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PEP Talk Podcast With David Barrie

With the Coronavirus lockdown, many of us are having our relationships deeply disturbed as we struggle to connect with others from a distance. What impact does this have on the gospel? This time on PEP Talk, Andy and Kristi speak with small town pastor and football chaplain David Barrie about connecting and sharing with others in our churches, sports clubs and our communities.

With David Barrie PEP Talk

Our Guest

David Barrie is one of the pastors of Pitlochry Baptist Church in Highland Perthshire. He has served as a chaplain in Scottish Football since 2001, and for the past 8 seasons, chaplain to St Johnstone Football Club in Perth.

A New Dawn for Apologetics

I have waited my whole life to read The Lord of the Rings to my kids. Last night, we hit my favourite scene, in which the shield-maiden Éowyn confronts the Witch-king of Angmar: a terrifying agent of evil, before whom all, but she, have fled.
When Éowyn challenges this undead King, he mocks her with the words of a prophecy. “Thou fool! No living man may hinder me!” But Éowyn, who has gone into battle disguised, laughs at the line. She pulls her helmet off, her hair flows free, “No living man am I,” she says, and kills her foe. What looked like a promise of victory for the enemy only prophesied defeat.
After nine years working with Christian professors at leading secular universities, I believe we are on the edge of a similar reveal. If we look beyond the secularising West, which prophesies Christianity’s demise, to the global stage, we’ll discover that Christianity is thriving and growing, while the proportion of people without religious affiliation declines.
If we look more closely at each seeming roadblock to faith, like the three examples below, they turn out to be signposts to Christ.

1. Diversity

Christianity is an exclusivist faith. We claim Jesus is Lord, regardless of race or place or culture. But rather than pulling against diversity, as many assume, Christianity is the greatest movement for diversity in all of history. Jesus tore through the racial and cultural barriers of his day (John 4:5–29) and commanded his followers to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). Two thousand years later, Christianity is not only the largest global worldview (and expected to remain so) but also the most racially and culturally mixed.
To be sure, Christians have sinned time and again in this respect, and turned the love-across-differences (to which Christ calls us) into hatred, racism, and xenophobia. But the New Testament texts and the global church are the two greatest rallying points for diversity in all of history. Indeed, far from stamping out diversity, Christianity insists on it.

2. Science

Christianity proclaims an all-powerful Creator God. But far from that belief pitting us against science, it aligns us with the very origins of the modern scientific method.
The first empirical scientists believed that the God who created the universe is rational, and so they hypothesised that he built the universe according to rational laws. But they also believed this God is free, so the only way to find out what those laws are was to go and look. These two beliefs laid the foundation for empirical science, the project (in early astronomer Johannes Kepler’s words) of “thinking God’s thoughts after him.”
To be sure, science can raise complex theological questions, but Christians have been at the forefront of science from the first, and today, there are Christians at the cutting edge of every scientific field that is thought to have discredited Christianity. Rather than conceding science to atheism, we should be thrilled to discover more about God’s world — not because we don’t believe in a Creator, but precisely because we do (Revelation 4:11).

3. Sexuality

Believing that sex belongs only in marriage between one man and one woman puts us at odds with unbelieving friends. Indeed, we may find ourselves accused of hatred and bigotry. Rather than being a tiny candle in the wind of progressive morality, however, biblical sexual ethics are well supported by the data around human flourishing.
For women in particular, increasing numbers of sexual partners correlates with more sadness, depression, and suicidal ideation, while for both sexes, stable marriage is measurably good for one’s mental and physical health. Married people have more and better sex than their unmarried peers, and the happiness-maximising number of sexual partners in the last year turns out to be one!
When it comes to same-sex sexuality, we are utterly at odds with our immediate culture. But in this area as well, Christianity has more resources than most think. Some of the first Christians experienced same-sex attraction and came to Christ with homosexual histories (1 Corinthians 6:9–11). The same is true of the church today, as increasing numbers of same-sex attracted Christians are standing up for biblical sexual ethics on a costly platform of personal sacrifice.
The Bible calls us to firm boundaries around sex. But these are not hateful barriers designed to keep people out. Rather, they are marks on the playing field of human life, designed to create space for different kinds of love, each mirroring a different aspect of God’s love. In light of this, the Bible calls us to a particular model of marriage, a high view of singleness, and deep intimacy in friendships, where we are brothers and sisters (Matthew 12:50), one body (Romans 12:5), “knit together in love” (Colossians 2:2), and comrades in arms (Philippians 2:25). Indeed, Paul calls his friend Onesimus his “very heart” (Philemon 12) and tells the Thessalonians he was among them “like a nursing mother taking care of her own children” (1 Thessalonians 2:7).
In true Christian community, no one is left out. So, our response to the secular mantra “Love is love” need not be hostility or defensiveness. Rather, it can be our single Saviour’s radical claim: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

The Ultimate Answer

In the area of sexuality, as in every other area of apologetics, Jesus lies at the heart of the answer. We believe that marriage is one man and one woman for life because it models Christ’s love for his church (Ephesians 5:22–33). We believe that the scientific method works because the universe is sustained by the all-powerful word of God (Hebrews 1:3). We believe in love across racial and cultural difference because one day people from every tribe and tongue and nation will worship Jesus in fellowship together (Revelation 7:9–10).
Just as Éowyn’s revelation of her sex spelled death for the Witch-king of Angmar, so time and again, when we look more closely at supposed obstacles to faith, they point us to Christ. So, let’s not sound the retreat. Instead, let’s arm ourselves with love, prayer, and humility — and with the best insights we can glean from God’s world through careful study — and let’s meet our unbelieving friends where they are.
Christ’s love compels us to embrace the hardest questions, knowing his truth will surely win the day.


Rebecca McLaughlin grew up in the UK and holds a Ph.D. in English literature from Cambridge University and a theology degree from Oak Hill College in London. In 2008, she moved to America and spent 9 years with The Veritas Forum. In September 2017, she co-founded Vocable Communications. Rebecca is the author of “Confronting Christianity; 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion”, which is available here and she blogs at https://www.rebeccamclaughlin.org/ from where this article was republished with permission.

Book: Neither Bomb nor Bullet – Benjamin Kwashi, Archbishop on the Front Line

Ben Kwashi’s story is nothing if not remarkable. In this easy-to-read book he charts his life from his typical Nigerian childhood right through to his international leadership in the church today. The context of that story is that it takes place in the years in which Nigeria was plunged into conflict, and violence engulfed his own family in the process.

