Taken from the book Világnézeti Válaszok (Answers Regarding Worldviews) by P. Béla Bangha
It is enough to believe in a personal, omnipotent God, the Creator of the world. Belief in revelation and religions with doctrines is superfluous.
It depends on whether revelation from God has really taken place and can be recognized as such after due investigation. If it is, then it is the most serious obligation for everyone to believe in it and to follow the particular religion (not “religions”) which duly preserves and proclaims these revelations. No one can say to the State either: “I recognize the State, but I do not care for its laws or its demands!”
Who knows what is true from the things the Bible says about creation, the first human couple, paradise, the fall, the Ten Commandments and the promises of the Savior? How can things that happened millennia ago be established with absolute certainty today?
There is evidence for this, too, which cannot even be summarized in a few words, but which the interested reader will find in abundance in any handbook on apologetics. We will emphasize only one point here: without the sacred writings of the Old Testament, it is impossible to understand the history of the Jewish people, its very particular religious development.
In particular, it is impossible to understand how a relatively small and insignificant nation, which by nature was also inclined to the idolatrous customs of the sea of people flowing around it, could have survived for one and a half thousand years on the basis of a pure faith in God and very high moral and religious ideals, such as are not to be found among any ancient people, not even among the highly cultured Greeks and Romans. This cannot explained by any natural development, but solely by the fact that the Jewish people, in spite of all their faults and fallibility, felt the revelations, commands, and promises of God hovering almost over them; the revelations which God addressed to them through the patriarchs and prophets, and which they partly wrote down.
How do I know that the Gospels are reliable historical sources?
First of all, it is a historical certainty that the Gospels do indeed come from the contemporaries of Christ. This was denied for a long time by the German unbelieving Bible scholarship, but the conclusive power of the facts forced one of their main leaders, Adolf Harnack himself, to retreat. The life, words and deeds of Jesus were conducted in full public view, and if the evangelists had not faithfully conveyed them, contemporaries would certainly have protested vehemently. The great respect with which contemporaries received these Gospels without controversy elevates the statements in the Gospels from the level of mere individual statements to the universal witness of a whole people, and even of a great, world-wide movement.
Moreover, the narrative of the evangelists itself bears the inimitable stamp of honesty and truthfulness, so much so that it excludes any conscious or unconscious distortion. The Gospel authors observed closely and knew the events they were describing; they had ample opportunity to verify every detail by direct testimony. That they deliberately intended to be untruthful is ruled out by the consideration that it could not possibly have been in their interest, for they could not have derived any benefit from the Gospel narratives, on the contrary, they had only suffered much persecution from the Gentiles and the Pharisaic Jews. Three of the four evangelists were martyred for what they wrote, but so were hundreds and thousands of others who gave their lives and blood for the truth of the Gospels, for the doctrines and events they presented.
If there is any document whose authenticity and historical reliability is beyond doubt, it is the Gospel.
There is no evidence that the Gospels were indeed written immediately after the life of Jesus. It is probable that they were published only a few hundred years later and are therefore full of fables, mythological embellishments and exaggerations.
This is how the “enlightened” spoke a hundred years ago, and even half a century ago Renan and his followers. Today, no serious person subscribes to this premise. The first two centuries of Christianity provide such a mass of written testimony to the early origin of the Gospels that it is no longer possible to doubt it. Harnack himself, one of the most respected leaders of modern scriptural scholarship, is forced to admit that the Gospels and the other books of the New Testament do indeed date from the period in which Catholic tradition places them, the 1st century.
The authors of the Gospels obviously want to glorify the figure of Jesus with legendary details; these legendary details must therefore be excised from the Gospels.
There are no such things as legendary details in the Gospels, unless someone, out of prejudice and bias, declares everything that is beyond the ordinary and quite supernatural to be legendary in the first place. The birth and life of Jesus, his death and resurrection, are indeed full of miraculous events which are almost self-evident if the main character of the Gospels, Jesus, is indeed the Son of God. These miraculous phenomena cannot simply be brushed aside and declared to be fairy tales on a whim. If these miracles had been untrue, Jesus’ contemporaries and direct witnesses of the events would not have accepted the Gospels as true historical records, and even as God’s inspiration, but would have protested against them and turned their backs on them. And there is no trace of this in the history and literature of all Christian antiquity.
The Gospel authors were gullible and naive people, and that is why they were caught up in the miraculous details.
These miraculous details either really happened or they didn’t. If they had not happened, the Gospel writers would have been common charlatans and deceivers, and it is then inexplicable that they should have taken so much danger, persecution and even death upon themselves for the sake of their lies. But it would also be incomprehensible that the thousands who had seen and observed Jesus’ life with their own eyes would have taken these nonsense and fibs so deadly seriously. And if these miracles did indeed take place, then their accurate and faithful recording is neither credulity nor naivety, but factual truth.
The Scriptures are full of miracles, and miracles are in conflict with natural science.
A miracle transcends natural science, but does not “get into conflict” with it. No science can claim that the omnipotent God who created all of nature cannot, once in a while, for some very important reason, e.g., for the purpose of obviously validating a revelation, do something that goes beyond the normal course of nature. For example, to heal the sick suddenly through his saints, or even to raise the dead, to calm a storm with a single word, or to multiply the loaves of bread. If one believes in an omnipotent God, one cannot doubt the miraculous power of God.
The Gospels give different accounts of certain events. How then can they be books written due to inspiration?
