5/5 stars. As a Christian who loves apologetics and knowing how to explain my faith when questioned, I loved this book. It had so many great points I agreed with and made me think about a lot of things I didn’t realize or think about before when it comes to Christianity. Since this was a non-fiction book, I’m not gonna do a full review like with the other books I read, but in this post I will share all of the quotes I loved or that really stood out to me from each chapter.
Introduction:
"We believe that the unexamined faith is not worth believing. Furthermore, contrary to popular opinion, Christians are not supposed to "just have faith." Christians are commanded to know what they believe and why they believe it. They are commanded to give answers to those who ask (1 Pet. 3:15), and to demolish arguments against the Christian faith (2 Cor. 10:4-5). Since God is reasonable (Isa. 1:18) and wants us to use our reason, Christians don't get brownie points for being stupid. In fact, using reason is part of the greatest commandment which, according to Jesus, is to 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind' (Matt. 22:37)."
"Belief requires assent not only of the mind but also of the will. While many non-Christians have honest intellectual questions, we have found that many more seem to have a volitional resistance to Christianity. In other words, it's not that they don't have evidence to believe, it's that they don't want to believe."
"Namely, many believe that accepting the truth of Christianity would require them to change their thinking, friends, priorities, lifestyle, or morals, and they are not quite willing to give up control over their lives in order to make those changes. They believe that life would be easier and more fun without such changes. Perhaps they realize that while Christianity is all about forgiveness, it's also about denying yourself and carrying your cross. Indeed, Christianity is free, but it can cost you your life."
"God has provided enough evidence in this life to convince anyone willing to believe, yet he has also left some ambiguity so as not to compel the unwilling. In this way, God gives us the opportunity either to love him or to reject him without violating our freedom."
"But there's a big difference between being open-minded and being empty-minded...For example, what should we do when we see evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that George Washington was the first president of the United States? Should we remain 'open-minded' as to who the first president was? No, that would be empty-minded."
Chapter 1
"We just don't want to be held accountable to any moral standards or religious doctrine. So we blindly accept the self-defeating truth claims of politically correct intellectuals who tell us that truth does not exist; everything is relative; there are no absolutes; it's all a matter of opinion; you ought not judge; religion is about faith, not facts!...we love the truth when it enlightens us, but we hate it when it convicts us."
"In short, contrary beliefs are possible, but contrary truths are not possible. We can believe everything is true, but we cannot make everything true."
"'True for you but not for me' may be the mantra of our day, but it's not how the world really works. Try saying that to your bank teller, the police, or the IRS and see how far you get!"
"If there really is no truth, then why try to learn anything? Why should any student listen to any professor? After all, the professor doesn't have the truth. What's the point of going to school, much less paying for it? And what's the point of obeying the professor's moral prohibitions against cheating on tests or plagiarizing term papers?... Why should they act 'right' when we teach them that there is no such thing as 'right'?"
"The truth of the matter is this: false ideas about truth lead to false ideas about life. In many cases, these false ideas give apparent justification for what is really immoral behavior. For if you can kill the concept of truth, then you can kill the concept of any true religion or any true morality."
"Since Christians have a religious belief that they ought to question religious beliefs, then pluralists--according to their own standard--should accept this Christian belief as well. But of course they do not. Ironically, pluralists--advocates of the new tolerance--are not really tolerant at all. They only "tolerate" those who already agree with them, which by anyone's definition is not tolerance."
"While we should respect the rights of others to believe what they want, we are foolish, and maybe even unloving, to tacitly accept every religious belief as true. Why is this unloving? Because if Christianity is true, then it would be unloving to suggest to anyone that their opposing religious beliefs are true as well. Affirming such error might keep them on the road to damnation. Instead, if Christianity is true, we ought to kindly tell them the truth because only the truth can set them free."
"Unfortunately, many of us who deny there's truth in religion are not actually blind but only willfully blind. We may not want to admit that there's truth in religion because that truth will convict us. But if we open our eyes and stop hiding behind the self-defeating nonsense that truth cannot be known, then we'll be able to see the truth as well."
