Is God Dead?: The Noble Lie

Value and Purpose in a Godless Universe:

  This won't take long.  In a universe with no God there is no purpose and there can be no values.  I had some people ask questions about my last post.  So just to clarify, this is how the world would look without God.  This is how the atheist has to view humanity in order to be consistent.  Granted, you won't find an atheist that lives this out, because consistency is not at the heart of atheism, randomness is.  If nature is the only thing available then you can't protest the result.  In nature the consistent pattern is that the strong survive in order to advance the species.  In a godless world you can have no altruism.  What's inside of us that propels us to feel sympathetic toward the weak, handicapped or marginalized in our society? Shouldn't we want them all exterminated if nature is our guide?  In the heart of the atheist there is terrible inconsistency in sympathy.  The interesting thing that I've found in studying is that the atheists (at least the bright ones) realize this and wrestle with it.

  Outspoken atheist and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg wrote the following towards the end of his acclaimed book The First Three Minutes: "It is very hard to realize that this all is just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe.  It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat.  The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless."  You see, the really intelligent atheists agree with my given statements in their own words.  Everything is pointless in this universe, especially if this is all there is.  Weinberg nailed it, without God the universe doesn't just "seem pointless," it really is.

The Noble Lie Option:

  Here we have a truly terrible dilemma to face in this godless world of ours.  The atheistic stance provides no road to a happy and consistent life.  In order to live consistently within the boundaries of atheism, a man will find himself profoundly unhappy.  In order to live happily, one must be profoundly inconsistent.  In this realization there are atheistic philosophers that have come up with options, so let's walk down that road.

  In an address to the American Academy for the Advancement of Science in 1991, Dr. L.D. Rue proposed that we simply lie to ourselves so we can deceive ourselves into thinking that we and the universe do have value.  This became know as the "Noble Lie" option.  In his statement Dr. Rue said, "The lesson of the past two centuries is that intellectual and moral relativism is profoundly the case." He expounded on this by saying that "the consequence of this realization is that the quest for self-fulfillment and the quest for social coherence fall apart." A life void of defined meaning leads to relativism, and in relativism the search for purpose and fulfillment becomes privatized.  Each person will in turn chose his own set of values and meaning.

   Rue didn't present the "Noble Lie" as the only option, he went further.  He also offers us the "Madhouse Option."  This is one option in which each person will pursue self fulfillment regardless of the consequences of the destruction of social coherence.  To round out his list, Rue presented the Academy with the "Totalitarian Option."  In this option the state imposes social coherence at the expense of personal fulfillment.  Now to be clear in this, Rue leaned toward the Noble Lie option and presented the Madhouse and Totalitarian options because he somehow assumed that those would be so absurd that the Noble Lie would just make sense.  In closing the speech he further defined the Noble Lie option as "one that deceives us, tricks us, compels us beyond self-interest, beyond ego, beyond family, nation and race."  When studying this speech I couldn't help but feel sadness towards this worldview.  The verdict is out, and the decision has been announced. In order to survive, a godless man must live in a pattern of self-deception.

Going Forward:

  This post closes out the worldview of the atheist from the words of their own.  I want to be clear that I went out of my way to avoid the "Barnes and Noble" atheist crowd that are more concerned with selling books than finding answers.  The men I quoted were all atheist, but at least they knew it was a social failure.  In only being able to use a blog format I want to say that this was about 5% of the information I had to study, but studying the material did nothing but solidify my faith in Biblical Christianity as the best possible end result in the quest for meaning, value and purpose in life, and my next post will show you why to a small degree.  I believe it's obvious, but I still want to take the time to show where Christianity fills in all the gaps and answers all the questions that atheism can't.  At some point I will take a more scientific approach on atheism, but for now a philosophical one is really a better starting point (plus it's the subject matter that I'm studying).  The sad thing about atheism is that it's really just a quest to explain the beginning, but once they rejected God as the source of creation then there was no turning back when they had to explain the present and future.  The Noble Lie is all they have to fill the void of eternity.

