"THE TESTIMONY OF THE GOSPELS”
I
was delighted when a university student who grew up in our Church
approached me to inform me that one of his college professors had
misused his position as an educator to attack Christianity in the
classroom. Such is to be expected by dishonest bullies who use
their platform and their age and experience to overwhelm mismatched
college students who are simply looking to take a class.
However,
a batter is expected to hit the pitches that are thrown at him, so
long as they are in the strike zone. Therefore, though there
are two thousand years of scholarship that any intellectually honest
person could draw on to discover the truth himself, we will address
some of the issues this lazy college professor raised.
From
the e-mail sent to me with the college professor’s assertions, it
appears that the instructor has not read the Bible nearly as
carefully as he has read Dale Brown’s DaVinci Code.
Nevertheless, one of his comments was that “the four Gospels are
contradictory and not in agreement.” Was he reading the same
Bible that I read?
I
think I will run with that ball for a bit. If we are going to be
intellectually honest, we must consider what we are dealing with.
There are four books in the Christian Bible that are typically termed
Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which have been available for
anyone and everyone to read, to study, to consider, to accept, or to
reject, for almost two thousand years.
An
unknown teacher stands up and posits that these literary masterpieces
that stand towering above all other comparable works are
contradictory and not in agreement? Anyone can say the Mona
Lisa is not great art. Excuse me, but the burden of proof is on
him. The responsibility to defend his assertion is his. The
requirement to produce convincing evidence rests on him, not any
student, not me, and not on anyone else.
The
college instructor’s burden is much the same as the atheist’s
burden. Atheists get very excited as we conduct ministry, and
they shout, “Prove there is a God!” No, I do not have to
prove there is a God. The Bible makes no attempt to prove there
is a God, but begins with the assumption of God’s existence that
all but the most foolish people agree with. It is the atheist’s
burden to prove there is no God.
The
same thing is true in this case. Were this man dealing with a
more sophisticated audience, he would have been immediately challenged
for outrageously and unreasonably placing a burden on his class to
disprove something that is so widely held by those capable of
reading. Disbelieve the Bible if you want to, but do not be so
incredibly ridiculous as to maintain that the Gospels contradict each
other and disagree.
That
said, and not for one moment yielding to his presumptive implication
that the burden of proof is not
on him, let me address the issue of the harmony and the
message of the Gospels.
First,
THE HISTORY OF THE GOSPEL
Webster’s
indicates that the word “gospel” is derived from the Middle English word godspell, meaning “good news,” and is intended as the translation of the Greek word euangelion, “good tidings.” More on this later.
Originally,
of course, there was only one gospel. Mark 1.1 opens, “The
beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” This was the good news of the coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of
God. Thus, the reaction of the angels and the shepherds when they
received the good news of Jesus Christ’s birth in Bethlehem, Luke
chapter 2.
Nothing
was committed to writing beyond the Old Testament Hebrew scriptures
until some time after Christ’s earthly ministry concluded, and He
was crucified, raised from the dead, and ascended to heaven. It
becomes clear why the Lord Jesus chose His twelve apostles, and why
it was so important that Judas Iscariot be quickly replaced after he
committed suicide in the aftermath of his predicted betrayal of the
Savior.
Note
Acts 1.15-26, explaining the selection of Judas Iscariot’s
replacement some weeks after our Lord’s resurrection:
15 And
in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said,
(the number of names together were about an hundred and twenty,)
16 Men
and brethren, this scripture must needs have been fulfilled,
which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before concerning
Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus.
17 For
he was numbered with us, and had obtained part of this ministry.
18 Now
this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling
headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed
out.
19 And
it was known unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem; insomuch as that
field is called in their proper tongue, Aceldama, that is to say, The
field of blood.
20 For
it is written in the book of Psalms, Let his habitation be desolate,
and let no man dwell therein: and his bishoprick let another take.
21 Wherefore
of these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord
Jesus went in and out among us,
22 Beginning
from the baptism of John, unto that same day that he was taken up
from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his
resurrection.
23 And
they appointed two, Joseph called Barsabas, who was surnamed Justus,
and Matthias.
24 And
they prayed, and said, Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all
men, shew whether of these two thou hast chosen,
25 That
he may take part of this ministry and apostleship, from which Judas
by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place.
26 And
they gave forth their lots; and the lot fell upon Matthias; and he
was numbered with the eleven apostles.
Throughout
the course of those men’s lives, they (more on Paul later) were the
chosen designees who testified with certainty as eyewitnesses, from
the baptism of John the Baptist, being privy to all His teachings,
His miracles, and His holy life, and observers of not only His
crucifixion, but also of hundreds of others that He had risen from the
dead.