Chapter 2
"Many beliefs that people hold today are not supported by evidence, but only by the subjective preferences of those holding them."
"Truth is truth no matter what country you come from. And truth is truth no matter what you believe about it. Just as the same gravity keeps all people on the ground whether they believe in it or not, the same logic applies to all people whether they believe it or not."
"Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered."
"An argument can be logically sound but still be false because the premises of the argument do not correspond to reality."
"After all, if we're merely the product of blind naturalistic forces--if no deity created us with any special significance--then we are nothing more than pigs with big brains."
Chapter 3 "It turns out that the scientist behaves the way the rest of us do when our beliefs are in conflict with the evidence. We become irritated, we pretend the conflict does not exist, or we paper it over with meaningless phrases." "They may not like the evidence or its implications, but that won't change the facts." "What we are saying here is that the universe, Big Bang or not, had a beginning. That is, the Cosmological Argument is true because both premises of the argument are true: everything that comes to be has a cause, and the universe came to be. Since the universe had a beginning, it must have had a Beginner." "The Law of Causality does not say that everything needs a cause. It says that everything that comes to be needs a cause. God did not come to be. No one made God. He is unmade. As an eternal being, God did not have a beginning, so he didn't need a cause." "And in light of the evidence, we are left with only two options: either no one created something out of nothing, or else someone created something out of nothing. Which view is more reasonable? Nothing created something? No... And if you can't believe that nothing caused something, then you don't have enough faith to be an atheist!" Chapter 5 "Darwinists can't answer that question by showing how natural laws could do the job. Instead, they define the rules of science so narrowly that intelligence is ruled out in advance, leaving natural laws as the only game in town." "Scientists intelligently contrive experiments and they still cannot do what we are told mindless natural laws have done. Why should we believe that mindless processes can do what brilliant scientists cannot do? And even if scientists eventually did create life in the laboratory, it would prove creation. Why? Because their efforts would show that it takes a lot of intelligence to create life." "The creation-evolution debate is not about religion versus science or the Bible versus science--it's about good science versus bad science. Likewise, it's not about faith versus reason--it's about reasonable faith versus unreasonable faith." "Darwinists like Dawkins and Crick rule out intelligent causes before they even look at the evidence. In other words, their conclusions are preloaded into their assumptions. Spontaneous generation by natural laws must be the cause of life because they consider no other options." "Ironically, this is exactly what Darwinists have long accused creationists of doing--allowing their ideology to overrule observation and reason. In truth, it's the Darwinists who are allowing their faith to overrule observation and reason." "It's their secular religion of naturalism that leads them to ignore the empirically detectable scientific evidence for design." "Data are always interpreted by scientists. When those scientists let their personal preferences or unproven philosophical assumptions dictate their interpretation of the evidence, they do exactly what they accuse religious people of doing--they let their ideology dictate their conclusions." "Finally, if materialism is true, then reason itself is impossible. For if mental processes are nothing but chemical reactions in the brain, then there is no reason to believe that anything is true (including the theory of materialism)." "Darwinists--who claim to champion truth and reason--have made truth and reason impossible by their theory of materialism." "Darwinism borrows from the theistic worldview in order to make its own view intelligible."
Chapter 6
"Natural selection may be able to explain the survival of a species, but it cannot explain the arrival of a species."
"The fossil record actually lines up better with supernatural creation than with macroevolution. Indeed, there aren't missing links--there's a missing chain!"
"To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story--amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific."
"ID scientists are open to both natural and intelligent causes. It just so happens that an intelligent cause best fits the evidence."
"Darwinists don't allow falsification of their "creation story" because, as we have described, they don't allow any other creation story to be considered. Their "science" is not tentative or open to correction; it's more closed-minded than the most dogmatic church doctrine the Darwinists are so apt to criticize."
"The truth doesn't lie in the motivation of the scientists, but in the quality of the evidence. A scientist's motivation or bias doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong. He could have a bias and still be right. Bias or motivation isn't the main issue--truth is."
"Why are creationist conclusions immediately thought to be biased but Darwinist conclusions automatically considered objective? Because most people don't realize that atheists have a worldview just like creationists."
