How Can We Believe What the Gospels Say about Jesus?

Recently a reader named Gary submitted a Spiritual Conundrum to Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life in which he asked, among other things:

The Angel appearing to the Three Marys at the Sepulchre, by William Blake, 1803

I want to understand how you, from a Swedenborgian perspective, conclude that Jesus’ stories are true. How do we know Jesus actually rose from the dead when we don’t have any clear written documentation outside of these Gospels?

I’ll give Gary’s full spiritual conundrum in a moment. First, here are the basic points I’ll cover in response to his questions:

• The Gospels were written when people who knew Jesus were still alive.
• The four Gospels are each written with a different audience in mind.
• The Gospels agree about the most important parts of Jesus’ life.
• The Gospels are more focused on delivering a spiritual message than on historical accuracy.
• The spiritual meaning of the Gospels is what’s most important.
• Spiritual knowledge comes from revelation, not from science and history.

Let’s dig into it.

Can we really believe the Gospels?

Here is Gary’s full spiritual conundrum (lightly edited for publication):

I really appreciate your blog about Swedenborg and his perspectives on God.

Personally, I lean toward a more skeptical approach, but I find myself believing that our fundamental nature is “immaterial.” To me, what we directly see and hear is concrete, whereas the concept of “matter” itself feels abstract. For instance, if you take a box and strip away its color, texture, and form, what is actually left of the “material”? It seems to me that a material concept doesn’t truly make sense without our five senses. In contrast, sensory experiences, morality, happiness, and the internal drive to do the right thing feel much less abstract. This is why I tend to be a theist; I believe in an immaterial primary cause (e.g., a thought suddenly comes up into my mind)

However, I want to understand how you, from a Swedenborgian perspective, conclude that Jesus’ stories are true. How do we know Jesus actually rose from the dead when we don’t have any clear written documentation outside of these Gospels?

We know that the Gospels contain flat contradictions and that their narratives evolved over time. For example, there is a major geographic clash after the resurrection: Matthew claims the disciples were commanded to go north to Galilee to see Jesus, while Luke explicitly states they were ordered to stay in Jerusalem and not leave the city. Furthermore, the Gospels were written decades after the firsthand generation had passed.

Given these literal discrepancies and the late date of the texts, how can we historically justify or validate events like the empty tomb? Or the account in Matthew of the saints rising and walking into the city? I am genuinely interested in your thoughts on these historical and textual complexities.

Great question, Gary! And I’m glad you’re benefiting from the articles here.

Part of my response to your question is general knowledge. Other parts draw specifically on Swedenborgian beliefs.

When were the Gospels written?

First, the Gospels were not written decades after the firsthand generation had passed. They were written within the lifetimes of people who were present for these events. And the lifetimes of the authors of the Gospels easily overlapped with the lifetimes of people who knew Jesus personally.

Scholars generally place the writing of the Gospels from 65 AD to 100 AD. Mark is considered the earliest Gospel, written somewhere between 65 AD and 75 AD. John is considered the latest, written somewhere between 85 AD and 100 AD. The range of likely dates for the composition of Matthew and Luke fall between the two. There are scholars who believe in earlier and later dates, but these dates represent the predominant view. This means that the Gospels were written between three and seven decades after Jesus’ death.

These dates do fall within the lifetime of people who knew Jesus. Most of the twelve Apostles are believed to have been martyred, and to have died at a relatively early age. John, however, is commonly believed to have lived well into his 90s, or even to have reached 100 years old, and to have died of natural causes. He could have died as late as 100 AD, which is the later date at which the Gospel of John is generally believed to have been written.

Whoever the writers of these Gospels were, even if they were not the people they are traditionally attributed to, at minimum they would have been adults at the time they wrote them, meaning that their lives went back at least two or three decades before the Gospels were written. If they themselves were not alive at the time Jesus died around 30 AD, they would have known people who were.

In short, even from a more skeptical perspective that rejects, for example, the common Christian belief that the Gospel of John was written by the Apostle John, the lifetimes of the Gospel authors easily overlapped with the lifetimes of many people who had known Jesus. And it is perfectly possible that even the latest Gospel, which shows the greatest evidence of direct personal experience, could have been written by someone who was present for the events it describes.

