The Missionary Journey

The City of Nazareth and why Arguments from Silence are a bad idea

2011-04-15T16:46:00.001-04:00

The basic idea behind an argument from silence (argumentum ex silentio), is to argue for a conclusion based on lack of evidence. Of course, given that this is the skeptic's favorite form of argument, we shouldn't be surprised to see it cropping up often. In fact virtually any argument can be made based on silence or lack of evidence (or supposed lack of evidence) - which is exactly why skeptics love it so much. Now, an argument from silence can be a good argument under the right circumstances. For example, if you had an exhaustive list of U.S. Presidents, then you could prove that Benjamin Franklin was never the President of the U.S. by pointing to the fact that his name is not on that list. That would be a good argument from silence.

One skeptic I saw tried to "prove" that there was no Nazareth at the time of Jesus (a rather popular skeptical argument, especially among the looney-tune "Jesus was a myth" crowd) by means of various arguments from silence. The arguments for this are that 1) Nazareth is not mentioned in the OT, 2) historical sources from the time of Jesus don't say anything about Nazareth, 3) Josephus doesn't mention Nazareth, but does mention 40-50 cities and towns of Galilee. Notice that all three of these are forms of argument from silence - some particular source doesn't say anything about Nazareth, therefore we conclude that Nazareth didn't exist at the time that source was from.

For the moment we'll leave aside the archaeological evidence that Nazareth was a city which was populated during Jesus' time. I'll get to that at the end. Let's just consider these arguments on their face.

1) The fact that Nazareth is not mentioned in the OT means absolutely nothing. The last of the OT was written 400 years or so before Jesus was born, so even if we could read into the silence of the OT on Nazareth, it wouldn't mean that there was no city of Nazareth in Jesus' day. This is an awful argument from silence, completely brainless. Strike one.

2) In fact we do have historical sources from that time period that talk about the city of Nazareth - namely Luke and Matthew. While the skeptic might want to say that these don't count, in fact they count just as much as any other historical source from the time period. Elsewhere I've presented some of the copious amounts of evidence for Luke's accuracy as a historian. Even in many cases where scholars thought Luke made this or that error, it later turned out that Luke was right and the critics were wrong.

Now, the skeptic might be tempted to argue that this is circular reasoning - to use the Gospels to prove that the Gospels are accurate. But this is a separate question than simply asking whether there was a city of Nazareth in the time of Jesus. It would be completely bogus, for example, to take a historical source that talks about some city, and say that this particular source doesn't count in determining whether that city existed. And in this case you have four sources saying that Jesus was from Nazareth, two of them saying that Nazareth was a city (polis). In any other context, this would be about as conclusive as you can get that Nazareth existed in Jesus' time (keeping in mind that the argument is not whether there was a city of Nazareth, but whether it was populated in the time of Jesus or not).

So this second argument fares little better than the first one, particularly given the archaeological corroboration. Strike two.

3) This third argument sounds more plausible on the surface. Josephus never mentions Nazareth, and he was the governor of Galilee for awhile. He mentions by name 45 cities and villages from Galilee, and yet Nazareth is not among them. Could this be a good argument from silence?

To answer that, the first question we have to ask is whether or not he mentioned all or even most of the cities and villages of Galilee. It was actually in trying to find the answer to that question that I came upon a discovery. Josephus himself, governor of Galilee, tells us how many cities and villages there were there. In his autobiography (The Life of Flavius Josephus), 45th chapter, he writes that there were 240 cities and villages in Galilee. He wrote this in a letter to one of his enemies, saying he would be willing to meet him in any of those places except for two of them which were in league with him.

This simple fact changes what looks like a plausible argument from silence into an utterly disastrous one. While it might sound like a big deal that Josephus mentions 45 cities and villages in his writings, that's not quite so impressive when you realize that that is less than 19% of the total. In other words, more than 80% of the cities and villages of Galilee have not been mentioned by him, or 4 out of every 5. It isn't even necessary to argue that Nazareth wasn't a very big city in his time to explain why it might not have been mentioned by Josephus - the majority of them weren't mentioned. This likewise renders moot the related argument sometimes used by skeptics that Nazareth is not included among the 63 Galilean cities and villages mentioned in the Talmud, either. Even 63 is only about 25% of the total. Even if you assumed that the ones mentioned by Josephus don't overlap at all with the 63 mentioned in the Talmud (which seems pretty unlikely though I haven't seen an actual comprehensive list of either), that would still be less than half! It would still only be 45%. So neither of these arguments are actually any good, in spite of their apparent plausibility (and the fact that they get widely repeated on the internet by skeptics who simply copy and paste bad arguments from each other). Strike three. That's called a strikeout.

Finally, a word about archaeology. The following three links deal with recent archaological finds in the area around Nazareth. Some scholars have suggested that it was inhabited at the time of Jesus, but was a small village. In that case, Jesus still could have been from Nazareth, but calling it a city would have been a mistake. However, as the last two links show, evidence of an early Roman bath house in Nazareth suggests that it may have been larger than believed. As the article in the Guardian (that well-known fundamentalist rag [irony alert]) notes, there actually hasn't been much archaeological work done in Nazareth for some reason, which is all the more reason why arguments from silence based on lack of archaeological evidence from Nazareth is a bad idea.

http://www.israel21c.org/briefs/house-from-jesus-time-excavated

http://www.nazarethbathhouse.org/en/AboutNazareth.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/oct/22/research.artsandhumanities

The skeptic will likely argue that the archaeological evidence doesn't count for this or that reason, such as the fact that it involves religious artifacts and could be a boon to tourism. Well, certainly finding a bath house that Jesus might have used (though that would be difficult to prove) would be a boon to tourism, but that has nothing to do with the authenticity of the find. Virtually any important archaeological find is going to be a boon to tourism for somebody. And while I don't suggest that these finds are conclusive proof (history rarely works that way), they certainly give enough reason to say that the conclusion of the skeptic that Nazareth didn't exist at the time of Jesus is unwarranted to put it mildly. So remember this the next time some skeptic repeats one or more of these bad arguments.

Is Rob Bell a Heretic?

2011-03-19T09:58:00.003-04:00

It behooved me to get in on the recent furor over Rob Bell’s new book, Love Wins. As of this writing, it is #3 on Amazon’s top sellers list. As far as I can tell, the print version of it only became available within the last couple of days. I bought it on Kindle, which I suspect a lot of other people have done as well. But the response to this book has been remarkable.

I had never heard of Rob Bell that I know of until I came across a link a couple of weeks ago to the promo for his book. Even the promo ignited a firestorm of controversy, with many people writing condemnatory statements about Bell’s book which they had not even read at that point. But they were apparently shocked by Bell's suggestion that maybe Gandhi isn’t burning in hell forever and ever.

Having now read the book, I don’t see anything to suggest that Bell is actually a heretic. He denies being a universalist, but he does point out that the history of the Christian faith includes universalist elements and beliefs. The church father Origen was a well-known and influential universalist. His form of universalism did not deny that there is punishment after death for the wicked, but that punishment was ultimately for the purpose of restoration. Eventually all would be restored to the presence of God, including the devil himself. However, everything would be restored by the work of Christ.

This is not the kind of universalism that teaches that all religions are equally valid, or that different religions including Christianity are simply different views of the same basic reality. Such a view is simply nonsensical. It is impossible for different religions to be equally valid when they teach things which are radically contradictory to each other. Either Jesus is the only way to the Father or he is not. Both of these contradictory statements cannot be equally valid.

Bell stops short of saying where he thinks Gandhi is. He also stops short of saying that ultimately everyone will be restored to the presence of God as Origen believed. At the same time, he doesn’t say that those statements are definitely false, and this seems to be where the charges of heresy are coming from. The orthodox position would say that Gandhi is definitely in hell, and that he is definitely going to remain there without end. And that such a judgment is fitting and deserved, and entirely consistent with God’s justice to mete it out. For many Christians, the denial of these statements constitutes heresy. To even question these statements is at least moving in the direction of heresy, and will undoubtedly lead one far from the faith. That, it seems to me, summarizes the viewpoint which I see many people expressing in various ways (including some quite mean-spirited ways) on the internet in the last few days.

One area of contention has to do with just how widespread the belief in universalism has been throughout the history of the church. Is it just a fringe position, or has it ever been mainstream and widely held? This argument seems to be crucial to those who want to charge Bell with heresy, presumably under the assumption that whatever has been held by a large number of Christians over time is what defines orthodoxy. Is everlasting punishment in conscious torment a part of orthodoxy or is it not? Rob Bell suggests that in the early church various forms of universalism were widely held. His critics want to downplay that idea. While no one can deny that Origen held to a form of universalism and that he was highly influential, there is dispute over others.

Augustine, who himself was certainly not sympathetic to universalism, nevertheless wrote this in Enchiridion 112: “It is in vain, then, that some, indeed very many, make moan over the eternal punishment, and perpetual, unintermitted torments of the lost, and say they do not believe it shall be so; not, indeed, that they directly oppose themselves to Holy Scripture, but, at the suggestion of their own feelings, they soften down everything that seems hard, and give a milder turn to statements which they think are rather designed to terrify than to be received as literally true.”

It’s worth noting the points that Augustine makes. 1) “Very many” believers in his time denied the doctrine of everlasting hell. 2) He did not consider them to be opposing themselves to Scripture; in other words, they denied that Scripture taught this doctrine, not that Scripture taught it but they didn’t believe it. Thus Augustine does not seem to regard them as being outside the faith. 3) He believes it is because of their emotions that they deny the doctrine. This is interesting because it’s the same charge that we see being leveled against Bell and others today.

In his book Hell: The Logic of Damnation, my former seminary prof Jerry Walls also notes that universalism had some respectable support in the early church. Walls himself does not support the idea, but does seem to indicate that it could be argued that it is a historically viable position within the Christian tradition. Other scholars that I am aware of have made similar points, including Gregory MacDonald in The Evangelical Universalist. So I think Bell is correct in this. The point he seems to be making is that there should at least be room in the church to discuss this issue without condemning people for heresy. I think he is correct. I also think he will continue to be condemned for heresy by many people who are more concerned about protecting some orthodoxy than they are about following the commandments of Jesus.

The problem with Ehrman (part 1)

2011-02-28T16:01:00.003-05:00

New Testament scholar Dirk Jongkind gives a striking rebuttal to Bart Ehrman’s arguments against the reliability of the text of the New Testament. Ehrman frequently appeals to the fact that there are more variant readings for the New Testament than there are words in the New Testament. This is true, as there are between 300,000 and 400,000 manuscript variants for the New Testament, and approximately 134,000 words in the New Testament. To the uneducated, these stats give the impression that not one single word of the New Testament (or at best very few of them) can be considered authentic. This, however, is complete nonsense.

First, we must understand what constitutes a variant. A textual variant is any word or reading of a verse or passage which is different from another one in any way. So, for example, if the name of King David is spelled differently in one hand-written Greek manuscript from how it is spelled in another one, that’s a variant. One feature of writing before the modern period (and not just in Greek) is that there were no standardized spellings for proper names. Jongkind points out that William Shakespeare spelled his own name 13 different ways! There are at least four different ways that “David” is spelled in New Testament manuscripts. Each of these is a variant; moreover, each of them is a variant each time it occurs. The name David appears 59 times in the New Testament. That is potentially 236 variants just on that one name alone. You can multiply that by all of the other proper names in the New Testament – not just names of people, but also of places. These kinds of inconsequential variants account for about 99% of all variants in the New Testament. This fact is well known by anyone who has studied criticism of the New Testament text – including Bart Ehrman. His use of this statistic can only be described as disingenuous and misleading.

But there is another fact which sheds a very different light on the number of NT variants. The total number of manuscript pages of handwritten Greek texts of the NT is estimated to be about 2,600,000 pages. This is the reason why we have so many variants – because we have so many texts. But this means that on average there is about 1 variant for every 8 pages of handwritten Greek text. Try copying the New Testament by hand and see if you can do that well! But keep in mind that 99% of these variants have nothing to do with the meaning of the text and are merely a question of the spelling of proper names, word order (which in Greek is flexible and can be changed without affecting the meaning). This is far from Ehrman’s only problem, but it is quite a notorious one given the frequency with which he publicly uses this highly misleading stat without explaining what it really means.

On the authenticity of the Gospels and Acts

2011-02-10T12:20:00.001-05:00

Skeptics have attempted to cast doubt on the authenticity of the Gospels and Acts for centuries. When the arguments are examined in detail, however, they crumble in the face of the evidence. The first issue has to do with dating the Gospels and Acts. Skeptics have alleged that the Gospels and Acts were written much later than traditionally believed. It is noteworthy that in recent decades the tide has shifted in the direction of the traditional dating simply because of the evidence.

To begin the examination, we need to start by looking at the dating of Acts and the historical confirmation of it. Even the vast majority of skeptical scholars agree that Acts was written by the same person as the Gospel of Luke, and the prefaces indicate they are a two-part work. Thus Luke can be dated to the same period as Acts. Some skeptical scholars have claimed that Acts was written in the second century or later even though it describes events between approximately 30-60 AD. This conclusion is not based on evidence, but rather on assumptions. The assumption is that there must have been a significant time gap to allow for the development of what the skeptic believes were myths and legends. The question is, how does this conclusion fit with the evidence? The answer is that it doesn't.

A.N. Sherwin-White devoted a series of lectures to the evidence that Acts was a first-century work. Sherwin-White was not a Christian apologist, but a Roman historian. Among the evidence cited by Sherwin-White is the correctness of the charges against Paul in his trail before Felix and Festus. Sherwin-White shows that the charge of stirring up strife was normal under the existing system of the period as reflected in a letter from Claudius to the Alexandrines which contains similar language to the charge against Paul. Although this detail was considered unhistorical by many scholars, Sherwin-White concludes that “the narrative of Acts is using contemporary language.” Likewise in his handling of the status of the province of Cilicia and Felix’s decision to hear Paul’s case in Acts 23:34-35, Luke shows “remarkable familiarity with the provincial and juridical situation in the last years of Claudius.” Other examples include the situation in Acts 24:18-19 when the Asian Jews who brought charges against Paul withdrew, giving Paul a valid technical objection against them, properly corresponding to the offence of destitio. Acts also correctly handles the appeal of Paul as it would have been done under the rule of provocatio, which differed in many ways from the later procedure of appellatio which would have been in effect in the time period when critics believe Acts was written. Sherwin-White remarks that in this the author of Acts “has the advantage over some modern critics.” Sherwin-White’s conclusion? “The agnostic type of form-criticism would be much more credible if the compilation of the Gospels were much later in time, much more remote from the events themselves, than can be the case.”

Archaeologist Sir William Ramsay stumbled upon this same conclusion almost by accident. He was conducted field research in Asia minor, and had been thoroughly indoctrinated with the view that Acts was a second-century work. But Ramsay discovered that one of the many errors that Luke had been charged with was not an error at all. It had long been held that the statement in Acts 14:6 that Paul and Barnabas fled from Iconium to the province of Lycaonia was nonsense, since Iconium was believed to have been in Lycaonia. Writing in the second century as was supposed, the author of Acts simply was using outdated and incorrect information. However, Ramsay shows in great detail that in fact at the time of Paul’s journeys, Iconium was part of Phyrigia and not of Lycaonia as the critics had believed. His subsequent research showed that in fact Acts was a remarkably accurate book. On issue after issue, Luke was right and the critics were wrong.

The instances of skeptical malpractice with regard to Acts can be multiplied over and over. Critics of Acts have had a history of seizing upon difficulties and arguments from silence to buttress their claims that Acts was written late, only to be refuted by later evidence. An example is given by Adolf Deissmann, who commented on the claim by critics that Luke’s use of kurios as a title for the Roman Emperor in Acts 25:26 reflected the development of a later period. However, it was discovered that this title was used for the Emperor as far back as the Ptolemaic period in Egypt and the East, and the usage became widespread under Nero. Deissmann comments that “the insignificant detail, questioned by various commentators, who, seated at their writing-tables in Tübingen or Berlin, vainly imagined that they knew the period better than St. Luke, now appears thoroughly credible.”

Sherwin-White made the observation that Roman historians had long since taken for granted the basic historicity of Acts “even in matters of detail.” This is not to suggest that he endorsed or even commented on the element of Acts that critics find objectionable – namely the miracle stories. In fact his comments had to do with the historical setting, and the fact that the evidence simply precludes a late-dating for Acts which all of the skeptical theories require. He also makes the point that the skeptical methods that have been applied to the New Testament simply don't work in the field of Roman antiquities. But critics who make use of these skeptical methods are not usually historians. W. Ward Gasque similarly observed that as a general rule it was theologians and not historians who questioned the basic historicity and dating of Acts. These theologians were ideological descendents of the Tübingen school in Germany. As a result, continental scholars have differed substantially from British scholars in regard to the historicity of Acts. The evidence, however, is on the side of Acts. Recent efforts to discredit Acts by arguing that it was not written as historiography, a view championed by Richard Pervo, has gained very little acceptance from scholars. Pervo simply fails to engage with the historical evidence in any meaningful way.

The external evidence is overwhelming that Acts was written by someone from the same time period as the events it describes. That the writer was a sometimes travelling companion of Paul also has considerable internal and external support. Scholars almost universally agree that the writer of Acts did not have access to Paul’s letters, but nevertheless numerous parallels and congruencies with Paul’s letter even in small details which are inexplicable as simply coincidence. That the Gospel has been universally attributed to Luke leaves the skeptic with an insurmountable problem: if these books were forgeries, why would they be attributed to such an obscure figure in the church who was neither an apostle nor, as far as we know, an eyewitness to the events of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection? The simple answer is they wouldn’t. Forged gospels, such as the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, or the Gospel of Mary were attributed to apostles or important church figures.

The oft-repeated claim that we don’t know who wrote the Gospels is simply bunk. The skepticism towards these books is based on methods that simply don’t fly in any other field except New Testament studies, and are universally based on a priori rejection of the miraculous. Such theories do not stand up to the evidence.

On A. N. Sherwin-White and Vince Hart’s Abuse of Christian Apologists UPDATED: Deleted Comments on Hart's Blog

2011-02-01T05:16:00.013-05:00

A blogger by the name of Vince Hart, who apparently has an undergraduate degree in finance and a graduate degree in law, wrote in 2007 that Christian apologists abuse Roman historian A. N. Sherwin-White by taking his arguments from his book Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament out of context. I’ve actually seen Hart’s blog cited a few times by skeptics who link to Hart as if he knows what he’s talking about. However, Hart is clearly an amateur hack as a historian. He’s good at finding nit-picky errors (although sometimes not so good), but when it comes to substance he’s clearly out of his depth in this field. It was actually after someone referenced Hart’s blog to me a couple of years ago that I decided to buy a copy of Sherwin-White’s book to see for myself what was going on. It was well worth the price. While there are a few quotes of Sherwin-White’s that rightly get a lot of air time, there is a lot of highly valuable material in it that in my opinion is under-utilized. My overall conclusion, however, was that the apologists’ use of Sherwin-White is perfectly acceptable and that Hart is out to lunch. What Hart points to as a couple of minor misquotations are insubstantial and don’t affect the arguments. And as we will see shortly, Hart is guilty of a few howlers of his own.

After an introductory paragraph, Hart begins his critique with a glaring misinterpretation: “The first thing I noticed is that the book has nothing to do with the historical reliability of the resurrection accounts or any of the miracle stories.”

This is a highly misleading statement for several reasons. Sherwin-White repeatedly addresses questions pertaining to the historical and legal setting of the Gospels and Acts, and frequently through the course of his lectures refers to instances where the skeptics have completely blown it because of their assumption that the Gospels and Acts were myths and legends that developed over several generations. It’s simply incorrect (and rather ridiculous) to say that this has nothing to do with the historical reliability of the specific stories, and actually Sherwin-White himself refutes such a misunderstanding later in the book as we will see. Hart is correct only insofar as Sherwin-White does not directly render a historical verdict on the Resurrection or the miracle stories of the Gospels and Acts, but since no Christian apologist that I am aware of argues that he does, this is simply a non-issue. Hart appears to simply not understand the point, but appears to want to poison the well as early as possible by making it sound as if Christian apologists are citing Sherwin-White for purposes which in fact they are not. In fact Hart repeatedly engages in these kinds of straw men arguments. Over and over he says, “Sherwin-White never says X,” implying that Christian apologists say that Sherwin-White says X when in fact that’s not the case. Hart weaves a web of deception that is hard to untangle if you aren’t familiar with Sherwin-White’s book and with the way Christian apologists use his arguments.

