Just Thinking 28 2 by James Balgalore

THE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF RAVI ZACHARIAS INTERNATIONAL MINISTRIES

JUST THINKING VOLUME 28.2

UNEXPECTED APOLOGETIC PAGE 04

A WELL-PLACED TRUST PAGE 06

A SHOUT FOR JOY PAGE 14

MATTERS OF HISTORY PAGE 16

H E L P I N G T H E T H I NK ER BELI EVE. HELPING THE BELIEVER THINK.

Just Thinking is a teaching resource of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries and exists to engender thoughtful engagement with apologetics, Scripture, and the whole of life. Danielle DuRant Editor Ravi Zacharias International Ministries 3755 Mansell Road Alpharetta, Georgia 30022 770.449.6766

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JUST THINKING THE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF RAVI ZACHARIAS INTERNATIONAL MINISTRIES

14 A SHOUT FOR JOY Jose Philip states that we can know the truth of who God is. By learning to trust that God is good, we can live in hope that He will remake all things good.

03 Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Note WHATEVER BARRIER

UNEXPECTED APOLOGETIC Margaret Manning Shull observes that in the life of Jesus, women were the first witnesses. Their testimony offers an unexpected apologetic for every generation of seeker.

06 A WELL-PLACED TRUST Ravi Zacharias shares how Jesus is unique and trustworthy because his entire life and teaching can be subjected to the test of truth.

MATTERS OF HISTORY As John Dickson explains, Christian statements are not immune from historical scrutiny. By stepping onto public turf, someone is bound to want to challenge those claims. And challenge they do.

24 Think Again CATCHING THE LIGHT Ravi Zacharias

RELEASES ON APRIL 28, 2020 PREORDER TODAY!

Seeing is indeed believing. In the West, Jesus is usually seen through one lens, that of Western reasoning and linear thought. As the world becomes smaller and more people are brought to our door, a broader view of Jesus is needed, one that can be grasped by Easterners and can penetrate the hearts and imaginations of postmodern Westerners. In Seeing Jesus from the East, Ravi Zacharias and Abdu Murray capture a revitalized gospel message through an Eastern lens, revealing its power afresh and sharing the truth about Jesus in a compelling and winsome way. Incorporating story, honor, vivid imagery, sacrifice, and rewards, Seeing Jesus from the East calls readers, both Eastern and Western alike, to a fresh encounter with the living and boundless Jesus. Available for purchase through our bookstore at RZIM, 3755 Mansell Road, Alpharetta, GA 30022, 470-359-2465 or e-mail bookstore@rzim.org. Order online at rzim.christianbook.com

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WHATEVER BARRIER “O UR MINDS CAN shape the way a thing will be, because we act according to our expectations,” commented the filmmaker Federico Fellini. In their recent book The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It, authors John Tierney and Roy F. Baumeister examine “negativity bias”—“the universal tendency for bad events and emotions to affect us more strongly than positive ones.” They suggest that it can take four positive events to override a negative one. Their “Rule of Four” isn’t a rule but rather an observation—and a helpful one, I think, when we consider inviting skeptical individuals to take a closer look at Jesus. Ravi Zacharias has said that one of the tasks of apologetics is to “remove obstacles in the path of the listener, so that he or she will get a direct look at the Cross and the person of Christ.” Such obstacles may be misinformation or a painful experience accompanied by unspoken assumptions and presuppositions. Whatever the barrier, “If apologetics is to be done effectively,” writes Ravi inside this issue of Just Thinking 28.2, “we must connect with the person at the level of the personal and understand where the individual faces their personal struggle. It is never a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Jesus consistently drove this home. His one-on-one conversations were remarkably personal and left others looking into their hearts and considering their spiritual condition.”

Whether from curious Nicodemus or the beleaguered woman at the well, Jesus invited searching questions—and asked a few of his own: “Why do you doubt?” (Matthew 14:31). “Who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15). “Why do you call me good? (Mark 10:18). “What is it you want? (Matthew 20:21). Jesus listened carefully, probed his questioners’ assumptions, and extended grace to all. Biblical history is accurate, compelling, and sometimes quite surprising, as Margaret Manning Shull and John Dickson suggest in their articles. For instance, upon examining the gospel accounts of Jesus’s resurrection, Margaret asks, “Given that a woman’s testimony was not credible, why would the gospel writers report them as witnesses—indeed, the first witnesses for the resurrection?” In his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus challenges the presuppositions of every generation. Whatever barrier, whatever heartache, the God of the Scriptures invites us to come to Him. Through Jesus, we discover a God who listens carefully to our questions, who tenderly probes our hearts and minds, and who extends grace to all who would receive Him. Danielle DuRant is Director of Research and Writing and Editor of Just Thinking magazine.

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UNEXPECTED APOLOGETIC By Margaret Manning Shull

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O VER THE YEARS , various scholars and skeptics have weighed in on whether or not Jesus was actually raised from the dead. Bart Ehrman’s book How Jesus Became God is a case in point. Writing as a historian, he questions many of the gospel remembrances of the events surrounding the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. His conclusion is that the gospels are not reliable, historical witnesses. But is this really the case? A careful reading of the four evangelists’ remembrances of the resurrection does indeed reveal many different emphases and details. The Gospel of Matthew, for example, tells us that a great earthquake occurred as an angel of the Lord descended and came and rolled away the stone and sat upon it. The Gospel of Mark, on the other hand, tells us that a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe, was inside the tomb to announce Jesus’s resurrection. The Gospel of Luke tells us that two men suddenly stood near the women in dazzling apparel, and John’s Gospel reports the discovery of the linen wrappings abandoned in the empty tomb.1 There are many other differences in the retelling of the resurrection appearances of Jesus, and this should be expected from different testimonies. No two people report exactly the same details about any event or happening! But, there is one feature that is the same in all four gospel testimonies: the resurrection announcement is made first to the women who followed Jesus (Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:1; Luke 23:55-24:5; John 20:1). Many reasons have been offered as to why women serve as the immediate witnesses to the resurrection: the women stayed with him through the crucifixion, so he appeared first to those who stuck with him to the last; women traditionally carried out the burial rituals in first century Judaism, so they were witnesses by default. Others suggest that the first women witnesses represent Jesus’s elevation of the status

