The First Question of Christian Apologetics: "Is It True?"

NOTE: This is the second part of a series on the three big questions of Christian apologetics: (1) Is Christianity true? (2) Is Christianity good? and (3) Is Christianity meaningful? You can find the introduction to this series here.

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I think that contact, single-conversation evangelism is where we often see the supernatural happen. God can move in a heart and take a person all the way from resistance to rescue in the space of one conversation. When that happens, it's a sight to behold! I pray for those moments regularly. However, I don't think that people regularly move from skepticism to faith in one conversation. Trying to make that happen could be one reason why so much Christian evangelism is ineffective. Many people have complicated, tangled webs of resistance and doubt and alternate ways of seeing things, and for that reason, often the best way to use evidence of the Christian faith is to simply help people move a little closer to Christianity than they were before. What follows is my attempt to create a road map to which evidences might help someone most where they are at. I hope this helps you as you either carry out your own personal journey or work to help someone else get closer to Jesus.

STEP ONE: FROM ATHEIST TO DEIST

If you are speaking to someone who is an atheist, your first goal is probably not going to be to convince them that the Bible teaches that Jesus is God and that he has died for our sins and will return bodily to judge the living and the dead. The reason for this is that before we can talk about how someone can know that Jesus is God, that person has to be willing to entertain the idea that God exists. An atheist might know that Christians believe in Jesus, and the truth of the Bible, and lots of other things, but they are hung up on the question of how we can know that there is a God in the first place. With that goal in mind, I think I could open an ATHEIST up to the idea that if the history of the universe goes backward eternally (I usually do this by asking, "what do you think came before the Big Bang?") then there might be something that always existed. And if this thing moves on its own without being moved by something before it, then it has a will of its own. And if it brought the whole universe into being, then it's all-powerful or so close as to make no difference--and pretty soon we are talking about God. Arguments for intelligent design or the fine-tuning of the universe point out that if the universe operates by mathematical principles then that suggests a high level of order and engineering which suggests a Designer. These arguments serve to ask a person who says there is no God whether they're being totally reasonable in discounting God. Once someone acknowledges the existence of God, it's entirely reasonable to explore whether God would want something to do with us, and that question takes us to the next step.

STEP TWO: FROM DEIST TO THEIST

If someone does allow for God to exist, but they are a DEIST who says God is not personally involved in our lives, I think I could continue to try to open them up from there. (Or if you're reading this and that's you, I'd like to suggest a couple of things to think about.) For example, the existence of morality and consciousness shows that we all have a divinely-impressed law on our hearts that goes way beyond self-preservation, or the betterment of our own group. Although some have tried to argue to the contrary, I don't think that self-sacrificial morality is an evolutionary feature because it doesn't lead to us improving our chances of passing on our genes. It often leads us to make choices for the good of others that prevent us from passing on genes, especially when the person whose good we are concerned with is outside of our own community. This powerful moral consciousness is something that suggests that God not only exists, but that he is personally concerned with our lives and has given us a moral code to help us live our lives in accordance with his will. And I don't think that applies just to this life. Arguments for the existence of the soul such as the study of Near Death Experiences, which have been included in some prestigious medical journals, and which even non-religious researchers describe as "evidence of something... more", could also demonstrate that not only has God made us, but that he has made us with the ability to enjoy relationship with him beyond death. Accounts of miracles and attempts to scientifically measure their veracity have also gained interest, in ways that still invite outlets like The New York Times to wonder. Evidence for the existence of miracles, if it bears the weight of investigation, obviously opens us up to the possibility that not only does God exist, but he is actively interested and involved in the lives of human beings. Once someone acknowledges that God exists and that it seems like he wants to have a relationship with us, then it's reasonable to push a little further and look at whether there's any evidence that he's revealed himself to humans before.

