A Modern Challenge to Fundamentalist Christianity

It would be convenient to begin an exploration of Christianity by simply looking at the story of Jesus and following it along through the ministry of Paul and Peter and culminating with the Apocalypse of John, thus producing an agreed upon sequence of events. Unfortunately, it is no longer possible to draw a nice timeline because biblical scholars have mucked up the clear picture accepted by Christians for two millennia. Their order of authorship is in question as well as their dating. Even more unfortunate, there can be no reconciliation. What a scholar sees as clear dating evidence a theologian postulates as a prophecy fulfilled. As such, there is an impasse. Just as with the Hebrew stories of Jonah in the belly of a fish or Noah saving all species of animals in his ark, any scientific claims of implausibility are countered with the concept of the miracle. With miracles anything is possible, anything is believable. Thanks to prophecy any early dating of biblical texts is possible. As long as believers are willing to attribute any impossibility to a miraculous event and any revealed history as fulfilled prophecy, finding common ground between natural science and Christian belief is severely limited.

The most significant challenge to Christianity has occurred because of this issue. What modernity has done is change the burden of proof. It now rests with believers. For centuries the default position regarding any theological belief was the Church's (whether Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, or Protestant). Beginning with 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume, the default position gradually shifted toward a belief in the laws of nature and attributing accounts to miracles and fulfilled prophecy as either mistake or lie.

The consequences of this change have been profound and problematic for church theologians. In a new "defensive" position miracles, prophecy, and divination pose more problems than they solve. This is because all the religions of the Bronze age attributed natural phenomena such as rainbows, earthquakes, thunderstorms, and sunrises to divine acts. This includes all the religions current believers dismiss plus the one they still hang onto. There is no good criteria for accepting some as true while dismissing the balance. Furthermore, the reliance on miracles as a counter to rationalism fails miserably because of an inherent circularity in the reasoning. The existence of God is presupposed to explain miracles and prophecy and the existence of miracles and prophecy is presupposed to explain the existence of God.

Contending with miracles has produced a different trend in Christian scholarship and yet another problem. In the modern centuries Christians have sought to use science such as archaeology and philology (the study of ancient texts), to find physical evidence for biblical accounts that do not rely on the miraculous. Jewish scholars use the science to explore their own history. This is not Christian history, though. Christians scholars use the science to search for validity for the Bible. This implies a need for this validity which did not exist prior to Hume and the change in the burden of proof responsibility. With the funding for archaeological study in Israel, Christians are demonstrating that they'd prefer hard evidence to a reliance on the miraculous in order to address modernity's critique.

The world is becoming more educated. Christianity is becoming more reactionary. The changes in religious beliefs in the United States since 1990 have been significant and striking. The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS 2008 - published March, 2009 by Trinity College) has shown a 10% drop in Christian identification in just 18 years with fundamentalist Christianity gaining significantly; not from new converts, but at the expense of less evangelical denominations. Modernity is doing a number on the Christian religion.

The reliance on miracles, prophecy and divination as the foundation for biblical arguments is producing two outcomes. Among the educated populace in modern societies it is losing its impact. Modern society is becoming more reliant on scientific explanations and these religious views are not treated with the reverence they commanded a few centuries back. Among the believers, though, they become more important. They fit nicely into the anti-science view that permeates the more fundamentalist Christian sects.

The consequence of this dichotomy is that Christianity is losing much of its influence outside its own realm and this realm is becoming more reactionary, more apocalyptic, and less educated.

The reliance on miracles, prophecy, and divination are not adequate responses to the many challenges posed by modern scholarship. They serve their purpose among the faithful but increasingly reduce the strength of arguments made outside of theological seminaries. With the number of seminary and theological students in rapid decline throughout the modern world, the time when Christian apologists have the ability to preserve the old traditions is rapidly in decline.