From Theism to Christianity

[Trevor_Stamm]

Hello all and God’s blessing,

Posting this in the non-Catholic forum to hear the arguments of Catholics and Protestants alike on this subject that works to a mutual goal.

Explain on how to bridge theism to Christianity. So for instance, we have a person who now believes that the first cause was caused by God (the uncaused mover), but would like to hear a good reason to accept Christianity out of all the other religions on earth. I’d like to hear all approaches but spearheaded on how to prove and validate the accounts of Scared Scripture.

I have my own conclusions on the subject but I’m sure everyone is looking to help strengthen this subject in anyway possible.

Pax

 

[Barbkw]

Dr. Hugh Ross drew up without religion, however through multicultural experiences in high school he became interested in the connection between religions of the world and astronomy.

Ross relates his journey here:

hughrossstory.com/ Page 1 of 4

So I went after these holy books and began to compare them with the established facts of nature and history. Now, my big problem was to find facts for statements, about nature and history in these books. That would take me a while. Because what I had discovered was that these books are written in an esoteric poetry by and large. Very difficult reading, kind of reminded me of reading James Joyce –four hidden levels of meaning, and you have to get all of them to figure out what the author is trying to say. And that disturbed me to some extent, because I felt, you know, that’s not the Creator that I see in science and nature. Things are simple, elegant, and beautiful as we look at the scientific record, and they’re consistent.

So I was disturbed to some extent by this, but after some searching, things began to make sense. Like in going through the Hindu Vedas I discovered that those scriptures speak about human-type civilizations on the back side of the moon. Now this was just before NASA had actually sent men there to actually check it out. But even before NASA went there to look we knew that it was an absurd hypothesis that there were cities and civilizations on the back side of the moon. No atmosphere there. But I can’t blame the Hindus of 3,000 years ago –they had no way of knowing. Neither did they have any way of knowing that the surface of the sun is hot, because that’s another place they said where there were human civilizations and cities and so forth –on the surface of the sun. Now, of course, we know that it’s a little uncomfortably warm for that kind of development.

And after picking up a couple of dozen such absurdities, scientific and historic, I was able to throw the Hindu Vedas to the side and say, “That’s a human product”. I felt secure in doing that because my experience with science is that the scientific record is totally consistent and free of contradictions. God created the natural world; therefore we see this consistency and this freedom of contradiction so I felt that if this same God was communicating to us through a written message then it must be likewise just as consistent and just as free of contradictions, and just as simple and elegant. And I didn’t find that in Hindu Vedas, so I put that aside.

Then I went through the Buddhist writings and the Qur’an, and through the different religions of the world, Baha’i, etc., seeing what they had to say. And in each case, after several hours of study, I was able to collect enough scientific misstatements and historical misstatements to convince me that this is of human origin, not of divine. I mean, even our best textbooks have human errors in them, so the searching for human errors I felt was a good way to sift out the divine from the human.

Now, I did have one contact with Christians when I was growing up. I never talked to them, but they came into our school –they were the Gideons. I remember the closing day of my sixth grade. They came in and gave each one of us one of these little New Testaments with Psalms and Proverbs. So I took it home. It stayed on the shelf for five years. After I had been through these major religions and was looking at some of the more minor religions, I took this book off the shelf.

Story continues (pages 2 and 3) at hughrossstory.com/hughs-story-page-2/

Ross’ website: reasons.org/dr-hugh-ross.html

 

[Barbkw]

Theism defined:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theism

Theism, in the broadest sense, is the belief that at least one deity exists.[1][2] In a more specific sense, theism refers to a doctrine concerning the nature of a monotheistic God and God’s relationship to the universe.[3][4]

Theism, in this specific sense, conceives of God as personal, present and active in the governance and organization of the world and the universe.

The use of the word theism as indicating a particular doctrine of monotheism arose in the wake of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century to contrast with the then emerging deism that contended that God, though transcendent and supreme, did not intervene in the natural world and could be known rationally but not via revelation.[5]

 

[Trevor_Stamm]

Awesome story.

I like how he used probability theory to approach it. Another way with that line of reasoning, in relations to Scared Scripture, is the typology involved, and not just the basic typologies, but extreme typologies such as the garden or what Scott Hahn released recently, “The Fourth Cup”. Can draw a very reasonable conclusion that such typologies are near impossible in human hands alone.

Hope to hear more ways to make the connection from theism to Christianity.