However,
those twelve were mortal men who passed off the scene in time. Eleven were martyred, with only the youngest, the Apostle John,
living out the course of his life to a good old age and dying a
natural death at the end of the first century. Before the men
who orally transmitted the good news of what they saw had passed off
the scene, the good news was committed to writing.
Next,
THE HISTORY OF THE GOSPELS
We
know that Christianity was advanced by the preaching of the Gospel by eyewitnesses to Christ’s resurrection (including Paul, who saw the risen Jesus on the Damascus road) and by those who knew them,
for several decades. However, at some point, those eyewitnesses and those who knew them would begin to die off. As well,
Christianity was expanding at an ever-increasing rate. Something
had to be done to reduce the Gospel story to writing to preserve its
accuracy. Something was done. The Holy Spirit inspired the
writing of the five Gospel accounts, with four of them named after
their human authors, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and with Paul’s
Gospel being spread through the numerous New Testament letters he
wrote.
The period between the crucifixion and the writing of the Gospels
was referred to as the formative period. During the heyday of
the very liberal German Tubingen school, it was popular to date the
Gospel accounts to a hundred or more years after Jesus’
crucifixion.
F.
C. Bauer, along with other critics, assumed that the New Testament
Scriptures were not written until late in the second century A.D. He concluded that these writings came mainly from myths or legends
that had developed during what he believed was the lengthy interval between the time of Jesus and when these accounts were set
down in writing.
By
the end of the nineteenth century, however, archaeological
discoveries had confirmed the accuracy of the thousands of New
Testament manuscripts. Discoveries of early papyrus manuscripts
bridged the gap between the time of Christ and later manuscripts. In 1955, Dr. William F. Albright, recognized
as one of the world’s outstanding biblical archaeologists, wrote:
"We
can already say emphatically that there is no longer any solid basis
for dating any book of the New Testament after circa AD. 80, two full
generations before the date between 130 and 150 given by the more
radical New Testament critics of today.”
Eight
years later, he stated in an interview that the completion date for
all the books in the New Testament was “probably sometime between
circa A.D. 50 and 75.” That being the case, the written
Gospels appeared much earlier than many first thought after Christ’s earthly ministry.
Dr.
John A. T. Robinson, lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge, was
for years one of England’s more distinguished [Bible] critics.
Robinson accepted the consensus typified by [liberal] German
criticism that the New Testament [and therefore the Gospels] was
written many years after the time of Christ, at the end of the first
century. But, as “little more than a theological joke,” he
decided to investigate the arguments on the late dating of all the
New Testament books, a field largely dormant since the turn of the
century. The results stunned him.
He
said that owing to scholarly “sloth,” the “tyranny of
unexamined assumptions” and “almost willful blindness” by
previous authors, much of the past reasoning was untenable. He
concluded that the New Testament is the work of the apostles
themselves or of contemporaries who worked with them and that all the
New Testament books, including John, had to have been written before
A.D. 64.
Robinson
challenged his
colleagues to try to prove him wrong. If scholars reopened the
question, he was
convinced, the results would
force “the rewriting of many introductions to — and ultimately,
theologies of— the New Testament.”
With
the arrival of Robinson’s Redating
the New Testament (1976), which pays
greater attention to historical evidence than did the form critics,
the date has been pushed back to as early as circa A.D. 40 for a
possible first draft of Matthew. Most scholars who do not
presuppose an antisupernatural bias date the synoptic Gospels
generally in the 60s, some a little earlier. There
is, then, strong evidence that the formative period was no more than 17 to 20 years in length, possibly as little as 7 to 10 years for an Aramaic or Hebrew version of Matthew, as spoken of by
Papias, one of the apostolic fathers.
This
conclusion is corroborated by several pieces of converging evidence.
First, it is evident that the Book of Acts was written in
approximately A.D. 62. It does not mention the fall of
Jerusalem in A.D. 70, an event which would have been impossible to
omit since Jerusalem is central to much of Acts. Next, nothing is
mentioned of Nero’s persecution of A.D. 64. The book ends
with Paul in Rome under the confinement of Nero. Third, neither does
Acts mention the martyrdoms of three central figures of the book:
James (A.D. 62), Paul (A.D. 64), and Peter (A.D. 65). Why
aren’t their deaths mentioned when Acts does record the deaths of
Stephen and James, the brother of John? Finally, if the book of Acts
was written by Luke in A.D. 62, then the Gospel of Luke must be dated
earlier, probably in the late 50s.
