Have you ever wondered how much confidence you should put in the four gospel accounts that open the New Testament? Are they just legends? Should we read them as reliable accounts of what Jesus actually did? Could they have preserved Jesus’ teachings after such a long time? These are questions I asked when I first began to investigate Christianity, but a course that I’m taking in the gospels with Wayne Baxter this term has given me greater clarity in understanding them. Let me share what I’ve learned.
I remember meeting with someone who had begun attending our church. They wanted to know how tolerant our church was. Before I answered their question, I asked them one of my own. “If you became convinced that the Bible didn’t meet your definition of tolerance, would you throw out the Bible or your definition of tolerance?” My point wasn’t that the Bible is intolerant, but before I began the conversation, I needed to understand whether I was trying to defend the Bible or explain the Bible. Was the Bible the authority that helped them evaluate all their other beliefs, or was a certain view of tolerance the standard by which they would evaluate the Bible? After a long pause, they decided that if the Bible didn’t agree with their definition of tolerance, they would abandon a commitment to their definition of tolerance and accept the Bible’s. Sooner or later, everyone who reads the Bible needs to make a similar decision. Will we treat the Bible as a nice book, even one of our favourites? Or will we put it on the top shelf, in a class all by itself, with ultimate authority in our lives?
I remember a woman in one of my Bible studies in Japan who approached me, puzzled, one day. She said, “I don’t know what to do with the Bible. It contains stories that are so remarkable that they can’t be true. But it’s not written like any of our legends or myths. It reads like a collection of eye-witness accounts and historical records. How am I supposed to read it?” She was actually asking a very profound question. Whether people read the Bible or reject it, they often do so without considering what the Bible says about what kind of book it is. The Bible makes the following five claims about itself.
I remember a conversation I had with someone I had been studying the Bible with and they said to me, “I don’t know what to make of the Bible.” Before they had started reading it, they assumed the Bible was a book of legends – amazing stories intended to communicate spiritual truths. But as they began to read, they realized that the Bible contained too much detail and first-hand witness to read it as a fable. It seemed like a collection of letters, speeches and historical accounts. The problem they had was that it also spoke of things they found too remarkable to be true. And so they were at a loss to know how to read the Bible. I think a lot of people have drawn similar conclusions.
