Many non-believers tend to think “Christian Dogma” is some kind of vile intolerance that must be eradicated from society. When looked at, however, it is simply truth defined in a culture when it’s popular to believe spiritual truth cannot be defined. Here are 12 points that clarify why Christians are dogmatic:
1) Dogma defined: a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.
2) Christians say truth can be defined in the person of Jesus Christ, as the New Testaments documents attest.
3) Jesus Christ was an actual, historical person, not some legend. Everything we know about history and how it is defined, verifies his life on Earth.
4) Scribes wrote down what he said as eyewitness testimony to the events surrounding his life.
5) New Testaments documents, when analyzed by most historians today, have shown to be some of the most verifiable historical documents we have in ancient history.
6) Since this is the case, we can trust what the New Testament says about Jesus.
7) Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6 (NIV)
8) Jesus was either a:
- Lunatic
- Liar
- Lord
9) Lunatics don’t spawn movements that last for thousand of years and improve people’s lives. (I am one of those people. Faith in Christ pulled me out of a self-destructive lifestyle.)
10) Liars eventually get caught. If he lied, it’s the greatest conspiracy in all of history! Anyway, Jesus’ disciples, who weren’t brainwashed as children but came to faith as adults, were martyred for their belief in Christ. Who dies for a known lie?
11) Lord – just maybe he was actually telling the truth! If you keep an open mind, one that is not adamantly opposed to the supernatural, then you must consider this could be true.
12) The Resurrection event was witnessed by hundreds of people, as written about in New Testament documents. (Remember, these were scrolls not put into a Canonical bible until hundreds of years later. These were eye-witness accounts and can be used independently to verify claims.) If this was false, it would have been refuted by those who heard the stories at that time period. They could debunk it in many ways; one most notable would have been to produce his dead body. To this date, no such evidence exists. The tomb was found empty, verified by Roman guards themselves, who had every reason to disclaim this event. They could never prove it didn’t happen. What more proof do you need?
Many apologists know this quote, but for those of you who don’t, this is C.S Lewis’ famous trilemma quote:
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
