Basic Proofs of Christianity

The following is something that a wrote a long time ago for an old blog. I have cleaned it up and turned it into something for this blog. I hope you enjoy. Feel free to comment on the post in response to the questions that I asked at the bottom.

The way I see it, the claims of Christianity can basically be viewed together as a three-legged stool attempting to support the basic claim that Christianity is true. If any one of the three legs falls, the support disappears, and the body of claims come toppling down.

In the case of Christianity, the three basic claim groups are: 1) Jesus fulfills me personally (personal testimony); 2) Jesus fulfilled the prophetic expectation of the Messiah (prophecy fulfillment); and, 3) The New Testament is an accurate record of the continued revelation of the God of Israel (NT authenticity).

If any one of these claims can be disproved, the weight of the Christian argument comes tumbling to the ground. Christianity depends on all of these things being true, though less so the claims of personal testimony, since these tend to accompany every form of religious expression based in a belief in a higher power.

Archaeology and Faith

French Dominican biblical scholar and archaeologist Roland De Vaux said, “If the historical faith of Israel is not founded in history, such faith is erroneous, and therefore our faith is also.”

William F. Albright, an early 20th century biblical archaeologist and scholar said as well: “[A]s a whole, the picture in Genesis is historical, and there is no reason to doubt the general accuracy of the biographical details.”

The first time I read these words I was impressed with the boldness of the message and did not think then and still do not believe any truer words could be spoken about the relevance of the Bible and the accuracy contained within its recorded history. But these words had been rooted in a belief that the findings would support their literal theological belief. Would these same men have made these same bold assertions should it had been discovered at their time of investigations, what the current archaeologists and professors such as Israel Finkelstein, Amihai Mazar and Neil Silberman have learned and shared through books such as The Bible Unearthed, David and Solomon, and The Quest for the Historical Israel?

False Dilemmas and Religious Thinking

Last week I was hit by a huge surprise. Suddenly, my brother – like my aunt before him – starting placing loads of posts on his Facebook timeline (the new designation for the social medium’s “wall”) containing prayers and references to his faith in Jesus and his newly-discovered attention to religious conviction. The newest post in the series featured a picture of Romans 1:16 highlighted in a King James Bible: “I am not ashamed of the gospel....” It was probably the first time my brother had ever come across this verse, given that he doesn't read or understand the Bible.

It turns out that he recently attended a Promise Keepers convention, which reminded him of his bad life decisions, convinced him of his need for a savior and swindled him into committing his life to Jesus – the obvious choice for a savior that one hasn’t investigated. Since then he’s been attending church regularly, tithing, praying, blah, blah, blah.

I was simply stunned, and my reaction (“Why?! No! Don't be hoodwinked!”) may have been a bit strong, but among the replies to my response was a girl who attempted to insinuate that I was “persecuting” my own brother (whom I love dearly) and to lay before me a lame version of Pascal’s Wager. This post is intending to lay out the assumptions involved in that famous wager and also C.S. Lewis’s famous “liar, lunatic or Lord” dilemma.

Superstition and Science

The Hound of the Baskervilles

I was in the third grade the first time that I heard the story of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles. Our teacher took one hour every week – my favorite hour, for sure – when she would read to us various books of interest to kids of that age (around ten or eleven years old). I fondly remember listening to her read My Side of the Mountain (Jean Craighead George), Hatchet (Gary Paulsen) and, of course, The Hound of the Baskervilles (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). Ever since that time, this has been my favorite of all of the Sherlock Holmes mystery stories that Doyle put into writing. (I later bought a set of various Sherlock Holmes stories and The Hound in a separate volume of its own, and it has certainly provided me with hours of entertainment and recollection.)

In this story, we hear of the death of Sir Charles Baskerville and a supposed curse that was put on his family. A naturalist scientist (Mr. Stapleton) found a way to promote a ghost story about a devilish hound called up from hell to haunt the family of the Baskervilles, the latest victim of which was Charles. Everyone in the area of the tragedy readily believed the story promoted about the hound, and their fear-supported superstitions directed at the beast allowed them to overlook the murderer that was freely walking around in their midst.

Josiah and His Reforms

I find that my issue with blogging is that you always have to find something to say that is going to be both relevant and interesting. I’m not all too sure where to begin with such things, since what is interesting to me is rarely interesting to many other people. Ron basically told me last night that I’m “special” because my interests are not the same as others’.

For instance, I can stay up all night talking with people online or over the phone about the development of the Hebrew Bible and the reign of Josiah. It’s something that interests me to no end. I get really excited by what I read in the records of the kings of Judah when it comes to what Josiah did and how he enacted the reforms of his time – not that I think that it’s particularly good how he forced the people to observe his form of monotheism, but I think it’s extremely important to understand just what was happening at that time, since it can drastically change how we view the entirety of Israelite/Jewish history.

Relevant information from the Bible regarding Josiah: 1 Kings 13:2; 2 Kings 21:23-23:30; 2 Chronicles 33:25-35:27.

My “Testimony”

I prayed the sinner’s prayer when I was twelve years old, just after seeing the series of movies made by Mark IV Productions (A Thief in the Night, A Distant Thunder et cetera). I was baptized at the age of fifteen, having spent my first three years reading the Bible (in King James) and learning to challenge adults in their thinking regarding the Bible. I started to learn Greek at the age of seventeen and went to Bible College at eighteen, with intentions of going into ministry. I was there for three years before I left Christianity (as the result of a long inner struggle) and began my trek into Judaism. After three years of study at the local synagogue, I converted in 2003 and came to Israel for the first time in 2004. I held onto my belief in God throughout those years and believed in the revelation of the Torah up until last year. I no longer believe that the Torah was inspired by a divinity or given on Mount Sinai. I no longer believe that there was an exodus in which over a million Israelites left Egypt. I’m rather sold on the position that the Torah was majorly composed in the time of Josiah, king of Judah – probably by his scribe Shafan in collaboration with the priest Hilkiah (Jeremiah’s father).

The Trinity and “Echad”

[A post I wrote for an old blog of mine.]

In his The Defense of an Essential: A Believer’s Handbook for Defending the Trinity, Nick Norelli took up the argument common among missionaries that echad (אֶחָד – the Hebrew word used in Deuteronomy 6:4 to say that HaShem is “one”) “is a word that allows for plurality within one and diversity within unity” (page 3). This is the most common argument when the subject of the Trinity comes up in the face of the declared unity of G-d in the text of the Hebrew Bible.