Hart continues: “As the book’s title suggests, Sherwin-White’s interest was Roman law and society. The book addresses the procedural and jurisdictional issues that arise in the gospel accounts of Jesus’ trial and the issues of Paul's Roman citizenship that arise in the book of Acts. "[O]ne may show how the various historical and social and legal problems raised by the Gospels and Acts now look to a Roman historian. That, and only that, is the intention of these lectures." (emphasis added) (RSRLNT p. iv)””

Here Hart has taken a half a sentence, but what he’s done with it is simply bizarre. First, the sentence in its entirety reads, “But one may learn what are the questions requiring answers, and one may show how the various historical and legal and social problems raised by the Gospels and Acts now look to a Roman historian. That, and only that, is the intention of these lectures” (the quote is from p. vi, not p. iv). Hart omitted the phrase, “one may learn what are the questions requiring answers,” which in the context refers to Sherwin-White’s statement that while he is an outsider to the field of New Testament criticism, he can still bring insights as a Roman historian. In other words, his intention is to show how the field of New Testament criticism looks to a Roman historian, which he does quite forcefully. Whatever point Hart wants to make with this statement is quite obscure, except that he seems to interpret Sherwin-White as saying that he’s not going to say anything that has to do with the historicity of the events in the NT (even though "historical" was one of the categories that Sherwin-White explicitly mentioned!). But that would be a gross misinterpretation, as Sherwin-White’s implicit and explicit statements in the book itself shows. Hart seems to think that Sherwin-White is simply using the New Testament to give insight into the field of Roman law and history. In fact, the opposite is the case – Sherwin-White is bringing his considerable expertise in Roman law and history to bear on New Testament studies. Hart has gotten it completely backwards.

Hart writes, “Sherwin-White’s analysis did not require him to reach any conclusions about the historical reliability of the New Testament stories. He simply offered his opinion on the extent to which the accounts reflected what historians knew about the legal system of ancient Rome. . . . This does not mean that Sherwin-White either affirmed or denied that any particular story in the New Testament was factual or fictional. For his purposes, the question was not relevant.”

This is simply false. It is absolutely untrue to say that the question of historicity of any particular story in the NT was not relevant for his purposes. In fact the final chapter is titled “Aspects of Roman Citizenship, and the Question of Historicity.” In the second section of the chapter, which is subtitled “The Historicity of the Gospels and Graeco-Roman Historiography,” Sherwin-White writes in the first paragraph, “it is fitting for a professional Graeco-Roman historian to consider the whole topic of historicity briefly and very generally, and boldly to state a case” (186). Hart makes much ado of the phrase “briefly and very generally” in his ludicrous attack on Lee Strobel, but ignores the “boldly to state a case” bit. In fact Hart seems oblivious to what case it is that Sherwin-White is even making in the entire book, but seems confident that it has nothing to do with the historicity of any of the events in the Gospels and Acts! Hart himself is good at making mountains out of molehills while apparently missing the point of the entire thrust of Sherwin-White’s lectures. In any case, Sherwin-White makes it quite explicit when he says, “Yet however one accepts form-criticism, its principles do not inevitably contradict the notion of the basic historicity of the particular stories of which the Gospel narratives are composed, even if these were not shored up and confirmed by the external guarantee of their fabric and setting” (p. 188). So it’s astounding that Hart can say the historicity of any particular story in the NT was irrelevant for Sherwin-White’s purposes! Hart is simply applying his own skeptical slant to Sherwin-White’s words and badly misinterpreting them.

In his next paragraph, Hart moves to an argument from silence, but even that isn’t very good. He writes, “[Sherwin-White] did not assert that the gospels were historically factual. He asserted that they could be used to do history.” This is a bizarre statement. If the Gospels are not historically factual at all (which is the essence of the skeptical theories which Sherwin-White rightly castigates), then they are of no use for doing history! Hart appears to be saying that Sherwin-White didn’t say that the Gospels are 100% accurate or inerrant or anything of that nature. That’s certainly true, but again no apologist that I have ever seen says that Sherwin-White said that. Hart is again engaging in some straw man manufacturing by implying that Christian apologists are using Sherwin-White for a purpose for which in fact they are not using him. The entire comment of Hart’s is irrelevant except in advancing his anti-apologist agenda. One might well ask the question what Hart even makes of Sherwin-White’s comments. How does Hart think the Gospels should be used to do history according to Sherwin-White? What does he think we can know from them? Clearly Sherwin-White thought we could know a great deal more than the skeptics believed.

Hart’s misunderstanding continues: “Professor Sherwin-White noted that even the “most deplorable” sources can be read critically by historians to yield a “basic layer of historical truth.” While he did not claim that the Bible was a deplorable source, he repeatedly compared it to writings that are replete with problems.”

Another very misleading statement from Hart, this one more egregious. Sherwin-White compares the Gospels with a variety of Roman sources, some of which are replete with problems and some of which aren’t. He doesn’t only compare them to Herodotus, he also compares them to Thucydides, Plutarch, Arrian, Tacitus, and others. Hart is being appallingly selective in his quotes here, and appears to be simply quote-mining (a practice in which he demonstrated great proficiency during some personal interaction with yours truly as well).

More from Hart: “Sherwin-White did not “suggest the literal accuracy of ancient sources, ecclesiastical or secular;” (RSRLNT p.192-193 n.2) he merely rejected the view “that the historical Christ is unknowable.””

Again this is misleading. Sherwin-White did not “merely” reject the hyper-skeptical view - in fact he found that view to be “astonishing” (187 – Sherwin-White’s own word). But this is a great part of Sherwin-White’s point which Hart has completely missed; it’s not just that the skeptics are a little off in their thinking, they are wildly mistaken, and their conclusions simply wouldn’t fly in the field of Roman history. Hart apparently misses the point because of his own amateur understanding of the field.

Hart continues his adventure in misinterpretation with some more silliness: “However, contrary to Craig, Strobel, Geisler and a host of others, he did not attempt to calculate a rate of legendary accumulation that is universally applicable. Nor did he lay out a rule that enables an historian to identify a point before which an oral tradition can still be considered historical.”

The first sentence is strange. In fact Sherwin-White does lay out a general principle concerning what he calls the tempo of mythmaking. While Sherwin-White didn’t say the words, “universally applicable,” it’s quite clear that he believed it was applicable to the Gospels and Acts – otherwise there would have been no point in putting it in the book! But once again, Hart seems to be wanting to put words in the mouths of Christian apologists which they have never said and then indict them for it. As for “laying out a rule that enables an historian . . .,” it’s hard to understand the point of this sentence. Again, unless someone has used Sherwin-White this way, Hart appears to be simply fantasizing about arguments that have never appeared in print.

The first concrete charge against an apologist that Hart attempts after his several paragraphs of straw men and misinterpretation of Sherwin-White is with William Lane Craig. Hart writes, “The apologetic abuse of the Oxford professor starts with William Lane Craig. His claim that Sherwin-White “states that for the gospels to be legends, the rate of legendary accumulation would have to be ‘unbelievable’" is at least a gross distortion if not an outright falsehood. Sherwin-White never classified the gospels as either legend or fact. Nor did he ever use the word “unbelievable” despite Craig application of quotation marks.”

It does appear to be the case that Craig has incorrectly used quotations around the word “unbelievable.” Here is the section where Hart found this: http://www.accordingtothescriptures.org/doctrine/evidenceforjesus.html

It’s worth looking at the entire paragraph from Craig to see how significant this issue is. Craig writes,

One of the major problems with the legend hypothesis, however, which is almost never addressed by sceptical critics, is that the time between Jesus's death and the writing of the gospels is just too short for this to happen. This point has been well-explained by A. N. Sherwin-White in his book Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament.{2} Professor Sherwin-White is not a theologian; he is a professional historian of times prior to and contemporaneous with Jesus. According to Sherwin-White, the sources for Roman and Greek history are usually biased and removed one or two generations or even centuries from the events they record. Yet, he says, historians reconstruct with confidence the course of Roman and Greek history.

What Craig has written here accurately summarizes Sherwin-White’s comments on p. 186 of his book.

Craig goes on to say,

For example, the two earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch more than 400 years after Alexander's death, and yet classical historians still consider them to be trustworthy. The fabulous legends about Alexander the Great did not develop until during the centuries after these two writers.

Here Craig is bringing in material which is not explicitly stated by Sherwin-White, but is still correct. Undoubtedly he is referring to the Alexander Romance with his last sentence.

Craig continues:

According to Sherwin-White, the writings of Herodotus enable us to determine the rate at which legend accumulates, and the tests show that even two generations is too short a time span to allow legendary tendencies to wipe out the hard core of historical facts.

This is a paraphrase of Sherwin-White, who wrote that “Herodotus enables us to test the tempo of myth-making, and the tests suggest that even two generations are too short a span to allow the mythical tendency to prevail over the hard historic core of the oral tradition.” Here Craig’s paraphrase is spot-on.

Craig again,

When Professor Sherwin-White turns to the gospels, he states that for the gospels to be legends, the rate of legendary accumulation would have to be "unbelievable." More generations would be needed.

Hart objects to Craig’s use of “unbelievable” in quotation marks, saying that it’s “at least a gross distortion if not an outright falsehood.” I will say that the use of quotation marks is puzzling, since I can’t see where Sherwin-White uses that word in that way. However, neither do I agree with Hart that it’s a “gross distortion” of Sherwin-White’s words. In fact Sherwin-White does write, specifically with regard to the tempo of mythological development, that “the agnostic type of form-criticism would be much more credible if the compilation of the Gospels were much later in time, much more remote from the events themselves, than can be the case” (189). Sherwin-White has demonstrated in careful detail throughout his book that the Gospels can’t have been written as late as the skeptical theories required. Here he simply says outright that the agnostic form-criticism would be more credible if the Gospels were written a lot later than they actually were. But that’s his point – the theories AREN’T credible because the Gospels COULDN’T have been written as late as the skeptics said they were. So Sherwin-White is, in fact, making the point that Craig says he’s making, just in different, more restrained words. Craig might also have been thinking of Sherwin-White’s use of the word “astonishing” with regard to the skepticism of New Testament studies. Should Craig re-word his point? Yes, probably. But it’s certainly not the “gross distortion” that Hart imagines it to be. In fact Craig’s comments on the whole are exactly in line with what Sherwin-White has said quite explicitly.

Hart’s objection that “Sherwin-White never classified the gospels as either legend or fact” is positively bizarre. Since Craig doesn’t say that he classified them as either, it’s hard to know why Hart would even say this except in the cause of continuing to produce straw men. Craig simply says that according to Sherwin-White, in order for the Gospels to be legends the rate of legendary development would have had to have been unbelievable. He doesn’t say either that Sherwin-White classified them as legend or as fact.

Hart continues, “Throughout his essay, the Oxford professor acknowledged that all of his ancient sources contain both fact and fiction. What he did argue is that it would usually take more than two generations for the legendary elements to so completely displace the historical facts as to make the gospels useless to the critical historian. But he made no attempt to identify where such displacement occurred in the gospels or which parts could be considered historical.”

Sherwin-White did NOT say that it would “usually take more than two generations for the legendary elements to so completely displace the historical facts as to make the gospels useless to the critical historian.” In fact the word, “usually” doesn’t appear at all! Hart has made a botch of a paraphrase here, implying that there might be some cases where two generations would be sufficient for the kind of mythological development that the skeptics imagine occurred. Here’s the actual quote again: “Herodotus enables us to test the tempo of myth-making, and the tests suggest that even two generations are too short a span to allow the mythical tendency to prevail over the hard historic core of the oral tradition.” There’s no “usually” here – that word, ironically, is a product of Hart’s imagination.

Hart has again put words in the apologist’s mouth that the apologist has not argued, and then wrestled the straw man to the ground. No apologist that I have seen argues that Sherwin-White DID identify which specific part could be considered historical. Rather, apologists use Sherwin-White to demonstrate that the skeptical view that the Gospels are not historically reliable at all is wrong. The skeptical view is that myth has completely obliterated historical fact, because no matter how deeply you look into the traditions, you find the miraculous. But Hart is fallaciously intimating that because Sherwin-White hasn’t explicitly said which parts are historical, he’s affirming that we can’t know if any of it is historical. Hart is actually implicitly using Sherwin-White’s words to argue in favor of a position which Sherwin-White is explicitly disavowing. He’s reading Sherwin-White as agnostic when Sherwin-White has explicitly said the agnostic position is not credible!

Probably the clearest demonstration of Hart’s desire to smear apologists is revealed by his ridiculous attack on Lee Strobel. Here are Hart’s own words:

“Not surprisingly, Lee Strobel is even less circumspect in his use of Sherwin-White. In his summary in The Case for Christ, Strobel bloviates

What clinched it for me was the famous study by A. N. Sherwin-White, the great classical historian from Oxford University, which William Lane alluded to in our interview. Sherwin-White meticulously examined the rate at which legend accrued in the ancient world. His conclusion: not even two full generations was enough time for legend to develop and to wipe out a solid core of historical truth. (The Case for Christ p. 264)

"Contrary to Strobel’s imagination, the comments in Roman Law and Roman Society in the New Testament do not constitute a “study” and they do not reflect “meticulous” examination. No such study was required to support the rest of the book, which is why Sherwin-White described himself as considering the topic of historicity “briefly and very generally.” (RSRLNT p. 186) Most importantly, Strobel ignores the fact that it still takes critical historical methodology to identify that "solid core." Sherwin-White did not admit the possibility of accepting the gospels at face value.”

The first point to notice is Hart’s derogatory use of “bloviates” which adds nothing to the argument and is simply a gratuitous (and completely unjustified) ad hominem. But what is the substance of Hart’s complaint against Strobel? It’s that Strobel refers to Sherwin-White’s work as “meticulous” and a “study.” In interacting with Hart on his blog about this issue, part of the problem seems to stem from Hart interpreting Strobel’s use of the word “study” as referring particularly to the section in which Sherwin-White talks about the rate of mythmaking with reference to Herodotus. That’s far from obvious from his single use of the word, which more plausibly refers to the whole book. Hart also complains about Strobel using the word “meticulous.” This is simply a bizarre complaint, and hardly constitutes an abuse! Sherwin-White talks about the rate of mythmaking by examining the story of the murder of Hipparchus as it is related by Herodotus and later by Thucydides. Actually, it’s difficult to summarize the point without getting into details (I wonder if Hart could pull that off!), which in my mind indicates that it is fairly meticulous. Indeed, Sherwin-White was remembered as a very meticulous scholar. So this complaint of Hart’s is simply mindless. By the end of my exchange with him on his blog, he had quietly dropped the subject altogether. But it does reveal an intent to simply defame Christian apologists regardless of how much merit there is in the complaint.

In defending his absurd attack on Strobel in the comments section, Hart committed a howler and a clear distortion of his own. He wrote, “What Strobel characterizes as a “study” consists of a single anecdote from Herodotus concerning Alexander the Great. (Moreover, as Sherwin-White admits in a footnote, “There was a remarkable growth of myth around his person and deeds with the lifetime of contemporaries, and the historical embroidery was often deliberate.”)”

Hart’s distortion is manifest with his cherry-picked quote from the footnote. He says that Sherwin-White “admits” that there was a remarkable growth of myth around Alexander the Great in his lifetime. The reader is left with the impression that Sherwin-White actually refuted the idea that myth didn’t develop as fast as what the apologists have said. But here is the full quote from Sherwin-White: “Mr. P. A. Brunt has suggested in private correspondence that a study of the Alexander sources is less encouraging for my thesis. There was a remarkable growth of myth around his person and deeds within the lifetime of contemporaries, and the historical embroidery was often deliberate. But the hard core still remains, and an alternative but neglected source – or pair of sources – survived for the serious inquirer Arrian to utilize in the second century A.D. This seems to me encouraging rather than the reverse.” This is clear deception on Hart’s part. First, he made it appear as if this was simply an observation which Sherwin-White had made, when in fact it was made by someone else. Second, he deliberately omitted the response of Sherwin-White to this argument in which Sherwin-White not only refutes it, but actually points out that in the end it supports his point rather than hurting it! Amazingly, Hart has gone quote-mining to make it look like Sherwin-White has said the opposite of what he actually said, precisely the charge which he tries to level against Habermas (see below).

As for the howler, Hart mistakenly thought that the example Sherwin-White gave to illustrate the tempo of myth-making in Roman history was from Herodotus talking about something from the life of Alexander the Great. While this might be an understandable confusion for a layman (he obviously got confused about the footnote concerning Alexander), the problem is that Herodotus lived a century before Alexander was born! As anyone familiar with this era of history knows full well, our earliest existing biographies of Alexander come from four centuries after his death. We only know about earlier sources because parts of them are preserved in these later writings. The idea that Herodotus wrote about Alexander would be like saying that David Hume (philosopher and historian who died in 1776) wrote something about Abraham Lincoln! As I said at the beginning, Hart is clearly an amateur hack as a historian – and it shows.

But Hart’s closing statement in this paragraph is incredible. He writes, “Sherwin-White did not admit the possibility of accepting the gospels at face value.” This really IS a distortion. It seems to imply that Sherwin-White said, “we can’t accept the Gospels at face value” or some such thing. In fact he made no statement at all of the kind. When someone says “so-and-so doesn’t admit the possibility of X,” that implies that they have explicitly disavowed X. Hart is simply engaging in some creative writing at this point, inventing statements which Sherwin-White simply never made.

Hart’s complaint against Habermas appears to be more significant on the surface. Hart writes, “Another interesting misuse of Sherwin-White comes from Gary Habermas who appears to simply alter words to meet his own purposes in Why I Believe the New Testament is Historically Reliable. According to Habermas, "The sort of thoroughgoing propaganda literature that some critics believe the Gospels to be was actually nonexistent in ancient times. Sherwin-White declares, 'We are not acquainted with this type of writing in ancient historiography.'" The only problem is that Sherwin-White did not declare that! He declared that "we are not unacquainted with this type of writing."(emphasis added)(RSRLNT p. 189) The point of Sherwin-White’s essay is that historians were familiar with this type of literature and were capable of using critical analysis to get at the historical content despite the difficulties posed by the genre.”

If Habermas said this, then it is a misquote that should be corrected. But does it show that Habermas’ use of Sherwin-White is an abuse? Without the full context of the quote it’s difficult to say, but it appears that Habermas is saying that according to Sherwin-White, the skeptical view of the NT (that it is essentially entirely myth and legend) is wrong. Well, that IS what Sherwin-White is saying. The type of literature that Sherwin-White is actually referring to in the quote in question is what he calls “didactic myths.” This actually leads into Sherwin-White’s comments on the tempo of myth-making, in which he says that even two generations are too short for the mythmaking tendency to prevail over the historical core. So when Sherwin-White says, “we are not unacquainted with this type of writing,” he isn’t talking about writing that is pure myth which arose in short order – rather he’s talking about material which has been somewhat distorted but still retains the historical core. Notice that Sherwin-White is NOT saying that the Gospels have been distorted in this way (although he doesn’t deny it, either), rather his emphasis is on the fact that the historical core must still be intact, something which the skeptics deny. But that’s exactly what Christian apologists are also saying. Thus their use of Sherwin-White appears to be consistent with what he himself wrote.

So Hart has failed to demonstrate that Christian apologists have misused the work of A. N. Sherwin-White. All Hart has done is to fabricate some straw men and locate a couple of misquotes which nevertheless retain the gist of what Sherwin-White was saying. Perhaps Hart’s argument is with Sherwin-White himself. However, amateur hack that he is, it is unlikely that Hart has anything worthwhile to say about whether Sherwin-White’s observations were correct. A. N. Sherwin-White was known and respected as a careful and serious-minded scholar. His slender but detailed work on the New Testament contains rich material that confounds the ludicrous theories of skeptics as I have gone into some detail in showing elsewhere. Hart’s straw men and nitpicky attacks on Christian apologists can’t change that fact.

Update:

While attempting to engage with Hart on his blog, he reached the point where he decided to simply start deleting my comments. Was I being profane or defamatory? No, I simply demonstrated where he was clearly misreading Sherwin-White and he was unable to answer the point.

On the comments thread on his most recent blog post, Hart said, "On the question of whether Sherwin-White thinks that the New Testament accounts contain both legend and fact just as the Roman sources do, I don't think there can be any doubt; it is the nature of ancient sources."

I pointed out that in fact Sherwin-White says absolutely nothing even remotely resembling this in his book, and doesn't use the word legend this way. He certainly doesn't say that it's the nature of ancient sources that they contain both legend and fact. Assuming that legend means "a story with no historical basis whatsoever," Sherwin-White doesn't even hint that the sources he deals with contain such stories, and says nothing that implies the New Testament contains such legends. Even his use of the word "myth" is very different from the skeptical use of this word, as I pointed out in a comment which Vinny allowed to remain. But in a comment which he deleted, I reiterated the point which Vinny failed to respond to - Sherwin-White nowhere says or suggests that the New Testament contains legends, nor does he say that it's the nature of ancient sources to do so. In fact everything he says actually argues against that view. In talking about Herodotus and the possible application of form-criticism to his writings, he says, "The notions of form-criticism have not been applied systematically to Herodotus. His stories are obviously open to treatment of this kind. The investigation would cast much light on his literary method, but would not affect seriously the basic historicity of his material, which is sufficiently established." He ends this with the footnote about Alexander that I discussed above, which Vinny seriously mangled, taking part of it out of context in his misinterpretation of Sherwin-White. But since he has now taken to simply deleting comments that he can't adequately refute, further discussion of the topic is apparently not going to happen unless he comes and posts his comments here (which I will be happy to allow to remain as long as they contain no profanity, which is my criteria for removing comments).

