Saturday, March 30, 2019

Rome's moral compromise

That the Roman Catholic church has been morally compromised by the sodomite subculture is now part of its indelible public image. However, the moral compromise doesn't begin with that.

Historically, Roman Catholicism became the state religion of Europe and (prior to the Reformation) Great Britain. To enjoy that monopoly required royal patronage. But there was a price for that. It meant the Catholic church had to be very indulgent towards the never-ending promiscuities of kings, princes, and nobles. Royal harems, royal courtesans, as well as mistresses to service aristocrats, and so on and so forth. Court preachers were privy to all that. But it's not as if they routinely denounced it from the pulpit. Had they done so, they'd rapidly fallen out of favor with the royals and nobles.  As a result, the European ruling class has never taken the moral authority of Rome seriously. That wouldn't be possible. There was always a Gentleman's agreement between the church of Rome and the sex life of the ruling class. 

Types of fiction

Human beings love stories. Human beings love fiction. I think a basic reason for that is because individual human experience is extremely provincial. You can only live in one place at a time. You can only live in one timeframe. So stories enable us to vicariously expand our range of individual experience. 

There are roughly two kinds of stories: factual and fictional. We can also subdivide the fictional category. Many fictional stories could parallel factual stories. Many stories deal with the kinds of people, situations, and events that happen in real life. 

That raises the question of why novelists, playwrights, and moviemakers so often prefer fictional stories even though there are real life stories that illustrate the same things. I think that's largely due to convenience and flexibility. In fiction you can arbitrarily select and combine the elements so that your characters say and do exactly what you wish, when and where you wish they to do so. That gives a creative artist great freedom. In real life, the variables can't be manipulated that way.

It also reflects the fact that our knowledge of true stories is quite limited, whereas imagination is much more expansive, so that  fictional stories doesn't require the same amount of knowledge as, say, a historical film or novel. 

Speaking for myself, I find dramas based on "a true story" more emotionally satisfying than imaginary stories. Knowing that it happened to real people. 

On the other hand, there are fictional stories that couldn't happen in real life. Take stories about time travel, interstellar travel, a parallel universe, or a fantasy world, viz. Perelandra, The Tempest, vampires, aliens, talking animals. 

In some cases, these might be naturally impossible, although there could be a Perelandra theme park. An artificial setting. In other cases, they might be naturally or physically possible, but we lack the technology to experience that. 

In addition, unrealistic fiction is appealing because it's how we wish things would happen sometimes. Comedies often trade on that appeal. 

Functional polytheism

Friday, March 29, 2019

Evangelical Jainism

This has been kicking around for 4 years already:

Signatories include Albert Mohler, Russell Moore, Richard Land, Daniel Akin, and Bill Hybels (because nothing says moral authority like Bill Hybels). Here's a sample:

We resolve to rule and treat all animals as living valued creatures, deserving of compassion, because they ultimately belong to God, because He has created them, declared them good, given them the breath of life, covenanted with them, and entrusted them to our responsible rule. So while animals have been given into our hand and for food this does not mean we can treat them as objects or act cruelly towards them.

i) Does that include termites, cockroaches, deer ticks, head lice, fire ants, tape worms, bot flies, Tsetse flies, and mosquitos? 

ii) What about rats? 

iii) What about venomous snakes in residential areas? Or reticulating pythons in residential areas?

iv) What about dangerous predators in residential areas, viz. wolves, cougars, crocodiles, grizzly bears? 

v) God didn't say every species is good. Gen 1 refers to the natural kinds that God created in the beginning. 

vi) What about all the animals God destroys in natural disasters and mass extinctions? 

The Every Living Thing site links to a video in which vegan open theist Gregory Boyd waxes sentimental about animal rights. 

It has a girl who pats herself on the back because she volunteers at an animal shelter. What about volunteering to visit shut-ins, nursing homes, and hospices, full of lonely or dying people? What about abandoned street kids around the world, some of them quite young. Or child trafficking? 

The video has a guy making the demonstrably false statement that "in treating animals more respectfully we will treat people more respectfully." To the contrary, lots of folks treat their pets much better than they treat strangers. Consider all the polls in which many respondents say that given a choice between saving their dog and saving a stranger, they'd save the dog. On the one hand we have laws against animal cruelty while, on the other hand, there's abortion, infanticide, and voluntary and involuntary euthanasia for the elderly, depressed, and developmentally disabled.  

Jesus' rejection at Nazareth and Miracles at Capernaum

Thursday, March 28, 2019

Parsing faith

1. In philosophy and theology, faith is defined in different ways:

i) Faith fills the gap between evidence and knowledge

ii) Faith involves risk-taking 

iii) Calibrating confidence to the level of evidence

iv) Knowledge or belief based on testimonial evidence

v) Conviction grounded in evidence

2. One issue is whether faith is the same for every Christian (or biblical believer). For instance, Abraham is a paradigm example of faith. Yet he experienced God in more direct ways than many Christians do. God spoke to him (audible voice). God appeared to him (theophanies, angelophanies). He witnesses a miracle (the supernatural conception of Isaac). So there's a sense in which Abraham had a different kind of faith than the average Christian. The evidential basis for his faith is more direct. 

