Episode 13 - The Cross

In this season we have been talking about the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. For the past 250 years the Gospels have been a battleground. Critical scholars have done their best to portray the Gospels as fictions invented by the early Church to serve political purposes. 

In this episode we discussed alleged contradictions in the Gospels. We work our way through a number of examples, and seek to show that the Gospel accounts are coherent and, therefore, can be trusted. 

We’ve called this season ‘Battleground’ because the four Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – have been attacked in recent centuries by critical scholars who argue that the Gospels don’t contain an accurate record of what Jesus said and did. 

In this episode we will be thinking particularly about what Jesus said. Do the Gospels record Jesus actual words accurately, or do the words attributed to him really come from the Gospel writers themselves?

We’ve called this episode ‘The Quest for the Historical Jesus.’  The basic idea is that critical scholars try to dig a great ugly ditch between what they term 'the authentic Jesus', the Jesus of history, and 'the Christ of faith'. According to these critical scholars, the Gospels are the product of the early church. For mainly political reasons, the early church invented the Christ that we know. And so the job of the scholar is to sift through the Gospels, like an archaeologist who carefully chips away at different levels of an ancient structure until we get to the rock bed of the authentic Jesus.

In this episode we push back against such criticism and discover that it really shouldn't worry faithful Christians at all. 

In the first two episodes of Season 8, we consider the historical context of the Gospels. We'll think about the blank page in our Bibles that separates the last book of the Old Testament from the first book of the New Testament. There's a 400-year gap between the end of Malachi and the Gospels. It's sometimes called the intertestamental period.

This historical context really matters. Many young Christians can believe that Bible history exists in a parallel universe from the rest of world history. It's as if the Bible begins in a land far far away. But Christianity is truth revealed in history. So one of our big aims in these first two episodes is to show how biblical history is woven seamlessly into world history. Christianity is not a cunning fable. It is about real historical events. 

We hope Season 8 is a blessing to you. To God be the Glory.

This season we're going to be thinking about the gospel records, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Those four books take us to the heart of Christianity. And, for a long time, they've been a battleground.

Critics of Christianity have launched wave after wave of attacks on the historicity and the theological coherence of the Gospels. We're going to examine many of the arguments advanced by biblical critics against the trustworthiness of the Gospels. It's vital that believers have confidence in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John because our faith is built entirely on the person and work of Jesus Christ. If the gospel authors have written a fiction, or if they're horribly biased, then our faith is a castle built on sand.

We'll think about the quest for the authentic Jesus. That's a term used by critical scholars who treat the four Gospels as literary rubble that must be sifted to find some evidence of the central figure of Christianity.

Then we'll tackle the controversy over Jesus's words. Do the Gospels record Jesus's exact words? Or did the Gospel writers just give us a gist of what he said? Another critical question that is often raised relates to the reliability of the Gospel documents: how can we have confidence that we're reading eyewitness accounts of Jesus's life?

And finally, we'll delve into some of the classic questions about contradictions in the Gospels.

In our first two episodes, however, we'll consider the historical context of the Gospels. We'll think about the blank page in our Bibles that separates the last book of the Old Testament from the first book of the New Testament. There's a 400-year gap between the end of Malachi and the Gospels. It's sometimes called the intertestamental period.

This historical context really matters. Many young Christians can believe that Bible history exists in a parallel universe from the rest of world history. It's as if the Bible begins in a land far far away. But Christianity is truth revealed in history. So one of our big aims in these first two episodes is to show how biblical history is woven seamlessly into world history. Christianity is not a cunning fable. It is about real historical events. 

We hope Season 8 is a blessing to you. To God be the Glory. 

In the final episode of season 7 we’ll take a step back and survey the various storms we’ve discussed, so that our listeners can see the logic that underpins this season. And then we’ll think Biblically about how to survive the storms that are heading our way over the next few years.

We’ve called this season Twitterstorms, because we’re discussing controversies that have blown up in the US among Christians in recent years. In this episode we talk about conspiracy theories. Be prepared for questions about QAnon and the Great Reset...

Back in 2007, the term “the New Atheists” was applied to men like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. They were fairly brutal enemies of Christianity. They saw it as a poisonous thing, a belief system that had blighted humanity for a thousand years. And they were determined to destroy Christianity. So Hitchens wrote God is not great. Dawkins wrote the God Delusion.

But in the past decade, something new has happened. The New Atheists are now dismissed by most public intellectuals. They are seen as a bit embarrassing, even by their fellow atheists. And in their place we have a group of academics who, while they are not Christians, are much more sympathetic to Christianity. These are the people we’re calling the new, new atheists.

This season we've been focussing on some of the big controversies that have hit evangelicalism in recent years. In this episode, we use a case study to consider the subtle ways Scripture can be set aside in order to nudge Christians towards false theological positions and beliefs. 

It's one thing to listen to a Bible teacher talk about a passage of Scripture. But in our personal study, how should we go about making sense of it? Are there any techniques that might help a young adult engage more effectively with the Bible? 

Our desire is that the Lord might use these episode to equip you and encourage you when it comes to studying the Bible.