Appendix D: Apologetics and the Nature of Christ

I once heard an amusing story about a scientist who was conversing with God. The scientist was explaining how he figured out how to make a human being from the dust of the ground. "Would you like me to show you?" he asked God with a confident smile. "Sure," said God. So the scientist picks up a handful of dust from the ground and heads to his lab. "Wait a minute," says God in a serious voice. "What’s the problem?" queries the scientist. God replies gently, "My dear fellow, please get your own dust."

Creating life is not as simple as we imagine, especially when we have to get our own dust.

As a scientist, I marvel at the order in the universe. When I see how gravity can be described by simple equations, and how the three laws of motion can explain so much, and how electromagnetism can be described in just four elegant equations, I am amazed. Special relativity is so disarmingly simple to describe, and probability theory is so ingenious, and quantum mechanics is so imaginative. When I study astronomy and get insight into how stars form and how the universe came to be, I am enthralled. How wonderful that with just around a 100 elements (and a few universal constants) we can build so much. And what about the fact that with just a handful of amino acids we can build all the proteins needed for life to exist? And isn’t it wonderful that a molecule like DNA encodes the instructions to build all these proteins? Truly amazing!

As the days go by and our knowledge of science increases it gets harder and harder, and more and more insane, to be an atheist. I just can’t imagine how it is possible to be an atheist and still call oneself logical.

Take the theory of evolution, which stands on the fossil record. That is, atheists look at the similarity of the fossils of different species and conclude that one species evolved from another. Now the atheist says that something as complex as life in all its forms and glory appeared randomly, solely by chance, over a period of just 4.5 billion years or so. Yet when I tell them that the fossils on which they base their theory, could also have appeared due to random arrangement rather than actually represent the bones of dead animals they look at me in askance. Why is it that they allow chance to create live animals and disallow chance to create ‘the (significantly less complex) apparent remains of dead animals’? Their arguments seem mighty biased and circular, don’t they?

For this reason, I rejoice when I hear of Christian apologists all around the country, and the world, battling the atheist on the existence of God. I’ve heard some of them myself and they make excellent arguments.

All of their arguments are based on the Law of Non-Contradiction (TLONC). TLONC simply says that any statement and its opposite cannot both be true at the same time and place. For example, any person that says, "The apple is red," cannot also say, "The apple is not red," at the same time, and concerning the same apple. If they do so, they would be contradicting themselves, and contradictions cannot exist.

Contradictions cannot exist at any place in the universe at any time, say our apologists. What’s more, our apologists apply TLONC to statements about God too. For example, they say that the atheist cannot ask, "Why does God allow evil to exist?" Their argument goes like this…

"Your question assumes the existence of evil. If you allow the existence of evil then you must also allow the existence of good. When you allow the existence of good and evil you must allow that a universal moral code exists. If you affirm that a universal moral code exists then there must also be a moral code giver, and bingo, you have just described God, and thereby contradict yourself because as an atheist you presuppose that there is no God."

Then they bring in TLONC and say that since you cannot contradict yourself you cannot ask a question like, "Why does God allow evil to exist?"

I love such an argument. It is so brilliant!

Unfortunately, I am sorry to bring to the notice of our apologists that there is a big flaw in such an argument. The flaw is this: you cannot bring TLONC to bear on an atheist’s statements about God if you yourself violate TLONC when you make statements about God. The pot cannot call the kettle black!

How do these apologists violate TLONC? They do so when they say that Jesus was fully God and fully Man. Such a statement is a contradiction because, for example, God cannot be tempted but man can. So a being that is fully God and fully man is tempted and is not tempted at the same time – voila, a contradiction!

If you allow yourself the luxury of allowing contradictions in your theology, you cannot, in all fairness, disallow the atheist from allowing contradictions in his theology, can you?

For this reason, every Christian apologist must reconsider his theology on the nature of Christ.

Since my theology on the nature of Christ is not self-contradictory, I can happily contend with the atheist, and I would encourage every Christian apologist to join with me in this.


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