Yes, we can. For more info, here’s the paper entitled “Can we know Truth?” that I presented at the Roundtable of Ideology this year. Its intended audience is Christians, so I presuppose a certain degree of agreement with some of the points I make. Keep that in mind if you’re not a Christian and would like to read it.
“Nothing is true” - This is actually part of the tagline of the video game Assassin’s Creed and made me laugh when I saw it for the first time and heard so many fans repeat it like it’s the greatest thing; it sure sounds deep. Too bad it’s self-defeating.
If nothing is true, the statement itself falls under that category, making itself false and thereby irrelevant. Congratulations!
“Everything is relative” - Really? For everyone? Everywhere? At any time? Sounds like a very absolute statement to me. This is my personal favorite and also self-defeating.
“We can’t know anything for sure” - Another good one and the sceptic’s best friend. Unfortunately, it’s self-defeating, too. It seems like we at least know for sure that we can’t know anything for sure.
I hope this small overview was helpful. Beware of those absolutes!
I recently talked with a Jewish acquaintance about Jesus being the Messiah. He gave me a list of reasons why Jews don’t believe that and asked me to answer them. I usually think pasting links with objections to Christianity are cheap, after all I may just link back to CARM.org and start a link pasting contest, but I decided to answer this one.
To start out, one of the main argument given against my attempts to explain OT scriptures is that I don’t know Hebrew, and since Jews read the Tanakh (which we call the OT. I will use OT in this post for simplicity’s sake) in Hebrew even today, the point was that translations cannot accurately reflect the meaning of the text.
While I agree that stuff gets lost in translation, it is generally possible to get a point across. It is that way between German, English, and Japanese, languages that are fundamentally different, and I think it is the same with Hebrew. If it were impossible to translate between languages and keep any amount of meaning, world news would be pointless. Watching foreign films would be pointless. We do watch world news and have probably seen a foreign film or two, so we don’t live like translations are totally meaningless, and a philosophy that isn’t lived out is not worth having.
Also, there are many Hebrew scholars out there who are Christians, some I am sure who are Jews also, who can translate Hebrew to English and keep the meaning very similar. To make up for personal interpretation by those scholars, it’s helpful to read a wide array of translations to compare how different Hebrew scholars translate certain passages.
It’s also interesting to note that there are several English translations of the Tanakh made by Jewish scholars. Surely they wouldn’t waste their time if the meaning cannot be transferred.
Just to clarify, translations aren’t infallible, neither are the manuscripts it is translated from, only the autographs are. I probably explained textual criticism before, so just search my blog.
Now, let’s look at the list of reasons. I will keep the original numbering so you can cross reference the arguments made.
1) JESUS DID NOT FULFILL THE MESSIANIC PROPHECIES
A. - D.: These can be summarized in one. Just as the article says, the bible says Jesus/God will fulfill these prophecies and promises at the Second Coming, which is indeed a concept of the NT and not in the OT to my knowledge. That doesn’t make it invalid though. Jesus is still alive, and nowhere does the OT say these prophecies have to be fulfilled by the year 2008 or else they are false. The text simply says those things will happen, and the bible agrees. This is not a problem.
2) JESUS DID NOT EMBODY THE PERSONAL QUALIFICATIONS OF MESSIAH
A. MESSIAH AS PROPHET
I’d like to know where it says that prophecy will cease with Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. In fact, Malachi 4:4 talks about God sending Elijah the prophet before the terrible day of the Lord. John the Baptist came in the spirit of Elijah, as Jesus explains in Matthew 11:14.
Jesus also prophesied. In Matthew 24:1-2 he said the temple would be destroyed, which happened in A.D. 70.1 Matthew 24 and the latter part of 25 are full of prophecies about the end times, most of which haven’t been fulfilled yet either, which again doesn’t make them invalid.
B. DESCENDENT OF DAVID
This is an interesting one. According to the NT, Jesus was in the line of David by blood through Mary, and as the son -though not biologically, but by adoption- of Joseph, he was also in the line of David through his father. The fact that the lineage was traced through the woman is not unheard of (cf 1 Chronicles 2). The daughters of Zelophehad were without brothers but had their descendants traced through them, the maternal line. Jair’s father is in the line of Judah according to 1 Chronicles 2:22, but Jair is described as a son of Manasseh in Numbers 32:41, indicating that his mother must have been from the tribe of Manasseh and his genealogy traced through her.
