I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (61 page)

Let’s consider that last point for just a minute. Who would invent the Old Testament storyline? A story invented by Hebrews probably would depict the Israelites as noble and upright people. But the Old Testament writers don’t say this. Instead they depict their own people as sinful and fickle slaves who, time after time, are miraculously rescued by God, but who abandon him every chance they get. The history they record is filled with bone-headed disobedience, distrust, and selfishness. Their leaders are all Olympic-quality sinners, including Moses (a mur-derer), Saul (a paranoid egomaniac), David (an adulterer, liar, and mur-derer), and Solomon (a serial polygamist). These are the people who are supposed to be leading the nation through which God has chosen to bring the Savior of the world. Yet the Old Testament writers admit that the ancestors of this Messiah include sinful characters such as David and Solomon and even a prostitute named Rahab. This is clearly not an invented storyline!

While the Old Testament tells of one embarrassing gaffe after another, most other ancient historians avoid even mentioning unflattering historical events. For example, there’s been nothing found in the records of Egypt about the Exodus, leading some critics to suggest the event never occurred. But what do the critics expect? Writer Peter Fineman imagines what a press release from Pharaoh might say:

A spokesman for Rameses the great, Pharaoh of Pharaohs, supreme ruler of Egypt, son of Ra, before whom all tremble in awe blinded by his brilliance, today announced that the man Moses had kicked his royal [rear end] for all the world to see, thus proving that God is Yahweh and the 2,000-year-old-culture of Egypt is a lie. Film at 11:00.
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Of course no press secretary for Pharaoh would admit such an event! The Egyptian silence on the Exodus is understandable. However, by contrast, when the Egyptians scored a military victory, they went to press and exaggerated greatly. This is apparent from the oldest known reference to the Israel outside the Bible. It comes from a granite monument found in the funerary temple of Pharaoh Merneptah in Thebes. The monument boasts about the military victory of the Pharaoh in the highlands of Canaan, claiming that “Israel is laid waste, his seed is not.”
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Historians date the battle to 1207 B.C., which confirms that Israel was in the land by that time.

There are several other archaeological findings corroborating the Old Testament. And recall from chapter 3 that there’s even evidence from astronomy (the Big Bang) that supports Genesis. (For more evidence supporting the Old Testament, see
The Baker Encyclopedia of
Christian Apologetics
).
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But in the end, the strongest argument for the Old Testament comes from Jesus himself. As God, he holds the trump card. If the New Testament documents are reliable, then the Old Testament is without error because Jesus said it is.

Our friend Andy Stanley put it well: “My high school science teacher once told me that much of Genesis is false. But since my high school science teacher did not prove he was God by rising from the dead, I’m going to believe Jesus instead.”
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Wise move.

What About the New Testament?

Jesus taught that the Old Testament is inerrant, but what could he say about the New Testament? After all, it was not written until after the end of Christ’s earthly life.

While Jesus
confirmed
the Old Testament, he
promised
the New Testament. He said the New Testament would come through his apostles because the Holy Spirit would remind them what Jesus had said and would lead them into “all truth.” This is recorded in two passages of John’s Gospel. Jesus declared:

“All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name,
will teach you all things
and will remind you of everything I have said to you
” (John 14:25-26).

And,

“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes,
he will guide you into all truth.
He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come” (John 16:12-13).

In other words, Jesus is promising his apostles that the Holy Spirit would lead them to author what we now know as the New Testament. Paul would later echo this teaching of Jesus by asserting that the church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone” (Eph. 2:20). The early church recognized this as well because they “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching” (Acts 2:42).

But did the apostles really get the message from the Holy Spirit as Jesus promised? They certainly claim as much. John writes that the apostles
“are from God”
(1 John 4:6), and begins the book of Revelation with, “The revelation of Jesus Christ,
which God gave him”
(Rev. 1:1). Paul claims that his words are
“taught by the Spirit”
(1 Cor 2:10, 13; 7:40), and that his writings are
“the Lord’s command”
(1 Cor. 14:37). In the opening of his letter to the Galatians, Paul declares, “I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather,
I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ”
(Gal. 1:11-12). In fact, in his first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul affirms that he is providing them with the word of God: “And we also thank God continually because,
when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you
accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God,
which is at work in you who believe” (1 Thess. 2:13). In addition to affirming the inspired nature of his own works, Paul quotes the Gospels of Luke and Matthew as “Scripture,” putting them on the same level as Deuteronomy (1 Tim. 5:18; Luke 10:7; Matt. 10:10).

Referring to Paul’s letters (there are thirteen of them), Peter agrees they are inspired when he writes, “His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do
the other Scriptures,
to their own destruction” (2 Pet. 3:15-16; cf. 2 Tim. 3:15-16). Peter also affirms the divine source of his own words and those of the other apostles when he declares,
“We
did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty . . . .
we have the word of the prophets made more certain,
and you will do well to pay attention to it. . . . you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:16-21).

But the apostles didn’t just
claim
to be getting messages from God. Anyone can do that. They gave evidence that their words were inspired by performing miraculous signs. In fact, one of the two qualifications of an apostle was the ability to perform such signs; the other qualification was being an eyewitness to the Resurrection (Acts 1:22; 1 Cor 9:1). Paul affirmed that he was an apostle when he declared to his Corinthian readers, “The things that mark an apostle—signs, wonders and miracles—were done among you with great perseverance” (2 Cor. 12:12). Paul must have been telling the truth about having done miracles in their presence, or he would have lost all credibility with his readers.

