Friday, December 7, 2007

If in this world only....

Christianity has brought many benefits to humankind, but so have other religions and secular philosophies. The really important argument for Christianity is that it is true. Alan Jacobs at Books & Culture:
...I doubt most of the claims made about the perfidy of religious belief in general, or monotheism, or Christianity in particular. But I wonder whether in responding to those claims of perfidy we sometimes neglect the prior claim, the claim of falsehood. After all, if the best that can be said for the Christian faith is that it has produced or helped to produce good things in this world—even the finest goods of, say, modern medicine—then it does not have a very strong claim upon us. It may be merely a kind of stepping stone, a way of understanding the world that has been useful but may now safely be abandoned for something better. Or perhaps the best things that it has produced are inferior to the best things that would be produced by another governing philosophy. Christianity only matters vitally and permanently if it brings what it fundamentally claims to bring: the redemption of humanity and the deliverance of the whole Creation. [more]
Rumors of Glory: Making Trade-Offs - Books & Culture Magazine

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