Gooding, David: 1 - Has the Bible been Discredited?

Ladies and gentlemen, I rise to greet you, full of pleasure at the honor of being for the first time in my life here in the city of Athlone. Just a word or two of explanation. I count it a great honor to have lived the larger part of my life in Belfast, and I'm happy indeed and privileged to have been elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy. In spite of that, I have an incorrigibly English voice, with the result that I was once in Canada and was asked there to preach and was announced as Dr. Gooding from Belfast, you see. And after it was all over, a woman in her middle age came up to me quite irate. She had an exhortation to give me, which obviously burdened her heart. She said, why on earth did you put on that absurd English accent if you come from Belfast, you'll see? And I had patiently and very humbly to suggest to her I just hadn't learned, uh, managed to get learning the Belfast accent, that I was in fact English. Uh, that is not my fault, and I ask you to forgive me. And now, because of my old age, I, by your gracious permission, sit down to deliver my talk. The topic that I have been given to discuss this evening is the question, has the Bible been discredited? And I suppose the first simple ar- answer to that question is, yes, of course. Down through the centuries, the Bible has been discredited times without number. That is, of course, in the eyes of some people. Whether the, uh, whether they were justified in discrediting the Bible is, of course, another thing altogether. But right from the very start, it was as- it is astonishing to read how the Bible in people's minds and those who preached it had given rise to all sorts of ideas, some of them quite fantastic. So we are told that the great famous Christian apostle Paul was once in Jerusalem and went with some of his Jewish friends into the temple. But many of the Jews had seen him in the city with Gentile people. And when they now saw him in the temple, the Jews objected most strongly, thinking that he had brought a Gentile into the temple. That was forbidden not only by the Jewish law, but by the Roman law, who had the governing of that province. Without asking any questions, the mob set on Paul and attempted to lynch him. Whereupon, the captain of the Roman guard that, eh, occupied the citadel overlooking the temple grounds, rushed down with a squad of troops and managed to get Paul free of the mob and lead him up the stairs to the doorway to the citadel. When they got to the top, Paul asked the Roman captain permission to address the crowd, and of course he spoke to the Roman captain in Greek. Much to the astonishment of the Roman captain, who proceeded to say, oh, you speak Greek? Well, yes, of course. Why not? He said, I thought you were that Egyptian that some time ago, uh, led a revolt against the Roman and went off with three hundred assassins into the wilderness. What fantastic ideas people get. The notion that the Apostle Paul was kind of an agent to an early Al-Qaeda mob is, um, interesting, at least to say the least, isn't it? It was quite fantastic. It astonishes me, I must confess, how so many people are prepared to take the imaginations of the fictions of a novel here and there in modern times, and feel the Bible has been discredited for what they read in these fictional novels. Tonight I shall be trying to answer some of the accusations, so to speak, at least the complaints that are brought to me against the Bible, and the arguments that it could not possibly be true. I shall try to answer them. Maybe for shortage of time, I shall not be able to deal with your particular complaint about the Bible, if you have one, why the Bible to you stands discredited. But then there is to be a question time, and this is only the first of a number of lectures. I want to come to what appear to me to be some of the more substantial reasons that people have for thinking the Bible is discredited. And the first one, because I find it most common, is the notion that somehow modern science makes it completely impossible for any modern intelligent man or woman to take the Bible seriously. For the Bible is nothing if it isn't full of God and claiming to be God's word. And people say, but look, that was all right in centuries gone by, when people didn't understand how the universe works. So when it thundered, people imagined that was a god crying out and shouting, and of course they felt fear. But they say, no, of course, science has shown how thunder comes about. We know how it works, and this is not God shouting. When the moon went into an eclipse in ancient world, people thought some demons had got hold of the moon, and the women ran out, like sometimes they do in Belfast or did in the, in the decades past, but for different reasons, and got the bin lids and banged them to frighten the demons away from getting hold of the moon. And people say, well, of course, that was in the days, pre-scientific days of, days of superstition. We know now, for science has shown us, exactly how these things happen. And there's no room left for God. And they say there are some things in science that we still don't understand. But even so, it would be false method to bring in God to un- to explain the things