How do we know? Part 1 - the Question

Why do all religions claim that they are the only way? How do we know which, if any, is right?

This is a very common question, one that is asked all the time. It’s also the one that gets a lot of Christians charged with bigotry and intolerance because we believe that Christ is the only way. But is it true that all religions claim to be the one true way? Not all, but certainly most. Why do they do it? I can’t speak for any other faith, but we Christians believe it because Christ said it. And why do we trust Christ? To borrow from Hollywood, “That, detective, is the right question.”*

But what is the answer? To answer this question, we must turn to history. You see, the Bible has stood the test of history, and it contains a huge number of verifiable (and verified, on many occasions) historical facts. The New Testament has never (to my knowledge) been proven wrong in any historical event it records. It is true that some of what it records has yet to be verified, but I believe it will, in time. Compare this to other holy books, like the Book of Mormon, that contain verified historical errors, and you find that what we have, in fact, are reliable primary source documents about, amongst other things, the life of Jesus. Four of them. They’re called by Christians “the Gospels”. Now, many tend to dismiss them or think of them as one document because they are bound together in one volume called the Bible, but that would be a mistake. Just because we collected the documents and published them together does nothing to undermine their historic reliability. Entire volumes have been written on whether what we have today is what was actually written, and a very strong case can be made in favour of their reliability, so I won’t attempt to do so here (the interested reader is referred The Evidence That Demands a Verdict, by Josh McDowell, for a very thorough examination or here for a thumbnail sketch).

What it boils down to are a series of historical facts that are, according to Dr William Lane Craig, almost universally accepted by Biblical scholars, religious and secular alike. These are: Christ’s crucifixion, His honourable burial by Joseph of Arimathea, the empty tomb three days later, and the post-mortem appearances to His disciples. Now, it should be noted, that although most scholars agree on these facts, they differ in their interpretation. For example, with regards to the empty tomb, some say the disciples stole the body, or they went to the wrong tomb, etc. These four events will take some time to thoroughly discuss, so what I intend to do over the next week or so is post on each of these in turn. I’ll leave it a couple of days between each for comments and for me to prepare the next post. But, in case you can’t wait that long, let me fill you in on how it ends – the hypothesis that Jesus was who He claimed to be (the Son of God) emerges as the most probable explanation for these events. And if He was who He claimed to be, then we have good reason to believe him when He said “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

P.S. For an extremely easy to read, cheap book on this topic ($6US), I recommend The Case For Christ by Lee Strobel. I will be drawing heavinly on this book for the subsequent posts.

Part 2: The Crucifixion
Part 3: The Empty Tomb
Part 4: Appearances and Transformations

* I, Robot, (2004)