Recommended Sources on Christianity

I. Online

  1. Bishop Barron (theology, history, and culture)
  2. Pints With Aquinas (philosophy, theology, spirituality, and culture)
  3. Breaking In The Habit (apologetics, theology, and history)
  4. The Council of Trent (rebuttal videos)
  5. Mike Licona (historical evidence for the resurrection, reliability of the gospels, and NT scholarship).
  6. InspiringPhilosophy (apologetics, philosophy, science, history, etc)
  7. Capturing Christianity (apologetics, philosophy, history and debates)
  8. Testify (New Testament apologetics)
  9. Explore Christianity (philosophy and biblical scholarship)

II. Books

Books are a great way to learn more about God and Christianity. Since there is literally so much to learn about, I will list a number of recommended books per category. Feel free to check them out! Most of these books that I will mention have Ebook versions available so you can get them anytime you wish.

Note: The resources listed below are accessible to the layman unless they contain an “(A)” beside the title. An “(A)” means that the book contains philosophy, theology, or science at more technical levels, or is written in a more scholarly way.

C.S. Lewis

Christianity

Church Teaching

Jesus the New Testament

Atheism

Science

History

Conversion Stories

Other

Undesigned Coincidences and New Testament Reliability

One fascinating line of evidence for the reliability of the Gospels is undesigned coincidences. An undesigned coincidence is a notable connection between two or more accounts or texts that does not seem to have been planned by the individuals giving the account – it is when two or more accounts or texts interlock at a point, fitting together like pieces of a puzzle, so that one account or text clarifies or explains a detail in another.[1]

Undesigned coincidences are what one expects from eyewitness testimonies. In fact, undesigned coincidences between different eyewitness accounts aid investigators in arriving at a more complete picture of how an event transpired, and in some cases, can even lead to the resolution of a case. James Warner Wallace, a Los Angeles homicide detective, comments: 

Often, questions an eyewitness raises at the time of the crime are left unanswered until we locate an additional witness years later. This is a common characteristic of true, reliable eyewitness accounts.[2]

It’s my job to assemble the complete picture of what happened at the scene. No single witness is likely to have seen every detail, so I must piece together the accounts, allowing the observations of one eyewitness to fill in the gaps that may exist in the observations of another eyewitness. … True, reliable eyewitness accounts are never completely parallel and identical. Instead, they are different pieces of the same puzzle, unintentionally supporting and complementing each other to provide all the details related to what really happened.[3]

1. Undesigned coincidences in the Gospels

Undesigned coincidences are found between Gospels (as well as between Paul’s letters and Acts as we shall see in a later section). In this section, I will provide a number of examples of undesigned coincidences in the Gospel accounts. For our first example, let us look at Matthew’s account of Herod’s thoughts about Jesus.

1.1. Herod on Jesus

In Matt 14:1-2, Herod hears of Jesus and his miracles and is disconcerted by  the thought that Jesus may have been John the Baptist (whom Herod had executed) raised from the dead:

At that time Herod the tetrarch heard about the fame of Jesus, and he said to his servants, “This is John the Baptist. He had been raised from the dead; that is why these miraculous powers are at work in him”.

Matthew mentions that Herod said this to servants but how did the early Church know what Herod said to members of his household? The answer is found in an unrelated passage in Luke 8:1-3:

Soon afterward he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means.

This passage is not about Herod in any way. Luke is merely listing those who accompanied Jesus at a point in his ministry. Among these he mentions Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager.

1.2. The feeding of the five thousand

Undesigned coincidences cluster in Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand, which is the only miracle in the Gospels, other than resurrection, to be recorded in all four Gospels. 

Mark introduces the feeding of the five thousand by mentioning Jesus’ attempt to get away from the crowds with his disciples after the Twelve returned from a preaching mission (Mk 6:30-31): 

The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.

Reading the verses initially, one might assume that the reference to “many coming and going” is an allusion to the fact that Jesus was often followed by crowds, and as the passage continues, Mark does say that the crowds found a way to follow Jesus (Mk 6:33-35). The phrase “many coming and going”, however, is slightly odd as a description of Jesus’ popularity alone and suggests that there was another reason for the bustle of people in the vicinity. We find this other reason in John’s introduction of the feeding of the five thousand (Jn 6:1-4):

After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. And a large crowd was following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick. Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand.

In passing, John mentions that this occurred just before Passover. As Passover was approaching, Jews would have been on the roads traveling to Jerusalem in large numbers. In fact, the Jewish historian Josephus estimates that there were almost three million Jews in Jerusalem for Passover during the reign of Nero. The event taking place just before Passover, as John notes, explains the bustling of people in Mark.  

For the second undesigned coincidence, three Gospels mention that there was grass in the place where the feeding of the five thousand took place (Mk 6:39; Matt 14:19; Jn 6:10) but only Mark mentions the grass’ green color. The grass is not generally green in the region but it is green in the spring, which encompasses the time of Passover. 

Moving on to the third undesigned coincidence, prior to the miracle, John notes that Jesus asked Philip where they could buy bread for the people. Reading the account, one could ask “why Philip?”. Philip was not one of the more prominent disciples (Peter, James, and John) nor was he the treasurer of the group (Judas). Was it just by chance that Philip was chosen? Possibly, but a much better answer is found when one looks at Luke’s account of the miracle, as well as a passage in John. Luke mentions that the miracle took place near the town of Bethsaida (Lk 9:10) while John, in a passage unrelated to the feeding of the five thousand, mentions that Philip was from Bethsaida (Jn 1:43-44).

For the fourth undesigned coincidence, all four Gospels note that roughly five thousand men were fed after the miracle. Matthew says “about five thousand men, besides women and children” (Matt 14:21), while Mark, Matthew, and John say about five thousand men, but do not add “besides women and children”. Two of the Gospels, Mark and Luke, give some idea of how the estimate of five thousand was calculated. Mark and Luke mention that Jesus ordered “them all” (Mk 6:39)/”them” (Lk 9:14) to sit down in groups by hundreds and by fifties. Having the crowd sorted into groups made it easier to distribute food to them. It also made it possible to get some idea of how many people there were. However, one still wonders why the Gospels give their count exclusively in terms of the number of males fed. As McGrew observes:

Notice that Mark and Luke could be taken to mean that Jesus had all the people sit down. Yet one would have thought that if all the people — men, women, and children — sat down in groups of approximately fifty to a hundred, the Gospels would not give their count exclusively in terms of number of males fed, especially not as emphatically as Matthew does.[4]

 John does not mention the groupings by hundreds and fifties, as Mark and Luke do, but his account adds the crucial piece to the puzzle – attesting that Jesus called to “Have the people sit down”, and that “the men sat down, about five thousand in number” (Jn 6:10-11). Then the food was distributed to the men and from them, to the women and children. This explains how the men could be approximately counted, leaving the number of women and children undetermined. As McGrew notes:

This is an intricate coincidence and a mentally satisfying one, depending as it does on subtle indications in various texts. Beyond this, it is true to human nature. It is extremely difficult to imagine getting a milling crowd of such a size, including children, who were no doubt running about and playing, all to sit down on the grass at the same time …  It is impressive enough that, in a world without sound systems or megaphones, the disciples were able to get even the men seated in groups of about fifty to a hundred. Not attempting to seat the children, and leaving the women free to look after them would be only common sense in the culture and context.[5]

1.3. Why the foot washing?

According to John, during the Last Supper, Jesus did something unusual: he washed his disciple’s feet in a very deliberate and even formal manner (Jn 13:1-15), “taking upon himself a servant’s garb and role”[6]:

Now before the Feast of the Passover … [Jesus] rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. … When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you … If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

Reading John’s account, Jesus washing the feet of his disciples is done out of the blue. Of course, Jesus may have decided to teach this lesson about humility and servant leadership on that night for no special reason but we find information in another gospel that explains why Jesus chose to teach that lesson on that night in particular. During the Last Supper, Luke notes that a dispute arose among the disciples about which of them was the greatest (Lk 22:24-27), presumably, about who was to hold the highest stature when Jesus established His kingdom (see Mk 9:33-37; Matt 18:1-14; Matt 20:20-21):

A dispute also arose among them, as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. And he said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at the table? But I am among you as the one who serves.

The foot-washing in John is explained – in response to the subject of the dispute among the disciples that evening, Jesus gave a lesson on humility and servant leadership. John never mentions the dispute among the disciples and Luke does not mention the foot-washing but together, the full picture emerges. In this undesigned coincidence, Luke explains the foot-washing in John. Within the same passage, however, there is another undesigned coincidence – this time, in the other direction – wherein John explains information in Luke. 

In Lk 22:27, Jesus says to his disciples: “But I am among you as the one who serves”. To what, however, does this statement refer? Jesus does not do anything servant-like in Luke. John’s account of the foot-washing fills in this gap, explaining Luke. The two passages fit together “extremely tightly” – Luke explains John, and John explains Luke.[7]

1.4. Prophesy, who hit you?

In Matt 26:67-68, at the conclusion of Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin, people were said to have hit Jesus and asked Jesus to prophesy “who” hit him (Matt 26:67-68):

Then they spit in his face and struck him with their fists. Others slapped him and said, “Prophesy to us, Messiah. Who hit you?.

The mocking challenge is quite odd if Jesus could see who hit him but Luke’s account notes that Jesus was blindfolded (Lk 22:64):

They blindfolded him and demanded, “Prophesy Who hit you?.

This detail in Luke sheds light on the mockery in Matthew’s account.

1.5. The Jewish leaders, Jesus, and Pilate

There are three undesigned coincidences in the discussion between the Jewish leaders, Jesus, and Pilate. 

Mark, Matthew, and John note that the Jewish leadership brought Jesus to Pilate, and that Pilate proceeded to question Jesus, asking Jesus if he was “the king of the Jews”. Reading Mark, Matthew, and John’s accounts, one wonders what made Pilate think that Jesus claimed to be king of the Jews? Not a word is said in these Gospels about sedition or any other political accusation being leveled against Jesus. Luke’s account sheds light on this matter (Lk 23:1-4):

Then the whole company of them arose and brought him before Pilate. And they began to accuse him, saying, “We found this man misleading our nation and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ, a king.” And Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”. And he answered him, “You have said so”.

Luke attests that the Jewish leaders brought Jesus before Pilate and accused Jesus of sedition against Rome – that Jesus claimed to be Christ (i.e. the Messiah), a king. This explains why Pilate had to get involved and ask Jesus if he was the king of the Jews.  

For the second undesigned coincidence, we turn our focus to Jesus’ response to Pilate’s inquiry, as well as Pilate’s initial verdict of Jesus as not guilty, using Luke’s account (Lk 23:3-4): 

And Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”. And he answered him, “You have said so.” Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, “I find no guilt in this man.

Given the accounts in the Synoptic Gospels, Pilate’s initial verdict of not guilty is odd, since based on the accounts, Jesus did not reject the charge, saying “You have said so” (Mk 15:2; Matt 27:11; Lk 23:3). As McGrew notes:

[Jesus’] answer is variously translated. The New American Standard Bible (NASB) translates his answer, “It is as you say,” treating it as an idiom rather like our American expression, “You said it.” The English Standard Version (ESV), quoted above [(“You have said so”)], translates his words strictly literally, allowing the expression to be taken as an ambiguous refusal to reply to the charge. Such ambiguity by itself was cheeky, at a minimum, in response to an accusation of a kind that Pilate, as the Roman governor, was bound to treat seriously. In neither case is there any explanation for Pilate’s going back to the crowds and stating that he finds Jesus innocent. Why does Pilate not even question Jesus further? Why does he seem so unfazed by Jesus’ reply? Why does he go so far as to declare Jesus free of all guilt concerning the charge?[8]

The answers to the questions McGrew raises are found in John’s account which reads (Jn 18:33-38): 

So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?”. Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” … [Pilate] went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him…”

Jesus notes that his kingdom is not of this world and that he is not encouraging the use of physical force to achieve his aims – explaining Pilate’s conclusion that Jesus is not guilty in the eyes of Roman law. 

The third undesigned coincidence pertains once more to Jesus’ answer to Pilate, as well as the maiming of a servant of the high priest at Jesus’ arrest at Gethsemane. As just discussed, when Pilate asks Jesus if he was the king of the Jews, Jesus notes that his kingdom is not of this world, and to support his statement, Jesus refers to the fact that his disciples were not fighting during his arrest (Jn 18:36):

Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”

Reading John, one wonders why Jesus would make this argument, given that John recounts Peter as having cut off the ear of a servant of the high priest, named Malchus (Jn 18:10), at the time of Jesus’ arrest. Based on John, why would Jesus make this argument knowing that evidence of violence (i.e. Malchus’ injury) could be produced against him? Like John, Mark and Matthew both attest that a servant of the high priest was maimed (Mk 14:47; Matt 26:51). An answer as to why Jesus makes this argument is provided in Luke, who attests that a servant of the high priest’s ear was cut off but also that this servant’s ear was healed by Jesus (Lk 22:50-51):

And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear. But Jesus answered, “No more of this!” And he touched the man’s ear and healed him.

Jesus’ healing in Luke provides explanatory power to, and coheres with, Jesus’ response to Pilate in John. This undesigned coincidence, which cuts across different periscopes, also provides positive evidence for Jesus’ healing of Malchus.

1.6. Conclusion: undesigned coincidences in the Gospels

Undesigned coincidences provide another stream of evidence for the historical reliability of the Gospels – pointing to the Gospel accounts being based on eyewitness testimony or tradition based on eyewitness testimony. The casual, subtle, interlocking of details in the Gospels are not what one typically finds in ancient fiction. They are, however, a feature of historical reportage. 

A notable point is that a good number of undesigned coincidences cut across two or more periscopes (e.g. Herod on Jesus, Jesus asking Philip prior to the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus’ response to Pilate in light of Malchus being healed, etc.). These especially argue against the accounts being invented.[9] Another notable point is that the gospel of John has the largest number of undesigned coincidences – with the Synoptics explaining John, John explaining the Synoptics, or an account in John being clarified or explained by another account in his gospel.[10]  

Other than the undesigned coincidences discussed here, philosopher Lydia McGrew has documented seventeen more undesigned coincidences in the Gospels in her book Hidden in Plain View (2018). Undesigned coincidences, taken all together, form a compelling cumulative case for the reliability of the Gospels.

2. Undesigned coincidences between Acts and Paul’s letters

There are also undesigned coincidences between Acts and Paul’s letters. In this section, I will provide a number of examples of undesigned coincidences between both of these texts.

2.1. Paul’s funding in Corinth

In Acts 18:3-5, Luke notes that Paul made tents during the working week to support himself in Corinth while preaching on the Sabbath, but when Silas and Timothy came down to Corinth from Macedonia, Paul began to devote himself completely to the word:

… Paul went to see them, and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them. Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.” When Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah.

This makes one wonder – why the sudden change? What was it about Silas and Timothy coming to Corinth that made Paul devote himself exclusively to preaching? The answer is found in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor 11:7-9):

Was it a sin for me to lower myself in order to elevate you by preaching the gospel of God to you free of charge? And when I was with you and needed something, I was not a burden to anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied what I needed.

When Silas and Timothy came down to Corinth from Macedonia, they brought with them a gift of money, which allowed Paul to devote himself completely to preaching the good news. 

2.2. Timothy’s religious upbringing

In second Timothy, Paul praises Timothy’s religious upbringing (II Tim 1:5; 3:14-15):

I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well … But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

Based on these verses, one infers that Timothy grew up with a knowledge of the Jewish scriptures as a result of his family. Timothy’s grandmother and mother are noted as significant religious influences within Timothy’s family but Timothy’s father is not mentioned, leading to the inference that perhaps Timothy’s father died when Timothy was young or that he was a Gentile. The reason for the exclusion of Timothy’s father in Paul’s named list of those whose faith has been a model to Timothy is found in Acts. As Luke notes in his second volume (Acts 16:1-3)

Paul came also to Derbe and to Lystra. A disciple was there, named TImothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer, but his father was a Greek. He was well spoken of by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him, and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek.

Acts attests that Timothy’s mom was a Jew who believed that Jesus was the Messiah and that Timothy’s father was a Gentile of Greek ethnicity, resulting in Timothy’s not having been circumcised in infancy.

2.3. “When Timothy comes…”

In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he informs the church that he had already sent Timothy to them. However, later in the same letter, Paul indicates that he expects the letter he is currently writing to reach the Corinthian church first prior to Timothy’s arrival  (1 Cor 4:17; 16:10):

That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church … When Timothy comes, see that you put him at ease among you, for he is doing the work of the Lord, as I am.

From these verses, one infers that Timothy is taking some indirect route to Corinth. 

In the same letter, one learns that Paul wrote first Corinthians in Ephesus in Asia minor, that Paul was planning to stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, and that Paul planned a future trip to Corinth passing through Macedonia (1 Cor 16:5-9):

I will visit you after passing through Macedonia, for I intend to pass through Macedonia, and perhaps I will stay with you or even spend the winter … But I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective work has opened to me… 

In a wonderful connection with Paul’s letters, Acts attests that Paul was in Ephesus, that he stayed in Ephesus for some time, that he planned to pass through Macedonia on a future trip, and relevant to this undesigned coincidence, that he sent Timothy and Erastus ahead on a missionary journey, with a stop of theirs being Macedonia (Acts 19:1; 19:21-22):

… Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus … Now after these events Paul, resolved in the Spirit to pass through Macedonia and Achaia and go to Jerusalem, saying, “After I have been there, I must also see Rome”. And having sent into Macedonia two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while.

Putting together the information from Paul’s letter and Acts, Timothy was headed to the Corinth through Macedonia (and Paul planned a future trip to Corinth passing through Macedonia as well). Ultimately, Acts confirms that Timothy did take an indirect route to Corinth, traveling in an “arc-shaped route” along the coast of the Aegean Sea, going from Ephesus to Macedonia, and to Corinth. Presumably, Paul expected his letter to reach the Corinthian church before Timothy, who was already traveling, because Paul’s letter would be sent to Corinth via sea. There was a direct sea route between Ephesus and Corinth.[11] Both cities, in fact, were major centers of trade. With a good wind, a letter could reach Corinth from Ephesus fairly quickly. 

2.4. The activities of Apollos

In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he repeatedly mentions a person named Apollos, stressing his and Apollos’ unity as followers of Jesus, and insisting that Christians should not break up into factions centered on, among others, himself and Apollos (1 Cor 1:11-13; 3:4-7):

For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? … For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, and the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.

The sentence “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” implies that Paul worked in Corinth first then Apollos came later and worked as well. This is corroborated by Acts 18:18-19:1:

Paul stayed on in Corinth for some time. Then he left the brothers and sisters and sailed for Syria, accompanied by Priscilla and Aquila. Before he sailed, he had his hair cut off at Cenchreae because of a vow he had taken. They arrived at Ephesus, where Paul left Priscilla and Aquila …  Now a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures … And when he wished to cross to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to welcome him. When he arrived, he greatly helped those who through grace had believed … And it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus.  

Acts states that Apollos came to Ephesus, crossed over to Greece at Achaia, and at one point, worked at Corinth, and that Apollos’ work at Corinth came after Paul’s work in the city.

2.5. What is with Barnabas and Mark?

Acts attests to Paul and Barnabas having a strong disagreement, which resulted in their group splitting up (Acts 15:36-40):

And after some days Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are”. Now Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark. But Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work. And there arose a sharp disagreement, so that they separated from each other. Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord.

Before anything else, it must be noted that the account of the disagreement in Acts fits Paul’s character very well  as it emerges in his letters – a zealous and exacting person. As McGrew notes, the Paul “would be unwilling to have John Mark on another journey after he turned back from a previous one is only too plausible”.[12]

With that said, reading these verses, a possible reason for Barnabas’ advocacy of Mark as a travel companion is that Barnabas may have thought that Paul was being too harsh, and that Mark would be helpful in the upcoming journey. In fact, in Paul’s second letter to Timothy, which is dated after this period in Acts, Paul asks Timothy to bring Mark due to his usefulness in ministry (2 Tim 4:11). Although Mark’s usefulness may have been one of the reasons for Barnabas’ advocacy of Mark, it is only a part of the explanation. Another reason for Barnabas’ advocacy of Mark emerges when we turn to Paul’s letter to the Colossians:

Aristarchus my fellow prisoner greets you, and Mark the cousin of Barnabas (concerning whom you have received instructions – if he comes to you, welcome him), and Jesus who is also called Justus.

Mark is Barnabas’ cousin – explaining why Barnabas was firm in insisting that Mark join the group in the trip they were planning.

2.6. Conclusion: undesigned coincidences between Acts and Paul’s letters

Undesigned coincidences between Acts and Paul’s letters provide further evidence of Acts’ historical reliability as well as the position that Acts was authored by Luke, a traveling companion of Paul. Other than the undesigned coincidences presented in this section, Lydia McGrew documents fifteen more undesigned coincidences between Acts and Paul’s letters in her work. These undesigned coincidences, taken all together, form a potent cumulative case for the reliability of Acts.

References:

  1. Lydia McGrew. (2020, August 3). “Timothy McGrew: Undesigned Coincidences in Scripture”. [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MHzNkQxKvU&list=PLe1tMOs8ARn08J6XcziBKENY6GDdIP7LI&index=1
  2. Wallace, Cold Case Christianity, pg. 187 
  3. Ibid, pg. 183
  4. McGrew, Hidden in Plain View, pg. 98
  5. Ibid.
  6. Ibid, pg. 45
  7. McDowell, S. (2017). UNIQUE EVIDENCE FOR THE NEW TESTAMENT: INTERVIEW WITH LYDIA MCGREW ABOUT “UNINTENDED COINCIDENCES. Retrieved from: https://seanmcdowell.org/blog/unique-evidence-for-the-new-testament-interview-with-lydia-mcgrew-about-unintended-coincidences-1
  8. McGrew, Hidden in Plain View, pg. 68
  9. McGrew, L. (2020). More on ur-source theories vs. undesigned coincidences. Retrieved from: https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/08/more-on-ur-source-theories-vs.html
  10. McGrew, Hidden in Plain View, pg. 30
  11. Paley, Horae Paulinae, pgs. 71-73
  12. McGrew, Hidden in Plain View, pg. 168

Debunking 10 Common Objections to God and Christianity

The Flying Spaghetti Monster, a parody god and religion (“Pastafarianism”) in skeptical circles

Skeptics hurl several objections to God and Christianity. You read and hear of them in social gatherings, on college campuses, on social media and the Internet, and in popular culture (Netflix, Hollywood, comedians, etc.). Skeptics who launch these, however, are not aware that there are good answers to these objections. Christianity has a rich intellectual tradition spanning 2,000 years. Its thinkers have and continue to ponder many questions (philosophical, theological, biblical, etc.). They also have and continue to provide answers to objections from non-Christian critics — from pagans in antiquity like Celsus, to atheists in our modern age like the late Christopher Hitchens.

As a Christian who has a lot more to learn, but is nevertheless informed in his tradition, I will respond to ten common objections to God and Christianity in this article, and show why these objections miss the mark. I will first lay out the skeptical objection, then proceed to debunk it with a rebuttal.

1. “Religion is the opium of the people, a ‘crutch’ for those who need hope or help in life.

We can respond to this objection in three ways. First, I will discuss why Christianity does not securely fit the bill of an “opium”. Second, I will clarify that this skeptical remark has no bearing on the truth of any religion. Third, I will point out that this remark can be turned around against atheists.

Responding to this skeptical remark will entail a discussion that could “press the wrong buttons” for some readers but that is not my desire. I hope we can all talk about sensitive topics and ponder uncomfortable questions for the sake of truth, and good and open discussion.

1.1. Christianity does not comfortably fit the bill of an “opium”

Yes, there are pleasing psychological aspects to religious belief, such as, in the case of Christianity, believing that one is immensely loved by God, that one is sustained by God’s grace in one’s life and guided in His providence, and that one will enter into God’s full presence in Heaven (i.e. the beatific vision) if one chooses God over sin in this life. However, not all aspects of Christian belief are pleasing and these aspects go against the idea of Christianity being an “opium”. Belief in the existence of hell for those who choose sin over God in this life is terrifying. Likewise, the notion that man is subject to a transcendent authority is unpleasant for many individuals who wish “to call their soul their own” and “live as they please”. Finally, Christianity’s high ethical demands (humility, chastity, temperance, etc.) are difficult and inconvenient. In fact, the early Church employed athletic metaphors (Heb 12:1, 1 Cor 9:25-27, Gal 5:7, Phil 2:16; 2 Tim 4:7) to describe themselves as Christians (“athletes”) and to describe the Christian life (“a race”). The celebrated 20th century writer, G.K. Chesterton, observed that many of his fellow British did not embrace the Christian life because they saw it as difficult, commenting:

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.[1]

Christianity is not an easy and convenient religion. It is because of Christianity’s unpleasant aspects that numerous former atheists have noted in their conversion stories that they were “reluctant converts” (e.g. C.S. Lewis, Guillaume Bignon, Marc Lozano, etc.).[2] They wanted atheism to be true but looking into the the evidence for the existence of God and the truth of the Christian religion compelled them to belief in Christian theism. C.S. Lewis, for example, an Oxford academic and writer, describes the climax of his conversion from atheism to Christianity:

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?[3]

Christianity does not solidly fit the bill of being an “opium” because there are aspects of the Christian faith that are unpleasant and inconvenient. In fact, there are many people out there who prefer Christianity to be false.

1.2. The remark has no bearing on the truth of any religion

It important to note that the remark “religion is the opium of the people” does nothing to refute the truth claims of any religion. Pleasing psychological benefits derived from a belief system have nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of a belief system. Christianity can be true and at the same time, be an effective coping mechanism for people who need hope or help in life. Likewise, Christianity can be false and be a great coping mechanism for people in need.

Further commenting, as a Christian, I believe the first option is true — Christianity is true and it is an effective coping mechanism for people in life. Speaking as a Christian who believes that Jesus is Lord and that the Bible is the inspired word of God, Christianity is not only an effective coping mechanism by human intention, it is an effective coping mechanism according to theological truth (the historical testimony of Jesus of Nazareth as God in the flesh) and by divine will (i.e. God sustaining us with His grace and guiding us in His providence). Jesus invites us to find comfort in Him (Matt 11:28-30) and assured His listeners to be at peace for God is with them (Matt 6:25-34; Jhn 14:27). As Christians, we should seek comfort in God, who entered into human history and told us to be at peace — for we are loved and cared for by Him.

1.3. The remark can be turned around against atheists

Finally, I want to point out that the remark in question can be easily turned around against atheists.

A theist could say that atheism is an opium for many atheists – a “happy pill” that provides pleasure, convenience, and peace.

Why pleasure and convenience? Under an atheistic worldview, people can “live as they please” and engage in sins that they are attached to (e.g. sexual sins). They would be free from any transcendent authority. Christianity being true is an uncomfortable thought for many atheists because it would compel them, through their conscience and intellect, to conform their personhood and life to the tenets of the Christian faith. A religion like Christianity, if true, entails a lot of change, and change is uncomfortable and inconvenient.

Why peace? An atheist can find comfort in the idea that they will not be judged for the way they lived their life after death – and that after death, there is just nothingness. 

Frankly speaking, many atheists today do not just not believe in God, they also do not want God to exist. They have a psychological preference or bias for atheism and want it to be true. Some atheists have even admitted this psychological preference openly.

Thomas Nagel, a prominent atheist philosopher, remarks:

I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time.[4]

Likewise, Aldous Huxley, an atheist writer and philosopher, notes:

The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none … For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning – the Christian meaning, they insisted – of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt: we would deny that the world had any meaning whatever.[5]

The remark can be turned around against atheists as well — for many atheists have a psychological preference for atheism. However, I also want to bring up the point that many atheists have a preference for atheism because I believe many atheists (to those it applies to) have not confronted this truth about the psychology of their beliefs, and more importantly, they do not realize the negative effect their bias for atheism may have in their pursuit of truth. Wanting God to not exist can be a hindrance to a proactive, honest, open-minded, fair, and vigorous examination of the evidence for God and Christianity.

Ultimately, whether Christian or non-Christian, it is great for all of us to be aware of our biases or preferences so that we can better pursue the truth, especially when it comes to the most important question of all – the question of God’s existence and if He has revealed Himself in any particular religion.

2. “If God created and sustains the universe, then what created and sustains God?”

Nothing did and nothing does. What caused the uncaused first cause? Who moved the prime mover? What sustains the non-contingent ground of contingent reality? Do you see how these sentences do not make sense? These sentences are actually contradictions, making them logically meaningless. God, as the uncaused first cause, as prime mover, and as the non-contingent ground of contingent reality is not caused, not moved, and not sustained by anything else. 

Thinkers of the classical theist tradition (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Leibniz, etc.) deduced that in order for contingent reality to exist, it must casually terminate in an uncaused first cause, and this is what we refer to as God. If something derived its existence from anything else, it could not be what classical theists refer to as God. 

While discussing this skeptical objection, I also want to clarify another point. Excluding the Kalam Cosmological argument, the classical arguments for God’s existence do not depend on the universe having a beginning. Plato and Aristotle believed the universe was eternal. Although Aquinas believed that the universe had a beginning due to scripture, he did not believe that the claim that the universe had a beginning could be established through philosophical argument. The classical arguments for God’s existence (excluding the Kalam Cosmological argument) work if the universe had a beginning or if it always existed. As Thomist philosopher Edward Feser states:

Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic, Thomistic, and Leibnizian cosmological arguments are all concerned to show that there must be an uncaused cause even if the universe has always existed.  Of course, Aquinas did believe that the world had a beginning, but (as all Aquinas scholars know) that is not a claim that plays any role in his versions of the cosmological argument.  When he argues that there must be a First Cause, he doesn’t mean “first” in the order of events extending backwards into the past.  What he means is that there must be a most fundamental cause of things which keeps them in existence at every moment, whether or not the series of moments extends backwards into the past without a beginning.[6]

3. “Anyone who rejects Zeus, Thor, Quetzalcoatl, and the other pagan gods — as Jews, Christians, and Muslims no less than atheists do — should, to be consistent, go one god further and reject also the God of Western monotheism”.

This statement reveals ignorance about what Christians mean by “God”. When we Christians say God we do not think “one being among many”, “contingent”, or “within the world”.

The historic Christian view of God (i.e. the classical theist view of God) is that God is not “a being”, He is being itself (Exo 3:13-14) or Aquinas put it, ipsum esse subsistens – “the sheer act of to be itself”.[7] Philosopher Edward Feser notes the error in equating the God of classical theism to gods like Zeus and Thor (or other beings that atheists compare God to like Santa Klaus, the Easter Bunny, a Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc.):

Proponents of the “ one god further” objection implicitly suppose that that it is a question of whether there exist one or more instances of an unusual class of entities called “gods”, understood as  “supernatural beings” comparable to werewolves, ghosts, and Santa Claus. And they think of the God of classical theism as merely one of these gods or beings alongside the others such as Zeus, Venus, Thor, Quetzalcoatl, and so forth … The God of classical theism is not a member of any species or genus — including the species or genus “gods” — because if he were, he would be composed of parts (such as genus and specific difference), and he is instead absolutely simple or noncomposite. He does not share an essence with other members of the same class called “gods”, because if he did, then there would be a distinction in him between his essence and his existence, and in fact he just is existence itself … Each of these various gods is “a being” alongside other beings, whereas the God of classical theism is not “a being” — that is to say, something which merely has being and derives being from some source — but is rather underived or subsistent being itself, that from which anything else that exists or could exist derives its being.[8]

God is also non-contingent. As Feser just mentioned, God does not derive His existence from anything. He simply is. On the other hand, pagan gods such as Zeus, Thor, Quetzalcoatl, etc. are contingent. They all have stories of their own creation called “theogeny”, something else is responsible for their existence. Zeus is the child of Cronus and Rhea; Thor is the child of Odin and Jord; Quetzalcoatl was born by a virgin named Chimalman, etc. Even if other beings do not have origin stories such as Santa Klaus and the Easter Bunny, they are still contingent, for they do not carry within themselves the reason for their existence. Santa Klaus and the Easter Bunny exist because they are comprised of matter such as organs, which are comprised of cells, which are comprised of organic molecules, which are comprised of subatomic molecules, and so on. If you take these away, Santa Klaus and the Easter Bunny would evanesce.

Furthermore, the God of classical theism transcends creation. In contrast, the pagan gods of Greco-Roman antiquity are beings within the world. Zeus resides on Mt. Olympus, and Thor, in Asgard. Quetzalcoatl lives in one of the levels of heaven in Aztec cosmology. Santa Klaus and the Easter Bunny, if they existed, are denizens of the natural world. Santa Klaus lives in the North Pole and delivers gifts to homes around the world while the Easter Bunny lays, decorates, and hides eggs in nature.

When atheists compare the God of classical theism to gods such as Zeus and Thor (or to other beings such as Santa Klaus, the Easter Bunny, or a Flying Spaghetti Monster), then he is committing a category mistake. If an atheist rejects the existence of gods that are contingent beings within the world then so do I. As a Christian and adherent of the classical theist tradition, that is not what I mean by God. 

Another flaw in the “one god further” objection is that it falsely implies that the evidence supporting the existence of God and the evidence supporting the existence of gods (Zeus, Thor, Quetzalcoatl, etc.) are the same, which, in the view of skeptics who make this objection, is no evidence. This is false. Philosophical theists throughout history have put forward an array of arguments for the existence of God. See, for example, Craig and Moreland’s The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology and Edward Feser’s Five Proofs of the Existence of God. Another important point is that classical theists have deduced that God, as prime mover, must possess certain attributes (e.g. omnipotence, omniscience, immutability, immateriality, oneness, simplicity, will, perfect goodness, and necessary existence). St. Thomas Aquinas devotes over a hundred double-column pages in His Summa Theologica in support of various divine attributes.[9] Much of Samuel Clarke’s book, “A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God”, is, as the title shows, devoted to arguing for certain divine attributes. Other philosophers of the classical theist tradition such as Aristotle, Plotinus, Leibniz, etc. also put forward arguments for divine attributes in their works.[10] 

How many philosophical arguments are presented in favor of a conception of god like Zeus or Thor? None. How many philosophical arguments are put forward for the existence of the God of classical theism? A lot! In fact, the God of classical theism is supported by a rich philosophical tradition. For this reason, the God of classical theism is also referred to as the “God of the philosophers”.

How many philosophers today believe in the existence of “gods” such as Zeus or Thor? None. How many philosophers today believe in the God of classical theism? A lot. In modern times, many atheist and agnostic philosophers have converted and have become classical theists on the basis of philosophical arguments. See, for example, Jacques Maritan, Edith Stein, Peter Geach, G.E.M. Anscombe, Mortimer Adler, Alasdair MacIntyre, John Finnis, Edward Feser, J. Budziszewski, etc.

Another notable example of a convert from atheism to classical theism is Anthony Flew. Flew was one of the most prominent atheist philosophers of the 20th century. Over time, however, Flew became convinced by the arguments of natural theology (i.e. what we can know about God through reason alone) – becoming a classical theist. In his book, “There Is a God”, Flew notes that he shares the same view of God as philosopher David Conway:

As for my new position on the classical philosophical debates about God, in this area I was persuaded above all by the philosopher David Conway’s argument for God’s existence in his book The Recovery of Wisdom: From Here to Antiquity in Quest of Sophia. Conway is a distinguished British philosopher at Middlesex University who is equally at home with classical and modern philosophy. 

The God whose existence is defended by Conway and myself is the God of Aristotle. Conway writes:

“In sum, to the Being whom he considered to be the explanation of the world and its broad form, Aristotle ascribed the following attributes: immutability, immateriality, omnipotence, omniscience, oneness or indivisibility, perfect goodness and necessary existence. There is an impressive correspondence between this set of attributes and those traditionally ascribed to God within the Judaeo-Christian tradition. It is one that fully justifies us in viewing Aristotle as having had the same Divine Being in mind as the cause of the world that is the object of worship of these two religions.”



Conway believes, and I concur, that it is possible to learn of the existence and nature of this Aristotelian God by the exercise of unaided human reason.
[11]

Also worth noting is that Flew would spend the remaining years of his life studying Christianity, not only because its conception of God is consistent with the God of classical theism, but also because Flew found the historical evidence supporting Christianity remarkable, and Christianity’s main personalities (Jesus of Nazareth and Paul of Tarsus) impressive. Regarding the historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection as laid out by Christian New Testament scholars, Flew remarks:

The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity.[12]

Commenting on the Christian religion, Flew notes:

As I have said more than once, no other religion enjoys anything like the combination of a charismatic figure like Jesus and a first-class intellectual like St. Paul. If you’re wanting omnipotence to set up a religion, it seems to me that this is the one to beat![13]

Ultimately, the “one god further” objection fails because it misunderstands what Christians mean by “God” and falsely implies that the evidence supporting the God of classical theism and the evidence supporting gods such as Zeus, Thor, Quetzalcoatl, etc. are the same.

4. “Religion was invented to explain what we did not understand about the natural world. In modernity, we now know that natural phenomena that were once attributed to gods are now explained by science. As science advances, religion retreats.”

We can respond to this objection in two parts.

First, I will address the objection that “Religion was invented to explain what we did not understand about the natural world” and that “in modernity, we now know that natural phenomena that were once attributed to the gods are now explained by science”.

These statements certainly apply to many religions such as the pantheon of gods of Greco-Roman antiquity (e.g. thunder to Zeus, earthquakes to Poseidon, certain weather conditions to the Anemoi, etc.) and to past and present animist religions, which affirm that divine forces organize and animate the natural world. This objection, however, does not apply to all religions. Christianity, for example, started because Jesus’ disciples discovered his tomb empty (Lk 24:9-12) and soon after, they had experiences, as individuals and in groups (1 Cor 15:3-8), that convinced them that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to them. The origins of Christian belief in Jesus as Lord and Messiah are not related to phenomena in nature that were not understood in antiquity.

Another point to note is that Christian theology positively contributed to the emergence of modern science. Christian theology viewed God as transcending creation and as having created a rational and orderly universe. Christian theology guided scholars in the Middle Ages to break free from the predominant pantheist-animist view of nature of antiquity, carry out the “depersonalization of nature” (i.e. viewing nature as not divine), and come to the conclusion that nature operates under universal natural laws.[14] With this view of nature, Medieval scholars were committed to developing explanations based on natural causation for phenomena in the universe. This was a critical step towards the emergence of modern science in 16th-century Europe. Looking at history, skeptics may point to the Greco-Roman pagan tradition and say that it viewed unexplained natural phenomena like storms and earthquakes as created by gods, but they may not say the same about the Christian tradition.

Second, I will now respond to the claim that “As science advances, religion retreats”. Science cannot examine the God of classical theism because science is limited to the study of the natural world, while the God of classical theism transcends the natural world.

The pagan gods of antiquity (e.g. Zeus, Poseidon, the Anemoi, etc.) and science compete “on the same field” – the natural world. As a result, the advance of science can tell us that there is zero evidence for superhuman beings like Zeus and Poseidon in the earth’s atmosphere and in the sea, and that natural phenomena that were once attributed to both gods (e.g. thunder for Zeus and earthquakes for Poseidon) are now understood to be the result of earth’s natural processes. In contrast, the God of classical theism and science do not compete on the same field, for the God of classical theism is not an item within the natural world that science studies. Science does not have the tools to study the prime mover that transcends contingent reality. Therefore, the advance of science does not cause the retreat of authentic religion, for the object of both fields (i.e. the natural world and God), once again, do not compete on the same field. Bishop Robert Barron draws an analogy between science and God and the study of the Harry Potter books and J.K. Rowling:

God is not a thing or an item or an event or a relationship within the empirically verifiable universe. Rather, God is the reason why there should be a universe at all … Think of this long sprawling story [like the Harry Potter series] with all these hundreds and hundreds of characters and plots and subsplots and things going on, and Hogwarts academy, and the whole world. Well, I could name all the characters and I could analyze all the characters and all the events. Who will I never find in this story? J.K. Rowling. She is not a character in the story. Rather, she is the reason why there is that world at all … Therefore science, go all the way, advance all you want because it is not in competition with God and the things of God.[15]

Science is also incapable of rebutting philosophical arguments for the necessity of a prime mover, for that is the realm of philosophy, in particular, metaphysics. This is the reason why a good number of classical theists are not fond of the Kalam Cosmological argument, because the Kalam is an argument that is dependent on scientific evidence that points to the universe having a beginning. As a result, and in contrast to the other classical arguments for God’s existence, the Kalam’s strength as an argument may be negatively affected by future scientific developments. As Feser remarks on philosopher William Lane Craig’s Kalam Cosmological Argument:

Another reservation I have is that the [Kalam] argument, at least as Craig presents it, in my view puts way too much emphasis on results in modern scientific cosmology. As I have argued many times, the chief arguments for God’s existence rest not on empirical science but rather on deeper principles of metaphysics and philosophy of nature which cannot be overturned by – and indeed must be presupposed by – any possible empirical science.[16] 

(Note: In my view, the Kalam Cosmological argument succeeds and I do not mind its dependence on science because the scientific evidence supporting it is strong (the Big Bang theory and the Borde–Guth–Vilenkin theorem). The Kalam is actually my favorite argument for God’s existence because it is compelling and simple. It is not technical and you do not need to be a philosopher to grasp the argument well. Feel free to check out Dr. Craig’s video on the Kalam Cosmological argument and Faithful Philosophy’s article on the finite age of the universe.)

5. “Funny that you think that your religion is true. If you grew up in India, you would probably be a Hindu arguing for Hinduism. If you grew up in the Middle East, you would probably be a Muslim arguing for Islam.”

Unless you are talking about geography, geography has nothing to do with truth. If you lived in Rome in the first century AD, you probably would have believed that there was nothing morally wrong with infant exposure.[17] If you lived in China in the 16th century, you probably would have believed that divine forces organize and animate the natural world.[18] If you live in North Korea today, you would probably believe that Kim Jong II invented the hamburger (it is an official state belief — seriously!).[19]

Predominant beliefs in a culture whether political, scientific, historical, philosophical, religious, etc. can be true or false, so we have to discern the truth about reality by following the evidence wherever it leads and assessing rational arguments, if any, in support of different positions. 

This brings us to our second point, which further rebuts the argument that “religious belief is only the result of cultural transmission” – many non-Christians have converted to Christianity on the basis of evidence. Many atheist and agnostic intellectuals, for example, converted to Christianity after being persuaded by philosophical arguments for the existence of God and historical arguments supporting the Christian faith. These former atheists and agnostics include men and women such as Jacques Maritain, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Thomas Merton, Edith Stein, Peter Geach, G.E.M. Anscombe, Malcolm Muggeridge, Mortimer Adler, Alasdair MacIntyre, John Finnis, Alister McGrath, Edward Feser, J. Budziszewski, Abigale Favale, etc.

Taking one person from this list as an example, Edward Feser was a convinced atheist philosopher for many years. He read the works of numerous skeptical philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, David Hume, J.L. Mackie, J.L. Schellenberg, Kai Nielsen, etc., and was firmly persuaded by their arguments. Feser’s reading in the philosophy of mind and language (John Searle and Gottlob Frege), however, made him lose his belief in materialism, which was a key component of his atheism. Furthermore, delving deeper into the classical theist tradition made Feser realize that theism was “much more philosophically sophisticated and worked out” than he had supposed.[20] In time, Feser ended up being convinced by theistic arguments for God’s existence — becoming a classical theist.

Now a classical theist, Feser began to look into whether God did reveal Himself in any particular religion. Based on the classical theist conception of God and his belief in the immateriality of the human intellect, Feser was able to rule out most religions. As Feser notes:

Now, since I eventually became convinced by the theistic arguments of philosophers like Aquinas and Leibniz, that ruled out certain religions right away. God, the arguments showed, is utterly distinct from the world, and there is in him something analogous to what we call intellect and will in us. I concluded that pantheistic religions, like Hinduism in most of its forms, are therefore mistaken at a fundamental level. So too are religions that conceive of the ultimate principle of reality in impersonal terms, as Confucianism and Taoism do. Buddhism is even more deeply mistaken insofar as it denies that there is any permanent divine reality underlying the world of appearances. So, while I respected the great thinkers of the Eastern religions, I decided that these religions were too deeply in error with respect to the nature of God to be acceptable.

A second problem with the Eastern religions was what they had to say about the nature of man. For another thing that I had become convinced of, you’ll recall, is the immateriality of the human intellect. The core of the individual human being, I had concluded, is an incorporeal self that stands apart from the entire material world in which we are embedded. And since this self is rational, it is like God in a way that nothing else in the material world is. I also eventually became convinced by the traditional philosophical arguments to the effect that this self’s incorporeal nature made it incorruptible. All of this makes human beings unique in nature; yet this uniqueness did not seem to me to be recognized in the Eastern religions. Even those having a doctrine of reincarnation, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, held that the individual person ultimately disappears, like a water droplet absorbed back into the ocean. There is no abiding self at all in Buddhism; and though there is an abiding self in Hinduism, what strictly abides is the deep core of the self that is taken to be identical to God, and not anything that is distinctive of this or that particular man or woman. For pantheistic Hinduism, everything is ultimately Godlike, because everything is ultimately God. There’s nothing special about human beings.

So, if any of the world religions is true, I judged, it had to be one that recognized that God was a creator utterly distinct from the world he creates, and that human beings do have a special destiny within that creation. Hence, I concluded that it is the view of God and the soul that one finds in the Abrahamic religions that was most in accord with what we could know through philosophical arguments. But were any of these religions true?
[21]

In time, Feser ended up becoming convinced of the truth of the Christian religion – converting in 2001. In his view, Christianity’s answer to the point of human existence is very plausible (reading the early Church fathers and the thesis of salvation as theosis in light of the biblical narrative).[22] He also found the logic grounding Christian doctrine, as well as its systematic structure, impressive. Finally, Feser found the historical evidence for the resurrection compelling as presented in the work of the Christian philosopher William Lane Craig. 

In the end, intellectual religious conversions firmly rebut the objection that religious belief is only the result of cultural transmission. People learn new information and this has the potential to change their beliefs and attitudes towards anything, including the existence of God and the truth of any particular religion. 

6. “The Bible goes against science. I do not believe that the world and all life in it, including humans, were created over a period of seven days. I also believe in evolution.”

First off, the type of Christianity being referred to here is called “fundamentalist Protestantism”. These Christians believe that the Bible has to be interpreted literally. It is important to note, however, that biblical literalism is a modern development and that Christians historically did not interpret the Bible this way. As atheist history writer Tim O’Neill notes (see also O’Neill’s article on biblical literalism):

In fact, the idea of Biblical literalism is a very modern notion – one that arose in the USA in the Nineteenth Century and is exclusively a fundamentalist Protestant idea.[23]

The historic Christian view is that any given Bible verse or passage could be interpreted via no less than four levels of exegesis — the literal, the allegorical/symbolic, the moral, and the eschatological. As O’Neill notes:

Of these, the literal meaning was generally regarded as the least important. This also meant that a verse of scripture could be interpreted via one or more of these levels and it could potentially have no literal meaning at all and be purely metaphorical or symbolic. Therefore the Church had no problem with learning that a passage which had been interpreted literally could no longer be read that way because we now have a better understanding of the world.[24] 

In contrast to modern biblical literalists, the early Church fathers interpreted Genesis in a variety of ways, and they recognized that it employs figurative language while at the same time affirming a primeval event in the history of man.[25] The early Church father, Origen (ca. 185 AD – 253 AD), for example, notes the following on Genesis:

Now who is there, pray, possessed of understanding, that will regard the statement as appropriate, that the first day, and the second, and the third, in which also both evening and morning are mentioned, existed without sun, and moon, and stars — the first day even without a sky? And who is found so ignorant as to suppose that God, as if He had been a husbandman, planted trees in paradise, in Eden towards the east, and a tree of life in it…No one, I think, can doubt that the statement that God walked in the afternoon in paradise, and that Adam lay hid under a tree, is related figuratively in Scripture, that some mystical meaning may be indicated by it…It is very easy for anyone who pleases to gather out of holy Scripture what is recorded indeed as having been done, but what nevertheless cannot be believed as having rea­sonably and appropriately occurred according to the historical account…And many other instances similar to this will be found in the Gospels by anyone who will read them with atten­tion, and will observe that in those narratives which appear to be literally recorded, there are inserted and interwoven things which cannot be admitted his­torically, but which may be accepted in a spiritual signification.[26]

St. Augustine (ca. 354 AD – 430 AD), the Church’s most influential theologian prior to Aquinas, affirmed the use of figurative language in Genesis. He also criticized Christians of this day who attempted to lecture people on the sciences because they thought the information was contained in scripture. As Augustine notes:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.[27]

One can even fast forward to today and look at Pope Benedict XVI’s comments on Genesis:

The Bible is not a natural science textbook, nor does it intend to be such … One cannot get from it a scientific explanation of how the world arose; one can only glean religious experience from it. Anything else is an image and a way of describing things whose aim is to make profound realities graspable to human beings. One must distinguish between the form of portrayal and the content that is portrayed. The form would have been chosen from what was understandable at the time —from the images which surrounded the people who lived then, which they used in speaking and in thinking, and thanks to which they were able to understand the greater realities. And only the reality that shines through these images would be what was intended and what was truly enduring. Thus Scripture would not wish to inform us about how the different species of plant life gradually appeared or how the sun and the moon and the stars were established. Its purpose ultimately would be to say one thing: God created the world. The world is not, as people used to think then, a chaos of mutually opposed forces; nor is it the dwelling of demonic powers from which human beings must protect themselves. The sun and the moon are not deities that rule over them, and the sky that stretches over their heads is not full of mysterious and adversary divinities. Rather, all of this comes from one power, from God’s eternal Reason, which became — in the Word — the power of creation.



The story of the dust of the earth and the breath of God, which we just heard, does not in fact explain how human persons come to be but rather what they are. It explains their inmost origin and casts light on the project that they are. And, vice versa, the theory of evolution seeks to understand and describe biological developments. But in so doing it cannot explain where the “project” of human persons comes from, nor their inner origin, nor their particular nature. To that extent we are faced here with two complementary—rather than mutually exclusive—realities.[28]

As Orthodox theologian and scholar of religion David Bentley Hart comments on the historic Christian view of biblical interpretation:

The Ancient and Medieval Church has always acknowledged that the Bible ought to be read allegorically in many instances, according to the spiritual doctrines of the church, and that the principal truths of scripture are not confined to its literal level which often reflects only the minds of its human authors.[29]

So this brings us to the question, how should we interpret the Bible? Well, before answering that question, we must grasp what the Bible is. The Bible is a collection of books of different genres (e.g. wisdom, poetry, songs, Greco-Roman biographies, apocalyptic, etc.), written by various authors, who were situated in particular cultures at different periods in history. Now if Christianity is true and the Bible is an inspired text through which God communicates truth through human authors, and there is an objective connection between the Old and New Testaments since they narrate salvation history, then that adds another layer of richness and complexity to the biblical text. For these reasons, the Bible must be read in thoughtful and nuanced ways.

This is why biblical scholarship is important, it allows us to arrive at proper, nuanced, and rich interpretation of the text through critical reading — taking into account genre, the culture of the author, language used, etc. Theology is also important because it allows us to read the biblical text in light of the revelation of Jesus Christ and salvation history. As St. Augustine remarked:

In the Old Testament the New is concealed, in the New the Old is revealed.[30]

Speaking for my tradition, the Catholic Church gives freedom to its theologians and biblical scholars to propose interpretations of biblical verses and passages provided that they do not conflict with the dogmas of the faith. The Church sets the parameters of what Christians have to affirm regarding the biblical texts but within and other than these parameters, the Church gives its theologians and biblical scholars the freedom to put forward interpretations that they believe are plausible or fit the evidence best.

On the subject of Genesis and human origins, for example, the Church says that Catholics have to affirm that God created the universe ex nihilo, that God infused our first parents with rational souls, that our first parents fell from a state of grace due to original sin and that we are all descendants of them. Apart from these de fide teachings, the Church “permits wide discussion on the issue of origins”.[31]

Although there are fundamentalist Christians today who reject scientific positions such as evolution, this does not apply to all Christian denominations. The Catholic Church, for example, the largest and oldest Christian denomination, never rejected evolution in its history. The Catholic Church sees no conflict between the Christian faith and evolution and leaves it up to individual Catholics whether to believe in either creationism, evolution, or intelligent design (I personally am an evolutionist).[32] Many Protestant denominations do not see a conflict between Christianity and evolution as well.[33] (For a great book on Adam, Eve, and evolution see Joshua Swamidass’ The Genealogical Adam and Eve).

Having said that, I also want to debunk the idea that Christianity has been a hindrance to science historically because nothing could be further from the truth. Historians of science have long rejected the “conflict thesis”, which sees science and religion as historical enemies.[34] Historians of science now affirm that although science and religion have clashed a number of times in history (mainly due to fundamentalist Protestantism), religion’s relationship with science has been by and large highly positive.[35] In fact, Christianity played a critical positive role in the emergence of modern science in 16th-century Europe. I will provide a summary of Christianity’s contributions to science below but if you want to dive deeper into the subject, you are free to check out section “V. Science” in part two of my Christianity: Builder of Western Civilization series

To begin the summary, after the fall of Rome, the West stood as a patchwork of barbarian kingdoms. Learning and scholarship had reached a low ebb and the next several centuries would be characterized by invasions, fragmentation and chaos, with few brief periods of stability and centralized authority. The West was basically a third-world country, economically poor and uneducated. It was from this low point that the Christian Church gradually took the West under its wing and worked to re-establish the groundwork of civilization.

The Church would educate Europe through its monastic and cathedral schools, and out of the Church’s cathedral schools would emerge the modern university.[36] Institutions of higher learning existed prior to the Middle Ages but the university we are familiar with today with its degrees (i.e. graduate and post-graduate), courses of study, standardized curriculum, faculties, thesis and thesis defense, is a Medieval innovation and a legacy of the Christian Church. These institutions would become the main sites of scientific activity in the West. As historian of science Peter Harrison notes:

The medieval universities, which were the chief sites of scientific activity in the later middle ages, were founded and supported by the Catholic Church.[37]

Likewise, historian of science Michael Shank, comments:

Between 1150 and 1500 … Europeans had had access to scientific materials than any of their predecessors in earlier cultures, thanks largely to the emergence, rapid growth and naturalistic arts curricula of medieval universities … About 30 percent of the medieval university curriculum covered subjects and texts concerned with the natural world.[38]

Popes and Christian religious orders would go on to establish many universities. (Yes, Popes! See Sapienza University for example, the first pontifical university founded in 1303 AD). 

