Tag: Christianity

JF wonders how to handle the historical angle:

I am a new reader to your blog (better late than never!) and I must say I am very impressed. I have your book “The Irrational Atheist” on my wishlist and am looking forward to reading it when the time comes. Quick summary of my worldview: Baptized as a Catholic, bordered on Deism/Agnosticism in my teens/young adulthood and then re-embraced Christianity after reading “Mere Christianity” by C.S Lewis, combined with a personal spiritual experience. I have now decided to return to the ranks of the RCC as I now approach my 30’s. After finding out the horrific crimes of State Atheism in the 20th century, and realizing the absolute bankruptcy of metaphysical naturalism in regards to objective morality and purpose, I lose no opportunity to challenge the few atheists I know and take them to task on their often narrow views. I have been successful when it comes to monotheism vs atheism. No problems there. The one chink in my armour, so to speak, is when discussing Christianity, and that is why I have come to you. While I am a mere amateur at this, you have ten times the intellect that I do and have sent the mightiest New Atheist arguments packing with the tail between their legs. So here is my problem and question for you and the purpose of this email:

How do/can I argue that Jesus Christ is the Son of God/Divine when the historicity, authorship and authenticity of the Gospels are often challenged or even dismissed by some scholars? Another example of this challenge is that many atheists (or non denominational monotheists, like my fiancee) champion the supposed fact that none of the Gospels are actual eyewitness accounts, but second or third-hand re-tellings of past events, often with gross embellishment and fabrication? Many scholars share this opinion and I find it difficult to refute. If one takes the Gospels (especially that of John) as an actual eye witness testimony of Jesus, then of course (thanks to the Lewis Trilema) one is almost forced to admit him to be the Son of God. But if someone does not consider the Gospels historically accurate, I have no way of arguing that Jesus was who he said he was.

First of all, you must recognize that they have just handed you a gigantic sledgehammer with which to smash their feigned rationale for their lack of faith. It is only the historically illiterate and the willfully dishonest who consider the Gospels to be historically inaccurate. There are three things to keep in mind. 1) If it were not for the supernatural claims, not a single historian would cast any aspersions on either the Old or New Testament. 2) As an archeological guide, the Bible has repeatedly proven to be far more accurate than the current state of archeological science. There are a host of examples where scientists thought to have disproved the Biblical history, such as the nonexistent “Assyrian” and “Hittite” empires, only to learn to their chagrin that they were incorrect and the Bible was supported by the archeological evidence. The relatively recent discovery of a Bronze Age kingdom in Israel which corresponds with the Davidic kingdom is another, more recent example of this phenomenon. 3) Rejecting the Bible as a historically reliable document on any of the grounds usually cited requires rejecting most of history’s most famous figures, including Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great.

For example, the primary source on Alexander the Great, Arrian, was writing as a second-hand source more than 400 years after Alexander. All four Gospels, on the other hand, were clearly written within 70 years of Jesus Christ’s resurrection. “The Gospels are dated traditionally as follows: Mark is believed to be the first gospel written around A.D. 60. Matthew and Luke follow and are written between A.D. 60-70; John is the final gospel, written between A.D. 90-100.” And Paul’s letters were written between 48 AD and 60 AD.

The best way of defeating these silly arguments is through brutal mockery. For example, you can ask them if they are asserting that it was the Persian Empire that occupied Judea and not the Roman Empire as the Bible has it. Or you can ask them if it was Julius Caesar who ordered the famous census that led to Mary and Joseph being at Bethlehem, not Octavian. You will be surprised at how most atheists with whom you speak will stick their heads directly into the easiest of historical traps. Once they have done so, you can point out that they have absolutely no grounds for holding an opinion on the historical reliability of the Bible.

At church last Sunday, the band played a familiar worship song that was occasionally sung at both another church we have attended as well as at the evangelical churches we attended in the States. What I found interesting, however, was that the English words were translated somewhat differently into Italian.

Church 1: Potrei cantar del Tuo amor per sempre

Church 2: Cantero’ sempre del Tuo amore

The translations are similar, but not identical. The first one is more literal and takes some mild liberties with the words in order to maintain the meter. The second slightly modifies the meaning in order to better accommodate the grammatical structure of the language.

Church 1: I could sing of your love forever.

Church 2: I will always sing of your love.

In like manner, every Bible translation features many such minor variations that depart from every other translation. For the most part, these variations are extremely trivial, although a few of them have led to some serious problems of interpretation, such as the English translations from Hebrew “ratsach” to “kill” rather than the more accurate “murder” and “‘ôp” to “bat” rather than “flying creature”.

This is why I think it is such a massive mistake for Christians to make a fetish of Biblical perfection. While I believe the Bible is the Word of God and is to be applied in the most literal manner possible, I do not believe that the human mind is capable of properly comprehending either the Word of God or the Will of God. There is, I submit, considerably Biblical evidence to support this contention, especially in the words of Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul. Now, this does not mean that one can pick and choose whatever sections of the Bible one happens to think makes the most sense at any given moment, but it means that there is no need to concoct elaborate structures of illogic in order to paper over what appear to be minor contradictions or to insist that the entire verity of the Bible stands or falls on the perfection of every translator working in every language.

