Kaitlyn Nowak gave a talk summarizing her studies in apologetics at the International Academy of Apologetics, Evangelism, and Human Rights. She outlined using a historical approach to defend Christianity, arguing that: 1) The gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are reliable primary sources due to their proximity to Jesus and superior manuscript transmission. 2) Jesus claimed to be God in the gospels. 3) The gospels provide detailed accounts of Jesus' death and resurrection that match historical evidence. 4) Jesus' resurrection proves his deity by demonstrating power over death, which is the fundamental human issue.

1. Defending
Christianity in an
Age of Pluralism
Part 2 – A talk by Kaitlyn Nowak
on her studies at the International Academy of
Apologetics, Evangelism, and Human Rights

2. Outline
1. Intro to Strasbourg, quick overview of Academy classes
2. Apologetics – What is it?
3. Why is Apologetics necessary today?
4. Sin as a starting point
5. Grace as the answer
6. Historicity of Christianity
7. Reliability of the Gospels

3. Apologetics Tabling Sign

4. Christianity as Contradictory
• Sin and guilt as common ground
• In other religions, it’s all about what you can do for God,
to achieve Nirvana, etc.
• Christianity is the only religion that has a concept of
grace
• Still, why is Christianity true and not just the “oddball”?

5. Christianity is Falsifiable
• Analytical philosophy – philosophy must be checked
against reality
• Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:12-19
• Remember, most other religions are simply based on
personal experience, not history
• You can’t even prove most religions true or false

6. Christianity is Historical
• “Heaven and earth conjoin” in the Incarnation!
• Born under Caesar Augustus
• Crucified under Pontius Pilate
• 1 Corinthians 15:6 (over 500 witnesses)

7. Christianity is Historical
• Paul to King Agrippa: “This thing [the historical events of
Christianity] has not been done in a corner.”

8. Why Use the Historical Approach?
• Why not common sense/intuition or authority?
• We use historical investigation in everyday life
• The present is always turning into the past
• We act on less than 100% certainty all the time
• Courts don’t require 100% certainty
• “All that Christianity asks of men on this subject, is, that
they would be consistent with themselves; that they
would treat its evidences as they treat the evidence of
other things…” (The Testimony of the Evangelists, Simon
Greenleaf, law professor at Harvard in the early 19th century
and foremost authority on common law evidence at the time)

9. Outline of the Historical Approach
• Point 1: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are primary
source documents according to the standard of any court
of law
• They didn’t come hundreds of years later from inebriated
monks
• Point 2: In those primary source records, Jesus claims to
be God in human flesh
• Point 3: In all of these primary source records, Christ’s
death and resurrection are described in great detail
• Point 4: Christ’s resurrection proves His deity

10. Point 1: The Primary Sources
• Calling them “primary sources”, not “Gospels”
• Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the best historical
documents about Jesus’s life
• Esp. Matthew and John are direct eyewitness testimony
• Even non-Christians like Bart Ehrmann know these are the
best sources
• Why do we think these documents are “good”?
• Why do we think these documents contain the truth and
not just stories made up by the eyewitnesses?

11. Transmission of the Documents
• Proximity in time of document and events it records
• Not having originals of even works of Shakespeare isn’t
considered a problem for literary scholars
• Comparison to works of antiquity
• How many copies do we have?
• No typewriters back then
• More copies, easier detection of errors
• Extra care is used when copying the literal word of God
• We admit there are sections we’re not sure about
• We can actually reconstruct the Gospels from the
writings of early Church Fathers

12. Superior Document Transmission
Author/Work Date
Written
Earliest
Copy
Time
Span
Copies
Caesar (Gallic Wars) 58-50 BC 900 AD 1000 yrs 10
Thucydides
480-425 BC 900 AD 1300 yrs 8
(Histories)
Catallus (Poetics) 84-54 BC 1400 AD 1500 yrs 3
Plato (Tetralogies) 427-347 BC 900 AD 1300 yrs 7
Tacitus (Annals) 100 AD 1100 AD 1000 yrs 10
Pliny the Younger
61-113 AD 850 AD 800 yrs 7
(Letters)
Seutonius (Life of
Caesar)
75-160 AD 950 AD 800 yrs 8
Homer (Illiad) 850 BC 400 BC 450 yrs 643
Matthew, Mark,
60-90 AD 200 AD,
140-265
Luke, & John
325 AD
yrs
15,000+

13. Why are the Documents Trustworthy?
Internal External
Witnesses character issues?
external
pressures?
Testimony
inconsistencies
or
contradictions?
archaeological
issues?