Nicely weaving his own story of being a happy, if not rather precocious child, onto the wider history of Nigeria; Ben Kwashi invites the reader both into his own world, and into that of his country. His descriptions of his own life are vivid and engaging, while his brief introduction to Nigerian history is fascinating. I was especially interested in his very mixed assessment of the legacy of British Imperialism. Whilst on one hand he acknowledges some of the benefits of education and government; on the other he his scathing about some of the policies the British pursued which have fostered inter-ethnic conflict ever since they left in 1960. One of these was that Christian churches had been banned from fully operating in some of the Northern provinces, which might have disrupted British trade with the dominant Muslim population. Whilst inter-religious tolerance was the norm in other parts of the country and the Christian churches were free to share the gospel and plant churches, it is in these places in the North where the British had prioritised trade, that have seen the subsequent spiralling violence. As a side note, I was fascinated by the fact that whilst Christian faith is often unfairly criticised as being an element of colonialism, here the British colonists actively opposed the church’s mission.

The book moves on to discuss Kwashi’s Army career, and his youthful exuberance; something that was interrupted by his profound Christian conversion as a young man. Almost immediately after finding a real and vibrant faith in Christ, Kwashi felt the call to evangelism and began preaching. Soon ordained in the Anglican Church, he had a reforming zeal which was accompanied by church growth and opposition to his efforts. He also speaks of his remarkable wife Gloria, his difficulty in persuading her to marry him; and what a truly remarkable woman she is. She is now also the subject of a biography in her own right.

The most significant part of this story, and the one which has brought it to the attention of the world however is that as an Archbishop in Jos, he has been in the frontline of the terror attacks upon Christians in Nigeria over the last two decades. First of all, Boko Haram, the militant Islamist Group, which has associations with Islamic State, and is armed and funded from the Middle East, has sustained a targeted campaign of terror, designed to drive Christians from the country. While the fate of the Chibok school girls is well known the systematic destruction of Christian communities in a sustained jihad is not; nor is the complicity of the state in allowing these attacks to remain unpunished. Kwashi’s book is an attempt to tell the world about what has gone on. Secondly, the raids by well-armed Fulani herdsmen are documented. Kwashi traces the roots of this back into historical ethnic conflict, but also demonstrates that the current wave of violence and killing has come from the Islamisation and heavy-arming of the Fulani.

Kwashi himself has had his churches and family home attacked, his wife brutally assaulted, and many parishoners killed. He still doesn’t know why the assassins sent to kill him walked away without finishing their task, as he lay praying on the floor of his office. Helping the church to form a suitable response to these killings has been a key part of Kwashi’s ministry. Alongside effectively adopting countless orphans, Kwashi has worked for peace and reconciliation in Jos – alongside local Imams. He is deeply perplexed about the government’s lack of intervention to maintain peace, safety and the rule of law in Northern Nigeria, and writes extensively about his appeals to them to uphold their constitutional responsibilities. Yet he is also conflicted about what a Christian response should be to unremitting extreme violence. On one hand, he is totally condemning of those from his own community who have resorted to extreme and illegal acts of revenge and violence. While on the other hand, he notes that violence has often been abated when villagers have offered some self-defence, and that Christians offering non-violent resistance have been simply annihilated.

One of the interesting things is that throughout this fast-moving, (and very moving) dramatic story; the core of Ben Kwashi’s life and faith remains his faith in Christ and his call to evangelism. While he has led a global movement in Anglicanism (GAFCON), attended Lambeth Conferences, and spoken to Presidents – he seems far more animated when describing people responding to his preaching and putting their faith in Jesus. The book closes with pastoral concerns, and some serious exhortations for Christians in the UK to take Christ’s call to evangelism and discipleship seriously; and for the US church to disentangle itself from politics.

“Neither Bomb nor Bullet” isn’t a work of complex theology, academic analysis of the human condition, or poetic response to injustice; but it is a rich, raw and extraordinary story which leaves an indelible mark on the reader. It is a gospel-centred narrative, which is something of a wake-up call to those of us in more peaceful parts of the world firstly to pray and support the church in places such as Nigeria; but also to think hard about the apathy that has infected large parts of the western church – and what we can learn from true evangelists like Ben Kwashi.


Neither Bomb nor Bullet is available online here: £8.19 (paperback)

Can I Choose My Own Identity? | Andy Bannister

“What’s wrong with trying to choose my own identity?” We live in a culture that tells us that we can be whatever we want to be: choose the gender, sexuality, political tribe, or any other construct that works for you. In this highly topical SHORT ANSWERS episode, Andy Bannister explores how this idea is actually tearing us apart from one another—and how the pressure of building our identity is more than we were designed to bear. In contrast, we’ll see how at the heart of the message of Jesus lies the incredible offer of a new identity that is safe, secure, and life-giving.

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A Beginner’s Guide to the Evidence for the Resurrection

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There are 5 Major Points of Interest you should know pertaining to the resurrection of Jesus.
1. Jesus’s resurrection is the ultimate test pertaining to whether Christianity is true.

Almost all historians of Jesus agree that, at the very minimum, Jesus claimed that he had a special relationship with God who had chosen him to usher in his kingdom. Among other things, they also agree that Jesus challenged the Jewish leadership and accused them of various misdeeds. The Gospels inform us that Jesus’s critics responded by challenging him to give proof to support his claims. On one of those occasions, the Gospel of John reports that Jesus answered he would rise from the dead after they had killed him (John 2:18-20). In this response, Jesus provided a test by which others could know if he was the real deal. The apostle Paul would later state that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, our faith is futile, God has not forgiven us, our loved ones who have died as followers of Jesus are forever gone, and those who are persecuted for their faith do so needlessly. In that case, Christians should party hard now, because this life is all that there is (1 Corinthians 15:12-19, 30-32). There are many items about Jesus and the Bible that are debated. But few are as important as the resurrection of Jesus. For if Jesus truly rose from the dead, Christianity is true. So, even if there were errors in the Bible, even if the author of Genesis had actually borrowed the story of Noah’s flood from the Epic of Gilgamesh, even if Israel had wiped out her enemies, not by God’s command but, by the command of its brutal kings who had claimed it was God’s will, these would only call into question the divine inspiration of the biblical literature. However, if Jesus rose from the dead, Christianity would still be true, even if certain reports in the Bible were not.

2. Historical Investigation yields “probability” rather than “certainty.”

Historians are in a predicament similar to those shared by geologists, evolutionary biologists, and archaeologists: They cannot use a time machine to return to the past in order to verify their conclusions. So, they employ strictly controlled method and choose the hypothesis that accounts for the data better than other hypotheses. That preferred hypothesis is regarded as what “probably” occurred.