Update 2:

When I called Hart's attention to this update, he responded by suggesting that the reason he deleted my comments was because I wasn't civil enough and was dishonest. When I challenged him to demonstrate where I had been dishonest and how it was that I wasn't civil enough for his blog when he charges Christian apologists with "abusing" Sherwin-White and "bloviating" when simply stating what Sherwin-White said, he responded by deleting the comment! I think if anyone reads my comments over at Vince's blog you will see that his charges of incivility and dishonesty are entirely without merit. He has yet to actually respond to the substance of the above charge, that he is just clearly putting words in Sherwin-White's mouth - words which toe the skeptical line even though Sherwin-White argues against the skeptical position throughout his book. So as for who is engaging in dishonesty here, I have to say that's pretty clear.

Diary of a Conversion

2010-03-12T22:54:00.003-05:00

I came across a wonderful and powerful testimony of a woman (Jennifer Fulwiler) who describes herself as having been a life-long atheist who had "never once believed in God, not even as a child." This is somewhat unusual, as I have seen studies which have shown that belief in the supernatural is almost universal among children across all cultures. It's striking that she also describes herself as having been "vocally anti-Christian" before her conversion.

The story of Jennifer's conversion to Christianity (particularly Catholicism) is simply beautiful, and well worth reading. It's a story of what happens when someone decides to give God a chance. While I can relate to some aspects of her testimony (such as how the world and her life made so much more sense after her conversion compared with prior to it), I can't relate to never having believed in God. I'm one of those for whom the existence of God seemed obvious, although I didn't know who He was and didn't live my life for Him until my conversion at the age of 19.

Sometimes it can be discouraging in trying to share the Gospel with atheists and skeptics, presenting the arguments and evidence, and often seeing nothing as a result. But those arguments can and do work to break down the intellectual barriers to faith that many people have. Jennifer writes, "When I first started reading works by Christian apologists I was quite surprised at how reasonable they were, that their arguments in favor of God and Christ his Son were more involved than the one's I'd always heard (mainly "Shut up," and the old standby "You're going to hell"). I decided to take Pascal up on his wager, to follow St. Augustine on his advice to believe so that you might understand, and to just live my life for a while as if God did exist."

Jennifer listed some of the books that helped influence her in coming to faith, a list that included The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel and Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, books which I have used in teaching apologetics in Hungary. It was a blessing to me to see these books included in Jennifer's list!

From Lowly Beginnings

2009-12-21T16:09:00.002-05:00

Of all of the skeptical arguments marshaled against the historicity of the New Testament, few are as absurd as one promulgated by atheist Frank Zindler and propagated on the internet: that there was no town of Nazareth in the time of Jesus, and that the description of Jesus as having grown up there was a later fabrication, possibly based on a corruption of the Hebrew word for Nazarite. The basis for this argument was entirely an argument from ignorance, and not a very good one at that. Zindler’s points include the following:

• No "ancient historians or geographers mention [Nazareth] before the beginning of the fourth century.”
• Nazareth is not mentioned in the Old Testament, the Talmud, nor in the Apocrypha and it does not appear in any early rabbinic literature.
• Nazareth was not included in the list of settlements of the tribes of Zebulun (Joshua 19:10-16) which mentions twelve towns and six villages
• Nazareth is not included among the 45 cities of Galilee that were mentioned by Josephus (37AD-100AD).
• Nazareth is also missing from the 63 towns of Galilee mentioned in the Talmud.

Apparently someone forgot to tell him that arguments from ignorance don’t prove anything, and that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But what really makes this argument rather bizarre is that it has been known for a long time that the area around the modern city of Nazareth was inhabited in the periods before and after the time of Jesus. Some skeptics speculated that it was uninhabited for the period in which Jesus was a child, but not because of evidence that it wasn’t. It was based on the lack of solid evidence that it was, and apparently this was enough to try to throw more doubt on the historical details and setting of the New Testament, even though those details have been well confirmed by historians.

In any case, today the announcement was made of the discovery of a dwelling in ancient Nazareth from the time period of Jesus, in this article from the AP: “The humble dwelling is the first dating to the era of Jesus to be discovered in Nazareth, then a hamlet of around 50 impoverished Jewish families where Jesus spent his boyhood.” This points to the most obvious reason why Nazareth was left off of the lists of towns pointed out by Zindler - Nazareth was too small and insignificant. Even the response of Nathaniel to Philip in John 1:46 points to the lowly status of this little town: “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?”

This is yet another victory for the Gospels in the long-standing war of skeptics who have tried to undermine it on various grounds. Recently I spoke in a Sunday School class on the historical evidence for the NT, and mentioned the story of Sir William Ramsay, the skeptical archaeologist who set out to prove that the book of Acts was a late second- or early third-century forgery, and ended up becoming a Christian instead because of the overwhelming historical evidence supporting Acts.

In the middle of the Christmas season, it’s also worth reflecting on the background of the One who was born in a lowly manger in Bethlehem and lived his childhood in a poor Jewish village with no status and no prestige, the One who came to redeem the world, to exalt the humble and to tear down the proud. In a world that still values the prestige and honor of the “elites” above all else, it’s a reminder that ultimately it will not be the elites who will inherit the earth, but the meek.

Reasonable Faith

2009-09-13T14:58:00.000-04:00

Tonight I begin leading a small group here in Houghton, NY, called "Reasonable Faith". The name is taken from the book by William Lane Craig of the same title. Dr. Craig also has an apologetics website, www.reasonablefaith.org. I'm looking forward to a good discussion about many interesting topics related to apologetics, some of which I've already covered in previous blog entries. To kick things off, I wanted to bring an old post out from the archives titled, "What evidence were you expecting, anyways?" I'm hoping this will lead to some discussion here on the blog, but if not, at least I'll be talking about it tonight with my small group!

The atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell was famously asked what he would say if after he died he found himself standing before the God in whose existence he did not believe, and God asked him, “why didn’t you believe in me?” Russell’s reply was, “not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence!”

I was having a blog debate with an atheist not long ago. The atheist said, “after centuries of theism and all of the searching we’ve done without finding any evidence, I think we’re justified in discarding religion and moving on.”

In my response, I conceded that we can be justified in disbelieving the existence of some entity E if we expect certain kinds of evidence in the case of E’s existence, and after thorough investigation that evidence does not turn up. I then asked the atheist what evidence he was expecting to find in the case of God’s existence which had not turned up.

Being the good sport that I am, I offered a couple of suggestion for him to consider while formulating his answer. For starters, I said, if God existed we might expect to find that the universe had a beginning rather than finding that the universe had always existed. Hey, wait a minute. According to a considerable amount of evidence that cosmologists have discovered, the universe did have a beginning. That’s pretty interesting when you think about it, since according to the First Law of Thermodynamics (also known as the Law of Conservation), matter can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed into energy (and vice-versa). So if there is no God, we might well expect that the universe had always existed. In fact, that was the dominant view among cosmologists in the early part of the 20th century before the Big Bang theory became widely accepted.

Another bit of evidence that we might anticipate if God existed is evidence of design in the structure of the universe itself (as opposed to it being a haphazard jumble). Again, the evidence for design based on the fine-tuning of the universe for life is extremely well documented. The structure of the universe both in terms of the values of the fundamental constants of physics and the initial conditions at the very first moment of the universe’s existence had to be within a staggeringly small range in order for life to exist. Even the skeptic Fred Hoyle was so impressed by this cosmic fine-tuning that he remarked that it appeared that a superintellect had monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology. He further commented that the numbers were so overwhelming “as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.” Since Hoyle wrote that statement, the list of “anthropic coincidences” (those values that are necessary for a life-sustaining universe) has continued to grow longer.

My atheist interlocutor never did answer the question as to what evidence he expected to find in the case of God’s existence that hadn’t turned up. That seemed a little odd to me. If you’re going to conclude that there is no evidence for something, I think you should have some idea of what evidence you might expect. I wonder what Bertrand Russell would have said in answer to that question. Maybe after he died he did say to God “not enough evidence!”, I don’t know. If so, I can imagine God saying in response, “what evidence were you expecting, anyways?”

Whom would you most like to meet?

2009-07-06T17:09:00.002-04:00

It’s interesting that a recent poll conducted in the U.K. asked respondents which dead person they would most like to meet. Princess Diana was expected to be number one. But in fact, she came in at the number two spot behind Jesus. What this shows is that even in the heart of secular Europe, interest in the historical person of Jesus is as high as it has ever been. Even in America, Jesus remains a highly popular, enigmatic, and fascinating figure. As Dr. Ben Witherington III says, we live in a Jesus-haunted culture that is biblically illiterate. Unfortunately, because of that almost anything can pass for knowledge of Jesus. Thus have we seen a slough of popular and supposedly scholarly books on Jesus in the last decade that are based on flimsy foundations, weak theories, and pseudo-scholarship.

My introduction to Ben Witherington was when I took a class from him in my last year at Asbury Seminary, the year he started teaching there. This was back in 1995, and he had already written several excellent, scholarly books on the New Testament. Within a few classes I was thinking to myself, “why have I never heard of this guy before?” Before the end of that class, I thought to myself, “this guy is going somewhere.” While I hadn’t seen his name quoted or cited as an authority up until that time, I had a strong feeling that that would happen. Sure enough, in the 14 years since that class, I have seen Ben Witherington’s name come up repeatedly in different places. He has written many more books, including the best-selling title “The Gospel Code”, which was written in response to Dan Brown’s horrible and now thoroughly discredited book, “The Da Vinci Code.” He has been interviewed by every major TV network as well as appearing on the History Channel and the Discovery Channel, and is cited as an authority by many other scholars. One of my regrets from my time in seminary was that I didn’t have opportunity to take more classes from Witherington.

So I was excited to find out that he was teaching a one-week intensive class at Houghton College at the end of June on “The Jesus of Film, Fantasy, and Faith.” The purpose of the class was to cut through all of the pseudo-scholarship and popular level works about Jesus that have become so prominent in the last decade and show the evidence for the canonical Gospel portraits of Jesus, the books developed out of the collective memory of those who were closest to Jesus and knew him the best. I’ll be blogging about some of the insights I gained from that class. But as Dr. Witherington puts it, Witherington shared in the class how he has spoken to audiences across the country and has been amazed at the number of Christians who don’t realize, for example, that the New Testament doesn’t say that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, or in fact that he was married at all! In fact, there is no historical evidence for that claim at all even though many popular writers treat it as a serious hypothesis.

Another atheist comes back home

2009-06-06T22:45:00.002-04:00

On another internet site I came across some posts by a former atheist from the U.K. who had actually served as the director of the Rationalist Press Association for almost 10 years, as well as a one-year stint as the president of the National Secular Society. He gives the following reasons for his return to Christianity after 20 years as a hardened atheist:

1. A realisation that the universe is not self-explanatory, and that - unless it is completely absurd - it needs a transcendent explanation.2. A realisation that science cannot - even in principle - even begin to explain why there is something and not nothing.3. A realisation that Hume's critique of theism is far from watertight; that Darwin's theory of evolution does not begin to explain either the emergence or the complexity of life, and that much 19th century criticism and modern scientism is founded on an untenable world-view.

My return to the Christian faith was facilitated by a recognition that much biblical criticism from the Enlightenment until quite recently was based on faulty premises, and by a recognition that - notwithstanding some legendary elements - the Gospel story of Jesus, his teaching, his death and resurrection were historically well-founded. Furthermore, the experience of worship and reconciliation was a source of inner conviction that has remained with me, and I hope always will.

There are a growing number of testimonies on the internet of atheists coming to Christ, or coming back to Christ. Some have come as a result of internet apologetics. This one appears to have come back to the fold through his own study on issues of theology and religion, and his recognition of the limitations of scientific explanations for the world as well as the ultimately incoherent worldview of scientific materialism.

Of course skeptics will point out that there are also testimonies of former Christians – even former ministers in some cases – becoming atheists. While this is true, the skeptical position is that atheism is strictly based on pure reason while religion is irrational. For a knowledgeable and highly educated atheist to turn to religion, then, should necessitate that a rational person has suddenly become irrational. However, these individuals do not give evidence of being irrational, and are able to give good rational arguments as to why they abandoned the atheistic worldview. Of course, these defectors are generally treated with the great contempt, mockery and abuse that are so typical of the atheist internet community.

Stay tuned, as there are surely more exciting conversion stories to come!

Resurrection Faith (part four)

2009-05-07T00:19:00.004-04:00

And last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also.

The appearance to Paul is one of the most controversial ones listed. Many skeptics suggest that Paul’s claimed experience was not an experience of the risen Christ in person, but was rather a vision or a “spiritual” experience. In other words, Paul made no claim to having had an physical encounter with Christ in the real world. This, they say, also means that Paul thought of these other appearances to the apostles in the same way – merely as some sort of undefined vision. The stories in the Gospels arose later, and are of a different nature altogether than the claims made in this early church creed that Paul uses. The first question, then, is what was the nature of Paul’s experience? Is it true that Paul only reported a spiritual vision rather than a physical encounter with Christ? Let’s examine the evidence.

Paul’s encounter with Christ on the way to Damascus is recorded 3 times in the book of Acts: once when it is narrated, and twice when Paul is recorded as giving speeches about it to others. In addition, Paul alludes to his experience three times in his own letters: once in Galatians and twice in 1 Corinthians. So if critics want to make a case that Paul only reported having a vision of some kind, this is the primary data.

The three descriptions of Paul’s experience in Acts are found in 9:3-9; 22:6-11; and 26:12-16. There are several important features of all three descriptions. One of the first things to note is that in every case the men who were with Saul (Paul’s pre-Christian name) also experienced something. In none of these descriptions is this simply a private experience that only Paul was privy to. Something supposedly happened in the real world. But what exactly? Each of the descriptions include a bright light described as being “from heaven” and a voice. Unlike the light, it is not said where the voice came from. In the first account, we are told that the men heard the voice but saw no one. In the second account, Paul specifies that the men saw the light but did not hear the voice. In the third account it says the light shone around them all and they all fell to the ground.

So it’s clear that what is being described here is a real-world event and not a private vision that was only taking place in Paul’s mind. But the question is raised as to whether the men heard the voice or not. Luke wrote both accounts, so it’s unlikely he would have left them this way if it was an actual contradiction. As Ben Witherington points out, in classical Greek the verb akouo (“to hear”) can be used either to hear the sound of something or someone, or to hear and understand. In the former case it’s used with the gentive form of the noun, while in the latter it’s used with the accusative.[i] This is what we find in Acts: in 9:7 the genitive of the noun is used, while 22:9 it’s in the accusative. The men with Paul heard something, but it was not intelligible to them.

But another important clue to what happened is that it specifically says in Acts 9:7 that the men with Paul saw nobody. But why say this unless Paul himself DID see somebody? It seems to imply that Paul saw somebody but the men with him did not, though they did, apparently, see a bright light (perhaps obscuring their sight temporarily). But there are other clues as well. As N.T. Wright points out, Barnabas describes Paul’s experience to the other apostles in Acts 9:27 as him having “seen the Lord on the road.”[ii] But more importantly, in 1 Cor. 9:1 Paul says, “Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?”

Perhaps the skeptics strongest argument comes from Acts 26:19, where Paul says “So, King Agrippa, I did not prove disobedient to the heavenly vision”. This should settle it, right? Paul had a vision, not an objectively real experience. Actually, it turns out not to be the case. The word Paul uses here is the Greek word optasia, which is used four times in the NT. Besides this occurrence, it is found in Luke 1:22; Luke 24:23; and 2 Cor. 12:1. In the cases in Luke it appears to refer to appearances of angels which appear to be objectively real. This is especially clear in 24:23 where it refers to the angels at the tomb which appeared to the women. 2 Cor. 12:1 is ambiguous, although Paul himself says he doesn’t know if the experience described there was “in the body” or “apart from the body.” But the important thing is this is NOT the word used to describe visions which clearly were simply spiritual or private in nature, such as the vision of Ananais in Acts 9:10 (and the parallel vision of Paul in 9:12), the vision of Cornelius in Acts 10:3, and the vision of Peter in Acts 10:17. These all use the word opama. And actually in Acts 12:9, when Peter is miraculously released from prison, we read “And he went out and continued to follow, and he did not know that what was being done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision (opama).” So here it is clear that the word opama is a vision that is not objectively real. This is not the word that Paul used to describe his vision of Jesus, which would be better described as heavenly appearance.[iii]

Thus the idea that the appearance of Jesus to Paul was just a spiritual vision of some kind is just mistaken. All of the accounts make it clear that it was experienced by Paul’s companions as well, though their experience apparently differed from his in some ways. We also have the implication that Paul saw a person, and elsewhere he says specifically that he has seen Jesus. Yes, Paul’s experience was different in many ways from the experiences of the other apostles (and he describes it with the word ektroma – “untimely born”), but still at it’s core involved seeing Jesus physically.

More importantly was the effect of this experience in changing Paul from a violent persecutor of this new sect to one of its leading proponents. Even skeptics recognize that Paul had an experience of some kind that transformed him from a violent zealot bent on destroying the Christian faith to its most famous missionary, one who endured persecution, imprisonment, and ultimately martyrdom for his proclamation that Jesus was the Messiah who had risen from the dead. A change of this magnitude and with such suddenness can only be explained by a life-changing event. Paul testifies to what that life-changing event was: “He appeared to me also.”
__________________

[i] Ben Witherington, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary, (312).
[ii] Wright, 389-390.
[iii] Witherington, (746).

Resurrection Faith (part three)

2009-04-10T20:33:00.003-04:00

He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles;

Here Paul begins to list the eyewitnesses – not to the Resurrection itself, but to the risen Christ. Keep in mind that these reports were in circulation within 2-3 years after Jesus’ death. There can be no doubt that these people actually reported having seen Jesus after his death. Those reports were either true or false. One thing they were not were myths and legends that developed over a long period of time. Paul himself checked with the apostles to verify the contents of his preaching as he writes in Galatians 1:18-20. He says, “Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas, and stayed with him fifteen days. But I did not see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord's brother. Now in what I am writing to you, I assure you before God that I am not lying.”

Skeptics sometimes like to use the illustration of the game where you have a line of people and the person at the start of the line gives a message to the next person. They pass it to the next person and so on, until it gets to the other end. Then you see how the message got garbled in the process. This, they say, is how we got the stories about Jesus in the New Testament. The problems with this illustration are numerous. The biggest problem is this: all you need to do to find out what the original message was is to ask the person at the front of the line. In fact, that’s the only way you can tell that the message was changed is by comparing the last person’s story with the first person’s story. So in order for this to be the process by which we arrived at the stories of Jesus in the New Testament, you have to assume that nobody checked with those who were reported as eyewitnesses. However, we have specific claims that people DID check with the eyewitnesses, and not just by Paul. Luke also specifically claims to have checked with eyewitnesses, as does John. Paul even basically swears an oath here in Galatians that he’s telling the truth. But if those claims were false, then these men were lying. Is it possible Paul was lying? The early and consistent testimony of church history is that Paul died a martyr’s death in Rome around 64 AD under Nero after having risked his life countless times to proclaim the Gospel message throughout the Roman Empire. Of first importance in that proclamation was the eyewitness testimony of those who had seen Jesus after his Resurrection. This was not a game for Paul and for the other eyewitnesses – it was quite literally a matter of life and death.

He Appeared to Cephas

The first appearance Paul reports is one to Peter (Cephas is Peter’s name in Aramaic), and evidently to Peter by himself since it’s listed separately from the appearance to the Twelve. Some skeptics object that we have no report in the Gospels of such an appearance. But this is not entirely correct. It’s true that there’s no narrative of such an appearance, but in fact an appearance to Peter by himself is mentioned by Luke. This happens after the narrative of Jesus appearing to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Luke writes, “And they got up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem, and found gathered together the eleven and those who were with them, saying, ‘The Lord has really risen and has appeared to Simon’” (Luke 24:33-34). Simon is Peter’s original name which Jesus changed to Cephas (or Peter), meaning rock. So here in Luke we have a clear reference to this first appearance to Peter mentioned by Paul in 1 Corinthians. We have no other details of this appearance, but Luke indicates that Peter, after going to the tomb himself to verify the incredible story of the women, returned to his home “marveling at what had happened” (Luke 24:12). This private appearance to Peter most likely occurred at his home.

Then to the Twelve

The next appearance listed by Paul is to the Twelve. Luke and John both record an appearance of Jesus to his disciples on the evening after his resurrection. In Luke it occurs immediately after the passage given above. The Emmaus disciples return to Jerusalem to find the eleven and others who are with them talking about Jesus’ appearance to Peter. The two from Emmaus then recount their own testimony. Jesus then appears to all of them. Interestingly, Luke records that they became frightened thinking that it was a spirit. Jesus says to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” He then asks them if they have something to eat, and eats a piece of broiled fish in front of them. This is an absolutely remarkable story given the completely unexpected nature of it. Luke does not portray Jesus here as a spirit-like being at all, but as having the properties of a normal human being. At the same time, he also can do things normal people can’t do, like appearing and disappearing at will. But the Gospel narratives give nothing else unusual about Jesus, except that he is sometimes recognized immediately and sometimes not recognized until later. If this was a legendary development, why does Jesus’s body not glow or something else to indicate its supernatural qualities? Luke indicates that the angels in the tomb were “dazzling” in appearance – why not Jesus? Even the disciples seem to have doubts and questions about their experiences. This is consistent with what we would expect from anyone who sees a person they’ve known after their death, but hardly as an apologetic for the Resurrection written afterwards to dupe a gullible populace.