STEP THREE: FROM THEIST TO ABRAHAMIC

Of course, there are plenty of people who are theists who believe in the existence of a real, personal God who is interested in their lives. They just don't happen to be convinced of the truth of the Bible. Maybe they have heard that it has been discounted, or that there are too many problems or contradictions in it for it to be true. But maybe a THEIST (a person who believes in a God who is personally involved in our lives, but is not necessarily a Christian) would be surprised and interested to hear that there is quite a bit of corroborating evidence for the Bible in the field of archaeology. They might also be surprised, and interested, to hear that there are many good reasons for acknowledging the antiquity of the documents that make up the Bible relative to the events that they describe, both from the New Testament and from the Old Testament. The findings of source criticism can also help to show that as old as these documents are, they can clearly be shown to build on still-earlier sources that are even closer to (or contemporaneous with) the events recorded. There are other arguments for the Bible's trustworthiness too, among which we can include historical fulfillment of prophecy (for example, Daniel's prediction of the rise of successive empires, once the antiquity of Daniel's writing is established) and the self-authentication of Scripture where it is shown to be well ahead of the times in which it was written, in various aspects. If the Bible can be shown to be a uniquely trustworthy source of revelation from God, then it's worthwhile to explore what it has to say about Jesus.

STEP FOUR: FROM ABRAHAMIC TO CHRISTIAN

Someone who is a member of one of the Abrahamic faiths believes that God has truthfully revealed himself through Scripture (at least through the Old Testament, but also often the New Testament). Christianity is commonly considered part of this grouping, but in this case I'm using the term to distinguish the other groups under this umbrella from Christianity. This ABRAHAMIC group includes Jewish and Muslim people, but also includes those who are Rastafarian, Baha'i, Mormon, Jehovah's Witnesses, and so on. Often a central claim made by these groups is that mainstream Christianity arises from some mistaken divergence from either the Old Testament or from Jesus' true original message. To someone of this belief, I might first appeal to arguments for the antiquity and reliability of the documents that we have, to show that Scripture has not been added to or tampered with, and that we indeed have what was originally written. Then, I would appeal to Messianic prophecy in the Old Testament. Much of my preaching as a pastor actually focuses on showing how the Old Testament consistently points to Jesus in unmistakable ways. In particular, the work of Christian Old Testament scholars like Michael Rydelnik and Ian Vaillancourt go a long way towards showing that Jesus is the true point of the Old Testament Scriptures. Once I showed Jesus from the Old Testament, I would also borrow from historical Jesus research to show that the Gospels can be used as good sources about the life of Jesus, even by those who don't fully trust in their inerrancy or inspiration. There is a great deal of biblical and non-biblical information about the historical Jesus of Nazareth, and the work of scholars is very helpful here. The results of this research also tend to cut against attempts to radically re-cast Jesus' identity by fringe groups (i.e. that he preached Islam, or that he is really the Apostle Paul, or that he married Mary Magdalene and escaped to France, all of which are actual claims that people have made). Another helpful tool for demonstrating the reliability of the Gospels as containing eyewitness testimony about Jesus is the argument from undesigned coincidences. This argument recognizes that in many places throughout the Gospels, there is evidence of independent accounts of shared events which happen to overlap in detail in seemingly unintentional ways, fitting together like puzzle pieces. This matches up with how the incidental details of two people's story of their trip to a restaurant might lock together with many incidental details overlapping or explaining one another. I would also reference the various historical arguments for the resurrection. If the historical Jesus research demonstrates his existence, and the Gospels faithfully preserve the claims and the actions of Jesus, then the evidence for the resurrection acts as a divine stamp of authenticity on all that Jesus ever did and all that he ever claimed about himself. And finally, I would appeal to the argument from the early church witnesses. Some of the earliest church fathers outside of the New Testament, like Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Smyrna, are so early that they seem to have known the apostles personally. They can confirm what was widely held to be true about Jesus by the apostles and by the church in the very first century, long before the time of Constantine when many argue that Christianity was co-opted or altered from its original form. If Jesus lived like the Gospels say he did, and he claimed what they say he claimed, and he was resurrected from death to prove those claims, and the whole early church believed in him beginning at the time soon after his crucifixion, then it makes it incredibly likely that the Christian message about Jesus is how God has revealed himself to us.

WHAT'S NEXT?

So far, that's been quite a journey! At each stage, depending where people are at, this post provides a sort of map that details at which point one of the evidences for Christianity might prove most helpful for people who are seeking to know more about Jesus. But what about all of the other religious options that are out there? And how can we know anything at all? That's for the next post.

Cheers,

-Pastor Sean

More Than Facts: Is Christianity True, Good, and Meaningful?

