Why Believe?: Reason and Mystery as Pointers to God by C. Stephen Evans

Why Believe?: Reason and Mystery as Pointers to God by C. Stephen Evans

Author:C. Stephen Evans [Evans, C. Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christian Books & Bibles, Theology, Apologetics, Religion & Spirituality
ISBN: 9780802801272
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Published: 1996-01-01T22:00:00+00:00


CHAPTER NINE

Miracles and the Bible

Make no mistake: if He rose at all it was His Body; if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fall.... Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping, transcendence; making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages: let us walk through the door.

John Updike, Seven Stanzas at Easter

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to use electrical light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles."1 So said Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976), an important European theologian.

There are three important things to notice in Bultmann's statement. First, he ties belief in "spirits and miracles" to belief in the New Testament. Such things are part of the New Testament's "world."

Second, it is evident that belief in "spirits and miracles" and in the New Testament has declined in the twentieth century. It has declined so much that even some who purport to be Christian theologians no longer can believe in them in the traditional way.

Third, Bultmann links the decline in belief in these things to the technology of Western civilization, which is in turn made possible by contemporary scientific discoveries.

I believe the chain of thought that underlies Bultmann's perspective goes something like this: (1) Modern science makes belief in miracles and spirits irrational. (2) We modern people commit ourselves to a scientific worldview when we embrace the technology that depends on that worldview. (3) Hence we cannot believe in spirits and miracles. (4) To the extent that the New Testament involves belief in spirits and miracles, then we cannot believe the New Testament. Bultmann is not alone in thinking this way.



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