The Church sponsored the education of its clergy at universities and many priest-scientists would go on to make significant contributions that laid the groundwork for modern science.[39] Priests Roger Grosseteste and Roger Bacon laid the underlying scientific principles of observation and repeatable experimentation. A priest by the name of Jean Buridan discovered the concept of impetus, which was the first stepping stone to Newton’s first law of motion. To name one more example, Thomas Bradwadine, another priest, was one of the four groundbreaking Merton Calculators. This group of Oxford scholars was the first to truly apply mathematics to the study of physics! As Bradwadine commented:

[Mathematics] is the revealer of every genuine truth, for it knows every hidden secret and bears the key to every subtlety of letters. Whoever, then, has the effrontery to pursue physics while neglecting mathematics should know from the start that he will never make his entry through the portals of wisdom.[40]

The Merton Calculators laid the foundations for the later key understanding of momentum by distinguishing kinematics from dynamics. In addition to this, they developed logarithmic functions and the Mean Speed Theorem.[41] 

Christian theology also contributed to the emergence of modern science. Christian theology guided Medieval scholars to break free from the predominant pantheist-animist view of nature of antiquity, carry out the “depersonalization of nature”, and come to the conclusion that nature operates under fixed laws. As historian of science Noah Efron notes:

Generations of historians and sociologists have discovered many ways in which Christians, Christian beliefs, and Christian institutions played crucial roles in fashioning the tenets, methods, and institutions of what in time became modern science … today almost all historians agree that Christianity (Catholicism as well as Protestanism) moved many early-modern intellectuals to study nature systematically. Historians have also found that notions borrowed from Christian belief found their way into scientific discourse with glorious results; the very notion that nature is lawful … For all these reasons, one cannot recount the history of modern science without acknowledging the crucial importance of Christianity.[42]

The Church also has a particular interest in astronomy. It provided substantial financial resources and social support over the centuries to this area of scientific study, to the point that historian of science John Heilborn notes that:

The Roman Catholic Church gave more financial aid and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and, probably, all other, institutions.[43]

In fact, at the turn of the 18th century, the four best observatories in the world were cathedrals that doubled up as astronomical observatories.[44] The calendar we use today, the Gregorian calendar, is an innovation of the Church. It was developed by Jesuit astronomer and mathematician Christoph Clavius and enacted by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582.[45]

The Jesuits contributed excellently to the sciences as well. By the 17th century, just one century after their founding, the Christian religious order had become “the leading scientific organization in Europe, publishing thousands of papers and spreading new discoveries around the world”.[46] Historian of science Jonathan Wright provides a snapshot of the Jesuit’s scientific achievements:

They had contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes and microscopes, to scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics and electricity. They observed, in some cases before anyone else, the coloured bands on Jupiter’s surface, the Andromeda nebula and Saturn’s rings. They theorised about the circulation of the blood (independently of Harvey), the theoretical possibility of flight, the way the moon effected the tides, and the wave-like nature of light.  Star maps of the southern hemisphere, symbolic logic, flood-control measures on the Po and Adige rivers, introducing plus and minus signs into Italian mathematics — all were typical Jesuit achievements, and scientists as influential as Fermat, Huygens, Leibniz and Newton were not alone in counting Jesuits among their most prized correspondents.[47]

Furthermore, Christian clergy made scientific contributions based on their learnings of the natural world from foreign missionary efforts. Lawrence Principe, a historian of science, notes:

But on a broader scale, during the Scientific revolution, Catholic monks, friars, and priests in missions constituted a virtual worldwide web of correspondents and data collectors. Information on local geography, flora, fauna, mineralogy, and other subjects as well as a wealth of astronomical, meteorological and seismological observations flooded back into Europe from far-flung Catholic missions in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. The data and specimens they sent back were channeled into natural-philosophical treatises and studies by Catholics and Protestants alike. This massive collection of new scientific information was carried out by Franciscans, Dominicans, Benedictines, and, perhaps most of all, Jesuits.[48]

Providing three more examples of impressive clergy-scientists, Marin Mersenne, a Christian priest, facilitated an exceptional amount of scientific information during the Scientific Revolution. He corresponded with over 140+ key thinkers throughout Europe (and as far away as Tunisia, Syria, and Turkey). For this reason, Mersenne has been called “the center of the world of science and mathematics during the first half of the 1600s”.[49] Modern genetics was founded by a monk growing peas in a monastic garden – Gregor Mendel. Finally, the Big Bang theory was formulated by a Christian priest, Fr. George Lemaitre.

Christianity has contributed greatly to science and this is recognized by contemporary historians. As historian of science Peter Harrison notes:

[W]e might regard this period, [the Middle Ages,] as one that saw Christianity set the agenda for the emergence of modern science.[50]

Historian of science Lawrence Principe comments:

[I]t is clear from the historical record that the Catholic Church has been probably the largest single and longest-term patron of science in history.[51]

Historian of science James Hannam notes:

[Until the late 18th century,] the Catholic Church was the leading sponsor of scientific research.[52]

Noah Efron, another historian of science, states that the Catholic Church was the leading patron of science for “a crucial millennium”.[53]

Today, the Church’s interest in and support of the sciences can be seen most prominently in its Pontifical Academy of the Sciences (PAS) – a scientific academy, with a first-rate roster, that aims to promote the progress of the mathematical, physical, and natural sciences. The Church also has its own observatory, the Vatican Observatory, in Castel Gandolfo, Italy. Of course, the Church continues to educate people in the sciences worldwide through its schools, especially at the higher level. The Catholic Church’s 1,300+ universities offer degrees in various scientific fields (biology, chemistry, physics, M.D. programs, etc.) and scientific research is conducted and published at these institutions.[54]

Contrary to portrayals in Netflix and Hollywood, Christianity has been, by and large (excluding clashes from fundamentalist Protestantism), an excellent ally of the sciences. Historians have written many works debunking the conflict thesis and detailing Christianity’s critical contributions to science. These include works such as Edward Grant’s God and Reason in the Middle Ages (2001) Roland Number’s Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion (2010), James Hannam’s God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science (2010), Derrick Peterson’s Flat Earths and Fake Footnotes: The Strange Tale of How the Conflict of Science and Christianity Was Written Into History (2021), and David Hutchings and James Ungureanu’s Of Popes and Unicorns: Science, Christianity and How the Conflict Thesis Fooled the World (2021). Although the conflict thesis has been long rejected by historians, works rebutting it continue to be made. It can earnestly be described as “flogging a dead horse” at this point. Thomas Dixon, a historian of science and religion, observes:

[Ever] since John Hedley Brooke’s Science and religion: some historical perspectives (1991), a thriving industry has grown up among historians of science debunking the idea of an inevitable and timeless conflict between religion and science.[55]

For a free source online, I highly recommend checking out atheist history writer Tim O’Neill’s debunking of the conflict thesis and his rebuttal of historical myths regarding the Galileo affair.

7. “The Catholic Church is scandalously rich, it is disgusting. They are living in wealth.”

The Church has a lot of money, but the question is — where does this money go? Are priests typically living in luxury as a result of donations from the laity? 

Answering the first question (“where does this money go?”), I do not think people who launch this objection are aware of how much money is needed to sustain and expand the Church’s work. I will first talk about the affairs of the Vatican, whose financial assets are managed by the Pope.[56] Then I will talk about the activities of Catholic religious orders and dioceses worldwide. Catholic religious orders and dioceses are entirely de-centralized from the Vatican.[57] They are run by “Superior Generals” and bishops respectively.

The Vatican, like any independent state, has a lot going on that cannot be easily summarized, but we can start our discussion with the fact that the Vatican has sixteen dicasteries (e.g. dicastery of Evangelization, dicastery of Clergy, dicastery of Communications, etc). To give you an example of one of these, the dicastery of Communications is in charge of transmitting the message of the Pope in 40+ languages over TV, radio, social media, print, and photography. This dicastery employs 530+ people.[58] In addition to its dicasteries, the Vatican comprises the Secretariat of State (which is in charge of international relations and diplomatic missions), institutions of justice, institutions of finance, various other institutes (e.g. the Labour Office of the Apostolic See, the various Pontifical academies, the Vatican Apostolic Library, etc.), interdicasterial commissions, and commissions and committees. The point is, do not think the Vatican is just St. Peter’s Basilica, The Apostolic Palace, and St. Peter’s Square and Colonnade. It is much more than these. The Vatican is a city-state that requires substantial financial resources to run. In 2021, the Vatican even posted a deficit.[59]

Going beyond the Vatican, the Church’s religious orders run a large number of healthcare facilities (hospitals, clinics, orphanages, etc.) and schools (seminaries, primary and secondary schools, and universities) worldwide — and money is needed to maintain, develop, and establish more of these institutions. Moving on to Catholic dioceses, these need to be run and developed (e.g. utility costs for seminaries and churches, salaries of church employees, the building of new parish structures and new churches, etc.). For both religious orders and dioceses, funding is needed for various charitable activities and missionary efforts as well.

All of these require a lot of money. A sustainable financial flow is needed to maintain, improve, and expand the activities of the Church, as well as pay off any debts the Vatican, a religious order, or a diocese may have to financial institutions.[60]    

This brings us to the second question: are priests typically living in luxury? The answer is no. Priests do not have high salaries. In the Philippines, priests have an entry-level salary of P23,937 a month, and an average salary of P32,628 a month. This puts them in the lower middle-income bracket of the country (P19,928.94 to P38,597.88).[61] Priests have comfortable lives in terms of being fed well and living in good functional residences but priests typically do not enjoy the luxuries of those living in middle- to higher-end subdivisions (e.g. pools, occasional shopping sprees at malls, higher-end cars, eating in higher-end restaurants, annual or bi-annual trips abroad for recreational purposes, etc.).  

Furthermore, there are other aspects of a priest’s lifestyle that are not easy. Priests do not enjoy the level of privacy that the laity possess in their private residences, since priests typically live in communal residences with other clergy. Of course, priests cannot get married too! 

If you think priests typically live lives of luxury and privilege, you are free to enroll in a seminary right now. There is a reason why most Christians, even most devout Christians, do not become priests – it entails a lot of sacrifice. This is why there is a shortage of priests (priest-to-laity ratio) even in a highly Christian country like the Philippines — not a lot of people are willing to give up many of the world’s goods (material goods, family life, the enjoyment of travel, etc.).[62] If you want to enjoy the goods of a world, priesthood is not the way to go.

Look, I have no doubt that there are corrupt priests out there who misuse the Church’s money (there are good priests and there are bad priests) – particularly those in higher positions within the Church. When people are put in a position of power and have the means to access the pool of money of an organization, corruption happens – be it in government, in business, or in the Church. That is reality. The point, however, is that the average priest does not live a material life that the laity should envy. If you are middle to upper class, you are living a life more materially blessed than the average priest.

As for the many beautiful churches of the Church, including any gold and valuably adorned items like chalices or monstrances in them, these are not for the material benefit of the clergy in their personal lives, these are for the purpose of giving glory to God (wealth can be used to glorify God, see Matt 26:6–13), to signify and honor theological realities (e.g. the Real Presence — that Jesus is truly present body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Eucharist), and are for the benefit of the entire Christian faithful (beauty uplifts the soul and draws one to God, “Via Pulchritudinis”).

Moving on to the Church’s art, which you see if you go to the Vatican Museum in Rome, these are for everyone to appreciate. The Vatican, like other Western cultural institutions, is serving as a steward and caretaker of European history.[63] The Vatican charges a modest €17 for entry into its museum, which includes access to the Raphael Rooms and the Sistine Chapel. (€17 is the same price as The Lourve in Paris and cheaper than the Natural History Museum in New York).[64] On the other hand, St. Peter’s Basilica is free to enter, meaning that the cost of upkeep and employees is largely paid for from a deficit.[65]

8. “Christianity is bad for society.”

There is a lot I want to say in response to this objection but to keep my response punchy but not too long, I will set aside Christianity’s contributions in the past (you are free to check out my four-part series, Christianity: Builder of Western Civilization, to learn more on this) and focus on Christianity’s contributions today. In addition to this, I will lay out the positive benefits of religion according to social science. 

Regarding Christianity’s contributions today, the Catholic Church is the largest non-governmental provider of education and healthcare in the world.[66] 

In the area of education, as of 2021, the Church operated globally 214,000+ primary and secondary schools, and 1,300+ universities.[67] Especially noteworthy is the Church’s major role in establishing universities across Africa. To give two examples, as of 2019, Nigeria has 23 public universities and 17 private universities.[68] Of the 17 private universities, the Church built them all. Nigeria has 61 private universities. Of the 61 private universities, 31 were built by the Church.[69] Joel Carpenter, a historian and director of the Nagel Institute for the Study of World Christianity, comments:

This trend is quite dynamic across the continent … sub-Saharan Africa is one of the “hot spots” in the growth of Christian higher education worldwide.[70]

Moving on to healthcare, as of 2010, it was estimated that the Catholic Church managed 26% of the world’s healthcare facilities.[71] In 2011, the Church ran 117,000+ healthcare facilities worldwide, including hospitals, clinics, orphanages, homes for the elderly, handicapped, and those with special needs, centers for the care of those with leprosy, etc.[72] Another notable point is that among the Church’s 5,500+ hospitals, an estimated 65% of them are located in developing countries.[73]

Adding to its contributions in education and healthcare, the Church may be the largest charitable organization in the world. We do not have statistics on the Church’s total charitable spending, but it is reasonable to conclude that the Church is the largest charitable organization today given that it is the largest Christian Church and engages in a wide scope of charitable activities. As journalist David Patton notes:

Caritas, the umbrella organisation for [a large number of] Catholic aid agencies, estimates that spending by its affiliates totals between £2 billion and £4 billion, making it one of the biggest aid agencies in the world. Even these numbers only tell half the tale. Caritas does not include development spending by a host of religious orders and other Catholic charities, while most of the 200,000 Catholic parishes around the world operate their own small-scale charitable projects which are never picked up in official figures. Establishing like-for-like comparisons is hard, but there can be little doubt that in pretty much every field of social action, from education to health to social care, the Church is the largest and most significant non-state organisation in the world.[74]

This is only the Catholic Church as well — Protestant Christianity also does excellent work. According to Forbes, in 2021, Protestant Christian charities in the United States comprised almost half (eleven out of twenty-five!) of the country’s top 25 charities – Salvation Army (#3), Habitat for Humanity International (#6), YMCA of the USA (#8), Compassion International (#10), Samaritan’s Purse (#17), World Vision (#18), Food for the Poor (#19), Mount Sinai Health Systems (#20), Lutheran Services in America (#21), MAP International (#23), and Campus Crusade for Christ (#25).[75]

Christianity is a leading source of social action in the world today. Its impact in the areas of education, healthcare, and charity is terrific.

According to social science, religion has many positive benefits as well. In the section below, I will not focus on individual studies but on meta-analyses and systematic reviews which put together multiple studies to find the overall general trend on an issue (a meta-analysis is “a study that takes in all studies published across a time period on a specific topic”).[76] Moreover, since these studies are conducted by and large in the West, Christianity is the focus of these studies many times.[77]

To start, we can discuss religion’s effect on crime and delinquent behavior. A 2001 meta-analysis (60 studies) showed that religion is a moderate deterrent of crime. As researchers Colin Baier and Bradley Wright note: 

We examined data from 60 studies and we found that religion had a statistically significant, moderately sized effect on crime of about r=-.12 … Our findings give confidence that religion does indeed have some deterrent effect.[78]

More recent studies have also confirmed religiosity’s inverse effect on crime and delinquent behavior. A 2010 systematic review showed that 90% of studies (244 of 270) find an inverse or beneficial relation between religion and some measure of crime or delinquency, 9% of studies (24 of 270) found no association or reported mixed findings, while only two studies (0.008%) found that religion was positively associated with a harmful outcome.[79] A 2015 meta-analysis of 62 studies found that religiosity was inversely correlated with alcohol use, illicit drug use, and non-drug delinquency (i.e. theft, robbery, assault, and murder).[80]

Moving on to religion and personal well-being, a large 2001 meta-analysis of 850 studies found that “religious involvement is generally associated with greater-wellbeing, less depression and anxiety, greater social support, and less substance abuse”.[81] A 2021 meta-analysis (34 studies) also found a “moderate positive correlation” between religiosity and resilience, which was defined as the “ability to recover from a difficult situation”.[82] 

Another benefit of religion is that it fosters prosocial behavior (e.g. helping, sharing, donating, etc.). An extensive 2006 study across 53 countries found that “frequent churchgoers are more active in volunteer work and a devout national context has an additional positive effect”.[83] A 2020 systematic review showed that religiosity is positively correlated with charitable giving to outgroups and secular organizations.[84] A 2015 meta-analysis (93 studies) also shows that religious priming is positively correlated with prosocial behavior.[85] Priming is when researchers divide subjects into a control group and an experimental group. In this study, the experimental group was primed with religious activity (e.g. prayer, worship music, a Bible study, etc.) while the control group was not primed. 

Furthermore, studies confirm religion’s benefits being linked to intrinsic religiosity but not extrinsic religiosity. Individuals with an orientation of intrinsic religiosity “want to hold to the core tenets of a religion … [they] make central their religion as the framework for their lives, and they try to consistently live the religion they believe”.[86] On the other hand, individuals with an orientation of extrinsic religiosity are “religious as a means to an end. One is religious to be a part of a community, for sociability reasons, a distraction, or because it is a family tradition, but one does not have to actually believe what the religion teaches”.[87]  

A 2009 paper that surveyed a wide variety of research found that intrinsic religiosity was associated with higher self-control and self-regulation while extrinsic religiosity was not.[88]  

A 1997 meta-analysis (14 studies) found that intrinsic religiosity positively correlates with mental health and altruism while extrinsic religiosity negatively correlates with mental health and altruism.[89] A 2003 meta-analysis (147 studies) found that intrinsic religiosity was negatively correlated to depressive symptoms but extrinsic religiosity was positively correlated to depressive symptoms.[90] A 2015 meta-analysis (9 studies) and a 2017 review of the literature (8 studies) both showed that intrinsic religiosity was negatively correlated with suicidal behavior.[91] 

A 2002 meta-analysis (12 studies) found that those with an intrinsic religious orientation positively correlated with three of the big personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) and did not correlate with the other two big personality traits (neuroticism and openness).[92] However, those identified as “mature” in their religion positively correlated with four of the five big personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness) and negatively correlated with neuroticism. Extrinsic religiosity, on the other hand, positively correlated with neuroticism and did not correlate with the other big personality traits.

In the end, social science firmly points to the conclusion that religion gives rise to numerous benefits. It deters crime and delinquent behavior, boosts mental health, and fosters personal development and prosocial behavior. Furthermore, the positive benefits of religion are tied to an intrinsic religious orientation rather than an extrinsic religious religion. In other words, religion’s benefits shine through when a person earnestly believes and practices his faith. This is well-evidenced by Christianity’s rich history of saints, Christian men and women of amazing virtue who lived lives of service to God and others (think St. Francis of Assisi, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, St. Philip Neri, St. Therese of Liseux, Bl. Pier Giorgio Frasatti, etc.).  

With that said, I do recognize that religion has negative effects as well. Religious people can be inspired by their theology to act negatively towards others they view as engaging in sin. Christians, for example, can treat people with same-sex attraction poorly (insult, shun, look down on, etc.) due to their faith. However, it is important to note that these Christians, though inspired by their faith to act poorly in these cases, are actually not following Christianity’s teachings. Jesus taught the primacy of love. In fact, it is through love that Jesus said that others would come to know that they were his followers. As Jesus said in Jhn 13:34-35:

As I have loved you, so you also must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

Jesus also befriended sinners (e.g. tax-collectors and prostitutes) and sought to lead them away from sin (Lk 5:31-32):

It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.

In the parable of the Pharisee and tax-collector, Jesus communicates that God values humility and looks down on self-righteousness (Luke 18:9-14).

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable.



The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

Treating people badly, such as those with same-sex attraction, is contrary to love, and therefore, contrary to the Christian faith. Shunning sinners is contrary to both love and the Christian mission of preaching the good news. Rather than shun sinners, Christians are called to love them and through earnest friendship, lead them away from sin and towards God. Christianity is at its core, about love, and to love means “to will the good of the beloved”, including and especially his or her soul. Finally, Christianity teaches that Christians ought to be humble rather than self-righteous and that we are all sinners in need of God’s grace (Rom 3:23-24).

The teachings of Jesus are morally excellent. Unfortunately, Christians do not always live up to them. The problem with Christians who treat people such as those with same-sex attraction poorly is that they are so focused on the sin (in this case, non-marital sexual activity — sexual attraction, by itself, is not a sin) that they completely forget Jesus’ teachings on the primacy of love and humility, as well as their Christian duty to preach the good news. The problem then is not Christianity’s teachings, it is the failure of Christians to live according to the teachings of Jesus — the failure of Christians to live according to the Christian ideal. When Christians largely succeed in living the Christian ideal, you get the saints – Christian men and women who cultivated virtue in their lives to a degree that amazes. In fact, Pope Benedict XVI names the lives of the saints, along with the beauty Christianity has produced (Christian religious art, medieval Gothic cathedrals, Gregorian chant, etc.) as the two most effective apologia for the faith. As Pope Benedict XVI remarks:

[T]he true apology of Christian faith, the most convincing demonstration of its truth against every denial, are the saints, and the beauty that the faith has generated … Nothing can bring us into close contact with the beauty of Christ himself other than the world of beauty created by faith and light that shines out from the faces of the saints, through whom his own light becomes visible.[93]

In the end, it is difficult to deny that Christianity is an excellent net positive force for good in the world today. Christianity’s contributions in the areas of education, healthcare, and charity worldwide are terrific. Social science also shows that religiosity has many benefits – it deters crime and delinquent behavior, aids in mental health, and fosters personal development and prosocial behavior. The findings of social science regarding religion are further evidenced by Christianity’s rich tradition of saints — Christian men and women, in every generation, who have lived lives of remarkable virtue and service to God and others.

Tuloy Sa Don Bosco, a center for the poor run by the Salesian order in the Philippines. The Salesians provide free primary and secondary education to 900+ former street children and children from abusive family environments. They also provide free housing for the center’s 200+ resident students.
Kiria-ini Mission Hospital, a Christian mission hospital in Kenya run by the Consolata Sisters. It is one of the 497 Catholic mission hospitals in the country.
Missionaries of Charity sisters prepare lunch for the poor in the order’s soup kitchen in St. Louis, Missouri. The Missionaries of Charity conduct excellent work for the poor in 133 countries worldwide.
Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati (1901 – 1925) during one of his mountain climbs. Frassati was dubbed by Pope John Paul II as “the man of the eight beatitudes” and lived a life of outstanding service to the poor.

9. “I don’t see how the Christian religion can be true given the Church’s sexual abuse crisis”.

The Catholic Church does have a sexual abuse problem. Over the past many decades, there has been a plethora of sexual abuse cases. Even worse is the fact that many bishops around the world were complicit in covering up cases of abuse in their dioceses.

Before I address the core of this objection (“How can Christianity be true given the sexual abuse crisis?”), I need to raise four points in order to bring balance to the picture and correct wrong assumptions that could emerge in people’s minds due to the media’s frequent spotlighting of sexual abuse cases within the Church, as well as the common portrayals of priests as sex offenders in popular culture (Hollywood and Netflix).

First, it needs to be clarified that the Pope is not responsible for sexual abuse cover-ups around the world. The Church is a decentralized organization.[94] The Pope does not know what is happening in the diocese of Kalookan, Philippines, or the diocese of Syracuse, New York. The administrators of Catholic dioceses around the world are the appointed bishops of these dioceses. These are the individuals responsible for covering up sexual abuse in an area, should there be any. 

Second, it must be pointed out that the rate by which Catholic priests commit sexual abuse is no higher than the rate of sexual abuse of clergy of other religious groups and less than the rate of sexual abuse among the general population of men. This is what the data shows. As noted by Thomas Plante, a professor of psychology at Santa Clara University: 

Catholic clergy aren’t more likely to abuse children than other clergy or men in general. According to the best available data (which is pretty good mostly coming from a comprehensive report by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 2004 as well as several other studies), 4% of Catholic priests in the USA sexually victimized minors during the past half century. No evidence has been published at this time that states that this number is higher than clergy from other religious traditions. The 4% figure is lower than school teachers (at 5%) during the same time frame and perhaps as much as half of the numbers of the general population of men.[95]

Likewise, Ernie Allen, current Founding Chairman and former president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, remarks:

We don’t see the Catholic Church as a hotbed of this or a place that has a bigger problem than anyone else. I can tell you without hesitation that we have seen cases in many religious settings, from traveling evangelists to mainstream ministers to rabbis and others.[96]

Dr. Philip Jenkins, a professor of history and religious studies at Penn State, and author of Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis (Oxford University Press) states:

My research of cases over the past 20 years indicates no evidence whatever that Catholic or other celibate clergy are any more likely to be involved in misconduct or abuse than clergy of any other denomination —or indeed, than nonclergy …  (I cannot be called a Catholic apologist, since I am not even a Catholic).[97]

Michael Castleman, a San Francisco journalist who has spent decades delving into sex-related research, comments that only a very small portion of child sex abusers are priests. As Castleman notes in his Psychology Today article, Beyond Bad-Apple Priests: Who the Pedophiles Really Are:

From media reports, one might infer that Catholic priests commit most pedophilia. In fact, only a tiny fraction of child sex abusers are priests.

We know who the pedophiles are from the National Sexual Health Survey (NSHS), a large, comprehensive study of American sexuality based on in-depth interviews in 1996 with a representative sample of 8,400 Americans…

Ninety-five percent of the abusers were men.

Who were the molesters? NSHS categories included: strangers, dates, friends or acquaintances, parents, step-parents, other relatives, and others. Dates, friends, and acquaintances comprised the largest group of assailants (38 percent), followed by non-parent relatives (23 percent), others (15 percent), strangers (10 percent), parents (6 percent), and step-parents (4 percent).

Victims under 12 were typically abused by caregivers: parents, step-parents, other relatives, babysitters, or camp or recreational-program staff. Teens were generally abused by friends or acquaintances.

Under “other,” the NSHS asked: Who? Surprisingly, not one victim mentioned a priest. Most of the abusers in this category were teachers, neighbors, doctors, grandparents, a parent’s friend or coworker, or an adult around the house: a gardener, or repairman.

Not a single priest. I emphasize this not to exculpate pedophile priests, but rather to elucidate the reality of this crime … The problem of child sexual abuse is much larger than bad apples in the priesthood. As the NSHS clearly shows, we’re dealing with bad apples potentially anywhere.[98]

Yes, the Catholic Church has a sexual abuse problem but the rate of abuse within the Church is no higher than the rate of abuse by other religious clergy and is less than the rate of abuse of the general population of men. Sexual abuse is not a particularly serious problem (compared to the clergy of other religious groups or the general population of men) of the Catholic Church. It is a human problem.

This brings us to the third point — sexual abuse cover-ups occur in various institutions. According to a 2022 investigation by U.K.’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), a culture of sexual abuse cover-up exists in many of Britain’s schools.[99] The investigations found that headteachers and school staff dismiss allegations or do not take proper action when allegations arise because they do not want to damage the school’s reputation. A 2012 review by the Los Angeles Times revealed sexual abuse cover-up in the Boy Scouts of America. There were 500+ cases wherein the organization either did not notify the police or “went out of their way to conceal reports of abuse”.[100] In 2022, Netflix released a documentary on sexual abuse cover-up in the Boy Scouts entitled “Leave No Trace”. Hollywood also has a long history of sexual abuse and people in the industry protecting their own and “looking the other way”.[101] Alissa Wilkinson, a culture reporter at Vox, states:

There’s no political or religious or any other kind of boundary to communities that cover up for abusers and silence the accusers. It happens at Fox News. It happens in Hollywood and among communities of cinephiles. It happened among sports fans at Penn State. It happens on college campuses. It happens in Silicon Valley and in politics on the left and right. It happens in the Catholic Church, in missionary communities, in evangelical churches.[102]

Moving on to the fourth point, at least in the United States, cases of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church have been on a trend of decline since the 1980s and have especially declined into the 21st century, as a result of effective reforms by the American Church.[103] In 2002, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) instituted mandatory reporting guidelines, and Catholic dioceses enacted “safe environment policies” that prohibited adults from being alone with minors except in certain approved situations. David Gibson of the Washington Post notes the effectiveness of the Church’s reforms in his article, 10 years after Catholic sex abuse reforms, what’s changed?, saying: 

Whatever its past record, the Catholic Church in the U.S. has made unparalleled strides in educating their flock about child sexual abuse and ensuring that children are safe in Catholic environments.

Over the past 10 years, Catholic parishes have trained more than 2.1 million clergy, employees, and volunteers about how to create safe environments and prevent child sexual abuse. More than 5.2 million children have also been taught to protect themselves, and churches have run criminal background checks on more than 2 million volunteers, employees, educators, clerics and seminarians. Allegations of new abuse cases continue to decline … and appear to reflect the effectiveness of some of the charter’s policies as well as ongoing efforts to increase screening of seminarians and to deal with suspected abusers before they claim multiple victims.[104]

Having raised these four points and brought balance and perspective to the reality of the Church’s sexual abuse problem, we can now turn to address the core of the objection – how can the Christian religion be true given the Church’s sexual abuse crisis?

The response to this objection is that the moral evils committed by religious people do not make their religion false. A religion can be true while having adherents who engage in moral evil (i.e. sin). In fact, moral evil by men, including Christians, is expected (but not approved) under a Christian worldview, because Christianity affirms that man has a fallen human nature due to original sin and that as a result, he is prone to sin and error. 

When we look at the scripture, we see that men of the Judeo-Christian tradition committed moral evil (even the Bible’s protagonists!) — many of these moral evils were especially grave as well. In the Old Testament, Cain murdered his brother Abel. Sampson slept with a prostitute and broke his Nazarite vow a number of times. King Saul worshipped pagan gods alongside YHWH, gravely violating the first commandment. King David lusted after a woman, had her husband killed, then married her. In the New Testament, Judas betrayed Jesus for money. Peter, Jesus’ leading disciple, denied Jesus thrice and was later called out by Paul for his moral shortcoming in Antioch (Gal 2:10-13). Even if Jesus respected and affirmed the religious office of the Pharisees, Jesus also pointed out their hypocrisy (Matt 23:1-3):

The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they teach.

All of us are sinners. All Christians fall short of the Christian ideal. I certainly do not expect the Church’s record to be blameless because it is an institution comprised of fallible human beings. Anything involving men, be it ourselves, social institutions, or history, will always be black and white – a mix of good and evil. 

Regarding the moral failures of the Church’s priests (corruption, sexual sin, etc.), I also want to point out that this is why we are often told as Christians to pray for our priests. The devil will especially target God’s officers – His priests and pastors – because he knows that he could do the most damage to the body of Christ by leading these individuals into grave sin. By the nature of their vocation, priests and pastors have a “target on their back”. As it is in war, you target the enemy’s officers. 

Ultimately, this skeptical objection fails because moral evil committed by religious people does not make their religion false. In the same way, religious people doing moral good does not make their religion true. In the case of the Christian religion, its truth is dependent on the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. If Jesus did rise from the dead, then Christianity is true. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then Christianity is false. As St. Paul succinctly put it in his letter to the church at Corinth (1 Cor 15:14):

 [I]f Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.

To ponder the truth or falsehood of the Christian religion will entail, at its core, examining Christianity’s origins — the historical evidence for the alleged resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, which Jesus’ disciples proclaimed as reality shortly following his death.

10. “Religion does not matter. What matters is that you are a good person, and one does not need religion to be a good person.”

False, religion does matter – if it is true. The question one should ask, above all, is “Does God exist and did He reveal Himself in a particular religion?”. If yes, then it is right and just to give God honor. It is not only right and just to give God honor due to His excellence (perfect goodness is an attribute of the God of classical theism), but also because all contingent reality derives its being from Him.

In order to elaborate further on why it is just to give God honor, we need to talk about the virtue of justice and the virtue of religion. As Christian theologian Scott Hahn notes, justice is the virtue by which “we render to others what is their due”, while religion, as a virtue, involves “giving to God what He is due”.[105] For this reason, religion is “the highest form of justice”.[106] 

Religion is also a transcendent form of justice because it is a case wherein what is owed to another cannot be met. An example of a transcendent form of justice would be our parents.[107] We cannot give them back what they gave us because our parents gave us life, love, food, clothing, shelter, education, wisdom, and all of the nurture that comes from fathering and mothering. When it comes to our parents, justice calls for pietas, or as embodied in the ten commandments – “Honor your father and your mother”. Even more than our parents, God, as Creator and non-contingent ground of contingent reality, gives us everything – our lives, our family and friends, the food we eat, the air we breathe, the nature we enjoy, etc. 

Furthermore, if Christianity is true, then God’s goodness to us should make us feel extremely shy, like how we would feel about a good friend who has done too much good to us – more than we deserve. Under Christianity, God humbled Himself by taking on our lesser human form, suffered for us, and ultimately, died for us out of love. Through death on the cross, God paid the price for all our sins – liberating us from its bondage. In the present day, God continues to provide us the grace to do good (2 Cor 12:9), guide us in our temporal affairs, and bring good out of evil in our lives (Gen 50:20; Rom 8:28). He is always eager, like the father of the Prodigal Son, to forgive us of our sins, no matter how many times and how gravely we offend Him – He just waits for us to return to Him. Moreover, God, at every moment, loves us infinitely. God is not only our Lord and Creator, He is also our greatest friend, ally, and lover. 

It is right and just that we honor our parents based on who they are (i.e. our parents) and the good that they give us. Infinitely more so, it is right and just to honor God based on who He is and the good that He gives us. As Christian priests say at the Holy Mass:

It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God, through Christ our Lord. In him you have been pleased to renew all things, giving us all a share in his fullness. For though he was in the form of God, he emptied himself and by the blood of his Cross brought peace to all creation.[108]

In addition to the virtue of religion leading man to give God due honor, the virtue also leads to man’s flourishing. For when man worships God, his mind is subjected to God, and it is in this subjection to God that man’s mind finds perfection.[109] When man orients himself towards God, he orients himself towards the Good and finds true freedom, which is not “the ability to do whatever I want” but the “capacity to do good” and liberation from sin.[110] Think about it, are you truly free when you are prideful, self-centered, vain, envious, lustful, etc.? As stated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2097, v. 14):

The worship of the one God sets man free from turning in on himself, from the slavery of sin and the idolatry of the world.

The virtue of religion, by perfecting man’s mind, also places man on the right path towards eternal salvation. As Pope John Paul II notes in his encyclical letter, Redemptor Hominis:

Our spirit is set in one direction, the only direction for our intellect, will and heart is towards Christ our Redeemer, towards Christ, the Redeemer of man. We wish to look towards him because there is salvation in no one else but him.[111]

Ultimately, man not only reveres God because it is right and just, man also reveres God for his own sake — for it is only in God that man finds his fullness.

Having discussed why it is right and just for man to honor God, and why it is necessary for man to do so for his perfection, I also want to respond to the other aspect of the skeptical objection – i.e. “What is important is to be a good person”.

How do you know what is good? Is the moral good that you believe in subjective or objective?

Under an atheistic naturalist worldview, there is no reason or rhyme to existence, no purpose or meaning to life (except what you make of it), and no objective good or evil. So if atheistic naturalism is true, then you are free to live as you please because all human actions would have no objective moral value. Morality would be subjective. In this scenario, there is no objectively right way to live one’s life ethically, so one can live based on his subjective beliefs of what it means to be a good person.

If God does exist, however, then morality is objectively grounded in His nature as perfect goodness, and based on our created nature as human beings (i.e. natural law) who possess an intellect and a will.[112] If God does exist and if He did reveal Himself in a particular religion, then “being a good person” is not about living in accordance with our subjective beliefs of what it means to be a good person, it is about living in accordance with God’s objective moral law as revealed in sacred scripture (which is a product of divine revelation and providence).

Ultimately, this skeptical objection fails because religion does matter if it is true. If God does exist and if He did reveal Himself in the Christian religion, then we ought to give God honor and follow Christianity’s tenets, not only because it is right and just, and not only because Christianity’s tenets would be true and good in and of themselves, but also because it would lead to the perfection of our minds and put us on the direct path towards eternal salvation.[113] If Christianity is true, then “being a good person” is not about living up to our own subjective moral beliefs, it is about following Jesus in all matters for He alone is “the way, the truth, and the life” (Jhn 14:6).

Furthermore, if Christianity is true, then we are not called to spiritual mediocrity (i.e. do not hurt people and be nice to them), we are called to become saints — to become like Christ, to be Christ-like. There is so much more to being good than not hurting people and being nice to them. Pride, selfishness, envy, lust, dishonesty, etc. can all be done while not hurting people and being nice to them. Yet, these are all moral evils that need to be done away with if we are to live morally good lives.

Conclusion

As we have seen, the skeptical objections raised in this article miss the mark. If you are a skeptic reading this, I earnestly encourage you to look deeper into Christianity, for there are good answers to questions you have. I once went through a period of searching myself and had a lot of questions. I looked into various belief systems (Christianity, atheism, and Islam especially) and in the end, I came out earnestly convinced of the truth of the Christian religion. I was convinced by the answers Christianity provided and the evidence grounding Christianity’s historical claims.

As a believer of Jesus Christ, I now do what I can to share the answers and riches of the Christian tradition, and help others in their search for the truth. For those who are interested in looking further into Christianity, I came up with a list of recommended YouTube content creators and books elsewhere in my blog. Feel free to check it out. Of course, you are free to message me if you have any questions about God or Christianity as well!

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  84. Yasin, Kidist & Adams, Anita & King, David. (2020). How Does Religion Affect Giving to Outgroups and Secular Organizations? A Systematic Literature Review. Religions. 11. 405. 10.3390/rel11080405. 
  85. D   Shariff, Azim F., et al. “Religious Priming: A Meta-Analysis With a Focus on Prosociality.” Personality and Social Psychology Review, vol. 20, no. 1, Feb. 2016, pp. 27–48, doi:10.1177/1088868314568811.
  86. Inspiring Philosophy. (2022, February 12). “Is Christianity Harmful?”. [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/FnbHal6vL4o
  87. Inspiring Philosophy. (2022, February 12). “Is Christianity Harmful?”. [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/FnbHal6vL4o
  88. Mccullough, Michael & Willoughby, Brian. (2009). Religion, Self-Regulation, and Self-Control: Associations, Explanations, and Implications. Psychological bulletin. 135. 69-93. 10.1037/a0014213. 
  89.  Trimble, Douglas E. “The Religious Orientation Scale: Review and Meta-Analysis of Social Desirability Effects.” Educational and Psychological Measurement, vol. 57, no. 6, Dec. 1997, pp. 970–986, doi:10.1177/0013164497057006007.
  90. Smith, Timothy & Mccullough, Michael & Poll, Justin. (2003). Religiousness and Depression: Evidence for a Main Effect and the Moderating Influence of Stressful Life Events. Psychological bulletin. 129. 614-36. 10.1037/0033-2909.129.4.614. 
  91. Wu, Andrew & Wang, Jin-Yu & Jia, Cunxian. (2015). Religion and Completed Suicide: a Meta-Analysis. PloS one. 10. e0131715. 10.1371/journal.pone.0131715  and Lester, David. (2017). Does Religiosity Predict Suicidal Behavior?. Religions. 8. 238. 10.3390/rel8110238. 
  92.  Saroglou, Vassilis. (2002). Religion and the five factors of personality: A meta-analytic review. Personality and Individual Differences. 32. 15-25. 10.1016/S0191-8869(00)00233-6. 
  93. Ratzinger, “The Feelings of Things, the Contemplation of Beauty: Message of His Eminence Card. Joseph Ratzinger to the Communion and Liberation (CL) Meeting at Rimini (24-30 August 2002).
  94. Breaking In The Habit. (2020, November 12). “Catholic Church: Sell Everything and Give to the Poor?”. [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/rRjD3Hh12Pk
  95. Plante, T.  (2018). , Six Important Points You Don’t Hear about regarding Clergy Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church. Retrieved from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/do-the-right-thing/201808/separating-facts-about-clergy-abuse-fiction
  96. Kaczor, The Seven Big Myths about the Catholic Church, pg. 89
  97. Kaczor, The Seven Big Myths about the Catholic Church, pgs. 88-89
  98. Castleman, M. (2010). Beyond Bad-Apple Priests: Who the Pedophiles Really Are. Retrieved from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/all-about-sex/201003/beyond-bad-apple-priests-who-the-pedophiles-really-are
  99.  Lynch, C. (2022). Schools have ‘cover-up’ culture and put reputation ahead of kids’s safety, report finds. Retrieved from: https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/schools-are-covering-up-cases-of-grooming-and-sex-abuse-by-staff-inquiry-finds/
  100. Christensen and Felch. (2012). Boy Scouts helped alleged molesters cover tracks, files show. Retrieved from: https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-boy-scouts-files-20120916-story.html
  101. Wilkinson, A. (2017). The abuse problem within the film community extends beyond big names like Harvey Weinstein. Retrieved from: https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-boy-scouts-files-20120916-story.html
  102. Ibid.
  103. Douthat, R. (2010). The Pattern of Priestly Sexual Abuse. Retrieved from: https://archive.nytimes.com/douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/the-pattern-of-priestly-sex-abuse/
  104. Gibson, D. (2012). 10 years after Catholic sex abuse reforms, what’s changed? Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/10-years-after-catholic-sex-abuse-reforms-whats-changed/2012/06/06/gJQAQMjOJV_story.html?utm_term=.19297e4e7a33
  105. Hahn and McGinely, It is Right and Just: Why the Future of Civilization Depends on True Religion, loc. 460.
  106. Ibid.
  107. Pints With Aquinas. (2020, December 22). “Why Civilization is DOOMED Without True Religion W/ Dr. Scott Hahn”. [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/9dH7SgGCq24
  108. https://universalis.com/static/mass/orderofmass.htm
  109. Paez, A. The Virtue of Religion According to St. Thomas Aquinas. Retrieved from: https://graduate.christendom.edu/pdfs/papers/Paez%20Virtue%20of%20Religion.pdf
  110. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1731-1733 
  111. John Paul II. (1979). Redemptor Hominis. Retrieved from: https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_04031979_redemptor-hominis.html
  112. Feser, E. (2012) Whose nature? Which law? Retrieved from: http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/10/whose-nature-which-law.html
  113. Paez, A. The Virtue of Religion According to St. Thomas Aquinas. Retrieved from: https://graduate.christendom.edu/pdfs/papers/Paez%20Virtue%20of%20Religion.pdf

 

Christian Religious Experiences: An Evidence Sampler

The Transverberation of St. Teresa of Avila by Bernini

A line of historical evidence for Christianity is Christian religious experiences. When it comes to these though, I am not focusing on vague, general, experiences like feelings of love, peace, euphoria, etc. I am talking about experiences that possess explicit Christian elements as well as extraordinary elements. These extraordinary elements in particular make a supernatural explanation for these experiences more likely than natural explanations. Especially striking about Christian religious experiences is that they not only occur to Christians but to non-Christians as well (e.g. atheists and agnostics, Jews, Muslims, etc).

In this article, I will lay out a solid evidence sampler of Christian religious experiences, focusing on firsthand accounts in modern times from non-Christians. 

1. Visitations from the Angelic Doctor[1]

Stojan Adasevic (left) in his earlier years

Stojan Adasevic was an atheist abortion doctor in Serbia back when it was still a communist country. During his career of over 25 years, he had carried out thousands of abortions — but he did not believe he was doing anything wrong. As put by the Spanish newspaper, La Razon, which interviewed Adasevic:

The medical textbooks of the Communist regime said abortion was simply the removal of a blob of tissue. Ultrasounds allowing the fetus to be seen did not arrive until the 1980s, but they did not change his opinion.

Adasevic began to have recurring dreams each night of a beautiful field full of children and young people who were playing and laughing, but who ran away from him in fear. A man dressed in a black and white habit stared at him in silence. Every time Adasevic woke up from this dream, he would do so in cold sweat.

One night, Adasevic asked the man in his dream who he was. The man told Adasevic that he was Thomas Aquinas (at this point in his life, Adasevic did not even know who Aquinas was). Adasevic then asked Aquinas who these children were, and Aquinas told him that they were the ones he killed with his abortions. Adasevic woke up in shock and fear. He decided that he would refuse to perform any more abortions. 

Once Adasevic notified his hospital that he would no longer perform abortions, the reaction from the hospital, which was run by the state, was swift and severe. Physicians in communist Yugoslavia did not refuse to do their job. Adasevic’s salary was cut in half, they fired his daughter from her job, and his son was barred from enrolling into the state university. 

Adasevic’s family endured great hardships due to these punitive measures and he started to doubt his decision to not perform abortions. However, one night, he had another dream of St. Thomas, who assured him that he made the right decision as well as his friendship with Adasevic.

Today, Adasevic is a leader in Serbia’s pro-life movement. Now a Christian, he has a strong devotion to St. Thomas Aquinas and is frequently with Aquinas’ works as his reading material. 

Whenever Adasevic shares his story to others, he notes that in Aquinas’ Summa Theologica Aquinas wrote that human life begins forty days after fertilization. Perhaps, Adasevic would opine, “the saint wanted to make amends for that error”. 

2. A Powerful Experience on the Road[2]

There are religious skeptics, and there are religious skeptics who disdain religion. Sy Garte was the latter. He was an atheist raised by very anti-theistic parents.

Garte is a very accomplished man in his line of work. As a biochemist, he was a professor at New York University and the University of Pittsburgh, and he currently teaches at Rutgers University. He has authored over two hundred scientific publications, three scientific monographs, and has served as a division director at the National Institute of Health.

Garte’s inquisitive nature led him to ask questions, which led him to rethink his atheism and in time, look into religion, and eventually, Christianity. He met Christians who were smart and scientifically-minded. He also checked out a church service for the first time and to his surprise, found it welcoming, and the content of the sermons, beneficial. These would lead Garte to look deeper into the Gospels and investigate Christianity’s claims, as he details in his book “The Works of His Hands: A Scientist’s Journey from Atheism to Faith” (2019).

In time, Garte found himself at an impasse. Although he was no longer an atheist (i.e. God does not exist), he was not a Christian either – remaining in a state of agnosticism (i.e. God may or may not exist). Although Garte was open to Christianity and saw it to some degree, as evidentially compelling, Christianity was a whole new world that was foreign to him. He was afraid to step into it. Garte also had doubts of his own. God, however, would meet Garte halfway in his search for Him. 

One day, Garte was driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in the middle part of the state, with a long way to go before his destination. Turning the radio on, he heard a voice of a Christian preacher — the sort of people whom he “used to mock and avoid”. This preacher, however, was really good, and Garte listened for a few minutes before turning it off. Driving in silence for a while, he began to wonder what it would sound like if he were preaching. Garte, recounting what happened next, notes:

Driving in silence for a while, I began wondering how I would sound if I ever tried preaching—after all, I always liked to talk. I laughed a bit, thinking about what I could possibly say. The first thing that came to my mind was something about science—how, if there were a God, he might have used science to create the world.

And then something happened. I felt a chill up and down my spine and could hear myself speaking in my mind—preaching, in fact. I could see an audience in front of me, people in an outdoor stadium, dressed in summer clothing. I pulled the car over to the right lane and slowed down. It was not a vision exactly, but it was intense. I knew I wasn’t making the words up—I was listening just as much as the audience.

I talked about knowing that Jesus loves me. With a voice full of passionate emotion, I assured the crowd that whatever their sins might be, they were no worse than my own, and that because of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross we could all be saved. I explained that God’s love is more powerful than any other kind and that anyone can have it without deserving it.

At some point during this experience, I had pulled over onto the shoulder of the road, where I sat behind the wheel crying for some time. I had never considered the things “I” had been saying. Some of the concepts were unfamiliar. The only explanation I could fathom was that the Holy Spirit had entered into my life in dramatic fashion.

On the side of the road in his car and in between sobs, Garte voiced his belief and gratitude out to God: “Thank you, Lord Jesus Christ”. 

After his conversion to Christianity, Garte would go on to become a member and active lay leader of the United Methodist Church in Rockville, Maryland.

3. “The Tears Just Stopped, Just Dried”[3]

Another case is that of Sally Read. Read was an atheist who “hated” Christianity. She is also accomplished in her line of work as an award-winning poet and writer.

Read’s conversion, like many others, was a journey. It began when she was writing a book that prompted her to ask existential questions, but instrumental to her conversion was an intelligent and pastoral priest by the name of Fr. Gregory Hrynkiw, whom Read often dialogued with. When asked about Fr. Hrynkiw’s instrumental role in her conversion, Read commented: 

[Fr. Hrynkiw and I] were the same age, so we were equal, on a level playing field. And he’s really bright — a really brilliant theologian — so whatever I threw at him he could always come back with the answer. That was very important and still is — he’s such a support to me, whatever I ask him, he can answer. But also because he didn’t try to convert me. He said “only Christ can convert you” and he let Christ do all the work in that sense. But he was very steady and never deserted me. He always answered my emails, and was always ready to talk with me.

Eventually, with her stumbling blocks towards Christianity crumbling, and family problems bringing her to a low point, Read drove to a church in Via del Carmelo. Looking at an icon of Christ’s face and speaking honestly and instinctively, with no belief or unbelief, she uttered: “If you’re there, you have to help me”. Describing what happened next, Read attests:

There was this incredible experience where this presence almost came down, and my tears just stopped, just dried. I felt almost physically carried up … [it was] utterly tangible.

Read, describing her initial state of confusion and vulnerability prior to her prayer, the presence that came over her, and the affect of this experience on her being, notes:

It was like being in the grip of panicked amnesia, when suddenly someone familiar walked into the room and gave myself back to me—a self restored to me more fully than before. It was a presence entirely fixed on me as I was on it, and it both descended toward me and pulled me up. I knew it was Him.

Read converted to Christianity. She details her journey from atheism to Christianity in her book “Night’s Bright Darkness: A Modern Conversion Story” (2016).

4. “You’re Going to Have to Do It Yourself”[4]

Craig Keener is one of the world’s leading New Testament scholars today. He has developed a reputation as a thorough and meticulous researcher and has written several notable works in his field. These include leading commentaries on Acts and John, a magisterial two-volume work on miracles, and a major monograph on the Gospels as Greco-Roman biographies.

Keener was not always a Christian. He grew up in a non-religious household and identified as an atheist at a young age of nine. Keener recalls telling his mom that he did not believe in life after death, a view that his mother shared with him.

A notable point came when Keener was thirteen and he started to read Plato. Plato got Keener thinking about the purpose and meaning of life, and Keener related these to his atheistic worldview. This also made Keener ponder the question of God’s existence, to the point that he would say, even as an atheist – “God, if you’re out there. Or a god, or whatever, if you are out there, please show me.” – but Keener did not know if saying this would result in anything happening.

One day, Keener ran into a couple of Christians on the street and they began to share the Gospel to him. Keener argued with them for quite some time. The Christians continued to quote from scripture to prove their point but Keener  told them “I do not believe in the Bible, I am an atheist. Can you give me anything else to convince me?”. The Christians, uninformed in apologetics, could not provide an answer to Keener and Keener decided to part ways with them. However, the encounter was not over yet.

On his way home, Keener says that he “felt God’s presence”. He studied different religions and this was “different from everything that he had studied”. It was also “different from anything he had experienced before”. Keener went to his room. Still feeling God’s presence, he pondered about his beliefs and what he was experiencing for a considerable period of time. God’s presence was “so overwhelming” and “so real” and Keener got the sense that He was “not going to leave him alone” until Keener either accepted or rejected Him.

In this situation, Keener, drawing from his earlier conversation with the two Christians and on his knees, said: 

God, I don’t understand, they said that Jesus rose from the dead and died for me and that makes me right with you. I do not understand how that works … So God, if you want to make me right with you, you’re going to have to do it yourself. 

Immediately after saying that, Keener felt “something rush into his body like he never felt before” and this made him jump back to his feet in shock. He did not know what was happening to him. 

Taking in this experience on the spot, Keener decided to dedicate his life to Christ. Back when he was atheist, one of his main gripes with Christians he saw was that they did not seem to give God much importance in their lives. Keener had always said that if he believed God existed, he would give Him his everything. Since Keener now knew that God did exist, Keener chose to give Him his all. He would go on to become a Christian pastor and esteemed New Testament scholar.

5. A Progressive Secularist Encounters the Blessed Virgin Mary[5]

Alphonse Ratisbonne (1814 – 1884) lived a very privileged life. He was born into a very wealthy and aristocratic Jewish family in France. He was also a well-educated lawyer, a partner in his family’s prestigious bank, and engaged to a fiancee whom he deeply loved.

Religiously, Ratisbonne was not a believing Jew, he was a “progressive theist”. He believed in a God but he did believe in any religion. He also believed that man should practice whatever faith he held in the way that he understood it. As Ratisbonne describes his beliefs prior to his conversion:

My own opinion was to abandon all forms of the religion, relying neither on books or on men, and to let each practice his faith however he understood it. … I was very progressive, you see!   

He also lived a worldly life. As he notes:

I loved only pleasures; business irritated me, the atmosphere of offices suffocated me; I thought that we are in the world to enjoy it; and, even though a certain prudishness kept me away from the basest pleasures and company, I nonetheless dreamed only of parties and enjoyments, which I indulged in with passion.

As for Ratisbonne’s views on Christianity, he despised it. When his brother, Theodore Ratisbonne, converted and became a Jesuit priest, Ratisbonne cut all ties with him and viewed him with disdain. 

Although Ratisbonne did not subscribe to any religion, including the Jewish faith of his heritage, he did have a soft spot for his fellow Jews and was active in a local organization that aimed to uplift their condition. 

Ratisbonne’s life continued along the same trajectory until his trip to Rome, which would change everything. One of his stops during this trip was the home of Baron de Bussieres, a friend of the family. At de Bussieres’ house, Ratisbonne and de Bussiere got into a passionate discussion about religion which ended with de Bussiere (who was a Christian) challenging Ratisbonne to an “innocent test”. De Bussiere challenged Ratisbonne to wear a Miraculous Medal (a medal of the Blessed Virgin Mary popularized by St. Catherine Labore) and pray the Memorare (a prayer to Our Lady composed by St. Bernard) every morning and evening. 

Ratisbonne was stunned at the childishness of the proposition and his first reaction was to laugh, but he accepted the offer. If it did him no good, it would do him no harm. He also viewed the medal as a memento he could give his fiancee in the future.

Ratisbonne wore the medal and prayed the Memorare every morning and evening during his stay in Rome. Then came January 20, 1842, the day that would change his life forever.

Leaving a cafe that morning, Ratisbonne saw the carriage of de Bussieres and de Bussieres invited him for a ride. During their ride, de Bussieres told Ratisbonne that he had an errand to do. He had to make funeral arrangements for his friend who died recently, M. de Laferronays, at the sacristy of the church of San Andrea delle Fratte. He suggested that Ratisbonne wait in the carriage since what he had to do would only take a few minutes. Ratisbonne, however, decided to check out the church. 

The church of San Andrea delle Fratte was in Ratisbonne’s words, “small, poor, and deserted”. He was alone and no piece of art attracted his attention. Ratisbonne walked and looked around — recounting what happened next, he notes:

I had only been in the church a moment when I was suddenly seized with an indescribable agitation of mind. I looked up and found that the rest of the building had disappeared. One single chapel seemed to have gathered all the light and concentrated it in itself. In the midst of this radiance I saw someone standing on the altar, a lofty shining figure, all majesty and sweetness, the Virgin Mary just as she looks on this medal. Some irresistible force drew me toward her. She motioned to me to kneel down and when I did so, she seemed to approve. Though she never said a word, I understood her perfectly … I was there, prostrate, bathed in my tears, my heart beating out of my chest, when M. de Bussieres recalled me to life. I was unable to reply to his sudden questions, but finally I grabbed the medal that I had left around my neck, I bathed with kisses the image of the Virgin pouring forth rays of grace. “Oh! It was really she!”

I didn’t know where I was, I didn’t know whether I was Alphonse, or someone else; I felt so entirely changed that I thought I was another self. I tried to find myself, and couldn’t. The most intense joy burst in the depths of my soul; I was unable to speak; I wanted to reveal nothing; I felt something solemn and sacred in me that made me ask to see a priest.

