A compelling objection sometimes raised against Christianity is that it’s merely a patchwork of ancient beliefs. Once we study the history, so these critics maintain, we quickly find that Christianity is virtually indistinguishable from the competing beliefs of other ancient cultures. This objection carries some force because even a cursory examination of historic Christianity quickly reveals striking parallels with other cultures. As we argue here, nevertheless, this statement doesn’t represent an actual threat to the church but merely arises in consequence of Christianity’s status as a historical religion.
One of Christianity’s distinguishing features is that it claims to be historical. The doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture, as an example, maintains that the Bible was written by human beings under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Yes, these writers had access to divine revelation, but they were also people of their times—members of the family and residents of a selected place and time. And once they wrote, their writings got here through the prisms of their very own personalities. Islam, as an example, maintains that the prophet Muhammad directly transcribed a message of revelation from Allah. Hinduism’s most sacred writings pertain to the everlasting, timeless dimensions of being that exist beyond the illusory confines of our tangible world. In a really real sense, the sprawling and messy details of historical circumstances are, due to this fact, illusory. Indeed, even the person self ultimately proves to be an illusion within the Hindu vision of reality.
In his book The Gospel In a Pluralist Society, Lesslie Newbigin uses the phrase “the logic of election” to explain Christianity’s historical specificity. A conspicuous example could be the nation of Israel. Why is that this tiny group of individuals chosen by God to bear His light? It could just as easily have been one other group, comparable to the Assyrians. The logic of election signifies that if Christianity is to play out on an actual historical stage, it is going to achieve this in specific times and places. How could it’s otherwise? If the world and all that we all know should not ultimately illusory, divine interactions will necessarily come about through concrete people, times, places, and circumstances.
An extra implication here is that cultural influence is inevitable and never all the time a foul thing. The book of Proverbs, as an example, relays sensible sayings that were on display within the broader culture of the Ancient Near East. The proven fact that the book incorporates these popular elements and tropes of a culture will not be evidence of its integrity. As Newbigin and others are quick to indicate, language itself is a necessarily communal vehicle of communication. Quite simply, it’s impossible to make use of language without some level of cultural influence. It is “common currency,” so to talk.
The celebrated opening of John’s Gospel appropriates the trope of the “Logos,” which had a wealthy tradition of philosophical thought behind it in ancient Greece. Far from using this trope in a static fashion, nevertheless, John boldly declares Christ to be the culmination of this tradition. This will not be an act of compromise that taints the purity of the Gospel. Rather, it represents a surprising mental breakthrough.
The supreme example of Christianity’s historical unfolding, nevertheless, is Jesus’s incarnation. Here once more, we see the “logic of election” at work. If God is to disclose himself in human form, it is going to come about through one specific person in a particular time and place. The key query here is: Was Jesus who he claimed to be? Modifying an argument from C.S. Lewis, we’ve got 4 options: 1) He was a legend, 2) He was a liar, 3) He was a lunatic, and 4) He is Lord.
Let’s take these 4 so as. Regarding his possible status as a legendary figure, the evidence for Jesus’s actual existence is overwhelming, and only a few scholars would deny that a figure named Jesus existed. To those that affirm Jesus’s existence but deny his divinity, perhaps insisting that his resurrection consisted of an elaborate hoax, it’s value pointing to the striking accumulation of evidence in favor of the resurrection.
The proven fact that the Gospels report women as the primary eyewitnesses is very revealing for the reason that testimony of a lady was not considered formally credible on the time of their authorship. If the writers desired to fabricate an airtight hoax, they definitely wouldn’t need to feature women as key witnesses. Another arresting detail concerns the biographies of Jesus’s disciples. All of them, to a person, underwent a profound moral transformation after their time with Jesus. And most of them died as martyrs. Moreover, legends take considerable time to develop, and the complete account of Jesus’s resurrection took hold and spread at such a rapid pace that this theory proves exceedingly unlikely. To date, the most effective books on this subject is Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.
Was Jesus simply a liar, a conman, or a non secular charlatan? The possibility is there, after all, however it’s value pointing to the character and lasting influence of his teachings. Put simply, the moral teachings we’ve got from Jesus have effectively shaped not only our modern Western culture; they’ve effectively shaped the Western conscience. This, as an example, is the argument of Tom Holland in his magisterial history of Christianity, Dominion. According to Holland, even those that would never crack a Bible or darken the doorway of a church have nevertheless had their moral sensibilities shaped by Christ’s moral vision. Why will we default to considering that essentially the most vulnerable members of our society must be protected, as an example? It’s a position that’s on no account self-evident, and it’s definitely not evident within the pagan world of the past. If Jesus was indeed a liar, he has the odd distinction of introducing a few of the most profound moral teachings known to humanity.
C.S. Lewis’s stark claims about Jesus’s identity are designed to maintain us from falling prey to the tendency to see him in neutral terms—viewing him as a type of benign moral teacher. If we take to heart his claims, nevertheless, we see that he made some astonishing statements. He claimed to give you the option to forgive sins (Matthew 9:10); he shocked his followers by telling them to eat his flesh and drink his blood (John 6:53-58); he claimed to be God (Mark 14:62). The nature of those claims is simply too radical to permit for a neutral response. After serious consideration, we’re confronted by Christ’s query to his disciples, “Who do you say that I’m?”
As we’ve seen, the notion that cultural influence compromises the reality of Scripture only obtains if Christianity is ultimately ahistorical and impersonal. Since that is clearly not the case, cultural influence needn’t derail our faith. The foremost query concerns the character of Jesus’s identity.
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Kenneth Boa equips people to like well (being), learn well (knowing), and live well (doing). He is a author, teacher, speaker, and mentor and is the President of Reflections Ministries, The Museum of Created Beauty, and Trinity House Publishers.
Publications by Dr. Boa include Conformed to His Image, Handbook to Prayer, Handbook to Leadership, Faith Has Its Reasons, Rewriting Your Broken Story, Life within the Presence of God, Leverage, and Recalibrate Your Life.
Dr. Boa holds a B.S. from Case Institute of Technology, a Th.M. from Dallas Theological Seminary, a Ph.D. from New York University, and a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford in England.
