Wednesday, June 10, 2009

The Gospel…to the Gentiles foolishness

1) 1 Corinthians 1:22-23 “For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness

When Lennox makes his closing statements, he mentions the centrality of Jesus Christ and the resurrection. Dawkins then ridicules,

“Yes, well that concluding bit rather gives the game away doesn’t it? If all that stuff about science and physics and the complications of physics and things...what it all really comes down to is the resurrection of Jesus. There is a fundamental incompatibility between the sort of sophisticated scientist which we hear part of the time from John Lennox and its impressive and we are interested in the arguments about multi-verses (as opposed to uni-verse) and things. And then having produced some sort of a case for some sort of deistic god; perhaps some god like the great physicist who adjusted the laws of the constants of the universe…that’s all very grand and wonderful and then suddenly we come down to the resurrection of Jesus. It’s so petty. It’s so trivial. It’s so local. It’s so earthbound. It’s so unworthy of the universe.” —Dawkins (BSD, emphasis added)

When Dawkins brings up the topic of Jesus again, he sticks to the word “petty” (OD 5:00-7:00 mark). Later, sneering, he chides Lennox,

“Do you really think that the creator of this magnificent edifice of the universe, these expanding universe, the galaxies…do you really think He couldn’t think of a better way than to get rid of the sins on this one little speck of dust than to have himself tortured? He’s the one who is doing the forgiving after all. Could he have just forgiven?” —Dawkins (OD, 32:00 mark).

Two thousand years ago, the debate was the same. Scriptures describe precisely this response from those who reject God’s wisdom for their own. When Paul preached in Athens notice the response in Acts 17:32, "Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer.." The relatively recent and "new" assertions of Darwin, and subsequently, Dawkins, are actually old and expected from those who reject God. Note, the correlation of Dawkins’ condescending reaction to God’s Gospel with Paul’s claim, “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chose, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God” (1 Cor 1:27-29).

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