Not only was Jesus in the line of David, he was also greater than David due to his divine attributes, which is perfectly accounted for in the virgin birth (Matthew 22:44ff, quoting Psalm 110:1ff)
C. TORAH OBSERVANCE
What Deut. 13:1-4 is talking about is indeed false prophets that lead Israel astray to worship false gods, which did happen. So if anyone told Israel to worship gods they have not known, he is a false prophet. The verse before, Deut 12:32, does mention something about not adding or taking away from the commandments, which is true as well. However, what happened in the NT is God himself giving further revelation, both as God the Father as well as God the Son. This passage in Deut is about people twisting and perverting God’s commandments, not about no further revelation ever being given by God.
Naturally, we need to see if Jesus was/is indeed God, which the NT clearly affirms - without the council of Nicea, thank you very much. But that’s a different story and worthy of further discussion.
About Jesus breaking the law in John 9:14 and other places I can just say that Jesus never broke the law; he fulfilled it perfectly. What the Pharisees didn’t understand was that God judges the heart. They refused to do good on the Sabbath and Jesus reprimanded them for it. It was the Pharisees legalistic rules that Jesus broke, not the Law of Moses. One example is Matthew 12:10ff.
Torah observance is a classic example of works righteousness which is rejected in Isaiah 64:6. Romans 3 may help clarify, especially passages quotes from the OT, such as Psalm 14:1-3 and others. No one is good, and no good deeds will ever change that.
Jeremiah 31 refers to this new covenant that the Messiah would usher in, implying that the old covenant would be obsolete. This new covenant would result in everyone knowing God (meaning not everyone knew God before) and their sin will be remembered no more. This is what Jesus accomplished. Through Jesus we have access to God and our sins are forgiven and paid for by him.
Additionally, Paul in Galatians 3:15-29 explains that the purpose of the law is to point to Messiah, to Christ.
3) MISTRANSLATED VERSES “REFERRING” TO JESUS
A. VIRGIN BIRTH
“alma” can indeed mean young woman, but it can also be translated as virgin. In fact, it is never used to designate anything other than an unmarried young woman and by that, a virgin. One example is Genesis 24:43, in which Rebekah is called alma, a young woman, and Genesis 24:16, in which she is called a betulah, a virgin. It also means virgin in Songs of Solomon 1:3 and 6:8.
Also take the context of the passage into account. God tells Ahaz to ask for a sign. God doesn’t do that very often, so this is a very special thing. Ahaz, in false piety, refuses and says he will not test the Lord. So God says he will give a sign: An “alma” will be with child! Now, what kind of sign is a young woman having a child? It’s not. It happens all the time. However, a virgin being with child is truly a magnificent sign!
There were no sexual relations between God and Mary, that’s ludicrous and a desperate attempt to deal with the virgin birth.
B. CRUCIFIXION
I don’t know much about Hebrew, but I can somewhat see this one, though I don’t think it’s quite accurate either. The NET translates this passage as: “Yes, wild dogs surround me - a gang of evil men crowd around me; like a lion they pin my hands and feet.” I suppose the word can mean both lion and to pierce, according to the Strong’s concordance, so it could be seen as a hint towards crucifixion. The passage is Psalm 22:16 in my bible, may be a numbering thing.
This is not the only passage that refers to God being pierced. Look at Zechariah 12:10, which says “And they will look unto me whom they have pierced,” clearly a parallel to Jesus’ piercing by the Roman soldier. There are more prophecies that were fulfilled by Jesus, such as Zechariah 9:9 et al.
C. SUFFERING SERVANT
That the suffering servant refers to Israel is kind of a stretch. Israel is the subject and addressee in chapter 52. In v.13 it talks about God’s servant who will be greatly exalted, “just as many were astonished at you” (emphasis mine). He clearly addresses Israel again, as a separate entity from the servant.
Furthermore, that this passage refers to the crusades is an empty assertion and speculation at best. I may comment on Isaiah 53 at some later point and show how it was fulfilled by Christ.
I’ve also never heard of St. Gregory, the 4th century Bishop of Nanianzus, which is probably in part because of my ignorance. Either way, it doesn’t really matter what he says. Let the bible speak for itself.
4) JEWISH BELIEF IS BASED SOLELY ON NATIONAL REVELATION
I agree that God would tell everyone about his religion, something I didn’t think he did with the Jews. His revelation was very specifically directed at his chosen people Israel. Only with Jesus and the new covenant was this expanded to the Gentiles, causing much confusion among the Jews. Acts 10:34 may help explain that.
