The Case for Christ - Ch 1

A couple weeks ago, I started reading “The Case for Christ” by Lee Strobel. Recently, I wrote the author an email thanking him for a relatively unbiased approach on the evidence for the Biblical Jesus Christ (he didn’t respond, unfortunately), so let’s let that serve as an introduction.

I’m Brandon Lee, a senior at New Trier High School. Finding your book (The Case for Christ) in my house one day when I was feeling bored, I gave it a quick read, and I was so intrigued that I started rereading it in earnest, annotating it and everything—something I’ve only willingly done before for 'The Analects'. I need to say that so far, it has been one of the fairest, most intellectually robust Christian books that I’ve ever read. I really appreciate how it minimizes hand-waving and relying on treating canon as axiom. Personally, as of now, I’m unconvinced that the Jesus as described in Christianity existed, but perhaps that will change once I’m done with your book.

"‹Anyway, I want to lay out another reason why I’m reading this book before I get on with it. In Korea, over half of the population doesn’t identify with a religion. However, among Korean-Americans, almost 75% identify as Christians. Why does this happen, you might ask? Well, in terms of my parents, basically what happened was that they were very non-religious in Korea (in fact, my dad was a Buddhist), but when they came to the U.S., they started going to church. This was because, similar to how “Black churches” serve not only as religious centers but also community centers for African-Americans, a lot of the Korean-American community exists through Korean-American churches. So, growing up, I was pretty immersed in the Christian community.

However, like many, growing up, a lot of my belief in not only Jesus, but also there being a god in general kind of withered. As of now, I’m not convinced that there is a god. So, I’m reading this book to see if there is any good evidence that God, specifically Jesus, existed (exists) as described in Christianity. As Strobel puts it in his introduction, “If Jesus is to be believed… then nothing is more important than how you respond to him.”

Anyway, the way that I’m going to approach this book is going to be as impartial as possible. I’m going to avoid making any judgements about whether I agree or not with the author until I’ve understood his points and his arguments as much as I can. So, in terms of my posts, I’ve decided to post my QPC’s of the book, which are essentially me constructing an outline of the author’s arguments by dividing them into Questions, Propositions, and Conclusions.

So, here is the QPC for Chapter 1, which discusses how reliable the gospels are as eyewitness testimonies (I would scan my annotations for convenience, but that would probably be an infringement on the copyright). Remember: These are not necessarily my opinions, but rather the propositions and conclusions that the author offers.

"‹. . .

Q1: Were the gospels written by the names attached to them?

P1: Yes. There are no known competitors.

P2: The names attached to the first three gospels (AKA the “Synoptics”) are relatively less prominent followers of Jesus. There was no motivation for someone to lie by attaching such less prominent names.

P3: There is the exception of John, the fourth gospel, which has a prominent name attached to it, but the current scholarly consensus is that the disciple John was indeed the person who wrote the Book of John.

C1: There are no significant competing theories about the authorship, and there would have been no reason to use these less prominent names.

Q2: What is the evidence for the authorship?

P1: Papias and Irenaeus, bishops who lived around a century after Christ’s death, claim that the gospels were indeed written by the names attached to them and vouch for their accuracy.

C2: Same as P1.

Q3: What genre are the gospels?

P1: It doesn’t really feel like a biography in the modern sense, as it glosses over most of Jesus’s life and mostly focuses on the last three years, and most specifically on the last week.

P2: This is how they used to write biographies, however: Biographies were written to teach lessons, and so they concentrated on the lesson-teaching part of the subject’s life.

P3: The main take-away from Jesus’s life is his crucifixion.

C3: It’s a biography that, written in the style of the tie, concentrates mostly on the important part: the crucifixion, in this case.

Q4: What is “Q”?

P1: Q is a hypothesis that there may have been an earlier, aphoristic version of the Bible that consisted mostly of Jesus’s sayings that the gospel writers used as a source.

P2: Q, if it existed, would preserve Jesus’s claims to divinity.

P3: Q, if it existed, would preserve the idea that Jesus did miracles.

C4: Q, an early collection of Jesus’s aphorisms, may have served as an early source for the gospels, but this does not really take away from the core ideas of Jesus’s divinity and miracles.

Q5: If Matthew had more access to Jesus than Mark, why would Matthew rely on Mark in writing his gospel?

P1: Mark faithfully relayed the perspective of Peter, who, as part of Jesus’s inner circle, had more access to Jesus than Matthew.

C5: Same as P1.

Q6: What are the differences between John and the Synoptics?

P1: John doesn’t address all the major stories presented in the Synoptics.

P2: John’s theology is more explicit.

P3: One theory for why this happened is that John chose to supplement the Synoptics, and another theory is that John just had a different perspective he wanted to present.

P4: All the explicit theologies that John presents have parallels in the Synoptics.

P5: An example of P4 – John’s explicit claims of Jesus’s divinity are more implicitly present in the story of Jesus walking on water, when Jesus says “Fear not, I am” which is reminiscent of God naming himself “I am (YHWH)” in the Old Testament.

P6: Adding on to P5 – We also see Jesus claiming divinity when he calls himself “Son of Man,” which, contrary to popular belief, is a divine title.

P7: Adding on to P6 – Jesus also claims to be able to forgive sins, which is a power unique to God.

C6: The explicit theological claims of John are also more implicitly present in the Synoptics.

Q7: Isn’t John more theological, and therefore more biased?

P1: All the gospels have their own theological agendas, not just John.

P2: Having an agenda doesn’t mean that something is unreliable.

C7: All the gospels had theological agendas, but that doesn’t necessarily discredit them.

Q8: Were the gospels distorted over the time between the events actually occurring and them being written down?

P1: The time gap, at the maximum estimates of being written around the 80s, is not that bad, since it’s still within the lifetimes of the eyewitnesses.

P2: Compared to most contemporary historical texts, the gospels were written relatively close to the events.

P3: There are also estimates that the time gap was even smaller, based on the idea that Acts was written before Paul’s death, that Luke was written before Acts, and that Mark was written before Luke.

C8: No; first of all, the gap was likely small, and second, even if it was the maximum estimates, it’s still relatively quick reporting.

Q9: How early can we date the core beliefs of Christianity?

P1: Paul’s letters, which were written around the 40s and 50s, referenced some early Christian creeds and hymns.

P2: That Jesus and God are equivalent was a belief among these early creeds.

P3: That the resurrection happened was a belief referenced by these early letters.

C9: The earliest beliefs, likely formed almost right after the resurrection, included the ideas of Jesus’s divinity and resurrection.