“Mere” Christianity, Question of the week by Dr. Craig

Dear Dr. Craig, first of all I want to thank you for reinforce my Christian faith and be confident about our Lord in these hard secular times. I am an Greek Orthodox Christian, former Catholic (still in personal conflict between the two). For years now I've been watching your debates against atheists, and you are, for certain, an instrument of God in these times of general Christophobia. Now that your books are arriving in Brazil in Portuguese, I had the privilege of purchasing two already. Although I don't agree with some of your protestant positions, such as the nature of the brothers of Christ (what makes the James argument strange to me), one thing came to my attention reading On Guard: You used countries in crisis to make example of how Christianity grow in hard times. But you used as examples El Salvador and Ethiopia as examples, two historically Christian countries! El Salvadorc- a Christian Catholic- and Ethiopia, with its historical Oriental Orthodox culture. Please, take some attention not to simplify Christianity to Protestant Evangelicalism; because you are a fortress not only for protestants: Christianity in general is in need of leaders like you in this skeptical, cynical and secular world ! I myself am all the time in defensive, since most of my family (uncles, cousins, etc), originally Catholics, became agnostics, atheists, sufi muslims, spiritism kardecists... and they don't give me a break even in Christmas family reunion! One of my uncles, a very cult and studied Italian old man, says Christianity is blasphemous because you simply can't say a human being is God; but, worst of all: he says Jesus not only survived, but have gone to Kashmir, and he even traveled there to that Roza Bal in Srinagar to see the tomb of "Jesus", and truly believe in Nicolas Notovitch lies. It's simply unbelievable how people today, even cult and studied ones, believe in every kind of sensationalism about Christ. Not even the videogames are giving us a break, like the Assassin's Creed series.

Finally, my question: Can't your Particularism argument be used to support Chistian sectarism, like Orthodox or Catholics who say they are the only true church? Or even by the more than 30.000 protestant denominations?

Thank you for illuminating the faith of so many Christians worldwide, and sorry for the bad English!

Otavio

Brazil

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