we don't understand, because we have understood so much as a result of scientific exploration, that in the end we shall understand these other things too. So they find it, so they told me, difficult, if not impossible, to take the Bible seriously. That proclaims that the world was created by God, and that from time to time God has intervened in its history to perform miracles. My answer to that, as best I can think it through, is to tell a little parable. Now, this parable is quite true because I made it up, you see, so you have to believe it's true because I made it up. I want you to imagine some pygmies in the rainforest of what used to be Congo. I have visited some of them, and charming people they are anyway, but I want you to imagine some imaginary pygmies, you see. And walking through the forest, they one day come across a motor car. I've never seen such a thing before in all their lives. Don't know what it is, nor how it came there. But their interest is aroused, and presently they begin to examine it, and they open the door, and they look at this, and they look at that, and suddenly, fiddling with things, someone manages to turn the ignition key, and the engine starts into life. And of course, they're startled and frightened. They said, there must be a god in there. And then they look round the front, and they see the letters FORD on the front of it. So they say that's the god Ford in there. Do you see? So they, um, uh, let the engine run, and when it runs smoothly, they think the god Ford is very pleased with them. And then when it backfires, they think he's grown angry and offer a sacrifice or two to it, you, you see. But then one of them, uh, begins to study it more closely and takes up engineering. And lo and behold, he finds, as he takes the thing to pieces, that he can see how it works. And you know, he finds there isn't a God Ford inside the car, making it work. Nor is Ford necessary in order to understand how the thing works. And so they decide that, of course, all that notion of there being a Mr. Ford in the car, God Ford, is all been superstition. And then they take another big step, and they decide there never was a Mr. Ford. On the grounds that they can understand how the car works without positing any Mr. Ford. And we can see at once, can't we, the, the, the falsity in that logic. They don't need Mr. Ford to sh- to be inside the car making it work. They can understand how it works. But to decide because they can understand how it works, there never was a designer of the car, nor a maker. Of course, it's a false step of logic, isn't it? Wonderful, the advance of science tells us how our universe works. But to decide because we can understand how it works, that there never was a designer who made it, seems to me a false step of logic. But then will people will say to me, but look, you re- religious people, you, you, you, it all depends on your faith, doesn't it? You have to believe. Where science, they, they say, doesn't depend on faith. Science bids you look at the hard facts and the rational explanation of those facts. Doesn't require any faith. It puts the evidence in front of your noses and shows you that any rational per- person must accept the evidence as to how this thing works. But as for God, they say, there's no evidence. You just have to make up your mind to believe. And to their mind, faith is believing something that you really at your heart know isn't true, but you're determined to believe it because it comforts you some- somehow or other. But upon reflection, that seems to me to be doubly false. The notion that religion is founded on faith, but science is founded on sheer rationality and doesn't require any faith, is not true. Scientific endeavor does depend on faith. You needn't accept my argument. L- listen to Einstein, if you will, who confessed that the scientist's belief in the rational intelligibility of the universe goes beyond science and is, in its very nature, essentially religious. His exact words, if I may quote them, are these, says Einstein, the belief that the universe of exi- existing things is accessible to human rationality, and that the rules valid for it are rational. That belief belongs to the do- to the domain of religion, says Einstein. I cannot imagine, he adds, a genuine scientist who does not share this deep faith. It is a popular notion, but mistaken, that science does not require faith. You have to propose, uh, consider that the study of the universe will yield to rationality. In so studying it, scientists have come up with remarkable, and many of them would say beautiful laws that govern the physical universe. Professor Penrose of Oxford, the famous mathematician who, along with, uh, Hawkins, did the mathematics leading to the theory of black holes. He points out that mathematicians do not invent the laws of mathematics. They discover them. They are there to start with. Seeing they are evidence of intelligence and are subject to rationality, that leads Professor Paul Davies, the mathematical physicist, to claim, contrary to some of some cosmologists, that the universe is rational all the way down to the level of metaphysics, and adds that this remarkable phenomenon, that we human beings, and he thinks we have evolved, have evolved to the state where we can