Apologetics Guided Reading: George Park Fisher “Manual of Christian Evidences” Chapter 12

Source for image: http://divinity-adhoc.library.yale.edu/Exhibits/YDSMilestones.htm

I am leading a guided reading of the Manual of Christian Evidences by George Park Fisher. It is freely available online and will serve as a base for discussing Christian apologetics throughout this series. The chapters are short and readable. I encourage you to join in by reading the chapters and commenting with your thoughts. When I discuss the book, I will be citing page numbers from the edition linked above

Chapter 12

Fisher turns to a rather brief aside in this chapter about whether the charge that Christianity is inconsistent with the Old Testament is accurate. Readers of this brief chapter may come away with many questions, and again the most important thing is that Fisher is here not concerned with many of the deeper questions on issues he considers to be less important. His book is intended as a brief introduction to Christian evidences, not a comprehensive theology or apologetic. Modern charges about the Old Testament include its character, charges that prophecies weren’t fulfilled, that it is purely fable rather than having any truth in it. When one considers many modern objections, it is actually rather surprising how on point Fisher’s swift dismissal is.

Many objections to Christianity from the Old Testament might be covered by noting, as Fisher did, that there is a progression of revelation and that Christians are not to go beyond the words of Christ when it comes to trying to make sense of many passages in the Old Testament (92-93). Fisher explicitly notes that questions of authorship and dating are questions to which Christ and the apostles pay no attention. Readers can see this in a couple different ways. Some may take it as seeing the modern obsession with source criticism or finding which parts of the Old Testament were composed in which order is an irrelevant and perhaps even wrong-headed endeavor. Others may see those things as quite beneficial but instead note that the findings of modern scholarship related to the composition of the Old Testament do nothing to challenge the Christian faith. For my part, I think the latter are more correct. Modern scholarship can and does challenge many traditional interpretations of the text, but when it comes down to it, the foundations of the Christian faith do not stand or fall on whether Moses wrote by hand every word that has traditionally been attributed to him or not.

Fisher even goes beyond this and argues that Jesus’s teaching on divorce shows progressive revelation and that part of the Old Testament law did not reach the “Christian ideal (93). From this, he argues that God has been gradually revealing His will and plan to all peoples in the times and places where they are.

And that is the point, I believe, that Fisher is averring to here. He shows what seems a remarkable disinterest in questions that obsess Christians today–whether progressive, conservative, or of any other leaning. Why? Because he’s getting at the point that these questions don’t matter when it comes down to Christ crucified, a point he makes more explicit closing out the chapter (94).

Study Questions

1. What do you think of Fisher’s assertion that dates and authors are not important to Christ and the apostles?

2. How might we avoid going beyond the text when it comes to trying to establish the authority of Scripture?

3. Do you think Fisher’s arguments here are sound? Why/not?

Links

Be sure to check out the page for this site on Facebook and Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies and more!

Apologetics Read-Through: Historical Apologetics Read-Along– Here are links for the collected posts in this series and other read-throughs of apologetics books (forthcoming).

Dead Apologists Society– A page for Christians interested in the works of historical apologetics. There is also a Facebook group for it.

SDG.

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