I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (35 page)

Psychosomatic—
Many years ago, I (Norm) developed what I thought was an allergy to blooming flowers. I began taking a strong drug in the spring of that year to help alleviate the symptoms. One spring Sunday morning I was invited to preach at a local church and had arrived early to meet the elders. When I got near the pulpit I saw some flowers on a nearby table. Almost immediately, I began to sneeze and my eyes watered up.

I said to one of the elders, “I won’t be able to preach with these flowers here because my allergy is acting up. So, would you please move them?”

He looked at me and said, “They’re plastic!”

I said to myself, “Geisler, you just sneezed at plastic flowers. That allergy has got to be in your head!” So I threw away my prescription and have not had that problem to this day.

Now, perhaps not all allergies are purely psychosomatic. But certainly there are some illnesses and cures that are psychosomatic, and these are well documented. Norman Cousins, in his book
Anatomy of
an Illness,
describes in detail how he literally laughed himself well from cancer. Indeed, mental stress can have a negative impact on our physical health, while having a positive mental attitude, faith, or happiness can have a positive, healing effect (see Prov. 17:22).

Yet there are some medical conditions—such as severed spinal cords or amputated limbs—that cannot be cured by mind over matter because they are not psychosomatic illnesses. A true miracle would have to occur for those conditions to be cured.

The bottom line is that psychosomatic cures are psychological, not supernatural, in nature. They are evidence that the mind can have a limited but significant impact on the body. They are not to be confused with miracles.

Magic—
Perhaps the most familiar kind of unusual event is magic. Magic is based on human sleight of hand or misleading the mind. A good magician can make you think he has sliced a woman in half, pulled a rabbit out of a hat, or made an elephant disappear. But it’s all an illusion, a clever trick. Once you’re let in on it, you say, “Now, why didn’t I think of that?” Magic, being a trick under human control, is not a miracle. Only God can perform a miracle.

Anomalies
—An anomaly is an unexplained freak of nature. For example, at one time scientists couldn’t understand how a bumblebee could fly. Its wings were too small for its body. Scientists considered bumblebee flight an anomaly until they discovered a kind of “power pack” that made up for the small wings. They knew it wasn’t a miracle because of the observable pattern—all bumblebees flew. So they kept looking for a natural explanation and they found one.

The skeptic might ask, “So why couldn’t the resurrection of Jesus Christ be considered an anomaly?” Because the Resurrection was predicted. It had intelligent design behind it—God’s fingerprints were all over it. Anomalies are not connected with intelligent truth claims, and they lack moral and theological dimensions. If the resurrection of Christ actually occurred, it was no anomaly.

W
HY
D
ON
’
T
W
E
S
EE
B
IBLICAL
M
IRACLES
T
ODAY
?

Many people today have a very provincial view of history and of human experience. “If I personally don’t see certain events happening today,” they think, “they probably never happened.” The implication for miracles is obvious. Namely, “If there are no public, biblical-quality miracles happening today (and if they were, they’d be on the Fox News Channel), then why should I think they happened in the past?” It’s a fair question.

However, there’s a common misconception behind this question. It’s the belief that the Bible is filled with miracles that occur continually throughout biblical history. That’s only partially true. It is true that the Bible is filled with miracles, about 250 occasions of them.
¹⁷
But most of those miracles occur in very small windows of history, during three distinct time periods—during the lifetimes of Moses, Elijah and Elisha, and Jesus and the apostles. Why then? Because those were the times when God was confirming new truth (revelation) and new messengers with that truth.
¹⁸

If most of the miracles are bunched there, what’s happening miraculously during the other periods the Bible covers? Nothing. In fact, there are huge gaps of time in the Bible (even hundreds of years) where there are no recorded miracles from God. Why? Because there was no new word from God, and most miracles confirmed some new word from God.

So why don’t we see biblical miracles today? Because if the Bible is true and complete, God is not confirming any new revelation and thus does not have this main purpose for performing miracles today. There is no new word from God that needs to be confirmed by God.

Now don’t misunderstand us here. We are
not
saying that God cannot do miracles today, or that he never does. As the sovereign Creator and sustainer of the universe, he can do a miracle anytime he wants. It’s just that he may not have a reason to publicly display his power the way he did during biblical times because all of the truths he wanted to reveal have already been revealed and confirmed. As with a house, the foundation only needs to be laid once. Biblical miracles were special acts of God that laid the foundation for his permanent revelation to mankind.

S
UMMARY AND
C
ONCLUSION

1. The essential characteristics of the biblical God can be discovered without the Bible by way of natural revelation—as manifested in the Cosmological, Teleological, and Moral Arguments. Those arguments, which are supported by very strong evidence, show us that this is a theistic universe. Since this is a theistic universe, only the theistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have “made the cut” of truth to this point. All nontheisms are built on a false foundation because they are wrong about the existence and nature of God.

2. Since God exists, miracles are possible. In fact, the greatest miracle of all—the creation of the universe out of nothing—has already occurred, which means Genesis 1:1 and every other miracle in the Bible is believable. Arguments against miracles fail because they are based on false philosophical assumptions rather than observational evidence. As a result, they fail to disprove miracles. God can intervene in the universe he created despite what David Hume says.

