jeffjs@ihlpb.att.com (12/11/89)
J.B. Phillips, in _Your God Is Too Small_, writes something like this (approximate quote from memory): The lack of careful mutual endorsement of the Resurrection accounts is to one side a proof of their slipshod and even imaginative nature, while to the other side it indicates that they were written by people so totally convinced of the Resurrection that to worry about tiny details wouldn't even occur to them. Actually, for Christians to have skeptics around, and even to deal with doubts themselves, can be useful. One Christian writer (Os Guiness?) has said, "Doubts keep faith trim and help shed the paunchiness of false ideas." Frederick Buechner writes, "Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving." And in C.S. Lewis's novel _That Hideous Strength_ (volume 3 of the trilogy also including _Out of the Silent Planet_ and _Perelandra_), the company assembled to battle the forces of evil deliberately includes a skeptic, and indeed considers that to be a very important and useful (though sometimes annoying) office. In conclusion, I'll note one thing which is so obvious that it's easily ignored or missed: All four of the Gospels do agree on that most important, central point, that Jesus did rise from the dead. -- Jeff Sargent att!ihlpb!jeffjs (UUCP), jeffjs@ihlpb.att.com (Internet) AT&T Bell Laboratories IH 5A-433 (708) [new area code] 979-5284
tom@dvnspc1.Dev.Unisys.COM (Tom Albrecht) (12/15/89)
In article <Dec.11.03.51.26.1989.23588@athos.rutgers.edu>, jeffjs@ihlpb.att.com writes: > Actually, for Christians to have skeptics around, and even to deal with > doubts themselves, can be useful. One Christian writer (Os Guiness?) > has said, "Doubts keep faith trim and help shed the paunchiness of false > ideas." ... Charles Hodge, in his Systematic Theology, wrote: "It would be insane to reject the Bible with all its sublime and saving truths, because there may be in it a few passages which we cannot understand, and which in themselves seem inconsistent with the perfection of the author. No man refuses to believe in the sun and to rejoice in its light because there are dark spots on its surface for which he cannot account. Ignorance is a very healthful condition of our present state of being." -- Tom Albrecht