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Is Christianity for the “weak-minded?” “Is the Bible really true?” During this three week sermon series, Greg refutes common questions people have about the reliability of the Gospel accounts (specifically Luke) of Jesus. He addresses 2 common arguments (theories) that scholars use agianst the reliability of the Gospels. The Conspiracy Theory, which states that the Gopels are intentionally false, and the Legendary Theory, which maintains that though the authors of Luke weren’t consciously lying and trying to deceive people (they genuinely believed what they where saying), they were just wrong about essential things like Jesus’ being both the messiah and God!
Greg introduced the Book of Luke by first providing some context for the Gospel. Then he launched into a big question that occurs to many who read the Bible in general: “Is this true?” In other words, is the Gospel about Jesus that Luke researched and presents true? And to get at this he broke it down as follows: either it is true or it is false. If it is false, then it can be false in one of two ways: intentionally false (Conspiracy Theory) or unintentionally false (Legendary Theory). This week’s message focused on showing how irrational the Conspiracy Theory is.
In this message, Greg explains the “Legendary Theory.” This theory maintains that though the authors of Luke weren’t consciously lying and trying to deceive people (they genuinely believed what they where saying), they were just wrong about essential things like Jesus’ being both the messiah and God! They were not trying to deceive, but they themselves were deceived, according to the Legendary Theory.
In the last two weeks Greg spent time showing the flaws in the “conspiracy theory” and the “legendary theory.” This week he addressed another theory that secular scholars offer to answer the question: “What happened to produce the Gospel accounts?” The resurrection could have been a hallucination. Greg had five responses to counter this theory.