In this month's newsletter:
1) Spring means: Street Evangelization time! Want to see us in action?
2) Jesus: did He exist? Was He just a "good moral teacher"? More evidence for the Resurrection.
Street Evangelization Time!
Spring is here! Well, ok, it's technically been here for over a month but the weather is finally - hopefully - taking a turn for the warmer. For the apostolate it means street evangelization season!
As you may remember, as much as our apostolate is about teaching the evidence for Catholic Truth, we're even more about actually talking to people about it!
No, we don't use soap boxes, bull-horns, signs that warn of hell or accost people asking if they're accepted the Church as their only means of salvation.
We follow the model set up by St. Paul Street Evangelization (http://streetevangelization.com/). We do a non-confrontational, non-approach, low-key evangelization. What we do is set up a table with free materials, a sign that says "Catholic Truth: Need Prayer? Have Questions? Free Materials, Find True Joy" then we sit back, pray and wait to see who the Holy Spirit sends our way.
You don't need to know a lot to do it. Mostly you just need to know Your Story: what was your life like before you took your faith in Christ seriously, how you came to take your faith in Christ seriously and how your life has changed since.
Most people lead lives of quiet desperation, to paraphrase Thoreau. They have holes in their hearts - God-sized holes - they are trying to fill with something other than God. They desire, crave to hear the Good News.
Do you want to see how we do it? Do you want to experience the Holy Spirit moving in the Green Bay area?
We have space for a few people who are interested in just knowing more, or just watching, to join us. You don't have to do any of the evangelizing; just watch and pray.
If you want to join us, the first date is May 23rd, in the morning, at DePere Fest. This is going to be limited to just 3 or 4 people per date. Please contact us through either the Facebook page or email: fidei_defensor@yahoo.com.
2) This month's meeting we wrapped up evidence for the existence of Jesus, Jesus' Divinity (as well as humanity), and evidence for His Resurrection. Since I posted a lot of the evidence for the Resurrection already, I'll focus more on the first two section.
Did Jesus even exist?
In the last two hundred years or so we've seen the advent of the idea that Jesus Christ never existed. More recently, claims from militant atheist (and comedian) Bill Mahr, his movie "Religulous" (mix of "religious" and "ridiculous") and the all too popular youtube movie "Zeitgeist" state that Jesus Christ was just a myth based on Egyptian myths in their "Book of the Dead."There are many things that make this claim problematic.
1) The "Egyptian Book of the Dead" was not one book. When a person with enough money died either a scroll or a carving on their coffin was commissioned. This scroll / carving depicted the deceased entering the after life. Each one was different with different activities the deceased did in life, different ways of passing into the afterlife and different adventures there. Each one was called a book of the dead. All told there are thousands of "Book(s) of the Dead." Some of them included different aspects similar to the life of Christ.
For the claim that Christ is a myth based on the "Book of the Dead," the disciples would have to have had access to all of these books, be able to read hieroglyphics, know Egyptian religion / myths well enough to understand what they meant and then cut / paste certain aspects of certain books and weave them into the most believable "myth" of all times.
Related is the idea that Jesus Christ is a myth based on the Egyptian god Horus, or that the Romans started. Instead of going into it, I'll just link some Catholic Answers articles about it: No, the Romans did not invent Jesus.
2) This would make the Apostles liars. This is very related to a point I'll make later in the post: The Apostles were willing to preach Jesus, and Him crucified and Resurrected, to the point of horrible torturous deaths.
This also brings up a question: to what end would the Apostles lie? Most liars on this magnitude do so for some gain. Since this point is identical to the objection that Jesus was a liar, I'll detail it out there.
3) We have good, historical evidence of Jesus' existence: The Roman Historian, Tacitus (AD 54 - 115) says that a sect of the Jews, Christians, who's leader was crucified under Pontius Pilot in the reign of Tiberius.
We also have the testimony of Pliny the Younger (AD 61 - AD 115) and Suetonius (AD 75-160) who believed Christ to be a minor revolutionary.