Baron de Bussieres, provides an account from his perspective:

I left him and went off to the sacristy to make some arrangements for the funeral. I could not have been away much more than ten minutes. When I returned I saw nothing of Ratisbonne at first. Then I caught sight of him on his knees, in the Chapel of Saint Michael the Archangel. I went up to him and touched him. I had to do this three or four times before he became aware of my presence. Finally he turned toward me, face bathed in tears, clasped his hands together …  I helped Ratisbonne to his feet and led him, almost carrying him, out of the church. Then I asked him what was the matter, and where he wanted to go. “Take me wherever you like,” he cried, “after what I have seen, I shall obey.” I urged him to explain his meaning, but he was unable to do so—his emotion was too strong. Instead he took hold of his miraculous medal and kissed it with passionate emotion.



He begged me to take him to a priest, and he asked me when he could receive holy baptism … I took him at once to the Gesu to see Father de Villefort, who invited him to explain what had happened. Ratisbonne drew out his medal, kissed it, and showed it to us, saying, “I saw her! I saw her!” and again emotion choked his words, but soon he grew calmer and spoke … Brief as his account was, Ratisbonne could not utter it without frequently pausing for breath, and to subdue the overwhelming emotion he felt. We listened to him, awe mingled with joy and gratitude. One phrase struck us especially, so deep and mysterious was it: “She never said a word, but I understood her perfectly.” From this moment on, it was enough to hear him speak; faith exhaled from his heart like a precious perfume from a casket, that holds but cannot imprison.



Upon leaving Father de Villefort, we went to give thanks to God, first at Saint Mary Major, the basilica beloved of Our Lady, and then at Saint Peter’s. He prayed with great fervor at the tombs of the Holy Apostles.

Ratisbonne converted to Christianity after his experience. He called off his engagement with his fiancee, renounced his worldly life, and would go on to become a priest. He reconciled with his brother, Theodore, and would spend the rest of his life in the Holy Land – establishing religious communities, engaging in charitable work, and praying for the conversion of souls. In gratitude to our Lady, he added “Marie” to his name – Alphonse Marie Ratisbonne. 

Later on, Ratisbonne would learn that his brother, Fr. Theodore, had kept him in his prayers ever since Ratisbonne bitterly cut ties with him. Baron de Bussieres and his family also continually prayed for Ratisbonne after their conversation at his house. 

The apparition of Our Lady to Alphonse Ratisbonne is among the Church’s approved Marian apparitions. The apparition to Alphonse Ratisbonne, in particular, is known as “Our Lady of Zion”.

Outside view of the San Andrea delle Fratte church today

6. Rome’s Chief Rabbi Sees Jesus[6]

Rome was one of Europe’s most important Jewish communities in the early 20th century, and its leader during a portion of the 1940s was Rabbi Israel Zoli (1881 – 1956). 

Zoli was a devout Jew and intelligent man. He completed rabbinical schooling and received a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Florence with a specialization in psychology. During his time as the Chief Rabbi of Trieste (1918 – 1939), Zoli established himself as an academic and scholar. He wrote several notable scholarly works and served as a Professor of Semitic languages at the University of Padua. 

It is not uncommon for rabbis and Jews in general to have negative attitudes towards Jesus but this was not the case for Zoli, who viewed Jesus very positively and even felt drawn to Christianity. Zoli even wrote a work on Jesus entitled “The Nazarene”, which, although written from a Jewish perspective, received high praise from Christian circles. 

In 1939, Zoli left his longtime position as Chief Rabbi of Trieste to assume the position of Chief Rabbi of Rome. A number of years into this position, Zoli would have a religious experience that would cause him to convert to Christianity. This experience took place in 1944 and occurred while Zoli was celebrating Yom Kippur services (Yom Kippur is the most solemn holiday of the Jewish calendar). As Zoli recounts:

It was the Day of Atonement in the fall of 1944, and I was presiding over the religious service in the Temple. The day was nearing its end, and I was all alone in the midst of a great number of persons. I began to feel as though a fog were creeping into my soul; it became denser, and I wholly lost touch with the men and things around me. And just then I saw with my mind’s eye a meadow sweeping upward, with bright grass. In this meadow I saw Jesus Christ clad in a white mantle, and beyond His head the blue sky. I experienced the greatest interior peace. If I were to give an image of the state of my soul at that moment I should say a crystal-clear lake amid high mountains. Within my heart I found the words: “You are here for the last time.” I considered them with the greatest serenity of soul. The reply of my heart was: So it is, so it shall be, so it must be.

When Zoli went home, he was surprised to hear his wife tell him that when Zoli was before the Ark of the Torah during the celebration service, she saw a “white figure” of a man put his hands on Zoli’s head — in a manner that looked like a blessing.

A few days after that experience, Zoli resigned from his position as Chief Rabbi of Rome. He went to a Christian priest to receive instruction and a few weeks later, he was baptized into the Church. Unfortunately, Zoli was ostracized by the Jewish community after his conversion. He spent the rest of his life teaching and writing. He also founded a religious congregation dedicated to aiding Jews after their reception into the Church. 

After Zoli’s conversion, he would learn that many of his students at the University of Padua, who were priests, were praying for his conversion. As he notes in his autobiography:

[T]hey were remembering me in their holy Masses, asking God (as they told me years later) for my conversion.

7. An Experience Before the Blessed Sacrament[7]

As a young child, Hermann Cohen (1820 – 1871) was a pious Jew. He loved going to the synagogue and chanting prayers and psalms at home, an activity into which he would often draw his siblings. Cohen’s tremendous talents, however, eventually pulled him away from his religiosity. Cohen was gifted intellectually, but more than this, he was a musical prodigy. At the age of six, he was playing many of the popular opera tunes of his day (and he would even add improvisations of his own to these). By twelve, his professional recitals were the talk of his town. Unfortunately, Cohen’s mother entrusted him to a piano professor of great talent but loose morals. The example of his teacher had a negative effect on Cohen’s spiritual life. As Cohen later wrote:

[The teacher’s great genius] was enough to justify, in the eyes of the public, all of his whims and adventures, however irresponsible and scandalous. … Since I admired him above anyone, I soon began to imitate his wild behavior. He loved gambling; I, alas, early on acquired the taste for it. He loved the horses and all the pleasures, and since he found the purses of his admirers always open to satisfy all his caprices, I began to think that there could be no existence on earth happier than that of an artist.

In time, Cohen would go to Paris — one of Europe’s best centers of music — and it was there that his success would soar. Cohen became a darling of Europe’s cultural and artistic elite. Surrounded by attention and praise, and with his whims frequently indulged, Cohen became spoiled, arrogant, and self-centered.

For the next decade, Cohen lived a life of worldly sensuality. He partied, had sexual relationships with many women, and gambled, but Cohen’s “self-centered hedonism and irresponsibility” also took a toll on many of his relationships. 

At the age of twenty-six, Cohen began to reform his life. He abruptly broke off his romantic relationship with Celeste Mogadar, telling her that he was placing his life in the hands of God. Appalled with his life, Cohen began to rechart his trajectory more towards the Jewish religiosity of his childhood, returning, at least, to the practice of prayer. 

Some time afterward, a momentous life event would occur to Cohen. He was asked by a friend to direct the choir at a church service. It was at this service that Cohen would have an extraordinary experience during the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament (a devotional ceremony wherein a priest blesses the congregation with the Holy Eucharist at the end of a period of Eucharistic adoration). As Cohen notes:

It happened during May 1847. Mary’s month was celebrated with great pomp at the Church of Sainte Valere … Prince Moskowa, who led these pious concerts, and whom I already had the honor of knowing, asked me one evening if I would take his place directing the choirs. I agreed and went, solely from my love of music and the desire to do a friend a favor. During the ceremony I felt nothing special, but at the moment of Benediction, even though I had no intention to prostrate myself like the rest of the congregation, I felt an indefinable agitation; my soul, deafened and distracted by the discord of the world, re-found itself, a bit like the prodigal son coming to his senses, and sensed that something previously entirely unknown was taking place. I felt for the first time a very powerful, but indefinable emotion. Without any participation of my will, I was forced, despite myself, to bow down. When I returned the following Friday, the same emotion came over me, even more powerfully, and I felt a great weight that descended over my whole body, forcing me to bow, even to prostrate myself, despite myself, and I was struck with the sudden thought of becoming Catholic. 

A few days later I was passing near the same Church of Sainte Valere; the bells were ringing for Mass. I went in and was present at the Holy Sacrifice, remaining motionless and attentive throughout. I stayed for one, two, three Masses without a thought of leaving, although I had no idea what was keeping me there. After having returned home, involuntarily I was led to go out again that evening and go back to the same place; the bells made me enter once again. The Blessed Sacrament was exposed and as soon as I saw it I was drawn to the altar rail and fell to my knees. This time, at the moment of Benediction it was easy for me to bow down, and getting up again I felt a very sweet peace in my whole being. I returned to my room and went to bed, but throughout the entire night, my mind was, whether in dream or awake, occupied with the thought of the Blessed Sacrament. I burned with impatience to be at more Masses. In the following days, I attended many at Sainte Valere, always with an inner joy that absorbed all my faculties.

I wanted to see a priest, to settle down the agitation that was incessantly troubling my spirit since this extraordinary event. Until now priests had been, for me, monsters to flee, and I do not know how I was led by an irresistible force to find one. Eventually I was introduced to Father Legrand. I told him what had happened to me. He listened with interest and exhorted me to be calm, to persevere in my current disposition, and to have wholehearted confidence in the paths that Divine Providence would not fail to point out to me. This cleric’s benevolent and kind welcome made a strong impression on me, and in an instant made fall one of the deepest prejudices I held. I had been afraid of priests! … Yet I found myself in the presence of a learned man, humble, kind and open-hearted, looking entirely to God, not himself.

Later that summer, Cohen would go to Ems, Germany to give a concert, and it was there that he would have another experience that would cement his conversion to Christianity. Recounting this second experience, Cohen notes:

The day after my arrival was a Sunday, the eighth of August, and not caring about human respect, that is, despite the presence of my friends, I went to Mass. There, bit by bit, the prayers, the presence—invisible, and yet felt by me—of a supernatural power began to act on me, agitate me, make me start trembling; in a word, divine grace deigned to descend on me with all its force. At the moment of elevation, all of a sudden I felt burst forth, behind my eyelids, a flood of tears that did not cease to flow with voluptuous abundance down my inflamed cheeks. O moment forever memorable for the salvation of my soul! I had You there, present, in my spirit, with all the celestial sensations that You brought down to me from on high! With passion I invoked the all-powerful and all-merciful God, that the exquisite memory of His beauty remain eternally engraved in my heart … and gratitude for the enormity of the blessings that He was flooding me with.



I remember having cried a few times as a child, but never, no, never did I know such tears. While they were drowning me, I felt surge up from the depths of my chest, split open by my conscience, the most tearing remorse over my entire past life. All of a sudden, and spontaneously, as though by intuition, I offered God a general confession, interior and rapid, of all of my enormous sins since childhood. I saw them there, piled up before me by the thousands, hideous, repulsive, revolting, deserving all of the anger of a sovereign Judge …  And yet, I also felt an unknown peace that soon spread over my entire soul like a soothing balm, that the God of mercy would forgive me these, that He would turn His gaze away from my crimes, that He would take pity on my sincere contrition, on my bitter sorrow. Yes, I felt that He would give me grace, and that He would accept in expiation my firm resolution to love Him above all else and to turn to Him from then on. 

When I left the church, I was already a Christian, as much a Christian as it is possible to be before baptism.

Cohen would go on to dedicate his life entirely to Christ. After being baptized, Cohen became a Carmelite priest and monk. He would play an instrumental role in establishing the Carmelite order in France, England, Ireland and Scotland – preaching and founding houses for the order.

Pope Francis During the Moment of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament

8. “I Saved Your Son”[8]

A Christian house church in Iran

Ali Akbar is a Muslim convert to Christianity. When he was thirty years old, Akbar was arrested because he was found to be a leader in his house church (the operation of house churches in Iran is deemed illegal). The security police interrogated him so harshly that his stomach began to bleed and his blood pressure dropped.

Akbar was rushed to the hospital. The doctor told him that he was going to die. They could not give him a blood transfusion because his blood pressure was so low that they could not get the needle into a vein. However, as Akbar notes, he suddenly felt “very warm like a fire was in my body”. His blood pressure became normal again and the doctor, shocked, sent him home. 

In the elevator of the hospital, on Akbar’s way out, Akbar had a vision of a man in a long white gown. He thought he was delirious. Later though, his mother said that she saw Jesus and that He told her: “I saved your son”. Akbar’s mother, a Muslim, then converted to Christianity and after hearing what had happened to Akbar and his mother, the rest of Akbar’s family converted to Christianity as well. 

Ali Akbar’s case is far from unique. There is a notable phenomenon in Islamic countries of Muslims having dreams and visions of Jesus and converting to Christianity as a result. Firsthand testimonies of a large number of Muslims have been documented in works such as David Garrison’s A Wind In the House of Islam and Tom Doyle’s Dreams and Visions: Is Jesus Awakening the Muslim World?. Akbar’s case is one of many recorded in David Garrison’s book. 

Conclusion

Christian religious experiences have graced many throughout history, including our modern age. What is remarkable about these experiences is that they not only occur to Christians but to non-Christians as well (e.g. atheists and agnostics, Jews, Muslims, etc). Furthermore, many of these experiences possess Christian elements (e.g. taking place in a Christian church, the individual has visions of Jesus, Mary, or a Christian saint, taking place right after a conversation with Christian missionaries, etc) as well as extraordinary elements. These extraordinary elements make supernatural explanations for these experiences more likely than natural explanations. Among the cases we have looked at in this article, extraordinary elements include (listing the ones I find particularly compelling):

  • Adasevic having recurring dreams every night of a man who later identified as a Christian saint, who he did not know at that point in his life, and Adasevic having another dream of this saint when he started to doubt his decision to no longer perform abortions.
  • Garte “listening just as much as the audience” during his experience, him never considering the things “he” had said during his experience, and him finding some of the concepts “he” was talking about during his experience “unfamiliar”. 
  • Read’s tears drying up instantaneously – indicating that her experience was not only subjective and internal, but that there was an external force at work.
  • Zoli having a vision of Jesus that was independently corroborated by his wife when he got home.
  • Cohen being compelled to prostrate himself, independent of his will, twice (with the second instance being stronger than the first) – leading him to think about converting to Christianity. 
  • Akbar’s striking healing being followed by visions of Jesus experienced by both him and his mother.

Ultimately, Christian religious experiences provide further evidence for the truth of the Christian faith as well as the existence of the spiritual world.

The evidence continues to pile up –  the evidence for Jesus’ miracles, Jesus’ resurrection, Christian miraculous healings, and now Christian religious experiences. Stay tuned for more historical lines of evidence supporting Christianity with the next post being about the evidence for demonic activity.

References

  1. Stagnaro, A. (2017). “Abortionist Quits After St. Thomas Aquinas Visits Him in a Dream.” Retrieved from: https://www.ncregister.com/blog/abortionist-quits-after-st-thomas-aquinas-visits-him-in-a-dream
  2. Garte, S. (2020). “I Assumed Science Had All the Answers. Then I Started Asking Inconvenient Questions.” Retrieved from: https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/march/sy-garte-science-answers-inconvenient-questions.html
  3. Kandra, G. (2016). “From scoffing atheist to devout Catholic: the powerful conversion story of acclaimed poet Sally Read”. Retrieved from: https://aleteia.org/blogs/aleteia-blog/from-scoffing-atheist-to-devout-catholic-the-powerful-conversion-story-of-acclaimed-poet-sally-read/. See also Read, Night’s Bright Darkness, pg. 42.
  4. Dr. Sean McDowell. (2021, April 30). “Behind the Scenes with Craig Keener (The People, Books, and Events that Shaped His Life”. [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/s3iq3jCDza0. See also Hayden Clark. (2019, October 28). “Craig Keener: From Atheism to Christianity”. [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=injEbY_HnlA
  5. Schoeman, “Honey from the Rock: Sixteen Jews Find the Sweetness of Christ”, pgs. 12-34
  6. Schoeman, “Honey from the Rock: Sixteen Jews Find the Sweetness of Christ”, pgs. 60-67
  7. Schoeman, “Honey from the Rock: Sixteen Jews Find the Sweetness of Christ”, pgs. 35-51
  8. Garrison, A Wind In The House Of Islam, pgs. 122-123

The Historical Reliability of the New Testament (Part 2 of 2)

Jesus heals a paralytic at Capernaum (Mk 2:1-12)

To return to part one of this series, click here.

1. Introduction

In part one of this series, we examined the Gospels and Acts as historical sources about Jesus of Nazareth and the early Church. In particular, we examined multiple factors that influenced the contents of these texts (e.g. genre, time of writing, authorship, the traditioning community they arose from, etc) and discussed how these factors point to the Gospels and Acts being generally reliable historical sources.

In this part of the series (part two), we will tackle the subject of historical reliability by examining the contents of the Gospels and Acts. We will examine the Gospels in terms of the geographical information they provide about Palestine, the local color they reflect, the information they contain that enjoy robust critical support and corroboration from archaeology, as well as compare their content with those of the later apocryphal gospels. Likewise, we will examine Acts in terms of the geographical information it provides about various places, the local color it reflects, and the support it enjoys from archaeology.

With that said, let us begin our discussion on the Gospels and see how their contents argue for their reliability as historical sources.

2. The Gospels

2.1. Geography

As a writer, imagine being given the task of providing substantial and accurate geographical information about a country you have never been to (e.g. Rome, Korea, Canada, etc). You are asked to convey accurate information about local towns, regions, places, bodies of water, and travel routes — how difficult would this be? You might think that this task would require a significant amount of effort and research, but that in time, it is a task you can do sufficiently.

Now turn back the clock 2,000+ years. You are now a writer in the first century Roman Empire. The Internet did not exist. You do not have the privilege of modernity’s rich and accessible book culture or the privilege of modern travel such as cars, navigation software (GPS or Waze), modern vessels, planes, etc. How difficult is your task now? If you were a writer in the first century, the task of acquiring substantial geographical knowledge about a country you have never been to and getting its geography right is extremely difficult (not to mention expensive!). Yet, the Gospel authors were able to do this with the land of Palestine.

The Gospels display a high level of geographical knowledge about Palestine. Mark names thirteen towns in Palestine, Matthew names sixteen, Luke names sixteen, and John names thirteen.[1] These range from well-known towns like Jerusalem to more obscure towns like Aenon or Chorazin which, as scholar Craig Keener notes, would not have been known outside Palestine.[2]

When it comes to regions in Palestine and its surrounding areas, Mark names four, Matthew names seven, Luke names eight, and John names three (e.g. Decapolis, Samaria, Galilee, etc).[3]

As for local places, Mark names three, Matthew names four, Luke names two, and John names four (e.g. Gabbatha, Gethsemane, Mount of Olives, etc).[4] In addition to this, Mark, Matthew, and Luke know that there is a Judean desert near the Jordan.[5]

When it comes to local bodies of water, Mark, Matthew, and Luke each name two while John mentions five (e.g. Bethesda, Kidron, river Jordan, etc).[6]

Knowledge of “place names” like the above is not trivial information.[7] As we shall see later when we compare the canonical Gospels to the later apocryphal gospels (section 3.5), this kind of information was hard to get.

Another notable point is that the Gospels mention place names at similar frequencies despite their individual differences. Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John mention 5.404, 4.905, 5.087, and 4.921 names respectively (roughly five each) every 1,000 words.[8] If the Gospel authors were spreading out place names in their works to “make their stories seem authentic”, we would expect greater variances in frequency. One author would put in a lot of names while another would put in considerably less.[9] The fact that the Gospel authors mention place names at similar frequencies despite “variation within the types of geographical names they mention” suggests that they were doing so as a result of natural, truthful reportage.[10] As scholar Peter Williams notes:

The even distribution of place names in the four Gospels is unlikely to be the result of each of the four writers making a deliberate effort to spread names out, but is exactly the sort of pattern that might occur through unconscious behavior, recording places naturally when relevant to their stories.[11]

The Gospels also display accurate knowledge of roads and travel. All four Gospels know that traveling to Jerusalem (elevation about 750 meters) entails “going up” while Mark and Luke mention that leaving Jerusalem entails “going down”.[12] The parable of the good Samaritan (only found in Luke) accurately describes travel from Jerusalem to Jericho:

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed … Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side”.

Jericho is the lowest city on earth, over 800 feet below sea level.[13] Traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho involves a descent of one kilometer so “going down” is certainly the right expression. The parable also correctly assumes a direct route between Jerusalem and Jericho.

In John 2:12, the journey from Cana to Capernaum is accurately described as going “down”. Likewise, John 4 has a nobleman come to Jesus while he is in Cana and ask him to “come down” to Capernaum. Luke 4:31 is accurate in describing the journey from Nazareth to Capernaum as going “down” as well.

In Matt 11:21-24//Lk 10:13-15, Jesus rebukes three Jewish towns — Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, and contrasts the first two with the Gentile towns of Tyre and Sidon:

Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades.

The obscure town of Chorazin mentioned here is located on the road to Bethsaida and just a couple of miles north of Capernaum.[14]

Giving further examples, Luke and John know that there are two routes between Judea and Galilee: the hilly route via Samaria and the indirect route avoiding the Samaritan areas via the Jordan Valley.[15] Mark and Matthew know that one can go from the Sea of Galilee directly into hill country.[16] The Gospel authors correctly describe travel to Jerusalem in ways that vary but cohere with each other. As Williams notes:

[Luke] describes a journey to Jerusalem via Jericho (Luke 18:36) and then through the villages of Bethphage and Bethany (Luke 19:29). John depicts Jesus as making his final approach to Jerusalem from the east via Bethany (John 12:1).

The information in Luke and John accords with the way Matthew and Mark portray Jesus’s final approach to Jerusalem. He is said to go from Galilee to the Transjordan (Matt 19:1; Mark 10:1) and to approach Jerusalem from Jericho (Matt 20:29; Mark 10:46) and then Bethphage, which is located by the narrative as on the Mount of Olives (Matt 21:1; Mrk 11:1).
[17]

In the end, the Gospels display substantial and accurate knowledge of Palestinian geography.[18] This argues for their historical reliability and points to the conclusion that their authors drew on eyewitness knowledge (i.e. their own eyewitness knowledge, the testimony of other eyewitnesses, or oral tradition deriving from eyewitness testimony). As scholar Simon Gathercole notes:

It is hard to fake accurate geography. If you try to, you get it wrong … The New Testament Gospel writers could not possibly have got the details that they got right … unless they had eyewitness knowledge or knowledge from eyewitness sources.[19]

Likewise, Williams comments:

[The Gospels are] valuable geographical sources … they are not what we would expect from people who made up stories at a geographical distance.[20]

2.2. Elements from Jesus’ Time and Location

If the Gospels contain authentic reminisces of Jesus, we should expect them to firmly reflect the culture in which Jesus lived — Jewish Palestine. The Gospels succeed in doing this very well. As scholars Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz note, Palestinian-Jewish coloring pervades our Gospel accounts about Jesus.[21]

If the accounts in the Gospels were made up by writers outside Palestine, such as in Rome, Greece, or Turkey, for example, we would not expect them to reflect much Palestinian color. I mentioned earlier that it was difficult to acquire substantial and accurate geographical knowledge of a country you have been to in the first century. The same can be said about local color. It is difficult to write about a place as though you were there. If doing this is still difficult now, how much more difficult would it have been back in the first century!

Likewise, if the accounts in the Gospels were made up by later Gentile Christians, we would not expect them to reflect significant Jewish traits. Large numbers of Gentiles entered the Church in the decades following Pentecost, and the Jesus movement gradually became detached from its Jewish roots.[22] Gentiles would have had limited knowledge of Jewish culture as ethnic and religious outsiders. (In the same way that non-Jews today, including Christians, know little about Jewish culture).

Ultimately, if the Gospels reflect strong Palestinian-Jewish color, then this argues for the accounts within them deriving from eyewitness knowledge of Jesus’ life and ministry. 

I will divide the subsequent discussion into three — Names, Palestinian Traits, and Jewishness. There will be some overlap between these subsections. Names, for example, are both Palestinian and Jewish. On the other hand, all information in the Jewishness subsection fits a Palestinian Jewish environment, but some of it, in particular, reflects Jewish Palestine distinctively. Despite this overlap, I separated these sections this way for the purposes of structure. With that said, let us tackle our first subsection — Names.

2.2.1. Names

An impressive line of evidence for the reliability of the Gospels (and Acts!) has to do with the names within them. A series of scholarly studies have shown that Jews located in different places in the Roman Empire had rather distinct naming patterns and that the popularity of names among Jews outside Palestine bore little relationship to those inside Palestine.[23]

Scholar Richard Bauckham’s study, based on Israeli scholar Tal Ilan’s Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, found that the relative frequency of names in the Gospels corresponds very well to the frequency of Palestinian Jewish names during the time of Jesus.[24] The most popular Palestinian Jewish male names, for example, were Simon and Joseph. These names make up 15.6% of the modern database. On the other hand, men named Simon and Joseph comprise 18.2% of male names in the Gospels and Acts (in Acts’ narratives in Palestine)This remarkable correspondence extends down the rankings of the most common male names, and to female names as well. Furthermore, Bauckham notes that lesser-known names in the Gospels such as Jairus, Nathaniel, Malchus, Jonah, Nicodemus, etc are sometimes attested in Palestine but never outside of it. It must also be noted that the name correspondence in question shines through when one adds up all the names in the Gospels and Acts rather than viewing each text individually. The more data is factored in, the clearer the correspondence becomes.

Ultimately, as Keener notes:

[T]he names in the Gospels are] precisely the names archaeology associates with their time and place, even if no reference works in antiquity collected this information. In general, the most common names in the Gospels were the most popular Judean/Galilean names in that period.[25] 

The names of people in the Gospels are not what we would expect if the narratives were made up by individuals outside Palestine. On the other hand, they are exactly what we would expect if the Gospel accounts are authentic — stemming from eyewitness knowledge of Jesus’ life and ministry.

2.2.2. Palestinian Traits

The Gospels are very Palestinian, containing many traits reflecting Jesus’ environment.

Mark, Matthew, and John correctly name the “Sea of Galilee” as it is known locally.[26] Outsiders would have viewed the Sea of Galilee as a lake since it only stretches 21 kilometers as a body of water. To local Galileans who had not traveled far, however, this was known as a sea. Other times, the Gospel authors simply call the Sea of Galilee “the sea”.[27] The first time the author of John’s gospel mentions the Sea of Galilee, he rightly notes that it was also called the “the Sea of Tiberias” (Jhn 6:1). The body of water was also named after Tiberias, a major town on the shore.[28] Luke, who is traditionally known to be a Gentile author, diverges from the other Gospel authors and calls the Sea of Galilee “the Lake”.[29]

The Gospels refer to the town of Bethsaida by its pre-30 AD name. Bethsaida was renamed “Julia” in 30 AD, the year of Jesus’ crucifixion.[30] The fact that the Gospels preserve the town’s name during Jesus’ ministry, “Bethsaida” (Mk 6:45; 8:22; Matt 11:21//Luke 10:13; Jhn 1:44; 12:21), is remarkable.

The Gospels are consistent with what we know of occupations in Palestine.

According to the Gospels, Jesus ministered in Capernaum and Bethsaida, which were fishing villages along the Sea of Galilee.[31] Jesus ministering in these towns and even making one of them, Capernaum, his “home base” for his ministry (Matt 4:13), fits perfectly with Jesus calling a number of fishermen to become his disciples (Mk 1:14-20; Lk 5:1-11).

The Gospels mention a whole group of tax collectors at Capernaum (Mk 2:14-15; Matt 9:9-10). Again, this fits well with what we know of the town. Capernaum was situated at a strategic point at the northern end of the Sea of Galilee. It was a key location for collecting customs on what crossed the border of the territory of Herod Antipas.[32] Likewise, Luke mentions that Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector in Jericho (Lk 19:2). Jericho was the major town on Pontius Pilate’s side of the border of Judea with Peraea, the territory of Herod Antipas.[33] In light of this information, Williams comments:

Matthew and Mark, on the one hand, and Luke, on the other, have independently recorded different events with tax collectors in different border towns. The Gospels show knowledge of the local tax systems.[34]

When we look at Jesus’ parables in the Gospels, we find that they reflect a Galilean environment, which was heavily rural and agricultural.[35] This matches Jesus’ extensive Galilean ministry.

Farmers sowed seeds by the “broadcast” method (Mk 4:3-9). The mustard seed was the smallest seed typically cultivated in Palestine (Mk 4:30-32). A dragnet was used to trawl the Sea of Galilee in its shallower areas for fish (Mk 13:47-50) and seine nets were cast on the lake (Matt 13:47-50). Although Roman cities had bakeries, Galilean village women baked their own bread for their families (Matt 12:33//Lk 13:21). Building one’s house on sand rather than rock recalls the deep wadis that usually remained dry or had a small stream of water in it, but could turn into raging torrents after heavy rains (Matt 7:24-27). Vineyards and hirelings were important features of Galilean life during Jesus’ time (Matt 20). In the end, as Keener notes:

[Jesus’ parables] bear many traits reflecting their Jewish and often even rural Galilean flavor. Although later Christians employed illustrations, they were usually the sort of illustrations characteristic of the Greek world, not the sort of story parables at home specifically in Jewish Palestine.[36]

Jesus’ language of a millstone being hung around a person who is then drowned in the depths of the sea (Mk 9:42) fits the farmland around the Sea of Galilee very well.[37] In fact, ancient millstones can still be viewed in the ruins of Capernaum today.

In Lk 7:11-17, Jesus is said to have spoken to a widow at a public funeral procession in Nain before going up to the bier. In Galilee, mourning women did walk in front of the casket, as opposed to the better known Judean custom in which women walked behind it.[38]

Sycamore trees did not grow in northern Mediterranean countries (e.g. Italy, Greece, Turkey, etc). They do grow, however, in the location of Luke’s account of Zacchaeus — Jericho (Lk 19:1).[39]

The debate over which mountain to worship on (Jhn 4:21), Mount Zion in Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim in Samaria, was a significant point of conflict between Jews and Samaritans in Palestine.[40]

The Gospels attest that Jesus was arrested in a garden called Gethsemane. This place is not referenced in any other ancient writing but its name betrays its Palestinian origin. As Williams notes:

Gethsemane [in Aramaic] means “oil press” (i.e., press for olives) and is perfectly located on the Mount of Olives [(Lk 22:39)] … However, nowhere do the Gospel writers draw attention to the meaning of Gethsemane and how it particularly suited the location. They just knew.[41]

Examples here can be easily multiplied. (If there was one section I would extend, it would be this one — there are so many fascinating examples!). As Keener notes, the Gospels reflect “abundant” Palestinian traits.[42] The fact that the Gospels are “written in Greek and contextualized for (at least mostly) Diaspora audiences highlights all the more clearly the frequent non-Diaspora elements that remain”.[43]

2.2.3. Jewishness

As we would expect from biographies of a Jewish teacher in Palestine, the Gospels are deeply Jewish. The Gospels reference and talk about Jewish practices, disputes, scripture, thought, politics, etc throughout their narratives. In this section, however, I want to hone in on Jesus in particular and see how the Gospels reflect his Jewishness both in general matters and down to minute aspects of speech. I will also cover some examples of Jewish disputes that Jesus commented on.

Many characteristics of Jesus’s style such as preaching in parables, employing beatitudes, and the use of “amen”, are all distinctively Jewish.[44] Jesus’ proclamation of the “kingdom of God” and his favorite self-designation, “Son of Man”, are Jewish as well. Both concepts are drawn from the book of Daniel (Dan 2:44; 7:13-14).[45]

To give more examples, Jewish teachers often employed the phrase “to what shall I/we compare?”, especially to introduce parables.[46] Jesus did the same (Matt 11:16//Lk 7:31; Lk 13:18, 20). Jesus used the phrase ‘So-and-so is like’ (Mt. 11.16; 13.24; 25.1; cf. also Mk 4.26, 31; 13.34; Lk. 6.48-49). This is common in Jewish rhetoric.[47] In Mk 12:30-31//Matt 22:37-39, Jesus links the two greatest commandments on the basis of the common opening word, we’ahavta (‘You shall love’). This linkage reflects a common Jewish interpretive technique.[48]

In the Gospels, Jesus employs a standard type of Jewish argument called qal vaomer (Matt 7:11/Lk 11:13; Matt 10:25; 12:12).[49] This can be seen when Jesus says “how much more?” (e.g. in Matt 10:25, “If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household!”). Jesus also uses this figure of speech in his sermons (Matt 6:26, 30//Lk 12:25, 28).

When Jesus asks a question about the Messiah and David in Mk 12:35-37, he does so in a way similar to other Jewish teachers, asking didactic questions that functioned as “haggadic antimony”, in which both sides of a question were correct but their relationship needed to be resolved.[50]

In Jhn 6:32-58, Jesus closely matches a rabbinic form of homily known as a proem midrash — executing a pattern of “first text plus exposition, second text plus exposition, followed by a return to the first text plus exposition”, and resulting in a tightly knit unity.[51]

Jesus’ response to the Pharisees regarding divorce (Mk 10:2) is characteristically Jewish.[52] Other first century Jewish teachers looked to the creation narrative for God’s ideal purposes on various issues. Jesus did exactly this when he referred to the creation of man and woman in Genesis. The Pharisees’ question about divorce reflects a debate that surviving sources attribute to Pharisaic schools in Jesus’ generation as well.

In Matt 23:25-26, Jesus complains that Pharisees insist on cleaning the outside of the cup but do not clean their hearts first. He then goes on to say that the inside of a cup should be cleaned first, alluding to a debate that extant sources say was raging between two schools of Pharisees in Jesus’ time. These groups were the Shamnmaites, who were divided over whether the inside or the outside of a cup should be purified first, and the Hillelites, who insisted on cleaning the inner part first.[53]

Again, a lot more examples can be given here. As Keener notes, one could “pile up countless other samples” of Jesus’ sayings “fitting a Palestinian Jewish environment”.[54] Suffice it to say that the Gospels are deeply Jewish and this applies to the person of Jesus Himself. As Jewish scholar David Flusser notes, the portrait of Jesus in the Gospels is consistent and Jewish.[55] Similarly, scholar James Charlesworth comments the following on the Jesus we encounter in the Gospels:

Jesus was a very devout Jew. In fact, he was more Jewish than Philo, who mixed Jewish traditions in the caldron of Greek ideals and myths, and Josephus, who explained Jewish theology as if it was like Greek philosophy.[56]

2.2.4. Conclusion: Elements from Jesus’ Time and Location

In the end, the Gospels reflect strong local color. As Keener comments:

[L]ocal color pervades the Gospels so thoroughly … that we sometimes wonder how well Diaspora audiences understood some of the details.[57]

This argues for their historical reliability and points to the conclusion that their authors drew on eyewitness knowledge regarding Jesus’ life and ministry.

2.3. Critical Corroboration

Adding on to what we discussed so far, many Gospel narratives enjoy robust support from critical analysis. As a result, the probability of their historicity is very likely. Although the survey below is not exhaustive, it provides a good overview of the corroboration of the Gospels. The great majority of aspects of Jesus’ life I mention below are widely affirmed by Christian and non-Christian scholars alike, and all aspects mentioned enjoy strong critical support.

To start, Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist is highly probable.[58] It is unlikely that the early Church would have invented Jesus, whom they believed to be God and thus sinless, undertaking an action associated with repentance and the forgiveness of sins.

It is likely that Jesus ministered in Capernaum and Bethsaida, and made Capernaum his home base for his ministry.[59] No one would have invented fishing villages as sites of a great person’s ministry. Furthermore, as Keener notes regarding Jesus and Capernaum:

Jesus’ association with Capernaum is multiply attested in various strata of tradition (e.g., Mk 1:21; 2:1; Matt 4:13; Lk 4:31; Jn 2:12), including “Q” (Matt 8:5//Lk 7:1).[60]

It is also very probable that Jesus experienced resistance to his preaching at Capernaum (Matt 11:21-24//Lk 10:13-15).[61] In addition to being embarrassing, the authenticity of this tradition is supported by the fact that Capernaum later became a center of Christianity. As Keener notes:

Later Christians probably would have been loath to fabricate opposition to Jesus’ ministry in his adopted town. Indeed, far from testifying that the saying is a later Christian invention, Capernaum’s unrepentance suggests that the saying dates to Jesus’ lifetime, since, as we have noted, Capernaum later became a center in Galilean Christianity.[62]

Jesus likely experienced resistance at Bethsaida and Chorazin (Matt 11:21; Lk 10:13) as well, since this attestation is likewise unflattering to Jesus.[63] Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, this passage of Jesus’ rebuke of three Jewish towns (Capernaum, Chorazin, and Bethsaida) displays intimate familiarity with Galilean geography. This argues for the tradition originating from very early Palestinian sources.

It is highly likely that Jesus called some fishermen and tax collectors to be his disciples. Jesus calling fishermen coheres perfectly with his ministering in fishing villages such as Capernaum and Bethsaida. Furthermore, as scholar Ben Witherington notes, the saying “fishers of humans” (Mk 1:17) is hardly a later Christian image for mission.[64] The metaphor, however, does make sense if some of Jesus’ earliest disciples were fishermen. Luke also attests to the “fishers of humans” saying in a different context and form (Lk 5:10), making the saying multiply attested, and thus, more likely to be authentic. Jesus’ calling of tax collectors, on the other hand, is unlikely to be invented since Palestinian Jews disdained the profession.[65] The calling of tax collectors also coheres with a secure element of the tradition — Jesus’ outreach to sinners.[66]

It is highly likely that Jesus called twelve disciples to form his inner circle, with the number twelve representing the twelve tribes of Israel.[67] The existence of the Twelve is not only attested in the Gospels (Mk 3:13-19; Matt 10:1-4; Lk 8:1; Jhn 6:70) and Acts (Acts 1:12-26), it is also attested in a primitive Christian creed embedded in Paul’s letters (1 Cor 15:3-ff). This creed is widely viewed by scholars as the oldest extant Christian tradition — dating within five years of the death of Jesus (30-35 AD)![68] They also affirm that this creed stems from the Jerusalem church, which was the “headquarters” of the early Church.[69] In addition to being multiply attested, no one would have invented the Twelve and placed Judas inside of it.

The evidence for Jesus being a miracle worker is so strong that virtually all contemporary scholars, including skeptical scholars, believe that Jesus was a healer and exorcist, who performed deeds that were viewed by his contemporaries as miracles.[70] The disagreement among scholars is not over whether Jesus performed miracles or not, but over how these miracles are to be interpreted (i.e. healings of organic illnesses and therefore pointing to divine causation, healings of psychosomatic illnesses, or the result of the placebo effect). All five sources behind the Gospels (Mark, Q, M, L, and J) and the Jewish historian Josephus attest that Jesus performed miracles (see footnote 71 for more information on Josephus’ attestation).[71] The Gospels and Josephus both agree that Jesus’ success in drawing large crowds stemmed from two factors — miracle-working and compelling teaching.

Later hostile sources, both Jewish and pagan (the Talmud and the pagan critic Celsus), also affirm that Jesus was a miracle worker, but they attribute his actions to sorcery.[72] These attestations cohere well with the Jewish polemic recorded in Mark and Q (Mk 3:20-30; Matt 12:22-32//Lk 11:14-23), which states that Jesus healed by calling on a demonic power. This polemic is likely authentic. In addition to being multiply attested, it is unlikely that the early Church would have invented a charge that cast Jesus in an ambiguous light.[73] If this polemic and Jesus’ rebuttal of it in Mk 3:23-24 were not historical, it begs the question — “Why answer a charge that was not leveled?”. The embarrassing account of Jesus’ rejection at Nazareth (Mk 6:1-6), his own hometown, as well as his being able to heal only a few individuals there due to lack of faith, is likely authentic as well.[74] Ultimately, Jesus being a miracle worker is scarcely disputed in scholarship. As scholar Graham Twelftree notes:

There is now almost unanimous agreement among Jesus questers that the historical Jesus performed mighty works.[75]

Likewise, scholars Bruce Chilton and Craig Evans note:

Any fair reading of the Gospels and other ancient sources (including Josephus) inexorably leads to the conclusion that Jesus was well known in his time as a healer and exorcist. The miracle stories are now treated seriously and are widely accepted by Jesus scholars as deriving from Jesus’ ministry. Several specialized studies have appeared in recent years, which conclude that Jesus did things that were viewed as “miracles”.[76]

Moving on, John the Baptist’s doubts about Jesus are very likely historical (Matt 11:2-11//Lk 7:19-28). No one would have invented such a tradition.[77] Not only was John a very respected religious figure in Palestine, but the Gospel narrative does not even conclude with a clear statement of John’s renewed faith. There are also many reasons supporting the authenticity of Jesus’ response to John’s doubts in this passage (Matt 11:5-6//Lk 7:22-23) — it is characteristic of Jesus’ responses (fitting the Messianic secret, a Middle Eastern teaching style, and Jesus’ fondness of riddles), the gospel to the “poor” coheres with other Q tradition about Jesus (Mat 5:3//Lk 6:20), and the saying exhibits Semitic structure.[78]

In general, Jesus’ controversial actions are unlikely to have been invented. One example of this is Jesus’ dining with sinners.[79] Another example would be Jesus’ violation of his contemporaries’ conventional purity boundaries, which as Keener notes, “appears throughout the gospel tradition”.[80] The Gospels portray Jesus touching the unclean, including lepers (Mk 1:41), and most impure of all, corpses (Mk 5:41; cf. Lk 7:14). They also recount Jesus publicly acknowledging the touch of a bleeding woman (Mk 5:31-33), which should have rendered him impure. As Keener notes regarding Jesus’ dining with sinners and his violations of his contemporaries’ standard purity boundaries:

That most of Jesus’ religious contemporaries did not share Jesus’ practice [of dining with sinners] is not difficult to understand. Table fellowship established something of a covenant relationship; eating with sinners thus would appear to connote acceptance of them. By contrast, a pious person normally preferred to eat with scholars.



Pure table-fellowship was a primary defining characteristic of the Pharisaic movement. Scripture was already clear that one should not have fellowship with sinners (Ps 1:1; 119:63; Prov 13:20; 14:7; 28:7), though the point in each instance was to warn against being influenced by sinners. Jewish tradition developed this warning against improper association with the wicked. Jesus’ behavior thus thoroughly violated his contemporaries’ understanding of holiness. Yet had the Pharisees valued his objective more than his method they should not have been annoyed. In Jesus’ case the influence was going one way — from Jesus to the sinners (Mk 2:155, 17; Lk 15:1; cf. Ps 25:8) … Jesus goes even to the most obviously sinful and seeks their repentance. This behavior was so shocking that it left an indelible mark in the traditions about him.



[Likewise, when it comes to Jesus violating his peers’ conventional purity boundaries,] Jesus does not explicitly address contracting impurity so much as he removes the impurity [through healing the individual] … Presumably the [Gospel] writers viewed such cases the way they viewed Jesus’ contact with sinners: the true influence flowed from Jesus to others, not the reverse. Nevertheless, they are no more likely to have deliberately invented this pervasive yet potentially controversial emphasis in Jesus’ behavior toward the impure than they are to have invented his welcome of sinners.
[81] 

Earlier, we discussed the Jewish polemic that Jesus healed by calling on a demonic power. This is not the only polemic attested in our sources. The Gospels state that Jesus was called a “glutton-and-drunkard” (Matt 11:19//Lk 7:34).[82] No one would have invented this charge. In all likelihood, it is authentic.

When it comes to Jesus’ teachings, it is highly probable that he taught the primacy of love.[83] It is difficult to see how love came to enjoy such a central prominence in the early Church’s ethics if the teaching did not originate from Jesus. As Keener notes:

[O]nly Jesus wielded the moral authority among his followers to focus their ethics so profoundly around a single theme. The distinctive primacy that love plays in virtually all early Christian ethics would not have been possible had the Christians not derived this primacy from the mouth of the one Teacher who united them. Thence comes the early Christian “law of love,” attested not only in Mark’s tradition but in Paul (Rom 13:8-10; Gal 5:14), James (Jas 2:8), and Johannine tradition (Jn 13:14-35).[84]

Similarly, scholar James Charlesworth notes:

Jesus most likely taught a love command that was unique. Jesus elevated the concept of love and made it central to his teachings; he even seems to have taught that his followers should love their enemies.[85]

The beatitudes of Jesus (Matt 5:3-12; Lk 6:20-23) are widely accepted as authentic.[86] Beatitudes are a Jewish rhetorical form. The Old Testament authors, the Qumran, the New Testament writers, and later rabbis all used beatitudes. It would be strange if Jesus were an exception to this. Furthermore, the contents of Jesus’ beatitudes cohere very well with secure elements of the tradition — Jesus being an eschatological prophet, his proclamation of the kingdom of God, the content of many of his parables, as well as his basic exhortations to mercy, love, and forgiveness.[87] The short Q beatitudes also reflect the same structure as the M beatitudes, multiply attesting that Jesus used beatitudes in chains like Ben Sira and Qumran.

The parables of Jesus in the Gospels are very likely authentic. They reflect Jesus’ agrarian environment as opposed to the urban environment of the early Church.[88] As Keener notes:

Jesus most often told stories about agriculture and the daily life of his common hearers, a characteristic that supports authenticity in his Galilean context”.[89]

Furthermore, bracketing the reportage of Jesus’ parables, other New Testament writers do not employ parables when typically addressing urban communities outside Palestine. Early Christian writers scarcely used parables too. Since parables were not a popular rhetorical form in early Christianity, later Christians are unlikely to have invented parables. Even if we were to suppose that they did invent parables, they likely would not have reflected Jesus’ environment, as the parables in the Gospels do. Whenever early Christians employed illustrations, they typically reflected the Greek world. For these reasons, scholars widely accept Jesus’ parables in the Gospels. As Keener notes:

[Jesus’ parables] are among the least debatable, most securely authentic elements of the Jesus tradition.[90]

It is highly likely that Jesus taught a form of the Lord’s prayer (Matt 6:9-13; Lk 11:2-4).[92] Although Matthew’s and Luke’s versions of the prayer agree on many points, they also differ significantly. As Charlesworth notes, this suggests that they derive from two independent sources. Furthermore, the prayer echoes the Kaddish as well as the language of other early Jewish prayers, so it cannot be an invention of the later Gentile church.[93]

The account of Jesus and his disciples at Caesarea Philippi, in which Jesus blesses and commissions Peter (Matt 16:13-17), is very likely historical.[94] Beatitudes and comissionings appear elsewhere in Jesus’ words and elsewhere in early Judaism. Jewish teachers sometimes pronounced blessings on those who gave correct responses, just as Jesus does to Peter in the narrative. Jesus’ renaming of Simon to Peter fits Jesus’ authority as a teacher and biblical naming traditions (e.g. God renaming Abram to Abraham). The name Peter is not a common name so it is apt to be a symbolic nickname. The Aramaic translation of Peter, “Cephas”, is multiply attested, including in the primitive Christian creed in 1 Cor 15:3-ff. This points to a very early tradition. Of course, Jesus granting Peter the chief rank among his disciples in this account “best explains his multiply attested leadership role both in the gospel tradition and in the apostolic church.[95] Lastly, the passage contains several Palestinian-Jewish elements. As Keener notes:

[N]early every other element of the blessing (not least the blessing formula itself) … [is] at home in a Palestinian Jewish setting.[96] 

Moving into the passion narrative, the Last Supper enjoys strong critical support.[97] It is multiply attested not only in the Gospels (Mk 14:12-26; Jhn 13:1-4) but even in Paul’s letters. Quoting St. Paul at length (1 Cor 11:23-26):

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

If the Last Supper was known by Paul then the tradition must be very early. This is supported by the recorded words of Jesus in the Last Supper, which display various early linguistic features. In addition to being very early, the tradition satisfies the criterion of embarrassment. Being asked to eat one’s flesh and blood is scandalous — no one would have invented such a controversial command. John’s gospel, in fact, reports that many of Jesus’ disciples had difficulty in accepting this teaching of his (Jhn 6:60-62). In the end, as Keener notes:

Jesus’ words about the cup, the bread, his body and blood are among the most secure elements of our traditions about Jesus.[98]

One of the most striking things about the Gospels is that the disciples are portrayed in an unflattering light in many instances.[99] Indeed, as Keener notes, it is interesting that Jesus’ leading disciples, though viewed as a foundation for the Church (Matt 16:18; Eph 2:20; Rev 21:14), “never achieve a heroic status in the Gospels”.[100] When Jesus asks his disciples to stay up with him in prayer on the night of his arrest, they struggle to do so and eventually fall asleep (Mk 14:32-37). Judas, one of the Twelve, betrays Jesus (Mk 14:43-44). Once Jesus is arrested, the disciples flee and abandon him (Mk 14:50). Peter, the leader of the early Church, denies Jesus several times after inquiries from others about his identity and affiliation (Mk 14:66-71). These slew of embarrassing details are likely historical.

Moving on, it is highly probable that Jesus was weak enough to carry his own cross, needing the help of a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, to carry it all the way to Calvary (Mk 15:21). As Keener notes:

Since condemned criminals normally carried their own crosses, it would increase the perception of Jesus’ shame if he proved too weak to carry his own … [Furthermore,] Simon does not bear the cross willingly as a mere invention to fulfill a disciple paradigm.[101]

Jesus was indisputably crucified under Pontius Pilate, the prefect of Judea.[102] This event is supported by a number of Christian and non-Christian sources. Jesus’ death by crucifixion is attested across the New Testament texts. It is also attested by the Jewish historian Josephus and the Roman historian Tacitus. Furthermore, crucifixion was seen as (literally) the most shameful manner of execution in the Roman Empire.[103] It is not something any Christian would want to invent. In fact, St. Paul states that Jesus’ lowly end was an obstacle to conversion for many non-Christians. As Paul notes in his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 1:23):

[W]e preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.

The Alexamenos graffito, our earliest known pictorial representation of Jesus’ crucifixion (early 3rd century graffiti), attests to the embarrassing nature of Jesus’ execution as well.[104] The drawing portrays a crucified man with a donkey’s head to the right of the image and a young man to the left of the image. Underneath the crucified figure is a Greek inscription that when translated into English says: “Alexamenos worships [his] god”. With this graffiti, an unknown pagan artist mocked a Christian named Alexamenos for believing in a god who was crucified.

Next up, we will discuss the critical support for the resurrection narratives. (Hold your thought on what Christian and non-Christian scholars affirm about the resurrection appearances! We will get to that towards the end of this section).

In the Gospels, a group of Jesus’ female followers is said to have visited Jesus’ tomb, discovered it empty, and witnessed Jesus’ first post-mortem appearance. That the first witnesses to the empty tomb and resurrection were women (Mk 16:1; Matt 28:8-10) and not men bespeaks authenticity.[105] Women were viewed in a low light in antiquity. In fact, in ancient Jewish culture, the testimony of women was considered unreliable and inadmissible in a court of law. For this reason, if the narratives were invented, it is very difficult to see why women were made the first witnesses — to Christianity’s biggest claim and foundational event no less — the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. As Jewish scholar Adela Yarbo Collins notes:

The status of women in the ancient world was such that a story fabricated as proof or apology would not be based on the testimony of women.[106]  

Another notable point is that although the women are recognized as the first witnesses in the Gospels, they are left out of the statement of eyewitnesses in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 15:1-7). This may very well be because of the low status of women in antiquity. Mentioning them as witnesses, especially as first in order, would not have been persuasive to ancient audiences. As Pope Benedict XVI comments in his Jesus of Nazareth series:

In the confessional tradition [(1 Cor 15:1-7)] only men are named as witnesses, whereas in the narrative tradition [(the Gospels)] women play a key role, indeed they take precedence over the men. This may be linked to the fact that in the Jewish tradition only men could be admitted as witnesses in court — the testimony of women was considered unreliable. So the “official” tradition, which is, so to speak, addressing the court of Israel and the court of the world, has to observe this norm if it is to prevail in what we might in what we might describe as Jesus’ ongoing trial.[107]

With all that said, let us shift our focus from the women as first witnesses and tackle the resurrection appearances generally.

The evidence for the resurrection experiences of the disciples is so strong that virtually all contemporary scholars, including skeptical scholars, affirm that Jesus’ disciples had experiences that caused them to believe that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to them. As scholar Michael Licona notes:

[S]ubsequent to Jesus’ execution, a number of his followers had experiences … that convinced them Jesus had risen from the dead and had appeared to them in some manner. This conclusion is granted by a nearly unanimous consensus of modern scholars and may therefore be added to our “historical bedrock”.[108]

How these “experiences” are to be interpreted (i.e. actual appearances of a risen Jesus or some variant of the hallucination theory) is where the disagreement comes in. Jesus’ resurrection appearances are attested not only in the Gospels and Acts but also in Paul’s letters. The most valuable tradition among these is 1 Corinthians 15:1-7, which is widely agreed by scholars to date within 5 years of the death of Jesus and originate from the Jerusalem church:[109]

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas [(Peter)], then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the Apostles.

After conveying this tradition, Paul, a former persecutor of the Church, concludes by testifying about Jesus’ appearance to him (1 Cor 15:8):

Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

In light of 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, atheist scholar Mark Crossley affirms:

The resurrection appearances are some of the hardest, best evidence we have.[110]

Combining the evidence for the post-mortem appearances with the strong evidence for the willingness of the disciples to endanger themselves by preaching a risen Christ, historians are on firm ground in saying that the disciples were genuine in their belief that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to them.

2.4. Archaeology

The Gospels enjoy support from archaeology as well. In modern times, many discoveries have been made that confirm or give credence to the New Testament narrative.

In 1990, several ancient ossuaries were discovered in a burial cave in Jerusalem. One of these belonged to a “Joseph, son of Caiaphas”.[111] This Caiaphas has been identified as the high priest of Israel who presided over the trial of Jesus. In 2008, another ossuary, called the “Miriam Ossuary”, was discovered. This find mentions Caiaphas as well saying “Miriam daughter of yeshua son of Caiaphas, priest of Ma’azya from Beit Imri”.[112]

In 1962, an archaeologist working on Israel’s coast discovered an inscription that confirmed the existence of Pontius Pilate.[113] This discovery, now known as the “Pilate Inscription”, mentions Tiberius, the Roman emperor during Jesus’ time, and Pontius Pilate, the prefect of Judea — “Tiberieum/[Pon]tius Pilatus/ [Praef]ectus Iuda[eae]”.

In the past, there was only evidence of Nazareth being inhabited before and after the first century.[114] The hyper skepticism of some scholars led them to doubt the inhabitation of Nazareth during Jesus’ time (despite the fact that continuity of inhabitation between the two periods should have been a likely conclusion). In 2006, a first century stone house with underground cisterns and grain silos was discovered in Nazareth, confirming that the town was inhabited during Jesus’ lifetime. (This is the problem with skeptical arguments or conclusions from silence!).

Some scholars used to doubt the veracity of the Gospels regarding the existence of synagogues in Palestine during Jesus’ lifetime. This put into doubt one key feature of Jesus’ ministry — his preaching in synagogues across Galilee. The reason for these doubts was that, in the past, there was no archaeological evidence of synagogues in Palestine before 70 AD. In light of this, some skeptical scholars presumed that the Gospel authors retrojected a reality in their time to Jesus’ ministry. This all changed in 2009 when archaeologists uncovered the ruins of a large and well-preserved first century synagogue complex in Magdala (the village of Mary Magdalene).[115] This synagogue was determined to be in use between 50 BC and 67 AD. Based on the size of the synagogue, its location in Magdala, and information from the Gospels, archaeologists have come to the conclusion that Jesus “almost certainly” preached here. Since this discovery, nine more first century synagogues have been discovered in Palestine, showing once again why absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.[116]

One of the most fascinating archaeological discoveries related to the New Testament is St. Peter’s house.[117] In the late 1960s, archaeologists discovered a series of insula or attached stone houses in Capernaum. Built on top of one of these structures was an ancient 5th century Byzantine church. The stone house beneath the church dates back to the first century BC. Scratched on the walls of one of its rooms, in the plaster, are Christian prayers in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, and Syriac. Archaeologists came to the conclusion that the structure was a ”house church” from the first century and very likely the home of St. Peter, who lived in Capernaum. This also makes it the site of one healing account in the Gospels, the healing of St. Peter’s mother-in-law (Mk 1:29-31). 