"Intelligent Design beliefs may be consistent with the Bible, but they are not based on the Bible."
"Regardless of what the Bible may say on the topic, Darwinism is rejected because it doesn't fit the scientific data, and Intelligent Design is accepted because it does."
"Some Darwinists are motivated not by the evidence but rather by a desire to remain free from the perceived moral restraints of God. This motivation may drive them to suppress the evidence for the Creator so they can continue to live the way they want to live."
"Some Darwinists, instead of acknowledging guilt and offering ways to atone for it or rules to avoid it, attempt to avoid any implication of guilt by asserting that there's no such thing as immoral behavior to be guilty about!"
"Belief in Darwinism is often a matter of the will rather than the mind. Sometimes people refuse to accept what they know to be true because of the impact it will have on their personal lives."
"Darwinists would rather suppress the evidence than allow it to be presented fairly. Why? Because this is the one area where Darwinists lack faith--they lack the faith to believe that their theory will still be believed after our children see all the evidence."
Chapter 7
"The Moral Law is not always the standard by which we treat others, but it is nearly always the standard by which we expect others to treat us."
"The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people's ideas get nearer to that real Right than others."
"If the Moral Law doesn't exist, then there's no moral difference between the behavior of Mother Teresa and that of Hitler. Likewise, statements like 'Murder is evil,' 'Racism is wrong,' or 'You shouldn't abuse children' have no objective meaning. They're just someone's opinion, on a par with 'chocolate tastes better than vanilla.' In fact, without the Moral Law, simple value-laden terms such as 'good,' 'bad,' 'better,' and 'worse' would have no objective meaning when used in a moral sense."
"Some relativists are famous for this kind self-defeating arrogance. They claim there is no truth, but then make truth claims of their own. They claim they don't know what is right, but then claim their own political causes are right. They deny the Moral Law in one sentence and then assume it in the next."
"Without the Moral Law, atheists have no moral grounds to argue for their pet political causes. There is no right to an abortion, homosexual sex, or any of their other political sacraments because in a nontheistic world there are no rights."
"Even the number one virtue of our largely immoral culture--tolerance--reveals the Moral Law, because tolerance itself is a moral principle. If there is no Moral Law, then why should anyone be tolerant? Actually, the Moral Law calls us to go beyond tolerance to love. Tolerance is too weak--tolerance says, hold your nose and put up with them. Love says, reach out and help them. Tolerating evil is unloving, but that's what many in our culture want us to do."
"We only make excuses when we act against the Moral Law. We wouldn't do so if it didn't exist."
"What people do is subject to change, but what they ought to do is not. This is the difference between sociology and morality. Sociology is descriptive; morality is prescriptive."
"Of course everyone disobeys the Moral Law to some degree--from telling white lies to murder. But that doesn't mean there is no unchanging Moral Law; it simply means that we all violate it. Everyone makes mathematical mistakes too, but that doesn't mean there are no unchanging rules of mathematics."
"The fact that there are difficult problems in morality doesn't disprove the existence of objective moral laws any more than difficult problems in science disprove the existence of objective natural laws."
"'I've noticed all those in favor of abortion are already born.'"
"This moral disagreement exists because some people are suppressing the Moral Law in order justify what they want to do."
Human thoughts and transcendent moral laws are not material things any more than the laws of logic and mathematics are material things."
"The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys."
"In fact, this is the problem with pragmatic and utilitarian ethical systems that say 'do what works' or 'do whatever brings the greatest good.' Do what works toward whose ends--Mother Teresa's or Hitler's? Do whatever brings the greatest good by whose definition of good--Mother Teresa's or Hitler's? Such ethical systems must smuggle in the Moral Law to define what ends we should work toward and what really is the greatest 'good.'"
"In other words, racism and then genocide is the logical outworking of Darwinism. On the other hand, love and then self-sacrifice is the logical outworking of Christianity."
"If at least one thing is really morally wrong--like it's wrong to torture babies, or it's wrong to intentionally fly planes into buildings with innocent people in them--then God exists."
