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I would like to start a series of six threads based on the six most common objections to Christianity. *The content is not my own. It will be taken from an article entitled, DECONSTRUCTING DEFEATER BELIEFS: Leading the Secular to Christ. By Dr Timothy Keller, Senior Pastor, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, NYC (2004)
After decades of pastoring a church in NYC and listening to many a harsh sceptic, Tim Keller addresses six of the most common objections to Christianity that he comes across:
The other religions - Christianity is too exclusive.
Evil and suffering - How can an all-loving and all-powerful God allow evil and suffering?
The ethical straitjacket - We all have to choose right and wrong for ourselves.
The record of Christians - What about the crusades?!
The angry God - Wrath, Hell judgement. Your God is angry.
The unreliable Bible - How can we be sure it's really God's Word?
I will post each objection separately, and the answers to these objections are brief, so we will have room for discussion.
Here's Tim's explanation of what a defeater belief is and how it works:
"Every culture hostile to Christianity holds to a set of 'common-sense' consensus beliefs that automatically make Christianity seem implausible to people. These are what philosophers call "defeater beliefs". A defeater belief is Belief-A that, if true, means Belief-B can't be true.
Christianity is disbelieved in one culture for totally opposite reasons it is disbelieved in another. So for example, in the West it is widely assumed that Christianity can't be true because of the cultural belief there can't be just one "true" religion. But in the Middle East, people have absolutely no problem with the idea that there is just one true religion. That doesn't seem implausible at all. Rather, there it is widely assumed that Christianity can't be true because of the cultural belief that American culture, based on Christianity, is unjust and corrupt. (Skeptics ought to realize, then, that the objections they have to the Christian faith are culturally relative!) So each culture has its own set of culturally-based doubt-generators which people call 'objections' or 'problems' with Christianity.
When a culture develops a combination of many, widely held defeater beliefs it becomes a cultural 'implausibility-structure.' In these societies, most people don't feel they have to give Christianity a good hearing – they don't feel that kind of energy is warranted. They know it just can't be true. That is what makes evangelism in hostile cultures so much more difficult and complex than it was under 'Christendom.' In our Western culture (and in places like Japan, India, and Muslim countries) the reigning implausibility-structure against Christianity is very strong. Christianity simply looks ludicrous. In places like Africa, Latin America, and China, however, the implausibility structures are eroding fast. The widely held assumptions in the culture make Christianity look credible there."
*All of the threads in this series, "Defeaters" are the work of Dr Timothy Keller, not my own. To my knowledge, his article, DECONSTRUCTING DEFEATER BELIEFS: Leading the Secular to Christ. By Dr. Timothy Keller, Senior Pastor, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, NYC (2004) is free for distribution, and is not copyrighted material.
After decades of pastoring a church in NYC and listening to many a harsh sceptic, Tim Keller addresses six of the most common objections to Christianity that he comes across:
The other religions - Christianity is too exclusive.
Evil and suffering - How can an all-loving and all-powerful God allow evil and suffering?
The ethical straitjacket - We all have to choose right and wrong for ourselves.
The record of Christians - What about the crusades?!
The angry God - Wrath, Hell judgement. Your God is angry.
The unreliable Bible - How can we be sure it's really God's Word?
I will post each objection separately, and the answers to these objections are brief, so we will have room for discussion.
Here's Tim's explanation of what a defeater belief is and how it works:
"Every culture hostile to Christianity holds to a set of 'common-sense' consensus beliefs that automatically make Christianity seem implausible to people. These are what philosophers call "defeater beliefs". A defeater belief is Belief-A that, if true, means Belief-B can't be true.
Christianity is disbelieved in one culture for totally opposite reasons it is disbelieved in another. So for example, in the West it is widely assumed that Christianity can't be true because of the cultural belief there can't be just one "true" religion. But in the Middle East, people have absolutely no problem with the idea that there is just one true religion. That doesn't seem implausible at all. Rather, there it is widely assumed that Christianity can't be true because of the cultural belief that American culture, based on Christianity, is unjust and corrupt. (Skeptics ought to realize, then, that the objections they have to the Christian faith are culturally relative!) So each culture has its own set of culturally-based doubt-generators which people call 'objections' or 'problems' with Christianity.
When a culture develops a combination of many, widely held defeater beliefs it becomes a cultural 'implausibility-structure.' In these societies, most people don't feel they have to give Christianity a good hearing – they don't feel that kind of energy is warranted. They know it just can't be true. That is what makes evangelism in hostile cultures so much more difficult and complex than it was under 'Christendom.' In our Western culture (and in places like Japan, India, and Muslim countries) the reigning implausibility-structure against Christianity is very strong. Christianity simply looks ludicrous. In places like Africa, Latin America, and China, however, the implausibility structures are eroding fast. The widely held assumptions in the culture make Christianity look credible there."
*All of the threads in this series, "Defeaters" are the work of Dr Timothy Keller, not my own. To my knowledge, his article, DECONSTRUCTING DEFEATER BELIEFS: Leading the Secular to Christ. By Dr. Timothy Keller, Senior Pastor, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, NYC (2004) is free for distribution, and is not copyrighted material.