There's also the writings of Josephus, a Jewish Historian (AD 37-94) who witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans. His works include this following quote:
"About this time appeared Jesus, a wise man (if indeed it is right to call Him man; for He was a worker of astonishing deeds, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with joy), and He drew to Himself many Jews (many also of Greeks. This was the Christ.) And when Pilate, at the denunciation of those that are foremost among us, had condemned Him to the cross, those who had first loved Him did not abandon Him (for He appeared to them alive again on the third day, the holy prophets having foretold this and countless other marvels about Him.) The tribe of Christians named after Him did not cease to this day." (Antiquities XVIII, iii, 3)
People dispute this quote as authentic. The most disputed parts are in the parentheticals. It is possible that an early copyist was a Christian and inserted the parentheticals. I will say two more things on this quote: 1) according to New Advent (the Catholic encyclopedia) there is no copy of Josephus known that does not have the parentheticals; 2) There is a very good case to be made that most of this quote is completely authentic.
We also have a host of Christian writings starting first and foremost with the Gospels. Do not let someone throw out the Gospels as historical evidence. We can look at the Gospels / Christian writings as historical writings and take into account what they say. One thing none of them say is that Jesus was made up, only a spiritual idea or a myth. They all profess that He was a real person who lived, died and rose from the dead.
There are also 42 references to the existence of Jesus Christ within 150 years of His death / Resurrection. In comparison there are only 10 for Tiberius Caesar and 2 for William Wallace.
It is also interesting to note that for 1800 years, no one doubted the existence of Jesus Christ and the vast majority of historians believe Jesus Christ existed; even the enemies of Christ believed he existed. Here's a Catholic Answer's pod cast specifically on whether or not Jesus existed:
Just a 'Good Moral Teacher'
The next objection is usually that Jesus existed, but He was not God, but only a man; a 'good moral teacher.' Usually this is coupled with the idea that Jesus never claimed to be God.However, if we look at the Gospels, and take them in context, we can see plainly that Jesus claimed to be God: Jn 1: Jn 8:58-59; Jn 10:30-33; Jn 20:28.
Some may object saying the idea of Jesus being God only appears in John's Gospel. The objection continues saying that Jesus was only a man but the early Christians LATER thought of him as God. This is why, according to the objectors, only John's Gospel - the last Gospel written - refers to Jesus as God.
This is objectively false. All four Gospels, taken in a 1st Century Jewish context, have Jesus claiming to be God: Mk 2:28; Mt 12:8; Lk 6:5.
Liar, Lunatic or Lord
Once we see that Jesus claimed to be God, we have entered C.S. Lewis' famous argument of "Liar, Lunatic or Lord." The thought process goes like this:Jesus claimed to be God. This is either right or wrong. There are no other possibilities. If it is wrong, Jesus either knew that He wasn't God or He didn't. These are the only two possibilities.
Liar
Let's propose that Jesus knew His claim to be God was false. This would make Him a liar. Not just any liar, He would be lying about the most important thing ever: that you can live forever with Him, if you believe in Him. This isn't just any liar, this would be a pathological liar.But we must ask, if He is a liar, to what end? People who lie do so with a purpose. So, was Jesus' purpose fame, fortune, pleasure, power? If those were His purpose, He was horrible at it. He owned only a cloak at the end, everyone left Him - except His mother, a couple other women and one disciple - He ended up crucified and was powerless by the world's standards.
Also, reading the Gospels, He does not fit the profile for a pathological liar. He is kind, helps people, heals people and comforts people. Name me another pathological liar who did these things.
We can reasonably eliminate 'liar' as a possibility.
Lunatic
What if He claimed to be God but didn't know He was wrong? That would mean He was delusional, mad, insane, in other words a lunatic. But there's a major problem with that: He doesn't act like a lunatic at all: Jesus is orientated to time and date; He addresses people by proper titles, names etc; He yells at people He's angry with, He cries when something sad happens; He helps people who are sick and feeds people who are hungry; He eats when He's hungry, sleeps when He's tired, washes things that are dirty etc.In the Law Enforcement world, there is, at times, the need to place people into treatment centers who are deemed to have gone insane. There are behaviors, signs and symptoms that must be observed before Law Enforcement can place them into a treatment center. Jesus does not meet any of the criteria. No Law Enforcement Officer would place Him in a treatment center based off of Jesus' behavior as written by the eye-witness testimony of the Gospels.
