Most people don’t realize it, but the majority of objections leveled at Christianity fail from the outset. This is because of something I call the entailment problem. Basically, it means that the objection does not at all logically entail the falsehood of Christianity’s central premise. The central premise is the identity of Jesus as the Messiah and Lord. What use is an objection to Christianity if the fact that Jesus is the Son of God remains intact?
Furthermore, most of these objections don’t even attack most core doctrines of Christianity. The book of Acts records early Christian preaching of the gospel. Most objections to Christianity do not even attempt to falsify the gospel message. Furthermore, even other core elements, such as the Second Coming of Jesus aren’t falsified either. Most objections to Christianity don’t even attack the Nicene Creed!
William Lane Craig is a Christian philosopher who is known for making similar arguments. When people raise certain objections, he sometimes says things like: “but what does this entail? That Jesus didn’t rise from the dead? That Jesus isn’t the Son of God?” He also uses a web metaphor, where he says core doctrines, such as the existence of God and the resurrection are at the center, and things such as Biblical inerrancy, and a person’s views of controversial theological topics are on the periphery of the web. I want to build on this view and illustrate how true it really is.
A few obviously false logical arguments will illustrate the point that most attacks on Christianity don’t really attack the main message:
Example of Fallacious Syllogisms
Evolution is true.
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Therefore, Jesus is not the Son of God and did not rise from the dead.
It is unjust and unloving for God to send people into eternal punishment.
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Therefore, Jesus is not the Son of God and did not rise from the dead.
Christians are sometimes hypocrites.
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Therefore, Jesus is not the Son of God and did not rise from the dead.
Christians sometimes hate homosexuals.
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Therefore, Jesus is not the Son of God and did not rise from the dead.
There was no actual flood of Noah.
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Therefore, Jesus is not the Son of God and did not rise from the dead.
The cosmological, teleological, and ontological arguments for the existence of God are unsuccessful.
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Therefore, Jesus is not the Son of God and did not rise from the dead.
The Bible contains contradictions and mistakes.
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Therefore, Jesus is not the Son of God and did not rise from the dead.
You get my drift……
Granted, I will not even concede the first premise in many instances. But even if the first premise is true, it does nothing to defeat Christianity’s core message. Some of these arguments above are more apparently false than others, but the principle remains true.
Some legitimate concerns have to be addressed here. One may accuse me of picking and choosing which aspects of Christianity to believe in order to win an argument. Both Christians and non-Christians seem not to appreciate this. However, think of it this way. Let’s imagine that the only things I know about Christianity are what is contained in the Nicene Creed. So imagine someone brings up one of these objections to me. It wouldn’t make any sense to me. Let’s say perhaps that I not only just believe the Nicene Creed, but I am familiar with strong arguments for the resurrection of Jesus. Should I abandon Christianity because someone brings up the eternal hell objection, or evolution, or anything else? Certainly not. This was the position many of the first Christians were in, especially the one’s Paul preached to in Athens Greece. All they knew was the main message, nothing else.
It’s not like a person is picking and choosing which core doctrines are most important. It’s that most of these objections don’t even attack the core doctrines at all! If these objections succeed, they just cut branches off of the tree, they don’t cut down the tree itself.
Early Christian Belief
To the early Christians, Christianity is true because of the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah and Lord. This was based on eyewitness testimony of the appearances. This message was understood to be the fulfillment of the Jewish religion. The death and resurrection of the Messiah was the trunk of the tree, and the other doctrines branched out because Jesus taught them or they were big concepts in the Old Testament.
This is not how many American Christians think of it today. For many of us, the fact that the Bible is perfectly true is the trunk of the tree, and all the other beliefs, such as the resurrection of Jesus and his death for sins, hangs on that. Some people even go so far as to say that if there is even one contradiction in the Bible, then the whole thing is false. This is not at all how I see them do it in early Christianity. They held all those other beliefs, like the authority of Scripture, and all those other controversial teachings, they just weren’t the center of their beliefs. Christianity wasn’t true because the Bible was true. It was true because Jesus was raised from the dead and fulfilled Old Testament prophecy about the Messiah.
Biblical Inerrancy
The fact that the Bible may contain many contradictions and errors falls into this category as well. Even if the Bible contained many errors and contradictions, it would certainly not falsify Christianity. However, saying that the Bible contains mistakes is a far cry from saying that certain elements of it, namely the Gospels, aren’t historically reliable. Dr. Gary Habermas has shown that we don’t even have to regard the gospels as reliable historical information to provide good evidence for the resurrection.
For example, the assassination of Julius Caesar only has 2 primary sources (Plutarch and Suetonius), all written over 100 years after the actual events. Neither of these guys could be eyewitnesses, even if they wanted to be. Furthermore, they even contradict one another on the last words of Caesar. Yet people don’t even think twice when believing that Julius Caesar was stabbed to death on the Senate floor in Rome.
The gospels are 4 primary sources (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), some of whom claim to be eyewitnesses or at least claim to have talked to them. In addition, these are all written within 70 years of the events, according to even the most liberal scholars. Just like the Caesar accounts, these could contain many mistakes, but still be a worthwhile source of historical information, especially on the things they all agreed on (such as the resurrection and the feeding of the 5000). So Christianity is not at all dependent on the belief that the Bible contains no contradictions.
Summary
So overall, unless a skeptic challenges a core part of the Nicene Creed, or a core part of original Christian preaching, Christianity hasn’t even been challenged….
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