How do we know the Gospel of John is reliable?

[coolduude]

Say I’m trying to convert an agnostic (so they don’t believe the Magisterium helped the Church pick John). How do we know the Gospel of John is reliable even though it was written 60 years after the events happened? How can we trust it? Any foresight into this?

Coolduude

 

[rocketrob]

The essence of your question is how do we believe in the authenticity of the Gospel of John without deferring to the Magisterium of the Church, and without belief that it is inspired Scripture from God. This will be a difficult question to answer without these basic building blocks of faith. Perhaps the Gospel of John is not the best place to begin with an agnostic, other than to use it as a basis for explaining Christian beliefs.

Nevertheless, people are ultimately drawn to the Truth, and one thing that has always struck me about this Gospel are the following very matter of fact statements:

…but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. (Jn 20:31)

This is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things, and who has written these things; and we know that his testimony is true. (Jn 21:24)

John has testified to the Truth, as did Jesus (Jn 18:37), so that we all may believe throughout the ages.

rocketrob

 

[Bookcat]

Say I’m trying to convert an agnostic (so they don’t believe the Magisterium helped the Church pick John). How do we know the Gospel of John is reliable even though it was written 60 years after the events happened? How can we trust it? Any foresight into this?

Coolduude

How do we know that the things written by those who were in WWII are reliable…now more than 60 years later…

John was there.

as well as the Holy Spirit!

 

[kepha1]

The real question should be: “How do we know the Gospel of John is inspired?”

The extant copies of Plato are 1200 years after Plato’s death, and no one questions it. For the New Testament it is mere decades giving the New Testament an unheard of historical and documentary veracity.

The bible is not a history book. It paints historical portraits, but it does not give historical accounts the way we are accustomed to reading texts or newspapers.

 

[kepha1]

The Bible is initially approached as any other ancient work. It is not, at first, presumed to be inspired. From textual criticism we are able to conclude that we have a text the accuracy of which is more certain than the accuracy of any other ancient work.
Next we take a look at what the Bible, considered merely as a history, tells us, focusing particularly on the New Testament, and more specifically the Gospels.

We examine the account contained therein of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Using what is in the Gospels themselves and what we find in extra-biblical writings from the early centuries. We then take that and together with what we know of human nature (and what we can otherwise, from natural reason alone, know of divine nature), we conclude that either Jesus was just what he claimed to be—God—or he was crazy.

Further, Christ said he would found a Church. Both the Bible (still taken as merely a historical book, not yet as an inspired one) and other ancient works attest to the fact that Christ established a Church with the rudiments of what we see in the Catholic Church today—papacy, hierarchy, priesthood, sacraments, teaching authority, and, as a consequence of the last, infallibility.
Christ’s Church, to do what he said it would do, had to have the character of doctrinal infallibility.

We have thus taken purely historical material and concluded that a Church exists, namely, the Catholic Church, which is divinely protected against teaching doctrinal error. Now we are at the last premise of the argument.
This Catholic Church tells us the
(2)Bible is inspired, and we can take the Church’s word for it precisely because the
(1)Church is infallible.

Only after having been told by a properly constituted authority—
(1)that is, one established by God to assure us of the truth concerning matters of faith—
(2)that the Bible is inspired can we reasonably begin to use it as an inspired book.

Dizzy? This SUMMARY of a summary should clarify:

1. On the first level we argue to the reliability of the Bible insofar as it is history.
2. From that we conclude that an infallible Church was founded.
3. And then we take the word of that infallible Church that the Bible is inspired.
4. This is not a circular argument because the final conclusion (the Bible is inspired) is not simply a restatement of its initial finding (the Bible is historically reliable),
5. and its initial finding (the Bible is historically reliable) is in no way based on the final conclusion (the Bible is inspired).
   What I have demonstrated is that without the existence of the Church, we could never know whether the Bible is inspired.
   I took most of the information fromhttp://www.catholic.com/library/Proving_Inspiration.asp

 

[Holly3278]

The Bible is a very reliable book. The early Church fathers trusted it and Biblical archaeology confirms that much, if not all, of the historical information in the Bible is true.

 

[simspt]

Say I’m trying to convert an agnostic (so they don’t believe the Magisterium helped the Church pick John). How do we know the Gospel of John is reliable even though it was written 60 years after the events happened? How can we trust it? Any foresight into this?

Coolduude

It seems to me that it really boils down to faith based on tradition and the early Church. Are not the Gospels the Evangelists wrote basically the tradition of the early Church with theological reflections especially with John? Christians existed before any NT book was ever written.