Every once in a while I trade emails with a reader who has become a friend. I’ll call him Dave.
Dave is a former Catholic seminarian, a kind-hearted man with an exceptional mind. I don’t think he’d call himself a Christian anymore, which I regret. But whenever we talk about religion, he’s perfectly civil.
A couple of weeks ago, Dave and I were debating the plausibility of Christian belief. He wrote to me with this argument:
As in all religions, there is a fear of dying. So (the Apostles may have reasoned) let us build on that fear and, borrowing from Genesis, convince people that their hope for an afterlife is real. Call it “Heaven.” It’s up there in the stars where it remains unverifiable. Thus, Christianity requires faith and good behavior to get there.
I’m sure you’ve been faced with this argument before. And I like it a lot. I wish skeptics used it more often. Because, when you think about it, this is really an argument for Christianity. In fact, it’s a better argument than you’ll find in ninety-nine percent of apologetical texts.
Whatever else you want to say about the Apostles—whether they were dupes or madmen or what—we absolutely cannot accuse them of lying. If nothing else, they believed every word they spoke. Their their lives—and deaths—make that abundantly clear.
From the day they were called by Our Lord, the Apostles never knew a moment’s rest. After His death, they wandered all over the known world—from Spain to Ethiopia—planting churches and preaching the Gospel. They were vagrants, fugitives. And not one of them ever recanted. Not one. Not a single one threw in the towel and go back to his old job, fishing or tax-collecting. On the contrary: all of the Apostles won the martyr’s crown.
Peter, Andrew, and Philip were crucified.
Bartholomew was flayed alive.
James the Just and Matthias were stoned and clubbed to death.
Thomas and Matthew were hacked to death.
Simon and Jude were cut in half.
John was boiled alive.
James the Great and Paul were beheaded.
The one exception is Judas Iscariot. And yet he, too, was a kind of witness. Whatever his faults, whatever his sins, Judas was a believer.
But if that’s not proof enough, think of St. Paul.
Paul began his career as a Pharisee, a brilliant and pious scholar. He devoted his life to suppressing Jesus of Nazareth’s messianic cult. A favorite of both the Jewish and Roman authorities, whole bands of soldiers were placed under his command. He was charged with eradicating this dangerous sect by any means necessary. And he was more than happy to put these Christians to death, if that’s what it took.
One day, Paul set out from Jerusalem to Syria. Somewhere along the way, this Jesus came to him in a vision.
When he left the Holy City, he was a zealous Jew. When he arrived in Damascus, he was a Christian—and not only a Christian, but an Apostle of Christ.
News of his defection spread quickly. Within three days, an attempt was made on his life. He survived only by being smuggled over the city walls in a basket. Paul spent the rest of his life traveling across Syria, Anatolia, Greece, and Rome. He was beaten, imprisoned, and shipwrecked. And, all the while, he was completely destitute: he payed for his voyages by working as a tentmaker.
Paul was beheaded by the Romans in 65 A.D. Just few decades earlier, he himself would have gladly condemned such a noisome heretic to death. That’s what you might call a stroke of irony.
Now, maybe you’re still not sold. You could argue that each of these (otherwise highly functional) men experienced a series of hallucinations—sometimes alone, sometimes in small groups, sometimes all together—involving this Jesus of Nazareth; and that these hallucinations somehow cohered into a single lucid metaphysical system, which eventually evolved into the most popular religion in human history.
What you cannot say is that the Apostles were lying. That’s not skepticism. It’s madness.
And if the mass-hysteria theory doesn’t cut the mustard, there’s only one other option: you must confess that the Apostles were telling the truth. Jesus of Nazareth really is the Messiah, the risen Lord, the incarnate God. And, to me, that seems a whole lot more plausible.
Seriously, think about it. Thirteen out of thirteen. No historian—Jewish, pagan, Zoroastrian, whatever—has ever claimed that a single Apostle breathed even a word of doubt about his faith.
I was thinking about all of this on Tuesday, the feast of St. John the Beloved, my favorite saint. In the prologue to his first epistle, John writes:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life…. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.
That your joy may be full. Here, John is echoing the words of Jesus, which he took down in the fifteenth chapter of his Gospel:
If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
This is the fullness of joy: to keep God’s commandments, and to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Every last one of the Apostles did exactly that. They lived and died by His words.
Say what you want, but they believed. And in my darker moments, their faith strengthens mine. I hope it does yours, too.
Semper gaudete!