Is Christianity True?

Christianity is not mainly a set of ideas about how to live. It is a report about events: that Jesus of Nazareth lived, died on a Roman cross, and was raised from the dead on the third day. Everything else in the faith hangs on that.

Paul, one of its first leaders, said so bluntly: “And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14, KJV). Christianity stakes everything on a single event in history that could, in principle, be checked. So the question “Is Christianity true?” comes down to another one: did Jesus rise?

The heart of the evidence is the resurrection. The oldest written account of it is a short summary Paul passed on to the church in Corinth. He wrote the letter in the mid-50s AD, and he says he is handing on what he had himself received, so the summary is older than the letter:

Notice what Paul does. He names names: Cephas (that is, Peter), the twelve, James, and himself. He mentions a crowd of more than five hundred and adds that most of them are still alive, which is an open invitation to go and ask them. Several other lines of evidence fit with his summary.

The empty tomb. All four Gospels say that women who went to the grave early on the first day of the week found it empty (Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, John 20). They name different women and tell it in their own ways, as separate witnesses usually do, but they agree on the central fact.

Frightened followers became bold witnesses. When Jesus was arrested, “they all forsook him, and fled” (Mark 14:50, KJV). A few weeks later the same men were preaching in Jerusalem, the city where He had been executed, and they kept preaching through arrests and beatings (Acts 4-5). People will suffer for something they believe is true. It is hard to see why they would suffer for something they knew they had made up.

Skeptics changed their minds. James, the brother of Jesus, did not believe in Him during His ministry: “For neither did his brethren believe in him” (John 7:5, KJV). Yet after Jesus “was seen of James” (1 Corinthians 15:7, KJV), James became a leader of the church in Jerusalem (Galatians 1:19, 2:9). Paul had been trying to destroy the church (Galatians 1:13) until, by his own account, he met the risen Jesus.

None of this is proof in the way a sum is proved. History works by asking which explanation best fits the evidence. Other explanations have been offered: the disciples stole the body, they saw visions, the story grew into a legend. Each one has to account for the empty tomb, the many witnesses, the change in skeptics like James and Paul, and how early the claim was being taught. Christians are convinced the best explanation is the one the women heard at the empty tomb: “He is not here: for he is risen, as he said” (Matthew 28:6, KJV).

Nearly all historians of the ancient world, Christian or not, agree that Jesus lived and was crucified under Pontius Pilate. Besides the New Testament, two writers from outside the church mention Him.

Tacitus, a Roman historian writing early in the second century, describes how the emperor Nero blamed the Christians for the great fire of Rome. He explains that their name came from Christus, who had been put to death under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius (Annals 15.44). Tacitus was no friend of the faith: he calls it a harmful superstition. That makes his note about its founder more telling, not less.

Josephus, a Jewish historian writing in Rome around AD 93, mentions Jesus twice in his Jewish Antiquities. The shorter mention is in Book 20. Describing how a high priest had James stoned, he calls James “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ” (in William Whiston's classic translation). Most historians accept this passing remark as Josephus's own words.

The longer passage, in Book 18, needs more care. As it stands, it calls Jesus “a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man”, says “He was [the] Christ”, and reports that He “appeared to them alive again the third day”. Those lines read like a Christian's words, not a Jewish historian's, and most scholars think a Christian copyist added them. Many believe Josephus did write a shorter note about Jesus, which was later expanded. So it is wise not to lean on that passage's exact wording.

The Gospels are our fullest sources for Jesus, and they are rooted in real places and rulers. Luke dates the start of John the Baptist's preaching to “the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea” (Luke 3:1, KJV), and an inscription found at Caesarea confirms Pilate's title as the Roman prefect there.

Luke also tells us how he worked. He says many accounts had been written, “Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses” (Luke 1:2, KJV), and that he set out to write in order so that his reader might “know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed” (Luke 1:4, KJV). The Gospel writers were not neutral: John says plainly that he wrote so that people would believe (John 20:31). But writing to persuade is not the same as writing fiction. The four accounts differ in details and in order, the way honest witnesses do, and they agree on the main events.

Their text has also been handed down with great care: more than 5,700 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament survive, some of them very early. For the manuscripts, the Dead Sea Scrolls and archaeology, read is the Bible reliable?

People often ask whether all religions are really saying the same thing. They are not. They give different answers to the biggest questions: who God is, what is wrong with the world, and who Jesus was. Those answers cannot all be true at once, so the honest question is which of them is true.

Christianity's claim is not that Christians are better people. Many are not, and the Bible is honest about the failures of believers. Its claim is about Jesus, who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6, KJV). Either that is true or it is not, and Christians believe the resurrection is God's answer. That is also why Christians do not need to look down on anyone. You can respect people of other faiths, learn from them and recognize what is good in their lives, while still believing that Jesus is who He said He was.

Many people also wonder about those who never had a fair chance to hear about Jesus. Scripture gives a question that steadies the heart: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25, KJV). For what the Bible asks of you, read how to be saved.

Thoughtful Christians have wrestled with each of these questions. The answers below are short, and each question deserves more time than a paragraph.

Many people assume that faith means believing something without evidence, or even against it. That is not how the Bible uses the word. Faith is trust in a person, based on what that person has shown. John wrote his Gospel for exactly that reason: “But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name” (John 20:31, KJV).

Hebrews calls faith “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1, KJV). It is trust that reaches beyond what you can see right now, the way you trust a friend whose character you know. Peter tells Christians to be ready to give “a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear” (1 Peter 3:15, KJV). Reasons and trust belong together.

Evidence can take you to the edge. It can show that trusting Jesus is reasonable, but it cannot take the step for you. Jesus said to Thomas, “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29, KJV). That is not a blessing on believing without reasons. It is a blessing on everyone after that first generation who trusts the witness of those who did see.