Another major discovery is the pool of Bethesda, which is mentioned in John 5:2. The pool was accidentally discovered in the 19th century when workers sought to restore the medieval church of St. Anne.[118] Underneath the courtyard of the church, ruins of a large and very deep pool were discovered. These ruins precisely match John’s description of the pool of Bethesda — bounded on the sides with four colonnades and spanned across the middle by a fifth. Prior to the discovery, some scholars doubted the existence of the pool due to lack of evidence as well as its unusual design. As it turns out, however, such a pool existed. Its unique design is likely the reason why it was described by the author of John’s gospel in the first place. This site is also the location of another one of Jesus’ healings (Jhn 5:1-14)

Finally, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre may very well be the site of Jesus’ tomb. There are several reasons supporting the authenticity of the site.[119]

One, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands on an ancient first century Jewish cemetery, with rock-cut tombs matching the description of Jesus’ tomb in the Gospels.[120]

Two, the history of the identification of the site shows that it was known as Jesus’ tomb as early as the first half of the second century. Helena, the mother of Constantine, went to Jerusalem to identify the Holy Places in 326-328 AD. When she asked the locals where the site of Jesus’ tomb was, she was pointed to a pagan temple that was erected by Emperor Hadrian (reigned 117-138 AD), who desecrated many Jewish holy sites by building pagan temples on top of them. If Jesus was truly buried on the site of today’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, then Hadrian’s action of disrespect ended up serving as a marker of identification for future generations.

Three, the location of the site is unlikely to be invented. This strengthens its credibility. Christian tradition is unanimous that Jesus was buried outside Jerusalem’s walls (Heb 13:12; Jn 19:41). Jewish custom made it common knowledge that burials would occur outside the city’s walls as well. No one would invent a site inside. Today, the site of the Holy Sepulchre is located inside Jerusalem’s walls, not outside, but Agrippa I expanded the walls of Jerusalem to include the area of the Holy Sepulchre sometime between 41 and 44 AD. In other words, the site of the Holy Sepulchre during Jesus’ time was located outside Jerusalem’s walls but 11-14 years after Jesus’ crucifixion, the location became inside the city’s walls due to Agrippa I’s wall expansion.

Ultimately, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was rightly located inside Jerusalem’s walls during Jesus’ time. The site would also be an unlikely choice for later Christians who would want to invent a location for Jesus’ tomb, since during their time, the site would be located inside Jerusalem’s walls and not outside. We may very well have a site that was identified as Jesus’ tomb within 14 years of his death, during a time in which his disciples “led the growing church in Jerusalem, within walking distance away”.[121]

On the probability of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre being the site of Jesus’ tomb, archaeologist John McRay states:

The archaeological and early literary evidence argues strongly for those who associate [Jesus’ tomb] with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.[122]

Likewise, archaeologist Jerome Murphy-O’Connor of the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem comments the following in his “The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide” (2008):

Is this the place where Christ … was buried? Very probably, yes.[123]

Dan Bahat, a Jerusalem archaeologist, comments on the probability of the site being authentic:

We may not be absolutely certain that the site of the Holy Sepulchre Church is the site of Jesus’ burial, but we certainly have no other site that can lay a claim nearly as weighty, and we really have no reason to reject the authenticity of the site.[124]

Although the evidence in favor of the site is not decisive, it is significant and definitely worthy of being taken seriously.

2.5. Comparison with Apocryphal Gospels

We can close our discussion on the reliability of the Gospels by comparing them with the later apocryphal gospels (e.g. the Gospel of Thomas, Judas, Peter, etc). These texts were written after the first century AD and originated from heterodox gnostic communities outside the early Church. The apocryphal gospels provide a great comparison to the canonical Gospels Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John.

When it comes to geographical information, the apocryphal gospels hardly mention any place names. The gospel of Thomas, one of the earliest apocryphal gospels (mid-second century) and the most popular one, mentions Judea, the world” and names no other location.[125] Likewise, the gospel of Judas mentions Judea and “the world” only.[126] The gospel of Truth names no locations.[127] The gospel of Philip names four locations — Jerusalem, Nazareth, the Jordan River, and “the world”.[128] This, however, is not impressive, considering that Jerusalem was a known religious capital, and Nazareth, though an obscure town and not known outside Palestine in Jesus’ day, was already famous because of Jesus by the time the gospel of Philip was written.[129] Furthermore, as a point of comparison, the gospel of John names more local bodies of water (five) than the gospel of Philip mentions all types of place names (three, excluding “the world”) — think about that!

Another characteristic of the apocryphal gospels is that when they do give geographical descriptions, they “often” make mistakes.[130] The Sophia of Jesus Christ locates the Mount of Olives “in Galilee” despite it being located beside Jerusalem.[131] The Infancy Gospel of Thomas errs in describing the town of Nazareth as being located “in the region of Bethlehem”.[132] Nazareth is not located anywhere near Bethlehem. Nazareth is located in the region of Galilee to the north while Bethlehem is located in the region of Judea to the south. The gospel of Barnabas describes Jesus as “sailing to his city of Nazareth”.[133] Nazareth is not a city and it is also located inland, making it impossible to “sail to”.  The gospel of Philip gives a detailed discussion on temples in Jerusalem and mentions the directions these buildings faced. Scholar Hans Martin Schenke described this discussion as displaying “irritatingly unrealistic topography”.[134]

The apocryphal gospels also do a poor job of reflecting Jesus’ environment containing limited Palestinian-Jewish traits. As Keener notes, the apocryphal gospels “reflect the environment of their authors far better than the environment in which the story is set”.[135] In the following discussion, we will focus on our earliest apocryphal texts (those that can be dated to the second century), such as the gospel of Thomas and the gospel of Peter, in order to see the best that the apocryphal tradition can offer.

When it comes to Palestinian traits, the apocryphal gospels hardly reflect any. They display, as Keener put it, “second-century tendencies far removed from a Palestinian tradition”.[136] The gospel of Thomas’ ending image of a woman being saved by becoming male “fits Philo’s Platonic Alexandrian milieu far better than that of Jesus”.[137] In the gospel of Peter, Jewish priests wait in a burial plot. This makes no sense in Jesus’ original environment.[138]

As for the quality of Jewishness, Williams notes that the apocryphal gospels look “decidedly less Jewish than the canonical Gospels.[139] The gospel of Thomas, for example, reflects “little Jewish background” while the Gospel of Peter is bluntly described as “so far removed from any knowledge of early Judaism”.[140]

In the end, the apocryphal gospels are a great comparison to the canonical gospels. Unlike the canonical Gospels, the apocryphal gospels provide limited geographical detail, and when they do give geographical descriptions, they often make mistakes. Unlike the canonical Gospels, the apocryphal gospels hardly reflect Palestinian-Jewish color and instead, much better reflect the second century environment of their authors.

The apocryphal gospels provide us with another line of evidence for the reliability of the canonical Gospels. The differences between the two are stark — as clear as day and night. As Williams comments:

These later Gospels … provide us with an excellent control sample. They show that sometimes people wrote about Jesus without close knowledge of what he did. The fact that the four Gospels, both as a group and individually, contrast with these other Gospels illustrates the qualitative difference between these sources.[141]

3. Acts of the Apostles

Having finished our discussion on the Gospels, we can now move on to the book of Acts.

We have strong reasons to view Acts as a reliable history of the early Church. A great amount of information in Acts has been corroborated, even in matters of small detail. Luke’s accounts of Paul’s missionary journeys are both detailed and coherent, and as Keener notes, the “we” sections tend to be “among Luke’s most detailed material”.[142] This is exactly what we would expect if Luke was a traveling companion of Paul and an eyewitness to the “we” sections in Acts.

When it comes to Paul’s first missionary journey, Luke tells us that Paul and Barnabas traveled to Cyprus, Barnabas’ homeland. Traveling from east coast to west coast, as they would have to do after coming from Seleucia, Luke mentions their significant stops at Salamis and Paphos. These were the two biggest cities of Cyprus on each of those respective coasts.[144]

The existence of the family of Sergius Paulus (Acts 13:7), a proconsul in Paphos who becomes a Christian, has been impressively confirmed by two gravestones and one inscription.[145] Luke mentions that one of Paulus’ attendants was a sorcerer. This fits with the historical data. As scholar James Dunn notes:

[Roman sources] tell us of more than one high-born Roman who was attracted by the “superstitions” stemming from the East. And several Roman rulers had magicians and soothsayers among their personal staff.[146]

Luke tells us that this sorcerer was also Jewish (Acts 13:6), making this a case of religious syncretism. This fits with other information Luke provides about this individual — the attendant was known by two names, “Bar-Jesus” and “Elymas” (Acts 13:7-8). Bar-Jesus is a Jewish name and Elymas is a Greek name.

Paul and others head to the south-central coast of Turkey. As scholar Craig Blomberg comments on Luke’s description of Paul’s travels in this area:

All the places can be identified, and all of Luke’s geography proves accurate.[147]

Paul’s next stop after Paphos was Pisidian Antioch. Impressively, we have inscriptional evidence that members of Sergius Paulus’ extended family lived there, suggesting that perhaps, Paulus requested Paul to proclaim the good news to his relatives after becoming Christian himself.[148]

Luke tells us that Paul and company visited the local synagogue at Pisidian Antioch. In the early 20th century, the foundations of a first century building underneath a fourth century Byzantine church in Pisidian Antioch was uncovered. According to archaeologists, this may very well be the synagogue that Paul and his companions visited.[149]

In Acts 14:1-23, Paul and Barnabas visit Lystra and Derbe. For the longest time, scholars did not know where these ancient cities were located. Some even doubted their existence altogether. Inscriptions for both cities were discovered in the late 19th century and mid 20th century respectively.[150] Luke rightly identifies both cities as part of the ancient territory of Lycaonia. He is also aware that a separate indigenous Lycaonian language is spoken in these cities. Luke correctly identifies worship to Zeus and Hermes in Lystra. An ancient altar and inscription to both Zeus and Hermes were discovered just outside the ancient city.[151]

Retracing their steps to the Mediterranean sea, Paul and Barnabas preach in Perga, a major port city in Pamphylia. Afterward, they travel to nearby Attalia and sail back to Syrian Antioch. As Blomberg comments, landing at Perga when coming from Cyprus and traveling to Attalia to sail for Syria “corresponds to the most common routes of the day”.[152]

Luke recounts Paul’s journey back to Jerusalem and his geography is on-point. From Syrian Antioch, Phoenicia is farther south and Samaria even further, on the way to Jerusalem in Judea.

At the beginning of Acts’ fifth section (now in Paul’s second missionary journey), Luke displays very accurate and detailed knowledge of Roman provincial organization.[153] Luke shows knowledge that there was one region jointly encompassing both Phrygia and Galatia (16:6; cf. 18:23). This is precisely the arrangement Rome created in 25 BC when it reorganized its empire into ten provinces — a reorganization that often blurred historic territorial divisions along ethnic lines.

Luke continues to recount Paul’s journeys. His geography continues to be accurate and his travel routes are coherent. As Blomberg comments:

The territories of Asia (minor), Mysia, Bithynia and Macedonia, and the city of Troas, are all real places, listed in a way that makes sense of Paul’s attempted and actual travels. The same is true of his itinerary in Greece — from the island of Samothrace to the cities of Neapolis (16:11), Philippi (16:12), Amphipolis, Apollonia, Thessalonica (17:1), Berea (17:10), Athens (17:16), and Corinth (18:1). Paul is visiting the major towns on the eastern side of the peninsula in sequence as he progresses from north to south.[154]

Luke correctly describes Philippi as a Roman colony and he impressively identifies a small river near a gate to the west of the city, the Gangites.[155] Luke tells us of a woman named Lydia (Acts 16:14), a dealer of purple cloth from Thyatira who converts to Christianity and urges Paul and his companions to stay at her house in Philippi. This fits with the historical evidence. As scholar Eckhard Schnabel notes:

A Latin inscription from Philippi refers to dealers in purple, an inscription from Thessalonica documents a guild of purple dyers, and an inscription from Philippi mentions purple dyers from Thyatira.[156]

The use and abuse of fortune-tellers in Greco-Roman antiquity (Acts 16:16-18) is just as well-attested, and the description of being stripped, beaten with rods, and put into foot stocks, is in line with documented experiences of the day (Acts 16:22-24).[157]

Paul’s mention of an altar to an unknown god at Athens (Acts 17:23) is corroborated by other ancient writers and various inscriptional evidence — such altars did exist at Athens.[158] As Luke accurately notes, there were many Epicureans and Stoics in the city. Paul’s recorded sermon in Athens is both brilliant and contextualized for his audience, just as one would expect from a first-rate intellectual like Paul. As Blomberg comments on this sermon of Paul:

[Paul’s sermon beautifully plays] the views of each group against each other in service of Christian truth. The Cretan Epimenides and the Cilician Stoic Aratus are quoted in verses 27-28 to support God’s immanence, but only after his transcendance, in agreement with the Epicureans, was well established (vv. 24-26).[159]

Paul being questioned by the Athean city council, the Areopagus, makes sense. It was their job to serve as custodian of the accepted gods and goddesses who could be legally worshipped in the city.

Luke breezes through Paul’s voyage to Israel and return to Syrian Antioch. As usual, he gets the details right. As Blomberg notes:

[Luke] knows it was natural to sail directly across the Aegean Sea and dock at Ephesus (v. 19) before making the much longer journey to the eastern Mediterranean (v. 18). He knows Caesarea was a major port city on the coast of Israel (v. 22a) and that one goes “up” to Jerusalem because of its elevation and “down” to Antioch in Syria (v. 22b) at a lower altitude, even though it was north of Jerusalem.[160]

On Paul’s third missionary journey, a major stop for him was Ephesus. Luke, again, displays accurate knowledge of the place. As Keener notes:

Luke also displays accurate information about Ephesus (Acts 19:1-41): Ephesians used a unique title for Artemis, sometimes defended her cult, were sensitive at precisely this time concerning the economics of Artemis worship, could have unscheduled meetings in the theater near the crowded market, and countless other details.[161] 

As for Paul’s travels after Ephesus, Blomberg comments:

Much of Paul’s subsequent journeying is narrated almost like a travel itinerary, with only sporadic additional information about what happened at the various locations. All of the sites were real places — Troas (20:5), Assos (v. 13), Mitylene (v. 14), Chios, Samos and Miletos (v. 15) … The travel itinerary continues in chapter 21, with every city in the right order forming a logical sequence — Kos, Rhodes, and Patara (v. 1), passing by Cyprus en route to Tyre in Syrophoenica (vv. 2-3). Then would come Ptolemais (v. 7) and Caesara (b. 16), prior to Jerusalem (v. 17).[162] 

Impressively, even the account of Paul’s and Luke’s trip from Caesarea to Rome, in which they both experienced a shipwreck, shows great accuracy and detail. As Keener notes:

Although further examples could be multiplied, I conclude this section with Luke’s “we” narrative about the sea voyage (Acts 27:1-28:15). Even minor details of the account match what we know of weather conditions and the sailors’ actions. Already in the nineteenth century, a mariner [(James Smith and his work, “The Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul”)] showed how the seasonal storm conditions, direction and timing of the ship’s drift, and other details precisely fit Mediterranean conditions. More recent meteorological studies offer further confirmation. Luke or his source was clearly aboard a ship in these conditions. Skeptics suggest that perhaps Luke simply added the mentions of Paul to the existing narrative, but if Luke describes the conditions accurately, is it not simpler to assume that he was also present with Paul, as he claims?.[163]

Likewise, Blomberg comments:

There is not an unrealistic detail in this entire account. The mid-nineteenth-century commentator, James Smith, wrote a classic work … In meticulous detail he examined every aspect of ancient seafaring relevant to Paul’s experiences in these chapters, concluding that the author of Acts must have either accompanied Paul, as is implied by the “we”-narrative, or was relying on another person’s eyewitness account of the events. Every element of the route, the danger yet desire to travel late in the fall while still before winter, the outfitting of the vessel, the measures taken to survive during the storm, the hurricane-force wind blowing from the northeast, soundings as land became closer, and the danger of running aground at too great a speed all correspond perfectly to what we know of the practices and technology of the day.



The completion of the trip to Rome on a new boat after winter had ended likewise fits what we know of Paul’s era. Castor and Pollux were the twin gods of seafaring, so they formed a natural figure head for a ship (28:11). Syracuse, Rhegium, Puteoli, and Three Taverns were towns on the Appian Way as travelers made their way northward on the Italian Peninsula toward Rome (vv. 12-15).
[164]

The ending of Acts with Paul under house arrest in Rome fits what we know of the practice during the period.[165] House arrest, with a prisoner lightly chained to a series of rotating guards, was common practice for individuals not considered to be dangerous (v. 16). As Luke accurately notes, the prisoner had to pay for his own rent and accommodation (v. 30) — adding insult to injury!

Another notable point about Acts is Luke’s accuracy when it comes to local rulers and titles of local officials.

Luke identifies several local rulers in Acts such as Herod Agrippa I, Herod Agrippa II, Felix, Festus, and Galio. The most impressive of these is his identification of Galio, the proconsul of Achaia in Greece. A discovery of an inscription at Delphi confirmed that Gallio was indeed the proconsul of Achaia and that his term only lasted less than a year (Gallio also did not finish his term) — encompassing 51-52 AD. As Blomberg comments: “The reference to Galio in verse 12 forms a major synchronism with extra-biblical history”.[166] Although not a local ruler, Luke correctly identifies the Jewish high priest at the time of Acts 23:2, Ananias.[167]

In addition to identifying several local rulers, Luke gives accurate information about these individuals. Agrippa I, for example, did die of a gastrointestinal disorder as he was giving a public address to a crowd that revered him. Agrippa II took in his sister, Bernice, to live with him precisely during the time of Acts 25:13.[168] Before and after the time of Acts, Bernice did not stay with Agrippa II for she was and would be married. Felix was married three times in his life but Drusilla was his wife at exactly the time of Acts 24:24.[169]

Overall, Luke’s depiction of local rulers comports well with what we know of these figures from other sources. Luke’s depiction of political rulers in Judea accords well with what we know of these individuals from Josephus (who wrote later than Acts!). As Keener notes:

Often in Acts, and especially once the narrative streches beyond Judea, we have sources available that confirm Luke’s reports about persons or events … the depictions of Herod Agrippa I, Agrippa II, Felix, and Festus (Acts 12:1-23; 23:24-26:32) resemble what we know of these figures from Josephus.[170]

Likewise, Luke’s depiction of Gallio accords well with what we know of him from other sources.[171]

Luke gets the titles of local officials correct too. City officials in Thessalonica, for example, are rightly called “politarchs” (Acts 17:8). This term was unattested in history until an inscription on the city’s Vardar Gate was discovered. Likewise, the office of “city clerk” (Acts 19:35) did exist at Ephesus. Luke mentions a good number of terms used for local officials in the many places his narratives span — all of them are accurate. As Keener notes:

Even though no handbook for local titles of officials existed … Luke always gets correct the titles for officials in different locals.[172]

In the end, a great amount of information in Acts has been corroborated, even in matters of small detail. As Blomberg puts it, in Acts:

[O]ne can trace in detail … [Paul’s] travels, identify every location, and understand something from the local culture or Paul’s past experience that explains his movements, behavior, and forms of public address. And the historical existence of even minor characters and details can often be confirmed from extra biblical sources.[173]

Likewise, Roman historian A.N. Sherwin-White comments on Acts saying:

The confirmation of historicity is overwhelming … any attempt to reject its basic historicity even in matters of detail must now appear absurd.[174] 

Ultimately, there is strong evidence for the historical reliability of Acts. Since Luke and Acts were written by the same author, this evidence also reflects well on the gospel of Luke.

I will close this section with a quote from Sir William Mitchell Ramsay, a leading 20th century New Testament scholar and distinguished archaeologist. Ramsay was educated in the liberal Tübingen school of thought, which viewed the New Testament texts with skepticism. Later in life, Ramsay traveled to Asia Minor to study the land extensively. As he did, however, his skepticism of Acts collapsed and he reversed his opinion on the text and its author. As Ramsay remarks:

Further study showed that the book [Acts] could bear the most minute scrutiny as an authority for the facts of the Aegean world, and that it was written with such judgment, skill, art and perception of truth as to be a model of historical statement  … Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy; he is possessed of the true historic sense.[175]

St. Paul’s Areopagus sermon at Athens. Painting by Raphael.

4. Conclusion

In closing, we have strong reason to trust the Gospels and Acts as historical sources about Jesus and the early Church.

In part one, we discussed how multiple factors (e.g. genre, time of writing, authorship, the traditioning community they arose from, etc) point to the conclusion that the Gospels are generally reliable biographies of Jesus. We have very good reason to believe that a historical core lies behind the average account in the Gospels. Unless there is good reason to believe otherwise, the basic attitude towards events in the Gospels should be one of trust, since full-length early empire biographies about recent figures normally recounted genuine historical information. 

We also discussed how the evidence points to Acts being a generally reliable history of the early Church. There is good reason to believe that Acts was written by Luke — a traveling companion of Paul, an eyewitness to the “we” sections in Acts, and a member of the Christian Church at an early date (the 50s AD, possibly earlier). These are great credentials to write a work like Acts.

The conclusions of part one summarized above are strengthened by the evidence presented in part two. 

Looking at the texts, the Gospels possess qualities we would expect if they were based on eyewitness knowledge of Jesus’ life. The Gospels display substantial and accurate knowledge of Palestinian geography as well as strong local color. Furthermore, critical analysis indicates that a substantial portion of Jesus’ life and teachings are very likely historical. Especially striking is the presence of many embarrassing details in the narrative. These testify to the existence of a significant conservative impulse within the early Church.[176] Evidence from archaeology and a comparison with the later apocryphal Gospels provide further evidence for the historical reliability of the Gospels.

Likewise, Acts possesses qualities we would expect if it was based on eyewitness knowledge of events in the early Church. A great amount of information in Acts has been corroborated, even in matters of small detail. The simplest and most logical conclusion is that Luke was indeed a traveling companion of Paul and an eyewitness to the “we” sections in Acts. The evidence for the reliability of Acts also reflects well on the gospel of Luke, which was written by the same author.

Ultimately, there is strong evidence for the general reliability of the Gospels and Acts. We have very good reasons for trusting these texts as historical sources about Jesus of Nazareth and the early Christian Church. 

References

  1. Williams, Can We Trust The Gospels, loc. 739-808
  2. Keener, The Historical Jesus, pg. 183
  3. Williams, Can We Trust The Gospels, loc. 808
  4. Ibid, loc. 808.
  5. Ibid, loc. 968
  6. Ibid, loc. 808.
  7. FOCLOnline. Youtube. Can We Trust the Gospels? – Peter Williams. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBLyatge8BM
  8. Ibid, loc. 905
  9. FOCLOnline. Youtube. Can We Trust the Gospels? – Peter Williams. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBLyatge8BM
  10. Williams, Can We Trust The Gospels, loc. 894
  11. Ibid.
  12. Ibid, loc. 955
  13. Ibid, loc. 974
  14. Ibid
  15. Ibid
  16. Ibid
  17. Ibid
  18. Ibid, loc. 1249. Skeptics will point to a number of geographical errors (less than a handful) in Mark to argue against his reliability as a source. Two points to note here.

    One, geographical errors were made by other ancient historical writers as well. The Jewish historian Josephus was very familiar with Galilean geography. He was the leader of Jewish forces in Galilee during the Jewish-Roman war. Despite this, Josephus made a number of Galilean geographical errors in his works. Geography was not easy.

    Despite being an eyewitness, Josephus made mistakes himself. This does not mean that Josephus’ work is unreliable. In fact, scholars view Josephus as a generally reliable historical source. In the same way, if Mark made a number of geographical errors in his work, it would not count against his general reliability. More evidence needs to be marshaled in order to cast doubt on a source.

    Two, there are genuinely good explanations offered for these possible geographical errors in Mark. Looking at the explanations offered, I certainly think not all of them are errors. Check out Faithful Philosophy’s article, Thoughts on Mark’s Supposed Geographical Errors, for more information. If the explanations offered by scholars are correct, then these geographical errors become evidence for Mark’s geographical accuracy as well! Like a seat in the House of Representatives “shifting” from party A to party B if an incumbent congressman from party A is dethroned by the challenger from party B.
  19. Gathercole, The Journeys of Jesus and Jewish Geography. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT1o2mdxu44 
  20. Williams, Can We Trust the Gospels, loc. 993
  21. Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, pg. 101.
  22.  Williams, Can We Trust The Gospels, loc. 1296
  23.  Margaret H Williams, “Palestinian Jewish Personal Names in Acts,” in The Book of Acts in Its First Century Setting, vol. 4, Palestinian Setting, ed. Richard Bauckham (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 79-113; Tal Ilan, Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, pt. 1 Palestine 330 BCE-200 CE.
  24. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, pgs. 67-92
  25. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 489.
  26. Williams, Can We Trust The Gospels, loc. 894-955
  27. Ibid, loc. 894
  28. Ibid, loc. 955
  29. Ibid, loc. 955
  30. Keener, The Historical Jesus, pg. 182
  31. Ibid, pg. 183
  32. Williams, Can We Trust The Gospels, loc. 1333
  33. Ibid.
  34. Ibid.
  35. Keener, The Historical Jesus, pg. 20
  36. Ibid, pgs. 188 and 194
  37. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament, pg. 132
  38. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament, pg. 126
  39. Williams, Can We Trust The Gospels, loc. 1333
  40. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament, pg. 197
  41. Williams, Can We Trust The Gospels, loc. 1004
  42. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 100
  43. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 489
  44. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 493 and Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament, pg. 118
  45. Pitre, The Case for Jesus, pgs. 104-113
  46. Keener, The Historical Jesus, pg. 188
  47. Keener, Assumptions in Historical-Jesus Research: Using Ancient Biographies and Disciples’ Traditioning as a Control
  48. Ibid.
  49. Keener, The Historical Jesus, pg. 215
  50. Ibid, pg. 270
  51. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament, pg. 203
  52. Ibid, pg. 217
  53. Keener, The Historical Jesus, pg. 233
  54. Keener, The Historical Jesus, pg. 220
  55. Ibid, pg. 241
  56. Homlen and Porter (editors), James Charlesworth in Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus
  57. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 77
  58. Keener, The Historical Jesus, pg. 176
  59. Ibid, pg. 182
  60. Ibid.
  61. Ibid, pg. 182
  62. Ibid, pg. 183
  63. Ibid.
  64. Ibid, pg. 184
  65. Ibid, pg. 210-211
  66. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 6
  67. Homlen and Porter (editors), James Charlesworth in Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus
  68. As scholar John Granger Cook notes: “There is almost universal scholarly consensus that 1 Cor 15:3-5 contains a carefully preserved tradition pre-dating Paul’s apostolic activity and received by him within two to five years of the founding events” (The Resurrection of Jesus in the Pre-Pauline Formula of 1 Cor 15.3–5).
  69. As noted by leading scholar Larry Hurtado: “It is widely accepted, however, that the tradition Paul recites in 15:1-7 must go back to the Jerusalem Church” (Lord Jesus Christ, pg.  168).
  70. Homlen and Porter (editors), James Charlesworth in Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus
  71. Although the passage in Josephus was tampered by a later Christian scribe, scholars widely agree (even skeptical scholars) that the mention of Jesus’ miracle working is authentic to Josephus. Below is the scholarly reconstruction of what Josephus actually said:

    “At this time [the rule of Pontius Pilate as prefect of Judea] there appeared Jesus, a wise man. For he was a doer of paradoxical deeds, a teacher who received the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and among many of Gentile origin. And when Pilate at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day”.

    Scholars believe they can reconstruct what Josephus said with good confidence because the portions of interpolation are obvious and clumsy, and a Christian interpolator would not have used the word “paradoxical” to describe Jesus’ miracles (“Paradoxōn” is only used once in the New Testament, in Lk 5:26. It is also a fairly neutral term) but “signs” or “wonders”. Josephus also uses the word paradoxōn in another work when describing the miracles of the Jewish prophet Elisha. Other portions of the agreed-upon authentic core also have very good reasons for being legitimate. For example, the beginning “Now about this time …” is used by Josephus as a way of introducing a new topic many times in his work. There are also no early Christian parallels that refer to Jesus merely as “a wise man”, but this is a term used by Josephus several times, such as for Solomon and Daniel. The use of the word φῦλον (“phylon” – “race, tribe”) is also not used by Christians about themselves in any works of the time, but Josephus uses it elsewhere when he talks about nations or other distinct groups. All of the above elements mentioned are distinctively Josephean.
  72. Keener, The Historical Jesus, pg. 241
  73. Homlen and Porter (editors), James Charlesworth in Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus
  74. Keener, The Historical Jesus, pg. 241
  75. Twelftree, The Face of New Testament Studies, pg. 206
  76. Chilton and Evans, Authenticating the Activities of Jesus, pgs. 11-12
  77. Keener, The Historical Jesus, pg. 170
  78. Ibid.
  79. Ibid, pg. 211
  80. Ibid, pg. 221
  81. Ibid, pg. 211-212 and 221
  82. Ibid, pg. 211
  83.  Keener, The Historical Jesus, pg. 215-216
  84. Ibid, pg. 216
  85. Homlen and Porter (editors), James Charlesworth in Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus
  86. Ibid
  87. Meier, A Marginal Jew Volume Two, pgs. 330-331 and 336 
  88. Keener, The Historical Jesus, pg. 188
  89. Ibid, pg. 189
  90. Ibid, pg. 189
  91. Ibid, pg. 194
  92. Homlen and Porter (editors), James Charlesworth in Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus
  93. Keener, The Historical Jesus, pg. 198
  94. Keener, The Historical Jesus, pgs. 247-248
  95. Ibid, pg. 248
  96. Ibid.
  97. See also Brant Pitre’s excellent Jesus and the Last Supper (2017)
  98. Keener, The Historical Jesus, pg. 299
  99. In other parts of the Gospel tradition, the disciples are portrayed as having difficulty understanding (Mk 9:9-11), cowardly (Jhn 20:19), lacking in faith (Mk 4:40; Matt 14:30-32) and being worldy in thinking (Mk 8:32-33; Mk 10:35-37).
  100. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 128
  101. Keener, The Historical Jesus, pg. 322
  102. Ibid, pg. 323.
  103. Holland, T. Tom Holland & AC Grayling — History: Did Christianity give us our human values? Retrieved from https://youtu.be/7eSyz3BaVK8?t=407
  104. Hutchinson, Searching for Jesus, pg. 262
  105. Keener, The Historical Jesus, pg. 331 and Homlen and Porter (editors), James Charlesworth in Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus
  106.  Adela Yarbro Collins, The Beginning of the Gospel, pg.  127
  107. Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance Into Jerusalem To The Resurrection
  108.  Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, pg. 372
  109. As noted by leading critical scholar Dale Allison:

    “We can also be confident, given that Paul knew Peter and James, that 1 Cor. 15:3-8 is not folklore; and ‘since Paul…visited Peter and the Christian community in Jerusalem about five to six years after the crucifixion of Jesus, the tradition which he reports…can, at least, not contradict what he heard then’.” (The Resurrection of Jesus, pg. 40)

    Scholar John Granger Cook comments regarding the creed, which at minimum, extends as far as 1 Cor 15:3-5:

    “There is almost universal scholarly consensus that 1 Cor 15:3-5 contains a carefully preserved tradition pre-dating Paul’s apostolic activity and received by him within two to five years of the founding events” (The Resurrection of Jesus in the Pre-Pauline Formula of 1 Cor 15.3–5).

    Likewise, scholar David C. Sim notes on the tradition in 1 Cor 15:6-7 being equally early as the creed:

    “Many of them have argued that the original creedal formula extended from vv. 3-5a (“Christ died for our sins” to “he appeared to Cephas”) or from vv. 3-5b (which would include the appearance to the twelve). While there can be little doubt that in the list of later appearances Paul has added material, it is equally clear that the references to the appearances to the 500, James and all the apostles also stem from very early tradition. Whether this material was joined to the early creedal formula in vv. 3-5 or whether it was originally independent and brought together by Paul, the important point is that in either case Paul in 15:3-7 is citing very early material from the church in Jerusalem” (“The Family of Jesus and the Disciples of Jesus in Paul and Mark: Taking Sides in the Early Church’s Factional Dispute,” in Paul and Mark, pg. 76).

    Leading scholar Larry Hurtado notes regarding the origin of 1 Cor 15:3-7:

    “It is widely accepted, however, that the tradition Paul recites in 15:1-7 must go back to the Jerusalem Church” (Lord Jesus Christ, pg. 168).
  110. Unbelievable? Do the minimal facts support the resurrection? Gary Habermas & James Crossley. Retrieved from: https://unbelievable.podbean.com/e/new-testament-listener-qa-gary-habermas-james-crossley/
  111. Biblical Archaeology Review 18:5, September/October 1992. Retrieved from: https://www.baslibrary.org/biblical-archaeology-review/18/5/7
  112. Zissu and Goren, Israel Exploration Journal Vol. 61, No. 1 (2011), pp. 74-95 (22 pages). The Ossuary of ‘Miriam Daughter of Yeshua Son of Caiaphas, Priests [of] Maʿaziah from Beth ʾImri’. Retrieved from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23214223?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
  113.  Hutchinson, Searching for Jesus, pgs. 110-111
  114.  Ibid, pgs. 96-100
  115. Ibid, pgs. 103-104 
  116. Faithful Philosophy. Bible and History. Retrieved from: https://faithfulphilosophy.wordpress.com/bible-and-history/
  117. Hutchinson, Searching for Jesus, pgs. 107-109
  118. Craig, Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology,
  119. Keener, The Historical Jesus, pgs. 327-328
  120. Romey, Unsealing of Christ’s Reputed Tomb Turns Up New Revelations. National Geographic. Retrieved from: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/jesus-christ-tomb-burial-church-holy-sepulchre
  121. Keener, The Historical Jesus, pg. 328
  122. McRay, Archaelogy and the New Testament, pg. 216
  123. Murphy-O’Conner, The Holy Land; An Oxford Archaeologist, pgs. 49-57
  124. Romey, Unsealing of Christ’s Reputed Tomb Turns Up New Revelations. National Geographic. Retrieved from: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/jesus-christ-tomb-burial-church-holy-sepulchre
  125. Gathercole, The Journeys of Jesus and Jewish Geography. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT1o2mdxu44
  126. Ibid.
  127. Ibid.
  128. Ibid.
  129. Williams, Can We Trust The Gospels, loc. 1030.
  130. Gathercole, The Journeys of Jesus and Jewish Geography. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT1o2mdxu44
  131. Ibid.
  132. Ibid.
  133. Ibid.
  134. Ibid.
  135. Williams, Can We Trust The Gospels, loc. 1315 and Keener, the Historical Jesus, pg. 51
  136. Keener, The Historical Jesus, pg. 49
  137. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 492
  138. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 492
  139. Williams, Can We Trust The Gospels, loc. 1270-1315
  140. Ibid.
  141. Williams, Can We Trust The Gospels, loc. 1038.
  142. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 228
  143. A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Law and Roman Society in the New Testament, pgs. 186–89.
  144. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament, pg. 271-272.
  145. Dunn, Beginning from Jerusalem, pg. 421
  146. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament, pg. 272
  147. Ibid, pg. 271
  148. Ibid, pg. 272
  149. Ibid. pg. 271
  150. Ibid, pg. 273
  151. Ibid.
  152. Ibid, pg. 274-275
  153. Ibid, pg. 278
  154. Ibid.
  155. Apologetics Academy, The Reliability of Acts: A Conversation with Dr. Tim McGrew. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hcj1rxM_ng
  156. Ibid, pg. 279
  157. Ibid.
  158. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament, pg. 282
  159. Ibid, pg. 283
  160. Ibid, pg. 285
  161. Keener in Jesus, Skepticism and the Problem of History, loc. 9180.
  162. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament, pg. 287
  163. Keener in Jesus, Skepticism and the Problem of History, loc. 9180.
  164. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament, pgs. 291-292
  165. Ibid, pg. 292
  166. Ibid, pg. 284
  167. Keener, Skepticism and the Problem of History, loc. 9242
  168. Keener in Jesus, Skepticism and the Problem of History, loc. 9180.
  169. Ibid.
  170. Ibid.
  171. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament, pg. 274
  172. Keener in Jesus, Skepticism and the Problem of History, loc. 9086-9180.
  173. Ibid, pg. 275
  174. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament, pg. 189
  175. Ramsay, The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1915, pgs. 85 and 89
  176. Meier, A Marginal Jew, Volume 1, pg. 170

The Historical Reliability of the New Testament (Part 1 of 2)

Jesus heals blind Bartimaeus (Mk 10:46-52)

1. Introduction

If anyone wants to learn more about Jesus and the early Church, they open up the New Testament — but how reliable is it? Does it accurately recount Jesus’ life and teachings, as well as the history of the early Church?

In this two-part series, we will look into the historical reliability of the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles. 

Unlike other books of the New Testament (e.g. Paul’s letters, the other pastoral epistles, and the book of Revelation), the Gospels and Acts are historiographic writings. The Gospels are ancient biographies of Jesus of Nazareth, and biography, as a literary genre, is a subtype of historiography. On the other hand, Acts is a work of ancient historiography about the early Church. Since the Gospels and Acts are historiographic writings, this series will focus on them.

In part one of this series, we will look into what we should expect from the Gospels and Acts as historical sources based on multiple factors — their genre, dating, authorship, the impact of disciples, the capabilities and frailties of memory, oral tradition, etc. These factors will affect how we view the Gospels and Acts as historical sources, as they have implications on historical reliability. For part one of this series, I draw extensively from Craig Keener’s Christobiography: Memory, History and the Reliability of the Gospels (2019). Keener is one of the best New Testament scholars in the world today. He has developed a reputation as a thorough and meticulous researcher and has written leading commentaries on Acts and John.

In part two of this series, we will cover the question of historical reliability by looking into the contents of the Gospels and Acts. We will look into how well the authors of the Gospels and Acts knew local geography, the extent to which their writings reflect local color, and other indicators that point to their reliability as historical sources. In part two, I will draw on the works of a number of scholars such as Craig Keener, Craig Blomberg, Peter Williams, and Simon Gathercole.

As a preliminary matter, let us define a number of important terms that will be used in this series:

Synoptic Gospels – These refer to the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. They are referred to as the “Synoptic Gospels” because of their similarities in terms of the stories they recount about Jesus, sequence, and wording. The Synoptics are differentiated from the gospel of John, which contains a lot of unique material not found in the Synoptics and differs from the Synoptic tradition in significant ways. 

Two-source hypothesis – The two-source hypothesis is the solution to the Synoptic problem (i.e. what is the literary relationship of Mark, Matthew, and Luke to each other) that is held by the majority of scholars today. According to the hypothesis, Mark was the first gospel written. Matthew and Luke wrote next, drawing substantially from Mark in writing their Gospels and another shared source called “Q”. Matthew and Luke also drew on their own exclusive sources which are referred to as “M” and “L”. John is not included in the two-source hypothesis because most scholars believe that its author wrote independently from the Synoptics. 

Standard dating – This refers to the dating of the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles that is accepted by most scholars today. According to the standard dating, Mark was written around 70 AD, Matthew and Luke were written around 80-85 AD and John was written around 90-95 AD.[1] In this dating scheme, Matthew and Luke are dated 10-15 years after Mark in order to give enough time for Mark’s gospel to be copied and circulated across the empire, and find its way into the hands of Matthew and Luke. As for Acts of the Apostles, most scholars affirm a date in the 80s AD, probably within the same period as the composition of the Gospel of Luke, 80-85 AD.[2]

Collective memory – The shared memory of a community. It is distinguished from individual memory.

In addition to defining these terms, let me lay out other background information.

To start, I want to point out that it is a historical fact that Jesus was a miracle worker. Virtually all scholars, including skeptical scholars, affirm that Jesus was a healer and exorcist, who performed deeds that were viewed by his contemporaries as “miracles”. The disagreement among scholars is not over whether Jesus performed miracles or not, but over how these miracles are to be interpreted (i.e. healings of organic illnesses and therefore pointing to divine causation, healings of psychosomatic illnesses, or the result of the placebo effect). Jesus’ being a miracle worker will be casually mentioned later in this article, so I want to ensure that readers know that this aspect of Jesus’ life is not disputed beforehand (skeptics who do not know this will wonder why I casually assume the historicity of Jesus’ miracles if I do not clarify this!).

I also want to encourage readers to pick up scholar Brant Pitre’s The Case For Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ, if they want to investigate the reliability of the Gospels further after reading this series. Pitre provides important information on authorship and dating that I will not discuss here (see footnote 3 though for some basic information).[3]

Readers may also want to check out my blog post, “Advances in New Testament Scholarship“, before or after reading this series. That blog post compliments this two-part series very well.

Having defined our terms and laid down certain background information, let us now begin our discussion on the historical reliability of the New Testament and go through part one of our series. As mentioned earlier, part one focuses on what we should expect from the Gospels and Acts as historical sources based on multiple factors.

We will begin part one by discussing the views of scholarship on the genres of the Gospels and Acts, as well as go through a brief history of how scholarship changed its views regarding the genre of the Gospels in particular (section 2). Then, we will go through a quick course on ancient biography (section 3), focusing on details relevant to the subsequent discussion on the Gospels as ancient biographies (section 4). After our discussion on the Gospels, we will discuss Acts as a work of ancient historiography (section 5). After this, we will end with a conclusion on the Gospels and Acts as historical sources (section 6), summarizing the key findings of our discussion and answering the question: “What should we expect from these sources in terms of preserving reliable information about Jesus and the early Christian Church?”.

2. The Gospels as Greco-Roman Biography; Acts as Historiography

Prior to the 1990s, a large segment of New Testament scholarship viewed the Gospels as belonging to the genre of “sui-generis”, a genre unique to the Gospels. This sui generis was viewed as a type of mythology.[4] Since then, however, there has been a great swing in scholarly opinion. Today, the consensus view among scholars is that the Gospels belong to the genre of ancient biography, and within the family of Greco-Roman biography in particular.[5] This shift in scholarly opinion was initiated by Charles Talbert and later cemented by Richard Burridge’s influential work “What Are the Gospels?: A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography” (1992).

Burridge was a classicist who set out to disprove the thesis first proposed by Talbert and a few other American scholars that the Gospels belong to the genre of ancient biography. During the course of his research, however, Burridge reversed his opinion, and his work would go on to change the world of scholarship on the subject. As scholar Craig Keener comments, it was Burridge’s “forceful Cambridge monograph that largely effected the paradigm shift in Gospels studies”, showing how Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John belong to the genre of ancient biography.[6]

As for Acts of the Apostles, the consensus view among scholars today is that it belongs to the genre of ancient historiography.[7]

3. Ancient Biography

Before we proceed to our discussion on the Gospels, let us go through a quick course on ancient biography. The information discussed in this section will be relevant in our later discussion on the Gospels as ancient biographies.

To start off this section, let us look at the development of ancient biography.

3.1. Development

Literary genres are not static. They develop within cultures over time.

Like other literary genres, the genre of ancient biography developed. As Keener notes, a “number of generic predecessors with various degrees of biographic focus” came before what we would call full biographies.[10] These works usually differed considerably from biographies of the early empire period, especially in terms of interest in and commitment to historical accuracy.

A notable development in the genre of ancient biography before the early empire period was the emergence of the prose encomium. It must be noted, however, that these works are not considered biographies but “protobiographies”. The prose encomium was primarily encomiastic, that is, praise-oriented. As a result, Keener notes that one “should certainly not expect a balanced or always truthful picture” from these works.[11]

Moving into the Hellenistic era, biographic writing achieved the title of “bios” or life. Biographies in this period were often written about poets. These lives were typically very short (consisting of a few paragraphs) and sketchy (in the sense of lacking detail and substance). They were also often compiled with other brief biographies. Since there was very little information about poets, biographers of this era often compensated by making inferences about them from their poems.[12] This practice, of course, resulted in dubious information about the biographee. During the Hellenistic era, biographies were also written about sages and public figures. Later surviving sources suggest that Antigonus of Carystus’s “Lives of Philosophers” established a new standard for accuracy in depicting the sages of his era.[13]

Among works that have survived, biographies in the fullest sense began with Cornelius Nepos (ca. 100 BC –  24 BC), who wrote in the last generation of the Roman Republic. The flowering of ancient biography began with Nepos’ works, at least with regard to surviving or extant treatment of public figures.[14] Nepos was clearly interested in using historical information. His works provide a standard of accuracy that was missing in what we know of Hellenistic biography. With the works of Nepos, historical interest in biographies reached a range found in the early empire. Ancient biographies also assumed a three-part structure (for full-length biographic works) that differed from the continuous flow in standard historical works.[15]

The historiographic standards for ancient biography reached their peak during the early empire period, which spanned the late first century BC to the early third century AD.[16] Greco-Roman biographers such as Plutarch, Suetonius, Tacitus, and Lucian, and Jewish biographers such as Philo and Josephus, all confirm this direction. Even the lives of the poets during this period displayed a clear increase in historiographic sensitivity. As Keener notes, the early empire was the “apex of historical biography”.[17]

In late antiquity, the nature of biographical works would change from that of the early empire. Hagiography was embraced. In these works, sacred idealization of the subject became a major force and historical accuracy was not highly valued. As Keener notes, hagiography “conflates the character concern of biography with the fictional and plot concerns of the novel”.[18]

3.2. Definition and Basic Information

Ancient biography is defined as a narrative of a real individual’s life based on prior information.[19] As a genre, it is a subtype of ancient historiography.[20]

Early empire biographies, in particular, had strong historiographic commitments. Biographers during the early empire sought to communicate authentic information about their subject and not fabricate events like ancient novels (including historical novels) did.[21]

3.3. Biographies by Subjects

One organic way scholars organize ancient biographies is by subject. Ancient biographers composed works on different types of individuals: public figures like political and military figures, sages, and poets.

Biographies on different types of individuals varied in the amount of information they contained. This is because more information was available for some individuals than others. Biographies of public figures, for example, were longer than biographies of poets. They were also typically longer than biographies of sages because information about sages was less available except in schools themselves.

Overall, a person’s actions were important in ancient biographies. However, since most sages led relatively uneventful lives, biographies of sages tended to focus more on their words than on their actions.[22]

3.4. Sources Used

Since biography is a subtype of historiography, it deals in historical information. This brings us to the question: how did historical writers in antiquity garner information? What kind of sources did they seek?

Ancient historians garnered information in a number of ways: personal experience, interviewing individuals and consulting other texts (public records, histories, biographies, memoirs, etc). The ideal source of information for historians was their own experience — being an eyewitness to the events they wrote about.[21] The next preferred source was personally interviewing eyewitnesses.[23]

Investigation methods also differed among historians.

Primary research was a strength of Greek historians.[24] The Greek term often used for research or investigation, ἱστορία (historia), indicates what many from an early period regarded as historiography’s central characteristic: questioning those with firsthand knowledge then weaving their responses into a cohesive narrative. As Keener notes:

Greek historians often traveled to the locations of events and consulted those whom they considered reliable oral sources.[25]

Not all historians traveled, however. As Keener notes regarding Roman historians:

Because of senatorial records, Roman historians often had sufficient information for their interests without the need for field research, and because Romans’ interest was more in providing examples than history for its own sake, Roman historians sometimes appear less careful with facts than Greeks.[26]

3.5. Time of Writing

Time of writing or distance from the events being recounted is an important factor in historical writing.

Biographers writing within living memory of the events had access to more reliable sources than biographers writing outside living memory. Living memory is the period in which eyewitnesses or their hearers were alive.[27]

A biographer writing within living memory had access to eyewitnesses or those who heard them. Within the period of living memory, the closer in time a biographer was to the events, the greater access he had to the above sources. Reports within living memory, that is, within 80 years, at most, 100 years, are normally the most reliable.[28] According to scholars of social-memory research, in virtually any kind of society, the period of living memory spans within this period.[29]

A biographer in the early empire period also faced other issues if he was writing about a figure in the distant past. As Keener notes:

In contrast to typical biographers and historians of the early empire, some earlier orators fabricated significant information surrounding history that lay beyond living memory. Once told, such stories became part of the collective memory on which later writers might draw, knowingly or unknowingly. Over the span of centuries, adaptations by less conservative tradents and writers could accumulate significantly.[30]

For these biographers, writing about events in the distant past required them to sort through legendary and actual historical data.  

Although it is typically better to write closer in time to the events being recounted, ancient historians knew that sources too close to the events could be less reliable and lack perspective.[31] This is due to the influence of political pressure and the matter of historical perspective. 

When it comes to political pressure, Keener notes that “[p]leasing powerful potential readers was a significant temptation and avoiding their wrath sometimes a necessity”.[32] Given the political environment of his time, Nicolaus of Damascus was prudent to praise Augustus and Herod the Great. The historian Velleius Paterculus was “far less reserved” in his praise of Tiberius, who was emperor at the time of his writing, than later historians. Arrian preferred Ptolemy and Aristobulus as sources for Alexander the Great because Alexander was dead at the time they wrote their histories. As a result, they were not pressured or influenced to engage in flattery (unlike Callisthenes, Alexander’s embedded historian, who did engage in flattery).

On the issue of historical perspective, historians “often need at least some space after events to discern which events will lead to significant events in the long run”.[33] Scholar Markus Bockmuehl points out that the 1940 edition of Encylopaedia Britannica devotes only a half column to Adolf Hitler, offering “more information about his ‘vegetarian diet and lack of respect for the Treaty of Versailles than about his ideological views on Greater Germany or the Jews’”.[34] Likewise, the work’s much longer article on Winston Churchill focuses on his military failures in World War I and dismisses his current relevance as a “political has-been”. As Keener notes: “These two individuals would bear roles of entirely different significance when viewed from a vantage point of several years later”.[35] Ultimately, writing from an adequate distance to the events allows a historical writer to avoid myopia.

3.6. Ancient Biography vs. Modern Biography

Although ancient and modern biography both aim to communicate historical information about an individual in narrative form, ancient biography differed from its modern namesake in certain ways. As Keener notes: “The conventions of ancient biography permitted considerable freedom in how biographers recounted their information”.[36]

In his seminal work, “Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? What We Can Learn from Ancient Biography” (2016), scholar Michael Licona lists various compositional devices that were used in the writing of ancient biographies. These include the following:[37]

  1. Transferal of information about one figure to another.
  2. Displacement of an event from one context to another. 
  3. Conflation of material to simplify it.
  4. Compression of time sequences to maintain dramatic continuity.
  5. Spotlighting to keep the focus on a single character, despite knowledge that others were involved.
  6. Simplification that removes or changes details to prevent the narrative from being cluttered.
  7. Filling in plausible details where they were unknown to maintain narrative’s realism.
  8. Paraphrase.

Some of these compositional devices are still employed in modern biographic writing. Some of these, however, are no longer accepted.

Another way by which ancient biographies differ from modern biographies is in the standard of verbal precision. Verbatim wording was not expected in ancient biographies. As Keener notes:

In all ancient historical work, the primary interest was the gist more than precise wording. Historians necessarily employed standards of accuracy appropriate to memory rather than to recordings.[38]

4. The Gospels As Biographies

Having gone through an overview of ancient biography, we can now look at the Gospels as ancient biographies and examine various factors affecting their content. These factors will have an effect on how we view the Gospels in terms of historical reliability.

4.1. Full-Length Biographies of A Public Figure and Sage

The Gospels are ancient biographies of Jesus of Nazareth, the founder of the movement known today as Christianity.

As mentioned earlier, one organic way of organizing ancient biographies is by subject: public figures like political and military figures, sages, and poets. When it comes to Jesus, he encompasses two categories since he was both a public figure and sage (i.e. teacher or philosopher).

Since Jesus was a sage, the Gospels contain elements typical of biographies of sages — teachings, anecdotes (to illustrate the sage’s moral teaching), and aphorisms.

In addition to being a sage, Jesus was also a public figure like certain other sages such as Socrates, Crates, and Demonax who became publicly known in their communities.[39] Jesus’ ministry of teaching and miracle-working drew large crowds. He also drew controversy among the Jewish religious leadership and was executed publicly.

As mentioned earlier, biographies of sages tended to focus more on a sage’s words than his actions. This is because most sages led relatively uneventful lives. Since Jesus was also a public figure, the Gospel authors were able to focus on his actions significantly.

Like biographies of other public figures, the Gospels are also full-length biographies — possessing a three-part structure.[40] This feature of the Gospels follows from Jesus being a public figure, but it also follows from another fact — that the Gospels emerged from the early Church, a community deeply interested in Jesus and led by his disciples in the decades following his death. The Gospels being full-length biographies indicates that the Gospel authors had substantial information on Jesus to work with. They were not dealing with information scarcity as biographers of poets did, for example.

4.2. Early Empire Biographies

The Gospels were written during the early empire, the period when historiographic standards for ancient biography were at their highest. This period is situated after the era of prose encomium and before the period of hagiography. As Keener notes, strong historiographic commitments “clearly dominated by the era of the Gospels”.[41]

4.3. Written in the Eastern Mediterranean

It is also worth noting that the Gospels were written in the Eastern Mediterranean, an area in which the Greek practice of historia, seeking firsthand knowledge by traveling to the locations of the events and interviewing eyewitnesses, clearly prevailed. As Keener notes:

Greek practice dominated the eastern Mediterranean, from which the Gospels, written in Greek, hail.[42]

4.4. Written Within Living Memory

The Gospels were written within living memory of Jesus. Based on the standard dating, the Gospels were written 40-65 years after the death of Jesus — that is within living memory.[43] Mark’s gospel, in particular, was written well within living memory.[44] Since the Gospels were written within living memory, their authors were in a good position to receive reliable information about Jesus, and ultimately, record a substantial amount of historical information.[45]

Since the Gospels were written 40-65 years after the events they recount, they also fall under the ideal period to write historical works.[46] The Gospels fall within living memory but they are distant enough from the initial events to not fall under political pressure and (more relevant to the Gospel tradition) and avoid myopia.[47]

It must also be noted that by the standard dating, the Gospels were written closer to the events they recount than most extant historical works in antiquity. By ancient standards, 40-65 years is not a long period.[48] Around forty years, as is the case with Mark’s gospel, is even short! As Keener notes:

Only a few surviving ancient biographies come from within roughly four decades of their chief character, as Mark likely does.[49]

To put this into perspective, Arrian’s biography of Alexander the Great (our best surviving biography of Alexander) was written four centuries after his death.[50] Plutarch’s biography of Cicero, the great Roman statesman, orator, and philosopher, was written around 140 years after his death.[51] Suetonius’ biography of Tiberius, the Roman emperor during Jesus’ lifetime (reigned 14 – 37 AD) was written at least some 80 years after his death![52]

In addition to Suetonius’ biography of Tiberius, it is worth noting the Roman histories we have that also give us information on Tiberius (unlike biographies, which focus on a single person, histories focus on a single topic and often involve multiple individuals). Even most of these histories, however, are further away from the death of Tiberius than any of the Gospels are from the death of Jesus. Velleius Paterculus’ work was written 7 years before the death of Tiberius while Tacitus’ and Dio Cassius’ Roman histories were written at least 70 and 160 years after the death of Tiberius.[53] Furthermore, although Paterculus’ history was written while Tiberius was still alive, his testimony is usually valued less by scholars than that of the other three writers since Paterculus engaged in flattery towards Tiberius. He may have been working under Tiberius’ patronage.[54]

Ultimately, as Keener notes, most of what is known about the ancient world comes from surviving biographic and historical sources written within the same distance of the Gospels to the events they recount (40-65 years) or beyond (more than 65 years).[55]

In addition to what has been discussed, the existence of earlier written sources about Jesus must be noted as well. In certain cases, we know that there are earlier works for historical figures that have not survived. We know, for example, that there were earlier works on Alexander the Great that Arrian drew on (e.g. the works of Aristobulus and Ptolemy). When it comes to Jesus, the same can be said.

