Upwards Church

We’re continuing our new series Explore God!  Each campus will explore the topic, “Is Christianity Too Narrow?”   I hope you can join us!  Below is an article from www.ExploreGod.com to get us thinking on the topic.

Are all religions created equally? Can Jesus really be the only way to know God?

We all know the world is filled with a wide variety of religions. Though not all religions are the same, sometimes the similarities can be striking.

Most religions acknowledge a divine being or beings—for simplicity’s sake, we’ll call that entity God. Furthermore, people of all religious stripes tend to believe there is a barrier between God and humans.

This barrier has been identified as a variety of things—lack of belief, human finitude, a need for enlightenment, suffering, sin. But the commonality is that most religions claim that we can overcome this barrier in our search to know and experience God.

But is it possible that every religion represents a different way to the same God?

Atop the Mountain

Some picture it this way: God is at the top of a many-sided mountain. On one side is Islam. On another is Hinduism. Still another, the way of Christianity. Then Judaism, Confucianism, tribal religions . . . you get the picture. Each side presents an equally legitimate path to the same destination.

In contrast to this optimistic image, many Christians claim that the only true and valid way to God is through Jesus—a claim often considered intolerant and narrow-minded.

So which is it? Do all religions lead to the same place? Or is Jesus truly the only way to God?

Exclusive Claims about What’s at the Peak

Unfortunately, the God-at-the-top-of-the-mountain picture is not as simple as it sounds. For starters, many religions are exclusive in their definitions of who the God atop the mountain peak is.

Some forms of Buddhism and Confucianism do not conceive that a God exists at all. Hindus, on the other hand, believe in many diverse gods. Different still are Christians, Jews, and Muslims, who claim there is only one true God.

With such fundamental differences, not every religion can be right. Either God exists, or he does not. Either there are many gods, or there is just one. Only one of these viewpoints corresponds to reality; the answer cannot be “all of the above.”

In other words, a more accurate picture of religious perceptions of God would be a vast mountain range with countless different peaks.

Exclusive Claims about the Path

A second problem is that religions are also exclusive when it comes to how people make their way up the mountain to God. The journeys to the peak are as diverse as the peaks themselves.

Even if we limit ourselves to the three dominant monotheistic religions—Christianity,Judaism, and Islam—their pathways to God are conflicting.

For Muslims, knowing God must come through the prophet Muhammad and his sacred writings in the Qur’an. But Jews and Christians do not regard Muhammad as God’s spokesperson.

For observant Jews, knowing God comes through keeping his commandments in the Torah and identifying with his chosen people. But while Christians and Muslims respect the Jewish heritage of their faiths, they both believe that Judaism is incomplete. For them, the New Testament and Qur’an respectively teach a more complete way to God.

For Christians, knowing God comes through faith in Jesus as the Messiah and God’s son, and belief in his death and resurrection. But Jews reject the Christian belief that Jesus is the Messiah, and Muslims do not believe Jesus was the Son of God.¹

Add onto this the countless number of other religious ideas and the result is a confusing mess of largely incompatible claims and creeds.

Exclusive Claims about Hiking Practices

A third problem comes from each religion’s specific teachings about God’s will for our lives. Were we to enumerate all the practices and behaviors every religion both encourages and prohibits, we would find another lengthy list of irreconcilable elements.

Consider just one example: If there is a God at the top of the mountain, why would he forbid certain practices (like drinking alcohol or worshiping images) for some people but allow them among others?

The only way to make sense of these conflicting teachings is to conceive of God as inconsistent (at the very least), if not schizophrenic. Few would say this is a God worth seeking.

Exclusive Claims of the Guidebooks

Then there is the fact that most religions have their own particular—and often exclusive—religious texts. When it comes to Christianity, the biggest hindrances to a universalistic mind-set—the perspective that all religions lead to the same place—are the exclusive claims of the Bible.

The New Testament writers teach that humans are separated from God by their sinful nature. When Jesus died on the cross, he took on the sins of humanity through his sacrifice. He then offered the forgiveness of sins to all who trust in him.

