This is the tenth post in a series based on John Maisel’s lecture and book “Is Jesus God?” Click here to receive your free download of this resource.

How Closed Thinking Affects Belief

There are some of you who, no matter what evidence was presented on the resurrection of Jesus, would refuse to believe it. Many people reject the claims of God and the person of Christ based not upon intellectual investigation but upon philosophical presuppositions.

Often one can find that a person says he does not believe in the resurrection because he does not believe in God, or in the supernatural, or in miracles. Instead he adheres to a closed system of thought.

Historical Examples of Closed Thinking

The philosophers Spinoza and Hume said that even if presented the evidence for the resurrection, they would not believe in it.

Why? Not because of a lack of evidence, but because they already believed that there is no God, no supernatural, no miracles. I need not add that such thinking is not intellectual integrity, but philosophical myopia. “Even if all evidence says 2+2 = 4,” the closed mind argues, “I choose to believe it can only be three.”

Moving Beyond Closed Thinking

So my appeal is to earnest seekers, those with genuine desire to know God. I appeal to your intellectual integrity, like that of earlier skeptics who set out objectively to disprove God.

Here is a quote from the Book of Acts in the New Testament, which Sir William Ramsey, the well-known archaeologist, called one of the most accurate histories of the first century:

“In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.” -Acts 1:1-3, ESV

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