Further comments on the lectures of Pastor Stephane Chauvette
I have been interested in religious themes for a long time. I have participated in many religious debates, I have heard many opinions about God, the Bible and Jesus, but I must admit that I have never met someone who glorifies the Bible and Jesus so much, and at the same time lies and misleads people so much as Stephane Chauvette, pastor of the Montreal congregation named “New Beginnings Church”. And he does it in a conscious and calculated way. After watching three filmed lectures of Mr. Chauvette – “Sola Scriptura”, “Trinity”, and “The Place of Jesus in History”, I was disgusted with his arguments and decided to outpoint his errors.
Here is the list of my answers to his theses:
Lie One: Pastor says, “The Bible says the Earth is a sphere.”
Answer: The Bible nowhere says about “the globe of the earth”, it only mentions “the circle of the earth”. The Earth is depicted in it as a circular platform covered with a dome (Isa. 40:22 and Job 26:6-9)
Lie Two: “The Church forbade reading the Bible for 12 centuries, that is, from the fall of Rome to the Reformation.”
Answer: Such a ban did not exist at all until the end of the 10th century, i.e. during the first 800 years of the existence of Christianity. From the 11th till 16th century, such a ban was in force intermittently, but not all the time. So the pastor more than doubled this period.
Lie Three: “During this entire period of 12 centuries, the world was plunged into pagan darkness. Ordinary people did not know the difference between evil and good because they did not have the Bible.”
Answer: In the pre-Christian era, there was already a great legacy of Greek and Roman philosophers, as well as the teachings of Socrates and Buddha. For example, many people today think that the author of the so-called “golden rule” of conduct “Do not do to others what you don’t want to be done to you” (Mt 7:12) is Jesus. Meanwhile, it was well known in the pre-Christian era. It had been spoken by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher and thinker, five centuries before the birth of Jesus.
Lie Four: “The Bible is the cornerstone of Western knowledge.”
Answer: If he said Christianity is a part of Western culture, he would be right. But I’ve never heard before anyone who spoke about the Bible like that. What kind of knowledge is the book that doesn’t even say plainly that the earth is spherical in shape? Which scientific source confirms this? If the pastor knows any, let him mention it. But I’m afraid he would have trouble finding it.
Lie Five: “The Bible is the primary source of law.”
Answer: This is also not confirmed by any scientific source. Some laws in The Old Testament are definitely questionable. An important source of law is Roman law, on which modern European civilization is largely based.
Lie Six: “The Bible is the primary source of morality.”
Answer: It is an odd source of morality in which there are so many bloody stories that arouse horror and disgust to many readers. Even the Decalogue, i.e. the Ten Commandments of God, is not quite original, it was largely copied from the older code of Hammurabi. And by the way – can the Jewish commandment “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” be considered moral ?
Lie Seven: “Jesus Christ is the central figure in human history, the most important figure in history.”
Answer: Let me repeat what I wrote earlier. There is no definitely central figure in the history of humanity. I would agree with him if he said that Jesus is one of the most popular figures in human history. According to my research, the most powerful, influential figure in the world history is Muhammad. In the twelve rankings that I found on the web (and I chose them at random, without making any selection), Muhammad is listed in the first place 8 times, and one time in the third place. Jesus ranks the second – he appears in the first place of these lists twice, and in the third place 9 times. Newton is third – 9 times he ranks second on those lists, and one time he is third. Therefore, Newton’s popularity is comparable to that of Jesus. But of course we should remember that historians and chroniclers contemporary to Jesus, i.e. those living in the 1st century, have practically nothing to say about him.
Lie Eight: “When Jesus spoke to the people of Jerusalem, he often referred to himself as “I AM.”
Answer: In the Gospel of John (10:34-36) we read:
“Jesus replied, “It is written in your own Scriptures that God said to certain leaders of the people, ‘I say, you are gods!’ And you know that the Scriptures cannot be altered. So if those people who received God’s message were called ‘gods,’ why do you call it blasphemy when I say, ‘I am the Son of God’? After all, the Father set me apart and sent me into the world.”