for women of the first century and for women in general. Although all of these are plausible, historical reasons, there is another strategic, indeed, apologetic reason why the women were the first witnesses. In the first century, the testimony of women was not counted as credible. In both Josephus, the first century Jewish historian, and the Talmud, a woman’s testimony is considered unreliable at best. Josephus wrote, “But let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex…since it is probable that they may not speak truth, either out of hope of gain, or fear of punishment.”2 The Talmud states that “Any evidence which a woman [gives] is not valid (to offer)…. This is equivalent to saying that one who is Rabbinically accounted a robber is qualified to give the same evidence as a woman.”3 No man in the first century would give credence to a woman’s testimony. Given that a woman’s testimony was not credible, why would the gospel writers report them as witnesses—indeed, the first witnesses for the resurrection? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to offer some credible, male testimonial? Anglican priest and physicist John Polkinghorne answers this question with a resounding, “No!” He writes: Perhaps the strongest reason of taking the stories of the empty tomb absolutely seriously lies in the fact that it is women who play the leading role. It would have been very unlikely for anyone in the ancient world who was concocting a story to assign the principal part to women since, in those times, they were not considered capable of being reliable witnesses in a court of law. It is surely much more probable that they appear in the gospel accounts precisely because they actually fulfilled the role that the stories assign

to them, and in so doing, they make a startling discovery.4 In this sense, the women offer very strong historical evidence for the testimony that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. Of course, the biblical narrative confirms the unexpected choice for chief witnesses to God’s great action in history. God chooses those whom we least expect in ways that are profoundly remarkable: Deborah, the first woman judge over Israel; Gideon, the least and the youngest in his tribe and family chosen to defeat the Midianites; David, a simple shepherd boy to be the king of Israel; Rahab and Jael, non-Israelite women who help defeat Israel’s enemies; and finally, tax-collectors, fishermen, and women—Mary, the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, Martha, and Joanna were key witnesses to the ministry of Jesus. In the biblical narrative, God chooses those we might be tempted to overlook or ignore—those who were the last and the least in their society—to bear witness to the great work of God. While historians like Bart Ehrman may fail to see the forest through the trees, the unexpected witnesses documented throughout the Bible offer a compelling vision. Something remarkable happened in the life of Jesus, and women were the first witnesses. Their testimony offers an unexpected apologetic for every generation of seekers. Margaret Manning Shull is an adjunct RZIM speaker and writer and a licensed clinical mental health counselor. 1

See Matthew 28:2; Mark 16:5; Luke 24:4; John 20:5. 2 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 4.8.15. 3 Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 1.8. 4 John Polkinghorne, Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 86-87.

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A WELL-PLACED TRUST By Ravi Zacharias

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THE NOTED atheistic philosopher Bertrand Russell was once asked, “If you meet God after you die, what will you say to Him to justify your unbelief?” “I will tell Him that He did not give me enough evidence,” Russell snapped. Bertrand Russell may have been an unusually hostile voice against all religious belief, and Christianity in particular, but his thirst for evidence or his demand for proof is not unique. For my part, I confess that I wonder more about those who seek no such support for the things they believe than about those who do. There are hundreds, if not thousands, whose paths I have crossed in my journeys who have not only “theoretically believed” in some divine entity but also made their commitment with heartfelt devotion. “Gods” and “goddesses” with ghastly features Adapted from Jesus Among Other and attributes are venerated Gods by Ravi Zacharias by millions bringing their (Nashville: Word offerings and prostrating Publishing, 2000). Used with permission. themselves in worship. I am confounded by such unquestioning commitment, practiced because of a feeling that is engendered or as the bequest of their culture. On the other hand, I also grant that finding a hard-nosed rational justification for belief can be a tedious and sometimes hazardous pursuit. But if truth is the motive for the search, when reasonably pursued, it has its rewards. There is an old adage that says, “It is better to debate a question before settling it than to settle a question before debating it.” My own intellectual battles were rather necessary in a land filled with as many “gods” as people. Unfortunately, for reasons justifiable and unjustifiable, individuals hostile to belief in God often malign faith in Him as the lure of emotion clinging to an idea with the mind disengaged. They do not believe that faith can sustain the weight of both the emotions and the mind.

I realize we are all built with different capacities for thinking on such matters. However, that will not serve as reason enough to support one view over another. We cannot evade the questions that opponents have posed to those who “live by faith.” They are justified in wanting to know what distinguishes faith from foolishness or irrationality, when no coherent logic is ever offered for one’s “faith.” My mother, in great frustration, on one occasion asked me, “From where do you come up with all these questions? Must there be an explanation for everything?” I envied her simplicity. But our idiosyncrasies aside, I have to raise the counterpoint in a world plagued with contradicting ways of defining ultimate reality. To commit one’s life, habits, thoughts, goals, priorities—everything— to a certain worldview with no questions asked is, from the antagonist’s point of view, to build one’s life upon a very questionable foundation.

The Demand for a Sign Common sense dictates that in asserting a conviction of belief, we do more than offer a heart’s desire or present some isolated strands of the claimant’s credentials with which to leap to grandiose conclusions. A true defense of any claim must also deal with the evidences that challenge or contradict it. In other words, truth is not only a matter of offense, in that it makes certain assertions. It is also a matter of defense, in that it must be able to make a cogent and sensible response to the counterpoints that are raised. And here something very important surfaces. Sometimes the choice is not between that which is manifestly contradictory and that which is consistently coherent. To contrast the former cult leader Jim Jones with Jesus Christ is not difficult. The challenge emerges when a claimant to deity may have some unique features that attract, while covering up a

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five thousand people from a handful of loaves and fishes. Immediately after the miracle, the skeptics in the group reminded Jesus that Moses had fed the masses with manna. “What miraculous sign then will you give that we might see it and believe you?” In Matthew’s Gospel, the demand for a sign came after the healing of a blind and mute man (12:22–45). These give us clues to what Jesus was up against and why he responded the way he did. When the Pharisees and the teachers of the law demanded a sign of him in Matthew 12, He replied with some rather pointed words: A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. . . . The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here. The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here. (vv. 39, 41–42) Jesus is charging that the very motivation that impelled them to demand a sign revealed not just that they were not genuinely seeking the truth; their resistance to truth, though they were religious, made the hardened pagan look better than they. In other words, it was not the absence of a sign that troubled them.