About miracles. God used miracles sparingly, but always before some great new revelation. Moses is one example. Before the giving of the law, there were miracles, which God used to prove that he really is God. Whether or not the Jews believed Moses and by extension God is irrelevant. That said, of course miracles aren’t the foundation of our faith; the bible is. But just as there were miracles and revelation with Moses, so there were miracles and further revelation through Jesus and after that the apostles, who then wrote the NT by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, on which we base our faith (the bible that is, not the Holy Spirit).
This is interesting: “Judaism is not miracles. It is the personal eyewitness experience of every man, woman and child, standing at Mount Sinai 3,300 years ago.” I think we need to clarify that it was the experience of every Jewish man, woman, and child, since the Law was given to the Jews, not all nations. There were of course non-Jews who decided to follow God and the Jews and by that received the same blessing, but only because of the proximity to Israel.
5) CHRISTIANITY CONTRADICTS JEWISH THEOLOGY
These parts are my favorite. They are such gross misrepresentations of Christian theology it’s almost sad. It also seems to take a lot of doctrine from the catholic church that I don’t agree with either and would call unbiblical.
A. GOD AS THREE?
The definition of the Trinity says that God exists in three distinct persons who are one in essence. So there is one God in the person of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, not separate gods, like e.g. Mormonism says. Just to be clear, there is only one God. One. Jesus affirms that when he says “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).
B. MAN AS GOD?
Jesus was 100% man and 100% God. He was both. The person Jesus is very unique, there is no one like him. He was fully God and fully Man. How does it work exactly? I have no idea. But it certainly doesn’t make God a man or vice versa. I may write more about the person of Jesus at a later time and his role in God’s plan of redemption. I thought I already had but a search didn’t reveal much.
C. INTERMEDIARY FOR PRAYER?
Jesus saying that no man comes to the father except by him is taken out of context. I, as a Christian, can be in the presence of God as well as pray to him. Jews could pray to him, but only very few people (Moses, the High Priest) could enter God’s presence, in the tent of meeting or the Holy of Holies.
What Jesus meant is that no one can get to the father in the first place because of their sin (Isaiah 59:2). God is so holy that no one who isn’t perfect can approach him. God sanctified the High Priest so that he could, as well as the Levites for serving God, e.g. touching the ark of the covenant. Under the new covenant, Jesus’ perfect righteousness is imputed on me by repenting from my sins and trusting in Christ to forgive my sins, so that in God’s eyes I am perfect and holy; not by anything I did, but by his grace and for his glory.
Also, I’d like to know how Jesus as mediator is the same as putting another god before God.
D. INVOLVEMENT IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD
I think we should be very involved in this world, which is what the bible commands, also (Matthew 28:18ff). I am not a Roman Catholic and don’t hold to their view on this issue, so my worldview in this regard is very close to the Jewish worldview.
6) JEWS AND GENTILES
The seven laws of Noah are yet another example of works righteousness, which I showed above is not enough to stand before a perfectly holy God. To press the point further, consider these passages. Habakkuk 2:4 - “the righteous man shall live by his faith.” Gen 15:6 - “Abraham believed God and it was imputed to him as righteousness.” One cannot be righteous in God’s eyes without faith in the only true God. No amount of works will do the trick. That includes both Jews and Gentiles.
7) BRINGING THE MESSIAH
Millions now believe in the God of Israel because of Jesus.
I don’t see how the Law can perfect anything. It condemns and shows just how wicked we are. Living by the Torah must be a frustrating thing. Just looking at the 10 commandments (9, rather, since #4 isn’t repeated in the NT), I have broken every single one of them. Being judged by them and trying to live by them is a nightmare in my eyes. I thank God for the freedom that I have in Christ and his redemptive work in me!
RANDOM REMARKS
Daniel prophesies in Daniel 9:26 that the Messiah must come after the temple is rebuilt (v 25) and before it’s destroyed. The second temple was destroyed in A.D. 70. If Jesus isn’t the Messiah, I am afraid there is no Messiah ever coming.
I’d be happy to go into more details on some of those points and explain them further.
FootnotesThis comes courtesy of Paul Manata @ Triablogue. Sound familiar? This is the very thing we see today, the logical conclusion of relativism and ultimately evolution.
