The Case for the Real Jesus

by Lee Strobel

  “We can know many things—like the expansion of the universe or that various planets orbit the sun—even if we don’t have a hundred-percent certainty. Between absolute, mathematical certainty and utter skepticism are degrees of knowledge—the highly plausible, the probable, and the reasonable, for instance. We rely on these standards every day. Certain beliefs are more plausible or likely than others. We can know truly, even if we don’t know exhaustively or with absolute certainty.”

  THE TRUTH ABOUT TRUTH

  I went back to the infamous question posed by Pilate two thousand years ago. “What is truth?” I asked.

  I was expecting a complex answer laden with philosophical jargon. Instead, Copan’s definition was surprisingly straightforward: “I think people instinctively understand that truth is a belief, story, ideal, or statement that matches up with reality or corresponds to the way things really are.”

  When I asked him for an example, he said, “If I say the moon is made of cheese, that’s false because there isn’t a correspondence, or a match-up, with the way things really are. Or consider an event in history: Martin Luther wrote out his ninety-five theses in 1517. That’s factually true, and to disagree with that would mean that you believe something that’s false.

  “Something is true—or corresponds to reality—even if people don’t believe it. I often use the example of the earth being round even when people thought it was flat. Some people have said to me, ‘Well, wasn’t the earth flat for them at that time?’ I say, ‘No, the earth was still round. It wasn’t as though people could fall over the edge of the earth and be swallowed by dragons back then. The earth was round, even if people didn’t believe it.’”

  “So truth is true even if people don’t acknowledge it,” I said, cementing his point in my mind.

  “That’s right. In fact, truth is true even if no one knows it, admits it, agrees with it, follows it, or even fully grasps it.”

  “Some people,” I observed, “believe that whatever works for them is true.”

  “Yes, that’s the pragmatic view,” he said, nodding in acknowledgment. “The problem is that people can have beliefs that are ‘useful,’ maybe temporarily and for certain ends, but they may be completely false. And some things can be true—like the temperature at the North Pole—even though they don’t help us in any way. So truth isn’t merely what works.

  “On the other hand, the pragmatist does have a point when he asks, ‘Can my beliefs be lived out practically?’ If not, then it’s highly likely that the view isn’t true. What is true can be lived out consistently—there doesn’t have to be a mismatch between ‘theory’ and ‘practice.’

  “Another view of truth is called coherence,” he continued. “This means that our beliefs must have internal consistency. In other words, our beliefs cohere in a kind of web or fit together like a puzzle. Now, coherence is important. If something is incoherent, it can’t be true. But coherence, by itself, isn’t enough to determine if something is true.”

  “Why not?”

  “Look individually at Buddhism and Christianity,” he said. “They both have an internal coherence, right?”

  “That’s right,” I replied.

  “Yet both of them can’t be true,” he said. “The Buddhist rejects the existence of God, while the Christian embraces the existence of God. So by itself, internal coherence isn’t enough: we have to ask whether either of these views matches up with reality. Coherence is an important component of truth, but it doesn’t constitute truth. It’s not all that there is to truth.

  “Ultimately, any theory of truth is going to correspond with reality. Something true is like a socket wrench that matches up to a bolt—there’s a fit. And truth isn’t merely propositional. Look at the person of Jesus. When he said he’s the truth in John 14:6, there was a correspondence with reality. There was a match-up: He was faithfully and authentically representing to us who God is. He was the revelation of God, and he genuinely lived out what human beings are supposed to be before God.”

  I was reminded of a quote I had come across in my research. I searched through my notes until I found the words of New Testament scholar Andreas J. Köstenberger and read them to Copan:

  The very notion of truth has largely become a casualty of postmodern thought and discourse. Truth is no longer “the” truth, in Jesus’ terms who claimed to be “the truth.” Rather it is conceived of as “your” truth or “my” truth—that is, different yet equally legitimate ways of perceiving reality. Hence truth is simply one’s preferred, culturally conditioned, socially constructed version of reality.17

  Copan was listening carefully as I read. “I agree with his analysis,” he said. “Ultimately, it comes down to a theological question: Can there be an authoritative viewpoint? To put it in Christian terms, is there the possibility of a special revelation in which God speaks authoritatively for all times and all cultures? Can God break onto the scene and offer a way to know truth with confidence?”