 

[cooterhein]

Explain on how to bridge theism to Christianity. So for instance, we have a person who now believes that the first cause was caused by God (the uncaused mover), but would like to hear a good reason to accept Christianity out of all the other religions on earth.

This sounds a lot like a description of Antony Flew- a longtime giant among modern atheists who, back in '04, became theistic in the sense that he believed in a creator who was the first cause. He was still quite deistic, however, and stated in no uncertain terms that he’s not a believer in a specifically Christian god. He also had some views on “the god of the Old Testament” that are reminiscent of Marcion in some ways. (Flew died in April last year).

I’d like to hear all approaches but spearheaded on how to prove and validate the accounts of Scared Scripture.

I think arguments from a natural theology can only get you so far. It’s quite difficult to succeed in convincing someone like Flew that any sort of god exists, and I think that’s as far as you can go with those sorts of arguments. Some will argue that the best you can do, even to that limited end, is establish a preponderance of evidence such that belief in a creative being is more reasonable than disbelief.

The holy writings of various religions are certainly worth looking into, and it’s good to be able to make comparisons between the Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, the various Vedic writings, and so forth. Especially when dealing with Protestantism, Islam, and Judaism, you’re looking at religious groups identified as “people of the book.” This isn’t as true with Catholicism, however, so the relative level of importance might drop.

I have my own conclusions on the subject but I’m sure everyone is looking to help strengthen this subject in anyway possible.

Well, aside from literary kinds of things and arguments from a natural theology, I think there’s one other thing to look at. Natural theology is a process whereby one reasons from the facts of the world to God. But this can work in reverse, whereby knowledge of God is initiated by God through some broadly revelatory act on His part. This is called “kerygmatic theology.”

This is a place where Protestants and Catholics might diverge in some ways. The Protestant description of salvation includes a rather significant miracle that God does (and by “miracle,” I mean “a marvelous event manifesting a supernatural act by a divine agent.”) Many Protestants will describe this miracle in terms of being “born again/anew/from above,” being regenerated, becoming a new creature/creation, or “becoming a Christian.” This sort of miracle is rather foreign to the Catholic understanding of salvation. To the Catholic, salvation is an ever-gaining ever-losing-it process whereby you’re ultimately and really saved “when your butt is in heaven” (to quote one Catholic apologist), and this salvation is a reward given to Catholics who maintain a relatively high level of commitment- especially at the end of your life- to 5 or 6 different rituals that are relatively easy to do (in that you’d expect anyone to be able to do them). While salvation may also be given to Protestants and non-Christians who have sufficient goodness along with sufficient ignorance, dying “in a state of grace” is the best way for a Catholic to have some confidence in a smooth progression from purgatory to heaven.

There is an understanding of “baptismal regeneration” that involves something of a guarantee that anyone baptized by Trinitarian formula will summon this sort of activity, but it’s not the sort of regenerative miracle that Protestants talk about. What Protestants talk about is a miracle that God actually does to a person and it’s the kind of thing they obviously know about because it’s such a dramatic and life-altering change. What Catholics talk about is a mysterious grace-infusion that’s more likely to be experientially unverifiable and only “known” to happen by faith in Church teaching.

Thus, the Catholic is usually left in a situation where arguments from a kerygmatic theology are moot. (That’s my understanding, at least). On a personal prove-it-to-yourself kind of level, a Protestant has revelatory proof of God’s existence based on the average salvific miracle and God’s indwelling presence. Beyond that, this sort of thing can act as proof for others to the extent that someone else can get to know this person and realize, over the course of some period of time, that God does indwell this person and God was and is doing something serious in that person’s life. It’s not quite the same as when God actually does it to you, but in lieu of that, seeing the evidence in the life of another person can demonstrate that God does these sorts of things to other people and He could very well do it to you too.

I’ll grant that this sort of evidence can be hard to come by, especially in the lives of immature believers and hypocrites. But if you’ve had the pleasure of knowing older, more mature Christians with decades of service to God under their belts- and especially if you’ve gotten to know them particularly well over the course of a significant period of time- perhaps you have some idea of what it is to know that God is at work in that person’s life and has been for quite some time.

That is what I mean by evidence for the existence of a specifically Christian God that is obtained through more of a kerygmatic theology rather than an argument from natural theology, and for someone who’s seeking after God but hasn’t found Him yet, this sort of thing can be an incredible encouragement just because you know it’s happening to someone else even if God hasn’t done it to you yet.

This might be less of an option for Catholics, but I’ll let someone else be the one who addresses whether or not that is so.