The
early church fathers affirm that Matthew wrote his account first.
Many modern critics say Mark wrote his first. In either case, almost
everyone agrees that they both wrote before Luke, which puts their
dates of composition no later than the late 50s. Thus, again, the formative period could have lasted no longer than 17 to 20 years.
The
formative period should not be construed as that period of time in
which the content of the Gospels was being formed by some “creative
community.” It is rather that period when the form of the material was transitioning from an oral to a written medium.
Analyzing
the critics’ conclusions of late authorship, Albright wrote:
“Only
modern scholars who lack both historical method and perspective can
spin such a web of speculation as that with which critics have
surrounded the Gospel tradition.”
He
added that the period is “too slight to permit any appreciable
corruption of the essential center and even of the specific wording
of the sayings of Jesus.”
Howard
Vos, researcher, declares, “From the standpoint of literary
evidence, the only logical conclusion is that the case for the
reliability of the New Testament is infinitely stronger than that for
any other record of antiquity.
That is the history of the Gospel record from the human
perspective.
Finally,
THE TESTIMONY OF THE GOSPELS
The
New Testament is the ultimate authority for the life of Christ. In
that collection of books, His life is set forth in four distinct
phases: First, His eternal existence, essential Deity,
relations, and activities as pure spirit prior to all time and
history. Next, His foreshadowing in time, prior to His
incarnation. This is done by an interpretation of the Old
Testament. Third, His incarnation, or earthly life, from His
birth to His death. Fourth, the glorious life of His exalted
humanity, from His resurrection and ascension to the end of time.
As
mentioned before, the Greek word rendered “gospel” means good
tidings of any kind, but in this collection of books, it means the
good tidings of salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord. Nowhere
in New Testament usage does the word “gospel” mean a history, as
when we say, “the Gospel according to Matthew.” The word
“gospel” occurs often alone, or with the article only; as “preach
the gospel,” or “believe the gospel.”
In
connection with the Father, we have the usage: “The Gospel of God,”
“The Gospel of the grace of God.” In connection with the
Son we have the usage: “The Gospel of the Son,” “The Gospel of
Christ,” “The Gospel of Jesus Christ,” “The Gospel of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God.” It is also used with another
modifying term, “The Gospel of the Kingdom,” and it is used with
reference to its purpose, “The Gospel of Salvation,” and to its
duration, “The Everlasting Gospel.”
Our
English word “gospel,” remember, is derived from the Anglo-Saxon,
“godspell,” meaning “a story of God.” We employ the
word in this narrative sense when we say, “Matthew’s Gospel,”
or “The Gospel according to Matthew.” In this last sense, meaning
a narrative, there have come down to us in writing five
Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul. Of these, it is
surprising to most Christians to learn that Paul’s was the first
that was reduced to writing, and John’s the last. Three of
these Gospels are called synoptics: Matthew, Mark, and Luke, because
they present a common view.
These
five Gospels must be considered as an independent and complete report
about our Lord from each author’s viewpoint. They were written by
different men, at different times, for different purposes—for
different ends—and each, I repeat, must be considered as a complete
view. That is to say, notwithstanding the multitude of books that
have been written upon the subject, there is no satisfactory evidence
that any one of them had before him, or was influenced by a copy of
any other from which he consciously borrowed, or which he
supplemented in any way.
Nor
is there any reliable evidence that any two or more of them had
access to a common original written Gospel now lost. There
was, of course, before any writing, a common oral Gospel, but mere
human memory could not be relied upon to recall with accuracy the
minute details such as we find in Mark, nor the very words of long
discourses, such as we find in John and Matthew. We must look
elsewhere for an adequate explanation of their agreements and
differences. In the final analysis, the inspiration of each author
best accounts for the plan of his account, not only in the material
he selected, but in what he omitted, in his authoritative portrait of
our Lord.
Westcott, in his introduction to the Gospels, cites that three portraits of Charles I were painted: one giving the front view, the others the right and left profile views, to enable a sculptor to carve a lifelike statue of him. The
sculptor could not carve this statue with accuracy from a front view
only, nor from either one of the two side views only. In the same
way, we have five wonderful portraits of our Lord, in order that we,
in the study of them from their different angles of vision, may get a
full view of our Lord and Savior.
We have already said that the New Testament considers the life of our Lord in four distinct phases: His pre-existence, His Old Testament foreshadowings, His incarnation, and the glorious life of His exalted humanity after His resurrection. Each Gospel writer considers only
so much of these four phases as is essential to his plan.
