"It should not surprise that many lose faith in God. Some are put off by the fact that even some who describe themselves as “friends” of the Bible attack its authenticity and reliability. Today, most Bible commentators, although claiming to be Christian, “will only speak of Scripture as a human record,” says the New Dictionary of Theology."
MrGordon,
There are many reasons that people loose faith in God. The one that you state is just one of them (in my experience) . There are often a multitude of reasons for loosing faith in God. The loss of faith can be as a result of an accumulation of reasons.
Other than that, I have no evidence to believe that scripture is the work of a God, especially a loving God. The contradictions in scripture and demands of God that often show anything but love, to me, points to human finger prints all over the bible.
"Many theologians challenge the authorship of the books of the Bible. Some say, for example, that the prophet Isaiah did not write the book of Isaiah. This Bible book, they say, was written long after Isaiah’s time. The Concise Bible Commentary, by Lowther Clarke, contends that it is “the product of many minds and many generations.” But such assertions ignore that Jesus Christ and his disciples repeatedly credit Isaiah with writing this book.—Matthew 3:3; 15:7; Luke 4:17; John 12:38-41; Romans 9:27, 29."
In my view challenges of this nature are necessary. If authentic, the book of Isaiah and the whole bible should stand up to challenges. Also remember that the Gospels and Romans where all written after the time of Jesus and hence the authors had the benefit of hindsight in compiling their works. From the known history of the time we know that some historic events depicted in the gospels are inaccurate, and we can, 2000 years after the event, only guess at the motives of the authors.
"Is it reasonable for a Christian to believe that Jesus Christ himself would have been party to deception—that he would have supported history disguised as prophecy? Surely not."
I think that a question should be: Where the authors of the gospels part of a deception? They may have been, but I think that if one takes the view that the authors were conveying a message rather than writing an accurate historic document then they were not trying to deceive.
