How Do We Know What Is True?

This is an important question, that we often don’t think to ask ourselves. Why? Because we assume that what we believe is already true. If we discovered that it was not true, we would change our belief or opinion, because no one intentionally believes a lie. There is something innate within us that rejects lies and seeks that which is true. What we believe is often built upon what we have heard and learned from trusted sources: parents, relatives, teachers, authors etc. Upon that information, believing it to be true, we make decisions and live our lives.

When it comes to what a person believes about Jesus, there are many different opinions based on the information an individual considers credible. Historic Christianity is built upon the belief that what the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John include is an accurate testimony of Jesus’ life. This was the belief of most people until the Enlightenment of the 1700’s applied rationalism to what Christians believed about Jesus. Since it was not rational to believe in the miracles that are described in the Gospels, especially the resurrection of Jesus, the miracles were believed to be added to the original story of Jesus. This explains why Thomas Jefferson edited his Bible removing all aspects of the miraculous. In the 1800’s this led to a study of the search for the historical Jesus, popularized by Albert Schweitzer’s landmark book “The Quest For the Historical Jesus”. This position advocated that while Jesus did live, what is found in the Gospels is mixed with myth, and is not actual history. Some scholars used the discipline of textual criticism, specifically the preference for a shorter reading of an ancient text, to conclude that Mark was the original of the four Gospels, because it was the shortest. Matthew and Luke used Mark’s Gospel as a source and expanded upon it. This of course assumed that the four Gospels were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, because Matthew and John being an eye-witnesses of Jesus’ life, would not have needed a source such as Mark for their Gospels. Along with what became known as the “Priority of Mark”, was the theory that an original document, now lost, known as “Q”, was the source of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Along with this view, was the belief that the four Gospels were written much later than the 1^st century. However, in the 1900’s archaeological discoveries proved that the Gospels were written in the decades following Jesus’ death, which required a rethinking of the views proclaimed by those advocating that the Gospels contained myth.

Since the Gospels were written within decades of Jesus’ life they would not have been credible to the readers if they contained mythical information about Jesus’ life, because there would still be people alive who had known those events and could easily dispute them. For example the early church father, Irenaeus, writing in the 2nd century, recorded that he learned Christianity from Polycarp, who personally had known the apostle John. Such a reaction against “mythical” information in the Gospels would have prohibited the growth of Christianity in the late first century and early second century. Meaning if the Gospels contained myth, we likely would not even know who Jesus is today. To illustrate, this would be like if today biographers of Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. Such a mythological portrayal of Martin Luther King Jr’s life would not be credible today and be ridiculed out of existence, because many of us were alive during his lifetime and remember him. The same would have happened in the first century, the fact that Christianity was not ridiculed out of existence, even though the Jewish leaders and the Roman authorities attempted to eradicate it, points to the historical accuracy of all that was written in the Gospels.

So whatever one believes about Jesus, it is no longer reasonable to believe that the Gospels found in the New Testament included myth. Which leaves everyone of us to deal with Jesus’ claims to be Lord and King, along with his invitation to follow Him as such.