Category Archives: Apologetics

What Jesus believed about the Old Testament

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torahMike Matthews writes:

The debate about the Bible’s accuracy is not a secondary, theoretical concern. The integrity of Jesus Christ Himself is at stake. He accepted the Old Testament’s historical accounts as real, and He built His teachings on those facts of history. Here is a list of Christ’s references to various Old Testament events. Interestingly, these are the very events that skeptics have often considered myth:

God’s recent Creation (Mark 10:6–9)
Adam and Eve (Matthew 19:4–5)
Cain’s murder of Abel (Matthew 23:35; Luke 11:51)
Noah’s Ark (Luke 17:26)
God’s judgment on the world by a global Flood (Matthew 24:37–39)
Abraham (John 8:56–58)
Lot (Luke 17:28)
Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire (Luke 17:29)
Lot’s wife turned to salt (Luke 17:32)
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—not only historical people but still living in Jesus’ day (Matthew 22:32; see John 4:12)
God spoke to Moses in a burning bush (Mark 12:26)
God fed Israel with manna in the wilderness (John 6:32)
Moses’ authorship of Genesis (Luke 24:27; John 5:46–47)
Moses’ brass serpent healed Hebrew believers of snake bites (John 3:14)
David’s great deeds (Matthew 12:3; Mark 2:5; Luke 6:3)
David’s authorship of psalms (Matthew 22:42–45; Mark 12:35–37; Luke 20:42–44)
King Solomon’s glorious rule (Matthew 12:42)
Elijah’s and Elisha’s unique miracles (Luke 4:25–27)
God delivered Jonah from a great fish (Matthew 12:39–40)
Isaiah’s authorship of the prophetic book bearing his name (Matthew 13:14 citing Isaiah 6:9–10 and John 12:38 citing Isaiah 53:1)
Daniel’s authorship of the prophetic book bearing his name (Matthew 24:15)

Addressing the Fourth Option of Jesus as Legend

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Lord, Lunatic…or Legend?

Tom Gilson, in an article entitled “The Gospel Truth Of Jesus – What Happens to Apologetics If We Add “Legend” to the Trilemma “Liar, Lunatic, or Lord”?” writes:

He did not leave us that option: he did not intend to.” Thus C. S. Lewis closes out his famous “Trilemma” argument on the impossibility of Jesus being a great moral teacher and nothing more. The argument is beautiful in its simplicity: it calls for no deep familiarity with New Testament theology or history, only knowledge of the Gospels themselves, and some understanding of human nature. A man claiming to be God, says Lewis, could hardly be good unless he really was God. If Jesus was not the Lord, then (to borrow Josh McDowell’s alliterative version of the argument), he must have been a liar or a lunatic.

The questions have changed since Lewis wrote that, though, and it’s less common these days to hear Jesus honored as a great moral teacher by those who doubt his deity. Today’s skepticism runs deeper than that. The skeptics’ line now is that Jesus probably never claimed to be God at all, that the whole story of Jesus, or at least significant portions of it, is nothing more than legend.

Christian apologists have responded with arguments hinging on the correct dates for the composition of the Gospels, the identities of their authors, external corroborating evidence, and the like. All this has been enormously helpful, but one could wish for a more Lewis-like approach to that new l-word, legend—that is, for a way of recognizing the necessary truthfulness of the Gospels from their internal content alone.

Lewis was always more at home looking at the evidence of the Gospels themselves than at the historical circumstances surrounding them. In one classic essay (variously titled “Fern-Seed and Elephants” or “Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism,” depending on where you find it) he delineates the Gospels as true “reportage” rather than fable, and concludes, “The reader who doesn’t see this has simply not learned to read.” Continue reading →