Apologetics: Is New Testament Reliable?

Ever since I came into the Lord in 1993, studying Bible with commentaries had been my passion; I was equally passionate about defending the Gospel and proving that Christ alone is the true God worthy of worship. As I engaged in arguments with my Hindu colleagues, I realized I needed more ammunition. I set about researching the matter and making it a subject for my PhD thesis. Then came my struggle for the next almost 10 years to read, study and write about Western philosophy, history of England, Christianity, Hinduism, Eastern philosophy, British Civil Service in India, modern history of India and ethics resultant of the influence of the religions, Christianity and Hinduism, as witnessed in the Administrative Service of which I was part of and conducting a survey among the serving officers of the IAS in the Karnataka cadre.  

This also involved a year’s study of the Pre-PhD programme at SAIACS as a full time day scholar, a concise course in Theology in 2000.[1] Later I completed my MA in Divinity from Union Biblical Seminary (UBS), Poone in 2012. I did prove in my dissertation that the Indian Civil Service of British India (ICS), all said and done was much more ethical than the present Indian Administrative Service of the Indian government (IAS), constituted after Independence, mainly because of the ethics taught in Christianity, based on the Bible and the life and teachings of Christ, were loftier as compared to almost no great ethics taught by Hindu social treatises like Manusmriti and Arthasastra. This has come out as a book, “Values and Influence of Religion in Public Administration,” published by Sage in 2011.

My steam went out as I came under barrage of criticism from my colleagues for writing such a book and I realized I needed to be more diplomatic and put forth facts in a non-antagonistic manner. I was searching for avenues to learn such an art and came across a certificate course on Christian Apologetics run by Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM), Chennai and underwent the three weeks course in 2014 as a resident student. Ever since I have been investing in the books on Apologetics and following the leaders in this movement globally.

I have been greatly blessed by Apologetics and I thought instead of taking just another book from the Bible for study in my Neighborhood Fellowship Group (NFG) of my church, Koramangala Methodist Church, (KMC), I should share my learning about the subject with my group. Thus started this series and lo and behold, after completing the first topic, “Is the New Testament (NT) reliable?” I am writing this blog giving a synopsis of the same. It might run into more than one blog and hence I plead your patience and indulgence regarding it. I need to acknowledge the interest and enthusiasm of my NFG group for venturing to write this blog. Let God’s name be glorified and His Kingdom be built on solid grounds. 

Apologetics:

What is Apologetics? Sounds like being apologetic about something, isn’t it? On the contrary it is defending one’s faith. The Greek word ‘apologia’ meant a ‘reasonable defense.’ It is a defending one’s case before one’s opponents, like the Greek philosophers Socrates or Plato did. Paul followed a similar course when he defended his faith in Christ before King Agrippa, in answer to his critics and accusers in Acts 26:2; in Philippians 1:17 Paul says he was appointed for the defense of the gospel. 1 Peter 3:15 gives a better basis for such a defense, “…and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.” This then is Christian Apologetics, to defend the faith and hope we have in Christ in the face of opposition and criticism, with meekness and fear.

Christianity is not a blind faith in something supernatural; it is a reasonable faith, which can be argued and proved on reasonable grounds. It has to be done in humility and fear of God, without offending another man’s self respect. Ever since Paul and Peter the Apostles, and then through the Church Fathers, and the Christian philosophers, writers and leaders of Reformation and later, defending our faith has been the normal duty of the Christians.

Today in the 21^st century things are not very different from that prevailed in the 1^st century AD, when Paul and Peter lived. We are living in a pluralistic society which values relativism and syncretism. A Hindu friend would put it casually ‘all gods are the same; all religions are but different paths to the same god.’ Another Hindu would ask ‘why was God so cruel and indifferent that He did not come to the help of Jesus when he was crucified?’ A Muslim would say ‘Jesus was not the one who was crucified, but someone else died in his place; Jesus was taken to the heavens before he was crucified, so he never died.’ Another person might say ‘Jesus was a wise teacher, a great philosopher like Buddha, and not a God.’ ‘How do we know that what was written some 2000 years back was really true?’

How do we encounter such questions and doubts? How do we answer them? These questions are asked not by vindictiveness, but because the people of other faiths do not understand and know about Christ and Christianity. Along with a knowledge of what is written in the Bible and its books, we need to know more about the history of the secular world around the time of Christ and later, history of Christianity, the backgrounds of the biblical books written, about the authors of the various books written and the context in which they wrote and much more to give suitable answers to these questions. A study of Apologetics would take you through all these and equip you to answer the critics in a confident manner with facts and reason it out with the skeptics in a friendly manner.

Is The New Testament Reliable?

As you know there are 27 books in the NT; first four are gospels, dealing with the birth, life, ministry, teachings of Christ and his death and resurrection. Then appended is the historical book, the Acts, which narrates the spread of Christianity from Jerusalem to Judah and Samaria and to the Roman world at large. Thirteen of Paul’s letters or Epistles follow this; then is Hebrew whose authorship is in doubt and after that comes 1 & 2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude and then the Apocalyptic book Revelation which is the last in the list.

So, how do we know that these books are authentic? What are the norms with which we can prove our case? For this express purpose, we will look at the Documentary evidences, evidence of Eye-witness accounts, evidence through Chain of custody, corroborative evidences from other writers of secular books and writings of first and second centuries AD and finally Archaeological evidences to support the claim that what has been written in the NT books are true and reliable.

As I am self-imposing a limit of four pages per blog, I need to stop here and continue this in the next blog which, I assure, will come by next week. You can take this blog as an introductory one. I will take up the Documentary evidences in my next blog. Till then bear with me and good bye. God bless you all.

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[1] I had taken a two years sabbatical for the purpose.