WHY I AM A CHRISTIAN - فريق اللاهوت الدفاعي

evidence or expert testimony will change your mind, be advised that the law allows a trialattorney to have you removed from the jury panel. To serve as a juror you must promise,under oath, that you will keep an open mind and weigh the evidence set before you.Though you may be skeptical, can you nonetheless promise that you will keep an openmind, hear the evidence, weigh it, and make a fair and honest decision? That is all we canask. We in return promise that our witnesses will not lie to you or attempt to trick you.MAY IT PLEASE THE COURTLadies and gentlemen of the jury, we are here today representing our client,Christianity. Our client has been accused of making false statements and outrageousclaims. The Christian faith has been maligned and defamed by its detractors for centuries.We are here not to seek retribution or remuneration for harm done but simply to set therecord straight. We intend to prove to you that the Christian faith is both reasonable andtrue, and we shall do this by presenting expert and eyewitness testimony. Indeed, all ourexperts are also eyewitnesses to the truth and power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.“Then they are biased!” you may object, and of course you are correct. But herein liesa problem. We have searched the world over, and we cannot find anyone who is unbiasedin matters of religion. As a juror, you must therefore carefully examine their testimony tosee if by their bias our witnesses have skewed the facts. If it appears they have, you arefree to reject their testimony. But if the facts are presented plainly and straightforwardly,and if the facts support the claims of Christianity, you are duty-bound to give them theirdue weight.Here then is what the evidence will show. Two thousand years ago a man lived inwhat is today the country of Israel. He was a Jew and a carpenter by trade. He nevertraveled far from home, never wrote a book, never raised an army, and never served inany political office. But amazingly, incredibly, he claimed to be the Messiah and Son ofGod. He lived a perfect life and performed miracles, healing the sick and lame, givingsight to the blind, walking on water, even raising the dead, the kinds of things one wouldexpect the real Son of God would be able to do.There were those who considered his claims blasphemous, and they executed him forthis crime, just as he had predicted (along with the Old Testament prophets centuriesbefore). Three days later he rose physically from the dead, proving convincingly that hewas who he claimed to be, and that is how and why he is now our Savior. The person ofthe Son of God, by taking on a human body and living a perfect life, by suffering with usand dying for us, and by overcoming death itself, has reunited us with our Creator. This istruly good news. God loves us, he knows our pain, and he has provided the means for

sinful men and women to have true relationship with a holy God. These are the facts, andbelieving these facts is, in the most basic sense, what makes one a Christian. 2We recognize that there are many intellectual obstacles to such belief. In presentingour evidence in support of the facts described above, therefore, we shall also do our bestto remove common obstacles to faith, obstacles that have given rise to the followingquestions and objections.How can anyone claim to have the truth or to know the truth?Aren’t agnosticism and atheism sound positions, since no one can really prove theexistence of God?Even if a god is proven to exist, how does this prove that he (or it) is the Goddescribed in the Bible?Honestly now, isn’t believing in miracles silly?Don’t we know, from evolution, that the Bible story about creation is false?How can we accept as historically reliable what the followers of Jesus wrote andobviously embellished in the Gospels? Isn’t it just myth?“Historically” reliable, maybe. But how can it be the true Word of God when itcontains so many statements that are scientifically impossible?There are many other holy books. What makes you Christians think your book isbetter than the others?If Jesus Christ was the Messiah, then aren’t the Jews all mistaken?He may have been the promised Messiah. He may even have performed miracles. Butthe Son of God? Isn’t that going a bit too far?With all the evil and suffering in this world, don’t you have to admit that your God iseither weak or evil himself?2 The many Christian denominations, from Roman Catholics to Quakers, may formulatethe definition of Christian with varying degrees of specificity or doctrinal emphasis. Butwe all accept as true and foundational the words of the apostle Paul: “That if you confesswith your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from thedead, you will be saved” ( Rom. 10:9 ). The particular expression of faith described hereby Paul, if genuine, brings with it a supernatural transaction that truly changes us. Jesushimself described it as being “born again” ( John 3:7 ), and Paul said, “If anyone is inChrist, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God” ( 2Cor. 5:17–18 ).

