"Is Anything Worth Believing In?" The Veritas Forum with John Lennox
April 2, 2013 | by Travis Reginal BK '16
On Saturday, February 23rd, John Lennox rolled onto Yale’s campus for the first time to speak on the question “Is Anything Worth Believing In?” It was part of the widely popular Veritas Forum that brings speakers to campuses in the Northeast to speak on the big issues. Yale lecturer in philosophy, Greg Ganssle, helped to facilitate John Lennox’s argument for Christianity by clarifying some of the claims Lennox made and at times pushed back on them. The event was very much anticipated in the Christian community, as a way to bring skeptical friends to hear someone discuss religion logically, and for the skeptical community it was an opportunity to see a moment where John Lennox may falter and give them a reason for their unbelief.
The largest issue tackled during the discussion was the problem of evil. If God exists, how do we explain the amount and extremes of evil in the world? Where was God when Adam Lanza went on a shooting spree and took the lives of 20 elementary school students? However, Lennox argued that if there was no just God, then the disastrous events we see in the world should be normal to us. Where does our natural sense of morality come from, if not God?
Lennox also looked at how we should define faith. Many believe that faith is a blind leap, but Lennox argues that concerning Christianity it should be evidenced-based proof - faith comes from the Holy Spirit. John Lennox was mostly making an argument for monotheism instead of one for Christianity. The argument for Christianity would require a few more hours than we had that Saturday!
The most important take away from the Lennox talk is not the apologetics, but the personal aspect. We can debate until we turn blue in the face, but simply using logic and reason to prove the existence of God isn't enough to convince. The most personal witness is personal testimony. Lennox closed perfectly by summing up why he believes in Jesus: “Christ accepted me unconditionally and I did the same.”
March 30, 2022 | By Michael Kielstra H’22
I first heard the story of the widow’s oil in Sunday school. Found in 2 Kings 4:1-7, it’s an astounding, heartwarming story of divine grace: a widow, utterly helpless and heavily indebted, appeals to Elisha and is miraculously given enough oil to pay off her creditors. What Sunday school teachers tend to gloss over, however, is the depth not only of the widow’s hopelessness but also of the cruelty of her creditors and of the society in which she lives.