A miraculous story is not terribly difficult to fabricate. I imagine that considerations like that explain the ease with which many people reject the historicity of the Resurrection and other supernatural claims made in the Bible.
To a point, I am sympathetic to such skepticism; the Bible itself warns against false prophets and instructs us to test the spirits (1 John 4.1). But I ultimately find myself less than compelled by such worries, because other features of the Gospels do not strike me as the sort could be easily fabricated.
One such feature is the remarkable moral insight of the Gospels and New Testament writings. It does not take a genius to devise the Golden Rule - or even a particularly good man. But what the Apostle Paul says about (for example) godly sorrow and worldly sorrow - how contrition, in and of itself, is meaningless and even dangerous - is something that I have found to be remarkably true in my own life, and also something that I never would have understood on my own. What the Bible has to say about pride has struck at the central problem of the human condition unlike anything else I have ever known. And such wisdom, I think, is not the mark of "cleverly devised myths" (2 Peter 1.16), but of the Truth.
To a point, I am sympathetic to such skepticism; the Bible itself warns against false prophets and instructs us to test the spirits (1 John 4.1). But I ultimately find myself less than compelled by such worries, because other features of the Gospels do not strike me as the sort could be easily fabricated.
One such feature is the remarkable moral insight of the Gospels and New Testament writings. It does not take a genius to devise the Golden Rule - or even a particularly good man. But what the Apostle Paul says about (for example) godly sorrow and worldly sorrow - how contrition, in and of itself, is meaningless and even dangerous - is something that I have found to be remarkably true in my own life, and also something that I never would have understood on my own. What the Bible has to say about pride has struck at the central problem of the human condition unlike anything else I have ever known. And such wisdom, I think, is not the mark of "cleverly devised myths" (2 Peter 1.16), but of the Truth.
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