Simple?

If Christianity were something we were making up, of course we could make it easier, but it is not. We can not compete in simplicity with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with fact; of course anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about. C.S. Lewis

The Bible is not a simple book, and the Christian faith is, in some ways a very complicated one. Our understanding of God is more complicated than many people can abide by. We believe in one God, and yet we believe that God is a unity of being. He is one and he is three, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

This idea of God offends many. They insist that God must be one, a simple unity. Or, they insist that we admit that we actually believe in three gods. But the Scriptures teach God is a unity and a plurality in one God, He is a trinity. That is not a simple view of God and it is here that numerous individuals and groups have broken with the Christian faith.

We Christians believe that Jesus is wholly man and we also believe that he is wholly and fully the eternal God incarnated in human flesh. This too is a difficult teaching that offends many. They are willing to accept Jesus as a prophet or a great moral teacher. They are willing to accept that Jesus was filled with God’s spirit, but they frown at the doctrine that he can be fully God and fully man at one and the same time. This is teaching of Scripture is not simple or easy.

Christians believe that God took on human flesh and humanity by being conceived in the womb of a young virgin. This again is a teaching that many reject as preposterous nonsense. They don’t, so much, mind God appearing in human flesh, but the idea that he was born of a virgin, that a helpless infant was fully God is beyond what many can accept as reasonable. Unitarians reject the virgin birth.

The cross of Christ is also offensive to many who disbelieve the Christian faith. The God/man being punished for the sins of others is another concept that is not in all aspects a simple one. Why do we have to believe in a blood sacrifice? It is not a simple teaching and is despised by many.

The simplest statement of the Christian Faith is the Apostles Creed.

I BELIEVE in God the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth:
And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord,
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
Born of the Virgin Mary,
Suffered under Pontius Pilate,
Was crucified, dead, and buried:
He descended into hell;
The third day he rose again from the dead;
He ascended into heaven,
And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost;
The holy Catholic Church;
The Communion of Saints;
The Forgiveness of sins;
The Resurrection of the body,
And the Life everlasting.
Amen.

The Christian Faith is a faith based on events that took place in history. The Bible is mostly a divine history of the fall man and God’s work of redeeming work in history to save man and the bring in a new heavens and a new earth.

The teaching the Bible about God and His Christ are not simple, but they are truth.

Coram Deo,
Kenith