This is the third and final installment of this three part series. Please see earlier entries for part 1 and part 2.
What does the atheist do with Jesus of
Nazareth?
Some atheists, right from the start, try
to inject doubt into this topic
by either overtly claiming or subtly hinting that there actually was no
historical Jesus of Nazareth. For example, Bertrand Russell wrote: “Historically
it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if he did we know
nothing about him.”[1]
Although some may argue for the participation
of other, earlier historical figures that began making these claims, most
historians peg the start of these allegations with a man named Bruno Bauer
(1809 – 1882). Bauer was a German theologian, philosopher and historian who
looked at the sources of the New Testament and controversially concluded that
early Christianity owed more to Greek philosophy (Stoicism) than to Judaism.
Starting in 1840, he began a series of controversial works arguing that Jesus
was a myth, a second century fusion of Jewish, Greek, and Roman theology.
Bauer’s work was picked up by Albert
Kalthoff (1850-1906) who followed Bauer’s extreme skepticism about the
historical Jesus. Kalthoff went so far as to claim that Jesus of Nazareth never
existed and was not the founder of Christianity.
However, Bauer’s and Kalthoff’s assertions
were refuted (and have continued to be refuted) by legions of historians, both
Christian and secular. One example is Gary Habermas book “The Historical Jesus”
that chronicles scores of extra-Biblical historical references to Jesus’ first
century life, the count of which outnumbers citations of historical figures
that no person doubts (e.g. Tiberius Caesar; 10 mentions vs. 43 for
Jesus).
Summing up the conclusion on whether Jesus
of Nazareth actually lived, Princeton New Testament scholar Dr. Bruce Metzger
says, “Today no competent scholar denies the historicity of Jesus.”[2]
So where is the atheist’s evidence that
Jesus of Nazareth never existed? To date, no compelling proof has been offered.
Some atheists who know better than to
attack the historicity of Jesus’ actual life put forward arguments that involve
Christ being mythologized by His followers into more than He was. They try and
assert that various pagan gods such as Horus, Mithras, etc., influenced the
disciples who borrowed traits from those deities and attached them to Jesus.
Books such as James Frazer’s The Golden Bough and more recent works
like the Internet Zeitgeist movie
have been literally pulverized into submission by scholars who have showcased
the many logical fallacies committed by the authors and the extraordinary lack
of real commitment to historical research. Metzger says, “It goes without
saying that alleged parallels which are discovered by pursuing such methodology
evaporate when they are confronted with the original texts. In a word, one must
beware of what have been called, ‘parallels made plausible by selective
description.’”[3]
The fact is, the atheist cannot deny the
historicity of Jesus’ life and be on the side of historical truth. The core
historical facts include the following:
Jesus was born to a young and very
ordinary couple. There was some controversy surrounding his birth (which
primarily centered on who his actual father was), however outside of that, he
lived in relative obscurity for about thirty years. He then burst onto the
religious scene in the Roman occupied areas of Galilee and Jerusalem as a very
learned Jewish Rabbi, despite never being formerly educated. Reports of him
performing amazing miracles (e.g. healing the sick, raising the dead, performing
exorcisms) spread throughout the regions, along with claims of him being the
long awaited Jewish Messiah. He gathered around him a band of fairly
unsophisticated disciples, with others also following his itinerant preaching
journeys.
Soon, though, he ran afoul of the Jewish
religious leaders and was brought before the Roman authorities on a number of
unsubstantiated charges. He was then condemned to death under the Roman prefect
Pontius Pilate, put to death under the common form of Roman execution, which
was crucifixion, and then buried.
Three days later, his body went missing
and remains missing to this day. Reports of him appearing to both believers and
unbelievers alike quickly began to circulate. His disciples who had fled from
him during his arrest then boldly began to declare that they had seen him
alive, that he was the Christ of God, with his resurrection becoming the
absolute center of their preaching. A number of his disciples were martyred for
their refusal to deny their story, with others like John dying of natural
causes.
Lastly, a zealous Jewish Pharisee, Saul of
Tarsus, who had formerly persecuted the new Jesus movement, claimed he too had
seen Jesus alive. Saul converted to the Christian faith and eventually was
beheaded by the emperor Nero for his faith around 65 A.D.
Now, it’s important to understand one
thing about the prior statements: none of
them requires any faith whatsoever to believe. Not one. Every claim above
can be confirmed via the standard, scholarly methods (including archaeological
finds that back the Bible) used to verify ancient history.
The question is, when a philosophical
appeal to the best explanation is made to account for these facts, where does
the atheist end up?
What bothers the atheists the most,
obviously, is Christ’s resurrection. Dead men stay dead, says the atheist. Our
experience tells us that this is something you can count on.
Dead people do indeed stay dead in a
naturalistic-only reality that is a closed system. But what if…what if there is
a supernatural reality and our universe is actually an open system to a Creator
that transcends everything that is physical? That is a horse of a different
color, and one that goes back to the atheist’s need for philosophical and
empirical evidence to rule out God.
Conclusion
Occasionally an atheist will say to me
(quoting Carl Sagan): “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
What they often don’t realize is that, while they meant to slice into me with
their comment, their sword actually cuts both ways.
The atheist claims that a cause (with a
beginning all its own) possessing none of the characteristics of its effects
created all that we know. That’s a pretty extraordinary claim.
The atheist claims that “Living objects .
. . look designed, they look overwhelmingly as though they’re designed. Biology
is the study of complicated things which give the impression of having been
designed for a purpose”[4],
and that the information (not data) contained with all of us did not come from
an intelligent source. That’s a pretty extraordinary claim.
The atheist claims that either Jesus never
existed or all the historical accounts written about Him are inaccurate,
exaggerated, and cannot be trusted. That’s a pretty extraordinary claim.
If extraordinary claims require extraordinary
evidence, then the atheist has some explaining to do. And that explaining needs
to involve supplying the same rock-solid proof (not mere theories) that they themselves
routinely require of Christians.
[1]
Bertrand Russell, Why I am not a Christian, pg. 16.
[2]
Bruce Metzger, The New Testament: Its Background, Growth, and Content (New
York: Abingdon, 1965), pg. 78.
[3]
Bruce Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish, and Christian
(Grand Rapid, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 1968), 9.
[4]
Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 1986, Pg. 1.
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