Mark,
with very vivid details, considers the public ministry of our Lord,
having little to do with either His pre-existence, His foreshadowing
in the Old Testament, or His life after His ascension. Matthew and
Luke alone consider the infancy of our Lord. Matthew and Paul
particularly consider the interpretation of the Old Testament,
foreshadowing of our Lord. Luke, in the book of Acts, discusses
much of the exalted life of our Lord in the establishment of the
churches. John and Paul both address His pre-existence and the activities of His exalted life. This John does in Revelation.
Anyone,
including the college instructor, could easily examine these accounts
of our Lord in two ways: First, considering each account alone, in
order to get before our minds the author’s complete view according
to his plan. Then there is the harmonic study of our Lord, putting
in parallel columns so much as each account has to say on a given
point, and looking at the testimony of all the witnesses.
In
the first method, it is easy to see that Matthew writes for Jews, and
his is the Gospel of the King and of His kingdom, according to a
correct interpretation of Old Testament foreshadowings. We find,
therefore, in Matthew, many Old Testament quotations. He seeks to
prove to the Jews that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah foretold in
the Old Testament. Paul unites with Matthew in making the same
proof, but with reference to a larger purpose than does Matthew.
Mark’s
Gospel may be called the Gospel of deeds rather than of teachings. It
is limited to the earthly life of Jesus, and describes the mighty
things which He did. It is most vivid and minute in detail and has
much of the narrative style. It is the “straightway” gospel. As
only an eyewitness could give the vivid and minute details of
gesture, posture, indeed the very look of the actors and observers,
this has been called Peter’s Gospel.
There
is both external and internal evidence that Peter supplied most of
the material of Mark’s Gospel. As Mark limits himself almost
exclusively to one of the four phases of our Lord’s life and to
only His public ministry, and as he makes but little special
contribution to the sum of discourses, parables, and miracles, we must
find the most valuable contribution in his vivid and minute details,
therein far surpassing all others. He surrounds his incidents with
all the circumstances that make them impressive. We see the posture,
gesture, look, and the effect. His particulars of person, number,
time, and place are peculiar. His transitions are rapid, his tenses
often are present, not past, and we hear the very Aramaic words
spoken, in direct quotation, such as “Boanerges,” “Talitha
cumi,” “Corban,” “Ephphatha,” and “abba.”
Luke’s
Gospel may be called the Gospel of the Saviour and of humanity, his
purpose being not so much to convince the Jews that Jesus is the
Messiah, as to show His relation to all mankind. Because Luke’s
is the Gospel of the Saviour and of humanity, his genealogy extends
back to Adam. If Luke were not a Jew, he would be the only Gentile
who wrote a book of the Bible. His writings, the Gospel and Acts,
treat elaborately the earthly life of our Lord, and His post
resurrection life up to Paul’s first Roman imprisonment. Renan, the infidel, calls Luke’s Gospel “the most beautiful book in the world,” speaking of them as masterpieces of human literature. Isaiah and Luke surpass all other books of the Bible. One cannot,
in a few words, recount all the special contributions of Luke’s
Gospel. We may note a few:
He
alone gives an account of the birth and training of John the
Baptist.
He
alone gives us the five great hymns, four of which have Latin
titles: The “Hail Mary,” the “Benedictus” of Zacharias, the
“Magnificat” of Mary, the “Gloria in Excelsis” of the
angels, and what is called the “Nunc Dimittis” of old Simeon.
He
recites more miracles and parables than any other historian, and of
these at least six miracles and seventeen parables are not given
elsewhere.
More
than the others it is the Gospel to women, to the poor, to the sick,
the outcast, and the foreigner.
To
him we are indebted more than to all the others for the incidents
and teachings of our Lord’s ministry after the rejection in
Galilee and up to the last week of that ministry.
It
is more than the others the Gospel of prayers and thanksgiving in
giving not only the occasions when our Lord prayed, and often the
prayers themselves, but the lessons on prayer taught to the
disciples.
John’s
Gospel may be called the Gospel of positive knowledge, assurance, and
comfort. It is more subjective than the objective history. He
means, evidently, to give to every Christian absolute knowledge and
internal assurance of the certainty of that knowledge.
Paul, unlike the others, addresses the details of His earthly life, focusing more on its purposes than on its historical
facts. It is interesting to compare Matthew, Mark, Luke, John,
and Paul to note each one’s special contribution to the complete
history of our Lord.
No
mere human historian would have omitted from his history what any one
of them omits. We cannot account in a mere human way for the
omission of the early Judean ministry by the Synoptic Gospels, nor
for John’s omission of the bulk of the Galilean ministry.
