One wonders why some who claim to be evangelical seem so highly invested in enouraging people to reject whole swaths of the Bible as error or myth. I recall one visit with a scholar who rejects much of the Bible as erroneous. I asked if he believed in the resurrection of Jesus. His reply to me was, "Yes." I asked him why he believed in the resurrection of Christ but rejected most of the Old Testament and much of the New. His reply was curious to say the least. "Because I have not yet seen any evidence to the contrary." I was stunned by the answer because there is a very simple reply: Dead men are not raised. That is the most compelling reason I know of to reject the resurrection of Jesus.
If God did not create the universe as the Bible says, If He did not created man as the Bible says, if God does not direct history as the Bible says, if the testimony of the Scriptures is hopelessly contradictory, if the New Testament misinterprets the Old, and if Jesus did not perform the miracles attributed to him in the gospels then it seems foolish to suddenly accept the resurrection as fact especially on such flimsy grounds as, "I have not yet seen evidence to the contrary." Again, I say, dead men are not raised!
The fact is, I believe in the resurrection of Jesus because the Word of God declares it to be so. certainly there are other "proofs" of the resurrection that can be quite compelling. But no such proofs can stand apart from the attestation of God's powerful Word. It is God's Word which creates faith in the heart of the unbeliever. It is God's supernatural use of His unerring Word which creates faith where once dwelt only skepticism and rebellion.
So, for the one who wishes to endorse the ethics of Jesus but rejects His miralces; for the one who dismisses creation but holds on to redemption; for one who denies God's power to give us an unerring word but claims belief in resurrection, I ask, "Why?"
2 comments:
Amen Pastor. The irrationality so rampant today makes one think the world is insane. But, then, I guess that's what the Bible says isn't it - you know - mind's darkened etc.
It is all too human to say, "Hath God really said?" What stunning hubris to assume I have the authority and the intellectual gifts to sit in judgment of God's Word.
A commentor in one of the Biologos threads I connect to makes the ridiculous statement that the scholars who hold to biblical inerrancy are lightweights and not taken seriously. Really?! I have no doubt that unbelieving scholars do not want to take the likes of D.A. Carson, Doug Moo, Dan Wallace, Andreas Kostenberger, Richard Gaffin, Vern Poythress, Greg Beale, (and many others) seriously. After all, these men actually believe the Bible. Believers make unbelievers very uncomfortable. Belief is a stinging rebuke to unbelief. Therefore, mockery, disdain, and dismissal are the weapons of choice from those who do not believe. Notice the tone of the Biologos entries. To believe in the Bible's inerrancy is simply stupid and cannot be taken seriously by anyone with half a brain.
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