3. There are a number of facts about Jesus’s fate that are nearly universally accepted by historians.

These are (1) Jesus’s death by crucifixion under the orders of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate in April of either AD 30 or AD 33. (2) Shortly thereafter, a number of his disciples had experiences that convinced them Jesus had risen from the dead and had appeared to them. Although not enjoying a universal consensus, roughly 80 percent of historians also think some of the appearances were experienced by groups. (3) A Jewish leader named Paul, who was in the throes of persecuting the Christian Church, had an experience he was convinced was the risen Jesus appearing to him; an experience that forever altered the course of his life, leading him to become a Christian who so passionately proclaimed the message of Jesus that he willingly endured persecution, beatings, imprisonment, and martyrdom.

4. The Resurrection Hypothesis accounts for the known facts far better than competing hypotheses.

The hypothesis that Jesus rose from the dead easily accounts for the experiences of many of Jesus’ disciples that led them to believe the risen Jesus had appeared to them. It accounts for their claim that Jesus had appeared to several individuals and to a few groups. It also explains why the persecutor of the Christian Church named Paul came to believe the risen Jesus had appeared to him. The alternate hypothesis most popular among non-Christian scholars is that these experiences were nothing more than hallucinations. However, the Hallucination Hypothesis does not do as well explaining the appearances of the risen Jesus as does the Resurrection Hypothesis. Multiple studies have shown that while half of those in the frame of mind to experience an hallucination actually do, only 7 percent of candidates for hallucinations experience them visually, as opposed to other modes, such as auditory, tactile (i.e., touch), kinesthetic (i.e., sense of motion), gustatory (i.e., taste), and olfactory (i.e., smell). Yet, the earliest claims are that Jesus appeared (visual) to an unthinkable 100 percent of his disciples. Moreover, since hallucinations are false sensory perceptions of something not actually present, the identical hallucination can no more be experienced by a group than every member of a group participating in the same dream simultaneously. And since Paul was far from grieving over Jesus’s death, he would not have been a good candidate for experiencing a hallucination of the risen Jesus that was so powerful that it convinced him to become one of his followers. Although, in this short article, we have only been able to compare the ability of the Resurrection and Hallucination Hypotheses to account for the facts that are widely agreed upon by scholars, there are no other hypotheses that can account for those facts as well as the Resurrection Hypothesis.

5. Conclusion: Christ is Risen Indeed!

Since the Resurrection Hypothesis accounts for the widely agreed upon facts in a manner far better than competing hypotheses do, the historian can conclude that Jesus probably rose from the dead. It follows, then, that Christianity is probably true. Because this conclusion can be arrived at apart from faith, one is certainly rational to believe Jesus rose from the dead and to become one of his followers. And, if Jesus truly rose as the evidence suggests, there are important matters that can be inferred. We can know that each of us has intrinsic value, since we were created by God. This means that YOU possess great value because God created you. We can also know that God loves us, that we are never alone, and that following Jesus yields eternal life, which opens the door to fellowship with God in this life and to enjoy him forever in heaven.


Michael R. Licona, Ph.D. is associate professor of theology at Houston Baptist University and president of Risen Jesus, Inc. He is the author of several books, including The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (IVP Academic) and Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? What We Can Learn From Ancient Biography (Oxford University Press). Visit Mike’s web site: https://www.risenjesus.com and YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2KiV88L.

Further Reading:
Intro Level: Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. LiconaThe Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2014)
Intro Level: Michael R. LiconaPaul Meets Muhammad (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006)
Intermediate Level and for Specialists: Michael R. LiconaThe Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2010)

Debating the Resurrection of Jesus

St Andrews University Christian Union hosted a debate entitled “Did Jesus rise from the dead?” Andy Bannister author of The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist, went up against John Richards who wrote his book Theist!: The dreadful consequences of thinking like a Theist in response to Andy’s book. On paper at least this looked to be a fascinating debate.

Andy began by addressing the accounts of resurrection on their own terms, looking at whether the sources could be seen to be trustworthy and setting up criteria for assessment (do we have multiple sources, how early are they, is there eye witness testimony etc), as well asking about the behaviour of the disciples following the death of Jesus and the questioning why a fake first century story would base itself of the testimony of women). As well as relying on a huge variety of sources from secular, Jewish, Christian scholars, Andy effectively laid out some of the key reasons for believing the resurrection is based on some level of evidence, rather than a blind misguided desire to believe that God is real.

Conversely John opted for three main strategies of attack, firstly by claiming that Resurrection often forms a key part of ancient mythologies (notably Egyptian and Greek). John then proceeded to argue that source material is inherently untrustworthy. Finally, he argued that we can only trust that which we can prove via the scientific method, meaning we cannot believe resurrection occurred because it goes against that which science says is possible.

Personally, I found most of John’s arguments to be weak and lacking academic rigour, with some obvious problems in his logic. For example, Andy roundly destroyed his idea that resurrection is to be found in many of the world’s religions citing Johnathan Z. Smiths work Dying and Rising Gods. John argued that Constantine doctored the New Testament writings in AD300 (a belief that I believe was made popular by the Da Vinci Code in 2003) but provided no source material (academic or otherwise) for why this would be the case. In addition, John failed to address the idea that resurrection is a supernatural event which is the very reason it’s important in Christian history (and that’s skipping over the issue that the only things we can believe and those that are empirically proven is in itself, a statement which cannot be proven). John did show his foresight in producing a list of academics he believed Andy would reference, Yet unfortunately he was unable to reference many world leading scholars himself to address Andy’s position, which given the debate was at one of the world’s oldest universities isn’t a strategy I would have adopted myself.

In the end however, both participants came down to the position that this is something that this does come down to faith. Andy told the audience about how his life was changed by the person of Jesus and essentially argued that this is a topic that is worth your time.

Looking back at the event, Annie, one of the leaders of the CU added:

One first year told me his friends from halls went in firmly against the claim of Jesus’ resurrection, but left almost convinced the other way! Two other members also spent an hour with a guy who’d come by himself having been given a flyer, who was convinced that science held all the answers to life and was stunned by the fact that there were rational and compelling arguments for Christianity. All in all, we are so encouraged and excited by the ways we’re seeing God using this event.”

If you are interested in watching the debate, you can find it on YouTube, although none of the important information on the screen was captured by the camera.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4mR2K9y6aM.


Jack Johnson is a PhD student at the university of St. Andrews in Divinity (specifically systematic Theology). he did a MLitt in Systematic and Historical Theology at St Andrews and a BA (hons) in Christian Theology and Politics at Liverpool Hope University, where he was also Student Union President. He is originally from Liverpool, but has lived in various parts of England prior to coming to Scotland.

