Christianity in Dialogue with the World

Dave sent this article to the staff at ChristLife the other day, and I found it pretty interesting. Peter Kreeft, a philosophy professor at Boston College and a Christian apologist, works from a logical perspective as he writes about 12 common beliefs that Christians come in contact with when they share their faith with others. The essay, “The Uniqueness of Christianity,” deserves to be read in its entirety, but here are a few key passages:

The objection is not that Christianity is not true but that it is not the truth; not that it is a false religion but that it is only a religion...This is the single most common objection to the Faith today, for “today” worships not God but equality. It fears being right where others are wrong more than it fears being wrong. It worships democracy and resent the fact that God is an absolute monarch.

This really is at the heart of it. Democracy is more comfortable than monarchy. At least in democratic societies, we can claim a vote, claim to have a little bit of power. If God is King, if Christianity is the truth, then we’re entirely dependant on Him.

It’s a lot more comfortable to think of religion as a journey in which we can take whatever highway we please and still reach God in the end. We get to be driver’s seat. We get to be in control. However, as Kreeft explains,

Christianity is not a system of man’s search for God but a story of God’s search for man. True religion is not like a cloud of incense wafting up from special spirits into the nostrils of a waiting God, but like a Father’s hand thrust downward to rescue the fallen.

That’s the message that we have to convey: that while God is an absolute monarch, King of the Universe, Lord of Lords, he is also Father, Abba, a Person to be loved and a Person who so loved the world that He gave His only son (John 3:16). That Son told us that He is the Way and the Truth and the Life and that all must go through Him to get to the Father (John 14:6).

Of course, as Kreeft points out, the exclusivity of this message tends to rub some people the wrong way. And he answers objections in this vein, like “It fosters religious imperialism to insist that your way is the only way,” and “All religions are the same, deep down.” While going through each of his responses would take more words than a reasonable blog post, I’d like to close with his reply to the belief “All God expects of us is sincerity.”

How do you know what God expects of us? Have you listened to God's revelation? Isn't it dangerous to assume without question or doubt that God must do exactly what you would do if you were God? Suppose sincerity were not enough; suppose truth was needed too…
The…implicit assumption here is that there is no objective truth in religion, only subjective sincerity, so that no one can ever be both sincere and wrong… True sincerity wants to know the truth.

As these objections are obstacles that we must overcome in the new evangelization, it’s great to have Kreeft’s essay as a resource for simple answers to some common questions.

May the Holy Spirit make us truly sincere and grow in our desire to know the Truth, which is Christ.

peanuts

Love it :)

ChristLife will be stocking this "evangelism" book this Fall! :)

Hat tip: Fr. Mike at Intentional Disciples

How do you get to heaven?

Lots of people, Christians and those of other religions or no religious belief at all, believe in heaven. Fewer people seem to believe in hell or at least don’t want to think about it. And now days many don’t seem to give much thought to how you get to one place or the other.

Christ talked about the existence of both frequently, and urged everyone to do what was necessary to go to heaven. As Christians our reason for believing in the existence of heaven and hell is because we believe in Him and He believed in them!

Back in the 1970’s I taught religion at a Jesuit boys high school. At some point during the courses I taught I would ask the question, “When you die what is the reason for getting to go to heaven?” I almost always got the same answers: Because I was good, I didn’t hurt anyone, I was sincere. Rarely was Jesus mentioned as the answer. Many of the students had received Catholic education throughout their schooling yet did not understand what Christ Jesus had to do with eternal life.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except by me.” (John 14:6) He also said, “eternal life is this to know you the only true God, an Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)

The Church teaches, “By his death and Resurrection, Jesus Christ has “opened heaven to us. The life of the blessed consists in the full and perfect possession of the fruits of the redemption accomplished by Christ. He makes partners in his heavenly glorification those who have believed in him and remain faithful to his will. Heaven is the blessed community of all who are perfectly incorporated into him.” Check it out in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), 1027

The essential answer for our getting to go to heaven is, Christ. Jesus has “opened heaven to us.” He is the way we can be eternally with God. By his death and resurrection Jesus accomplished what we in and of ourselves could not accomplish - our redemption. It is the love of God made manifest on the cross, bearing our sins, granting us forgiveness and through the Spirit entry into relationship with God. It is God’s initiative, not ours that allows us this access to eternal joy with the Trinity and all of the saints and angels! The Father wants us to be with Him eternally and through the Son has made the way for us be with them, happily ever after! It is our responsibility to respond to this grace of God with faith doing his will in our daily lives.

