Section 3. THE PHILOSOPHICAL EVIDENCE
Visit any part of the world today. Talk to people of any religion. No matter how committed they are to their particular religion, if they know anything about history, they will have to admit that there has never been a man like Jesus of Nazareth. He is the most unique personality of all time.
Jesus
changed the direction of history. Even the date on your morning newspaper
testifies to the fact that Jesus of Nazareth lived on earth nearly 2,000 years
ago. B.C. means "before Christ"; A.D. Anno Domini, "the year of
our Lord".
Past world rulers like Alexander
the Great, Tutankhamen and Julius Caesar have all had one thing in common: the
past. They're stuck in it. It makes more sense to follow a ruler who has
conquered death...and a world leader who promises to someday rule the world
through peace.
Jesus Christ is that ruler. He
claimed to be God, was crucified for our sins, and then rose bodily from the
grave. And he promises to return to rule over the earth.
The great escape artist Harry
Houdini said that he was determined to come back from the grave if possible. He
didn't. But someone else did: Jesus Christ claimed to be the God who created the
universe and said he would die and then bodily rise from the dead to prove he
was God. He did.
It is impossible for us to know conclusively whether
God exists and what He is like unless He takes the initiative and reveals
Himself.
We must know what He is like and His attitude toward us. Suppose we knew He existed, but that He was like Adolf Hitler--capricious, vicious, prejudiced, and cruel. What a horrible realization that would be!
We
must scan the horizon of history to see if there is any clue to God's
revelation. There is one clear clue. In an obscure village in Palestine, almost
2,000 years ago, a Child was born in a stable. Today the entire world is still
celebrating the birth of Jesus.
He
lived in obscurity until He was thirty, and then began a public ministry that
lasted three years. It was destined to change the course of history. He was a
kindly person and we're told that "the common people heard Him
gladly." And, "He taught as One who had authority, and not as their
teachers of the Law" (Matthew 7:29).
It soon became apparent, however, that He was making shocking and startling statements about Himself. He began to identify Himself as far more than a remarkable teacher or prophet. He began to say clearly that He was God. He made His identity the focal point of His teaching. The all-important question He put to those who followed Him was, "Who do you say I am?" When Peter answered and said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:15-16), Jesus was not shocked, nor did He rebuke Peter. On the contrary, He commended him!
He made the
claim explicitly, and His hearers got the full impact of His words. We are told,
"The Jews tried all the harder to kill Him; not only was He breaking the
Sabbath, but He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with
God" (John 5:18).
On another
occasion he said, "I and My Father are One." Immediately the Jews
wanted to stone Him. He asked them for which good work they wanted to kill Him.
They replied, "We are not stoning You for any of these but for blasphemy,
because You, a mere man, claim to be God" (John 5:18).
Jesus clearly
claimed attributes which only God has. When a
paralyzed man was let down through the roof wanting to be healed by Him, He
said, "Son, your sins are forgiven you." This caused a great to-do
among the religious leaders, who said in their hearts, "Why does this
fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God
alone?"
At the
critical moment when His life was at stake, the high priest put the question to
Him directly: "Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?"
"I am," said Jesus. "And you will see the Son of Man sitting at
the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven."
The high
priest tore his clothes. "Why do we need any more witnesses?" he
asked. "You have heard the blasphemy" (Mark 14:61-64).
So close was
His connection with God that He equated a person's attitude to Himself with the
person's attitude toward God. Thus, to know Him was to know God (John 8:19;
14:7). To see Him was to see God (12:45; 14:9). To believe in Him was to believe
in God (12:44; 14:1). To receive Him was to receive God (Mark 9:37). To hate Him
was to hate God (John 15:23). And to honour Him was to honour God (5:23).
LORD LIAR OR
LUNATIC ?
In his famous
book Mere
Christianity, C.S. Lewis makes this statement,
"A man
who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great
moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with a man who says
he is a poached egg - or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your
choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something
worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him
Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being
a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us."