"Moral values are absolute, even if our understanding of them or of the circumstances in which they should be applied are not absolute."
There weren't any quotes that stood out to me in chapter 8, but it was still a great chapter.
Chapter 9
"In light of these non-Christian references, the theory that Jesus never existed is clearly unreasonable. How could non-Christian writers collectively reveal a storyline congruent with the New Testament if Jesus never existed?"
"So discounting all the Christian sources, Jesus is actually mentioned by one more source than the Roman emperor."
"Ironically, not having the originals may preserve God's Word better than having them."
"It cannot be too strongly asserted that in substance the text of the Bible is certain: Especially is this the case with the New Testament. The number of manuscripts of the New Testament, of early translations from it, and of quotations from it in the oldest writers of the Church, is so large that it is practically certain that the true reading of every doubtful passage is preserved in some one or other of these ancient authorities. This can be said of no other ancient book in the world."
"The most recent argument generated against even considering the reliability of the New Testament documents is the assertion that history cannot be known. Ironically, this objection normally comes from the same people who say they know that the first life generated spontaneously from nonliving chemicals, and that all subsequent life evolved from that first life without intelligent intervention."
"Finally, if we cannot know history, then skeptics cannot claim that Christianity is untrue. To say that Christianity is untrue, the skeptic must know history. Why? Because every negation implies an affirmation. To say that Jesus didn't rise from the dead (the negation), the skeptic must know what actually did happen to him (the affirmation)."
"In the end, skeptics are caught in a dilemma. If they say history cannot be known, then they lose the ability to say evolution is true and Christianity is false. If they admit history can be known, then they must deal with the multiple lines of historical evidence for creation and Christianity."
"The New Testament writers had to have witnessed some very strong evidence to turn away from those ancient beliefs and practices that had defined who they and their forebears were for nearly 2,000 years."
"The truth of the matter is that all books are written for a reason, and most authors believe what they are writing! But that doesn't mean what they write is wrong or has no objective element...While passion may cause some people to exaggerate, it may drive others to be all the more meticulous and accurate so as not to lose credibility and acceptance of the message they wish to communicate."
Chapter 10 "For Acts the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming.... Any attempt to reject its basic historicity must now appear absurd." "Now, why would Luke be so accurate with trivial details like wind directions, water depths, and peculiar town names, but not be accurate when it comes to important events like miracles? In light of the fact that Luke has proven accurate with so many trivial details, it is nothing but pure anti-supernatural bias to say he's not telling the truth about the miracles he records." "In other words, Luke's credentials as a historian have been proven on so many points that it takes more faith not to believe his miracle accounts than to believe them." "Since Luke is telling the truth, then so are Mark and Matthew because their Gospels tell the same basic story. This is devastating to skeptics, but the logic is inescapable. You need a lot of faith to ignore it." "When we couple John's knowledge of Jesus' personal conversations with these nearly sixty historically confirmed/historically probable details, is there any doubt that John was an eyewitness or at least had access to eyewitness testimony? It certainly seems to us that it takes a lot more faith not to believe John's Gospel than to believe it." "There are many problems with this theory. First, it can't explain why independent non-Christian writers collectively reveal a storyline similar to the New Testament. If the New Testament events are fictional, then why do the non-Christian writers record some of them as though they actually happened?" "Second, it can't explain why the New Testament writers endured persecution, torture, and death. Why would they have done so for a fictional story?" "Third, historical novelists usually do not use the names of real people for the main characters in their stories. If they did, those real people--especially powerful government and religious officials--would deny the story, destroy the credibility of the authors, and maybe even take punitive action against them for doing so. As we have seen, the New Testament includes at least thirty actual historical figures who have been confirmed by non-Christian sources, and many of these are prominent and powerful leaders." "Six sane, sober eyewitnesses, who refuse to recant their testimony even under the threat of death, would convict anyone of anything in a court of law (even without the additional lines of corroborating evidence that support the New Testament story). Such eyewitness testimony yields a verdict that is certain beyond a reasonable doubt. Unless