There is a new phenomenon in the court
system called “The CSI Effect.” The TV show, CSI (which stands for “Crime Scene
Investigation”) has produced a generation of jurors who expect the evidence in
a case to prove it one way or the other with absolute certainty. After all,
that’s the way it works on TV. Some hi-tech process links a fingerprint or a
blood sample or some obscure piece of clothing to place a person at the scene
of the crime precisely when it happened and there is no doubt that they’re
guilty. As ABC News puts it, “Every case has a “slam dunk” solution.”
Unfortunately, real life is not like that.
In the majority of cases there is no forensic evidence and juries have to judge
on the basis of witnesses’ testimonies. That’s why the standard of evidence,
even in a murder case, is not that things be proven with “absolute certainty”
but simply “beyond reasonable doubt.”
This morning we’re going to be doing a bit
of detective work. Christians claim that the New Testament, is an accurate and
trustworthy record of the life and ministry of Jesus and the earliest
Christians. We can’t prove that with “absolute certainty” – no-one can. That’s
the nature of things that happened in the past. The best you can do is show
“beyond reasonable doubt” that they happened and that the records we have are
accurate. Then it’s up to us as individuals to decide if we are going take the
step beyond “reasonable doubt” and put our faith in the person those records
claim to reveal.
In The Da Vinci Code the main
“expert” makes this statement, “The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven…
The Bible is a product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall
magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous
times…” (Da Vinci Code p231)
The Bible itself, on the other hand, makes
some pretty strong claims for itself…
“Every part of Scripture is God-breathed
and useful one way or another—showing us truth, exposing our rebellion,
correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way. Through the Word we are
put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.” (2 Tim 3:16-17, The Message)
So, is the Bible a heavenly fax, or is it
just earthly opinion?
Actually the answer is “neither.” When Dan
Brown wrote, “The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven” and “The Bible did
not fall magically from the clouds,” he obviously thought he was saying
something controversial and opposed to what Christians believe. But the fact is
that neither Jews nor Christians have ever believed that the Bible came down
from heaven in some miraculous way.
Other faiths do believe that about
their scriptures. Muslims believe that the archangel Gabriel, reading
from a “preserved tablet” in heaven, dictated the Qur’an to Mohammed, who then
repeated it to his followers, who then wrote it down. Mormons believe
that their founder, Joseph Smith, found some golden tablets which were written
in an unknown language, and that the angel Moroni gave him special glasses that
allowed him to read them. Once he had translated them, the tablets disappeared.
Of course, you can’t establish either of
those stories “beyond reasonable doubt.” They’re the claims of one person, who
is now dead, about their own personal experiences with angels. You either
believe them – or you don’t. You can’t really discuss them or argue for them or
against them. They’re just “there.”
What we as Christians believe about the
Bible is summed up well in Hebrews 1:1.
“Long ago God spoke many times and in
many ways to our ancestors through the prophets.” (Heb 1:1, NRSV) Let’s look
for a moment at what that verse claims.
It claims that God spoke – not
angels, not demons, not some intermediary, not the indigestion caused by last
night’s pizza – God spoke. The claim is that the creator of the universe
has something to say and he has communicated it.
It says that God spoke many times.
Now there’s an interesting claim. Christianity doesn’t claim that God spoke
once and that if you missed it you’re out of luck. No, God spoke lots of times.
In fact, the implication is that God spoke more times than we have record of.
There are a number of major characters in the Bible that God speaks to and
through. But there are also some people who just pop up once, say something
from God, then disappear again. In the historical books (Joshua to Kings) every
now and then someone pops up who is simply described as something like, “a man
of God.” They speak for God, sometimes just a sentence, then they go. God spoke
many times.
And he spoke in many ways. If you
look at the Bible you’ll see that it is made up of all kinds of literature.
There’s history and law and poetry and songs. There’s sermons and prayers and
letters and visions. My son is part of a small group that meets in our house
from time to time. They’re studying 1 Samuel, and in the first two
chapters of 1 Samuel, which is a book of history, you get narrative (which is
what you’d expect) but also a song and a prophecy. In Paul’s letters to Timothy
you get personal encouragement to Timothy but also directions about how to
organize the church he was working in and principles about how to relate across
gender and age differences. But the main type of writing in the Bible is
narrative, history, because Jews and Christians both believe that God is at
work in history and that if we understand how he has worked in the past we can
learn how to live for him in the present.