    Most atheists seek to be free from religion since they view it as a series of rules that one must adhere to in order to pacify God. What they fail to realize is that all Christians have already been set free.  As Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians, "All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful, but not all things build up."  To also pull a quote from the great C.H. Spurgeon on the subject of Christian freedom, "There is nothing in the law of God that will rob you of happiness; it only denies you that which would cost you sorrow." You can't be set any more free than that.

  Someone confronted me recently to say that my time and money would be better spent pursuing Biblical degree programs other than apologetics.  Their concern was that it did nothing for evangelism.  I've just started in what will be a long process, but I can honestly say that I couldn't disagree more.  It's emboldened me more towards evangelism.  It's awesome to know that you don't have to put your intellect in one pocket and your faith in another in fear that you simply don't have the facts.  Christianity IS NOT blind faith.  It's history, and it's supported by an infra-structure of facts and logic.

 

Is God Dead?: Worthless Cosmic Orphans

From Nothing to Nothing Without Anything In Between:

  This is the opportunity for some of atheism's best and brightest to give us their take on the purpose, values and meaning of man.  I will be pulling material from some of the speeches and writings of some of the best scholars this worldview has to offer.  I refuse to give men like Dawkins, Harris or Hitchens the right to embarrass atheistic philosophers in my allotted space.

  Loren Eiseley wrote, "Man is the cosmic orphan. He's the only creature in the universe who asks, 'Why?' Other animals have instincts to guide them, but man has learned to ask questions" 'Who am I?' 'Why am I here?' "Where am I going?'" The answer for the atheist is horrifying and hard to bear.  To the atheist, man is simply an accidental by product of nature.  The sad and pathetic result of matter plus time plus chance.  Atheists set out to be free of finding these answers within the constraints of religion, but instead of being free they ended up being orphaned and alone with nothing but the doom of death at the end of every question.

Meaningless:

  The first point at which atheism fails is in an attempt to define meaning in life for the human being.  John-Paul Sartre decided that a man can find meaning in the universe by simply assigning it one and then following that course, but this cannot be consistent. What if I assign it one meaning and you assign it another?  Which meaning is right and who are you to decide that meaning (relativism in action)?  What if your meaning is to live a a long and healthy life and my meaning is to kill you?  Simple duration of your existence is not meaning.  If you came from nothing and end in nothing then what does it matter if you existed at all? If man is doomed to an eternal nothingness then absolutely nothing you can do on this planet in your short life will matter.

  Some might argue here and say something like, "well what if I cure cancer?" Well so what if you do.  While your pursuit is noble, you're still not doing anything by curing cancer.  You're just delaying the inevitable progression into nothingness that we're all doomed to.  All you've done is kept people around longer that are still doomed to an eternal blackout.  As for the years you've added to the lives of millions of people, well, their lives were meaningless when they were short and now their meaningless for that much longer.  So what did you really accomplish? Again, simple duration of existence is not meaning. You see nothing, again nothing, has meaning if all you have are a few short years on a dying planet.  No matter how much you accomplish, no matter how many lives you save, no matter what you do you cannot stop what's coming. Death.

Going Forward:

  Next I will discuss values and purpose briefly because it will be quite redundant to try and drag these out for too long.  I think you can tell from the segment on meaning where I'll be going with the other two.  While these points sound harsh, I want to re-establish that I'm writing as if the lack of a creator is a given and not discussing God as if He were an option until later.  At that time it will be clear that Biblical Christianity fills in all of the holes that atheism can't.  If you're dealing with a true atheist then remember the Gospel is still at the heart of your discussion, but they certainly won't accept the Gospel until they have accepted that there is a creator.  I know a lot of people that claim to be atheists, but their claim is usually because of their desire to understand the beginning of creation and they feel the Bible fails.  It's really rare that you meet an atheist that's truly thought all of this out. So as you engage in conversations and start to bring some of these points up it's important to know that this subject matter might not come out in a loving manner.  That doesn't mean we shouldn't take them down this road, it just means we need to drive slowly.