The Bible also claims that Jesus rose from the dead, fully conquering sin and death for all who would follow him. The apostle Paul described it this way: “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people.”²

The implications of these New Testament claims are far-reaching: there is only one God; there is only one way to be restored to God; that way is through Jesus and his death for our sins; the way was made complete when Jesus rose from the grave.

If Jesus did not die for our sins and rise from the grave, then the Christian faith is a delusion. It may give people a purpose in life (albeit a misguided one), but it does not lead to God. But if the Bible is correct and the claims it makes are true, then all other religious paths to God lead away from the one true path.

To put it another way, if there are other paths to God, then Jesus’ life and death were unnecessary and his teaching about the need to believe in him was false.

Your Hike

Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide what you believe and whether or not you accept the Bible’s teaching. Perhaps you have good reasons for embracing another belief system and rejecting the Bible’s account about Jesus.

No matter what, to have confidence in our beliefs, they must be rational and coherent. And that begins by dispensing with the notion that exclusive religious claims simply offer different paths to the same God.

What do you think?

www.RidgeFellowship.com

Footnotes

1. Though Muslims and Christians both believe many of the same things about Jesus, Muslims reject the divinity of Jesus. Muslims believe Jesus to have been merely a prophet, not the actual son of God. For more on this, see “Islamic Views of Other Faiths,” Religion Facts,http://www.religionfacts.com/islam/beliefs/other.htm.
2. The Holy Bible, New International Version © 2011, 1 Timothy 2:5-6a.

Written by Norton Herbst

We’re continuing our series Explore God!  Each campus will explore the topic, “Is the Bible Reliable?”   I hope you can join us!  Below is an article from www.ExploreGod.com to get us thinking on the topic.

What happened to give us the Bible we have today? What is its history?

Recent books, such as Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, have proposed that those who believe the Bible are victims of an elaborate cover-up about its true creation and character.¹ Should anyone have confidence in the historical and ostensibly human process that culminated in this collection of books called the Bible?

The history of the formation of the best-selling book of all time is a fascinating story that covers not just centuries but millennia.

Who Wrote the Old Testament

The thirty-nine books of today’s Old Testament were composed over a period of about one thousand years by as many as forty different authors. Yet they tell one complete, unified story: the history of the Israelites, God’s chosen people.

Ancient writers did not share our modern preoccupation with detailed documentation. Yet the literary nature of these books demonstrates that they were composed by people with remarkable skills. In addition, the people, places, and periods they chronicle are often attested by other reliable ancient sources from history and archaeology.

Who Wrote the New Testament

Soon after the crucifixion and reported resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, around 60–90 CE, several written accounts of his life and ministry (some of which became known as the gospels) began to circulate. These were composed by some of his first followers.

But decades earlier, a Jewish scholar named Saul, who had persecuted Jesus’ followers, had come to believe that Jesus was in fact the promised Messiah (at this point Saul became known as Paul). From approximately 40 to 60 CE, he wrote many letters to early Christian churches in order to teach them, encourage them, and address specific problems they were facing. Several of these letters are included in the New Testament.²

The remaining New Testament books were written in the second half of the first century CE.³ Internal and extrabiblical evidence suggests they were written by Jesus’ disciples Peter and John and other well-known followers such as James and Jude.

Authorship and dating debates about New Testament books are ongoing. Yet the goal of each New Testament book remains to explain and hand down the teachings of Jesus and his first followers.

The Preservation of the Bible

Professor Bart D. Ehrman has said, “Even if God had inspired the original words, we don’t have the original words.”⁴ Many have claimed that centuries of translation and editing may have affected the content, leaving us with something that barely resembles the original writings. So how were the books of the Bible preserved? How could we possibly know what the original text said?

The books that comprise the Old Testament were carefully copied by hand over the centuries. There are some variations in the available manuscripts, but these involve mostly minor details.

Let’s take a look at the Dead Sea Scrolls, for example. Written and copied during the second century BCE and discovered in 1947 CE, the Dead Sea Scrolls are invaluable witnesses to the manuscript history of the Old Testament. Specifically, let’s examine the two copies of the book of Isaiah that were included in the scrolls.