Even if the more skeptical scholars are correct, and none of the authors of the Gospels were present for the events they are describing, they would have had access to people who were. They could have heard these stories directly from the mouths of people who had firsthand experience of them. This is reflected in the prologue to the Gospel of Luke:

Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative about the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I, too, decided, as one having a grasp of everything from the start, to write a well-ordered account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may have a firm grasp of the words in which you have been instructed. (Luke 1:1–4)

Four Gospels, four audiences

Another common view about the four Gospels is that they were written with four different audiences in mind. Here is the simplest version:

• Matthew was written for a Jewish audience
• Mark was written for a Roman audience
• Luke was written for a Greek audience
• John was written for a broad, universal audience

This isn’t the place to get into the details of exactly how and why the four Gospels were aimed at these four different audiences. However, the idea that they were written for different audiences does account for many of the differences in style and substance among the four Gospels.

For example, Matthew, being aimed at Jews, has an especially strong dose of saying how this or that event or saying of Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of the Messiah in the Hebrew Bible. John, meanwhile, is much less interested in that, and much more interested in establishing the broad universality of Jesus and his message.

If the question is why the Gospels disagree with each other on some basic facts, one of the answers is that they were speaking to different audiences, and therefore told the story differently, adapting it to the group of people it was primarily intended to reach.

The Gospels agree on the basics

However, the differences among the Gospels are mostly about relatively unimportant and peripheral aspects of the story.

Does it really matter how many times the cock crowed, or whether the Apostles went to Galilee or stayed in Jerusalem after the Resurrection? Skeptics place great weight on these differences, building them up into an argument that the Gospels disagree with each other right and left, and therefore are not trustworthy and cannot be true.

But much more remarkable is the fact that all four Gospels do agree on the most critical points, or at least do not contradict each other:

• Matthew and Luke, the two Gospels that have a birth story, agree that Jesus was born of a virgin.
• The four Gospels agree that Jesus was the Son of God.
• The Gospels agree on Jesus having had a relatively short ministry (about three years) starting when he was about thirty years old.
• The Gospels agree that Jesus gathered twelve core disciples around himself.
• The Gospels agree that Jesus’ ministry involved teaching and preaching, as well as miracles—especially miracles of healing.
• The Gospels agree that Jesus was crucified by the Romans.
• The Gospels agree that he rose again on the third day.

There are many more things that the Gospels agree on, but these are some of the most significant ones. And from a Christian perspective, including from a Swedenborgian Christian perspective, the most important of these are the critical events that must be true for Christianity to have a solid foundation. Specifically, the virgin birth, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus are fundamental to Christian belief. And on these critical events, the Gospels do not conflict with one another.

If some of the other things—things on which the Gospels don’t agree with each other—are not entirely accurate from a historical and biographical point of view, this is not critical. Most Christians don’t even bother with these relatively minor differences among the Gospels.

Even if the Gospels were based on firsthand accounts, different people commonly see the same events differently. It is not at all surprising that some of the details differ in the four accounts. In fact, the differences in the stories make it all the more likely that these were not carefully crafted propaganda pieces, as some skeptics believe, but were living stories told either by people who were there or by people who knew people who were there.

Delivering a spiritual message

For Christians, as for the original writers of the Gospels, the important thing is not their historicity and biographical accuracy, but their supremely important spiritual and divine message.

Today, we have a highly developed academic system that has rigorous standards for scientific, historical, and biographical accuracy. Everything is tested and vetted and sourced with these standards in mind. Academic books, papers, and articles written today are valued for and expected to provide solid, factually correct accounts of the subject matter they cover.

That’s not how things were for most authors throughout most of history. Yes, they used historical and biographical facts. But for most authors, these were simply a skeleton on which to hang a story that was meant to deliver a message and a viewpoint. If the subject was some famous or important person, the story would commonly be freely “embroidered” to paint the picture of that personage that the author wished to portray, whether laudatory or condemnatory.

The Gospels are even farther along that curve. Superficially, though they look like brief biographies of Jesus, that’s not really what they are. They are books intended to deliver a message about who Jesus was, and about the truth and eternal importance of the message he delivered. The events described, while not unimportant, were simply vehicles for delivering that spiritual and divine message.

For modern secular scholars, the Gospels are of interest mostly for what can be deduced about the life, times, and teachings of an influential figure believed to have founded the world’s largest religion. Such scholars seek material facts about history and biography.

But for Christian believers, historical and biographical facts are distinctly secondary—just as they were for the original authors of the Gospels. What’s important to believers is the message of salvation and eternal life that the Gospels deliver. Compared to that, how important is it whether the Apostles stayed in Jerusalem or went to Galilee after the Resurrection?

A few specifics

It would not be possible in this article to cover all the issues and discrepancies people see in the Gospels. But before moving on, I’ll take a crack at the ones Gary mentions in his conundrum.

Jesus’ resurrection

How do we know Jesus actually rose from the dead when we don’t have any clear written documentation outside of these Gospels?

Of course, secular scholars will flatly deny that Jesus rose from the dead. It does not fit into their materialistic belief system.

