How Can We Be Sure That Christianity is the Right Religion? Question #21

Question:

I have heard of many other religions such as Buddhism, Islam, Jews, Jehovah Witness…etc. How can we -as Christians- be so sure that were the right ones out of all other ones. What makes Christianity different and unique?

    Hope to get a reply real soon

    Thanks!

    – Cesar Sosa

Reply:

Thank you very much for your question, Cesar!

Well the first thing I’d have to say is because its true. If Christianity is true, then it wouldn’t be a question as to why it would be the correct, one  “true” religion.

Space would not permit me to go into detail about the other religions but you’re more than welcome to look at my YouTube channel playlist on arguments for God’s existence. This will narrow it down to a monotheistic religion which bring us to Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.

So why Christianity? Many reasons can be given such as it answers the human condition better than any other religion or that its very outlook on the human condition surpasses every other religion. For example every other religion makes you live in a way to reach God where as Christianity makes us aware that we can not, so God reached down to us.

However the one and only argument really needed to establish Christianity as true is the historical fact of the resurrection of Christ. Once this point is proven, every other religion that is not Christian will by default be false, plain and simple. So lets take a look at the argument for the resurrection briefly. Here is a link to the full video for the argument here: Jesus and Why I’m not an Atheist.

There are three facts that need to be established regarding the historical account of the resurrection of Jesus.

1. The empty tomb
2. The postmortem appearances
3. The origin of the Christian faith

The world’s leader on the topic of the resurrection is none other than Gary Habermas. These are facts that virtually every historian, whether Christian, agnostic, atheist or the like agree upon. That is to say that they all agree His tomb was empty, they all agree that people did in fact claim to have seen him after his death and that the origin of the Christian faith does depend on the earliest disciples believing that he did in fact rise from the dead. Whether or not they all agree that their claims were true or not is irrelevant so far. The point is they all agree these claims are made and believed by the people making them.

Whatever the best explanation is it must:

1. Have explanatory scope- explain the majority of the evidence
2. Have explanatory power- makes the evidence more probable
3. Be plausible- fit better than any other information
4. Be less contrived- won’t call for superfluous new beliefs that don’t have justification.
5. Be disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs- won’t conflict with already known and established beliefs of that time.

For example if one explanation was that aliens took the body (which was actually an attempted alternative explanation) then sure it would explain the missing body, but would not fit numbers 2-4 such as #4 it would then contrive us to believe that now aliens exist and would have a reason to take the body in the first place!

Once again, rather than go into the leading competing hypothesis to explain these facts, I’ll just mention the resurrection hypothesis.

The Resurrection Hypothesis- God Raised Jesus From The Dead

1. Best explains all three established historical facts. Far more than rival hypothesis.
2. On this theory all the facts are supported by this explanation. The facts of the empty tomb, appearances, and origin of the Christian faith are best supported by this explanation
3. Its highly plausible considering the historical context and the philosophical context. That is, if God exist then it is highly probable that He could and would and did raise Jesus from the dead.
4. Is it contrived? It only requires one new hypothesis: that God exist. Every other hypothesis requires much more than that. But for the believer it does not require anything new. Given the context this is not a “God of the gaps”. In fact to cry out for a natural explanation is by default excluding the supernatural all together. So we aren’t asking what is the best natural explanation, but rather what best explains the historical evidence irrelevant to our bias.
5. No prior accepted historical beliefs need to be disconfirmed on this hypothesis. One might say, “dead men do not rise” as a disconformity, but this is based on what naturally happens. It is not a contradiction to say “men do not rise naturally from the dead” and “God raised Jesus from the dead”.

 

 

 

 

The only objection would be a naturalistic assumption that miracles are impossible. But that would then need to be justified and is a separate issue in itself. However, once you give up the unjustified prejudice against miracles, its hard to deny the historical resurrection of Jesus to best explain all the facts. After all, if an all powerful God exist then He could raise someone from the dead.  And if no other hypothesis bears the explanation that 1-4 does, then it logically fits as the best explanation.

Thus given this argument, it puts to rest all other religions and would validate Christianity as the one, true religion, plain and simple whether one likes it or not.

-Eric Hernandez

---

 

Recommended authorities in this area:

Gary Habermas

Mike Licona

William Lane Craig

 

Got a question? Submit any questions regarding God, Philosophy, Apologetics, Theology, Christianity, or the like to our ministry via Facebook, Instagram, Youtube or our Website. Thank you and God bless.