Luke notes that “many” written accounts about Jesus were circulating the early Church before he wrote his own gospel (Lk 1:1). One of these sources is undoubtedly Mark. Another may have been the hypothetical Q source, which was probably primarily a collection of Jesus’ sayings (based on the shared material between Matthew and Luke). As Keener notes, other than Mark, however, these other written accounts have been lost to history.[56] The need for copying these texts was presumably lessened as Mark and the later Gospels covered or surpassed their contents. These earlier texts that Luke mentions other than Mark may have been circulating around the period of Mark’s gospel, or even earlier (scholars date Q between 40-60 AD).[57]

4.5. The Value of Memory in Antiquity

One factor to take into account in the remembrance and passing on of Jesus’ deeds and teachings is that ancient culture highly valued memory. As Keener notes:

[There was] a necessity for memory in all ancient learning, whether formal or informal, literate or illiterate, in Greek elementary schools or for disciples for ancient disciples following an itinerant teacher. Ancient pedagogy without a focus on memory did not exist.[58]

Likewise, scholar of Roman antiquity, Karl Galinsky, notes:

Ancient Rome was a memory culture par excellence.[59]

To illustrate the high value placed on memory in antiquity, we can look to examples from Greco-Roman and Jewish culture.

When it comes to Greco-Roman culture, Greek students memorized considerable portions of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, works that were deemed quintessential to their culture. Many illiterate bards were also able to narrate these works from memory in their entirety.[60] Orators in antiquity were supposed to memorize their speeches, even though these could run for two or three hours![61] In Greco-Roman education, maxims were memorized and passed on for centuries, even in elementary educational settings. 

The value of memory was also evident in Jewish culture. Jewish education “emphasized memorization of the Torah”.[62] In addition to the Torah, other aspects of the Jewish tradition needed to be learned. These necessarily entailed the development of memory skills. As Keener notes:

Most relevantly, Jewish boys necessarily developed memory skills; whether or not they could read and (still more rarely) write, Jewish boys learned to recite Torah. Those who were not literate therefore learned Torah orally.[63]

More generally, Judeans and Galileans were known for instructing boys meticulously in the law, probably especially orally and presumably therefore requiring the boys to develop skills in oral memory.[64] 

Like the broader Greco-Roman circulation of maxims, Judean oral training involved memorizing and passing on various types of wise sayings such as proverbs, parables, etc — rhetorical forms which were also used by Jesus.[65]

In the end, ancient culture valued and developed memory much more than modern Western culture. This is the era in which Jesus and the disciples lived. The value and emphasis placed on memory in antiquity undoubtedly aided the disciples and other early Christians in remembering Jesus’ deeds and teachings.[66] 

4.6. Jesus was a Teacher

An important factor that must be taken into account in the remembrance and passing on of Jesus’ legacy is that Jesus was a teacher with disciples.[67] As a teacher, we would expect Jesus to pass on his teachings to his disciples. On the other hand, we would expect Jesus’ disciples, as disciples, to learn and pass on his teaching carefully. As Keener notes, these basic teacher-disciple goals were normally achieved in antiquity.[68]

In antiquity, teachers expected disciples to develop their memories in order to learn and remember their teachings.[69] One major way disciples ingrained their sage’s teachings was repetition or rehearsal.[70] We have evidence for this practice among Greek and Jewish disciples.

It was also standard practice for disciples to not only learn their sage’s teachings, but study and emulate their behavior. As Keener comments on the effects of this practice: “Not surprisingly, then, they also transmitted it”.[71] This was a practice among Greek and Jewish disciples. In fact, later Jewish disciples cited the behavior of earlier rabbis as legal precedent.

Moving on from the disciples to Jesus, Jesus, as a teacher, used various teaching techniques for “easy remembering”.[72] Prominent features in the Gospels include various kinds of parallelism, alliteration, assonance, and wordplay, as cataloged by a host of New Testament scholars.

During his ministry, Jesus trained his disciples in various ways. He instructed his disciples as a group (Mk 4:34; 23:10; Matt 11:1; 20:25-27) and he also sent them out on preaching missions in pairs (Mk 6:6-7 and Lk 10:1-16). The fact that Jesus sent out his disciples on preaching missions implies that “there must have been agreement between Jesus and his disciples on the message they should preach and the life-style they should follow”.[73] This action of sending out disciples in pairs also guards against error and fosters learning. If one disciple forgot or committed a mistake in preaching, the other person would have been able to help him or correct him. They also would have been able to talk to each other about their preaching mission beforehand and afterward.

Having said all that, although Jesus’ disciples were like other disciples in many respects, the tradition does highlight a key feature that separates Jesus’ disciples from many kinds of disciples. As Keener notes:

Their adherence to Jesus was not to one teacher among many, as in the rabbinic movement or among many popular philosophers. It is closer to that of disciples of a teacher founding a new school or movement.[74]

Ultimately, as Keener notes, disciples in antiquity “normally preserved the substance of their masters teachings and, where relevant, stories about their behavior”.[75] Transmission through disciples was, in fact, “one of ancient memory’s most careful forms of transmission”.[76] In light of the evidence, the most appropriate starting assumption should be that Jesus’ disciples would have learned and transmitted his teachings no less carefully than other disciples in antiquity transmitted the teachings of their sages.[77] 

4.7. Memory and Eyewitnesses

Besides earlier texts, biographers had to depend on memories to write their works. These could have been their own memories for events they witnessed, the memories of eyewitnesses whom they interviewed, or the memories of those who had heard the eyewitnesses.[78]

Since biographical works depend on memory in an important way, we need to tackle the subject of memory, its capabilities and frailties, in our discussion on the Gospels as historical sources. The capabilities and frailties of memory will have implications on the reliability of the Gospels. They will help us form judicious expectations for the Gospels as historical sources.

In our discussion below, we will examine memory’s capabilities, what kind of events are usually remembered, the frailties of memory, and end with a conclusion on the Gospels and memory.

4.7.1. Memory’s Capabilities: Remembering the Gist

Although memory is fallible, it is generally reliable in accurately recounting the gist (substance or essence) of events.[79] This is what we should expect from the Gospels — for them to accurately preserve the gist of Jesus’ deeds and teachings. The exception to this would be Jesus’ aphorisms. These would be preserved closer to verbatim like other aphorisms in antiquity. An analysis of the Gospel texts also confirms this. Aphorisms are reported by the Gospel authors closer to verbatim agreement than Jesus’ parables.[80]

When it comes to the Gospels preserving the gist of events, Keener illustrates two examples of what this would look like:

If disciples witnessed the raising of the widow of Nain’s son (Lk:11-17), features they might well recall would include the locality (Nain) and the raising of the widow’s son in the midst of the burial procession. Luke would be within his rights as a historian to reconstruct Jesus’s wording, to infer (based on his other knowledge) the crowds and Jesus’ compassion, and to mention the gate (7:12), even if these features were not in his oral or written source (although they may have been).

Since Mark knows Jairus’s name (in contrast to that of many other characters in his Gospel, (e.g., in 1:40; 2:3; 3:1; 5:2), the ultimate source of the account may have been familiar with this locally prominent family (cf. 5:22). Jesus’ immediate disciples (5:37) could well have remembered mourners’ scorn (5:40), obviously the previously apparently dead girl responding to Jesus, walking and eating (5:41-43), and a feature as striking as Jesus touching someone presumed dead (5:41). While we normally do not expect recollection of direct discourse, the preservation of the Aramaic command “Talitha kum!” (5:41) presumably reflects a reminiscence rather than Mark’s elaboration, since Mark must translate it for his audience. Details such as the witnesses’ astonishment could well be in Mark’s source, but neither would any of us likely begrudge him this inference.

Others will insist on a core larger or smaller for these examples, but the point is that the Evangelists normally derive the basic putative events from their sources; in the case of these illustrations, the genre leads me to expect that Luke and Mark did not invent the stories that Jesus raised this young man and woman.[81]

4.7.2. Events We Remember

We experience so much in our lives, but what do we tend to remember? We tend to remember events that are memorable such as unusual, distinctive, or emotionally charged experiences.[82]  

We are also more likely to remember experiences that we found mentally engaging, experiences that we have shared with others (the more we “rehearse” memories, the more likely we are to remember them), and memories of matters that are of great interest or importance to us.[83]

Experiences that impress on multiple senses (e.g. sight, sound, and smell) are also more memorable.[84] This is because we reconstruct memory based on multiple memory subsystems in different parts of the brain. As a result, these experiences enjoy multisensory reinforcement.

Looking at the disciples, we see that many of their experiences with Jesus must have been memorable. Of course, they must have been able to remember many of Jesus’ miracles as unusual and distinct events.[85] In addition to this, Keener notes other experiences with Jesus that the disciples may have found memorable:

The Gospels do suggest that Jesus’ closest followers would have had such stark, emotive experiences (Mk 4:38-41; 6:49:-51; 8:17-21, 33; 9:32; 10:13-14, 24, 26, 32; 14:18, 22-25, 29-31, 38, 43-52, 72). Jesus’ teachings also incorporate graphic, often vivid visual imagery that could impress itself through hearer’s imagination in multiple subsystems (e.g. Matt 5:34-36, 39-41, 46; 6:2, 26-30; Mk 9:42-43; Lk 12:6-7). Morally salient information also invites “evaluative attention”, hence reinforces retention; evaluative attention is relevant to the consideration demanded by Jesus’ ethical pronouncements and riddles.[86]

They must have remembered significant personal-event memories related to Jesus as well, such as their callings (Mk 1:16-20; Matt 9:9-13) and other words or deeds of Jesus that had a significant impact on them, or “stood out” to them (Mk 1:29–31; 3:13-19; 8:31-33; 9:2-7, Matt 16:17-20; Jhn 13:4-17; 19:25-27).

The disciples must have also been able to remember Jesus’ teachings, as well as many of their experiences with him, due to repetition or rehearsal. There are two points to note here.

One, Jesus recounted his teachings many times.[87] Many people needed to hear them after all. The privilege of hearing the content of the Sermon on the Mount did not belong to a single group of people, and neither did the privilege of hearing many of Jesus’ parables, or his teachings on the primacy of love, the importance of faith, forgiveness, etc. In addition to preaching in public, Jesus also instructed his disciples in private (Mk 4:34; 23:10; Matt 11:1; 20:25-27).

Two, the disciples rehearsed Jesus’ deeds and teachings many times. Like other disciples in antiquity, Jesus’ disciples must have been recounting his deeds and teachings from the start, that is, from the moment they became disciples.[88] As mentioned earlier, Jesus also sent out his disciples in pairs on preaching missions. This must have further ingrained his teachings in their memories. As they taught, they must have continuously rehearsed the things that they learned. Furthermore, after Jesus’ death, as the Christian movement began to spread with communities being established across the Mediterranean, the disciples of Jesus must have continued preaching. They must have also been invited to recount their stories of Jesus again and again.[89] These must have reinforced their memories of these experiences.

Another reason why the disciples must have remembered Jesus’ teachings and many of his deeds is because these were of great interest to them. As Keener notes, the disciples clearly had a deep interest in Jesus.[90] They devoted their lives to learning and passing on Jesus’ teaching, and after the death of Jesus, they continued in their mission of passing it on in the face of hardship and persecution.

4.7.3. Memory’s Frailties

Although memory aids us in our daily life, it does have frailties.

When we remember events, our mind reconstructs memory from different subsystems. If there are gaps, our mind sometimes fills them in with inferences, “including mental elaborations and explanations fused to our memories”.[91] This process can lead to errors.

As Keener notes, “[o]ur memories are not video cameras”.[92] Although memory studies suggest that memory is generally reliable in accurately recounting the gist of events, it can be faulty at times in the details due to human fallibility.

When it comes to eyewitness testimony, the most relevant memory frailties are suggestibility, chronological conflations, and transience.[93]

a. Suggestability

Suggestibility involves the emergence and/or acceptance of false memories. False memories involve distortions, and in extreme cases, remembering events that never happened at all.

Memory experiments, however, show that planted false memories tend to lack “perceptual detail”, are much more difficult to recall afterward than genuine memories, and are “more readily subject to correction or suppression in healthy adults”.[94] Furthermore, one important observation about false memories is that they are only accepted by the individual because they possess the characteristic of plausibility. For this reason, scholar Robert McIver notes that any false collective memories that survived in the Jesus tradition may well have been consistent with the overall gist of Jesus’ ministry. They likely would have persisted because they had “considerable congruence” with “what Jesus did and said”.[95] 

As for the possibility of remembering events that never happened at all, this is unlikely. Cases of these are “very rare”.[96] Today, instances of these sometimes include unintentionally fabricated memories “recovered” in therapy but as Keener notes, this phenomenon was not available to adjust memories in antiquity.

b. Chronological Conflations

Another memory frailty is the lack of accurate chronological connection for memories.

Chronological errors are one of the most common memory errors. As Keener notes:

[I]ndividual memory usually preserves episodes … piecemeal, organizing them interpretively rather than chronologically. Although episodic memory may preserve location and other elements, the timing of events normally must be reconstructed from other memory cues rather than simply retrieved from memory. Memory often conflates experiences that are similar.[97]

Precise chronology, however, was not an expectation in ancient biography, especially given their frequent dependence on episodic recollections.[98] Literary devices employed in ancient biographies further attest to this. Conflation of events to condense stories and rearrangement of material in terms of events and sayings were accepted practices in ancient biographic writing. 

c. Transience

Transience refers to the fact that we forget most of what we experience. As Keener notes, this frailty is a survival strength. It prevents our brains from being overloaded.[99]

According to memory studies, after five years, witnesses might recall as many as half of “distinctive episodes” and particularly significant memories.[100] However, memory studies also show that memories that remain after those five years typically remain stable for decades.[101]

Some studies even confirm the tendency to recall memorable personal events for up to six decades![102] Researchers, for example, compared Danish citizens who had experienced the time of the German invasion (April 9, 1940) and subsequent surrender (May 4, 1945) with others who had only studied it in school. More than two-thirds of those who lived through the invasion correctly remembered the weather during the invasion as opposed to about one-twentieth of the control group. Around one-sixth of the witnesses could even recall the time of the German surrender within five minutes, a feat no one among the student group could replicate. Those who did not recall the correct answer normally did not substitute an incorrect one as well.

In another study, four decades after the closure of Camp Erika, a Dutch prison camp, nearly all interviewed survivors recalled it vividly.[103] More than half of the survivors could even recall the precise date of their imprisonment; over half also remembered their registration number.

As Keener notes, the crucial period for the eyewitnesses’ ability to remember what they witnessed is the first five years after the crucifixion of Jesus, not the forty to sixty-five years before the writing of the Gospels. Most of what the disciples remembered after five years must have persisted through the following decades, especially when it was reinforced through retellings.[104] 

3.7.4. Memory and Eyewitnesses: Conclusion

Ultimately, the frailties of memory argue against verbatim recall in the Gospels, as well as for the possibility of errors in detail. However, the capabilities of memory suggest that the disciples must have been able to accurately recount the gist of many events related to Jesus, as well as his teachings. 

Based on information from the Gospels, the disciples spent considerable time with Jesus during his ministry — around three years. They must have been able to remember many memorable events, certainly enough to fill more than a gospel. As Keener notes:

What they did remember after a few years, however, should have easily filled more than a Gospel, rather than less. Indeed, if we add up the time necessary for the occurrence of all episodes reported in all four Gospels, it would represent only a fraction of a one-year ministry.[105] 

In fact, the author of John states that Jesus did many more things that he did not recount in his gospel (Jhn 20:30, 21:25).

4.8. The Gospels And Eyewitness Testimony

In antiquity, if someone sought to produce an authoritative historical work, he would seek out eyewitness testimony. As Keener notes: “This was the historical and biographic practice everywhere favored in antiquity”.[106] Failing eyewitnesses themselves, historical writers would appeal to material that they believed came from eyewitnesses. Thus, they “sought information from sources as close to the eyewitnesses as possible”.[107] One then should expect the Gospel authors, who chose the biographic medium and obviously valued Jesus’ example and teachings, to treat their subject as respectfully as other historical writers did during their time. As Keener notes:

They must have at least believed that their material cohered in basic substance and spirit with the testimony of the witnesses present at the events they depict.[108]

This brings us to the question — who were eyewitnesses to Jesus in the early Church? Eyewitnesses to Jesus would include the Twelve (Mk 3:13-19), a sizable group of other disciples, both male and female (Lk 8:1-3; 10:1-23), Jesus’ mother and relatives (Acts 1:13-14), and recipients and witnesses of his healings.

Although many besides the eyewitnesses would have been recounting stories about Jesus, the eyewitnesses themselves would have been viewed as the most authoritative sources within the early Church.[109] As Keener notes, other authoritative voices would have been leaders such as elders, who would have the greatest contact with the apostles (Acts 6:6; 14:23: 15:6).[110]

Given the time frame, the Gospel authors may have had direct contacts with eyewitnesses (some may have been eyewitnesses as well!). This is especially true of Jesus’ disciples. Jesus had many disciples and most disciples in antiquity were young and in their teens. As Keener notes:

Like most disciples of other teachers, whether Jewish or gentile, most of Jesus’ disciples were probably in their teens, with a few possibly in their early twenties.[111]

Given their youth, many of Jesus’ disciples would have lived several decades after his death in 30 AD.

Based on the standard dating (Mark 70 AD, Luke and Matthew 80-85 AD, and John 90-95 AD), Mark was written when a fair number of eyewitnesses were still alive, while Matthew, Luke, and (especially) John were written when eyewitnesses were becoming scarce.[112] Of course, the Evangelists may have had contact with eyewitnesses at an earlier point in time, prior to the writing of their Gospels.

Furthermore, although eyewitnesses were becoming scarce in the period Matthew, Luke, and John wrote their Gospels, many people who heard the eyewitnesses would have still been alive.[113] A number of these individuals would have also held leadership positions within the early Church.[114] Even if we were to suppose that the traditions in the Gospels do not come directly from eyewitnesses, they would still come to us from communities closely removed from them, with many individuals who heard the eyewitnesses still being alive. This is the benefit of the Gospels being written within living memory. We will discuss drawing on community or collective memory later in subsection 4.9.2.

With that said, let us examine the Gospels, our main sources about Jesus, in more detail. Working with prominent scholarly views on authorship, let us assess them as sources to Jesus. 

4.8.1. Working With Prominent Views

According to the traditional view, not all of the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses. Mark was an interpreter of Peter and Luke was a traveling companion of Paul. Only Matthew and John were disciples of Jesus, and therefore, eyewitnesses. Although traditional authorship for all four Gospels can be defended with good scholarly force (see footnote 3 for some basic information), we may base our reconstruction here on prominent views in contemporary scholarship.

The gospel of Mark. Today, a large number of scholars (probably the majority) believe that the gospel of Mark was written by Mark. In 2019, Josh Pelletier conducted the largest survey on Markan authorship to date.[115] Pelletier surveyed the views of 207 critical scholars writing in English, in their published works from 1965 onwards, and found that most scholars believe that Mark was the author of Mark’s gospel and that Peter was his source or one of his sources.

This is in line with the strong Church tradition that Mark wrote his gospel based on the reminisces of Peter. The earliest testimony for Markan authorship comes from Papias (60-130 AD), a second-generation Christian who was instructed by John the Elder (John the Elder may have been John the Apostle!). As Papias notes ca. 100 AD regarding Mark’s gospel:

And the elder [John] used to say this: “Mark, having become Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately everything he remembered, though not in order, of the things either said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, followed Peter, who adapted his teachings but had no intention of giving an ordered account of the Lord’s sayings. Consequently Mark did nothing wrong in writing down some things as he remembered them, for he made it his one concern not to omit anything that he heard or make any false statement in them.[116]

The gospel of Luke. As Keener notes, a large number of scholars (probably the majority) believe that the gospel of Luke was written by Luke.[117] As a member of the Jesus movement at an earlier date, Luke himself states that he investigated matters “from the very beginning” (Lk 1:3) and that the material in his gospel is in line with the testimony of “those who from the first were eyewitnesses” (Lk 1:2).

The gospel of John. Finally, a large number of Johannine scholars (probably the majority) believe that the main source behind John’s gospel was an eyewitness and disciple of Jesus. In fact, John’s gospel is explicit in its source being a disciple of Jesus (Jhn 21:24). As Keener notes:

Probably a majority of Johannine scholars, including myself, do view the beloved disciple, the main source behind the Fourth Gospel, as an eyewitness personally acquainted with Jesus.[118]

It is worth noting that the standard dating of 90-95 AD for John does not preclude John the Apostle from writing the gospel. The early Church fathers attest that John lived to be a “very old man” and that he wrote his gospel in his old age.[119] Employing scribes for writing was also common in antiquity among the literate and illiterate.[120] Cicero and St. Paul (Rom 16:22), for example, both used scribes, despite being literate.

As Keener notes, “many” scholars believe that John the Apostle wrote the fourth gospel while many others believe that his disciples had a hand in writing the Gospel based on his reminiscences. Together, these positions enjoy “considerable support”.[121] In fact, in scholar James Charlesworth’s list of views concerning the identity of the beloved disciple, the apostle John enjoys “the longest list of defenders”.[122] Many other scholars also believe that the main source behind the fourth gospel was not John the Apostle but another disciple of Jesus.[123]

Ultimately, under this reconstruction, we have two gospels based on eyewitness testimony (Mark and John), with one of these two (Mark) being based on the testimony of a leading disciple of Jesus. We also have another gospel written by a traveling companion of Paul, Luke. As we shall see in the following subsection (4.8.2. Luke’s Preface), Luke was in a good position to garner information about Jesus from eyewitnesses and other reliable sources (e.g. Paul). As mentioned earlier, Luke also states that the material in his gospel is in line with the testimony of the eyewitnesses (Lk 1:2).

4.8.2. Luke’s Preface

Luke’s preface contains important information about his gospel, so we should look into it. Here is Luke’s preface in full (Lk 1:1-4):

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

Luke includes a preface to his gospel similar to what one finds in works of ancient historiography.[124] His summary of what is to follow is explicitly historical: “an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us” (Lk 1:1), and his stated purpose in writing his work, to confirm truth (Lk 1:4), fits expectations for historiography.

Luke also mentions the existence of many written accounts about Jesus prior to his own work, one of which is undoubtedly Mark but the rest have been lost to history. Luke mentions that the contents of these earlier works were in line with the testimony of the “eyewitnesses” (autopai in Greek) and “servants of the word” (Lk 1:2). As scholar Craig Blomberg notes: “The use of the single article in the Greek with the two nouns paired in this fashion suggests the eyewitnesses and those who handed down the tradition were at least two closely related groups and most probably one and the same”.[125] This verse in Luke indicates the high regard the early Church placed on eyewitness testimony and the authoritative status eyewitnesses held in the passing on of the Jesus tradition.

Continuing further, Luke says that he is following in the footsteps of these earlier written accounts in writing a work in line with the testimony of the eyewitnesses. He states his credentials in being able to so to do so as being someone who has “carefully investigated everything from the beginning” (Lk 1:3). The word “investigated” here in the original Greek is the word παρακολουθέω (parakoloutheō), which may refer to “investigation” or “participation”. In any case, the verb indicates “thorough acquaintance” or “informed familiarity”.[126] As Keener notes:

The NRSV’s investigating everything captures some of the sense, but the wording elsewhere in historical prefaces suggests an even more direct acquaintance than investigation; it can even imply participation in some of the narrative, an implication consistent with the narratorial “we” later in the work (see comment at Acts 16:10). But whether by research or other means, the verb parakoloutheô, translated here as “investigating,” denotes such thorough acquaintance that Luke is in a position to evaluate the accuracy of the reports he receives.[127]

Since the sort of familiarity expressed by parakoloutheō “often comes partly through personal involvement”, “participation” is the likely meaning of the verb in this passage.[128] Parakoloutheō, then, would refer to Luke’s involvement in the Christian movement and prior knowledge of the tradition (this is consistent with the “we” sections in Acts, as we shall discuss shortly). Whether by research or participation, Luke’s “thorough acquaintance” would have entailed consulting and contact with reliable sources, presumably eyewitnesses and servants of the word (Lk 1:2) and those who knew them (e.g. Paul).[129]

When Luke says that he has investigated everything “from the beginning” (ἄνωθεν or anōthen), he claims that his acquaintance with the Christian movement began much earlier than the time of his writing.[130] This fits with the “we” passages in Acts.

Scholars widely agree that Luke and Acts were written by the same author.[131] Acts is written in the third person, but at times, shifts into the first person (“we”), when the author of Acts claims to have traveled with Paul. The narrative shifts between third person and first person a number of times throughout Acts. If these “we” passages represent genuine eyewitness material, and the majority of scholars do affirm this, then as Keener notes:

If this is correct, Luke stayed in Judea for up to two years, and would have had plenty of opportunities to talk with eyewitnesses and those who knew them (Acts 21:15; 24:27; 27:1).[132]

The “we” sections in Acts span the 50s AD, beginning in 51 AD and ending in Judea in the late 50s AD, when many eyewitnesses were still alive. In fact, we know that the disciples held key leadership positions within the early Church into the 50s AD (Gal  2:9, 1 Cor 3:22; 1 Cor 9:5).[133]

Before proceeding to the next section, let us return to Luke’s comments in his preface regarding the earlier written sources about Jesus prior to his own work. As Keener notes:

[A]ncient prefaces treated their predecessors in different ways: some berated them, whereas others, more charitably, simply distinguished their respective spheres of activity.[135]

As a member of the Jesus movement at an earlier date (the 50s AD, possibly earlier), Luke praises the accuracy of the works before him. This reflects well on Mark’s gospel. It also indicates the stability of traditions about Jesus over time within the early Church, since Luke affirms the contents of Mark’s gospel, which was written ca. 70 AD, as a member of the Jesus movement at a much earlier date. Luke’s only complaint seems to be about order or rhetorical arrangement (Lk 1:3).[136] This is consistent with the comments of John the Elder on Mark and his gospel that was discussed earlier. Papias, relating what John the Elder said, said that the Elder affirmed the accuracy of Mark but notes that he did not write everything in order.

4.9. Passing on the Jesus Tradition

Stories about Jesus were recounted in the early Church but what role did the eyewitnesses play in this process? In addition to eyewitnesses, the community as a whole would have had a role to play in passing on the Jesus tradition. This brings us to the question, would traditions about Jesus have been well-preserved in collective memory before finding their way into the Gospels?

4.9.1. The Role of Eyewitnesses

During their lives, the eyewitnesses repeatedly recounted their stories about Jesus, and their reminiscences were at the disposal of others who sought information.[137]  

As mentioned earlier, although many besides the eyewitnesses would be recounting stories about Jesus, the eyewitnesses themselves would have been viewed as the most authoritative sources within the early Church. This would have especially been the case for the disciples, who were not only chief eyewitnesses to Jesus but were also leaders in the early Church. As Keener notes:

In Middle Eastern and rural Mediterranean culture, deference to authority and tradition would reinforce the role of Jesus’s designated apostles on both counts. They were both chief eyewitnesses and the chief leaders of the Christian community in Jerusalem (cf. Gal 1:19-19; 2:7-9), to which even Diaspora Christians looked as the mother church (Rom 15:25-27; Gal 1:17-18; 2:1-2; cf. 1 Cor 16:4) … As leading eyewitnesses and also leaders of the early Christian movement, Jesus’s chief associates would be accepted as leading authorities on what Jesus said and did. Theirs would be the standard version to which other members of their movement would wish to conform.[138]

While they were alive, the eyewitnesses served as a conservative force on the Jesus tradition.[139] Based on Paul’s letters, we know that the eyewitnesses held key leadership positions within the early Church into the 50s AD (Gal  2:9, 1 Cor 3:22; 1 Cor 9:5). Based on Christian and Jewish sources, we also know that Peter and James the Just, leaders in the early Church (Gal 2:9), were martyred in the 60s AD, ca. 64 AD for Peter and ca. 62 AD for James — a very short distance to the writing of Mark’s gospel.[140]

4.9.2. Drawing from Communal or Collective Memory

What if the Gospel authors drew not on eyewitnesses for their works but on tradition they believed derived from eyewitness testimony? How likely is it that these community traditions were fabricated or significantly altered before eventually finding their way into the Gospels?

When it comes to the fabrication of events, this is unlikely. Although communities shape tradition, they typically do not fabricate it. As scholar Robert McIver notes: “It seems that by and large, outright fabrication of collective memory is rare”.[141] This is especially the case when we are talking about living memory.

It is also highly unlikely that the gist of these traditions would have been significantly altered within 40-65 years since this period is quite short by the standards of oral tradition. As noted by oral historian Jan Vansina, “recent oral tradition — one or two generations [(40-80 years)] suffers only small damage” [(a generation here is defined as a period of 40 years)].[142] 

The major weaknesses of oral tradition apply more to later oral tradition, not recent oral tradition. Traditions about Jesus within the early Church that found their way into the Gospels classify as recent oral tradition, given the period of 40-65 years between the death of Jesus and the completion of the Gospels. As Keener notes, by the standards of oral tradition, “the time frame between Jesus’s ministry and any of the first-century Gospels is quite brief”.[143]

This is not to say that oral tradition beyond two generations (80 years) necessarily becomes significantly distorted. Keener cites many examples of robust oral traditions over a century, as well as over centuries, in various cultures around the world.[144] The point is that recent oral tradition, within 80 years after the events they recount, tends to be well-preserved and not significantly altered. Within this time frame, the gist of oral traditions tends to persist.

In the following subsection, we will discuss in greater depth why traditions about Jesus within the early Church were very likely well-preserved within a timeframe of 40-65 years.

4.9.3. Going Deeper: Why Traditions About Jesus Were Likely Well-Preserved

Given what we know about oral tradition and the early Church, it is highly likely that the gist of traditions about Jesus would have been well-preserved in collective memory. There are many reasons supporting this conclusion.

1. Within Living Memory

The period of oral tradition for all four Gospels is 40-65 years. This falls within living memory, the period during which eyewitnesses or their hearers were alive.

When it comes to eyewitnesses to Jesus, Jesus’ disciples were the chief witnesses. After Jesus’ death in 30 AD, the disciples did not go into “permanent retreat”, they continued to work in the world. They established Christian communities across the Roman Empire, nurtured them, moved among them, preached, and engaged in worship with communities.[145] Based on Paul’s letters we know that the disciples held key leadership within the early Church into the 50s AD. Christian and Jewish sources also attest that Peter and James the Just, leaders in the early Church, were martyred in the 60s AD.

During their lives, the disciples and other eyewitnesses continued to recount their stories of Jesus and their recollections were at the disposal of others who sought information. While they were alive, the eyewitnesses served as a conservative force on the Jesus tradition.

The important point is that the period of 40-65 years between Jesus’ ministry and the writing of the Gospels was not devoid of eyewitness influence. Eyewitnesses played a major role in a considerable stretch of that period.

Furthermore, when eyewitnesses to Jesus were becoming scarce in 80-95 AD, many people who heard the eyewitnesses would have still been alive (e.g. Luke the Evangelist, Clement of Rome, Polycarp, etc). A number of these individuals would have also held leadership positions within the early Church during this period. Even if we were to suppose that the traditions in the Gospels do not come directly from eyewitnesses, they would still come to us from communities closely removed from them, with many individuals who heard the eyewitnesses still being alive. Once again, this is the benefit of living memory.

2. The Role of Tradents

When it came to the passing on of tradition in communities, individuals called “tradents” assumed the duty of remembering traditions accurately, narrating them to the community, and in general, serving as “repositories” of community tradition.[146] Tradents are a cross-cultural phenomenon — they have been observed in various oral cultures. Tradents function as “strong tradition-bearers” and typically assume the role due to their qualifications such as being eyewitnesses (Jesus’ disciples undoubtedly served as tradents during their lives), having close contact with the eyewitnesses, possessing great memory, etc.[147]

Ultimately, the role of tradents must be considered in the oral period before the writing of the Gospels. Tradents played an important role in the passing on of the Jesus tradition within Christian communities, functioning as strong bearers of tradition.

3. Oral Tradition is Set Up to Endure

Another reason in support of the preservation of the Jesus tradition is that oral tradition is set up to persist for a lengthy period of time. As Keener notes, oral tradition is “specifically designed to counter the frailties of memory”.[148] When it comes to oral tradition, the core of stories generally persists in collective memory, especially within living memory.[149]

Stability is a feature of oral tradition. This is because every retelling of a story stabilizes the core of the tradition in the memory of the community, guarding against future error and distortion.[150] Errors in oral performances were also called out by the audience. As noted by oral historian Jan Assman: “An audience knowledgeable in a tradition is a strong conservative force”.[151] This expectation of public correction kept performers in check since the consequence of correction was shame, which is a more than adequate deterrent in many oral cultures today, as well as in ancient cultures that operated on an honor-shame paradigm.

Having said that, although oral tradition features stability, it also features flexibility. Variation is standard fare in oral performances.[152] Verbatim reproduction was not expected. Oral performers adapted their presentation for their audience, contextualizing stories for them like good teachers or preachers do today. As good storytellers, oral performers also varied in their telling of stories that were retold repeatedly. These variations, however, must come in noncentral details since “one was not allowed to tamper with key information”.[153] Oral tradition, for this reason, is characterized by stability in the core of stories with variation in minor details. 

Ultimately, oral tradition was designed to endure. Since the traditions about Jesus that found their way into the Gospels classify as recent oral tradition, it is highly likely that their gist was well-preserved.

4. Jesus’ Deeds and Teachings Were Important to the Community

Another important factor that needs to be considered when reconstructing the handling and preservation of oral tradition is the importance of the traditions to the community. As Keener notes:

Not all traditions are equal; some are more relevant to community identity and thus more apt to be preserved with greater attentiveness and group concern.[154]

Traditions about Jesus were certainly of great importance to the early Church. They were foundational to the community and must have been preserved with greater care. As Keener notes communities “usually develop more formal and deliberate ways of rehearsing memories important to their group identity”.[155]

5. The Effect of Wider Knowledge of Stories

One more reason for the preservation of the Jesus tradition is the effect of wider knowledge of stories. Wider knowledge of stories could constrain their subsequent telling.[156] We see evidence of this in the preface of Luke’s gospel. As Keener notes:

Luke not only affirms that his account about Jesus rests on information going back to the beginning of the movement (Lk 1:1-2) but also expects that Theophilus will find it consistent with what he has already learned (1:3-4) … The familiarity of Luke’s audience with much of Jesus’s story at the time he wrote (Luke 1:4) presumably constrained his telling.[157] 

Stories about Jesus undoubtedly circulated widely while the disciples held key leadership positions within the early Church in roughly the first three decades of the movement. Not only were the eyewitnesses active during this period but the early Church was already well-connected by the time Paul wrote his letters in the 50s AD. As Keener notes:

Clearly already in the third decade of the Christian movement, many churches knew what was happening with churches in other cities (Rom 1:8; 1 Cor 11:16; 14:33; 1 Thess 1:7–9), and even shared letters (Col 4:16). 87 Missionaries could speak about some churches to others (Rom 15:26; 2 Cor 8:1–5; 9:2–4; Phil 4:16; 1 Thess 2:14–16) and send personal news by other workers (Eph 6:21–22; Col 4:7–9). Some urban Christians traveled (1 Cor 16:10, 12, 17; Phil 2:30; 4:18), carrying letters (Rom 16:1–2; Phil 2:25). They also relocated to other places (Rom 16:3, 5; perhaps 16:6–15 passim) and sent greetings to other churches (Rom 16:21–23; 1 Cor 16:19; Phil 4:22; Col 4:10–15).[158]

Wider knowledge of stories about Jesus had a constraining effect on their subsequent telling, making later alterations difficult.

So far, in this subsection, we discussed many reasons why traditions about Jesus within the early Church were likely well-preserved before finding their way into the Gospels. Is there any evidence in our sources that suggest that this turned out to be the case, however? Yes. As Keener notes:

Yet most Synoptic accounts actually diverge from one another far less than one encounters in many oral traditions and in many cases of ancient literary dependence. Their conspicuous similarity may reflect their respect for the authoritative status of their material, their lesser rhetorical interest in paraphrase, and most relevantly here, their brief chronological distance from their material.



Some diverse traditions about Jesus arose by the later decades of the first century … Particularly obvious divergences in our sources surface in the specifics of Judas’s grisly death or Jesus’s genealogy (Matt 1:2-16; Luke 3:24-38). Nevertheless, and in contrast to such examples, the strong majority of gospel tradition reflected in our first-century sources appears remarkably stable. This is likely in part because our written sources derive from the period of living memory of Jesus.[159]

4.10. Use of Prior Sources

As Keener notes, we can assess an author’s intention of reliability in the way he used his sources.[160] In order to do this with the Gospels, we need to take into account their literary relationship. Based on the majority solution to the Synoptic Problem, the relationship between the Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke) are as follows — Mark wrote first, Matthew and Luke drew from Mark substantially, another shared source called “Q”, as well as their own exclusive sources — “M” (Matthew) and “L” (Luke).

Although we cannot test how Mark used his sources, the fact that Matthew and Luke drew substantially from Mark suggests their respect for Mark as a reliable historical source about Jesus. This is consistent with Matthew and Luke believing that Peter’s authority stood behind Mark’s gospel. Since Matthew and Luke were writing well within living memory of Mark’s gospel (10-15 years after Mark), they were in a better position than we are today to know who Mark was and assess the reliability of his work.[161]

It is worth noting that some of Mark’s information is attested independently in the letters of Paul. Paul’s letters comprise our earliest extant Christian writings, some twenty-plus years after the death of Jesus. Where Mark and Paul address the same material, the gist remains the same in both (1 Cor 7:10-11; 11:23-26; Mk 10:9-12; 14:22-25).

Looking at how Matthew and Luke adapted Mark and Q, we see that they drew from Mark and Q more conservatively than most of their peers writing biographic or historical works (generous paraphrase was common in ancient historical writing — Matthew and Luke did not do this!).[162] As scholar Michael Licona notes, Matthew and Luke “very often” employ a “near copy and paste method” where we can test them.[163] This may reflect their respect for the authoritative status of their material. If Matthew and Luke adapt their sources conservatively where we can test them, we can expect them to do so where we cannot test them.[164]

On the other hand, most scholars believe that John wrote independently from the Synoptics.[165] This does not necessarily mean that the author of John’s gospel did not know about the Synoptics (he likely did), it means that he did not have any of the Synoptic Gospels in front of him as he was composing his gospel. He did not draw from them as sources. However, it is worth noting that John departs from the Synoptics in significant ways. John’s gospel is a mix of history and theological insight, with the author telling Jesus’ story his own way. As Keener notes:

The consistent direction of many of the above changes [in John] … appear to be deliberately rhetorical and especially theological More importantly, John highlights some theological points by these surprising variations (although, again, these features need not be incompatible with historical detail as well). That is, we find here not random accidents or mistakes but a consistent and therefore deliberate adaptation.[166] 

Despite these changes, an examination of John’s gospel shows substantial overlap and strong coherence with the Synoptics. Its kinship with the Synoptics is evident.[167] Moreover, if the primary source behind John’s Gospel was an eyewitness, as most Johannine scholars affirm, then he would have been in the best position to recount Jesus’ life and ministry. 

4.11. Literary Techniques

Like other ancient biographers, the Gospel authors employed various literary devices in their biographies of Jesus. Michael Licona has written an excellent book surveying this subject, “Why Are Their Differences In The Gospels?: What We Can Learn From Ancient Biography” (2016). As an alternative, I highly recommend watching Licona’s talk on Youtube, “Why are there Differences in the Gospels?”, to learn more about how the Evangelists employed literary devices in their Gospels. It is a very enlightening watch!

5. Acts of the Apostles

After discussing the Gospels as ancient biographies, we can now turn to our discussion on Acts of the Apostles. In this section, we will examine Acts as a work of ancient historiography, as well as the question of authorship in particular.

5.1. Acts as Ancient Historiography

The consensus of scholars today is that Acts belongs to the genre of ancient historiography, which aims to recount real events in the past.[168] If a biography is focused on a person’s life and character, historiography is more focused on a single topic and often involves many people.

Looking at Acts, the focus of the work is not on a single individual but a single topic, the early Christian Church. In recounting the history of the early Church, the narrative of Acts involves many people — the apostles generally but especially Peter and Paul.

Acts of the Apostles is also the second volume of a two-volume work, Luke-Acts. The gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles are dedicated to the same patron, Theophilus. Both works display clear continuity as evidenced by the beginning of Acts: “In my former book, Theophilus…” (Acts 1:1).

Luke’s gospel has a preface and the preface to a two-volume work could cover both volumes. This is probably the case for Luke’s preface (Lk 1:1-4).[169] Luke’s preface, as mentioned earlier, is similar to what one finds in works of ancient historiography.

As mentioned earlier, most scholars affirm that Luke-Acts was written by Luke, a traveling companion of Paul. Since Luke was a traveling companion of Paul and a member of the Jesus movement at an early period (in the 50s AD, possibly earlier), he was in a favorable position to garner information from eyewitnesses and other reliable sources about the history of the early Church, as well as from Paul regarding his own experiences. As an eyewitness to some of the events in Acts (the “we” material), Luke was also in the best position to write about those events. Overall, Luke has great credentials to write a history of the early Church like Acts.

6. Conclusion

Ultimately, the evidence points to the Gospels and Acts being generally reliable historical sources. When it comes to the Gospels, multiple reasons support this conclusion.

  1. The Gospels are full-length early empire biographies written within living memory of the events they recount. This makes their preservation of substantial historical information likely.

  2. The traditioning community was led by eyewitnesses.

  3. The leaders of the traditioning community were not only eyewitnesses, they were also disciples, who must have worked hard from the beginning to preserve their mentor’s legacy and teachings. As Keener notes, transmission through disciples was “one of ancient memory’s most careful forms of transmission”.[170]

  4. By the standards of oral tradition, the time frame between Jesus’s ministry and any of the first century Gospels is quite brief. The oral tradition that made it into the Gospels classifies as recent oral tradition, which tends to be well-preserved and not significantly altered. 

  5. Given the time frame between Jesus’ ministry and the writing of the Gospels, the Gospels cannot have been significantly (more than a few decades) later than those sources they used. The authors of the Gospels were in a better position than we are today to assess the reliability of their sources, and they likely had good reason to trust and use them for their biographies of Jesus.

  6. The Gospel authors display a solid intention of reliability in the way they adapted their sources. Matthew and Luke drew from Mark and Q more conservatively than most of their peers writing biographic and historical works. If Matthew and Luke draw from their sources responsibly where we can test them, we should expect them to do so where we cannot test them.

  7. Luke affirms the accuracy of the written accounts about Jesus prior to his own work (Lk 1:1-2). One of these works is undoubtedly Mark. The fact that Luke praises the accuracy of Mark as a member of the Jesus movement at an early period (the 50s AD, possibly earlier) and a traveling companion of Paul, reflects well on Mark’s gospel. Luke’s comments also indicate the stability of traditions about Jesus within the early Church over time. In addition to Luke, John the Elder independently affirms the accuracy of Mark’s gospel.

In light of the evidence, Keener concludes:

[The historical evidence] suggests a significant a priori probability in favor of at least a core of genuine historical information behind the average account in the Gospels … a more historically probable starting point is that these biographies written within living memory of Jesus do in fact succeed in preserving many of Jesus’s acts and teachings, even for many events that are not independently attested in multiple sources.



In any case, I believe that my two most essential primary points are difficult to dispute: in the early empire, normal biographers writing full works about recent figures attempted to recount or reconstruct what they believed to be historical information (or perhaps in some cases, traditions that were at least possibly historical), normally for edifying purposes; and biographers could exercise a degree of flexibility in how they recounted that information.

More precisely, audiences from the Gospels’ era did not expect biographers to freely invent events, but they did allow them to flesh out scenes and discourse for the purpose of what they considered narrative verisimilitude. Biographers were not supposed to invent a teacher’s message, but they could interpret and communicate it from their own perspectives. If biographies of recent figures in the early empire normally recount genuine historical events, then this expectation follows, to a reasonable degree of probability, for the Gospels.[171]

In the end, we have very good reason to believe that a historical core lies behind the average account in the Gospels. This applies to events that are attested by a single source as well (only in Mark or Q or M or L or J).[172] Unless there is good reason to believe otherwise, the basic attitude towards events in the Gospels should be one of trust, since full-length early empire biographies about recent figures normally recounted genuine historical information. 

Moving on from the Gospels to Acts, Acts is a work of ancient historiography that was written by an author who was a traveling companion of Paul and a member of the Jesus movement in the 50s AD (possibly earlier). Based on the information in Acts, Luke was well-positioned to garner information from eyewitnesses and other reliable sources about the history of the early Church, as well as from Paul regarding his own experiences. Luke was also in the best position to write the “we” sections in Acts since he was an eyewitness to those events.

Like the Gospels, we have significant good reason to believe that a historical core lies behind the average account in Acts. Unless there is good reason to believe otherwise, our basic attitude towards events in Acts should be one of trust as well.

To proceed to part two of this series, click here.

References

  1. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, pg. 74-76.
  2. Powell, Acts, pg. 37
  3. Many scholars doubt traditional authorship for each gospel but the external evidence we have for traditional authorship (Mark, Matthew, Luke and John writing our Gospels) is strong and unanimous.

    The early Church fathers are unanimous that Mark, Matthew, Luke and John wrote our Gospels. There are also no competing traditions to these authors. All surviving ancient manuscripts attribute the Gospels to Mark, Matthew, Luke and John as well.

    The theory that the Gospels were formally anonymous works is based on (no exaggeration!) zero hard evidence. Yes, the Gospels are internally anonymous in the sense that the authors do not identify themselves within the main body of text but this does not mean that they were formally anonymous (originally published with no authorship attribution) or that no one knew who wrote them.

    In recent years, scholar Simon Gathercole published a paper, “The Alleged Anonymity of the Canonical Gospels” (2018), that decisively refuted the main argument in favor of formal anonymity – that the Gospels are formally anonymous because their authors do not identify themselves within the main body of text. In his paper, Gathercole showed that it was extremely common for authors of ancient biographies to not identify themselves within the main body of the text but elsewhere (e.g. title above the main body of the work, in the capitula list, a running header, etc). We have over one hundred surviving biographies written between the mid-second century BC and the late fourth century AD, and all of them are internally anonymous except two! When it comes to ancient biographies, internal anonymity is not evidence for formal anonymity. Internal anonymity was standard in the genre.

    Having said that, if the external evidence points firmly towards traditional authorship, how do New Testament scholars deal with this? They substantially undervalue the external evidence and base their conclusions on internal evidence. There is certainly good internal evidence for traditional authorship as well but it is the substantial undervaluing of external evidence that gives scholars greater room to come to non-traditional conclusions when weighing the evidence for authorship.

    This is one significant difference between New Testament scholarship and the study of the classics. In the study of the classics, external evidence, such as attestation of authorship by later writers, is accepted as good evidence for the authorship of any particular text. If the Gospels were judged by the same standards as other ancient works, traditional authorship would be affirmed much more across the board. In New Testament studies, however, the Gospels are treated with higher levels of scrutiny and suspicion since they contain miraculous and supernatural elements. This suspicion of the Gospels extends to the early Church fathers, since they belong to the Christian tradition. Due to attitudes such as these in the field, Pope Benedict XVI rightly commented in his Erasmus Lecture that “the debate about modern exegesis is not at its core a debate among historians, but among philosophers”.

    When it comes to the undervaluing of external evidence in New Testament studies, scholar D.A. Carson notes in his commentary of John (The Gospel According to John, pg. 69):

    “Most scholars of antiquity, were they assessing the authorship of some other document, could not so easily set aside evidence as plentiful, consistent and plainly tied to the source as is the external evidence that supports Johannine authorship. The majority of contemporary biblical scholars do not rest nearly as much weight on external evidence as do their colleagues in classical scholarship.”

    Carson’s comment here apply not only to John but all four Gospels. As I mentioned earlier, traditional authorship is unanimously affirmed by the early Church fathers.

    Likewise, scholar R.T. France notes in his commentary on Matthew (The Gospel of Matthew, pg 84):

    Attribution of this gospel to Matthew the apostle goes back to our earliest surviving patristic testimonies, and there is no evidence that any other author was ever proposed. As far back as we can trace it, and from the earliest manuscript attributions that have survived, it is always the Gospel kata Matthaion. It often seems to be assumed that whatever the early church said about the origins of the NT books must be treated with suspicion unless it can be independently proved, but I do not share that assumption.”

    Ultimately, as scholar Martin Hengel commented on his peers who rejected traditional authorship and affirmed formal anonymity for the Gospels: (The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ, pg. 55):

    “Let those who deny the great age and therefore the basic originality of the Gospel superscriptions in order to preserve their “good” critical conscience give a better explanation of the completely unanimous and relatively early attestation of these titles, their origin and the names of the authors associated with them. Such an explanation has yet to be given, and it never will be.”

    If Mark, Matthew, Luke and John did write the Gospels, and a skeptical scholar is surprised to learn this when he meets God in heaven, God would be justified in saying “the evidence was there all along!”.  

    Although Christians are not required to affirm traditional authorship, they are on good grounds in affirming it for all four Gospels. There is good internal and external evidence and testimony of the early Church fathers in particular is quite early and unanimous.

    As for the question of dating, it must be noted that the standard dating is based on an anti-supernaturalist assumption – that Jesus could not have predicted the destruction of the Jersusalem Temple in 70 AD. According to many New Testament scholars, since Jesus could not have predicted the destruction of the Temple, the predictions of Jesus in his Olivet Discourse (Mk 13; Lk 21; Matt 24 and 25) must be “predictions after the fact” or predictions made when such an event was foreseeable by the earliest Gospel author through natural means. This means that Mark, widely believed to be the first gospel, must have been written after the destruction of the Temple during or shortly after 70 AD (70-75 AD), or shortly before it, when the destruction of the Temple was foreseeable (65-70 AD). Interestingly, the largest contingent of scholars believe Mark was written shortly before 70 AD (65-70 AD) — the standard dating for Mark more broadly is 65-75 AD but in discussions the midpoint of 70 AD is typically pegged.

    The problem with the reasoning for the standard dating is that the destruction of the Temple is never mentioned as a past event in any of the Gospels. Furthermore, the Gospels provide odd details if the Temple had already been destroyed at the time the Gospels were written. In his gospel, Mark exhorts his readers to pray that the Temple’s destruction would not occur in winter (Mk 13:18). On the other hand, Matthew urges his readers to pray that it would not occur during winter or on a Sabbath (Matt 24:20).

    Why would Mark tell his readers to pray for it not to happen in the winter if he already knew that the Romans destroyed the Temple in the late summer? Likewise, why would Matthew tell his readers to pray for it not happen in the winter or on a Sabbath if the event had already happened?

    Of course, the main flaw of the reasoning behind the standard dating is that it presupposes that Jesus could not have predicted the destruction of the Temple. But what if Jesus is who Christians say He is? What if Jesus is God Incarnate — “the Word made flesh” (Jhn 1:13)? If Jesus is God then of course, such a prediction would not be implausible at all.

    In addition to supernaturalist explanations, there are also arguments put forward for Jesus predicting the destruction of the Temple on secular (non-supernaturalist) grounds, though I won’t get into those arguments here. This end note is long enough as it is!

    In any case, if one adopts an open philosophy (miracles are possible) rather than a ready-made Kantian philosophy (miracles are impossible), or if one accepts secular arguments for Jesus prediction the destruction of the Temple, then the dating for the Gospels open up. The Gospels may have been written between 30 AD–95 AD. This also affects conclusions for dating — one reason for doubting traditional authorship for Matthew and John is that it is unlikely that they would have been alive in the period 80-95 AD, since this was the period when eyewitnesses were becoming scarce within the early Church (as you can see, assumptions affect scholarly reconstructions in major ways).

    I personally affirm traditional authorship for all four Gospels. I think the internal and external evidence for Mark, Matthew, Luke and John writing our Gospels is solid. I also believe that at least some of the Gospels were written before 70 AD. It is hard for me to believe that that forty year period (30-70 AD) was absent of any Gospel composition. With that said, as a Christian, I have no problem assuming the standard dating or prominent scholarly views on authorship (as I do in this two-part series) because a strong case for the reliability of the Gospels can be made while adopting these views. I also see assuming prominent views in New Testament scholarship as a good way to “meet skeptics halfway” — working with their assumptions and dialouging from there.

    I have to say though, if I were a skeptic, I would be troubled by the fact that critical scholarly views on the dating and authorship of the Gospels, which give skeptics a lot of leeway in their reconstructions of the past pertaining to the historical Jesus and the early Church, lie on weak foundations. Non-traditional views on authorship run counter to the unanimous testimony of the early Church fathers and the theory of the Gospels being formally anonymous is based on zero hard evidence. On the other hand, the standard dating on the Gospels is based on an anti-supernaturalist philosophical presupposition. If I were a skeptic, these foundations for my views on authorship and dating would not give me confidence and security. Furthermore, as a hypothetical skeptic, if I were to assume the traditional authorship and earlier datings, then it would entail major difficulties on my end.

    If some of the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses (Matthew and John), how would I, as a skeptic, account for the events reported in these Gospels? Would I be willing to rest on faith that they were lying when it comes to their affirmation of events that challenge my worldview?

    Likewise, if any of the Gospels were written earlier than the standard dating, particularly between 30-60 AD, can I still remain confident in my belief that the events in the Gospels do not reflect the testimony of the eyewitnesses? Due to Paul’s letters we know that the disciples held key leadership positions within the early Church into the 50s AD (Gal  2:9, 1 Cor 3:22; 1 Cor 9:5). We also have strong evidence from Christian and Jewish sources that leading figures of the early Church — Peter, James the Just, and Paul, were marytred in the 60s AD (ca. 62 AD for James and ca. 64 AD for Peter and Paul). For these reasons, New Testament scholars view the period 30 AD – 60 AD as “the period of the eyewitnesses”. We know that many eyewitnesses were alive during this period. If any of the Gospels were written between 30-60 AD, then that is strong evidence in favor of the conclusion that their contents are in line with the testimony of eyewitnesses. A 30-60 AD dating means that we have biographies of Jesus written during the time of Paul’s missionary journeys (as recorded in Acts) or even earlier!

    To the Christian, a dating of 70-95 AD for the Gospels is non-problematic. The Gospels may have been written during this period and a strong case can still be made for their reliability. To the skeptic, however, a dating of at least one of the Gospels within 30-60 AD is much more problematic — given that the disciples of Jesus held key leadership positions within the early Church during this period. If any of the Gospels were written within 30-60 AD then that aids the Christian side with major ammo in historical reconstruction — making it very likely likely that the contents of that gospel or those gospels are in line with the testimony of the eyewitnesses.

