The Case For Christ

But your love goes beyond that. You can know all these things
about your wife and not be in love with her and put your trust in
her, but you do. So the decision goes beyond the evidence, yet it
is there also on the basis of the evidence.
So it is with falling in love with Jesus. To have a relationship
with Jesus Christ goes beyond just knowing the historical facts
about him, yet it's rooted in the historical facts about him. I
believe in Jesus on the basis of the historical evidence, but my
relationship with Jesus goes way beyond the evidence. I have to
put my trust in him and walk with him on a daily basis."
I interrupted to say, "Yes, but will you acknowledge that
Christianity makes some claims about Jesus that are just plain
hard to
believe?"
"Yes, of course I do," he replied. "That's why I'm glad we have
such incredibly strong evidence to show us they're true.
For me," he added, "it comes down to this: there's no
competition. The evidence for Jesus being who the disciples said
he was for having done the miracles that he did, for rising from
the dead, for making the claims that he did-is just light-years
beyond my reasons for thinking that the left-wing scholarship of
the Jesus Seminar is correct.
What do these scholars have? Well, there's a brief allusion to a
lost 'secret' gospel in a late-second-century letter that has
unfortunately only been seen by one person and has now itself
been lost. There's a third-century account of the Crucifixion and
Resurrection that stars a talking cross and that less than a
handful of scholars think predates the gospels. There's a secondcentury
Gnostic document, parts of which some scholars now want
to date early to back up their own preconceptions. And there is a
hypothetical document built on shaky assumptions that is being
sliced thinner and thinner by using circular reasoning."
Boyd flopped back in his chair. "No, I'm sorry," he said, shaking
his head. "I don't buy it. It's far more reasonable to put my
trust in the gospels-which pass the tests of historical scrutiny
with flying colors-than to put my hope in what the Jesus Seminar
is saying."
A CHORUS OF CRITICISM
Back at my motel, I mentally played back my interview with Boyd.
I felt the same way he did: If the Jesus of faith is not also the