The gospels differ from one another, it is true, but they never contradict one another. The difference is rather that one emphasizes this or that circumstance more than the other; one gives a longer, the other a shorter account of the words of Christ. It is precisely these apparent contradictions which rather prove that the Gospels were indeed written on the basis of total sincerity and directness, not of collusion.
How do I know that the original Gospels have come down to us unchanged for all these centuries?
Because from the very beginning, these sacred texts have been preserved with the utmost respect by Christians, just as sacred texts were by the Jews of the Old Testament, copied with religious piety and handed down from generation to generation. The copiers sometimes missed a word or a letter, but since they copied and transmitted the documents in many places at once, it was easy to spot and correct the errors, The 5000 or so surviving ancient manuscripts do indeed contain thousands of minor variations (textual discrepancies), but they are almost always completely insignificant; in essence they all agree. […]
St Paul’s letters already show a vast development compared to the Gospels, especially to the Gospel of Mark, perhaps the earliest of them. This would seem to imply that the original teachings of Jesus had already undergone substantial changes at the beginning. Christianity is not founded by Jesus, but rather by the Apostle Paul.
St. Paul, with his marvelous profundity, is indeed a giant step towards the systematization and theological elaboration of the doctrines of the Gospel. He is the first theologian and systematizer of Christianity, the first inventor of certain later theological terms. But it is out of the question that he is the true founder of Christianity, for there is not a single line or letter in his writings that is not in its essence already found in the Gospels and in the statements of Jesus. To systematize is not to invent. St. Paul’s role in relation to the Gospels is like that of a botanist in relation to the plant kingdom. By systematizing the wonders of the plant world, the botanist does not create or modify it; he is only its presenter, its explainer, its scientist, but he cannot be said to be the creator of the plant world.
If the religion of Christ is true, why has he not been able to conquer the world to this day?
Christ Himself said that His kingdom would be like a mustard seed, which starts from the smallest beginnings and slowly grows into a tree that overshadows the whole world. This is exactly what history shows us: Christianity is growing. Today, on every continent, in every country, on every island, more than 700 million people profess to be its adherents, a good third of humanity.
The fact that the faith of Jesus has not yet conquered the whole world is not due to the inadequacy of Christianity, but to the omissions and inadequacies of men. For just as Christ himself had enemies and haters, so Christianity has always had and continues to have fierce opponents who do everything in their power to hinder the triumph of Christ’s faith and his Church. In this endeavor they find powerful help in the blind and sinful nature of men themselves.
Christianity demands that we should give the other side of our face to the one who slaps us in the face. This may be the religion of cowards and lackeys, but not of self-respecting people with a spine.
Christianity demands humility and bowing before God and his commands, ordinances, revelations; it demands respect for lawful rulers, parents, ecclesiastical and secular authorities, patience and generosity even in persecution; but it does not demand servile bowing before those who do not deserve it. Christian humility is neither servility nor being a lackey.
On the contrary, the masculine profession and practice of Christianity today often requires a high degree of self-respect and courage. Much more than the spirit that is ashamed to bow before God, but humbles itself to the ground, crawling before some earthly authorities: party leaders, political dictators, business bosses, from whom it can expect something in the way of money and promotion. Interesting inconsistency! These people take it for granted that when one kneels down before an actress with a made up face, a beautiful woman, one is not ashamed to kiss her hand, but is aroused and speaks angry words when one sees faithful Catholics kissing the hands of the Pope, the bishops, their spiritual father, in whom they respect the vicar of Christ.
In reality, however, no one gives the other cheek to the one who slaps him in the face!
No, indeed, and that is because this admonition of our Lord Christ is obviously not a literal command, but a statement of principle, expressing the great truth that it is better to bear individual shame or injury in peace, even if it is repeated, than to pay for evil with evil, and thus open the way to hatred and eternal rivalry.
How much happier humanity would have been down the centuries if this principle had been followed! How many wars, massacres, family quarrels, hatreds and social rivalries could have been prevented if men had learned to be forgiving and patient rather than to get into an immediate quarrel and engage in endless quarrels and wars!
The morality of Christianity is inferior because it teaches us to do good for reward and to avoid evil for fear of punishment. Kant teaches us to do good for its own sake!
Christianity does not teach us to do good and avoid evil only for the sake of reward and punishment. If someone talks like this, he misunderstands Christianity. Christian morality teaches that we do good primarily out of love for God and that we avoid evil because it is sin and offends God. But the motives of reward and punishment are also necessary, because pure love of God and abstract love of virtue would in practice have a sufficiently decisive and moving effect on very few people. Is it also a low thing to accept state or military honours?
The two are not mutually exclusive but complementary. It is better to rely on the motives of reward and fear, too, than to fall completely behind in the moral struggle! Is it immoral for parents and the state to reward or punish? Besides, reward and punishment in the afterlife are also supernatural motives connected with God, which cannot be equated with the motive of selfishness; here again, the love of God is the highest degree of reward, and the loss of God is the punishment: this is the noblest motive.
And Kant’s categorical imperative, which seeks to cultivate virtue for the sake of abstract virtue, lacks a sufficient basis and thus hangs in the air and has no effect on serious men. No one does good because it is called good, unless there is a real higher law behind the word, a divine will, and what necessarily goes with it: reward and punishment.
This text is in released under the Creative Commons Zero License. The original author died in 1939, therefore the original Hungarian text is in the public domain.