A couple of years ago, I had a sustained discussion with a "Jesus myther" on Facebook. The "Jesus Myth Movement", for those unfamiliar, is a modern movement among skeptics and critics that Jesus wasn't a historical figure; instead, he had been created, whole-cloth, from older a syncretic amalgamation of older religious traditions in the ancient world. According to "Jesus Mythers", Jesus is a myth.
I tried, at the time, setting out all the historical reasons that argument is problematic.
So today I'm not recreating that argument.
Instead, I want to demonstrate what a non-foundationalist, unapologetic preaching of Jesus looks like.
Let me do that by addressing two primary arguments I hear a lot.
First: "I don't think there is a good reason to believe in Jesus as the Christ because the accounts of him are historically non-convincing for two reasons (a) these are not his accounts but accounts of him from flawed men ..."
This comment seems to assume that we cannot believe in Jesus without "good reasons" and without evidence that is "historically reliable". It also seems to assume that we would be better off with writings directly from Jesus himself rather than from his followers, who were flawed like the rest of us. I can see that this line of thinking seems reasonable. I don't think it's sufficient, however.
First, there's the question of what it would be "reasonable" for someone to believe. Although good reasons can actually be given of the kind folks seem to be seeking (more on that in a bit), I don't think any such reasons, by themselves, would ever be enough for someone to have faith in Christ. This is a very important point to which I will need to return, because it has to do with the nature of faith. Here I am commenting somewhat more on the nature of reason. Even the best of reasons, I am saying, would be insufficient. That's because believing in Christ is not just the same as believing that Caesar crossed the Rubicon.
There's certainly an element of historical argument to Christian faith (a la all that crap Jesus Mythers claim), but that element isn't enough to elicit Christian faith. This is the problem Josh McDowell and his like have in books like Evidence That Demands a Verdict or The Case for Christ.
That is, the best that popular apologetics can do is create a weighing of the probabilities. Christian faith, though, can't fall into a category of statistics or be established solely on the basis of the preponderance of the evidence.
It doesn't come down to probability assessments. It comes down to choice, to a decision: "Who do you say that Jesus is?"
Even if we had documents written by Jesus himself, we would still need to go well beyond mere historical "probabilities" if we were to commit our lives to him as our Lord and Savior, in life and in death, which is what the gospel says is required of us. (And required of us unconditionally.)
Second, at the level of those historical reliabilities, I think the Christian faith has to meet a minimal standard, but just a minimal one. If we found his bones in a grave, that's a game-ender. Our faith has historical elements. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that (sorry Bultmann), but Christianity -- no matter what my local school system says -- can't be reduced to history. The historical aspects are important -- even essential -- but there's more than a historical positivism at work here.
The minimum standard will always apply. If Jesus died in an old folks home in Palestine, then, sure, we have a problem. But, and this is key, I think it's important that after 250 years of modern knowledges trying to establish it, we're still no where closer to dismissing Jesus as witnessed to in the Gospels. (No matter what the Jesus Seminar says.)
Which is to say: Christ's resurrection could theoretically be disproved by historical evidence, but it could not be proven on historical grounds alone, because, in the nature of the case, it confronts us with something more than a merely historical claim -- something much more terrifying and radical.
In the end, I think the historical evidence is tantalizing but ambiguous. There's a lot of data to go on, but it can be read both positively and negatively. Positively, we can't ignore the lines of probability that converge. Negatively, all that possibility still leaves room for very honest doubt.
Reason just reaches its categorical limit with Jesus. There aren't any knock-down-knock-out arguments. None. Historical claims in the Gospel are subject to honorable intellectual defenses. But that'll get me only so far.
Which is why I also usually hear: "Furthermore (b) these stories are not necessarily trustworthy. Did they remember wrong? Were they even there? Even if they remembered right (how could they after so long?) and were actually there, did they misinterpret Jesus (of course, we know from their own accounts that they consistently did)".
Everything comes down to what the New Testament texts are. They're not historical reports. Not like AP reporters. They're witnesses of the Risen Christ. And as witnesses they mean to say that the "historical Jesus" and the "risen Christ" are the same guy.
And that's what I mean by unapologetic preaching: The Christian faith is far more a matter of radical conversion than it is of rational persuasion. The claim that a marginal Jew who was put to death on a cross should have been raised from the dead so that he now reigns as Lord and Savior is never going to be plausible to rational or evidential considerations. It is always going to be foolishness, as Paul himself confessed: "For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men" (1 Cor 1.22-25).
We never read the Bible intelligently until we read it spiritually. Which is why so much modern preaching of "relevant sermons" misses the boat in my opinion.
The Bible isn't just a historical document. No matter what the History Channel says. The truth to which it bears witness necessarily transcends every ordinary rational mode of perception. Unless the doors of perception are opened, and we begin thinking in a whole new framework, it will never make any sense.
That's why I tell my preaching students: "We don't read the Bible. The Bible reads us." It calls us and our detached role as would-be authoritative, evidence-weighing spectators radically into question. That is why it is so dangerous. Many of those original "unreliable" witnesses to the resurrection of Christ, like Peter and Paul, went to their brutal deaths as martyrs. "When Christ calls a man", wrote Bonhoeffer, "he bids him come and die".
Reading the Bible -- and preaching it -- is risky business. No one who's not up to taking that risk should try either. But, like the Church has found out for 20 centuries now, those who take that risk and make this decision realize: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life" (John 6.68).
This is why I tell everyone, if you want a good apologetic, read Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship, not silly little books like The Case for Christ.