Therefore, he says that if the leaders and judges of God’s people were called “gods” (Ps 82:6), much less does he blaspheme if he calls himself the Son of God. Where did Mr. Chauvette read that he often referred to himself per “I AM”, that is, declared that he is a god, someone much bigger than the son of God? I don’t know, it is his secret.
The name I AM Jesus used three times during a heated debate with the Jews, as we read in chapter 8 of the Gospel of John. On no other occasion had he spoken about himself in this manner. And he never said outright that he was god or that he was the same as Yahweh.
It is also worth noting that the authors of the three canonical gospels, i.e. Matthew, Mark and Luke, do not present Jesus as a god at any point. Didn’t they want to acknowledge his divinity? This seems highly unlikely. No, they couldn’t have missed out on such an important fact. The conclusion is that they simply did not regard him as a god. Only the author of the gospel of John did this. And as we this is youngest canonical gospel, edited only at the end of the 1st century.
Lie Nine: “Belief in the Trinity is reasonable, biblical, and factual.”
Answer: Pastor is gravely wrong here and misleading people. The concept of the Trinity is fundamentally contrary to Judaism. In this religion, God is an indivisible and incomprehensible being. He is a unity unlike any other unity. He cannot be part of any other whole. There is no such thing as a complex unity in the Bible. The fundamental commandment, a cornerstone, of the Jewish religion are the words of Moses: “Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is ONE.” Let’s look also at this passage from Mark’s gospel (12:28-31):
“One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
Therefore, both Jesus and the Jews understood this commandment in unequivocal terms. One God means one, unique and indivisible. There is no room for any trinity here. Moreover, Jesus himself considered it as the GREATEST COMMANDMENT of all. It probably didn’t occur to him that after his death, some people would make a divinity of him.
So the concept of the Trinity does not have a strong basis in the New Testament either. Let me remind you what I wrote earlier: – The number of biblical passages that contradict the idea of the Trinity definitely outweighs those that support it. Besides, there are many passages in the book of Isaiah that strongly contradict the idea of the Trinity.
In another lecture, when asked by his interlocutor why there are so many sects in the world, Pastor replies: “Because it’s like in sports. We have many hockey clubs in this country, but only one sport called hockey.”
With such a foolish answer, he justified and downplayed this serious problem. How can you compare religious denominations to sports clubs! We know that the rules of hockey sport are the same everywhere, all over the world. Meanwhile, the Christian world is so divided because each sect has its own teachings, which are not fully consistent with, or even contradictory to the teachings of all other sects. For example, what do Jehovah’s witnesses have in common with the pentecostals? Virtually nothing, except that both call themselves Christians.
Lie Ten: “Christianity was founded under Christ and the apostles.”
Answer: Jesus did not found any new religion. Why would he do that, anyway? He proclaimed the imminent coming of the kingdom of God and this event was to take place in his generation, or in the next one at the latest. As for the apostles, they also proclaimed the imminent coming of the kingdom of God, but they did not organize any church, they attended the synagogues and waited for the coming of the Lord. The church, as we know it today, was founded by the church fathers many years after Jesus’ death, based mainly on the teachings of Paul of Tarsus. They obtained blessing and support for this work from the pagan Roman emperors – Constantine and Theodosius.
Next, Mr. Chauvette convinces his audience what a wonderful chosen nation the Jewish people are. To support his claim he says that 15 to 20 percent of Nobel Prize winners are Jews, which in his opinion proves that God endowed them with outstanding scientific abilities nad skills. Let me remind you of what I wrote earlier: – Jews are a nation about which we can say more bad than good things. It was they who invented communism, and it was they who invented Christianity, which they ultimately rejected. The founders of communism – Karl Marx, Moses Hess, Leon Trotsky, were Jews. They led the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917. As for Poland, in Stalinist times, there were many Jewish officials in the Ministry of Public Security, they performed all the major functions there. So Stalin oppressed Poles and destroyed the post-war “Home Army” opposition with the hands of this “chosen nation”.
As we now can see, Pastor Chauvette’s arguments are largely fraudulent, deceitful and pseudoscientific. Some of them even contradict the Bible. Unfortunately, they are convincing to the members of his congregation, who don’t seem to be enlightened or intellectually demanding people.
Jerzy Sędziak, September 2023
© Copyright by Jerzy Sędziak