  He allowed the question to hang in the air for a moment, then added: “Not only do I believe he can, but I believe he has.”

  THE “YUCK FACTOR”

  While intrigued with the direction our conversation was taking, there were other topics I wanted to be sure we covered. Shifting the emphasis of my questions, I told Copan about Wendi and read her quote: “I don’t believe in right or wrong. It just is. If it feels like something that I should do, then I’ll do it.” Turning to Copan, I asked, “What’s the role of feelings in terms of what’s true or false, right or wrong?”

  “Feelings can be tricky,” Copan began. “A person may say, ‘I need to be true to myself by following my feelings’—and then run off with his secretary. Such people use their feelings to rationalize immoral behavior. The problem, of course, is that feelings are only one aspect of who we are. The capacity to feel is a God-given gift—but so is the capacity to think, to act in a morally responsible way, to discipline ourselves, and, by God’s grace, to shape our character into something better than it presently is. If we follow only our feelings, then we’re being false to all of who we are and what we were designed to be.”

  “Still,” I countered, “there is a role for feelings.”

  “Absolutely. Feelings and intuition have their place. For instance, there’s the ‘yuck factor.’”

  “The what?”

  “The ‘yuck factor’ is when we don’t even have to think through certain issues. We have a strong visceral revulsion against, say, rape or child abuse. We don’t hem and haw by saying, ‘Oh, well, maybe rape is right in some contexts.’ We know immediately, on a gut level, that rape is wrong. This is evidence that there are objective moral values that aren’t the product of sociobiological evolution. They are valid and binding for everyone, not just for some cultures. And we should take intuitions about these moral values—the ‘yuck factor’—seriously.

  “In Romans 2, Paul says that even though Gentiles weren’t given the law of Moses, their conscience bears witness, alternately accusing or else defending them, because the law has been placed in their hearts.18 There is this moral law, and people with a well-functioning conscience can get a lot of things right.

  “As one author put it, there are things we can’t not know. We’d have to suppress our conscience not to know those things—and that’s exactly what Romans 1 is talking about, that people may suppress the truth in unrighteousness.19 They may even use ‘reason’ to avoid certain moral implications for their own lives, but they themselves recognize that there’s a degree of self-deception going on for them to weasel out from those moral commitments.”

  “So we can use our feelings to justify virtually any behavior, even though deep down we often have a sense that we’re doing something wrong,” I said.

  “Yes, that can certainly happen,” he said. “We have to remember as well that our feelings can’t change objective reality. Following our feelings wherever they go doesn’t change who we are as human beings or how we were designed to function, and it
doesn’t make certain things true or right.

  “For example, what happens when feelings conflict? If you have a Jew in Nazi Germany who has certain feelings and you’ve got Hitler who has feelings the other way, then the person with the greater power wins out. But that doesn’t make his actions right.”

  A MIX-AND-MATCH JESUS

  I told Copan how the stories of Wendi, Ed, and Joanne were good examples of the way many people today feel comfortable in customizing their own religious beliefs. “It seems like a lot of people are trying to free themselves from the straitjacket of religious dogma and create their own Jesus by picking and choosing what they want from Christianity and other faiths,” I said. “What’s wrong with creating our own Jesus to suit our own needs?”

  “We should clarify that Christianity isn’t primarily about subscribing to a set of doctrines. Christianity is focused on the person of Christ. We’re called into a relationship, not simply to believe a set of doctrines,” he noted.