And God spoke to many people. It
says he spoke “to our ancestors.” God speaks into a community, not just to
individuals off by themselves in a cave.
And he does that through many people,
specifically through “the prophets.” When the writer of Hebrews speaks of “the
prophets” they’re talking about all those who speak for God, not just those who
foretell things.
So, despite Dan Brown’s delusions, the
Bible never claims to have dropped out of heaven, so saying it didn’t is
irrelevant. What it does claim, is to be a collection of 66 books, with various
kinds of writing, written over a period of about 1500 years, by about 40 authors,
in three different languages (Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.) And it claims
that God guided those authors so that what they wrote was a faithful record of
what God did, the effect that had in peoples’ lives and, as a result, it is a
trustworthy revelation of who God is and how he operates.
What is amazing, especially when you
consider 40 authors, over 1500 years, in three languages, on three continents,
is that the Bible speaks with one “voice” about God. Each writer brings his (or
her) own accent, but you get the sense that they are all talking about the same
person and that that persons’ voice is there to be heard through the voices of
the various authors.
[Dan Brown, on the other hand, has
difficulties at times keeping his characters straight in his own novel, and he
made them up!]
((By the way, this is what theologians call
the “Doctrine of Inspiration” and it sets Judaism and Christianity apart from
every other religion in the world, because Biblical faith is rooted in
historical detail. This is what Paul says in 1 Cor 15, “14
And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so
is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found
to be false witnesses about God… 17 And if Christ
has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.” Our
faith is tied to historical details like the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Perhaps this is why people seem to try to disprove Christianity more than any other religion – because Christianity leaves itself open to challenge. If you can show that these things didn’t happen, or that they didn’t happen the way the Bible says, then you have seriously challenged the basis for Christian faith. That’s because the Christian faith is not primarily about our individual, personal experience of “deity” or “spirituality” or “the divine other” or whatever you want to call it. The Christian faith is primarily about recognising God’s activity in history, especially his grace in sending his Son to die for us, and then getting in line with it.))
OK, so Dan Brown got it wrong about what
the Bible claims to be. The whole thing about it not arriving by fax from
heaven is a bit of a “red herring.” But what about his other charge, that we
can’t trust the Bible, that it isn’t truthful, that the New Testament was the
result of political manoeuvring by the Roman emperor Canstantine? Well,
precisely because the New Testament doesn’t claim to be some kind of
special religious knowledge handed on in secret, but a truthful record of what
happened with Jesus, his disciples and the early church, we can check a claim
like that against other things we know to be true and see if we can trust the
Bible or not.
But before we go there I just want to point
out something that often comes up when I’m talking to Muslims about Jesus and
that is relevant here. This is not a “battle of the books.” This is not about
the New Testament, versus the Qur’an, versus the Book of Mormon, versus the
Gnostic Gospels. The followers of Qur’an, the Book of Mormon and the Gnostic
Gospels all claim that their book is the final revelation of God to humanity.
That is not what Christians claim for the New Testament. (Though you might not
realise it.) What we claim is in Hebrews 1:2 – that Jesus is God’s final
revelation to humanity – a person, not a book – an event, not a lecture. And
the New Testament, especially the gospels, are the historical record of Jesus’
coming and what that means.
[Let’s say you wanted to know about how
Canada came into existence? You could go get a book on Confederation that was
written in the last 10 years. That’s called a secondary source. But you would
want to check that the writer actually did their research by looking at
documents written in and around 1867. Those are called primary sources. If
there was no evidence that the writer had done any research like that you would
question how accurate it was.]