  I don't mean to sound like I'm giving you talking points here, but apologetics offers structure in which to present your content so I would be doing you a disservice not to give you some guidance for handling this topic.  I'm writing this series on atheism and then plugging in God at the end because my assumption is that the majority of people reading are believers, but if you're talking to an atheist you need to fill in the gaps with God throughout the conversation and not at the end.  You might not make it to the end of the conversation or they could shut you out before you have the opportunity to define the meaning that you, the believer, have and why.  After all, the goal in breaking down this wall is to share the Gospel, not just make them "religious."  Making someone religious apart from Christ might be worse than just leaving them in their atheistic state.

  

Is God Dead?: Faithful Yet Fruitless

Faithless Faith:

  It takes faith to put your eternal security in the resurrection of Christ, but our faith is minuscule in comparison to that of an atheist.  We believe in history while their fate rests in the balance of a calculator and a ton of untested scientific theory.  You have to go against the grain of every logical pattern of thought available to end up with the conclusion that something came from nothing and that nothing evolved into humans, fire ants, and dandelions.  Let's say we were walking through the mall and we came across a small spherical object about the size of a gumball.  The object was beautiful appeared to be of some value.  It gave off colors we had never seen before and changed temperatures at preset times.  Anyone you could show that object to, regardless of their religious affiliation, would come to the same few conclusions; that it was created by someone, that it belonged to someone and that it was there for a reason.  Now take that same sphere and make it the size of the Earth and an atheist will deny all three of those conclusions about the same object. I use this analogy for the simple purpose of establishing that atheists do have faith, a ton of it, but it just doesn't yield any fruit.

   In a later series I hope to address more of the scientific arguments against the concept of everything beginning with nothing, but this set of posts isn't planned to push back on the atheists beliefs on our beginning.  Here I want to address what our present life and eternity would look like in a world where God doesn't exist.  In the end I hope to show why Biblical Christianity is the only worldview that can offer someone the two things necessary for a meaningful life, God and secured immortality.  I want to make it clear that immortality alone is not enough to give meaning or purpose to human life, but more on that later.

The Evolution of Inconsistency: 

  I'm not much of a "scholar" on any level, but this is especially obvious when compared to the men that I read and study. As part of my coursework  I had to read through bits and pieces of some great atheistic scholars and philosophers.  Without trying to sound pretentious, I'm amazed at the consistent contradictions in their logic.  They all hold that evolution is fact, which is expected since it would be the only way they could rationalize their existence while denying that we were all created in God's image.  They explain the entire spectrum of human emotion away by assigning them each with a corresponding evolutionary necessity (lust is necessary for reproduction, fear is necessary for defense, etc), but when it comes to hope they avoid it all together.  In my humble opinion, hope of eternal life seems like it would be vital as it pertains to evolution and society.  If there were no God and literally no hope then it seems that society as a whole would crumble.  It seems to me that hope itself would be a basic survival instinct of man.  Hope would be worth fighting for since it would be man's way of going down swinging and holding on to a belief that there was anything beyond our short lives here on Earth.

   In a world without God we are in a constant state of evolutionary progression. If that were true then wouldn't mankind be evolving towards Biblical Christianity if for no other reason than hope?  Why then is the number of people that believe in the afterlife dwindling from generation to generation according to an American Values Survey from the Pew Research Center?  Since atheism means there's no hope, and numerically people are evolving towards atheism, then it just seems to me that hope refutes evolution.  If evolution isn't an available option then atheism has to be dismissed given that it would indicate that human beings were intelligently designed. We live in a time where nothing is a fact unless you can see a YouTube video of the event.  If it takes a leap of faith to believe in a creator or believe in creation by chaotic randomness, then I would push all my chips towards the side that offers hope, even if hope was the only reward.  Fortunately for the believer in Christ, there is no need for a leap of faith and hope of an afterlife is a fact.  I will lay out the evidence for the resurrection in a later series, but for now you can know that there is evidence, which is more than any atheists has.

