The Authenticity of Christianity: Too good not to be true

There is a difference between asking for evidence of something and demanding proof.

Of course Christianity remains a matter of faith -- that's the whole point. Christ said, "The person who believes, and is baptized shall be saved, the person who does not believe shall be damned".

Christianity, at its core, is a message, than can be accepted or rejected or ignored. The Originator claimed that what one did with this message would determine their eternal destiny.

The "evidences" (not "proofs") that come to mind for the authenticity of Christianity include the following:

1. The superior moral/ethical nature of the Jewish Scriptures -- especially when compared to what was being written by contemporaries, as evidence that the Jewish Bible is an authentic revelation of the one true God. Contemporary dieties were often capricious and arbitrary. Yahweh is a God of scrupulous justice.

2. The prophecies in the Old Testament which predict a coming Messiah and the establishment of a new covenant.

3. The numerous OT prophecies which were fulfilled in Christ -- many fulfilled on the day of his fateful death.

4. The ring of truth concerning the NT stories, such as the conversion of Peter, of Paul, the arguments, the disagreements, the successes, the failures, the realistic view of shortcomings and failures among those professing faith in Christ.

5. The eyewitness testimonies concerning the resurrection appearances of Christ.

6. The fact that the NT scriptures were not written hundreds of years and hundreds of miles away from the events they purport to describe, but, rather, written in the very milieu and within the same lifetime of the events portrayed. In other words, if miraculous healings had not in fact occurred, if the body of Christ had not "gone missing", etc. contemporaries could have easily disproved and dismissed the spurious claims of the apostles.

7. The missing body of Christ. Given the historical events surrounding Christ's death, including the posting of the Roman guard, etc., no satisfactory alternative explanation has been given concerning what happened to his body. Obviously, if either the Roman or Jewish authorities had his body, they would have produced it, and it would have been "game over". If the Christians had it, you have to ask how they could have gotten it, given the Roman guard, and why they would bother suffering the social ostracization, the imprisonment, and even death, for a message that they themselves knew to be false.

8. The uniform and unchanging witness of the apostles to the resurrection of Christ, to the point of death. Being willing to die for a belief does not make it true. And people may be willing to die for a belief that the believe to be true but is not, but how many people are willing to die for a belief that they know to be untrue? Even secular historians today admit that the evidence supports the idea that the apostles themselves believed Jesus to have risen from the dead.

9. The apostles were not fanatical or even prone to being particularly religious (with the exception of the apostle Paul). They came from a variety of backgrounds, from semi-literate fishermen to members of higher social standing.

10. The apostle Paul's message and ministry was accepted and validated by the apostles who were direct eye-witnesses to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

11. The early Church fathers quote almost every verse of NT Scripture in their writings, which precede the formal canonization of Scripture. This shows that the Roman Catholic Church did not "decide" which books would be authoritative, as some like to suggest to today. Rather, the Church met and ratified the books that were already in widespread circulation and which already enjoyed, unlike the spurious gnostic texts, widespread acceptance within the Church universal.

12. There is about 1,000 times more manuscript evidence for the text of the New Testament than any other ancient writing.

13. Jesus said that in the last days the nations of the world would surround Israel. For 1,900 years this could have not been fulfilled, since Israel ceased to exist. This prophecy of Jesus is now fulfillable, in our generation. The book of Revelation speaks of believers from every tribe and nation being gathered. If Christianity had fizzled, this Scripture would have gone unfullfilled. In fact, the gospel has prospered, and now has adherents in most if not all countries of the world.

14. The New Testament speaks of sin, and not just sin in an outward kind of way, but sin going down to the deepest motives and misdirected desires of the human heart. Its authentic and accurate diagnosis of the condition of the human heart lends credibility to its prescribed remedies.

15. Unlike other religions which allow for human merit and effort, Christianity is humbling to man's pride. It says that there is nothing we can do to be worthy of a holy God, or to merit his acceptance. The good news is that there is a way to God. But it is His way, not ours. It is His provision, and not our efforts. So it is very humbling -- exactly what we need.

