What follows is a continuation of a talk I gave at RTS Washington’s Sed Contra series. The series of is intended to be a casual space for conversation about difficult or controversial topics. Since I decided to write up my presentation “conference style,” I thought I’d chop it up into bits and post it on the blog. Here’s the final installment (and links for the other parts should appear above).

And now, the “Hard” Problem

But now, back to that distinction I made between the “hard” and the “easy” problem. I made it easy on myself, and I hope that I have sufficiently established the easy problem. And yet, there was a little phrase that might be bothering you. I said, in that initial post, that the NT must be reliable “in a manner appropriate to the relationship we sustain to it.” What kind of relationship do the NT writers want us to have with respect to their testimony? It’s one thing to say “my barber is reliable,” but it seems like the NT writers want more from me than what my barber wants. John says he is writing “that we may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). Luke likewise claims that his testimony should provide “certainty” to Theophilus. Paul: “take your stand” on this Gospel; “hold firmly” to it (1 Cor 15:1-2). Hebrews: “because we have confidence” in our confession we may “approach with full assurance” the throne of God and “hold unswervingly to the hope we possess” (Heb. 10:19-23). And what does Jesus himself say? “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 16:25).

That’s admittedly a high bar. The biblical writers are not asking me to trust them with my haircut or stock portfolio (and I would honestly not recommend trusting St. Paul with your stock portfolio); they want me to entrust my whole life to this person, Jesus. And so we should talk about the Hard Problem: inerrancy. It would be nice, before I entrust my life to Jesus, to be confident that the NT is not just generally reliable, but “Specially” reliable, that it is inerrant and infallible. Do I need it to be specially reliable? No, perhaps not. Many have trusted in Jesus and yet believe that the Bible contains mistakes. And yet, if Jesus is asking for all of me, my whole self, to entrust “my body and soul, both in life and in death” to a 1^st century Judean from Nazareth, who died, as did so many others, as a criminal on a Roman cross, then it must meet a high standard.

The Resurrection, Yet Again

Here’s my argument: if the Bible meets the standards of general reliability, it necessarily meets the standards of special reliability. Or, to put it another way, if the resurrection is true then the NT is inspired by God and authorized by Jesus himself and should be the final authority for all who follow him.

Ok, how do we get there exactly?

First, my argument from this point on is entirely dependent on the truthfulness of the resurrection. Other arguments can and have been made, but mine is dependent on what I hope is the “easy” problem of reliability. If the best explanation of the testimony about the resurrection of Jesus is that Jesus was in fact raised, then the claims and deeds of Jesus have to be reckoned with. I make no apology here for my dependence on the resurrection for my argument. If Jesus was not raised then the Bible is, ultimately, not true and my faith is in vain. That’s not a new claim. Paul makes it in 1 Corinthians 15. If Jesus was not raised “our faith is in vain” and indeed “we are worse off than other humans.”

But if Jesus has been raised, and if something like this has never happened before or since, then I have good evidence that his claims about himself are true. What are those claims? What did he say, and what did he do? Well, lots of things, but I have in mind here a simple observation: he trained and appointed disciples.

The Acts of Jesus through His Apostles

During his life he cultivated a community of followers, men and women who called him “Rabbi” and “Lord” and “Master.” These are all titles he received and promoted, and prior to his death he told these “you will be my witnesses” to the ends of the Earth (Acts 1:7). He said to Peter “on this rock I will build my church” (Matt. 16:18); to Paul: “I will show him what he must suffer for my name” (Acts 9:16). To all his disciples: “I will send you the Holy Spirit,” who will empower you to understand the truth, to testify to the Christ, to shepherd His flock, to be the foundational pillars of a worldwide and generation-spanning church (John 14-17). Neither the church nor the NT Scriptures were an afterthought for Jesus. He is the cornerstone of both, and he accomplishes both by appointing a unique band, the apostles, to testify.

This is how Paul, “least” of these apostles, says it in 1 Cor. 15.

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

1 Corinthians 15:3-8

Notice how he defines the Gospel. He does not end with the work of Jesus with his death and resurrection. That would be a reasonable place to stop the sentence–the Gospel is what Jesus did, and then the events of 15:5 would be the things that the church does. But Paul’s definition of the Gospel keeps going. Jesus continues to work by appearing to and appointing apostles. These apostles were eyewitness. They had unique authority. They are empowered to exercise that authority by the Holy Spirit. And at least part of what that authority entails is testimony.