Going Forward:

  In doing some research on general blogging practices, it appears that I've been going way too long on my posts.  Apparently the average amount of time that a web page will hold someone's attention is far less than it takes to read some of my previous posts.  So going forward I will submit shorter entries with a longer overall series.  For that of you that just signed up to be polite, I'll apologize in advance for the emails.  Feel free to unsubscribe.  For those that stick it out, I will continue to probe around on the topic of a life without God.  Believe it or not, I do have an outline.  I'm not blogging in the blind.  I want to discuss meaning, purpose and human values in a Godless world and then show you where Biblical Christianity answers all of the questions that atheism can't.  For now I just wanted to show you why the term faith wasn't exclusive to religion, but it seems that hope is reserved for the believer.

Is God Dead?: Entry Level Atheism

 "Several hours or several years make no difference once you have lost eternity." Jean-Paul Sartre

Old Atheism:

  The magazine cover above looks like something that could be on it's way to bookstores any day now, but in fact this was the April 1966 edition of TIME magazine.  Atheism was alive and well 50 years ago as was Christian apologetics, so I'm not plowing a new field here.  What follows might sound odd, but there was a time when atheistic scholars were respected among their Christian counterparts and considered by many to be among the greatest philosophers of their time.  They clearly didn't agree on everything, but there was a mutual respect and a common goal which was an effort to answer the big questions like purpose, life, value and eternity.  

  French existentialist and atheist Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was one of the biggest names in the field during his time.  His father died of fever when Sartre was two.  He would later go on to serve in the French military, only to be a German prisoner of war for nearly a year.  Although I've never read it anywhere, one could comfortably infer that his atheism was a result of not being able to reconcile a loving God back to the evil he experienced.  As an atheist, Sartre wrestled with the origin of morals.  He was empathetic towards issues like feminism and was in strict opposition to Nazi anti-Semitism, yet his atheistic worldview couldn't offer a sufficient explanation for these emotions.  In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature and he refused it.  He is quoted as saying that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution." Sartre was a far cry from today's book touring, self promoting atheistic "scholars."

New Atheism:

  Today's leading atheists are reaching far more people and selling far more books than ever imagined.  Atheism has become an industry, and business is good.  The atheism of the day is lead by a group that some refer to as "The Four Horsemen of the New Atheism." This group is comprised of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and the late Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011).  All of these men have held the #1 spot on the New York times best seller list with one or more books at some point along their path. By trade, Harris is a neuroscientist, Dawkins an evolutionary biologist, Dennett a cognitive scientist and Hitchens was a journalist.  While all of these men are, and should be, recognized as leaders within their field of study, none of them are trained and formally educated theologians or philosophers. The exception is Dennett, who holds a doctorate in philosophy, but is by far the least outspoken when it comes to atheism itself. Instead he goes deeper into explaining his field of science than making a concentrated effort to rid the world of religion. When given all of their resumes it's hard for me to understand how they have become so influential when it comes to the subject of God.  You might argue that they don't need to be theologians to disprove the existence of an intelligent designer, but we will just have to agree to disagree.  Given that the natural flow is that there had to be theism before there was atheism, then the burden of proof lies squarely on the atheist here. I find it embarrassing that someone would try to disqualify a God that they know nothing of.  If this same logic were applied to our legal system, it would be no different than hiring a divorce lawyer to defend you in a murder trial.  The problem is that jail time is temporary and hell is eternal. 

