"I believe that the historical evidence is strongly against, is hugely against, six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler,"he said in a recent interview for Swedish TV.
I post this from BBC News, not because I find the man's views offensive (which I do) but because they are ridiculous. "...that the historical evidence is strongly against, is hugely against, six million Jews having been deliberately gassed..." really speaks of one's personal agenda and how one may see the facts (or blatantly ignore them, as the case may be).
It rather brings to mind several [post] modern historians like Bart Ehrman (UNC-Chapel Hill) who say that the historical evidence for Christ is lacking. Granted, those who view the resurrection to be true are doubtless coloured by their personal beliefs and agenda as well, but to take one's agenda so far as to dismiss large, sometimes significantly large, reservoirs of data goes beyond personal or even professional irresponsibility and lands in the realm of asinine fatuity, as my favorite writer would perhaps have put it. This goes for both sides of the resurrection debate as well as anyone's belief in, well, anything. Ignoring that Joseph Smith was arrested for horse rustling and shot in prision by Freemasons for stealing "sacred rites" and so by calling him a martyr on par with Christ comes to mind.
Historical facts must be taken as they are - not in a vacuum. We can neither be fully objective, nor fully relative in our studies. Facts must be taken in light of surrounding (background) data - not made to fulfill our own agendas or justify our own beliefs. I think that Ehrman, who lost his Christian faith due to "historicity," would agree with this. However, I still feel that his conclusion is coloured by his own (in my view, though I may be wrong) narrow convictions.
I take the Gospels to be true - fully true. Do I find they have errors? In as much as I have errors yet am still perfected in Christ, yes. So God uses sinful Man to promote His word, He demands 100 percent truthfulness and so can be said for literature. We are His body after all, and His Word - we do, in fact, dwell in a fallen world but we are not of it. "Historical evidence" caused Ehrman to lose his faith, and in light of Bishop Williamson's view of "historical evidence" it seems that those can be, if not ignored, altogether distorted to fit one's view. Sometimes they simply be taken without regard to their surrounding world. Williamson doesn't want to believe the Holocaust occurred (quite frankly I don't think anyone does) and Ehrman doesn't want to believe that God came as a man.
As it is dangerous to take one verse of the Word out of context (Satan likes to do that), so we cannot take any one [set of] data (historical or philosophical) out of its context either. That is a subject too long for a blog post, certainly. My point though is this: I don't take the Gospels to be true because they say they are - I don't place my faith in God because of the Bible. I place my faith in the Bible because of God whom I know exists and is LORD because all of Creation, reason, logic, theology, philosophy, and most importantly, the Spirit attest to Him. I know the Gospels to be true because I know Him to be true and they scream His testament - if they didn't, the very rocks would cry out. Isn't this the meaning of this passage? We have in Christ a historical figure who brings together all hope, truth, religion, science, philosophy, indeed all of life and truly can be called Lord of all!
Lewis once said, "[I believe in Christianity] as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."*
*(C.S. Lewis, "Is Theology Poetry?" The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (HarperCollins, 1980), p. 140
1 comment:
> "...I don't place my faith in God because of the Bible. I place my faith in the Bible because of God whom I know exists and is LORD..."
Amen and Amen!!!
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