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multitude of contradictory teachings or a contradicting lifestyle. Unsuspecting people make a fatal mistake when they give their allegiance to a system of thought by focusing on its benefits while ignoring its systemic contradictions. The entire life of anyone making prophetic or divine claims must be observed in concert with the teaching offered. Numerous historical and philosophical matters come into play when one seriously evaluates such claims. This is precisely what makes Jesus so unique. The whole range of both his life and his teaching can be subjected to the test of truth. Each aspect of his teaching is a link in the greater whole. Each facet is like the face of a diamond, catching the light as it is gently turned. We assume, at this time in the history of thought, that the ancients were more gullible than we and that we have come of age when, in truth, some of the credulity we have displayed would have rightly made them squirm. If anyone denies that reality, just ask those in the marketing industry whether it is form or substance that sells. Several times in the Gospels, someone in the audience challenged Jesus to give a sign in order to prove his claims. They were not a naive bunch. It is telling that in virtually every instance, the challenge came on the heels of a miraculous act that Jesus had just performed. They were not even satisfied merely to see the miraculous. They wanted something more. For example, in John 6:30, the demand for a sign follows his feeding of

It was the message behind the signs that provoked their discomfort. If Jesus could sustain who he was, the ramifications for them were cataclysmic. Everything they pursued and owned, every vestige of inordinate power they enjoyed, was dependent on them being the determiners of other people’s destinies. Sometimes religion can be the greatest roadblock to true spirituality. The bitter tip of Jesus’s verbal arrow struck a raw nerve in them when he said that even a murderous people like the Ninevites were more honest than they were. Why? Because Jonah’s preaching to the Ninevites resulted in a national repentance on such a scale that it made history. And Solomon’s wisdom was so widely recognized that it brought people from distant lands just to listen to him. In brief, Jesus is saying that a message in itself won the hearts of the pagan, but those who claimed spiritual fervor were fleeing from the implications of what they already knew to be true. He demonstrated more authenticating signs and persuasions than Jonah, more beauty and wisdom in thought than Solomon. Jonah was not the author of the miraculous. Jesus was. Solomon was not the source of his wisdom. Jesus was. Yet that difference counted as nothing to them. From then on, all the way to his death on the cross at their hands, Jesus proved that it was not evidence they were looking for but control of their enterprises, even at the cost of truth. I would venture to suggest that the skepticism of some in our time may well come from the same motivation. A major difference for the average person of our day from the context of Jesus’s day is that he was trying to establish himself as Messiah to an audience that at least believed in the existence of God. In our day, we must first establish the existence of God. Only then can we present the evidence that Jesus is God incarnate.

To the religiously minded, the challenge is more complex. How do we establish that Jesus is the only way to God? Where do we find the common ground on which to begin?

Faith and Reason Faith has not always been as suspect a category as it has now come to be. Both the Hebrews and the Greeks had an understanding of faith. True, there were some differences, but faith still had legitimacy. Today, if faith is admitted at all, it is seen as the faith to have faith. It is packaged as a private matter and banned from intellectual credence. “Everyone has to have some faith,” we quip. “If it were not for my faith, I would never have hung in there,” we may hear someone else say. Faith in what, one might ask? In such a faith, the focus is often on anything but truth and on everything that signals pragmatism—“It worked for me, whether it’s true or not.” Such glib pronouncements have made us vulnerable to the faith marketers of our time. It is time to do some “temple cleansing” of the mind and face this reality head-on. First, let us clearly understand what faith is not before establishing what it is. The faith that the Bible speaks of is not antithetical to reason. It is not just a will to believe, everything to the contrary notwithstanding. It is not a predisposition to force every piece of information to fit into the mold of one’s desires. Faith in the biblical sense is substantive, based on the knowledge that the One in whom that faith is placed has proven that He is worthy of that trust. In its essence, faith is a confidence in the person of Jesus Christ and in his power, so that even when his power does not serve my end, my confidence in him remains because of who he is. Faith for the Christian is the response of trust based on who Jesus Christ claimed to be,

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and it results in a life that brings both mind and heart in a commitment of love to him. Is this an irrational or unreasonable response based on all that Christ demonstrated himself to be? Each individual who comes into this kind of faith in the one true God does so through a different struggle. In the Old Testament, Moses was the classic example of how faith was built into someone for whom the implications of trust were not easy. Repeatedly and protractedly, God pursued Moses until Moses understood that the God he served expected his trust and that He would prove Himself, both before and after the trust had been followed through. God gave him just enough, along his journey, to demonstrate who He was but saved the climactic proof for the end of Moses’ journey of faith. On the other hand, Abraham is shown to us as one who so hungered after God that he was willing, with minimal outward proof, to leave his home and to build for posterity a community of faith in the living God. But even in his case, every step in his faith-building process was met with the affirmation of God. God deals with both kinds of us, those of us who long for more evidence and those of us for whom a little evidence will do. But He works always in concert with a revelation of his character. But notice that there are twin angles here. The first is that of trust. Jesus claimed to be the consummate expression of God. The true believer trusts him to be speaking the truth. Everything he said and did sustains that claim, and contrarily, nothing he said or did challenges that claim. It has been said that human nature abhors a vacuum, and that must be true of our faith too. None of us lives comfortably with a vacuous faith. There ought to be both substance to our faith and an object of our faith. But there is a second common misunderstanding about faith. We often assume that it is a crutch for those who

are hurting or are in need of some kind of transcendent intervention in a situation from which they cannot rescue themselves. How often we hear testimonies of faith from the sick and the dying or the injured and bleeding. That, we assume, is the grandest expression of faith. Without doubt, a faith that stays strong in the storms of life is a faith that must be envied. May I suggest, however, that in reality this kind of situation is more often the realizing or the testing of one’s faith. An equally viable faith is demonstrated when dependence upon God is shown in the midst of success, when everything is going right. That kind of faith knows that every moment and every success in life is a gift from God. Is the faith of the one any less than the faith of the other? It may be true that perhaps one who has suffered has been tested more than the other. But certainly, to turn to God when all your earthly needs are already met is to express in no uncertain terms that faith in God is to trust Him even when other supports are within reach. Jesus said that for a rich man to make such a commitment was almost impossible. But thankfully he went on to say that with God it was possible. You see, that is the way God has designed us. One of the most startling things about life is that it does not start with reason and end with faith. It starts in childhood with faith and is sustained either by reasoning through that faith or by blindly leaving the reason for faith unaddressed. The child’s mind has a very limited capacity to inform it of the reason for its trust. But whether she nestles on her mother’s shoulder, nurses at her mother’s breast, or runs into her father’s arms, she does so because of an implicit trust that those shoulders will bear her, that her food will sustain her, and that those arms will hold her. If over time that trust is tested, it will be the character of the parent that will either prove that trust wise or foolish. Faith is not bereft of reason.