    More can be said on the question of authorship and dating. For those who are interested in looking into this further, I suggest picking up Brant Pitre’s The Case for Jesus. I also recommend readers to check out my blog post, Advances in New Testament Studies, for a good introduction into New Testament studies and summary of the developments in the field.
  4. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, pg. 201
  5. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 27
  6. Ibid, pg. 32
  7. Ibid, pg. 221
  8. Ibid, pg. 221
  9. Ibid, pg. 222
  10. Ibid, pg. 68
  11. Ibid, pg. 69-70
  12. Ibid, pg. 53-54
  13. Ibid, pg. 77
  14. Ibid.
  15. Ibid, pg. 78
  16. Ibid, pgs. 102-103
  17. Ibid, pg. 91
  18. Ibid, pg. 96
  19. Ibid, pgs. 36 and 38
  20. Ibid, pg. 157
  21. Ibid, pg. 151 
  22. Ibid, pg. 112
  23. Ibid, pg. 244
  24. Ibid.
  25. Ibid, pg. 208
  26. Ibid.
  27. Ibid, pg. 209
  28. Ibid, pg. 478
  29. Ibid, pg. 479
  30. Ibid.
  31. Ibid, pg. 241
  32. Ibid, pg. 252-255
  33. Ibid, pg. 252
  34. Ibid, pg. 255
  35. Ibid.
  36. Ibid.
  37. Ibid, pg. 303
  38. Ibid, pg. 311
  39. Ibid, pg. 387
  40. Ibid, pg. 119
  41. Ibid, pg. 67
  42. Ibid, pg. 77
  43. Ibid, pg. 209
  44. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, pg. 7
  45. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 477
  46. Ibid, pg. 366
  47. Ibid, pg. 255
  48. Ibid, pg. 366
  49. Ibid, pg. 477
  50. Ibid, pg. 242
  51. Mike Licona. The Gospels are Historically Reliable: 6 Reasons. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxxhY8ueo7c
  52. Williams, Can We Trust the Gospels, loc. 512
  53. Ibid.
  54. Ibid.
  55. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 483
  56. Ibid, pg. 477
  57. Dunn, Christianity in the Making Volume 1: Jesus Remembered, pg. 159
  58. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 424
  59. Ibid, pg. 370
  60. Ibid, pg. 442
  61. Ibid, pg. 423
  62. Keener, The Historical Jesus of the Gospels, pg. 149
  63. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 443
  64. Ibid, pg. 430
  65. Ibid, pg. 426
  66. Ibid, pg. 423-424
  67. Ibid, pg. 416
  68. Ibid, pg. 448
  69. Ibid, pg. 428
  70. Ibid, pg. 427
  71. Ibid, pg. 428
  72. Ibid, pg. 427
  73. Ibid, pg. 414
  74. Ibid, pg. 437
  75. Ibid, pg. 448
  76. Ibid, pg. 302
  77. Ibid, pg. 448. Keener is conservative in his conclusion despite thinking that there is more reason to believe that the disciples of Jesus had greater reason to preserve his deeds and teachings well than other ancient disciples in antiquity: “Apostles and tradents who staked their lives on the message of Jesus obviously had deep interest in it. These long-term memories were not a mere matter of random recollections. As Samuel Byrskog notes, ‘Since Jesus was a qualitatively unique teacher, it must have been generally essential to transmit his words and deeds’ (emphasis his). In chapter 15 I compare them to other ancient disciples, but ultimately they had more reason, not less reason, than disciples of other teachers to transmit carefully their master’s words and deeds. As noted earlier, perspectives are inevitable, and in this case, far from their faith in Jesus as Lord invalidating their perspective, it shaped their perspective for the very reason that the disciples preserved and propagated his teaching widely to begin with, despite the enormous cost. Even disciples of other teachers normally preserved their teachers’ message; they did not, however, always stake their lives on its propagation, as most of Jesus’s disciples ultimately seemed ready to do” (Christobiography, pgs. 396-397).
  78. Ibid, pg. 365
  79. Ibid, pg. 400
  80. Ibid, pg. 390
  81. Ibid, pg. 367
  82. Ibid, pg. 393
  83. Ibid
  84. Ibid, pgs. 394-395
  85. Keener, The Reliability of the Gospels, par. 15. Retrieved from: https://influencemagazine.com/practice/the-reliability-of-the-gospels
  86. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 395
  87. Licona, Are the Gospels Historically Reliable?
  88. Ibid, pg. 397
  89. Ibid. pg. 398
  90. Ibid, pgs. 396-397. As Keener notes on the effect of interest on memory: “Interest motivates memory in both literate 179 and illiterate persons. Swazi herdsmen, for example, with normal memories on other matters, could readily and nearly precisely recite verifiable details of cattle purchases that they had merely witnessed a year earlier. 180 Illiterate !Kung bushmen and doctoral-level ethnographers who interview them each may remember what the other finds impossible to recall; different cultures value and develop memory skills for different subjects” (Christobiography, pg. 396).
  91. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 373
  92. Ibid, pg. 374
  93. Ibid, pgs. 376-380, 382-385, 398-400
  94. Ibid, pg. 378
  95. Ibid, pg. 380
  96. Ibid, pg. 379
  97. Ibid, pg. 382-383
  98. Ibid, pg. 383
  99. Ibid, pg. 391
  100. Ibid, pg. 399
  101. Ibid, pg. 398
  102. Ibid, pg. 400
  103. Ibid, pg. 399
  104. Ibid, pg. 400
  105. Ibid, pg. 399
  106. Ibid, pg. 402
  107. Ibid.
  108. Ibid, pg. 366
  109. Ibid, pg. 402-403
  110. Ibid, pg. 403
  111. Ibid, pgs. 419-420
  112. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, pg. 7
  113. Based on extant historical writings, we know of a number of individuals who knew the eyewitnesses as being alive during this period. These include St. Luke the Evangelist, Clement of Rome and Polycarp.

    Assuming John the Elder is John the Apostle or another disciple of Jesus, we may also add Papias to this list. Given that Clement was ordained by Peter himself, it is highly likely this his predecessor as bishop of Rome, Anacletus, also knew St. Peter and was ordained by him as well. Another possible candidate of a person who had contact the eyewitnesses would be Ignatius of Antioch.

    We know this much based on limited information from antiquity. Certainly, there were many others who we do not know about, especially since some eyewitnesses were still alive during this period (e.g. John the Apostle and Simeon).

    Clement’s epistle to the Romans (ca. 80-95) also assumes that there are still living leaders of the Christian churches who had been appointed by the apostles of Jesus (1 Clem. 5.1, 42, 44).
  114. St. Peter, the first bishop of Rome, was succeeded by Linus and Clement (most probably Anacletus as well), whom he ordained personally. Polycarp, who was instructed by John the Apostle, would go on to become bishop of Smyrna, Turkey. Assuming John the Elder is John the Apostle, Papias would also go on to become bishop of Hierapolis. Clement’s epistle to the Romans (ca. 80-95) also assumes that there are still living leaders of the Christian churches who had been appointed by the apostles (1 Clem. 5.1, 42, 44). Of course, people who had contact with the eyewitnesses would go on to assume leadership positions within the early Church!
  115. Mike Licona. Who wrote the Gospel of Mark? Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TMY3VI-K9U&t=458s. Was Peter Mark’s Source for the Gospel of Mark? Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbBcwb8wtVk. Pelletier’s study is not released yet but I am going to be conservative and assume that his results show a “slight majority” in favor of Markan authorship since Mike Licona and Nick Peters did a survey on the subject (sampling of 75 critical scholars) a few years ago and this was their result. Pelletier is Licona’s student and he volunteered to continue Licona and Peter’s research on the topic.
  116. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 306
  117. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 227
  118. Ibid, pg. 403
  119. Pitre, The Case for Jesus, pg. 76 (PDF)
  120. Keener, The Gospel of John, pg. 101
  121. Ibid. pg. 83
  122. Charlesworth, Disciple, 197–211
  123. Keener, The Gospel of John, pg. 83. See also the rest of the chapters discussion.
  124. Ibid, pgs. 224-225
  125. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament, pg. 28
  126. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 226.
  127. Keener, Acts, pgs. 17-18
  128. Ibid, pg. 226-227
  129. Ibid, pg. 229
  130. Ibid, pg. 228
  131. Ibid, pg. 227
  132. Ibid pg. 228 as well as Keener, Gospel truth — Luke 1:1-4, par. 8. Retrieved from: https://craigkeener.com/gospel-truth-luke-11-4/. The content of the quote in the latter source is of course, also mentioned in Christobiography — but I preferred the phrasing in this article better. 
  133. Ibid, pg. 410
  134. Ibid, pg. 228
  135. Ibid, pg. 229-230
  136. Ibid, pg. 230. 
  137. Taylor, The Formation of the Gospel Tradition, pg. 42 
  138. Keener, Christobiograpghy, pg. 474. 
  139. McIver, Jesus, Skepticism and the Problem of History, loc. 3754
  140. Habermas and Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, pgs. 61-66 (PDF)
  141. Rhodes Eddy, Jesus, Skepticism and the Problem of History, loc. 4307-4417
  142. Keener, Christobiograpghy, pg. 455
  143. Ibid, pg. 480
  144. Ibid, pg. 462-465
  145. Taylor, The Formation of the Gospel Tradition, pg. 42
  146. Rhodes Eddy, Jesus, Skepticism and the Problem of History, loc. 4396
  147. Ibid.
  148. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 410
  149. Ibid, pg. 470
  150. Ibid, pg. 466
  151. Ibid, pg. 467
  152. Ibid, pg. 467-468
  153. Ibid, pg. 468
  154. Ibid, pg. 466
  155. Ibid, pg. 453
  156. Ibid, pg. 468
  157. Ibid.
  158. Ibid, pg. 231
  159. Ibid, pgs. 442 and 484
  160. Ibid, pg. 263
  161. Ibid, pgs. 154-155
  162. Ibid, pgs. 326
  163. Ibid, pg. 326
  164. Ibid, pg. 264
  165. Keener, The Gospel of John.
  166. Keener, Christobiography, pgs. 353
  167. Craig Keener, John’s Gospel in Historical Jesus Research. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWLU4O7VEYg
  168. Ibid, pg. 222
  169. Ibid, pg. 224
  170. Ibid, pg. 302
  171. Ibid, pgs. 497, 499-500.
  172. Ibid, pg. 497

Advances In New Testament Scholarship

One thing that strengthens my conviction in the truth of Christianity is seeing the advances made in New Testament studies since its inception. I find these advancements particularly encouraging because the field is not even slanted towards Christianity.

New Testament studies is a secular field with a liberal history.[1] Its pioneers viewed the New Testament texts with skepticism. They were convinced that the historical Jesus was not reflected in the New Testament texts and sought to uncover the “real Jesus” behind what they believed to be the legendary accretions and theology in the Gospels. The field of New Testament studies was profoundly shaped by its era, the Enlightenment, and its prejudice against divine and supernatural causation. 

With the emergence of biblical historical criticism in the 19th century, liberal scholars set out to uncover “the truth” behind the New Testament texts. Whoever Jesus was, he could not have been the “Jesus of faith”, and none of the miraculous events in the Gospels could have happened. These scholars examined the Bible with Enlightenment presuppositions and liberal assumptions, yet in time, especially in the last several decades, the views of scholarship would change, on many fronts, towards conservative positions. More and more devout Christians have entered the field and many first-rate works arguing for conservative conclusions have also been produced.[2] Later on in this post, we will go through many of these developments in scholarship. 

Before anything else, I want to point out that New Testament studies, in the tradition bequeathed to us by its liberal progenitors, is a valuable field. It has deepened our understanding of the Bible immensely and produced a lot of good fruit. As Pope Benedict XVI (a great admirer of the historical-critical tradition but also a critic of it) said, the field has many positive points, it just has its flaws — flaws that we need to be aware of.[3] 

Many scholars view the Bible through the lens of reason alone as opposed to faith and reason. Although this approach can bear a lot of fruit, it also leads to erroneous conclusions such as Jesus’ predictions of his death being invented after the fact and backdated into the Gospels. Another example of an erroneous conclusion is Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem on a donkey (which fulfilled the Messianic prophecy in Zechariah) being invented, a creative retelling of a story from the Hebrew Bible.

Philosophical presuppositions also play a major role in how a scholar assesses the data. These presuppositions can lead one to erroneous conclusions about the Biblical texts as well. New Testament studies is such a polarized field today because of philosophical presuppositions.[4] You either believe in the possibility of miracles or you do not. You either believe in the person of Jesus Christ or you do not. A scholar’s views on these matters affect his perception of the New Testament, which in turn, affect the assumptions he adopts, his assessment of the data, and ultimately, his historical reconstruction of the past. Giving an example of this, a scholar who does not believe in the possibility of miracles will view overtly miraculous events in the Gospels, such as Jesus’ nature miracles, as non-historical — the result of legendary embellishment. This, in turn, will also make him more skeptical of other accounts in the Gospels. In order to account for these elements in the Gospels, this scholar will also adopt a pessimistic view of the oral period before the Gospels were written. 

In the end, a scholar’s philosophical presuppositions (Christian or non-Christian) affects how he views New Testament texts, which in turn, affects how he views, weighs, and interprets the data available to him. As Pope Benedict XVI remarked in his famous Erasmus Lecture:

The debate about modern exegesis is not at its core a debate among historians, but among philosophers.[5]

As Christians, we need to read the Biblical texts not from a position of reason alone but from a position of faith and reason. The Bible was meant to be read through the lens of both. As Christians, we also need to engage the scholarship of secular scholars and provide thoughtful critiques of their critiques. 

With that said, let us go through an overview of significant advances made in New Testament studies. A lot of progress has been made in different areas and Christians have good reasons to be optimistic about the direction of the field heading into the future:

The Progress

Genre of the Gospels: Prior to the 1990s, a large segment of New Testament scholarship viewed the Gospels as belonging to the genre of sui-generis, a genre unique to the gospels. This sui generis was viewed as a type of mythology. Today, the consensus view is that the Gospels belong to the genre of ancient biography.[6] Richard Burridge’s “What Are the Gospels?: A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography” (1992) rapidly overturned the views of scholarship on the genre of the Gospels. Burridge actually began his work intending to refute the thesis of Charles Talbert and a few other scholars that the Gospels belonged to the genre of ancient biography. Over the course of his research, however, he reversed his opinion, and his work would go on to change the world of scholarship on the subject.

Miracles: In the past, scholars viewed the miracle accounts in the Gospels as legends. Today, virtually all scholars, including skeptical scholars, agree that Jesus was a miracle worker — particularly, that he was a healer and exorcist who performed deeds that were viewed by his contemporaries as “miracles”. Scholars will disagree over how these miracles are to be interpreted (e.g. healings of organic illnesses and therefore pointing to divine causation, healings of psychosomatic illnesses, or the result of the placebo effect) but scarcely anyone disputes the fact that Jesus was a miracle worker. As scholar Graham Twelftree notes:

There is now almost unanimous agreement among Jesus’ questers that the historical Jesus performed mighty works.[7]

Likewise, scholars Bruce Chilton and Craig Evans note:

Any fair reading of the Gospels and other ancient sources (including Josephus) inexorably leads to the conclusion that Jesus was well known in his time as a healer and exorcist. The miracle stories are now treated seriously and are widely accepted by Jesus scholars as deriving from Jesus’ ministry. Several specialized studies have appeared in recent years, which conclude that Jesus did things that were viewed as “miracles”.[8]

Notable studies on the subject of Jesus’ miracles include John Meier’s “A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus Volume II: Mentor, Message and Miracles” (1994), and Craig Keener’s magisterial two-volume work on miracles, “Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts” (2011).

Authorship of the Gospels: Although the Gospel authors do not identify themselves within the main body of text (internal anonymity), this does not mean that they were published without any authorship attribution (formal anonymity) or that no one knew who wrote them. Simon Gathercole’s “The Alleged Anonymity of the Gospels” (2017) decisively refutes the primary argument in favor of formal anonymity, showing that it was extremely common for authors of ancient biographies to not identify themselves within the main body of the text but elsewhere (e.g. title above the main body of the work, in the capitula list, a running header, etc). We have over 100+ biographies written between the mid-second century BC and the late fourth century AD and all of them are internally anonymous except two![9] Gathercole, adding on to the arguments of Martin Hengel and Richard Bauckham, also presents new evidence to argue for the high probability that the names “Mark”, “Matthew”, “Luke” and “John” appeared on the cover page of the canonical Gospels when they were published, just as they appear in all surviving ancient manuscripts. When it comes to the question of authorship, currently, a large number of scholars (probably the majority) believe that Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark and Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke.[10] Many scholars also believe that John the Apostle wrote John’s Gospel while many others believe that John’s disciples had a hand in writing the Gospel based on his reminiscences. Together, these positions enjoy “considerable support”.[11] In fact, in scholar James Charlesworth’s list of views concerning the identity of the beloved disciple, the apostle John enjoys “the longest list of defenders”.[12]

The Reliability of the Gospels: Many aspects of Jesus’ life enjoy strong support from historical-critical analysis and are widely agreed to be historical by Christian and non-Christian scholars alike. These include Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist, his forming of the Twelve as a group, his ministry of miracle-working, his teaching on the primacy of love, his beatitudes, his parables in the Gospels, his proclamation of the kingdom of God, his conflicts with the Jewish religious leadership, his disruption at the temple, his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate, etc.[13] More broadly, Craig Keener has argued for the general reliability of the Gospels based on multiple factors (e.g. the genre of the Gospels, their being early empire biographies written within living memory, the reliability of transmission through disciples, the findings of modern memory studies, what we know about oral tradition, Palestinian-Jewish coloring throughout the Gospels, etc) in his highly acclaimed work, “Christobiography: Memory, History and the Reliability of the Gospels” (2019). Michael Licona’s “Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? What We Can Learn from Ancient Biography” (2016) is another notable work in this area. Licona’s work shows that “a very large majority” of differences in the Gospels are the result of the author’s use of literary devices common in ancient biographies (e.g. spotlighting, compression, displacement, etc) rather than contradiction.[14]

The Gospel of John: In the field of New Testament studies, the Gospel of John is traditionally ignored in historical Jesus research. Its differences with the Synoptic tradition has led scholars to see it as a theological document rather than a historical one. In the last two decades, however, substantial evidence has mounted in favor of John as a valuable historical source. John contains a lot of information not found in the Synoptics and this information has been impressively corroborated by recent archaeological discoveries. John’s gospel contains very precise topographical information about Jerusalem and very accurate knowledge of Judean traditions.[15] Its author displays intimate knowledge of pre-70 AD Jerusalem (Jerusalem prior to its destruction by the Romans). There are now growing calls to include John in historical Jesus research. As scholar James Charlesworth notes in his paper, “The Historical Jesus in the Fourth Gospel: A Paradigm Shift?” (2010)

John is independent of the Synoptics and has special sources that need to be evaluated for their historical value. John has amazing details about pre-70 Jerusalem and archaeologists are frequently able to prove John’s historical accuracy … should scholars call for a paradigm shift in the study of the historical Jesus so that all data is included for assessment, including evidence that seems to lie hidden behind the kerygmatic Christology of John’s narrative? The evidence surveyed above indicates that the obvious answer in terms of historiography and reliable historical data is ‘yes’.[16]

Acts of the Apostles: Acts of the Apostles used to be viewed in a low light in scholarship. In time, however, a great amount of material in Acts would be corroborated, even in matters of small detail. Today, Acts of the Apostles stands firmly vindicated. As Roman historian A.N. Sherwin White comments:

The confirmation of historicity is overwhelming … any attempt to reject its basic historicity even in matters of detail must now appear absurd.[17]

Notable works on the subject include classicist Colin Hemer’s magisterial “The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History” (1989), as well as Craig Keener’s extremely thorough four-volume commentary on Acts, “Acts: An Exegetical Commentary” (2012).

Jesus as God Among the Earliest Christians: For most of the 20th century, scholars widely viewed belief in Jesus’ divinity as a later development, one that arose within the early Church several decades after Jesus’ crucifixion. Today, the consensus of scholars is that “high Christology” (the view of Jesus as a pre-existent divine figure alongside the Father within Jewish monotheism) arose extremely early and goes back to the earliest period of the Church. As scholar Crispin Fletcher-Louis noted in 2015: 

There is now, however, a newly emerging consensus that a “high Christology” goes back to the earliest period of the church and that it was adopted by the Jerusalem-based disciples in the early years, or even the first few months, of the movement after Jesus’ death.[18]

This latest revolution in scholarship owes itself primarily to the works of Larry Hurtado and Richard Bauckham. See Hurtado’s “One God, One Lord” (1988) and “Lord Jesus Christ” (2005), and Bauckham’s “God Crucified” (1999) and “Jesus and the God of Israel” (2008)

Jesus as Divine in All Four Gospels: In line with the previously mentioned revolution in scholarship, the consensus view among scholars today is that Jesus is portrayed as divine in all four Gospels. Two notable works that show the divinity of Jesus in the Gospels are Richard Hay’s “Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness” (2016) and “Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels” (2017). In the past, most scholars used to think that Jesus was only portrayed as divine in the gospel of John. This is no longer the case.

Jesus’ Predictions of his Death: The historicity of Jesus’ predictions about his death has received strong support in the last two decades. Today, the position that Jesus predicted his death is held by a considerable number of scholars, including leading critical scholar Dale Allison.[19] It is now a position in the mainstream. Notable works in this area include Michael Licona’s “Did Jesus Predict His Death and Vindication/Resurrection” (2010) and Michael Barber’s “Did Jesus Anticipate a Violent Death? The Implications of Memory Research and Dale C. Allison’s Methodology” (2020).

The Burial and Resurrection of Jesus: The evidence for the resurrection has received major support in recent decades. Significant works in this area include N.T. Wright’s magisterial “The Resurrection of the Son of God” (2003) and Michael Licona’s “The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach” (2010). In the near future, Gary Habermas, the leading Christian scholar on the resurrection, will also publish his multi-volume 5,500+ page magnum opus on the subject. 

The evidence for the post-mortem appearances of Jesus is so strong that virtually all scholars, including skeptical scholars, believe that the disciples had experiences that convinced them that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to them. Of course, how these “experiences” are to be interpreted is another matter (i.e. actual appearances of a risen Jesus or some variant of the hallucination theory). As scholar Michael Licona notes:

[S]ubsequent to Jesus’ execution, a number of his followers had experiences … that convinced them Jesus had risen from the dead and had appeared to them in some manner. This conclusion is granted by a nearly unanimous consensus of modern scholars and may therefore be added to our “historical bedrock”.[20]

Some skeptical scholars have put forward the idea that Paul, our earliest Christian source, preached spiritual resurrection, not physical resurrection. This interpretation, already lacking in evidence (the Jewish concept of resurrection is physical in nature in all surviving sources), has been dealt heavy blows in recent papers by James Ware and John Granger Cook. See Ware’s “Paul’s Understanding of the Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:3–5” (2014) and “The Resurrection of Jesus in the Pre-Pauline Formula of 1 Cor 15.3–5” (2014) as well as Cook’s “Resurrection in Paganism and the Question of an Empty Tomb in 1 Corinthians 15” (2017). Jesus’ disciples sincerely believed that he rose from the dead and physically appeared to them. This is a historical datum that skeptical scholars need to grapple with. 

The historicity of Jesus’ burial by Joseph of Arimathea, a significant subject in the debate surrounding the resurrection, has also enjoyed strong support in the last two decades. The most notable works in this area come from Craig Evans, John Granger Cook (a leading scholar on Roman crucifixion) and Jodi Magness (a Jewish archaeologist and expert in first-century Jewish burial practices). See Evan’s “Jewish Burial Traditions and the Resurrection of Jesus” (2005), Cook’s “Crucifixion and Burial” (2011), and Magness’ “Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus” (2011)

Conclusion

As we have seen, on many fronts, New Testament scholarship has progressed in conservative directions (coming “full-circle”). Christian scholars like Larry Hurtado, Richard Hays, Craig Keener, and others have also been producing first-rate works and impacting the field in significant ways. To Christians, these developments provide very good reason for optimism heading into the future. Indeed, if Christianity is true, we should expect further study to validate the Bible.

References:

  1. Keener, The Historical Jesus, pgs. 3-13
  2. As observers have noted, more and more devout Christians have entered the field in the last few decades.

    As scholar Craig Blomberg noted in Jesus, Skepticism and the Problem of History, pg. 53: “The proliferation of evangelicals in the academy means that there is hardly a discipline, subdiscipline, or sub-subdiscipline of New Testament, Gospels, or Jesus research in which committed, Bible-believing Christians have not published significant works at the highest levels of scholarship”.

    On the Catholic side, Dr. Andrew Swafford commented in an interview on Pints With Aquinas: “What is different now … [is that] you have got devoutly Catholic scholars with all the linguistic and historical street cred you can ever want and they are building huge bridges”.
  3. Rampage, Jesus Interpreted, pgs. 61-64
  4. Ibid, pg. 14
  5. Benedict XVI, Biblical Interpretation In Conflict, 19
  6. Keener, Christobiography, pg. 27
  7. Twelftree, The Face of New Testament Studies, pg. 206
  8. Chilton and Evans, Authenticating the Activities of Jesus, 11-12
  9. Gathercole, The Alleged Anonymity of the Gospels.
  10. Mike Licona. Who wrote the Gospel of Mark? Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TMY3VI-K9U&t=458s and Keener, Christobiography, pg. 227. Pelletier’s study is not released yet. All we know from the interview is that his survey shows a majority in favor of Markan authorship. I am going to be conservative though and assume that his results will show a “slight majority” in favor of Markan authorship since Michael Licona and Nick Peters did a survey on Markan authorship a few years ago (sampling of 75 critical scholars) and this was their result. Pelletier is Licona’s student and he volunteered to continue his and Peter’s research on the topic.
  11. Charlesworth, Disciple, pgs. 197–211
  12. Ibid.
  13. See Keener, Christobiography, pgs. 6-7 and James Charlesworth in Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus (edited by Homlen and Porter).
  14. Licona, Why Are Their Differences in the Gospels, pg. 184.
  15. Charlesworth, The Historical Jesus in the Fourth Gospel: A Paradigm Shift?
  16. Charlesworth, The Historical Jesus in the Fourth Gospel: A Paradigm Shift?
  17. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament, pg. 189
  18. Fletcher-Louis, Jesus Monotheism: Volume 1, pg. 4
  19. Personal correspondence with Faithful Philosophy, who told me that “considerable” is in line with the treatments he has read.
  20. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus, A New Historiographical Approach, pg.  372

Responding to the “Colonizer Jesus vs. Historical Jesus” Meme

A week ago, a friend of mine sent me this meme comparing “Colonizer Jesus” and “Historical Jesus” and told me that it was spreading among his friends. After hearing that, I felt like it was worth responding to and decided to write a blog post about it. So here it is!

There’s a lot to respond to in this meme, and the statements on both columns, “Colonizer Jesus” and “Historical Jesus”, also reveal a lot about the maker of the meme, who is undoubtedly a liberal (I do respect liberals, and have many liberal friends whom I love but I respectfully disagree with them on several issues!).

The concise Christian response to this meme is that there’s only one Jesus Christians worship and that’s the Jesus of the gospels. The Jesus of the gospels is not “Colonizer Jesus” and neither is He “Historical Jesus”. Both portraits of Jesus in the meme contain errors. A number of statements in “Colonizer Jesus” are also true . I am also uneasy about some of the true statements made in “Historical Jesus” such as “friend of sinners & outcasts” and “critiques religious people” because although they are true, I suspect there are behind these statements, unstated erroneous understandings of Jesus. 

So in the end, I will relate the two Jesus’ of this meme to the real Jesus — the Jesus of the gospels. As a Christian, I will respond to this meme on thirteen points — clarifying, affirming and debunking different statements in it.

1. “White”

Christians know that Jesus isn’t white but it’s typical for artworks to depict individuals according to their culture. This is why Christian artwork in Korea or Japan will depict Jesus with Asian characteristics while Christian artwork in Africa will portray Jesus with dark skin.

 An artwork, after all, is typically created to cater to the culture it was produced in. It has to be relatable with the people, its audience. As a result, artists around the world have taken liberties to change Jesus’ appearance to better match their culture.

In the case of Europeans living in the Middle Ages in particular, can we really fault them for portraying Jesus as white if they, and virtually everyone around them, was Caucasian? In addition to what I’ve said already, people in the Middle Ages also did not have the privilege of travelling around the world like we do and they didn’t possess the degree of familiarity we have about other cultures. Globalization didn’t occur yet and people were enclosed in their own cultural bubbles.

2. “Patriotic

I don’t understand why the maker of the meme makes this into an issue, mentioning “patriotic” as though it were a bad thing. Patriotism, loving and appreciating your nation, is a good thing and Jesus was patriotic. 

As Israel’s Messiah, Jesus loved the Jewish nation. He was also well aware of the covenant between God and the Jewish people, and that the Jew’s were God’s chosen people. This is why Jesus chose Twelve apostles for His inner circle, to represent the Twelve tribes of Israel. It is also why Jesus’ priority during His ministry was to reach out to the lost sheep of Israel (Matt 10:5-6) before ordering his disciples to reach out to the Gentiles at a later time. Jesus’ Messianic mission initially prioritized the Jews, His own people, for it was to these people that the covenantal promises were first made. 

Lk:7-10 is another passage that indicates Jesus’ patriotism. In the passage, Jewish Elders successfully persuade Jesus to go to a centurion’s house and heal his servant. How did they persuade Jesus? They told him that the centurion “loves our nation, and he is the one who built our synagogues”. In this passage, Jesus was positively moved by the love and service this man had for the Jewish people. 

Other passages also indicate Jesus’ love and appreciation for His nation.

In Jhn 4:22, Jesus tells a pagan woman that “salvation is from the Jews”, since God chose to reveal Himself first to the Jewish people. Salvation is then the gift of the Jews to the world because it is through the Jews that man came to know God and enter into a relationship with Him. 

In Matt 23:37-39, Jesus laments the hypocrisy and hard hearts of the Jewish religious leadership. This lamentation (“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem…”)  stems from a love and concern for His native land and its people.

Of course, this does not mean that Jesus only cared about his own people, Jesus cared about all men. This is why He preached a love that was total, radical and universal in scope (Mk 12:29-31, Matt 5:43-48, Jhn 13:34 and Lk 10:25-37) and instructed His disciples to spread the gospel to “all nations” (Matt 28:19-20). However, it is also clear that Jesus loved the Jewish people. He was patriotic. If He weren’t, then He’d be a lousy Jewish Messiah.

3. “Jewish”

Of course Jesus was a Jew but the movement He founded eventually broke away from second temple Judaism.

Christianity differed from Judaism in belief and practice (Christians believed that Jesus was the Messiah and God Incarnate, believed that they were bound by a new covenant established by Jesus, which fulfilled the old covenant of Moses, had their own sacred writings in the New Testament, etc). By and large, early Christians also began establishing and attending their own places of worship.

Yes, Jesus and the disciples were Jews but for theological and historical reasons, the early Christians began to identify themselves not as Jews but as members of a movement that followed Jesus.[1] When this happened, the parting of ways had begun.

The meme says that Jesus was a “Jew” as if this were a striking fact but it isn’t. Christians, of course, know about this, just as they know that Jesus was a brown Middle-Eastern man. The Christian response to this part of the meme is “Of course, nothing new here”.

4. “Died For Your Sins”

Jesus did die for our sins. This is essential to Christian belief and it’s right there in the New Testament (1 Cor 15:3, Gal 2:20 and Jhn 3:16). Jesus’ sacrifice is also properly understood in the context of Jewish culture and history, in which animals were sacrificed to atone for sin (Lev 4:35). This practice was well-known and ubiquitous. This is why John, knowing that Jesus died for sins, equated Jesus to a lamb in his gospel (Jhn 1:29).

Jesus dying for our sins is also embedded in the narrative of the New Testament. Jesus Himself predicted His death in the gospels several times (Mk 9:30-32; 10:32-34; 14:3-9) and as He told Peter, this had to happen (Mk 8:31-33). He knew what His mission was and it was to “give His life for the ransom of many” (Matt 20:28). This explains His institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper (Mk 14:22-24), His agony at Gethsemane (Lk 22:39-43), His lack of resistance during His arrest (Matt 26:47-56), His calm and silence during the trial (Mk 14:53-63) and one of His final words on the cross: “It is finished” (Jhn 19:30).

If Jesus didn’t die for our sins, then the gospel becomes incomprehensible.

5. “Friends of sinners and outcasts”

Jesus was certainly a friend to sinners and outcasts but he reached out to these individuals precisely to lead them away from sin. As Jesus said: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance” (Lk 5:31-32). This intention of Jesus is also well expressed in His Parable of the Lost Sheep (Matt 18:12-14), in which a shepherd leaves his flock of ninety-nine sheep to look for one sheep that lost his way. 

So yes, Jesus loved sinners BUT He did not approve of sin. He guided others, gently but firmly, away from sin.  As Jesus told the adulterous woman: “Now go and sin no more” (Jhn 8:11). 

Now why did Jesus guide people away from sin? He did so precisely because He loved them. Sin harms the soul and to love means to will the good of the beloved, including and especially his or her soul. This is why it is loving to guide others away from sin. It is done out of concern for others — with their spiritual well-being in mind. 

6. “Endorses Church and State”

Jesus did endorse “Church and State”.

Jesus Himself founded one Church, the Catholic Church, on St. Peter and His apostles. Jesus also promised that this Church would be guided and protected until the end of time:

“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matt 16:16-19).

First, Jesus renames Simon as Peter in the passage. Name changes in the Bible are significant and indicate a new purpose or vocation God has for that individual. For example, God renamed Abram (“Father”) to Abraham (“Father of Nations”) because He intended Him to be the Father of the Jewish people. Afterwards, God blesses Abraham and Sarah with Isaac and the rest is, well, history. Likewise, Jesus renames Simon to Peter (“Rock”) because he intends Peter to be the rock or foundation of His Church: “you are rock (Peter), and on this rock I will build my Church”. 

Second, Jesus gives Peter the “keys of the kingdom of heaven” as well as the power to “bind and loose”. When Jesus does this, He is recalling Isaiah 22:20-23, in which Eliakim is named the royal steward. In Isaiah 22:20-23, Eliakim is told that he was being given “the keys of the kingdom” and that whatever he “close[s], no man will open” and that whatever he “open[s] no man will close”.  In ancient Israel, the royal steward was second in command to the King. It was his duty to take care of the Kingdom while the King was away. In Matthew 16, by giving Peter the keys, Jesus, the Messianic Davidic King, names Peter His Royal Steward, making Peter in charge of His Church in His absence. By giving Peter the authority to “bind and loose” (mirroring the opening and the closing of doors in Isaiah 22:20-23), Jesus is also giving Peter administrative power. “Binding and loosing” were common words among rabbis and judges. Binding refers to the ability to make laws while loosing meant the ability to release others from laws. Ultimately, in these verses, Jesus establishes the Petrine office, or the Papacy. As Steve Ray, a teacher of biblical studies and well-known convert to Catholic Christianity, notes:

After establishing Peter as the ‘Rock’, Jesus promises to give Peter the “keys of the kingdom of heaven” – a reference to the steward’s keys in Isaiah 22. The Davidic throne had been vacant since the Babylonian captivity (586 BC). The archangel Gabriel announced to Mary her Son Jesus would be given ‘the throne of his father David’ (Lk 1:42). As Jesus, the new King of Israel, re-established the Davidic throne he appointed Peter to the office of royal steward to rule ‘over the house’ of the king (cf. CCC 553). Keys represent exclusive dominion and this authority was granted to Peter alone. The office of royal steward was successive in Israel. Familiar with their history, the Jews certainly understand that the office of Peter would be filled by successors as was the royal steward’s office in Judah. The steward may die, but the office continues”.[2]

Unlike Protestant denominations, the Catholic Church can trace itself back to St. Peter and the apostles through apostolic succession, an unbroken line of succession from St. Peter (the first bishop of Rome) to Pope Francis (the current bishop of Rome and 266th successor of St. Peter). She is Christ’s one true Church.

Jesus also endorsed the State. He recognizes the authority of Caesar and the duty of the citizenry to pay taxes to the State (Mk 12:16-17).

7. “A King”

Jesus certainly is a King! The Messiah in the Old Testament is depicted as possessing three offices — King (Jer 23:5, Mic 5:2, Isa 9:6 and Zech 9:9), High Priest and Prophet. Jesus is all three.

When it comes to Jesus being a King, check out the Bible. In the New Testament, the angel Gabriel tells Mary at the Annunciation) that the “Lord God will give” her son “the throne of his father David and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end” (Lk 1:26-38). Shortly after Jesus was born, the wise men paid their respects to Him — the King of the Jews (Matt 2: 1-2). King Herod, on the other hand, wanted to kill Jesus because he saw him as a political rival (Matt 2:3-7;12). During Jesus’ ministry, Jesus gives Peter the keys of the kingdom of Heaven (Matt 16:16-19), recalling Isaiah 22:20-23, and naming Peter His royal steward. During Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, He is portrayed as King by the gospel writers, who mention the Messianic prophecy fulfilled by the event (Matt 21:1-11). Jesus as King is also mentioned many other times during the Passion narrative: the Jews and Jesus talking with Pilate (Jhn 19:12 and Jhn 18:33-36), Roman soldiers making a “crown of thorns” for Jesus after His scourging and affixing it to his head to mock Him (Mk 15:17-19), the sign above Jesus’ cross (Mk 15:26) and the taunting by onlookers (Mk 15:32).  

8. “Sends sinners to hell”

To start, I want to point out that the existence and eternity of hell is explicitly affirmed by the Bible and particularly, Jesus Himself (Mk 9:43-47, Matt 5:22; 7:13; 10:28; 23:33, 25:1-46, Lk 16:19-31 and Jhn 5:29).

If we end up in hell though, then that’s because of us, not God. God only hands out justice — whatever we deserve. If we live a life that is a “yes” to God and His laws, then we go to Heaven. If we live a life that is a “no” to God and His laws, then we go to hell. In short, we choose our eternal destiny. As C.S. Lewis says:

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened”.[3]

Man is created with an immortal soul and is destined for eternity, particularly, to be in God’s full presence in Heaven and share in His Love (CCC 1023-1024; 1028). However, since God respects man’s free will, He allows the possibility for man to reject Him and spend eternity away from Him. Heaven and hell are logical end-states of our decisions in life. Heaven is the state of being in God’s full presence (the “beatific vision”) while Hell is a “state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God” (CCC 1033). Those who accept God and follow His laws choose Heaven and those who reject God and His laws choose hell.

Once we die, our souls become fixed on a final end that is either God or not God (i.e. sin over God). Although the orientation of a man’s soul can shift or “correct course” during his or her life, it becomes fixed upon death. God gives man sufficient grace and opportunity to repent during his or her life but upon death, this ends, and he or she will be judged. 

A lot more can be said on the subject of salvation and hell. I’ll discuss these topics further in a future post. I’ll say this though, yes, the Church teaches that non-Christians can be saved, see Lumen Gentium, no. 16.

9. “Critiques Religious People”

Yes, Jesus did criticize religious people, particularly, the Pharisees, but he did not do so because He disagreed with their moral teachings, He did so because they were hypocrites (Matt 23:13-32).

Of course, we Christians can also be significant hypocrites, and if we are, then we deserve to be called out in fraternal correction for our shortcomings so we can become better Christians.

Setting aside the hypocritical behavior of the Pharisees, Jesus did affirm their moral teachings (Matt 23:1-3). This is why he instructed his audience to do as they preach and not as they do. Jesus also respected their religious position: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they teach”. Jesus, as a devout Jew, also preached adherence to the ten commandments (Matt 19:18-21).

10. “Subverts Empire

I completely agree. Jesus did subvert the Empire He was born in. It’s one of the most striking aspects about Christianity. Its founder died in a lowly and embarrassing manner — crucifixion. It was also a kind of death that communicated the power of the Roman Empire. Crucifixions were public and served as a sort of billboard, not only advertising the humiliation of the crucified but also the power of the Roman authorities that were putting him or her to death.

Jesus was, in the eyes of the world, thoroughly defeated. Yet in time, as agnostic historian Tom Holland put it, His life and death would “completely upend” the assumptions of the Empire upon which he was born.[4] Although the Romans executed Jesus, His life and death would end up dramatically changing the Empire’s values and theological assumptions. In his book, “Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World”, Holland lays out the many ways Christianity radically transformed ancient pagan society, particularly in terms of morals. I also lay out many of these changes in part 4 of my Christianity: Builder of Civilization series.  

In our morals today, we are not Greek or Roman, we are Christian. The Christian revolution transformed our world and it all started with Jesus, who subverted the assumptions of the Empire he was born in. 

11. “Upholds the traditional family unit.”

Jesus does affirm the traditional family unit. Jesus says that marriage is a lifelong and sexually exclusive union between one man and one woman (Mk 10:5-12).

12. “Homeless man and child refugee

Child refugee is right but “homeless man” needs to be clarified. Jesus had a home in Nazareth. His family were not beggars (though they were lower class) and his father, Joseph, was a carpenter. 

During Jesus’ ministry, however, He traveled to a lot of places throughout Palestine. As an itinerant preacher, He relied on the generosity of others during this period. He would stay in the homes of others as a guest as He traveled with His disciples from place to place. Sometimes, however, this was not always possible and He wouldn’t have a place to sleep in (Matt 8:20).

13. “Had half siblings

Jesus didn’t have half-siblings. The “brothers” of Jesus described in the Bible refer to his cousins.

In ancient Jewish context, the Greek word for brother (adelphos) and sister (adelphi) could be used as a synonym for close relatives such as cousins.

Both the gospels and early Christian writers attest that the “brothers” of Jesus were his cousins, particularly, that they were the sons of Joseph’s brother, Clopas, and his wife, who was also named Mary (Mary was a common name during the period. There are, for example, multiple Marys in the gospels). For a detailed explanation on how the brothers of Jesus in the gospels are his cousins see footnote 5.[5]

But sure, for the sake of argument, let’s grant that Jesus had half-siblings, meaning that Joseph and Mary had marital relations after Jesus was born (because “even if” arguments are great). This still would not mean that Jesus endorses the intentional creation of non-traditional family units.

One, as mentioned earlier, Jesus’ teachings on marriage and family are clear (Mk 10:5-12).

Two, in this scenario, Jesus’ half-siblings would not be born out of marriage but within marriage (between Joseph and Mary). As for Jesus, although he was not conceived in the traditional way, His conception was not the result of pre-marital sex or marital infidelity — it was the result of divine intervention. Furthermore, Jesus was intentionally placed in a traditional family unit, with Mary being His biological mother and Joseph (whom God intended to be Mary’s spouse) being His adopted father. Think about it. Jesus could have entered the world through Mary alone. A man is not needed for the Incarnation. Yet, Joseph was still chosen to be Jesus’ adopted father, with God sending an angel to tell Joseph in a dream to take Mary as his wife, and that, through the Holy Spirit, Mary will bear a child, who they would name Jesus (Matt 1:18-25). Here, we see God affirming the traditional family unit, with Jesus being placed under the care of one father and one mother in a lifelong, sexually exclusive union. 

Conclusion

If there’s one good thing that this meme brought about it’s this, it’s important for us to know who the real Jesus is. Today, Jesus can be politicized by different groups of people to promote their ideology or worldview. As a result,  it’s important for us to get our picture of Jesus right by reading the gospels. This way, we will be aware when someone is politicizing Jesus and know the errors in their portrait of Him when they do so.

To guard against the politicization of Jesus, I recommend reading Trent Horn’s book, Counterfeit Christs: Finding the Real Jesus Among the Imposters. This book debunks several common and false portraits of Jesus today. These false portraits make it seem like Jesus supported certain beliefs and ideologies when an understanding of the Jesus of the New Testament shows that He did not.

Before this article ends, there’s one more message I want to communicate, in light of the common perception of Jesus today as an affirming 60s hippie. The real Jesus is incredible (read the gospels and find out!) but contrary to what modern man thinks or wants him to be, He wasn’t easy or convenient. He was demanding and challenging. Jesus urges us to walk the narrow path (Matt 7:13) and encourages us to carry our cross (Lk 9:23). He loves us and calls us to love others radically, and because He was all about love, He would not approve our sins or the sins of others — because He cares about the good of our soul.

References and Footnotes

  1. This portion of the write-up was verified by Faithful Philosophy in personal correspondence. For those who want to learn more on how Christianity broke away from Judaism, see Daniel Boyarin’s paper, The Christian Invention of Judaism (2008).
  2. Steve Ray, “Peter & the Primacy in the New Testament”, par. 5. Retrieved from: https://catholicconvert.com/blog/2020/06/30/peter-the-primacy-in-the-new-testament/
  3. C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce. 
  4. Cameron Bertuzzi interview with Tom Holland (2021). “Why Science and Secularism Come From Christianity”. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/Lehk-ZSsbpI?t=2409

5. In ancient Jewish context , the Greek word for brother (adelphos) and sister (adelphi) could be used as a synonym for close relatives such as cousins.

Both the gospels and the early Christian writers attest that the brothers of Jesus mentioned in the gospels were his cousins. To begin our discussion, let us look into Matthew’s mention of the “brothers” and “sisters” of Jesus in Matthew 13:53-57 (though only the brothers are named in this passage):

When Jesus had finished these parables, he moved on from there.  Coming to his hometown, he began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed.  “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?” they asked. “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” And they took offense at him.

Matthew names James, Joseph, Simon and Judas as Jesus’ brothers. 

The gospels, however, also mention that two of these so-called brothers were Jesus’ cousins.  Matthew notes that James and Joseph were sons of another Mary (Matt 27:55-56), who was also present at Jesus’ entombment by Joseph of Arimathea  (Matt 27:59-61).  John identifies this Mary as “Mary the Wife of Clopas” and mentions her being present at Jesus’ crucifixion (Jhn 19:25). See the following quotes below:

Many women were there [at the cross], watching from a distance.  They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons (Matt 27:55-56). 

Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock.  He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were sitting there opposite the tomb (Matt 27:59-61).

Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene (John 19:25).

As seen in the above verses, the gospels identify two of Jesus’ brothers, James and Joseph, as sons of Mary, the wife of Clopas.  Moreover, John 19:25 is further proof that the gospel writers used “adelphos” and “adelphi” broadly, because it is highly unlikely that Mary would have had another sister named Mary: “Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas…”.  However, this would not be surprising if Mary the wife of Clopas were a close relative, and as we shall see shortly, Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary the wife of Clopas were sisters in law.

Outside of the New Testament we also have evidence from the early Christian writers regarding “Jesus’ brothers”, illuminating this issue further. 

First, Christian historian Eusebius, draws on an earlier Christian historian, Hegesippus (Hegesippus was the first person to write a “history” of the Church in the 2nd century), who attests that James and Simon (another one the four “brothers of Jesus” in Matt 13:53-57) were cousins of Jesus and states that Simon was the “son of Clopas”. He also says that Simon succeeded James as leader of the Jerusalem Church because like James, he was also a cousin of the Lord. Two, Hegesippus also attests that Clopas was the brother of Joseph. This means that Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary the mother of James, Joseph and Simon were sisters in law.  Three, Hegesippus also says that Judas (another one the four “brothers of Jesus” in Matt 13:53-57) was another cousin of the Lord (as Eusebius says, “another so-called brethren”) and says that he lived a long time, surviving Roman persecution under the reign of Domitian. See the following quotes below:

“After James the Just had suffered martyrdom for the same reason as the Lord, Simeon (Simon), his cousin, the son of Clopas was appointed bishop, whom they all proposed because he was another cousin of the Lord” (Church History 4.22.4).

“After the martyrdom of James and the capture of Jerusalem which immediately followed, the story goes that those of the Apostles and of the disciples of the Lord who were still alive came together from every place with those who were, humanly speaking, of the family of the Lord, for many of them were then still alive, and they all took counsel together as to whom they ought to adjudge worthy to succeed James, and all unanimously decided that Simeon, son of Clopas, whom the scripture of the Gospel also mentions, was worthy of the throne of the diocese there.  He was, so it is said, a cousin of the Saviour, for Hegesippus relates that Clopas was the brother of Joseph” (Church History 3.11-12).

“The same writer says that other grandsons of one of the so-called brethren of the Savior named Judas survived to the same reign after they had given in the time of Domitian the testimony already recorded of them in behalf of the faith in Christ.  He writes thus: “They came therefore and presided over every church as witnesses belonging to the Lord’s family…” (Church history 3.32.1-6).

In the end, the gospels and the early Church fathers identify the “brothers of Jesus” — James, Joseph, Simon and Judas as his cousins.  With at least three of them — James, Simon and Joseph, as being sons of Cleopas, the brother of Joseph, and another Mary.

Lastly, the fact that Jesus entrusts Mary, his mother, to John at the cross (John 19:25-27), is also evidence that he was the only child because if Jesus had siblings, then this action would have been extremely disrespectful.  

See scholar Brant Pitre’s book, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary: Unveiling the Mother of the Messiah, pgs. 116-126

Christianity: Builder of Western Civilization (Part 4 of 4)

The Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent De Paul by Karol Tichy

To return to part 3 of this series, click here.

VII. Ethics

The most important way Christianity influenced our world is in terms of ethics (beliefs and theological assumptions).  The ten commandments, the teachings and example of Christ and the Bible in general, would be taken in by Christians down the centuries — resulting in radical changes in society. 

Christianity’s influence in terms of ethics was also important because it pacified the barbarians and united Europe under a single faith.  As noted by historian Dawson:

The Church had to undertake the task of introducing the law of the Gospel and the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount among peoples who regarded homicide as the most honorable occupation and vengeance as synonymous with justice.[1] 

With that said, let us look into several key ways Christianity changed our world in terms of ethics.

A. The Crucifixion

When it comes to ethical beliefs and theological assumptions, the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth caused great reverberations down the ages. Strikingly, Jesus’ death may have had as much of an impact as His life and teachings.

One way the crucifixion changed the world, particularly in terms of theological assumptions, is its elevation and empowerment of the weak.  In the ancient world, the strong imposed their will on the weak.  The weak had no dignity and those in power had no qualms about treating them callously.  Christianity changed all this, and it did so most clearly through the image of Christ on the cross.

In ancient Rome, the cross symbolized the power of the greatest empire on earth to torture anyone who opposed its rule.  Roman governors could punish rebels in a number of ways, the worst of which was crucifixion. Those who were crucified suffered excruciating pain.  They could be hung upside down, impaled, or have nails smashed through their bones (in this last case, in order to stay alive, they would have to pull themselves up and down resulting in the person feeling the metal scraping against their bone in the process).  Birds would flock around the crucified’s head and he would be unable to stop them from pecking his eye out.  The crucified individual would also have to endure this ordeal naked. 

The cross was also beneficial from a Roman point of view because it was public.  The crucified served as a sort of billboard, advertising their own humiliation and the power of the Roman authorities that were putting them to death.  Christianity, however, upended this symbol of Roman power in light of Christ’s resurrection (following his death from crucifixion).  As historian Holland put it “from degradation — the notion of triumph, from humiliation — glory, from death — life”.[2]  Furthermore, Holland continues, the idea that someone who suffered the death of a slave turns out to be the creator of all Heaven and earth and of all humanity — this taught and communicated that even the lowest in society had dignity and that God was closer to the weak than to the mighty.[3]

The cross also changed the world by serving a moral pedagogical function. It taught, through the example of Christ, that there was merit in lowering oneself for others (as we shall see in the next sub-section on humility). As noted by agnostic historian Tom Holland, the insights from the cross were a great “detonation under the assumptions of Roman power”.[4]  

The cross also had an impact by serving as a powerful symbol of God’s love.[5]  It communicated the primacy of love within the Christian faith, for the cross exemplified God’s love for humanity — God dying and suffering for man.  As Paul himself said: “I live by the faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20).  In addition to communicating the primacy of love within the Christian faith, the cross also had a profound impact on the way man viewed God — as Love.

Ultimately, the reverberations of the cross had a great impact on Western morality as Christians would look at it, pray before it, and reflect on it down the ages.  It became an object of enormous theological reflection.

The Crucifixion of Christ by Salvador Dali

B. Humility

Christianity also revolutionized the world in terms of humility.  Although our society sees humility as a virtue, the ancient Greco-Roman world did not.[6]   As historian John Dickson notes, humility (humilitas in Latin, tapeinos in Greek) meant “crushed” or “to lower in status”.[7]  It was associated with failure and shame, which were to be avoided at all costs.  In ancient Rome, society was centered around philotimia, “the love and pursuit for honor”.  Aristotle for example noted that “honor” and “reputation” are among the most pleasant things one could contemplate and attain for oneself.

In ancient Rome, people pursued honor and felt at liberty to parade their best accomplishments before others – provided that said accomplishments were true and communicated in a way that did not put down others.  Merit demanded honor and praise, and the latter two were proof of the former.

In antiquity, humilitas (the lowering of oneself) was appropriate before the gods.  It was also fitting before emperors.  However, humilitas before an equal or a lesser was morally suspect because such an action did not accord with the merit one possessed.

How then, did humility become a virtue? How did we go from drawing a straight line between greatness and honor as the ancients did, to drawing a straight line between greatness and humility? How did our culture move from prizing public honor and despising lowering yourself before an equal (let alone a lesser) to one that despises self-aggrandizement and prizes lowering yourself for others? The answer is Christianity – the teachings and life of Jesus.

During his ministry, Jesus upended ancient notions of blessedness in his beatitudes (Matt 5:3-11) and in saying “the last will be first, and the first last” (Matt 20:16).  He also upended ancient notions of greatness, saying that “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant” for “even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve” (Matt 20:26, 28).  Jesus also urged his disciples to lower themselves: “For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Lk 14:11). He also told his disciples that whoever lowered themselves would be the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven (Matt 18:4). Lastly, Jesus of Nazareth, believed to be God in the flesh, also displayed humility throughout the gospels – His lowly birth, His being the son of a carpenter, His washing of the feet of His disciples during their last meal together, and most importantly, His death on the cross.

It was Jesus’ death on the cross that broke the honor–shame paradigm of the ancient world.[8]  In antiquity, honor was pursued and shame was avoided at all costs.  Honor was proof of merit and shame was proof of failure and worthlessness.  If this was the case, however, then what did that entail for Jesus, who was executed in the (literally) most shameful manner in the Empire – crucifixion.  Either Jesus was not as great as his followers thought (with his crucifixion being evidence of his insignificance) or the notion of “greatness” had to be redefined to fit his seemingly shameful end.  Opponents of early Christianity happily accepted the first option and indeed, this was the common-sense interpretation for those living in a culture that highly prized honor. This is why St. Paul noted that Gentile audiences had a hard time grappling with the idea of a crucified Messiah: “[the] Greeks search for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified”“foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:23).  Christians, on the other hand, took the other option.  They did not see Jesus’ crucifixion as evidence for His humiliation, but proof that greatness can express itself in humility — the noble choice to lower oneself for the sake of others.  This perspective can be seen in Paul’s second letter to the Philippians, in which he urges his Christian readers to live in humility and follow the example of Christ (Philippians 2:3-8):

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.  Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.  Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross!”

As historian Dickson notes, the writings of Paul above is evidence of nothing less than a “humility revolution”[9]:

The highly honoured Jesus lowered himself to a shameful cross and, yet, in so doing became an object not of scorn but of worship and emulation.  Honour has been redefined, greatness recast.  If the greatest man we have ever known chose to forgo his status for the good of others, reasoned the early Christians, greatness must consist in humble service.[10]  

When it comes to humility, the Christian moral universe was a near-complete inversion of the Greco-Roman one, with humility replacing pride as the rightful interior attitude in one’s life.

Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet by Ford Madox Brown

C. The Primacy of Love

One of Christianity’s most enduring legacies to Western morality is the primacy of love.[11]  When a scribe asked Jesus what the greatest commandment was, Jesus told him that it was love —  love for God and neighbor (Mk 12:29-31):

The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.  And the second is namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.  There is none other commandment greater than these.

The love called by Jesus of Nazareth was demanding. It was total, radical and universal in scope.  It applied not only to one’s loved ones but strangers and foreigners, as well as one’s enemies (Matt 5:43-48):

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.  He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.  If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?”

Indeed, Jesus told his disciples that others would know they were His followers through their love (Jhn 13:34):

A new commandment I give unto you: Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you also must love one another.  By this shall all men know that you are my disciples… 

The teachings of Jesus would be taken up after His death by His followers, who spread his teachings across the Empire with great zeal.  One of His followers, St.  Paul, displayed the primacy of love in his writings — letters to the newly founded churches across the Mediterranean (Gal 5:14 and 1 Cor 13:1-13):

The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’.

If I speak in the tongues of angels , but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and exult in the surrender of my body, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.



And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.  But the greatest of these is love.

The Christian primacy of love has had a huge impact on our history.  As historian Holland notes, because of it, our world stood transformed as a result.[12]  It has also been the driving force behind Christian charity. 

D. Charity

One of the clearest and most important ways Christianity revolutionized the world was in terms of charity.  As stated by historian Woods: “[Christianity] invented charity as we know it in the West”.[13] 

As agnostic historian Holland notes, in antiquity, “the gods cared nothing for the poor” and the efforts of pagan priests went to “dancing, cross-dressing and self-castration” as opposed to helping those in need.[14] Indifference to the poor also extended to pagan philosophers.[15] Whether one looked to the character of the pagan gods or the teachings of philosophers, there was little “to justify any assumption that the poor, just by virtue of their poverty had a right to aid”.[16] In Greco-Roman antiquity, the attitude towards the poor was harsh — “The starving deserved no sympathy. Beggars were best rounded up and deported. Pity risked undermining a wise man’s self-control. Only fellow citizens of good character, who, through no fault of their own, had fallen on evil days might conceivably merit assistance”.[17]

In his article, “How the poor became blessed”, scholar Pieter van der Horst elaborates further on the attitudes towards the poor in Greco-Roman antiquity:

In Greco-Roman culture, the well-to-do weren’t expected to support and help the poor. The Greek and Latin verbs for “doing good, being beneficentnever have “the poor” as their object, nor do they mean “almsgiving”. The Greek word philanthrôpia doesn’t have the sense of our modern philanthropy. One is philanthrôpos towards one’s own people, family, and guests – not towards the poor. And eleêmosynê (from which “alms” is derived), in the sense of showing pity or mercy for someone else, never has the poor as its primary object. Ancient Greek moralists didn’t admonish people to concern themselves about the fate of the poor. And while generosity was praised as a virtue, the poor were never singled out as its object; it was always directed to humans in general, provided that they deserved it.

When Greeks did speak about the joy of giving to others, it has nothing to do with altruism, but only with the desired effects of giving: namely honour, prestige, fame, status. Honour is the driving motive behind Greek beneficence, and for that reason the Greek word philotimia (literally, “the love of honour”) could develop the meaning of “generosity, beneficence”, not directed towards the poor but to fellow humans in general, especially those from whom one could reasonably expect a gift in return. These were the “worthy ones” because they acknowledged and respected the principle of reciprocity (quid pro quo), one of the pillars of ancient social life, which was simply stated by the poet Hesiod around 700 BCE: “Give to him who gives, but do not give to him who does not give (in return).” Even though some ancient moralists occasionally said that in the best form of beneficence one does not expect anything in return from the beneficiary, the pervasive view was that a donor should be reimbursed one way or another, preferably with a gift greater than the donor himself had given.

Religion was not much help to the poor: they simply weren’t the favourites of the gods. There was a Zeus Xenios (for strangers) and a Zeus Hiketêsios (for supplicants), but there was no Zeus Ptôchios (for the poor), nor any other god with an epithet indicating concern for the needy. It was rather the rich who were seen as the favourites of the divine world, their wealth being the visible proof of that favour
.

...

The distributions of corn to the population by city states or emperors in times of need cannot pass for organised charity because the corn was given to all citizens in equal measure (not only to the poor). The poor didn’t get more than the rich, and even the poorest class of society was never singled out for especially favourable treatment.”
[18] 

This attitude toward the poor, however, changed with the arrival and growth of Christianity.  As historian Holland comments:

The roots of Christian charity ran deep.  The apostles, obedient to the Jewish tradition as well as to the teachings of their master, had laid it as a solemn charge upon new churches always ‘to remember the poor’.  Generation after generation, Christians had held true to this injunction.  Every week, in churches across the Roman world, collections for orphans and widows, for the imprisoned, and the shipwrecked and the sick had been raised.  Over time, as congregations swelled, and ever more of the wealthy were brought to baptism, the funds available for poor relief had grown as well.  Entire systems of social security had begun to emerge.  Elaborate and well organised, these had progressively embedded themselves within the great cities of the Mediterranean.[19] 

Systems and institutions of charity emerged.  Deacons were assigned the job of distributing the collections at mass to those in need, be it in the form of money or very often in the form of other resources, such as food or clothing.[20]  Collections were also used by the Church to free slaves and to release the innocent from prison, or at least pay the guards to provide better treatment. Eventually, the Church would establish orphanages (so that give those who planned to abandon their infants had an alternative), poorhouses and hostels, hospitals, and leper houses.[21]  Eventually, with the Christianization of the Empire, charity became “normal” as it is today.

There was also a major change in philanthropy in terms of focus.  Prior to the Christianization of the Empire, the wealthy primarily donated temples, public buildings, theatres, bathhouses and other forms of public entertainment.[22]  However, due to the influence of Christianity, philanthropy became more focused on helping the poor, sick, and needy.  As noted by historian Holland:

The days when a wealthy man had only to sponsor a self-aggrandising piece of architecture to be hailed a public benefactor were well and truly gone.[23]  

Christianity’s concept of charity also differed from that of the ancient world due to its emphasis on selflessness, humility, and love for neighbor.  As noted by historian Woods:

The spirit of giving in the ancient world was in a certain sense deficient when set against that of the Church.  Most ancient giving was self-interested rather than purely gratuitous.  The buildings financed by the wealthy prominently displayed their names.  Donors gave what they did either to put the recipients in their debt or to call attention to themselves and their great liberality.  That those in need were to be served with a cheerful heart and provided for without thought of reward or reciprocity was certainly not the governing principle.[24]

When it comes to charitable efforts carried out by Christian individuals, parishes, dioceses, monasteries, religious orders, lay organizations, and the Holy See, a complete history of all these would fill many large volumes.  As historian Woods notes, Christian charity “has had no peer in the amount and variety of good work it has done and the human suffering and misery it has alleviated”.[25]  With that said, let us look at some notable examples of Christian charity.

When pestilences struck Carthage and Alexandria, Christians earned respect and admiration for the bravery with which they consoled the dying and buried the dead.  Pagans, on the other hand, kept to themselves, refusing to aid even their friends and plundering the dead.  St.  Cyprian, bishop of Alexandria, rebuked the pagan population for their behavior saying:

No compassion is shown by you to the sick, only covetousness and plunder open their jaws over the dead; they who are too fearful for the work of mercy, are bold for guilty profits.  They who shun to bury the dead, are greedy for what they have left behind them.[26] 

St.  Cyprian called Christians to action, urging them to aid the sick and bury the dead, including pagans who had been persecuting them (this event took place when the Empire was still persecuting Christians):

If we only do good to those who do good to us, what do we more than the heathens and publicans? If we are the children of God, who makes His sun to shine upon the good and the bad, and sends rain on the just and the unjust, let us prove it by our acts, by blessing those who curse us, and doing good to those who persecute us.[27] 

The remarkable response of Christians during this time was recorded by Dionysius:

[They] did not spare themselves, but kept by each other, and visited the sick without thought of their own peril, and ministered to them assiduously … drawing upon themselves their neighbors’ diseases, and willingly taking over to their own persons the burden of the sufferings of those around them.[28] 

The Christian response during this difficult time resulted in significant numbers of pagans converting to Christianity. 

St.  Paulinus was a wealthy Roman senator and skilled administrator.  He was extremely well-connected and owned a vast array of properties in Italy, France, and Spain.[29]  Paulinus, however, converted to Christianity, and he and his already Christian wife Therasia renounced their wealth — with Paulinus himself renouncing his rank as senator.  Paulinus announced that all of his properties and possessions would be given to the poor and the Church.   He did not, however, give all his wealth in one go but spent it on the poor and the Church over his lifetime, funding many charitable projects.  Paulinus would spend the rest of his life residing in a small hut and living on a modest diet of beans — praying, carrying out vigils, and giving alms to the poor.[30]   After the death of his wife, Paulinus would end up being ordained a priest and assuming the position of bishop of Nola, Italy.  His radical actions sent shockwaves through the circles of Rome’s elite, “thrilling some” and “appalling many others”.[31]  St.  Paulinus does not stand alone in his actions. Many wealthy and pious Christian men and women gave up their possessions to the poor such as St.  Francis of Assisi, St.  Elizabeth of Hungary (a German princess), and St.  Katharine Drexel. 

St.  Vincent De Paul, a French priest, devoted his life to serving the needy.  He was known for his attention to detail, a manifestation of the great affection and love he had for those he served.  To one group of his volunteers he wrote:

Each sick person should have as much bread as he needs, with a quarter pound of boiled button or beef for dinner, and the same amount of roast for supper; except on Sundays when they may be given some boiled chicken for their dinner, and two or three times a week their meat may be chopped.  Those who have no fever should have a pint of wine each day, half in the morning and half in the evening … If fish can be found at an honest price, this shall be given them only at dinner.  Permission to eat meat in Lent and on other forbidden days should be obtained for those who are very ill; and if they are unable to eat solid meat, they should be given bouillon, bread-soup or toasted bread, barley gruel and fresh eggs, twice or thrice a day.[32] 

Each orderly under St. Vincent was instructed to serve the needy “all with love, as if it were her son she were treating, or rather God, who counts as done to himself the good she does to the poor”.[33]

Vincent’s greatest contribution was the founding of the Daughters of Charity, whose “Grey Sisters” would labor in hospitals, hospices, foundling homes, and armies (as the first female military nurses).[34] 

During the period of the Thirty Years War and the plagues and famines that accompanied it, Vincent also rose to the occasion.  He lodged thousands of refugees and 800+ orphans who were put to trade or in service.[35]  Right after the war, in the 1650s, Vincent’s various enterprises fed as many as 15,000 people.[36] 

When it came to the poor, Vincent told those who worked in his organizations the following:

The poor are our masters.  They are our kings; we must obey them; and it is no exaggeration to call them this, since Our Lord is in the poor.[37]

A more ordinary but certainly extraordinary model of Christian charity would be Pier Giorgio Frassati, who carried out exemplary efforts to help the poor before dying at the young age of 24.  Pier Giorgio was a normal young man in many ways.  He loved having fun with his friends, cracking jokes, and playing sports. He also had a passion for mountain climbing.  In addition to these, Pier Giorgio had a deep Christian faith that shone through in his life (in this discussion, we will only focus on his charity though). 

There are many stories of how Pier Giorgio loved the poor.  One time, when Pier Giorgio was a young boy, a frail woman knocked on the door of his home with a barefoot child in her arms. Pier Giorgio quickly removed his shoes and socks, gave them to her, and shut the door before anyone in his family could object.[38]  Another time, during a freezing night, his father asked him where his coat was when he arrived home without it.  Pier Giorgio told him that he gave the coat away: “You see, Dad, it was cold”.[39]  At times, he would also give his train money to the poor and hurry back home on foot.[40] 

Pier Giorgio was also selfless with the money that was given to him.  When his sister, Luciana, got married and gave him 1,000 liras from her wedding gifts, he gave it all away to charitable causes.[41]  Likewise, when his father gave him 5,000 liras instead of a car, Pier Giorgio donated all of it to good causes as well.[42] 

An important event in Pier Giorgio’s life would be when he joined the St.  Vincent de Paul Society at the age of 17.  When Pier Giorgio joined, he was assigned specific poor families to visit and care for.  Pier Giorgio loved these visits.  He saw them as a chance not only to offer material support but also spiritual encouragement.  He visited the poor daily and lifted their spirits.  By the time Pier Giorgio was 21, he was personally helping several families (e.g. purchasing medicines for them, helping them find work, carrying firewood, etc) and making sure that the local children received the sacraments (he would sponsor many of them himself).[43]  

Although a lot more can be said about Pier Giorgio Frassati, one striking aspect of his charitable work is how low-key he was in carrying them out.  Although his family knew that he carried out acts of charity, they did not know the extent to which he did so until after his death. 

When Pier Giorgio passed away, his loss was felt in Turin.  To the shock of his family, thousands of people showed up to his funeral, including many of the poor families he helped.  These families gave accounts of how Pier Giorgio helped them and Luciana collected hundreds of these testimonies in a book entitled “The Charity of Pier Giorgio”.[44]  Although Pier Giorgio’s acts of charity were rarely mentioned by him.  He did make a reference to them in a letter to a friend: “Jesus comes every day to visit me sacramentally in the Eucharist; I return the visit by going to find him among the poor”.[45] 

Moving on to another example of Christian charity, historian Woods also notes how the Christian “Church fathers”, who bequeathed to Western civilization a fine corpus of literary and scholarly work, found time to devote themselves to the service of the needy:

Saint Augustine established a hospice for pilgrims, ransomed slaves, and gave away clothing to the poor.  (He warned people not to give him expensive garments, since he would only sell them and give the proceeds to the poor.) Saint John Chrysostom founded a series of hospitals in Constantinople.  Saint Cyprian and Saint Ephrem organized relief efforts during times of plague and famine.[46]  

The impressiveness of Christian charity was also noted by pagan writers such as Lucian, Aristides of Athens, and Emperor Julian the Apostate (a devout pagan who detested Christianity). Emperor Julian’s testimony is especially valuable since despite being a pagan and hating Christianity, he attests to the strong spirit of charity among Christians during his own time, as well as the indifference of pagan priests towards the poor:

The earnestness with which the people of this religion help one another in their needs is incredible.  They spare themselves nothing for this end.  Their first lawgiver put it into their heads that they were all brethren!”[47]  

If the [Christian]  brethren have among them a man in need and they have not abundant resources, they fast for a day or two, so as to provide the needy man with the necessary food.[48]

These impious Galileans [(i.e. Christians)] not only feed their own poor, but ours also …  Whilst the pagan priests neglect the poor, the hated Galileans devote themselves to works of charity and by a display of false compassion have established and given effect to their pernicious errors.  Such practice is common among them, and causes contempt for our gods.[49]

In the end, Christianity revolutionized our world through charity and transformed ancient pagan society in another very important way.  As historian W.  E.  H.  Lecky recognizes, there can be “no question that neither in practice nor in theory, neither in the institutions that were founded nor in the place that was assigned to it in the scale of duties, did charity in antiquity occupy a position at all comparable to that which it has obtained by Christianity.  Nearly all relief was a State measure, dictated much more by policy than by benevolence”.[50]

“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matt 25:40)
Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati during one of his climbs. He was dubbed by Pope John Paul II as “the man of the eight beatitudes”

E. The Dignity of the Human Person

Another essential contribution of Christianity is the belief in the dignity of the human person.  In the ancient world, only the wealthy and powerful had dignity.  It was not something that the poor possessed.  Christianity, however, taught that all men possessed an equal intrinsic dignity. 

The dignity of the human person is grounded in the belief that all men are created in the image and likeness of God (“Imago Dei”).  The idea that the poor possessed dignity was further reinforced by the fact Christ Himself chose to live and die as one of the poor.  As St.  Gregory of Nyssa said in the 4th century regarding the poor:

Do not despise these people in their abjection; do not think they merit no respect.  Reflect on who they are, and you will understand their dignity; that they have taken upon them the person of our Saviour.  For he, the compassionate, has given them his own person.[51] 

Historian Holland notes the radical change Christianity brought about on this issue:

Dignity, which no philosopher had ever taught might be possessed by the stinking, toiling masses, was for all.  There was no human existence so wretched, none so despised or vulnerable, that it did not bear witness to the image of God.  Divine love for the outcast and derelict demanded that mortals love them too.[52] 

With the entire person came the body. For Christians, it followed that the body also had a God-given dignity. St. Paul preached the dignity of the body in his letters.  His writings were a clear challenge to the Roman sexual norms of his day not only when it came to fornication and prostitution but also when it came to the norm of males being able to sexually abuse their social inferiors (i.e. slaves and prostitutes).  To the Romans, sex was an exercise of power.[53]  As historian Holland notes, this is also reflected in their gods — Zeus, Apollo, and Dionysus: had all been habitual rapists.[54]  Historian Holland, commenting on Roman sexual culture notes:

The dynamic in the Roman world was not between, as it is now, men and women.  It was between those who have power, namely Roman free male citizens, and those who were subordinate to them.  And essentially the Roman sexual universe was by our lights very brutal.  It was a very Harvey Weinstein sexual arena.  A Roman man had the right to sexually use anyone who was subordinate to him: Slaves, social inferiors.  He could just use their mouths, their various orifices, as receptacles for his excess sperm.  And so, the Romans had this one word “mayo” for urine and ejaculate.  …  Now, Christianity radically, radically changes that.[55] 

In contrast to Roman sexual norms, Paul preached that everyone’s body was sacred, and so, ought to be treated with dignity and respect.  As stated in his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 6:13; 18-20):  

The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body … Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself?



 Flee from sexual immorality.  All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.  Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? … Therefore honor God with your bodies.

Under Christianity, men were encouraged to respect their bodies and not dishonor them through sexual sin. Men also no longer had the right to sexually abuse the bodies of their social inferiors since their bodies were sacred as well.  The Roman practices and attitudes on sex would cease as they would be replaced by Christian views and attitudes. 

The creation of man by Michelangelo. God (depicted in human form) reaches out with his right arm, creating and giving life to Adam. Adam’s left arm is extended in a pose mirroring God’s, communicating the biblical truth that man is created in the image and likeness of God.

F. Sex and Marriage

Christianity also contributed greatly when it comes to sex and marriage. 

Christianity gave dignity to the institution of marriage and elevated the position of women within it.  Once again, St. Paul’s writings would serve as the key basis for the Christian understanding of marriage, particularly his comparison of  a man marrying a woman being like Christ (bridegroom) marrying the Church (bride):

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church … Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave himself for it … Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.  He who loves his wife loves himself.  After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the Church — for we are members of his body.  “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.

This gave as historian Holland put it, an “incredible sacral potency to every man and every woman in a married relationship … The insistence of scripture that a man and a woman, whenever they took to the marital bed, were joined as Christ and his Church were joined gave to both a rare dignity”.[56]  Marital relations were modeled on the relationship of Christ and His Church. 

This comparison by St.  Paul also promulgated sexual fidelity.  If the wife was instructed to submit to her husband, then so equally the husband was instructed to be faithful to his wife.  This was a particularly high demand in the ancient world since men were not expected to be faithful to their wives even if they were married.  This double standard was removed with the Christianization of society. As noted by historian Holland and Woods:

That Roman Law … defined marriage as a monogamous institution had not for a moment meant that it required men to display life-long fidelity … The double standards that for so long been a feature of marital ethics had [ceased due to Christian influence][57]

Adultery, according to the Church, was not confined to a wife’s infidelity to her husband, as the ancient world so often had it, but also extended to a husband’s unfaithfulness to his wife.  The Church’s influence in this area was of great historical significance.[58]

Christianity also affected the institution of marriage in other significant ways. 

Prior to marriage being brought firmly under the Church via canon law, marriage was seen by many as a means to cement alliances between two families.  However, this changed as the Church taught and enshrined at the foundation of the marital union, consent (free will).  As noted by historian Holland:

No couple could be forced into a betrothal, nor into wedlock, nor into a physical coupling.  Priests were authorised to join couples without the knowledge of their parents — or even their permission.  It was consent, not coercion, that constituted the only proper foundation of a marriage.  … Inexorably, the rights of the individual were coming to trump those of family.  God’s authority was being identified, not with the venerable authority of a father to impose his will on his children, but with an altogether more subversive principle: freedom of choice.[59] 

The Church saw freedom of choice as so central to marriage that it actively pursued efforts to end the practice of clans keeping marriages within the family for purposes of power.  It did so by forbidding through its canons, marriages up to six degrees of separation.  This was done to “smash the power of clan lords — leaders who felt that they have the right to marry one cousin off to another to keep things in the family”.[60]  The Church’s belief in the importance of free will also led to the overcoming of the practice of infant marriage among barbarian tribes.[61] Since infants were incapable of giving consent, they could not enter into a marital union. 

Christianity also made monogamy and permanency marital norms in societies that fell under its influence. As historian Holland notes, the Christian Church imposed on believing Christians this sense that being male does not license you to have multiple wives and concubines — you have to focus on one.[62] 

Christianity also curbed pagan sexual appetites.  In ancient Rome, the Roman senator and historian Tacitus commented that a chaste wife was a rare phenomenon.[63]  The Roman poet Juvenal wrote that widespread promiscuity had caused the Romans to lose the goddess Chastity.[64]  Ovid observed that sexual practices in his day had grown particularly perverse, even sadistic.[65]  Similar testimonies to the state of marital fidelity and sexual deviancy could be found in other writings such as those of Catullus, Marital, and Suetonius.[66]  However, the Church managed to curb this, preaching chastity within the Christian life and the confinement of sexual relationships between a husband and wife.  The second-century Greek physician Galen was so impressed by the rectitude of Christian sexual behavior that he described them as “so far advanced in self-discipline and … intense [in] desire to attain moral excellence that they are in no way inferior to true philosophers”.[67]

In the end, as historian Edward Gibbons affirms:

The dignity of marriage was restored by the Christians.[68]

G.  Human Rights

Another critical contribution of Christianity to the West is the concept of human rights. As agnostic historian Tom Holland notes the concept of human rights derived “not from ancient Greece or Rome … It was an inheritance from the canon lawyers of the Middle Ages.[69]  Human rights arose from a belief in natural law and in the dignity of the human person as a result of his being created in God’s image and likeness (Gen 1:27).

Since man is created in God’s image, he possesses an intrinsic dignity that needs to be rightly accorded. The tradition of human rights works out the implications of this conclusion, a conclusion grounded in Judeo-Christian theology.[70] 

H.  Other Social Change

Christianity provoked other major positive social changes.

Christianity spoke out against infanticide and eventually abolished it. Infanticide was common and considered morally acceptable in the ancient Roman empire.  The fate of a newborn was determined by its father, who conferred personhood upon a child by recognizing him or her.[71] History writer Aquilina describes this process. When a mother gave birth, a midwife placed the child on the floor and the father was summoned into the room.  The father examined the child with his criteria in mind.  Was the child his — did he suspect his wife of adultery? Was it weakly or abnormal? Was it female (females were less desired in patriarchal societies)? If the father decided to reject the child for whatever reason he left the room.  The child would be drowned in a bucket of water or left to die on the side of a street or in a town or city dump.  If the father accepted the child, he picked him or her up from the floor and recognized the child as his.  Historian Holland paints a picture of infanticide in the ancient world, a practice that was ended by Christian influence:

Across the Roman world, wailing at the sides of roads or on rubbish tips, babies abandoned by their parents were a common sight.  Others might be dropped down drains, there to perish in the hundreds.  The odd eccentric philosopher aside, few had ever queried this practice.  Indeed, there were cities who by ancient law had made a positive virtue of it: condemning to death deformed infants for the good of the state.  Sparta, one of the most celebrated cities in Greece, had been the epitome of this policy, and Aristotle himself had lent it the full weight of his prestige.  Girls in particular were liable to be winnowed ruthlessly.  Those who were rescued from the wayside would invariably be raised as slaves.  Brothels were full of women who, as infants, had been abandoned by their parents — so much so that it had long provided novelists with a staple of their fiction.  Only a few peoples — the odd German tribe and, inevitably, the Jews — had stood aloof from the exposure.  Pretty much everyone else had always taken it for granted.  Until, that was, the emergence of a Christian people.[72]

Another Christian achievement is the abolition of gladiatorial contests, a practice that excited many in ancient Rome.  These contests trivialized human life in a way that went against Christian belief in the dignity of the human person.  As a result, they were eventually outlawed by Christian emperors — in the western half of the empire by the late fourth century, and in the eastern half by the early fifth.[73]  As historian W.  E.  H.  Lecky notes: 

There is scarcely any single reform so important in the moral history of mankind as the suppression of gladiatorial shows, a feat that must be almost exclusively ascribed to the Christian Church.[74]

Christianity was also responsible for ending slavery.  The abolition movements that swept Britain then the U.S.  in the 18th and 19th centuries were thoroughly Christian.[75]  The Britain abolition movement, led by Christian leaders, picked up great steam. This momentum further increased when many seized the event of the American Revolution to claim that the British Empire was being punished by God for their slavery.  In 1787, a full-blown abolition movement was at hand, driven out of an evangelical urgency for national redemption and quickly succeeded.  As historian Christopher Leslie Brown notes:

Through the campaign against the Atlantic slave trade, some British abolitionists hoped to make the British people better Christians.  That was the possibility first anticipated by Anglican evangelicals gathered at Barham Court in Teston, Kent during the 1780s and subsequently at Clapham Common south of London.  These evangelicals within the Church of England – Hannah More, William Wilberforce, James Ramsay, Charles and Margaret Middleton – had grown uncomfortable with the distaste for earnest Christianity among certain elements of polite and fashionable society … Slave trade abolition, accomplished with overwhelming public support in 1807 but orchestrated by Clapham Sect leadership, offered concrete proof that the British people had come to embrace in form and substance a devotion to practical Christianity.[76]

In time, the Christian abolitionist movement found its way into the U.S. and gained momentum.  It found complete success after the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which next to the Bible, was the second best-selling book of the 19th century.  Its Christian argumentation against slavery and defining abolition as a Christian imperative swung the consensus of the American people against slavery.[77]  Less than 15 years after the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, America followed the footsteps of Britain and abolished slavery. 

Christianity played a primary role in the fight against racism.  Martin Luther King, a Christian minister, led the charge for racial equality in America in the 20th century.  The movement led by King was driven by Christian conviction and aimed to persuade through religious argumentation — “pricking” the conscience of white American Christians.   As historian Holland notes: 

The campaign for civil rights gave to Christianity an overt centrality in American politics that it had not had since the decades before the Civil War.  King, by stirring the slumbering conscience of white Christians, succeeded in setting his country on a transformative new path …  the spark had set it to flame with a renewed brilliance was the faith of African Americans.  The sound of protest was the sound of black churches…[78]

One more example of Christianity and social change is St.  Pope John Paul II and the pivotal role he played in the fall of communism in his native Poland, and more largely, Eastern Europe.[79]  When it comes to John Paul’s first visit to Poland in 1979, history writer Thomas Bokenkotter described its effect saying that “it was nothing less than a Polish Pentecost, a moral renewal and an incomparable spiritual experience that restored to the Polish people a sense of their nationhood”.[80]  As John Paul II gave a stirring speech to over a million Poles, who were previously burdened and impoverished by their country’s communist-atheist regime, the crowd in reply would chant lines such as “We want God!” and “Christ has conquered, Christ is king and Christ commands our lives”.  A year later, Solidarity, an anti-communist movement founded on Christian ideals, emerged.  Previously, the Poles had rallied against their Communist rulers before — in 1956, 1970 and 1976 — each time ending in violent futility.  Now, inspired by John Paul II, they carried out strikes committed to Christian nonviolence and maintained that heroic commitment throughout.  As historian Timothy Garton Ash comments on this Polish revolution:

It is hard to think of any previous revolution in which ethical categories and moral goals have played such a large part ; not only in the theory but also in the practice of the revolutionaries, not only at the outset but throughout the revolution … This extraordinary record of non-violence, this majestic self-restraint in the face of many provocations, distinguished the Polish revolution from previous revolutions.[81] 

In addition to his role in the fall of communism, John Paul also played a significant role in the collapse of three dictatorships in three South American countries: Haiti, Paraguay, and Chile.[82]  The life and actions of John Paul is another testament to the power of Christian ethics, inspiration, and mobilization in causing social change.

John Paul II greets the people during his first trip to Poland in 1979

I.  Conclusion on ethics and values

Christianity has thoroughly shaped our sense of ethics and values over the last two thousand years.  As agnostic historian Tom Holland notes, to live in a Western country today is to live in a country “utterly saturated by Christian values and assumptions”.[83]  This applies even to Western countries that have largely turned away from the faith.  Indeed, “[t]wo thousand years on from the birth of Christ, it does not require a belief that he rose from the dead to be stamped by the formidable — indeed inescapable — influence of Christianity … Christianity may be the most enduring and influential legacy of the ancient world, and its emergence the single most transformative development in Western history“.[84]

The primacy of love, the emphasis on charity to the needy, the belief that every person possesses equal dignity, etc — these are all an inheritance from the Christian tradition.  Our sense of ethics, which seems so normal to us, would have been seen as foreign, bewildering, and even repellent (in some cases, such as equal dignity for the weak) to those living in Greco-Roman antiquity.  The fact that these are familiar, normal, and attractive to us shows how deeply our consciences have been shaped by Christianity. As Holland notes, we are like “fish swimming in essentially Christian water”.[85] We hardly even notice that we are doing it.

In addition to deeply influencing our sense of ethics, we have also seen how Christianity has been a powerful stimulus for social change, bringing about the abolishment of immoral societal practices, as well as the healing and renewing of nations.    

VIII.  Conclusion

Blessing of the Wheat by Jules Breton

Christianity has made a tremendous positive impact on history.  It is no understatement to say that it built Western civilization.  The Christian Church was the one fortunate constant of the West after the fall of Rome — nurturing and bringing it out of its lowest point and towards its triumph in the Renaissance (i.e. the Scientific Revolution), as well as shaping its identity and ethics profoundly.

Christian monasteries were powerhouses of activity (agricultural, industrial, intellectual, and charitable). They gave life to Europe and its people, especially during the West’s most turbulent time. 

Driven by a spirit of charity, Christianity innovated hospitals for the general public and was responsible for the spread of these institutions throughout Christendom — to the point that hospitals were found in both major cities and modest villages alike. Due to this second medical revolution, medicine eventually became well-ensconced in Europe’s public life and its universities.

No other institution championed learning and education quite like the Church.  She educated Europe through her monastic and cathedral schools and later on, invented and supported the university — the educational institution we are all familiar with today. Under Her wing, reason was enshrined at the heart of Europe’s intellectual life.

The Christian Church was also a great patron of the sciences. In addition to inventing and supporting the university, She also sponsored the education of Her clergy, and encouraged and funded the scientific endeavors of Her members. The Church was, in fact, the leading patron of science until the late 18th century and many of its priests (e.g. Bacon, Grosseteste, Buridan, Bradwardine, and Oresme) made key contributions to the emergence of modern science. Christian theology also encouraged the study of the natural world, and guided Christians to see and study Nature the right way. In time, it guided Christian scholars to embark on a quantitative inquiry as a way of understanding the universe. 

The Church’s canon law was the first modern Western legal system. It brought back reason with regard to law, made a number of original and important contributions in the field of law, and served as the model for secular jurists in developing the legal systems of Europe’s emerging nations.

Christianity also affirmed the importance of beauty. Its contributions to art and architecture have left a major, lasting and distinctive mark on the West, and moved and uplifted many souls.

Most importantly, Christianity shaped our sense of ethics and values thoroughly. In terms of ethics and values, we are not Greek or Roman. We are Christian.

In the end, Christianity’s mark on our history is indisputably deep, and it is a mark we should all be grateful for.  Without Christianity, it is difficult to imagine what today would even be like — for Christianity shaped the type of civilization we live in and the type of people we are immensely. 

References

  1. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 11
  2. Holland, Unbelievable Debate with A.C. Grayling, 2019. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/7eSyz3BaVK8?t=407
  3. Holland, T. Tom Holland & AC Grayling — History: Did Christianity give us our human values? Retrieved from https://youtu.be/7eSyz3BaVK8?t=407 and Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pgs. 9 and 441.
  4. Holland, T. Tom Holland & AC Grayling — History: Did Christianity give us our human values? Retrieved from https://youtu.be/7eSyz3BaVK8?t=407
  5. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 87
  6. Dickson, J. (2011). How Christian Humility upended the world. Retrieved from: https://www.abc.net.au/religion/how-christian-humility-upended-the-world/10101062#:~:text=It%20is%20well%20known%20that,associated%20with%20failure%20and%20shame.&text=Humility%20before%20the%20gods%2C%20of,because%20they%20could%20kill%20you. See also Dunnington, K. (2020). Humility: the beginning and end of virtues. Retrieved from: https://www.abc.net.au/religion/humility-beginning-and-end-of-virtue/10616416
  7. Dickson, J. (2011). How Christian Humility upended the world. Retrieved from: https://www.abc.net.au/religion/how-christian-humility-upended-the-world/10101062#:~:text=It%20is%20well%20known%20that,associated%20with%20failure%20and%20shame.&text=Humility%20before%20the%20gods%2C%20of,because%20they%20could%20kill%20you.
  8. Dickson, J. (2011). How Christian Humility upended the world. Retrieved from: https://www.abc.net.au/religion/how-christian-humility-upended-the-world/10101062#:~:text=It%20is%20well%20known%20that,associated%20with%20failure%20and%20shame.&text=Humility%20before%20the%20gods%2C%20of,because%20they%20could%20kill%20you.
  9. Dickson, J. (2011). How Christian Humility upended the world. Retrieved from: https://www.abc.net.au/religion/how-christian-humility-upended-the-world/10101062#:~:text=It%20is%20well%20known%20that,associated%20with%20failure%20and%20shame.&text=Humility%20before%20the%20gods%2C%20of,because%20they%20could%20kill%20you.
  10. Dickson, J. (2011). How Christian Humility upended the world. Retrieved from: https://www.abc.net.au/religion/how-christian-humility-upended-the-world/10101062#:~:text=It%20is%20well%20known%20that,associated%20with%20failure%20and%20shame.&text=Humility%20before%20the%20gods%2C%20of,because%20they%20could%20kill%20you.
  11. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 93
  12. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pgs. 86-87, pg. 488-489, 495
  13. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 170
  14. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 138-139
  15. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 139
  16. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 139
  17. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 139
  18. Pieter van der Horst, How the poor became blessed. Aeon. Retrieved from: https://aeon.co/essays/the-poor-might-have-always-been-with-us-but-charity-has-not
  19. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 139-140
  20. Aquilina and Papandrea, Seven Revolutions: How Christianity Changed the World And Can Change It Again, pg. 143
  21. Aquilina and Papandrea, Seven Revolutions: How Christianity Changed the World And Can Change It Again, pg. 144
  22. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 138-139. See also Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 170
  23. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 141-142
  24. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 170
  25. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 170
  26. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 174
  27. Uhlhorn, Christian Charity in the Ancient Church, pg. 264
  28. Schmidt, under the Influence, pg. 153-155
  29. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 150
  30. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 150-151
  31. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 150
  32. Carroll and Shiflett, Christianity on Trial, Arguments Against Anti-Religious Bigotry, pg. 150-151
  33. Carroll and Shiflett, Christianity on Trial, Arguments Against Anti-Religious Bigotry, pg. 151
  34. Carroll and Shiflett, Christianity on Trial, Arguments Against Anti-Religious Bigotry, pg. 151
  35. Carroll and Shiflett, Christianity on Trial, Arguments Against Anti-Religious Bigotry, pg. 151
  36. Carroll and Shiflett, Christianity on Trial, Arguments Against Anti-Religious Bigotry, pg. 151
  37. Carroll and Shiflett, Christianity on Trial, Arguments Against Anti-Religious Bigotry, pg. 151
  38. Vogt, Saints and Social Justice, A Guide to Changing the World, pg. 79
  39. Vogt, Saints and Social Justice, A Guide to Changing the World, pg. 80
  40. Vogt, Saints and Social Justice, A Guide to Changing the World, pg. 80
  41. Vogt, Saints and Social Justice, A Guide to Changing the World, pg. 80
  42. Vogt, Saints and Social Justice, A Guide to Changing the World, pg. 80
  43. Vogt, Saints and Social Justice, A Guide to Changing the World, pg. 80
  44. Cruz, Saintly Men of Modern Times, pg. 262
  45. Vogt, Saints and Social Justice, A Guide to Changing the World, pg. 81
  46. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pgs. 173-174
  47. Carroll and Shiflett, Christianity on Trial, Arguments Against Anti-Religious Bigotry, pg. 143
  48. Carroll and Shiflett, Christianity on Trial, Arguments Against Anti-Religious Bigotry, pg. 143
  49. Baluffi and Gargan, The Charity of the Church, a Proof of Her Divinity, pg. 16
  50. Lecky, History of European Morals From Augustus to Charlemagne, pg. 83
  51. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Love of the poor, 1.
  52. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 141
  53. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 99
  54. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 527
  55. Daniyal, S. (2020). ‘Christianity gave women a dignity that no previous sexual dispensation had offered’: Tom Holland. Retrieved from: https://scroll.in/article/953904/christianity-gave-women-a-dignity-that-no-previous-sexual-dispensation-had-offered-tom-holland
  56. Daniyal, S. (2020). ‘Christianity gave women a dignity that no previous sexual dispensation had offered’: Tom Holland. Retrieved from: https://scroll.in/article/953904/christianity-gave-women-a-dignity-that-no-previous-sexual-dispensation-had-offered-tom-holland
  57. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 282
  58. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 212
  59. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 283
  60. Daniyal, S. (2020). ‘Christianity gave women a dignity that no previous sexual dispensation had offered’: Tom Holland. Retrieved from: https://scroll.in/article/953904/christianity-gave-women-a-dignity-that-no-previous-sexual-dispensation-had-offered-tom-holland
  61. Berman, “Influence of Christianity Upon the Development of Law,” 93.
  62. Daniyal, S. (2020). ‘Christianity gave women a dignity that no previous sexual dispensation had offered’: Tom Holland. Retrieved from: https://scroll.in/article/953904/christianity-gave-women-a-dignity-that-no-previous-sexual-dispensation-had-offered-tom-holland
  63. Schmidt, Under the Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilization, pgs. 80-82
  64. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 212
  65. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 211
  66. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 211
  67. Schmidt, Under the Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilization, pg. 84
  68. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 212
  69. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 400
  70. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pgs. 401-402.
  71. Aquilina and Papandrea, Seven Revolutions: How Christianity Changed the World And Can Change It Again, pgs. 47-48.
  72. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 143
  73. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 205
  74. Schmidt, Under the Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilization, pg. 63
  75. Carroll and Shiflett, Christianity on Trial, Arguments Against Anti-Religious Bigotry, pgs. 26-51
  76. Brown, Christianity and the campaign against slavery and the slave trade, pg. 528
  77. Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. Stowe’s Global Impact: Her Words Changed the World. Retrieved from: https://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/harriet-beecher-stowe/her-global-impact/\
  78. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pgs. 140-141
  79. Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History, pg. 193
  80. Bokenkotter, Church and Revolution: Catholics in the Struggle for Democracy and Social Justice, pg. 547.
  81. Ash, The Uses of Adversity: Essays on the Fate of Central Europe, pg. 60
  82. Kwitny, Man of the Century: The Life and Times of Pope John Paul II, pg. 592
  83. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 13
  84. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 13
  85. O’Neill, T. (2020). REVIEW – TOM HOLLAND “DOMINION: THE MAKING OF THE WESTERN MIND”. Retrieved from: https://historyforatheists.com/2020/01/tom-holland-dominion/

Christianity: Builder of Western Civilization (Part 3 of 4)

 Scrovegni Chapel, one of the great masterpieces of Christian art. Painted by Giotto.

To return to part 2 of this series, click here.

VI. Law

The Church made important contributions to law.  She is credited with introducing the first modern legal system in Europe — canon law.[1]  In the 12th century, a monk named Gratian produced the Decretum Gratiani (“A Concordance of Discordant Canons”), a prodigious work that took several decades to complete.  Gratian systemically codified remarks from previous ecumenial councils, penitentials, popes, individual bishops, the Bible and the Church fathers into a comprehensive and consistent whole. He also drew from other sources in creating his work.  As a result of the Decretum Gratiani, Church law was now universally applicable throughout Christendom.  Prior to Gratian, Church law was regional in nature.[2]  As legal scholar Harold Berman comments on canon law:

[Canon law] is the first comprehensive and systematic legal treatise in the history of the West, and perhaps in the history of mankind — if by ‘comprehensive’ is meant the attempt to embrace virtually the entire law of a given polity, and by ‘systematic’ is meant the express effort to present that law as a single body, in which all the parts are viewed as interacting to form a whole.

[It] took a variety of texts — the Old Testament, the Gospel, ‘The Philosopher’ — Aristotle, ‘The Jurist’ — Justinian, the Church fathers, Saint Augustine, the Church councils; and by the use of the scholastic method and of a natural law-theory they [(e.g.  Gratian and other canon lawyers of the Church)]  were able to create out of these various sources, as well as out of the existing customs of their contemporary ecclesiastical and secular society, a coherent and rational legal science … it was the church that first taught Western man what a modern legal system is like.[3] 

The foundation of this Christian legal system was Christ’s command to “Love your neighbor as yourself”.  Gratian saw this command as the cornerstone of justice.  So important to him was the command that he opened the Decretum by citing it.[4]  Canon law, the first modern Western legal system, would serve as the model for secular jurists in developing the legal systems of the emerging nations of Europe.[5] 

The Church’s canon law also had an important effect in medieval society — it brought back reason with regard to law.  The barbarian kingdoms determined guilt through “trials of ordeal”, which were primitive tests to determine innocence and guilt. Examples of these trials vary but one example involved a defendant reaching into a pot of scalding water to retrieve a stone at the bottom.[6]  His arm would then be bandaged.  Three days later, when the bandages were removed, the man was declared innocent if the wound had begun to heal and scabs were visible.  If not, his guilt was established.  The rational procedures of canon law hastened the end of concerning methods such as this.  As noted by scholar Berman: “the introduction of rational trial procedures [introduced by canon law]” replaced “magical mechanical modes of proof by ordeals of fire and water“.[7] 

As for the contributions of canon law, there are many.  As noted by historian Woods:

Equally important was the content of canon law, whose scope was so sweeping that it contributed to the development of Western law in such areas as marriage, property and inheritance.[8]  

Let us now look at number of examples of how canon law contributed to the Western legal tradition.  For those who want a deeper treatment of the topic, see scholar Berman’s influential work, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition. 

Canon law contributed significantly to the West’s legal tradition in terms of marriage.  It held that a valid marriage required the consent of both the man and the woman, and that a marriage could be deemed invalid if it took place under duress, or if one of the parties entered into the marriage on the basis of a mistake regarding either the identity or some important quality of the other person.[9]  As scholar Berman notes:

Here were the foundations not only of the modern law of marriage but also of certain basic elements of modern contract law, namely, the concept of free will and related concepts of mistake, duress, and fraud.[10] 

This contribution of canon law would shape the West’s legal tradition in a major and enduring way.

Canon law also made significant contributions when it came to determining the criminality of a particular act.  As noted by historian Woods:

When we examine the rules by which canon law sought to determine the criminality of a particular act, we discover legal principles that have since become standard in all modern Western legal systems.  Canon lawyers were concerned with the intent of an act, with various kinds of intent, and with the moral implications of various kinds of casual connections.  With regard to the last point, canonists considered examples such as this: Someone throws a stone to frighten his companion, but in the course of avoiding it the companion runs into a rock and causes himself great injury.  He seeks medical assistance, but a doctor’s negligence causes him to die.  To what extent was the throwing of the stone a cause of the man’s death? This was the kind of sophisticated legal question for which canon lawyers sought an answer.[11]

The same canonists also contributed in terms of the modern principle that extenuating factors could exempt someone from legal liability.[12]  Building on the contributions of the Romans, who distinguished between intentional and accidental acts, canon lawyers made notable refinements and contributions of their own. As historian Woods notes:

Thus, if one were insane, asleep, mistaken, or intoxicated, his apparently criminal actions might not be actionable.  But these mitigating factors could excuse someone from legal liability only if as a result of them the accused could not have known that he was doing something wrong, and only if he had not wrongfully brought one or more of these conditions upon himself, as in the case of someone who purposely makes himself drunk.[13]

They also introduced the initial contributions of the Romans into European societies that had known nothing about these distinctions during the numerous centuries under barbarian influence. 

Another major contribution of canon law is the concept of human rights, which stems from the natural law tradition of Church (an inheritance from Greek philosophy) and Judeo-Christian theology.[14]  The concept of human rights evolved over time but it originated from Christian canon lawyers in the Middle Ages. For more on the subject see the book of leading medieval scholar Brian Tierney, “The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law and Church Law 1150-1625”.

Medieval commentators of the Decretum, looking at the constant reference to “natural law” in the work, began to see that an adequate concept of natural justice entailed individual rights —  given that all men possessed an equal dignity being created in God’s image (Gen 1:27).[15] As the Church’s canon law tradition developed, specific rights soon began to be identified (to give one example, the right to appear and defend oneself against charges in a court of law) and a firm language of rights was developed.  As stated by historian Kenneth Pennington:

[Canon lawyers]  had developed a sturdy language of rights derived from natural law.  During the period from 1150 to 1300, they defined the rights of property, self-defense, non-Christians, marriage, and procedure as being rooted in natural, not positive, law.  By placing these rights squarely within the framework of natural law, the jurists could and did argue that these rights could not be taken away by the human prince.  The prince had no jurisdiction over rights based on natural law; consequently these rights were inalienable.[16]

Another significant development in the history of human rights came with the commentary of Pope Innocent IV on the Decretum (Innovent IV was himself a great canonist).  Innocent IV, in considering the question of whether fundamental rights of property and of establishing lawful governments belonged only to Christians or to all men, answered that they belonged to all men:

Ownership, possession and jurisdiction can belong to infidels licitly…for these things were made not only for the faithful but for every rational creature.[17]  

This text would be cited significantly by later Catholic rights theorists.  In the 17th century, the concept of human rights was further solidified during the European discovery of America. During this time Spanish scholastic theologians, led by Fr. Francisco de Vitoria, raised questions with regard to the rights of the inhabitants of these new lands. Spanish scholastics developed the idea that the American natives possessed natural rights that Europeans had to respect (these theologians frequently quoted the statement of Innocent IV earlier). They argued that the natives in the New World were not “lesser humans”, they were human — full stop — possessing equal dignity being created in God’s image. As a result, the natives possessed the same rights they did. These scholars condemned the mistreatment of the American natives by Spanish colonizers and they would find a staunch ally in Fr. Bartholomew de las Casas, a fellow Spaniard priest and reformer who shared their beliefs and was stationed in the New World. Writing passionately against the mistreatment of American natives, de las Casas used the term “derechos humanos” (human rights) to describe the inalienable rights these indigenous peoples had.[18]

Ultimately, the concept of human rights stems from the Church’s canon lawyers. As noted by scholars John Witte Jr. and M. Christian Green:

The idea of natural rights emerged from the legal culture of the Christian West in the Early Middle Ages and has been employed by lawyers, theologians, philosophers, political theorists, and social and political activists ever since. The philosophers of the Enlightenment inherited the idea from their Christian forbears; they did not devise it.[19]

Another important contribution of canon law is its approach to crime.  When it comes to crime, canon law was strongly influenced by St.  Anselm’s work, Cur Deus Homo, which tackled the question of why God should have become man in the person of Jesus Christ, and why Christ’s sacrifice was an indispensable ingredient in the redemption of mankind after The Fall.  Summarizing St.  Anselm’s reasoning to these questions, historian Woods explains:

God originally created man in order that he might enjoy eternal blessedness.  Man in a certain sense frustrated God’s intention by rebelling against Him and introducing sin into the world.  In order for the demands of justice to be satisfied, man must be punished for his sin against God.  Yet his offense against the all-good God is so great that no punishment he might suffer could offer Him adequate recompense.  Whatever punishment he did suffer, moreover, would have to be so severe that at the very least he would have to forfeit eternal blessedness, but since eternal blessedness was God’s plan for man in the first place, such a punishment would undermine God’s purposes yet again.  The reason that God cannot simply forgive man’s sin in the absence of some form of punishment is that when man rebelled against God he disturbed the moral order of the universe.  That moral order must be repaired.  God’s honor must be restored, and that restoration cannot occur so long as the rupture of the moral order that occurred as a result of man’s rebellion remains in existence.  Since man owes restitution to God but is incapable of making it, while God could vindicate His own honor through a gratuitous act (but should not), the only way that atonement for original sin can take place is through the mediation of a God-Man.[20]

Anselm’s exposition “rested fundamentally on the idea that a violation of the law was an offense against justice and against the moral order itself, [and] that such a violation required a punishment if the moral order were to be repaired, and that the punishment should befit the nature and extent of the violation”.[21]  These ideas of Anselm were taken in by Christian thinkers and as time passed, it became common to think not just about Adam and Eve and original sin but also about the perpetrator of crime in everyday life: having violated justice in the abstract, he had to be subject to some punishment if the order of justice were to be restored.  As a result of St.  Anselm and canon law, crime became in large measure depersonalized, as criminal actions came to be viewed less as actions directed at particular persons and more as violations of the abstract principle of justice, whose disturbance of the moral order should be rectified through the application of punishment. The legal tradition of the West, adopting the development of canon law on this issue, would bear the distinct imprint of Christian theology.  As scholar Berman notes on the effect of this development of canon law in relation to crimes:

Contracts, it was said, must be kept, and if they were not, a price must be paid for their breach.  Torts must be remedied by damages equivalent to the injury.  Property rights must be restored by those who had violated them.  These and similar principles became so deeply embedded in the consciousness— indeed, in the sacred values—of Western society that it became hard to imagine a legal order founded on different kinds of principles and values.  Yet contemporary non-Western cultures do have legal orders founded on different kinds of principles and values, and so did European culture prior to the eleventh and twelfth centuries.  In some legal orders, ideas of fate and honor prevail, of vengeance and reconciliation.  In others, ideas of covenant and community dominate; in still others, ideas of deterrence and rehabilitation.[22] 

VII. Art and Architecture

A. The Medieval Cathedral

Christianity’s greatest contribution to art and architecture, and one that undoubtedly left its mark on the European landscape, is the medieval cathedral. Particularly stunning are Europe’s Gothic cathedrals, which emerged in Europe in the 12th century. These cathedrals are characterized by three distinguishing features: the pointed arch, the flying buttress, and the ribbed vault. The pointed arch came from India and arrived in Europe sometime in the 11th century. The flying buttress and the ribbed vault are medieval innovations.  In Gothic cathedrals, these three elements were molded, as historian Hannam put it, “into a series of aesthetic masterpieces”.[23]  The goal of medieval masons in building these structures was to build upwards and create massive amounts of interior space.  Since the flying buttresses were outside the building, they were also able to fill the walls with glass rather than needing enormous trunks of stone. The result was breathtaking – soaring cathedrals, of monumental size and scope, and ample space and lighting.

Another achievement of Gothic cathedrals is their geometric coherence, which was inspired from an important strain in Christian thought, that God created a rational and orderly universe – setting all things in right order by proportion “by measure, number and weight” (Wis 11:21).  As historian Woods notes regarding the idea that God created a rational and orderly universe: “This idea became common currency among a great many Catholic thinkers, particularly those associated with the great cathedral school at Chartres in the twelfth century. It played a central role in the construction of Gothic cathedrals”.[24]  At the time Gothic architecture was evolving from its Romanesque predecessor, more and more Christian thinkers were becoming persuaded of the link between mathematics – geometry in particular – and God.  At the cathedral school of Chartres, says scholar Robert Scott, Christian thinkers “believed that geometry was a means for linking human beings to God, that mathematics was a vehicle for revealing to humankind the innermost secrets of heaven … [and] that the cosmos was a work of architecture and God was its architect.”[25] These ideas led builders “to conceive of architecture as applied geometry, geometry as applied theology, and the designer of a Gothic cathedral as an imitator of the divine Master.” Professor John Baldwin, commenting on this strain in Christian thought and the building of cathedrals notes: “Just as the great Geometer created the world in order and harmony, so the Gothic architect, in his small way, attempted to fashion God’s earthly abode according to the supreme principles of proportion and beauty.”[26] In the end, the desire for geometric precision and numerical meaning in constructing medieval cathedrals elevated their aesthetic beauty significantly.

One of the most noticeable characteristics of Gothic cathedrals is interior lighting. Builders of Gothic cathedrals paid particular attention to how light entered the building through windows, not only for practical reasons, but also for theological reasons.[27] One popular way in which light was perceived in relation to medieval cathedrals, is influenced by the writing of St. Augustine, who conceived of human beings’ acquisition of knowledge in terms of divine illumination: God enlightens the mind with knowledge. As historian Woods notes: “This idea of God pouring light into the minds of men proved a potent metaphor for architects in the Gothic tradition, in which physical light was meant to evoke thoughts of its divine source”.[28] Continuing, Woods gives an example of the Abbey Church of St. Denis in France, a great church of Gothic style: Here, the religious significance of the light pouring in through the windows in the choir and the nave cannot be missed. An inscription of the doors explains that the light elevates the mind upward from the material world and directs it toward the true light that is Christ”.[29] Scholar Scott notes that light was also utilized to symbolize God’s grace streaming down in benediction, encouraging worship.[30] Ultimately, light was utilized to draw worshippers to contemplate the divine or to represent the divine in the material world.

The beauty of light inside cathedrals is enhanced by another key feature of the Gothic tradition: the use of large-scale stained-glass windows.[31] These windows would cause streams of multi-colored light to enter the building – a sight that continues to enchant visitors of these structures today.  One prominent type of stained-glass window in the Gothic tradition were rose windows – which were enormous in size and circular in shape.[32]

Ultimately, medieval cathedrals are a testament to the age in which they were built.  They point to the Middle Ages being a period of supernatural faith, reason, and innovation. Fast forward several centuries later, these structures continue to awe visitors today. They are indeed, one of the greatest artistic and architectural achievements in history, and to some, the greatest even. As art historian Paul Johnson comments on these phenomenal structures: “The medieval cathedrals of Europe…are the greatest accomplishments of humanity in the whole theatre of art”.[33]

B. Stained Glass Windows

Although we discussed stained glass windows in the previous section, it does deserve its own section, since it is another significant contribution of Christianity to the field of art.  Colored glass has been made since ancient times.  Both the Egyptians and the Romans manufactured small colored glass objects.  However, it was Christianity that pioneered stained glass windows as an art form.[34]   

Stained glass windows gained recognition as a Christian art form in the 4th century as churches continued to be built.  Centuries later, in the Gothic period (12th-16th centuries), this art form would take center stage in the designs of medieval cathedrals.  As time passed, the size of stained glass windows increased, as well as their complexity.

In addition to providing lighting and aesthetic beauty, stained glass windows served a pedagogical function.  They were used to communicate events in the Bible, Church history, as well as Christian theology visually, and were particularly helpful to parishioners who could not read.[35]  In larger churches, it was not uncommon for stained-glass windows to be biblically comprehensive – communicating the most important stories from Genesis to Revelation.[36] 

C. Art

Christianity also contributed greatly in terms of art in general — paintings, frescos, sculptures, etc.  Countless Western artworks are Christian. If you go to Europe and walk into a museum of medieval or Renaissance art, it will be littered with Christian art.