  I've been going to the same doctor for several years.  He's a great physician, brother in Christ, philanthropist and missionary, but I'm just not that sure he's the guy I'm going to call if my car won't start tomorrow morning.  So why are millions of people putting their eternal fate into the hands men who simply aren't qualified to discuss the subject?  It's because these are entry level philosophers catering to entry level atheist. I'll admit that I've never invested the time to read their work in full, but you have to assume that their popularity alone indicates that they are palatable and well suited for the masses, much like a Justin Beiber album.  If a book is deeply philosophical and soundly written then the average person will labor to read it.  Christian theologians John Calvin and St. Augustine were both profound intellectuals and reading their work took real effort from a layperson such as myself. Most of the more academic Christian philosophers of today don't think much of the work of the horsemen. When interviewed on the subject of the new atheists, Dr. William Lane Craig (an actual philosopher, apologist and theologian by both degree and profession) had the following to say; "The spade of new books published by the new atheist like Harris and Hitchens and Dawkins and so-forth are not sophisticated books intellectually. These are, for the most part, angry bitter diatribes against religion. And while someone like Dawkins may be a good scientist in his field, when he begins to talk about philosophy and theology he is merely a layman. Their books are very unsophisticated intellectually. As a philosopher I am just appalled at the arguments given. It is an embarrassment really." 

How We Respond:

  In keeping the Gospel at the heart of this post, I want to get us to a point that allows us to really sympathize with atheists.  If you struggle with loving them then you need to be in prayer.  They are not the enemy, they are the target.  The next time you get into a discussion with an atheist you need to understand that they have been led astray by popular, yet vastly unqualified men with hardened hearts that have no problem toying with the eternal destination of other men in the name of pleasing their publishers.  I think if we're honest, we can find ourselves intimidated by someone that claims atheism as a worldview.  We tend to think that the only way to get to them is by showing them love and avoiding real discussion in fear that they have the upper hand.  In reality I think that it's the atheist that need to be presented with the facts about Christianity to appeal to their intellectual appetite.  By all means present the truth with love and humility, but do not be intimidated.  

Going Forward:

  Clearly I plan on moving forward with atheism, but again this is to be a philosophical approach.  I want to give the atheist a fair shot here, so I'm going to push some of their beliefs to the extreme to see where they take us.  I want to put all of the aspects of atheism on the table so we can see what a world without God looks like and how unthinkable it would be to live in such a place.  I think if you were to sit down with someone claiming to be an atheist and lay out all the ramifications of a truly random, meaningless existence then at the very least they would want to experience a small taste of the hope that believers rest in daily.  Be in prayer for the atheists.  If you want to see someone radically changed by the drawing of the Holy Spirit then you should pursue the atheist and not avoid them.  Some of the greatest apologists, evangelists and theologians we have were once atheists.  You might be the person that plants the seed for the next Lee Strobel or C.S. Lewis.

The Rise of Relativism: Extreme Application

The Irrelevant Relativism Recap:

  By this time we've established two clear and distinct moral paths.  Relativism is the path that tells people that it's not good to push your moral views on anyone else.  It tells us that morals are subjective and are up to the individual.  You don't have to be much of a thinker to realize that this can only really exist in a state of silence.  Once you open your mouth to give someone your opinion on the subject of morals you have made an exit from true relativism into the land of personal opinion.  The only way you can openly discuss morals and speak the truth is to have something external to ground them in.  For the Christian this truth is grounded in scripture, and this scripture is inerrant and was given to us by an intelligent designer.  Relativism, by it's very nature, is irrelevant in a moral conversation.  It simply doesn't exist unless in exercised in silence.

Extreme Morality:

  I've quickly learned that when you study philosophy of any kind that the best way to examine it is by taking it to extreme levels of practice and seeing where they lead.  I didn't invent this line of thinking, this is what all great philosophers do. I'm simply going to replicate a process that's been around for centuries. For the believer, with their morals grounded in scripture and given by an intelligent designer, the application of all Biblical morality is, well, Jesus Christ himself.  We all know that we fall short of this goal, but we get up day after day trying to live life like Christ would.  We want to respond to adversity like Christ did.  We call this process sanctification, and we have help in living this out from the Holy Spirit through reading and application of scripture.  Living out Biblical morality is challenging, but it's the goal in the pursuit of holiness.  I fall short every day of my life.  There isn't a day where I go to sleep knowing that I was perfect that day, but I'm forgiven for every sin, past, present and future.  