turn round and study the universe and understand its laws. He says that is altogether a remarkable phenomenon, and to his mind suggests that we are truly meant to be here. Of course, if you're going to say with Paul Davies, we are meant to be here, that leads inevitably to the question, who meant us to be here? Now, Paul Davies being asked, uh, personally, does he think it's God? No, he doesn't like the idea of God. So then what meant us to be here? These marvelous, beautiful laws that respond to our rational inquiry. He says, well, he thinks there might be some mathematical laws somewhere so clever that they cause the whole universe to be. I could wish he were right sometimes, because I wish I had some remarkable ar- arithmetical laws, that I could add, uh, a th- a thousand pounds and multiply it by another thousand pounds and come up with a million, and go down to the bank and find out that these mathematical laws had caused a million, uh, to pounds to exist in my bank account. But abstract mathical, mathematical laws don't do that kind of thing. And so I turned the question of Professor Davis back on him. If we're meant to be here, then who meant us to be here? And you'll say, but you're going to say it's God, and doesn't that require a lot of faith? Yes, I'm going to say it's God. And believe what the Bible has long since been saying for centuries. That God formed this world by his word. Super Super divine divine. intelligence, imposing form and rationality on the matter he created. You say you have no proof of it. Well, now that is a very interesting point, isn't it? Someone says you prove there's a God. Well, I would admit at once that you won't prove God by some philosophical analysis. But of course, in real life, that is not the only proof that we ask. God is not only, uh, power and rationality. God, says the Bible, is love. So let's take some examples of love as we know it at our lesser level. Here's a child of four. his daddy has been away abroad, and dad comes home, and the child comes running, running to his dad, who picks him up in his arms, and the child is delighted. And you say to the little child, does your dad love you? Yes, he says. You say, but prove it. How would you prove it? Sir, you can't prove that your wife is faithful to you. You believe it, of course you rightly do. You believe it on tons of evidence, of course you do. But if you try to prove it philosophically, anybody could add endless doubts to it. There are some things, and they are life's basic things, that we accept on evidence that is overwhelmingly strong, but which in the technical sense we cannot prove. So it is with the God whom as Christians we claim inspired the Bible, and is God speaking to us. Let's come to the New Testament part of the Bible. For there we encounter the claim that the God who made the universe by the word of his power, has come into our world, and that Jesus Christ is the Word of God, incarnate in human form. For that, the New Testament offers not logical proof in the philosophical sense, but offers evidence. John's gospel is notorious for putting it in concise language. These signs, says he, these miracles that Jesus did are here recorded. They are signs, they are evidence, that upon that evidence you might come to believe first the fact that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and then proceeding to the next step, believing him, that you might receive eternal life. Evidence, therefore. Ah, but here now we come to a whole lot of more questions, don't we? I have a friend in Belfast. He had two children. Both were handicapped. One managed to live until she was about, uh, thirteen or fourteen years old. And the man as her father had taken a tremendous lot involved in the nursing of the child. She died. I have a second child. It is likewise handicapped and will die prematurely. He came to my door asking if he could speak. Able and intelligent man indeed, but you will imagine his emotional feelings in such a situation. He says, how can I believe there's a God? I said something about the Bible and the New Testament. He said, but my friends tell me that the New Testament wasn't written down until three hundred years after Christ. How can we believe it? You may think it odd, I don't know. But there are people who think that the New Testament was not written down until three hundred years after the time of Christ. When I first went to Russia after the walls came down, I learned that many people there had been rigorously taught in school and elsewhere that Christianity was a fourth century legend. I wonder where people get the idea from. The last le- last persons on earth who ought to hold that view are, if I may say it, Irish people. For Dublin is world famous. For all sorts of things, of course. But its Chester Beatty library, so magnificently housed these days, contains some fabulous manuscripts, particularly those of the New Testament. The papyrus number forty six is a collection, an early collection of the epistles by Paul. Not all the letters Paul wrote, but a good many of them, collected in one volume, originally. The experts date that particular manuscript around about the year two hundred AD. Some might put it a few years later, two forty maybe. But just ponder the implications of its