To find out more about St Andrews University Christian Union click here.

PEP Talk Podcast With Greg Ganssle

Sometimes Christians focus on proving that Christianity is true, failing to realise that many people don’t care that it’s true. But what do they care about? Andy and Kristi are joined by Greg Ganssle to discuss how focussing our conversations on the deepest human desires can bring us right to the heart of the gospel. Greg also reminds us that “Any conversation that continues is a successful conversation.”

Greg recently contributed two articles to our “A Beginner’s Guide to Apologetics” series: The Best Fit Argument Part One and Part Two.

With Greg Ganssle PEP Talk

Our Guest

Greg Ganssle is Professor of Philosophy at Biola University in Los Angeles. Greg worked in campus ministry before earning his doctorate at Syracuse University in 1995. He worked at Yale University for nine years before joining Biola. He is author of several books, including Our Deepest Desires: How the Christian Story Fulfills Human Aspirations (IVP, 2017)

A Beginner’s Guide to the Argument from the Life of Jesus

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At the centre of the Christian faith is Jesus: the Resurrected Son of God. If Jesus is the Son of God, then how we respond to this is vitally important for this life – and the life to come. If Jesus isn’t the Son of God, then frankly Christianity is pointless and irrelevant.

The purpose of this short article is to focus on some of the evidence for the life of Jesus. Does this evidence point to Jesus being the Son of God? Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus will be covered in another article in this series.

So, what does the evidence say about the life of Jesus?

Jesus Really Existed

Historians have been extensively researching the historical evidence for Jesus for around 200 years. This research has come to the clear conclusion that the Jesus who Christians follow really existed. You may hear or read people suggesting otherwise – but this position has virtually no serious supporters among today’s historians (including many non-Christian historians) who specialise in this period of history.

The Historical Jesus

If today’s historians are agreed Jesus existed, what else do they agree upon? EP Sanders is one of today’s leading scholars on the historical Jesus. In his book: “The Historical Figure of Jesus”, Sanders provides a list of “secure facts” about Jesus – on which he says the majority of today’s historians are agreed. Here is a reprint of that list:

  • Jesus was born circa. 4 BCE, near the time of death of Herod the Great.
  • He spent his childhood and early adult years in Nazareth, a Galilean village.
  • He was baptised by John the Baptist.
  • He called disciples.
  • He taught in the towns, villages and countryside of Galilee (apparently not the cities).
  • He preached “the kingdom of God”.
  • About the year 30 [AD], he went to Jerusalem for Passover.
  • He created a disturbance in the Temple area.
  • He had a final meal with the disciples.
  • He was arrested and interrogated by Jewish authorities, specifically the high priest.
  • He was executed on the orders of the Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate.
  • [After His death] His disciples first fled.
  • They saw him ([but] in what sense is not certain) after his death.
  • As a consequence, they believed that he would return to found the kingdom.
  • They formed a community to await his return and sought to win others to faith in him as God’s Messiah.

You’ll notice that these “secure facts” are very close to what is described in the Biblical gospels. Which brings me to the next point.

The Gospels and New Testament Letters Can be Used for Historical Research

Historical research has concluded that the Gospels in the bible were written between 30 to 50 years after Jesus’ death. The letters the apostle Paul wrote were written even earlier than this – his first letter written just under 20 years after Jesus’ death. The letter attributed to Jesus’ brother James may be even earlier than this – possibly the mid to late 40’s AD.

Secondly, today’s historians are of the view that the Gospels and the New Testament letters we read today are largely identical to what was originally written.

There is undoubtedly debate among scholars about the accuracy of some of the events in the Gospels and some of the words spoken by Jesus. However, this is a focus on detail. The consensus view is that the Gospels provide a generally accurate picture of Jesus’ ministry – and of Jesus thinking and acting as if He was the Son of God.

Liar, Lunatic or Lord? (or Just Wrong?)

In his book “Mere Christianity” CS Lewis said the following about Jesus (sometimes called “The Trilemma”):

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.

The historical evidence shows Jesus thinking and acting as if He was the Son of God. If He wasn’t the Son of God, then He was either mad – or a terrible, malicious liar (given the disruption and persecution heaped on those who followed Him).

We have four detailed accounts of Jesus mission in the Gospels which historians tell us are pretty accurate. Do we see any hints of evidence of Jesus behaving like a lunatic or a malicious, pathological liar? Read the Gospels for yourself and see what you think.

You’ll notice I added a fourth option to the heading above. This is because some non-Christians dismiss CS Lewis’ trilemma by saying that Jesus was in some way honestly mistaken (or just wrong) that He was the Son of God. The argument is that people are wrong about all kinds of things in their lives. Why not Jesus about this?

The issue here is what you’re honestly mistaken about.

I’m sure you’ve been honestly mistaken about things in your life. It doesn’t necessarily make you mad. However, there are some things that you can be honestly mistaken about (like thinking you’re a poached egg or thinking you’re the Son of God) that also require you to have a screw loose.

In short, if you think you’re God then you’re either mad – or you are God.

Further, if you think you are God and, like Jesus, are prepared to do something about it by going on a mission that collects followers, challenges the established religious order and ends up getting you killed, then you really are mad – or God.

Conclusion

In an article of this size, I’m never going to cover the wealth of evidence pointing to Jesus being the Son of God. For example, I haven’t even touched on over 300 Old Testament prophesies fulfilled by Jesus – many of which couldn’t have been fulfilled by Jesus (the man) deliberately setting out to make sure He fulfilled them.

I also haven’t touched on the mass of evidence pointing to Jesus’ Resurrection being a historical event.

If what you’ve just read is too superficial, I’d suggest you do what I did before I became a follower of Jesus. Do your own research. There are plenty of books and online videos to check out. I’ve made a few book suggestions at the end of this article. For a summary of this evidence, there’s also the “Jesus: The Evidence” booklet – available as a free download or hard copy from the website jesustheevidence.com.


Photo of Derek MacIntyre

Derek McIntyre was an atheist until he read and considered the evidence for the life of Jesus. He lives in Scotland, and works in the water industry, and runs the website, Jesus the Evidence.

Further Reading 

EP Sanders “The Historical Figure of Jesus” (1995 Penguin Books)

Geza Vermes: “The Changing Faces of Jesus (2001 Penguin Books)

Geza Vermes: “The Passion” (2005 Penguin Books)

Geza Vermes: “The Resurrection” (2008 Penguin Books)

Dale Allison Jr: “Constructing Jesus” (2010 SPCK)

Maurice Casey: Jesus of Nazareth (2010 T&T Clark International)

Luke Timothy Johnston: “The New Testament – A Very Short Introduction” (2010 Oxford University Press)

James Beilby (Editor): The Historical Jesus: Five Views (2010 SPCK)

Jesus: The Evidence booklet. Available at jesustheevidence.com

Andy Bannister at American University DC – "Why it Matters What You Believe!"

