The Wayside Pulpit No.20
The Rationality of the Christian Faith
The
Christian faith is wholly rational. God has given men and women minds to use.
The renewed mind of the one who is born again is wholly adequate for
determining the rationality of his/her faith, and there should never be grounds
for wavering. The Bible is a clean, clear, bright, revelatory book that
enlightens the mind, feeds the soul, and elevates the spirit. The Author is God
Himself, the Mediator is the Lord Jesus, and the Revelator is the Holy Spirit.
We do not
have an impotent Father, a disappointed Christ, or a defeated Holy Spirit
as is sometimes canvassed. Emphatically NO! We have an omnipotent Father, an
all-victorious Christ, and an all-persuasive Holy Spirit, able to break the
hardest heart, and subdue the stoutest will. Even if as yet "we do not SEE
all things under His feet," the victory was won at the cross, and it is
merely a matter of time before the world wakes up to this as an absolute and
irreversible fact.
Peter
Kreeft, paraphrasing the words of Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274), says,
"Every possible argument against every Christian doctrine has a rational
mistake in it somewhere, and therefore can be answered by reason alone."
Men may have a bagful of cunning reasons for arguing otherwise, often to keep
guilt at arm's length, but any honest enquirer placed in the company of a true
man of faith will find satisfactory answers to his questions from Holy Writ.
The Holy Spirit will re-enforce that, to bring the soul to repentance and new
life in Christ. As it has always been, so shall it always be, and God will be
honoured by it.
Jesus
Christ claimed divinity. No one, reading the Gospels, can doubt that. There are
just four ways of looking at this.
1. He
meant it literally, and it is
true. This
makes Him Lord of all.
2.He meant
it literally, and He knew it to be
false. This makes
Him a Liar.
3.He meant it literally, but didn't know it was
false. This makes Him a Lunatic.
4.He meant it
non-literally,
mystically. This
makes Him a Guru.
Until the Edict of
Milan in AD 313, Christians were subject to persecution, often tortured and
martyred, and hated and oppressed for their beliefs. But at no time in the
world's history can we find men and women obstinately maintaining faith in one
whom they KNOW to be a Liar or a Lunatic. History itself shows the absurdity of
items 2 & 3. Men die for their faith because they hold fast to the Lordship
of Christ.
As for the fourth
possibility, one can only say that Jesus could NEVER have been a Guru, simply
because He was a Jew. The utter contradictions between Eastern-style religion
and that of Judaism cannot be emphasised enough. No Guru-type figure could find
a place in the market places of
The only reasonable,
rational, acceptable and satisfying solution to all this, is that Jesus Christ
is Lord of all, and as Paul declared on the basis of this, God now commands all
men everywhere to repent, because a day is coming very soon when He will judge
all men everywhere according to their deeds.
[The essence of part
of the above statement is derived from "Handbook of Christian
Apologetics" by Peter Kreeft & Ronald K. Tacelli. IVP. 1994]