As we face the claims of Christ, there are only four possibilities. He was either a liar, a lunatic, a legend, or the Truth. If we say He is not the Truth, we are automatically affirming one of the other three alternatives, whether we realize it or not.
One
possibility is that Jesus lied when He said He was God--that He knew He was not
God, but deliberately deceived His hearers to lend authority to His teaching.
Few, if any, seriously hold this position. Even those who deny His deity affirm
that He w as a great moral teacher. They fail to realize those two statements
are a contradiction. Jesus could hardly be a great moral teacher if, on the most
crucial point of His teaching--His identity--He was a deliberate liar.
A kinder,
though no less shocking possibility, is that He was sincere but self-deceived.
We have a name for a person today who thinks he is God. That name is lunatic,
and it certainly would apply to Christ if He were deceived on this all-important
issue. But as we look at the life of Christ, we see no evidence of the
abnormality and imbalance we find in a deranged person. Rather, we find the
greatest composure under pressure.
The third
alternative is that all of the talk about His claiming to be God is a
legend--that what actually happened was that His enthusiastic followers, in the
third and fourth centuries, put words into His mouth He would have been shocked
to hear. Were He to return, He would immediately repudiate them.
The legend
theory has been significantly refuted by many discoveries of modern archeology.
These have conclusively shown that the four biographies of Christ were written
within the lifetime of contemporaries of Christ. Some time ago Dr. William F.
Albright, world-famous archaeologist now retired from Johns Hopkins University,
said that there was no reason to believe that any of the Gospels were written
later than A.D. 70. For a mere legend about Christ, in the form of the Gospel,
to have gained the circulation and to have had the impact it had, without one
shred of basis in fact, is incredible.
For this to
have happened would be as fantastic as for someone in our own time to write a
biography of the late John F. Kennedy and in it say he claimed to be God, to
forgive people's sins, and to have risen from the dead. Such a story is so wild
it would never get off the ground because there are still too many people around
who knew Kennedy. The legend theory does not hold water in the light of the
early date of the Gospel manuscripts.
The only
other alternative is that Jesus spoke the truth. From one point of view,
however, claims don't mean much. Talk is cheap. Anyone can make claims. There
have been others who have claimed to be God.
I could claim
to be God, and you could claim to be God, but the question all of us must answer
is, "What credentials do we bring to substantiate our claim?" In my
case it wouldn't take you five minutes to disprove my claim. It probably
wouldn't take too much more to dispose of yours. But when it comes to Jesus of
Nazareth, it's not so simple. He had the credentials to back up His claim. He
said, "Even though you do not believe Me, believe the evidence of the
miracles, that you may learn and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in
the Father" ( John 10:38).
First, His
moral character coincided with His claims. Many asylum
inmates claim to be celebrities or deities. But their claims are belied by their
characters. Not so with Christ. He is unique--as unique as God.
Jesus Christ
was sinless. The caliber of His life was such that He was able to challenge His
enemies with the question, "Can any of you prove Me guilty of sin?"
(John 8:46). He was met by silence, even though He addressed those who would
have liked to point out a flaw in His character.
We read of
the temptations of Jesus, but we never hear of a confession of sin on His part.
He never asked for forgiveness, though He told His followers to do so.
This lack of
any sense of moral failure on Jesus' part is astonishing in view of the fact
that it is completely contrary to the experience of the saints and mystics in
all ages. The closer men and women draw to God, the more overwhelmed they
are with their own failure, corruption, and shortcomings. The closer one
is to a shining light, the more he realizes his need of a bath. This is true
also, in the moral realm, for ordinary mortals.
It is also
striking that John, Paul, and Peter, all of whom were trained from earliest
childhood to believe in the universality of sin, all spoke of the sinlessness of
Christ: "He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in His mouth" (1
Peter 2:22).