existence. It's not an original, of course not. It's a copy. This copy has now lasted uh eighteen hundred years. How old do you suppose was the manuscript from which it was copied? We don't know, do we? Could have been just a year old, the result of a chain of copying with ten or twenty manuscripts before. It could merely have had one manuscript before. On the walls in that part of the library, you will see a tiny fragment coming from the Gospel of John. It's a fragment of another, uh, uh, a manuscript. We can know at once where it comes from. It's part of Christ's speaking to his mother, the Virgin Mary, at the foot of his cross. When he said to her, see your son, namely the Apostle John, and to him he said, behold your mother. That manuscript is dated by the experts at hundred and AD. If you go to the Rylands Library in Manchester, you will find there fragments of the Gospel of John that are dated to hundred and AD. They weren't originally written as fragments, of course. They were written as whole copies. Most of the manuscript has gone, but these fragments survive. When we see those hard facts, it becomes a nonsense when people say that the New Testament wasn't written down till three hundred years after Christ's time. The facts are open to any inspection. The same kind of thing could be said about the availability of reading and writing in the time of Jesus. This book by Professor Alan Millard, a cadian specialist, now retired from Liverpool, points to the common existence of reading and writing and recording in the time of Jesus. So it is quite understandable that some of his apostles, particularly Matthew, who was an income tax inspector before he got converted, eh, uh, how that he would have written down at the time when he heard them. Actual notes of what Jesus said. The same thing has been true archaeologically. In the book of the Acts of the Apostles, we're told that when Paul the Apostle reached Corinth, the Jews caused a hubbub and dragged him before the Roman governor, whose name, says the Acts of the Apostles, was Gallio. I'm old enough to know the time when expert scholars said there is an evidence that Luke is, uh, making it all up. There was never a Roman governor called Gallio of Corinth. That and such like things, in one sense, as you see, discredited the historical reliability of the New Testament. But then an inscription turned up with Gallio's name on it. Those things tend not to get the headlines so much. But now I come to the heart of the matter. Let's suppose that our manuscripts give us an authentic text of what was originally written in the New Testament. And let us suppose that the compilers of the Gospels and the Epistles were very careful to do their background study and got all the geographical and historical things in the right place, like any writer of a novel will do when he's pitching you a big yarn. He'll get all the factual details as best he can correct, to give verisimilitude to his story. Let's suppose that's what is... what some of the gospel writers did. The fact that the manuscripts give us an authentic account of Christ's life doesn't necessarily prove by itself, does it, that the main message of the New Testament is true. How can we begin to know that the Jesus who appears to us in the New Testament and claimed to be God incarnate? How can we know that message is true and not something made up by the Christian apostles. I want to take one thing that suggests to me very, very strongly, that this claim of Christ was not manufactured by the apostles. And the part I'm talking about now is the significance of the death of Jesus Christ, crucified on a cross in the time of Pontius Pilate. How do we know that the gospel writers didn't make it up? Well, for the first thing, they tell us themselves in honesty that when Jesus first announced he was going to Jerusalem to die, the apostles thought it was the most absurd thing they heard, and no less than Peter rebuked our Lord straight to his face. Said it was nonsense. When in the Garden of Gethsemane, they came to arrest Christ, and Christ refused his apostles' permission to use the sword to defend him, but meekly surrendered to the arresting part- party. The apostles tell us they all fled. And we might listen to Paul the Apostle. He preached the cross of Christ as central to his gospel. But even as he preached it, he tells us in one of the letters he wrote to a new Christian church, that he realized that the preaching of the cross was to the Jew a scandalous offense, and to the philosophically minded Gentile, it was sheer folly. To come before philosophically minded Greeks and preach that the cure of the world's problems is to be found in a man who was crucified on a cross, seemed to many a Greek to be self-evident. Why then did Paul preach it? If he knew right well before he preached it that this would be the reaction of many people to it. He did it for two things. One, because this gospel is traceable straight to Christ. He not only announced it, even when his apostles objected, but they record how he said, the Son of Man has not come to be served, but to serve and give his life a ransom for many. The fact that Christ himself held this to be the central part of his divine mission is seen in another thing that can be traced to the very