Jesus on Trial Conference. About Dr. Mike Licona's Lecture

On October 3-10, there was an apologetics conference, “Jesus on Trial” with the involvement of well-known authors and apologists. The goal of the conference was to strengthen the people’s faith in Christ, and especially to defend the reality of His resurrection. The conference’s attendees were primarily teens and youth who were fluent in English. For those who did not understand English, there was Russian translation that was made available.

The conference covered many useful subjects and for the most part, the conference was very useful. However, one of the Speakers, Dr. Mike Licona was proposing very dangerous teaching, which, instead of strengthening the authority of Scriptures, created doubts. Dr. Mike Licona is an associate professor of Theology at Houston Baptist University, and a president of Risen Jesus Apologetics Ministry.

Although any Christian who reads the Scriptures notices certain differences in the accounts of the life of Jesus, they look at these discrepancies not as contradictions, but as a harmony of the overall picture of redemption, that the authors of Scriptures recorded for us under the direction of the Holy Spirit.

Below is a list of a few examples that Mike Licona mentioned as evidence of Bible contradictions:

1. In John 19:16 it says that Jesus carried His cross the whole way, but other Gospels it says that Simon helped Him. (Matt. 27:32, М 15:21, Luke. 23:26).
2. 27:44 says that both robbers cursed Jesus, while Luke 23:39-43 says that only one was cursing Him
3. Question: how many women came to the tomb? Only Mary Magdalene (John 20:1) or other women also? (Matt. 28:1, Mark. 15:47, Luke. 24:10)
4. Did they see one angel, as Matthew and Mark describe it in Matt. 28:2-3 и 16:5, or two, as Luke and John describe it Luke. 24:4 and John 20:11?

These and other so-called contradictions an easily be explained. In fact, that is what is called the harmonization of Scriptures. Unfortunately, Mike Licona does not believe that this is the proper approach to Bible interpretation, and that is a big problem. He admits it himself that before he began his doctoral study, he believed that the Scriptures could be harmonized. Apparently, his professors convinced him otherwise. He says that by the end of his doctorate program he did not try to harmonize similar passages. Instead, he explained that in many of the ancient Roman biographies, he noticed that the authors used to describe the same event differently, although they had certain similarities. In the end, Dr. Licona concluded that the Scriptures were recorded in a similar manner. However, that is not a proper conclusion because the Roman biographies were recorded by sinful people and not by the men of God who were moved by the Holy Spirit, and that is his main problem. He completely excludes God’s role in writing of the Gospel, and you will see below how this conclusion is very dangerous.

Furthermore, he says the following:

«There are differences in the resurrection narratives, and the crucifixion narratives, and throughout the Gospels. But that does not mean that they are all wrong. They’re in the peripheral details. And so, I figured that if Jesus rose from the dead, it’s game, set, match; Christianity is true, period.

If Jesus rose from the dead, He did so in the month of April in the year 30 or 33, and the first Gospel – Mark was not written until some time later. Perhaps around year 50 to 70. Somewhere in that range. So let’s say at the earliest at the year 50, that still leaves about 20 years between when Jesus rose from the dead and between when the first Gospel was written. (14:50) Now if there were any errors in Mark, that would not mean that Christianity is false, because Christianity was true before Mark was written. All it would mean, and we would have to adjust and RETHINK WHAT WE THINK ABOUT THE BIBLE BEING DIVINELY INSPIRED OR WE HAVE TO RECALIBRATE OUR THINKING THERE OR HOW WE DEFINE INERRANCY, IF WE EVEN WOULD USE THE CONCEPT OF INERRANCY AT ALL. But we wouldn’t say that Christianity is false. Jesus rose from the dead. Therefore, Christianity is true. 

A lot of people when they see discrepancies between the Gospels and it really worries them. It shakes their faith, but it shouldn’t. (15:43). It can shake their faith on the view of scripture, sure. or their view of inerrancy or inspiration, and rethink what is meant by those terms. Or if the Scriptures even falls into those categories. But it wouldn’t mean that the Gospels are not historically reliable, and it would not mean that Jesus did not raise from the dead. That is the most important point.

In this paragraph, he admits it himself that he is questioning the inerrancy of Scriptures, and apparently this does not bother him at all!

In his lecture, Mike Licona says that the Gospels are to be classified as a genre of Roman biography, and to support his point of view, he provides a brief quiz:

Out of the following options, to which genre do the Gospels belong?