In the Psalms, faith is generally based on God's track record. What God has done in the past makes his future promises trustworthy. That's faith based on testimonial evidence, which is different from Abraham's faith. 

3. Although, for many believers, faith is primarily grounded in testimonial evidence, some believers experience God firsthand through a miracle, special providence, or unmistakable answer to prayer. So we can't confine the definition of Christian faith to testimonial evidence alone. In some cases, it has a more direct basis in firsthand observation. But even that is supplementary. They must still rely on Scripture. 

4. Philosophers prefer universal definitions or universal criteria that cover every situation. For instance, true belief is considered a deficient concept of knowledge since that's consistent with a lucky guess. 

It is, however, very hard to come up with definitions or criteria that admit no exceptions, and perhaps that's unreasonably restrictive. Perhaps general definitions or general criteria are adequate. We can allow for exceptions, where they occur, without that scuttling the value of definitions or criteria that cover normal situations. Why should anomalous or hypothetical scenarios necessarily determine our operating concept of faith or knowledge? 

5. With those preliminary caveats duly registered, let's consider some elements of biblical faith:

i) Future-oriented

There's a sense in which biblical faith is both past-oriented and future-oriented. God's past actions provide precedent for future actions. God has a modus operandi. Likewise, we look back on Christ's redemptive death. In reference to the past, faith has an evidential basis. But that only yields partial knowledge.

However, the past and future orientations are asymmetrical. Faith involves an attitude about the future. The past in relation to the future.While knowledge of the past may bolster our confidence about the future, human existence is forward moving. We're always moving into the future. 

ii) Beyond our direct experience

Apropos (i), except for seers who preview the future, we don't experience the future ahead of time. So the future can't be an object of firsthand experience. 

iii) Beyond our direct control

Apropos (i-ii), the future is beyond our direct control. That's in part because our knowledge of the future is very limited, and the extrapolations become increasingly unreliable the further out we go. In addition, that's in part because there are too many variables for us to manipulate. These two considerations result in natural uncertainty and insecurity about the future. 

iv) Reliance on another

Because the future is beyond our direct experience or control, to have faith is to rely on someone else who, unlike us, both knows and controls the future. Someone who can use that knowledge and power for our benefit, in our behalf and in our stead. In particular, we rely on God/Christ to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. 

v) Resignation 

Apropos (iv), although that involves an element of trust in God's omnipotence, omniscience, and benevolent providence, it ultimately reflects an attitude of resignation–because we have no alternative. Since we can't do it on our own, we must resign ourselves to God's provision. In a way, that makes it easier. Since it's out of our hands, we might as well acknowledge the fact, not fret so much. The future lies in God's hands regardless of your outlook. But life is easier if you adjust your attitude to reality.  

6. Someone might object that I've blurred the distinction between the concept of faith, the content of faith, and the basis of faith. But that's because Scripture doesn't partition those in airtight compartments. Rather, they flow into each other and out of each other, like a circulatory system. 

Is simpler better?

Hands off my rights

It will be interesting to see how much traction this gets.

Jesus' Fulfillment Of The Other Servant Songs

Isaiah has been called the fifth gospel for good reason. We've written a lot about the evidence for Jesus' fulfillment of passages like Isaiah 9 and 52-53, such as here and here. But I want to say more about a few passages in Isaiah that Jesus has fulfilled that don't get discussed as often. The fourth of the passages commonly referred to as Servant Songs, 52:13-53:12, gets a lot of attention. The three Servant Songs that come before it, in chapters 42, 49, and 50, are discussed much less. They're the subject of this post.

At the outset, I want to repeat something I've noted before about prophecy fulfillment. Jesus' alignment with Isaiah 42, 49, and 50 would be highly evidential for Christianity even if we were to conclude that he only fulfilled the passages in a secondary, typological way. Even if we thought the passages originally or primarily referred to Israel, a remnant within the nation, Isaiah, Deutero-Isaiah, or Cyrus, for example, it's tremendously unlikely that Jesus' life would just happen to align with the passages as much as it does. So, it's not enough for critics to argue that the passages are about some entity other than the Messiah, Jesus in particular, or whatever. They have to also go on to address how closely the passages line up with Jesus. A Christian could, for the sake of argument, grant a non-Christian understanding of the primary meaning of the passages, yet argue that Jesus wouldn't have naturalistically lined up with the passages as well as he has. Something supernatural seems to be going on.

