Here are the notes from the lecture I attended back on September 18th. I found the arguments thorough and dynamic, and I highly recommend reading up on them more (I know I will!).
If you would like to listen to this lecture for yourself, go
here. Scroll to the bottom to "Lectures" and click on "The Five Objections to the Bible."
A book I have really enjoyed that comprehensively yet understandably articulates the apologetic reasons for the Christian faith is
The Reason for God by Timothy Keller. There are many others that approach apologetics from different angles, and I'd be happy to suggest them to you.
* * * * *
Objection #1: The Bible is historically unreliable. "Can we trust the four Gospels? Can we trust the four Gospels alone?"-The four canonical Gospels are the
earliest sources we have on the life of Jesus. They are the only Gospels that come from the 1st century. The Gospel of Thomas and other apocrypha can't say that.
-These Gospels were written at the same time as people who knew Jesus personally were still alive, so they were there to corroborate the facts.
-The Gospel authors were not at all advantaged by writing these books. They were under the constant threat and reality of martyrdom. It would have done them no good to have simply made up stories.
-It is the canonical -- and not the apocryphal - Gospels that have held influence since the very beginning.
Objection #2: The Bible has been changed in its transmission.-The
nature of textual changes is important. Are the words vague, or are they specific? Are they simple misspelling errors? Most mistakes are misspelled words.
-We must ask, "Do the errors change the ability to decipher what the original author was saying?" In almost all cases, the answer is "no."
-The number of errors in relation to the quantities of manuscripts available is important. (The more manuscripts I have, the more comparisons -- comparisons for accuracy and determination of originals -- matters.) The more manuscripts, the more stable documents there will be. In other words, numbers matter all around.
-We have over 5,700 manuscripts of the New Testament --> All made by hand, before the invention of the printing press.
Objection #3: The Bible contradicts itself.-Modern definitions of precision are different than definitions of precision 2,000 years ago.
-We must consider the difference between
differences versus
contradictions. We also have to know how ways of doing historiography differs over time.
-We can't include everything (that has EVER happened!) in a historical account. No one can even include everything that has ever happened to him/her in his/her own autobiography.
-The four Gospel writers wrote what they saw, so they wrote their takes on the history of Jesus's life.
-In the ancient world, it was very common and appropriate for someone reporting someone elses words to either 1) condense (because they didn't have a lot of papyrus), or 2) paraphrase (because they didn't have tape recorders). This accounts for differences in Jesus's words between the Gospels.
-Stories were often arranged in different ways -- thematically, chronologically, type of act, etc -- which explains why sequences of events in the Gospels are sometimes different.
Objection #4: The Bible contains miracles.-This objection is rooted in the idea that the idea of miracles are nothing trustworthy.
-The opinion that miracles are impossible has to be justified and demonstrated itself. --> Some people say that modern science does this, achieves this. However, we would have to empirically observe every single event in the world to rule out supernatural causes for natural ones, and the only way to accomplish
this is to be omniscient. So, science cannot disprove miracles.
-Still, scientists often continue to hold to this unprovable opinion that science explains everything.
-Objections to miracles are circular.
-To object to miracles is to object against the very existence of God because He
is all-powerful and capable of anything. You can't have one without the other.
Objection #5: The Bible is immoral and offensive.-Having a moral objection objection to God has its own problems: *It says there is a standard in the world that God doesn't live up to. *It says that God doesn't match our own ideas of moral norms.
-How are moral norms established in an atheistic system? In an atheistic system, there is no concept of "things
ought to be this way"; there is only "this
is how things are."
-Personally not liking something doesn't cause it to disappear.
-If then someone like Dawkins (Hitchens, Harris, etc) says God doesn't exist, then his own argument against God based on God's morals completely collapses.
-C.S. Lewis found this above argument to be true, and it is the reason he became a Christian.
General notes from Q&A session:-Josephus was a 1st-century historian, yet our earliest existing copy of his accounts is from the 10th century. Still, secular historians believe Josephus's info is accurate. --> So why not our earliest-found copy of the Gospel of John from 125 A.D.? Why should we believe it is different from its original from ~80 A.D.? Furthermore, many secular historian's accounts corroborate the events of the Bible. Josephus is one of these trusted historians who does this.
-Old Atheism (in the vein of Bertrand Russell) is philosophically-driven, whild New Atheism (like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens) is an emotionally-outraged, morally-upset variety.
-You
can't live out an atheistic worldview consistently.
-Grounds for faith in Christianity does not come from looking to Christians (because we are still inherently flawed and continue to fall short) but from looking to Christ himself. We must consider the Bible and how it does give explanation for why Christians are mixes of good and bad: Original Sin.
-Luke himself says he used sources --> to the question of Q account is plausible (though not necessarily true), though it wouldn't contradict the Bible. (Luke 1:1-3)
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