Ep. #243 – A Fresh Look at the Evidence for Christ w/ Jimmy Akin
Summary
What is the meaning of Messiah? Why should we think Jesus is the Messiah foretold in the Old Testament? Do all messianic prophecies have the same evidentiary weight? Doesn’t Jesus falsely say the end of the world will come within one generation? How can we respond to skeptical claims of critics who argue the evidence for Jesus and his Resurrection is weak and based on hearsay? Jimmy Akin joins the show to discuss these topics.
Resources
The Catholic Answers School of Apologetics
Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham
Jimmy’s Debate with Bart Ehrman
Video Version (Jimmy Akin’s YouTube channel)
Related Episodes
Ep. #112 – Natural Theology & the Resurrection of Jesus w/ Dr. Levering
Ep. #71 – Why Take Jesus Seriously? w/ Michael Gormley
Ep. #70 – Minimal Facts & the Resurrection w/ Dr. Licona
I am a scientist and an admirer of Christianity, but I find faith difficult to adopt. Why are we urged to have faith as if it was a matter of personal choice and effort? Isn’t faith a gift of the Holy Spirit to the honest seekers of truth and to the well-intended?
Why is the search of Truth so complicated for the seeker? Shouldn’t the knowledge of Truth be innate (as the sibling effortlessly knows how to breastfeed), obvious and equally given to all. Shouldn’t the Truth be given by grace to all, and the only dilemma left for us to solve be ”Do I follow or do I not”?
I beg you for an answer.
Hi Ioannis,
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. Here are a few answers that come to mind, but feel free to give a follow up comment or ask a question about another episode.
Re: “Why are we urged to have faith as if it was a matter of personal choice and effort?”
It is partially a matter of personal choice (free will) and effort, because it is an important aspect of our relationship with God. Just as in a human relationship, when one goes deeper and grows closer to a person, one can *choose to believe* a person (especially when they reveal some inner manner of their heart) as a matter of growing in trust and intimacy, we can also choose to believe God (and walk in accord with his will) as a matter of growing in trust and intimacy with Him.
Re: “Isn’t faith a gift of the Holy Spirit to the honest seekers of truth and to the well-intended?”
The gift is offered to all in the sense that God supplies all sufficient grace not to be lost. But whether a person cooperates with that grace or receives the gift will depend on their docility to God’s working in their lives.
Re: “Why is the search of Truth so complicated for the seeker? Shouldn’t the knowledge of Truth be innate (as the sibling effortlessly knows how to breastfeed), obvious and equally given to all.”
For some, it is complicated. For others, it is less complicated. Even then, in some ways it is complicated, but in other ways it is less complicated. For example, my friend Pat Flynn (author of The Best Argument for God — you should check it out!) had a reversion to his Catholic faith after years as an atheist and a skeptic. I think he would say that his reversion was a bit complicated in some ways (it took time and wrestling with various ideas) but was simpler in other ways (he came to see worldview of naturalism as absurd/untenable and so needed to abandon it).
For the angels, the knowledge of God was as you say — innate and given immediately to all of them (at least on a typical understanding of the creation of angels). Yet, some still chose for God and others against God.
Yet, we are not angels but rather human persons i.e. composites of body and soul. Since we are not simply pure intellects (like angels), it is part and parcel with our mode of being that we do things that involve going through bodily processes. Our knowledge of things begins in the world of sense experience and through our intellection/abstraction we go on to grasp more general ideas than simply what is sensed. Over time, we live and learn and seek the truth.
So, your question amounts to, “Why didn’t God make us like the angels with immediate knowledge of Him?” And to any such question, “Why didn’t God do X?” or “Why did God do X?” we must be humble and admit we are not God and cannot know the precise divine rationale. Yet, we can reason to make sense of possible explanations. In this case, some of those could be: (i) It’s a great good to reason to the existence of God, and God wanted to give us the opportunity to do this, (ii) it’s more fitting of our nature as embodied beings not to have divinely implanted knowledge right from the start, (iii) God desires us not just to know facts about him, but to enter a deeper relationship with him; giving us the right facts of his existence in a blatant manner might hinder the prospects of an authentic relationship (i.e. perhaps some would believe more likely out of fear than out of love for God and desire to know Him).
Re: “Shouldn’t the Truth be given by grace to all, and the only dilemma left for us to solve be ”Do I follow or do I not”?”
If Catholicism is true, then all people are provided sufficient grace not to be lost. Hence, in a way you are correct, and it will be true that all people have answered at the end of their lives “I will follow” or “I will not follow.” Yet, in some lives, the decision making and choice might be more implicit rather than explicit (e.g. a choice NOT to look into the reasons for Christianity out of a desire to continue in a particular lifestyle).
I think your worry is that a person, call him X, *would have* believed in God if he had enough information, and he tried to get all of the information he could, but through no fault of his own, X cannot obtain clear enough access to the truth that God exists, and hence X remains agnostic. Would X then be lost in eternity? The Catholic Church has a very nuanced answer here. It is possible that X would be lost if he is culpable for his sins and choices and ultimate lack of faith. Yet, what if X is invincibly ignorant of God’s existence such that it is truly not X’s fault that he does not come to explicit faith? In such a case, the Church holds that if X responds to the grace given by God in his life (even unknowingly) and cooperates with it (e.g. to choose the good over seriously evil choices), then X may (possibly could) be saved through a notion of implicit faith. Ultimately, only God can judge whether a person is culpable or not for their ignorance (and whether they culpably resisted evidence that they should not have resisted, etc.).
Our task in apologetics is to remove objections so that people can more easily and readily trust in God, since they see it is an eminently rational thing to do. Lastly, you might find this episode helpful which touches on the subject of implicit faith: https://www.classicaltheism.com/implicitfaith/
Peace,
John