I. The Importance of Textual Integrity
As an evangelical Christian, I acknowledge the Bible, including the New Testament, as the inspired, inerrant, and authoritative Word of God – God’s revelation of His character, actions, purpose, and calling to His people. The text of the New Testament is central to our Christian faith. For example, we talked last week about the historical reliability of the New Testament Gospels. One of the reasons we can trust their accuracy is that they were written very soon after the death and resurrection of Christ. Eyewitnesses – both Christian and non-Christian – were present who could (and would) have contradicted any false historical claims contained in the Gospels. This is all fine and good – but what if the text, the words, of the Gospels were changed after their initial writing? That is, what if the words that we have in Matthew’s Gospel are not an accurate reflection of what Matthew actually wrote, but have been radically changed by later scribes and copyists? The words would no longer be a reflection of early eyewitness testimony.
This morning we are going to talk about textual integrity. A working definition of textual integrity is: “Accurate transmission of the words of the New Testament, such that the words we have in our New Testament are a faithful representation of the words originally written by the authors of Scripture.”
Furthermore, as Christians our faith is centered around the person and work of Jesus Christ. While Christianity affirms much more than this, the necessary core of faith in Christ must include and profess (1) the deity; (2) the atoning death; and (3) the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. How do we come to the place of acknowledging the centrality of these doctrines? From the New Testament. How do we know who Jesus is and what He has done? From the Gospels. The historical reliability of the New Testament is absolutely key. But so too is the textual integrity of the New Testament.
A. Textual Integrity and Historical Reliability
In many ways historical reliability depends upon textual integrity. Imagine with me that I have in my hands the only existing biography of my great-great-great-grandfather Sven Anderson – hand-written in Swedish by his eldest son Argur in a series of journals. Argur’s account of his father’s life would be the best source of information about the famous Sven Anderson (inventor of Swedish meatballs and the founder of IKEA). What a treasure it would be! Naturally, I prepare to publish the account so that the world can acknowledge the genius of my ancestor. But now, imagine that I come across some parts of Sven’s biography that strike me as inaccurate or unkind. I don’t want to malign great-great-great-grandfather’s memory, so I decide to, well, change a few details here and there. You know, take out the section about Sven beating his wife; change the section about Sven’s dispute with his neighbor to make the neighbor look worse. Whatever the changes I make, they are all made before the account of Sven’s life is published. My newly-published biography of Sven Anderson would still be the only source of information about the life of the great Swede; but it would no longer be an accurate account. The changes that I made would have rendered it historically suspect. The biography is no longer historically reliable – not because of any fault of the original author (Argur Anderson), or the original hand-written document, but rather because of the ill intentions and actions of myself as a later scribe.
B. Textual Reliability and the Person and Work of Jesus Christ
The New Testament Gospels are, by all accounts, the best source of information that we have about the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If the Gospels are the result of a long process of textual corruption and alteration, such that the original form of the Gospels is irrecoverable, then our ability to know who Jesus is and what He has done and what we are to do in response would be compromised. A popular accusation launched by liberal theologians and scholars is that the real Jesus was just a man, but that later scribes and church authorities imposed a supernatural Jesus upon the earliest Gospel traditions. That is, the Gospel-writers did not necessarily present Jesus as being a God-man; that came later as scribes copied and re-wrote the Gospel material. In order to have faith in Jesus and follow Him faithfully, we need to know who Jesus was and what He did.
C. Textual Reliability and Scriptural Inspiration, Inerrancy, and Authority
Finally, our affirmation of the New Testament as the Word of God depends upon textual integrity. Along with 1 Peter 1:21, I affirm that Scriptural prophecy did not come about “by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” 2 Timothy 3:16 proclaims that Scripture is “God-breathed,” or inspired by the Holy Spirit, for the purposes of “teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.” But what precisely is inspired by God? It is natural to assume that it is the writing of the original Scriptural author. That is, the Gospel penned by Matthew is God-inspired. If later scribes introduced errors or mistakes into the text, those mistakes are not inspired Scripture. We affirm Scripture as being inerrant – that is, without error in all that it teaches and proclaims. However, what precisely is inerrant? Again, it is the original writings that must be seen as inerrant. If a later copyist or scribe introduced an error or addition to the original document, those scribal errors are not inerrant. Ditto for Scriptural authority. God’s Word is authoritative for our Christian belief and practice. We are to do what Jesus commands and exhorts us to do, and to believe what the New Testament teaches us to believe. But we must be confident that what we have is actually what God intended to communicate to us.
Thus, it is essential to be able to know and to show that we have good reasons for believing that the text of the New Testament that we have today is an accurate representation of the original text of the New Testament documents. So our endeavor today is to provide reasons to believe in the textual integrity of the New Testament.
II. The Textual Reliability of the New Testament
This may come as a shock, but the New Testament was not originally written in English. Rather, it was written in Greek – koine Greek, to be precise – the common language throughout the 1st-century Roman Empire. The Greek New Testament was then translated into other languages – Syriac and Latin being amongst the earliest. Our English New Testaments are translations of Greek originals.
However, originals is a misleading word. We do not have the original New Testament. That is, we do not have the hand-written Gospel of Matthew that came from Matthew’s pen. What we have, rather, is copies of the originals. The original documents (e.g. the Gospel written down personally by Matthew) are known as the “autographs” (αυτογραφοι). These documents are long gone, disintegrated in Middle Eastern dust, or burned in a Roman or Jewish fire. Thus, we have copies of the original autographs. In fact, we have copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of the first copy of the original autographs. The various copies of the New Testament (in whole and in part) are knows as the manuscripts, or the manuscript tradition; and it is from these copies that our English translations are derived.
The original copies of the New Testament documents were not done by computer, or by photocopying, or by printing press. Rather, they were painstakingly hand-written, by candlelight, often in the context of oppression and persecution. Sometimes the copies were hand-written as an elder or bishop read the Scriptures aloud. Either way, copies were made from a very early date, and circulated among the first Christian communities.
A. The Wealth of the Manuscript Tradition – Quantity and Quality
The existing copies of the New Testament documents are known as the Manuscript Tradition. We have an incredible wealth of New Testament manuscripts, especially in comparison to other ancient documents. For example, the Roman historian Tacitus wrote his Annals around 100 A.D. – later than all (or nearly all if you accept the questionable dates put forward by more liberal scholars) of the New Testament documents. However, there are only two surviving manuscripts of the Annals, from the 9th and 11th centuries respectively. Our New Testament documents, on the other hand, have more than 5000 manuscripts in existence, the earliest ones being partial copies of individual books from the mid-2nd century, or less than 100 years after the autographs were written. We have manuscripts containing the entire text of the New Testament from as early as the 4th century. Tell me, how could you possibly tell whether the Annals reflect what Tacitus originally wrote or not? Well, you have to trust the two existing manuscripts, assuming that they agree with one another! In the case of the New Testament, however, we have thousands of manuscripts to compare to one another.
Ancient historians have great respect for the textual integrity of the New Testament, because they are accustomed to working with other ancient documents that have much poorer textual traditions.
But there’s a funny thing about copying by hand, especially under less-than-ideal conditions. Even with incredible care and attention, it is inevitable that some mistakes will be made in the copying process. When copying text, it is easy for your eye to skip a whole line and pick up further on – in fact, this sometimes happens when I am reading a text, let alone trying to copy it by hand. It’s also easy to err by replacing something unfamiliar with something much more familiar (e.g. replacing “Tawa” with “Tara” in a written copy, or with “Paul” if it’s read). Sometimes scribes could err by attempting to smooth out apparent inconsistencies or difficulties.
For example, take a simple sentence: “In the fifth year of marriage, his wife Shirley bore a firstborn, a son, and he named him John, a gift from God.” Imagine that this sentence is read out loud, and a number of scribes are busy writing out what they hear. How do they spell John? Jon (short for Jonathan) is a very common alternative spelling; if the scribe personally knows a Jon, they are quite likely to “mis”spell the name accordingly. Similarly, someone from a smaller community where there are no “Shirley”s, but a couple of “Shirlene”s, could easily hear the more familiar name and write it down instead. Furthermore, in hearing the words read, it would be quite natural to filter out “, a” and simply write “bore a firstborn son” instead. Thus, from one simple reading and writing of the sentence, there are three easily-understood errors that could occur.
Given a written copyist, other errors could just as easily occur. Instead of “In the fifth year of marriage,” a scribe could easily write “In their fifth year of marriage,” or even “In the fifth year of their marriage,” emphasizing that it was both the unnamed husband and the wife (Shirley) who were married for five years.
Indeed, we ought to expect that the manuscripts containing copies of the New Testament documents would have a large number of copying errors. And this is the case. There are thousands of scribal errors that can be identified in the New Testament manuscripts.
B. (Most) Copying Mistakes are Insignificant
However, the vast majority of those scribal errors are pitifully insignificant. For example, does Paul end the letter to the Philippians with “Amen,” or not? The manuscripts disagree – some have it, others do not. Does it matter? No. In 1 John 1:4, is John writing in order to make his or their (“our” or “your”) joy complete? Again, the manuscripts disagree – some have “our” (ημων), others have “your” (υμων). Does it matter? Not really. Both are perfectly applicable, and it doesn’t affect anything near the main message of the letter. Even the most strident opponents of Christianity admit that there are relatively few scribal errors in the New Testament manuscripts that have any sort of importance or relevance.
C. (Almost All) Copying Mistakes are Identifiable
Not only are scribal errors in the New Testament manuscripts relatively insignificant, they are also easily identifiable through the academic discipline of textual criticism.
By comparing New Testament manuscripts, it is almost always relatively easy to identify where the mistake was made, and what the original reading was. Why? Different scribes copying the same manuscript are almost certain to make different mistakes. Hence, where one scribe might miswrite “John” as “Jon”; another (perhaps Scandinavian in origin) may write “Johan,” another (perhaps French) “Jean,” and another yet “Jan.” Most of the scribes, however, would correctly transcribe “John” as “John.” Nearly always, by comparing existing manuscripts side by side, textual critics are able to ascertain with fair certainty what the original (correct) reading is.
What I would like to do now is take a look at several places in the New Testament where we have differences in the manuscript tradition – where some manuscripts read one way, and others a different way. The examples that we will look at are not chosen randomly or self-consciously. Rather, I have adopted most of the primary examples used by Bart Ehrman in his book Misquoting Jesus, where Ehrman struggles valiantly to demonstrate that the New Testament manuscripts are hopelessly and irreparably corrupted.
In looking at some of these examples, I will show that far from supporting Ehrman’s thesis about the textual corruption of the New Testament, we can see even from these (Ehrman’s strongest arguments), the textual integrity of the New Testament shines forth brightly.
IV. Some Test Cases of Textual Reliability
A. Obvious Additions: Mark 16:9-20 & John 7:53-8:11
Ehrman cites two prominent examples of places in the New Testament where later scribes have obviously inserted a lengthy passage where it did not originally exist.
Mark’s Gospel ends fairly abruptly. After the crucifixion and burial of Jesus, Mark 16 recounts the discovery of the empty tomb by three women. An angelic messenger instructs the women to “Go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’” Instead, verse 8 reads: “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” And there ends the Gospel of Mark, according to the oldest and most reliable manuscripts. Most English translations continue to print verses 9-20 as the official ending to Mark’s Gospel – but notice that they preface the section with an indication that these verses are not in the earliest manuscripts. The scholarly consensus, among both Christian and non-Christian biblical scholars, is that verses 9-20 do not belong at the end of Mark’s Gospel. If there was more after verse 8 (and scholars are disagreed on whether there was or not), it has been lost; what we have is definitely not original. This is a clear case where later scribes have added an ending. The copyist who originally inserted the verses was unwilling to allow such an abrupt and seemingly non-triumphant ending to the Gospel; possibly he or she knew what we have as verses 9-20 through an apocryphal source, and added them as an “appropriate ending”.
Another significant and rather obvious addition is John 7:53-8:11, which also happens to be one of the best-loved Jesus narratives in the Gospels. In this story, a woman caught in adultery is brought before Jesus by a crowd eager to judge and stone her [no mention of where the guilty male party happened to be]. Jesus rebukes the crowd, inviting the innocent members of the mob to cast the first stones. Ashamed, they each walk away; Jesus implicitly absolves the woman of her wrongdoing and exhorts her to “Go now and leave your life of sin.” Here, the manuscript evidence is similarly clear, but also somewhat confused. Many ancient manuscripts do not have these verses at all; others have the story, but at a different point in John’s Gospel; others still have the story, but place it in a different Gospel altogether. What seems clear, however, is that the story was not a part of the autograph of John’s Gospel – it is not originally there. Please note – this does not mean that the story must be false or invented. Indeed, as we saw last week, the John the Gospel-writer insists that not everything that could be told about Jesus is told about Jesus in his Gospel. Therefore, the narrative of Jesus and the adulterous woman could very well be authentic and historically accurate. However, it is quite clear that it is not part of the original Gospel of John.
How ought we as Christians, and as teachers and preachers, respond to these “obvious additions” to the New Testament? Simply put, we should not build a theological edifice of any sort upon these non-original passages. We should acknowledge that, to the best of our knowledge, Mark 16:9-20 is not a part of the Gospel of Mark. When we preach through Mark’s Gospel, we should not include these verses. We should certainly not initiate a snake-handling cult on the basis of Jesus’ promise in Mark 16:18! And while we all love the touching story of forgiveness and redemption in John 8, we ought not use it as our foremost example of Jesus’ compassion and mission to lost sinners. Fortunately, we have ample other material in the Gospels to illustrate Jesus’ love – John 4 immediately springs to mind as an acceptable alternative. However, we should steer clear of using either of these obvious additions in our preaching or teaching ministries to avoid the perception that we do not care about the textual integrity and reliability of the New Testament.
It must also be emphasized, however, that Christian scholars and textual critics all acknowledge that these two passages are not part of the original text of the New Testament. Furthermore, neither passage is essential to establishing either the reality of the resurrection of Christ or the forgiving and redeeming mission of Jesus.
B. Verbal Dictation Errors?: Revelation 1:5
Revelation 1:5 serves as a fascinating example of a possible early scribal error based upon a mishearing of the read Scripture. In the NIV, the second half of the verse reads: “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, … [v. 6 – to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.]” Most Bibles will not even have this as a textual note, but a minority of manuscripts have a different reading: “To him who loves us and has washed us from our sins by his blood …” The Greek word in question is either lusanti (λυσαντι – to release, to set free) or lousanti (λουσαντι – to wash). One can easily understand how a scribe could mistake the word – after all, they sound exactly the same. The presumption is that at one point in time, an elder or bishop would have been reading the text aloud to a group of copyists; one or more of the copyists heard the wrong word and recorded it. Perhaps they felt too shy to raise their hand and ask the elder to identify which word (lusanti or lousanti) he meant. Either way, a mistake was the end result.
Ehrman makes much of this example, even though textual critics are virtually certain that they have recovered the correct original reading (lusanti – freed/released). Why? He argues that this is an example where the scribal error has great theological significance. After all, Ehrman insists, there is a great difference between Jesus washing us from our sins and releasing us from our sins. However, there is not such a difference as Ehrman perceives. If there was, that first mistaken scribe would have been more likely to have raised his hand and asked the elder to clarify the word! Indeed, both connotations are amply evidenced in other New Testament passages – Jesus cleansing us from our sins (e.g. Acts 2:39, 1 Peter 3:21) and freeing us from our sins (e.g. Romans 6). We are not dependent upon Revelation 1:5 for either implication.
Ehrman also uses Revelation 1:5 as a paradigmatic example, arguing that there are likely thousands of other places where oral misunderstanding of the read Scripture resulted in textual errors. However, what Revelation 1:5 does instead, is affirm the role of textual criticism, and its incredible ability to identify places where oral misunderstanding has occurred and resulted in textual variants. Thus, our confidence in the textual integrity of the New Testament is heightened by acknowledging what happened here.
C. Heightened Christology?: John 1:18
Does John 1:18 read: “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known”? Or is it supposed to read: “but the one and only son, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known”? Textual critics are fairly confident that “God the One and Only” is the correct textual tradition; Bart Ehrman disagrees. Personally, I’ll go with the majority of textual scholars, but just for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Ehrman is correct, and that John’s Gospel originally read “the one and only Son” instead. What does this change?
According to Ehrman, a great deal. It demonstrates that some early copyist (very early, in this case), felt it necessary to make divine Christology explicit in John 1. The entire prologue of John (verses 1-18) emphasizes the divine nature and origin of Jesus of Nazareth. Verse 18 is kind of like the icing on the cake – emphasizing that Jesus is “God the One and Only”. Ehrman says this addition is late, and that originally the divine nature of Christ was only implicit in the passage. My question is – does it really matter? Our understanding of the divine nature of Jesus certainly does not rest on John 1:18. Even within the general passage, our understanding of Jesus’ divinity is amply evidenced. (1) Verse 1 – The Word was with God, and the Word was God. (2) Verses 2-3 – He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made. (3) Verse 12 – To all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. (4) Verse 14 – The Word became flesh and made his dwelling [tabernacled] among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only.
Verse 18 adds to the divine overtones. But even if Ehrman is correct in asserting that it originally read “the one and only Son,” the Christology of John 1:1-18 is still incredibly rich, and points inescapably to the divine nature of Jesus. This is just an example of how the supposedly “significant theological implications” that Ehrman attributes to textual errors or disputes are really not important when they’re understood in context.
