This is the first of a 3-part series on the supposed contradictions between the Gospels of Mark and John. Pastor J.D. and I (Chris) recently taught an apologetics class in which this question came up, so we decided to dig a little deeper. Be sure to check out part 2 and part 3.
In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis offers up a now-famous apologetic defense of Jesus’ divinity. It’s known as the Lord-liar-lunatic “trilemma.” As he puts it:
“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great moral teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
There’s still a lot of currency to Lewis’ argument, but many Christians have found that it’s not as compelling to people these days. That’s because in the last generation or two, Western society has invented a new “L” to add to the list—legend. The idea here is that there was a man named “Jesus,” who said a bunch of great things, was incredibly wise and loving, and died a horrific death. But afterwards, some of his followers cooked up the resurrection and all the “God parts” to beef up their story. Boom: mischief managed.
The notion of the Gospel accounts being legend is incredibly prevalent today. One writer calls this the “ferociously obvious” fourth possibility (impugning Lewis as an idiot in the process). Especially among young people, I’ve found that it’s the most common objection to the divinity of Jesus.
There are a couple reasons that C.S. Lewis never introduced the idea of “legend” in his trilemma. First, it wasn’t a very prominent argument in Lewis’ day, whereas it is the primary line of reasoning for most skeptics today. And second, Lewis did address the idea of the Gospels as legends…just not in the famous passage above. (Our own reflections on that question, which borrow heavily from Lewis, can be found here.)
Since the idea of Jesus as legend is so prominent today, it warrants a closer look. One of the most common ways that skeptics attempt to show the “legendary” nature of Jesus is by showing the supposed inconsistencies between the various Gospel narratives.
In the following two posts, I’m going to show why I believe this line of reasoning doesn’t quite add up. To set the stage, though, I want to end this post with a brief summary of the Jesus-as-legend narrative. Here’s how the story goes:
The entire Bible is full of contradictions, and the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life are no different. Historically speaking, the accounts of Jesus’ life simply don’t add up.
Perhaps the biggest contradiction is between the depiction of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel and John’s Gospel. These “Jesuses” are so different that there’s simply no way they could be describing the same person.
In Mark, for instance, it says that Jesus “did not speak to them [the crowds] without a parable” (Mark 4:34). But the book of John doesn’t have any parables at all. Well, which is it?
And in the book of John, Jesus is constantly defending his divinity with “I am” statements. I am the way, I am the bread of life, etc. If the whole “I am” theme was so important to Jesus’ teaching, why doesn’t Mark have those statements at all?
In short, the versions of Jesus in Mark and John aren’t just different; they’re nearly opposite. In Mark, you find a religious teacher who doesn’t think he’s God. In fact, he’s continually telling his disciples not to tell others that he was the Christ (Mark 1:43-45; 4:11; 8:29-30). He’s shy, coy, human.
But in John’s Gospel, Jesus assumes center stage right away. He wants people to know about him, and he’s constantly telling people that he’s God. He’s triumphant, victorious, divine.
We can see this contradiction most markedly at the end of Jesus’ life. In Mark, Jesus’ last words on the cross are, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He’s defeated. But in John’s Gospel, Jesus’ last words are, “It is finished.” Not only is that a drastically different tone, but it’s a flat contradiction. Were his last words about being forsaken or about triumphing in the face of evil?
We can’t know all the details about the true Jesus, but we know this: what we have in the Gospels can’t be trusted.
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