....There's a kind of atheist who thinks that any sort of difficulty they can come up with invalidates all of Christianity. So if you can't quantify which view of salvation by faith is right by the percentage points of it's truth content in comparison to other views then there's no point in being a Christian at all. One favorite gambit of these "difficulty atheists," is to ask "which God is it?" The implication being that if one can't show conclusively that the true God is something they call 'the bible God' then there's no point in belief in God at all becuase it easily be any God and there's no way to know.[1] This is a "pp" argument. The reason is obvious, any red blooded fundamentalist can give a 250 reasons why "The Christian God" is the true God. The problem is, and it's a problem for both camps, the Bible never uses the phrase "Bible God." Neither Jesus, nor Paul nor Moses nor any Biblical figure ever says "believe ye the bible God and no other." Even passages where God himself indicates "i am the Lord and beside me there is no other" he he doesn't say "I am the Bible God." In all actuality there is no such thing as the Christian God, that phrase is not used either, or the Bible God. There is only God, and all people have different ideas about God.
....It's not a matter of which God as though they are all competing for existence, it's a matter of which tradition do we think actually adheres more closely to the reality behind the constructs. That is the content that is hinted at in the phrase "the bible God." What they are trying to awkwardly to say is that this is the set of God related concepts embodied in the traditions that stem from the Biblical text. That doesn't exclude the idea that other traditions have truth too, or that God is working in other traditions. These atheists usually want to keep putting it in terms of specific figures from various traditions such as Zeus or Odin or whomever. This is treating God as a contingency, as adding a fact to the universe. He's just one more personality. These are just place holders within a tradition, when people speak of God as the creator, the basis of reality, it doesn't make any difference what contingent concept they stick on it. Like Spinoza's argument about the triangle. There is one shape that is a triangle and that one shape is represented in many ways in many places but they all refer back tot he same idea. The red triangle I use to group my billiard balls is referring to the same triangle represented by the green plastic triangular law sprinkler or the white triangle drawn on the black board in math class.
....There is one reality behind all religious traditions. This is not say that all gods are synonymous with the God who whom Jesus prayed in the Garden, but it is to say that all god images and all concepts of God point to the reality that stands behind them all. We can see this in the Bible. Paul said:
"To those who through persistence seek glory, honor and immortality he will give eternal life.But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the good and follow evil there will be wrath and anger...first for the Jew and then for the gentile; but glory honor and peace for everyone who does good. For God does not show favoritism. All who sin apart from the law will perish apart form the law and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.Most Christians are afraid of this conclusion and they down play this verse. Often Evangelicals will come back and say "he makes it clear in the next passage that no one can really follow the law on their hearts." Well, if they can't, than they can't. But if they can, and do, than God will excuse them. God knows the heart, we do not. The verse clearly opens the door to the possibility of salvation (although by Jesus) through a de facto arrangement in which one is seeking the good without knowing the object one is seeking (Jesus). In other words, it is possible that people in other cultures who follow the moral law written on the heart know Jesus de facto even if they don't know him overtly. Paul backs up this conclusion in Acts 17:22 Paul goes to Athens as is asked by the Athenian philosophers to explain his ideas to them.
Indeed when Gentiles who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirement of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences bearing witness and their hearts now accusing, now even defending them..." (Romans 2:7-15). New American Standard and other translations say "their hearts accusing, now excusing them..."
....These were pagan followers of another religion. Paul stood up and said to them, "Men of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious for as I walked around and observed your objects of worship I even found an alter with this inscription 'TO AN UNKOWN GOD' Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you."He basically says that they are worshiping God, they just don't know who he is. That's why he says "I will make it known to you." He doesn't say "you have the wrong idea completely." Most Evangelicals dismiss this as a neat rhetorical trick. But if we assume that Paul would not lie or distort his beliefs for the sake of cheap tricks, we must consider that he did not say "you are all a bunch of pagans and you are going to hell!" He essentially told them, "God is working in your culture, you do know God, but you don't know who God is. You seek him, without knowing the one you seek. He goes on,(v27)"God did this [created humanity and scattered them into different cultures] so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out and find him though he is not far form each one of us." This implies that God not only wants to work in other cultures, but that it is actually his paln to do things in this way. Perhaps through a diversity of insights we might come to know God better. Perhaps it means that through spreading the Gospel people would come to contemplate better the meaning of God's love.
