Why Christianity? Good, True, and Beautiful

Handout

Why this matters?

• Consider one person who devoted her life to serving the poor and received a Nobel Peace Prize.
• Another leader of his country spread his vision for a better world but ended up being responsible for millions of deaths.
• Depending on your worldview, if there is no morality, no purpose in life, and no consequences in an afterlife. If the universe is headed towards heat death—nothing that was ever done will ultimately matter.
• Sports analogy: what is someone was just playing by their own rules?

What is Christianity?

• Christianity is the good news that even though we have messed up, we can have a relationship with God, the greatest conceivable being, through trust in his Son Jesus Christ, who lovingly died for us and rose again, promising everlasting life.

Conway, Does Christianity Still Make Sense? 2024.

• “The first orphanages were run by churches. Various churches and individual Christians founded many of the great American universities, such as Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, to ensure that people would be given a proper education. The church was pivotal in leading society to abolish slavery, with leaders such as the British parliamentarian William Wilberforce. George Williams founded the YMCA to protect youth from the hazardous conditions on the streets. Likewise, William Booth founded the Salvation Army to care for the poor and disadvantaged. In our day, Millard and Linda Fuller started Habitat for Humanity to provide housing for the poor on an international level.
• Today, churches everywhere strive to help the homeless, offer protection and alternatives to women considering abortion, work to eradicate the sex trade preying on young women and girls, and feed the hungry…

Scrivener, The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality, 2022.

• Equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, and progress are values from the Christian worldview that have become like the air around us and other cultures did not endorse such things prior to Christianity.

Holland, “Why I Was Wrong About Christianity,” New Statesman 2016.

• “The longer I spent immersed in the study of classical antiquity, the more alien and unsettling I came to find it. … It was not just the extremes of callousness that I came to find shocking, but the lack of a sense that the poor or the weak might have any intrinsic value. … Today, even as belief in God fades across the West, the countries that were once collectively known as Christendom continue to bear the stamp of the two-millennia-old revolution that Christianity represents. It is the principal reason why, by and large, most of us who live in post-Christian societies still take for granted that it is nobler to suffer than to inflict suffering. … It is why we generally assume that every human life is of equal value. In my morals and ethics, I have learned to accept that I am not Greek or Roman at all, but thoroughly and proudly Christian.”

But Even if Christianity is Good, Why Think it is True?

1. There are good reasons to believe that God exists
2. There is solid evidence for Jesus’ resurrection
3. There is substantial support that the Bible is historically reliable
4. Christianity offers your best life now and hope forevermore
5. God’s presence can be real in your life

Evidence that God Exists

1. The Cosmological Argument
2. Teleological Argument
3. Moral Argument
4. Ontological Argument

A Cosmological Argument

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/kalam

A Moral Argument

1. There are objective moral facts.
2. God provides the best explanation of the existence of objective moral facts.
3. Therefore, (probably) God exists.

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/moral

The Resurrection of Jesus

1. Jesus’ death
2. Burial
3. The empty tomb
4. Various people believed they saw appearances of Jesus

Licona, Michael R. The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach. IVP Academic, 2010.

Theories to Explain the Data

•The story developed as legend over time; a mere myth (fiction)

1.The disciples didn’t experience anything but claimed they did   (false claims or no experience hypothesis)

2.All experiences of Jesus were intra-mental (hallucination or vision theory)

3.What the disciples experienced was extra-mental but was not actually Jesus (mistaken identity theory)

4.The disciples extra-mentally experienced Jesus, but Jesus didn’t actually die on the cross, just fainted and revived naturally in the tomb (swoon theory) [or Jesus escaped, someone else was crucified and Jesus later showed himself to the disciples].

5.They experienced Jesus who had died and was back from the dead (resurrection hypothesis)

Loke, Andrew. Investigating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ: A New Transdisciplinary Approach. Routledge, 2020.

The Period Between Events and Writing

Book	Lower (Bernier)	Lower (Robinson)	Middle (Harnack)	Higher (Sturdy)
Matt	45–59	50	70–75	130
Mark	42–45	45	65–73	80
Luke	59	60	80–95	110
John	60–70	65	80–110	140
Acts	62	62	80–95	130
Romans	winter of 56/57	57	56–57	50
1 Cor	early 56	55	56	50
2 Cor	late 56	56	56	50
Gal	47–52	56	53	50
Eph	57–59	58	57–59	100
Phil	57–59	58	57–59	50
Col	57–59	58	57–59	80
1 Thess	50–52	50	48–49	40
2 Thess	50–52	50–51	48–49	120
1 Tim—if Pauline	63 or 64	55	n/a	n/a
1 Tim—if pseudo	60–150	n/a	90–110	140
2 Tim—if Pauline	64–68	58	n/a	n/a
2 Tim—if pseudo	60–150	n/a	90–110	140
Titus—if Pauline	63 or 64	57	n/a	n/a
Titus—if pseudo	60–175	n/a	90–110	140
Philemon	57–59	58	57–62	50
Hebrews	50–70	67	81–96	110
James	prior to 62	47–48	70–90	130
1 Peter	60–69	65	81–96	110
2 Pet—if Petrine	60–69	61–62	n/a	n/a
2 Pet—if pseudo	60–125	n/a	110–120	150
1 John	60–100	60–65	80–110	140
2 John	60–100	60–65	80–110	140
3 John	prior to 100	60–65	80–110	140
Jude	prior to 96	61–62	100–130	130
Rev	68–70	68	93–96	150

Bernier, Jonathan. Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament: The Evidence for Early Composition, 2022.

Reasons Why Christianity is True, Good and Beautiful

1. God’s presence is real in my life
2. There are good reasons to believe God exists
3. There is evidence for the resurrection
4. Christianity has changed the world for the better
5. Christianity offers eternity with the Beautiful One

Recommended Resources

McLaughlin, Rebecca. Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion. Crossway, 2019.

Schmidt, Alvin J. How Christianity Changed the World. Zondervan, 2009.

Undeceptions – John Dickson. https://undeceptions.com/podcast/

Discussion Questions

1. What are your reasons for thinking Christianity is true or false?
2. Do you believe that, on the whole, Christianity is good or bad for society?
3. What do you feel about who Jesus was?

Objections: The Problem of Evil

• 1. We are not in a good position to assess the probability of whether God has morally sufficient reasons for the evils that occur. 
• 2. The Christian faith entails doctrines that increase the probability of the co-existence of God and evil.
• a. The chief purpose of life is not happiness, but the knowledge of God. 
• b. Mankind is in a state of rebellion against God and His purpose.
• c. The knowledge of God spills over into eternal life.
• d. The knowledge of God is an incommensurable good. 
• 3. Relative to the full scope of the evidence, God’s existence is probable.