In the opening verses of his gospel, Luke
tells us why and how he came to write it, “Most honorable Theophilus: Many people
have written accounts about the events that took place among
us. They used as their source material the reports circulating among us from
the early disciples and other eyewitnesses of what God has done in fulfillment
of his promises. Having carefully investigated all of these accounts from the
beginning, I have decided to write a careful summary for you, to reassure you
of the truth of all you were taught.” (Luke 1:1-4 New Living Translation)
Luke claims to have done serious research before he wrote his gospel. And do you know, Luke is considered the best historian we have from the first century? Everything that can be checked, he gets right. I have a friend who did his doctorate in church history at Wilfred Laurier. In the history department they regularly pointed to Luke as an example of accuracy in reporting. Meanwhile, across the campus in the religious studies department they said things like, “Well, we can’t trust Luke, he was a Christian you know.” But, from people who don’t have their own axe to grind, Luke gets an A+ for accuracy. He names thirty-two countries, fifty-four cities, and nine islands and gets them all right. He also uses names for officials that don’t appear anywhere else in documents and so theologians have said he must have made them up or been wrong. But then, in the last 20-30 years, they’ve dug up inscriptions in places like Turkey and Cyprus with those very names on them that show that Luke was accurate in everything he wrote about that too. He gets it right. Luke is more accurate than Peter Jennings, Dan Rather and Peter Mansbridge put together.
When the early church was trying to decide which documents to trust there were four main tests. 1) Was the book written by a prophet or apostle, or someone close to them? 2) Did the message tell the truth about God (did it contradict itself or other Scripture)? 3) Did it come with the power of God to change lives? 4) Was it accepted by the people of God?
Luke passes all those tests and it was accepted long before Constantine. In A.D.150, 200 years before Constantine, Tertullian lists as acceptable; the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, thirteen Pauline epistles, the epistle to the Hebrews, and I John and the Revelation. That’s more than 90% of the New Testament as we have it today.
But what about the alternative? Dan Brown
and the scholars he follows, like the Jesus Seminar, say we should put the New
Testament to one side and follow the Gnostic Gospels. But these are the very
books that the early church rejected because…
1) They weren’t written by an apostle or
close associate. Yes they are called “The Gospel of Thomas” or “The
Apocalypse of Peter” or “The Acts of
John” but there is no link to those people and they don’t even look like the
same kind of writing. These books appear 150 years after Jesus with these
famous names on them and no-one has ever seen them before.
[If you ever watch the Antiques Roadshow on
television you’ll note that often the first question the experts ask is “How
did you come to have this piece?” And the person will say something like,
“Well, my grandmother worked for so-and-so and when she left their employment
they gave her this vase, or painting, or sculpture, whatever.” They’re
establishing the provenance, the history of the piece, to make sure it’s
authentic. These “Gnostic Gospels” have no provenance. They just pop up in the
2nd or 3rd century with no history at all.]
2) They didn’t “ring true.” I said earlier
that throughout the Bible there is this sense that all these various people are
talking about the same person, the same God who made the world good and works
to redeem it. Then the Gnostic gospels come along and say something totally
opposite, that we’re all gods and that the physical world is evil and we need
to escape it.
3) They don’t change lives. In fact,
because Gnosticism says that we are really spiritual beings and that matter is
evil, it doesn’t matter how you live. You can deny yourself, if that works for
you, or you can go out and get drunk, get laid, get high, because it’s
all meaningless anyway. All that’s important is that you realise you’re really
a god… Hardly a life changing message.
4) The community of faith never accepted
them. We’re not talking about the leaders, or the emperor. We’re talking about
regular communities of faith like Wentworth Baptist Church. The early church
“asked around” and found that the great majority of believers thought that
these books were just worthless.
[Imagine that a book on Canadian history
not only had no ties to the reports of people who were actually there but also
said things like the creation of Canada was a conspiracy by extra-terrestrials
to make sure they had a refuelling base in this galaxy. You’d begin to wonder
about whether to trust the book. That’s the conclusion the early church came to
about the “Gnostic Gospels.” They’re just plain wacky.]
The Gospel of Thomas opens with this
sentence, “These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke…which
Thomas wrote down.” – We’re back to the same kind of thing as Joseph Smith and
his angel Moroni, things that no-one can authenticate as true or false, they’re
just there.
Those are our options. New Testament
documents that we can trace back to the people who actually walked and talked
with Jesus (I haven’t even touched on the huge number of manuscripts we have
from the earliest dates) or Johnny-come-lately texts that tell us the same as
most other religions – that we’re all gods.
The gospels are trustworthy (they are in
fact the most trustworthy ancient documents on the face of the earth) but
betond that they have the power to change lives, because in them we find access
to the person and life of Jesus Christ, the saviour of the world. But that’s
for next week.