By Jim Denison
I live in Dallas, often called the “buckle of the Bible belt.” You can imagine the stir caused by the Dallas-Fort Worth Coalition of Reason when it purchased signs on four Fort Worth city buses: “Millions of Americans are Good Without God.” A group of pastors called for a boycott of these buses.
A similar campaign has begun in New York City. A billboard outside the Lincoln Tunnel depicts the Wise Men with the words, “You KNOW it’s a myth. This season, celebrate reason.” The sign is sponsored by “American Atheists, reasonable since 1963.” The Catholic League countered with its own billboard: “You know it’s real. This season, celebrate Jesus.”
Must we choose between reason and Jesus?
God invites us to “reason together” (Is. 1:18) — the Hebrew means to “argue it out.” Jesus taught us to love God “with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37). He could remain sinless (Heb. 4:15) while crying from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46). Faith and reason are not enemies but partners.
What reasons exist for believing that Christmas is not myth but truth?
Let’s begin with the historical existence of Jesus. If we did not have the New Testament, what could we know about the Christ of Christmas? Consider these historical records:
- Thallus the Samaritan (A.D. 52) referred to the crucifixion of Jesus.
- Mara bar Serapion (after A.D. 70) spoke of Christ as the Jews’ “wise King.”
- Tacitus (ca. A.D. 115) stated: “Christus … suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus” (Annals XV.44).
- Pliny the Younger described Christian worship in A.D. 112: “They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ as to a god.” Note that believers worshiped Christ as God in A.D. 112, not centuries later, after their beliefs “evolved” to embrace the incarnation, as some critics claim.
What of his birth in Bethlehem? We know that Emperor Augustus issued a census decree in 8 B.C. and A.D. 6, and that Jewish authorities required their subjects to return to their ancestral homes for these registrations. Luke’s Christmas record aligns fully with the historical data.
What do we know about the place of his birth? Its location was so well established that pagan emperor Hadrian I wanted to remove Christian connections to the area. In A.D. 135 he constructed a grove over the location, dedicated to the worship of Adonis, the lover of Venus. Constantine the Great removed this grove and built the Church of the Nativity over the cave in A.D. 330.
Is there reason to believe that the Baby of Bethlehem is the Son of God?
His resurrection demonstrates his divinity. We know without the New Testament that Jesus was crucified by Pontius Pilate, and that his followers believed him to have been raised from the dead. How else can we account for his empty tomb?
- If his disciples stole the body, they somehow overpowered Roman soldiers, then all died for what they knew to be a lie.
- If the authorities stole the body, they would have produced it.
- If the disciples went to the wrong tomb, the authorities would have corrected their error.
- If Jesus did not die on the cross, he somehow survived a spear thrust to the pericardial sac around his heart and three days in an air-tight mummified shroud. He then overpowered the guards, walked through locked doors, and performed the greatest high jump in history at the Ascension.
Can we prove that Jesus is the Son of God? Of course not. Neither can we prove that he is not. Faith is a relationship. Like all relationships, it requires a commitment that transcends the evidence and becomes self-validating.
There are excellent reasons for believing in the truth of Christmas. But the best is the simplest: You can meet the Baby of Bethlehem personally. When Billy Graham was asked about the “God is dead” controversy of the 1960s, he smiled and said, “I can assure you that he’s not — I spoke with him this morning.” So can you.