Craig L. Blomberg - Can We Still Believe in God?: Answering Ten Contemporary Challenges to Christianity

A significant part of growing up and maturing for many people involves discovering that what they assumed was normal about their childhood was just one of many different kinds of experiences they could have had. The same is true for Christian growth and maturity. I had a lot of wonderful education, discipling, and mentoring, both formally and informally, in my family, in my church, and through two amazing parachurch ministries in my high school and college. All my life I went to public schools, and my college, though private, was in the process of shedding much of its religious heritage when I attended it. I spent a year between college and graduate school teaching in a public high school. By the time I attended my first evangelical Christian institution, then, when I went to seminary, I was aware of all kinds of questions that my friends and acquaintances who did not share my Christian convictions asked. I knew the ways skeptics often countered Christian faith. I had devoured literature, tapes, and live teaching in numerous settings that in most instances gave me what seemed to be compelling answers.

My experience at seminary was therefore not like that of many of my peers. Oh, I learned an amazing amount, and, at times, I realized that what I had thought was the evangelical Christian viewpoint on an issue was just one of several. Nevertheless, unlike many who struggled to grasp the reasons we were required to study numerous topics in an academically rigorous fashion, I understoodbased on my previous experiences inside and outside of the classroom trying to share my faith and make a credible case for following Jesuswhy we needed to be studying all that we were. I had already been introduced to every issue, in one form or another, that I am addressing in this book. I had already discovered convincing answers to most of them, but I realized I had much more to learn. It quickly surprised me, then, how many seminarians seemed uninterested in them and unprepared to address them.

After I moved on from seminary to doctoral study and completed my PhD in New Testament, my first teaching job was at a comparatively young undergraduate Christian liberal arts college where students majoring in religion were eager for all kinds of knowledge. What some of them lacked in sheer smarts they made up for with zeal. But it was not my lot to stay there for a long time; instead, I came to Denver Seminary, where I have now completed thirty-three years of teaching in a wonderfully congenial environment. Over the years, I have experienced some of the same disconnect I had as a seminary student. There is a mercenary attitude among more seminarians than college students that insists a topic be demonstrated to be relevant fairly immediately in their ministries, current or projected, or else we shouldnt foist it on them. Amazingly, even some of these top ten reasons for rejecting God are at times on their list of topics we shouldnt bore them with! If it wont preach on Sunday, titillate their youth group on Wednesday night, or help their clients in the counseling clinic, then they show little interest. Never mind that most of them will go on to have multiple, fairly distinct ministries throughout their careers, with responsibilities they never anticipated and, if they dare to talk about their faith with people who dont share it, they will run into these topics again and again. I therefore make no apologies, for example, for spending an entire chapter on the transmission and translation of the text of the New Testament. But I begin with a chapter that deals with the problem of suffering and evil, which I hope needs no justification for anyone.