Thoughts on a Judaic-Christian Apologetic

Thoughts on a Christian Apologetic
Share
Saturday, 10 October 2009 at 16:44 Edit note Delete
Speaking as a Gentile for me to be a Christian is to embrace and join a communion and a community that historically goes back to a repentant Adam and Eve.. It is also to join hands with our Jewish brothers and sisters for Christianity is Jewish and we newly grafted Gentile believers have been grafted into that Judaic-Christian faith that we now have in common to a large extent though of course it is not complete yet but expected to be so in the fullness of time. Like the Jews and Judaism too memory is crucial for us. One could point out figures throughout the Old and New Testaments whose belief and actions were crucial to Judaism and the Jews surviving and Judaism flowering into the shared heritage we have today with the fulfilled promise of the coming of the Messiah and the Second Coming yet to be fulfilled. As we remember,we remember the people, the prophets, the words, the works, the many miracles of deliverance and the other times where persecution,massacre,resistance,battle and death by suicide and martyrdom in the arena was common. If only it was memory only. I lived in York ,England whose name is marred because of the persecution of the Jews for some time ago one such event took place there. The Jews are people of the Book like no other. It is carried on their heads and written on their hearts. To forget is for a Jew to deny his (1)people, and all that that symbolizes until finally he loses himself or herself. Remember to keep Shabat, remember Yom Kippur, remember slavery in Egypt and how you wept by the rivers of Babylon when you remembered Zion. Remember Auschwitz,Treblinka, Therisenstadt, Sobibor etc. , remember, remember. Jewish parents would tell their children “Do not forget you are Jewish” when they left home. I think one of the many reasons why Oscar Schindler's Jews so loved him was that even under the eyes of the Nazis Schindler would actively remind them and make it possible for them to celebrate their worship, their holy days and holidays and festivals. Jesus,when He was here was hated too from the start and one of the reasons was because the portion of scripture He chose to read in the temple involved the Year of Jubilee a time when debts were forgiven and land restored. Apologetics then for us as Christians, as grafted Gentiles into this rich Jewish vineyard and do not forget for Jesus the Jew too, life for him was not one of wine and roses,He was marked for death from birth and many died when He came and even before He was born He knew that a cruel death was part of His chosen portion and committed to that to finish His task and gain the joy that was set before Him. He was like no other man being in charge of His death and its timing.. He was “ a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief “.I personally am profoundly grateful for that. Sorrow can be utilised for other things. When man in grief falls silent God gives songs in the watches of the night when no one else listens or is there to listen. This too is apologetics.Apologetics has its place in Affliction for it is in the tough times we can know of God's presence with us and also learn to deal with things when He seems not to be around and actually isn't in the case of Christ when he was on the cross. Apologetics then for us as Christians grafted into this rich vineyard is to learn and apply the past to the present. Those that will not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. With memory comes the duty to remember. Memory creates and nourishes bonds not only ,speaking personally, with the Jews I am honoured to have as friends both here and in Israel but sisters and brothers in the Lord,Gentile and Jew. God may be discreet but He has already proved convincingly He is not a far off God and One who remains unmoved by our circumstances. Apologetics is being able to give a reason for the hope that is within us. Apologetics is not a dry discipline but is the personal day to day testimony by life and action and thought form of a person to person walk with the living God in and through the tangle of our lives. So then what must we do. Apologetics is first of all to assert the Lordship of Christ over each and every aspect of life on Earth and the Earth itself and the cosmos,whether man,animal,plant,machine. How is this applied one might ask.Language seems a good starting point. Our apologetic re language would assert that language preceded man,not the other way around. Language distinguishes us from every thing else existing. Life and death Ecclesiastes points out is in the tongue.The name of the Messiah preceded the Messiah. Who was Isaiah prophesying about seven hundred years before Christ was born.?Judaism might ask itself.
The spoken word preceded Creation. God spoke and it was so. Language was used to introduce man into what he was,who he was,his name, where he was, his gender,his newly created partner,her name,what she was,her gender and of course mankind to God himself,person to person..So it was also with Eve. God formed man to be a herbivore not a carnivore, a vegetarian not a meat eater. The historic space time fall made that scenario change by invoking the judgement of God which also provided a way of mercy and final recovery at the same time to take place eventually within God's providential care. We have a clearly outlined personal beginning not impersonal showing our first relationship is upward not downwards as in the Evolutionary argument. We have a basis for language and forthe creation and establishment of different languages that no other scenario can adequately supply. An illustration of the importance of language is beautifully shown in an old Jewish lullaby which tells of a Rabbi who taught a student the Aleph -bet (Alphabet) and said “When you grow up you will come to understand how much joy,how much sorrow,how much pain,how much majesty these letters contain” The Infinite exists and our words may be made to explode. My friend Irina (Ratushinskya ) was locked up in the Gulag Archipelago in the former USSR for years and it was all because of her poetry, because her pen leaked explosions. Language makes enemies impotent. Somebody once said “the Torah may burn but the letters will float in the air.” Language though these days,in the time of the sound-bite, has suffered verbal inflation.Football teams get”massacred” and we are overwhelmed with words as snow in an avalanche can mask and suffocate what is beneath by critical mass. Evolution for example is a word like that,it seems to say everything and in many ways says nothing and for many Christians it is like dealing with Zen Buddhism trying to understand what the other hand is doing when only one is clapping. Evolutionary arguments too in some ways like Zen is used to upset categories and induce mysticism, A good unveiling of Darwinism and its theoretical base can be found in Nancy Pearcey's book which I would heartily recommend.A quick reading of Dawkins,the ultra Rationalist, for example would prove conclusively he is theologically illiterate.(2)
I think that for Dawkins he still thinks that science is “objective” but scientific facts and theories have to pass through the subjective filter of our minds,our presuppositions,our pre-conceptions our sensual experience and therefore any fact could possibly be open to change as boundaries to scientific knowledge is extended. (3) Gunpowder provides a good example; Gunpowder will either flame or explode depending whether it is open to the air or confined and enclosed. A visual example with no danger whatsoever can be seen in the recent film of The Lord of the Rings where Saruman plots the destruction of the walls of Helm's Deep. Is that true at all times. No,for wet gunpowder will do neither. So the initial supposition has had to be revised in the light of further evidence.There are many questions one could ask of Evolution that do not receive satisfactory answers. Darwin himself pointedly did not either ask them or answer them.”Light will be shed...” is all he said which is probably one of the biggest evolutionary statements ever foisted on to the public arena ever. Without turning this into a book or examining the whole gamut that encompasses human life we have ample reason and evidence to have confidence in the reasons for the hope that is within us. It is evidence that compels a verdict

Notes (1 ) It is intended that the use of the word man should encompass both Genders.(2 ) See for example the excellent review by Terry Eagleton of Dawkins “The God Delusion.” available on my page for viewing(3 ) See Michel Polanyi in his book “Personal Knowledge” for a fuller and more devastating critique of objectivism in science. A book to which I am indebted