The skeptic likes to raise the objection that at this point in the story the Twelve was no longer twelve, since Judas had reportedly committed suicide after betraying Jesus. In fact Luke says the disciples on the road to Emmaus returned to “the eleven.” So how can Paul say that Jesus appeared to the Twelve? One solution immediately presents itself in Luke’s account of the election of a replacement for Judas in Acts 1. We are told that Matthias was chosen for this role. But we are also told that Peter gave the necessary qualifications for this office in Acts 1:21-22: “Therefore it is necessary that of the men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us -- beginning with the baptism of John until the day that He was taken up from us -- one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection.” So the only candidates were apparently those who had accompanied the apostles from the beginning. Luke has already indicated that there were others gathered with the eleven when Jesus appeared, so it’s quite possible, even probable, that Matthais was one of those present at that appearance on the first evening. Of course, John reports that Thomas was NOT present for that first appearance, but that eight days later Jesus appeared to them again when all of the disciples were present.

Then to more than 500

Paul makes a remarkable report that Jesus also appeared to a group of more than five hundred people at one time. He also adds the note “most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep.” This obviously was not part of the original creed which Paul had received, but was added by him when he wrote the Corinthians. Skeptics will argue that this appearance must be fictitious, because there is no record of such an appearance in the Gospels. Some suggest that the appearance in Matthew 28 on the mountain in Galilee may have been this event, although Matthew only mentions the eleven. It’s conceivable that Matthew just omitted reference to a large crowd besides the disciples, although arguments from silence make for poor evidence. But the skeptic’s argument is itself an argument from silence: the Gospels do not specifically mention such an appearance, so there must not have been one. Of course, even when multiple accounts mention the same appearance (such as the one to Peter and to the Twelve), the skeptic says those ones didn’t happen, either for some other reason!

What is remarkable about the five hundred is Paul’s statement that most of these eyewitnesses are still alive. For one thing, it indicates that he must have known who these people were and had some sort of up-to-date information on their whereabouts in order to make such a claim. After all, he was writing to the Corinthians some 20 years after the events in question. How could he claim that most of these eyewitnesses were alive without having some reliable source of information on them? And of course it also raises the question of why he would add this to his letter. He’s clearly using this list as evidential support for the claim that Jesus had really risen from the dead. The information could be verified by his readers, and Paul is staking not only his own apostolic authority on the veracity of his claims, but also the entire truth of the Gospel message itself, a message which he had risked his life to proclaim and eventually gave his life for it. Would he have made a claim like this if such an event had not been reported by eyewitnesses? And again, since the event itself appears to have been part of the early creed and was thus in circulation within 2-3 years after Jesus’ death, how could such a story have originated? Skeptical theories such as hallucinations absolutely won’t work. For more than 500 people to have a hallucination of the same person at the same time would be at least as great a miracle as the Resurrection itself.

Then He Appeared to James

This James is not the same James as the member of the original apostles by that name, the son of Zebedee and the brother of John. Paul is referring here to James, the brother of Jesus (Mark 6:3) who became a leader in the early church (Gal. 1:19) and wrote the book of James. This is in itself a remarkable fact. The portrait of Jesus’ siblings in John’s Gospel is that they did not believe in him and may in fact have been somewhat embarrassed by him. How is it, then, that one of Jesus’ brothers not only became one of his followers after his death but a leader in the early church? According to this early church creed, it was because Jesus himself appeared to James after his resurrection. Paul himself met personally with James to confirm this story. So there can be no doubt that James, the brother of Jesus, reported having seen his older brother after he had risen.

Then to All the Apostles

The penultimate appearance on Paul’s list is to “all the apostles,” apparently meaning a different group than the Twelve. The word “apostle” means one who is sent or commissioned and is used in the New Testament to refer to individuals other than the Twelve. A.T. Robertson believes this final appearance to be the one narrated in Acts 1 at Jesus’ ascension. While this is a plausible explanation, we don’t have enough information to be certain.

The list of eyewitnesses that Paul gives here is impressive. He says that all of these people claimed to have seen Jesus after his resurrection. As we have already learned, this creed was almost certainly in circulation among the churches within 2-3 years of Jesus’ crucifixion. Is it possible that these stories had developed as legends in such a short period of time? That’s out of the question. Legends take far longer than that to develop. As A.N. Sherwin-White notes, even two full generations is not sufficient to wipe out a core of historical facts. Besides that, Paul himself met with at least some of these eyewitnesses personally, and was also able to make the claim that most of the 500 were still alive at the time of the writing of his letter to the Corinthians 20 years after the crucifixion. They weren’t legends.

Could the reports have been mistaken in some way? Did people simply think they had seen Jesus but they actually didn’t? Natural explanations involving things like hallucinations are just not plausible. Hallucinations are subject-dependent, so it’s not possible for two people to have identical hallucinations at the same time, let alone 500 people! Even taking just the testimony of the apostles, it’s impossible that they could have all been deceived into thinking that they had seen Jesus when in fact they had not.

It’s also inconceivable that they could have fabricated the story. What would have been their motive? To achieve fame and glory? If that was there motive, they would have had plenty of opportunity to recant after it became clear that their “reward” for their deception was going to be persecution, imprisonment, and martyrdom. But tradition records that all of the apostles except for John were martyred for their faith without ever recanting of their testimony. Skeptics have challenged how good the evidence is for the martyrdom of all of the apostles. The accounts for some of the apostles are admittedly sketchy, but there are good early traditions for many of them, including James the brother of John who was put to death by Herod in Acts 12:2, Peter, and Paul among several others. As Tim and Lydia McGrew point out, even the fact that the apostles had seen others of their number put to death would have been enough to give strong motive to recant on their testimony. So how strong is this eyewitness testimony? Strong enough for the eyewitnesses themselves to have risked, and in many cases given their lives for it, to deliver their message to future generations.

Resurrection Faith (part two)

2009-04-08T21:42:00.004-04:00

that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures

Paul begins here to lay out what exactly it was that was of “first importance.” Three historical events are given here: that Christ died, was buried, and was raised on the third day. Paul also uses the expression “according to the Scriptures” twice. Finally, he states that Jesus died “for our sins.” N.T. Wright points out that Paul probably doesn’t have any specific proof-texts in mind, but the Scriptural revelation as a whole. The themes of redemption and atonement are, of course, prominent themes in the Old Testament. Jesus’ death is shown in the New Testament as being prefigured in the Passover, and in the Old Testament sacrificial system. Paul may have meant that Jesus’ Resurrection was prefigured in the Scriptures (Jesus himself referred to it as the “sign of the prophet Jonah”), or perhaps even that the Resurrection on the third day was prefigured. Some have seen this in Hosea 6:1-2: “Come, let us return to the LORD. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us. He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day, that we may live before Him.” Some messianic passages in the Old Testament were originally predicated of the nation of Judah. This is the clearest passage in the OT that looks like a resurrection on the third day.

Christ Died For Our Sins

The death of Jesus by crucifixion is, of course, recorded in all four Gospels. Some critics have alleged that Jesus didn’t actually die on the cross, that he just fainted and then later revived. This is sometimes known as the “swoon” theory, and is an attempt to explain how the disciples came to believe that Jesus was alive after his death (or apparent death as the theory goes). However, this idea is utterly implausible for several reasons. First, Roman centurions were very experienced in executing people, and knew how to tell when someone was dead. We have testimony from John’s Gospel that indicates that the soldiers took Jesus to be dead. In order to hasten death for the two criminals executed beside Jesus, the soldiers broke their legs with a heavy mallet. This would result in death in short order, since crucifixion victims must push up on their legs in order to take a breath. Lacking the ability to do that, they would die of asphyxiation quite quickly. But when the soldiers came to Jesus, they saw that he was already dead and didn’t break his legs. Furthermore, John records that one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear to double-check that he was dead.

According to John, “one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe” (John 19:33-34). This is a remarkable statement. First, the fact that this is given not one but two attestations as to its veracity (“the man who saw it has given his testimony which is true and he knows it’s true”). This sounds almost like an oath in a court of law. Second, what the eyewitness saw was blood and water flowing out of Jesus’ side. Apparently this was unexpected and unusual which is why he commented on it and reinforced the comment with an oath as to its veracity. But it’s also consistent with the mode of death. According to Dr. Alexander Metherell (M.D.), “Even before he died . . . the hypovolemic shock would have caused a sustained rapid heart rate that would have contributed to heart failure, resulting in the collection of fluid in the membrane around the heart, called a pericardial effusion, as well as around the lungs, which is called a pleural effusion.” This unexpected event was noteworthy to John. It’s consistent with Jesus’ medical condition at the time of his death. It also proves that he was, in fact, dead.

He Was Buried

All four of the Gospels record the burial of Jesus in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea who was a member of the Sandhedrin, the ruling council that condemned Jesus to death. Matthew and John both indicate that Joseph was a follower of Jesus, with John adding that he was a “closet disciple” for fear of the other Jews. It seems highly unlikely that this was a legend or an invention of the early Christians. There would have been no reason to invent a member of the council that condemned Jesus to come forward and to be the person who gave Jesus an honorable burial in his own family tomb. And while the Gospels include different details in the post-Resurrection narratives, all four include Joseph’s involvement in the burial. For these reasons the late Cambridge University NT scholar John A.T. Robinson said, “the honorable burial of Jesus is one of the earliest and best-attested facts that we have about the historical Jesus” (Strobel, 210).

Skeptics object that there is no other historical record of such an individual, and no clear identification of a city called Arimathea. However, there are many other references to Joseph in non-canonical literature. Some of it is clearly legendary, but the city of Ramah, which was the birthplace of the prophet Samuel, is called Armathaim in the Greek translation of the Old Testament (1 Sam. 2:2). This may well have been the city where Joseph was from. For the early Christians to have invented and named a specific individual from a specific group if that person did not exist would be a curious move, given that the information could be checked out.

He Was Raised on the Third Day

Some skeptics argue that Paul did not believe in a physical resurrection, but a spiritual one. Thus Paul doesn’t specifically mention the fact that the tomb was discovered empty as the Gospels indicate. These skeptics sometimes point to 1 Cor. 15:42-44 as evidence for this contention: “So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.”

Paul makes a number of contrasts between the present body and the resurrected body, including that the present body is “natural” while the resurrection body is “spiritual.” This is taken to mean “physical” and “ghost-like" by the skeptic. However, this is a mistake. Paul uses the exact same contrast with the exact same words (“natural” and “spiritual”) at the beginning of the letter. In 1 Cor. 2:14-15 Paul writes, “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one.” When he speaks of the “natural” man and he who is “spiritual,” he doesn’t mean one with a physical body and one who is a ghost! Rather, he’s talking about the orientation of the person, whether towards the earthly (natural) realm or towards the heavenly (spiritual) realm. This skeptical theory is rather bizarre for another reason. Skeptics normally assert that the belief in the Resurrection was a process of accumulating myth. Yet according to the skeptics’ theory here, the earliest belief (in 1 Cor. 15) is more mythologized than the later versions which appear in the Gospels where Jesus is physically resurrected!

There is also the point that if Paul thought the Resurrection was spiritual and didn’t involved Jesus’ body coming back to life, what was significant about the third day? Why the delay? A spiritual resurrection wouldn’t require a waiting period of three days. Presumably Jesus would have gone to heaven spiritually immediately upon his death. But Paul says he was raised on the third day, the same day that the tomb was discovered empty by some of Jesus’ women followers according to all of the Gospel reports. This story is also a very unlikely invention, as women were not considered to be reliable witnesses in Jewish culture. In fact Paul’s list of appearances in 1 Cor. 15 fails to mention any of the appearances to the women reported in the Gospels. This can be explained in one of two ways. Either the story of the women was invented later and inserted into the Gospel accounts (highly unlikely), or the early church creed left out the appearances to the women in part due to the cultural stigma against having women as witnesses, and in part because creeds only record information which is deemed essential. This explanation makes much more sense of the evidence.

Resurrection Faith (part one)

2009-04-06T21:42:00.011-04:00

In preparation for Easter, I'd like to walk through one of the key passages in all of Scripture that points to the faith of the earliest disciples that Jesus had risen from the dead. I'll also be commenting on the implications of our Easter faith at the end of the week.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also.

1 Corinthians 15:3-8

This passage is the earliest witness in the New Testament to the Resurrection. I'll be examining it one piece at a time. Skeptics, of course, regard the Resurrection as a myth or a legend, a story that simply developed over time as people told stories about a charismatic Jewish peasant preacher named Yeshua. But of course nobody today could believe such nonsense . . . could they?

Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is universally recognized as an authentic letter of Paul, written to the church in Corinth around 55-57 AD. This passage from Paul is recognized as having the form of an early church creed. It’s stylized as a creed and uses some early expressions such as Peter’s Aramaic name (Cephas) and “the Twelve.” Paul tells his readers that he had delivered this creed to them that he had previously received, the contents of which consist of a number of historical claims. The words Paul uses are important – he uses two technical rabbinic terms for receiving and handing on of sacred tradition¹. He wasn’t merely passing on gossip that he’d heard. The accepted date for Paul’s previous visit to Corinth was 51 AD. So when Paul says he had delivered this message to the Corinthians, he was referring to something he had done on his previous visit. But when did he receive it? Obviously prior to that. It’s also significant that he says this was “of first importance.” James D.G. Dunn notes that “he assuredly does not imply that the tradition became important to him only at some subsequent date. More likely he indicates the importance of the tradition to himself from the start; that was why he made sure to pass it on to the Corinthians when they first believed.”²

Thus it appears that this creed was received by Paul very early after his remarkable conversion, which occurred on his way to Damascus in about 33-34 AD, within just a couple of years after Jesus’ crucifixion. It’s possible he received it in Damascus, or he may have received it on his visit with the apostles which he mentions in Gal. 1:18, which would have been no later than 37 AD. But this creed would have already been in circulation before that. Thus Dunn writes, “this tradition, we can be entirely confident, was formulated as tradition within months of Jesus’ death [emphasis original].”³ Even liberal New Testament scholar Gerd Lüdemann says, “We can assume that all the elements in the tradition are to be dated to the first two years after the crucifixion of Jesus.”⁴ N.T. Wright agrees, saying this creed was likely formulated with 2-3 years of the crucifixion.⁵

If all of this is true, and there’s no good reason to doubt it, then these historical claims simply cannot be dismissed as myths and legends that developed over decades or even centuries as some skeptics claim. Many skeptics point to supposed late dates for the writing of the Gospels to bolster the myth argument, but those arguments are irrelevant (besides being generally mistaken). The historic core of the events surrounding the first Easter can be traced back to within months of the death of Jesus by crucifixion on that Good Friday almost 2000 years ago.

It’s interesting that the creed which Paul delivered so carefully to the Corinthians was not a statement of doctrine, dogma, moral teachings, or esoteric religious philosophy. It was rather a set of very specific historical claims. The only item in it that could be called doctrine is the phrase “for our sins.” This is significant. The foundational claims of Christianity do not have to do with doctrine, dogma, or a philosophical system. They have to do with specific claims of specific historic events. Why is this important? Historic truth claims are true or false. It’s not a question of whether they are true for some people but not for others. And if the historic truths of Christianity can be shown to be true, then Christianity is true, and it’s true for everybody.

It’s also worth mentioning that these claims were quite literally a matter of life and death. Paul had persecuted the church and had been present for the execution of believers, giving his approval. After his amazing conversion, he put his own life on the line repeatedly to proclaim this very message around the Roman Empire, ultimately giving his life for it in martyrdom in Rome. Skeptics may say there were lots of miracle stories, although you will not find any miracle story attested like this one. And you will not find another miracle story for which so many eyewitnesses were willing to give their lives in order to testify to the truth of what they had seen. This was not merely idle gossip or tall tales, but a life-transforming message that survived against all odds to continue to be preached today.

As Paul said in his sermon to the people of Athens in Acts 17,

Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.

Acts 17:30-31

Interesting that in the crowd that heard Paul that day, some scoffed, some said, “we’d like to hear more about this,” and some believed. These are the same responses that you still see today whenever this message is preached. In 2000 years, nothing has changed! One of my favorite things about that sermon of Paul’s is that one of those who believed on the same day was Dionysius the Areopagite. This was a member of the Athenian ruling judicial council, a leader of the city and probably a man learned in law, arguments, and evidence. That message changed his life that day, just like it continues to change lives the world over.

¹N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 319n13.
²James D.G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 855.
³Dunn, 855.
⁴Gerd Lüdemann, The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology. London:SCM, 1998. Cited in Dunn, 855n129.
⁵Wright, 319.

Lies and Statistics (part 2)

2009-03-17T12:09:00.006-04:00

I thought it might be helpful to illustrate the information I gave in my last post in chart form to help bring some clarity to the situation. The first chart is the religious trends in the U.S. based on the ARIS. Keep in mind that Kevin Slater cherry-picked that data by comparing only the numbers from 1990 and 2008 for everybody except atheists (for which there was no number in 1990), leaving out the important figures from 2001.

As you can see from this first chart, the trend for Catholics and generic Christian churches has reversed since 2001 against the total population. While neither group has reached the same percentage of the population as in 1990, they are both trending that direction. By simply taking the percentage from 1990 and 2008, however, this important trend is entirely overlooked. Mainline churches, by contrast, have plummeted and are trending sharply downwards. As we’ll see in the second chart, this is true not only as a percentage of the adult population, but also in terms of raw numbers. Baptists continue to decline as a percentage of the population, though their numbers are still growing and the rate of decline as percentage of the population has slowed significantly. Those reporting no religion increased slightly as a percentage of the population from 2001 to 2008, but not at nearly as sharp a rate as in the 90s. The number of atheists rose slightly, though it’s worth noting that the rate of growth of atheists as a percentage of the population is actually about the same as the poll’s margin of error.

Looking at the second chart is perhaps more revealing, since it gives actual number of adherents rather than just percentage of the population. Slater claimed at one point that “attendance is down almost across the board.” This is just factually incorrect. Actually the only group which has lost in terms of number of adherents since 1990 is mainline Protestants. Every other group has grown with the most notable growth coming among Catholics and generic Christians. Generic Christians actually recovered from a decline in the 90s and exploded with growth in the seven year period between 2001 and 2008. If you’re wondering what a generic Christian is, it seems to be basically non-denominational Christian or Bible churches.

Why is all of this important? Well, first I think it’s important for believers to understand the times that we live in. It can be discouraging to think that the country is going to hell in a hand basket, and reading articles like the one by Kevin Slater might give the impression that we’re fighting a losing battle. But a closer examination actually gives the impression that what has been happening since 2001 looks more like a religious revival than any kind of a decline. Why isn’t anyone talking about this?

Another reason I think it’s important is to call attention to the kind of gerrymandering of information that often goes on in the media. As we’ve often seen in recent years, narratives are very important in the media in terms of how things are presented. A big part of the liberal, secular narrative is that religion is going to become less and less important to people and will experience a steady decline. A lot of people are waiting expectantly for this to happen in the U.S. the way it has supposedly happened in Europe. As a result, anything that gives the appearance of it happening here is reason for celebration among the liberal elites. But as the ARIS shows, whatever happened in the 90s is no longer happening.

Now it’s entirely possible that Christianity will decline significantly in the U.S. at some point in the future. What’s interesting to me is that the Christian worldview doesn’t depend on the number of Christians increasing – it only depends on the message of the Gospel being spread around the world. I believe that as that happens the number of Christians will increase, but the Bible also predicts that many will fall away. Secularism, on the other hand, really depends on the number of secular people (ie. atheists and agnostics) increasing. In fact, most secular thinkers expected this to happen a long time ago. The fact that it hasn’t happened and isn’t showing any signs of happening in most of the world (where religion is actually growing) is what has caused most sociologists to decide that secularization theory has been disproven. I believe this in itself demonstrates the inadequacy of the secular worldview. However, in the popular thinking of most secular liberals, secularization theory is just a fact that will eventually be empirically demonstrated. While it’s difficult to overcome the blind faith of secular liberals, it will be interesting to see at what point they decide that their worldview is in tatters.

Lies and Statistics

2009-03-16T23:51:00.003-04:00

I was interested to find an article recently about the state of religious belief and denominations in the U.S. based on the recently released American Religious Identification Survey, done in 2008. I was even more interested when I compared what the aforementioned article said and what the report actually revealed. It’s amazing how someone can selectively report facts which bolster their preconceived ideas and ignore the ones that don’t. The thrust of the article (and the title as well) by Kevin Slater of the SW Iowa news is that religion is taking a “backseat” in the minds of Americans and that many Americans are “losing their religion.” Mr. Slater uses the ARIS report to bolster this contention. But let’s do some “fact-checking” here, shall we?