14. Internal Evidence
• Are the witnesses honest, or do they paint over their
weaknesses?
• They paint themselves as clueless, not even loyal, etc.
• Peter used by Satan, “an idiot” on the Mount of
Transfiguration
• Ability of witnesses to get it right
• Matthew was a tax collector & Luke was a medical doctor
• Are there a sufficient number of witnesses and are they
consistent?
• Consistency without collusion
• Contradiction or difference in presentation of evidence?
• Example of car accident
• Examples of contradictions in historical documents

15. Internal Evidence (cont.)
• Is what they write in conformity to our own experience?
• Does the testimony coincide with external
contemporaneous facts and circumstances?
• Think Sherlock Holmes or art dealers
• Endless references to customs of the day, circumstances of
the times, etc.
• “It would be difficult to select any place or period in the
history of nations, for the time and scene of a fictitious
history or an imposture, which would combine so many
difficulties for the fabricator to surmount…” (The Testimony
of the Evangelists, Simon Greenleaf)

16. External Evidence
• Hostile witnesses abounded
• Archaeologist and rabbi Nelson Glueck stated clearly that no
archaeological discovery has ever contradicted the Bible
• The “Pilate inscription”
• Timeline argument
• 64 AD – death of Peter & Paul under Nero’s persecution
• Acts makes no mention of the death of Paul
• If Acts was written after Paul’s death, it would’ve mentioned it
• Luke came before Acts (most scholars agree on the same
author)
• Mark and Matthew came before Luke
• Jesus died 30-33 AD
• So there’s a very small gap between the first Gospels and the
events they record

17. The Process of Telling the Truth
Event
Recollection
Portion selected to be
communicated
Symbols
Interpretation by listener
Reproduced from
The Defense Never
Rests, Parton

18. The Process of Lying
Event
Original Recollection
Distortion to serve purpose of witness
Comparison with prior statements of
witnesses
Estimate chance of discovery
Decision to continue with or revise
original story
Symbols
Interpretation by listener
Comparison with
belief or knowledge
of examiner
Comparison for
obvious, provable
discrepancies
Reproduced from
The Defense Never
Rests, Parton

19. Point 2: Jesus Claimed to be God
• Many non-Christians are shocked to hear this
• Many Christian denominations now deny it
• Scripture passages
• Luke 5:18-24 (healing of paralytic)
• John 10:25-33 (I told you I’m the Christ, but you don’t
believe me, and I give my sheep eternal life, and I and the
Father are one)
• John 20:28 (doubting Thomas)
• Normal people don’t say this!
• Still, “claims are cheap”

20. Point 3: Detail of Death & Resurrection
• Some claim Jesus swooned on the cross
• Physicians have investigated how people die via
crucifixion, and it matches with the NT accounts
• Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
article: “On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ” (1986)
• NT accounts also match what we know about Roman
society in that time period
• A. N. Sherwan White’s Roman Society and Roman Law in
the New Testament
• To reject the Resurrection is to reject the best data we
have on the topic – this is the scientific way to approach
it

21. Point 4: Christ Proved His Deity
• Why does the Resurrection in particular prove Christ’s
deity, and not some other miracle?
• Death is our fundamental issue
• Jesus claimed that His Resurrection showed His
power/victory over death
• Christ also understands evil on a very personal level
• Important to note when talking with people who have been
deeply hurt by evil
• The Gospels are focused on the Cross because it was the
main point of His ministry
• Jesus knew what His mission was

22. QUESTIONS?