1. Horror Fiction
2. Poetry
3. Roman Biography 

Of course, given the options available, everyone will choose “c”. However, the Gospels are not a biography. The Gospels describe the history of redemption, that begins in the third chapter of Genesis with the fall of man, and is developed throughout the whole Bible. In addition, the Gospel of Matthew is primarily concentrated around five SERMONS of Jesus Christ, and the details surrounding these sermons:

1. Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7)
2. Teaching about Discipleship (Matt. 10)
3. Teaching about the Kingdom (Matt. 13)
4. Teaching about the Church (Matt. 18)
5. Teaching about the End-Time Events (Matt. 23-25)

However, the conclusion of Dr. Licona is that the Gospels are to be classified as Roman biographies.

BUT, being simple Jewish fishermen, the authors of Scriptures would not be basing their knowledge on Roman biographies, but according to the Jewish customs and understanding. Most likely, they probably never even seen a Roman biography. They were fishermen and not scribes and scholars of Greek classics and writing conventions. In addition, these biographies would most likely be very costly, and it is unlikely that simple fishermen would be able to get their hands even on one of these Roman biographies. 

The following is taken from the Q and A after the first lecture:

QUESTION: «What does it mean to harmonize the Gospels?»

ANSWER:

«It’s like four different people who see a car accident from four different angles and you compare their accounts and all their details fit. Trying to make all the details fit. Once we understand that the Gospel authors were following the literary rules, conventions for writing in the first century, then harmonization should not be our “go to””, it should not be our first step.

Let’s take the tearing of the veil in the temple. Some of the explanations get kind of crazy. Why not just take it simpler as one adjusted and moved it? Maybe Luke moved it just to be a little different and to alter it. But we see that the Gospel writers did that elsewhere.

He says here that Luke decided changed the details “just because”. However, why would he want to do that, if his claim in the opening of Luke is that he “having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out in consecutive order” (Luke 1:3). If his main purpose was careful investigation, then he wouldn’t be so flippant about changing what he knew to be the fact, and changed it to something else. Dr. Licona apparently thinks that the authors were so flippant about the Bible that they changed the facts as they saw fit; and that is seen in the apparent change by Luke that Dr. Licona thinks that Luke made after reading Mark and wrote differently in his Gospel account.

Dr. Licona does not consider the seriousness, and even the danger that the authors of Scriptures were under. Look what it says: “Everyone who hears the words of the prophecy  of this book; if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book” (Rev. 22:18-19). Dr. Licona is wrong therefore, to concluded that this type of editing is happening in the Gospels accounts. 

QUESTION: «Why do you think that the Gospel of Mark was written first?»

In this section Dr. Licona holds to the wrong position according to which he thinks that the Gospel of Mark was written first, and that the other Gospel writers, Matthew and Luke copied from his Gospel account, changed some words and content, and added something from other sources. In other words, the Gospel writers wrought as we would expect the authors of today to write, and not as men of God who were inspired by God and guided by the Holy Spirit. Response to this will be in the latter part of this response. 

ANSWER:

«Testimony of Papias who said that the sayings of Jesus were first. Matthew Mark and Luke are synoptic Gospels. Sometimes Luke differs from Matthew and Mark; where Luke differs Matthew seems to stay with Mark, Matthew and Mark are the same. Sometimes, Matthew goes off and has a different chronology but where he does this, Luke follows Mark’s Chronology. So it seems that Mark is this middle term. There’s always two of them together. This could be so if Mark was the primary one and Matthew and Luke were using Mark. There’s another reason, Mark’s grammar is very rough. After Jesus’ baptism, it says that in Mark the Holy Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness. The Greek term is ekballo which is the same word that is always used in the New Testament for casting out demons and this is the word that is used of Jesus and is an awkward term. When Matthew and Luke report the same thing, they say that the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness. Which one is more likely, that Mark changed “led” to “cast out” or that Matthew and Luke read Mark and said, “Umm, we could use a better term than that AND CHANGED THAT.»

In this part of the answer, Mike Licona plainly distorts the Greek language thinking that the listeners will not know that because of their lack of the knowledge of the Greek language. His claim that ekballo is always used in the New Testament only in reference to the casting out of demons is not true. Look how this word is used:

• М 7:4, when talking about taking out of the speck from the brother’s eye
• М 9:25, in reference to sending out the crowd before healing the daughter of a synagogue official
• М 9:38, in reference to the answer to prayer about, the Master sending out the workers to the harvest
• М 12:20, in reference to the battered reed He will not break off, and a smoldering wick He will not put out, until He leads justice to victory.»
• М 12:35, in reference to «the good man bringing out of his good treasure what is good...»
• М 13:52, «...disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a head of a household, who brings out of his treasure things new and old»
• М 15:17, in reference to food going out after digestion
• М 21:12, in reference to Jesus when He cast out the money changers and the sellers at the Temple
• М 21:39, in reference to the SON as described in an parable: «They took him, and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him».
• М 22:13, in reference to the guest at the wedding feast who was not dressed in wedding garments, that he was bound and thrown into the external darkness.

