Recommended Reading (cont.)

Vintage Jesus by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears

I'd love to give the summary of this book, but it's one of those stupid books without summaries, only a bunch of reviews saying how awesome the book is. Oh well. Mark Driscoll, pastor of the Mars Hill church in Seattle, and Gerry, a professor of theology at Western Seminary, talk about the different views of Jesus in our society today and get a deep look on what the Bible says about Jesus. Is Jesus the only God? Did Jesus rise from death? Why did Jesus' mom need to be a virgin? Why should we worship Jesus? What did Jesus accomplish on the cross? What will Jesus do upon His return? These are just some of the questions that they answer, each question given it's own chapter and a Q & A section at the end of each. Mark uses his deep understanding of Scripture to answer each question, so don't worry about him just using his own imagination or what he feels is right. He pulls it all from the Bible. It's a good book for those who want to understand the Biblical Jesus a bit better.

The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel

Summary
Is there credible evidence that Jesus of Nazareth really is the Son of God?

Retracing his own spiritual journey from atheism to faith, Lee Strobel, former legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, cross-examines a dozen experts with doctorates from schools like Cambridge, Princeton, and Brandeis who are recognized as authorities in their own fields.

Strobel challenges them with questions like How reliable is the New Testament? Does evidence exist for Jesus outside the Bible? Is there any reason to believe the resurrection was an actual event?

Strobel's tough, point-blank questions make this remarkable book read like a captivating, fast-paced novel. But it's not fiction. It's a riveting quest for the truch about history's most compelling figure.

Yet another one of those summaries that make the book sound friggin' awesome! But anyway, like the summary says, Lee was a skeptic and went to several different scholars in the field to ask them tough questions about the evidence for Christ. By the end he was convince that it was truth and became a believer. This book is good for Christians who want to be able to defend their belief and good for skeptics with a lot of questions as to whether the belief is rational. It also leaves you open to decide whether you believe the evidence is strong enough for belief. This book is specifically about Jesus, but for those who are skeptical about the existence of God, Lee also has another book called The Case for a Creator that might interest God skeptics.

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

Summary
A masterpiece of satire, this classic has entertained and enlightened readers the world over with its sly and ironic portrayal of human life and foibles from the vantage point of Screwtape, a highly placed assistant to "Our Father Below." At once wildly comic, deadly serious, and strikingly original, C.S. Lewis gives us the correspondence of the worldly-wise old devil to his nephew Wormwood, a novice demon in charge of securing the damnation of an ordinary young man. The Screwtape Letters is the most engaging account of temptation-and triumph over it-ever written.

Well here's a first for my list! This is not an apologetic. It's just a fiction written by C.S. Lewis, though it does have heavy Christian elements. This book is a series of letters from a senior demon named Screwtape to his young nephew, Wormwood, who is in charge of tempting a man away from God so that he goes to Hell. It's kinda funny while also kinda creepy at the same time. It also gives us a glimps into our own lives and the things that worry and tempt us away from God daily. C.S. Lewis doesn't get into big things like murder or lying, but simpler, harder to notice things like becoming prideful without realizing it or food excess. A good book for anyone looking for a good fiction to read.

Recommended Reading

I've been reading a lot over this year so I figured I'd put together a list of the best. This is Christian reading, so it'll only interest maybe one of you. ;)

The Reason for God by Timothy Keller

Summary
Why does God allow suffering in the world? How could a loving God send people to Hell? Why isn't Christianity more inclusive? How can one religion be "right" and the others "wrong"? Why have so many wars been fought in the name of God? These are just a few of the questions and doubts even ardent believers wrestle with today. As the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, Timothy Keller has compiled a list of the most frequently voiced "doubts" skeptics bring to his church. And in The Reason for God he single-handedly dismantles each of them. Keller uses literature, philosophy, real-life conversations, and reasoning to explain how faith in a Christian God is a soundly rational belief, held by thoughtful people of intellectual integrity with a deep compassion for those who truly want to know the truth.

I've heard people call Timothy Keller the "C.S. Lewis of our time." Honestly I don't think that's accurate. They each have completely different styles. And I just don't find Timothy Keller as good as C.S. Lewis. Still, this is a good book for newcomers to apologetics. It's easy to understand and easy to remember. It's also not that long so you can get through it quickly. In the first half of the book each chapter is dedicated to one question or "doubt." In the second half he explains why Christianity is the Truth. It's directed at skeptics, but believers can benefit from reading it cause it will give them the knowledge they need to justify their faith towards people who may feel like arguing. This is a good book for beginners in apologetics. Try it out.

