Christianity in a world of religions

Kevin Moss | 16:15, 15 July 2018

We only had a week's notice but even so, around fifty folks from churches around Cardiff were able to enjoy Craig's entertaining and engaging take on comparative religion, as well as the insights derived from his own direct experience of the discourse within the USA's most aggressively secular universities.

Christian Apologetics, as a discipline, is one that engages some folks, but puts others off. The primary reason for the latter is often the sheer degree of technical detail. Craig managed to avoid that pitfall entirely, by panning back and focusing on key principles and exploring the kind of logic which ought to bear fruit if open-minded agnostics were seeking to explore spirituality for themselves. He showed that Christianity:

• Is uniquely testable, unlike other mainstream religious or philosophical systems which float free of the kind of evidence which might help you assess their veracity;
• Involves a free gift from God – so no complicated rituals, no painful asceticism;
• Provides a picture of the world which correlates precisely with what it actually is – no need, for instance, to attempt to dispense with the problem of evil and suffering by labelling it or pretending that it does not really exist;
• Has Jesus right at the centre of it – most other religions wants a piece of Him in some way or another, but within the Christian Gospel He is centre.

The atheist, John Gray, comes to exactly the same conclusion as Craig – namely that Christianity is unlike any other 'religious' belief system because it is uniquely testable. However, Gray both giveth and taketh away, when his own appeal to selected authorities effectively denies the open-minded enquirer the means to engage with the claims of Christ, as Craig Hazen presented them to us on 7th July.