Interactive Gospel
- Historic Evidence -
by Paul Hazelden
1. Summary
We believe there is historic evidence for the
truth of the Christian message.
One starting point is this: the Church exists. The
Church has not always existed. So the Church came
into existence at some point. Of course, what
started may not have been recognisable (by people today) as the Church, but there
will be some continuity of people, belief and practice which
identifies it as the same group.
The New Testament gives one account of the founding of the
Church. Someone who wishes to claim the New
Testament is wrong about what it teaches will need to supply an
alternative explanation. The early Church believed
that a real man who had been killed by the civil authority was
also God incarnate and had risen from the dead. The
early Christians were prepared to be tortured and killed rather
than deny this strange claim. They clearly believed
it was true. But why believe it unless it was
true?
The key point is that Christianity is a historic faith
- it is rooted in history. It tells about historical
facts, about real people, real places and real
events. If what it says is untrue, then Christianity
is false, no matter how beautiful the message or noble the
truth.
This is the heart of the reason why I
became a Christian in the
first place. People could suggest all kinds of
alternative theories (the apostles were halucinating when they
thought they saw the risen Jesus; it was wishful thinking; Jesus
only fainted on the cross; and so on) - but each of these
theories gives rise to more implausible beliefs. I
just couldn't work up the faith to believe any of these other
possible stories. I am a Christian because I lack
faith. I lack the faith required to believe it is
not true, in the face of all the available evidence.
However, that is simply my personal
position. I am not asking you to believe the
historic evidence proves the truth of the Christian faith, only
to accept that there is strong historical evidence to support
the belief that the New Testament account is essentially rooted
in fact.
- I'll go along with that
- Please explain further
- I object to what you've said
- What are the alternatives?
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2. Further Details
I worded this belief fairly carefully: "We believe there is
historic evidence for the truth of the Christian message."
I am trying here to steer a course between two extremes.
On the one hand are those who say that it is all made up and
completely unreliable. I think I respond to those folk in the
rest of this piece.
On the other hand are those who claim that every word of the
Bible is literally true, and it must all be accepted without
question.
For a start, I don't accept anything without question.
Secondly, no serious Biblical scholar believes in the literal
truth of every word of the Bible: at best, they believe it is all
true when the original text (not the English translation) is
understood in context.
Sometimes the context is obvious. The Bible says "There
is no god" but it does not mean that. The full quote is: 'The fool
says in his heart, "There is no god."' - which is quite different.
But sometimes understanding the context of a passage is quite
tricky. And, sometimes, different passage appear to contradict
each other on some details. Perhaps, when we understand them
correctly, there is no contradiction. Perhaps slightly different
accounts of the same event are actually accurate accounts of
very similar events, for example.
To be honest, I am really not too interested in these
arguments. There are only a few apparent contradictions or
inconsistencies in the texts we have, and not one of them matters.
Not one of them has any real significance. The arguments are all
about trivial details: did this event happen before that, or after
it? Was there one man or two? Quite frankly - who cares? Not a
single doctrine is affected in any way by any of these questions.
Over the years, historians have criticised the New Testament
documents in many ways, suggesting that various details are
mistaken or distorted. Over and over again, when new evidence has
come to light, it has confirmed the accuracy of the New Testament.
All the evidence suggests that what we have in the New
Testament are reliable documents which have been accurately copied
and carefully peserved.
Many Christians do believe in the absolute truth of every word
of the Bible, when taken in context. But that belief arises from
studying the text and examining the options. It is a belief you
arrive at, it is not where you start off from in the journey of
faith.
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3. Objections
One objection I sometimes hear is that the only evidence for
the founding of the Christian Church lies in the pages of the
New Testament.
But if you choose to collect all the evidence for something
- anything! - into one place, then there will be no evidence
outside that place. This isn't an objection, it is just a
re-statement of the reason the early Christians had for
pulling the documents together into one collection.
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4. Alternatives
The alternatives tend to fall into two groups:
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4a. Unreliable
Many people have told me very confidently that the New
Testament documents are unreliable. Not one of these people has
ever put any effort into finding out if this is actually the
case.
By 'unreliable', they usually mean 'corrupt'. But the New
Testament documents are the most reliable and accurately
preserved documents we have from the ancient world. All our
history up to the printing press is based on documents with
fewer copies and more variations in the text than the ones we
are talking about. No serious historian doubts the accuracy
or authenticity of the documents we are talking about.
A few people suggest that the New testament documents are
unreliable because they are fictional. They have never been able
to describe how you would begin to make up such a story, create
dozens of documents, seemingly by many different authors, written
over some fifty or sixty years, then convince a bumch of people
that these stories are true - convince them so well that they
are prepared to die for their beliefs. And none of the people
involved in the conspiracy ever breathes a word: the best secret
in the world and they never tell a soul. And nobody has ever been
able to suggest a reason why anyone would want to do this. The
more you think about it, the less it makes sense.
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4b. Other Documents
This is the one the conspiracy theorists like.
People who come up with this have usually read - or talked to
someone who has read - one of the many best sellers that deal with
this topic. The first one I read, and still one of the classics,
is Holy Blood, Holy Grail. More recently, many people have
been taken up with the idea that the 'revelations' in The
Da Vinci Code are true.
I have responded to these ideas in more detail in my article on
The Da Vinci
Code, so just one comment will have to suffice for here:
if the truth has been hidden by means of a conspiracy, how come
there have been so many best selling books unveiling this
conspiracy?
Of course, there are many documents other than those in the
New Testament. They have not been suppressed by the Church,
beyond the obvious fact that they have been copied and
distributed by the Church far less, because they are less
important.
You can pick up collections of these ancient documents in
any decent bookshop. Several in my own collection are published
by Penguin. There are many so-called 'gospels' other than the
four in the New Testament. None of them date from the first
century. And none of them are anything like those four. If you
think the early Church made a mistake in not including these
other documents in their recognised collection of texts, fine.
I suggest you read them, and then make up your own mind about
their value. I have read them. My personal opinion is that
the early Church made the right decision, and it wasn't a very
difficult one.
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