14 Apr Truth and Freedom – The Truths of Historic Christian Faith

I. Raising Testimony to the Truths of the Historic Christian Faith:
This is not about the personal testimony of individual believers, although it is very important. This is about establishing the credibility of the Christian Faith or Worldview. This is about presenting all the evidences we can of all different kinds (historical, scientific, archaeological, anthropological, sociological, psychological, and so on) to establish the plausibility of the truths of the historic Christian faith in the public square. If we are serious about our first aim of evangelism, and particularly reaching the Friends of Other Faiths (FOF) and the people of other philosophical persuasions (like atheism, naturalism, skepticism), we must learn to establish the framework or biblical worldview and thus set the stage to introduce Jesus. Only then the gospel invitation can make sense to the people in our college and university campuses.

Often the gospel does not make sense to the FOF because they are not prepared to receive and understand it. They grow up with and live with their own belief system and see what we present through that lens. Since that lens is defective, the gospel we present does not make sense to them. Sometimes, they even misinterpret it. Paul says that people are deceived by the Devil to believe in all kinds of false ideas and worldviews and they cannot see the truth because they are blinded (2 Cor 4: 4). Unless we remove those obstacles and establish the correct framework, we can never expect people to come to know the truth. Gresham Machen says,

“False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the gospel. We may preach with all fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or the world to be controlled by ideas, which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.”

In our context, the collective thought of the nation (and even the world) is controlled by the false idea that ‘all religions are the same,’ or ‘all religions are just different ways to reach the same God,’ or ‘all religions are equally true’. The implication is that there is nothing unique about Christ and Christianity. So, we should engage people at the pre-evangelistic stage and prepare them for the gospel presentation and invitation. This can be achieved through personal discussions and dialogues, small group discussions, talks, seminars, open forums, panel discussions, scholarly debates, and public lectures in secular settings (like the college and university campuses) where we can address the false ideas that have captured the minds of people and establish a theistic or biblical framework. This strategy helps us in removing the mental or intellectual blocks from the minds of our FOF so that they might be better prepared to receive the gospel or at least consider it more seriously and openly, when it is presented. Moreland thinks that unless a person considers the possibility that a belief might be true, he or she can never take that belief seriously. He says,

“If a culture reaches the point where Christian claims are not even part of its plausibility structure, fewer and fewer people will be able to entertain the possibility that they might be true… This is why apologetics is so crucial to evangelism. It seeks to create a plausibility structure in a person’s mind, “favourable conditions” as Machen put it, so the gospel can be entertained by a person.”

• We should think smartly and come up with attention grabbing, thought provoking, and open-ended questions as topics for these different kinds of programs. Here are some examples: 1) God Particle and the Question of God’s Existence, 2) Origin of the Universe: Big Bang or Big Being? 3) The Origins Debate: Which Way? 4) Is Death Our Ultimate Destiny or …? 5) If God is good, why is there evil? 6) Life After Death: Resurrection or Reincarnation? 7) Can we be good without God? 8) The Creation-Evolution Controversy: Which Way? 9) Truth and Religions: Are All Religions Really the Same? 10) Is God Really Dead?

This is exactly what we see Apostle Paul doing in his Areopagus Address. He established a framework (within which the truth about Christ makes sense) with nine key elements.

1. The first element he establishes is that God is the creator of the whole universe (v. 24). He achieves two things by this; showing that God is other than the created order (polytheism and pantheism are wrong) and that humans are accountable to God.

2. The second key element is that God “is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands” (v. 24).

• Luke gives us a condensed version of Paul’s speech to the Athenians (Acts 17: 16-34), which must have been a much longer one. Given the truth about the Athenians and Paul himself (known for his long discourses both in speech and writing), this version that can be read in just two minutes must be a record of only the major points that he must have explained at length. If we look at Paul’s discourses and arguments on each of these points in his epistles, we can almost with certainty see how he must have expanded and argued for each point. I have drawn the main points of Paul’s speech from D. A. Carson, “Athens Revisited,” in D. A. Carson, Gen. Ed., Telling the Truth: Evangelizing Postmoderns (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 2000), pp. 391-394.

3. Third, Paul further clarified that God “is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything” (v. 25). The point is that God does not need us, because God is self-existent and independent of his created order as far as his well-being, contentment, and existence are concerned. This rules out polytheism and all works-based approaches to salvation.

• Personal and Community problems; existential, intellectual, spiritual, psychological, and so on problems. Humans are incurably meaning seeking beings. Humans everywhere deal with the problems of guilt, evil and suffering, injustice, discrimination, exploitation, etc., and we long and search for solutions.

4. Fourth, Paul argued that in contrast to God, we humans are utterly dependent on God – “he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else” (v. 25b).

• John Stott, The Contemporary Christian (Leicester: Inver-Varsity Press, 1992), 255-256.

5. Fifth, Paul turned to human origins and insisted that all nations descended from one man (v. 26). This is a crucial truth because it is connected to other truths like sin, death and salvation. We just cannot neglect the issue of origins.

6. Sixth, Paul hints that something had gone wrong in God’s universe when he talks about the purpose of God’s providential rule over all – that some would reach out for him and find him (v. 27). It is implied here that all humans do not know the God who created them.