NOTE: This is the introduction to a series on the three big questions of Christian apologetics: (1) Is Christianity true? (2) Is Christianity good? and (3) Is Christianity meaningful?

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How do you make a good argument for Christianity? I am wired for apologetics. I love digging into the meat of a matter, sorting out fact from fiction, and discovering the place where two competing points of view, using the same set of facts, diverge from each other--and then determining which philosophical fork in the road is the most reasonable path to take given the fact-finding journey that led up to it. However, as a former championship-level debater, I also know that there is a limit to what arguments and fact-sorting can accomplish. The line of someone's argumentation can get lost, and sometimes the most convincing person can simply be whoever was the last to speak because theirs is the most recent impression made. As an apologetically-minded pastor who has seen some pretty discerning thinkers come to faith in my own ministry, I think that contrasting worldviews and showing the reasonableness of the Christian faith is incredibly important.  But I think that when we talk about the Christian faith, we should start with how most people make their decisions -based on impressions- and work from there to make the case that Christianity is not only true, but also good and meaningful.

ESTABLISHING CREDIBILITY: IS CHRISTIANITY TRUE?

For the most part, it's true that most people won't be argued into the Kingdom of Heaven. Some especially discerning or logic-oriented people might; after all, that's the story of some famous apologists like Lee Strobel, whose own faith journey began with an exploration of the evidence for the resurrection. But facts and arguments still have a role to play in establishing credibility. My goal in arguing for the truth of Christianity isn't necessarily to convince someone that Christianity is true; it's to show that a reasonable person could believe that Christianity is true. It's to demonstrate credibility. This shows that Christianity is at least worth consideration.

I won't lay out a case for the trustworthiness of Christianity here. That will come next week (I'll come back and link to it here once it is written). But people are not going to give the Christian faith a second thought if they don't even see how it could be true. There are a lot of hard-hearted skeptics out there, but my experience is that most people are open to seeing things a different way if they don't feel that they're being pushed into an immediate response. For those people, I often find that they are interested and surprised to hear that there is archaeological evidence for events depicted in the Bible. I've also never had a bad response to asking someone what they think came before the Big Bang, and before that, etc. which opens up all kinds of discussion about whether there is a God and what he must be like. The more confident that someone is about some statement of their disbelief, the more constructive I find it is to "put a rock in their shoe" by throwing in something that might disturb their confident unbelief: for example, when someone confidently states that Jesus never existed, I like to mention Bart Ehrman's book Did Jesus Exist? as an example of a non-Christian scholar who confidently writes about Jesus' existence and all the ways the Gospels can be good sources about his life (even though Ehrman doesn't believe in the truths of Christianity or the inspiration of the Bible). My goal here isn't to push them into Christianity--it's to make them question their own unbelief.

ESTABLISHING BENEFIT TO HUMANITY: IS CHRISTIANITY GOOD?

It's not enough to show someone that Christianity is credible, though. This is where I think that a lot of apologetics falls short. Most Christian apologetics seeks to show that Christianity is true, but not that it is good. We live in a world where people come from having grown up or been exposed to really bad church experiences. People are aware of historical atrocities committed in Christ's name. Recent revelations in Canada regarding First Nations Residential Schools have left a bad taste in many people's mouths. The perceived anti-scientific views of many Christians, or anti-progress attitudes, may convince many that they don't want Christianity to be true because it is not good and its continuing role in society is holding everyone else back. This is where a modern apologetic for Christianity's societal goodness needs a bigger role. Even if you are not a Christian, we might say, you should want Christianity to have a role in the public sphere. A lot of interesting work has been done here in recent years. For example the historian Tom Holland has shown that Christianity has created the basis for modern concepts of justice, equality, and fairness in his book on the subject. The role of Christianity in establishing the foundation for modern healthcare, education, charities, orphanages, and care for the impoverished has been described by normally anti-Christian thinkers as a Christian innovation. Even in the case of missionaries, often seen as a colonialist enterprise, some of the best research available demonstrates the incredible social and physical benefits that have come to the countries that have received the most Christian missionaries. The role of churches in North America has also been shown to have a sort of "halo effect" in providing goods and services for North American communities more effectively and at lower cost than what can be provided by publicly-funded care. Where harm has been done in Christ's name, it can be reliably shown that those actions were not in line with the teachings of Christ. However, the basis for calling out that harm as evil is itself Christian: As Tom Holland writes in his book Dominion, “[It is true that] Many [Christians], over the course of time, have themselves become agents of terror. They have put the weak in their shadow; they have brought suffering, and persecution, and slavery in their wake. Yet the standards by which they stand condemned for this are themselves Christian.” We need to make a bigger case that Christianity has something meaningful, or even foundational, to bring into the public sphere. We should leave people saying, not only that Christianity is credible, but that even non-Christians would want for there to be more Christians and more Christianity in the world for all the good that it does.