you saw the event yourself, you can't be any more certain that those historical events actually occurred." Chapter 11 '"Why would the apostles lie?... If they lied, what was their motive, what did they get out of it? What they got out of it was misunderstanding, rejection, persecution, torture, and martyrdom. Hardly a list of perks!' -Peter Kreeft" "In short, we don't have enough faith to believe that the New Testament writers included all of those embarrassing details in a made-up story. The best explanation is that they were really telling the truth--warts and all." "So if you were making up a resurrection story in the first century, you would avoid women witnesses and make yourselves--the brave men--the first ones to discover the empty tomb and the risen Jesus. Citing the testimony of women--especially demon-possessed women--would only hurt your attempt to pass off a lie as the truth." "Pharisee conversion and Joseph of Arimathea were two unnecessary details that--if untrue--would have completely blown Luke's cover. And the Joseph story would have blown the cover not only of Luke but of every other Gospel writer as well because they include the same burial story." "The New Testament documents cannot have been invented because they contain too many historically confirmed characters. The New Testament writers would have blown their credibility with their contemporary audiences by implicating real people in a fictional story, especially people of great notoriety and power." "Ironically, it's not the New Testament that is contradictory, it's the critics. On one hand, the critics claim that the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are too uniform to be independent sources. On the other hand, they claim that they are too divergent to be telling the truth. So which are they? Are they too uniform or too divergent? Actually, we think they are a perfect blend of both. Namely, they are both sufficiently uniform and sufficiently divergent (but not too much so) precisely because they are independent eyewitness accounts of the same events. One would expect to see the same major facts and different minor details in three independent newspaper stories about the same event." "The bottom line is this: agreement on the major points and divergence on the minor details is the nature of eyewitness testimony, and this is the very nature of the New Testament documents." "Finally, in addition to abandoning long-held sacred institutions and adopting new ones, the New Testament writers suffered persecution and death when they could have saved themselves by recanting. If they had made up the Resurrection story, they certainly would have said so when they were about to be crucified (Peter), stoned (James), or beheaded (Paul). But no one recanted--eleven out of the twelve were martyred for their faith (the only survivor was John, who was exiled to the Greek island of Patmos). Why would they die for a known lie?" "While many people will die for a lie that they think is truth, no sane person will die for what they know is a lie. The New Testament writers and the other apostles knew for sure that Jesus had resurrected, and they demonstrated that knowledge with their own blood. What more could eyewitnesses do to prove that they are telling the truth!" "So here's the contrast: in the early days of Christianity, you might be killed for becoming Christian; in the early days of Islam's growth, you might be killed for not becoming a Muslim! In other words, the spread of these two great monotheistic faiths couldn't have been more different: Islam spread by use of the sword on others; Christianity spread when others used the sword on it." "Now, one can understand why a religion spreads when it takes over militarily. But why does a religion spread when its adherents are persecuted, tortured, and killed during its first 280 years? (Those are not good selling points.) Perhaps there's some very reliable testimony about miraculous events that proves the religion is true. How else can you explain why scared, scattered, skeptical cowards suddenly become the most dedicated, determined, self-sacrificing, and peaceful missionary force the world has ever known?" Chapter 12 "The hallucination theory doesn't work because Jesus did not appear once to just one person--he appeared on a dozen separate occasions, in a variety of settings to different people over a forty-day period. He was seen by men and women. He was seen walking, talking, and eating. He was seen inside and outside. He was seen by many and by a few. A total of more than 500 people saw this risen Jesus. And they were not seeing a hallucination or a ghost because on six of the twelve appearances Jesus was physically touched and/or he ate real food." "Even if one could explain the empty tomb naturally, this would not be enough to disprove the Resurrection. Any alternative theory of the Resurrection must also explain away the appearances of Jesus. The wrong tomb theory explains neither."
"Accordingly, interpretations based on the assumption that Jesus did not die on the cross appear to be at odds with modern medical knowledge."
"The theory that the disciples stole Jesus' body cannot support the skeptic's last option--that the New Testament writers were all deceived. Why? Because the theory makes the New Testament writers the deceivers, not the deceived ones."
