10/28/2024 – “The Bible: Myth or History?” / Ch. 8 – “Pocket Handbook of Christian Apologetics” by Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli (ISBN-13: 978-0-8308-2702-2)
Some christians get to the truth by God’s grace but unfortunately resort to “circular reasoning”, a logical fallacy, in witnessing to “future” believers as illustrated here:
- Scripture is infallible;
- therefore Christ is infallible;
- therefore Christ is divine.
“Circular reasoning” or “begging the question” fallacy defined: arguments that bring their leading premise into the conclusion.
As, Kreeft and Tacelli point out, the more convincing order is:
- Scripture is reliable as historical record, as data;
- Christ’s claims to divinity are found in Scripture;
- then comes the argument for the truth of these claims (Chapter Eight) (*A)
(*A): The Bible has remained unscathed, despite being the most criticized book that was ever written. I’ll pick up an excerpt from chapter 8, pg. #63 – 64, from here:
“Concerning the first one — that Jesus claimed to be God — perhaps the New Testament texts lie. Perhaps traditional Christianity is a myth, a fairy tale, a fantasy. But this raises questions even more unanswerable than the questions of how a man could be God. Here are five such questions.
- If the Gospels lie, who invented the lie, and for what reason? Was it Jesus’ apostles? What did they get out of the lie? Martyrdom – hardly an attractive temptation. a liar always has some selfish motive.
- Why did thousands suffer torture and death for this life if they knew it was a lie? What force sent Christians to the lions’ den with hymns of praise on their lips? What lie ever transformed the world like that?
- If it was not a deliberate lie but a hallucination or a myth sincerely mistaken for literal truth, then who were the naive fools who first believed it? There isn’t any idea a Jew would be less likely to believe. Imagine this: the transcendent God who for millennia had strictly forbidden his chosen people to confuse him with a creature as the pagans did, this Creator-God became a creature, a man –a crucified criminal. Hardly a myth that arises naturally in the Jewish mind!
- And if it was not the Jews but the Gentiles who started the myth, where did the myth come from in the New Testament? Of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, twenty-five were written by Jews.
- Whether Jews or Gentiles. started the myth, they could not have done so during the lifetime of those who knew the real Jesus, for it would have been publicly refuted by eyewitnesses who knew the facts. (*B)
(*B). Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians that there were 500 witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection. (1 Corinthians 15:6). Paul wrote 1 Corinthians approximately 55 A.D. . There would be too many witnesses still alive less than one generation later, to refute Paul if he made it up.
What better speaks to the Bible’s reliability than a plethora of prophecy that was fulfilled, even 2,000 years after the fact. Check out the attached link below – “Fulfilled Prophecy: Evidence for the Reliability of the Bible”, presented by Hugh Ross, including this statement right up front:
“Approximately 2,500 prophecies appear in the pages of the Bible, about 2,000 of which already have been fulfilled to the letter—no errors.“
https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/resources-category/speakers/hugh-ross
Soli Deo Gloria!