Blog #2

Peter Abelard was a scholastic philosopher who challenged the commonly practiced blind faith in authoritative theological figureheads. In his time period, Aristotle’s writings were forbidden from being read for fear of people losing their faith in God and their religious leaders. Abelard not only translated Aristotle’s writing, but also pointed out many contradicting viewpoints held by Christian theologians and in scripture.  From this, Abelard brought forth an idea that one’s religious belief should not be governed purely by a sort of blind faith, but also by logic and reason.

In my life, there have been times when I have doubted the logic behind what is written about in the Bible and believed by the average Christian. Whether you realize it or not, believing in the miracles and resurrection of Jesus is a rather insane notion. We have little evidence of these events actually happening besides a book written from one person’s perspective. Of the books of the gospel, which are written from four different perspectives, a lot of time passed before they were written. With all of this knowledge in mind, the Christian faith would appear to have little logic or reason to defend it. However, this is not the case.

I tend to be a rather logical and reasonable person, which is why I tend to speak about my faith from a logical point of view. If I hadn’t experienced certain events in my life, I can’t be certain that I would be a Christian today. This was the topic of a conversation that I had recently with a few friends of mine. The discussion was mainly between someone with many doubts about the Christian faith and another who is very strong in their faith. After about two hours of hypothetical situations and testimonies the conversation came down to one logical statement about the belief in what is written in the Bible about the story of Jesus Christ. Of all of the people who have been on Earth claiming to be the son of God and who were killed for saying so, why do we still talk about one man in particular who lived over 2000 years ago? People who claim to be the reincarnation of God are written off as crazy before they are ever taken seriously. If someone came up to me today and said that they were the human form of God himself, I’d immediately consider him to be insane. Yet, I believe in a story about a man who did the exact same thing. One of the few logical reasons that I have for this is the fact that the story of Jesus is the only story, as far as I know, where a man claimed to be the son of God and was considered to be a lunatic by many, that we still talk and learn about today.

Naturally, there are many other reasons that I believe in the death an resurrection of Jesus along with many other stories in the Bible. However, most of those stories are thought to be true due to a certain amount of faith that I have. This is also influenced by my personal testimony, but the fact that Jesus’ story continues to be told is my biggest rationale for my faith in God and practice of Christianity.