"It would take more of a 'miracle' for all this to happen than for Jesus to rise from the dead. We don't have enough faith to believe all that!"
"The main point is that the theft hypothesis was a tacit admission that the tomb was really empty. After all, why would the Jews concoct an explanation for the empty tomb if Jesus' body was still in there?"
"The faith of the disciples did not lead to the [resurrection] appearances, but it was the appearances which led to their faith."
"C. S. Lewis, a writer of myths himself, has commented that the New Testament stories do not show signs of being mythological. 'All I am in private life is a literary critic and historian, that's my job,' said Lewis. 'And I'm prepared to say on that basis if anyone thinks the Gospels are either legends or novels, then that person is simply showing his incompetence as a literary critic. I've read a great many novels and I know a fair amount about the legends that grew up among early people, and I know perfectly well the Gospels are not that kind of stuff.'"
"Fifth, the first real parallel of a dying and rising god does not appear until a.d. 150, more than 100 years after the origin of Christianity. So if there was any influence of one on the other, it was the influence of the historical event of the New Testament on mythology, not the reverse."
"Finally, even if there are myths about dying and rising gods prior to Christianity, that doesn't mean the New Testament writers copied from them. The fictional TV show Star Trek preceded the U.S. Space Shuttle program, but that doesn't mean that newspaper reports of space shuttle missions are influenced by Star Trek episodes!"
"Christians need to put the burden of proof on skeptics for their alternative theories. In light of all the positive evidence for the Resurrection, skeptics must offer positive, first-century evidence for their alternative views."
"The sheer number of Jesus' miracles cited by independent sources is too great to be explained away as a great deception. One person may be deceived once, but not numerous observers repeatedly."
"The bottom line is that there are too many miracles and too much testimony to believe that all of the eyewitnesses got it wrong every time. With regard to the Resurrection, all alternative theories have fatal flaws, and we have strong eyewitness and circumstantial evidence that Jesus actually rose from the dead...The explanation that requires the least amount of faith is that Jesus really did perform miracles and really did rise from the dead as he predicted. So we don't have enough faith to believe that the New Testament writers were all deceived."
"It is not that the historical evidence for the New Testament is weak (it's very strong indeed). It's that they've ruled out miracles in advance. They arrive at the wrong conclusion because their bias makes it impossible for them to arrive at the right conclusion."
"This is the case we have with the Resurrection. It's not just that we lack a natural explanation for the empty tomb. It's that we have positive eyewitness and corroborating circumstantial evidence for the resurrection miracle."
"Since there's a God who can act, there can be acts of God. When God's intention is announced in advance, and you then have good eyewitness testimony and corroborating evidence that such events actually occurred, it takes a lot more faith to deny those events than to believe them."
"Besides, atheists who demand repeatability for biblical miracles are inconsistent because they do not demand repeatability of the historical 'miracles' in which they believe--the Big Bang, spontaneous generation of first life, and macroevolution of subsequent life forms."
"Finally, the skeptic's presupposition can be challenged. We don't need "extraordinary" evidence to believe something. Atheists affirm that from their own worldview. They believe in the Big Bang not because they have "extraordinary" evidence for it but because there is good evidence that the universe exploded into being out of nothing. Good evidence is all you need to believe something. However, atheists don't have even good evidence for some of their own precious beliefs. For example, atheists believe in spontaneous generation and macroevolution on faith alone." "The truth is, we base virtually everything we know about the 'extraordinary' life of Alexander the Great from historians who wrote 300 to 500 years after his death! In light of the robust evidence for the life of Christ, anyone who doubts Christ's historicity should also doubt the historicity of Alexander the Great. In fact, to be consistent, such a skeptic would have to doubt all of ancient history."
Chapter 13 "In the Old Testament Christ is concealed; in the New Testament he is revealed. While many prophecies are clear beforehand, some can be seen only in the light of Christ's life. Those that become clear after Christ are no less a product of supernatural design than those that were clear before Christ." "Out of Jesus' fifty-two recorded narrative parables, twenty depict him in imagery which the Old Testament typically refers to God."
"'I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish things that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would rather be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell.'"