As art historian Kenneth Clark notes, many of the West’s great artists were devout Christians, and their faith inspired them in their work.[37] Guercino, for example, spent much of his mornings in prayer. Bernini frequently went into retreats and practiced the Spiritual Exercises of St.  Ignatius. Rubens attended Mass every morning before beginning work. Fra Angelico was a priest and has been beatified due to his sanctity.  The great Christian artists of the West would go on to produce many Christian artistic masterpieces.

Some Popes, particularly Julius II and Leo X, were also huge patrons of the arts and were responsible for the creation of exceptional works such as St.  Peter’s Basilica, St.  Peter’s Square and colonnade, the Raphael Rooms and the Sistine Chapel.[38] 

To proceed to part 4 of this series, click here.

References

  1. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 6
  2. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 191
  3. Berman, Law and Revolution, The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition, pg. 143, Berman, “The Influence of Christianity Upon the Development of Law”, pg. 93 and Berman, Interaction of Law and Religion, pg. 59.
  4. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 237
  5. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 192
  6. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 11
  7. Berman, The Interaction of Law and Religion, pg. 44
  8. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 192
  9. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 193
  10. Berman, The Interaction of Law and Religion, pg. 228
  11. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 195-196
  12. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 196
  13. Berman, The Interaction of Law and Religion, pg. 189
  14. Woods refers readers to Tierney’s influential work: The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law on pgs. 197 and 198.
  15. Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law, pg. 6. See also Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 282
  16. Woods cites Pennington, The History of Rights in Western Thought in pg. 200.
  17. Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights, pg. 7
  18. Holland, Dominion How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, pg. 347.
  19. Witte and Green, Religion and Human Rights: An Introduction, pg. 42
  20. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pgs. 195-196
  21. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pgs. 196
  22. Berman, Law and Revolution, pgs. 194-195
  23. Hannam
  24. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 119
  25. Scott, The Gothic Enterprise, pg. 125
  26. Baldwin, The Scholastic Culture of the Middle Ages, pg. 107
  27. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pgs. 121
  28. Baldwin, The Scholastic Culture of the Middle Ages, pgs. 107-108
  29. Baldwin, The Scholastic Culture of the Middle Ages, pg. 108
  30. Scott, The Gothic Enterprise, pg. 132
  31. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 119
  32. Smith, H. (2020). Gothic Cathedrals: Architecture & Divine Light. Retrieved from: https://www.ancient.eu/article/1649/gothic-cathedrals-architecture–divine-light/?fbclid=IwAR3Q6Ha1aAdTh2LSMhh03zF8S7UWqAh33O_UkpIPABifg2g4J3Z1WzrLuFY
  33. Johnson, Art: A New History, pg. 153
  34. History of Glass. The history of stained glass. Retrieved from: http://www.historyofglass.com/glass-history/stained-glass-history/
  35. Kosloski, P. (2017). This is Why Churches Have Stained Glass Windows. Retrieved from: https://aleteia.org/2017/07/19/this-is-why-churches-have-stained-glass-windows/
  36. Kosloski, P. (2017). This is Why Churches Have Stained Glass Windows. Retrieved from: https://aleteia.org/2017/07/19/this-is-why-churches-have-stained-glass-windows/
  37. Clark, Civilisation, quoted in Joseph E. MacDonnell, Companions of Jesiots: A Tradition of Collaboration.
  38. Chapter 2: Artistic Expression of Jesuit Values. Retrieved from: http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/jmac/sj/cj/cj2art.html. See also Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pg. 128

Christianity: Builder of Western Civilization (Part 2 of 4)

The University of Paris, one of the first medieval universities and arguably,
the most prestigious one during the period

To return to part 1 of this series, click here.

IV. Reason and Education

Another contribution of the Christian Church is that it cultivated a high regard for reason in medieval intellectual life and promoted education. To begin our discussion, let us look into the enshrinement of reason in the Middle Ages.

A. The Medieval Enshrinement of Reason

Reason was enshrined at the heart of medieval intellectual life because the Church, as educator of Europe, embraced it.  This acceptance of reason could be traced to early Christian thinkers.  As noted by atheist history writer Tim O’Neill:

Christian thinkers who had been trained in philosophy could see it [(Greek philosophy and learning)]  as something to be embraced.  God, they argued, was a rational intelligence and had created the universe along rational lines.  It made sense, therefore, that humans could and should use reason to understand his creation.  Clement of Alexandria [(150 – 215 AD)]  argued that just as the Jews had been given a divine gift of special religious revelation, so had the Greeks been given a gift of rational analysis.  Both were to be embraced and used.[1]

In addition to this, one of the few areas in which a reasonable number of texts survived after the fall of Rome was logic.  This caused medieval thinkers to pay great attention to this area.  As noted by history writer O’Neill:

One writer has compared the long road back from the intellectual catastrophe of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire on learning in western Europe to people after a nuclear holocaust trying to revive modern science with nothing but a few volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and a copy of Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything.  Scholars in the Eighth or Ninth Centuries had just enough fragments of information to know that they had barely anything at all but not enough to begin reconstructing what had been lost.  What is interesting is what they did with the bits they had – they revered them.  These ancient writers, mostly pagans, were held up as all-knowing authorities and what elements of their works did survive were studied with immense reverence and painstaking scrutiny.  This meant particular attention was paid to one of the few areas in which a reasonable number of works had survived – logic, or “dialectic” as it was known.[2] 

The Church’s acceptance of reason as a tool of discovering the truth about world (in both religious and secular matters), logic being one of the few areas in which a reasonable number of texts had survived after the fall of Rome, and the Church assuming the role of educator of Europe led to reason being enshrined at the heart of medieval intellectual life.

B. The Founding of the University

After the fall of Rome, the initiative for the spread of learning in Europe would be taken up by the Church.  The Church’s monastic and cathedral schools educated Europe and as historian Joseph Lynch notes, these centers of learning “stimulated a change in the quality and quantity of intellectual life”.[3]  A major development, however, would occur in the 13th century, as a new institution would emerge from the Church — the university.[4]  As noted by historian Jacques Verger:

But at the same time, in the field of teaching, the early decades of the thirteenth century were marked by serious mutations and ruptures, which must also be considered.  Of these, the first and most visible was the appearance of an institutional structure which was completely new, without any real precedent and with an exceptional historical destiny: the university”.[5]

This institution developed from the Church’s cathedral schools.  As noted by leading historian Edward Grant:

The cathedral school was an evolutionary step on the path to the formation of the university, which was a wholly new institution that not only transformed the curriculum but also the faculty and its relationship to state and church.[6] 

As historian Lowrie Daly notes, the Church developed the university because it was “the only institution in Europe that showed consistent interest in the preservation and cultivation of knowledge”.[7] 

There are a number of aspects that made the university different from its precedent, the cathedral school, and all other previous institutions of higher learning in history.  The university had degrees (i.e.  graduate and post-graduate), courses of study, standardized curriculum, faculties, examinations, and thesis and thesis defense.[8]  The marks of the university we are intimately familiar with today originate from the Middle Ages.

The Church also introduced the concept of “the right to teach” (i.e.  licentia docendi) in its university system.[9]  Those who completed masters degrees were rendered qualified to teach at other universities across Europe.  This resulted in the creation of an international community of scholars, the effectiveness of which was enhanced by the fact that Europe was united under a single faith and shared Latin as a common language.  As noted by historian Hannam:

The shared religion of western Europe, as well as widespread knowledge of Latin, meant that medieval scholars formed a single international intelligentsia that was more closely knit than it has ever been since.[10]

Medieval universities found a great ally in the Pope, who, as one historian put it, “granted, increased, and protected their privileged status in a world of conflicting opinions”.[11]  To give a number of examples, Pope Honorius III sided with scholars at the university Bologna in 1220 against infringements on their liberties.  In 1231, when local diocesan officials encroached on the institutional autonomy of the university of Paris, Pope Gregory IX issued the bull Parens Scientiarum.  This document effectively granted the university of Paris the right of self-government, whereby it could make its own rules regarding courses and studies.[12]  The document also granted the university a separate papal jurisdiction, which freed it from future diocesan interference.  These decisions were historic because for the first time universities would be recognized as legal entities.  As noted by historian Daly, with Parens Scientiarum, the university “appears in legal history as a fully formed intellectual corporation for the advancement and training of scholars”.[13]  In the same document, the pope also sought to establish a just and peaceful environment for the university by granting a privilege known as “cessatio” — the right to suspend lectures and go on a general strike if its members were abused.[14]  On numerous occasions, the pope also intervened to force university authorities to pay professors their salaries.  Pope Boniface VIII, Clement V, Clement VI and Gregory IX all had to take such measures.[15]  Ultimately, on this issue, historian Henri Daniel-Rops comments:

Thanks to the repeated intervention of the papacy, higher education was enabled to extend its boundaries; the Church, in fact, was the matrix that produced the university, the nest whence it took flight.[16]

At medieval universities, students studied the seven liberal arts, along with civil and canon law, natural philosophy (their term for science), medicine and theology.[17] 

When it comes to the study of science at medieval universities, it is worth noting the access to scientific materials these institutions provided students,  and the proportion science took up in the curriculum.  As noted by historian of science Michael Shank:

Between 1150 and 1500 … Europeans had had access to scientific materials than any of their predecessors in earlier cultures, thanks largely to the emergence, rapid growth and naturalistic arts curricula of medieval universities … About 30 percent of the medieval university curriculum covered subjects and texts concerned with the natural world.[18]

Indeed, as historian Hannam notes, the Church “even insisted that science and mathematics should be a compulsory part of the syllabus”.[19]

A map of medieval universities

C. Academic Life

Let us now take a look at the academic life for students at these institutions.

The undergraduate or artist (student of the liberal arts) at a medieval university attended lectures and took part in debates in class.  Masters (professors) typically lectured on an important text, often drawn from classical antiquity.  Alongside these lectures, professors also posed a series of questions in class which were to be resolved through logical argument.[20]  These questions were posed in what was known as “ordinary disputation”.  The master would assign students to argue one or the other side of the question.  When their interaction had ceased, it was up to the master to resolve the question.  The final step in the degree program of medieval universities was an oral examination, wherein a student needed to determine a question by himself to the satisfaction of the faculty.  Before being permitted to take this oral exam, however, the student needed to prove that he was adequately prepared and fit to be evaluated.   

After obtaining an undergraduate degree, the student could begin to look for work or continue his studies to pursue a graduate degree (masters).  In order to obtain a masters degree, a student needed to possess and demonstrate competence within the canon of important works of Western civilization.  Historian Lowrie Daly gives an overview of texts with which the student needed to be familiar:

After his bachelorship, and before he petitioned for his license to teach, the student must have ‘heard at Paris or in another university’ the following Aristotelian works: Physics, On Generation and Corruption, On the Heavens, and the Parva Naturalia; namely, the treatises of Aristotle On Sense and Sensation, On Waking and Sleeping, On Memory and Remembering, On the Length and Shortness of Life.  He must also have heard (or have plans to hear) On the Metaphysics, and have attended lectures on the mathematical books.  [Historian]  Rashdall, when speaking of the Oxford curriculum, gives the following list of works, to be read by the bachelor between the period of his determination and his inception (mastership): books on the liberal arts: in grammar, Priscian; in rhetoric, Aristotle’s Rhetoric (three terms), or the Topics of Boethius (bk.  iv.), or Cicero’s Nova Rhetorica or Ovid’s Metamorphoses or Poetria Virgilii; in logic, Aristotle’s De Interpretatione (three terms) or Boethius’ Topics (bks.  1-3) or the Prior Analytics or Topics (Aristotle); in arithmetic and in music, Boethius; in geometry, Euclid, Alhacen, or Vitellio, Perspectiva; in astronomy, Theorica Planetarum (two terms), or Ptolemy, Almagesta.  In natural philosophy the additional works are: the Physics or On the Heavens (three terms) or On the Properties of the Elements or the Meteorics or On Vegetables and Plants or On the Soul or On Animals or any of the Parva Naturalia; in moral philosophy, the Ethics or Economics or Politics of Aristotle for three terms, and in metaphysics, the Metaphysics for two terms or for three terms if the candidate had not determined.[21]

After familiarizing himself with the specified texts through classes, the prospective Master needed to pass a series of tests and oral examinations.  After doing so, he would obtain his postgraduate degree and was deemed a Master himself, making him eligible to teach at other universities across Europe.

A medieval university class

D. Reason and the Medieval University

It is also worth expounding on the prominence of reason in medieval universities to better appreciate the impressiveness of academic life during this time.

First, it must be pointed out that logic was strongly emphasized in medieval universities.  As leading historian of science Edward Grant comments in his book “God and Reason In the Middle Ages”:

Judging from the various examples and sophisms that I have cited here, one can hardly avoid the conclusion that medieval logic was an extraordinarily difficult subject, although it undoubtedly appears much stranger to modern eyes than it would have to the medieval undergraduates who regularly grappled with it in their logic courses.  Nevertheless one marvels at the fact that logic courses based on syllogisms, fallacies, sophisms, and numerous other subdivisions of medieval logic were taught to all university students in the arts faculties of European universities … The textbooks and treatises that have been preserved, and from which excerpts have been presented here, were well organized, but enormously complex and difficult.  They are a tribute to the masters who wrote them, but even more remarkable is the fact that medieval undergraduates were required to cope with such difficult textsThrough their high-powered logic courses, medieval students were made aware of the subtleties of language and the pitfalls of argumentation.  Thus were the importance and utility of reason given heavy emphasis in a university education.[22]

Grant then goes on to lament how logic is not given its due importance in universities today:

By comparison to the Middle Ages, logic as a formal subject of study in the modern university is of little consequence.  Students are certainly not required to take it and most shun it as too difficult and demanding.  How ironic it is that although we live in an age of triumphant science, a science the very being and existence of which depends on reason and logical thought, there has been a concomitant diminution of the study of logic, the quintessential embodiment of reason.[23] 

Atheist history writer Tim O’Neill also notes how important logic was in medieval education:

A grasp of logic was central to Medieval education.  A student had to master it, via Boethius’ translations of Aristotle and other works, before they could tackle any other subjects.[24]

Second, the prominence of debate and argumentation at medieval universities must also be stressed further.  As history writer O’Neill notes, debate played a key role in determining advancement and prominence within the university system:

The other radical and crucial novelty in the university system was the way advancement and prominence in this system was not gained merely by mastering material from key texts, but by disputation and debate using set rules of formal logic.  Masters and doctors maintained their positions and their reputations (and therefore their incomes from students) by their ability to win debates, often throwing open the floor to all comers.  And brilliant students could rise quickly in reputation and renown by taking on these masters and beating them.[25] 

Debate was so prominent in medieval universities that disputation events were held at these institutions.  As O’Neill notes:

At least twice a year a university would hold a quodlibeta – a multi-day tournament of rigorous logical disputation where anyone could propose and defend any position on any subject at all.  Often highly radical, controversial, paradoxical or even heretical idea were presented [(as long as it was not presented as fact)], and participants had to defend or attack them using logic and reason alone … quodlibeta debates at Medieval universities were such open free-for-alls where all kinds of radical and even heretical ideas could be proposed to see if they stood up to logical analysis.[26]

A discussion on reason in the Middle Ages would not be complete without a look at the scholastics. 

E. The Age of Scholasticism

It is also worth looking at how reason was enshrined in the minds and writings of scholastic philosophers and theologians, most of whom held formal academic posts at universities.  The use of reason among these thinkers is famously exemplified by their use of the “scholastic method”, which was, as historian Hannam put it, an “extremely methodical and carefully organized system that medieval philosophers used to construct rational arguments”.[27] The scholastic tradition dominated the academe during the high and late middle ages (1000 – 1500 AD). As a result, the period can be referred to as “the age of scholasticism”.[28] Historian Woods, commenting on the scholastics says:

The Scholastics, by and large, were committed to the use of reason as an indispensable tool in theological and philosophical study, and to dialectic — the juxtaposition of opposing positions, followed by a resolution of the matter at hand by recourse to both reason and authority — as the method of pursuing issues of intellectual interest.  As the tradition matured, it became common for Scholastic treatises to follow a set pattern: posing a question, considering arguments on both sides, giving the writer’s own view, and answering objections.[29]

In order to develop a better appreciation of the scholastics, let us look into a number of individuals within the tradition. 

St.  Anselm (1033-1109), like other scholastics, used reason to explore philosophical and theological questions.  In his Cur Deus Homo, for example, Anselm examines from a rational point of view why it was appropriate and fitting for God to have become man.[30]  Anselm is also known for developing a rational proof for the existence of God known as the ontological argument, which he lays out in his Proslogion.  This simple and fascinating argument, would be taken up by later thinkers (e.g.  Lebiniz, Godel, Platinga, etc), who would come up with their own formulations of it.  Today, the ontological argument continues to generate significant discussion and interest in philosophical circles.  Anselm, however, differed from most scholastics in that he did not hold a formal academic post at a university.  He served as abbot of the monastery of Bec and later as the archbishop of Canterbury.

Another scholastic would be Peter Lombard (1100-1160), a master at the university of Paris and a later archbishop of the same city.   Lombard’s work, the Sentences, became the central textbook for students of theology for the next five centuries.[31]  The book employed reason in the explanation of theological points.  Historian Woods describes the work as “a systematic exposition of the Catholic faith, including discussion on everything from God’s attributes to such topics as sin, grace, the Incarnation, redemption, the virtues, the sacraments, and the Four Last Things (death, judgement, heaven and hell)”.[32]

A discussion on the scholastics of course would be incomplete without St.  Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest intellects of all time and the prime exponent of the scholastic method.[33]  His magnum opus, the Summae Theologicae, raised and answered thousands of questions in theology and philosophy, ranging from the existence of God, to the justice of war, to whether all vices should be criminalized (St.  Thomas said no).[34]  Aquinas also developed five rational proofs for the existence of God. Commenting on the influence of Aquinas, historian Hannam notes:

Aquinas was made a saint less than 50 years after his death.  He was a humble and devout man, as no one doubts, but he owes his canonisation to his phenomenal works of philosophy and theology.  They have been one of the intellectual bulwarks of Catholicism ever since, to the extent that the Church has awarded him the title of ‘Angelic Doctor’.[35] 

The legacy of the work and thought of Aquinas has resulted in the philosophical school of Thomism, which enjoys a robust tradition of thinkers such as Jacques Maritain, G.E.M.  Anscombe, Bernard Longeran, Alaisdair Mcintyre, John Haldane, Eleonore Stump, Robert P.  George and others.

Ultimately, leading historian Edward Grant comments that rational argument became so prominent among philosophers during the High Middle ages (1000-1250 AD) that the period deserves to be thought of as “the beginning of the ‘Age of Reason’”.[36] The great mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, who was a huge admirer of the scholastic tradition, also notes that the period was “preeminently an epoch of orderly thought” and that it was “rationalist through and through”.[37]

St. Thomas Aquinas: Dominican friar, philosopher and theologian
Rome’s Angelicum, the Dominican order’s center of Thomistic theology and philosophy. The pontifical university was founded in 1222 AD.

F.  The Fruits of Reason

The enshrinement of reason at the heart of European intellectual life had profound effects, not only in the fields of philosophy and theology, but in other fields as well.  As historian R.W. Southern states:


The digestion of Aristotle’s logic was the greatest intellectual task of the period from the end of the tenth to the end of the twelfth century.  Under its influence, the method of theological discussion and the form of the presentation of theological speculation underwent a profound change … every department of thought was similarly affected.  The methods of logical arrangement and analysis, and, still more, the habits of thought associated with the study of logic, penetrated the studies of law, politics, grammar and rhetoric, to mention only a few of the fields that were affected.[38] 

The prominence of reason during the Middle Ages would propel the West to excel in the sciences in a historically unprecedented fashion.  As leading historian of science Edward Grant states:

What made it possible for Western Civilization to develop science and the social sciences in a way that no other civilization had ever done before? The answer, I am convinced, lies in a pervasive and deep-seated spirit of inquiry that was a natural consequence of the emphasis on reason that began in the Middle Ages … It was quite natural for scholars immersed in a university environment to employ reason to probe into subject areas that had not been explored before, as well as to discuss possibilities that had not previously been seriously entertained.[39]

When it comes to modern science in particular, the enshrinement of reason at the heart of medieval intellectual life and the emergence of the university were two key factors in its emergement, and these historical occurrences owe their actualization greatly to the Church.  As noted by historians of science James Hannam and Peter Harrison:

Before the edifice of modern science could be built it required the strong foundations that were laid for it in the Middle Ages.  The cornerstone was a widespread acceptance of reason as a valid tool for discovering the truth about our world.  Clearly, this could not happen without the approval of the Church, which at the time was the guardian of almost all intellectual endeavors.[40] 

The medieval universities, which were the chief sites of scientific activity in the later middle ages, were founded and supported by the Catholic Church.[41] 

With that said, let us now look into how else the Church contributed to science.

V. Science

A. The Guidance of Christian Theology

Earlier, we discussed how reason was enshrined at the heart of medieval intellectual life as well as the emergence of the university.  These factors contributed to the emergence of modern science in Europe in the 17th century (the “Scientific Revolution”).  However, we have yet to discuss another important factor to the emergence of modern science in Europe Christian theology, which, unlike the worldviews of many other cultures in times past, was conducive to a confident and quantitative study of the natural world. 

Fr.  Stanley Jaki, O.S.B., was a prizewinning historian of science and a leading contributor in the field.[42]  In his works, Jaki showed how the Christian tradition conceived of God’s creation as rational and orderly, and how this view of creation led Christian thinkers to study the natural world with confidence, and eventually, led them to study it quantitatively (through mathematics) — resulting in the birth of modern science. Jaki provides ample quotes from the Old Testament, examines the scientific attitudes of the early Church fathers (to show the continuity of biblical culture to the Middle Ages) and looks into the contributions of numerous medieval Christian scholars (in both theological understanding and science) to show how the progression towards a breakthrough in scientific thought was guided by divine revelation.[43]

1. The Path Towards Modern Science

In order to provide an idea of how the Christian tradition viewed the natural world as rational and orderly, see the following passages from the Bible (Ish 40:12-16, Prov 8:22-23 and Wis 11:20):

Who was it measured out the waters in his open hand, heaven balanced on his palm, earth’s mass poised on three of his fingers? … No aid, then, had the spirit of the Lord to help him, no counsellor stood by to admonish him.  None other was there to lend his skill; guide to point out the way … Lift up your eyes, and look at the heavens; who was it that made them? Who is it that marshals the full muster of their starry host, calling each one by its name, not one of them missing from the ranks? Such strength, such vigour, such spirit is his.

The Lord made me his when first he went about his work, at the birth of time, before his creation began. … when I was born, the mountains had not yet sunk on their firm foundations, and there were no hills; not yet had he made the earth, or the rivers, or the solid framework of our world.

I was there when he built the heavens, when he fenced in the waters with a vault inviolable, when we fixed the sky overhead, when he and levelled the fountain-springs of the deep.

I was there when he enclosed the sea within its confines, forbidding the waters to transgress their assigned limits, when he poised the foundations of the world.

I was at his side, a master-workman, my delight increasing with each day…

But you [(God)] have set all things in right order by proportion: by measure, by number, and by weight.

Biblical passages such as these indicated that the natural world was rational and orderly. As a result, Christian theology viewed the natural world this way, and since the natural world was rational and orderly, it could be comprehended by human reason. This belief gave medieval scholars confidence to study and understand creation. It led medieval scholars to affirm that nature operates under fixed laws, to carry out the complete “depersonalization of nature” — that is, to believe that there are no divine forces in nature and that God, though He ordained the laws of nature, did not typically interfere in their workings (besides the working of miracles in salvation history), and finally, to study Nature quantitatively, leading to the emergence of modern science.[44]

2. Against Pantheist-Animist Views

In order for medieval scholars to have proceeded along the path towards modern science, they also needed to reject the prevailing but erroneous pantheist-animist views of the day (antiquity into the Middle Ages).

Pantheism identifies God with the universe itself. The pantheistic beliefs of antiquity also came with other beliefs that dampened scientific study or hindered scientific advancement (e.g. belief in the “cosmic treadmill”). Animism is the belief that divine forces organize and animate the natural world. Pantheism and animism comprised how other cultures of antiquity and the Middle Ages viewed the natural world (hence “pantheist-animist”). Pantheist-animist views also influenced the thinking and understanding of the West substantially due to its inheritance of the Greco-Roman intellectual tradition, which subscribed to pantheist-animist views, particularly, the extremely influential works of Aristotle, which held such views. However, the influence of pantheist-animist views on the West would continue to decline due to Christian theology, which conflicted with pantheist-animist views and led medieval scholars away from them, and in other directions.

As Jaki notes, the beginning of Genesis served as a guard against pantheist-animist views. In it, God, who is distinct from the natural world, creates it out of nothing: “And God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light” (Gen 1:3).  Here, a clear distinction is made between Creator and creation. That God is distinct from the natural world is further solidified by the Trinitarian and Incarnational aspects of Christian monotheism.[45] These steered Christian thinkers away from the erroneous pantheist-animist views of their day, and eventually, Christian thinkers would reject pantheist-animist views wholesale.

3. The Stillbirth of Modern Science in Other Cultures

Jaki also examines the “stillbirths” of modern science in other major ancient civilizations (i.e.  Egypt, India, China, Babylon, Greece and Arabia).[46]  When Jaki says “stillbirth” in reference to these cultures, he is not saying that there was no progress or breakthroughs in science in these civilizations.  In fact, Jaki spends a significant amount of space detailing the technological and scientific achievements of each of these civilizations.[47]  When Jaki says “stillbirth”, he is referring to the failure of science in these cultures to “breakthrough” into a universal enterprise of exact physical laws and systems of laws (i.e.  modern science).  The path of development towards modern science in these cultures “died” — reaching a standstill.[48]

The problem with these other civilizations was their theology, which was pantheistic-animistic.[49]  Under such a theology, the cosmos are understood to be driven by divine forces, and not governed by constant natural laws. This theology led one not to see or look for fixed laws in Nature. It also lead one to study nature the wrong way.  Agnostic historian Tom Holland gives an example of this. He highlights the difference between Christian Europe and Confucian China in the 17th century — to show how Christian theology is conducive to modern science, and how China’s pantheistic-animist theology is not.  Holland narrates how Jesuit priests were invited by the Chinese Emperor to improve China’s calendar, and how the Jesuits outclassed the best Chinese scholars in terms of astronomy, a subclass of physics, due to their theological assumptions:

There was no better way to appreciate, perhaps, just how truly distinctive the Christian understanding of natural philosophy [(i.e.  science)] was, just how deeply rooted in the soil of Christendom, then to be a Jesuit in China.  In 1634, the presentation to the Chinese emperor of a telescope had provided Galileo, [its inventor in Europe], with an unexpectedly global seal of approval; but in Beijing there had been no great wave of excitement, no rush by princes and scholars to stare at the craters on the moon, such as there had been in Rome.  “It is better to have no good astronomy than to have Westerners in China.” So Yang Guangxian, a scholar resentful of the Jesuits’ stranglehold on the Bureau of Astronomy, complained …  Correctly, he [(Yang Guangxian)]  had identified the degree to which their ability to make sense of the heavens was rooted in [theological]  assumptions that were exclusive to Christians.  The obsession of the Jesuits with fathoming laws that might govern the cosmos, Yang charged, had led them to neglect what Confucian scholarship had always known to be the proper object of astronomy: divination … The understanding of the cosmos that underpinned the Jesuits’ ability to draw up accurate calendars did not, it seemed, come easily to scholars from a radically different tradition.[50]

 Just as China’s pantheistic-animist theology hindered the emergence of modern science in their civilization, so did the pantheistic-animist theologies of Egypt, India, China, Babylon, Greece and Arabia hinder the emergence of modern science in their civilizations.  In his work, Jaki examines the cases of each of the above cultures in-depth. 

Looking at the list of the above cultures, one may wonder why Arabia is included as having a pantheistic-animist theology when its religion, Islam, is monotheistic.  Although Islam is monotheistic, it is neither Christological or Incarnational.  This left it vulnerable to a monotheism that approached towards pantheism (there was more leeway to adhere to the prevailing pantheistic-animistic views of the day),– and this is what happened.[51] Many Arabian philosophers adopted the works of the Greeks and their pantheistic-animistic worldview, resulting in a conflict with the the teachings of Islam.  Among these philosophers, there was a separation of science and religion that should have been reconciled but was not.  As Stacy Trasancos, a popularizer of Jaki’s work, notes:

Muslim science made notable contributions in areas that had nothing to do with physical laws.  When it came to a study of physical laws of the world, there was a certain inertia owed to the unwillingness to question the Aristotelian animistic worldview, which is why the study of biology advanced but without an underlying increase in the understanding of the physical world.

This lack of understanding of physics is evidenced by Arab alchemy, which came to stand for the study of materials and compounds.  This field of investigation was a combination of ‘mystical and astrological proclivities,’ fundamentally the result of mixing the organismic, eternal cycles of pantheism with the belief that a Creator created the universe.  It was an attempt to reconcile the conflicting views of Aristotelian philosophy and Muslim theology.

The same paradox occurred in astrology.  The astrologers, working with assumptions in conflict with their religion, gave credence to the pagan doctrine of the Great Year, even to the point of believing it could predict the succession of rulers, religions, reigns and physical catastrophes”.
[52] 

There was, however, also a problem among faithful Muslim scholars (the problem then was twofold). Muslim theology viewed God as so powerful that He does not submit Himself to anything, such as natural laws.[53] Christian theology, on the other hand, was receptive to the notion of God willing to submit Himself to laws because of its belief in covenants. God, having established covenants with His people, bound Himself to behave in a certain way and would remain faithful to His promise. Since God bound Himself to covenants, He could also submit Himself to natural laws. As historian Holland notes:

The Muslim God, basically, for the emergence of science, is too powerful. The Muslim God does not bind Himself with laws. The Muslim God does not have an equivalent of covenants. The assumption among Muslim scholars is that if you drop an apple from a tree its not because there is a law that says that the apple must drop from the tree, its because God is intervening to ensure every time the apple drops from the tree because to say otherwise would be to limit God’s power. So, in a sense, the impetus for Muslim scholars to try and identify universal laws in the way you get with Newtonian physics is simply not there.[54]

For these reasons, Arabia experienced stillbirth with regards to modern science.

In the end, it was Christian theology that led medieval scholars to reject the pantheist-animist views their day and see the natural world as rational and orderly. This led them to pursue scientific study with confidence, since a rational and orderly universe is comprehensible to human reason. It also led them to affirm that the natural world is governed by fixed laws, not divine and finally, capable of being studied quantitatively — leading to the birth of modern science. As historian of science James Hannam notes: 

Christian theology turned out to be uniquely suited to encouraging the study of the natural world.[55]

Medieval depiction of God as Geometer, 13th century illuminated manuscript
In line with the belief of God creating a rational and orderly universe, medieval Christians honored God through geometry in the building of cathedrals, as well as the use of numbers and proportions of special significance. This manuscript of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence reveals the intricate mathematical proportions of the structure. The three bays shown above were also designed to honor the Trinity

B.  The Medieval Proto-Scientific Revolution

Contrary to erroneous perceptions of the Middle Ages, the period was one of excellent scientific progress. As atheist history writer Tim O’Neill notes:

[T]he period from 1000 to 1500 AD actually saw the most impressive flowering of scientific inquiry and discovery since the time of the ancient Greeks, far eclipsing the Roman and Hellenic Eras in every respect.[56] 

In fact, it was during the Middle Ages that the foundations of modern science were laid. Without the advances made by medieval scholars, the Scientific Revolution would never have occurred.

Giving an overview of how the foundations of modern science were laid during the Middle Ages, a large amount of ancient learning flooded back into Western Europe in the 12th century, around the time the first universities were developing.  This large amount of classical learning stemmed from the capture of the Spanish city of Toledo and its great library, which had been under the control of the Arabs since the 8th century.[57]  Once Toledo and its library was captured, knowledge that the Greek-speaking East had benefited from (i.e. the Byzantine and Arab empires) had become accessible to the West.  As historian Hannam notes:

From the early twelfth century onwards, western scholars translated a vast corpus of Greek and Arabic learning into Latin.  Once recovered, these works quickly came to dominate learning throughout Catholic Europe.  The translation movement occurred because western Christians knew that they were missing out on a great deal of knowledge already available to Muslims and Byzantines.[58]

This large amount of learning that flooded back into Europe, and the emergence of the institution that is the university provided a tremendous boost to the intellectual and cultural life of the West. 

Medieval scientists like Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon (who were both priests) laid the underlying scientific principles of observation and repeatable experimentation.[60] 

The discussions and conclusions reached at the cathedral school of Chartres were very important and foundational. As historian Woods notes “practically everyone of the period who made any substantial contribution to the development of science was at one time or another associated with or influenced by Chartres“.[61] At this esteemed institution, Christian scholars were committed to developing explanations based on natural causation — that is, without recourse to supernatural explanation.[62] God, they argued, created and set the laws of nature in their place, allowing them to operate according to their nature and typically did not interfere in their workings (“typically does not”, of course, because God can work and has worked miracles in history). As noted by William of Conches, a scholar at Chartres: “The nature with which He [(God)] endowed His creatures accomplishes a whole scheme of operations, and these too turn to His glory since it is He who created this very nature”.[63] As noted by historian Goldstein, the scholars at Chartres “were consciously striving to launch the evolution of Western science” and undertook several important steps that were needed to achieve that end.[64]

Then, the Church’s Condemnations of 1227 at the university of Paris (which arose due to conflicts with new works of Aristotle from Spain and the university’s theology faculty) and Aquinas’ influential Summa Theologica, caused medieval thinkers to break free from certain Aristotelian errors, and progress further in the field of science. As noted by historian Hannam and history writer Tim O’Neill:

The condemnations and Thomas’s Summa Theologiae had created a framework within which natural philosophers could safely pursue their studies.  The framework …  laid down the principle that God had decreed laws of nature but was not bound by them.  Finally, it stated that Aristotle was sometimes wrong.  The world was not ‘eternal according to reason’ and ‘finite according to faith’.  It was not eternal, full stop.  And if Aristotle could be wrong about something that he regarded as completely certainly certain, that threw his whole philosophy into question.  The way was clear for the natural philosophers of the Middle Ages to move decisively beyond the achievements of the Greeks



[M]edieval thinkers began to notice that there was something seriously amiss with all aspects of Aristotle’s natural philosophy, and not just those parts of it that directly contradicted the Christian faith.  The time had come when medieval scholars could begin their own quest to advance knowledge ….  striking out in new directions that neither the Greeks nor the Arabs ever explored.  Their first breakthrough was to combine the two subjects of mathematics and physics in a way that had not been done before.[65]

The closest the Church came to suppressing science in any way was when, in reaction to some of the ideas being debated in the University of Paris at the height of the rediscovery of Aristotelian learning in the Thirteenth Century, the Faculty of Theology attempted at putting some limits on what could be discussed by the Faculty of Arts.  In 1210, 1270 and again in 1277 the Pope, at the request of the Parisian Theology Faculty, published lists of ideas proposed by Aristotle or implied by his philosophy that were contrary to Christian doctrine and so were forbidden.  What is remarkable about this is, firstly, how little in Aristotle was actually proscribed by these Condemnations.  Secondly, it’s remarkable how ineffective the Condemnations were.  They only applied to Paris, whereas discussion of all these topics continued at Oxford and other universities unaffected.  And, as the fact that they had to be repeated twice indicates, they were widely ignored anyway.  They also had another effect – by arguing that Aristotle was actually wrong on several key points, they stimulated a more critical examination of the Greek philosopher’s work which led to several of his ideas being critically analysed and found to be incorrect (e.g.  the idea that a heavy object falls faster than a lighter one).  In a strange way, the Condemnations failed to suppress science and actually helped to stimulate it.[66]

Jean Buridan, a priest-scientist, also made a critical contribution to science through his concept of impetus, which was the first stepping stone towards Newton’s first law of motion.[67]

The biggest developments in medieval science, however, would arise in the 14th century, from a group of Oxford university scholars who would later be referred to as the “Merton Calculators” — Thomas Bradwardine, William Heytesbury, Richard Swineshead and John Dumbeldon.  This group of scholars worked on key issues in physics and made the most revolutionary medieval contribution to the field of science — they introduced the use of mathematics as a language to describe the physical world.[68] This insight is captured well in a quote of one of the Calculators, Thomas Bradwadine, a priest-scientist:

[Mathematics]  is the revealer of every genuine truth, for it knows every hidden secret and bears the key to every subtlety of letters.  Whoever, then, has the effrontery to pursue physics while neglecting mathematics should know from the start that he will never make his entry through the portals of wisdom.[69]

The Calculators also overturned the earlier Greek conception of motion by distinguishing kinematics from dynamics (the Merton scholars looked at the persistence of motion via impetus — measurable by material volume and velocity). This effectively laid the foundation for the later key understanding of momentum and helped the Merton Calculators develop the Mean Speed Theorem 200 years before Galileo.[70] As if this was not impressive enough, the Calculators also developed logarithmic functions 300 years before John Napier.[71]  Ultimately, as O’Neill recognizes, these men “laid the foundations for modern physics as we know it”.[72] 

The contributions of Jean Buridan and the Merton Calculators allowed later medieval scholars such as Nicole Oresme and Nicholas of Cusa to develop physics further and begin to apply them to astronomy.[73] The foundation from which modern science was to emerge from was set.  As noted by O’Neill:

The idea that Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton all developed ideas that had no roots in the thinking of the two or three centuries that preceded them is clearly ridiculous, yet this has been the claim of the post-Enlightenment myths about the Middle Ages.  Objective modern research, however, has shown that without the work of people like Grosseteste, Bacon, Occam, the Merton scholars, Oresme and Buridan the “Scientific Revolution” would never had occurred.  That revolution had Medieval foundations.[74]

Chartres Cathedral, the site of the school that contributed so much to science

C. The Church

The Church contributed to science in a number of ways — by inventing and supporting the university, sponsoring the education of Her clergy (many of whom would engage in science) and encouraging and funding the scientific endeavors of her members.[75] When it comes to specific fields, the Church’s contributions to astronomy must be noted, for She was its leading patron for many centuries.  As historian of science Heilbron notes:

The Roman Catholic Church gave more financial aid and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and, probably, all other, institutions.[76]

The scientific contributions of the Church’s members, as a result of missionary work in far-off lands, must also be noted.  As stated by historian of science Lawrence Principe:

But on a broader scale, during the Scientific revolution, Catholic monks, friars, and priests in missions constituted a virtual worldwide web of correspondents and data collectors.  Information on local geography, flora, fauna, mineralogy, and other subjects as well as a wealth of astronomical, meteorological and seismological observations flooded back into Europe from far-flung Catholic missions in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. The data and specimens they sent back were channeled into natural-philosophical treatises and studies by Catholics and Protestants alike.  This massive collection of new scientific information was carried out by Franciscans, Dominicans, Benedictines, and, perhaps most of all, Jesuits.[77]

D.  The Priest-Scientist

A great number of priests were also scientists, many of whom made significant contributions to the field. 

St.  Albertus Magnus was a Dominican priest who served a number of important positions within the Church (e.g.  provincial of the German Dominicans and bishop of Regensburg).  He also had a career in academe as a Master at the university of Paris.  Magnus was given the title “the Great” during his lifetime due to, as historian Hannam put it, his “enormous appetite for learning and the sheer size of his output”.[78]  Commenting further, Hannam notes that “his marvellous mind scrutinised everything under the sun, and he questioned and analysed all that he read”.  The standard edition of Magnus’ works fills thirty eight capacious Latin volumes and spans the areas of “physics, logic, metaphysics, biology, psychology and various earth sciences”.[79] After his death, Magnus was named a doctor of the Church. He was given the title “the Universal Doctor”. 

Robert Grosseteste was a priest who served as chancellor to Oxford university and later on, as the bishop of Lincoln.  He produced works in a number of fields — optics, astronomy and a number of earth sciences.  Grosseteste is most known for introducing the notion of controlled experiment.  As noted by history writer Tim O’Neill, Grosseteste “proposed that  scholar[s]  should not only derive universal laws from particulars and then apply laws to particular cases (Aristotle’s “principle of induction”), but they should also use experiment to verify the particulars”.[80] 

Roger Bacon was a Franciscan who taught at Oxford university.  His scholarly range of interests included mathematics, optics, astronomy and the philosophy of science.  Thanks to Bacon’s development of Grosseteste’s ideas, the medieval period possessed the rudiments of the scientific method (Grosseteste and Bacon are considered forerunners of the scientific method). As stated by history writer Tim O’Neill:

Roger Bacon developed this idea [of Grosseteste]  further, proposing a method based on a repeated cycle of observation, hypothesis and experimentation.[81] 

Bacon also identified a number of obstacles to the transition of truth such as uninstructed popular opinion and long-standing but erroneous custom.[82]

Moving past the Middle Ages, another priest-scientist is Bl.  Nicholas Steno.  A Lutheran convert to Catholicism, Steno had quite the career.  He taught as a Master at the University of Padua, served as a court physician to the grand duke of Tuscany, and was appointed later on as the bishop of Titiopolis.  In the field of science, however, Steno secured his reputation in the study of the earth’s strata and fossils, in which he was a pioneer.  Steno is credited for proposing the idea that rocks, fossils, and geological strata told a story about the earth’s history, and that geological study could illuminate that history.[83]  Writers prior to Steno had assumed, with Aristotle, that the earth’s past was fundamentally unintelligible.  As noted by Alan Cutler, a recent biographer of the priest:

Steno was the first to assert that the world’s history might be recoverable from the rocks and to take it upon himself to unravel that history.[84] 

Steno is also credited with “setting down most of the principles of modern geology”.[85]  Of the many insights in Steno’s influential work,  De solido intra solidum naturaliter contento dissertationis produmus (“Preliminary Discourse to a Dissertation on a Solid Body Naturally Contained Within a Solid”), three have been generally referred to as “Steno’s principles” — superimposition, original horizontality and lateral continuity.[86]

Another priest-scientist, this time, during the period of the Scientific Revolution, was Marin Mersenne — and he played a significant role in it.  Mersenne was a polymath who made a number of contributions to the sciences.  Mersenne is considered the founder of acoustics.  He pioneered “the scientific study of the upper and lower limits of audible frequencies, of harmonics, and of the measurement of the speed of sound, which he showed to be independent of pitch and loudness.”[87]  Furthermore, Mersenne also “established that the intensity of sound, like that of light, is inversely proportional to the distance from its source.”[88]  He also developed three laws in acoustics, describing the relationship between frequency and tension, weight, and length of strings.[89]  Mersenne’s seminal work on acoustics, Harmonie universelle, represented the sum of musical knowledge during his lifetime.  Mersenne also did work on pendulums. He discovered that the frequency of a pendulum is inversely proportional to the square root of its length.  He also discovered the length of a seconds pendulum, and that pendulum swings are not isochronous (against Galileo).[90]  Furthermore, Mersenne’s suggestion to Christiaan Huygens, that the pendulum could be used as a timing device, played a role in inspiring the pendulum clock.[91]  Mersenne also made contributions in terms of scientific study.  His “insistence on the careful specification of experimental procedures, repetition of experiments, publication of the numerical results of actual measurements as distinct from those calculated from theory, and recognition of approximations marked a notable step in the organization of experimental science in the seventeenth century.”[92]  Mersenne also made contributions to the field of mathematics, telescope theory and the study of the motion of falling objects, but if there is one more achievement to point out, it is his role as a terrific facilitator and correspondent of scientific ideas and information.  Mersenne had many contacts in the scientific world and had an exceptional ability to make connections between people and ideas.  In total, Mersenne corresponded with 140 key thinkers throughout Europe (and as far away as Tunisia, Syria, and Constantinople).[93]  His compiled correspondence now fills 12 volumes.  For this reason, Mersenne was called “an architect of the European scientific community”.[94] 

One more example of a priest-scientist is Fr.  George Lemaitre.  Lemaitre was a mathematician, physicist and astronomer.  After receiving the Belgian Cross (an award for military virtue on the battlefield) as an artillery officer in WW1, Lemaitre returned to school to earn a doctorate in mathematics.  After doing so, he turned down academic offers to pursue what he believed to be his calling as a devout Catholic — the priesthood.  After his ordination, Lemaitre went to Massachusetts to study astronomy at Harvard Observatory. Then he went to MIT to earn a doctorate in physics.  After his studies, Lemaitre would assume a professorship at the Catholic University of Louvain and begin a distinguished career in the sciences.  He would, in time, make a discovery that would shake the field of cosmology.  In 1927, Lemaitre proposed his theory of the “primeval atom”, which suggested that the universe was expanding and that it had a beginning in the finite past.[95]  This theory, which would later be dubbed the “Big Bang theory”, would continue to be corroborated by a number of different discoveries in the next several decades, making it one of the most comprehensive and rigorously established theories in contemporary cosmology.  In addition to the Big Bang theory, Leimaitre also found an important inhomogeneous solution of Einstein’s field equations, the Lemaitre-Tolman metric (1933).[96] He was also an early adopter of computers for cosmological calculations (introducing the first computer to Louvain) and was one of the inventors of the Fast Fourier transform algorithm (1958).[97]

There are many more priest-scientists (or monks) who contributed significantly to science.  These include Jean Buridan, Thomas Brawardine, Nicolaus Copernicus, Benedetto Castilli, Pierre Gassendi,  Jean-Framcois Niceron, Vincenzo Coronelli, Ismael Boulliau, Edme Mariotte, Gregor Mendel (Father of Genetics), Jean Picard, Rene Just Hauy, Lazzaro Spallanzani, etc. 

Fr. George Lemaitre with Albert Einstein after Lemaitre’s lecture at the California Institute of Technology in 1933

E. The Jesuits

The Society of Jesus, a priestly order founded in the 16th century by St.  Ignatius of Loyola, contributed so excellently to the field of science that they deserve a section of their own. So impressive are the Jesuits that by the 17th century, just one century after their founding, the order had become as historian Hannam notes: “the leading scientific organization in Europe, publishing thousands of papers and spreading new discoveries around the world”.[98]

The Jesuits hold the honor of being the first to introduce Western science in far-off places such as China and India, doing so in the same century they were founded — the 16th century.[99]  The Jesuits in particular made a great impact in China, which was, at the time, the second most sophisticated civilization in the world after Christian Europe.  As noted by historian Udias, the Jesuits:

[M]ade an enormous effort to translate western mathematical and astronomical works into Chinese and aroused the interest of Chinese scholars in the sciences.  They made very extensive astronomical observation and carried out the first modern cartographic work in China.  They also learned to appreciate the scientific achievements of this ancient culture and made them known in Europe.  Through their correspondence European scientists first learned about Chinese science and culture.[100]

By the 18th century, the Jesuits had accomplished so much in the sciences that historian Wright provides the following list of achievements:

They had contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes and microscopes, to scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics and electricity.  They observed, in some cases before anyone else, the coloured bands on Jupiter’s surface, the Andromeda nebula and Saturn’s rings.  They theorised about the circulation of the blood (independently of Harvey), the theoretical possibility of flight, the way the moon effected the tides, and the wave-like nature of light.  Star maps of the southern hemisphere, symbolic logic, flood-control measures on the Po and Adige rivers, introducing plus and minus signs into Italian mathematics—all were typical Jesuit achievements, and scientists as influential as Fermat, Huygens, Leibniz and Newton were not alone in counting Jesuits among their most prized correspondents.[102]

In addition, the Jesuits were also “the single most important contributor to experimental physics in the seventeenth century”, as recognized by historian J.L.  Heilbron.[103]  This achievement is only strengthened by their “detailed studies of other sciences, such as optics, where virtually all-important treatises of the period were written by Jesuits”.[104] Many of the great Jesuit scientists during this period also performed the extremely valuable task of recording their data in massive encyclopedias, which played a significant role in spreading scientific research throughout the scholarly community.[105]  As noted by historian Ashworth:

If scientific collaboration was one of the outgrowths of the scientific revolution the Jesuits deserve a large share of the credit.[106]

The Jesuits also contributed greatly to science through the universities they established. Due to the order’s intense missionary effort to evangelize and promote education, it had established, by 1749, 700+ colleges and universities in Europe and another 100+ in the rest of the world.[107] 

In addition to scientists, the Jesuits boast many top-notch mathematicians, who made a number of important contributions to their discipline.  As historian Woods comments:

When Charles Bossut, one of the first historians of mathematics, compiled a list of the most eminent mathematicians from 900 BC through 1800 AD, 16 of the 303 people he listed were Jesuits.  That figure – amounting to a full 5 percent of the greatest mathematicians over a span of 2700 years [(900 BC – 1800 AD)]  – becomes still more impressive when we recall that the Jesuits existed for only two of those twenty-seven centuries![108]

The Jesuits are also major contributors to the field of seismology (the study of earthquakes).  In fact, they contributed so much to the field that seismology has sometimes been called “the Jesuit science”.[109]   The Jesuits’ involvement in this field has been attributed to the order’s consistent presence in both universities and the scientific community, as well as the desire of its priests to minimize the devastating effects of earthquakes as a service to society.  In 1908, Fr.  Frederick Louis Odenbach came up with an idea that eventually resulted in the Jesuit Seismological Service (JSS).  He noticed that the far-flung system of Jesuit colleges and universities across America had the potential of a network of seismographic stations.  Odenbach worked to actualize this vision and the result was the JSS, which, as stated by scholars Udias and Suauder, was “the first seismological network established of continental scale with uniform instrumentation”.[110]

The marks of the Jesuits in science can also be seen in the names of the moon’s craters, 35 of which are named after Jesuit scientists and mathematicians.[111]

Another notable achievement of the Jesuits is their development of the modern calendar.  The calendar we use today, “the Gregorian calendar”, was developed by Jesuit mathematician and astronomer Christoph Clavius, and enacted by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582.[112] 

To close this discussion on the Jesuits, let us look at three renowned Jesuit scientists to better appreciate the excellence of this order when it comes to the sciences.

One remarkable Jesuit scientist is Fr.  Giambattista Riccioli.  He is credited with being the first to determine the rate of acceleration of a freely falling body, introducing the current scheme of the moon’s topography (he studied the moon extensively) and for discovering the first double star.[113]  Fr.  Ricciolis’ most notable achievement, however, is his magnum opus, the Almagestum Novum, which is a massive encyclopedia of astronomy.  The text consists of over 1500 pages (approx.  15 x 10 inches) densely packed with text, tables and illustrations.  The work became a standard technical reference book for astronomers all over Europe.[114]  Historian Heilbron described the Almagestum as “a deposit and memorial of energetic and devoted learning”.[115] 

Another Jesuit scientist is Fr.  Roger Boscovich, a terrific polymath who was accomplished in atomic theory, optics, mathematics, astronomy and poetry. He was also elected to prestigious scientific academies across Europe.[116]  Fr. Boscovich is credited with developing the first geometric method for calculating a planet’s orbit based on three observations of its position.[117]  He was also a prolific scholar, publishing 22 scientific dissertations during his lifetime.  Boscovich is most known for his exceptional “Theory of Natural Philosophy”, which was a precursor to atomic theory.[118]  Boscovich’s Theory of Natural Philosophy attracted a great number of admirers in his day.  Historian of science, Lancelot Law Whyte, speaking of Boscovich’s Theory, said that it “gave classical expression to one of the most powerful scientific ideas yet conceived and is unsurpassed for originality in fundamentals, clarity of expression, and precision in its view of structure — hence, its immense influence … [Boscovich’s novel contributions] anticipated the aims, and many of the features of twentieth-century atomic physics.  Nor is this all that stands to the credit of the [Theory].  For it also qualitatively predicted several physical phenomena that have since been observed, such as the penetrability of matter by high-speed particles, and the possibility of states of matter of exceptionally high density”.[119] For these reasons, historian Whyte calls Boscovich “the true creator of fundamental atomic physics as we understand it”.[120]  Another notable achievement of Fr.  Boscovich was his work on St.  Peter’s Basilica (the Church at the Vatican).  In 1742, Pope Benedict XIV (who was himself a great scholar) turned to Fr.  Boscovich for expertise after concerns had arisen that cracks in the dome of the Basilica signaled possible collapse.  In response, Fr.  Boscovich wrote a report recommending five iron rings to be used to circle the cupola.  This recommendation was taken up by the Pope to great success.  Today, Fr.  Boscovich’s report, which investigated the problem in theoretical terms, earned “the reputation of a minor classic in architectural statics”.[121]

One more example of a Jesuit scientist is Fr.  J.B.  Macelwane, who would end up becoming the most distinguished seismologist of the order.  In 1925, Macelwane reorganized and reinvigorated the Jesuit Seismological Service (which is now known as the Jesuit Seismological Association).  A brilliant researcher, he also published the first seismology textbook in America, Introduction to Theoretical Seismology, in 1936.[122]  Macelwane also served as president of the Seismological Society of America and of the American Geophysical Union.  In 1962, the latter organization established a medal in his honor, which is still awarded today to recognize the work of exceptional young geophysicists.

There are many more Jesuit scientists who contributed significantly to science such as Christoph Scheiner, Francesco Grimaldi, Francesco Lana Terzi, Honore Fabri, Athanasius Kircher, Niccolo Cabeo, Gaspar Schott, etc.  As historian of science Ashworth states: “The roll could be extended considerably without great drop-off in quality”.[123]

The dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, saved from collapse by Fr. Boscovich
Dome of St. Peter’s Basilica (exterior)

F.  Conclusion on Christianity and Science

In the end, the Church played an indispensable role in the emergence of modern science in the West.  The Church affirmed reason as a way to knowing more about God and his Creation. She educated Europe through her monastic and cathedral schools and ultimately, invented the university, and was a firm ally of it. The Church sponsored the education of Her members, and encouraged and sponsored their scientific endeavors. Her theology also inspired scientific study and guided Christian thinkers to study the world in a quantitative manner.  With the Church playing the leading role in shaping and cultivating Europe’s intellectual life, medieval scholars laid the foundations for modern science.  As historian of science Peter Harrison affirms:

[W]e  might regard this period, [the Middle Ages,] as one that saw Christianity set the agenda for the emergence of modern science.[124]

The Church and her clergy continued to contribute to science during and after the Scientific Revolution.  Overall, Her contributions in the field of science has led historian of science Lawrence Principe to state that “it is clear from the historical record that the Catholic Church has been probably the largest single and longest-term patron of science in history”.[125] Historian of science James Hannam likewise comments that  “the Catholic Church was the leading sponsor of scientific research” until the French Revolution (1789-1799).[126]  Noah Efron, another historian of science, notes that the Church was the leading patron of science for “a crucial millennium”.[127] 

Today, the Church’s interest in and support of the sciences can be seen most prominently in its Pontifical Academy of the Sciences (PAS), a scientific academy that aims to promote the progress of the mathematical, physical and natural sciences.  The academy boasts a member roster of the most respected names in 20th century science such as Alexander Fleming, Ernest Rutherford, Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrodinger and others.  The Church also has her own observatory, the Vatican Observatory, which is located in Castel Gandolfo, Italy. 

Young Stephen Hawking at the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences in 1975, his year of induction. In the picture, Pope Paul VI awards him with the Pius XI medal for exceptional promise in the sciences. Hawking would go on to become a longtime member of the academy.
Pope Francis greets Stephen Hawking during an audience with PAS members (2016)
Fr. Emmanuel Carreira operates a telescope at the Vatican Observatory in Castelgandolfo, Italy. Carreira is a man of many talents: physicist, astronomer, patented inventor, painter, photographer and poet.

To proceed to part 3 of this series, click here.

References

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