John W. Campbell’s 2021 book, Cross Examined: Putting Christianity on Trial, presents itself as a systematic sceptical interrogation of Christianity, particularly evangelical belief. Campbell is a trial lawyer who adopts the posture of a cross-examining attorney, probing what he regards as the weakest points in the Christian case: the reliability of the Gospels, the historical plausibility of miracles, the coherence of resurrection belief, and the rational legitimacy of faith itself.
What is surprising about the book is that it offers nothing new. Campbell simply rehashes old arguments that have long been soundly rebutted and discredited. Furthermore, his arguments rely heavily upon philosophical assumptions that are rarely acknowledged and seldom defended.
Argument 1: The Gospels Are Late, Anonymous, and Theologically Biased Documents
Campbell’s Claim
Campbell argues that the Gospels cannot be regarded as reliable historical sources because they were written decades after Jesus’ death, are formally anonymous, and were composed with explicit theological agendas. As such, he treats them as faith documents rather than reliable historical testimony. The implication is clear: Campbell is claiming that sources produced by believers for religious purposes are inherently unreliable when reconstructing historical events.
Response
In regard to Campbell’s criticism of the several decades of elapsed time from the events themselves to the written record of the Gospels, this argument fails to appreciate three factors: the strong oral tradition that existed in first century culture which accurately preserved important stories, the evidence that the Gospel writers quoted from or used earlier non-extant written records, and the existence of many living eye-witnesses who could have refuted the Gospel accounts if they were false. These three factors provide a very strong basis for confidence in the historical reliability of the Gospels.
In regard to the Gospels being written by believers, this is not sufficient reason to discredit them. In the ancient world, many reliable historical reports were written by people with pre-existing sympathetic worldviews. Thucydides wrote to explain the Peloponnesian War, Tacitus wrote with moral and political objectives and Josephus wrote apologetically for Judaism, yet historians do not dismiss their works as non-historical or unreliable for that reason.
As Craig Blomberg notes:
“Having a theological purpose does not disqualify a document from being historically reliable. The question is whether the theology is grounded in historical events.”¹
Modern scholarship increasingly recognises the Gospels as ancient biographies rather than mythic or legendary literature. Richard Burridge’s landmark study demonstrated that the Gospels conform closely to Greco-Roman biographical conventions.²
Finally, Campbell’s charge of anonymity ignores the weight of historical evidence. While the Gospels do not explicitly name their authors within the text, external attribution is early, uniform, and uncontested. There is no competing ancient tradition attributing the Gospels to different authors—a remarkable fact if they were late, fictional creations.
Richard Bauckham concludes:
“The Gospel traditions are not anonymous community creations but are linked to named and known eyewitnesses.”³
Campbell’s literary scepticism toward the Gospels is unfounded and would, if applied consistently, eliminate most ancient sources for information about the ancient world.
Argument 2: The Gospels Contain Contradictions and Therefore Cannot Be Trusted
Campbell’s Claim
Campbell highlights differences between Gospel accounts, especially in the resurrection narratives, as evidence that the texts contradict one another. These discrepancies, he argues, undermine their credibility and suggest legendary embellishment.
Response
Firstly, Campbell completely ignores the commonly proposed reconciliation of apparent contradictions by evangelical scholars. Most or all of the supposed contradictions in the Gospels are easily reconciled.
Secondly, Campbell’s argument wrongly assumes that historical reliability requires verbatim agreement, an assumption rejected by professional historians. Multiple independent accounts of the same events almost invariably contain variation in detail, sequence, and emphasis – not because they are false or unreliable, but simply because different eyewitnesses choose to focus on different aspects.
As F. F. Bruce observed:
“Some divergence in detail is not the mark of unreliable witnesses, but of independent witnesses.”⁴
When the resurrection narratives are examined carefully, the core facts remain strikingly consistent:
- Jesus was crucified and buried
- The tomb was found empty
- Multiple individuals and groups experienced appearances of the risen Jesus
- The disciples were transformed from fear to proclamation
The variations concern secondary details, not the central claim. Indeed, the presence of such variations argues against collusion or literary fabrication.
Craig Blomberg writes:
“The Gospels agree remarkably well on the major contours of Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection, even while differing in minor details.”⁵
Campbell, who is NOT a qualified or experienced historian, appears to have no understanding of the technical criteria of reliability that is used to assess historical documents. In particular, he mistakes literary diversity for historical disintegration. His arguments are facile and are easily refuted by anyone who has a basic understanding of critical historical methodology.
Argument 3: Jesus Was Mythologised by His Followers
Campbell’s Claim
Campbell suggests that the resurrection narratives represent a process of myth-making in which the memory of Jesus was gradually embellished with supernatural elements. The resurrection, on this view, is symbolic language expressing the disciples’ conviction that Jesus’ cause lived on.
Response
This argument collapses under the weight of historical chronology. The earliest Christian proclamation already affirms bodily resurrection, not symbolic vindication. The pre-Pauline creed preserved in 1 Corinthians 15 predates Paul’s letter by decades and is widely dated to within a few years of the crucifixion.