While I was in the USA, I spoke at the American University in Washington DC. I was invited there by the CRU group, which is a student Christian group which used to be known as Campus Crusade for Christ.
They gave me the topic, “Does it matter what you believe?” The context is that the Christian students, are studying and living their Christian lives out on a very secular campus. They told me that they face a number of challenges there. One is that people say things like, “you can believe whatever you want – it doesn’t really matter.” However, the other challenge comes from the belief that ‘religious people’ are arrogant and intolerant.
They gave me half an hour to address both of those topics, to do two talks in one; which was something of a challenge! So the way I addressed it was to start with the idea that we can’t avoid the fact that some beliefs are mutually exclusive. That’s fairly easy to demonstrate, but the biggest problem we face in our society is how we can live together – despite those differences. So we discussed the idea of ‘tolerance’ – and the way in which tolerance as an ideology doesn’t actually work. “Tolerance” is actually a rather sneaky word, because it causes you to look down on the other person. I also pointed out that ‘religion’ is unfairly targeted in these debates – when people are equally divided about politics, and almost every other issue. Our society today is more divided than ever, and it seems that people have forgotten how to disagree agreeably. (For more about the use and abuse of the concept of tolerance, click here).
My conclusion was to argue that what we really need in order to deal with great divisions we face are two things; the first is a foundation for human dignity (recognising that other people, who are different from us are humans with inherent value, dignity and worth), and the second is a basis for humility. That is, while we must not under-estimate the value of others; we also must not over-estimate our own significance or think that the world rotates around any of us. The reason that that Christianity is important is because it is the only worldview that provides an adequate foundation for both those things. It provides a foundation for human dignity, it says that all human beings are made in the image of God – and therefore possess a inherent worth. However, it also provides a basis for humility – because Christianity is ‘the great humbler’, as it tells me that I am sinful enough that Jesus actually had to die to rescue me. So, if I am ever tempted to feel smug, arrogant or self-reliant, the Christian view of sin and redemption reminds me that I am a messed-up, broken sinner who needs Jesus. The good news of the gospel of course, is that Jesus was willing to die for people like us. It’s Tim Keller who so memorably put it like this in his book “the Reason for God”: “The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time.”
As usual we concluded with a time of Q&A, which was very friendly. Maybe they liked my British accent! It is however, always a privilege to serve groups like this, in all the different places we go.
Editor’s Note. Since Andy got back from the USA, Andrew Powars from the Washington CRU group wrote to say:

Recently Andy Bannister came to speak on “Is anything worth believing?” We replaced our normal women’s Bible study with the event with the purpose of it being outreach oriented. We invited the campus and had 25 students attend. Probably 15 Christians (from our group) who invited 10 of their (non-Christian) friends. Andy spoke for 30 minutes and answered questions for 30 minutes. I was in attendance and thought the event a great success. In following up with our students, they really enjoyed it, were greatly encouraged (specifically noting that they had not encountered intelligent Christian academic conversation on campus), and hope we can have more events like this in the future.  We really felt blessed to have Dr. Bannister speak.   (-Ed)

Short Answers AndyDr Andy Bannister is the Director of the Solas Centre for Public Christianity

Is God Against Our Freedom? | Andy Bannister

“Isn’t Christianity limiting and restrictive? Isn’t God against my freedom?” In this very Scottish themed episode of SHORT ANSWERS, Solas Director Andy Bannister asks whether people who raise this objection have possibly misunderstood something incredibly important about the very nature of freedom.

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"Religion Poisons Everything"

A commenter going enigmatically by “notme” once responded to my rundown of a controversy over Scripture classes in schools:

What has religion got to offer but War, Intolerance/hatred (of other religions and minority groups), and poverty? religion should not only be banned from classrooms but from the whole planet

I faithfully reproduce the comment as is, grammatical warts and all, keyed in, I imagine, in the first flush of a righteous indignation. They’re common accusations, straight out of the New Atheist playbook. Religious belief is irrational, snarling, psychologically and socially stunting. In the enduring formulation of Christopher Hitchens in God Is Not Great (2007): “Religion poisons everything.”
But underneath the cynicism, the absolutism, sometimes the smugness, I wonder if what I’m really hearing is pain. The pain of someone who sought grace in a church community and instead found judgement and guilt. The pain, perhaps, of someone who invested their trust in a Christian group or friend only to meet with hypocrisy or cruelty. If I listened with more imagination and humility, what I might hear is the lashing out of the wounded.
Both have a terrible legitimacy. Christians have, after all, tortured heretics, burned witches, hoarded wealth, propped up slavery, rubber-stamped colonialism, expelled or massacred entire Jewish communities, silenced women, persecuted gay people, and moved known child molesters from parish to parish. These are not accusations; they are history.
And not only history. You don’t have to look far—probably not much farther than the murky corners of our own hearts—to see the same old ugliness cropping up today: the self-righteousness, the love of respectability and comfort, the inertia and cowardice, the militant certitude, the blindness to inconvenient truths, the fear of difference, the fear of losing power, the fear of change or challenge.

On the Other Hand …

And yet if the gospel is true, it is nothing less than the master story of life on this planet—the re-connection of fallen, broken creatures to their Creator and his purposes for them. If it is true, won’t it work? Even allowing for the tenacity of sin and the bumpy work of sanctification, won’t it change things for the better, not just for the reconnected, but with ripples travelling far beyond them?
There’s plenty of evidence that this is exactly what’s happened in our world over the last two thousand years. That as followers of Jesus loved their neighbours as themselves, turned the other cheek, cared for the least of these, forgave as God forgave them, and let their light shine before others, the world changed dramatically.
It’s a tangled tale, but one corroborated by various high-profile atheists like popular ancient history writer Tom Holland. “In my morals and ethics,” he recently wrote, “I have learned to accept that I am not Greek or Roman at all, but thoroughly and proudly Christian.” Philosopher Jürgen Habermas insists that the egalitarianism underpinning all our freedoms and democratic ideals is the direct and exclusive legacy of the Judeo-Christian ethic: “Everything else is just idle postmodern talk.”
David Bentley Hart fleshes out the content of this debt in his book Atheist Delusions:

Even the most ardent secularists among us generally cling to notions of human rights, economic and social justice, providence for the indigent, legal equality, or basic human dignity … It is simply the case that we distant children of the pagans would not be able to believe in any of these things – they would never have occurred to us – had our ancestors not once believed that God is love, that charity is the foundation of all virtues, that all of us are equal before the eyes of God, that to fail to feed the hungry or care for the suffering is to sin against Christ, and that Christ laid down his life for the least of his brethren.

