Eyewitness Testimony and the Gospel Proclamation

So on Easter morning, I finished re-reading the four Gospels. I read through them slowly once before, as a non-believer, many years ago; and since coming to faith in Christ, I've read through them fast—not really reading them for all they're worth. This is the first time, as a believer in Christ, that I have read the Gospels slowly and carefully—not skimming through rapdily—allowing their words to sink in.

The one key common theme to all four Gospels appears to be the emphasis on the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ—as a fulfilment of the Scriptures—and the large amounts of eyewitness testimony surrounding those events: especially to His death and bodily resurrection. (A prime example is John 19:31-37, with the emphatic statement in verse 35.)

Indeed, when we look at Paul's definition of the Gospel in 1 Corinthians 15, all those elements are there: "...that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures" (verses 3-4). Paul then goes on to give a long list of witnesses who saw the resurrected Jesus Christ, who—as the Gospels make clear, and Paul expounds further in this chapter—appeared to them in bodily form: Cephas (Peter), the other of the twelve Apostles, five hundred witnesses at once, James, and then all the other apostles (verses 5-7). (Paul then goes on to say that last of all, Christ appeared also to him, though Paul never claims that he saw Christ in His physical resurrection body, in the same intimate way that the others did.)

The portions of the four Gospels preceding Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, seem mainly intended to lay the groundwork for what followed, and to give a fuller picture of who Jesus Christ was and is. But the heart is this Gospel kerygma, the same one summed up by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with Scripture, was raised on the third day in accordance with Scripture, and appeared to many witnesses.

When the Evangelists wrote their respective accounts of the Gospel, the Gospel preaching tradition would already have been well established: the heart of the Gospel message preached by the earliest missionaries in Judea, Samaria, and the wider world. Each Evangelist expanded the core message to reflect His particular interest and audience, and to add from personal memory (Matthew, John) or first-hand recollections (Mark, Luke), accounts of our Lord and Saviour's life before the events of His last week in Jerusalem.

Last week, Justin Taylor linked to an article by C. Michael Patton, "What Happened to the Twelve Apostles? How Their Deaths Evidence Easter." There is historical evidence—of varying degrees of reliability—that all of the twelve Apostles except for John the Divine (and including Matthias, who replaced Judas Iscariot) eventually died for their faith: a faith that was grounded in their claim that they witnessed firsthand Christ's bodily resurrection from the dead. It would have been one thing if they had believed someone else's testimony, but they stood by their claim that they themselves could attest to what had happened.

The power of the Gospels lie in the fact that they are, in fact, expanded, fleshed-out versions of the Gospel message, based on eyewitness testimony to the person and work of Jesus Christ.