Mere Christianity By C.S. Lewis

Summary
One of the most popular and beloved introductions to the Christian faith ever written Mere Christianity has sold millions of copies worldwide. The book brings together Lewis's legendary broadcast of the war years, talks in which he set out simply to "explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times." Rejecting the boundaries that divide Christianity's many denominations, C.S. Lewis provides an unequaled opportunity for believers and nonbelievers alike to hear a powerful, rational case for the Christian faith. It is a collection of scintillating brilliance that remains strikingly fresh for the modern reader and at the same time confirms C.S. Lewis's reputation as one of the leading writers and thinkers of our age.

Now THIS is what I'm talking about! Considered perhaps the best apologist of all time, C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity is also a good introduction to apologetics and to the Christian faith. The book is more complicated than Reason for God so some may find it to go over their heads or just find it difficult to remember what they read, but it's incredibly compelling and amazingly insightful. First he starts off with a defense for belief in God using the transcendent moral law, and why that God is the God of Christianity. Then he goes on to talk about the very core of what Christians believe. If you strip away all the buildings, the denominations, all that theology, the hymns, etc, what is it that Christians believe and all agree on? That's what Lewis tells us in his book. This book is a classic and a must read.

The Language of God by Francis S. Collins

Summary
Dr. Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, is one of the world's leading scientists. he works at the cutting edge of the study of DNA, the code of life. Yet he is also a man of unshakable faith in God and scripture.
Dr. Collins believes that faith in God and faith in science can coexist within a person and be harmonious. In The Language of God he makes his case for God and for science. He has heard every argument against faith from scientists, and he can refute them. He has also heard the needles rejection of scientific truths by some people of faith, and he can counter that, too. He explains his own journey from atheism to faith, and then takes readers fora stunning tour of modern science to show that physics, chemistry, and biology can all fit together with belief in God and the Bible. The Language of God is essential reading for anyone who wonders about the deepest questions of faith: Why are we here? How did we get here? What does life mean?

Hmm. What can I say? That summary already says everything lol. As it says, Francis Collins is a scientist and a Christian and believes science and faith can coexist, not be in some kind of war like most people think. He even explains why we can believe in evolution and still be believers. He goes a little into some of the questions that Timothy Keller tackles in The Reason for God, but he doesn't get much into them. He has other things to tackle. He doesn't just counter the atheistic arguments he hears, but also the anti-science arguments he hears from professing Christians, so he picks on everyone. Anyone interested in how science and faith in God can coexist together should read this book.

That's all I have time for right now, but I will make another post with more books. Thanks for reading!

Grace

Sometimes I don't realize how far God's grace extends in my life until I'm reminded. To think what I probably would have become if He had not saved me from that... I would have destroyed myself. But that's the past! On to future glory!

O_O

Wow! I got Sunday off! Veritas, here I come!

Was the divinity of Christ made up centuries after his death?

I touched up on this on my last blog post, but I thought I continue on this specific issue. Is the modern-day Christian belief just a legend that was developed over the centuries after Jesus' death? The Da Vinci Code claims that the divinity of Jesus was made up by Constantine the Great in the 4th century. It's all historically false. The belief that Jesus rose from the dead was believed from the very beginning of the faith. The letters I talked about in my last post show early evidence of what early Christians believed. The entire New Testament was writen in the second half of the first century, still within the lifetimes of the eyewitnesses of Jesus and people who were taught by eyewitnesses. Historians agree that 1 Corinthians is an authentic letter by the Apostle Paul, and that the creed he mentions in it is an incredibly early attestation of the Christian belief. It goes like this:

that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. (1 Corinthians 15:3-5)

1 Corinthians can be dated to the mid-50's A.D. Paul says he passed on the creed to the Corinthians six years ealier and recieved it at his own convertion, which means that it can be dated to the early to mid 30's A.D., very soon after Christs crucifixion, which most believed happened at 33 A.D.

So what we as Christians believe was there from the very beginning. John Dickson has a good video about why historians take the resurrection seriously as a historical puzzle. Here's the video.

http://www.publicchristianity.com/resvid1.html

Jesus of history?

A fictional archaeologist in the 1979 book Act of God, by Charles Templeton, says that there is no mention of Jesus in secular history. Not so much as a reference outside of the Bible by the Romans or Josephus. Though no serious historian of the Biblical time, whether Christian, Jew, or Agnostic, denies that Jesus existed and that Christs resurrection was the bedrock of the Christian faith from the beginning, there are some today who may still say that Jesus probably never existed in history or that his divinity wasn't made up till centuries later. Is this true? No.

Even some of the most skeptical historians believe the Bible gives at least a good historical outline of the life of Jesus, even if they deny the reported miracles. But there are also non-biblical references to Christ and what the early Christian church believed. Here are some examples:

Josephus
Josephus was a Jewish Historian born in A.D. 37. In his book, The Antiquities, he makes a couple of references to Jesus. One is in dispute, but is still important. In the first one he talks about a trial in which a man named James, the brother of Jesus, was sentenced to be stoned.