Let me make one comment on hell. Hell is the consequence of our free will. We can choose it for ourselves. God does not cast anyone into hell against his will. If we truly are creatures with free will then we have the capacity to say no to a loving Creator. That is essentially what hell is. Eternal separation from the One who loves us so much that he allows us to choose to be with Him, or not. Take a look in the CCC, 1033-1037.

The Church also teaches that even those who have not baptized and responded with faith in Christ may be saved (under the impulse of grace) who “sincerely seek God and strive to do his will can also be saved without Baptism (Baptism of desire).” CCC,1258-1261. It is a mystery and thank God He is the judge of all and not me or you! It is not our responsibility to judge who is or isn’t going to heaven when they die.

Our responsibility is to pray for salvation for everyone and to be witnesses of the eternal life that begins here and now in knowing the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (See John 17:3 noted above). What is important for those of us who know Christ and are seeking to do his will, is to graciously be available to share the good news of what God has done in Jesus our Lord so that all might have fullness of life here and eternal happiness in heaven! After all, if we believe in a heaven and hell we certainly want to help others to be in heaven and to know the way to get there!

The New Atheism

So, circulating in academia and increasingly in postmodern culture is a new resurgence of disbelief in God that has been dubbed 'the new atheism.' This comes in two forms: 1) outright intellectual challenges to Christianity and 2) the subtle or not-so-subtle influence of media and the daily practical agnosticism of many peoples' lives, including 'believers.'

One of the most recent challenges comes from the world of comedy. Its a movie that just hit box offices on October 3, by Bill Maher, called 'Religulous.' Yeah, a combo of religion and ridiculous. Before we write it off as "ridiculous" in and of itself - which it is - we must realize this medium of a comedic video like this is extremely powerful to the media generation and thus it is dangerous. If you watch the trailer (above link), be careful, Bill is slick as I would imagine the devil is - checkout what follows below...

Thankfully, Fr. Robert Barron, among others, has offered an intelligent and inspiring rebuttal of this film:

Regarding the more intellectual side of the 'new atheism' Chuck Colson has this to say:

You know these names, or at least you know many of them: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens. They’re some of the best known of the “New Atheists,” the group that’s launched a massive public assault against religion over recent years.

Now here are some more names that you need to know: Ravi Zacharias, Alister McGrath, Timothy Paul Jones, and Dinesh D’Souza, among others. These are just some of the outstanding Christian apologists leading the charge against the New Atheists. Each of these distinguished authors has recently published a book targeted at a specific New Atheist, and their arguments are devastating to the atheistic worldview.

First is Ravi Zacharias’s latest book, The End of Reason, a response to Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation. Ravi Zacharias is one of the great Christian thinkers of our time, and one of my own favorite apologists.

Just like Harris’s book, Zacharias’s book is written in the form of a letter to the American people. But as Zacharias points out, “By the end of Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation, we don’t know who we are in essence or where we are in the grand scheme of a world without God."

Zacharias wants to set that situation straight. He knows the atheistic worldview all too well, as he states in the book, because he used to share it. And it drove him to the brink of suicide.

It was not until he was given a Bible and came to Christ that his life was turned around. He spends the rest of the book explaining why atheism is “devastating to our hunger for significance,” while the God of the Bible gives us meaning, purpose, and hope.

Then there’s The Dawkins Delusion? by Oxford scholars Alister and Joanna McGrath, which, as the title suggests, deals with Richard Dawkins’s popular book The God Delusion. The McGraths pull no punches about Dawkins’s book; in fact, they ask, “Is the case for atheism really so weak that it has to be bolstered by such half-baked nonsense?”

Lest you think that’s going a little too far, the atheistic philosopher Michael Ruse actually endorsed the McGraths’ book by saying that Dawkins’s work “makes me embarrassed to be an atheist, and the McGraths show why.”

Though Alister McGrath respects Dawkins intelligence and used to be an atheist, himself, he says the kind of blistering and abusive rhetoric that Dawkins resorts to isn’t worthy of him and is easy to take apart.

Then we have Misquoting Truth by Timothy Paul Jones, a response to Bart Ehrman’s book Misquoting Jesus. In contrast to Ehrman, who argues that the Bible is full of changes and mistakes, Jones provides a serious, thorough examination of how the Scripture was compiled and passed down to us over the years, and why we can trust it.

Finally, Dinesh D’Souza’s What’s So Great About Christianity is a very effective answer to Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great.

So don’t forget those names—again, that’s Ravi Zacharias, Alister and Joanna McGrath, Timothy Paul Jones, Dinesh D’Souza—and come visit our website, BreakPoint.org, to find out how you can get copies of their books. You can also order a copy of my book The Faith, which answers many of these same charges. The charges of the New Atheists are all sound bite and no substance. These books will equip you to challenge those baseless assumptions.

Also, if you don't feel like delving into a serious book responding to the new atheism, checkout this Web site which houses quite a few apologetic articles specifically responding to the new atheism.

Finally, a prayer:

Lord Jesus, I ask you would keep me "abiding in you" and in your love. I ask that you would protect me from deception and help me to share with others the light and love I've found in faith in you. Thank you so much for the faith you've given me! Amen!

Pink Flamingoes and the Pearl of Great Price

When I came to you, brethren, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power. St. Paul - I Corinthians 2:1-5

When I was a young boy my family traveled down the east coast of the U.S., from Maryland to Florida, to go on vacation. Back in those days we didn't have the interstate highways we now have and there were places where you had to travel along two lane roads that ran through small towns. I can remember in some of those areas you would see homes where the owners had decorated the yards with all kinds of things. Mirror balls, pin wheels, antique (abandoned) cars, statues of all kinds of things, dwarfs, deer, people and pink flamingo's. Now some of those lawns were so filled with 'decorative items' that it was hard to figure out how to get from the road to the house! Some home owners had gone even farther in their extravagant decorating and had affixed all kinds of things to the front porch walls. Flags, hubcaps, beware of dog signs, and other creative wall mountings! Kind a like the yard, some homes had so much stuff on the wall that you couldn't even see where the front door was!


Sometimes we as Catholic Christians feel compelled to immediately share with friends who, perhaps do not know the Lord or are not church goers, about the treasures of the Church,- Mass, the sacraments, Mary and the saints, Apostolic succession, etc. We feel the need to get it all out in front of them immediately. Sort of like the yards with the pink flamingos. By attempting to get it all out there immediately we run the risk of not establishing first things first. We can easily put the horse before the cart. We certainly want people to know all about the treasures of the Church, but we want them to know first and foremost about the Pearl of Great Price, who is the person that our faith is all about. We want them to know the reason for all of the wonders of the Church, His Body! When we share with others about the joy of knowing Jesus Christ personally as our Lord, as the center of our lives and of all creation, it puts first things first. We want them to know the way into house of God, and Jesus is that way! We want them to know the meaning of life which is found in union with the Trinity through what our Lord has done for all by his life, death and resurrection! If in fact our friends come to know the love of God in Jesus our Lord, the forgiveness of sins and, power of the Spirit given in baptism, then they will hunger to learn more and, live in the truths of the Church!

Let's growing in learning to share about the Lord Jesus, and look for opportunities to tell others why He is the pearl of great price and the joy of our lives!

“This is the principal proclamation of the Church, which remains unchanged down the ages. The Christian faith, therefore, is not an ideology but a personal encounter with the Crucified and Risen Christ. From this experience, both individual and communitarian, flows a new way of thinking and acting: an existence marked by love is born, as the saints testify.”
Pope Benedict XVI, Parish of God the Merciful Father, Rome, March 26, 2006

A Call for a New Apologetics

What is apologetics? First, the root of the word "apologetics" comes from "apologia" which means defense. A Scripture that pertains to this is 1 Peter 3:15:

"In your hearts reverence Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence."

On this topic, Cardinal George, the Archbishop of Chicago, wrote an very good article called A New Evangelization for a New Millennium: A Call for a New Apologetics

He has some very good points, and it is worth reading in its entirety, especially as we come into contact with friends, family members, and co-workers that are living in sin. The following is a short selection, which he begins with Jesus' words in Scripture:

“Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her. . . . Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again” (Jn. 8:7-11).