earliest times of Christianity. Before he left, Jesus Christ instituted a ceremony by which his disciples thereafter should remember him. What he chose as a means of memorial is exceedingly significant. He could have chosen, couldn't he, that when he was gone, his people should, every time they came together, read the Sermon on the Mount. And then we should have remembered Jesus Christ as primarily a moral teacher. That would have been marvelous. He was a great moral teacher. Or he might have chosen that they should read a collection of his miracles. They were genuine works of power, evidence of his deity. But then we should have remembered him as chiefly a miracle worker. He chose not those two things. He took symbols of his body and a symbol of his blood. This is my body given for you, said he. Eat it in remembrance of me. This is the blood of the new covenant, shed for many, for the forgiveness of sins. And from the very first time, according to the Christians, this they celebrated, have done throughout the world ever since. Pointing to the heart of the Christian gospel, as Christ enunciated it. It is this that we face eventually, is it not? When we come to the records of the New Testament, to consider their validity. It is a colossal claim. For a mere man to claim that he had come, in some sense, to offer his life as a sacrifice for- to God for the sins of the whole world, would suggest the man was bordering on lunacy. Christ claimed it. How does it speak to us? Not just a matter of philosophical proof, is it? I remember some years ago, there came to Queen's a postdoctoral student in chemistry, and a very bright scholar she was. She came from Thailand, I think, and joined the chemistry department. And there were a number of people in that department who were professing Christians. They got talking to her, and she to them, of course. She said she'd like to meet somebody to explain Christianity to her. And for some reason or other, her colleagues suggested that she should come to me. So she came to my office one bright Saturday morning. I can see her yet. Her first words were, I've come to ask you to explain Christianity. I don't want to get converted, says she. Please understand that. I'm not going to get converted. I said, okay. I'm a Buddhist, she said. So I explained to her, as I have just done, what lies at the heart of the message of the New Testament. And to emphasize it, I said, you see, I find this a remarkable thing. That there in and through his atoning death for us, God offers us forgiveness, and not only a shadowy hope of forgiveness when we've reached the other side, but forgiveness of which we can be utterly sure now. In the words that Paul preached, for instance, we have forgiveness through his blood. Or be it known to you, men and brothers, that through this man is preached to you the forgiveness of sins. By him all who believe are justified from all things, by which you could not possibly be justified by your attempt to keep the law of Moses. And waxing strong in my enthusiasm, you see, I said to the dear lady, I said, if your little child, have you a little child? Yes. I said, if she did something wrong and uh, she said she was sorry, you would forgive her, wouldn't you? And you'll not only forgive her, but you'll want to make it sure the child understood that she had forgiveness. I shall never forget her reply. I should do no such thing, she said. How can I forgive the child? There is no such thing as forgiveness. Forgiveness. Every Everybody bo- must suffer the wrongs they do and the consequences of them. That is their kamma, or karma, as the Indians call it. There is no such thing as forgiveness. We are born into this world, they say, defective and burdened by suffering because of the wrongs we have done in previous incarnations. What wrongs? They cannot tell you. How many reincarnations ago was it? They can't tell you. The theory is you must suffer the consequences in this life, and if you've not suffered enough when you come to the end of this life, then you must be reincarnated. But of course, in this life, you do some sins yourself anyway. What would you have said to a mother like that? Who believed there was no such thing as forgiveness. Here, Jesus Christ appeals to me. Can I tell you another story? Our old men do, you know, they tell stories. You have to forgive them. Just after the walls came down in Eastern Europe, I was in Ukraine, in Kiev, and was invited by a headmistress of a school to go to the school and talk to the children there assembled on Christianity. For, as she explained to the classes, the government has now had deeper insights. They used to forbid all religion, but now they've had deeper insights, and we're allowed to teach religion. And I'm going to have religion taught, not just Christianity, all kinds of religions, he said, in the school. So I held forth. Afterwards, the deputy head came to me, gracious senior lady. She said, may I ask you a question? I said, yes, by all means, madam. She said, what do you think of UFOs? I said, madam, I think they're remarkable. Eh, I said, I, I haven't seen any myself. I don't know anything about them. And uh, the ones that have, some people said, appeared over the UK, the government says they weren't the real thing anyway, so I