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Faith and Unreason There is another side. Jesus reminded his followers that the commitment of the will is a fickle thing when it comes up against the beckoning arms of God. The tendency of the human heart is so defiant that every generation will find ways to challenge that which God proclaims. This point is critical in order to understand that whatever proof is offered at any time in history, we will always demand something else. In Luke 7:31–35, Jesus said: To what, then, can I compare the people of this generation? What are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to each other: “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not cry.” For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, “He has a demon.” The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, “Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and ‘sinners.’” But wisdom is proved right by all her children. By this Jesus powerfully exposed the bent of the human will. When John warned them of the severity of the law, they called him demon-possessed because they wanted more liberty. When Jesus came and mingled with the outcasts of society, they called him a hedonist because they wanted a tighter reign over the law. But Jesus declared that wisdom reveals itself by what it produces. It does

not take more than one look at our society to see the utter absence of wisdom, and it is because we understand neither law nor grace. To such a mindset, faith will always be caricatured as a symptom of credulity. Jesus was not hesitant to call their bluff, as he does ours. But he turned the tables on them and reminded them that their faithlessness to what they knew to be true said more about their own character than it did about the evidence. This, I believe, is the essential component that is often missing from a discussion of faith. Yes, there is the component of content that speaks to the truth. Yes, there is the component of love that speaks to the blending of the emotion and commitment. But there is also the component of honesty that speaks to the truthfulness or the integrity of the individual. It is here that the battle lines are publicly drawn. It is here that the real truth about reason is revealed.

The Real Conflict How tragic that so many are living in the darkness of unreason, clinging to their absolute skepticism. The prophecies, person, and work of Christ, his resurrection from the dead, and numerous other affirmations do have points of verification in history. What does the naturalist do with them? No, the Christian’s faith is not a leap into the dark; it is a well-placed trust in the light—the Light of the World, who is Jesus. Some years ago, I was having dinner with a few scholars, most of whom were scientists. They were a fine group of people,

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selective sovereignty over what we allow to be transferred to philosophy and what we don’t.” There is the truth in cold, hard terms. The person who demands a sign and at the same time has already determined that anything that cannot be explained scientifically is meaningless is not merely stacking the deck; he is losing at his own game. The plea for evidence force ones to wonder who has to have more faith. Is it the Christian who uses his mind to trust in God, or is it the one who, without any attempt to explain how his mind came to be, nevertheless uses that mind to demand a sign and disbelieves in God? This is why Jesus challenged the notion that more evidence would have generated more faith. George Macdonald said years ago that to give truth to him who does not love the truth is to only to give more reasons for misinterpretation. In summary, as I have often said, God has put enough into this world to make faith in Him most reasonable, but He has left enough out to make it impossible to live by reason alone. The skeptic often caricatures the Christian faith as credulity. That is not how the Bible sees it. Real faith is based on reason and what we know to be true. It helps carry us over the chasms of our doubt when not every question is answered. Our faith is in the One whom we know offers us eternal life. He demonstrated that with enough reason, we may we trust Him for what we don’t know. Ravi Zacharias is Founder and Chairman of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Alpharetta, Georgia.

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and I was honored to be in their company. At one point, our discussion veered into the conflict between naturalism’s starting point—nature and nature alone—and supernaturalism’s starting point, which is that God is the only sufficient explanation for our origin. I asked them a couple of questions. “If the Big Bang were indeed where it all began [which one can fairly well grant, at least to this point in science’s thinking], may I ask what preceded the Big Bang?” Their answer, which I had anticipated, was that the universe was shrunk down to a singularity. I pursued, “But isn’t it correct that a singularity as defined by science is a point at which all the laws of physics break down?” That is correct,” was the answer. “Then, technically, your starting point is not scientific either.” There was silence, and their expressions betrayed the scurrying mental searches for an escape hatch. But I had yet another question. I asked if they agreed that when a mechanistic view of the universe had held sway, thinkers like Hume had chided philosophers for taking the principle of causality and applying it to a philosophical argument for the existence of God. Causality, he warned, could not be extrapolated from science to philosophy. “Now,” I added, “when quantum theory holds sway, randomness in the subatomic world is made a basis for randomness in life. Are you not making the very same extrapolation that you warned us against?” Again there was silence, and then one man said with a self-deprecating smile, “We scientists do seem to retain

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A SHOUT FOR JOY “W HERE IS G OD ?” is a question found not only on the lips of skeptics but also deep within the hearts of believers. Circumstances have a way of testing the strongest of wills and troubling the most devoted of hearts. Yet God answers them both, truthfully. Why truthfully, you may ask. Because humans are more than capable of creating gods for themselves. Everyone who asks questions about God has a picture of what God is like. Many skeptics, for example,

By Jose Philip

expect that if God exists, He would be more visible or would exercise better control. Christians, on the other hand, believing that God will work everything for good, expect that God must do what they deem is good. However, no matter how obliging or convenient our view of God may be, if it is not based upon truth, it will ultimately be unlivable. The human soul rots when the mind settles for lies; left to ourselves, we will remain blind to the very things we desperately need to see.