"If Jesus thought he was God but really wasn't, then he would have been a lunatic. But lunatic doesn't fit either. Jesus uttered some of the most profound sayings ever recorded. And everyone--even his enemies--claimed that Jesus was a man of integrity who taught the truth (Mark 12:14)."
"There are only two possible interpretations: Jesus is God, or Jesus is not God. The argument in its simplest form looks like this: Jesus was either (1) God, if his claim about himself was true, or (2) a bad man, if what he said was not true, for good men do not claim to be God. But he was not a bad man. (If anyone in history was not a bad man, Jesus was not a bad man.) Therefore, he was (and is) God."
"But it wasn't just his friends who affirmed his supreme character. Christ's enemies couldn't find fault with him either. The Pharisees, who were actively searching for dirt on Jesus, could find none (Mark 14:55). They even admitted that Jesus taught 'the way of God in accordance with the truth' (Mark 12:14). Even after all the efforts of the Pharisees to pin some charge on Jesus, Pilate found him innocent of any wrongdoing (Luke 23:22)."
"Third, Jesus had to be very careful about when and where he revealed his deity so that he could accomplish his mission of sacrificial atonement. If he had been too overt with his claims and miraculous proof, they might not have killed him. But if he had been too reserved, there would have been little proof that he was really God, and he may not have attracted a large enough following to spread his message."
"Despite what some skeptics may say, the Trinity is not illogical or against reason. Saying that there is one God and three Gods would be illogical. But saying that there is one God who has three persons is not illogical. It may be beyond reason, but it's not against reason."
"That doesn't mean the Trinity can be completely understood. After all, no finite being can completely comprehend an infinite God. But we can apprehend the Trinity, just like we apprehend but do not completely comprehend the ocean. When we're standing on the beach, we can apprehend that there's an ocean in front of us, even though we can't completely comprehend its vast magnitude."
"'If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with fact. Of course anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about.'"
Chapter 14
"'My high school science teacher once told me that much of Genesis is false. But since my high school science teacher did not prove he was God by rising from the dead, I'm going to believe Jesus instead.'
--Andy Stanley"
"Why would Jesus so confidently quote from the Old Testament if the Old Testament was not authoritative? He must have considered the Old Testament to be a source of truth in order to dismiss his most powerful enemy with it."
"In fact, on ninety-two occasions Jesus and his apostles supported their position by saying "it is written" (or the equivalent) and then quoting the Old Testament. Why? Because Jesus and his apostles considered the Old Testament Scriptures to be the written Word of God, and thus the ultimate authority for life."
"When the Sadducees tried to trap Jesus with a question, Jesus said to them, 'You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God' (Matt. 22:29). The implication, of course, is that the Scriptures are inerrant. It wouldn't make any sense for Jesus to say, 'You are in error because you don't know the Scriptures, which also err!'"
"In other words, Jesus taught that if the Bible does not speak truthfully about the physical world that you can see, then it cannot be trusted when it speaks about the spiritual world that you cannot see. Indeed, Christianity is built on historical events--such as Creation and the Resurrection--that can be tested through scientific and historical investigation. While adherents of other religions may accept a complete separation from science, Christians do not. Truth about the universe cannot be contradictory. Since all truth is God's truth, religious beliefs must agree with scientific facts. If they do not, then either there is an error in our scientific understanding, or our religious beliefs are wrong. As we have seen, many of the claims of Christianity are affirmed by scientific investigation. Christ knew it would be this way."
"The skeptic may say, 'But couldn't Jesus have erred because of his human limitations? After all, if he didn't know when he was coming back, maybe he didn't know about errors in the Old Testament.' No, this limitation theory doesn't work either. Limits on understanding are different from misunderstanding. As a man, there were some things Jesus didn't know. But that doesn't mean he was wrong on what he did know. What Jesus did know was true because he only taught what the Father told him to teach (John 8:28; 17:8, 14). So to charge Jesus with an error is to charge God the Father with an error. But God can't err because he is the unchangeable standard and source of truth."