don't really know. I said, I believe you've had a lot. She said, yes, I've had a lot. We've had a lot around here. And she said, you know, the last ones that came, when they got out of the UFO, they told the locals that Buddhism was the true religion and not Christianity. What do you say to that? I said, well, madam, I have a little difficulty there. I said, you see, if I may speak for myself personally, I have respect for all who teach us healthy ethics, that we ought to be good. I said, I have a personal problem, you know. I know I ought to be good. I haven't been. How can I find forgiveness that will not undercut my own values and not undercut God's values either? And I quoted the this story about the Thai- Thailand scholar, the chemist in Belfast, and what she told me. I said, you see, Buddhism tells you to be good. Strict Buddhism has no forgiveness. I said, what I desperately need is not someone to come along and tell me my sin doesn't matter. Someone that tells me my sin mattered infinitely because it was sin against God. But the God who loves us with the creator's love sent his son on purpose into this world, primary purpose, that he might offer to God the ransom for human guilt, that we can find forgiveness. I said, as far as I know, madam, Jesus Christ is the only one on the market, if you will allow me the, the crudity of expression. I think it is true to say, you'll never get somebody else coming alongside you, saying, you are a creature of God, you have sinned against most holy God, and sin matters. But I love you with the creator's love. I've come to bear the penalty of your sin before God, that you might be forgiven and be reconciled with God. I suggest to you, ladies and gentlemen, that the apostles, the Christian apostles, did not make up that story. Someone will perhaps say, and with this I close, but what about that gospel recently discovered, the gospel of Judas? Does that not undermine Christianity? For it tells a very different story. Instead of Judas betraying Christ, this time he and Christ collaborated together so that Christ could die. And Judas, being his soulmate and helper, organized it so that he should die. A very different story from the story of Judas the betrayer that we meet in the four gospels. How should we judge it? Well, we should notice first that that document is, yes, a genuine document, comes from the third century AD. Then we should notice what is its religious and philosophical stance. It is a Gnostic gospel, so-called. I shall not try to explain to you in these few moments what Gnosticism was, except to say it was a theory in which spirit was the enemy of matter. That because of a fall of some kind, spirit had entered into man, but resented and was imprisoned in the horrible prison of his body. And that the aim of this knowledge, to say that you have a wise spirit within you, was to help this spirit break free of the prison house of the human body. Now, that kind of religion is well known to us. Classical Hinduism is precisely that. It is a very different gospel from what the New Testament records. You say, but isn't it the truer account of the facts? Well, you could ask yourself the same question about a whole number of reinterpretations of Christianity that have been given down the centuries, who claim to be based on the historical event. Some of them claim to be based on the Bible, but then deny some of the very foundational things of the Bible. Take, for instance, if I may mention it without offense, Christian science that holds this view that matter is unworthy. The only thing that counts is mind. And since matter is unworthy, pain doesn't exist, disease doesn't exist. These are all malfunctions of the mind in thinking they exist. The main thing is spirit. Match it up, if you will, with what the New Testament says about the body. It says it was made by God and is not to be despised. Nor is rough treatment of the body in the form of religious asceticism a good and healthy thing. Because Christ wasn't trying to escape his body. He freely gave his body, bore our sins in his body, that we might be reconciled to God. And the final evidence was, of course, his resurrection, and by his resurrection, the New Testament means the resurrection of the body. And when on times I have put that to my friends who are Christian scientists, they find it difficult to contain, to retain their civility, because the idea of the resurrection of the body of Christ contradicts flat out their idea of the body. I quote that modern example to remind us that there have been reinterpretations of Christianity right from the beginning. It would be helpful in our deciding about them to notice from what theological persuasion they come, and thus to put their claim alongside the claim of Jesus Christ. In answer to the question, has the Bible been discredited? Well, in the eyes of many, often discredited. My opinion is, and I give it as my verdict, that none of the claims to have discredited the Bible stand. Thank you very much for your patient listening. We have a few moments left, so in that time, if you'd like to write something on some pieces of paper, we'll collect your questions, um, queries you might have, and we'll take them up to the front, and we'll try and answer as many as possible in the time.