Andreas Köstenberger is senior research professor of New Testament and Biblical Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, and author (with Justin Taylor) of The Final Days of Jesus. Today, we ask Andreas about how understanding the Gospel accounts impacts our understanding and experience of Holy Week.
1. Many Christians have a hard time synthesizing the Gospels' accounts of the Passion. How does understanding the chronology of that week help us?
I think you're right that sorting out all the chronological issues during Jesus' final week can be daunting. The nice thing is we have lots of information in all four Gospels. The problem is we need to see how all the different pieces of the puzzle fit together. That's true especially of the resurrection narratives that show Jesus appearing to at least 11 different individuals or groups, but no one Gospel has all of these resurrection appearances. So we need to take the time and make the effort to correlate the wealth of information we're given in Scripture. That's one of the main reasons we put together The Final Days of Jesus.
To speak to the second part of your question—we wanted to give people in the churches and in their families a tool to read the story of Jesus' final week in the Gospels as a coherent narrative so they can better understand why Jesus was crucified and that the biblical stories of his resurrection appearances are historically reliable.
2. What is the most misunderstood aspect of the last week of Jesus?
Wow, that's tough—picking just one. Several come to mind. Why did Judas betray Jesus? Why did the crowds hail Jesus as the messianic king on Palm Sunday and then cry “Crucify” a few short days later? But probably the most misunderstood aspect of Jesus' final week is why he died on the cross. Bart Ehrman, chair of the religion department at UNC-Chapel Hill, just published a book, How Jesus Became God, in which he says Jesus was just a Galilean peasant, an itinerant preacher, who went about proclaiming that God would soon bring history to an end through the “Son of Man,” a mysterious end-time ruler (not himself). Then, according to Ehrman, Jesus, a first-century Jewish apocalyptic, was put on a cross by the Romans. Well, this kind of theory is hardly new; the German theologian Albert Schweitzer proposed a similar theory over 100 years ago. But, clearly, that's not what the Bible says.
What does the Bible say? That's what we're interested in, from a vantage point that affirms the trustworthiness of the biblical record.
3. Why is it important to harmonize the Gospels?
It's important to harmonize the information because Christianity is a historical religion, and as such is centered around a person—Jesus of Nazareth—who was born, lived, died, and was raised again around 2,000 years ago in first-century Palestine.
I don't think our faith is just an affirmation of a set of doctrines; it includes adherence to the biblical, historical account of Jesus. Because we have four Gospels, not just one of them, we have to connect the dots in order to reconstruct a credible historical portrait of what happened. Our faith demands no less. An analogy may help here. What we're attempting to do by harmonizing the Gospels the way we do in The Final Days of Jesus is what people do in a variety of settings, such as in a court of law, every day. Essentially, we have four records of Jesus' final week, two by people who claim to be eyewitnesses (Matthew and John), and two others who claim a special relationship with eyewitnesses (Mark and Luke). Our task is to see how these eyewitness accounts cohere on a historical level.
4. What advice would you give Christians in preparing their hearts this Holy Week?
Let's not succumb to busyness or be so anti-liturgical that we react against traditional ways of Easter observance and miss out on the opportunity to reconnect with the heart of our faith.
Take Easter week as an opportunity to reflect on the essence of your faith, on what the gospel is all about. Make sure you understand the key elements of the biblical story of Jesus' final days on earth so you can pass it on to others, especially to the next generation. That's why I'm particularly excited to use The Final Days of Jesus as a tool with my own children as we read through what happened each day of Easter week – Palm Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc., and discuss the significance of all the events culminating in Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. We watch the videos posted on the Crossway website, we read the relevant Scripture passages and the associated commentary, and we spend time talking about what Jesus did for us and thanking him for it in prayer. Let's not succumb to busyness or be so anti-liturgical that we react against traditional ways of Easter observance and miss out on the opportunity to reconnect with the heart of our faith—Jesus crucified, buried, and risen (1 Cor 11:3-4).
5. As pastors prepare to preach and teach on Easter—perhaps the most-attended Sunday of the calendar—how would you counsel them?
Great question. Justin and I have written a short piece, “5 Errors to Drop From Your Easter Sermon,” that dispels some misconceptions related to the Easter story and also gives some constructive suggestions on how to get the Easter story right.
As one who loves John's Gospel, I would urge pastors to balance the “suffering” aspect of the cross with the “glory” part.
As one who loves John's Gospel, I would urge pastors to balance the “suffering” aspect of the cross with the “glory” part. Yes, tell people how much Jesus had to suffer to provide salvation for us on the cross. He did so at great cost. At the same time, tell people how it was glorious for Jesus to die for us, and how he came to bring us abundant life and to introduce us to the glory he had with the Father before the world began.
So, in the end, the Easter message is not a message of gloom and doom, it's a joyful message of salvation and new life in Jesus that we should celebrate and shout from the rooftops! That's what the gospel is all about.
Daniel Darling is vice-president of communications for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Activist Faith.
