Opondo, Christianity cannot be a forgery

Feb 07, 2005

On January 14, Mr Ofwono Opondo wrote an impassioned article asserting that “Christianity is a forgery pilfered from the sacred books and system of Zoroaster of Persia”.

Mayanja Nkangi

On January 14, Mr Ofwono Opondo wrote an impassioned article asserting that “Christianity is a forgery pilfered from the sacred books and system of Zoroaster of Persia”.

His article smacks of sacrilege and implies that Christianity is a cocktail of plagiarised doctrines, beliefs, and stark lies. The accusation is simply scandalous. A forgery is a misrepresentation of a specific reality. A person can forge another person’s signature, for example.

But living Christianity is personal surrender and allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ, and by and through Him, allegiance to God, the Sovereign Trinitarian majesty of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, which Majesty constitutes an eternal and indissoluble Divine Unity.

This allegiance necessarily entails both profession and Christ-like conduct which are consistent with the nature of the Trinitarian Majesty. The sovereignty of God requires that those who recognise, profess, and confess allegiance to Him shall live by its incidents.

For example, “you shall be holy because I the Lord your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2). This Christianity is not a doctrine or a set of doctrines which some believer may compose about the character of God, nor is it an intellectual assent to the proposition that God exists; for even the devils recognise this and shudder (James 2:19).

It is not knowledge of the Scriptures as such either for true Christianity is not in this of itself and in itself, Jesus so enunciated (John5:39-40). Doctrines and Scriptures are essential as aids, compasses, or even spiritual radars, for the Christian Pilgrim. But the quintessence of Christianity is submission to the Person of Christ and allegiance and loyalty to God.

We need only respond positively to His invitation: “Follow Me” (John 21:19). The robber who was crucified with Jesus simply appealed to Him and said “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom “(Luke 23:42). This robber was instantaneously admitted into Paradise by the Lord.

There was no dogma here and no doctrine; but only submission and allegiance to Christ The King. This Christianity is NOT a forgery. it cannot be forged. It may be incomplete, it may be insincere, it may even falter at times because Christians are subject to human frailties. But Christianity itself is a spiritual and behavioural reality centred on the living God.

Ofwono Opondo maintains that Christianity “invoked angels and devils” from the Zoroastrian system “in order to invent the infernal doctrines of the original sin and damnation.

And, yet Zoroaster lived between c.630 BC and c.563 BC, (page 321, Genesis Book of Knowledge, Guinness publishing Ltd. 1947), which was centuries after Moses, the author of the Books of Genesis and Exodus of the Bible, who lived between c.1265 BC and c.1185 BC according to The New International Version Study Bible, (Zondervan Publishing House 1995 P.2).

Mose wrote about angels, the devil or “serpent” before Zoroaster allegedly did (Genesis Chapter 16:7, 19:7, 3:1-22; Exodus chapters 3:2 and 23:20). This obviously antedates Zoroasters dualism of warrying forces of Goodness and Evil.

The Book of Job (c.2000 -1000 B.C) discusses both angels and satan’s havoc. (Job 1:6). The Prophet Isaiah writing c.701B.C- 681BC, again before Zoroaster’s lifetime, stated that “You will lie down in torment” (chapter 50:11), and that “the worm” of “the dead bodies of those who rebelled against” God “will not die, nor will their fire be quenched”... (Chapter 66:24). And indisputably the Books of the Old Testament (Judaism) are part and parcel of the Christian Bible. How can Christianity be said to have “pilfered” religious ideas and prophesies which existed before Zoroasterianism was ever conceptualised and formulated?

The imputation that “the Letter of St. Peter, fundamental Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament” were forged is equally groundless and impudent. None of the four Gospels material (scriptures) is questioned as to its canonical authority.

All of them were written between 50 AD and 100 AD and have defied the informed criticism of competent Biblical Scholars, literary critics, and researchers. Nor have archeological discoveries compromised the Gospel’s veracity.

This equally applies to the other 23 Books of the New Testament.

Some doubt has been expressed as to the authorship of the Second Letter of St. Peter and the Letter to the Hebrews. But no credible evidence has been adduced to defeat Peter the Apostle’s claim that he was the author (II Peter I:I), nor the consensus of scholars that St. Paul wrote the Letter to Hebrews and not Barnabas, Apollos or some other person. Even here then the allegation of forgery is simply strident and misguided.

Finally, there is the bogey of the alleged superiority of science over Christianity as promoters and sources of knowledge, the former being the one which yields “facts,” and the latter being sheer “ignorance” according to Ofwono Opondo, since “merely to believe that one knows is ignorance,” quoting Hippocrates. In other words, Christianity is institutionalised ignorance. But Opondo must come off this high horse and realise that faith, which is so central to Christianity, is equally critical to scientific investigation and knowledge accumulation.

The Hipprocratic scientist proceeds from supposition, or hypothesis, to “discovery, that is fact or reality; except where a discovery is merely stumbled upon. Clearly then faith is necessary for the pursuit of perceived reality for both science and Christianity. But a hypothesis is simply aggrandised “ignorance” based on faith or belief, that a certain (as yet unspecified and unknown) state of affairs exists, which may or may not be true. Thus scientific “ignorance” necessarily proceeds of discovery, though NOT creation, of existence or fact.

Existence is factually independent of the hypothesis and scientific research. Thus Ofwono Opondo who jauntily wants to role Christianity in dust ends up rolling the noble discipline of science into a quagmire. How sad! For the Christian, believing or faith is not a state of blind helplessness but of vibrant spiritual certainty. The Risen Lord Jesus lives; he is not a phantom. God existed and exists independently of science.

Christians are encouraged to fight the good fight of faith, avoiding “oppositions of science falsely so-called” (1 Timothy 6:12-20; King James Bible). The insinuation that Christianity is a repository of ignorance was a monumental indiscretion.

The writer is a Born-Again Christian

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});