Can we Really Know God?

Last Thursday, we broke into what is definitely the biggest series we’ve ever done talking about the most important relationship we could ever have: our relationship with God. Our first blog was part 1: Is there really a God? Obviously, for us to have a relationship with God, there has to be a god to begin with. We used the kalam cosmological argument to give grounded, scientific evidence to show why there has to be a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, uncaused, powerful, personal being responsible for the creation of the universe. That’s a great start, but that only gets us into the realm of Theism, or belief in a god; it doesn’t yet get us to the place of figuring out which god of all the different world religions is the one true God if any of them are right at all. That is the question we’ll be answering today!

Sifting through all of the various deities of the world religions to find the one that is real, or if any of them are real, seems like it would be a daunting task like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Rather than diving into the haystack headfirst and blindly tossing hay around until we either find the needle or give up from exhaustion, it would be much quicker if we had something like a high-powered magnet that could pull the metallic needle out instead. Thankfully, the kalam argument has already provided us with a pretty solid framework to build off of. We can compare the pantheon of world religions and their gods to the characteristics necessary for the creator of the universe and see if any still stack up. For instance, God has to be uncaused and outside of time. That actually removes millions of gods from contention. Zeus’ dad was Cronos. Cronos’ dad was Uranus. Uranus was produced by Gaia who emerged out of preexistent chaos. Gods in an infinite regression of gods, gods created and existing within time, gods coming into being out of preexisting material all fail to meet the standard necessary for the uncaused cause which actually removes the vast majority of potential candidates from the equation. So, who’s left?

Using the kalam as our basis, we quickly find that the strongest contenders left in the pack would be the big three monotheistic religions, or belief systems that believe in just one God: Judaism, Islam and Christianity. These are also known as the Abrahamic religions as each group traces their roots back to the historical figure of Abraham as a patriarch of their beliefs. While these groups do have a lot in common, they each have unique and exclusive claims that separate them from one another, as well. With our limited time, rather than showing where the other two fall short, we’ll look at the exclusive claims of Christianity to show why we believe it is true. You see, more people claim to be Christians than any other religion, with nearly 1/3 of the world's population. Christianity is built on the person and work of Jesus the Christ, or the Messiah which is the Jewish word for deliverer or savior. According to Christianity, Jesus is God the Son, one part of the triune Godhead. Trinitarian doctrine defines God as one Being, but three separate persons, namely God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Christians believe that Jesus, God the Son, existed before time in eternal relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but that He entered into time through the immaculate conception and virgin birth of His earthly mother, Mary, around 2,000 years ago. Now, already, we are getting into some pretty strange ideas. Virgins don’t become pregnant and give birth. That’s biology 101. This is where you have to allow for the existence of the supernatural or miracles. It’s actually not too much of a stretch, as we’ve already established that a supernatural being must exist outside of our universe and therefore beyond the laws of nature. Being the creator of nature and its laws, this Being would also conceivably be able to supersede those laws according to their divine will. In order for us to test the claims of Christianity, we have to be willing to allow for these types of supernatural expressions in the historical narrative, otherwise we would be denying the possibility of the supernatural which puts us back at trying to find an alternative origin of the universe. If God exists, you have to allow for miracles.

Throughout His life and ministry, Jesus performed many miracles and taught about the Kingdom of Heaven that He was establishing on the earth. Eventually, Jesus’ claims to divinity were determined to be considered blasphemy to the Jewish religious leaders of the day, which, if He was lying was actually a good call. Think about it, even today there are religious and cult leaders around the world claiming to be a reincarnated messiah, the 2ndcoming of Jesus or just claiming to be God. At best, we would think these people are simple liars or con-men, but history has shown that these individuals can be extremely dangerous, also. Even in Jesus’ time, there were other Jewish zealots who claimed to be the prophesied messiah who would free their people from Roman occupation. The big difference between Jesus and all of those other would-be messiahs is the claim that after Jesus was put to death by Roman crucifixion, He came back to life! This claim, above all others, is the vital component to the Christian faith. Even the Bible says so;

1 Cor. 15:12-19 says,

12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

According to the apostle Paul, if Jesus was not resurrected then the entire Christian faith is in vain. So, was Jesus really resurrected?

Well, the Bible teaches very clearly that Jesus was raised from the dead, but that doesn’t necessarily convince even the most nominal of skeptics. Isn’t that basically the equivalent of saying, “Believe me because I said I’m believable.” The important difference is that the Bible is not one book with a single author, but 66 books and letters authored by over 30 different people over a period of 1,500 years. These statements are all considered to be historical facts by almost all historical scholars. Scholars also widely agree on the historicity of the 4 gospels, the Biblical accounts of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, as well as the book of Acts which details the acts of the disciples and the foundation of the first century church. That means that most scholars believe that the events described actually happened with the explanations provided for the events to have been based off of the genuine testimonies of people who were there. A few of the strongest reasons for scholars to come to this conclusion are the discovery of the empty tomb by women, the reported eye-witness testimony of the disciples who personally knew Jesus and the drastic change in their behavior following His initial crucifixion and the resurrection just a short time later and, finally, the establishment and growth of the church based off of the preaching of these disciples. In the first century, women were not considered to be reliable witnesses and a fabricated story would have chosen to use men as its initial sources. The disciples, the men who followed Jesus during his ministry, on the other hand were afraid and in hiding after His crucifixion, an embarrassing detail that adds to its historical credibility. After the ascension of Christ, however, these same disciples were boldly preaching the message of Jesus in the streets and enduring extreme persecution for His name without renouncing their testimony. The disciples were also not the only people who bore witness to the resurrected Christ, either. The Bible reports that there were over 500 people who saw Jesus after His crucifixion. From the testimonies of these eye-witnesses, the message of Jesus began to spread and the Christian church was born. Even under the extreme persecution and martyrdom that the early church was experiencing, not only did these first century believers and eye-witnesses hold to their testimonies but the church grew and spread in spite of it. Taking these biblical evidences into account along with the multiple historical sources outside of the church like Tacitus, Josephus, Pliny the younger, the Babylonian Talmud and others, the biblical narrative, even with its supernatural events, becomes the most likely explanation and doesn’t that make sense? It seems like if there were no supernatural occurrences, there wouldn’t be any reason to believe that He is God. How many skeptics over the years have arrogantly raised their fists to Heaven and demanded that if God is real that He come down and prove Himself? Well, He did, so what are you going to do with that now?