For those of us seeking to generate a new apologetics in a new evangelization capable of drawing all closer to Christ, His Church, and one another, the account of Jesus’ disposition toward the adulteress and her accusers is instructive. Christ, who is God and thus knows the sinful hearts of all men and women, castigates those who were so ready to punish the adulteress, not because their judgment on her sin was in error, but because they lacked humility and respect. After forgiving the woman, Jesus immediately confirmed the nature of her act by calling it a sin and calling her to conversion — to a turn toward God and His truth that sets us free to love.

As a communion formed by preserving and sharing Christ’s gifts, the Church best fulfills her mission when she ministers with Our Lord’s combination of respect for persons and for the truth that fulfills them. In other words, the Church is both Catholic and apostolic. As Catholic, she reaches out to everyone, even — and especially — those most sinful and broken. But as apostolic, the Church also reaches out with the faith that comes to us from the apostles, without compromises that would contravene the dignity and vocation of beings made in the image of a self-giving God... read more

Visit our page of articles for more on apologetics or the section About the Catholic Faith in our bookstore.

Proofs for God

In the face of a new breed of books on atheism, most notably "God is not Great: How religion poisons everything" by Christopher Hitchens and the "God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins - we, as Christians need to hear again the words of Scripture:

"Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts reverence Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence; and keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are abused, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame." (1 Peter 3:14-16)

And speaking of the most basic "defense," which is an apologetic for God, most of us can probably say with the writer-convert Andre Frossard "God exists, and I have experienced Him." That is our best defense, or even offense :)

And just like I can say "love exists," not primarily because of a series of argument, but because I "have experienced it," so I can witness to the experience of knowing God. This is what our Sharing Christ series is all about.

BUT. Ah, yes, the long-awaited "but." The Church (the visible communion of those who believe in Jesus Christ) has always valued "reason." So recently I came across a great video by Fr. Robert Barron, a most excellent priest and teacher of the faith whom I had the pleasure of podcast-interviewing him last year, who gives a great series of arguments from reason for God's existence. Its one clip from a series of fifty clips on Christianity called Faith Clips. Enjoy!

Appreciating the Brethren

I was reading the Intentional Disciples blog this morning and I came across a great statement from Vatican II that is useful reflecting on as we encounter non-Catholic Christians.

"... Catholics must gladly acknowledge and esteem the truly Christian endowments from our common heritage which are to be found among our separated brethren. It is right and salutary to recognize the riches of Christ and virtuous works in the lives of others who are bearing witness to Christ, sometimes even to the shedding of their blood. For God is always wonderful in His works and worthy of all praise."

"Nor should we forget that anything wrought by the grace of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of our separated brethren can be a help to our own edification. Whatever is truly Christian is never contrary to what genuinely belongs to the faith; indeed, it can always bring a deeper realization of the mystery of Christ and the Church."

-Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio) (1964), I, 4.

Before I comment, the icon above is the apostle Peter (representing the Western - Latin Church) embracing the apostle Andrew (representing the Eastern - Greek Church). Unity has been a project in the Church since the beginning. Read Acts of the Apostles!.

As far as the statement, first, this is great to hear, especially from the teaching authority of the Church! And especially in 1964. Very prophetic.

Now, of course, none of this obviously contradicts our belief in the fullness of truth within the Catholic Church (which we pray all Christians, including us Catholics come to appreciate more and more). But, ultimately, ecumenism is an important part of the fullness of truth. Read what JPII wrote about it.

As far as our witness to non-Catholic Christians I think we need to always first recognize the enormity of our unity in Christ first and then, as we feel led, move forward with dialog and witness.
Our witness and our speech needs to be seasoned with salt though and should recognize that much disunity in the Church stems from miscommunication. Click on the above banner to access a really great Web site which is devoted to "building bridges and healing division with Evangelicals." This site explains Catholic truth in a way that is easy to understand for non-Catholics. Each article ends with the following prayer to Jesus for unity.

Lord Jesus, let Your prayer of unity for Christians
become a reality, in Your way
we have absolute confidence
that you can bring your people together
we give you absolute permission to move
Amen.