D. Countering Docetism?: Luke 22:43-44
Your Bible probably has a textual note concerning Luke 22:43-44. In my NIV, the verses are printed, but with a textual note that “some early manuscripts do not have” them. It is more likely that the verses were not in Luke’s Gospel originally, but were added in by later scribes to match the emotions of Jesus in the parallel passages of Matthew 26 and Mark 14. Compared to the other Gospel-writers, Luke’s Jesus is composed, almost impassionate, as he faces the knowledge of his impending death by crucifixion.
Critics suggest (somewhat plausibly) that later copyists added these two verses in to counter the growing heresy of docetism. Docetism taught that Jesus was the divine Son of God, but only seemed to take on humanity. Thus, when Jesus was on the cross, it was only the human flesh that was put to death; the divine essence of Jesus was unaffected. Luke’s Gospel was perceived as being the most susceptible to docetist tendencies – hence scribes felt the necessity to counter docetism by inserting anguished emotions upon the Savior.
Textual critics are fairly confident that these verses were not present in Luke’s autograph, even though the majority of our manuscript tradition contains the verses. The reason is simple – it is easier to conceive of a copyist adding these verses in (to counter docetist tendencies) than it is to imagine a copyist deleting these verses.
Let’s assume, then, that the verses were not originally there. What is changed or lost with that understanding? Absolutely nothing! There is simply the demonstration that later copyists did indeed mess with the text – but also the confident understanding that the discipline of textual criticism is able to discern occasions where that has happened and correct them. Is the Jesus of the Gospels altered? No. Are the emotions that Jesus experienced and expressed in the Garden of Gethsemane somehow eliminated? No – they are eminently present in Mark and Matthew. Again, this textual debate does not have any great theological significance. It sheds light on the reasons why early scribes might choose to make additions to the text. But, and I want to emphasize this strongly, it also demonstrates how good the process of textual criticism is at identifying places in the text where that has happened.
E. Eliminating Jesus’ Anger?: Mark 1:41
In Mark 1:40, a man with leprosy comes to Jesus and pleads: “If you are wiling, you can make me clean.” Verse 41 (in the NIV) reads: “Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand …”, heals the man, and sends him away. The vast majority (including the earliest) of our manuscripts contain that reading – the Greek σπλαγχνισθεις, a participle translated as “filled with compassion.” A few other manuscripts omit the participle altogether (reflecting the parallel passages in Matthew 8 and Luke 5). A few other manuscripts have a different participle, the Greek οργισθεις, which means “filled with anger” (or, more simply, “angry”). Admittedly, the meaning of the text is changed if Jesus is filled with anger instead of compassion when he responds to the leprous man. However, it is easy to rationally explain why Jesus responds in anger to the man: (a) he is angry at the results of human sin, which include the sickness that plagues the man; or perhaps (b) he is angry that the man questions his willingness to heal him. Furthermore, the idea of Jesus being angry is quite compatible with the picture of Jesus drawn throughout the Gospels. Is Jesus filled with compassion or anger when he cleanses the temple, driving out the money-changers? Well, probably both, but his compassion is made manifest in anger. Jesus the God-man was not a mild-mannered sissy-white college boy. He experienced and expressed the full range of emotions, including anger and wrath. God Himself is often picture in the Scriptures as wrathful – why should God incarnate be any different?
BUT, the main point to bring forward here is that textual critics (apart from Mr. Ehrman) are very confident that Mark presents Jesus in this verse as being filled with compassion, not anger. Ehrman’s preferred textual variant is almost unrepresented in the manuscript tradition, and almost certainly does not retain the original wording. And even if it did, it would not be a theologically significant difference.
F. Atonement & The Father: Hebrews 2:8-9
The textual variant contained in Hebrews 2:9 is so unimportant that most of our New Testaments will not even contain a textual note about it. Indeed, textual critics are as certain as they can be that they have preserved the correct rendering. Nonetheless, Ehrman again seeks to make hay with the variants in the manuscript tradition. What precisely is at stake here?
The context of Hebrews 2 is about the person and nature of Jesus Christ, and his relationship to humanity. Calling upon the echoes of Psalm 8:4-6, Hebrews 2:9 reads: “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” Again, textual critics are almost certain that this is the original text. The vast majority of manuscripts, including our earliest ones, contain this reading. However, there are a few later manuscripts which, instead of “by the grace of God [χαρι θεου]” read “apart from God [χωρις θεου]”. Thus, the end of the verse would read that “apart from God he might taste death for everyone.” There is, I will admit, a difference in meaning with this variant. (Remember, again, that Ehrman is almost certainly wrong in assuming that “apart from God” was the original text; so much of this debate is academic and meaningless.)
However, this is not a significant difference. Both implications – that Jesus died by the grace of God and apart from God – are perfectly in accordance with New Testament theology. The first one is obvious and undisputed – hence Ehrman focuses on the less-attested variant reading. But what does Mark relate Jesus crying out from the cross? Mark 15:34 – My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? As Jesus hangs on the cross, bearing upon himself the accumulation of all human sin, also takes upon himself the punishment for those sins. As a result, God the Father turns His face away from God the Son; the divine communion within the Triune God is broken by the presence of sin upon the Son. Speaking of the atonement being achieved apart from God then emphasizes the separation, abandonment, that is felt by Jesus as He hangs, burdened by the guilt of our sin, upon the cross. Granted, the variant textual tradition of Hebrews 2:9 does not present this truth of Scripture in the most clear manner – but again, remember that this is almost certainly not the original reading of Hebrews 2:9 anyway! The correct reading is that Jesus tastes death by the grace of God. But even if we assume (which we need not) that Ehrman’s alternative is correct, Hebrews 2:9 still fits within the scope of orthodox New Testament theology concerning the atoning death of Christ.
Again we see that what Ehrman points to as a significant theological implication of textual variants simply is not there.
G. Teaching the Trinity: 1 John 5:7-8
1 John 5:7-8 contains another fairly evident textual variant. My NIV reads: “For there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.” Again, the vast majority of manuscripts, including the earliest ones, contain this reading. However, there are some manuscripts that have a longer version, and read: “For there are three that testify in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. And there are three that testify on earth: the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.” It is quite evident, therefore, that at some point in time a copyist or scribe added the longer reading in, in order to teach Trinitarian theology explicitly.
Ehrman makes a big deal of this, insisting that 1 John 5 is the only place in the New Testament where the Trinity is explicitly affirmed, and that with the restored original reading, the Trinity is not a New Testament teaching.
However, Ehrman is simply off base. I have taught, preached, and written about the Trinity numerous times, and not once have I turned to 1 John 5:7-8 for textual support. On the one hand, I acknowledge that the verses are not part of the original, and thus cannot legitimately be used to support Trinitarian teaching. On the other hand, full-blown Trinitarianism is easily defended from numerous other passages of Scripture. So, what Ehrman identifies as a theologically significant textual variant is, in reality, inconsequential.
V. Conclusion: The New Testament’s Textual Integrity
Craig Blomberg writes: “only two variants anywhere affect more than a couple of verses, that only eleven involve even a full verse or two, that the consensus among textual critics is that in the modern critical editions of the Greek New Testament we have, either in the text itself or the footnotes upwards of 97% of what the original authors wrote reconstructed beyond any reasonable doubt, and that no doctrine of the Christian faith depends solely on one or more textually uncertain passages.” (The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, 333)
New Testament textual critics generally agree that we have recovered 97% of the original wording of the New Testament autographs with near certainty. Furthermore, places in the New Testament where textual critics still are not entirely certain which reading in the manuscript tradition truly reflects the original are insignificant. In fact, no Christian doctrines are affected by debated words, verses, and passages. The textual integrity of the New Testament is unparalleled in ancient literature. God has indeed preserved the text of His inspired Word, so that we might have confidence in the Savior who is proclaimed through it.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Did Jesus Really Say That? The Reliability of the New Testament Gospels
Matthew 6:19-23 is one of my favorite Gospel passages. In it, Jesus says:
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
This passage is powerful on many levels. First, it is a reminder that the things of God are more valuable than the things of this earth. You can’t take your earthly treasure with you when you die. Material things – the stuff we all pursue to greater or lesser degrees – are transitory. That nice Toyota Camry in the parking lot could be stolen during church this morning, or vandalized at home tomorrow, or demolished in an accident on Tuesday. For all I know, my precious piano in our Louisville townhouse has already been stolen or wrecked in our absence. Stuff doesn’t last. Spiritual treasures do. Second, the passage conveys the power of our worldview. The lens through which we view the world – our proverbial eyes in verses 22 and 23 – determines a great deal of how things affect us. If one’s eyes, one’s worldview, entirely discounts the very possibility of God’s existence, then no amount of evidence and argumentation will be able to change their mind. If the light within, the worldview, is darkness, how great indeed is the darkness that ensues. And third, the passage warns that we cannot serve both God and Money. Materialism is not a new temptation and snare for Christians – it pervaded 1st century Judaism and Christianity as well. God’s people have always been tempted to chase after the fruits of materialism instead of the fruits of the Spirit. This is nothing new. Jesus simply warns us, starkly, that we must make our choice. Money will master us unless we allow God to be our Master. It cannot be both ways. Indeed, this little passage carries deep, rich teaching for followers of Jesus Christ.
But have you ever wondered – did Jesus really say that? That is, are those words, which appear in my Bible as red-letter words, truly words which were uttered by Jesus of Nazareth? Beginning in the 18th century, the rise of critical scholarship questioned the historiticity of the New Testament documents, particularly the Gospels and Acts. In the mid-20th century, Rudolf Bultmann popularized the practice of “demythologization” – that is, stripping the Gospels of their layers of supernaturalism, miracle, and myth, and reducing them to their original ethical core. The original Gospels, according to Bultmann and others, were simply records of Jesus’ ethical teaching and revolutionary insubordination, upon which the Church later imposed its deification of Jesus and doctrinal assertions. In the 1980s, a group of scholars known as the Jesus Seminar began publishing their theory that the vast majority of words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels do not actually originate in Jesus. They argue that the Gospels are unreliable, theologically-colored texts. In their view, “the historical Jesus has been overlaid by Christian legend, myth, and metaphysics and thus scarcely resembled the Christ figure presented in the Gospels and worshiped by the church today.”[1] In their professional democratic opinion, less than 20% of Jesus’ words recorded in the Gospels are understood to be actually his own words; the rest are legendary additions.
Thus, when a pastor stands up and teaches that Jesus walked on water out to the disciples, the demythologizer responds – “no, he didn’t. The Gospels say he did, but that never happened.” If we want the demythologizer to accept the teaching of the New Testament, we need to provide good reasons to embrace the historicity of the documents.
So, there are a few important questions we need to answer: Are the Gospels accurate biographies of Jesus’ life and ministry? Did Jesus really say what the Gospels say he said? Did Jesus really do what the Gospels say he did? Are there good reasons for accepting the historical reliability of the New Testament Gospels? Do we have good reasons for believing the Gospels to be reliable? Or must we take it on “blind faith”? I am convinced, personally speaking, that the Bible is entirely trustworthy because it is the inspired, inerrant Word of God. But it’s a funny thing – when I was an atheist, if someone quoted the Bible to me, I would simply say, “So what? Why should I believe that?” A skeptic is not going to accept the authority or inspiration of the Bible. Thus, if we want our skeptical friends to accept what the Gospels tell us about Jesus, we need to establish the reliability and trustworthiness of the Bible by providing them with good reasons, good evidence, that points to the reliability of the texts which we trust and believe. Thankfully, those evidential reasons exist. Let's look at six lines of evidence that support the historical reliability of the New Testament Gospels.
1. The Gospels Claim to be Eyewitnesses
First, the New Testament Gospels present themselves as either eyewitness accounts, or accounts derived from eyewitnesses.
a) Luke 1:1-4 – Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
Notice the emphases that the historian Luke makes. First, his account accords with that of those who were eyewitnesses. Second, Luke has carefully investigated the events surrounding Jesus of Nazareth. Finally, he presents his Gospel as an orderly, historical account of Jesus’ life. Furthermore, when talking about the historical reliability of Luke’s Gospel, we cannot separate it from the Book of Acts, of which Luke is also the author. In several passages in the book of Acts, Luke slips into first-person plural talk, revealing that he accompanied Paul on his missionary journeys. Note Acts 16:10 – After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia. The first-person plural recurs in Acts 20:5-11, 21:1-26, and chapters 27 & 28. Luke was an eye-witness of many of the accounts recorded in Acts; furthermore, he was an associate of Paul, and therefore had access to the eyewitness accounts of the other apostles – James, John, and Peter in particular. It is reasonable to conclude that Luke’s Gospel contains considerable eye-witness testimony. Indeed, it is highly unreasonable to argue to the contrary.
b) The Gospel of John was the last Gospel to be written down, somewhere around A.D. 95, or 65 years after Christ’s crucifixion. But the Gospel-writer insists that it is a trustworthy eye-witness account of what truly happened. John 20:30-31 reads: Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. One page later, John 21:24-25 claims: This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written. While this passage suggests that the words in John’s Gospel may have been written by John’s close associates rather than by John himself, they insist unapologetically and incontrovertibly that the words derive from the apostle John, an eyewitness of Jesus’ ministry.
Admittedly, all this provides is a claim to be eyewitness testimony. But we do have corroborating evidence which supports the eyewitness claims of the Gospels, and that is what we are going to move on to.
2. The early date of the New Testament Gospels
A second reason to accept the reliability of the Gospels is that they were written relatively close to the time of the events which they relate. Almost all scholars agree that Mark is the earliest Gospel. Many scholars estimate it was written by A.D. 50, less than twenty years after Jesus’ death. The most liberal scholars out there, who seek to date things as late as humanly possible, agree that Mark must have been written before A.D. 65. Matthew and Luke were written between A.D. 60 and A.D. 85 (I tend to believe they were much closer to A.D. 60); and then John around A.D. 95. This means that when the New Testament Gospels were written and began to circulate amongst the Christian Churches, there would still have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people alive and present in those churches who themselves had seen and heard Jesus during His earthly ministry. While it is not in the Gospels, the testimony of 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 is important. There, Paul relates that after His resurrection, Jesus appeared (verse 6) to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Paul asserts that his claim can be checked with people who are still alive and were the eyewitnesses of what Paul is claiming to have happened. 1 Corinthians is written in the mid-50s, quite probably after Mark, but before the other Gospels.
Again, the point is simply that the Gospels are early enough to contain authentic eyewitness testimony—and by correlation, they were written early enough to have aroused opposition and contradictory testimony if they were not eyewitness reports. This latter point should not be underemphasized. The Gospel materials were already circulating widely by AD 50 – less than twenty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. That means that not only friends, but also foes of Christianity were around to counter false presentations. Yet there is not even a whisper of dissenting opinion. We have record of Jewish leaders circulating the report that the disciples of Jesus stole his body from the tomb. We also have record of Jews and Romans arguing that Jesus performed miracles because he was a sorcerer (or demon-possessed, which to Jews was the same thing). But we have NO non-Christian argument in those early decades (and centuries) that Jesus did not perform the miracles that he is reported to have performed, and NO non-Christian argument that he did not say and do the things that the Gospels report him as having said and done.
3. The historical church has always embraced them as eyewitness accounts.
A third compelling reason to accept the reliability and trustworthiness of the Gospels as eyewitness accounts is that the Christian Church universally has acknowledged them as such. From the first century onward, devout Christians have recognized that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are historical records of Jesus’ life. There is no debate within the church until the rise of critical scholarship during the Enlightenment (16th century and onwards). When the Gospels claim eyewitness status and the Church historically recognizes them as reliable and trustworthy, we ought to have strong reasons for rejecting such status.
What about other Gospels, accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry that are not in our New Testament? Two years ago the much-publicized “Gospel of Judas” made headlines around the world. Three years ago the blockbuster movie The DaVinci Code argued powerfully (and wrongly) that there were over 80 Gospels of Jesus’ life, and the patriarchal, misogynistic Catholic Church whittled them down to four acceptable, censored Gospels. The simple fact is that the early Church fathers, from the 1st century through the 4th century, did not recognize extra-canonical Gospels as authentic eyewitness accounts. Early church leaders like Clement, Papias, Justin, and Tertullian quote copiously from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and cite them as authoritative accounts. But they don't quote from other Gospels—Peter, Philip, Mary, Judas, etc. They never mention them as acceptable accounts. They do, however, sometimes cite them as untrustworthy accounts written later by people who had no connection with the eyewitnesses to Jesus’ ministry. If you glance through some of the “other” accounts of Jesus’ life, you will most likely recognize quite quickly why the early Church did not accept them as valid historical accounts of Jesus’ ministry. For example, in the Gospel of Peter (a late 2nd-century invention largely copied from Matthew and John), we read this account of the scene of Jesus’ resurrection:
The stone cast before the entrance rolled away by itself and moved to one side; the tomb was open and both young men entered. . . .
They saw three men emerge from the tomb, two of them supporting the other, with a cross following behind them. The heads of the two reached up to the sky, but the head of the one they were leading went up above the skies. And they heard a voice from the skies, ‘Have you preached to those who are asleep?’ And a reply came from the cross, ‘Yes.’
Early Christians were not stupid. They were not foolish. They were not naïve. Like the Gospel-writer Luke, they sought to establish what they believed on solid historical and evidential grounds. They did not credulously swallow ever tale or myth about Jesus—only what was well-grounded and well-attested by eyewitness testimony. That is why the four canonical Gospels were accepted, and the others were not.
4. Internal evidence of the Gospels.
A fourth reason to accept the historical reliability of the Gospels is the Gospels themselves. That is, the internal evidence of events and details contained within each Gospel strongly support their status as reliable eyewitness documents. When the police seek an eyewitness account of what happened at a crime scene, they often look for incidental details that witnesses are able to provide. Simply put, the Gospels contain a plethora of incidental details which are best explained by eyewitness testimony.
John 5:1-5 – Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.
As the narrative proceeds, Jesus heals the man, on the Sabbath Day, creating a ruckus amongst the Pharisees. But notice the details contained within John’s account. How long has the man been an invalid? Precisely 38 years – an incidental detail which adds nothing to the story, but supports eyewitness knowledge of the event. Where is the man healed? Notice that John provides the exact name of the Gate and pool, and even the number of surrounding covered colonnades. Vanessa and I are very different. We both enjoy fiction, particularly good mysteries. But a couple of weeks ago she was saying how she doesn’t really care for lengthy descriptive passages contained in many longer novels. She’s interested in the story itself. I, however, love the descriptive passages which draw a verbal picture. Skilled authors can bring you to the place of their writing, bringing to life in your imagination the view, the smell, the sights and sounds of the story. That is precisely what John is doing here – he is bringing the story to life, giving us the details which allow us to picture it in our own minds. Now, the picture admittedly doesn’t carry as much power with us as it would have for John’s original audience, who would have been familiar with the places that John writes about. But what John effectively does here is demonstrate his familiarity with exactly what happened, and exactly where.
I should also mention, in passing, that for skeptics and critics, it sometimes doesn’t matter. In situations like these, a critical scholar can happily claim, “John wasn’t really there. He just adds all of these details, some of them (like the name of the pool and gate) recalled from his memory of Jerusalem, others (like the length of his injury) purely imagined by John, in order to make us think that John was actually there.” For such scholars, the level of detail is not confirmation of eyewitness standing, but rather evidence of deliberate deception.
In other situations, however, the same scholars will point to the absence of details as evidence that the Gospel-writer was not an eyewitness at all. In fact, in this very passage, scholars will point to verse 1, and say, “Why didn’t John identify which feast it was? Obviously, because John wasn’t there, this didn’t really happen, and so he can’t say when the feast was.” So the lack of one detail is evidence that John wasn’t there, and the presence of other details is evidence of John’s deliberate deception. John just can’t win! If incidental details are there, it “proves” that John is making them up and putting them in to make the reader think he was actually there. If the details are not there, it “proves” that John wasn’t an eyewitness to what he relates. What is really going on is that such scholars are unwilling to admit the eyewitness standing of the Gospel-writers no matter what, because admitting the Gospels as eye-witness testimony has grave implications that they are absolutely unwilling to accept.
Another example is found in Mark 14:1-3. Now the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some sly way to arrest Jesus and kill him. ‘But not during the Feast,’ they said, ‘or the people may riot.’ While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head. Again, notice the details that Mark shares, which indicate his personal familiarity with the event. He tells us the exact day on which it occurs (two days before the Passover), the personal name of Jesus’ host (Simon the Leper), the precise type of perfume (made of pure nard), and even the method by which the woman pours the perfume on Jesus’ head (breaking the jar rather than pouring out from the top).
We have looked at just three of hundreds of passages in the Gospels which have such incidental details which support the eyewitness status of the accounts. Richard Bauckham, in his majestic work Jesus and the Eyewitnesses includes much more. Suffice to say that the New Testament Gospels provide sufficient support for their eyewitness claims.
5. Evidential support of the Gospels’ Historical Accuracy
A fifth reason is the evidential support of the Gospels historical accuracy. If police are presented with a professed eyewitness of a crime, they like to find empirical, objective confirmation that the individual was, in fact, at the scene. This is not always possible, but sometimes it is. The same is true with the New Testament Gospels. It is sometimes possible to confirm, through objective evidence, that the Gospel-writers had first-hand knowledge of what they wrote about. This is where the discipline of archaeology comes into play. Not everything can be verified from archaeological discoveries and extra-biblical records, but much has been.
One fascinating example has to do with a passage already discussed – the healing of a disabled man in John 5. For years, critical scholars rejected the eyewitness standing of John’s account on the basis that the name of the gate was not empirically verified, and the identification of five surrounding colonnades was structurally unlikely and, again, not verified through archaeological discoveries. There is a methodological problem with their argument. Archaeology can confirm biblical data, but it is honestly impossible for archaeology to disprove biblical claims. All that the absence of archaeological evidence for the Sheep Gate and five colonnades demonstrated was that so far as our limited archaeological evidence demonstrated, we could not confirm these historical details. That does not prove that John was making things up, or wrong, or lying – just that we cannot confirm that John is right! But some scholars, in their rush to denigrate the reliability of the Gospels, jump to such unsupported conclusions anyways. “We can’t find any inscriptions of a Sheep Gate by the pools of Bethsaida; therefore there was no such thing.” Come on!
Well, sadly for critics and happily for Christians, archaeological discoveries have verified the identity and name of the Sheep Gate by the Pool of Bethesda, as well as the presence of five porticos, or colonnades, there. What used to lack empirical, archaeological verification now has such it. Again, this demonstrates the futility of trying to draw conclusions of biblical inaccuracy from the limited and incomplete archaeological record. What currently lacks verification may well receive verification from future archaeological discoveries. Anyway, John 5 is simply one of dozens of details in the New Testament Gospels that have been confirmed through inscriptions and structures uncovered in archaeological digs. If you’re into looking for more, check out bible.org’s series: http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=5824; or Mark Roberts’ series: http://www.markdroberts.com/htmfiles/resources/gospelsreliable3.htm. Both have much more.
6. Experiential verification of the Gospels
So far we have covered five compelling reasons to acknowledge the historical reliability of the New Testament Gospels – the Gospels’ claim to transmit accurate records of Jesus’ life, ministry, and death; the early church’s recognition of their eyewitness status; the internal evidence of the Gospels; and the empirical verification provided by archaeology. The sixth reason we have for accepting the reliability and trustworthiness of the Gospels is on a different level. It is not so much an intellectual or academic reason as it is an experiential reason.
If you put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, you will find the truth of the Gospels confirmed in your life. You will experience the release of forgiveness & reconciliation with God; you will receive abundant joy of life in Christ. You will, both quickly and gradually, experience the transformation of your character, will, and works. Finally, you will find redemption and meaning in the midst of suffering. All that Jesus promises in the Gospels to those who will follow Him, you will find confirmed in your life – if you follow Him.
In some ways, it is analogous to the argument that marital faithfulness is the best path to take in romantic relationships. I could point to Scriptural arguments saying that God has designed us for monogamous sexual faithfulness. I could also point to sociological arguments, that faithful spouses are happier and express greater sexual satisfaction. I could point to further evidence that children of faithful married couples exhibit less sociological dysfunctions. But my final appeal to you would be personal and experiential—that if you will enter into a marriage covenant, and remain faithful to your husband or wife, you will experience the best of what God has to offer in human relationships. It is an argument whose full force can only be felt by one who chooses willingly to experience it in their life.
Same with the Gospels of the New Testament. We have surveyed some strong rational and evidential reasons to consider them trustworthy historical records of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. The Gospels themselves claim eyewitness status, and profess to contain a reliable record of Jesus’ life. The Gospels were written within the lifetime of those who witnessed the events of Jesus’ life. The Church historically has accepted the Gospels as trustworthy accounts. The incidental details contained within the Gospels confirm their eyewitness status. Archaeology has confirmed many of the eyewitness details recorded in the Gospels. But finally, and ultimately most persuasively, the Gospels are open to personal, experiential verification. As we embrace the Savior proclaimed in and through the Gospels, we find God confirming the truth of the accounts of Jesus’ life.
[1] Craig, Reasonable Faith (3rd ed.), 299.
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
This passage is powerful on many levels. First, it is a reminder that the things of God are more valuable than the things of this earth. You can’t take your earthly treasure with you when you die. Material things – the stuff we all pursue to greater or lesser degrees – are transitory. That nice Toyota Camry in the parking lot could be stolen during church this morning, or vandalized at home tomorrow, or demolished in an accident on Tuesday. For all I know, my precious piano in our Louisville townhouse has already been stolen or wrecked in our absence. Stuff doesn’t last. Spiritual treasures do. Second, the passage conveys the power of our worldview. The lens through which we view the world – our proverbial eyes in verses 22 and 23 – determines a great deal of how things affect us. If one’s eyes, one’s worldview, entirely discounts the very possibility of God’s existence, then no amount of evidence and argumentation will be able to change their mind. If the light within, the worldview, is darkness, how great indeed is the darkness that ensues. And third, the passage warns that we cannot serve both God and Money. Materialism is not a new temptation and snare for Christians – it pervaded 1st century Judaism and Christianity as well. God’s people have always been tempted to chase after the fruits of materialism instead of the fruits of the Spirit. This is nothing new. Jesus simply warns us, starkly, that we must make our choice. Money will master us unless we allow God to be our Master. It cannot be both ways. Indeed, this little passage carries deep, rich teaching for followers of Jesus Christ.
But have you ever wondered – did Jesus really say that? That is, are those words, which appear in my Bible as red-letter words, truly words which were uttered by Jesus of Nazareth? Beginning in the 18th century, the rise of critical scholarship questioned the historiticity of the New Testament documents, particularly the Gospels and Acts. In the mid-20th century, Rudolf Bultmann popularized the practice of “demythologization” – that is, stripping the Gospels of their layers of supernaturalism, miracle, and myth, and reducing them to their original ethical core. The original Gospels, according to Bultmann and others, were simply records of Jesus’ ethical teaching and revolutionary insubordination, upon which the Church later imposed its deification of Jesus and doctrinal assertions. In the 1980s, a group of scholars known as the Jesus Seminar began publishing their theory that the vast majority of words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels do not actually originate in Jesus. They argue that the Gospels are unreliable, theologically-colored texts. In their view, “the historical Jesus has been overlaid by Christian legend, myth, and metaphysics and thus scarcely resembled the Christ figure presented in the Gospels and worshiped by the church today.”[1] In their professional democratic opinion, less than 20% of Jesus’ words recorded in the Gospels are understood to be actually his own words; the rest are legendary additions.
Thus, when a pastor stands up and teaches that Jesus walked on water out to the disciples, the demythologizer responds – “no, he didn’t. The Gospels say he did, but that never happened.” If we want the demythologizer to accept the teaching of the New Testament, we need to provide good reasons to embrace the historicity of the documents.
So, there are a few important questions we need to answer: Are the Gospels accurate biographies of Jesus’ life and ministry? Did Jesus really say what the Gospels say he said? Did Jesus really do what the Gospels say he did? Are there good reasons for accepting the historical reliability of the New Testament Gospels? Do we have good reasons for believing the Gospels to be reliable? Or must we take it on “blind faith”? I am convinced, personally speaking, that the Bible is entirely trustworthy because it is the inspired, inerrant Word of God. But it’s a funny thing – when I was an atheist, if someone quoted the Bible to me, I would simply say, “So what? Why should I believe that?” A skeptic is not going to accept the authority or inspiration of the Bible. Thus, if we want our skeptical friends to accept what the Gospels tell us about Jesus, we need to establish the reliability and trustworthiness of the Bible by providing them with good reasons, good evidence, that points to the reliability of the texts which we trust and believe. Thankfully, those evidential reasons exist. Let's look at six lines of evidence that support the historical reliability of the New Testament Gospels.
1. The Gospels Claim to be Eyewitnesses
First, the New Testament Gospels present themselves as either eyewitness accounts, or accounts derived from eyewitnesses.
a) Luke 1:1-4 – Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
Notice the emphases that the historian Luke makes. First, his account accords with that of those who were eyewitnesses. Second, Luke has carefully investigated the events surrounding Jesus of Nazareth. Finally, he presents his Gospel as an orderly, historical account of Jesus’ life. Furthermore, when talking about the historical reliability of Luke’s Gospel, we cannot separate it from the Book of Acts, of which Luke is also the author. In several passages in the book of Acts, Luke slips into first-person plural talk, revealing that he accompanied Paul on his missionary journeys. Note Acts 16:10 – After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia. The first-person plural recurs in Acts 20:5-11, 21:1-26, and chapters 27 & 28. Luke was an eye-witness of many of the accounts recorded in Acts; furthermore, he was an associate of Paul, and therefore had access to the eyewitness accounts of the other apostles – James, John, and Peter in particular. It is reasonable to conclude that Luke’s Gospel contains considerable eye-witness testimony. Indeed, it is highly unreasonable to argue to the contrary.
b) The Gospel of John was the last Gospel to be written down, somewhere around A.D. 95, or 65 years after Christ’s crucifixion. But the Gospel-writer insists that it is a trustworthy eye-witness account of what truly happened. John 20:30-31 reads: Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. One page later, John 21:24-25 claims: This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written. While this passage suggests that the words in John’s Gospel may have been written by John’s close associates rather than by John himself, they insist unapologetically and incontrovertibly that the words derive from the apostle John, an eyewitness of Jesus’ ministry.
Admittedly, all this provides is a claim to be eyewitness testimony. But we do have corroborating evidence which supports the eyewitness claims of the Gospels, and that is what we are going to move on to.
2. The early date of the New Testament Gospels
A second reason to accept the reliability of the Gospels is that they were written relatively close to the time of the events which they relate. Almost all scholars agree that Mark is the earliest Gospel. Many scholars estimate it was written by A.D. 50, less than twenty years after Jesus’ death. The most liberal scholars out there, who seek to date things as late as humanly possible, agree that Mark must have been written before A.D. 65. Matthew and Luke were written between A.D. 60 and A.D. 85 (I tend to believe they were much closer to A.D. 60); and then John around A.D. 95. This means that when the New Testament Gospels were written and began to circulate amongst the Christian Churches, there would still have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people alive and present in those churches who themselves had seen and heard Jesus during His earthly ministry. While it is not in the Gospels, the testimony of 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 is important. There, Paul relates that after His resurrection, Jesus appeared (verse 6) to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Paul asserts that his claim can be checked with people who are still alive and were the eyewitnesses of what Paul is claiming to have happened. 1 Corinthians is written in the mid-50s, quite probably after Mark, but before the other Gospels.
Again, the point is simply that the Gospels are early enough to contain authentic eyewitness testimony—and by correlation, they were written early enough to have aroused opposition and contradictory testimony if they were not eyewitness reports. This latter point should not be underemphasized. The Gospel materials were already circulating widely by AD 50 – less than twenty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. That means that not only friends, but also foes of Christianity were around to counter false presentations. Yet there is not even a whisper of dissenting opinion. We have record of Jewish leaders circulating the report that the disciples of Jesus stole his body from the tomb. We also have record of Jews and Romans arguing that Jesus performed miracles because he was a sorcerer (or demon-possessed, which to Jews was the same thing). But we have NO non-Christian argument in those early decades (and centuries) that Jesus did not perform the miracles that he is reported to have performed, and NO non-Christian argument that he did not say and do the things that the Gospels report him as having said and done.
3. The historical church has always embraced them as eyewitness accounts.
A third compelling reason to accept the reliability and trustworthiness of the Gospels as eyewitness accounts is that the Christian Church universally has acknowledged them as such. From the first century onward, devout Christians have recognized that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are historical records of Jesus’ life. There is no debate within the church until the rise of critical scholarship during the Enlightenment (16th century and onwards). When the Gospels claim eyewitness status and the Church historically recognizes them as reliable and trustworthy, we ought to have strong reasons for rejecting such status.
What about other Gospels, accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry that are not in our New Testament? Two years ago the much-publicized “Gospel of Judas” made headlines around the world. Three years ago the blockbuster movie The DaVinci Code argued powerfully (and wrongly) that there were over 80 Gospels of Jesus’ life, and the patriarchal, misogynistic Catholic Church whittled them down to four acceptable, censored Gospels. The simple fact is that the early Church fathers, from the 1st century through the 4th century, did not recognize extra-canonical Gospels as authentic eyewitness accounts. Early church leaders like Clement, Papias, Justin, and Tertullian quote copiously from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and cite them as authoritative accounts. But they don't quote from other Gospels—Peter, Philip, Mary, Judas, etc. They never mention them as acceptable accounts. They do, however, sometimes cite them as untrustworthy accounts written later by people who had no connection with the eyewitnesses to Jesus’ ministry. If you glance through some of the “other” accounts of Jesus’ life, you will most likely recognize quite quickly why the early Church did not accept them as valid historical accounts of Jesus’ ministry. For example, in the Gospel of Peter (a late 2nd-century invention largely copied from Matthew and John), we read this account of the scene of Jesus’ resurrection:
The stone cast before the entrance rolled away by itself and moved to one side; the tomb was open and both young men entered. . . .
They saw three men emerge from the tomb, two of them supporting the other, with a cross following behind them. The heads of the two reached up to the sky, but the head of the one they were leading went up above the skies. And they heard a voice from the skies, ‘Have you preached to those who are asleep?’ And a reply came from the cross, ‘Yes.’
Early Christians were not stupid. They were not foolish. They were not naïve. Like the Gospel-writer Luke, they sought to establish what they believed on solid historical and evidential grounds. They did not credulously swallow ever tale or myth about Jesus—only what was well-grounded and well-attested by eyewitness testimony. That is why the four canonical Gospels were accepted, and the others were not.
4. Internal evidence of the Gospels.
A fourth reason to accept the historical reliability of the Gospels is the Gospels themselves. That is, the internal evidence of events and details contained within each Gospel strongly support their status as reliable eyewitness documents. When the police seek an eyewitness account of what happened at a crime scene, they often look for incidental details that witnesses are able to provide. Simply put, the Gospels contain a plethora of incidental details which are best explained by eyewitness testimony.
John 5:1-5 – Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.
As the narrative proceeds, Jesus heals the man, on the Sabbath Day, creating a ruckus amongst the Pharisees. But notice the details contained within John’s account. How long has the man been an invalid? Precisely 38 years – an incidental detail which adds nothing to the story, but supports eyewitness knowledge of the event. Where is the man healed? Notice that John provides the exact name of the Gate and pool, and even the number of surrounding covered colonnades. Vanessa and I are very different. We both enjoy fiction, particularly good mysteries. But a couple of weeks ago she was saying how she doesn’t really care for lengthy descriptive passages contained in many longer novels. She’s interested in the story itself. I, however, love the descriptive passages which draw a verbal picture. Skilled authors can bring you to the place of their writing, bringing to life in your imagination the view, the smell, the sights and sounds of the story. That is precisely what John is doing here – he is bringing the story to life, giving us the details which allow us to picture it in our own minds. Now, the picture admittedly doesn’t carry as much power with us as it would have for John’s original audience, who would have been familiar with the places that John writes about. But what John effectively does here is demonstrate his familiarity with exactly what happened, and exactly where.
I should also mention, in passing, that for skeptics and critics, it sometimes doesn’t matter. In situations like these, a critical scholar can happily claim, “John wasn’t really there. He just adds all of these details, some of them (like the name of the pool and gate) recalled from his memory of Jerusalem, others (like the length of his injury) purely imagined by John, in order to make us think that John was actually there.” For such scholars, the level of detail is not confirmation of eyewitness standing, but rather evidence of deliberate deception.
In other situations, however, the same scholars will point to the absence of details as evidence that the Gospel-writer was not an eyewitness at all. In fact, in this very passage, scholars will point to verse 1, and say, “Why didn’t John identify which feast it was? Obviously, because John wasn’t there, this didn’t really happen, and so he can’t say when the feast was.” So the lack of one detail is evidence that John wasn’t there, and the presence of other details is evidence of John’s deliberate deception. John just can’t win! If incidental details are there, it “proves” that John is making them up and putting them in to make the reader think he was actually there. If the details are not there, it “proves” that John wasn’t an eyewitness to what he relates. What is really going on is that such scholars are unwilling to admit the eyewitness standing of the Gospel-writers no matter what, because admitting the Gospels as eye-witness testimony has grave implications that they are absolutely unwilling to accept.
Another example is found in Mark 14:1-3. Now the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some sly way to arrest Jesus and kill him. ‘But not during the Feast,’ they said, ‘or the people may riot.’ While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head. Again, notice the details that Mark shares, which indicate his personal familiarity with the event. He tells us the exact day on which it occurs (two days before the Passover), the personal name of Jesus’ host (Simon the Leper), the precise type of perfume (made of pure nard), and even the method by which the woman pours the perfume on Jesus’ head (breaking the jar rather than pouring out from the top).
We have looked at just three of hundreds of passages in the Gospels which have such incidental details which support the eyewitness status of the accounts. Richard Bauckham, in his majestic work Jesus and the Eyewitnesses includes much more. Suffice to say that the New Testament Gospels provide sufficient support for their eyewitness claims.
5. Evidential support of the Gospels’ Historical Accuracy
A fifth reason is the evidential support of the Gospels historical accuracy. If police are presented with a professed eyewitness of a crime, they like to find empirical, objective confirmation that the individual was, in fact, at the scene. This is not always possible, but sometimes it is. The same is true with the New Testament Gospels. It is sometimes possible to confirm, through objective evidence, that the Gospel-writers had first-hand knowledge of what they wrote about. This is where the discipline of archaeology comes into play. Not everything can be verified from archaeological discoveries and extra-biblical records, but much has been.
One fascinating example has to do with a passage already discussed – the healing of a disabled man in John 5. For years, critical scholars rejected the eyewitness standing of John’s account on the basis that the name of the gate was not empirically verified, and the identification of five surrounding colonnades was structurally unlikely and, again, not verified through archaeological discoveries. There is a methodological problem with their argument. Archaeology can confirm biblical data, but it is honestly impossible for archaeology to disprove biblical claims. All that the absence of archaeological evidence for the Sheep Gate and five colonnades demonstrated was that so far as our limited archaeological evidence demonstrated, we could not confirm these historical details. That does not prove that John was making things up, or wrong, or lying – just that we cannot confirm that John is right! But some scholars, in their rush to denigrate the reliability of the Gospels, jump to such unsupported conclusions anyways. “We can’t find any inscriptions of a Sheep Gate by the pools of Bethsaida; therefore there was no such thing.” Come on!
Well, sadly for critics and happily for Christians, archaeological discoveries have verified the identity and name of the Sheep Gate by the Pool of Bethesda, as well as the presence of five porticos, or colonnades, there. What used to lack empirical, archaeological verification now has such it. Again, this demonstrates the futility of trying to draw conclusions of biblical inaccuracy from the limited and incomplete archaeological record. What currently lacks verification may well receive verification from future archaeological discoveries. Anyway, John 5 is simply one of dozens of details in the New Testament Gospels that have been confirmed through inscriptions and structures uncovered in archaeological digs. If you’re into looking for more, check out bible.org’s series: http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=5824; or Mark Roberts’ series: http://www.markdroberts.com/htmfiles/resources/gospelsreliable3.htm. Both have much more.
6. Experiential verification of the Gospels
So far we have covered five compelling reasons to acknowledge the historical reliability of the New Testament Gospels – the Gospels’ claim to transmit accurate records of Jesus’ life, ministry, and death; the early church’s recognition of their eyewitness status; the internal evidence of the Gospels; and the empirical verification provided by archaeology. The sixth reason we have for accepting the reliability and trustworthiness of the Gospels is on a different level. It is not so much an intellectual or academic reason as it is an experiential reason.
If you put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, you will find the truth of the Gospels confirmed in your life. You will experience the release of forgiveness & reconciliation with God; you will receive abundant joy of life in Christ. You will, both quickly and gradually, experience the transformation of your character, will, and works. Finally, you will find redemption and meaning in the midst of suffering. All that Jesus promises in the Gospels to those who will follow Him, you will find confirmed in your life – if you follow Him.
In some ways, it is analogous to the argument that marital faithfulness is the best path to take in romantic relationships. I could point to Scriptural arguments saying that God has designed us for monogamous sexual faithfulness. I could also point to sociological arguments, that faithful spouses are happier and express greater sexual satisfaction. I could point to further evidence that children of faithful married couples exhibit less sociological dysfunctions. But my final appeal to you would be personal and experiential—that if you will enter into a marriage covenant, and remain faithful to your husband or wife, you will experience the best of what God has to offer in human relationships. It is an argument whose full force can only be felt by one who chooses willingly to experience it in their life.
Same with the Gospels of the New Testament. We have surveyed some strong rational and evidential reasons to consider them trustworthy historical records of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. The Gospels themselves claim eyewitness status, and profess to contain a reliable record of Jesus’ life. The Gospels were written within the lifetime of those who witnessed the events of Jesus’ life. The Church historically has accepted the Gospels as trustworthy accounts. The incidental details contained within the Gospels confirm their eyewitness status. Archaeology has confirmed many of the eyewitness details recorded in the Gospels. But finally, and ultimately most persuasively, the Gospels are open to personal, experiential verification. As we embrace the Savior proclaimed in and through the Gospels, we find God confirming the truth of the accounts of Jesus’ life.
[1] Craig, Reasonable Faith (3rd ed.), 299.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
The Death and Resurrection of Rational Christianity
Last week I talked about the nature of apologetics, the desperate need for apologetics in your Christian life and ministry, and the purposes and focuses of apologetics. In passing, I commented on the distressing anti-intellectualism that characterized segments of the Western Church in the 20th century. Today I want to share some thoughts on how that came to be.
1. Western Christendom & The Predominance of Theism
The Christian Church was born in the midst of a robustly pagan Roman empire. The Roman religion incorporated numerous ‘gods,’ who were remarkably human in both form and behavior. Christians were actually accused of being atheists in the Roman Empire, because they refused to worship the various gods of the Empire, including the emperor (who was understood to be a living incarnation of the gods). In the midst of this pagan polytheism, monotheistic Judaism gave birth to monotheistic Christianity—the decisive cry that there is only one God, and that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh.
Christianity did not go over well in the Roman Empire. Christians faced intense persecution, first from fellow Jews, and later from pagan emperors and other regional authorities. The famous persecution of Christians by the emperor Nero in the 60s A.D. saw Christians being used as human torches to light the streets of Rome at night. Christians were crucified, burned alive, and thrown to wild animals in raunchy Colosseum games. Despite persecution, the Christian Church flourished and grew. As Eusebius records, “the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church.” The Church quickly spread to all corners of the empire, spread by traveling missionaries (like Paul), but also by merchants traveling from city to city, and by ordinary citizens. Within two hundred years, a sizeable portion of the Empire’s population had converted to Christianity.
In 311 A.D., the Emperor of the Roman Empire, Constantine, converted to Christianity. The Church was no longer the object of persecution. Within a few generations, the Church became favored, and within a hundred years, the Empire was predominantly Christian. Eventually, the Roman Empire was vanquished by hordes of barbarian invaders (from whom I am descended, incidentally), and the political empire ceased to exist. The Eastern Empire, governed by Greek Orthodox kings, continued on, but our primary interest this morning is the fate of the Western Empire.
The annihilation of the Roman Empire brought on what is commonly called “The Dark Ages,” but is more appropriately titled “The Middle Ages” or “Medieval Christendom.” During this roughly 1000-year period, the Christian Church was the beacon of light and learning in Western Europe. Gradually, Christian missionaries (like the famous St. Patrick) converted barbarian Germanic and Norse tribes to Christianity. More importantly, the cathedrals and monasteries of Christendom were the primary, and often the only, repository of learning and intellectual life. Philosophers, historians, theologians—all were educated within the confines of the Christian Church. The three great giants of the medieval West were Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas. During their eras, almost everyone acknowledged the existence of God. Theism was basically the default intellectual position. Even those who were not Christians were generally theists – Muslims and Jews, for instance.
2. The Englightenment & The Rise of Naturalism
The intellectual climate began to change in the Enlightenment, a period that began (depending who you ask) in the 15th century, at the same time as the invention of the printing press. During the Enlightenment, the universality of belief in God began to wane, ever so slightly. Atheistic humanism became rationally respectable. David Hume was one of the earlier explicit skeptics, and helped develop a naturalistic worldview. What does that mean – a naturalistic worldview? Basically, this is the belief that everything that happens has a purely natural, material cause and explanation. As Francis Schaeffer puts it, this view of the world accepts “the presupposition of the uniformity of natural causes as a closed system.”[1] In this worldview, if there is a God, He does not act within the universe. Everything that occurs is a result of a closed system, a box. And, if everything that happens can be explained naturally, then, as physicist Stephen Hawking concludes, “what place is there for God?”
3. Critical Biblical Scholarship & The Demise of Rational Christianity
Not long after a naturalistic worldview arose, Western Europe saw the rise of critical biblical scholarship. Throughout the Middle Ages, Christians viewed the Bible (Old and New Testament) as the inspired Word of God. They did not argue about such things as inerrancy, authority, and inspiration, as Christians argue about them today—rather, they all took these for granted! With the rise of critical scholarship (or liberal scholarship), this began to change. German scholars like Friedrich Schleiermacher, David Strauss, and Henri Reimarus began to propose that the Bible, rather than being inspired Word of God, was error-laden mythology. They sought out difficulties, inconsistencies, and contradictions within the Bible. Moreover, they accepted the Enlightenment’s worldview and operated within it. Thus they rejected everything miraculous and supernatural, including that in the life of Jesus Christ. For the most part, these scholars remained “Christians.” They believed in the existence of God (although they redefined Him substantially), and attempted to preserve Jesus’ ethical example and teaching. But they cut the branches out from underneath themselves by arguing that the intellectual and rational conclusion was that the Bible is full of mistakes and myths, and that everything that happens has a natural explanation (including Jesus’ miracles). By the late 19th century, the viewpoint of critical scholars had come to dominant European theology.
a) Orthodox retreat to pietism
There were, however, many within the church who continued to hold to the ancient Christian creeds, including the belief in an omnipotent, intimate God and belief in the deity of Jesus Christ. Sadly, as the 19th century gave way to the 20th, these orthodox Christians began to retreat intellectually. Faced with a powerful alliance of theologians and philosophers who doubted the inspiration and reliability of the Bible, who believed God to be a distant uninvolved deity (at best), orthodox Christians ran away from the academy and withdrew into a pietistic fortress where “reason” could not assault them. “Just give me Jesus,” was the rallying cry. Throughout the Middle Ages, throughout the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, throughout the Reformation and the rise of the physical sciences, the most eminent, intelligent, and innovative scholars in the Western world were devout believing Christians. This began to change in the 1700s, and was simply no longer true in the 20th century. Devout Christians shied away from the academic world, afraid, so it seems, of losing their faith like so many before them.
This trend is particularly marked in the North American Church, where the retreat from the academy resulted in the rise of anti-intellectual fundamentalism. This represented a failure of Christians to obey the Greatest Commandment, “To Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.” It also abandoned the imperative of 1 Peter 3:15 – to be prepared to give reasons for the hope that we have as Christians. Christianity abandoned rational faith and retreated to “mere belief”—what we call fideism. As a consequence, Christianity became intellectually bereft, and rightfully the object of academic and cultural scorn.
4. God is Dead (1960s)
By the mid-1900s, intellectual Christianity had sharply declined, and the result was a stark, disturbing lead article in Time magazine. “On April 8, 1966, Time magazine carried a dramatic cover with just three words emblazoned in red upon the black background. The words read: ‘Is God Dead?’ The article described the movement then current among American theologians [e.g. Paul Tillich] to proclaim the death of God.”[2] Note the key – it was American theologians who were proclaiming the death of God as a useful concept. The belief was that there was no point talking about God, because the word, the very idea, was meaningless. This from Christian theologians! The belief was that God was no longer a meaningful concept. Well-educated, intelligent Christians were somewhat difficult to find. Certainly Christian scholarship had declined.
5. The Resurrection of Rational Christianity
But a funny thing happened on the way to the morgue. Just as secular atheists (and some theologians) in the West declared God to be dead and buried, He made a stunning comeback. “In a quiet revolution in thought and argument that hardly anybody could have foreseen only two decades ago, God is making a comeback. Most intriguingly, this is happening not among theologians or ordinary believers, but in the crisp intellectual circles of academic philosophers, where the consensus had long banished the Almighty from fruitful discourse.”[3]
The work of prominent and brilliant Christian philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Alistair McGrath, Gary Habermas, J. P. Moreland, Ronald Nash, Richard Swinburne and William Lane Craig have brought substantial credibility to the resurgence of intellectual, rational Christianity. Christians have returned from academic exile. Atheist philosopher Kai Nelson lamented that “over ¼ of all philosophy professors in secular universities are now theists.” There have been three happy results of this academic resurgence within the western Christian Church.
a) Resurgence of traditional arguments for God’s existence
William Lane Craig writes: “Today all of the various traditional arguments for God’s existence find prominent, intelligent proponents, who defend these arguments in books published by the finest academic presses, in articles in professional journals of philosophy, and in papers presented at meetings of professional philosophical societies.”[4] Why does this matter? Well, if the most important question that anyone can ask is “Does God Exist?”, then we as Christians better have some rational backing for our answer, “Yes, He does exist.” And our answers had better be superior to the realm of “Yes, Victoria, there is a Santa Claus.”
b) Rejection of anti-intellectualism (at least in some circles)
Second, at least most of the Western Church has repudiated the anti-intellectual fundamentalism that characterized much of the 20th century. There was a time when parents grieved if their children were going off to university, particularly for Masters or Doctoral studies. The fear was that, if they went in a Christian, they would come out an atheist. Many Christian parents (and churches) urged their youth to fear the university, to see the university as “the Great Satan.” As Christians have re-entered academia in large and robust numbers, that sentiment is on the decline. Today it is not unusual to hear exhortations for Christians to engage the academy, to enter into university to face the best that secular atheism has to offer.
c) Emphasis upon the objective truth of Christianity, not just feeling or assent
Along those same lines, there has been a re-invigorating emphasis upon the objective truth of Christianity. The Church has come to acknowledge that Christianity is more than a feeling, that to embrace Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord requires more than an irrational leap into spiritual assent. Rather, the Christian faith is founded upon objective, rational, historical truth.
I don’t know about you, but I am thankful for this. As Socrates argued, the unexamined life is not worth living. Moreover, I want to live according to the truth. I want to know what is real, and to live accordingly. Hugh Ross, a Christian astronomer and the founder of “Reasons to Believe” Ministries, says that if he was not convinced that Christianity is objectively true—that there really is a God out there, that Jesus Christ truly is His Son—he would not be a Christian. I have to say that I agree. This is why I am so thankful for brilliant men and women who are demonstrating the rationality of the Christian faith, who are arguing for the historical evidence that supports the truth of Christianity.
There are reasons to believe. Our Christian faith is a rational faith. God commands us to love Him with all our mind, and expects that we will do so by pursuing His truth. The descent of Western Christianity into irrational fideism was lamentable. The abandonment of academia to secular humanism was a grave error and a grievous sin. Let us return to the intellectual battle arena with a vigor inspired by the certainty the Holy Spirit gives us that our faith is true.
[1] Francis Schaeffer, The God Who is There (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1968), 52.
[2] William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 3rd ed. (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), 93.
[3] “Modernizing the Case for God,” Time, April 7, 1980, 65-66.
[4] Craig, Reasonable Faith, 94.
