No.33 Referenced from ~ Part1 - Chapter 4 - Consideration 4

The reality of the historical Jesus-R

According to the view of modern theologians who seek academic reliability, there is no doubt about the reality of the historical Jesus-T that they derive. If this is the case, there should be no reason to consider the historical Jesus-R, which is set as the cause of the writing of the Gospels, as non-existent.

This is because "correct deductive inference is truth-preserving." As long as modern studies of Jesus maintain the correctness of the inferences, what is supposed to be true about the existence of Jesus in the consequent of the "historical Jesus" means that the existence of Jesus was also supposed to be true from the very beginning, that is, in the Gospel materials that they place as the antecedent of their inference. In correct inference, an initial truth or falsehood cannot be reversed.

In the first place, in the structure of [historical Jesus-R —— Jesus of the Gospels —— historical Jesus-T], it can be said that the reality of the historical Jesus-T had to be considered to extend beyond the "Jesus of the Gospels" which is the basis for its recognition, and to the historical Jesus-R who is the basis for the existence of the Gospels.

A affirming the consequent is usually an inference in which the truth or falsity of the antecedent is uncertain, but in this inference, the antecedent "the historical Jesus-R" and the consequent "Jesus of the Gospels" are the same entity, and are therefore in an equivalence relationship in which if one is true, the other is also true, and if one is false, the other is also false.