Healthy plants have deep roots and strong pillars have solid foundations. If we are to be Christians who are deeply rooted in Christ and built on the solid Rock, then we need more than mere sound bites. One means that the Lord has used throughout church history to strengthen His people’s faith and witness is reading good books. This book review series is identifying books that can serve as shovels that help you dig deeper in your Christian life.
Book: Surviving Religion 101 – Letters to a Christian Student on Keeping the Faith in College - Michael J. Kruger
The four biblical gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – are some of the most loved and most scrutinized books in the history of the world. The reason for this is because they are the only sources that tell us anything meaningful about Jesus’s earthly life. If you want to undermine Christianity, then you begin with undermining the Gospels. If you lose the Gospels, you lose Jesus. And if you lose Jesus, then there is no Christianity. In Chapter 11 of Surviving Religion 101, Michael Kruger addresses this important issue by giving us a few reasons for why we should trust the biblical Gospels.
1) Reason 1: The Date of the Gospels
If we want to know what happened in a historical period, we turn to the historical accounts that were written as close as possible to the events being recorded. For example, if we wanted to learn what happened in the American Revolution, we would favour accounts written as close to 1776 over accounts written 150 years later. We would want to read the autobiography of James Madison, one of the most influential founding fathers and eyewitnesses of the events. He published his autobiography in the 1830s, which brings us to within 50 or 60 years of the events, and he depended on his earlier notes to help him.
If we approach the history of the Gospels in a similar way, then we discover that only the four canonical gospels were written in the 1st century. Mark was probably written as early as the 50s, which is only twenty years after the life of Jesus. John is probably the latest, being written in the 80s or early 90s. These four gospels are the only ones that were written when people who witnessed the recorded events were still alive. This means they were written with a level of accountability, where someone could come forward saying, “That’s not how it happened. I was there!”
If we turn to the apocryphal gospels, which did not make it into our Bible, we find a different situation. For example, The Gospel of Peter (not actually written by Peter) wasn’t written until about 150 years after Christ’s life, when there was no one alive who could contest or challenge it. This is one good reason the early church did not trust the apocryphal gospels.
2) Reason 2: The Authors of the Gospels
If you were selecting a biography on a famous person and had a choice between an anonymous biography and one written by a close personal friend who participated in the events, we’d likely choose the one written by the friend as it would be the best chance of getting reliable information.
Similarly, if you had your choice of gospels, would you not prefer ones written by one of Jesus’s closest friends, eyewitnesses to all He said and did? Or, at a minimum, written by a companion of these eyewitnesses who could reliably tell their story? The only gospels that qualify in this way are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Matthew and John were part of the original twelve apostles. Mark was a disciple of the apostle Peter and recorded his teaching. And Luke was a student of the apostles (Luke 1:1-4) and companion of Paul (Col. 4:14) These four are the only gospels that are apostolic and have Jesus’s authorization to speak for Him (Acts 10:41-42).
But how do we know that these gospels were written by the names attached to them? First, we have the testimony of the church fathers. They were in a better position than we are to know who authored the Gospels. To illustrate this just think about the gospel of John. The second-century church father Irenaeus tells us John is the author. Why should we listen to him? His mentor was Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna, who was mentored by the apostle John himself! This means that Irenaeus’s information is only one person removed from John himself. We should not reject his testimony unless we have a very good reason to do so (which we don’t have).
Second, we have the titles of Gospels. Remarkably, all the earliest manuscripts of the Gospels have the same titles as they do now. Where title pages are still intact, we don’t have a single example of the four Gospels circulating without a title or with a different title from the current ones. The result is that these four gospels are the only “authorized” eyewitness accounts, which gives us a very good reason to trust their content.
3) Reason 3: The Reliability of the Gospels
Another good reason to trust the four gospels is because of their quality. As we read the gospels, we see that the authors show remarkable familiarity with the geography, culture, language and practices of first-century Palestine. If you met someone who claimed to live in England but was unaware of many of the cultural and geographical distinctives from North America, you’d probably doubt she actually lived there. So, it would be with the Gospel authors.
But here’s the point: our four canonical Gospels show impressive awareness of the culture and context of the first century. For example, they mention obscure towns and accurately describe travel routes, even giving details about buildings and structures that would only be known by those who had actually seen these things. This geographical awareness is glaringly absent in the apocryphal gospels.
One other example is an impressive awareness of Jewish names inside Palestine. The most popular names in Palestine in the first century were Simon, Joseph, Lazarus, Judah, John, and Joshua (Jesus). At first glance, this presents a remarkable correlation with our Gospels. And it’s not as if this would have been easy to guess as Jewish populations living in Egypt and Rome had a different matrix of Jewish names. Someone making up a story from outside Palestine would not have been able to just plug in Jewish names he happened to know. This little detail is another evidence of the trustworthy quality of the biblical Gospels.
4) Objection: Don’t They Contradict Themselves?
Many skeptics argue that we cannot trust the four Gospels because they contradict themselves. At first glance some apparent contradictions seem problematic. However, there are a few quick considerations to keep in mind.
· First, differences do not equal contradictions. For example, in the story of Jesus walking on the water, only Matthew mentions the additional fact that Peter joined Jesus on the water (Matt. 14:28-32), while Mark and Luke omit this. This is not a contradiction but just different details being included.
· Second, we must be careful not to apply modern standards of historical writing to ancient texts like the Gospels. In Matthew 8:5-13, he records the centurion himself going to Jesus, while Luke 7:1-10 states it was the centurion’s representatives who come. This is not a contradiction when we recognize in the ancient world it was typical to equate one’s representative with the person himself.
· Third, we need to remember that the words of a person were not always quoted verbatim as they are in our day. In the ancient world it was common to paraphrase, condense and summarize a person’s teaching. This explains how the same saying of Jesus might be worded slightly different in two different Gospels.
· Finally, we must remember that not seeing a solution doesn’t mean there cannot be one. Even if we don’t currently have a resolution to a problem in the Gospels, that does not prove a contradiction. Further study may reveal a solution we cannot yet see.
Conclusion: We have great reasons to trust our Gospels. They are the earliest accounts of Jesus that we have, they are connected to the original eyewitness testimony of the apostles, and they show great awareness of the historical time and place in which they were written. This means we can trust the message these Gospels contain. John states, “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31).
Surviving Religion 101 – Letters to a Christian Student on Keeping the Faith in College by Michael J. Kruger. Published by Crossway, Wheaton, Illinois, 2021. Softcover, 262 pages.