3. A true miracle would be an act only God could perform, meaning it would include Godlike characteristics such as supernatural power, intelligent design, and the promotion of moral behavior. By these characteristics, miracles can be distinguished from other types of unusual events such as providence, Satanic signs, psychosomatic cures, magic, and anomalies.

4. Due to his moral nature, we would expect God to communicate his specific purpose to us in more detail (i.e., beyond natural revelation to special revelation). God could use miracles as his sign to confirm to us his special revelation. Used in this way, a miracle is an act of God to confirm a message from God.

Our only question now is, “Has God used miracles to confirm Judaism, Christianity, or Islam?” That’s the question we’ll begin to answer in the next chapter.

Chapters 9–12
will cover:

1. Truth about reality is knowable.

2. The opposite of true is false.

3. It is true that the theistic God exists. This is evidenced by the:

a. Beginning of the universe (Cosmological Argument)

b. Design of the universe (Teleological Argument/ Anthropic Principle)

c. Design of life (Teleological Argument)

d. Moral Law (Moral Argument)

4. If God exists, then miracles are possible.

5. Miracles can be used to confirm a message from God (i.e., as acts of God to confirm a word from God).

6. The New Testament is historically reliable. This is evidenced
by:

a. Early testimony

b. Eyewitness testimony

c. Uninvented (authentic) testimony

d. Eyewitnesses who were not deceived

7. The New Testament says Jesus claimed to be God.

8. Jesus’ claim to be God was miraculously confirmed by:

a. His fulfillment of many prophecies about himself;

b. His sinless life and miraculous deeds;

c. His prediction and accomplishment of his resurrection.

9. Therefore, Jesus is God.

10. Whatever Jesus (who is God) teaches is true.

11. Jesus taught that the Bible is the Word of God.

12. Therefore, it is true that the Bible is the Word of God (and anything opposed to it is false).

9

Do We Have Early
Testimony About Jesus?

“Historical evidence moves us a long way towards
demonstrating our belief; as a result, the faith that is
necessary to fill in the remaining gap is reasonable.”

—CRAIG BLOMBERG

T
HE
G
OSPEL
A
CCORDING TO
N
ON
-C
HRISTIANS

In A.D. 66, Jews in Palestine initiated a revolt against Roman rule that—to put it mildly—the Romans did not appreciate. The emperor sent troops led by General Vespasian to squash the rebellion and regain control of rebel areas. In 67, Vespasian laid siege to the rebel town of Jotapata in Galilee. In the forty-seventh day of that siege, a young Jewish revolutionary chose to surrender to the superior Roman army rather than commit suicide—a fate many of his countrymen had chosen. That young man won favor with Vespasian and was later taken to Rome by General Titus, Vespasian’s son, after Titus destroyed Jerusalem and the Jewish temple in 70.

That young man was Flavius Josephus (ca. 37-–ca. 100), who ultimately became the greatest Jewish historian of his time. Josephus began his historical writings in Rome while serving as a historian for the Roman emperor Domitian. It was there that he authored his autobiography and two major historical works. One of those works is his now-famous
Antiquities of the Jews,
which he finished in about A.D. 93. In book 18, chapter 3, section 3 of that work, Josephus, who was not a Christian, wrote these words:

At this time [the time of Pilate] there was a wise man who was called Jesus. His conduct was good and (he) was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. But those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive; accordingly he was perhaps the Messiah, concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders.
¹

That wasn’t Josephus’s only mention of Jesus.
²
In another passage from
Antiquities,
Josephus revealed how the new high priest of the Jews (Ananus the younger) took advantage of a gap in Roman rule to kill James, the brother of Jesus. It was A.D. 62, and the Roman governor Festus died suddenly in office. Three months elapsed before his successor, Albinus, could get to Judea, allowing ample time for Ananus to do his dirty work. Josephus describes the incident this way:

Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he [Ananus the high priest] assembled the Sanhedrin of the judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, [or some of his compan-ions], and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned.
³

So here we have not only another first-century reference to Jesus, but confirmation that he had a brother named James who, obviously, was not well liked by the Jewish authorities. Could it be that James was martyred because he was the leader of the Jerusalem church, as the New Testament implies?
⁴

Just how many non-Christian sources are there that mention Jesus? Including Josephus, there are ten known non-Christian writers who mention Jesus within 150 years of his life.
⁵
By contrast, over the same 150 years, there are nine non-Christian sources who mention Tiberius Caesar, the Roman
emperor
at the time of Jesus.
⁶
So discounting all the Christian sources, Jesus is actually mentioned by one more source than the Roman emperor. If you include the Christian sources, authors mentioning Jesus outnumber those mentioning Tiberius 43 to 10!
⁷

Some of these non-Christian sources—such as Celsus, Tacitus, and the Jewish Talmud—could be considered
anti-Christian
sources. While these works do not have any eyewitness testimony that contradicts events described in the New Testament documents, they are works written by writers whose tone is decidedly anti-Christian. What can we learn from them and the more neutral non-Christian sources? We learn that they admit certain facts about early Christianity that help us piece together a storyline that is surprisingly congruent with the New Testament. Piecing together all ten non-Christian references, we see that: