What does the death of some of the first followers of Jesus’ tell us about what they knew?
Easter is a time of year that seems to bring sceptics out of the woodwork. The proverbial Grinches (wrong holiday, I know) find this to be a natural time of year to rain on the parade of Christians celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus. I still recall listening to the debate between William Lane Craig and Brian Edwards on the resurrection a few Easters ago (gosh, has it been that long? The year 2001 or 2000, I forget). You can check that debate out for yourself – Link to the debate.
It’s only fair, then, that Christians take this opportunity to capitalise on the surprising flimsiness of some of the sceptical arguments out there (hence my last post on the supposed virgin birth of Buddha), and also to continue to illustrate the way that the biblical account of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus stands up well to critical scrutiny.
So here’s a brief thought to consider for today: Why were some (although not all, or even most) of the early disciples martyred? What was the reason for killing them? That’s something of a no-brainer. They were killed for their proclamation of their religious beliefs in an effort to convert the local populaces where they lived. They proclaimed the message of the resurrection of their teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, and it cost them.
It has finally arrived, episode 25. It’s a bit of a different topic for me, not very philosophical, I guess a little theological, just some ideas that have been on my mind a bit lately about how we should approach the world and what it means to be a Christian in it.
Is Christian hope all about going to heaven, rather than you-know-where?
Did the Church conspire to hide the truth about other Gospels that did not make it into the Bible?
Is Jesus just Osiris with a new face? In Episode 19 I look at the sceptical argument claiming that Christianity was really just a collection of beliefs borrowed from pagan religions, and that Jesus was just a re-hash of one or many other Messiah or god-man figures. As there would be no way to deal with all of these other religions in one episode, I’ve chosen to use the example of the ancient Egyptian deity Osiris. In short, the sceptical argument is not particularly well supported by the facts.
Here it is, Episode 18. Here I draw on the work of the fourth century bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius. His work called The Incarnation of the Word is my all-time favourite work from the Church Fathers, and I think it gives us excellent theological reasons for adopting annihilationism. Along the way, it invites a theological storm over what it meant for Christ to become subject to death as one of us.