"He convened a meeting of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus, who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned."
The Antiquities 20.200

The Bible also says that a man named James was Jesus' brother and didn't come to believe in him as the messiah till after his death. He wrote the book of James in the New Testament.

The next one is disputed amongs scholars. All of them, even believers, know that there are some interpolations in this text, but on the whole it's considered authentic. Here it is.

"About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man, for he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him. And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared."
The Antiquities 18.63-64

As I said, there is some dispute about the authenticity of this passage. The parts that I underlined are parts that are considered authentic to Josephus. The other parts generally aren't, cause they seem to show that he professed belief in Jesus, but he was a Jew, not a Christian. Still, even without these parts, there's still a recognition that a man named Jesus existed, that he was a wise teacher and did many extraordinary things, he won over many people, he was condemned by Pilate to be crucified, and people still loved him even after that.

Tacitus
Tacitus was a Roman Historian and a senator. In A.D. 115 he explicitly states that Nero persecuted the Christians as scapegoats to divert suspicion away from himself for the great fire that had devestated Rome in A.D. 64. Here's his passage on the Christians.

"Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite torture on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome... Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty: then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted , not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind."
Annals 15.44 (underline added for emphasis)

This shows that crucifixion was an extreme penalty at the time and it's any wonder why anyone worships Jesus as God when he was punished in that way, especially when Jews believed that anyone crucified was considered cursed by God. It also seems to show that Christians were very persistent. They were persecuted harshly in that time, but they never died out.

Pliny the Younger
He was the nephew of Pliny the Elder, the famous encyclopedist who died in the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Pliny the Younger was the governor of Bithnynia. In one of his letters he wrote this about Christians.

"I have asked them if they are Christians, and if they admit it, I repeat the question a second and third time, with a warning of the punishment awaiting them. If they persist, I order them to be led away for execution; for, whatever the nature of their admission, I am convinced that their stubbornness and unshakable obstinacy ought not go unpunished...
They also declared that the sum total of their guilt or error amounted to no more than this: they had met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternately amongst themselved in honor of Christ as if to a god, and also to find themselved by oath, not for any criminal purpose, but to abstain from theft, robbery, and adultry...
This made me decide it was all the more necessary to extract the truth by torture from two slave-women, whom they called deaconesses. I found nothing but a degenerate sort of cult carried to extravagant lengths."
Letters 10.96 (underlines added for emphasis)

This letter was probably written in about A.D. 111. It attested to the fact that Christianity spread rapidly among many different kinds of people, they worshipped Christ as God, maintained high ethical standards, and weren't easily swayed from their beliefs.

A little known Syriac writer named Mara Bar-Serapion gives what is believed to be a reference to Jesus. It's also in dispute cause it may have been written in the third century, but the earliest dating is A.D. 73. He doesn't actually mention his name, but it fits the description of that happened quite well. It's a bit disputed because he doesn't actually say "Jesus," but we know of no one else that this could describe.

What advantage did the Athenians gain from putting Socrates to death? Famine and plague came upon them as a judgment for their crime. What advantage did the men of Samos gain from burning Pythagoras? In a moment their land was covered with sand. What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise king? It was just after that that their kingdom was abolished. God justly avenged these three wise men: the Athenians died of hunger; the Samians were overwhelmed by the sea; the Jews, ruined and driven from their land, live in complete dispersion. But Socrates did not die for good; he lived on in the teaching of Plato. Pythagoras did not die for good; he lived on in the statue of Hera. Nor did the wise king die for good; he lived on in the teaching which he had given

An Assyrian satarist known as Lucian of Samosata wrote some things about Christians. You'll also find his interesting perception of Christians by reading one of his satires called The Passing of Peregrinus.

"The Christians, you know, worship a man to this day-the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account."

Also the Jewish Talmud, an important Jewish work finished in about A.D. 500, talks of Jesus as a false messiah who practiced magic and was justly condemned to death. They also say he was born of Mary and a Roman soldier, implying that there was something strange about his birth. This is a more negative account than the Gospels give us, but it certainly sounds very much like the professing messiah who did miracles that we read in the Gospels. On top of that there are the second century church fathers such as Clement of Rome and Polycarp, who attest to the teachings of Christ in the Gospels.

And there's a brief blog on the extrabiblical accounts of Jesus and early Christianity. If one does not believe Jesus is God, these certainly won't prove it, but it should at least prove that Jesus did exist and that the beliefs that we as Christians have today weren't made up centuries after Christs death.

For more information on this stuff I recommend reading The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel.