Persuasion vs Proof

My first internet chat signature read: “No matter what your opinion, it can never alter Truth. Isaiah 55:8”. This Bible verse: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.” was the Lord speaking to Israel who was in their unrepentant state [Isaiah 6,7]. Even though they had plenty of proof from their own history that God was sovereign and blessed obedience as well as punished disobedience they remained unpersuaded toward repentance. Persuasion and proof are different things.

A good example for our nation today is our nearly 40 trillion dollar national debt. This is real debt with huge interest costs. Everyone knows this can’t go on without either a currency default or increased inflation. It only takes simple arithmetic to prove this. However, our country ignores the facts, acting as if this is false. We are not persuaded.

Let’s consider the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Is it true or false?

The movie “The Most Reluctant Convert” told the spiritual story of C. S. Lewis walking from his atheistic belief to believing in an intelligent creator to monotheism to Judaism and ultimately to Christianity. Lewis was very acquainted with myths of other religions, especially of those where a resurrection was claimed to have occurred. After mulling over these source documents he came to the conclusion time and again: no resurrection ever happened. He knew enough psychology and its specialty epistemology: how we know what we know, to only accept those resurrection stories as false because of no proof. His path from Judaism to Christianity was influenced by J. R. R. Tolkien but perhaps more importantly his friend T.D. “Harry” Weldon, an Oxford scholar and philosopher, who was a militant atheist. Harry said the New Testament was authentic and believable. This troubled C. S. Lewis. He had dismissed the Christian claim because he didn’t want to admit the source documents of the New Testament, especially the 4 actual testimonies contained within the 4 gospels, appeared genuine, different from all the other myths. Perhaps his last step which took him to accept Christianity was his reasonable conclusion that he had no logical way to say Jesus could not rise from the dead. The only thing he had was his own false opinion which was unreasonable!

Kurt Godel, a mathematician and logician, and close friend of Albert Einstein proved that the logic system as well as mathematics had to have intuitive axioms in order to exist. It cannot be 100% self contained. In other words there had to be something, he called “intuition”, to make logic and mathematics be able to have meaning. Kurt was strongly opposed to materialism. Using philosophical deduction he came to believe in an afterlife. It is unclear if he knew he was fulfilling Ecclesiastes 3:11 where God is mentioned as setting eternity in the human heart.

Greg Bahnsen, who earned his PhD in Epistemology, used Godel’s work in his research as well as in his debates with atheists. He showed this “intuition” of Godel to be the Christian Triune God which not only transcends logic and mathematics; but also time, and both the physical universe and metaphysics itself. Then, using this Christian worldview (The Triune God) presupposition, all of life then makes reasonable sense.

I’m not saying non Christians cannot use logic. Both unbelievers as well as Christians have used logic, research, mathematics, etc. to extend human knowledge in many ways. However, absent from the Christian worldview how extensive can you be about what is true and what is false? If the true vs false quest is only using naturalism it breaks down. For instance, using an example in metaphysics, what is love? Is it just an emotion? Is it a commitment? Love is one of those things that intersects with morality where true vs false using only naturalism is very subjective. This gives rise to skepticism, meaning, something is wrong with this true vs false process.

Christians themselves also have very subjective interpretations of our own Bible(s). This could be claimed by a non Christian that a Christian worldview is logically invalid. However, this doesn’t disprove the presupposition that the Bible, as the Word of God, stands with our Christian worldview. It only affirms it by upholding the Bible as having absolute authority where only the human understanding may be false. The most important and universally accepted truth within the Christian worldview is the resurrection of Jesus.

You have a choice. Did Jesus rise from the dead? Is this true or false? Note that you don’t have a third option. Either he did or he did not. Please don’t stop before considering the proof. Also be persuaded. Unlike our fiat dollar, much more is at stake – for all eternity.