So much of life comes down to epistemology, what can we know, how we know, if we can know. It’s unfortunate that so few Christians realize this, or have ever come across the word. This is important because the credibility of Christian truth claims in the postmodern, post-Christian secular West rest on questions of knowing. The default epistemological stance of our age is skepticism; the hole is the thing, not the doughnut. And whether Christians are aware of it or not, this skepticism affects us too. My passion is to teach Christians to know that we can know! Beyond a reasonable doubt.
Most knowing in our daily lives is taken for granted, although we don’t realize how much we accept that our knowledge is based on trusting the authority or testimony of others. We have little direct experience of most of what we take for granted, like the safety of our food, the competence of our doctors or pilots or engineers or builders. Our knowing of the Bible’s veracity is no different. We have to trust the testimony of those we can never meet, and of their interpretation of events we’ll never witness. Like any questions of history, we must ask, can we trust what we read in the Bible. Yes! Critics insist it’s all made up mythology or fairy tales, but the text of the Bible doesn’t read anything like made up stories, at all. It reads like eyewitness testimony we can trust, in this post I’m writing specifically of the gospels (and Acts), but if they are true, so is everything else in the Bible.
Christianity is completely unique among all the philosophies and religions of the world, and in so many ways. One of these is that it is based on verifiable historical facts of which we can be reasonably certain actually happened. For several hundred years biblical critical scholars have told us that Christianity is basically made up, stories transmitted anonymously, changing and developing over generations based on the needs of the community. In technical terms, that’s poppycock! In fact Christianity is based on eyewitness accounts of what Jesus of Nazareth actually did, including miracles that point to his divinity, and that he was Israel’s long promised Messiah. As Richard Bauckham argues in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, the traditions (i.e., stories) were handed down by authoritative eyewitnesses and those associated with them within their lifetimes. There wasn’t enough time between the events of Jesus’ life and what was written (or orally memorized) to be the stuff of myth.
Jews, and all the first Christians were Jews, deeply cared about history because they were defined by it. Their only interest was in what happened in real space and time. Critics and skeptics come to the Bible, if they come at all, with a naturalism bias; the miraculous can’t happen, ergo it didn’t happen! They do not treat the Bible as they would any other history simply because of this. They can’t let the text speak for itself. Christians, and honest seekers, won’t do that because if there is a God, of course miracles can happen!
Why can we trust what we read in the gospels (i.e., have confidence in our knowledge of it)? In a word, evidence. In the last verse of John’s gospel we read:
30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Luke says in the first chapter of his gospel:
1 Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, 3 it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.
And in the first chapter of Acts:
3 After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.
This is what sets Christianity apart from every other religion on earth: it is historically verifiable. Because of the claims of Jesus and his followers, don’t you want to at least see if those claims stand up under scrutiny? Of course you do, and they do, beyond a reasonable doubt.
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