....In any case, it does mean that God is working in other cultures, and that God is in the hearts of all people drawing them to himself. Of their worship of idols, Paul said "in past times God overlooked such ignorance but now he commands all people everywhere to repent" (v30). Now what can this mean? God never overlooks idolatry or paganism, in the OT he's always commanding the Israelite to wipe them out and expressly forbidding idolatry. It means that on an individual basis when God judges the hearts of people, he looks at their desire to seek him, to seek the good. That their status as individuals in a pagan culture does not negate the good they have done, and their ignorance of idolatry does not discount their desire to seek the good or the truth. IT means that they are following Jesus if they live in the moral life, even though they follow him as something unknown to them. IT also means that all of us should come into the truth, we should seek to know God fully, and when we do that we find that it is Jesus all along.
....Of course this doesn't mean that I'm worshiping other gods. It doesn't mean that if I see a representation of Shiva on a Hindu temple I'll pray to it and say it's pointing to Jesus. Why? Because that's not the cultural construct with which I identify and which is most meaningful to me. Neither will I spit on it or call it names or show contempt for it. I respect the traditions of other faiths as a matter of civilized discourse and Christian love. I do recognize it as pointing to God, the God my tradition, in a certain sense. This is another path and the view of those who follow it and the way they understand the reality behind all our paths. I must show it respect, but I don't have to worship it. So it's not a matter of trying to figure out which tradition is right or which one has the right God, if it were I could give you a long string of good arguments that's its mine, there's more to it than that. It's about understanding what a tradition says to us.We find the tradition that really speaks to us as respect the others as colleagues. I still believe that anyone who gives Christianity a fair chance and hears what its saying to us has a good chance of falling in love with Jesus and following him.
....People have always sought to find their place in the cosmos, that's what all the various forms of mythos are about. It's because we recognize that the thing we feel in our inner most begin when we we behold the star filled desert sky is the answer to that quest, "why am I here?" that we seek define who this is that's calling us to journey as Abraham did. It's more than just words on paper or stories in Sunday school abut an actual encounter with a reality that stands behind all reality and transcends all paths and all traditions. The Hebraic author knew when he quoted the prophet that it was more than a set of rules or a list of laws, but a realtinship with reality when Jeremiah wrote:
Heb. 8:10-12 "...I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts I will be their God and they will be my people. No longer will a man say to his neighbor 'know the Lord' for they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more."This passage promises a "personal relationship with God."The word for "to Know" is the Greek Term Ginosko, which means personal experiential knowledge. To give one's life to Jesus means to develop a personal relationship with Jesus. Jesus said (John) "My sheep know my voice..." Personal relationship means that it is more than a set of rules, more than an ideology or a belief system, but a matter of the heart, the emotions, religious affections. IT may not be through dramatic miraculous effects (although I do believe that that is open to all Christians) but it is deeper than mere rule keeping, and does make for a satisfaction nothing else can match.God acts upon the heart. Salvation is a matter of "knowing God" not of mere intellectual assent. What does it mean to know God? It means that being a Christian is a matter of experiencing God's love in the heart and of loving God and others. It is also a matter of being "led" by God through impressions upon the heart, and not merely a set of rules or a list of beliefs that one must check off. IT is the development of "religious affections."The excitement of knowing God is unequaled by anything else in this life.
[1] this can be seen argued by atheist Blogger Christopher Hallquist on is page "7.there are no good God arguments."
