I posted this in Traditional Catholicism, and I just realized it was the wrong place. If anyone knows how to delete a thread they’ve started please let me know.
Anyway, I’m an 18 year old girl who was raised in a traditional Catholic family. However, lately, I’m finding that my faith is seriously dwindling.
I’m starting to even doubt the existence of Jesus at all. I’ve read that all of the records that reference Him outside of the bible were written only years after he died, and that there are no historical records of Him while he was living. I’ve read that He was not included in the Roman censuses, and that there’s no evidence to say that King Herod every ordered the murder of children.
I’ve also read that there’s not even evidence of His trial with Pontus Pilate.
This is all so disturbing to me. If he was important enough to split time into two (BC and AD), how could there not be more historical records of His existence?
I’ve had experience with secular, heterodox people all my life, so I think I’ve heard it all.
First of all, almost every secular scholar accepts the historical existence of Jesus. The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus, who was born 4 years after the crucifixion wrote extensively about Pontius Pilate. In his book Antiquities of the Jews, written around AD 93 (within the lifetime of the Apostle John, I might add), he retells the story of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection:
“Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ, and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians so named from him are not extinct at this day.”
The Roman Senator Tacitus wrote a little later, in AD 116, that “Nero fastened the guilt of starting the blaze and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians [Chrestians] by the populace.
Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.”
Although these records come to us many years after he died, St. Paul wrote his Epistles in the early 50s AD, as early as 15-20 years after the crucifixion. The difference between Jesus and the gods of Rome, Greece, and Egypt is that Jesus was said to have lived in recent times. Remember the opening to the Gospel of St. Luke, which says that Jesus was born during the reign of Caesar Augustus and while Cyrinus was governor of Syria.
When it comes to there not being a record of the census, I have heard that this argument is a fallacy because either (and I forgot which) Romans didn’t keep census records or that we haven’t found much of the records they did keep.
About King Herod ordering the Slaughter of the Innocents, I’ve never looked into it. But you should note that not everything was recorded on paper in those days, and he certainly didn’t need to put it on paper to order it.
I’m so depressed about my lack of faith. I feel like I’m so close to not believing anymore, and that scares me because what else will I have to live for?
Does anyone have any advice for me? Or can anyone answer my doubts about the existence of Jesus? Please pray for me. Thank you and God bless
You’re not alone. I’ve felt lack of faith and doubts before as have we all. It’s very troubling. But we know from the argument from contingency that God exists. And when it comes to ‘proving’ the miracles of the Bible, of course weird and out of the usual things are going to happen when God, the creator of space/time itself, enters the historical process via the Incarnation, which is only proved by the various miracles which have occurred in the two thousand years of Christianity. Read the Book of Acts. From Paul’s vision on the Road to Emmaus, to St. Peter being freed from jail by an angel, God is revealing himself to not only them, but us. Do you think all the early Christians who experienced divine things such as these were all duped? Come on now. Ancient people weren’t more gullible or stupid than modern man as is commonly believed.
Faith is an act of the will, not a feeling. Will that you believe in God, whom we are all rightfully ordered too. Even if he doesn’t exist (and He does), I for one would rather live with the illusion that he does than live in a narcissistic, closed in, secular world.
I’ll keep you in my prayers. Pray to St. Thomas, he had doubts too. Remember Jesus suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane. Fulton Sheen once said that on the cross Jesus suffered for all our physical pain, and in the Garden of Gethsemane he suffered for all of our mental pain. Through it all, keep your eyes on the prize as they say. If you don’t believe, you have nothing to gain, if you do, you have everything to gain.
And if I may make a recommendation, Fr. Robert Barron on Youtube (his channel is
here) makes really good arguments in favor of Christianity and against atheism/agnosticism from a theological/philosophical/historical perspective. Checking out his videos has helped me tremendously with doubts in my faith life.
Have a nice Sunday!