I believe in Jesus, but I’m just not as religious as some people are. Doesn’t Godunderstand and accept me, faults and all?How could a good and loving God make faith in Jesus the only way to heaven andeternal life? Don’t all religions lead ultimately to God?We do not claim to have all the answers. But we have more than enough to show thatour faith in an omnipotent, omniscient, holy, and loving Creator God, who bridged thegap between himself and humankind in the person of Jesus Christ, is not only reasonablebut is, in fact, the most intellectually and existentially coherent option among all others.Christianity is both sensible to the head and satisfying to the heart.Our expert witnesses are scholars and apologists. They are sophisticated defenders ofthe Christian faith. But in the end their purpose here is very personal. They have a storyto tell, a wonderful story of how their lives were changed by encountering the Author oftruth. Each contributor desires to share with you the good news by offering his reasonedcontribution to this book.And so, dear reader, as the angel said to the shepherds on that first Christmas night,we now bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto to youwe present this day a Savior, which is Christ the Lord (see Luke 2:10–11 KJV ).PART 1WHYI BELIEVEIN TRUTH

Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life” ( John 14:6 , emphasis added). Healso said, “I am the good shepherd” ( John 10:11 , emphasis added). Our first order ofbusiness is to lay the groundwork not simply for proving Christ’s unique and remarkableclaims but for demonstrating the meaningfulness of these claims. Do the claims of Jesushave any objective and universal meaning? Are truth and goodness real and knowable, orare such matters ultimately beyond our grasp or simply matters of personal preference?While genuine knowledge of truth and goodness has been questioned by skeptics forcenturies, few seriously challenged the very existence of truth and goodness until theeighteenth-century’s hopeful modernism collapsed into the twentieth-century’s chaoticpostmodernism. If God is unnecessary (as Darwinism seems to imply), or if God is in factdead (as Nietszche boldly claimed), who is there to write the rules of life? Like a brattychild, may we not, with justification, incessantly reply to all claims and directives, “Sayswho?—says who?—says who?”“Says the Bible” was a perfectly adequate reply for many a century ago. That is notthe case today. Relativism so pervades our cultural consciousness that we have reachedthe very brink of our capacity for meaningful dialogue. We seem to have no way toexpress even the most basic directional concepts; there is no real “up” or “down” beyondthat which exists in one’s own mind. If up and down have no clear meaning, what can wepossibly know of truth and goodness?In beginning our examination of the Christian faith, it must be understood that Jesuswas not a relativist. The man who walked on water had his feet grounded on moral andobjective truth. He was not a to-each-his-own sort of guy. On the contrary, he was anemphatic and unequivocal absolutist. Of course he was loving, or as apostle John put it,“full of grace,” but not grace alone. The man who knew Jesus intimately said he was “fullof grace and truth ” ( John 1:14 , emphasis added). Jesus boldly berated the religiousleaders of his day, physically assaulted the activity of the money changers in the temple,discriminated against non-Jews in his ministry, and quoted the Old Testament withuncompromising zeal. He spoke and acted like a man who actually believed that he knewthe truth, or indeed, that he was the truth, incarnate. And for this he was not well receivedin polite society. Imagine his reception today!It is this very problem, our deeply ingrained cultural resistance to claims of truth, thatis addressed in chapters 1 and 2. Dr. Francis J. Beckwith first explains why moral claims(e.g., “I am the good shepherd”) are real and meaningful. He also shows that objectivemoral values do exist and that you—yes, you—hold such beliefs. Dr. Norman L. Geislerthen shows that objective truth not only exists but is knowable and that you cannot live,let alone function productively, without first acknowledging that you know certain thingsto be true.If you think we may be wrong, we ask you to ponder this question: Is it true that weare wrong?