  “The scriptures are basically a narrative of God’s interaction with humankind. If we lose this notion of God’s desire for relationship with human beings, we’re in danger of losing the heart of the Christian faith. Doctrines, of course, will flow from that, but when the scriptures call us to believe, we’re being called to put our trust in someone, not just agree with a bunch of doctrine. Demons could do that. We are to commit ourselves to Christ.

  “I’d also like to know what people mean by ‘dogma.’ When a person rejects dogma, does this mean that he has no convictions about reality, about God, about salvation? I’d ask those who reject dogma or doctrine—what do you live by? Is there anything you think is worth dying for? If there’s nothing worth dying for, is there anything worth living for? Often, people reject Christian dogma or doctrines because they disagree with them—and then they end up adopting their own set of dogmatic beliefs. So why choose one set of dogmas over another?

  “But I want to bring it back to the personal,” Copan continued. “The apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 11:3 commends a pure and simple devotion to Christ. The Corinthians had lofty aspirations of a sophisticated faith, but that can result in pride and arrogance that diminishes devotion to Jesus. Paul was trying to get them back to the basics. Jesus put it very simply: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind; and, Love your neighbors as yourself.”20 Everything hangs on that. Yes, there will be dogma attached to those things—true doctrines that we ought to believe in light of God’s existence and his relationship to human beings. But Jesus simplified it for us: Love God and love your neighbor.”

  “What about this tendency to pick and choose aspects of other faiths and incorporate them into Christianity?” I asked.

  “Well, if we do love God, then we want to follow his teachings. If Jesus is God’s unique revelation to us, then we want to follow what he said and did. So certain doctrines flow naturally from that: Jesus’ divinity, his death for our salvation, his resurrection, his command that we live righteous lives, and so forth. We shouldn’t be trying to create our own Jesus or our own set of doctrines, because then we are denying reality. Jesus reflects reality, so we need to align ourselves with him.”

  “If Jesus defines reality,” I pressed, “then are you saying there’s no truth in any other religion?”

  “I believe there are some truths in other religions,” he quickly replied. “As Scottish writer George MacDonald said, ‘Truth is truth, whether from the lips of Jesus or Balaam.’21 We need to affirm truth where we see it, but we need to remember there are entailments that come with certain beliefs. If you believe God exists, then you’re going to have to reject certain aspects of, say, Buddhism—mainly, God’s nonexistence. If you accept the existence of God, then large portions of Eastern philosophy are going to be wrong at that point. That doesn’t mean they’re a hundred percent wrong, but they’re wrong when they conflict with a view that is correct. You can’t say, ‘Well, I believe in Jesus’ resurrection, but I also believe in reincarnation.’ If it’s true that Jesus really did rise from the dead, then reincarnation is not true. Human beings have one earthly opportunity and then face judgment.”

  “So we ought to let Jesus speak for himself?” I asked.

  “Yes. A lot of times, people will put words into his mouth. This kind of an approach to the Christian faith is both misguided and superficial—oh, yeah, sure, I’m a Christian, but I believe in reincarnation. Well, you haven’t really taken a serious look at the Christian worldview. It’s like the person who says all religions are basically the same. Apart from their view of whether God exists, what the human problem is, what the solution to the human problem is, or the nature of the afterlife—yeah, sure, apart from those massive things, they’re pretty much the same,” he said, a chuckle in his voice.

  “If God has broken into the world and spoken through Christ, then there are going to be certain beliefs that we’re going to have to accept. It’s not up to us to say, ‘I like this, I don’t like that.’ C. S. Lewis said he’d gladly get rid of the doctrine of hell, but he concluded he can’t, because there are certain things that flow from the claims of Christ and the teachings of the New Testament that precluded him from doing that. I think there needs to be that kind of honesty.

  “We can say we find certain doctrines troubling—fine. But to try to pick and choose which doctrines we accept is denying the teachings of Jesus, who through his resurrection has demonstrated the reliability of his claims about being the Son of God and thus knowing what’s true and what isn’t.