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We need a vision of God for who He really is and the passion to pursue life as it is meant to be lived. And we are given both in Jesus Christ. It is to him the Scriptures, like all of human history, points. The prophet Isaiah, whose name literally means, “The Lord saves,” paints a vision of hope in his ancient words and invites us to marvel at God’s beauty. In the book of Isaiah, we see God making Himself manifest in three distinct ways. First, God upholds righteousness in the face of moral degradation (Isaiah 1-39). God is holy and He will judge sin. Second, God offers forgiveness as a gift to the undeserving (Isaiah 40-55). God’s judgment is not merely to show that humanity has fallen. The severity of his judgment is a foil for the magnitude of his mercy. God’s judgment needs no explanation. His heart to redeem the rebellious, however, remains a mystery. Third, God remains committed to perfect humanity in spite of human depravity (Isaiah 56-66). God, in his holiness, not only reclaims sinners but also redeems them to make them holy. Isaiah spends over six decades pleading with his people to know their God and to wait for Him patiently with hope and even joy. However, that did not sit well with the people. Waiting patiently in hope and with great joy does not come easily. The people expected that God would throw off the yoke that oppressed them and crush the heads of their oppressions. He did, but not the way they expected. They wanted a triumphant king, but God became king in the suffering servant—a paradox that the human mind will never fully fathom. It is possible to believe that there is a God from what we see around us (while others might assert that what we see argues against God’s existence). And yet, we need not settle for nature, or what theologians refer to as general revelation, as our guide. God has made it possible for us to know the truth of who He is in the person of Jesus (special revelation).

With the coming of Jesus, the invisible God became incarnate. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us,” as John the apostle wrote, giving humanity an unprecedented privilege: to know God for who He truly is (see John 1:14). As we reflect upon the life of Jesus, we begin to appreciate the lowly stable in which he was cradled; it points to the humility in which God reached out to humanity so that anyone could come to Him. The cross on which he died signified his forgiveness that we all, though undeserving, desperately need and can freely receive. And the empty tomb vindicates Jesus. He is who he claimed to be: the Living God. The resurrection evidences why everyone everywhere must come to Jesus, for eternal life is found only in him. It might seem incredulous to believe in a God who is sovereign and benevolent when the world seems to be spiraling out of control. But it is not incredulous. That was Isaiah’s plea: Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices; together they shout for joy. When the Lord returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes…. The Lord will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God. (Isaiah 52:8, 10) When we immerse ourselves in the wonder of who God is, the incredulous gives way to the incredible, satisfying both the heart and mind. Jesus invites us to come to him, to listen to him, and to see that because he is whom he claimed to be, we can know the truth of who God is. We can learn to trust that God is good and live in hope that He will remake all things good. Might this promise cause us to lift up our voices and shout for joy, even this very day. Jose Philip is a speaker with RZIM Asia-Pacific in Singapore.

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MATTERS OF HISTORY By John Dickson

Christianity has a problem. Only one, you might ask? Unlike other religions, Christianity gambles its plausibility on supposed historical events. Christians don’t just say other-worldly things like, “God loves you,” “We all need forgiveness,” and “Heaven is open to all.” None of that sort of thing is the least bit confirmable, or falsifiable. We may mock such spiritual claims, but we cannot disconfirm them with counterevidence. But that’s not really how Christians talk. Listen closely, and you’ll often hear them say things like “Jesus lived in the Galilean village of Nazareth,” or “He had a wide reputation as a healer,” or “He caused a scandal in the temple of Jerusalem around AD 30,” or “He suffered execution under a Roman governor named Pontius Pilate,” or even “His tomb outside the city wall was found empty a few days after his crucifixion, and his disciples saw him alive.”

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Statements like these are not completely immune from historical scrutiny. They touch times and places we know quite a bit about. They intersect with other figures (like Pilate) about whom we have reasonably good information. The alleged events all take place in a cultural and political melting pot—Roman Galilee and Judaea—for which we have thousands of archaeological remains and hundreds of thousands of words of ancient inscriptions and written records. When people proThis is an excerpt claim an intangible thing from Is Jesus History? like “the universal love of by John Dickson, Published by The God,” they are safe from Good Book Company, scrutiny. But as soon as 2020, and used by they say that their guy kind permission. was crucified by the fifth governor of Judaea, they are stepping onto public turf—and someone is bound to want to challenge the claim. And challenge they do!

ATTACKING THE CLAIMS For a few years now some of the bestselling books have been full-scale attacks of Christian claims by the world’s most brilliant atheists: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Michel Onfray, Lawrence Krauss, and so on. Hitchens, who sadly died a few years ago, speaks of the “highly questionable existence of Jesus” and the “huge amount of fabrication” in the stories written about him in the Gospels, the biographies of Jesus now found in the New Testament, the second part of the Christian Bible. He goes on: Either the Gospels are in some sense literal truth, or the whole thing is essentially a fraud and perhaps an immoral one at that. Well, it can be stated with certainty, and on their own evidence, that the Gospels are

most certainly not literal truth. That means that many of the “sayings” and teachings of Jesus are hearsay upon hearsay upon hearsay, which helps explain their garbled and contradictory nature.1 It’s very strong stuff, and many similarsounding statements can be found throughout the popular atheist literature of the last decade or two. And it is such good writing—at least Hitchens’ prose is fabulous—that it is easy to get swept up into thinking that these public naysayers must have a strong body of expert opinion behind them.

FALSE IMPRESSIONS The impression these writers leave us, whether intended or not, is that specialists in the field of history also talk of the “highly questionable existence of Jesus” or the “huge amount of fabrication” in the Gospels. But this impression is dramatically false. Anyone who dips into the academic literature about the figure of Jesus will quickly discover that trained scholars, regardless of their religious or irreligious conviction, reckon we know quite a bit about the influential teacher from Nazareth. An entire industry of “double-checking” the claims about Jesus of Nazareth has developed over the last 250 years. The study of the “Historical Jesus” is a vast secular discipline today, found in major universities all around the world, including the two with which I have been most closely associated—Macquarie University and Sydney University in Australia. While there are certainly plenty of active Christians involved in this sub-discipline of Ancient History, there are also a great many half-Christians, ex-Christians, Jewish scholars (lots of Jewish scholars) as well as self-confessed agnostics and atheists. This makes it very difficult for anyone writing and working in this field

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to get away with publishing theology under the guise of history, or privileging the biblical documents over non-biblical ones, or pretending we can “prove” most of what the New Testament says about Jesus. The process of peer review, where scholars publish their work in professional journals only after being double-checked by two or more independent (and anonymous) scholars of rank, might not be foolproof but it certainly filters out any works of propaganda. It also reduces the risk of fraudulent claims, and it keeps scholars constantly mindful of the rules of the History game.