The Bible itself is abundantly clear that to fetishize Scripture is a massive mistake. No one knew the Law better than the Pharisees, after all. One of Jesus Christ’s primary occupations was to point out, again and again, that it is the underlying message and the spirit of the texts that matter most, not the literal letter of them. And that is why I contend it is both counterproductive and downright Pharisaical to claim that one’s faith in Jesus Christ and ultimate salvation has connection whatsoever with one’s literal belief in the accuracy in a passage from Genesis, Nehemiah, or 2nd Peter.

I simply don’t believe that God cares at all if we believe that He created rabbits in a single 24-hour day or that they evolved from some proto-rabbits in the post-Cambrian. After all, He knows what happened so all of our various speculations can only amuse Him. I suspect our varying opinions on that and many other supposedly important matters are about as important to Him as our opinions on the passage of Obamacare and whether Brett Favre is going to play football in the 2010 season or not. God cares about our love for Him, our obedience to His Laws, and our willingness to place our faith in His Son and bend our knees before Him.

I don’t think it’s any secret that I am contemptuous of Christopher Hitchens’s intellect as well as his capacity for constructing a rational argument about religion. And yet…

Maryiln Sewell: “The religion you cite in your book is generally the fundamentalist faith of various kinds. I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories from the scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make and distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?”

Christopher Hitchens: “I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.”

So, what does it say about liberal Christianity that its representatives don’t even rise to the intellectual and theological level of the New Atheists?

In which a skeptic’s email is quoted:

I’ve written you before as a skeptic. Remember the topic about Sam Harris? I was a college student who lost his faith after reading Harris and reading atheist blogs. Actually, I had been skeptical for some time before that, as some of you pointed out. I have now graduated with a Master’s…. Anyway, last November I found Christ. Before I was probably merely a nominal Christian. I thought I had to believe, not that I wanted to, to get into Heaven. But that’s all over. I had a personal experience after reading Darin Hufford’s book The Misunderstood God. I followed his instructions, and I felt Christ enter my life. My relationship with Christ has since deepened.

It should come as no surprise that the spurious reasoning offered by the New Atheists holds an amount of appeal to nominal Christians who have been taught to hide from their doubts rather than to embrace and examine them. Those who are not taught to think critically about the Christian faith, but are merely raised in it, are always going to be susceptible to the sophistry and faux rationality of the Sam Harrises of the world. A license to do evil without ramifications or remorse is always going to be tempting no matter how shallow the justifications for it happen to be. And Heaven is a very long way off in the eyes of the young, especially when more immediate earthly paradises are there for the taking.

Anyhow, I’m pleased to hear that another wayward sheep has elected to return to the Good Shepherd. No doubt his faith will be all the stronger for experience of indulging his doubts. Believing in belief is no substitute for actually possessing it.

Markku is under the impression that he managed to catch me making a mistake about God’s knowledge of the design imperfections of His Creation. I think I can demonstrate that this is not correct:

“I think Jesus was the fix for a design gone haywire.”

Can’t be.

1Pe 1:19-20 But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.

Now, Markku is correct to the extent that the verses make it clear that Jesus cannot have been a fix conceived subsequent to the problem. However, I think Markku is making a mistake in equating Jesus Christ’s existence and potential mission with the actual sacrifice of his life here. Since we already knew that the Word was with God from the start, his existence before the foundation of the world isn’t in question from a Biblical perspective. However, we can also see that the foreordaining does not refer to his “precious blood”, although I agree that the reference is still in the context of him redeeming Man. This distinction between the potential redemption and fact of the redeeming sacrifice is perhaps more apparent in other translations.

NIV: For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.

Now, Markku’s interpretation is potentially correct, as it indicates that God was aware from before the beginning of the possible need to send Jesus Christ to redeem Man. The Redeemer was chosen from the start, but not revealed until later. But this does not make his interpretation necessarily correct because it is perfectly plausible that God would have understood that Man was capable of falling and had a backup plan prepared in case of such an event.

As a programmer – a very good programmer, as a matter of fact – Markku is well-equipped to understand the concept of an if/then structure created during the design phase. So, while these verses from 1st Peter certainly permit his interpretation of a scripted scenario of Fall and Redemption, they fall short of conclusively proving it. This means that my interpretation of an unscripted scenario remains Biblically tenable and it is possible that Jesus was the predetermined fix for a design with multiple potential outcomes.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

Merry Christmas everyone. May God bless you and your families with happiness and joy this Christmas Day.

Today, we give thanks to God for that with which He has blessed us.  We thank Him for our families, for our fortunes, and for our freedoms.  And in doing so, we should remember that to those whom much is given, much is expected.