"In addition to the claims of Jesus, there are many other reasons to support the truthfulness of the Old Testament documents. For example, the Old Testament has many of the same characteristics that make the New Testament believable: strong manuscript support, confirmation by archaeology, and a storyline that its authors would not invent."
"These are the people who are supposed to be leading the nation through which God has chosen to bring the Savior of the world. Yet the Old Testament writers admit that the ancestors of this Messiah include sinful characters such as David and Solomon and even a prostitute named Rahab. This is clearly not an invented storyline!"
"But in the end, the strongest argument for the Old Testament comes from Jesus himself. As God, he holds the trump card. If the New Testament documents are reliable, then the Old Testament is without error because Jesus said it is."
"In other words, they meet the criteria of Jesus--they are books that are either written by the apostles or confirmed by the apostles. Since there are no other authentic apostolic works known to exist--and since it's unlikely that God would allow an authentic work to go undiscovered for so long--we can rest assured that the New Testament canon is complete."
"Since this is a valid syllogism (form of reasoning), if the premises are true, then the conclusion is true. The Bible clearly declares itself to be the Word of God, and we've seen the strong evidence that it is. The Bible also informs us several times that God cannot err, and we know this from general revelation as well. So the conclusion is inevitable. The Bible cannot err. If the Bible erred in anything it affirms, then God would be mistaken. But God cannot make mistakes."
"Critics may site the polygamy of Solomon (1 Kings 11:3) as an example of a contradiction. Doesn't the Bible teach monogamy, not polygamy? Of course. But God certainly does not approve of every act recorded in the Bible. It records Satan's lies as well, but God doesn't approve of them either. God's standards are found in what the Bible reveals, not in everything it records."
"This is unique about Christianity. Unlike most other religious worldviews, Christianity is built on historical events and can therefore be either proven or falsified by historical investigation. The problem for skeptics and critics is that all the historical evidence points to the Resurrection."
"We are really no different than scientists who can't resolve all the difficulties or mysteries of the natural world. They don't deny the integrity of the natural world just because they can't explain something. Like a scientist of the natural world, a scientist of theology keeps looking for answers. As we do, the list of difficulties keeps getting shorter."
Chapter 15
"Imagine, the Creator of the universe humbling himself by coming to serve, suffer, and die at the hands of the very creatures he created! Why would he do this? Because his infinite love compels him to offer salvation to those made in his image. And taking the form of a human servant was the only way he could offer us that salvation without negating our ability to accept it."
"In order to respect your free choice, God has made the evidence for Christianity convincing but not compelling. If you want to suppress or ignore the evidence all around you (Rom. 1:18-20)--
including that which is presented in this book--then you are free to do so. But that would be a volitional act, not a rational one. You can reject Christ, but you cannot honestly say there's not enough evidence to believe in him."
"But merely believing that Jesus rose from the dead is not enough. You need to put your trust in him. You can believe that a certain person would make a great spouse, but that's not enough to make that person your husband or wife. You must go beyond the intellectual to volitional--you must put your trust in that person by saying 'I do.' The same is true concerning your relationship with God."
"Without a hell, injustices in this world would never be righted, the free choices of people would not be respected, and the greater good of a redemption could never be accomplished. If there is no heaven to seek and no hell to shun, then nothing in this universe has any ultimate meaning: your choices, your pleasures, your sufferings, the lives of you and your loved ones ultimately mean nothing. We struggle through this life for no ultimate reason, and Christ died for nothing. Without heaven and hell, this incredibly designed universe is a stairway to nowhere."
"Your choices do matter. Your life does have ultimate meaning. And thanks to Christ, no one has to experience hell. Every human being can accept his free gift of eternal salvation. It takes no effort at all. Does it take some faith? Yes, but every choice--even the choice to reject Christ--requires faith. Since the evidence shows beyond a reasonable doubt that the Bible is true, accepting Christ is the choice that requires the least amount of faith. The choice is up to you. Do you have enough faith to believe anything else?"
"In light of the evidence, you ought to have a lot more doubts about atheism and every other non-Christian belief system. They are not reasonable. Christianity is. So start doubting your doubts and accept Christ. It takes too much faith to believe anything else!"
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