ONEWHY I AM NOTA MORAL RELATIVISTFRANCIS J. BECKWITHIn his influential work, The Closing of the American Mind, the late philosopher AllanBloom made the observation that “there is one thing a professor can be absolutely certainof: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth isrelative. . . . The students, of course, cannot defend their opinion. It is something withwhich they have been indoctrinated.” 1 Bloom was talking about both moral relativismand epistemological relativism. The latter is the view that there is no such thing asobjective truth, that knowledge is relative to one’s self, culture, and/or point of view. Thistype of relativism will be addressed in the next chapter. In this chapter, however, I willfocus on moral relativism, a view that is not limited to indoctrinated college freshmen butis dominant in North American culture.Moral relativism is the view that when it comes to questions of morality, there are noabsolutes and no objective right or wrong; moral rules are merely personal preferencesand/or the result of one’s cultural, sexual, or ethnic orientation. The fact that one believesthere are exceptions or, to be more precise, exemptions to moral rules does not make onea moral relativist. For example, many people who believe lying is wrong nonethelessbelieve it is not wrong to lie in order to protect someone’s life. These people are notmoral relativists, for to permit certain exemptions to a rule one must first acknowledgethe general validity of the rule. The moral relativist rejects the idea that any such moralrules exist at all.Many people see relativism as necessary for promoting tolerance, nonjudgmentalism,and inclusiveness, for they think if one believes one’s moral position is correct andothers’ incorrect, one is closed-minded and intolerant. They typically consider moralrelativism the indispensable cornerstone of our pluralistic and modern democratic1 Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster,1987), 25.

society. Unless we all embrace relativism, they fear we will likely revert to amoralistically medieval culture.In this chapter, we will see why the arguments for relativism fail and why relativismitself cannot live up to its own reputation. But why, you may ask, is a critical evaluationof relativism important to the case for the Christian faith? First, Christianity teaches thatthere are objective moral norms that apply to all persons in all places and at all times. 2Relativism says that there are no such norms. If relativism is true, therefore, Christianitymust be false. But if relativism is incorrect, Christianity cannot be dismissed on thegrounds that it affirms objective moral norms. Second, if moral norms exist, thenmaterialism as a worldview is false, because moral norms are nonmaterial things. 3 Ifmaterialism is false, then other nonmaterial things such as God, angels, and souls cannotbe ruled out on the grounds that they are not material. Thus, the falsity of materialismhelps support the truth of Christianity. Ultimately, the claim “I am not a moral relativist”is not based on the fact that I am a Christian. Rather, I am a Christian at least in partbecause I am convinced that moral relativism is completely false.In this chapter, I will first briefly discuss how moral relativism has affected ourability to engage in moral discourse. Then I will present and critique two arguments formoral relativism. Finally, I will argue that given the existence of objective moral norms,the God of theism is the best explanation of the source of their existence.MORAL RELATIVISM AND MORAL DISCOURSEMoral relativism has stunted our ability to grasp the nature of moral claims. People inour culture often confuse preference claims with moral claims or reduce the latter to theformer. To understand what I mean by this, consider two statements: 41.I like vanilla ice cream.2.Killing people without justification is wrong.The first statement is a preference claim, since it is a description of a person’ssubjective taste. It is not a normative claim. It is not a claim about what one ought orought not to do. It is not saying, “Since I like vanilla ice cream, the government ought to2 There are many works that defend the notion that the Bible teaches objective moralnorms. See, for example, Norman L. Geisler, Christian Ethics: Options and Issues(Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989).3 Materialism is the worldview that holds that matter is all that exists. Since the God ofthe Bible is nonmaterial, if materialism is true, the Christian God does not exist.4 Hadley Arkes’s work, First Things: An Inquiry into the First Principles of Morality andJustice (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), was instrumental in helping tobetter understand the difference between the two statements.