We can reasonably eliminate 'lunatic' as a possibility.
Lord
The only possibility left is that He called Himself 'God' and He was right. I.E. He is Lord!Good Moral Teacher?
Notice, when we apply logic, the only thing that is not possible is that Jesus was only a good moral teacher. To clarify, we agree that Jesus was a good moral teacher; He was the Best Moral Teacher of all time; but we cannot agree that He was "only" a good moral teacher.If Jesus was lying about being God, is that a 'good moral teacher'? If He's lying about something this huge, how can we follow Him on anything else?
If Jesus was insane, is that someone we should follow? For example, if we heard that someone was calling himself an egg... "Before Abraham was, I am an egg!"; "The Son of Man is the egg of the Sabbath!" "The Father and I are eggs!" How could we possibly follow Him as a 'good moral teacher' unless we too were insane!
No, the only title given to Jesus by the modern world that is not possible is "Only a good moral teacher."
The Resurrection
The fact that Jesus is God is backed by the greatest miracle of all time, the Resurrection. In other posts I have gone over much of the evidence for the Resurrection: The Bare Minimum Facts argument; the 'Swoon Theory', 'The Apostles Stole the Body', and 'The Tomb was not Empty' objections. Please check out either the earlier posts on this blog or our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/fideidefensorgb for those explanations.Before we end I wanted to address what I promised above: one more reason we know the Apostles didn't just make the whole thing up. This is also one of the 'Bare Minimum Facts' and it is attested to by non-Christian historical writings: The 180 degree change in the Apostles' attitudes.
Just after Christ's death, the Apostles were hiding, fearing that they would be killed by the authorities. Yet, suddenly, they began to preach that Jesus rose from the dead and is the Messiah TO THE PEOPLE THEY WERE AFRAID OF. All the Apostles, except for John, suffered horrible martyr's deaths where they were given multiple chances to retract what they had been preaching and they would be allowed to go free. NONE OF THEM DID. Why would they do this?
Just pretend you made up a religion, or hid a body. You preach this to a bunch of people. They believe you and begin following you. The authorities become afraid that you're getting to popular and might start a revolt. They arrest you, bring you before a judge and say, "If you don't stop preaching this, we'll skin you alive." What would you do?
Let's pretend you were bold enough to continue the lie. You tell the judge, "It's true and I won't stop teaching it!" They then bring in a cruel looking man with an even crueler looking knife. They say, "Say it's all made-up or this man is going to skin you alive!" What would you do?
Let's pretend, for whatever reason, you decided to hold to your lie. They strap you to a table and say again, "We're going to start with your feet and skin you alive unless you say it was all made-up and a lie. If you do that, you can just go free!" What would you do?
Let's pretend, for whatever reason, you hold out. Then they start cutting into the bottom of one of your feet. "Deny your Christ and you can go free!" they tell you. How long could you hold out?
This is what happened to Nathaniel. He was skinned alive. He died professing it was TRUE! All the Apostles died professing that Jesus rose from the dead and is the Messiah.
No one died for what they know is false, especially slow, painful deaths. So we can reasonably eliminate the Apostles as 'liars'.
Were they lunatics? All 12 would have to suffer the exact same delusions and, again, none of them acted like it. None of them would meet the criteria for being insane. So we can reasonably eliminate the Apostles as being 'insane' or having a 'mass hallucination' - which has never been documented in history where everyone hallucinated the same thing.
What is left? They were telling the truth.
Now backed by history, logic and reason let us proclaim all the more....
HE IS RISEN!
Additional Resources:The Real Jesus, Why Believe in Jesus Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Apologetics for the Resurrection, Are the Gospels a Myth?, Four Reasons I think Jesus Really Existed
Fidei Defensor
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