1. Western Christendom & The Predominance of Theism
The Christian Church was born in the midst of a robustly pagan Roman empire. The Roman religion incorporated numerous ‘gods,’ who were remarkably human in both form and behavior. Christians were actually accused of being atheists in the Roman Empire, because they refused to worship the various gods of the Empire, including the emperor (who was understood to be a living incarnation of the gods). In the midst of this pagan polytheism, monotheistic Judaism gave birth to monotheistic Christianity—the decisive cry that there is only one God, and that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh.
Christianity did not go over well in the Roman Empire. Christians faced intense persecution, first from fellow Jews, and later from pagan emperors and other regional authorities. The famous persecution of Christians by the emperor Nero in the 60s A.D. saw Christians being used as human torches to light the streets of Rome at night. Christians were crucified, burned alive, and thrown to wild animals in raunchy Colosseum games. Despite persecution, the Christian Church flourished and grew. As Eusebius records, “the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church.” The Church quickly spread to all corners of the empire, spread by traveling missionaries (like Paul), but also by merchants traveling from city to city, and by ordinary citizens. Within two hundred years, a sizeable portion of the Empire’s population had converted to Christianity.
In 311 A.D., the Emperor of the Roman Empire, Constantine, converted to Christianity. The Church was no longer the object of persecution. Within a few generations, the Church became favored, and within a hundred years, the Empire was predominantly Christian. Eventually, the Roman Empire was vanquished by hordes of barbarian invaders (from whom I am descended, incidentally), and the political empire ceased to exist. The Eastern Empire, governed by Greek Orthodox kings, continued on, but our primary interest this morning is the fate of the Western Empire.
The annihilation of the Roman Empire brought on what is commonly called “The Dark Ages,” but is more appropriately titled “The Middle Ages” or “Medieval Christendom.” During this roughly 1000-year period, the Christian Church was the beacon of light and learning in Western Europe. Gradually, Christian missionaries (like the famous St. Patrick) converted barbarian Germanic and Norse tribes to Christianity. More importantly, the cathedrals and monasteries of Christendom were the primary, and often the only, repository of learning and intellectual life. Philosophers, historians, theologians—all were educated within the confines of the Christian Church. The three great giants of the medieval West were Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas. During their eras, almost everyone acknowledged the existence of God. Theism was basically the default intellectual position. Even those who were not Christians were generally theists – Muslims and Jews, for instance.
2. The Englightenment & The Rise of Naturalism
The intellectual climate began to change in the Enlightenment, a period that began (depending who you ask) in the 15th century, at the same time as the invention of the printing press. During the Enlightenment, the universality of belief in God began to wane, ever so slightly. Atheistic humanism became rationally respectable. David Hume was one of the earlier explicit skeptics, and helped develop a naturalistic worldview. What does that mean – a naturalistic worldview? Basically, this is the belief that everything that happens has a purely natural, material cause and explanation. As Francis Schaeffer puts it, this view of the world accepts “the presupposition of the uniformity of natural causes as a closed system.”[1] In this worldview, if there is a God, He does not act within the universe. Everything that occurs is a result of a closed system, a box. And, if everything that happens can be explained naturally, then, as physicist Stephen Hawking concludes, “what place is there for God?”
3. Critical Biblical Scholarship & The Demise of Rational Christianity
Not long after a naturalistic worldview arose, Western Europe saw the rise of critical biblical scholarship. Throughout the Middle Ages, Christians viewed the Bible (Old and New Testament) as the inspired Word of God. They did not argue about such things as inerrancy, authority, and inspiration, as Christians argue about them today—rather, they all took these for granted! With the rise of critical scholarship (or liberal scholarship), this began to change. German scholars like Friedrich Schleiermacher, David Strauss, and Henri Reimarus began to propose that the Bible, rather than being inspired Word of God, was error-laden mythology. They sought out difficulties, inconsistencies, and contradictions within the Bible. Moreover, they accepted the Enlightenment’s worldview and operated within it. Thus they rejected everything miraculous and supernatural, including that in the life of Jesus Christ. For the most part, these scholars remained “Christians.” They believed in the existence of God (although they redefined Him substantially), and attempted to preserve Jesus’ ethical example and teaching. But they cut the branches out from underneath themselves by arguing that the intellectual and rational conclusion was that the Bible is full of mistakes and myths, and that everything that happens has a natural explanation (including Jesus’ miracles). By the late 19th century, the viewpoint of critical scholars had come to dominant European theology.
a) Orthodox retreat to pietism
There were, however, many within the church who continued to hold to the ancient Christian creeds, including the belief in an omnipotent, intimate God and belief in the deity of Jesus Christ. Sadly, as the 19th century gave way to the 20th, these orthodox Christians began to retreat intellectually. Faced with a powerful alliance of theologians and philosophers who doubted the inspiration and reliability of the Bible, who believed God to be a distant uninvolved deity (at best), orthodox Christians ran away from the academy and withdrew into a pietistic fortress where “reason” could not assault them. “Just give me Jesus,” was the rallying cry. Throughout the Middle Ages, throughout the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, throughout the Reformation and the rise of the physical sciences, the most eminent, intelligent, and innovative scholars in the Western world were devout believing Christians. This began to change in the 1700s, and was simply no longer true in the 20th century. Devout Christians shied away from the academic world, afraid, so it seems, of losing their faith like so many before them.
This trend is particularly marked in the North American Church, where the retreat from the academy resulted in the rise of anti-intellectual fundamentalism. This represented a failure of Christians to obey the Greatest Commandment, “To Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.” It also abandoned the imperative of 1 Peter 3:15 – to be prepared to give reasons for the hope that we have as Christians. Christianity abandoned rational faith and retreated to “mere belief”—what we call fideism. As a consequence, Christianity became intellectually bereft, and rightfully the object of academic and cultural scorn.
4. God is Dead (1960s)
By the mid-1900s, intellectual Christianity had sharply declined, and the result was a stark, disturbing lead article in Time magazine. “On April 8, 1966, Time magazine carried a dramatic cover with just three words emblazoned in red upon the black background. The words read: ‘Is God Dead?’ The article described the movement then current among American theologians [e.g. Paul Tillich] to proclaim the death of God.”[2] Note the key – it was American theologians who were proclaiming the death of God as a useful concept. The belief was that there was no point talking about God, because the word, the very idea, was meaningless. This from Christian theologians! The belief was that God was no longer a meaningful concept. Well-educated, intelligent Christians were somewhat difficult to find. Certainly Christian scholarship had declined.
5. The Resurrection of Rational Christianity
But a funny thing happened on the way to the morgue. Just as secular atheists (and some theologians) in the West declared God to be dead and buried, He made a stunning comeback. “In a quiet revolution in thought and argument that hardly anybody could have foreseen only two decades ago, God is making a comeback. Most intriguingly, this is happening not among theologians or ordinary believers, but in the crisp intellectual circles of academic philosophers, where the consensus had long banished the Almighty from fruitful discourse.”[3]
The work of prominent and brilliant Christian philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Alistair McGrath, Gary Habermas, J. P. Moreland, Ronald Nash, Richard Swinburne and William Lane Craig have brought substantial credibility to the resurgence of intellectual, rational Christianity. Christians have returned from academic exile. Atheist philosopher Kai Nelson lamented that “over ¼ of all philosophy professors in secular universities are now theists.” There have been three happy results of this academic resurgence within the western Christian Church.
a) Resurgence of traditional arguments for God’s existence
William Lane Craig writes: “Today all of the various traditional arguments for God’s existence find prominent, intelligent proponents, who defend these arguments in books published by the finest academic presses, in articles in professional journals of philosophy, and in papers presented at meetings of professional philosophical societies.”[4] Why does this matter? Well, if the most important question that anyone can ask is “Does God Exist?”, then we as Christians better have some rational backing for our answer, “Yes, He does exist.” And our answers had better be superior to the realm of “Yes, Victoria, there is a Santa Claus.”
b) Rejection of anti-intellectualism (at least in some circles)
Second, at least most of the Western Church has repudiated the anti-intellectual fundamentalism that characterized much of the 20th century. There was a time when parents grieved if their children were going off to university, particularly for Masters or Doctoral studies. The fear was that, if they went in a Christian, they would come out an atheist. Many Christian parents (and churches) urged their youth to fear the university, to see the university as “the Great Satan.” As Christians have re-entered academia in large and robust numbers, that sentiment is on the decline. Today it is not unusual to hear exhortations for Christians to engage the academy, to enter into university to face the best that secular atheism has to offer.
c) Emphasis upon the objective truth of Christianity, not just feeling or assent
Along those same lines, there has been a re-invigorating emphasis upon the objective truth of Christianity. The Church has come to acknowledge that Christianity is more than a feeling, that to embrace Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord requires more than an irrational leap into spiritual assent. Rather, the Christian faith is founded upon objective, rational, historical truth.
I don’t know about you, but I am thankful for this. As Socrates argued, the unexamined life is not worth living. Moreover, I want to live according to the truth. I want to know what is real, and to live accordingly. Hugh Ross, a Christian astronomer and the founder of “Reasons to Believe” Ministries, says that if he was not convinced that Christianity is objectively true—that there really is a God out there, that Jesus Christ truly is His Son—he would not be a Christian. I have to say that I agree. This is why I am so thankful for brilliant men and women who are demonstrating the rationality of the Christian faith, who are arguing for the historical evidence that supports the truth of Christianity.
There are reasons to believe. Our Christian faith is a rational faith. God commands us to love Him with all our mind, and expects that we will do so by pursuing His truth. The descent of Western Christianity into irrational fideism was lamentable. The abandonment of academia to secular humanism was a grave error and a grievous sin. Let us return to the intellectual battle arena with a vigor inspired by the certainty the Holy Spirit gives us that our faith is true.
[1] Francis Schaeffer, The God Who is There (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1968), 52.
[2] William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 3rd ed. (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), 93.
[3] “Modernizing the Case for God,” Time, April 7, 1980, 65-66.
[4] Craig, Reasonable Faith, 94.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
A Reasonable Faith: The Need for and Purposes of Apologetics
A. Introduction: What is Apologetics?
1 Peter 3:15 reads: “But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” The Greek word translated “answer” is απολογια, which often takes the context of a courtroom appeal. It conveys the idea of providing evidence, building a case, responding to questions, or defending against attack. Thus, many translations supply the word “defense” (NASB, ESV) instead of “answer”.
The New Dictionary of Christian Apologetics defines apologetics like this: “Apologetics is the art of persuasion, the discipline which considers ways to commend and defend the living God to those without faith.”[1] With one objection which will become clear as we proceed this morning, I think this is a good working definition of apologetics. The simpler definition which I usually use is: “Apologetics is the defense and explanation of the Christian faith.”
B. Why Is Apologetics Necessary? (The Need for Apologetics)
We need to acknowledge first that conversion is a work of God, which is often accomplished apart from apologetics. Apologetics is not necessary for Christian conversion; nor is it necessary for knowing that Christianity is true.
William Lane Craig writes: “How does a Christian believer know that Christianity is true? . . . The inner witness of the Holy Spirit gives us an immediate and [true] assurance of the truth of our Christian faith. . . . such a person does not need supplementary arguments or evidence in order to know . . . with confidence that he is in fact experiencing the Spirit of God. . . . It is the witness of God’s Spirit with our spirit that gives us the assurance that we are God’s children. . . . When it comes to knowing one’s faith to be true, therefore, the Christian will not rely primarily on argument and evidence but on the gracious witness of God himself given to all his children by the indwelling Holy Spirit.”[2]
While knowing that our faith is true is a work of the Holy Spirit, remaining convinced of the truth of Christianity is often the work of apologetics. Dr. James Parker at Southern Seminary shared a conversation he had with a non-Christian friend. In response to questions, Dr. Parker was sharing traditional arguments for the existence of God. His friend then asked, “Are these kinds of reasons and answers really the reason that you became a Christian?” Dr. Parker responded, “No. They had nothing to do with me becoming a Christian. But they had everything to do with me remaining a Christian.” As a child, Parker believed Christianity was true, and embraced it. Growing older, he had questions and doubts. Apologetics answered those questions and doubts and enabled him to remain a convinced, rational, believing Christian.
Many Christians never doubt their faith, never question whether what they believe is true. They do not need apologetics to know that they are a Christian and that what they believe is true. However, there is a difference between knowing that your faith is real, and being able to show that your faith is true. Knowing that your faith is true is sufficient to be a full member of God’s family. Apologetics takes us beyond knowing, into being able to show to other people that Christianity is true.
Why is showing the truth so important? Why is apologetics necessary?
1. The Biblical Imperative for Apologetics
What does the Bible say about the necessity of not just knowing, but also showing, that our faith is true? What do each of the following passages say about the importance of apologetics?
1 Peter 3:15 – “But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” People will ask us what we believe, and why we believe it. We are to answer them, to provide a reasoned and reasonable defense for our faith – that is apologetics.
Luke 1:1-4 – “Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to be to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.” Luke wants his readers to what? To know with certainty the things they have been taught about Jesus. How? By providing them a written account – evidence, if you will – of Jesus’ life. This is apologetics.
John 20:30-31 – “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
Matthew 22:37-38 – “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.” In the 1900s, Christians in North America strayed away from loving God with their minds. The focus was on heart and soul, and sometimes emotion and feeling. Apologetics seeks to reclaim a rational Christianity, a faith which goes beyond mere feeling and emotion, and loves God with mind as well as heart and soul.
2. The Need for Apologetics in Christian Life & Ministry
I want to share the story of five individuals who each need to develop apologetics in their Christian life and ministry.
Gary grew up in a strong Christian family. His parents had been members of their Baptist church since they were married. Gary accepted Jesus as his Savior and Lord when he was nine years old, and was active in Sunday School and youth group throughout middle school and high school. However, when Gary was finishing high school and then entering college, he began to have doubts about the truth of Christianity. He noticed that some things in the Gospels simply did not add up. Matthew and Luke had quite different genealogies for Jesus. The details surrounding who visited Jesus’ empty tomb were different – how many women were there? Were there angels or men at the tomb? How many of them? He also questioned the character of the God presented in parts of the Old Testament. Why did God hate Esau? How could a loving God order the annihilation and extermination of entire people groups in the Promised Land? And how can God be both three and one?
Scott grew up in a nominal Christian family. Until their divorce, his parents attended their local Lutheran church off and on. After their divorce, Scott regularly attended a Unitarian Church with his mother, who had become a convinced Unitarian Universalist. When he was 20, Scott began attending a local Baptist church with a friend, and soon became a follower of Christ and was baptized. Scott wanted to share Christ with his non-Christian family and friends, but struggled to begin. How could he make any impact upon convinced universalists? Would they listen to him? How could he show them that their belief system was wrong and needed to be adjusted to match God’s truth?
John was a pastor to youth and adults in a university town. John had significant contact with non-Christians through a local college ministry that he served with regularly. A number of foreign students seemed to be spiritually seeking and open to the Gospel of Christ, but would not consider Christianity without seeing and hearing compelling reasons to believe that it was true. They wanted to be convinced that Christianity made sense and was rationally defensible before they would dive in.
Jill became a Christian in junior high school after her single mother started going to church and getting involved in fellowships and Sunday school classes. Joy was baptized during high school and emerged as a vibrant, budding believer. A popular and outgoing young woman, Joy was surrounded by numerous friends who were involved with other religions. Many of her friends launched specific objections against Christianity, and challenged Joy to see the truth of their beliefs. Joy wanted to see her friends come to know Christ, but felt pressured and attacked. She often didn’t know how to respond to the attacks her friends presented to Christianity.
Peter was a minister of small groups and discipleship in a mid-size Baptist church. He became increasingly concerned that many college-age students were dropping out of church. When he asked some of them why they had stopped attending, a number of them cited growing doubts about the truth of their faith. Their college professors taught them that God was a fiction of our imagination, and that man is a product of undirected, random, atheistic evolution. They simply could not reconcile the faith of their parents’ church with what they were being taught at college. They weren’t about to drop out of college, so they dropped out of church instead.
The reality is that people have questions and doubts. A friend of mine pastors in rural Georgia. He once asked members of his congregation what kinds of issues they would like him to address in future sermons and Bible studies. They responded with many great questions, the majority of which were apologetically oriented. For example: "How old is the earth?" "What about the Bible and scientific teaching?" "If people believe in Scientology, can they be saved?" "What is the difference between the God Christians worship and the gods of other religions?" "Is God real?" "Is the story of creation a myth?" "Is the Bible really true?" "Many say the Bible has errors in it. Is this true?" "Is Jesus a man? Or is he God?" "My friends tell me that all religions lead to heaven. Is this true?" "If God is a God of love, why would He send people to hell?" "If God is god, why is there evil?"
These questions are on the minds of youth, young adults, and often older adults as well. Apologetics is the process of responding to these questions and doubts. What happens when apologetics is neglected, and those questions go unanswered?
Surveys and studies show that an alarmingly large proportion of children raised in Christian homes walk away from Christianity as students or young adults. Most recent statistics in the United States suggest that up to 80% of “Christian kids” reject Christianity during college. This ought to concern you. Why is this happening? Honest, genuine answers need honest, genuine responses, and often these youth are not getting such answers.
Carol Anway did an extensive study of American women who converted to Islam. She writes: “Three of the women, prior to converting to Islam, were hoping to convert their [Muslim] husband to Christianity by agreeing to study Islam if the husband would consider Christianity. One woman started asking questions of ministers and theologians to help her prove the superiority of Christianity to her husband. She said, ‘I wanted it so badly; I cried to several of them to help me and most of them said, “I’m sorry—I don’t know” or “I’ll write to you,” but I never heard from them.’ . . . Nine of the women expressed problems with the belief in Jesus as God, Jesus as the Son of God, or the concept of the Trinity. Five others said they had major questions about Christianity that no one had satisfactorily answered.”[3]
Occasionally I hear about kids who come to parents/pastors with questions or doubts about the Christian faith. They are, sadly, sometimes met with one of two responses: either “Why do you have to ask these kinds of questions? Christians shouldn’t be asking questions like that or having doubts like that!” Or they are told: “You don’t need answers to questions like that. You just need to have faith in Jesus. Don’t ask. Just believe.”