  A similar comparison, yet substituted with relativism is going to sound harsh and probably arrogant.  I want to make sure that you understand that I'm addressing it from a point of love and not condemnation, because today's relativist could be tomorrow's Christian.  If you've been around a church long enough you're heard the phrase "don't hate the sinner hate the sin."  The same logic applies here.  I don't despise the relativist, I despise the moral implications that relativism has on the world.  I don't want my children raised in a world where the big decisions in life are left to their own personal opinions.  Which is why, as a father, this subject gives me a great deal of angst.  With all that being said, the champion of relativism is ultimately a sociopath.  Now a good person can still claim relativism without ever having actually applied it to all of it's extremes, but I'm pushing those extremes to demonstrate where it can lead.  If you're a relativist then you can't really judge those extremes to any degree, otherwise you cease to be a relativist and you then must contend that morals are universal.  This doesn't automatically make you a Christian by any stretch.  It just means that you've given up your stance on moral neutrality and you now have to find a new standard for truth.  I contend that scripture is that truth.  A person that does whatever they want, to whoever they want, whenever they want, to any degree that they see fit, is a full on card carrying relativist.  Depending on their wants and their personal degree of application (which again the true relativist cannot judge) this could be disastrous. 

  I offered you Jesus as a historical example of biblical morals exercised to their fullest extreme, so it's only fair that I offer you the same example for relativism.  That example is Adolph Hitler.  At Auschwitz, Hitler declared, "I freed Germany from the stupid and degrading fallacies of conscience and morality....We will train young people before whom the world will tremble."  You see, Adolph Hitler applied relativism to get to where he was morally.  He put extreme relativism on display for the world to see.  To the true relativist you cannot condemn Hitler for his actions.  He was simply doing what he thought was right.  He lived out his morals to the extreme.  You see morality grounded in scripture explains things that you otherwise couldn't. If morality is a byproduct of evolutionary chance, then why do we feel satisfaction when justice is dispersed?  Why do we rejoice in the punishment of our guilty while applauding the reward of the righteous?  The answer is simple, we are image bearers of a God of justice and punishment.  Evolution couldn't get us here.  Evolution sides with Hitler.  Kill the weak for the advancement for the strong. 

Our Options:

  By now someone that's reading this is thinking that there have to be other options.  Surely I'm not saying that everyone on the planet is either morally aligned with either Jesus Christ or Adolph Hitler, but in reality that's exactly what I'm saying.  Again these were the extreme examples of morality in practice, not simply two men that debated morality.  In the book Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted In Mid-air, co written by Francis Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, they lay out the options you have for establishing morality. " Faced with a limited number of options, we must chose something.  When the full range of choices is clear, rejection of one means acceptance of another.  Our options are limited to three. One: Morality is simply an illusion. Two: Moral rules exist but are mere accidents, the product of chance. Three: Moral rules are not accidents but are the products of intelligence."  They also point out why relativism is so attractive. " Relativists seem to think if they can get rid of both morality and God, then guilt and judgement will disappear as well.  It's like saying if we can eliminate doctors and hospitals, then disease and suffering will disappear too."  