But from a spiritual and Christian perspective, it is not a stretch to believe that if Jesus was “God with us” (Matthew 1:23), he had power over death just as God has power over everything.

Further, Jesus’ resurrection is something the Gospels unanimously agree upon. And since the Gospels were all written within the lifetime of people who were alive and could have been present in 30 AD, unless we want to reject the truth of the Gospels altogether, for people of faith this is one of the easiest things to believe.

If there were no truth to it, would four different writers really have the temerity to make such a bold and even preposterous claim during the lifetimes of people who were alive when the Resurrection was supposed to have happened? If what they wrote was false, it would have been met with a chorus of denials from people who were there. Instead, the reality of Jesus’ resurrection was universally believed among the early Christians, many of whom were either alive at the time or knew people who were.

Galilee or Jerusalem?

For example, there is a major geographic clash after the resurrection: Matthew claims the disciples were commanded to go north to Galilee to see Jesus, while Luke explicitly states they were ordered to stay in Jerusalem and not leave the city.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus first appears to his followers in Jerusalem, then later appears to them again Galilee (see John 20–21). The accounts in Matthew and Luke are therefore generally seen, not as contradictory, but as selective reporting aimed at delivering specific messages:

• Matthew focuses on Galilee to represent the spread of the Gospel to the Gentiles.
• Luke focuses on Jerusalem to emphasize Jerusalem as the center from which the Gospel spreads.

This might seem counterintuitive given that Matthew is seen as a Gospel for the Jews, whereas Luke is seen as a Gospel for the Greeks, who were Gentiles. But another way to look at it is that Matthew was emphasizing to Jewish people that the Gospel is not only for Jews but for Gentiles also, whereas Luke was emphasizing to non-Jews that Jerusalem is the center and source of this Gospel.

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) does not comment on either commandment (to stay in Jerusalem or to go to Galilee after the Resurrection). However, his understanding of Galilee and Jerusalem are compatible with the idea of Galilee as representing the Gentiles, and Chistian outreach into the Gentile world, and of Jerusalem as the core of the church—specifically, in Swedenborg’s interpretation, the church’s core beliefs and teachings, from which the broader message goes out.

The empty tomb

How can we historically justify or validate events like the empty tomb?

Since I already covered the basis and believability of the Resurrection above, here I’ll comment on the “historically justify or validate” part.

The simple answer is that we can’t historically justify or validate any of the miraculous events of the Gospels. No secular historian will accept as historically accurate accounts of events that violate the known laws of physics and biology, and require spiritual causation and reality—which, being secular materialists, they reject altogether.

And spurious Catholic relics to the contrary notwithstanding, there is no scientific evidence that the miraculous events in the Gospels ever happened—and there never will be.

I’m sorry to say that people who require historical and scientific evidence before they will believe will never become believers. It is only from revelation that we can have any knowledge about spiritual things at all. We’ll get to that in a few minutes.

Saints resurrected?

Or the account in Matthew of the saints rising and walking into the city?

This event is told only in the Gospel of Matthew. In the narrative it comes right after Jesus’ death, though it says that the resurrected people went to Jerusalem after his resurrection, which was a couple days later by our modern reckoning of days. Here it is:

And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people. (Matthew 27:50–53)

Traditional Christians read this literally. They believe that many “saints,” or holy people, were raised from their graves physically, and went to Jerusalem after Jesus’ resurrection. Since this is the only mention of them in the Bible, there are various opinions and conjectures about what happened to them afterwards.

Swedenborg, however, views this occurrence as representing events that took place in the spiritual world. He also says that it is about our spiritual rebirth. Along the way, he almost casually dismisses the idea that there was a bodily resurrection. I’ll let him speak for himself, in two extended passages from Apocalypse Explained, his massive unfinished and unpublished (by him) commentary on the book of Revelation. Unfortunately, it is available only in the old, archaic English translations:

It is related in Matthew:

That after the passion of the Lord the tombs were opened, and many bodies of those that slept coming out of their tombs went into the holy city, and appeared to many (Matthew 27:52, 53).