coerce you to eat it as well,” or, “Everyone in the world ought to like vanilla ice creamtoo.” A claim of subjective preference tells us nothing about what one ought to think ordo. For example, if someone were to say, “I like to torture children for fun,” this wouldtell us nothing about whether it is wrong or right to torture children for fun.The second claim, however, is quite different. It has little if anything to do with whatone likes or dislikes. In fact, one may prefer to kill another person without justificationand still know that it is morally wrong to do so. This statement is a moral claim. It is not adescriptive claim, for it does not tell us what, why, or how things are, or how a majorityof people in fact behave and think. Nor is it a preference claim, for it does not tell us whatanyone’s subjective preference may be or how one prefers to behave and think. Rather, itis a claim about what persons ought to do, which may be contrary to how persons in factbehave and how they prefer to behave.Unfortunately, the espousal of moral relativism has made it difficult for many peoplein our culture to distinguish between preference claims and moral claims. Rather thanpondering and struggling with arguments for and against a particular moral perspective,people sometimes reduce the disagreement to a question of personal preference orsubjective opinion. Take, for example, the issue of whether parents and other concernedcitizens have a right to boycott products that are advertised during television programsthese citizens find to be morally inappropriate, especially for children. The usual reply tothese citizens is, “If you don’t like a particular program, you don’t have to watch it. Youcan always change the channel.” But does the person who employs this reply reallyunderstand what these citizens are saying?These groups are not merely saying that they don’t prefer these programs. In fact,these citizens and their children may actually be tempted to watch these programs; that is,in terms of sheer untutored appetite, they may actually prefer these programs, thoughthey still may know these programs are not good for them, just as one may prefer a candybar but still know it’s not good for him or her. To put it another way, these citizens aresaying something a bit more subtle and profound than their detractors are likely torecognize let alone admit: These programs convey messages and create a moral climatethat will affect others, especially children, in a way that is adverse to the public good.Hence, what troubles these citizens is that you and your children will not change thechannel. Furthermore, it concerns these people that there is probably somewhere inAmerica an unsupervised ten-year-old who is, on a consistent basis, watching late nightHBO or listening to radio shock-jock Howard Stern. Most of these people fear that theirten-year-olds, who are not watching or listening to such programs, may have to interactsocially with the unsupervised ten-year-old. Others, who may not have young children,are concerned for the declining moral health of their communities, which is sometimesmanifested in an increasing level of rudeness, disrespect, incivility, crime, or verbal andphysical violence.There are, in fact, many well-educated and reasonable people who believe that such acommunity concern is justified, especially in light of what we know about how certainforms of entertainment and media affect people, especially the young. Just as a concern

for people’s lungs and physical health has resulted in criticism of and reprisals againsttobacco companies, concern for people’s souls and spiritual health sometimes results incriticisms of and reprisals against different media. Thus, such concerns cannot berelegated to a question of one’s personal preference. The real question is whether anycommunity or social action is ever permissible and would best serve the public good.Moral relativists, to be consistent, must answer no, while common sense seems to tell usotherwise.Consider another example: the debate over abortion rights. 5 Many who defend awoman’s right to abortion (pro-choicers) sometimes tell those who oppose abortion rights(pro-lifers), “If you don’t like abortion, then don’t have one.” The intent and effect ofsuch rhetoric is to reduce the abortion debate to a mere preference claim. That is, theobjective moral rightness or wrongness of abortion (i.e., whether or not it involves killingan innocent human person) is declared, without argument, to be irrelevant. But this isclearly a mistake, for those who oppose abortion do so because they believe that the fetus(during most if not all of a woman’s pregnancy) is a human person with a right to life,and it is generally wrong, both objectively and universally, to violate a person’s right tolife. For this reason, when the pro-lifer hears the pro-choicer t

13. Why I Believe Jesus Is the Son of God Peter Kreeft PART 6 WHY I HAVE CHOSEN TO FOLLOW CHRIST 14. Why I Still Believe in Christ, in Spite of Evil and Suffering John S. Feinberg 15. Why I Have Made Jesus Christ Lord of My Life J. P. Moreland 16. Why I Believe Jesus Christ Is the Ultimate Source for Meaning Ravi Zacharias Afterword Josh McDowell