In Conclusion:
  
 I want to convey something in closing about apologetics in general so you can get the big picture.  Morality alone is not the show stopper when defending your beliefs.  It's merely one weapon in a very vast arsenal.  You won't show someone the fullness of the Gospel by simply arguing that your moral roots make more sense than theirs.  Somehow though, morality always finds its way into the discussion, and rightfully so.  I believe that if you can show someone that your morals are grounded in a submission to scripture, and you can do so in a loving manner, then you can open their eyes a bit more.  Remaining humble is crucial. How many times have you heard a believer say something along these lines; "Homosexuality is sinful and wrong," while never really expounding on the subject or explaining where this stance came from?  You see, homosexuality is a sin according to the Bible, but so is gluttony, lying, stealing, heterosexual lust, and fifty other things that you did today.  God doesn't rank our sins, we do. So instead of addressing morals from a lofty position of arrogant personal opinion while attaching Bible verses to support your argument, you need to show morality with a side of love and understanding.  We all fall short of the glory of God.  None of us meet His criteria for perfection.  So when you put your moral position out there it's important to do so from a humble position of submission.  Apologetics isn't about winning the debate with the office atheist. True Christian apologetics is about making a defense on what you believe and why with an end result of providing rationality to our worldview, and should always be birthed from a desire to advance the Gospel.  As Lee Strobel once said, "Christians have an unfair advantage in the marketplace of ideas.  We've got truth on our side."  

  This concludes the topic of relativism. I hope that I've done a decent job of getting Relativism pulled into the light.  If I haven't then you need to know that I'm the limitation, not the subject matter.  This is all my limited knowledge allows me to write, but I can offer numerous study materials that will take you much deeper if you want.  Simply leave me a comment and I will point you in the right direction. Overall I hope you can see the devastation that this worldview can unleash if we aren't aggressive in attacking it on the front lines.  

Going Forward:

  The plan is to proceed by offering you more weaponry.  I do plan to get into more historical and scientific topics as they relate to defending Christianity.  My next series will stay a bit more on the philosophical side of things though.  I will do my best to explain the absurdity of a life lived without God.  Like this last post, it will go to extremes to show you where full blown atheism leads and why it's such a terrifying path for the world to wander into blindly.  

The Rise of Relativism: It Is Written

Intro:

 I really wanted to get someone with more expertise on the subject to write on the inerrancy of scripture, but life has a way of consuming time.  So I’m afraid you’ll get my take on the subject.  It’s probably not going to be my best post due to my lack of formal education on the subject.  However, I think I can put a few words together to help us continue in our journey.  Just so we’re all on the same page, my goal in this blog is to be as thorough as possible while not losing your attention, so I’ll keep it short and sweet.  I want to provide a comprehensive series of posts that take us through as many of the facets of basic apologetics as I can.  It’s meant to be applied, not just read.  So if you’re going to defend your faith then it’s important to grow in confidence.  Confidence in any discussion is always a byproduct of knowledge and experience.  So I plead with you to soak in as much scripture as you can.  Make Bible study a priority. While I might not do this post justice, I hope that you can at least take away one thing from this entry.  Scripture is without error.

  Scripture is our anchor:

  There might be a time where I go more in depth on this subject, but for now I wanted to tie this back into relativism.  As we have established, the relativist has no truth.  Their desire is to claim a level of moral neutrality that simply can’t exist if you follow that logic out to conclusion.  For the believer, truth comes from an external source, the Bible.  Before we can use scripture for our anchor, we must have confidence that it’s inerrant.  So as quickly as possible I want to build my case.  The case I’m presenting is not meant to be sold to the non-believer.  My goal is to help believers have confidence that we aren't planting our eternal security in soft ground.

  So the big question is this….  How do we know that the Bible is the word of God himself?  The answer is so simple that my 4 year old understands it to some degree.  The Bible is inerrant, factually inerrant, for one reason alone.  Jesus said it was. 

