defi-nitely do (“God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself”).
3.91 Can personal decisions required by the case for Jesus Christ not be postponed on the ground that that case is, after all, empirical in nature and therefore always subject to possible revision based on the discovery of new facts?
3.911 The evidence for Jesus’ Lordship, based chiefly on his resur-rection from the dead, has been available for two thousand years; the likelihood of finding the body of Christ today is in-finitesimal.
3.912 Would we consider rational a refusal to purchase an album of the “Complete Songs of Elvis Presley” because there is always the possibility that he is indeed still alive and may be recording new songs in the future?
3.92 Can a response to the claims of Christ be postponed on the ground that the case presented is not 100% certain and there-fore agnosticism is more reasonable than belief?
3.921 Would we consider it reasonable to refuse to put money into U.S. government bonds because 100% assurance cannot be provided that the country might not go bankrupt sometime in the future?
3.922 As the existentialists have correctly emphasised, all life is de-cision, and when one refuses to make a dede-cision, that in itself is a decision.
3.923 The real issue in agnosticism is, then: Does better evidence ex-ist in favour of not making a decision for Jesus Chrex-ist than for making such a decision? Everything presented to this point should decisively answer that question.
3.93 But surely many great thinkers have not gone this route? True;
though the best of them have wished they could—from Plato to Wittgenstein.
3.931 “With respect to such matters, it seems to me, and perhaps also to you, Socrates, that it is either impossible or very difficult to arrive at certainty in the present life; yet at the same time that a man shows very great weakness if he ceases to examine in every way what is said concerning these matters while he is still able to do so. For with regard to such things it is necessary to do one of the following: either learn from others or discover yourself how they stand, or, if this is impossible, lay hold on the very best and most irrefutable of human reasonings, and, hav-ing embarked on this, sail through life as one who risks himself upon a raft, unless a safer and less hazardous passage is
possi-ble in a more secure conveyance, to wit, some word of God”
(Phaedo, 85d; our translation).
3.932 “Often as we walked together he would stop and exclaim ‘Oh, my God!,’ looking at me almost piteously, as if imploring a di-vine intervention in human events” (Malcolm, speaking of Wittgenstein).
3.94 The evidence for the reality of the “secure conveyance” and for the facticity of the “intervention” is solid, and their benefits ex-traordinary.
3.941 “O King, this present life of men on earth, in comparison with the time that is unknown to us, seems to me as if you were sit-ting at a banquet with your ealdormen and thanes in the winter time with the fire burning and the hall warmed, and outside the storms of winter rain or snow were raging; and there should come a sparrow swiftly flying through the hall, coming in by one door and flying out through another. During the time it is inside it is not touched by the storm of winter; but, that little moment of quiet having passed, it soon returns from winter back to winter again, and is lost to sight. So this mortal life seems like a short interval; what may have gone before or what may come after it, we do not know. Therefore. if this new teaching has brought any greater certainty, it seems fitting that it should be followed” (Bede, H.E., ii.13, recounting the argu-ment that converted the 7th century Northumbrians to Christian faith).
3.95 If the case for Jesus Christ is as strong as it is, then one should consider the consequences both of acceptance and of rejection.
3.951 We are told that, ultimately, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10; cf. Romans 14:11; Isaiah 45:23).
3.9511 One does not, in the final analysis, have a choice between either confessing Christ or not confessing him; the choice is between doing it now, to one’s benefit, or doing it at the last judgment, unwillingly, and to one’s eternal loss.
3.96 Thus the force of Pascal’s wager, which asks: Suppose the ev-idence were exactly balanced for and against the truth of Chris-tianity, what would you gain and what would you lose by accepting Christ as Saviour?
3.961 If Christianity were false, and you accept it, you still benefit by gaining the highest moral code and following the finest moral example in human history.
3.962 If, however, Christianity is true, and you reject it, you lose your soul.
3.97 And we have seen that the evidence is by no means equally bal-anced for and against the veracity of Christ’s claims; the truth of his assertion to be God almighty, come to save us from our sins, is compelling to a moral certainty, beyond reasonable doubt.
3.971 “Belief does not aim merely at truth; it aims at knowledge. The more it is justified by knowledge, the closer it comes to knowl-edge itself. If evidence and knowlknowl-edge are one, then the more a belief is justified by evidence, the closer it comes to its aim” (T.
Williamson).
3.98 Jesus’ probing questions thus arrive at our door, and there is no rational way of avoiding them: “What do you think of Christ?”
“But who do you say that I am?”
3.99 “From no necessity [He] / Condescended to exist and to suffer death / And, scorned on a scaffold, ensconced in His life / The human household. In our anguish we struggle / To elude Him, to lie to Him, yet His love observes / His appalling promise; His predilection / As we wander and weep is with us to the end”
(W. H. Auden).
4 The historical validation of the Christian faith yields an inerrant, perspicuous and univocal written revelation.
4.1 The presence of fulfilled prophecies in the Bible supports the