That “the tombs were opened, and many bodies of them that slept appeared,” has a similar signification as above in Ezekiel, where it is said that “Jehovah was to open the sepulchers and cause them to come up out of the sepulchers,” namely, the regeneration and resurrection of the faithful unto life; not that the bodies themselves that lay in the tombs rose again, but that there was this appearance, that regeneration and resurrection to life from the Lord might be signified. Furthermore, these same words mean those who in the Word are said “to be bound in the pit,” whom the Lord delivered when He had finished the whole work of redemption. For many of the faithful could not be saved until the Lord had come into the world and subjugated the hells; in the meanwhile they were detained in the places called “pits” until the Lord came, but were delivered by the Lord immediately after His coming. These pits were represented also by the “tombs” that were opened, and those who were in them by those that “slept,” who after the Lord’s resurrection, as it is said, “appeared to many in the holy city;” “the holy city” was Zion and Jerusalem, but by them heaven is meant, to which they were raised up by the Lord, for both Zion and Jerusalem were profane rather than holy. This makes evident what that miracle and that appearance represented and signified. (Apocalypse Explained #659:15)

And:

The same was represented by:

The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints that slept were raised up, and coming forth out of their tombs after the Lord’s resurrection entered into the holy city and appeared unto many (Matthew 27:52, 53).

That the tombs were then opened and the saints who had previously died came forth and entered into the holy city and appeared to many, represented the resurrection of those who had been kept by the Lord in places under heaven until His coming into the world, and who after His resurrection were taken therefrom and raised up into heaven. This took place and was seen by those who were in Jerusalem; nevertheless it was representative of the resurrection of those here and before described. For as all things of the Lord’s passion were representative, also that the veil of the temple was rent in twain, the earth quaked, and the rocks were rent (Matthew 27:51), so was this, that they came forth from the opened tombs; therefore it is added that “they entered into the holy city and appeared there;” for “Zion,” which is here meant by “the holy city,” still represented heaven where the Lord reigns by His Divine truth (on this signification of “Zion” see above, n. 850); and that city, together with Jerusalem, was at that time profane rather than holy, so that it was even called “Egypt and Sodom” in Revelation (Revelation 11:8). But it is called “holy” on account of its representation and consequent signification in the Word. (Apocalypse Explained #899:10)

Based on these and related statements elsewhere, my conclusion is that there was no bodily resurrection of people’s physical bodies from their graves, and that the people in Jerusalem who saw these “saints” were seeing them with their spiritual eyes, not with their physical eyes. This event was symbolic in character, and not a literal event even in the spiritual world. Nobody literally came out of their graves.

What Swedenborg wrote about people being in pits is too involved to get into here. But basically, there were people in the spiritual world who couldn’t go to heaven until after the Lord’s advent, at which time he freed them, and they were finally able to leave their temporary homes in the world of spirits below heaven, and move on to their eternal homes in heaven. The “tombs” represent their temporary homes in “the pit” or “the lower earth” in the spiritual world, and their “going to the holy city” represents their being raised up to heaven at last.

That’s more than you ever wanted to know about “the saints rising and walking into the city”!

The spiritual meaning is key

And this is where my responses become specifically and uniquely Swedenborgian.

Here is Swedenborg’s definition of “the Word” (what we more commonly call “the Bible”), which he published in three places in his theological works:

The books of the Word are all those that have an internal sense; books that do not have it are not the Word. (Arcana Coelestia #10325, New Jerusalem #266, White Horse #16)

He goes on in each of these three places to list all the books in the Old and New Testaments that are part of the Word. For more on this, and for Swedenborg’s full list, please see: “Why Isn’t Paul in Swedenborg’s Canon?”

In the New Testament, the only books that make the cut are the four Gospels and the book of Revelation. For our current purpose, what this means is that Swedenborg sees the Gospels as having a deeper spiritual meaning all the way through. It is this spiritual meaning that makes them part of the Word of God. Although Swedenborg generally accepts the Gospels as describing actual events, his greatest focus is on the spiritual meaning of the events described in the Gospels, and of the words and actions of Jesus.

Looked at through this lens, although some events such as the Virgin Birth, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection must have actually taken place for Swedenborgian belief to hold, for the most part, it doesn’t much matter whether the accounts are precisely accurate historically, because it is the spiritual meaning of the events described in the Gospels that matters most.

Swedenborg never got around to providing a continuous, detailed explanation of the spiritual meaning of any of the Gospels. However, he did explain individual verses and stories, and some whole sections of the Gospels, in many places in his writings. Based on these and related explanations, New Church (Swedenborgian) authors have written commentaries giving a spiritual meaning for the four Gospels.

That would go far beyond what we can cover here. It is enough to know that all the seeming “contradictions” and “discrepancies” in the Gospels are there because they carry a deeper spiritual meaning that is an essential part of the Word of God being the Word of God, and not just a human history or biography.

Just as the four Gospels are traditionally seen as aimed at different audiences, so in their spiritual meaning they speak of different parts of our own character, and different stages in our process of spiritual rebirth. Spiritually speaking, the “discrepancies” in the Gospels are simply different angles and perspectives on our highly complex and varied spiritual life and relationship with God.