A careful student of the several accounts of our Lord cannot fail to be impressed that no one of them alone, nor all of them together, intends anything like a complete biography, as we find in the human history of a man. Each employs only that material essential to his plan, deliberately leaving out everything unnecessary to his purpose.
John,
at the close of his Gospel, rightly says, “Many other signs,
therefore, did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not
written in this book: but these are written, that you may believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye may
have life in his name.”
A
similar statement could well have been made by every author. What
is true with reference to the facts of His account is also true with
reference to His teachings. None of them gives all of His
teachings, or intended to do it, but only so much of the teachings as
is necessary to his plan of history.
Indeed,
Luke, in Acts, says that his Gospel is an account of what Jesus began
to do and to teach, implying that his second volume will tell what
Jesus continued to do and to teach in His exalted life. It is
interesting as well as profitable to collect together the incidents,
miracles, parables, and discourses given by each writer alone.
For
example, Matthew alone records the miracle of the healing of the two blind men in chapter 9 and the finding of the coin in the fish’s
mouth. Matthew alone gives ten of the great parables—the tares,
the hidden treasure, the pearl of great price, the dragnet, the
unmerciful servant, the laborers in the vineyard, the two sons, the
marriage of the king’s son, the ten virgins, and the talents.
Matthew alone gives a somewhat full account of the great Sermon on
the Mount, and the great discourses on the rejection of the Jews, and
our Lord’s great prophecy extending from chapter 21 through 25 of
his book. He alone gives us certain incidents of the life of our
Lord—the coming of the Wise Men, the massacre of the innocents, the
flight into Egypt, the return to Nazareth, the covenant of Judas for
thirty pieces of silver, his repentance and his end, the dream of
Pilate’s wife, the appearance of the saints in Jerusalem in
connection with Christ’s resurrection, the guards placed at the
sepulcher, the bribing of those watchmen to spread false reports, and
the earthquake.
It
is in John alone that we find the early Judean ministry, the
Samaritan ministry, the great discourse on the bread of life in
Capernaum, the discourse of the Good Shepherd, and particularly the
great discourse after the Lord’s Supper, as embodied in chapters
14-17. These
four chapters of John constitute the New Testament book of comfort;
Isaiah 39-66 constitutes the Old Testament book of comfort.
Of
course, these examples of the special contributions of each of the
Gospels are samples only, and not exhaustive.
Contradictory
and not in agreement. That was one of the complaints leveled by the
college instructor at the Gospels. Contradictory and not in
agreement.
What
the ignorant professor seems unable to comprehend, or possibly
unwilling to comprehend, is that the Gospels are obviously not
contradictory because they are complementary. They deal with subject
matter so vast as to astonish the human mind with its breadth, its
depth, and its length.
In
each Gospel, a somewhat different perspective is found, but a
different perspective of the same individual, the eternal Son of the
living God, virgin born as a means of clothing Himself in human
flesh, living among us and conducting a supernatural ministry of
teaching and miracle working, before suffering the death of the
cross.
The
Gospel accounts show Him to be once dead but now alive, victorious
over death and raised from the dead to be seen by reliable
eyewitnesses, and then ascended to heaven until He comes again. Is
He absent? Yes. Is He inactive in human history? No, He is
not. You see, Jesus is alive.
Contradictory
and not in agreement? To complain that the Gospels are
contradictory and not in agreement is like an old grandmother
complaining because the car that won the Indianapolis 500 last week
does not have a trunk for her suitcase or seats for her
grandchildren. She simply does not grasp what she sees before her.
The
Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are unique in literature,
being in themselves a genre of writing that exists nowhere else,
written by men who either saw the risen Savior or who collaborated
with men who saw the risen Savior that we might see Him with the eyes
of faith and be saved. Paul’s Gospel is set forth in a series of
epistles, or letters.I claim no originality in this article. I have relied heavily on comments written by B. H. Carroll a hundred years ago and Josh McDowell’s writing over the last few decades, as they, in turn, relied heavily on the writings of many Christians before them. For two thousand years, the written Gospels have been
available for anyone to read. Those who read with a closed mind
find a justification to reject or dismiss the good news.
However,
those who read the Gospel accounts with an open mind frequently
respond as our brother, Pastor Ibrahim ag Mohamed (now in London),
reacted when he opened the Gospel according to Matthew for the first
time and read its message; if not immediately, at least eventually,
embracing the Lord Jesus, the grand Subject of the Gospels, as Lord
and Savior.
