Dr. Bill Bright, former president and founder of Campus Crusade for Christ International wrote the FOREWORD to Josh McDowell’s Evidence for Christianity: Historical Evidences for the Christian Faith.
Excerpts:
- Is Christianity credible? Is there an intellectual basis for faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God? Scholars throughout the centuries, as well as millions of students and older adults, will answer such questions with a resounding “Yes”!
- A lawyer once asked Jesus: “Sir, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?” Jesus replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. This is the first and greatest commandment” (Matt 22: 37,38). God created man with the ability to think, to acquire knowledge, and to discern truth. God wants us to use our minds.
- To me, the evidence confirming the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ is overwhelmingly conclusive to any honest, objective seeker after truth. However, not all—not even the majority—of those to whom I have spoken have accepted Him as their Savior and Lord. This is not because they were unable to believe — they were simply unwilling to believe!
- . . . a brilliant but confused psychiatrist . . . confessed he had never been willing to consider honestly the claims of Christ in his own life, for fear that he would be convinced and, as a result, would have to change his way of life.
- Other well-known professing atheists, including Aldous Huxley and Bertrand Russell, have refused to come to intellectual grips with the basic historical facts concerning the birth, life, teachings, miracles, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
- Those who have—C.S. Lewis, C.E.M. Joad, and Malcolm Muggeridge, for example—have found the evidence so convincing that they have accepted the verdict that Jesus Christ truly is who He claimed to be—the Son of God and their own Savior and Lord.
- John 20:27-29 . . . “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Sinaite’s Commentary:
There is no question that Jesus of Nazareth was human; the question arises from the claim that he is deity. Around that claim, stories have developed about his birth, miracles, ministry, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension to heaven.
As if that were not enough to process, add to that the nature of Jesus’ virgin mother who miraculously conceives; note that it is not his birth that was miraculous, he came out just like any other baby; it was his conception that was miraculous, since Mary’s betrothed, poor St. Joseph, had nothing to do with it. The impregnating of Mary by the Holy Spirit caused a bit of a problem for some purists — how can a human egg (Mary’s who would have inherited original sin/fallen nature) mix with a sperm from . . . well, whom? One solution is—the whole package (egg fertilized by sperm to produce the human side of Jesus) was planted in Mary’s womb. Another solution which became the Catholic choice was to make Mary born sinless since she would be Mother of God. Let’s stop here before we forget what this article is all about.
As if that were not enough, Jesus then becomes part of a Trinity defined as one god in three persons. No amount of explaining how the 3-persons-1-god function can be intellectually grasped; one has to simply accept it by faith as a mystery one will never understand on this side of eternity.
As if that were not enough, there is introduced in the New Scriptures an evil being leading a host of other evil beings who frustrate the workings of God on earth, with whom Jesus interacts; these beings are understood to be fallen angels who seem to have free will, just like man, and wreak havoc on all humanity.
Let’s stop there, even if there’s more.
The key phrases in Bill Bright’s Foreword:
- credible,
- intellectual basis for faith,
- evidence confirming deity,
- conclusive proof,
- basic historical facts
. . . . are all debatable.
Instead, this much can be affirmed:
- there was a Jesus of history;
- around him developed a religion,
- Christianity which is a historical faith,
- with historical records about its roots in Judaism
- to its beginnings as a gentile political-religious institution,
- emerging from pagan Rome
- developing into papal Rome;
- a persecuting religion that was intolerant of deviations from its proclaimed tenets.
- Yes Christianity was a major influence in world history for almost two millennia; whether that could translate into proof or evidence that Jesus is God is not even debatable.
Adonai Elohim YHWH of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament Trinity are not the same God.
To quote Bill Bright since he’s on the dot with this one:
“God created man with the ability to think,
to acquire knowledge,
and to discern truth.
God wants us to use our minds.”
“This is not because they were unable to believe —
they were simply unwilling to believe!”
Ahem, finally we can agree with Mr. Bill Bright on ALL those points.