Spiritual knowledge comes from revelation

It is very common for people to want historical and even scientific evidence of the supernatural events that are described in the Bible, and of God and spirit generally, before they are willing to believe that they are real. Unfortunately for people who think this way, there is no scientific and historical evidence outside of the holy books themselves that God and spirit are real, and that any of these miraculous events took place.

Scientific and historical sources can say only that there is a common human belief that God, spirit, and miracles are real. They can’t tell us whether these things actually are real.

In that realm, human science and history are the wrong tools for the job. Science and history are the study of material reality and material-world events. God and spirit are not material. Therefore science and history are not the right disciplines to use in studying God and spirit. As Swedenborg wrote:

Without revelation from the divine, we could not know anything about eternal life or God, still less about loving and believing him. We are born in complete ignorance, and then, from the things in the world around us, we learn everything that shapes our understanding. Also, right from birth we inherit everything harmful, which comes from selfish and materialistic loves. The pleasure that comes from loving these things controls us all the time, and this encourages the kinds of things that are completely against the divine. This is why we do not know anything about eternal life. So there had to be revelation for us to learn about it. (The New Jerusalem #249)

In short, it is only from revelation—meaning from information conveyed to us by God from the spiritual world—that we can know anything at all about God and spirit. Swedenborg even says, after talking about various spiritual phenomena, that:

The truth of all this cannot be seen by anyone who relies on the light of natural evidence, for such light does not yield a person any knowledge of the laws of Divine order. (Arcana Coelestia #10779)

Information and confirmation about supernatural events such as God coming to earth as a human being in the person of Jesus Christ can come only from revelation—i.e., from the Bible, and specifically from the Gospels. We should not expect to find such information in separate, non-religious sources. Such sources might be able to provide some supporting information for people who already believe, but they can never be the source or basis of belief in God, spirit, and God’s appearances and actions on behalf of us here on earth.

Really, the question is not whether we have sources of information about these things. It is whether we will accept the sources of information we do have, given that they are not material and scientific sources, but spiritual and revelatory sources. For more on this, please see, “Where is the Proof of the Afterlife?”

Our fundamental nature

I will wrap things up by returning to Gary’s opening thoughts:

Personally, I lean toward a more skeptical approach, but I find myself believing that our fundamental nature is “immaterial.” To me, what we directly see and hear is concrete, whereas the concept of “matter” itself feels abstract. For instance, if you take a box and strip away its color, texture, and form, what is actually left of the “material”? It seems to me that a material concept doesn’t truly make sense without our five senses. In contrast, sensory experiences, morality, happiness, and the internal drive to do the right thing feel much less abstract. This is why I tend to be a theist; I believe in an immaterial primary cause (e.g., a thought suddenly comes up into my mind)

This is another way of saying what Swedenborg and others who have experienced the spiritual world commonly say: that the spiritual world is much more real than the material world.

From the perspective of materialistic science, matter and material things are the ultimate reality to be studied. Everything, including consciousness itself, is traced back to physical roots and causes. The brain is believed to produce consciousness, though how it does so is still a complete mystery to scientists.

However, as we actually live our daily lives, material things matter considerably less than mental and emotional ones. People who live in grand mansions can be miserable because they are alone and lonely or are in toxic relationships. People who live in glorified shacks can be very happy if they have companionship, friendship, and a good community of people around them.

It is our human interactions that are most real to us. Our material circumstances, as important as they are as a foundation for our life, are distinctly secondary, even for people who put them first in their own minds.

That’s because, as Gary is inclined to believe, our fundamental nature is immaterial. Or to state it positively, our fundamental nature is spiritual.

We live temporarily in the material world. It serves as a womb where we are conceived both physically and spiritually, and where we grow and develop into a person who is ready to be born into the spiritual world, which is our true and eternal home.

If we view the Gospels and their stories about Jesus in this light, they take on a whole new meaning. These are not stories about historical events that took place two thousand years ago. They are stories about our true nature as spiritual beings, and about the true purpose of our life here on earth.

When we read the Gospels from this perspective, questions of historical accuracy and consistency fade into insignificance. The real message of the Bible is spiritual. People who read it with this in mind will not trifle with the trivialities that secular Bible scholars engross themselves in. Instead, they will see in its stories “the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).

This article is a response to a spiritual conundrum submitted by a reader.

Here is a shorter video version of this article:

For further reading:

• Can We Really Believe the Bible?
• The Logic of Love: Why God became Jesus
• Where is the Proof of the Afterlife?
• Why Isn’t Paul in Swedenborg’s Canon?
• Eat My Flesh, Drink My Blood