These are only the examples from one of the Gospels. However, based on the answer of Dr. Licona, the listeners were under the impression that Mark had bad grammar, and in another question, someone asked how can the Holy Spirit use bad grammar. However, the problem is not with the Holy Spirit, but in the fact that Mike Licona distorted the Greek language for his own purpose, in order to give more weight to his claim that the Evangelists had mistakes in their accounts.

He continues: What’s more likely, that Mark corrupted the Greek or that Matthew and Luke corrected the Greek? My answer to that is neither, but that Mike Licona, corrupted the understanding of the Greek language, because that was convenient for him, and that’s what he decided to do.

He goes on to say:

Sometimes you find stories that are verbatim, and you find similar traditions in Matthew and Luke that are not found in Mark. In that case they couldn’t be using Mark as the primary source. So either Luke is using Matthew, or Matthew is using Luke. Or Matthew and Luke are using another source which we no longer have. What do you call that source? THE German scholar that came up with that said, we will just call it “source” and the German word for source is Quelle so it’s just abbreviated Q

 In other words, instead of the harmonization approach to Bible interpretation, Dr. Licona decided that Matthew and Luke were copying Mark; while copying Mark, they changed some details or added something. However, when there is an obvious evidence that Matthew and Luke are in agreement with themselves but at odds with Mark, instead of admitting that his (Dr. Licona’s) theory is wrong, he simply comes up with a “source” which does not exist, and was never found by anyone in the history of the church. He then simply states that the majority of scholars accepts this, and apparently that is good enough for him. However, that is not a proper approach to Bible interpretation. These so-called scholars, are clearly not on the side of God.

The main conclusion of Dr. Licona is that after 20-30 years, it is impossible to remember the words of Jesus so well, and what is recorded in Scriptures are not the true words of Jesus word for word. He claims that there was one source that all of the Gospel writers had access to, but that source does not exist! Instead, the Gospel authors, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, recorded the words and narrative accurately to every minute detail. This will be covered below.

The main problem of Mike Licona is clearly seen in the answer to the next question.

QUESTION: If Gospel authors paraphrased, how can we figure out what Jesus actually said verbatim?

AMSWER:

«We can’t. We can’t. They weren’t trying to tell us verbatim what Jesus tried to say. They pretty much wanted to give us the gist of what Jesus said. Just compare the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and in Luke. You could see that they paraphrased Him. And how are they getting back to this decades later? Now Matthew maybe the closest we can get to from the Q material, maybe Matthew took down the Q material and put down Jesus’ teachings when Jesus was still alive. But remember, Matthew heard Jesus teach this on several occasions. Was he going to record it as He said it at Galilee, or how He said it in Jerusalem, Caprenaum, or Bethsaida, or Bethany, or the Mount of Olives? he probably gave us the overall gist of what jesus said in that Q material, as he recalled Jesus saying it, not verbatim. But close enough.

DETAILED RESPONSE TO THE ARGUMENTS OF DR. MIKE LICONA

Mike Licona tried to convince the audience of the genuineness of the Resurrection of Jesus on the basis of the testimonies of the Gospels, even though there may be certain discrepancies in the descriptions of the resurrection account. However, his conclusions based on these discrepancies, is very dangerous. There is a series of wrong conclusions that he makes.

First: while working on his doctorate dissertation, he allowed himself to be influenced by his professors. Instead of continuing to study how to better harmonize the less important details of the accounts, he clearly concludes, that these are contradictions and they should not be harmonized.

Second: on the basis of his doctorate research, he concluded that the Gospels are written in the genre of Roman biography. As was previously stated, it is unlikely that the Jewish fishermen could know or have access to Roman biographies, and were definitely not guided by that convention in writing their Gospel accounts. One additional problem is that these Roman biographies were written by sinful people, who also had their own personal agenda while writing those biographies. They may have been politically or personally biased. However, the Bible was written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Although Mike Licona claims that we do not know what the term inspiration means, or that we do not know what is meant by the process of the men of God being moved by the Holy Spirit when writing the Scriptures, but that is not the case. Let’s look at what we can know for certain. And by the way, when talking about the “genre quiz” where he provides only three options:

1. Horror Fiction
2. Poetry
3. Roman Biography

Why not add a few more options? For example:

1. Narrative
2. History of Redemption

With this selection, people would be more likely to select d or e.  

Here is what we can know for CERTAIN about the inspiration of Scriptures.

2 Tim 3:16: «All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness». 

Inspired – literally means – breath of God. It is to be understood as the words heard as if God Himself would audibly speak them. In this case, the words of the Bible are a representation of the Person and character of God. So what do we know about the character of God?

Titus 1:1-3: «Paul, a bond-servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of those chosen of God and the knowledge of the truth which is according to godliness, in the hope of eternal life, which God Who cannot lie, promised long ages ago, but at the proper time revealed His word in the proclamation with which I was entrusted according to the commandment of God our Savior».

We see that God is a God who cannot lie. That is why there is a huge problem for Dr. Licona’s view. Since the word are coming from the very mouth of God and if they have contradictions (as Dr. Licona claims), then there is a problem with the character of God.

Furthermore, as it relates to the dual authorship of Scriptures about which Dr. Licona said nothing. We see that in 2 Peter 1:21, God is the initiator of revelation, and not Mark or Luke, who “decided” to take the content, edit it, add to it, or to paraphrase.

2 Peter 1:21: «For no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God». 

This verse also speaks of the process of the Holy Spirit superintending the process of revelation.  

So what can we know for sure about the character of the Holy Spirit?

John 16:13-14:  «But when He, the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take from Mine and will disclose it to you».

Therefore, if there are discrepancies or contradictions in Scriptures, then this is a problem for God who apparently can lie and that is a huge attack on His character, it is a problem for the Holy Spirit Who is called the Spirit of Truth, and a problem for the Son, because as it says that the Holy Spirit will take that which belongs to Jesus and will reveal to the disciples.

We also need to understand that in the process of revelation, the Old Testament Prophets did not always prophesy concerning the things that they saw and then remembered. Instead, God revealed to them what is to come, and they were not first-hand witnesses (see 1 Peter 1:10-11). That is why the Gospel writers did not have to be eye witnesses in order to record God’s revelation. In their case, God allowed them to be eye witnesses as an added benefit.

Mike Licona says that at best, Mark or other Gospel writers wrote the Scriptures 20-30 years after the ascension of Chris. Once again, he makes an error of taking into account only the human memory and for the most part that is what he is emphasizing in his lectures. BUT!!! When talking about the promised Holy Spirit, Jesus says:

John. 14:26: «But the Helper, the Holy Spirit Whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and will remind you of all that I said to you.

This passage clearly indicates that the Gospels and all of their details were the result of the Holy Spirit reminding them. That is the reason why people could remember word for word what was said twenty years ago or more. This is consistent with the Scriptures, and there is absolutely no reason to go to such lengths as does Mike Licona in order to fabricate the existence of the Q source. The invention of the Q source was with the intention to cast doubt on the Word of God.

The next, and probably the most important refutation of Mike Licona has to do with the following question.

QUESTION: «If Gospel authors paraphrased, how can we figure out what Jesus actually said verbatim?»

ANSWER:

««We can’t. We can’t. They weren’t trying to tell us verbatim what Jesus tried to say. They pretty much wanted to give us the gist of what Jesus said…not word for word, but close enough»

Let’s look at what the Scriptures have to say about that?

Matt. 24:35: «Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away».

If what we have is not word for word of what Jesus said, but relatively good representation of the teachings of Christ, then this text is a huge problem. But no! This text demands for all of the words of Jesus Christ to not pass away. In other words, they are true and we can know exactly what Jesus said.

In addition, if “we cannot be sure about what He said word for word”, then what is the foundation on which we build our understanding of eternal life?!

The biggest problem is also that Jesus Christ predicted His death and resurrection on the third day (Luke. 13:33, Matt. 16:21, Matt. 17:22, Mk. 8:31)

Matt. 16:21: «From that time Jesus began to reveal to His disciples, that it was necessary for Him to go to Jerusalem and to suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and to be killed, and to be raised up on the third day».

If according to Mike Licona, we cannot be sure in the words of Jesus, then we cannot be certain in these words as well. If we allow that the Bible could contain the words that were not spoken by Jesus, or that the narrative have contradiction, then the unchurched person or unbeliever can ask a question: “How can we then have faith that the Bible contains the truth about His resurrection? After all, it is equally possible then that His disciples overexaggerated these facts as well, just like the authors of the Roman biographies did when they described the deaths of kings, generals, and more. If we question the Scriptures, then it becomes a matter of time before the people will stop trusting the Bible, and then stop reading it and obeying it. 

The teaching of Mike licona is dangerous and destructive not only for personal faith, but also for our churches. All of his so-called contradictions have many explanations which do not go against the character of God, and do not cast doubt on His Word.

In tempting the first man, the devil cast doubt on whether God really said what He said, and we all know the result of that. I am not saying that Mike Licona is the servant of Satan; he does a good job in defending the authenticity and the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. However, if he questions the words of Jesus or the words of the Bible concerning the narrative describing the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that is a dangerous path.

All of the so-called contradictions have an answer, and it is the harmonization and not the rejection of Scriptures that is the proper approach to Bible interpretation.

Andrey Zabolotnyy