James Patrick Holding

My review as posted on amazon.com

The Impossible Faith

This book conflates a total of nine chapters that designates why Christianity is the Impossible Faith. After reading the book, I agree that Christianity was rather difficult religion of faith that survives even today. In a culture where postmodernism, revisionists, and non-qualified skeptics seem to be crawling from the woodwork--James Patrick Holding takes the reader to a more in-depth culture-relevant journey.

The author covers the honor-shame concept of the ANE culture and "how the crucifixion was the greatest shame that Jesus endured for our sake" in Chapter one. In Chapter two, JP talks about "the three strikes against Jesus with respect to widely-held ancient prejudices and stereo-types."

Commencement of Chapter three talks about the so-called problems of Christ's resurrection being unique before the time of final judgment. Chapter four covers the concepts of Forsaking family, Reversing Social Roles, Forsaking Symbols, and Teaching Subversion all relevant to the culture at hand. Often times our culture totally disregards the culture of the Jewish community through an Occidentalized view of individualism.

Chapter five is a comparison of other religions in how they are not so closely related to Christianity when it comes to impossiblity. Chapter six speaks of the three pillars of early evangelism. This chapter describes three appeals which cover Miracles, wonders, signs, the empty tomb, and fulfillment of the OT prophecy by Jesus.

Chapter seven covers the wishful thinking canards such as the apostles suffering from hallucination of a guardian angel as covered in the Talmud (when it came to the resurrection). This section also covers a discussion about a physical versus a spiritual resurrection of Christ.

Chapter eight covers the survival game which speaks about some of the typical alternative counter-explanations of the resurrection. This chapter includes the defunct swoon theory, the Romans expertise on execution, typical signs and stages of algor, rigor, and livor mortis (and how they are distinguishable even to the lay person). Also this segment dispels the myths about certain anesthesia drugs during the first century believed to seemingly put Christ asleep before his burial, including a discussion with Dr. Noel on this subject.

Chapter nine finishes on the subject of the claims of snatching the body through a total of three possibilities. This book highlights the basic tenets of Christianity and how it survived almost impossible odds at its conception. While the book is comprised of only 110 pages do not let the small size fool you. This is a book that serves as a quick reference tool that answers the skeptics but goes beyond that to invoke a more positive view of Apologetics for the 21st century.… (mehr)