If both are true-if Christians gave the West things we all rather like, such as inalienable human value, democracy, charity, and humility, and also gave us the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials and South African apartheid – what then? How do we make sense of the disjunction?

Coping Strategies

There are quite a few coping strategies out there. Frankly, I’ve found them mostly inadequate. So, for the intrepid fellow traveler along the tangled byways of Christian history, here are a few friendly “Dead End” signs to mark roads not worth taking—and some suggestions for alternative routes.

1. “They weren’t really Christian.”

This one certainly looks inviting. In most Western societies for most of the last millennium, it’s been at least advantageous to identify with orthodox Christianity. Where Christian identity is default, plenty of things will happen under the banner of faith that bear little resemblance to the person and teaching of Jesus Christ.
But we can’t get ourselves off the hook this easily. Partly this is because disentangling the motivations of a medieval crusader or heresy inquisitor from the Bible is not straightforward. It’s entirely possible to make arguments from Scripture – in some cases, uncomfortably coherent arguments – in support of “holy” war, the auto-da-fé, racial hierarchies, anti-Semitism, environmental despoliation, and more.
Would practically all Christians today agree that those are gross abuses of the text? Yes. Are we so confident that our own interpretative frameworks are unimpeachable—our exegetical manoeuvres so free from the slant of self-interest—that we feel able to dismiss the faith of such mis-readers as pure sham? Hmm.

The uncomfortable truth is no one comes out of history with clean hands.

Our engagement with history is so often superficial and incredibly supercilious. We fail to acknowledge how indebted we are to these blinkered, striving men and women who came before for the very weapons we level against them. And we forget our own blinkers, the contempt and disbelief that future generations will no doubt reserve for us and our blind spots. As T. S. Eliot wrote in another context: “Some one said: ‘The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.’ Precisely, and they are that which we know.”
The uncomfortable truth is no one comes out of history with clean hands. The law of unintended consequences is too potent, the feet of even our most cherished heroes too caked with clay. This is not to abdicate the responsibility either to act justly or to repent of the sins of the past. But it is to advocate for a measure of historical humility, an appreciation for how difficult it is to draw straight lines in a cracked and crooked world as cracked and crooked people.
Miroslav Volf offers a more subtle version of “they weren’t real Christians” in his description of “thin” and “thick” religion. A “thin” religious commitment may well be genuine but is not given primacy in an adherent’s life. It therefore easily becomes “thinned out,” instrumentalised, serving as a justification for actions which spring from far different sources.
“Thick” faith, on the other hand, will be content-rich and potentially transformative. In the case of Christianity, it will prick and nudge those who hold it toward things like enemy-love, self-sacrifice, generosity to strangers, and forgiveness. This does not absolve Christians from violence done in the name of Christ but does suggest, as Volf puts it, that what is needed in response to religious violence is not less religion but more religion—of the “thick” kind.

2. “It’s not so bad in context.”

Again, this pathway isn’t impassable, but it probably won’t take you where you want to go. It’s true that most people would benefit from a more nuanced understanding of almost any historical episode you care to name. It’s true that our sense of many periods and events is so reductive and so selective as to be tantamount to myth.

Defensiveness is a very human reaction; repentance is (or ought to be) a very Christian one.

As a first or primary response to the wounded or the outraged, though, the history lessons seem less appropriate—and much less Christian—than a wholehearted and heartbroken admission of guilt. When critics accuse the church of hypocrisy, violence, misogyny, and the like, can we not concede that what they say has all too often been true? Defensiveness is a very human reaction; repentance is (or ought to be) a very Christian one.
My colleagues and I have been immersed in making a documentary (and more recently, writing a book) called For the Love of God: How the Church Is Better and Worse than You Ever Imagined. Making it has been both a bruising and, surprisingly, mightily heartening experience. One of the gratifying/depressing reactions we’ve had has been the number of secular viewers and critics who’ve found themselves pleasantly surprised by our candidness. “You are acknowledging all sorts of bad behaviour in the name of Christianity over the centuries!” exclaimed one interviewer in disbelief.
This should not be extraordinary. If anyone should be fluent in the language of confession, it’s a group of people who meet together week in and week out to admit that we have left undone what we ought to have done, and we have done what we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us.
To openly and without reservation own the wrongs of the past is the road less travelled, but alongside the advantage of honesty, it can also open up the possibility of a more engaged and fruitful conversation about the contributions as well as the failures of the church.

3. “The good outweighs the bad.”

Once more, it’s not that I don’t think the argument is valid. To the extent that it’s a meaningful thing to say, I sincerely believe the overall contribution of Christianity has been a positive one. But the wrongs are incontrovertible, and however much we might want to haggle over the scorecard, good deeds don’t cancel out evil ones.
In grappling with the most shameful and the most shining moments of Christian action in the world, my colleagues and I have been using a governing metaphor that audiences have loved. It rests on the distinction between a musical composition and its performance.
Take a sublime piece of music like Bach’s celebrated “Cello Suites,” and have a complete novice sit down to play them. The result will be far from sublime – but it shouldn’t affect your understanding of the genius of Bach as a composer. We know to distinguish between a good and a bad performance of the same composition. For believers and for sceptics alike, going back to Jesus and measuring the deeds of his followers against his teaching and example offers a solid way forward through the labyrinthine complexity of a very mixed history.
Jesus wrote a beautiful tune. Christians claim that it has never been bettered. When those who claim to follow Jesus have played in tune with him, that has been of great and unique benefit to the world. When they’ve played the tune atrociously, it’s caused harm untold. But the tune itself continues to sound down the arches of the years, calling each of us to our appointed place in the orchestra.

The Church’s ‘Double Consciousness’

In the course of making the film, we had a conversation with novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson. When asked about the widespread suspicion of the institutional church, she spoke movingly of people’s reaction to John Ames, the small-town pastor who narrates her novel Gilead.
“I do book signings,” Robinson says, “and people come up and talk to me and often they say, ‘I just love John Ames. He’s just like my pastor.’”
What she calls a “double consciousness” of the church is operative here—the contrast between a sort of “televised religion” and people’s actual experience of the church. “When you write about somebody and they say, he’s just like my pastor, he’s just like my uncle who’s a priest, they’re having a very deep recognition … But if you sat them down to describe a priest, a church, they would come up with the conventions that are everywhere now.”
There is something in this that’s profoundly characteristic of our cultural moment. In 2017, an Ipsos poll conducted across 23 countries found that 49 percent of adults agree that religion does more harm than good in the world. In the US it was lower, at 39 percent; in my own country, Australia, it was significantly higher: fully 63 percent of Aussies are apparently convinced that overall, we would be better off without religion. Yet, intriguingly, 60 percent of the population ticked a box in the most recent census declaring an affiliation to one religion or another. And another survey found that 88 percent of non-churchgoers in Australia like the idea of having a church in their neighbourhood.

