Exploring the Historical Jesus: Faith and Understanding

I remember thinking about this question when I was on a mission trip as a young adult in Egypt. And one of the things that we did in these six weeks when we were in Egypt was we'd try to go to the marketplaces, and we would try to make friends and meet people, and we would begin to share with them the reasons for us being there. We would begin to share with them who Jesus was. And I remember making friends with, our group did, with one individual whom we invited back to our apartment. We had conversations, and we talked about who Jesus was. [00:01:21] (34 seconds)


There is a science of history that we ask certain questions and we can answer with certain probabilities or certain plausibility, but what probably happened in history? Now, history is not like chemistry, is not like physics, in the sense that there are proofs about what happened, but actually, we know with 100 % certainty that this happened, or we cannot reproduce again, historically, what happened 2 ,000 years ago. So how history operates is with probabilities. We look at all of the data that we know today about that past, and we try to understand what most likely explains that data. That's what history is about. [00:03:06] (52 seconds)


And he thought, as he was writing his theology, that our minds are corrupted by sin. And so to think clearly about God, to think clearly, in the first place, to think clearly about God, place. We actually have to believe because believing in God somehow helps us to recover some of that corruptedness of our minds, which are already tainted by sin. And I remember experiencing something of that principle or of that truth when I was in my first year of university. I've shared some of this story before, so I apologize if you've heard it before. But remember, my first year of university, I hit a kind of a spiritual crisis. Growing up in a Christian home, in a Christian church, I really... [00:07:17] (45 seconds)


took for granted the truth of all that I was taught and all that I believed. But going to university, I remember meeting friends who were not Christian. In particular, this friend who was a Muslim, a Muslim, and he got into conversations with me, and we talked about Christian faith, we talked about Islamic faith, and we had these discussions. And I remember struggling in that time, in those weeks and months in university, is all that I was believing really true? Or is it true simply because, for me, because I had learned it growing up? And wrestling with these questions. [00:08:01] (45 seconds)


It's not, maybe I should say it's simplistic. It's not just faith leads to understanding and therefore understanding our faith is good. It's not faith first and then understanding. I don't think that also is the biblical model. What does Paul say? Faith comes from hearing. Hearing that Jesus is Messiah. Romans 10, 17. I'm paraphrasing. But this is what Paul is saying. That faith comes through hearing. Hearing what? Hearing about Jesus. Hearing about the message of Jesus and believing that Jesus is Messiah. And of course, to believe, we need to understand. [00:10:27] (45 seconds)


The more we understand, the more that we can believe, the more we can trust. And as we believe, we hopefully can dive deeper into our understanding of our belief and flush it out more for ourselves. So faith and understanding, I believe, are intertwined. Now, going back to C .S. Lewis. This is trilemma for us. second. Liar, lunatic, or Lord, that trilemma, liar, lunatic, or Lord. There's something else, actually, a fourth option that evangelicals rarely talk about as we talk about history and Jesus and the historical Jesus. And it's actually a very important option that we need to talk about, and that is legend. Liar, lunatic, Lord. [00:11:37] (50 seconds)


Well, biblical scholars, both then and now, realize that this is an extreme form of skepticism that does not help us understand what actually happened in history. So here's just a few counterpoints that both in his day, as well as in our day, that it doesn't give a good explanation, historically, of what happened. In terms of the resurrection, the disciples simply fabricating these stories, and then being willing to die for them. That didn't really square historically. Jesus, simply as a political revolutionary, that he died simply as a political revolutionary and for no other reason, that ignores the complexity of his message. It's not just about power and politics. [00:15:25] (57 seconds)


The second reason that history really matters to faith, we had these passages read out from Luke chapter 4 and 1 John chapter 1, is that the New Testament documents themselves that we have, they claim to be historically reliable. So Luke says that he's taken pains to do his research and to give an accurate account of what actually happened in the life of Jesus. Now, Luke is not writing history in the sense that we understand it today. In fact, he's not even writing history in the sense of the ancient world. He's writing more of an ancient biography. And that's different than a modern biography. And we'll talk a bit more about that. But what he's trying to get at is that what he's giving you an account of is actually grounded in real facts, in real history, in actually what happened. [00:22:46] (60 seconds)