Then I learned that all moral judgments are ‘value judgments,’ that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ I even read somewhere that the Chief Justice of the United States had written that the American Constitution expressed nothing more than collective value judgments. Believe it or not, I figured out for myself–what apparently the Chief Justice couldn’t figure out for himself–that if the rationality of one value judgment was zero, multiplying it by millions would not make it one whit more rational. Nor is there any ‘reason’ to obey the law for anyone, like myself, who has the boldness and daring–the strength of character–to throw off its shackles…I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable ‘value judgment’ that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these ‘others?’ Other human beings, with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as ‘moral’ or ‘good’ and others as ‘immoral’ or ‘bad’? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure that I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me–after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and inhibited self. –Ted Bundy, Quoted from Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, 5th edition, p.30″
For some odd reason I was thinking back to my high school days. As a student at a Catholic private school (which sounds far worse than it was), we had to take Religion class until grade 13. At some point I remember talking about several ethical issues and our objection to teaching Religion -and naming the class thus- instead of simply teaching ethics, and having an Ethics class instead.
I have never made the connection, but tonight I realized what a stupid idea that was. I named this post Ethics without Religion to draw the parallel to the class I had to take, but since I am no big fan of religion, it would be more accurately named “Ethics without God.” My friend Alan (see the blogroll for a link to his blog) frequently takes on atheists and their moral positions, so you can get some more stuff from him if what I present is not good enough for you.
There is no moral argument for the existence of God per se, in the sense that the argument doesn’t lead to the conclusion that God exists, but it does provide a framework for true justice, so I’d like to present it here.
In most conversations about morality in a world without God that I have witnessed or been a part of, I see two things happening. Either good and bad are arbitrarily defined, or the fallacy of begging the question is committed. Let me explain.
Most people would say they learned right and wrong from their parents. In a sense that’s true; we did in fact learn from our parents. However, what if I was taught that raping and murdering little girls was good? Or eating other people? Or child pornography? Most people would agree that those things are indeed bad (if not, congratulations! You are indeed consistent in your world view, though I find the result exceedingly sad). So we cannot take our upbringing as the standard for morality.
Society is another candidate for determining morality. There are social norms and rules that shape us. However, if society is our standard, then Hitler wasn’t wrong because his behavior was socially acceptable. If society is our standard, then the little (imaginary, I hope) tribe in Africa that’s still eating people and sacrificing women by burning them is not wrong because their behavior is socially acceptable. Instead of one person making up the standard, it’s now many people making up the standard, which doesn’t solve the problem.
In both cases, good and bad are based solely on personal or collective opinion. We can try and define good by saying that it’s “whatever is beneficial for most and doesn’t cause harm,” which is begging the question: What does “beneficial” or “harm” mean? How are those defined beyond personal or collective opinion? This definition madness can and unfortunately sometimes does go on forever, but the bottom line is always opinion.
The problem with opinion is that it’s not binding. Who am I to say that my opinion of not raping and killing little girls is in any way superior to somebody else’s opinion who enjoys those things? It’s not. So without God, there can be no justice system. Sure, we can define laws and enforce them, but on the one hand legal doesn’t always mean moral, which is very apparent with the legality and immorality of abortion. On the other hand, those laws would be based on the opinion of some group of people, which again raises the question of why one set of opinions is superior to any other set of potentially conflicting opinions.
As a Christian who realizes that God does exist, I can say that raping and murdering is wrong, because God said so, thereby setting the absolute standard. Anybody adhering to a non-theistic world view who is judging right and wrong is borrowing from a theistic world view or trying to impose his opinions on others, something that Christians are ironically often charged with. I hope I made my point clear. I am not saying that atheists cannot act in a moral way, i.e. do the right thing; they can. What I am saying is that there is no true justice without God.
Agnosticism, from the greek negative “a” and “gnosis” - knowledge, means without knowledge or no knowledge and deals not so much with the existence of God, but more his attributes and character, or lack of “knowability” of them.
It asserts that we cannot know about God because the concept of God is simply too much for a finite mind.
If you noticed the problem in my last sentence, congratulations! The argument would go like this:
However, as per the premise, we already know that God is infinite and unlimited, so we know something about God. Does agnosticism have a point? Well, maybe. Is God infinite and unlimited? Definitely. Is man finite and limited? Of course. The conclusion would be correct if we changed it slightly by adding one word: exhaustively. Man cannot know God exhaustively. Does that pose a problem for the Christian? Not really, because we can indeed know God at some level, and I go so far as to say that thanks to the Bible, we can know God sufficiently.