The case for the gospel message is nowhere more irrepressible than in the tangible experience of disciple-love to be found in the church visible just down the road.

Apart from the observation that most polls would be considerably enhanced by a few well-chosen follow-up questions, what the disparity suggests is that for many people, our personal experience does not tally with certain powerful ideas that come to us via the cultural ether.
This is not only a religious phenomenon; as The Atlantic has reported, while in 2016 only 36 percent of Americans thought the country as a whole was headed in the right direction, 85 percent declared themselves “very or somewhat satisfied with their general position in life and their ability to pursue the American dream.” “What explains the gulf between most Americans’ hopeful outlook on areas and institutions they know directly and their despair about the country they know only through the news?” asked The Atlantic’s James Fallows.
Whatever the answer, it’s worth remembering that however bitter and cynical our public discourse may seem or become, bubbling beneath the surface is something both more interesting and less predictable. With all its quirks, frustrations, and serious failings, the case for the gospel message is nowhere more irrepressible than in the tangible experience of disciple-love to be found in the church visible just down the road.


Natasha Moore is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity in Sydney.
This article first appeared here in Christianity Today and is republished with permission.

Stirling University Christian Union – students on a mission

Stirling University Christian Union is a CU that Solas has a great relationship with. Andy Bannister led their mission week last year, and Gavin Matthews spoke at their houseparty. A few weeks ago Andy was back in Stirling for their weekly meeting on the campus.

There was a crowd of 70-80 people there, who were squeezed into the chaplaincy. The CU are really active in evangelism, and so Andy been asked to do some practical teaching on that. He has a session entitled, “How to talk about Jesus without looking like an idiot”, which outlines some very practical ideas from the Bible – about helpful ways in engaging in conversations about the Christian faith with people who do not believe it.
This a really important topic for the students, as on campuses as many people are genuinely afraid that if they talk about their faith in Jesus they will look like fools in front of their peers or Profs. So Andy took the students through some examples of how to have more useful conversations by asking really good questions – opening up friendly, respectful dialogue with people. It was great to see the students engaging really positively with this approach to evangelism, and they asked really great questions too. Some of them posed questions relating to specific situations, or likely scenarios they might face, and we thought through together what might be the best approach to take.
Solas really likes resourcing Christian Unions on campuses and Stirling are a really missional CU. Their current president, Cameron, is going to be on a forthcoming edition of our Solas Podcast – (PEP Talk – the Persuasive Evangelism Podcast). So look out for that when it is published in the New Year! Links to that will be posted here on the Solas blog, and from our social media feeds when it is published. Christian Union leaders, engaged in evangelism gain a wealth of experience and have loads of good ideas to pass onto the next load of students coming in – so we’re looking forward to hearing some of that on the podcast.


PEP Talk Podcast With Randy Newman

Kristi found the book “Questioning Evangelism” by Randy Newman to be a fantastic tool in her work ministering with university students. Today Andy and Kristi welcome Randy to the podcast to answers questions about questions with questions!

With Randy Newman PEP Talk

Our Guest

Randy Newman is Senior Fellow for Apologetics and Evangelism at the C.S. Lewis Institute near Washington D.C. He served for over 30 years with Campus Crusade for Christ and has taught at a number of seminaries. He has written five books and numerous articles, including his latest Unlikely Converts: Improbable Stories of Faith and What They Teach Us About Evangelism.

A Beginner’s Guide to the Kalam Cosmological Argument

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The Kalam cosmological argument was originally put forth by a twelfth-century medieval Muslim philosopher from Persia (modern day Iran) by the name of Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali. Al-Ghazali was concerned by the influence of Greek philosophy (which maintained a beginningless Universe – one which flows necessarily out of God) on the Muslim philosophers of his day. Al-Ghazali published a critique of this teaching in a book titled The Incoherence of the Philosophers, in which he argued that the Universe must have a beginning. And if the Universe had a beginning at a point in the finite past, then there must be a transcendent Creator who brought the Universe into being – since nothing begins to exist without a cause. As al-Ghazali put it:
“Every being which begins has a cause for its beginning; now the world is a being which begins; therefore, it possesses a cause for its beginning.”
We can thus summarise al-Ghazali’s reasoning in three basic steps:

  1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
  2. The Universe began to exist.
  3. Therefore, the Universe has a cause.