The NT is that testimony. It is the apostolic deposit, the word-work of the eyewitnesses, the tradition that Paul and Peter and John entrusted to the church, the confession upon which the church is to stand and hold fast.

The NT and Apostolic Authority

A longer argument is of courses needed, but this is the core: the resurrection demonstrates the divine authorization of the Son–that the God of creation has appointed a man for rule and judgement (Acts 17:31)–and the Son in turn has appointed a hand-trained body of eye-witnesses, the apostles, to be the ambassadorial center of his people. It is their role to proclaim his Kingship, gather and disciple his citizenry, and lay the foundation stones of his Temple (Eph. 2:20). They did not do it alone, but they were uniquely appointed to be the head of this growing community.¹

As the written form of this Apostolic deposit, the NT carries with it Apostolic authority, which is to say the very authority of Jesus. We see this idea in the pages of the New Testament itself. Paul’s pastorals, for example, repeatedly encourage us to “hold fast” to the testimony that was “delivered and received” (1 Tim. 3:16). Likewise, the author of Hebrews, a second-generation Christian, gives unique place to the proclamation of the eyewitnesses, confirmed as it was by the Holy Spirit (Heb. 2:1-4), and describes their testimony as superior to the speech of God long ago (Heb. 1:1).

Pride of place, though, goes to 2 Peter 3:2, and here we need the Greek:

μνησθῆναι τῶν προειρημένων ῥημάτων ὑπὸ τῶν ἁγίων προφητῶν καὶ τῆς τῶν ἀποστόλων ὑμῶν ἐντολῆς τοῦ κυρίου καὶ σωτῆρος,

2 Peter 3:2

The whole book of 2 Peter is a call to “remember.” As Peter approaches his death (1:12-15), and as the eschatological enemies prophesied from long ago descend upon the (soon to be apostleless) church (2:1), Peter tells his sheep: remember (1:12; 3:1). Remember what you heard. And what did they hear? Like the author of Hebrews, 2 Peter divides the divine speech into two parts.

The first part is “the words foretold by the Holy Prophets” (τῶν προειρημένων ῥημάτων ὑπὸ τῶν ἁγίων προφητῶν), which along with 2 Peter 1:19-21 is likely the OT, a thematized summary of which is provided in 2 Peter 2. The second part is of more interest to us. Peter’s audience is also to remember, and here I’m going to leave my translation a bit rough, “the-from-your-apostles-commandments-from-the-Lord” (τῆς τῶν ἀποστόλων ὑμῶν ἐντολῆς τοῦ κυρίου). The reason for leaving it rough like this is because the noun phrase is difficult to translate. English is more word-order dependent than Greek, and so it is hard to capture the double-genitive here. The “commandment” (ἐντολή) that the church is to remember has two origin points. It is simultaneously a commandment that comes from the Apostles and a commandment that comes from the Lord Jesus. Or, in view of the point that we are making, it is a commandment that comes from Jesus precisely because it comes from His Apostles. The Apostolic word is the very words of Jesus, and the words of Jesus are passed down through the Apostolic word.

Conclusion

So, in sum: if the NT is generally reliable, then it is logical to receive it as specially reliable. The NT is not like other books or historical testimony in this regard. This kind of argument will not work for Thucydides or Eusebius or The National Geographic. Those resources are generally reliable, but we do not accept them as inspired, divinely authorized, normative, final. What makes the NT different? What makes the NT different is that the resurrection of Jesus is at its core, and the resurrection of Jesus is a cosmic enthronement. Jesus is now King and ruler of this world. What makes the NT different is that this King has appointed emissaries and has empowered and authorized them to speak in his name, such that their words are the very words of the King. This, then, is what the NT documents claim to be: the repository of this apostolic tradition and, as such, the very words of Jesus.

In short: if Jesus has been raised, then the NT is his word, and his word is worthy of our trust.

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1. This is, in sum, the argument that Dick Gaffin makes in his excellent Perspectives on Pentecost. And though it’s a challenging read, the fullest defense can be found in Ridderbos’s Redemptive History and the NT Scriptures. [↩]