Tag Archives: Christ

Polemics

How is Christianity different from other world religions?

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Peter Sean Bradley comments on the Hindu/Christian debate I posted yesterday. The debate really showed the difference between how Hindus view religion and how Christians view religion. I thought one of his points was particularly interesting.

Peter Sean Bradley writes:

According to Professor Philip Carey, Christianity is unique in the religious-sphere because of its obsession with the person of Jesus.  Because Christianity is about a person, it is essential to know who that person is, which therefore puts a heavy emphasis on doctrine, specifically correct doctrine, about the person of Jesus.  Christianity is thus a faith rather than simply a practice and faith – being intellectual adherence to ideas – are by definition exclusive.  One can, for example, be faithful to many things, until there is a conflict among those things, and then the true faith has to be determined. This is the reason for the Christian obsession with orthodoxy, i.e., “correct belief,” rather than some Christian proclivity for hair-splitting.

The apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:12-14:

12But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

13If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.

14And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.

Basically, Christianity is the only religion that stands or falls on a historical event: the resurrection. Either it happened or it didn’t. And the job of every individual is to test for themselves and act accordingly. Christianity is about truth – what really happened. If people are just interested in religion to comfort them, or to spur them towards good deeds, or as a cultural/ethnic identity, or as a set of rules and rituals, then they cannot be Christians.

Consider the words of Jesus from John 18:36-37, when he is being questioned by Pilate:

36Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

37“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

And it turns out that Hindus are not the only ones who tend to think that religion is not about propositional truth. Peter Sean Bradley cites this interview with Paula Fredricksen, a Jewish historian who specializes in ancient history. Paula says that even Judaism is not exclusive in the sense that it required pagans to abandon other gods in order to worship in the Jewish synagogue.

My experience dealing with Jewish believers is that they have one of two views. The ones I’ve met were either cultural Jews who are functional atheists, or they believed that a religion is “true” so long as it results in good works. In my experience, debates and apologetics are not emphasized in Judaism, (or in Hinduism). Two of my favorite radio talk show hosts are Jewish. Michael Medved (orthodox) and Dennis Prager (Reformed), have both stated this point of view on air many times.

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Guest post: Photograph of early Christian engraving found in Rome

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WK: This is a guest post by journalist and blogger Rick Heller, who blogs at TransparentEye.This post is cross-posted here.

I was in Rome a few weeks ago, and took this photo in the entryway of the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere, one of the oldest churches in Rome. The engraving is one of a number preserved from an early date, and uses the Chi Rho symbol, which employs the first two Greek letters in “Christ.”

Maximinus in Chi Rho

I’ve been reflecting on the conversion of the Greco-Roman world to Christianity, and contrasting it with the persistence of polytheism in the Hindu world (as an agnostic, I have no stake in any of these religions).

Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire by Constantine in 313, starting a period of toleration that ended when Theodosius prohibited paganism later in the century. Paganism seems to have quickly disappeared. The pagans were apparently unwilling to die for their religion in the way that Christians were for theirs. I’m not an expert in this, but it seems to me that Greco-Roman religion, with its view of Hades, didn’t offer much in the way of an incentive for dying for one’s faith.

Hinduism, by contrast, has survived and prospered, despite the Muslim conquest of India many centuries ago (Indian Buddhism was essentially destroyed). I don’t know how to account for this, but it has been suggested to me that the Hindu belief in reincarnation gave it a strength and resilience that Greco-Roman religion lacked.

I do find engravings like the above moving. It appears to me to have been carved by a non-professional hand–certainly with less regularity than on an official Roman inscription–and thus seems like a personal communication transmitted across the centuries.

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What the Bible tells us about the character of God

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Here’s a post by Matthew who blogs at iPandora. He explains how the personality of God as presented in the Bible is very different from our human personalities.

Excerpt:

In the timeline of the Promise Land journey, this event occurred just two months after God’s parting of the Red Sea, and only about 2 weeks after God had led His people to an oasis with 12 springs and 70 palm trees. In other words, God’s provision in greater and lesser (though still great) ways was fresh on the minds of His people.

Or was it.

Exodus 16 opens with the people grumbling.

And not just the regular travel pains, this is specific whining and wanting for the comforts of Egypt. God had shown them the Egyptians low regard for their lives. He’d shown them His own supremacy over and above the greatest kings of this earth. He’d shown them his tender and remarkable hand in the smallest of details by leading them to a symbolically perfect place of provision.

And they were already complaining.

Ingratitude is a morally despicable attitude and an ingrate is an ugly person. Yet here was the entire congregation of Israel grumbling at their want in this wilderness and wishing for the meat pots of Egypt.

If any of us were in God’s position, we’d consider ourselves quite justified in being incensed at the complaints of this recalcitrant and backward people. We’d rail at the ingrates and give the whole nation a dressing down they wouldn’t soon forget.

But God doesn’t.

And that’s where it is most true that this lion is no tame lion.

This rest is here, in which he explains what he means by that last line. But now I’m going to make a few points of my own.

Why do Christians today read the Bible when it is so old? Well, God wanted Biblical writers to record propositional statements about him so that we could all read about it and learn about what God is like. And what do we find in the Bible? Well, one of the most compelling reasons for people to consider the claims of Christianity is that when you read the Bible, you find out that God is not just a bigger version of man.

We can see this clearly when we look at Jesus the Messiah dying on the cross to atone for the sins of we, his rebellious murderers, or God the Father feeding the rebellious children of Israel when they are ungrateful for being delivered from slavery. God is not like us – he is different. He has his own character. And our job is to get to know him as he is, and then try to freely choose to act in ways that honor him as he is.

Tough Questions Answered wrote a recent series of posts on how NOT to read the Bible. Here’s part 1 and part 2.

My series on sin and Hell

This series explains why humans do with respect to God that gets us in trouble, how God has made a way for us to make it right, and how Christians can explain all of this to others without feeling ashamed to speak about it.

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