This argument uses a form of reasoning that philosophers call deduction. In this style of argument, a conclusion necessarily and inescapably follows from the premises – provided, of course, that those premises are in fact true.
The first of those premises – whatever begins to exist has a cause – seems to be almost indisputable. After all, something cannot simply pop into being uncaused. The principle of causality – that effects are always produced by causes – is what undergirds the scientific endeavour. In every realm of experience, new things are brought into being by causes.
A sceptic will often reply to this point by claiming that in physics it is theorised that subatomic particles can come into being out of nothing. However, such theories concern particles originating as a fluctuation of the energy contained in a vacuum. A vacuum, in physics, is a sea of fluctuating energy that is governed by physical laws. When we are talking about the origins of the Universe, however, we are asking where the physical laws that govern the material world – as well as where matter itself – comes from.
Another typical counter that an atheist lacking sophistication might reply with is that if everything requires a cause, then what is the cause of the Creator? Notice, however, that premise 1 of the argument does not state that everything has a cause for its existence. Rather, it states that everything which has a beginning has a cause for its existence. This is a rather different claim. If God is conceived of as eternal – that is to say, timeless – then He does not fit into the category of things that begin to exist, and thus does not fit into the category of things requiring a cause. Ultimately, every worldview must posit an unmoved mover, something which exists out of the necessity of its own nature – a timeless, uncaused, necessarily existent being responsible for initiating the chain of cause and effect. Otherwise, one is forced to postulate an infinite regress of causal explanations. The Universe clearly is not the unmoved mover from which everything else comes, since the scientific evidence shows convincingly that our Universe began to exist around 13.8 billion years ago. On top of that, various philosophical arguments establish that an infinite regress entails logical absurdity.
Let us now turn our attention to the second premise of the argument, namely, that the Universe began to exist. There are two sets of argument that firmly establish the truth of this premise – those are philosophical arguments and scientific arguments.
Let’s begin by considering the philosophical arguments. Al-Ghazali pointed out that if the Universe is infinite in the past – that is, it never began to exist – then there must have been an unlimited number of past events prior to the present. But, Ghazali argued, an actual infinite number of things entails logical absurdity. Notice that there is a difference between an actual infinite number of things and a potential infinite. For instance, any finite distance can be divided in half, and then quarters, and then eighths, and so on to infinity. The number of divisions is what we call a potential infinite, since in principle one could go on dividing and dividing and dividing forever. You would never arrive, however, at an actual infinite number of divisions. You would always have divided the distance a finite number of times.
Al-Ghazali pointed out that if an actual infinite were possible, various absurdities were entailed. For example, imagine that you have a string of numbers from 1 to infinity. Suppose you were to remove all the numbers greater than or equal to three (that is, an infinite number of numbers). How many numbers do you have left? The answer of course is two. Now suppose that instead you were to remove all the odd numbers. How many numbers do you have left now? The answer is infinity. Thus, a contradiction is entailed – infinity minus infinity is equal to two and infinity minus infinity is equal to infinity. These are the sorts of logical contradictions entailed when we try to treat infinity as an actual number.
Besides the philosophical reasons to think the past is finite, there is also a plethora of scientific evidences that have pointed forcefully in this direction. For most of human history it was taken for granted that the Universe as a whole was unchanging. While things that were in the Universe itself were changing, the Universe itself was just there. Albert Einstein too held this view, but he found this understanding challenged by his general theory of relativity. Einstein’s equations described a Universe that was blowing up like a balloon or else collapsing in upon itself. Uncomfortable with this idea, Einstein manipulated his equations by adding a fudge factor known as the ‘cosmological constant’, a mistake that Einstein later described as ‘the greatest blunder of his career.’ In the 1920s, the Belgian astronomer Georges Lemaitre and the Russian mathematician Alexander Friedman independently developed models of an expanding universe, based upon the equations of Einstein. In 1929, the American astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered, through his observations at the Mount Wilson Observatory, that the light from distant galaxies, in every direction of the sky, appeared to be redder than expected – a phenomenon now known as “redshift”, which is best explained by the stretching of light waves as galaxies move away from us.
In order to get a better handle on what is going on, imagine a balloon with painted black dots over its surface. Imagine what would happen as you blow up the balloon. As the balloon (representing the Universe) gets bigger and bigger, the painted dots (representing the galaxies) grow farther and farther apart. Now imagine that somebody videotaped you blowing up the balloon. Rewinding the tape would reveal that as you go back in time the black dots get closer and closer together. The balloon cannot have been expanding forever. So it is with our Universe. Eventually, as the tape of the Universe is wound back, the Universe comes to have zero spatial volume. This is just one of various lines of scientific evidence that reveal our Universe began to exist.
Since the two premises of the kalam cosmological argument are true, the conclusion necessarily and inescapably follows – namely, that the Universe has a cause for its existence. What can we say about this cause? As the creator of time, space and matter itself, this cause must transcend space and time. That is to say, the cause must be transtemporal, spaceless, and immaterial – a description that rather befits what enters most people’s mind when they think of God. I will conclude by quoting the late agnostic astronomer Robert Jastrow, from his book God and the Astronomers:

For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.

Indeed, long before modern astronomy discovered powerful evidence of a cosmic beginning, the text of the Bible had stated for thousands of years that “All things were made through [Christ], and without him was not any thing made that was made,” (John 1:3).


Dr Jonathan McLatchie is a writer, international speaker and debater. He holds a Bachelor’s degree (with Honours) in forensic biology, a Masters (M.Res) degree in evolutionary biology, and a second Master’s degree in medical and molecular bioscience and PhD in cell biology. He is Assistant Professor of Biology at Sattler College.
Further Reading:

Beginner: A Faithful Guide to Philosophy by Peter S. Williams
Intermediate: Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, William Lane Craig & J.P. Moreland
Advanced: The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, William Lane Craig & J.P. Moreland (editors)

Andy at The National Geographic in Washington DC

I was recently in Washington DC to do an event at the headquarters of National Geographic. I have a friend there who is a member of the staff team – and is a Christian. He organises an event every couple of months, which a Christian speaker is invited to address. They invite anyone at National Geographic who might be interested to come along for a sandwich lunch and a lively, thought-provoking talk followed by Q&A and discussion.
It was the third time I have been there, and it was a real privilege to be invited back again to speak. The first time I was there I spoke on “Science and Beauty”, the second time was “What Does it Mean to be Human” and this time I spoke about the “Pursuit of Happiness”. That’s a talk I do a lot – particularly in places like this where people are working incredibly hard, as the culture in journalism is quite ‘driven’. In those kinds of contexts, it’s very easy for people to base their identity on their work, performance, pay-grade, how many cover-stores they’ve landed – and so forth. So in my talk I addressed the question of where identity lies.
The conclusion of the talk was the story of Charlie Duke, who was an astronaut on Apollo 16. In his autobiography, “Moonwalker” he describes how he tried to find his identity in speed, excitement, adventure – ultimately in going to the moon. However, he found that once he’d been to the moon; where to go next?! That linked into National Geographic quite well, as they’ve given extensive coverage to the Apollo Programme recently because it is the fiftieth anniversary of the first moon landing.
We had a great Q&A session after my talk. There was one question in particular that stood out. A woman seemed to be struck by the fact that the things we usually look to in order to find happiness don’t work; and had figured out the religious implications of that. Her question was ‘is it possible to find ultimate happiness in a secular way – without reference to any form of spirituality?’ I basically, but rather gently said, ‘no’, and explained why I thought that the three lower levels of the human search for happiness, such as food and sex (animal happiness), success, or even in serving others, all run out, because they are not designed to be ultimate.
Finally though,  when considering the kind of ultimate happiness which comes from living for something genuinely bigger than ourselves (something Christian believe only truly comes from having a relationship with Christ) then that kind of happiness reflects back on the other things, because we can then properly enjoy things like food, sex, success, and serving others because they don’t becomes ways in which we desperately try to find identity. Rather – they become good gifts, that we can enjoy and give God thanks for. As such – the whole package makes much more sense.
So, it was hugely enjoyable and a great privilege to be back at National Geographic, and engaging a lively and thoughtful audience outside the church; with a distinctly Christian and gospel-centred world-view.


Andy Bannister is director the Solas Centre of Public Christianity