The Case For Christ

Like the Introduction, Strobel opens his first chapter with another story about evidence. This time he demonstrates the importance of eyewitness testimony through the case of Leo Carter. Carter witnessed Elijah Baptist, a “sixteen-year-old delinquent with thirty arrests on his rap sheet” (21), murder a local grocer. When Baptist learns Carter will testify against him, he and two friends shoot Carter in the head and back. Carter miraculously survives, and his eyewitness testimony sends Baptist and his accomplices to prison for the rest of their lives.

The central question of Chapter 1 is whether the biographies of Jesus—also known as the New Testament gospels—can be trusted. Eyewitness testimony, as Strobel points out through Carter’s story, is critical to getting at the truth of events. That is why he goes to speak with Dr. Craig Blomberg, an internationally-renowned professor at Denver Seminary, to determine whether there are any reliable eyewitness historical accounts that validate Christianity’s supposition that “Jesus Christ is the unique Son of God” (23).

Strobel begins by asking the “tremendously important” (28)question about who authored the gospels and whether they are eyewitness testimonies to the works of Jesus. Blomberg explains that scholars generally agree about the authorship of the first three gospels: Matthew was written by the Apostle Matthew; Luke was written by Paul’s “beloved physician,”(28) Luke; and Mark was written by Peter’s companion, John Mark. The Book of John has the most questionable authorship, but Blomberg believes it was mostly written by the apostle, and he goes on to cite details from the all four gospels as proof of their veracity. He concludes by saying that the teachings of Jesus would be “meaningless if it were not historically factual that Christ died and was raised from the dead” (30).

Strobel then asks about the similarities and differences between the gospels. Blomberg argues the similarities between the first three books—also known as the “synoptics”(34)—come from basing their accounts on similar eyewitness reports of Jesus’s miracles, including those of Peter. The textual differences in the Book of John, according to Blomberg, mean that scholars consider it “largely independent of the other three gospels” (35), especially since it is more explicit about the deity of Christ. When Strobel asks whether that undermines the gospels’ credibility, Blomberg argues that the deity of Christ is not absent from the first three gospels but rather implicit to them; in other words, the writers imply that Christ is God rather than stating it outright. Thus, the Book of John avoids a “theological bent” (35)or agenda that would make the narrative unreliable.

This chapter concludes with an investigation of the timeframe of the gospels’ authorship since eyewitness testimony does not mean that “information was reliably preserved” (41) between Jesus’s life and the authorship of the gospels. Conservative estimates say the gospels were authored between 70 AD and 90 AD, which Blomberg says would have been within eyewitnesses’ lifetimes, including “hostile eyewitnesses who would have served as corrective if false teachings about Jesus were going around” (41). But Blomberg goes on to argue that he believes the gospels were actually authored much earlier. The Book of Acts, which is the last book written by an author of the gospel, does not mention Paul’s death, so Blomberg believes it was written around 62 AD. By working backwards, Blomberg concludes that the gospels were actually written “within two to five years of the events [of Jesus’s life] themselves,” which Blomberg and Strobel agree is well within the “generally acceptable” (44)timeframe for the eyewitness accounts to be considered reliable.

In this chapter, Strobel continues his interview with Blomberg to determine whether the gospels stand up to scrutiny. He opens the chapter with the story of Michael McCullough, a 16-year-old who was shot during an armed robbery. The robbers never denied shooting McCullough, but they alleged that the gun had gone off accidentally. Their attorneys tried to discredit McCullough’s testimony but could not, and their clients went to prison. Strobel tells readers this is the defense’s job: they subject “the [eyewitness] testimony to a variety of tests” (48)to generate doubts about a witness’s story. Honest testimony, Strobel asserts, will “withstand the scrutiny while false, exaggerated, or misleading testimony will be exposed” (48). Strobel does the same to both the gospel and Blomberg’s arguments in order to expose the truth.

To do this, Strobel tells Blomberg that he wants to test his argument to reveal its weaknesses or “underscore its strength” (49). Strobel uses the same eight tests that the defense attorneys in McCullough’s case used: the intention test, the ability test, the character test, the consistency test, the bias test, the cover-up test, the corroboration test, and the adverse witness test. Strobel breaks this chapter up into subsections based on each test, and each section contains three parts: Blomberg’s argument, Strobel’s counterargument, and Blomberg’s rebuttal.

The intention test and the ability test aim to discover whether the gospel’s writers wanted to accurately preserve history and if they succeeded. To the first point, Blomberg argues that the writers were devoted to Jesus and would have recorded events accurately. In terms of success, Blomberg explains that early Christianity was an oral tradition; because most people were illiterate, the stories were told orally. That meant many people knew them, so unlike a game of telephone where the message changes, the early Christian community ensured the “integrity of the message” (56). Along these lines, the character test asks whether the writers wanted to tell the truth. Given that being Christian was often life-threatening, Blomberg assures Strobel that the writers had no reason to lie.