7. Seventh, Paul, who argued for the transcendence of God in point one, now turns to the immanence of God when he says that the God he has in mind is “not far from each one of us’ (v. 27), and “we live and move and have our being in this God and we are his offspring” (v. 28). This is all an expression of God’s nearness to us and of his personal and immediate concern for our well-being.

8. Eighth, in verses 29-30, we see that Paul stated clearly that idolatry is reprehensible (implying that it is a sin). This again is a key step because without establishing what the problem is (the bad news) he cannot rightly introduce the solution (the good news). We can see that Paul is progressively preparing the stage to introduce Jesus and His role as Saviour.

9. Ninth and last, Paul focuses on a certain view of time or philosophy of history. The Greeks, like our Pantheistic friends, had a cyclical view of time and history. Paul demolishes that false view by establishing a linear framework (past-present-future being connected and time moving forward from creation linearly), which is the biblical view. He also talks about a time of final judgment in the future (v. 31). With this, the stage set to introduce Jesus is completed. Now, Paul finally moves on to the subject of Jesus or the gospel.

II. Showing the Message of the Truths of Historic Christian Faith as the Solution to All Human Problems:
This is not at all easy. But it is doable. We must put in much effort at different levels in trying to show or demonstrate that the message of the truths of historic Christian faith is indeed the solution to all human problems. Human problems are of different kinds and the root cause of all the problems is sin that separates humans from their creator God, Who is holy and the source of all good things. Every human problem is either directly or indirectly rooted in their separation from the one true and living God, the Creator. Blaise Pascal concluded that “there is a God-shaped vacuum in every human heart which can be filled only by God.” Augustine prayed and expressed a similar understanding that God has created our hearts for a relationship with Him and so humans cannot find rest until they find it in God. The God we are referring to is the One Creator God.

The English word ‘religion’ comes from two Latin words and essentially it means ‘reconnecting’ and the implication is that there was a connection between humans and their creator and that connection got broken and that, in one sense, religion is about humans trying to reconnect with God. But the gap between the finite humans and the infinite God is infinite and the finite humans cannot cross the infinite gap and reach the infinite God. Therefore, for the human quest for a relationship with God to be satisfied is that God must take the initiative, condescend, and come down to us. That is what exactly we find in the incarnation of God Almighty in the person of Jesus Christ. In a sense, the root of all human problems is sin and the God given solution is the Son (of God), Jesus Christ Who is God in human form, the God-man who bridges the gap between God and Humanity. This we must both declare verbally with our lips and demonstrate or display in our lives as redeemed individuals, families, and communities.

What it all means is that we should make sure that Christian ‘presence’ is established to make the Christian ‘proclamation’ effective. What Paul says in Tit 2:9-10, when applied to our own contexts means that we should make the gospel more attractive by living distinctive Christian lives. This is how I think we should establish Christian presence as individual Christians. To ADORN means to make it attractive for the onlookers, although the essence of what is adorned by something else does not change. The same is true of the GOSPEL as well.

When our life is well-pleasing to the others, then the Gospel (the doctrine = the teaching of God our Savior) will be appealing or attractive to our friends. As a community also we should establish Christian presence by the way we relate to one another as God’s people. Jesus says that if we love one another as He loved us the world will know that we are his disciples (Jn 13:34-35). If we are united in Christ, as His body, the world would know that Jesus is the Saviour from heaven (Jn 17:20-23). What we are trying to say is that the lives we live (as individuals, families, and as communities of God’s people) should show to the world that the gospel we are proclaiming has transformed us. In the words of John Stott it means that “the good news of Jesus Christ must be set forth both visually and verbally.” Commenting on 1 Jn 4:12 Stott says, “The invisible God, Who once made Himself visible in Christ, now makes Himself visible in Christians, if we love one another . . . It is through the quality of our loving that God makes Himself visible today.”

Conclusion:
I would like to conclude this article by simply reminding the biblical truth that we must not only know what we believe, but we must also know why we believe what we believe. We are obligated to raise a testimony to the truths of the historic Christian faith and this is what Jude describes as “the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people,” and says that he felt compelled to write and urge the recipients to contend for it (Jude 3). Unless we know the content of the faith, we can never contend for it. The message contained in the truths of the historic Christian faith is basically the gospel truth, which is the good news about Jesus Christ, the solution for all human problems. We have to declare, defend, and display Christ and thus show that in the person and work of Christ, God the creator has provided a solution for all human problems. May the Lord God Almighty enable us (students and graduates) to do this in a way that is relevant for the digital age in which we are living and working. May the Lord enable us to do some study of the generations and the intergenerational gaps so that we might know how to effectively raise a testimony to the truths of the historic Christian faith and to show the message there of as the solution to the problems of humanity among the ‘digital natives’, ‘Gen Z’, and ‘Gen Alpha’.

Rev. Sudhakar Mondithoka is the Principal and Faculty in Apologetics and World Religions at HITHA (Hyderabad Institute of Theology and Apologetics). Associated with UESI since 1979. He can be reached at sudhakar.mondithoka@gmail.com