The Unique Historical Basis of Christianity
Alone among all the religions of mankind, Christianity (including its Old Testament foundations) is based upon historical acts and facts. Other religions are centered in the ethical and religious teachings of their founders, but Christianity is built on the great events of creation and redemption.
For example, the Moslem faith is based on the teachings of Mohammed, Buddhism is based on the teachings of Buddha, Confucianism on those of Confucius, and so on. Christianity, however, is founded not on what Jesus taught, but on who He is and what He did! His teachings indeed were wonderful. "Never man spake like this man" (John 7:46). But it is not His teachings, but Christ himself, who provides salvation.
This unique feature of biblical Christianity is a strong evidence of its truth. Since all other religions are based upon the teachings of men, there is necessarily a strong subjective element in all of them. No matter how intelligent or compassionate a man Mohammed may have been, or Zoroaster, or Buddha, he was still a man, beset by the same physical and mental limitations as other men. His teachings may have been ever so brilliant and satisfying, but the only assurance of their reliability is their personal appeal to us. Thus, such religions are subjective religions, both in their origin and in their acceptance by individual followers.
Christianity, on the other hand, is based on objective facts, not subjective pressures. Its truth or falsity stands on the validity of the great facts of creation, fall, redemption, and resurrection, the historical records of which are subject to examination by the ordinary criteria of objective investigation. Thus, Christianity is the one and only religion which offers even the possibility of objective certainty concerning the question of its validity.
Its Unique Account of Origins
In trying to distinguish the truth about such basic issues as these, the question of origins is fundamental. Where did everything come from, and how did it get like it is? It is obvious that this question must be answered before any teaching concerning purposes and destinies can be more than pure speculation.
Strangely enough, the various religions of men all in effect confess their utter ignorance on this point. That is, although they all propose certain cosmogonic myths, none really is able to go back to the absolute beginning of things. All are basically evolutionary in their cosmogonies, beginning with matter in some form or other, and then trying to explain how this primeval matter may have gradually been transformed into the present world.
Thus, the famous Babylonian cosmogony Enuma Elish began with a primeval chaotic mixture of three kinds of waters. The ancient Egyptian cosmogony also assumes an initial watery chaos out of which everything else evolved. Likewise the early Greek myths, as transmitted by Hesiod, Homer, and Thales, drawing largely from the Sumerians, indicate a chaos of water at the beginning. So do those of many animistic tribes. Roman writers such as Lucretius assumed that in the beginning was a universal blind interplay of atoms, the Orphic myths suppose that the universe developed out of a primeval world-egg, and so on. Modern theories of evolution supposedly are more sophisticated, but they likewise begin with eternal matter in one form or another. Thus, no extra-biblical cosmogony, ancient or modern, is able to go beyond the present order of things to a real First Cause. In effect, therefore, they all end by confessing that they really do not know how the universe began. All begin with space, matter, and time already existing.
The Bible, and only the Bible, starts with the special creation of all things by an eternal, omnipotent, personal God. This is an eminently reasonable solution to the problem of origins; an infinite and eternal God is an adequate cause to explain space and time; an omnipotent God can account for the vast sources of power and matter in the cosmos; an omniscient God can explain the innumerable evidences of intelligence and order; a personal God is capable of creating life and personality in His creatures; but primeval chaos and colliding atoms are capable of explaining none of these things.
The Person of Christ
Biblical Christianity is also absolutely unique in the nature of its central personage and founder, Jesus Christ. There is none other like Him in all history or even in all literature.
Some writers, of course, presume to place Christ as merely one in a list of great religious leaders, but this is grotesque and absurd. He stands in contrast to all others, not in line with them, not even at the head of the line. His uniqueness is illustrated in the following partial list of attributes.
Anticipation of His Coming. His coming was prophesied in fine detail, as to lineage, birthplace, time, career, purpose, nature of death, resurrection, and many other things, hundreds of years prior to His actual appearance. Of no other religious leader — indeed, of no other man — in all history was such a thing true.
The Virgin Birth. Although tales of demi-gods, the progeny of unions between men and the gods (actually demons) are common in ancient mythology, the narrative of Christ's virgin birth stands entirely alone; nothing like it was ever imagined elsewhere. God himself took up residence in embryonic human form in a virgin's womb, thence to be born in a fully natural human birth, with no actual genetic connection to human parents, even though legally the natural heir of a human father and embryologically the seed and fruit of a human mother. No other human birth was ever like this, in fact or fiction, yet it was uniquely and ideally appropriate and natural when God became man.
The Divine-Human Nature. Though men have often thought of themselves as children of God, Jesus Christ was the only begotten Son of God. Although there have been power-crazed dictators and fanatics who have claimed to be God, even these individuals recognized and acknowledged that their assumption of divinity was only relative — they hardly imagined that they had created the stars or even their own mothers! But Jesus Christ was God in the highest sense, the Creator of all things (Col. 1:16), and He claimed to be God on many occasions and in many ways. He was also man in the fullest sense, except that He had no sin. He was not half-man and half-God, but rather all man and all God, in a perfect and indissoluble union. No other man was ever thus — indeed, no other man ever claimed to be thus.
Sinless Life. Of no one else in history could the claim ever be made in seriousness that he lived a whole lifetime without one sin, in thought or word or deed. But this very thing was claimed by Jesus' closest friends, by His worst enemies, by the greatest of the apostles, and by Jesus himself. Peter said, "[He] did no sin" (1 Pet. 2:22), and John said, "In him is no sin" (1 John 3:5). Judas said, "I have betrayed the innocent blood" (Matt. 27:4), and Pilate said, "I find in him no fault at all" (John 18:38). Paul said, "[He] knew no sin" (2 Cor. 5:21), and Jesus said concerning himself, "The Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him" (John 8:29). Jesus Christ was the one man who never sinned; He was the unique, representative Son of Man, man as God intended man to be.
Unique Teachings. Many non-Christians have acknowledged Christ to be the greatest teacher of all time. The Sermon on the Mount is without parallel, and the beauty and power of the Upper Room discourse, the compelling majesty of the sermon on the Mount of Olives, the power of His parables, and all His other teachings are separated by a great gulf from even the finest teaching of other men. And yet His teachings continually include both the claim and the internal awareness that He was uniquely God's Son, and that His teachings were absolutely true because of this. In no other religious writings does one find such a phenomenon as this.
His Unique Death. After a cruel mockery of a trial and a period of incomprehensible suffering in prison and on the cross, "He said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost" (John 19:30). Literally, He "dismissed His spirit." No one else can die like this. It is evidently quite a difficult task even to commit suicide, but certainly no one can simply decide to die and then, by his mere volition, proceed to die. But Jesus did! He said, "No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself" (John 10:18).
The Resurrection of Christ
Not only did Christ die by His own power, but He rose again on the third day by His own power. "I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." (John 10:18). The overwhelming proof of the bodily resurrection