Gary Habermas states:
“This creed is generally considered to be the earliest extant testimony concerning Jesus’ resurrection and dates to within a few years of the crucifixion.”⁶
Furthermore, mythologisation requires time and distance. Yet resurrection belief appears immediately, in the very city where Jesus was executed, among monotheistic Jews deeply resistant to pagan myth.
T. Wright emphasises:
“The early Christians did not invent the idea of resurrection; nor did they adapt it from pagan myths. They redefined it around the person of Jesus.”⁷
If Campbell’s theory were correct, we would expect vague spiritual language, not repeated insistence on physical resurrection, empty tombs, and bodily appearances.
Finally, Campbell completely ignores the major historical evidence for Jesus’ bodily resurrection: namely, the empty tomb, the missing body and the many and vehement eye-witness claims to have encountered the risen Jesus. Arguably the most significant of the latter is Saul the Pharisee, Christianity’s most hostile opponent whose claim to have encountered the risen Christ led to his dramatic conversion and life reversal. These are all historical facts, undisputed by even secular historians, and represent strong evidence for the veracity of the resurrection.
Argument 4: Miracles Are Inherently Implausible
Campbell’s Claim
Campbell adopts a broadly naturalistic argument, asserting that miracles violate both nature and common human experience and therefore cannot be historically credible. He maintains that natural explanations, however strained, are always more probable than supernatural ones.
Response
This argument makes a false leap of logic. While most things have a natural explanation, this does not exclude the possibility of supernaturalism. Furthermore, his underlying dogma that miracles are not possible is an unproved assumption for which he offers no robust argument.
John Earman, a philosopher of science, concludes:
“His argument against miracles is a failure because it begs the question against the possibility of miracles from the outset.”⁸
If God exists—and Campbell does not demonstrate otherwise—then miracles are not violations of natural law but expressions of divine agency. The Bible does not propose Christ’s resurrection as a common event, but as a singular act with unique historical context and evidence.
As N. T. Wright puts it:
“The question is not whether resurrections happen often, but whether this one happened once.”⁹
Campbell’s rejection of miracles is philosophical, not historical, and rests upon an unproven and biased assumption.
Argument 5: Faith Is Belief Without Evidence
Campbell’s Claim
Campbell portrays evangelical faith as an epistemic failure: a willingness to believe despite insufficient evidence, motivated by emotional comfort rather than rational judgment.
Response
Campbell’s portrayal of faith bears little resemblance to true biblical faith. He effectively sets up a straw figure to then demolish. By criticising and dismissing faith as mere wishful thinking, he has grossly misunderstood Christianity. In the Bible, faith is consistently grounded in testimony, evidence, and historical claims. For example, Luke explicitly states that his Gospel is based on careful investigation (Luke 1:1–4).
A. Carson writes:
“Faith in the New Testament is never portrayed as a blind leap; it is a reasoned response to God’s self-disclosure.”¹⁰
Thus, while Christianity does involve trust, it is trust informed by evidence. The resurrection is presented not as a private mystical experience but as a public event open to verification and falsification (1 Corinthians 15:6).
Alister McGrath observes:
“Christian faith is grounded in history, not in abstract ideas or private feelings.”¹¹
Campbell’s criticism of ‘faith’ bears little resemblance to true evangelical Christianity at this point.
Conclusion: The Failure of Cross Examined
When examined carefully, John W. Campbell’s Cross Examined proves less a devastating critique of Christianity than an over-confident rehashing of poorly informed Enlightenment scepticism. Its arguments depend upon unexamined philosophical assumptions, selective historical reasoning, and a consistent underestimation of early Christian evidence. At times, Campbell completely misrepresents Christian faith and, at other times, he deliberately overlooks the existing scholarly rebuttals and counter-evidence to his simplistic and outdated arguments.
The poor arguments in the book stem largely from the fact that Campbell is a trial lawyer, not a qualified historian. As such, he appears to have very little understanding of the nuanced criteria for assessing historical reliability. This results in facile arguments that might appear convincing to untrained lay people but which are easily dismantled. Sadly, however, his book has been warmly embraced by the atheistic community and held up as a devastating blow to Christianity.
Evangelical Christianity does not claim immunity from scrutiny. On the contrary, it rests its case on the public events of history—above all, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Campbell’s book fails to discredit that event in any significant way and is, in my opinion, a shallow and disappointing read that is not worthy of the attention it seems to have garnered in atheistic circles.
The subtitle to Campbell’s book is Putting Christianity on Trial, but, in the end, it is Campbell’s own arguments that are put on trial and found to be sadly lacking.
References
- Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (IVP Academic, 2007), p. 23.
- Richard A. Burridge, What Are the Gospels? (Eerdmans, 2004).
- Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (Eerdmans, 2006), p. 8.
- F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (Eerdmans, 1981), p. 89.
- Craig L. Blomberg, Jesus and the Gospels (B&H Academic, 2009), p. 93.
- Gary R. Habermas, The Historical Jesus (College Press, 1996), p. 152.
- N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (SPCK, 2003), p. 207.
- John Earman, Hume’s Abject Failure (Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 43.
- N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, p. 710.
- D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God (Zondervan, 1996), p. 543.
- Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction (Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), p. 101.