Pilate, no
friend of Jesus, said, "What evil has He done?" He implicitly
recognized Christ's innocence. And the Roman centurion who witnessed the death
of Christ said, "Surely He was the Son of God" (Matthew. 27:54).
Second,
Christ demonstrated a power over natural forces which could
belong only to God, the Author of these forces.
He stilled a
raging storm of wind and waves on the Sea of Galilee. In doing this He provoked
from those in the boat the awestruck question, "Who is this? Even the wind
and waves obey Him!" (Mark 4:41) He turned water into wine, fed 5,000
people from five loaves and two fish, gave a grieving widow back her only son by
raising him from the dead, and brought to life the dead daughter of a shattered
father. To an old friend He said, "Lazarus, come forth!" and
dramatically raised him from the dead. It is most significant that His enemies
did not deny this miracle. Rather, they tried to kill Him. "If we let Him
go on like this," they said, "everyone will believe in Him"
(John11:48).
Third, Jesus
demonstrated the Creator's power over sickness and disease. He
made the lame to walk, the dumb to speak, and the blind to see. Some of His
healings were of congenital problems not susceptible to psychosomatic cure. The
most outstanding was that of the blind man whose case is recorded in John 9.
Though the man couldn't answer his speculative questioners, his experience was
enough to convince him. "One thing I do know. I was blind but now I
see!" he declared. He was astounded that his friends didn't recognize this
Healer as the Son of God. "Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a
man born blind," he said (John 9:25, 32). To him the evidence was obvious.
Fourth,
Jesus' supreme credential to authenticate His claim to deity was His
resurrection from the dead. Five times in the course of His life He
predicted He would die. He also predicted how He would die and that three days
later He would rise from the dead and appear to His disciples.
Surely this
was the great test. It was a claim that was easy to verify. It either happened
or it didn't.
Both friends
and enemies of the Christian faith have recognized the resurrection of Christ to
be the foundation stone of the faith. Paul, the great apostle, wrote, "If
Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith"
(1 Corinthians 15:14). Paul rested his whole case on the bodily resurrection of
Christ. Either He did or He didn't rise from the dead. If He did, it was
the most sensational event in all of history.
If Christ
rose, we know with certainty that God exists, what He is like, and how we may
know Him in personal experience. The universe
takes on meaning and purpose, and it is possible to experience the living God in
contemporary life.
If we imagined our entire body of personal knowledge as a circle, how big would that circle be ? Could it be that in all of time and history, that there may be things entirely outside of our scope of intellect and understanding, that are nonetheless true ?
If this is the case, it would be foolish to write off the concept of God as antiquated mythology just because we don’t fully understand it.
Some of the greatest minds in history have totally devoted themselves to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, shouldn’t we “Mere Mortals” at least take this as a hint ?
In
1954 American psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed that all people are
motivated to fulfil a hierarchical pyramid of needs. At the bottom of Maslow's
pyramid are needs essential to survival, such as the needs for food, water, and
sleep. The need for safety follows these physiological needs. According to
Maslow, higher-level needs become important to us only after our more basic
needs are satisfied. These higher needs include the need for love and
belongingness, the need for esteem, and the need for self-actualization (in
Maslow's theory, a state in which people realize their greatest potential).
My personal opinion is that this is what separates us from being mere animals. (unless of course apes get together to meet in weekly craft groups, and read poetry, and discuss philosophy, or play the guitar “by ear” like the great Australian guitarist Tommy Emmanuel, or sit on the side of a mountain listening for the sound of “one hand clapping.”
Once our basic needs are met we do have a propensity to think about the “meaning of life”, but where I would not necessarily agree with Maslow, is that people in dire straits who are far from having their basic needs met
often turn their thoughts to God for help even if they say they don’t believe in Him. In some ways there is no spiritual deafness like the deafness of Materialism.
No
wonder that Blaise Pascal wrote: "There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart
of every man, and only God can fill it."