When our children or friends or parishioners are asking honest, searching, deep questions about the truthfulness of Christianity, it is not enough for us to say, “don’t ask these questions – just believe!” It is not enough to minimize or deny the validity of the questions. It is our responsibility to engage with the questions, and provide reasonable, thoughtful answers to them.
Our son Mataeo is constantly asking apologetic questions: “Where does God live?” “If God made the universe, then who made God?” He has learned from a young age that he can ask the questions, and we will TRY to respond to them. We won’t always have the answers – none of us do. But we will honestly respond as best we can. Most importantly, we always encourage the questions—faith seeking understanding. Kids will learn from a very young age whether their parents or pastors are open to them asking questions or raising doubts that they have. If that freedom of curiosity and seeking is not there, they will begin keeping doubts or questions to themselves. And one day, they will slip out the back door of the church. We might not even “see” the warning signs, it might take us totally by surprise. But an atmosphere that stunts, downplays, or ridicules questions or doubts will drive them further away. The back door of the church will be well-used.
C. Offensive vs. Defensive Apologetics (The Purpose of Apologetics)
I want to turn now to what I call the “Apologetics Matrix,” a little chart that displays the purpose and focus of apologetics. I have not yet learned how to insert tables and graphs into blogs, so ... you are going to have to use your visual imagination and picture a matrix with two axes - two columns and two rows. Four cells inside the matrix altogether. The left-hand (y-axis) side is the purpose of apologetics; the bottom (x-axis) is the focus of apologetics. Inside the matrix are four cells with the combination of the purpose and the focus.
1. Offensive (Positive) Apologetics
Offensive apologetics gives people positive reasons why we believe (and they ought to believe) that Christianity is true. It provides historical, evidential, and logical arguments to support the truth of our faith.
2. Defensive (Negative) Apologetics
Defensive apologetics gives people reasons not to disbelieve that Christianity is true. It responds to objections to or attacks against, providing historical, evidential, and logical arguments to support the truth of our faith in the face of the strongest objections of Christianity’s detractors. In a sense, you could see defensive apologetics as clearing away the intellectual brush that obscures the path to faith in Christ.
D. Evangelistic vs. Devotional Apologetics (The Focus of Apologetics)
Combining the purposes of apologetics (offensive and defensive) with the two focuses or audiences of apologetics allows us to fill in the four cells of the apologetics matrix. As we fill in each cell, I want you think of and provide biblical examples of this type of apologetics in action.
1. Evangelistic Apologetics
Evangelistic apologetics is oriented towards those who are not yet Christians.
a) Defensively – to respond to arguments or objections made by non-Christians, in order to clear the brush away, to remove obstacles to them believing in Jesus Christ. This is apologetics to “antagonistic atheists”.
E.g. Acts 4:5-12; Acts 6:8-8:1
b) Offensively – to present positive reasons for non-Christians to embrace the truth of the Christian faith. This is apologetics to “seeking skeptics”.
E.g. Acts 25:13-26:32; Jesus and Nicodemus (Jn. 3)
2. Devotional Apologetics
Devotional apologetics is directed towards those within the Christian Church. It aims to confirm believers in their faith, to give them assurance that what they believe is really real!
a) Defensively – to respond to questions or doubts that they might have. This is apologetics to “beleaguered brethren”. It could be responding to doubts created by their own Bible reading – is God a cruel, unloving God? (because of the Old Testament wars). Or questions caused by their own reflection (if God made everything, who made God?). Or doubts caused by interaction with non-Christians (my teacher says that we evolved from worms, and life arose randomly on earth; my good friend is a Muslim, and they’re really nice – will they go to heaven?).
E.g. Exodus 5:22-6:1; 1 Peter 4:12-19; 1 John 1:1-4
b) Offensively – to present positive reasons for continuing to believe. This is apologetics to “doubting disciples”. For example, seeking to demonstrate the truth of the core historical claims of biblical Christianity – particularly the miracles and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Or showing the logical coherence of difficult Christian doctrines like the incarnation, the atonement, and the Trinity.
E.g. Luke 24:13-48; John 20:19-29; Exodus 3-4.
Folks may differ, and I certainly do not claim to have the final word. But in my opinion and experience, the most important purpose and focus of apologetics is defensive devotional apologetics. Confirming Christians in the truth of their faith by responding to doubts and questions that they have. There are two reasons I say this:
1. The huge problem of the back door.
2. It is easier to help an existing Christian deal with questions and doubts than it is to do the same with someone who has rejected or walked away from Christianity.
E. SUMMARY of the Need for and Purposes of Apologetics
As Christians, we can not only know that our faith is true, but we can learn to be able to show to others that our faith is true. We can not only defend our faith against attacks and objections, but we can positively set forth reasons for others to believe in Jesus Christ as well. Finally, we can not only present compelling reasons to believe evangelistically to those outside the church; we can also present apologetics devotionally, giving Christians a strong rational foundation on which to build their faith.
The first and greatest commandment is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:38) Apologetics is a pursuit of the greatest commandment – seeking to love God with all of our being, including our mind.
REFERENCES:
[1] New Dictionary of Christian Apologetics, ed. W. C. Campbell-Jack and Gavin McGrath (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2006), 3.
[2] William Lane Craig, “Classical Apologetics,” in Five Views on Apologetics, ed. Steven Cowan (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 28-30, 36.
[3] Carol Anway, “American Women Choosing Islam,” in Muslims on the Americanization Path? Ed. Yvonne Haddad and John Esposito (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 150.
1 Peter 3:15 reads: “But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” The Greek word translated “answer” is απολογια, which often takes the context of a courtroom appeal. It conveys the idea of providing evidence, building a case, responding to questions, or defending against attack. Thus, many translations supply the word “defense” (NASB, ESV) instead of “answer”.
The New Dictionary of Christian Apologetics defines apologetics like this: “Apologetics is the art of persuasion, the discipline which considers ways to commend and defend the living God to those without faith.”[1] With one objection which will become clear as we proceed this morning, I think this is a good working definition of apologetics. The simpler definition which I usually use is: “Apologetics is the defense and explanation of the Christian faith.”
B. Why Is Apologetics Necessary? (The Need for Apologetics)
We need to acknowledge first that conversion is a work of God, which is often accomplished apart from apologetics. Apologetics is not necessary for Christian conversion; nor is it necessary for knowing that Christianity is true.
William Lane Craig writes: “How does a Christian believer know that Christianity is true? . . . The inner witness of the Holy Spirit gives us an immediate and [true] assurance of the truth of our Christian faith. . . . such a person does not need supplementary arguments or evidence in order to know . . . with confidence that he is in fact experiencing the Spirit of God. . . . It is the witness of God’s Spirit with our spirit that gives us the assurance that we are God’s children. . . . When it comes to knowing one’s faith to be true, therefore, the Christian will not rely primarily on argument and evidence but on the gracious witness of God himself given to all his children by the indwelling Holy Spirit.”[2]
While knowing that our faith is true is a work of the Holy Spirit, remaining convinced of the truth of Christianity is often the work of apologetics. Dr. James Parker at Southern Seminary shared a conversation he had with a non-Christian friend. In response to questions, Dr. Parker was sharing traditional arguments for the existence of God. His friend then asked, “Are these kinds of reasons and answers really the reason that you became a Christian?” Dr. Parker responded, “No. They had nothing to do with me becoming a Christian. But they had everything to do with me remaining a Christian.” As a child, Parker believed Christianity was true, and embraced it. Growing older, he had questions and doubts. Apologetics answered those questions and doubts and enabled him to remain a convinced, rational, believing Christian.
Many Christians never doubt their faith, never question whether what they believe is true. They do not need apologetics to know that they are a Christian and that what they believe is true. However, there is a difference between knowing that your faith is real, and being able to show that your faith is true. Knowing that your faith is true is sufficient to be a full member of God’s family. Apologetics takes us beyond knowing, into being able to show to other people that Christianity is true.
Why is showing the truth so important? Why is apologetics necessary?
1. The Biblical Imperative for Apologetics
What does the Bible say about the necessity of not just knowing, but also showing, that our faith is true? What do each of the following passages say about the importance of apologetics?
1 Peter 3:15 – “But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” People will ask us what we believe, and why we believe it. We are to answer them, to provide a reasoned and reasonable defense for our faith – that is apologetics.
Luke 1:1-4 – “Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to be to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.” Luke wants his readers to what? To know with certainty the things they have been taught about Jesus. How? By providing them a written account – evidence, if you will – of Jesus’ life. This is apologetics.
John 20:30-31 – “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
Matthew 22:37-38 – “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.” In the 1900s, Christians in North America strayed away from loving God with their minds. The focus was on heart and soul, and sometimes emotion and feeling. Apologetics seeks to reclaim a rational Christianity, a faith which goes beyond mere feeling and emotion, and loves God with mind as well as heart and soul.
2. The Need for Apologetics in Christian Life & Ministry
I want to share the story of five individuals who each need to develop apologetics in their Christian life and ministry.
Gary grew up in a strong Christian family. His parents had been members of their Baptist church since they were married. Gary accepted Jesus as his Savior and Lord when he was nine years old, and was active in Sunday School and youth group throughout middle school and high school. However, when Gary was finishing high school and then entering college, he began to have doubts about the truth of Christianity. He noticed that some things in the Gospels simply did not add up. Matthew and Luke had quite different genealogies for Jesus. The details surrounding who visited Jesus’ empty tomb were different – how many women were there? Were there angels or men at the tomb? How many of them? He also questioned the character of the God presented in parts of the Old Testament. Why did God hate Esau? How could a loving God order the annihilation and extermination of entire people groups in the Promised Land? And how can God be both three and one?
Scott grew up in a nominal Christian family. Until their divorce, his parents attended their local Lutheran church off and on. After their divorce, Scott regularly attended a Unitarian Church with his mother, who had become a convinced Unitarian Universalist. When he was 20, Scott began attending a local Baptist church with a friend, and soon became a follower of Christ and was baptized. Scott wanted to share Christ with his non-Christian family and friends, but struggled to begin. How could he make any impact upon convinced universalists? Would they listen to him? How could he show them that their belief system was wrong and needed to be adjusted to match God’s truth?
John was a pastor to youth and adults in a university town. John had significant contact with non-Christians through a local college ministry that he served with regularly. A number of foreign students seemed to be spiritually seeking and open to the Gospel of Christ, but would not consider Christianity without seeing and hearing compelling reasons to believe that it was true. They wanted to be convinced that Christianity made sense and was rationally defensible before they would dive in.
Jill became a Christian in junior high school after her single mother started going to church and getting involved in fellowships and Sunday school classes. Joy was baptized during high school and emerged as a vibrant, budding believer. A popular and outgoing young woman, Joy was surrounded by numerous friends who were involved with other religions. Many of her friends launched specific objections against Christianity, and challenged Joy to see the truth of their beliefs. Joy wanted to see her friends come to know Christ, but felt pressured and attacked. She often didn’t know how to respond to the attacks her friends presented to Christianity.
Peter was a minister of small groups and discipleship in a mid-size Baptist church. He became increasingly concerned that many college-age students were dropping out of church. When he asked some of them why they had stopped attending, a number of them cited growing doubts about the truth of their faith. Their college professors taught them that God was a fiction of our imagination, and that man is a product of undirected, random, atheistic evolution. They simply could not reconcile the faith of their parents’ church with what they were being taught at college. They weren’t about to drop out of college, so they dropped out of church instead.
The reality is that people have questions and doubts. A friend of mine pastors in rural Georgia. He once asked members of his congregation what kinds of issues they would like him to address in future sermons and Bible studies. They responded with many great questions, the majority of which were apologetically oriented. For example: "How old is the earth?" "What about the Bible and scientific teaching?" "If people believe in Scientology, can they be saved?" "What is the difference between the God Christians worship and the gods of other religions?" "Is God real?" "Is the story of creation a myth?" "Is the Bible really true?" "Many say the Bible has errors in it. Is this true?" "Is Jesus a man? Or is he God?" "My friends tell me that all religions lead to heaven. Is this true?" "If God is a God of love, why would He send people to hell?" "If God is god, why is there evil?"
These questions are on the minds of youth, young adults, and often older adults as well. Apologetics is the process of responding to these questions and doubts. What happens when apologetics is neglected, and those questions go unanswered?
Surveys and studies show that an alarmingly large proportion of children raised in Christian homes walk away from Christianity as students or young adults. Most recent statistics in the United States suggest that up to 80% of “Christian kids” reject Christianity during college. This ought to concern you. Why is this happening? Honest, genuine answers need honest, genuine responses, and often these youth are not getting such answers.
Carol Anway did an extensive study of American women who converted to Islam. She writes: “Three of the women, prior to converting to Islam, were hoping to convert their [Muslim] husband to Christianity by agreeing to study Islam if the husband would consider Christianity. One woman started asking questions of ministers and theologians to help her prove the superiority of Christianity to her husband. She said, ‘I wanted it so badly; I cried to several of them to help me and most of them said, “I’m sorry—I don’t know” or “I’ll write to you,” but I never heard from them.’ . . . Nine of the women expressed problems with the belief in Jesus as God, Jesus as the Son of God, or the concept of the Trinity. Five others said they had major questions about Christianity that no one had satisfactorily answered.”[3]
Occasionally I hear about kids who come to parents/pastors with questions or doubts about the Christian faith. They are, sadly, sometimes met with one of two responses: either “Why do you have to ask these kinds of questions? Christians shouldn’t be asking questions like that or having doubts like that!” Or they are told: “You don’t need answers to questions like that. You just need to have faith in Jesus. Don’t ask. Just believe.”
When our children or friends or parishioners are asking honest, searching, deep questions about the truthfulness of Christianity, it is not enough for us to say, “don’t ask these questions – just believe!” It is not enough to minimize or deny the validity of the questions. It is our responsibility to engage with the questions, and provide reasonable, thoughtful answers to them.
Our son Mataeo is constantly asking apologetic questions: “Where does God live?” “If God made the universe, then who made God?” He has learned from a young age that he can ask the questions, and we will TRY to respond to them. We won’t always have the answers – none of us do. But we will honestly respond as best we can. Most importantly, we always encourage the questions—faith seeking understanding. Kids will learn from a very young age whether their parents or pastors are open to them asking questions or raising doubts that they have. If that freedom of curiosity and seeking is not there, they will begin keeping doubts or questions to themselves. And one day, they will slip out the back door of the church. We might not even “see” the warning signs, it might take us totally by surprise. But an atmosphere that stunts, downplays, or ridicules questions or doubts will drive them further away. The back door of the church will be well-used.
C. Offensive vs. Defensive Apologetics (The Purpose of Apologetics)
I want to turn now to what I call the “Apologetics Matrix,” a little chart that displays the purpose and focus of apologetics. I have not yet learned how to insert tables and graphs into blogs, so ... you are going to have to use your visual imagination and picture a matrix with two axes - two columns and two rows. Four cells inside the matrix altogether. The left-hand (y-axis) side is the purpose of apologetics; the bottom (x-axis) is the focus of apologetics. Inside the matrix are four cells with the combination of the purpose and the focus.
1. Offensive (Positive) Apologetics
Offensive apologetics gives people positive reasons why we believe (and they ought to believe) that Christianity is true. It provides historical, evidential, and logical arguments to support the truth of our faith.
2. Defensive (Negative) Apologetics
Defensive apologetics gives people reasons not to disbelieve that Christianity is true. It responds to objections to or attacks against, providing historical, evidential, and logical arguments to support the truth of our faith in the face of the strongest objections of Christianity’s detractors. In a sense, you could see defensive apologetics as clearing away the intellectual brush that obscures the path to faith in Christ.
D. Evangelistic vs. Devotional Apologetics (The Focus of Apologetics)
Combining the purposes of apologetics (offensive and defensive) with the two focuses or audiences of apologetics allows us to fill in the four cells of the apologetics matrix. As we fill in each cell, I want you think of and provide biblical examples of this type of apologetics in action.
1. Evangelistic Apologetics
Evangelistic apologetics is oriented towards those who are not yet Christians.
a) Defensively – to respond to arguments or objections made by non-Christians, in order to clear the brush away, to remove obstacles to them believing in Jesus Christ. This is apologetics to “antagonistic atheists”.
E.g. Acts 4:5-12; Acts 6:8-8:1
b) Offensively – to present positive reasons for non-Christians to embrace the truth of the Christian faith. This is apologetics to “seeking skeptics”.
E.g. Acts 25:13-26:32; Jesus and Nicodemus (Jn. 3)
2. Devotional Apologetics
Devotional apologetics is directed towards those within the Christian Church. It aims to confirm believers in their faith, to give them assurance that what they believe is really real!
a) Defensively – to respond to questions or doubts that they might have. This is apologetics to “beleaguered brethren”. It could be responding to doubts created by their own Bible reading – is God a cruel, unloving God? (because of the Old Testament wars). Or questions caused by their own reflection (if God made everything, who made God?). Or doubts caused by interaction with non-Christians (my teacher says that we evolved from worms, and life arose randomly on earth; my good friend is a Muslim, and they’re really nice – will they go to heaven?).
E.g. Exodus 5:22-6:1; 1 Peter 4:12-19; 1 John 1:1-4
b) Offensively – to present positive reasons for continuing to believe. This is apologetics to “doubting disciples”. For example, seeking to demonstrate the truth of the core historical claims of biblical Christianity – particularly the miracles and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Or showing the logical coherence of difficult Christian doctrines like the incarnation, the atonement, and the Trinity.