Each copy of Isaiah was almost one thousand years older than the previously known oldest copy. Amazingly—if not miraculously—the more modern text was 95 percent word-for-word identical to the copies included with the Dead Sea Scrolls. And the disparities introduced in that other 5 percent are spelling variations and obvious slips of the pen. When compared, these copies demonstrate the diligence of the scribes in preserving the wording of the Bible.

The hand-copying method was utilized in the preservation of the New Testament as well.⁵ Again, there are variations and seeming contradictions in some manuscripts, but there is substantial agreement in the essentials. New Testament Greek text scholar Bruce Metzger has concluded, “Even in incidental details one observes the faithfulness of scribes.”⁶

The Books of the Bible

But where did we even get the books of the Bible in the first place? Jews and early Christians believed these books to be the result of God guiding the human authors and editors. A fundamental difference between the Bible and the sacred literature of most other major religions is the claim that the Bible was a cooperative creation between God and multiple human authors.

However, it’s a fair question to ask how human councils in the early church could authoritatively decide which books belong in the Bible. The biblical canon is the recognized and official list of Scriptures believed to be the product of divine revelation.¹² A scholarly consensus is that the current twenty-seven books of the New Testament were already in use by the Christian Church as early as 150 CE.

While an official decision regarding the canon came later, the majority of churches operated with a relatively fixed canon from the second century CE onward.

The Translation of the Bible

Over the past two thousand years, translation into numerous languages around the world has characterized the Bible’s legacy. A Greek version of the Hebrew Bible was prepared in lengthy and uneven stages starting around 250 BCE. Originally created for Greek-speaking Jews living in Egypt, this Greek version, known as the Septuagint, became the “Scripture” used by the early Christians.⁷

As Christianity gained traction, the Bible—both Old and New Testaments—was translated into various other languages. The first English translation was created in the fourteenth century.

Though each version is created with much care, preparation, and research, no translation is able to retain perfectly the meaning of the original text. Christians are therefore encouraged to select a Bible with care. It is also recommended that Bible readers use more than one translation in their study in order to get a more rounded presentation of biblical interpretation.⁸

Relevance of the Bible’s History

The Bible’s content alone testifies to its character as a unique book, and its historical development supports this characterization. Of course, legitimate questions may indeed be raised about the nature of the Bible. Certain Bible passages continue to stump even the greatest scholars. And even for faithful Christians, it remains a mystery how God could speak his Word through fallible people.

However, the Bible’s own history and its enduring influence on the world compels us to take a closer look at its message. Its impact demands its content not be ignored.

What do you think?

www.RidgeFellowship.com

Footnotes

1. For further examples, see Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion and Bart D. Ehrman’s The Judas Gospel and Whose Word Is It? See also the works by Bart D. Ehrman cited below.

2. David B. Capes et al., Rediscovering Paul (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2007).

3. Some scholars argue that a few of the New Testament books, like 2 Peter and 1 Timothy, were written in the early decades of the second century CE. See, for example, Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 5th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). Others, however, disagree and date all New Testament books to the first century.

4. Bart D. Ehrman, Whose Word Is It? (London: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006), 211.

5. With the invention of the printing press around 1450 CE, handwritten manuscripts eventually became obsolete.

6. Bruce M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 206.

7. The word “Scripture” is a direct reference to the Old Testament books. Christians believe that the biblical writings (both Old and New Testaments) were ultimately sourced in God’s work of revelation, although he used free human agents. Verses such as 2 Timothy 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:21 suggest that the Bible was not “dictated” by God but that the authors were directed by his Spirit, writing from their own God-given personalities. While the biblical text is said to be “inspired,” this is never said of the authors.

8. See Gordon Fee and Mark Strauss, How to Choose a Translation for All It’s Worth: A Guide to Understanding and Using Bible Versions (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007).

By:  Creig Marlowe, Ph.D.

We’re continuing our series Explore God!  Each campus will explore the topic, “Is the Bible Reliable?”   I hope you can join us!  Below is an article from www.ExploreGod.com to get us thinking on the topic.

Christians believe there’s something special about the bible; they believe that God reveals himself through its stories and teachings. But what if the stories themselves are not true? What if the teachings contradict one another? What if there are mistakes, errors, inconsistencies, and contradictions in the Bible? Wouldn’t that call everything into question? How can anyone trust the Bible?

