Ashdotman: Daily Reflections

History, Eyewitnesses, and the Trinity in the Earliest Gospel Skeptics often say the New Testament is late, fragmented, or full of contradictions. Others insist the idea of the Trinity or the divinity of Jesus was a later invention, hammered out in dusty councils centuries after the fact. But when you actually trace the evidence, manuscripts, eyewitness testimony, the distinct purposes of the Gospel writers, and the early Christian witness, a very different picture emerges. What you get is not legend piled on myth, but a living tradition that is both historically grounded and spiritually coherent. Paul’s Letters: The Earliest Christian Writings The New Testament does not start with the Gospels. The oldest surviving documents are the letters of Paul, written in the 50s CE, only about 20 years after the crucifixion. In these letters, Paul is not inventing Christianity out of thin air. He is passing on traditions that were already old by the time he wrote. In 1 Corinthians 15:3–7, Pa...

This morning, as I looked at the old water stain left by a flood years ago, I began to see more than damage. In its shapes I could make out the form of a cross, a figure stretched upon it, even what looked like a wound in the side where the spear pierced Christ . Beside it, a boot-like mark that reminded me of Rome, the empire that carried out the crucifixion. In that moment, a verse came to mind: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:15) From the very beginning, the Bible promised that evil would not have the last word. The serpent would strike the heel, but the Messiah would crush the serpent ’s head. On the cross, Jesus bore the wounds, his heel was struck, his side was pierced, but those wounds became the path to victory. What looked like defeat was in fact the crushing blow to Satan ’s power of sin and death. Paul reminds us of this truth: “The God of peace wil...