ESTABLISHING DESIRABILITY: IS CHRISTIANITY MEANINGFUL?

All of this won't be enough to make people want to become Christians themselves, though. There are a lot of people who find themselves persuaded of the truth of Christianity, but they view it as something like the general principles of accounting: true perhaps, and good in terms of keeping everything in order, but not something that they want to be personally involved with unless they have to. One more famous, recent example of this is Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams who is battling cancer. He recently announced that he will convert to Christianity: "I still have time. My understanding is you're never too late." Many people approach Christianity this way. Believing that it is true or reasonable, and that it is good for people to believe it, they still find themselves personally pushing the decision to convert off until they are certain they are near death, because they're convinced that Christianity isn't very fulfilling or meaningful. This is something we can spend a little more time on making a case for. For example, Christianity gives us an incredible foundation for our relationship with ourselves. The exemplary life of Jesus gives us some standard for what "normal" human behavior looks like, cutting against both the idea that health looks like unemotional, detached stoicism, or that it looks like a constant boundary-less response to the demands of the moment. Christian teachings on sex and its purpose are an incredibly freeing answer to both sexual repression and our modern cultural hypersexuality. Assumptions that reflect Christian teachings have been adopted by organizations that have achieved significantly higher-than-normal improvements in finding freedom from alcohol and drug addiction. And these are only the beginnings of the personal benefits of a life that is firmly rooted in our identity in Jesus.

Christianity also gives us an incredible foundation for our relationships with others. The teachings of Christianity both support the family structure, while establishing a clear boundary where one may "leave their mother and father, and cleave to [their spouse]" (Gen. 2:24). This is an important guideline which helps both with the harmony of existing families and the successful creation of new ones. Christian teachings about marriage support the respectful treatment of a husband by his wife, but it is also unique (especially for its time) in insisting on a standard of treatment and care that a husband owes to his wife. And the church, far from being a burden to those considering the truths of Christianity, has been shown to be a gift (even with the messiness that is involved any time that human beings gather together). The Harvard School of Public Health has even studied, and listed the many personal benefits, of those who regularly attend church services. In our relationship with the wider world around us. Christianity gives us a unique respect for the world as a gift of God which leads to a belief that it should be cared for and conservated. Politically, many of the beliefs of Christianity cut across or "diagonalize" across positions that are often held to be either Left or Right. But most importantly, Christianity gives us a foundation for a daily, ongoing and meaningful relationship with God. When the news cycle shows us the latest war or invasion or protest or pandemic, it is incredibly reassuring to know that we can rely on God who has a plan to take the evil that human beings commit or create, and that he will use it ultimately for good. When we feel stuck in the constant churn of waking up, going to work, dealing with bills, taking care of laundry and cooking and unending responsibilities, falling asleep, and repeating the same thing over again--worship draws us up into an experience of being part of something more enduring and wonderful and meaningful. And prayer is an incredibly helpful part of all of this: God absolutely does answer prayer. Prayer is not a magical ritual whereby we can move the hand of God to do our will and not his own, but in praying we are often transformed or given greater awareness or assurance, and besides all that, significant evidence does exist to support the effectiveness of prayer (though I'll write more about this in a couple of weeks). There are all kinds of reasons why we would not want to put that off until the moment of death. The reality is, Christianity gives a foundation for a much better life here and now than anything else.

So, this serves as an introduction to the next few weeks of writing where I'll dive into more detail on each of these topics. While I don't think that arguments can bring most people into a personal, saving belief in Jesus, I think that they do play an important role. But the argument needs to do more than just establish credibility: it needs to help someone understand why they would want other people to be Christians; and why they personally would want to receive that hope for themselves.

Cheers,

-Pastor Sean