Strobel believes the consistency test is the one that skeptics believe the gospels fail: there are undeniable inconsistencies from book to book. While Blomberg acknowledges this, he also says that the gospels are actually quite consistent by ancient standards. Issues in areas like geography can often be explained by closer examination of historical records, and the fact that the gospels agree on the big stories suggests that small differences happen because writers had “no previous concert among them” (58). That is to say, the gospel’s writers did not collude on the story of Jesus, so Blomberg encourages skeptics to analyze each contradiction individually to see if it is a real discrepancy.

The bias test and the cover-up test both address whether the writers were deceitful. Did the writers have ulterior motives or want to make themselves look better? Blomberg gives an unequivocal “no” here, and he points out that along with including unflattering details about themselves and the apostles, they had nothing to gain from professing Christianity other than “criticism, ostracism, and martyrdom” (62). Strobel’s last two tests have to do with witnesses: namely, if there were people at the time who could corroborate or disprove the stories of the gospels. Blomberg states that there are “non-Christian sources” that reaffirm details of Jesus’s life and the historical accuracy of people and events in the gospels. Likewise, he argues that there are few accounts contradicting Jesus’s actions; rather, other historical writings “implicitly acknowledge what the gospels wrote” (66). Thus, Strobel concludes his interview with Blomberg and decides to investigate whether the gospels have been altered throughout history. But before he leaves, Strobel asks whether Blomberg’s faith has weakened because of his investigation of the gospels. Blomberg tells Strobel that his faith has strengthened, and that many other scholars and skeptics have found faith by examining the evidence for Christ. 

This chapter opens with Strobel’s claim that he is a “document rat” (70)—as a reporter, he dug into files to look for evidence and discrepancies that could point to a bigger story. That is how he exposed Ford Motor Company’s suppression of a known issue with the Ford Pinto that would lead to the deaths of three Chicago teenagers. The story became a national headline, but more importantly, it lets Strobel bring up the issue of document verification. Before his story could run, Strobel had to make sure that the memos he found, which were photocopies, were accurate facsimiles of the original. Likewise, he also had to make sure they told the whole story. Strobel’s next goal is to explore whether “Jesus’ biographies were reliably preserved for us” and if “equally accurate biographies have been suppressed by the church” (72).

To do this, he meets with Dr. Bruce M. Metzger, a professor emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary and chairman of the New Revised Standard Version Bible Committee. Strobel begins the interview by asking whether the modern Bible bears any resemblance to the original given how many times the book has been copied. Metzger explains there are two things working in the Bible’s favor: the number of copies made and their age. He tells Strobel that the oldest biblical writings known to man are only a few generations older than Christ, which means there was less time for the texts to change. Likewise, the sheer number of ancient copies—more than 5,000 New Testament Greek manuscripts alone—mean that they can be compared to one another and checked for changes. Likewise, the Greek manuscripts can be compared to other manuscripts in different languages, like Latin and Armenian, to resolve conflicts. Metzger tells Strobel that where changes do occur, they tend to be “minor rather than substantive” (85)and do not conflict with church doctrine.

Strobel also asks Metzger about whether the Christian church is guilty of suppressing other texts that might offer contradictory images of Jesus or the Christian faith. He specifically references ancient texts like the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Philip, which discuss Jesus and Christianity but have been excluded from the Bible. To answer this question, Metzger turns to the issue of canon, which he defines as “books that have become accepted as official in the church and included in the New Testament” (85-86). The early church had three criteria for including a work in the Bible. First, the book had to have been written either by an apostle or by followers of the apostles. Second, the book had to conform with “normative” (86) Christian tradition. And lastly, the document had to have been continuously accepted and used by the majority of churches. Metzger explains that these criteria created unanimity within the church in terms of what books were biblical, and they are still used by scholars to address the problem today. To emphasize his point, he discusses the Gospel of Thomas, which is one of the more controversial exclusions from the Bible. Metzger points out that while some of the text echoes the gospels, there are elements—like the devaluation of women—that directly contradict Christian doctrine. Thus, scholars exclude texts like the Gospel of Thomas because it fails to meet all three of the early church’s criteria.

As Strobel’s interview with Metzger concludes, he asks him the same question as he asked Craig Blomberg: how did Metzger’s research affect his faith? Just like Blomberg, Metzger tells Strobel that understanding how the Bible has been compiled and preserved has “increased the basis of [his] personal faith” (93).