We recently returned from England, where we participated in events commemorating the 50th anniversary of C. S. Lewis’s death. Lewis was famous for his defense of what he called “mere Christianity,” that is to say, those central truths comprised by the Christian world view. If God exists and has revealed Himself decisively in Jesus of Nazareth, then Christianity is true, and the rest is working out the details.
Clearly, Jason, your concerns are with the details, not with the central truths. The unreliability of certain Old Testament narratives would have no impact upon the truth of theism or the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. The questions you ask are thus “in-house” concerns to be debated among Christians. Should we accept the Old Testament as inspired throughout by God? To what extent does inspiration imply scientific or historical reliability? These are, I think, open questions to be discussed. But they should not be obstacles to belief in mere Christianity and, hence, faith in Christ.
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