Something only members of Christianity and Judaism can do is to ask non-believers to examine the truth claims of their faiths. Even early on, Christian apologists argued that Christianity is founded on fact, not blind faith. The apostles argued they had actually seen the risen Christ. They were eye witnesses. Their faith was founded on fact.
Within a hundred years of Christ’s ascension, Christian apologists were arguing in public letters to the Roman emperor that Christianity makes sense, it’s rational, and that Christians add to the empire because of their faith. They were good workers, taxpayers, charitable, and helpful to others.
The Romans rejected the Christians, though, not directly because of what they believed but because Christians would not engage in the Roman public sacrifices to their gods. The Romans saw that as a lack of unity and, thus, rebellious and anti-Roman, a danger to the unity of the empire, so they continued to persecute Christians.
Had Christians not stood up and claimed their religion was true, it may not have convinced so many. As Roger E. Olson puts it in his book, The Story of Christian Theology, “that gospel would quickly devolve into mere folk religion and lose all conviction as truth and influence on the church or society.”
Claiming to be true and testable brought Christianity to the forefront in the marketplace of ideas in the Roman Empire, so much so, it became the official Roman religion by the early fourth century.
So, did apostles claim Christianity is true? Of course they did and even asked skeptics to examine their faith, to test it and see if it were true. The apostles also challenged Christians to test all things including their faith (1 Thess 5:20-21), to have an answer for everyone who asked (1 Peter 3:15), to earnestly contend for the faith (Jude 3). You don’t make these kinds of statements unless your belief system is testable, rational, and defensible.
God has given us the evidence. We need only to present it. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the central teaching of the Christian faith. If Christ is not raised, the faith has nothing to stand on (1 Cor. 15:17).
God prompted the writers of the New Testament to give us eye witness accounts of Christ’s resurrection from the dead. Others outside the faith admit to His resurrection as a belief of first century Christians. Josephus, a Roman historian wrote of Christ’s resurrection as a historic event. Tacitus, another Roman historian mentions Christ’s resurrection as a superstition accepted by the Christians. When your enemies acknowledge your beliefs, you have near certainty they are true.
The belief the Bible is inspired of God is another Christian claim. External evidence shows we have a text today which is better than 99% reliably representative of the original writings of the New Testament. We have more than 25,000 handwritten manuscripts of the New Testaments. Some fragments of the gospel writings can be dated back to the late first or early second centuries. So, we can rebuild what the originals say by examining the vast number of manuscripts. We also have other writings like the apostolic fathers (the disciples of the disciples) who quoted Scripture frequently.
We need to remember Diocletian, the Roman Emperor at the end of the third century through the beginning of the fourth, ordered all Christian writings destroyed throughout the empire. Also the great library at Antioch, a great center of Christian thought, was destroyed in 363 a.d. Calif Omar burned the Alexandrian Library of more than 200,000 scrolls in 640 a.d. Alexandria was another center for Christian thought and education. These three events made it difficult to find early manuscripts since most were copied from the holdings of these two libraries.
The church recovered even though the New Testament had become a somewhat rare book. Scriptoriums (copy centers) were set up to make up for the shortage. Also, the opinion of older manuscripts was not the same as it is today. Even as late as 1844, a scholar named Tishendorf staying at the monastery on Mount Sinai saw the monks using old manuscripts to light their fires on cold nights. Tishendorf rescued the oldest existent complete New Testament manuscript dated to the mid fourth century. Who knows, the monks might have destroyed even earlier manuscripts.
One proof for the inspiration of the Bible is fulfilled prophecies. There is a detailed prophecy in Ezekiel 26:3-5 which describes the city of Tyre, an important city in the time of Ezekiel’s prophecy, completely destroyed and scraped clean from the earth so that the fishermen would dry their nets on the site. Today that city is still a place where fishermen dry their nets. I wrote about this a couple of years ago: the city of Tyre
Why is this important?
Christians need to be assured ours is not a blind faith. It is a faith found in fact. We have a long tradition of logical argumentation for our beliefs, and they stand unbowed. Unlike other major religions, Christianity offers absolutes, objective moral standards, and major truth claims.
Believers Armed and Dangerous 