In addition to Paul claiming to do miracles, Luke records thirty-five miracles in the book of Acts alone—the well-authenticated book we’ve already investigated that chronicles the propagation of the church from the Resurrection to about A.D. 60. Most of these miracles are performed by the apostles (a few were performed by angels or by God).
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Furthermore, the writer of Hebrews, speaking of the salvation announced by the Lord, declares,
“God also testified to it by signs, wonders
and various miracles,
and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will” (Heb. 2:3-4).

Recall from chapter 8 that this is the way God authenticates his prophets—through miracles. The miracle confirms the message. The sign confirms the sermon. Acts of God confirm the Word of God to the people of God (Exodus 4; 1 Kings 18; John 3:2; Acts 2:22). It’s God’s way of telling us that a message really comes from him. And the New Testament apostles confirmed that their message came from God by performing miracles.

The skeptic may say, “Oh, they were just making up the miracle stories.” Nonsense. We’ve already seen in chapters 10, 11, and 12 that they were incredibly accurate historians and had no motive to make up miracle stories. In fact, they had every motive
not
to make up such stories because they were tortured, beaten, and killed for affirming them.

Moreover, the ability to perform miracles was not ultimately in their control, but resided with God himself. How do we know? For two reasons. First, the apostles appear to have lost the ability to perform miracles sometime in the mid-60s A.D. The writer of Hebrews, writing in the late 60s, referred to these special sign gifts of an apostle in the past tense (Heb. 2:3-4). And later in his ministry, Paul apparently could not heal some of his own trusted helpers (Phil. 2:26; 2 Tim. 4:20). If he still possessed the power to perform miracles, then why was he asking for prayer and recommending that his helpers take medicine (1 Tim. 5:23)?

Second, even
while Paul was doing miracles
he was unable to heal his own physical infirmity (Gal. 4:13). In fact, there’s no instance in Scripture of anyone performing a miracle for his own benefit or for entertainment. This demonstrates that the ability to perform miracles was limited by the will of God (cf. Heb. 2:4). Miracles were done for a specific purpose, which was usually to confirm some new messenger or new revelation.

This is probably why there is no record of apostolic miracles in Paul’s letters after about A.D. 62—the latest date Acts could have been composed.
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By this time, Paul and the other apostles had been proven as true messengers of God, and there was no need for further confirmation.

The Spirit of the Lord Is on Jesus—
There is one additional line of evidence regarding the fact that Jesus and the Holy Spirit would provide the New Testament. The Old Testament predicted that the Messiah would come and “preach good news.” Jesus declared that he fulfilled that prediction. As recorded in Luke 4, Jesus goes into the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth and makes that amazing claim. Luke says,

[Jesus] stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:14-21).

What was fulfilled that day? The first coming of the Messiah. Quoting from Isaiah 61:1-2, Jesus stopped in mid-verse to indicate that he was the Messiah who had come to “preach good news to the poor,” “proclaim freedom for the prisoners,” offer “recovery of sight for the blind,” and so forth. He stopped halfway through verse 2 because the second half of the verse declares the “day of vengeance of our God,” which refers to Christ’s second coming. The Jews in his hometown, who knew Jesus was the son of Joseph, also knew that he was claiming to be the Messiah. In fact, after Jesus made one more messianic claim, the crowd in the synagogue became “furious” and drove him out of town to push him off a cliff. But Jesus escaped by walking right through the crowd (4:22-30).

Isaiah 61 predicts that the Messiah will perform healing miracles and preach “good news. . . . to release the oppressed” by the “Spirit of the Lord.” In other words, the Messiah will do exactly what Jesus did—provide new revelation and back it up with miracles. Of course, since the Messiah is to provide new revelation, someone has to write it down. That’s why Jesus promised his apostles that the Holy Spirit would bring to their remembrance all of his words and guide them into “all truth” (John 14:26; 16:13).

Discovering the Canon—
What does all of this mean for the New Testament? It means that, according to Jesus, the only books that should be in the New Testament are those that are authored and/or confirmed by his apostles. Which books specifically are those?

First, we need to clear up a common misunderstanding about what we call “the canon.” It is this: It’s wrong to say that “the church” or the early church fathers
determined
what would be in the New Testament. They didn’t
determine
what would be in the New Testament—they
discovered
what
God intended
to be in the New Testament. Bruce Metzger of Princeton University put it well. He said, “The canon is a list of authoritative books more than it is an authoritative list of books. These documents didn’t derive their authority from being selected; each one was authoritative before anyone gathered them together.”
¹⁰
In other words, the only books that should be part of the New Testament are those that God has inspired. Since Jesus said that his apostles would produce those books, our only questions are historical: 1) Who were the apostles? and 2) What did they write?

The early church fathers can help us answer those questions because they were much closer to the events than we are. The fact is they had no trouble
discovering
the divine nature of the major New Testament books. While there was some initial controversy over some of the minor books (such as Philemon, 3 John, and James), the early church fathers immediately recognized the Gospels and major Epistles as divinely inspired. Why? Because they knew the books were written by apostles (or by those confirmed by apostles), and those apostles had been confirmed by miracles. How did they know that? Because there is an unbroken chain of testimony from the apostles to the early church fathers regarding the authorship and authenticity of the New Testament books.