Says Mr. Slater, “One of the most telling findings was the number of Americans who now claim to have no religion. That number has doubled in the last 18 years to its current total of 15 percent of Americans.” This is almost true, but also very misleading. The ARIS includes numbers from 1990, 2001, and 2008. In 1990 8.2 percent of the U.S. adult population reported no religious affiliation (the other categories included Catholic, other Christian, other religions, and didn’t know/refused). In 2001 the number of “nones” (no religious affiliation, not to be confused with “nuns”!) jumped to 14.2 percent. In 2008, it was 15.0 percent. So Mr. Slater’s claim that the number of “nones” has doubled is technically wrong; 8.2 percent to 15 percent is not double. But the growth of this group dramatically slowed between 2001 and 2008, recording a 0.8 percent increase of total population, compared to the 6 percent increase of the population between 1990 and 2001. It would be interesting to ask why the growth of this group has slowed so dramatically if one were actually interested in asking questions rather than simply pushing an agenda.

In a similar vein, Mr. Slater continues, “The percentage of Americans who define themselves as Christian has dropped from 86 percent in 1990 to 76 percent in 2008.” Again this is misleading because he omits the numbers from 2001. In 1990 the number of reported Christians was 86.2 percent of the population. In 2001 this had dramatically dropped to 76.7 percent. In 2008, the figure was 76.0 percent. Again it appears that what had been a marked downward trend of Christians slowed dramatically between 2001 and 2008. The decline of 9.5 percent of the population between 1990 and 2001 slowed to a drop of only 0.7 percent between 2001 and 2008. Something interesting is definitely happening here, but Slater seems oblivious to it.

Slater also says, “Attendance is down almost across the board, with Baptists falling from 19.3 to 15.8, and those of the Jewish faith down from 1.8 to 1.2 percent.” There is multiple weirdness in this statement. First, Slater says “attendance is down” giving the impression that he’s talking about sheer numbers (which is what “attendance” usually means). But then he refers again to percentages of the population, using Baptists and Jews as examples. Again, he’s missed some telling information and also done some more misleading. First, the percentage of Baptists among U.S. adults did drop from 19.3 percent to 15.8 percent between 1990 and 2008 as Slater says. But again, the bulk of that occurred between 1990 and 2001 when the percentages were 19.3 percent and 16.3 percent. From 2001 to 2008 the drop was only 0.5 percent compared to the 3 percent drop from 1990 to 2001. But the raw numbers increased between 2001 and 2008 from 33.8 million to 36.1 million (which was also higher than the figure of 33.9 million in 1990), so to say “attendance is down” seems rather like a false statement altogether. Slater puts a slight caveat at the end of his article, saying “Baptists, who constitute the largest non-Catholic Christian tradition, have increased their numbers by two million since 2001, but continue to decline as a proportion of the population.” This contradicts his statement that their “attendance” is down, and also fails to note that as a percentage of the population, they have declined but not at nearly such a rate as was seen between 1990-2001. Interestingly, the number of professing Jews showed more of a steady decline: 1.8 percent in 1990, 1.4 percent in 2001, and 1.2 percent in 2008.

Then Slater says, “meanwhile, the number of atheists, while still small, has nearly doubled from 900,000 to 1.6 million.” It’s interesting that rather than give the percentage of the population, Slater just gives the raw number of atheists when he’s only used percentages up until now. The percentages are 0.4 percent in 2001 and 0.7 percent in 2008, which Slater simply notes is “still small.” Well, yes. Less than three-quarters of one percent is indeed small. Perhaps “miniscule” would be a better term. But 1.6 million sounds much more impressive, doesn’t it? It’s also pretty generous to say that 900,000 to 1.6 million is “nearly double.” The ARIS combined the number of atheists and agnostics in a single category in 1990, so the number of atheists alone wasn’t measured that year.

In another caveat at the end of the article, Slater says “Only 1.6 percent of Americans call themselves atheist or agnostic. But based on stated beliefs, 12 percent are atheist (no God) or agnostic (unsure), while 12 percent more are deistic (believe in a higher power but not a personal God).” This was a new question on the existence of God that ARIS included in 2008 that wasn’t asked in 1990 or 2001, so we can’t compare with previous years. Slater appears to have come up with his figure that 12 percent are atheist or agnostic by adding together these three answers to the question of whether God exists: “there is no such thing”: 2.3%, “there is no way to know”: 4.3%, and “I’m not sure”: 5.7%. It seems he wants to boost the number of atheists, though it is interesting that only 0.7 percent of people identified themselves as atheist while 2.3 percent said there’s no such thing as God. Possibly some atheists are shy about identifying themselves as such. Of course, Buddhists don’t believe in God, either, and neither do some other religious people who might not consider themselves atheists per se. It’s also interesting that at the end of his article he repeated the increase in the number of atheists, again claiming it had “almost doubled” from 900,000 to 1.6 million.

But more importantly, Slater left out two sizeable groups that have seen an increase since 2001, both in terms of raw numbers and in percentage of the total population: Catholics and “generic” Christians. The percentage of Catholics was 26.2 percent in 1990, declined to 24.5 percent in 2001, but then climbed back to 25.1 percent in 2008. The percentage is not back to 1990 levels, but it is growing, and in terms of numbers Catholics have grown from 46 million to 57.1 million between 1990 and 2008. Generic Christians, on the other hand, saw an even bigger spike between 2001 and 2008. In 1990 this group was 14.8 percent of the population, then dropped to 10.8 percent in 2001, and now has grown to 14.2 percent in 2008. In terms of numbers this is an increase from 25.9 million in 1990 to 32.4 million in 2008.

In one of the few things that Slater actually gets right with no misleading, he does note that most of the decline in Christian churches has been in mainline denominations. Mainline Protestants show a markedly different trend from the previous ones. There was a slight decline in percentage between 1990 and 2001 (from 18.7 percent to 17.2 percent) which still represented an increase in raw numbers. But between 2001 and 2008 mainlines churches dropped dramatically to 12.9 percent, losing over 6 million in raw numbers during that time from 35.7 million to 29.3 million. Observers of the contemporary religious scene will surmise that many of these former mainline Christians now attend generic Christian churches. This is undoubtedly the result of the increasing liberalism of mainline churches in the last decade, a trend which has been underway for some time and will no doubt continue even as their numbers dwindle.

There are several things that are interesting to me in all of this. It’s interesting to see the trends in religious belief in the U.S. It seems that there was a downward trend between 1990 and 2001 which has either leveled off or reversed itself. The total number of professing Christians in the U.S. now stands at about 76 percent of the adult population. Whatever else may be said, the U.S. is still a highly religious country and still stands as a stark exception to the supposed rule of secularization theory. It’s interesting that, while the number of atheists has grown slightly since 2001, the number of generic Christians and Catholics has grown more. Mainline Protestants meanwhile are dropping like a rock.

But the most interesting thing to me was the slant on all of these stats given by Kevin Slater. It’s plain that he had an agenda to push, namely that religion is on the decline and atheism is on the rise. A closer look, however, shows that this thesis is not supported by the data, at least not from the ARIS. If anything, the trend of the 90s which showed a marked decline has slowed and in some cases reversed itself in Christian churches with the exception of mainline Protestants. Likewise, the growth of people reporting no religious affiliation leveled off to only a slight uptick of less than one percent between 2001 and 2008. Anyone can cherry-pick a mountain of stats to support their pet theory. It appears that the theory Mr. Slater wants us to believe, however, is simply wrong.

Christian celebrities

2009-03-12T21:11:00.002-04:00

I was quite disturbed recently to learn that the youth pastor of a certain high profile megachurch regularly charges a fee of $4500/day for speaking engagements. That includes travel days as well. So, for a single speaking engagement this unnamed youth pastor would charge $4500/day for three days (one day of travel each way plus the day of the engagement), as well as first-class airfare and two nights in a five-star hotel for him and his assistant. To say that I find this outrageous is a bit of an understatement. I didn't realize that things like this went on in the Christian world. But apparently this is the going rate for second-tier Christian celebrities like youth pastors. Some top-tier Christian speakers will charge $10,000/day.

I'm not saying that all big-name Christian ministers are like this, so I don't want to be the one to start any rumors about anybody in particular. There may well still be some big-name Christian speakers who still serve the Lord for a heavenly reward rather than an earthly one. I know there are a great many non-celebrity status pastors, missionaries, evangelists, and professors who simply want to serve the Lord often for very little in return.

What a contrast there is between our contemporary celebrity culture and the attitude of the apostle Paul. When Paul preached to the Corinthians he took pains to do it free of charge (1 Cor. 9:18). In his second letter to the Corinthians, he indicates that he received support from other churches so as not to be a burden to the Corinthians (2 Cor. 11:8). He also worked at his trade making tents during some of his time in Corinth (Acts 18:3). This is where the term “tentmaker”, referring to a bi-vocational Christian worker, comes from. To be sure, Paul said he had a right to receive financial compensation for his ministry, but that he deliberately gave up that right among the Corinthians (1 Cor. 9:14 and following). But seriously. Is any Christian minister worth $10,000/day or even $4500? There just seems to be something profoundly wrong with an arrangement like this. What would Paul say to today’s celebrity pastors?

It’s encouraging in some ways that the Lord is raising up Christian workers from the two-thirds world in our day and age. We need it. American values are badly out of alignment. Gospel preachers from poverty-stricken areas of the world could do us a lot of good and teach us again about storing up treasures in heaven rather than on earth.

The unreasonableness of agnosticism

2009-03-01T13:49:00.003-05:00

Albert Einstein famously said that “the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.” This peculiar fact is taken for granted as a foundation for modern science, yet most people seem to be unaware of how peculiar a fact it is. Why is it that the universe we observe operates by rules which can be described, and often described very accurately, in the language of mathematics?

Physicist Eugene Wigner, not exactly a household name, wrote a highly influential paper in 1960 called, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the natural sciences.” How is it, asked Wigner, that mathematical truths are often so accurate in describing the physical universe? Mathematical truths, after all, can be derived entirely independently of scientific investigation. There’s no reason for there to be any correspondence between these two independent spheres.

Wigner went on to say that “It is difficult to avoid the impression that a miracle confronts us here, quite comparable in its striking nature to the miracle that the human mind can string a thousand arguments together without getting itself into contradictions, or to the two miracles of laws of nature and of the human mind's capacity to divine them.” Einstein also recognized this when he wrote, “How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality?” Wigner’s conclusion was that “the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and that there is no rational explanation for it.”

This mystery seems lost on modern-day skeptics who simply take it for granted that we can describe physical reality mathematically without ever asking “why?”. There’s certainly no reason to expect this correspondence between the abstract realm of mathematics and the concrete world of physics if our universe is the product of blind materialistic causes and nothing else. Some have suggested that the underlying reality of the universe just is mathematical. This would explain the correspondence between math and physics, but it raises a much deeper question. Mathematics consists of abstract truths that are ascertainable by minds independent of experience. If the underlying reality of the universe is mathematical, then how can the universe be anything but the product of a Mind?

This is just one more reason to think that the materialistic worldview is entirely inadequate as a description of reality. On the other hand, many of the earliest scientists believed that the universe operates according to laws that are rationally discernible because the universe is the product of a rational mind. That is a much more consistent explanation of what we actually observe than to think that it just happened to turn out this way for no reason at all, or by sheer coincidence. That is not an explanation at all, but rather a non-explanation to give comfort to materialists.

God is the elephant in the room for modern scientists who are the intellectual heirs of the mathematicians and philosophers of past centuries. It’s reminiscent of the words of astronomer and physicist Robert Jastrow when he was confronted with the origins of the universe and the realization that this was a mystery which science was unable to penetrate. He said, “for the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

Antony Flew, the former atheistic philosopher, made religious headlines in recent years by abandoning atheism and becoming a theist (more specifically, he adopted a form of deism). Flew said it was a result of his commitment to “following the evidence wherever it leads.” He was compelled by the evidence of science to accept that the universe must have a mind behind it. Many atheists attacked Flew because of his age, even hinting that he was going senile. However, Flew continues to give public lectures on topics relating to science, philosophy, and religion as well as giving interviews. His mind appears to be as lucid as ever. As a Christian, I would of course hope that Flew would go one step further and consider the historical evidence for the truth of Christianity. But at least he’s moving in the right direction.

Robert Jastrow, on the other hand, remained agnostic. I have concluded that agnosticism is really a choice: the choice of eternal unbelief. Why do I say that? Consider the position of the agnostic. We have a perfectly good explanation for the features of the universe and for the very fact of the universe’s existence and its origins. That explanation is God. The agnostic, however, has determined to wait and see if another explanation will be forthcoming. But it’s not as though science is equipped to discover why the universe operates according to mathematical rules. All science can do is to say this is the way it is. But it can give no explanation for it. So what is the agnostic waiting for? There’s no hope in waiting for science on this one. The agnostic simply refuses to accept the one explanation that explains all else. Far from being a reasonable position, which is how it is often presented, agnosticism is inherently unreasonable.

Are missionaries really misallocated?

2009-02-23T15:21:00.007-05:00

I have often heard it stated that foreign missionaries are a misallocated resource. It has been pointed out that most foreign missionaries are sent to areas of the world which are already evangelized or Christianized. According to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, foreign missionaries worldwide are currently allocated disproportionately to either predominantly Christian areas of the world or areas which are already evangelized but remain largely non-Christian. The unevangelized world makes up about 30% of the world’s population, but receives only 4% of the total foreign missionary force. This is in contrast to Christian areas of the world, which make up 33% of the world’s population while receiving 80% of the world’s missionaries. David Barrett and Todd Johnson contend that the only scenario which would be a worse strategic deployment of missionaries would be if missionaries were deployed in exact proportion to the number of Christians in any given area – thus an area with the most Christians would receive the most missionaries, and the area with the fewest Christians would receive the fewest missionaries.

While there does seem to be an appealing logic to this, I can’t help but wonder how correct it is. As a missionary to Hungary, this analysis leaves me somewhat cold, partly because Hungary is listed as being part of the Christian world because of its historic Catholic roots. And yet it seems to me that Hungary could easily be listed as an evangelized non-Christian area. While most Hungarians might call themselves Christians, that word means very little in terms of what they actually believe or how they actually live. It certainly doesn’t for the most part include a belief in any of the historic doctrines of the faith.

But beyond this, I also wonder if it’s necessarily the case that missionaries should be strategically deployed with the majority sent to the least evangelized areas of the world. Looking at the biblical pattern, I’m not so sure. Those who say this often take the apostle Paul as their role model, who made it his aim to preach Christ where he had never been preached as he said in Romans 15:20. It’s undeniable that this was Paul’s calling, to spend his life in “pioneer” missions. But there’s no indication that Paul thought that this should be the case with most missionaries. In fact, he seemed to revel in this as a somewhat unique and special calling. Someone will point out that when the Gospel began to be preached on the day of Pentecost, the entire world was essentially unevangelized. By the time Paul wrote the letter to the Romans, however, the Gospel had already spread throughout the Empire. Many missionaries even in the New Testament were sent to teach and to strengthen existing churches. Timothy and Apollos are two examples. There’s no indication that Paul thought more missionaries should be sent to the unevangelized regions. Instead, his aim was to plant churches and teach those living in those places to do the work of the ministry themselves. It seems to me that the task of evangelism is more likely to progress rapidly by indigenous workers rather than by foreign missionaries who need the time to learn the language and culture and for a long time remain as outsiders even then.

The biblical picture could actually lead us to the conclusion that the kind of pioneering missions done by Paul is a special calling which is only given to a few, even to a small percentage of total missionaries. I had the privilege recently of listening to a young woman sharing about her calling to spread the Gospel in a country in central Asia which she couldn’t even name because evangelism there is illegal. It’s a dangerous work and a special calling, and this young woman exuded joy as she told of some of the Muslim women she had shared her faith with. But in such places sending large numbers of missionaries would be prohibitive, not the least because they would draw attention to themselves.

It’s interesting that perhaps the greatest church growth movement in history took place only after all the missionaries were kicked out! Those familiar with modern church history will know that I’m talking about China, and the underground house church movement which sprang up after the Maoist revolution and the expulsion of all foreign missionaries. After decades of little or no contact with Christians from the outside, Western Christians returned to find a church that had exploded numerically, albeit with many problems from the lack of trained leaders and teachers and scarcity of Bibles and teaching materials. Nevertheless, it underscores the point that more missionaries isn’t always a good thing and fewer missionaries isn’t always a bad thing (and I say this as a missionary myself!).

I’m not saying that there isn’t still a great need for missionaries in unreached areas of the world. Nor am I saying we should be satisfied with the status quo in missions. But I am saying that sometimes I think we kick ourselves a little too much over not doing enough. The task of missions was given to the church, but Jesus is head of the church! He is still in the business of calling and sending workers into his harvest field, and He knows best where those missionaries should be sent. Jesus was confident that the task would be completed. While I certainly think we should be wise in how we do our part, I think we also should realize that God’s strategy is not always the same as ours. In fact, if one examines the activities of God throughout biblical history, isn’t it safer to conclude that God’s strategy is never the same as ours? Who else would conquer a city by marching around the walls for seven days, conquer an invading army by whittling down the Israelites to a force of 300, or save the world through a baby born in a stable in Bethlehem?

The end of secularization theory

2009-02-02T09:06:00.008-05:00

Much of the Western world, or at least the educational system of the West, has taken for granted the truth of secularization theory. Securalization theory is the belief that as socities become more educated and advanced economically they would also become more secular (and so less religious). This has been the dominant view of much of the educated Western world for at least 100 years. Many thinkers have predicted the coming end of religion at the hands of the triumphal march of reason. The German philosopher Nietzsche declared that God was dead, we had killed him, and the news would gradually spread to all mankind from those who were the first to hear about it.

But secularization theory has always had some problems. One of the biggest is the United States. The U.S. has been such a stark exception to the supposed rule of secularization theory that writers call it "American exceptionalism." That is, the U.S. has become very advanced economically and educationally and yet remains a very religious nation, much more religious than most European nations. This has always been something of a mystery to secularists. If secularization theory is true, why isn't the general population of the U.S. more secularized?

More and more sociologists have been calling into question the basic assumptions of secularization theory in recent years. Mary Eberstadt challenges the idea that secularization leads to people having fewer children. She suggests that it may be the other way around. It may be that fewer people getting married and having children (and the ones that do have children having fewer of them) may actually cause secularization rather than being a result of it. In other words, as the basic family structure weakens people become more secular. This idea, she says, would explain American exceptionalism quite easily. America is less secular because there are more families, and because the family unit is stronger here than in Europe.

Another corollary of secularization theory is that children will, on the whole, be less religious than their parents. In other words, each succeeding generation will be more secular than the previous. The Bertelsmann Foundation, a German think-tank, has done an extensive worldwide survey of religious views and attitudes that challenges this and other assumptions. According to Martin Rieger who heads the Bertelsmann project (called the Religion Monitor), "The notion that religion continuously declines from generation to generation can be clearly disproved, even in some of the industrialized nations." In Britain, for example, religious belief is stronger among young people than among their secularized parents.

It appears clear that secularization theory has run into some serious trouble. It's certainly not the case that religion is on the decline worldwide, and it may be that the secularizing trend even in Europe is showing signs of reversing. Secularization theory, however, is still quite a strongly held belief in the West. Ironically, belief in the theory itself may partly explain why some surveys have shown religion to still be on the decline in Europe. Most surveys track religious affiliation or generalized categories (such as theist, agnostic or atheist). But such labels don't reveal anything about a person's actual attitudes towards religion (though perhaps towards religious institutions) or towards God or the meaning of life. Matthias Jaeger from the Bertelsmann Foundation says, "Traditional churches clearly have a communication problem because people are more open to religious messages and practices than we thought." Secularization itself may be coming to an end sooner than people think. The declining native populations in Europe are being replaced by swarms of immigrants, primarily Muslims, who are very religious. The issue in the future will likely be not how religious Europeans are, but what religion will predominate.

Of course all of these surveys leave out one very important factor: God. It's quite easy for a Christian to explain why secularization theory has run aground. It's because it's not true. Human beings, created in the image of God, are inveterately religious. We have a God-sized hole in the very core of our beings that can only be filled by God himself. We may try to fill that hole with other things, but nothing else can do the trick. God is still overseeing human affairs. As the apostle Paul said to the philosophers in Athens so long ago, “He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:26-27). God is still actively pursuing his rebellious creatures and still finding them.

While Europeans may have turned their backs on the traditional churches, they still have an inner longing for the one who created them. It’s both a challenge and a great opportunity. It may not be long before Europe becomes predominantly Muslim and very difficult to reach with the Gospel. But for now Europeans are more open to religion than most observers believe. The challenge is to present the Gospel to them in a way that breaks through the typical traditional stereotypes that many Europeans have about religion.

Skeptics and the paranormal

2009-01-19T14:07:00.004-05:00

The paranormal is an interesting category. One dictionary definition says that paranormal is anything that is beyond scientific explanation. In this sense it’s a loaded term, and implicitly defines “normal” as those things which do have scientific explanations. It’s often defined as anything supernatural, or which appears to defy natural scientific laws. It often includes things like ESP, telekinesis, astrology, ghosts, and so forth. It also usually includes UFOs, which is interesting since UFOs are not really considered to be supernatural, but rather aliens from other planets.

