Scripture as Historical Source Documents

I must draw everybody’s attention to the new work by Candida Moss, entitled the Myth of Christian Persecution. I will reserve judgment on her work because I have not read it; however, I encourage everybody to read a short article where she summarizes her views on the matter here - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/candida-moss/the-myth-of-christian-persecution_b_2901880.html

There is a tendency with liberal Christians and non-believers to deny the authenticity, let alone historicity, of Scripture from the outset. No serious scholar, of any theological persuasion, would deny that the NT is the most widely attested document from the ancient world. We can be more certain about the text of the NT than any other document from antiquity. However, such critics a priori dismiss them as historical source documents out of hand because their worldview will not accept anything else.

“Sure, they’re old documents,” they say. “We can’t actually take them seriously, though. They’re religious, after all …”

The irony is that such critics are blind to their own hostile starting point of enmity against God (Rom 1:18), while at the same time they castigate Christians for making inspired, inerrant Scripture their own starting point!

There is a wide divide between liberals and non-believers on one hand, and conservative, Bible believing Christians on the other. There is a tendency to want to toss the Bible aside and dive into the early church fathers to rebut some of Moss’ claims from her article. Surely the church fathers have a good amount of information to offer us, but we must never give up the validity and historical accuracy of the Scriptures themselves. If we do, we’ve already lost the battle before it even began.

This graphic, from Answers in Genesis, captures the opposing worldviews at play in any apologetic encounter. The picture depicts evolution vs creationism, but you get the idea …

The ultimate irony here, however, is that Moss contests the most basic fact of Christianity - Christ died for our sins and suffered persecution because He dared to proclaim the His divinity and preach the Gospel of the Kingdom (Mk 1:14-15). Christ promised the disciples that persecution would inevitably follow and prayed for their safety (Jn 17:14-15). The Gospel is inherently offensive to sinful men. How can it be otherwise? Moss’ contention that early persecution was a convenient myth is (1) an explicit contradiction of the testimony of Scripture and (2) an implicit admission of an exalted view of man, in that she would deny the Gospel is inherently offensive to sinful men who have no fear of God (Rom 3:9-18).