E.g. Luke 24:13-48; John 20:19-29; Exodus 3-4.
Folks may differ, and I certainly do not claim to have the final word. But in my opinion and experience, the most important purpose and focus of apologetics is defensive devotional apologetics. Confirming Christians in the truth of their faith by responding to doubts and questions that they have. There are two reasons I say this:
1. The huge problem of the back door.
2. It is easier to help an existing Christian deal with questions and doubts than it is to do the same with someone who has rejected or walked away from Christianity.
E. SUMMARY of the Need for and Purposes of Apologetics
As Christians, we can not only know that our faith is true, but we can learn to be able to show to others that our faith is true. We can not only defend our faith against attacks and objections, but we can positively set forth reasons for others to believe in Jesus Christ as well. Finally, we can not only present compelling reasons to believe evangelistically to those outside the church; we can also present apologetics devotionally, giving Christians a strong rational foundation on which to build their faith.
The first and greatest commandment is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:38) Apologetics is a pursuit of the greatest commandment – seeking to love God with all of our being, including our mind.
REFERENCES:
[1] New Dictionary of Christian Apologetics, ed. W. C. Campbell-Jack and Gavin McGrath (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2006), 3.
[2] William Lane Craig, “Classical Apologetics,” in Five Views on Apologetics, ed. Steven Cowan (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 28-30, 36.
[3] Carol Anway, “American Women Choosing Islam,” in Muslims on the Americanization Path? Ed. Yvonne Haddad and John Esposito (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 150.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Does Christian = Wrong?
Two interesting stories these past few days caught my eye.
1. A new study emanating from Dr. Marjorie Gunnoe suggests that spanked children may turn out to be more well-adjusted and successful adults. (see brief discussion of her article here http://www.nationalpost.com/most-popular/story.html?id=2409510). While a discussion of the relative merits of spanking would be enlightening and valuable, that is not my purpose here (except to say that spanking is not the same as hitting or beating). What I'm interested in are accusations launched against Dr. Gunnoe, who teaches at Calvin College (a Christian Reformed college in Michigan). The National Post story quotes:
"Grant Wilson, president of the Canadian Children's Rights Council, suggested that the study's results may have been influenced by Calvin College's Christian affiliation, adding that some religious groups have opposed abolition of corporal punishment." Is that so? I'm curious whether Mr. Wilson would accuse a study published by Harvard psychologists of being unduly influenced by the school's "secularist affiliation"? Obviously not! However, it is common and easy today to discard conclusions drawn by Christian researchers simply by invoking their faith. "They're Christian - that's why their research finds that."
2. American pundit Brit Hume apparently claimed that Tiger Woods needs Jesus, particularly the forgiveness and redemption that Christianity offers. Apparently this has caused a huge firestorm, including accusations that Hume is trying to force his religion upon Tiger Woods. Assessing the sensitivity or worth of Hume's efforts is not the point of this reflection - rather, I want to look at the response of others. E.g. http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brad-wilmouth/2010/01/06/olbermann-hume-tried-force-threaten-tiger-woods-christian-conversion In this link, Keith Olbermann accuses Hume of proselytizing and threatening Woods, and interviews Rev. Welton Gaddy, of the Interfaith Alliance, about Hume's sins. What I found particularly amusing in Olbermann's interview with Gaddy is that Gaddy says "anybody who is pro-American, who loves liberty in this nation, wants to support the unity of religions and not contribute to their divisiveness." What Gaddy is really saying is that true religious, freedom-loving American patriots recognize that all religious are fundamentally the same, and seek to have others recognize the same - a move which is itself an attempt to 'impose' Gaddy's own religion (pluralism and universalism) upon others (particularly Hume).
In the public square, Christian expression is often associated with intolerance, ignorance, and threat. Now, I think Gaddy is right, that American Christians do not experientially know persecution and oppression ... yet. But I still find it instructive that Christians are so easily castigated in public - their research conclusions are "religiously-motivated," and their attempts to persuade others are "threatening proselytization". Is Gaddy's attempt to have us all believe in the fundamental unity of all religious threatening? No. Is it an attempt to persuade people? Yes. Is it religiously-motivated? Definitely. Is he wrong? Absolutely. But he has the right to set forth his incorrect views in public - just as Hume has the right to encourage Woods to consider and embrace Christianity.
1. A new study emanating from Dr. Marjorie Gunnoe suggests that spanked children may turn out to be more well-adjusted and successful adults. (see brief discussion of her article here http://www.nationalpost.com/most-popular/story.html?id=2409510). While a discussion of the relative merits of spanking would be enlightening and valuable, that is not my purpose here (except to say that spanking is not the same as hitting or beating). What I'm interested in are accusations launched against Dr. Gunnoe, who teaches at Calvin College (a Christian Reformed college in Michigan). The National Post story quotes:
"Grant Wilson, president of the Canadian Children's Rights Council, suggested that the study's results may have been influenced by Calvin College's Christian affiliation, adding that some religious groups have opposed abolition of corporal punishment." Is that so? I'm curious whether Mr. Wilson would accuse a study published by Harvard psychologists of being unduly influenced by the school's "secularist affiliation"? Obviously not! However, it is common and easy today to discard conclusions drawn by Christian researchers simply by invoking their faith. "They're Christian - that's why their research finds that."
2. American pundit Brit Hume apparently claimed that Tiger Woods needs Jesus, particularly the forgiveness and redemption that Christianity offers. Apparently this has caused a huge firestorm, including accusations that Hume is trying to force his religion upon Tiger Woods. Assessing the sensitivity or worth of Hume's efforts is not the point of this reflection - rather, I want to look at the response of others. E.g. http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brad-wilmouth/2010/01/06/olbermann-hume-tried-force-threaten-tiger-woods-christian-conversion In this link, Keith Olbermann accuses Hume of proselytizing and threatening Woods, and interviews Rev. Welton Gaddy, of the Interfaith Alliance, about Hume's sins. What I found particularly amusing in Olbermann's interview with Gaddy is that Gaddy says "anybody who is pro-American, who loves liberty in this nation, wants to support the unity of religions and not contribute to their divisiveness." What Gaddy is really saying is that true religious, freedom-loving American patriots recognize that all religious are fundamentally the same, and seek to have others recognize the same - a move which is itself an attempt to 'impose' Gaddy's own religion (pluralism and universalism) upon others (particularly Hume).
In the public square, Christian expression is often associated with intolerance, ignorance, and threat. Now, I think Gaddy is right, that American Christians do not experientially know persecution and oppression ... yet. But I still find it instructive that Christians are so easily castigated in public - their research conclusions are "religiously-motivated," and their attempts to persuade others are "threatening proselytization". Is Gaddy's attempt to have us all believe in the fundamental unity of all religious threatening? No. Is it an attempt to persuade people? Yes. Is it religiously-motivated? Definitely. Is he wrong? Absolutely. But he has the right to set forth his incorrect views in public - just as Hume has the right to encourage Woods to consider and embrace Christianity.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
The Virgin Birth of Jesus
The Virgin Birth of Christ – sermon for Vine Street Baptist Church (Louisville, KY) – December 27, 2009
I have always loved Christmas. Growing up, I loved the lights, the Christmas tree, the time off school, and the presents. My dad’s parents almost always stayed with us over the holidays, which I loved too. Living in Edmonton, just east of the Canadian Rockies, I loved the deep snow we always had at Christmas – although I can’t say I enjoyed the -30 degree cold that often accompanied it! I loved hearing and singing Christmas carols. But I had no idea what they meant. I grew up in a strongly agnostic family. My parents never went to church, except for weddings and funerals. We never talked about God, nor about Jesus Christ and His birth which is celebrated at Christmas.
But we would sing and play the Christmas carols. Oh, would we ever! I have three older siblings; all four of us, along with my father, played the violin. The Anderson clan would make an annual trek to a senior’s home in town, and my mother would accompany us on the piano as we played an assortment of carols and other folk songs for residents of the senior’s home. Ever Christmas, my parents also hosted a musical Christmas party. Two dozen or so friends would be invited, almost all of whom played some type of instrument – we had a harp, a trombone, a trumpet, lots of violins, many singers, and as the years went on, a couple of flute players as well.
Yes, we loved Christmas music. I loved playing and singing those carols. When I hit high school, I started hosting caroling parties. A bunch of friends would come over, and we’d go throughout the neighborhood for hours on end, ringing doorbells and singing carols for the folks who would come to the door. We had a blast! The evening almost always ended with a marvelous snowball fight, followed by hot chocolate in my parents’ living room.
We loved the Christmas carols. We would sing (or play) Away in a Manger, What Child Is This?, Joy to the World!, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, even O Holy Night. But I never had a clue what any of it meant. To me, it was just thrilling music. I did not understand it. My parents did. But we never, ever, talked about the meaning of Christmas carols.
Then one year, when I was eighteen, I understood what all of these songs meant. I became a Christian in February of 1993. That April, I understood that Easter wasn’t about a bunny who brought you chocolates. Eight months later, I understood that Christmas wasn’t about a jolly old elf in a red suit who brought you gifts. I understood for the first time that Christmas carols are more than wonderful songs with uplifting melodies that cheer the heart. They were, in fact, songs of praise and worship, sung in honor of the birth of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh. Words cannot express how my heart soared that Christmas of 1993, the first year that I sung Christmas carols not just to enjoy the music and the camaraderie of friendship, but also to worship my newfound Savior and Lord, and to celebrate the incarnation of God Himself upon the earth. Oh, how my heart rejoiced as I sang all those old familiar carols with new appreciation for their meaning. “Silent Night, Holy Night; all is calm, all is bright. Round yon virgin mother and child; holy infant so tender and mild.” Ah – the Christ child, born of the virgin Mary, come into the world for our sake. “Joy to the World, the Lord has come! Let earth receive her King!” Christmas carols proclaim the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, who was born as a little baby. “O Little Town of Bethlehem how still we see thee lie.” Born in Bethlehem, in a manger because there was no room for him. “Away in a Manger,” not a song about sheep and goats at all! The chorus of O Holy Night – “Fall on your knees, and hear the angel voices; O night divine, O night that Christ was born.” My favorite time of the year when I was a child became even more special and meaningful now that I knew what it was all about. And then I learned that the Bible, which I had begun reading with hunger and eagerness as a new Christian, told the story that the Christmas carols proclaim in song.
I want to look at the Christmas story, first from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 1, verses 26-38; then from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 1, verses 18-25. As you read these passages, try to put yourself back in the place of hearing this as glorious good news, hearing it for the first time, and understanding the significance of the truth that God has sent His One and Only Son for our sake, to live and die and rise again to redeem us!
Luke, chapter 1, verses 26-38
26In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. 28The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you."
29Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. 31You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 32He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."
34"How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?"
35The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[c] the Son of God. 36Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. 37For nothing is impossible with God."
38"I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." Then the angel left her.
Matthew, chapter 1, verses 18-25
18This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 19Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
20But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,[c] because he will save his people from their sins."
22All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"[d]—which means, "God with us."
24When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
Both Luke and Matthew make mention of the special nature of the birth of Christ. Indeed, both unapologetically present the birth of Jesus as a miracle. Jesus is conceived not by the ordinary sexual union of husband and wife, but rather is conceived by the power of the holy spirit. I have not always been a Christian. I spent the first half of my life as a flaming atheist, hating the God that I did not believe in. If you had told me, when I was an atheist, that Jesus was born of a virgin, I would have laughed at you. After all, these kinds of things simply do not happen. I wasn’t born of a virgin. Neither were you. As soon as I was old enough to understand where babies come from, I understood that it takes two to tango. Babies aren’t born of virgins. A virgin birth smacks of miraculous divine intervention – and when I was a teenager, I didn’t believe in God, so believing in a divine miracle was simply out of the question.
Indeed, that is the response of many people today to the Christmas story. Although our society embraces the atmosphere and enjoyment of Christmas, it rejects the story of the miraculous birth of Jesus that underlies it. My own childhood reflects a dominant cultural celebration of Christmas. Enjoy the candles, the lights, the decorations, the gift-giving, the family gatherings, the music – but don’t talk about the birth of the Christ-child.
1 Corinthians 1:20-25 reads:
20Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.
The wisdom of our world has come to some rather significant conclusions which have a strong bearing upon our celebration of Christmas. Rudolf Bultmann, a German New Testament scholar in the mid-1900s, summarized these conclusions and their implications. He said, and I paraphrase:
“Modern man has evolved beyond the superstitious myths of the ancients. Educated, civilized moderns cannot accept stories of Jesus walking on water, healing the sick with a word, or being born of a virgin. Indeed, a man who turns on a light bulb cannot swallow the ancient myths of the Old and New Testaments. The biblical miracles are myths. They are not historical. They did not happen. They contain meaning and importance in their story. But they are not real events.”
In other words, according to Bultmann and many others, the virgin birth of Jesus Christ is a nice story, which conveys meaning about the significance of Jesus. But it is just a story. A myth. Jesus is nice; Christmas is nice; but we cannot, as scientific people, believe all that stuff about Mary and Joseph, the Holy Spirit, a virgin conceiving, Bethlehem and Herod. Those who reject the virgin birth of Jesus would claim – modern science has disproved the Bible. Babies simply cannot be born of virgins. It can’t happen. It doesn’t happen. It never happened. The Bible is either wrong, or mythical. Take your pick.
How do we as Christians respond? When friends or family members reject, mock, or doubt the truth that Jesus was born of the virgin Mary, what do we say? What do we do? First, I would suggest that we must grieve for and with them. As 2 Corinthians 3:14-16 suggests, a veil covers their hearts, and prevents them from comprehending the truth of Christmas. Someone who cannot or will not believe the Christmas story is missing out on the most important thing in life – a relationship with the living God who dwelt amongst us in the form of His Son, Jesus.
But I would suggest we can also go further than that. As followers of Jesus Christ, we can respond to those who reject the virgin birth of Christ with two profound truths: (1) While they claim they do not believe in miracles or virgin births, everyone believes in miracles and virgin births – they simply do not realize that they do. This is so counterintuitive that I’ll say it again: everyone believes in miracles and virgin births. (2) The virgin birth of Christ is only incredible from an atheistic worldview – if one believes in God, there is nothing unbelievable about it.
Let’s look at the first truth together for a minute. Everyone believe in miracles and virgin births. I can just see my face if someone had told me that when I was a 16-year-old atheist. “What?! You are accusing me of believing in miracles? NO!!! I don’t even believe in God! And I certainly don’t believe in virgin births!” Yes, an atheist will have steam coming out of his ears when you accuse him of believing in miracles. But let’s set that anger and passion aside for a minute. Try to envision the world from an atheist’s perspective, and see why this argument is true. An atheist believes in materialism, or naturalism – that is, there is only stuff. Material, physical stuff. There is no supernatural realm, no spirits, no divine beings, nothing like that. Carl Sagan summed it up best: “The universe is all that is, all that ever was, and all that ever will be.”
Let’s trace out the implications of that worldview. First, with regards to the origins of the universe; and second, with regards to the origins of life on earth.
(a) The universe was not always here. It had a beginning in time and space. As Christians, we naturally proclaim that God, who exists outside time and space, is the creator of the universe, including the space-time continuum. But if you’re an atheist, where did it come from? Many atheists (including Carl Sagan) will revert to calling the origins of the universe a “mystery,” but this is really a code word for a “miracle.” Atheists simply cannot explain what was behind the Big Bang and the origin of the universe. According to scientific models, there simply was nothing before the Big Bang. Nothing in time or space – indeed, no time or space at all! But, everyone knows that nothing can come from nothing. I can’t create something from nothing. I need something to make something. But the universe, it seems to have come from nothing. The universe, you could say, was born of a virgin. It had a miraculous origin.
(b) If you are an evolutionary atheist, where did human beings come from? We came from apes, right? That’s the story they tell, anyhow. And where did those apes come from? From earlier mammals, which came, perhaps, from reptiles, which came from fish, and so on. And if you trace it all the way back, there was, in their story, an original life-form, a single common ancestor from which all life on earth has evolved. But what, pray tell, gave birth to that life-form? Chemicals and energy. Life coming from non-life? But that simply doesn’t happen! That is a clinical definition of a miracle – something which naturally speaking does not and cannot occur, which has only occurred (to our knowledge) one time in one place. That’s a miracle.
Moving forward a little bit, the original single-celled organisms that atheists proclaim did not reproduce sexually. Rather, they replicated themselves – that is, they made copies. Whether they were legal copies or bootleg I don’t know. But eventually, so goes the atheist story, the replicators because sexual reproducers. BUT, and here’s the huge but, how did this happen? That first critter, let’s call it “Mary,” that somehow evolved so that its offspring would reproduce sexually rather than by making copies – how did that Mary produce offspring? Were her offspring the produce of natural sexual reproduction? No. Mary was the result, so the story goes, of copying. She had no “Mommy and Daddy”. Neither did her offspring, for that matter. Her children, let’s call them “Simeon” and “Anna” just for fun – they didn’t have a mommy and daddy either. They just had a mommy. But for Simeon and Anna to reproduce, they required sexual partners. What does that mean? That means that Simeon and Anna would have been the result of, you guessed it, a virgin birth. No daddy. Just a mommy. At some point in their evolutionary story, every atheist requires both a miraculous conception of new life on earth, as well as a miraculous virgin birth. That is, everyone believes in miracles and virgin births.