Old Testament:

  Most of the secular world finds their disbelief in Christianity because of the information recorded in the Old Testament.  I think if you probed a bit, you’ll find that most non-believers get stuck in the first two chapters. They simply can’t reconcile the Bible’s explanation on creation back to the ever changing theories offered by the science of the day.  My contention is simple.  They’re starting in the wrong place.  To me, the beginning actually starts in the middle with the birth of Christ.  As a believer, if you know that Christ is who He said He was, and did what He said He would, then your doubts of the Old Testament should disappear.   Jesus himself spoke of the Old Testament with divine authority.  Some of the things that non-believers (and some professing Christians) find hard to believe were talked about by Jesus.  He validated the Biblical account of the creation of man in Matthew 19:4.  He validated the flood in Matthew 24:37.  He validated the story of Jonah in Matthew 12:40(while simultaneously predicting his death, burial and resurrection).  He essentially canonizes the entire Old Testament in one phrase in Matthew 4:4, “It is written.”  The Old Testament is never open for a debate on accuracy for the Christian. Many of the books of the Old Testament are considered by the secular world to be myth.  Since we are still dealing with the topic of relativism, I will spare you from the archaeological and historical data to support the text.  For now, just rest in knowing that Jesus didn't consider it to be myth or fable.  So the next time you find yourself in doubt about a man that was swallowed by a fish, or animals in a big wooden boat, just remember….“ It is written.”

New Testament:

  The New Testament is often referred to by non-believers as an inaccurate account of a man named Jesus of Nazareth.  Again, I will go more in depth on all of this in a later series.  In that series I will deal with the atheists’ claims about how it came to be and how they don’t feel it meets their criteria for an accurate account of the birth and ministry of Jesus.  For now I think it’s important to know a few quick things about the New Testament. The most valuable tool in validating the New Testament is the same as we used for the Old Testament. So again we use Jesus as the constant in this equation.  While Jesus clearly didn't quote from the New Testament, He did promise us that we would have one in John 14:25-26.  Here He promises that the Holy Spirit will be sent by the Father and that the Spirit would teach the Apostles and bring them remembrance of all that He said.  Now all of this would have been irrelevant had Jesus died and remained in that state.  The key is, He didn't remain dead after his execution. He arose from death, thus fulfilling every prophecy that was written about Him in the Old Testament and also establishing the accuracy of the New Testament to come.  There are questions about how each of the books in the New Testament were qualified to make the cut as scripture. Below I will list the five qualifications that each book had to meet before being included.

   Was it written by a prophet of God? This was the way that God revealed Himself to man. 2 Peter 1:20-21 tells us that scripture is ONLY written by men of God.

   Was he confirmed by an act of God? Hebrews 2:3-4 tells us that we should literally expect to see miraculous confirmation from a man that spoke for God. Examples include Moses turning his staff into a snake, Jesus and the resurrection, etc. Prophets didn't just make predictions.

   Does it tell the truth about God? Galatians 1:8 explains that if anyone, even an angel from heaven proclaimed a Gospel different that the one presented in scripture, then let him be accursed.

   Does it have the power of God? If the book doesn't give an account of the transforming power of God when applied to the lives of believers then it is not from God.

   Was it accepted by the people of God? It is normative that the people of God will receive scripture as authoritative. Not just a small group of believers, but the vast majority. This can be illustrated in 2 Peter 3:16 where Peter is essentially referring to Paul’s letters as scripture. Another example is in 1 Timothy 5:18 where Paul is quoting Luke.

   Going Forward:

  I have a few more things to touch on before I put relativism in the rear view.  So we will get back to that subject. I hope that this helps you see why the Bible is the inerrant word of God himself.  I’ll admit that my effort to prove inerrancy was largely Christocentric in nature, but that doesn't make it less accurate.  There are many, many great sources that go way above my pay grade on the inerrancy of scripture.  Unfortunately this was the best I could do with my limited knowledge and time.  What I wanted to accomplish is not to discuss all of the aspects of scripture, but rather why believers should have no need to second guess the Bible.  It’s our standard for truth in morality.  As a believer you should start to develop an insatiable thirst for scripture.  And while you drink it all in, you can recline in the knowledge that it’s accurate.  We don't need to be intimidated when presenting scripture to non-believers.  We have the truth in our corner, and we know it's truth because "it is written."