A reader writes:
I have an issue that comes up in my classroom often enough. Throughout the year I present and flesh out a list of different reasons to my students why Catholicism is the one, true religion. Included among those reasons are (a) trusting the biblical testimony about Jesus and His miracles, and (b) the collective testimony of 2 billion people today professing belief in Christ and His teachings.
Some students will typically respond that the same two things could be said for Islam–people believe the Qur’an’s testimony about Muhammad and his alleged miracles, and there are alot of Muslims in the world today, too. There question ultimately is: Why should we accept these two reasons when they support Christianity but reject them when they support Islam? I do have a response to this question, but I would be curious to know how you would deal with it.
I would be careful about using the two billion people argument. One might suppose that God has a desire to reach the greatest number of humans and thus would work to see that the true religion is the largest, this argument is subject to a number of significant objections:
- The fact that Christianity is the largest at the moment doesn’t mean that it always was or always will be (indeed, Jesus seems to indicate that it will end up small). Why should we prefer this time period?
- During much of world history, the number of worshippers of the true God has been very, very small. This seems to cast doubt on the supposition used to support the argument.
- To the extent the argument provides evidence for Christianity, it seems to provide half as much evidence for Islam, there being half the number of Muslims in the world that there are Christians.
It thus seems to me that I’d stay away from this argument, at least as here articulated and interpreted. It may have some evidential value, but that seems to be only very limited.
It is possible to argue for the Church as a moral miracle that points to God, but the argument that will need to be made will involve much more than what is presented here.
As to how to defend the first claim, here we are on much firmer ground.
If you read the Qur’an, one of the recurrent themes that comes up with tiresome frequency is the question of why Muhammad can’t perform a miracle. In contrast to Jesus, who performed many miracles in his career, Muhammad seems unable to cough up any. Apparently people were regularly asking Muhammad to perform a miracle so that they might believe what he says (or to prove that he was no prophet at all by his failure to perform them) and he dictated suras explaining why he can’t do so. These suras tend to say the following things (or variations on them) each time the question is raised:
- Muhammad is only a prophet and so can only do what God lets him.
- Just look at creation! That’s a miracle!
- At the end of the world there will be the resurrection of the dead, and that’s a miracle.
- You’ll get yours for disbelieving God’s prophet!
Not a very convincing set of replies.
The few miracles that are attributed to Muhammad are problematic in various ways: (a) they are not clearly miraculous (e.g., "Hey! We won this battle against our enemies instead of losing it!"), (b) they are based on doubtful interpretations of verses in the Qur’an, or (c) they are based on late sources that do not appear to go back to the time of Muhammad.
By contrast, the evidence for Christianity’s miraculous origin is abundant.
This is not to say that every individual miracle Jesus performed can be verified. In fact, the great majority cannot be at this late date, when all of the eyewitnesses have been dead for so many centuries.
But the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, taken together, are the subject of a very powerful apologetic. Numerous alternatives for these can be tried (the Lord, liar, lunatic trilemma, the testimony of the apostles under pain of death, the failure of alternative explanations), but in the end the evidence supports the fact that Jesus both rose from the dead and then rose from the earth.
Other religions may have reports of miracles, but no other religion has miracles that can withstand the type of cross-examination (no pun intended) that the Resurrection and Ascension can. Therefore, no other religion has the kind of miraculous evidence for its veracity that Christianity does. This gives us a reason to believe in Christianity.
Not to mention the famous confusion between Miriam and Maryam. 😉
I have always found the most convincing argument is that if you look at the nature of Christianity (and Judaism) it is fundamentally different than any other religion. While the NT has its share of revelation, on whole, both OT and NT are grounded in the recounting of events that occur throughout salvation history. Christianity is not based on the ‘revelations’ of Jesus. It is based on the historical fact of Jesus’ life and ministry. On what he did and said (most importantly his Passion and Resurrection). Believe the accounts or not, the gospels were accounts of deeds done. Jesus didn’t go into a trance and receive some ‘secret’ revelation from God that no one else could verify. He lived and interacted with the world and based upon his life and deeds (miracles included), we have our faith.
Some can question the validity of what’s claimed as being myth or false. But the outside evidence (outside of Jesus himself) is the testimony of the eyewitness (in some cases), or disciples of the eyewitness, and the early Christian community. ‘Yes, we saw him raised, we ate with him, and we touched him.’ In most cases, these witnesses to his life and ministry were even willing to die for this conviction. This seems to me to go well beyond just trusting the personal charisma of Jesus (as awesome as that might have been). This is unique among religions from what I have studied. Much of Jewish history in the OT falls into the same category.
In contrast, take any other religion and it usually boils down to 1 dude who says that he/she has a direct pipeline to God and is going to reveal the REAL truth to us. Mohammed’s revelations, Joseph Smith’s golden tablets (Mormonism), Buddha’s enlightenment, etc., etc., etc. They always come down to the secret correspondence between a single individual and God which can not be validated and testified to by no one besides the ‘seer’ themselves. Unlike Christianity, these religions due ultimately boil down to the charisma of the individual seer. Can they convince enough people (to start a movement) that the secret that’s been specially revealed to them is the real deal.
I’m with Steve.
It seems to me that among the monotheistic religions that claim some basis in divine revelation, we can distinguish two basic kinds:
Whatever miracle-claims Islam does or doesn’t make, it is essentially an ethical monotheism, a religion about our duty to God rather than His saving works on our behalf.
For various reasons, apologetically speaking, I think it makes sense to give more serious consideration to the claim that God has intervened in history to save us (i.e., Judaism and Christianity) than to the claim that He has revealed himself to So-and-so. There’s more there there to investigate, for one thing. It offers a greater hope (which is better news, that God has revealed himself to us or that He has come to save us?). And it makes more of a difference (which matters more, whether Muhammed or Guru Narak is God’s prophet, or whether or not Jesus died on the cross?).
Jimmy–
Think that this contrast might be part of the reason Islam denies the Crucifixion and Resurrection?
Since we’re talking about the Rsurrection and Ascension being great “proofs” of Christianity, I have a question to ask that I hope someone can answer.
Does anyone have a good reason or supposition why the Ascension wasn’t mentioned in Matthew’s or John’s Gospel accounts. John’s omission could be chalked up to the Ascension being covered in Acts, Luke and Mark. However, if Matthew wrote his Gospel first, why would he omit such an important event? I realize omission doesn’t prove it DIDN’T happen, but this still is proving to be a challenge to my faith.
This is something I’ve been chewing on for a while and hope to find a solid answer.
God Bless.