VESTED INTERESTS At the same time, out of the universities and on the street this topic is filled with such emotion and vested interests that some folks won’t accept any claim that points even vaguely in the direction of the history of Jesus. The other day I posted on social media a famous statement about Jesus from the great Albert Einstein, and it triggered quite a reaction from my skeptical friends and followers. The great physicist was interviewed in 1929 by the journalist George Viereck and, among many other things, he was asked about some religious matters. It is well known that Einstein despised “revealed religion” as infantile; he did not even like the idea of a personal God. His religious outlook was little more than a vague hunch that behind the laws of nature there must be some “infinitely superior spirit and reasoning power.” Fair enough. But the thing that annoyed my atheist friends was Einstein’s admiration for the historical figure (yes, historical figure) found in the New Testament Gospels. Here’s a portion of the interview: Viereck: “To what extent are you influenced by Christianity?” Einstein: “As a child, I received

instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.” Viereck: “You accept the historical existence of Jesus?” Einstein: “Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life. How different, for instance, is the impression which we receive from an account of legendary heroes of antiquity like Theseus. Theseus and other heroes of his type lack the authentic vitality of Jesus.”2 Einstein’s admiration for Jesus, and his confidence that Jesus was a historical figure, offer a nice contrast to the more recent dogmatism of the best-selling atheists, which is perhaps why my skeptical social-media friends were so resistant to accepting that the great physicist could ever have stated such glowing words about the founder of Christianity.

Einstein’s admiration for Jesus, and his confidence that Jesus was a historical figure, offer a nice contrast to the more recent dogmatism of the best-selling atheists. I literally had folks suggesting Viereck’s interview itself was a fraud, even though—as I pointed out—it was published in one of twentieth-century America’s most widely read magazines. I had to dig it out of the archives and post screenshots of the relevant pages of

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the interview before some would believe that Einstein said such a thing. Even then, I’m not sure other folk would accept it. Such is the power of preference to shape what we believe!

COMMITMENT TO A CAUSE In fact, on December 18 a few years ago, friends and colleagues alerted me to an article in the mainstream press suggesting that the history of Jesus was entirely dubious. You can almost set your clock by it— Christmas is upon us, I thought. But this was different. Social media was alight with shares and retweets, because this piece appeared in the venerable Washington Post, and seemed to go further than the usual polite debunking of this or that element of the Nativity story. The author concluded triumphantly in the final line, “In sum, there are clearly good reasons to doubt Jesus’ historical existence—if not to think it outright improbable.”3 Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the author of the article had been a recent student of mine in the course I teach on “Historical Jesus to Written Gospels” for the University of Sydney. This young man had sat through lectures outlining the sources used by scholars, the latest historical methods, and the broad conclusions of the scholarly consensus in this large field of study. It turns out this student was an active ex-Christian atheist doing a PhD in another department of the university (Religious Studies) critiquing the wellknown Christian author and scholar William Lane Craig. Around the same time, he self-published a book entitled There Was No Jesus, There Is No God. Given the student’s clear commitment to a cause, I didn’t feel too bad that I had failed to convince him just how idiosyncratic it is in secular scholarship to propose the non-existence of Jesus of Nazareth. He was like an anti-vaxxer or flat-earther

disdaining mainstream science. With a wave of his hand he dismissed what he called the “atrocious methods” of historians of Jesus. No offense taken. I was glad to have the opportunity to offer a reply to my student’s claims.4 But my main point here is not the historical particulars—I explore that later in my book. I want to make the observation that skepticism can sometimes be as dogmatic as fundamentalism. They can be the mirror-image of each other.

ISSUING THE CHALLENGE In what might turn out to be a rush of blood to the head, a few years ago I was so confident that Jesus’s existence is regarded as beyond reasonable doubt in contemporary secular scholarship that I published a challenge on the ABC (Australia’s public broadcaster): if anyone can find just one full professor of Ancient History, Classics, or New Testament in any real university anywhere in the world who argues that Jesus never lived, I will eat a page out of my Bible.5

Given the student’s clear commitment to a cause, I didn’t feel too bad that I had failed to convince him just how idiosyncratic it is in secular scholarship to propose the non-existence of Jesus of Nazareth. The response on social media was fun, as various skeptical friends (and some who were not-so-much friends) set out to make me eat Holy Scripture. As the hours and days passed, a volley of names was offered: professors of psychology, English literature, philosophy, folklore (I kid you

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not), and German language. But not one professor from any of the relevant fields. My Bible was safe. I have since inadvertently discovered that there is an atheist group here in Australia determined to meet the challenge. And when they find a relevant professor who denies the historical existence of Jesus, the intention is apparently to barge into my office with a camera and make me eat a page of my Bible for the online public to enjoy live.

A SHORTCUT TO THE SCHOLARLY CONSENSUS Whether or not there is a relevant professor out there who denies Jesus ever lived, there is a simple shortcut for non-specialists to confirm that there is, indeed, a consensus among contemporary secular scholars that the broad outline of Jesus’s life is historically sound. This does not “prove” that Jesus existed, but it does demonstrate that professional scholarship—even outside religious institutions—considers there to be no real doubt about his existence. Anyone with access to a serious public or university library can easily consult the standard reference works in the disciplines of ancient history and classics. The big academic publishing houses produce compendiums designed to describe the state-of-the-question on all things historical. There are at least five such works that would be regarded as the authoritative and relevant volumes in English-speaking secular academia.

FIVE EXAMPLES OF CONSENSUS The first is the famous single-volume Oxford Classical Dictionary (published by Oxford University Press), which summarizes scholarship on all things Greek and Roman in just a little over 1700 pages. The several-page entry on the origins of Christianity begins with an assessment of

what may be reliably known about Jesus of Nazareth. Readers will discover that no doubts are raised about the basic facts that this teacher-healer really lived and really did die by crucifixion. Next is the much larger Cambridge Ancient History in fourteen volumes (published, of course, by Cambridge University Press). Volume 10 covers the “Augustan Period,” right about when Tiberius, Livia, Pliny the Elder, and Jesus all lived. It has a sizeable chapter on the birth of Christianity. The entry begins with a couple of pages outlining what is known of Jesus’s life and death, including his preaching of the kingdom of God, his fraternizing with sinners, and so on. No doubts are raised about the authenticity of these core elements of the Jesus-story. The third relevant standard work is also published by Cambridge University in the UK. It’s the Cambridge History of Judaism in four volumes. Volume 3 covers the “Early Roman Period.” Several different chapters refer to Jesus in passing as a interesting figure of Jewish history. One chapter—sixty pages in length—focuses entirely on Jesus and is written by two leading scholars, neither of whom has any qualms dismissing bits of the New Testament record when they think the evidence is against it. The chapter offers a first-rate account of what experts currently think of the historical Jesus. His teaching, fame as a healer, openness to sinners, selection of “the twelve” (apostles), prophetic actions (like cleansing the temple), clashes with elites, and, of course, his death on a cross are all are treated as beyond reasonable doubt. The authors do not tackle the resurrection (unsurprisingly), but they do acknowledge, as a matter of historical fact, that the first disciples of Jesus “…were absolutely convinced that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised and was Lord and that numerous of them were certain that he had appeared to them.”

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INSCRIPTIONS The fourth standard work comes from a different angle entirely, and is very revealing for anyone who imagines there are doubts about Jesus’s existence in mainstream secular scholarship. The monumental Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/ Palaestinae (from Germany’s 260-year-old publishing house De Gruyter) is a recent six-volume compendium of all the known inscriptions in Judaea/Palestine for the thousand-year period from Alexander the Great to Muhammad. An image of each inscription (when available) appears, followed by an analysis of its date, context, and content.

A COMPENDIUM OF ALL THE KNOWN INSCRIPTIONS IN JUDAEA/ PALESTINE FOR THE THOUSAND-YEAR PERIOD AFFIRMS THAT THERE IS NO REASON TO DOUBT THAT A TITULUS (INSCRIPTION) WITH THE REASON FOR JESUS’S CONDEMNATION BY PONTIUS PILATE WAS AFFIXED ON HIS CROSS.

Some might be surprised to read entry 15 of the Jerusalem inscriptions: “Titulus on the cross of Jesus in three languages: Aramaic, Latin and Greek, ca. 30 AD.” The four renditions of the inscription from the Gospels appear (basically, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”), followed by a brief commentary on the Roman practice of placarding the reason for the punishment of a condemned person. The entry then states: “Therefore there is no reason to doubt the tradition that a titulus with the reason for his condemnation by Pilatus was affixed on Jesus’s cross.” The point for my purposes isn’t just that this volume affirms the tiny detail of

the sign above Jesus’s cross—that is probably of minor interest to most readers. The point is that this peerless historical compendium of ancient inscriptions takes it as an absolute given that the Jewish figure Jesus existed, that he caused a scandal of some kind, and that he ended up on a Roman cross. The fifth and final example is Brill’s New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World (published by Brill Academic). It is a classic German-language compendium of Ancient History, now translated into English in twenty volumes. You can buy your own set for just €5.795.00 (a little over £5,000 or $6,600). Of course it has an entry on the historical Jesus, reaching 5,239 words (I didn’t count; each entry tells you exactly how many words it contains). It is skeptical about a lot of things in the Gospels. It has no interest in propping up the Christian Faith. But nor does it express even the slightest doubt about Jesus’s existence, the basic themes of his teaching, his reputation as a healer, and his crucifixion.

BEYOND DOUBT None of these five works is theological, or even remotely religious. They are the standard secular reference works to which scholars themselves turn to double-check certain details, and to get a quick summary of the state-of-the-question for just about any ancient topic you can imagine. Each volume treats the existence of Jesus the teacher, healer, and martyr as beyond doubt. I recognize that this article amounts to what philosophers call an argument from authority—but arguments from authority are far from bogus. They are used all the time in courts of law—where the judgment of an “expert witness” is considered evidence. And we all rely on authorities for many of the things we know about the world. If, for example, I am not a particle physicist, I will have

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to rely on experts for pretty much everything I know about the atom. When I learn that a consensus of particle physicists agrees that the Higgs Boson exists and has a mass of approximately 125 GeV/c2, I am justified in accepting this consensus as a shortcut to reliable knowledge on the topic.

anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him. We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a cross, but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen. He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen— by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. (Acts 10: 36-43)

The fact is there is an obvious consensus of scholarship that places Jesus’s existence beyond doubt. It is no different with matters of history. The fact that there is an obvious consensus of scholarship that places Jesus’s existence beyond doubt must count for something; not everything, but something.

IN A NUTSHELL The claim that Jesus of Nazareth did not even exist has virtually no currency in contemporary scholarship. All the standard (secular) compendiums of ancient history judge the core of the story—that a popular Galilean teacher and reputed healer named Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem by order of Pontius Pilate— to be beyond reasonable doubt. Lastly, a brief summary of the life of Jesus in a speech by the apostle Peter recorded in the book of Acts is instructive. Peter said, You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. You know what has happened throughout the province of Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached—how God

John Dickson, PhD, is Distinguished Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Public Christianity at Ridley College, Melbourne, and an adjunct speaker with RZIM. 1

Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve, 2007), 114-121. 2 “What Life Means to Einstein,” Saturday Evening Post (October 26, 1929), 117. 3 www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/ wp/2014/12/18/did-historical-jesus-existthe-traditional-evidence-doesnt-holdup/?hpid=z2&utm_term=.75c39646f78f. 4 http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/ 2014/12/24/4154120.htm. 5 www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-17/dicksonill-eat-a-page-from-my-bible-if-jesusdidnt-exist/5820620.

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THINK AGAIN

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B Y R AV I Z A C H A R I A S

CATCHING THE LIGHT PASSION2020 CONFERENCE

S KEPTICS OFTEN ATTACK Christians for living just by this thing we call “faith.” The attack redefines what faith actually is and then tears it apart. Skeptics say faith is the seduction of our emotions and something we attribute to that which cannot stand the test of reason. We must take that challenge seriously. In fact, the Bible does not see faith as a totally blind leap without any justification. “Faith” in the biblical sense is substantive; it is based on reason and the knowledge that the One in whom that faith is placed has proven that He is worthy of that trust. Time and again, we see how God provides sufficient

basis for that belief while calling upon us to trust Him even when things don’t go the way we wish. That kind of faith trusts not only in God’s power but also in God’s wisdom. God calls us to the proper blend of faith and reason, which everyone lives by—both believer and unbeliever. Therefore, the attack is self-defeating. Yes, the barriers to belief may be many, yet the bridges to every heart ought never to be lost. God provides enough reason to have that faith. At the same time, we know we don’t live by sheer reason alone. The very fact that I trust my reason is a step of faith.

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If apologetics is to be done effectively, we must connect with the person at the level of the personal and understand where the individual faces their personal struggle. It is never a “one size fits all” approach. Jesus consistently drove this home. His one-on-one conversations were remarkably personal and left others looking into their hearts and considering their spiritual condition. He opened people up within their own assumptions and then built a bridge from that starting point. With Nicodemus, he drew him to the assumptions of a teacher. With the woman at the well, he reached her from her broken heart. Consider the conversation between Jesus and Pilate recorded in the Gospel of John, chapter 18. The conversation began with Pilate asking Jesus if indeed he was a king. The very surprising answer of Jesus was, “Are you asking this of your own, or has someone else set you up for this?” Here we see the first and most important step to understanding the nature of truth. Jesus asked Pilate, in effect, if his question was genuine or purely academic. He was not merely checking on Pilate’s sincerity. He was opening up Pilate’s heart to himself, to reveal to Pilate his unwillingness to deal with the implications of Jesus’s answer. Pilate wanted a shortcut to the end game he had in mind. Jesus challenged him about his real intent. In the pursuit of truth, intent is prior to content, or to the availability of it. The love of truth and the willingness to submit to its demands is the first step. If one doesn’t desire the truth, no evidence will suffice. When we predetermine what we want, more argument ensues to justify the desire for a lie. Jesus then added something even more extraordinary. After claiming his lordship was rooted in a kingdom that was not of this world, he said, “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” Jesus was not merely establishing the existence of truth; he was affirming

his total embodiment of it. He was and is identical with the truth. This means that everything he said and did, and the life he lived in the flesh, represented that which was in keeping with ultimate reality. Life and living were defined by his being. And therefore, to reject him is to choose to govern one’s self with a lie and to redefine life. That was a staggering claim to give to Pilate, who was seduced by power and driven by self-preservation. Jesus told Pilate that how one responded to him revealed the true condition of that person’s heart. What an enormous claim just before he went to the cross to sacrifice his own power for the sake of our need. God’s answers to life’s questions are not just proven by the process of abstract reasoning. They are also sustained by the rigors of experience and our greatest needs. In the reality of history, God has demonstrated empirically the living out of truth in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of his Son. Loving Jesus is a total way of living. Not just an argument on one matter or another. Jesus challenges our hearts and our intents and the need of our very souls. As I have said, this is precisely what makes Jesus so unique. The whole range of both his life and his teaching can be subjected to the test of truth. Each aspect of his teaching is a link in the greater whole. Each facet is like the face of a diamond, catching the light as it is gently turned. Our response, in turn, shows who we really are: seekers of truth or pursuers of autonomy. Either we allow God to speak to us, or we use God to speak to ourselves. In short, the intimations of truth come in a multi-directional way. God as the guardian of reason leads us to check the correspondence of his word to see that it is true in individual claims. Yet truth goes beyond one or two assertions. In all of his claims, we see the coherence of the assertions. Our experience in life proves those truths in concrete reality.

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Our grand privilege is to know God, to bring our lives into conformity with truth, which leads us to that coherence within. Life, to be coherent, cannot just have one “knock out” argument. It must speak meaning in totality. Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32). In a world increasingly enslaved by error and falsehood, and further seduced by ideas and images to believe a lie, how wonderful to be freed by the truth of Christ’s peace and to live in the light of his presence. God speaks to every area of our lives. The Scriptures tell us that the enemy of our souls is the father of all lies. He will do anything to keep us from coming to the truth because it is the most valuable thing in the world and leads us to the source of all truth, to God alone. That is why we must stay in his Word and be guided by his purpose for us. To all of this the skeptic might say that such conclusions may be drawn only if the God of the Bible exists. To that, I heartily answer, Absolutely! And on numerous campuses around the world it has been our thrilling privilege to present a defense for the existence of God, the reality of the resurrection, and the authority of the Scriptures unique in their splendor and convincing in the truth they proclaim. But let us not miss what the skeptic unwittingly surrenders by saying that all this could be true only if God exists. For implicit in that concession is the Law of Non-contradiction and the Law of Rational Inference, both of which are only deductions based on the assumption that truth exists and can be tested, the assumption that truth must be coherent and that life must make sense. Truth, in turn, can exist only if there is an objective standard by which to measure it. That objective, unchanging absolute is God, further revealed to us in the person of Christ. So, the blend of objective truth

and subjective meaning makes for the bridge from argument to experience. Life is based on truth claims and is coherent because of God’s answers and God’s presence. Truth and faith come from knowledge and commitment. Growing up in India, I heard a story of a little boy who had many pretty marbles—but he was constantly eyeing his sister’s bag full of candy. One day he said to her, “If you give me all your candy, I’ll give you all of my marbles.” She gave it much thought and agreed to the trade. He took all her candy and went back to his room to get his marbles. But the more he admired them, the more reluctant he became to give them all up. So, he hid the best of them under his pillow and took the rest to her. That night, she slept soundly, while he tossed and turned restlessly, unable to sleep and thinking, “I wonder if she gave me all the candy?” I have often wondered when I see our culture claiming that God has not given us enough evidence if it is not the veiled restlessness of lives that live in doubt because of our own duplicity. We refuse to give up our selfish pursuits and then wonder if God really exists. The battle in our time is posed as one of the intellect, in the assertion that truth is unknowable. However, that may be only a veneer for the real battle: the battle of the heart, which Christ alone, the Light of the World, is able to transform. The just shall live by faith and faithfulness. That combination comes to trust and delight in God’s call and promise to draw near to us when we draw near to Him. Knowledge and trust are inseparable handmaidens. That which God has joined together, let no one put asunder. Warm Regards,

Ravi

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After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. —Matthew 28:1