A 2005 Gallup poll indicated that over 70 percent of Americans believe in one or more of a list of ten paranormal phenomena. Items which Gallup included in the evaluation were (along with the percentage of Americans who believed in each): ESP (41%), haunted houses (37%), spirits of the dead returning (32%), telepathy (31%), clairvoyance (26%), astrology (25%), communicating with the dead (21%), witches (21%), reincarnation (20%), channeling (9%). The survey indicated that Christians are somewhat more likely to believe in one or more of these things than non-Christians (75% to 66%), though not by a huge margin. It should be noted that the options for each item were: believe, not sure, don’t believe. Thus there was a group of people for each item who were agnostic with respect to that particular item.

There were some very interesting results when the data was analyzed. The poll showed no statistically significant difference in the percentage based on demographic categories. Thus, the percentage was about the same regardless of age, education, gender, race, or region of the country. Naturalists often insist that belief in “superstition” (which for them includes anything having to do with religion, the supernatural, or the paranormal) is something which education eliminates. It’s only ignorant and unlearned people that believe in such things. Well, at least according to Gallup that’s another skeptical myth. Level of education is not a factor in belief in the supernatural (readers may also want to refer to my post on Christian Intellectuals). This also presents a challenge to another persistent skeptical myth, namely that religion will eventually disappear to be replaced by human reason. Of course, this has been the skeptical belief for at least the last 200 years. The 19th century was probably the zenith of rationalism. The 20th century saw not a decline of religion, but a resurgence. As of yet the 21st century shows no sign of this trend reversing, and every indication that it will continue. But the skeptical utopia of a world without religion is such a compelling vision for some people that apparently facts don’t seem to matter.

Interestingly, three questions asked by Gallup were omitted from the final analysis because they were determined to not be paranormal. These were: psychic or spiritual healing (55%), possession by the devil (42%), and extra-terrestrials (24%). The reasoning for the omission of healing was that “The healing powers of the mind have been demonstrated empirically, reflected in the power of placebos, among other examples.” This is interesting reasoning. The reality of the placebo effect was one of the topics covered in The Spiritual Brain by Denyse O’ Leary and Mario Beauregard. The authors, however, take this as strong evidence that the mind is more than just a product of brain function, but actually has power to produce effects in the physical world. That Gallup omitted the question because in their opinion it has been demonstrated empirically to actually exist is somewhat startling, given that there is no naturalistic explanation for it. But it actually shows the bias of the pollsters – the paranormal isn’t supposed to include things which have been proven to be real! But this is simply begging the question (arguing in a circle).

Their reasoning for omitting possession by the devil was that they determined that it was impossible to know how many people took this literally or not. This is another rather strange conclusion, since the wording of their question was if people believed “that people on this earth are sometimes possessed by the devil.” It’s hard to see how someone could answer yes to that question but think of it only metaphorically.

Finally, they excluded extraterrestrials because, in their words, “although definitive scientific evidence of such visits is lacking, in principle the existence of extra-terrestrial beings and their ability to visit earth are subject to empirical verification.” Now, I do see the point of excluding extraterrestrials if "paranormal" is understood to mean "supernatural." But Gallup's reasoning is that paranormal should only include things which are not even verifiable in principle. But surely at least some items on the list may be subject to such verification, such as ESP, telepathy, and clairvoyance. Psychic or spiritual healing was removed from the list precisely because it has been verified! But it is also true that many of the items listed are really not verifiable. However, if the paranormal only includes things which can't be verified even in principle, then how should we categorize such beliefs as the multiverse (the belief in many universes outside of our own), or belief in dark matter and dark energy? These are normally considered to be in the realm of science even though it's questionable whether any of them can be verified empirically.

There's "probably" no God?

2009-01-16T11:42:00.009-05:00

You may have heard of the atheist advertising campaign in the U.K. headed up by noted atheist author and science popularizer Richard Dawkins. A group of atheists headlined by Dawkins purchased advertisements for the sides of London city buses which say, "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." This was supposedly a reaction against religious ads on buses which some atheists found objectionable.

The case raises many interesting issues. For one thing, it's interesting that a group of atheists says there's "probably" no God. The traditional definition of atheism was that it was the belief that there is no God, not that there is "probably" no God. In other words, an atheist under this definition wouldn't say there is "probably" no God, but that there is no God, period. It would be like defining a theist as someone who would say there "probably" is a God, rather than that there just IS a God. The fuzzy middle was occupied by what were called agnostics. These would be people who would say they don't know if there is a God, even though they would likely act in practice as if there were no God. Some would hold the position that you shouldn't believe in God unless there is indisputable proof that God exists.

Contemporary skeptics now frequently take the position that atheism is simply the absence of belief in God, rather than the presence of disbelief in God. Under this definition, anyone who lacks belief in God is an atheist. It's an interesting move, because it virtually eliminates the category of agnostic altogether. You don't have to hold the belief that there is no God to qualify as an atheist, you just have to not hold the belief that there is a God. Some who call themselves atheists actually argue passionately that this just is the definition of an atheist, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot (atheists, I've noticed, like to call other people idiots. In my experience they do this more than any other self-identified group. But that's another story).

The next issue is how Dawkins and his fellow atheists determined the probability of God's non-existence. One of the basic principles of probability theory is that you go from the known to the unknown. Say, for example, I want to determine the probability that I will be struck by lightning. I can start by finding out how many people get struck by lightning in a given population size, divide by the total population, and come up with a probability that any one person will be struck by lightning. But this really doesn't tell me if in fact I will be struck by lightning or not. Even though it's highly improbable that any one person will be struck by lightning, it still happens to some people.

So how does one calculate the probability of whether or not there is a God? After all, we know that some people will get struck by lightning. But when Dawkins and company say there "probably" is no God, they mean something different than if they were to say, "you probably won't be struck by lightning." They don't have a calculation to show that out of X number of possible universes there are Y number of gods, so therefore in our universe there probably is no God. What they really mean is "we don't think there is a God", or that the statement "there is a God" is likely false. This is a statement of opinion rather than of fact. If I say, "you probably won't be struck by lightning", that is a matter of fact that can be mathematically demonstrated. This makes the use of the word "probably" in the atheist ad somewhat misleading. This is especially so since Dawkins is a scientist and probability has a specific meaning in science and philosophy which is different than the meaning in the bus ad. It would be more accurate for the ad to say, "we don't think there is a God", but such an ad would doubtless be even less persuasive than the existing one. It's interesting to note that you may be struck by lightning anyways in spite of the low probability. It's likewise true that the statement, "there probably is no God" leaves open the possibility that, even from their standpoint, there might be a God. They just find it unlikely.

Going back to the question of why this group find the existence of God to be unlikely, we know for starters that Dawkins believes that there are good and complete naturalistic explanations for everything, and that therefore God is not necessary as an explanation for anything. Traditionally God has been appealed to as the explanation for various phenomena, but no longer. Science has made rapid and impressive progress in many areas over the last few centuries, so God is now out of a job, so to speak. It's still possible that there is a God, but there's no need to appeal to him as an explanation for anything in the observable universe.

But is that really true? Are there good and complete naturalistic explanations for everything in the universe? Dawkins (along with many others, of course) believes that Darwinian evolution fully accounts for the biological diversity on this planet. This is important to keep in mind, because some people mistakenly believe that evolution seeks to account for life in general. It does not. Darwin's theory (and its successors such as the neo-Darwinian synthesis and others) only seeks to explain the origin of species. It does not explain the origin of life itself. Nor does it explain the origin of the universe or the origin of consciousness (though some have made brave attempts at this latter). In fact there are no widely accepted naturalistic explanations for these phenomena, and there may be growing doubts about the adequacy of Darwinian evolution to even explain biological diversity. There are certainly many holes in Darwinian theory which have yet to be resolved in spite of the oft-heard pronouncement that "evolution is a fact."

But the belief that science will ultimately provide a naturalistic explanation for everything is nothing more than a statement of faith. Specifically, it's a statement of faith in two things: first, that nature really is all that there is, and second, that science will eventually explain it all. Both of these propositions are, in fact, highly implausible, and the second is almost certainly false. More importantly, neither of these statements are provable. It's impossible to prove that nature is all that there is unless one were to possess literally all knowledge. But no finite being could ever know that it possesses all knowledge. Only a being with infinite knowledge (such as God) could ever possess all knowledge and know that it possesses all knowledge. Thus naturalism can really never be proven. The second statement, that science will eventually explain everything, is almost certainly false. First, there are empirical limits on the ability of science to explain everything. These limits can be found in things like quantum theory and chaos theory just to give two examples. There's also Gödel's incompleteness theorem in mathematics which, when applied to physics, shows that science can't explain everything even in principle. So naturalism is every bit as much a statement of faith as theism or any other belief system. Moreover, it has the decided weakness of not being nearly as good an explanation for the observable properties of the universe as theism. The statement "there probably is no God" rests on highly dubious foundations.

But the final issue this ad raises is the conclusion: "Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." It's a strange conclusion in some ways. It would be as if I were to say, "when you die you're going to cease to exist and that will be the end of you, so don't worry about it!" That seems to be a probable cause to worry, rather than giving me cause not to. Presumably Dawkins and company mean to say that you shouldn't worry about things like judgment and life after death though their ad doesn't specify that. But again, this seems rather one-sided as it replaces one set of worries with another. A universe with no God is very different than a universe with a God, and I see no reason why a God-less universe is one in which there are fewer reasons to worry. On the contrary, belief in God also typically includes a belief that life is ultimately meaningful and purposeful, that injustices will ultimately be made right, and that goodness and truth will ultimately prevail. Not so with a God-less universe. If naturalism is true then justice or injustice (if those words have any real objective meaning at all) simply are, and that's the end of it. Ultimately it won't matter. People who have been treated unjustly in this life will die like dogs and cease to exist, with no hope of redress. It might be easy for an Oxford professor in a (relatively) free country like Great Britain to say "Now stop worrying and enjoy your life," but most of the world is not so privileged. Most of humanity has fared rather more poorly than that, and according to Dawkins's belief system, that's just too bad for them. Their lives were ultimately pointless anyhow. But to say to people like that "now stop worrying and enjoy your life" seems rather callous, not to mention nihilistic. It would be better to say, "now make the most of your ultimately meaningless and futile existence, you poor bugger!" But I suppose that wouldn't make for a very good bus advertisement, either!

Religion and Self-Control

2009-01-10T08:09:00.001-05:00

A study by a University of Miami psychology professor found that religion is a significant contributor to health, longevity and achieving goals in life. Findings such as these are not new, as other studies have demonstrated the measurable positive benefits of religion. The author of this particular study, Michael McCullough, suggests that the reason for religion’s benefits is that religion encourages self-control. In another article he's quoted as saying, “The importance of self-control and self-regulation for understanding human behavior are well known to social scientists, but the possibility that the links of religiosity to self-control might explain the links of religiosity to health and behavior has not received much explicit attention.”

Self-control is, of course, an important characteristic in Scripture. It’s listed among the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians, and is one of the seven qualities that are highlighted in 2 Peter 1:5-7 as being of integral importance to developing a life that bears fruit. The big question is what is self-control if naturalism is true? For if naturalism is true, then our behavior is determined by the complex inner workings of our brain, completely beyond our control. In fact, under naturalism there is no “we” (or “I”) to control anything. There is no “ghost in the machine” (to cite Gilbert Ryle’s famous put-down of the belief in the soul), there’s just a machine. Whatever self-control is under naturalism, it’s not a self that controls the body’s urges and desires, or chooses to behave in ways other than what those desires dictate.

The classical view is that we are more than just our bodies, and hence we are able to make choices that are contrary to our physical desires and urges. If McCullough is correct that self-control is the essential trait that religion develops and that results in positive benefits to adherents, then one wonders how he would explain what self-control actually is. McCullough’s aim seems to be to study religion from an evolutionary standpoint, which is to say from a naturalistic standpoint. My guess is that he’s simply assumed a commonsensical concept of self-control without asking whether that concept is compatible with a naturalistic view of the world or not. It’s not, but that doesn’t seem to come into his thinking. Self-control only makes sense if there is more to us than our brains and bodies, if there is a ghost in the machine. Otherwise the machine just runs by itself, however its wiring or programming dictates.

So one problem for the naturalist is how we can have self-control if we are nothing more than complex biological machines. But there is another problem. How can something which is (from the naturalistic standpoint) not true be so beneficial? From the naturalistic standpoint it appears that it’s better to have false beliefs than true ones. But if this is so, then how can the naturalist account for an evolutionary development of things like science if we aren’t wired in such a way that true beliefs are advantageous to us? In other words, if evolution has given rise to creatures which survive and thrive better with false beliefs, then how can a naturalist trust his or her own belief-forming faculties with regard to things like evolution? It’s a conundrum from which naturalistic philosophers have been unable to extricate themselves, though many seem blissfully unaware of the problem.

In his book God: The Evidence, former outspoken-atheist-turned-theist Patrick Glynn also pointed out that religion has huge positive health benefits. For Glynn, it became impossible to square this with a naturalistic worldview. The mind and the body appear to be designed to function best with a religious worldview. This is perfectly consistent if the religious worldview is true. But to suggest that homo sapiens has evolved to function best with a religious worldview even though naturalism is true requires a lot of creative explanation that ultimately seems forced and contrived. It also undermines confidence in any of our beliefs, including the naturalist's belief in evolution. And there’s still no way to coherently account for something like self-control, let alone how such a thing can have positive benefits for anyone, if naturalism is true.

In an interesting twist, McCullough found that only people who were outwardly religious (as in being involved with religious institutions and behaviors) showed higher self-control. Just having a “spiritual” view of the world didn’t help promote self-control. It also doesn’t seem to help if one just attends church but isn’t really a believer. It’s only the true believers (what McCullough terms “intrinsically religious”) who show higher self-control, not the “extrinsically religious” who just go to church for perceived social benefits or out of habit or tradition.

McCullough suggests that secular people could get the same results even if they don’t believe, which is a strange suggestion since it seems to contradict his own findings. But he says, “People can have sacred values that aren’t religious values. Self-reliance might be a sacred value to you that’s relevant to saving money. Concern for others might be a sacred value that’s relevant to taking time to do volunteer work. You can spend time thinking about what values are sacred to you and making New Year’s resolutions that are consistent with them.”

Umm, okay. Except this is obviously rubbish. McCullough seems to think that it doesn’t matter what values you pick: just pick anything that’s important to you, call it “sacred” and watch as the self-control magically develops. It’s hard to see how this sort of intentional self-deception would work, especially since McCullough’s own study appears to indicate that it doesn’t. In such a case the person is only substituting his/her own preferences for a divine moral standard. How about if someone’s value is maximizing their physical pleasure or becoming wealthy while doing as little work as possible? Would these values promote self-control? Even in principle how could such a standard help develop self-control when it’s simply the person giving their own desires and interests the status of being sacred? The very idea of self-control presumes that one is denying their own immediate desires for a higher goal or purpose. It seems clear that the person has to believe that value or purpose has come from a higher source, even if their belief is mistaken. But to just make up your own "sacred values" seems pretty useless.

Never mind that McCullough could have discovered the importance of self-control just by reading a New Testament. But modern psychology seems to have a way of demonstrating that what those ancient writers had to say so long ago is a timeless wisdom that occasionally even modern unbelieving scholars are forced to notice when they’re paying attention.

In God We Trust

2009-01-06T15:13:00.006-05:00

For many people (I’m thinking of Americans of course) this slogan is nothing more than words written on their currency. God has no bearing on their daily lives, and the idea of trusting in God is a foreign concept. But many of these same people DO trust in the very money on which these words are inscribed. They think if they only had more of it, they could be secure. Talk about trusting in God is cheap. What we really need is a goodly nest-egg for our retirement years, and financial security for today.

Thus, shakeups in the financial world can cause major panic in people. “What if our life savings are wiped out?” “What if our financial institutions fail?” To whom will we turn for help? It seems that many people want to turn to the government for a handout or bailout. The government, after all, has lots of money to spare. Isn’t that right? (Never mind for the moment that the government’s money is actually money that was taken from the people that earned it in the first place). Don’t we just need a bigger social safety net? It’s times like these that are good opportunities for re-evaluating our priorities. Where does our trust really lie? Is it in our currency? In our financial institutions? In our government?

I was interested to see that the New York Times (a rag which I generally disdain for ideological reasons) reported a dramatic increase in evangelical church attendance since the stock market began its sharp decline last September. The article cited a study by David Beckworth that showed that growth in evangelical church attendance spiked by 50 percent during every recession cycle between 1968 and 2004 (note this is the percentage of rate of attendance increase, not the growth in actual attendance). Mainline Protestant churches declined during the recession periods, but not by as much as during the non-recession years. The Times article gives anecdotal evidence that the same pattern is occurring this time around. Interestingly, Gallup released a poll in December that challenges the overall pattern, saying that church attendance showed no discernible increase at all during 2008. But that’s another story.

The idea that too much wealth is a bad thing is certainly biblical. In Proverbs 30:8-9 we read “give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, 'Who is the Lord?' Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.” Likewise the New Testament is not kind towards trusting in riches. James 5:1-3 gives a taste of it: “Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days.”

During the Methodist revival in England, John Wesley saw the danger of increasing wealth leading to a decrease in spiritual fervor and vitality and warned against it. Many of the Methodist societies consisted of lower class people. After these people were saved their lifestyles changed dramatically. They became more industrious and hard-working while at the same time they gave up vices like drinking, smoking and gambling. As a result, they also became more prosperous. This in turn tended toward spiritual apathy.

This was not only true of the early Methodists, but has been a repeated historical pattern in church history. According to tradition, the great medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas was once visiting Pope Innocent IV in Rome. The Pope proudly showed him the treasures in the Vatican and said, “no longer can we say, ‘silver or gold have I none.’” To which Aquinas replied, “yes, and neither can we say, ‘rise up and walk.’” The allusion of course is to Peter and John healing the lame beggar outside the temple in Acts 3:6. The repeated cycle of church history has been of God’s people becoming wealthy, drifting from God as a result, and then being brought back to Him after a time of humbling.

In a very real sense the current financial climate might be the best thing for the church in America. American evangelicals have poured countless millions of dollars into big, expensive facilities with attendant maintenance costs and so forth. We’ve become experts at slick fundraising methods, using the same techniques and gimmicks as the world. It’s not hard to see that our priorities have gone awry. Times like these may be the wake-up call that many people need to show them where their trust really lies. As Jesus said, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:21).

Someone shared with me recently that he had fallen on hard times and that it was possible he would be losing his home. At the same time, he praised God saying that he had never been closer to the Lord and he was happy in Him. What a great testimony! It reminds me of the words of the prophet from Habakkuk 3:17-18:

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior.

These are, I believe, some of the greatest words of faith from the Bible. Regardless of our circumstances, do we still trust in God? Or do we really trust in those pieces of paper on which those words are written?

Predestined to holiness

2008-12-11T19:33:00.003-05:00

When I first started studying theology in Bible college as a new Christian almost 20 years ago I was introduced to the Calvinist/Arminian debate over free will and predestination. I was attending a Free Methodist Bible College, so they were of course promoting the Arminian view of free will. That was a good thing as the Calvinist position made no sense to me. If God has already determined who’s going to heaven and who’s going to hell in advance without any power to change that on the part of the individual, then what’s the point of all of this? Besides that, Scripture frequently calls people to repent and believe, which certainly seems to strongly imply that they can choose to do that. If they don’t, what’s the point of telling them to? You may as well command someone to swim the ocean.

In the years since then I’ve continued to study this debate. And I can report that the Calvinist position still makes no sense to me! But I do understand that Calvinists sincerely believe that their view is clearly taught in Scripture, and so they are obligated to believe it even if it doesn’t make sense to them. There’s a sense in which I agree with that – sometimes there are things that are difficult to understand that we believe on the basis of reliable authority. This is true not only in matters of theology, but in many areas of life. I don’t believe, however, that this is one of those areas.

Scripture does talk about predestination, or at least of people being predestined. In Ephesians 1:3-5 we read this:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

What does this passage actually mean? Does it say that we who are believers were chosen to be saved while the rest of the world goes to hell? Actually, no. It says nothing about heaven or hell at all or even salvation. What it says is that firstly, we were chosen “that we would be holy and blameless before Him,” and secondly that God predestined us “to adoption as sons”. The emphasis is important here. It does in fact say that we were predestined (more in a minute about who the “we” refers to), but not that we were predestined to be saved or even predestined to believe, which is the Calvinist position. Rather, it says what we were predestined to: namely to be holy and blameless and to adoption as sons. The predestination involved here is just what it means – that the destination or destiny was determined in advance. In other words, God determined that he wanted a people who would be holy and blameless, and who would be his children. But how to do that, especially when you’re starting with people who are naturally stubborn, rebellious, and sinful? So God also determined the process that would produce this result – namely the atoning sacrifice of Jesus that would cleanse and purify a people for himself (Titus 2:14) and the adoption of those who have faith in Christ as children of God (John 1:12). God predestined or predetermined the end result and the process needed to produce that result.

