These lectures are great, especially because for October 2017 in my C.S. Lewis Fellows Program we rigorously scrutinized the origin, historicity, and the reliability of the Bible (Old and New Testament and how it came through the thousands of years of its history). This is absolutely fascinating. I have long contemplated going into graduate school for apologetics and this is another nudge in this direction.
Intro to Jesus Mythicism.
As Dan Brown in his book ‘The Da Vinci Code’ writes: “Nothing in Christianity is original.”
It is in recent times that a great number of people are claiming that Jesus is simply a rehash of older pagan secretive religions, and of the religions of dying and rising gods. We see this masqueraded as truth in films such as Zeitgeist, The Da Vinci Code and Irreligious which, to the layperson, seem to be factual and convincing. But how factually based are these claims? Surely anyone can misconstrue evidence to suit their presuppositional biases, especially if they don’t want to believe something. The first step for anyone really seeking to understand these allegations would be to consult the scholars in the relevant and necessary fields of expertise. What do they have to say? Is such an issue even on the table of debate nowadays?…
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“We are all starved for the glory of God, not self. No one goes to the Grand Canyon to increase self-esteem. Why do we go? Because there is greater healing for the soul in beholding splendor than there is in beholding self.”— John Piper
我們都對上帝的榮耀極度饑渴。沒有人是為了增強自尊心而去參觀大峽谷。我們為什麼去呢？因為參摩壯麗的輝煌璀璨，終究比參酌自我來的更能讓心靈得著康復。
–約翰派普爾
你說呢？禪修道學裡不是都注重往內參查而獲自由嗎？但我們的靈魂裡就是追求比我們的自我更絢麗更耀眼的大榮耀。這就是我們與生俱來對永恆對完美對愛，對上帝的追求。這是我們自身無法滿足的，唯有望外，不管是大自然大歷史大社會大智慧，都要我們謙卑下來向外參習才能昇華。
This is an amazing speech. Unfortunately there are a lot of Youtube-inserted ads to “skip” through but the speech itself is so worth every ounce of attention the entire way, even if you are a Ravi veteran.
This has been tried multiplied millions of times through violence, but killing Christians has only ever produced more and more Christians.
Source: What is the future of Christianity and religion as a whole?
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/383437
Journal article by Catherine M. Punsalan-Manlimos for American Journal of Theology & Philosophy > Volume 31, Number 1, January 2010
“Religion is not the place where the problem of man’s egotism is automatically solved. Rather, it is there that the ultimate battle between human pride and God’s grace takes place. Human pride may win the battle, and then religion can and does become one more instrument of human sin. But if there the self does meet God and His grace, and so surrenders to something beyond its self-interest, then Christian faith can prove to be the needed and rare release from human self-concern.” ― Langdon Brown Gilkey
宗教並不是人類自我中心的問題會自動解決的地方，而是個戰場：人類的驕傲自大對決上帝恩典的終極戰場。人類的驕傲有可能得勝，而宗教則淪落為另一個人類用來做惡的工具。但若在宗教裡，人的自我真能認識上帝和祂的恩典，從而降服於比自我利益更偉大的事，那麼，基督教信仰則真是我們需要而又極為罕見的自由：將我們從人類的自私自利中解放出來的自由。 – 藍盾布朗 吉爾基
More of brilliant quotes from David Wallace Foster
we should not so much as to win arguments but to model grace and give a winsome, not odious, impression… and it’s so easy to lose sight of that when there is so much falsehood in our environmental context and we’re anxious to point people towards truth…
