is circular reasoning. Now some circular reasoning is vicious, in the old Latin sense—it is faulty, it is a vicious circle. But there are circular reasons that are not vicious, that are necessarily true. For instance, how do I know the universe is there? You say, 'The scientists have made experiments and have shown it's there.' O, really? Did they invent it? Was it there before? Well of course they didn't invent it; it was there before they started to study it. We believe it was there long before the scientists currently studied it. Now they can tell us a lot about it; but because you're studying the universe, everything that you have about the universe comes from the universe to start with—it must do. If you say, 'How do you know this scientist is wrong?', well, you know he's wrong because if you studied the universe itself rightly, it will show you he's wrong. He's misinterpreted it. The universe therefore becomes the final authority on itself. The God of the universe is like that and similarly it's true of the New Testament.

Yes, you can follow a lot of scientists and what they say is in accordance with the facts of the universe and so you may trust them and come to think that there are atoms. I've never seen one myself—but the scientist says it is so and I trust him, and so forth and so on. I'm right to use them and trust them as a secondary authority. But in the end if I say, 'Where did they get their authority from?' it has to come from the universe. For example, the early Greek philosophers Leucippus and Democritus invented the atomic theory and came to the conclusion that the things in the universe are formed of atoms that you can't see. They gave them the name atom because they were so tiny you couldn't split them. They were right in saying all the matter in the universe is made up of atoms, but they were wrong in saying they couldn't be split. We know they can be. How do we come to know they were wrong? By studying the universe and the universe eventually came up with the evidence that these scientists were wrong.

So now, to apply that by analogy to our Lord. It's good that you consult John the Baptist and Peter, James and John, the apostles; they will point you to Christ. Not that they were wrong, but ultimately the authority that they have comes from Christ. That's how our New Testament came to be. That's why I say it's not a vicious circle. Listen to what those apostles actually say that Christ said. You must judge yourself whether it's true or not, when you listen to what he said.

That's why I make a big point of saying that the central part of the message that we find in the Gospels and in the Epistles is a message that can be traced back to Christ. The apostles didn't invent it, even though they wrote the account; they will show you that they didn't invent this story. In fact when they first heard it, they objected to it. Namely, the question of our Lord suffering on the cross and its purpose. Even when they preach it, Paul admits that it is a folly to the Greeks. Paul didn't invent it, so here is the evidence that it goes back to Christ. It goes back to him before there was any New Testament; the New Testament will tell you that it is their claim.

So, it does appear to the outsider to be a circular argument, but it's not a vicious circle. Science has to apply many of those circular arguments. The evidence, when looked at, goes back to Christ. If somebody in a newspaper tomorrow quotes Tony Blair as having said this, you don't necessarily take it for granted that the paper is giving you a fair report of what he said. You can check it with all sorts of things to see whether or not it came from Blair.