Apologetics

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CHAPTER V: CHRISTIANITY, NO FABLE

BY REV. THOMAS WHITELAW, M. A., D. D., KILMARNOCK, SCOTLAND

I. The first mark of the truthfulness of Christianity is to be found in

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CHAPTER IV: THE TESTIMONY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE

BY PRESIDENT E. Y. MULLINS, D. D., LL. D., LOUISVILLE, KY., U. S. A.

Reprinted with permission from Baptist Bulletin Mar/Apr 2013. All rights reserved.

Troubling headlines

Recent incidents of genocide (the systematic killing of ethnic or religious groups) and ethnic cleansing (the forced deportation of ethnic or religious groups):

• 1991 450,000 Palestinians expelled by Kuwait in retaliation for the PLO’s support of Saddam Hussein
• 1993 170,000 Croatians and non-Serbs murdered or deported by Serbian rebels led by Slobodan Miloševic
• 1999 800,000 Albanians flee their homes during the Kosovo War
• 1994 As many as 1,000,000 Tutsi killed by Hutus in the Rwandan genocide
• 2000 200,000 East Timorese killed or expelled from Indonesia after voting for independence in a 1999 referendum
• 2003 450,000 from various black ethnic groups killed and another 2 million expelled from the Darfur region of Sudan
• 2008 200,000 Karen and 120,000 other refugees displaced from their Burma (Myanmar) homes, fleeing to Thailand
• 2012 400,000 people displaced in dispute between Bodos and Bengali-speaking Muslims of Assam, India

Problem: How should a believer respond to accusations about genocide in the Old Testament? Does the Bible encourage genocide for religious purposes?

I purchased a copy of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion^* the other day. I teach an apologetics class at my church and wanted to actually read what one of the so-called “Four Horseman of New Atheism” had to say on the matter. My wife was horrified when I opened the package and held the tome aloft—she accused me of enriching a godless heretic who seems content to remain on a path leading inevitably to the fires of hell. I supposed she had a point, so I retreated to pragmaticism—how can I know what the man says unless I buy the book? My wife reluctantly agreed but was still suspicious, and ordered me to banish the text to a distant bookshelf, far from the reaches of our children.

Reading the first few chapters, I stumbled across a disturbing passage written by a well-meaning but ill-informed Christian to Albert Einstein. The missive was a response to a paper Einstein wrote in 1940 about why he did not believe in God. Dawkins evidenced contempt and scorn for this little letter, and I must agree he is justified in doing so. Here it is:

We respect your learning, Dr Einstein; but there is one thing you do not seem to have learned: that God is a spirit and cannot be found through the telescope or microscope, no more than human thought or emotion can be found by analyzing the brain. As everyone knows, religion is based on Faith, not knowledge. Every thinking person, perhaps, is assailed at times with religious doubt. My own faith has wavered many a time. But I never told anyone of my spiritual aberrations for two reasons: (1) I feared that I might, by mere suggestion, disturb and damage the life and hopes of some fellow being; (2) because I agree with the writer who said, “There is a mean streak in anyone who will destroy another’s faith.”…I hope, Dr Einstein, that you were misquoted and that you will yet say something more pleasing to the vast number of the American people who delight to do you honor. (38)

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Since the first century, the church has been involved in one way or another in the ministry of apologetics. Within the last few decades, as atheists have seemed to ramp up their religious efforts to discredit and eradicate the belief in God and Christianity more specifically, Christians have ramped up their apologetical focus with matching intensity.

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Amazon Affiliate LinkDo historical matters matter to faith? This is an intriguing question. Though the answer may seem obvious to many it is not so to others. To many evangelical Christians, Scripture, among many things, is an historical book that gives us a window into a time gone by in world history. There are events, places and people it gives an account of that only it gives us an account of.