What it doesn’t say is that he predetermined which individuals would end up “buying in” to this process. It says nothing about him arbitrarily deciding before you were born whether or not you would believe. When Paul says “we” were predestined to this or that, who is he talking about? He’s talking about believers – about those who have placed their faith in Christ and repented of their sins. So God predestined that those who have believed in Christ would end up holy and blameless and as the children of God – quite an amazing concept!

But isn’t all of this just about who goes to heaven and who goes to hell? Isn’t that what the Gospel is all about? Actually I don’t think so. Not that that’s not an important question of course, but it’s not the only question or maybe even the most important question. Heaven and hell are simply consequences of our decisions in this life. But salvation is much more than getting a “get out of jail free” card or “fire insurance”, or some other similar analogy. It’s about becoming the children of God – of the Holy One who created us, and who gives us “life, breath and all things” (Acts 17:25). We are predestined to holiness. For many of us it’s high time we started acting like it. But that’s another topic!

Who is Kris Kringle?

2008-12-07T00:28:00.002-05:00

According to one internet source, the name Kris Kringle (which is of course another name for Santa Claus) is derived from the German "Christkindl" or Christ child. I don't know if that's true (and I don't know a lick of German), but I can well believe it. The tradition in Hungary is that Christmas gifts are brought not by Santa Claus but by Baby Jesus. The only connection that Hungarians have with Saint Nicholas is on Saint Nicholas Day, which is December 6. On the evening of December 5th, children put out their shoes and wake up in the morning to find them filled with chocolate (okay, not like literally filled - more like little chocolate Santas placed in their shoes. It's not as icky as it sounds!).

So I can imagine that Kris Kringle, who brings the presents on Dec. 24th, is actually the Americanized adapatation of the Christ Child who does the same thing in the old country. Interestingly, according to Wikipedia the name Santa Claus is derived from the Dutch Sinterklaas, or Saint Nicholas. It's like a contest for how many messed up pronounciations you can find at Christmas or something. Also according to Wiki, the celebration of the Christ child on Dec. 24th was a Protestant development introduced by Martin Luther to replace the Saint Nicholas day that was a Catholic festival. If that's true, I think it was a bad move in some respects. In Hungary the whole "Baby Jesus" thing becomes like Santa Claus when you grow up - you stop believing in him. Or you believe in the "idea" but not the reality. And of course Santa Claus is one of the prime comparisons that skeptics use to deny the existence of the supernatural or the truth of Christianity. It makes you wonder how many skeptics are just disillusioned former believers in Santa Claus, not wanting to get duped again. But that's another topic.

That's one reason why we made the decision to tell our kids the truth about Santa early on. I don't think it's diminished their enjoyment of Christmas one bit, although Hannah did make another little girl cry when she told her that there was no Santa. Can't win 'em all. But we have adopted the tradition of giving the kids chocolate in their shoes on Dec.6th, so I think that makes up for it!

In Memoriam: Liam Iwig-O' Byrne (1967-2008)

2008-11-28T23:12:00.001-05:00

Liam Iwig-O'Byrne passed away on November 13, 2008 in an automobile accident in Forth Worth, Texas where he lived with his wife Cara and his children, Cian and Warren. From his obituary: "He was a pastor, teacher, and a true servant."

Liam was one of the first guys I met at Aldersgate College. I was a new Christian at the time, and I headed off to the foreign land of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan to attend Bible College. Liam was my senior by a year in age and two years ahead of me at Aldersgate, and he made an immediate impression on me. He was a budding young theologian at the time. He was also a spiritual leader on the campus. Those of us guys who were there will never forget the prayer meetings that sometimes lasted until 3 or 4 in the morning. Liam was a big part of that. He introduced me to the writings of Charles Finney, and constantly challenged me in my thinking as I developed my theology. It was a wild, wacky, formative period in my life.

I also attended seminary with Liam, starting a couple of years after he did. My first year I spent a lot of time at the trailer that he lived in, playing cards with his roommate and another friend of ours from Aldersgate. We had our share of theological differences, and had many long conversations. After seminary Liam moved away and I didn't keep up with him that much. Tricia and I did visit him and his wife, Cara, when they were living in Kansas many years ago and also last year when they were living in Texas.

Liam left a comment on this blog on the post from October 3, 2008 that can still be seen. He complimented me on my blog and gave me some encouraging words. It was the first time he had left a comment on my blog. Those are the last words I'll receive from Liam in this life. It's a sobering thought. Liam was forty-one years old when he died. Forty-one. That number really hits home for me. I just turned forty this year. Liam left behind a wife and two children.

It's times like these that remind me what are the really important things in life. The book of James speaks to this.

Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit"; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that."

James 4:13-15

It's so important that we live our lives in light of eternity. It will be here before we know it. Are you seeking to do God's will for your life? That's the only thing that will really matter in the end. Whatever you do, pursue God's will. Treasure your loved ones - family, church, co-workers and so on. And be thankful for them. We are only given one life to live. May we honor God with what we have been given.

More reasons to be skeptical of Global Warming

2008-11-26T17:48:00.001-05:00

One of the reasons I've been skeptical of the idea that man-made global warming was leading the earth toward an ecological amageddon is that I remember reading books from the 70s and 80s that also predicted the coming ecological collapse for different reasons. We were going to run out oil, we were going to pollute ourselves into extinction, we were going to run out resources, etc., etc. Those dire predictions of catastophe did not come to pass. However, some of the groups that promoted those ideas with particular vigor (like the Club of Rome) also had a strongly humanistic agenda and an interest in things like one world government and a new world order. All of this was in our best interests, of course. Without the help of these super-smart people (so we are told), we would end up destroying ourselves. They would graciously offer to rule over us in order to prevent this unspeakable harm from befalling us. How generous of them.

The global warming hysteria appears to me to be the same sort of thing with the same sort of questionable premises. Recently data has been coming out that seriously calls into question the idea that the earth really is warming, let alone whether that warming is caused by human activity and the production of too much carbon dioxide. As this article in the Telegraph shows, a report issued last week by NASA which claimed that this October was the hottest October on record was completely wrong. Two skeptical bloggers discovered that they had used the data from September for two months in a row. Rather than the hottest October on record, October 2008 was actually the 70th warmest out of 114 years - putting it in the bottom half of warmest Octobers on record. Other mistakes by global warming proponents include reports that the 90s was the hottest decade of the 20th century when in fact the 30s were hotter. Other studies have shown that temperatures are not rising as predicted, and in fact have been dropping. Also, sea-ice in the Arctic has recovered from the widely-reported melting in the summer and the ice cover is now 30% more than this time last year. But you won't hear that in most of the media which only publishes pro-global warming pieces. Other recent reports have indicated that rather than warming, the earth is actually cooling, possibly due to solar activity including a sudden decrease in sunspots. Apparently sudden decreases in sunspots (which is a cyclical phenomenon) in the past have resulted in sudden cooling on the earth, including one "mini ice-age".

It's always amazing to me when Christians jump on the bandwangon of the latest over-hyped claims. I can understand why a secular person who doesn't actually believe in God's sovereignty might be concerned and think that it's up to us to save the planet. But I've heard Christians, when confronted with the fact that the science behind global warming is not conclusive, say things like "yeah, but by the time it IS conclusive it'll be too late." I still have a hard time believing that a Christian would say or think such a thing. If it were limited to ivory-tower seminary professors it wouldn't concern me so much. But such thinking tends to filter down to the average church-goers when it's parroted by respected Christian leaders. It then becomes accepted wisdom in some circles, without ever being challenged.

Atheists for Intelligent Design?

2008-11-22T12:03:00.004-05:00

I recently listened to some interesting podcasts (see links below) in which an atheist philosopher of physics, Bradley Monton, shared that he thinks the basic arguments for Intelligent Design are sound from a scientific and philosophical standpoint and should be given more weight than they are. Intelligent Design is the theory that many features of the universe can only be explained as a result of the activity of an intelligent agent rather than as the product of non-intelligent forces and laws of nature. This includes many features of biological systems, which naturalists insist can be adequately explained by random mutation and natural selection working together.

Many critics of Intelligent Design view it as an attempt to sneak religion into the classroom and skirt the establishment clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. They often attempt to have ID arguments dismissed from the outset by saying that it is not science. This assumes that there is some agreed-upon means of determining what is "science" and what is not "science." This is a philosophical question known as the demarcation problem. Many people (including many philosophically unsophisticated scientists) believe that there are agreed-upon criteria that can delineate scientific ideas from non-scientific ones. In fact, there is no such set of criteria agreed upon by philosophers of science, which Monton points out in his interview. I have written previously about a Christian philosopher of science, Jeffrey Koperski, who agrees. Koperski is critical of some ID arguments (as is Monton), but does show that the ideas are valid and should not simply be dismissed out of hand.

A recent debate about Intelligent Design featured this interesting twist: the two men arguing in favor of it were an agnostic, secular Jew (David Berlinski) and an atheist (Monton), while the two men arguing against it were an atheist and a Christian. So of the four participants only one was religious, and he was arguing against ID. What does this mean in terms of the ongoing discussion and debate about ID?

Well, it does call into question the idea that ID is just religion in the guise of science or that it's a way to sneak religion into the classroom in violation of the establishment clause. If atheist and agnostic scholars can see that ID raises valid concerns, then this argument loses a lot of its force. I recognize that most supporters of ID are religious and do so for religious reasons (it does provide support for their worldview after all), but a great many supporters of Darwinism are atheists and have an anti-religious agenda. Some, like Richard Dawkins, apparently would like to eliminate religion altogether. Ultimately, however, the motivations of the supporters of one theory or the other is not the main issue.

I have long believed that as ID concepts get more exposure they would get more traction among scientists and philosophers who are actually interested in seeking truth rather than perpetuating the dogma of metaphysical naturalism. That appears to be happening. It doesn't help the cause of Darwinism that some high-profile academics who are in favor of ID have recently been victims of what appears to be flagrant discrimination for pro-ID sympathies, and this is in spite of having outstanding academic credentials.

The podcasts with Bradley Monton can be heard here:
[part 1] [part 2] [part 3] [part 4]

Update:

Part five is now available as well and can be found here:
[part 5]

Interestingly enough, one of the things professor Monton (whose website can be found here) discussed in this most recent podcast is the attacks that he has received from biologists over his willingness to discuss Intelligent Design. He notes that his colleagues in philosophy, even if they disagree with him, are still willing to engage in reasonable discourse. He also mentioned his surprise that even though he thought some of his arguments would offend Christians (I suspect because of the general misrepresentation of ID and Christians in the academic world), in fact that hasn't been the case. It has been the dogmatic Darwinists who have been up in arms, in one case even making a bogus threat of taking legal action against Monton. These types of intimidation tactics are becoming increasingly common.

I mention this in part because I just knew that as soon as I put up this post I would start receiving derogatory comments from the Darwinist collective in cyberspace. And sure enough, I came home this evening to find two juicy comments from bobxxxx (don't you love people who don't even have enough courage to sign their real name?). Whether "Bob" is actually 15 years old or just writes like he is is anyone's guess. But here's a sample of Darwinist thinking courtesy of Bob: "Since everyone knows "intelligent design" means "god's magic tricks", it's very obvious your fake atheist is an idiot and a liar."

This sort of anti-religious bigotry and inability to engage in anything other than ad hominem attacks is unfortunately all too common these days. Bob wouldn't be able to articulate a single argument in favor of ID, but he's sure they're wrong because he has it on good authority that they are. Unfortunately for Bob the ideas behind ID are already public where intellectually honest people like Bradley Monton and David Berlinski (the secular agnostic Jew who also defends ID whom I mentioned above) can examine them. The Darwinian establishment has focused all of its energy on attacking the people who speak favorably of ID rather than the ideas (which most of them haven't taken the time to understand and couldn't articulate if they had to). By the way, according to Monton's blog he's currently working on a book entitled Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design. Expect to see more attacks and threats against Bradley Monton.

What is missions, anyways?

2008-11-14T16:30:00.003-05:00

In 2000 I returned to seminary four years after graduating with the Master of Divinity degree to prepare for the mission field. I was there to earn another master’s degree in missions and evangelism. In one of my first classes on "Christian Mission and Global Culture," we watched a video. On saving the whales. No, seriously, it was about how to prevent the extinction of a particular endangered species of whale. I looked around the room, thinking to myself, "is this a joke?" It was no joke, but it does represent a strong trend in contemporary missiology.

If I could summarize this perspective, it basically says that whatever we do to bring "shalom" (or "peace") to the created order is missions. In other words, saving a species of whale from extinction is just as much a part of the mission of the church in this mode of thinking as the more traditional idea of converting sinners. Now, I was aware of the controversy surrounding the so-called "social gospel,” which emphasizes caring for the physical and material needs of people less fortunate than ourselves with not so much emphasis on things like repentance from sin and faith in the redemptive work of Christ as the means to eternal life. Of this Bishop Stephen O’Neill astutely observed that those who start with social needs never seem to get to the Gospel message, whereas those who start with the Gospel end up addressing these other needs of people as well.

But this wasn’t social gospel, it was the gospel of environmentalism. Taken to its greatest extreme, it’s the gospel of fix-everything-ism. Apparently the mission of the church in the eyes of some people is to fix every problem on earth. Eliminate poverty and economic inequality? We’re on it. Get rid of discrimination? We can do that. Solve environmental problems like endangered species, global warming, and all the rest? We can do that, too. Excuse me for saying this, but I really think the biggest problem in the world is the alienation of people from their creator. Everything else, in my humble opinion, is just symptoms of the disease. Even the issue of the alienation of people from each other in all of its many iterations is a symptom of alienation from God. We can try to address some specific problem like, say, racism by means of education and legislation. But we still haven’t changed anyone’s heart. You just can’t force people to love others. Eventually the ugliness that is still lurking in the heart will show itself unless the heart itself is changed. I’m thinking of some well-publicized instances where celebrity figures who say they aren’t racist suddenly and inexplicably start uttering racial epithets under duress. I don’t believe that’s because there’s something called “racism” in their hearts that is revealed in those inopportune moments. Rather, it’s that there is contempt and spite towards others that is manifested as racial slurs. No amount of education or legislation can fix that.

So I don’t really see the proclamation of the Gospel message as one more thing on the church’s “to do” list after finding a solution for poverty and replacing the ozone layer. It’s the one thing that we can offer that nobody else can: reconciliation to God. All of the rest, quite honestly, pales in comparison to this one. To put it another way, even if we solved or greatly alleviated all the rest of these issues without offering eternal life to the world, what have we really accomplished? Jesus’ words come to mind, “what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?” What does it profit the church if we fix all of these other problems but forfeit the souls of men and women who are perishing without the knowledge of the one True God? At the same time, I think another basic theological problem is the idea that the Gospel message is merely about what happens to you after you die. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the possibility of living an increasingly transformed life in the here-and-now, about biblical holiness. That’s an issue of Christian discipleship (as it’s often misleadingly called), of teaching Christians to obey everything that Jesus commanded. But this presupposes that someone is first a disciple.

Someone may tell me that it doesn’t have to be either/or. It can be both/and. We can evangelize and solve global warming (or whatever). Weeell, maybe. (I won’t even bother to comment whether man-made global warming is as big a problem as many people seem to think but I will say I’m pretty skeptical of that claim). But maybe the latest “-ism” that we’re supposed to fix is just a passing fad that is actually a distraction from our real mission, which seems to me to be much more likely. I would point out that genuine conversion contributes towards addressing many, if not all, of these other problems. It’s noteworthy to me that the world is fixated on solving these other problems but doing so in a humanistic fashion. If we all just come together and work together, we’re told that we can make the world a better place. But supposedly this will happen only if we put aside our differences, like ideas about who God is (or whether God exists or not), and about whether or not there are real objective moral values that we are all obligated to live by. I’m not convinced that Christians jumping on the bandwagon to show how eager we are to do our part really helps matters.

Christian Intellectuals

2008-11-08T19:20:00.006-05:00

A common stereotype of religious people among certain types of atheists is that they are all uneducated ignoramuses. That seems to be the view of one recent commenter on this blog who sent me this gem:

you pretend to know what you are talking about with enough rhetorical chum to bait in the ignoramuses. This tells a lot about your position: you go to uneducated and poor people to spread your “message.” If “the message” were worthy, you’d think you could go to any U.S. college campus and have converts. But no, it’s only for those who [have] no critical thought. Pat yourself on the back.

I'm not actually sure where this individual got his facts from on what my "position" is, but it's completely false. I can only presume he's just projecting his stereotype of what a missionary is or does. In fact, as readers of my blog should know, I've taught and ministered in Hungary. The Hungarian educational system is very rigorous, much more so than the increasingly dumbed-down American public education system. So I certainly can't be accused of going to "uneducated" people. It's true that Hungarians are not as wealthy as Americans, but it's not a third-world country, either. But it's hard to know what to say about someone who is so bigoted as to think that people who live in a poorer country than he does are all uneducated ignoramuses. It just shows the shocking bigotry of some anti-religious people. Apparently in his mind the only people dumb enough to believe in religion are poor and uneducated. That just doesn't fit the facts.

I was involved in campus ministry at Western Michigan University while I was doing graduate studies in philosophy there. And there I found a thriving campus ministry led by InterVarsity. I'm also currently involved in campus ministry at another U.S. college. Critical thinking is certainly a valuable skill. It prevents people from making false assumptions based on prejudice and stereotypes. I would encourage this atheist commenter to try developing some.

Normally I wouldn't bother even publishing comments like the one above seeing as it's an insult to every Christian reading this blog (and I happen to know that several of my Christian readers are college educated and some have done graduate and post-graduate studies), but it does serve to make a point. First, it points out the growing anti-religious bigotry that I fear is spreading in the U.S. and Europe, fueled by demagogues like Richard Dawkins and others. Second, it's an opportunity for me to point out that the Gospel message is alive and well on college campuses not only in the U.S. but also in Europe. Spiritually and intellectually vibrant faith movements are growing in these supposedly unlikely places. A good starting place for those who want to learn more about this is two books by Kelly Monroe Kullberg: Finding God at Harvard and Finding God Beyond Harvard.

Finding God at Harvard includes an essay by that poor, uneducated ignoramus Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1970 (please note my use of irony - Solzhenitsyn was a brilliant thinker and highly influential Christian intellectual). Solzhenitsyn brought the world's attention to the Soviet gulags. He diagnosed the cause of the inhuman and oppressive Soviet system as the "calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious human consciousness". He also criticized the West for being beholden to consumerism and commercialism. He decried the moral poverty of the West and saw the rising tide of humanism here and where it would lead. He said, "this carefree life cannot continue in your country or in ours. The fates of our two countries are going to be extremely difficult, and it is better to prepare for this beforehand." These words sound ominious. Rather than causing fear, however, they should serve as an exhortation to believers in the West. We have been guilty of spiritual laziness and worldliness. It's time to wake up to what has happened and is happening around us.

You can find out more about the Veritas Forum which was founded by Kullberg and their ministry on college campuses in the U.S. and Europe by visiting their website. One of the purposes of my blog is to discuss issues in Christian apologetics and expose my readers to the thought of some leading Christian intellectuals as well as more popular works. I'll continue to present readers with substantive apologetics along with updates on our ministry here in the States and abroad.

Eyewitness testimony

2008-11-02T13:01:00.003-05:00

In history and law, eyewitness testimony is of great importance. Both of these fields are concerned with establishing whether or not some event actually happened. While indirect evidence can obviously be important, the testimony of eyewitnesses can often be of crucial importance.

With eyewitnesses, of course, there are important questions to be asked. Is it possible the eyewitness is mistaken, and is it possible the eyewitness is lying? These are obviously crucial concerns, as not all eyewitness testimony is credible. People can be mistaken, and people can be intentionally deceptive in their testimony.

When it comes to the Resurrection, we are confronted with claims of having eyewitness testimony of several events. First, there is the death of Jesus by crucifixion. Second, there is his burial in a tomb. Third, there is the finding of the same tomb empty on the third day. Fourth, there are reports of several different appearances of Jesus to his followers after his resurrection. There are no eyewitness reports in the New Testament of anyone actually observing the Resurrection itself. The question, however, is if we actually have credible eyewitness testimony of these events, and if so, is there some explanation of them other than that offered by the New Testament writers: that God raised Jesus from the dead.

One skeptic on another website argued that Luke never claimed to have met anyone who was an eyewitness to Jesus. Note that this wasn't simply a claim that Luke hadn't met an eyewitness to the risen Christ, but that Luke never claimed to have met anyone who saw Jesus when he was alive. I pointed out that Luke writes in Acts 21:18-19 about a meeting between Paul and his traveling companions (including Luke) and James, along with all the elders in Jerusalem. Keep in mind that this was not James the son of Zebedee, one of the original twelve apostles. That James was executed by Herod in Acts 12:2. This was James the brother of Jesus mentioned in Matthew 13:55 who became one of the leaders of the early church in Jerusalem. This is also the James whom Paul records in 1 Cor. 15:7 as one of the witnesses to whom Jesus appeared after his resurrection. So not only was James an eyewitness of Jesus's life (having been his brother), but was also a witness of the resurrection. But, this skeptic argued, Luke didn't specifically say that James was an eyewitness of Jesus. But this point is moot. Paul specifically identified James as the brother of Jesus (Gal. 1:19) and as an eyewitness to the Resurrection. Luke was present when Paul conferred with James and the elders in Jerusalem. It's impossible to believe that Luke wasn't aware of James's background just because he didn't write about it. What this does, however, is point to the importance of eyewitness testimony. The skeptic wants to exclude any possibility of the Gospels being actual eyewitness accounts.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also.