Everyone believes in miracles and virgin births. It’s just the source of the miracle and virgin birth that is different. For the atheist, it is random chance or mystery that causes the miracle or the virgin birth. For the Christian, it is the sovereign God of the universe that miraculously brings the universe into being, creates life on earth, and conceives the baby Jesus within the womb of the virgin Mary. Both the Christian and the atheist believe in miracles and virgin births. We simply have the good manners to admit that we do, and to point to the source of the miraculous! The atheist can do neither.
Let’s look briefly at the second truth we can share with those who doubt the virgin birth of Christ. Skeptics argue, as I would have done in high school, that the virgin birth is simply an incredible story. It’s unbelievable. And, I have to admit, if one shares their view of the world, it is. That is, if you are an atheist, then the virgin birth is inconceivable. It simply could not have happened to Jesus that way. However, the virgin birth is only unbelievable from that worldview. Buddhists and Hindus can accept the virgin birth of Christ. After all, many Buddhists argue that the Buddha had a miraculous birth too! I’m not saying that they do accept the virgin birth. Some do, some don’t. I am just pointing out that within their worldview, Buddhists and Hindus are perfectly willing to acknowledge the possibility of a miraculous virgin birth. Not only that – did you know that Muslims actually do confess the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. That’s right, Muslims – who reject the divinity of Jesus, reject the atoning death of Jesus, and reject the glorious resurrection of Jesus – Muslims all believe that Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and was born of the virgin Mary. It’s in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Scriptures. They disagree with us about almost everything essential to the Christian faith, but they share the belief in the virgin birth.
At Christmas of 1992, I would have laughed at the virgin birth of Christ, had I known it was taught in Christmas carols. By Christmas of 1993, I no longer doubted or mocked the virgin birth. Indeed, when I read the Christmas story in Matthew and Luke for the first time, there was not even a flicker of doubt in my heart or mind. Why? Because my entire worldview had changed. I used to believe there was no God. In the absence of God, the virgin birth is incredible, unbelievable. Now I had come to believe in God – the sovereign creator of the universe and everything within it. And I had come to believe that because there is a God, there is nothing incredible about Jesus’ miraculous virgin birth. The adjectives “incredible” and “unbelievable” no longer applied. Other adjectives took their place – amazing, awesome, inspiring, momentous, significant, tremendous, unique, unusual, wonderful. The birth of Jesus Christ is all of these things, but because I had come to know God personally, the virgin birth was neither incredible nor unbelievable. Notice Mary’s reaction to Gabriel when he announces that she will bear the Son of God, in Luke 1:34. How will this be, since I am a virgin? She knows this is unique. The response of Gabriel? The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. . . . For nothing is impossible with God. Mary acknowledges the human impossibility of a virgin birth. Gabriel affirms the divine possibility of the virgin birth. Nothing is impossible with God. God, who created time and space, came into time and space in the person of the baby Jesus. Having come to know God, I must say: the virgin birth is still miraculous, but it is not unbelievable. Yes, Virginia, there is a God. And because there is a God, the virgin birth is miraculous, but not incredible; awesome, but not unbelievable.
And so, as we bask in the glow of Christmas, rejoice in the birth of the Christ-child by the virgin Mary. Know that you are not alone in affirming miraculous virgin births – that even atheists, despite their protestations to the contrary, believe in miracles and virgin births if they think things through. And pray for those who do not believe. Pray for those who sing the carols and celebrate the holidays without embracing the one they are singing about. Do not look down upon them, or despise them. Grieve for them, pray for them, and share with them the joy that you find in celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, your Savior and your Lord. And in the midst of the Christmas season, rejoice! And again I will say, rejoice! God has sent His Son into the world to redeem us and give us eternal life. Joy to the World! The Lord has come! Let earth receive her king! Hark! The herald angels sing – Glory to the newborn King!
I have always loved Christmas. Growing up, I loved the lights, the Christmas tree, the time off school, and the presents. My dad’s parents almost always stayed with us over the holidays, which I loved too. Living in Edmonton, just east of the Canadian Rockies, I loved the deep snow we always had at Christmas – although I can’t say I enjoyed the -30 degree cold that often accompanied it! I loved hearing and singing Christmas carols. But I had no idea what they meant. I grew up in a strongly agnostic family. My parents never went to church, except for weddings and funerals. We never talked about God, nor about Jesus Christ and His birth which is celebrated at Christmas.
But we would sing and play the Christmas carols. Oh, would we ever! I have three older siblings; all four of us, along with my father, played the violin. The Anderson clan would make an annual trek to a senior’s home in town, and my mother would accompany us on the piano as we played an assortment of carols and other folk songs for residents of the senior’s home. Ever Christmas, my parents also hosted a musical Christmas party. Two dozen or so friends would be invited, almost all of whom played some type of instrument – we had a harp, a trombone, a trumpet, lots of violins, many singers, and as the years went on, a couple of flute players as well.
Yes, we loved Christmas music. I loved playing and singing those carols. When I hit high school, I started hosting caroling parties. A bunch of friends would come over, and we’d go throughout the neighborhood for hours on end, ringing doorbells and singing carols for the folks who would come to the door. We had a blast! The evening almost always ended with a marvelous snowball fight, followed by hot chocolate in my parents’ living room.
We loved the Christmas carols. We would sing (or play) Away in a Manger, What Child Is This?, Joy to the World!, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, even O Holy Night. But I never had a clue what any of it meant. To me, it was just thrilling music. I did not understand it. My parents did. But we never, ever, talked about the meaning of Christmas carols.
Then one year, when I was eighteen, I understood what all of these songs meant. I became a Christian in February of 1993. That April, I understood that Easter wasn’t about a bunny who brought you chocolates. Eight months later, I understood that Christmas wasn’t about a jolly old elf in a red suit who brought you gifts. I understood for the first time that Christmas carols are more than wonderful songs with uplifting melodies that cheer the heart. They were, in fact, songs of praise and worship, sung in honor of the birth of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh. Words cannot express how my heart soared that Christmas of 1993, the first year that I sung Christmas carols not just to enjoy the music and the camaraderie of friendship, but also to worship my newfound Savior and Lord, and to celebrate the incarnation of God Himself upon the earth. Oh, how my heart rejoiced as I sang all those old familiar carols with new appreciation for their meaning. “Silent Night, Holy Night; all is calm, all is bright. Round yon virgin mother and child; holy infant so tender and mild.” Ah – the Christ child, born of the virgin Mary, come into the world for our sake. “Joy to the World, the Lord has come! Let earth receive her King!” Christmas carols proclaim the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, who was born as a little baby. “O Little Town of Bethlehem how still we see thee lie.” Born in Bethlehem, in a manger because there was no room for him. “Away in a Manger,” not a song about sheep and goats at all! The chorus of O Holy Night – “Fall on your knees, and hear the angel voices; O night divine, O night that Christ was born.” My favorite time of the year when I was a child became even more special and meaningful now that I knew what it was all about. And then I learned that the Bible, which I had begun reading with hunger and eagerness as a new Christian, told the story that the Christmas carols proclaim in song.
I want to look at the Christmas story, first from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 1, verses 26-38; then from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 1, verses 18-25. As you read these passages, try to put yourself back in the place of hearing this as glorious good news, hearing it for the first time, and understanding the significance of the truth that God has sent His One and Only Son for our sake, to live and die and rise again to redeem us!
Luke, chapter 1, verses 26-38
26In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. 28The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you."
29Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. 31You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 32He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."
34"How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?"
35The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[c] the Son of God. 36Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. 37For nothing is impossible with God."
38"I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." Then the angel left her.
Matthew, chapter 1, verses 18-25
18This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 19Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
20But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,[c] because he will save his people from their sins."
22All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"[d]—which means, "God with us."
24When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
Both Luke and Matthew make mention of the special nature of the birth of Christ. Indeed, both unapologetically present the birth of Jesus as a miracle. Jesus is conceived not by the ordinary sexual union of husband and wife, but rather is conceived by the power of the holy spirit. I have not always been a Christian. I spent the first half of my life as a flaming atheist, hating the God that I did not believe in. If you had told me, when I was an atheist, that Jesus was born of a virgin, I would have laughed at you. After all, these kinds of things simply do not happen. I wasn’t born of a virgin. Neither were you. As soon as I was old enough to understand where babies come from, I understood that it takes two to tango. Babies aren’t born of virgins. A virgin birth smacks of miraculous divine intervention – and when I was a teenager, I didn’t believe in God, so believing in a divine miracle was simply out of the question.
Indeed, that is the response of many people today to the Christmas story. Although our society embraces the atmosphere and enjoyment of Christmas, it rejects the story of the miraculous birth of Jesus that underlies it. My own childhood reflects a dominant cultural celebration of Christmas. Enjoy the candles, the lights, the decorations, the gift-giving, the family gatherings, the music – but don’t talk about the birth of the Christ-child.
1 Corinthians 1:20-25 reads:
20Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.
The wisdom of our world has come to some rather significant conclusions which have a strong bearing upon our celebration of Christmas. Rudolf Bultmann, a German New Testament scholar in the mid-1900s, summarized these conclusions and their implications. He said, and I paraphrase:
“Modern man has evolved beyond the superstitious myths of the ancients. Educated, civilized moderns cannot accept stories of Jesus walking on water, healing the sick with a word, or being born of a virgin. Indeed, a man who turns on a light bulb cannot swallow the ancient myths of the Old and New Testaments. The biblical miracles are myths. They are not historical. They did not happen. They contain meaning and importance in their story. But they are not real events.”
In other words, according to Bultmann and many others, the virgin birth of Jesus Christ is a nice story, which conveys meaning about the significance of Jesus. But it is just a story. A myth. Jesus is nice; Christmas is nice; but we cannot, as scientific people, believe all that stuff about Mary and Joseph, the Holy Spirit, a virgin conceiving, Bethlehem and Herod. Those who reject the virgin birth of Jesus would claim – modern science has disproved the Bible. Babies simply cannot be born of virgins. It can’t happen. It doesn’t happen. It never happened. The Bible is either wrong, or mythical. Take your pick.
How do we as Christians respond? When friends or family members reject, mock, or doubt the truth that Jesus was born of the virgin Mary, what do we say? What do we do? First, I would suggest that we must grieve for and with them. As 2 Corinthians 3:14-16 suggests, a veil covers their hearts, and prevents them from comprehending the truth of Christmas. Someone who cannot or will not believe the Christmas story is missing out on the most important thing in life – a relationship with the living God who dwelt amongst us in the form of His Son, Jesus.
But I would suggest we can also go further than that. As followers of Jesus Christ, we can respond to those who reject the virgin birth of Christ with two profound truths: (1) While they claim they do not believe in miracles or virgin births, everyone believes in miracles and virgin births – they simply do not realize that they do. This is so counterintuitive that I’ll say it again: everyone believes in miracles and virgin births. (2) The virgin birth of Christ is only incredible from an atheistic worldview – if one believes in God, there is nothing unbelievable about it.
Let’s look at the first truth together for a minute. Everyone believe in miracles and virgin births. I can just see my face if someone had told me that when I was a 16-year-old atheist. “What?! You are accusing me of believing in miracles? NO!!! I don’t even believe in God! And I certainly don’t believe in virgin births!” Yes, an atheist will have steam coming out of his ears when you accuse him of believing in miracles. But let’s set that anger and passion aside for a minute. Try to envision the world from an atheist’s perspective, and see why this argument is true. An atheist believes in materialism, or naturalism – that is, there is only stuff. Material, physical stuff. There is no supernatural realm, no spirits, no divine beings, nothing like that. Carl Sagan summed it up best: “The universe is all that is, all that ever was, and all that ever will be.”
Let’s trace out the implications of that worldview. First, with regards to the origins of the universe; and second, with regards to the origins of life on earth.
(a) The universe was not always here. It had a beginning in time and space. As Christians, we naturally proclaim that God, who exists outside time and space, is the creator of the universe, including the space-time continuum. But if you’re an atheist, where did it come from? Many atheists (including Carl Sagan) will revert to calling the origins of the universe a “mystery,” but this is really a code word for a “miracle.” Atheists simply cannot explain what was behind the Big Bang and the origin of the universe. According to scientific models, there simply was nothing before the Big Bang. Nothing in time or space – indeed, no time or space at all! But, everyone knows that nothing can come from nothing. I can’t create something from nothing. I need something to make something. But the universe, it seems to have come from nothing. The universe, you could say, was born of a virgin. It had a miraculous origin.
(b) If you are an evolutionary atheist, where did human beings come from? We came from apes, right? That’s the story they tell, anyhow. And where did those apes come from? From earlier mammals, which came, perhaps, from reptiles, which came from fish, and so on. And if you trace it all the way back, there was, in their story, an original life-form, a single common ancestor from which all life on earth has evolved. But what, pray tell, gave birth to that life-form? Chemicals and energy. Life coming from non-life? But that simply doesn’t happen! That is a clinical definition of a miracle – something which naturally speaking does not and cannot occur, which has only occurred (to our knowledge) one time in one place. That’s a miracle.
Moving forward a little bit, the original single-celled organisms that atheists proclaim did not reproduce sexually. Rather, they replicated themselves – that is, they made copies. Whether they were legal copies or bootleg I don’t know. But eventually, so goes the atheist story, the replicators because sexual reproducers. BUT, and here’s the huge but, how did this happen? That first critter, let’s call it “Mary,” that somehow evolved so that its offspring would reproduce sexually rather than by making copies – how did that Mary produce offspring? Were her offspring the produce of natural sexual reproduction? No. Mary was the result, so the story goes, of copying. She had no “Mommy and Daddy”. Neither did her offspring, for that matter. Her children, let’s call them “Simeon” and “Anna” just for fun – they didn’t have a mommy and daddy either. They just had a mommy. But for Simeon and Anna to reproduce, they required sexual partners. What does that mean? That means that Simeon and Anna would have been the result of, you guessed it, a virgin birth. No daddy. Just a mommy. At some point in their evolutionary story, every atheist requires both a miraculous conception of new life on earth, as well as a miraculous virgin birth. That is, everyone believes in miracles and virgin births.
Everyone believes in miracles and virgin births. It’s just the source of the miracle and virgin birth that is different. For the atheist, it is random chance or mystery that causes the miracle or the virgin birth. For the Christian, it is the sovereign God of the universe that miraculously brings the universe into being, creates life on earth, and conceives the baby Jesus within the womb of the virgin Mary. Both the Christian and the atheist believe in miracles and virgin births. We simply have the good manners to admit that we do, and to point to the source of the miraculous! The atheist can do neither.
Let’s look briefly at the second truth we can share with those who doubt the virgin birth of Christ. Skeptics argue, as I would have done in high school, that the virgin birth is simply an incredible story. It’s unbelievable. And, I have to admit, if one shares their view of the world, it is. That is, if you are an atheist, then the virgin birth is inconceivable. It simply could not have happened to Jesus that way. However, the virgin birth is only unbelievable from that worldview. Buddhists and Hindus can accept the virgin birth of Christ. After all, many Buddhists argue that the Buddha had a miraculous birth too! I’m not saying that they do accept the virgin birth. Some do, some don’t. I am just pointing out that within their worldview, Buddhists and Hindus are perfectly willing to acknowledge the possibility of a miraculous virgin birth. Not only that – did you know that Muslims actually do confess the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. That’s right, Muslims – who reject the divinity of Jesus, reject the atoning death of Jesus, and reject the glorious resurrection of Jesus – Muslims all believe that Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and was born of the virgin Mary. It’s in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Scriptures. They disagree with us about almost everything essential to the Christian faith, but they share the belief in the virgin birth.
At Christmas of 1992, I would have laughed at the virgin birth of Christ, had I known it was taught in Christmas carols. By Christmas of 1993, I no longer doubted or mocked the virgin birth. Indeed, when I read the Christmas story in Matthew and Luke for the first time, there was not even a flicker of doubt in my heart or mind. Why? Because my entire worldview had changed. I used to believe there was no God. In the absence of God, the virgin birth is incredible, unbelievable. Now I had come to believe in God – the sovereign creator of the universe and everything within it. And I had come to believe that because there is a God, there is nothing incredible about Jesus’ miraculous virgin birth. The adjectives “incredible” and “unbelievable” no longer applied. Other adjectives took their place – amazing, awesome, inspiring, momentous, significant, tremendous, unique, unusual, wonderful. The birth of Jesus Christ is all of these things, but because I had come to know God personally, the virgin birth was neither incredible nor unbelievable. Notice Mary’s reaction to Gabriel when he announces that she will bear the Son of God, in Luke 1:34. How will this be, since I am a virgin? She knows this is unique. The response of Gabriel? The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. . . . For nothing is impossible with God. Mary acknowledges the human impossibility of a virgin birth. Gabriel affirms the divine possibility of the virgin birth. Nothing is impossible with God. God, who created time and space, came into time and space in the person of the baby Jesus. Having come to know God, I must say: the virgin birth is still miraculous, but it is not unbelievable. Yes, Virginia, there is a God. And because there is a God, the virgin birth is miraculous, but not incredible; awesome, but not unbelievable.
And so, as we bask in the glow of Christmas, rejoice in the birth of the Christ-child by the virgin Mary. Know that you are not alone in affirming miraculous virgin births – that even atheists, despite their protestations to the contrary, believe in miracles and virgin births if they think things through. And pray for those who do not believe. Pray for those who sing the carols and celebrate the holidays without embracing the one they are singing about. Do not look down upon them, or despise them. Grieve for them, pray for them, and share with them the joy that you find in celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, your Savior and your Lord. And in the midst of the Christmas season, rejoice! And again I will say, rejoice! God has sent His Son into the world to redeem us and give us eternal life. Joy to the World! The Lord has come! Let earth receive her king! Hark! The herald angels sing – Glory to the newborn King!
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