  “Look at it this way: we may have subjective preferences about what doctrines we like and don’t like. But our subjective preferences can’t change the objective reality that Jesus is God’s unique revelation to humankind. If we want to sync up with reality, we need to sync up with him. We can’t change reality just by refusing to believe certain doctrines that Jesus affirms. We may not like the doctrine of hell, but that can’t change the objective reality of whether hell exists. We can’t wish it out of existence. It either exists, as Jesus affirms, or it doesn’t.”22

  I pondered his point for a minute as I tried to crystallize a response. “In a way,” I said finally, “everything goes back to the resurrection.”

  “That’s true,” he replied. “If Jesus really was resurrected from the dead, then this vindicates his claims that he really is the unique Son of God. And if he’s the unique Son of God, then we can rely on his teachings being true. And so when we add things or subtract things from his teaching, we’re in error, because we’d be believing something that doesn’t correspond with reality.”

  WHICH JESUS?

  Copan’s mention of reincarnation turned my thoughts to a related line of inquiry. “So often, people who want to create their own religion will include the idea of reincarnation,” I said. “Why is that?”

  “Some people in the West see reincarnation as another crack at life in order to get things right, sort of like the movie Groundhog Day. There’s an attraction to saying we have many opportunities and not just one lifetime. Actually, the reality is quite different.” He gestured toward me. “You’ve been to India, right?”

  “I’ve spent some time there, yes,” I said.

  “I have too. And I’m sure you’ve noticed that reincarnation is a very oppressive burden in that Hindu culture, as it is in the Buddhist world,” he said. “For example, if you’re a low caste or no caste Hindu, then you’re stuck at that low level because that’s what you deserve from your previous life. And people shouldn’t reach out to help you, because they might jeopardize their own karma by interfering with you living out the miserable existence that you deserve.”

  I knew he was right. What sounds on the surface like a magnanimous belief that gives people multiple opportunities to live a better life turns out to create a devastating situation for millions upon millions of people who are mired in hopeless poverty day to day.

  Another belief that people frequently add to t
heir customized faith is the idea that we’re all divine. “What about this tendency to make ourselves God?” I asked. “Shirley MacLaine said, ‘The tragedy of the human race was that we had forgotten that we were each Divine.’23 Why do people tend to gravitate toward that conclusion?”

  Copan smiled. “I would rewrite her statement by saying the tragedy of the human race is that we’ve forgotten we’re God’s creatures! That’s the problem,” he said, his tone lighthearted but emphatic at the same time. “Given a choice, we tend to select beliefs that elevate who we are, that diminish personal responsibility, that give us greater freedom to call ‘good’ what the scriptures call ‘sin,’ and that put ourselves in charge of our own destiny, rather than saying to God, as the psalmist did, ‘My times are in your hands.’24 We want to create our own guidelines that don’t put any demands on us.

  “We all know deep down that we’re flawed and imperfect. What kind of god would that make us? We flatter ourselves when we try to put ourselves in the place of God rather than acknowledge that we are God’s creation and that we need to give God his rightful place. We don’t need to be more self-centered than we are; we need to be more God-centered. We can’t find the real Jesus by thinking that we’re his equal.”

  His comment about the “real Jesus” sparked a thought. “These days if someone says he believes in Jesus, you almost have to say, ‘Which Jesus?’” I observed.

  “Unfortunately, that’s true,” he replied. “We’re living in an age of biblical illiteracy, where a lot of people have cobbled together beliefs of Jesus. If we ask which Jesus a person believes in, we may be surprised to find that it’s a Jesus who said and did things that no serious scholar believes the historical Jesus did. Or he may be a Gnostic Jesus, sort of an abstract teacher of amorphous sayings who’s divorced from history. But I can’t stress this enough: What we believe about Jesus doesn’t really affect who he is,” he said, his voice emphasizing each word.

  That statement seemed pivotal. “Please, elaborate on that,” I urged.