What, then, is sufficient knowledge of God? We can know all about God that God wants us to know about Him. We can definitely know who we are and who God is, ontologically. We can know that we are fallen and don’t hold up to God’s perfect law and standard. We can know that we cannot be reconciled to God no matter what we do. We can know that God had to step in if He ever wanted to have/restore fellowship with Him, and indeed did by sending His Son Jesus, the God-Man, to redeem us by paying the penalty for sin, which we can accept by repenting and putting our faith in Him.
That’s a lot of stuff we can know already, though none of these is complete or exhaustive knowledge. And believe me when I say, that is only the beginning of how much we can know God and know about God, by far.
Several months ago I read about atheism being self-defeating, but I forgot exactly how the argument went. I finally heard it again the other day so I thought I’d share.
Atheism comes from the Greek “a” - the negative, and “theos” - god. It not only means not believing in a God, it affirms the non-existence of God, period, meaning it absolutely affirms a negative. While that’s almost impossible to pull off, it’s also self defeating in this case. To give you an example, assume I told you that there are no yellow and red striped trees anywhere in this universe. I would have to have infinite knowledge of this universe in order to prove it, because I would have to know each and every spot everywhere in the universe to make that claim. So the atheist needs/claims infinite knowledge to tell us that there is no one with infinite knowledge (aka God), which doesn’t make any sense.
If you’re an atheist, now may be a good time to change your position to, say, agnostic. Wait, that’s self-defeating, too. More about that later…
Just watched the debate (direct link) from a couple of months ago. This is the first I have heard from both D’Souza and Hitchens and I am pretty impressed with the former; he’s a pretty sharp guy. I will let them speak for themselves, but being in the Roundtable I noticed a few things:
Maybe it’s me, but it seems like Hitchens doesn’t quite answer all the questions precisely and goes off on tangents. D’Souza did that a few times as well, but generally answered the questions very much to the point and only drifted off to answer Hitchens’ comments.
D’Souza didn’t use the bible at all in his debate, as he stated beforehand he wouldn’t. That’s a perfectly fine thing to do, as a matter of fact I love the arguments for God derived simply from logic. Some questions, however, are much easier to answer using the bible. One is the occurance of miracles. People like to question them, which is quite silly and shows the different presuppositions we function under.
It doesn’t take a philosophy degree to see the problem here. Independent from one’s own presuppositions, the situation taken in the context of the bible is this:
One cannot simply take the bible and its content, remove God, and question said content. It doesn’t make any sense, yet I still see it used.
Back to the debate and D’Souza not using the bible. The downside to using the bible is that it needs to be established as authoritative first, because most people don’t accept it as such, again mostly because they suppose it to be wrong/full of fairy tales from the start. In a recent discussion I had, this was still so after I gave a good amount of evidence for its authority or at least accuracy, without ever hearing a counter argument other than “it’s a fairy tale,” with an appeal to common knowledge: “Everyone knows that.”
Overall interesting debate to watch and I am looking forward to reading Dinesh D’Souza’s newest book.
Today I heard, again, that there is religion and there is logic, one or the other, mutually exclusive. But that’s not the case. Quite the opposite, without God we wouldn’t have logic or any foundation or absolute standard for anything. One logical argument I have never seen refuted is the cosmological argument for God.
That cause needs to be uncaused and transcendent, meaning above and beyond all matter and time, and we call that cause “God.”
There are other arguments like it. Another one of my favorites is that of absolute moral law.
Point 2 would be the most attacked one. My question is: “Is it right or wrong to torture and kill 5 year old girls?” - The answer for any atheist must be “I can’t say.” The only possible answer is that they dislike it, or they don’t approve of it personally, but they can’t say that it’s either right or wrong because they don’t have an absolute standard. Saying that our morals are shaped by society simply removes the problem one level; it’s still one person or many persons setting the standard based on their opinions, nothing more.
We all know the answer to the original question though: It’s wrong. Why can we say that? Because God set an absolute standard for right and wrong.
Some people are more fallen and evil than others and actually delight in horrible treatments like that, thinking it’s the right thing to do, but that really doesn’t make it so.
Only with God can we have a standard for what is good and what is evil, what is right and what is wrong, and logic (among other things) helps us figure that out. God gave us the ability to think, let’s do it and think these issues through!