1 Cor. 15:3-8

Scholarly consensus, even among critics of the New Testament, is that 1 Cor. 15:3-8 is an early church creed. 1 Corinthians was written around AD 55-57. Paul says that he had previously passed this creed on to the Corinthians, which would have been at the latest during his previous visit to Corinth, which was around AD 51. This is already within 20 years of the crucifixion. But he also says that he had passed on "what he had received", which means he received this tradition even earlier. It's probable that he received it during meetings with the apostles in Jerusalem or Damascus around AD 32-38, within a few months to a few short years after the crucifixion. There is no question then that we have actual claims of eyewitness testimony to the post-resurrection appearances. These were not legends that developed over a long period of time.

Were the eyewitnesses mistaken? We're not talking about an "Elvis" sighting at a distance for a brief moment. The independent testimony of the Gospels (which corroborate most of the specific details of Paul's testimony) record several encounters with the risen Christ which included extended conversations. It's impossible to conceive that the witnesses were mistaken. If Jesus did not actually appear to them, they were in a position to know it.

Were the eyewitnesses lying? It has been often observed that the conviction of the disciples in the truth of their message was that they died for their belief. While it's true that tradition records that all of the apostles except for John were martyred, the independent evidence is not always that strong in every case. But, as philosophers Tim and Lydia McGrew point out in a chapter in the upcoming Blackwell's Companion to Natural Theology, there are several cases where we do have strong evidence for the martyrdom of those who claimed to be eyewitnesses. The earliest of these is in the book of Acts itself, James the son of Zebedee (see above). The rest of the apostles knew, then, that death was a highly probable outcome of continuing to proclaim the Resurrection. And yet they persisted in that proclamation in spite of that fact. Thus, not only did the disciples have no good reason to lie about their testimony, they had very good reason not to lie, namely to save their own skins.

Legal scholar Simon Greenleaf, whom many regard as one of the greatest experts on eyewitness testimony who ever lived, applied the rules used in courts of law to the testimony of the evangelists. He wrote, "The result, it is confidently believed, will be an undoubting conviction of their integrity, ability, and truth."

Faith and evidence

2008-10-28T13:51:00.001-04:00

Many skeptics make the claim that faith in the sense used by believers means “to believe with no evidence”, or even “to believe in the teeth of evidence.” This is the position espoused by Richard Dawkins and others. Many Christians have responded to this statement by citing theologians down through history. This view of faith is definitely not the view of most theologians in the history of the church. Nevertheless, it does seem to be the view of some Christians, perhaps even many Christians today.

Once I was teaching a class on apologetics in a church Sunday school class. I was presenting the idea that faith is actually belief that is based on adequate evidence. One gentleman made this comment: “I can see what you’re saying about faith and evidence. I mean, even if you have 95 percent evidence, you still have 5 percent faith.”

Unfortunately, this gentleman didn’t get the point at all. In his mind, faith was still the part of our belief that didn’t have evidence to support it. But in that case, the more evidence you have, the less faith you have. Thus, the best way to increase your faith is to reduce the amount of evidence you have to support your beliefs! In that case, apologetics is not only unhelpful, it’s absolutely destructive to faith. The more evidence you have, the less faith. But is this view correct?

Consider Luke’s introduction to his Gospel. He writes,

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

If anything is clear from Luke’s opening remarks here, it’s that he intended for his historical research to be a help to strengthen the faith of his reader. Many scholars note that the name Theophilus means “lover of God,” so it’s possible Luke was writing his books (Luke and Acts) as a generic treatise to believers. But whether Luke intended his books for one person or many, the fact is that for Luke the historical evidence handed down by eyewitnesses was of crucial importance in “knowing the certainty of the things” believers have been taught. This is not a blind faith at all, nor is it the case that more evidence equals less faith. On the contrary, stronger evidence gives stronger certainty of the truth of the Gospel message.

Why Eastern Europe needs the Gospel

2008-10-21T08:29:00.000-04:00

Some years ago when we were living in Hungary I came across a study that surveyed people from every major region of the world to assess how happy or unhappy they were with life. Eastern Europe turned out to be the region with the unhappiest people in the entire world. That's not a surprise for those of us who have lived in that part of the world and are familiar with its history and culture. It wasn't that long ago that Hungary, for example, had the highest per capita rate of suicide in the world. While things have improved somewhat in that regard, Hungary still ranks 5th or 6th in the world for suicide these days.

Today, however, I came across this video by Reuters on a study of the unhappiest nations in Europe. Out of 19 European nations, only Russia and Bulgaria were ranked as being more unhappy than Hungarians.

But what makes Hungarians so unhappy? Is it their economy? While it's true that Hungary's economy has struggled in recent years, even drawing comparisons last week to Iceland (which was on the verge of bankruptcy until the IMF stepped in), I don't think that's the reason. After all, there are places which are much poorer than Hungary but where people are much happier. My first ever missions experience was in the Philippines. I visited many very poor people there, but in general I noticed that their level of happiness seemed to be higher than in North America. If suicide rates are any indicator Filipinos, with one of the lowest suicide rates in the world, are happier than North Americans. Why?

In my non-expert, unprofessional opinion, it's because relationships are so important to Filipinos. The family unit is still largely intact, and is of central importance to the Filipino culture and way of life. Latin Americans also have much lower rates of suicide than North Americans, yet these are generally nations which are much, much poorer than North America and Western Europe, and even poorer than the perennially depressed Eastern Europeans. But relationships in Hungary are fractured. The family unit is broken and fragmented. Even today the cultural decimation caused by decades of communist rule is still evident. The book by James Michener, The Bridge at Andau, gave a shocking portrait of life in Hungary under communism. People couldn't trust their next-door neighbor, and life was ruled by fear of the government. And while Hungary became a free country in 1991, the fragmented culture never fully healed. My own experience with Hungarian families is that the only healthy ones are ones where the whole family is committed to Christ. It's a rare thing in Hungary to be sure. Many Hungarians call themselves Christians (as do many Americans), but have not experienced the healing and reconciling power of the Gospel in their lives.

Eastern Europe doesn't need more religion, but it does need the Gospel.

Should Christians do apologetics?

2008-10-19T19:48:00.000-04:00

Some Christians eschew evidence-based apologetics. They reason that if our faith is based on, say, historical evidence and other evidence turns up that casts our historical conclusions into question, then our faith may be weakened or destroyed. Indeed there are some anti-apologists who say they used to be Christians but lost their faith because of contrary evidence.

There are several reasons why I find this thinking problematic. First of all, if our faith is not based on evidence for the truth claims of Christianity then what is it based on? Our own subjective feelings? Certainly subjective considerations have a lot to do with belief (regardless of what one believes), but I don’t see how this makes a better foundation for faith than arguments based on evidence and sound application of logic and reason. Feelings can change. Likewise if our own experience is the basis for our faith, that can be outweighed by other experiences (or perhaps by arguments that call our experiences into question).

Second, in every case that I’m familiar with of Christians who have lost their faith, there were significant factors at play other than strictly evidence-based arguments against Christianity. Often it’s the case that Christians lose their faith because of some personal crisis where they doubt whether God is really watching out for them. It starts with a loss of trust in God and then proceeds to full-blown apostasy, perhaps aided by skeptical arguments. But the arguments themselves are not terribly persuasive based strictly on their merits.

Third, my own experience of studying historical apologetics has always had the result of strengthening rather than weakening my faith. In particular, my study of arguments for and against the Resurrection has shown the weakness of the skeptical position very clearly to me. The striking thing is the lack of any coherent explanation for the evidence from the skeptical side. The traditional skeptical arguments have been shown to be full of holes. The evidence is too early for it to have been the result of legendary accretion, even though that’s usually the leading theory these days. There’s also no evidence for any development of the belief in the Resurrection – it appeared very suddenly and very early, serving as the foundation of the beliefs of the early Christians. Other skeptical theories have been repudiated time and again, including theories such as that the disciples hallucinated Jesus’ appearances to them, that Jesus didn’t really die on the cross but revived in the tomb and managed to escape, that the women went to the wrong tomb, or that the disciples made the whole thing up and hoodwinked a gullible Jewish audience.

N.T. Wright says he sent the manuscript of his impressive tome, The Resurrection of the Son of God, to his former tutor at Oxford, an atheist. The tutor said, “you’ve made a very impressive argument. But I simply choose to believe that there is some natural explanation for this other than Jesus rising from the dead.” Ultimately the skeptic falls back on the argument that says, “there must be some natural explanation for it.” But that, of course, is simply an assumption on the part of the skeptic. If all options are on the table including the supernatural one, the superiority of it is clearly demonstrated.

Thus I see no reason for Christians not to engage in historical, evidential apologetics, and many good reasons to do so.

Apologetics and holiness

2008-10-15T10:36:00.000-04:00

Apologetics, for those of you who don’t know this about me yet, is my favorite area of theology. Apologetics has to do with defending the truth of the Christian worldview. It’s an essential area for believers to study. What is true and what is not is of fundamental importance in answering the big questions of life.

One of my favorite verses in the Bible related to apologetics is this one from 1 Peter 3:15:

But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.

The word for apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia, which is translated as "defense" in this verse. It's the word that was used for legal defenses in a court of law. So this verse calls us to be prepared to defend the Gospel by giving sound arguments or reasons for our hope. You don't have to be an apologetics expert to do this, but some basic training in this area definitely helps, especially given the skeptical world that we live in.

Often when I use this verse in teaching, I tend to gloss over the first part, "sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts." It means to make Christ the Lord of our lives in our own heart. In other words, it means to make sure that our heart is right with God, and that our spiritual walk is right with Him. This is the essential first part of apologetics. Our words are of little value if our lives do not reflect the lordship of Christ in our behavior and attitudes. This is not a one-time thing, but a daily surrender to Christ's lordship. If we fail at this step we will fail altogether, no matter how good our arguments are.

I've been hearing about some former evangelical Christian scholars and even former apologists who have fallen away from the faith and are now fighting against Christianity. When listening to their stories, I believe they all failed at the first step above. It wasn't that they encountered arguments for atheism that were so irrefutable that they were compelled to lose their faith by force of reason. In fact, the former apologists that I've heard don't have any better arguments against the Gospel than any run-of-the-mill skeptic. But in one case, a former Christian apologist who was the pastor of an evangelical church fell into an adulterous relationship with a woman in his church. When he finally confessed, the church was (understandably I think) quite upset by it. He became bitter because of their response to him and, to make a long story short, he eventually divorced his wife and became an anti-apologist against Christianity. He had failed to live a life that was surrendered to the lordship of Christ even though he may have been good at apologetics.

Good apologetics doesn't start with good arguments, but rather with a surrendered life that is lived under the lordship of Christ. We do need good arguments, and we do need to have some idea of how to respond to skeptics (though I often struggle with being both “gentle” and “respectful”, which is something that we also need to be careful to do). But first and foremost we need to be people of holiness, people who are living in constant, daily communion with Jesus Christ.

The Resurrection and good works

2008-10-12T19:55:00.000-04:00

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.

1 Cor. 15:58

One of the easiest rules of Bible interpretation to remember is this one: whenever you see a “therefore” you have to ask what it’s there for. Whatever precedes the word “therefore” justifies whatever comes after it. In this case, Paul has given an extensive discussion of resurrection – first, of Christ’s resurrection, which is the foundation of our faith. He then talks about the future resurrection of believers. Because of this future hope of resurrection he says that we should “be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord,” knowing that our work is not in vain.

The Resurrection is not simply a nice theoretical doctrine. It has an important practical application in motivating faith and good works. It’s not a “pie-in-the-sky by-and-by” theology, but a theology of a future life in which we will be transformed to be like Christ in his resurrected life. As one of my former seminary professors has said, we will be “bulletproof”. The historical fact of Jesus’ resurrection is the guarantee of our own future resurrection. This is not an imaginary hope; it’s as real as it gets.

Theologian N.T. Wright calls this future hope “life AFTER life after death”. We often talk of “life after death”, by which we mean the immediate state that we enter after death. There is such a state (and I plan to do more blogging on the research into this through the study of “near-death experiences”), but this is not the final state for believers. It is a temporary one in which we await the final resurrected state that Paul talks about.

Some Christian theology is based on a future state of a disembodied existence in heaven. This is not the biblical view. The Resurrection of Jesus happened in the physical world. Our future resurrection will likewise be in the physical world, not in a spiritual world in which we float around on clouds strumming harps. The accusation of Christians as being “too spiritually minded to be of any earthly good” should never be true of us. Just as our future hope is a real hope, our good works should be real and visible to the world. God calls us to live lives characterized by good works, lives that stand out from the world by their quality. If that can’t be said of our lives, then something is wrong.

Give us a sign!

2008-10-09T09:44:00.000-04:00

Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, "Teacher, we want to see a miraculous sign from you." He answered, "A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.

Matt. 12:38-39

The Pharisees and teachers of the law wanted a sign from Jesus to prove to them that he was the Messiah. Many skeptics today want a miraculous sign for a different reason – to prove to them that God exists and that miracles actually happen. One skeptic I was arguing with said he would believe in God if God turned his grass blue. His reasoning was that it would be a simple enough thing for God to do. If his grass turned blue, he would consider that miraculous. He seemed to feel that God was obligated to meet his demand for proof.

The skeptic presumes that because God wants everyone to believe in him, God should satisfy everyone’s demand for direct, empirical evidence of his existence. But what skeptics don’t seem to understand is that there is more to faith than simply believing that God exists. Faith also involves trust – which is a question of our assessment of God’s character. It’s not enough to simply believe that God exists - faith means putting our trust in him and in his goodness, his love, and his mercy. Many people believe that God exists but do not trust him. Some believe God’s purpose in life is to keep us from having fun, so he gives us restrictive rules. They don’t understand that God’s commands are designed to help us and protect us, to increase our joy rather than decreasing it.

Jesus’ response to the Pharisees is interesting. He says no miraculous sign would be given to them except for the sign of the prophet Jonah. He explains what he means by that in the next verse: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Jesus is speaking about the Resurrection as the sign they would receive. It’s still the sign that has been given to every generation since that time wherever the Gospel has been preached. It’s a sign that not only reveals that God exists, but also that he “so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” The Resurrection of the Son of God is our guarantee that we will one day share in the glory of his life if we trust in him.

There is already sufficient proof for the skeptic that God exists. Without God, there is no reason for anything to exist, and thus nothing should exist. The very existence of the cosmos speaks not only to God’s existence, but also to his incredible power, his vast intelligence (if we can even use that term for God), and his creativity. But there is also sufficient proof that Jesus really rose from the dead. There is no natural explanation for the evidence of the early testimony of the first Christians that Jesus had risen from the dead and had appeared to them. It was not a legend, as the written records are much too early for that. All other naturalistic theories have failed – that the disciples made it up, that they were hallucinating, that Jesus didn’t really die but only fainted. None of these theories explain the evidence. The best explanation, the only explanation that really fits the evidence, is that Jesus really did rise from the dead.

The question is not what evidence does the skeptic require before he or she will believe. The real question is what will he or she do with the evidence which has already been given.

Baby Jonathan's Dedication

2008-10-06T14:37:00.000-04:00

On Sunday we drove up to Rochester to have baby Jonathan dedicated at Gates Wesleyan Church. It's the same church we were married in, so we have a special connection there, although we've never lived in Rochester since we were married. The highlight of the dedication ceremony was when Jonathan grabbed the pastor's nose immediately after being handed to him (unfortunately we have no photo of that)!

It's a good reminder of the responsibility of a Christian parent not only to care for the physical needs of our children, but their spiritual needs as well. When I became a Christian at the age of 19 and went off to Bible college, one of the things that struck me about many of my fellow students was the fact that they didn't seem to have a really clear understanding of their own faith. Most of them had grown up in the church. Unlike me, many of them had no clear before/after testimony of a conversion experience. I had gone from partying and doing drugs to being a Bible college student within a month. Some of the other students were still partying and doing drugs (though not the majority thankfully)!

My reaction was to conclude that it was better to not grow up in the church if you wanted a strong faith - not a comfortable conclusion in my mind. But then I immediately had another thought: one day I might end up having kids, and I certainly wanted my kids to grow up in the church. But I also wanted them to have a strong faith that was their own, and not just something they lamely inherited from their upbringing without much thought given to it. How could this be done?

Now that I have three kids of my own I'm still asking that question. Am I doing enough as a parent to give my kids a strong spiritual foundation? They are certainly getting plenty of exposure to other Christians. But what will happen to their faith when they leave the cocoon? My first answer, of course, is to give them lots of solid apologetics. But beyond that my prayer for my kids is that they will have their own vital experiences with God, such as the experiences I have had that have shaped my life and my faith in so many ways. Good theology is one thing, but encountering the presence of God firsthand is when lasting life change really takes place.

The Resurrection and Missions

2008-10-03T21:10:00.001-04:00

What does the Resurrection have to do with missions? Everything! As Paul proclaimed to the philosophers in Athens,

Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone-- an image made by man's design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.

Acts 17:29-31

The important message that Paul is driving home here is God's command, which is "to all people everywhere." That message is a fairly simple one: repent. It's the same message that Jesus preached himself, "repent, for the kindgom of heaven is near." The fundamental Gospel message has to do with repentance, with turning back to God and away from living according to our own desires. It means being reconciled to God through the forgiveness of sins. But how do we know this message is true out of all of the conflicting messages that claim to be from God?

The answer to that (if you haven't already guessed it) is the Resurrection itself. Paul says the Resurrection is the proof that God has given that this message is the truth. No other purported message from God comes with this kind of empirical test of its veracity. Nothing else even comes close.

But how does God intend to communicate this message of repentance to all people everywhere? The answer is, of course, through missions, and through the preaching of missionaries. In Romans 10:13-15 we read:

"Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"

We must be careful to guard against any idea of missions that takes away from this one fundamental task: to proclaim God's message of repentance and forgiveness through Christ to "all people everywhere." The task of proclaiming God's message to the world has been entrusted to the church. It is a task that we must fufill.

How important is the Resurrection?

2008-09-30T19:24:00.000-04:00

For the first several years of my Christian life, I'll admit that I didn’t understand the importance of the Resurrection in the Christian faith. I understood the importance of the crucifixion, and probably most Christians do. That Jesus died, and that he died for our sins is of course of paramount importance in Christian theology. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” This is the heart of the Gospel message, and yet it says nothing about the Resurrection.

Unlike almost all other revealed religions, however, Christianity bases the truth of its claims on objective historical events rather than on purely subjective truth claims. These amazing events – Jesus’ execution, his burial in a tomb, the finding of the tomb empty, and the subsequent appearances of the risen Christ to many individuals and groups of people over a period of 40 days afterward - are the foundation of the claims of the authors of the New Testament.

As N.T. Wright, author of the voluminous scholarly work “The Resurrection of the Son of God” observed, there were about a dozen or so other messianic movements in Judaism for the period of 200 years or so around the time of Christ. All of those movements, with the exception of Christianity, ended with the violent death of the leader. The Jewish messiah was to overthrow Roman rule and free the Jewish people from Roman oppression. Death at the hands of the Romans was thus a sure-fire indicator that this person was not the messiah.
The followers of these other would-be messiahs had the choice to either abandon the movement or find another messiah. The early Christians did neither, but instead began to proclaim that Jesus of Nazareth, who had been executed by Roman authorities, nevertheless was the awaited Jewish Messiah as well as Lord of all the earth. They insisted that this bizarre statement was true because God had raised Jesus from the dead, and they had seen the evidence with their own eyes: the tomb was empty, and Jesus himself had appeared to them, announcing his Resurrection in person.

So how important is the Resurrection? Well, Paul certainly considered it important when he wrote

And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead.

1 Cor. 15: 14-15

Furthermore, Paul proclaimed to the philosophers in Athens these words:

Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone-- an image made by man's design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.

Acts 17:29-31

The Resurrection is the proof of the pudding as far as the Gospel is concerned. If Jesus really rose from the dead, then everyone should be a Christian. If he did not rise from the dead, then no one should be.

Getting a fresh start . . .

2008-09-29T22:54:00.000-04:00

For my few but discriminating readers who have been following my blog, I'm going to be starting it up again with new content in the next few days. I plan on continuing to address topics related to theology and philosophy, with more of an emphasis on missions. I've also decided to replace the previous front page format with a simplified one for easier maintenance. Hopefully this will facilitate greater participation. As always, please feel free to leave your comments on any of the topics under discussion.

So stay tuned, there's more on the way!