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Counterfeit Christs
Understanding seeking faith leads to agnosticism and worse. It all depends on our preconceived ideas: if we approach scripture with a firm belief that Jesus is not the Son of God, we will end up believing the same. And we will use scripture to justify our views. All this is beautifully dealt with by Catholic apologist Trent Horn. The book is an excellent refutation of counterfeit Christs. According to Deepak Chopra, for example, Jesus went to India during his hidden life in order to learn from the Hindu mystics. But where is the evidence? And why stop with India? What about visiting Tibet and learning from the Buddhists? Or England's mountains green? People like Chopra are able to put forward their ill founded ideas by recourse to new age Gnostic reflections. I recall being very impressed with Gnosticism after reading Elaine Pagels until I found out that its foundations are rotten to the core. And still, as Trent Horn shows, those doctrines are still with us. The Mormons, for example,
believe we are all gods in transition. And they justify their strange notions by pointing out that the doctrine
of the Trinity means three gods. On the other side of the spectrum, we have the spiritual sons of Arius, the Jehovah's
Witnesses, who believe that Jesus is a mere creature. Trent very clearly demonstrates that once we move away from
orthodoxy, anything goes! Did Jesus approve of second marriages even when the first and only marriage was valid. After all, there is the famous exception clause. Again Trent shows us that there is no exception: the exception clause in fact refers to marriages that are null and void. In summary, Trent Horn ably demonstrates that those who follow counterfeit Christs do so because of their preconceived notions.
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