16. Unlike Islam, which demands submission to Allah, the NT record makes it clear that God honours the free-will that he gave mankind in the beginning. A message is presented. This message can be believed, and acted upon, or rejected. The NT record says that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all come to repentance. But He is not going to force anybody to love Him or submit to His gentle yoke.

17. Moderns tend to think that they have a love for truth that the ancients did not possess. So we tend to think that we have a love for objective truth while the ancients were happy just to make stuff up. Reading the early Church historian Eusebius will correct this false idea. It is clear from his writings that Christians from the get-go were very concerned with the factual and truthful nature of their beliefs. Christianity is a faith that is rooted in historical events. The historical events are not just important to the Christian faith, they are indispensible.

18. For various philosophical and mathematical reasons, humans are stuck with the logical necessity for a Creator. The fact that we live in a space-time universe means that the universe had a definite beginning, a start-point, prior to which it did not exist. How do we know this? One "proof" is based on the logical finiteness of time. If time were eternal, that would mean that there were an infinite number of past points in time, meaning we could never arrive at the "present" -- there would be an infinite number of past prior moments which would preclude arriving at the present one. Anyone who believes that the present exists, logically must believe in a finite universe.

19. Another evidence is based on an argument first raised by Christian monks, but refined by Islamic thinkers. It goes like this. A) Whatever begins to exist has a cause. B) The universe began to exist. C) Therefore, the universe has a cause. This cause we understand to be God.

20. Whoever or whatever created the universe must logically possess certain attributes. These include eternality, existence outside of time-space; great power; personality (since it is illogical for a greater Creator to create a lesser creation that has attributes that the Creator Himself/Itself does not possess); creativity; and we could even infer such things as goodness, love, etc. as we see these to a lesser degree in the created creatures.

21. While this kind of Creator can be logically deduced, we see in the world around us evidence of discreation, of chaos, of blight, decay, cruelty -- evil. The Old Testament witness to the entrance of evil into the world, and the despoiling of it is accepted as an integral part of the Christian worldview.

22. The NT testifies of a divine corrective to the disorder that is presently seen in the world. Sin will be destroyed. Death will be destroyed. The rebellion will be quashed. And God's order and kingdom will be established. It even gives the name of the Person who is going to pull this off. Without this, sin wins, rebellion wins, evil wins.

23. The words of Christ. Even is completely false, they are fantastic. "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes to the Father but by me". "I am the Bread of Life". "I am the Resurrection and the Life". "Before Abraham was, I am". "I am the Door, by me if any many enter in...". Where did these thoughts, these words come from? Collusion on the part of the apostles? Or did Jesus really say them? And, if he really said them, then who is he? Delusional lunatic? Demented liar? Or,... "Who do men say that I am"? "Who do you say that I am". And Peter's confession, "You are the Christ the Son of the Living God".

Please note that I am not trying to meet your demand to "prove" anything. I am simply trying to show that Christianity is a faith that, while remaining faith, is based on reason and evidences, and that, given all the facts of observable human existence, including consciousness (difficult to describe in purely materialistic terms), conscience, ingrained sense-of-justice, the reality of immaterial things such as mathematics and logic, the longings of the human heart for immortality, the existence of love, the logical necessity of a Creator, etc. etc., Christianity provides the best explanation of reality as it exists, of the human condition as it exists, and, if we accept that there is a God, the best revelation of His character, and HIs program with regards to humankind.

The fact that He would sacrifice His Son to win us makes Him just about irresistible in my mind. The fact that He would not only forgive the repentant rebels, but elevate us to the status of adopted sons and daughters for eternity, makes Him a God worthy of worship. And this message -- adoption through propitiation -- is so mind-blowing, it provides the final evidence that the gospel is something other than of merely human origins.

The gospel -- too good not to be true.