The Christian Faith

Introduction
The Christian Faith is the whole point of apologetics.

To explain, the point of philosophical debates surrounding Christianity is to either demonstrate that it is false or to affirm that it is true. It is not a discovery exercise. Thus, it is a bad idea to get into debates with antagonists to the Christian Faith unless one is absolutely certain of the reliability of the Bible^[1]. The other pertinent issue associated with this is that philosophical debates are always ostensibly about Truth and the Bible is the Truth, if we believe it^[2].

For these reasons, the very first thing to deal with is to understand the Christian position which is the target of attack and the ground that the believer must defend. So, what is the Christian Faith?

The Bible
The Bible captures in full what Christians believe or ought to believe. This is critical to defending one's faith in the spiritual assaults that believers face everyday even outside of apologetics. The business of a Christian's life is a question of how he/she responds to events, experiences, reports and verbal or written claims that challenge what the Bible actually says. This is the exact same thing in apologetics. The Bible is always the issue.

Since it is, what does it say? What do Christians believe?

This is a simple question, true, but the answer is very vast and complex. It can certainly be stated as simply as the question it responds to but the simple form of the answer will not do much more than produce a sense of suspense. In short, Christians believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. That answer at first glance will not seem to explain philosophical questions like why people die? But, in fact, faith in Jesus Christ means confidence that what He says about everything is true. So, whatever Jesus says about death, for example, is the Truth. And diligent study into what He says about it will answer every necessary question about the issue. This applies right across the board. So, the Bible is really a very big and very complex book to study.

This leads right to the conclusion that one can only successfully defend one's faith by taking the time and giving the energy necessary to learn in-depth all that the Bible teaches.

But is this possible? Is it possible to learn all that the Bible teaches in a lifetime? It isn't, in fact. But it is possible to arrive at a threshold where the general position of the Bible is understood. The Bible calls this threshold "maturity" (Ephesians 4:11-14). At this point, the believer has learned to "tell his right hand from his left". And he can keep growing in understanding of everything the Bible has to say with greater ease from this point. At this point too, it is much harder to deceive or confuse the believer about what the Bible actually says about things. A mature believer could read or hear the attacks that antagonists to the Faith make and still not be troubled in their faith because they know the answers to all the "impossible" questions or else they have learned both that such answers do exist in the Bible and how to find them. Then, if they possess the spiritual gift for apologetics, they are capable of producing them in the correct manner.

Bible Education: How can we learn what the Bible says? Ephesians 4:11-14 states that there are specific gifts that the Lord Jesus gave to the Church to make that possible. Apostles, prophets, pastor-teachers and evangelists were the gifts mentioned in connection with this. Ever since the Bible was completed, however, only pastor-teachers and evangelists have remained^[3]. So, today, we learn the Bible by first hearing the Gospel from evangelists and being saved and then by being tutored by men who possess the gift of teaching and who are also trained for the job of Bible-teaching. This is the biblical way. Bible-reading is critical to this process both for familiarity with what the Bible itself says and to keep pastor-teachers honest.

The Christian Position In A Nutshell: This is laid out as follows:

1. A God exists and the existence of creation is proof of that (Romans 1:19-20; Psalm 19:1-6)

2. The Identity of this God (including His Trinity) is decipherable from the evidence of the attributes of creation all around us (Romans 1:20)

3. The human conscience and the reality of Death are conclusive proof of Coming Judgment and God's unwavering and perfect Justice (Romans 1:32, 2:14-15)

4. Every living human being with a normal intelligence knows these things (Romans 1:20; Psalm 19:3-4)

5. Life in this world is all about a free will choice to freely and willingly submit to God or persist in rebellion against Him (John 3:16, 18, 20-21)

6. It is completely possible to dismiss the witness of Creation, human conscience and death and steadily grow to a state of certainty that God does not exist (that is, hardness of heart) or pretend that He is something that He is not at all (Romans 1:21-32)

7. For those who accept the witness of these things, the Gospel has always been preached to them (1 Peter 4:6)

8. Everyone who has accepted God's Offer of a Substitute (symbolized by animal sacrifices until the True Substitute Himself Jesus Christ came) to suffer the terrible penalty for their sin whether before Christ or after whether in Israel or in the remotest corner of the world has always been saved (1 Peter 4:6; Hebrews 8:4b-5; 10:1)

9. Evil is a production of creature free will (Ecclesiastes 7:29; Ezekiel 28:15; James 1:17)

10. God judges evil with calamity and trouble (Deuteronomy 28; Isaiah 45:7; Revelation 20:15)

11. Suffering in this world, while unpleasant, is both because of God's judgment on evil and also in order to test every human being to make clear what their choice about God is (Job 5:7; Deuteronomy 8:2; Proverbs 17:3)


These things are more thoroughly fleshed out and even added to by in-depth Bible-teaching. They are merely the most common issues that show up in debate very likely because they are some of the main questions that everyone wonders about.


Conclusion
In conclusion, the Christian Faith is the point of apologetics. We do not go into philosophical debates as Christians in order to discover Truth. We do so because we know the Truth already and mean to defend it. The Truth is defined by the Bible. We learn the Bible first by receiving the Gospel from evangelists who tell us of the incredible Sacrifice that Jesus Christ paid for us so that we can be saved and believing it and then by listening to gifted and prepared Bible-teachers who help us grow to maturity in order to know for sure what we have believed. The Bible is vast, covering far more ground than might first be thought. It includes answers to the Existence of God, free will, sin and suffering and more. In learning it diligently, we become able to answer some of the hard questions of life and protect ourselves from the lies that others succumb to.



Footnotes:
[1]: The Bible defines completely what the Christian Faith is, as will be discussed along the way. No creeds, traditions or practices actually do. So, in debate, it is wise to keep in mind that the Christian apologist's job is to stay in the Bible's position. This is why such a person must be absolutely sure that they consider the Bible completely reliable in every sense. Otherwise, they may find themselves being swept away by the lies and turned against their own Faith.

[2]: Although, of course, all belief systems are attacked by others who hold contrary beliefs, these are, spiritually speaking, merely distractions from the real attack of the father of lies. His true concern is Faith in Jesus Christ, so all of philosophy and religion is really a ruse to blunt the Bible's absolute claim that Jesus is the Only Way to God and the Only Truth. This will be discussed later as we go along.

[3]: In the past, before the Bible was completed, you knew that anyone claiming to be speaking for God was telling the truth if

i. he foretold events that actually came to pass;

ii. he did miraculous things that no one else could do; and/or

iii. what he said did not contradict earlier things that God had said.

Because sometimes God's new message was to enact a new era, #3 was often hard to deal with (still is, for us). So, if God was saying something new (as He was every time Scripture was written throughout the millennia), the messenger often had authority to foretell the future or do miraculous things to stamp their authority as God's true messengers on what they said.

Today, however, the Bible is God's stamp of authority on everything that is said to come from Him. It is also all that God has to say to the world (Hebrews 1:1-2). The apostles and prophets served both to complete it and to act as a stopgap in communication until it was. After it was, evangelists proclaim the Gospel from it and teachers teach from it.