Contradictions

It doesn’t take long for Bible readers to come across what seem to be inconsistencies and contradictions. Readers of the Bible have long recognized, analyzed, and discussed these discrepancies, and many have come to an important conclusion: with some basic understanding of ancient languages, literature, and the cultural context of biblical writings, it becomes apparent that most of these inconsistencies are not actually contradictions.

Good explanations can be found for why passages in the Bible sometimes differ. Let’s take a look at a few of these.

Editorial Differentiation

To begin, we must recognize that the Bible is a collection of books written by many different people who were not trying to force an artificial uniformity on their writings. Indeed, various authors had expressly different purposes or emphases.

This means that one writer may underscore God’s anger at injustice while another may emphasize his grace and compassion toward the undeserving. As a result, two books in the Bible, two passages in a single book, or even two verses in a single chapter may portray God in very different ways. Because God’s nature and character are so complex, each portrayal is necessarily incomplete but not necessarily inconsistent.

This also means that two authors may differ when describing the same event or people. For example, the books of 1 and 2 Kings recount the histories of the kings of Israel. The books of 1 and 2 Chronicles do the same, but their narratives often include quite different details. Are we to conclude, then, that the two accounts are contradictory? Of course not. We know that two descriptions of the same event often vary in their details, and yet both can be fully accurate in what they do include.

Here’s a good example: Matthew and Luke relate many of the same events in Jesus’ life. Luke’s order of events is often different than Matthew’s, and therefore one might conclude that the two books contradict one another. But it’s important to know that chronological accuracy is a modern concern, not an ancient one. Ancient biographers like Matthew and Luke organized their content based on different thematic interests. Thus differences in order simply reveal the purposes and themes important to each writer.

In case you think this strange or complex, just look at the numerous biographies of a recent historical figure like Abraham Lincoln.¹ The multitude of emphases (his childhood, family, senate race, presidency, the Civil War, etc.) and different biographical methods (chronological, thematic, documentary, etc.) produce widely varying accounts. Naturally, some accounts of Lincoln’s life could be false. But different ways of telling his story do not, in and of themselves, call into question the accuracy of the accounts. The same is true of the Bible.

Cultural Relevance

Moreover, paraphrasing was acceptable in the ancient world. This is important to know when examining quotations that appear inconsistent. For example, when Jesus was baptized early in his ministry, Matthew and Mark both record what was said next:

And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’Matthew 3:17

And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’Mark 1:11

So which is it? The differences are slight, but they’re there nonetheless—and this is supposed to be God talking! They can’t both be right, can they? But the languages in which the Bible was originally written have no quotation marks, and journalistic precision with quotations is a modern concern.

In the ancient world, it was acceptable for a writer to paraphrase someone else’s words, as long as the meaning of the original statement was not lost. So Mark directs the voice’s remarks to Jesus (“you are”), capturing the intimate nature of the encounter. Matthew, however, directs the voice to the crowd (“this is”), demonstrating to all readers God’s pleasure with his son. Both statements still faithfully communicate the same message. Thus variations of quotations in the Bible are not necessarily contradictions once we comprehend the accepted conventions of ancient writing.

Historical Familiarity

We all need a better perspective on the literature, geography, culture, and history of the Bible and the biblical world in order to understand perceived inconsistencies. At best, our knowledge of the biblical world is partial. Many gaps remain.

There will always remain some unanswered questions in light of the subject matter. As humans, its authors struggled with how to describe who God is and what he has done.

Reliability

While some Bible readers today are troubled by these seeming contradictions, many actually point to these inconsistencies as evidence of the Bible’s authenticity and reliability. Contrived and forged works generally don’t contain such marks.

To people in this camp, the best explanation is that the Bible is not contrived. Its authors simply reported what they experienced to the best of their abilities, so that in doing so, readers of all ages might see the hand of the Supreme Author and begin to find their own place in his grand story.

What do you think?

www.RidgeFellowship.com

Footnotes

1. See, for example, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005); William Lee Miller,Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography (New York: Knopf, 2002); James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief (New York: Penguin Press, 2008); and William C. Harris, Lincoln’s Rise to the Presidency (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2007).

By:  Norton Herbst