I also should note that my material on Isaiah 9 and 52-53 linked above discusses some of the connections between the first three Servant Songs and other passages in Isaiah. When those other passages refer to a king or the Messiah, for example, those passages give us information about the identity of the figure in the three Servant Songs under consideration here. The connections with other passages are important and should be kept in mind. I'll be mentioning some of them below, but I won't be repeating everything I said in my earlier articles. You may want to read or reread the material on Isaiah 9 and 52-53 to get a better idea of the connections involved.

When there are no easy answers

I'll be quoting from John S. Feinberg, When There are No Easy Answers (Kregel 2016). He's an evangelical philosopher and messianic Jew. His mother suffered from chronic pain. His father developed dementia. His brother died of complications from diabetes. His wife has Huntington's disease, which, in turn, carries a 50/50 chance that it will be transmitted to their children.  


At various times in my life I pondered whether I would still want to worship and serve God if he rewarded my faithfulness with severe affliction (17). 

Something else that heightens the feeling of abandonment. Invariably when news like this comes, people are very concerned; but for various reason, they tend to stay away. Some may feel that they will say the wrong thing and only make matters worse. They just stay away rather than taking the chance of sticking their foot in their mouth. Others may think that unless they have something "brilliant" to say that will remove all the pain and heartache, they should avoid the sufferer. Believing that they have nothing special to say, they don't communicate at all with the sufferer (29). 

Over the weeks, months, and years of dealing with tragedy, people who suffer "get used" to the problem they are facing. Adjustments in schedules are made as needed, and after a while, life returns to at least a semblance of normality. As this happens, those dealing with suffering and trials speak less often about the challenges facing them. Friends and family tend to take this as a cue that the sufferer is getting over whatever horrible things have happened. They assume, then, that the afflicted person must be doing fine with what has happened. As a result, they make little point to ask about the situation or offer any help that might be needed…[But] the burdens the sufferer bears are just as heavy as they ever were, and after bearing them for a long time, in some ways they hurt even more than they did at the start. Please remember, personal tragedy leaves an indelible mark that will only go away in eternity when God wipes away all tears. But we aren't there yet; so while the sufferer still bears the loss (as will be the case as long as he or she lives), continue to minister to his or her needs, just as you did during the first days, months, and years after tragedy struck (54-56).

In the weeks and months following Pat's diagnosis, I had so many thoughts and emotions rushing through my mind that I felt like there was a war going on inside my head. I felt like I had to express my thoughts, but I found few who would listen. It's not that I think friends and acquaintances didn't really care. I just think they weren't sure what to expect if they listened and whether they might make me feel worse by saying the wrong thing in response to what I would say. It was easier to pray for us or to offer a word of concern than to listen. Even today there are times when I just need someone to listen to how I feel and to what I've been thinking. And this is why it is so important for us to "be there" to listen, even if we have nothing profound to say in response. At times of crisis our profoundest contribution is our presence and our open ears. It says that we care and we understand the need to make public what is going on inside the sufferer's head and heart. So don't avoid the afflicted out of fear that you don't have the "magic words" to make the pain go away. Even if you have those words, when the pain is new and so intense, the sufferer cannot process what you would say. By listening instead, you gain the right to be heard when the sufferer is really ready and able to listen.

Listening alone won't make the pain go away, but it is a key first step. I hope I can encourage readers not to abandon the sufferer. I hope you will see that even if you don't have something to say that will remove the pain, you should still go to your suffering friend or family member. This is true  not only when tragedy first strikes; it is true for as long as the sufferer deals with his loss. Even now, there are times when I just need someone to listen to me talk about how I feel and what I think about what is happening to my  wife and family. Listening is far more helpful than you can ever imagine (59-60,62).

Here I must add that it is important for others to visit people who are sick. Thankfully, there are some friends who visit Pat regularly. But others visited only occasionally, and then stopped once Pat was not able to talk or interact with them. I understand that people like to think that when they visit the sick, it makes a difference to the patient. When the patient can't respond, it is easy to think you are accomplishing nothing, and so I understand why they stop visiting. But I must say two things. If you go at least in part because you think you can do some good for the patient, don't' assume you haven't helped just because the patient can't speak. If you could not speak, would you be happy to be left alone all day?…If you abandon your sick friend, what does that communicate? (63).

If I were ever to pastor again, I know one thing I would definitely do. At the very outset, I would work with church leaders to identify all the people in the congregation with special needs. And I would see to it that at least once every week (and no less than once every two weeks) someone in the church would contact these people…People with special needs may have little or no contact whatsoever with anyone for weeks at a time. Your love and care for them may be the only thing that brings any light into their life and dispels their loneliness, and it may be the only reason that they continue on in the faith. Though it may seems like an small investment of time and energy to those who do help, there is no way you can imagine the positive impact it will make when those you serve see that someone still cares and is there to offer a helping hand (70).

In previous chapters I have shared various lessons I have learned thorough our life experiences, and things that helped me to cope with our situation. But there were still a couple of issues raised along the way that bothered me. I knew that until I resolved them, they would continue to gnaw at me. I begin with the question of whether you could seek and find God's will only to wind up in a situation with severe affliction, something you expressly asked God to keep you from. And this raises the interesting theological question of whether on some occasions God gets us to do his will by withholding information from us, information that would have kept us from the situation. 

Once we got Pat's diagnosis, it seemed that I had made those choices under false pretenses. I believed God was leading me to choose one sort of life, when in fact I wound up with exactly the life I was trying to avoid. In fact, I was saddled with a situation worse than anything I could have ever dreamed in my worst nightmare. For a long time I was hurt and anguished by the thought that somehow God deceived me into marrying Pat by hiding information that could have saved me from my present circumstances…was it really God's will that I marry her but when one follows the Lord's leading one can expect to be double-crossed? How can one teach theology and write books about God, and yet be apparently so mistaken about how God works in people's lives? Such thoughts are among the most disturbing that I faced over the years, and they have been as disruptive to my relationship with the Lord as anything that I have ever experienced…The truth is that God had never promised me anything about my wife's health (99-100,104).

It is now more than twenty-eight ears since we first learned that she has Huntington's. That's a long time to live with someone who is slowly dying…The same old feelings of helplessness and hopelessness are always there, but increasingly they are joined with a growing loneliness as the Pat I married slips slowly and irreversibly away…Every time her condition became worse, it was much harder emotionally to deal with the changes than I'd anticipated. I had imagined what it would be like but it was always worse, and for a while I wondered why. Before too long I saw the reason. If you imagine what will happen next, you can make yourself feel very sad while you think about that. But the sadness doesn't last, because you know that she has not really reached that new level yet. When she does reach that level, you know that this is real and it won't go away. Seeing how bad things are and knowing that it will only get worse, you cannot help but feel more depressed. Indeed, the reality of what this disease is doing is always worse than whatever I can imagine (107,114).

When we first met and later decided to marry, there was no way we could have foreseen that our marriage would come to this–relatively short visits together each day in a nursing home…I also believe that God had another major intention for me, and it relates to marrying Pat. God decided to provide someone to manage Pat's needs and take care of her, and I am that someone…Over the last two decades or so as I have helplessly watched Pat's condition worsen, I have thought on a number of occasions that the point of this marriage is not about me but about her (115,124).

Do I have any regrets over marring Pat and having a family? If this question means would I have married her if I knew then what I know now, the  question is really impossible to answer. If I knew then what I know now, I would have known what a blessing from God she and my sons would be. I would have known all the problems I'd avoid by not marring her, but I'd also have known of the lost blessings. Would I give back those incredible blessings to escape the trials we have experienced? While many of us might wish for a different life, that is probably because we think a different life would be one with no problems, or at least one with nothing catastrophic. But in a fallen world there can be no guarantees of a life with only happiness and no problems or challenges. So perhaps I could have avoided the pains and sorrows that have come our way. But a different life might have had different but even  worse problems than those we have experienced. I certainly know that I have received many great blessings, and I wouldn't want to lose them! (128-29) 

When Pat moved into a nursing home, I had to pay a deposit of one month's fees, plus the amount it would cost for the first month of care. This amounted to around $13,000–indeed, nursing homes are not cheap, and this was back in November 2007. I didn't have that kind of money in my checking account, so I paid for it with credit cards. But the Lord had a very welcome surprise in store for us. 

My lawyer had been preparing the Medicaid application all summer, and filed it once Pat moved into the nursing home on November 15. Early in December, I received a call from a nurse at the nursing home. She asked about the brand of liquid food Pat used, because it was time to order a new batch. She wanted to know so that she could place the order and bill Medicaid. I told her that we had applied for Medicaid but hadn't yet heard whether Pat had been approve for it. The nurse told me that she saw in her computer that Pat was a Medical patient. After a few calls to government health agencies, I confirmed that Pat had been approved for Medicaid.

Needless to say, we were overwhelmed when we learned that within fourteen days after our lawyer submitted the Medicaid application, it was approved. And the approval was retroactive to the day she moved into the facility! All of the money I had given the nursing home would be refunded. I found this very had to believe–government agencies never move that quickly! Clearly, God's hand was in all of this. We again had a vivid reminder of the goodness of the Lord (112-13). 

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Deplatforming ex-Muslims

Safe spaces in church

Tom Buck, pastor at First Baptist Church, Lindale Texas, has a running series in which he critiques the inroads that homosexuality is making in TGC, ERLC, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, &c. It's not blatant homosexuality, but a soft, unstable, mediating position. In think Buck raises a number of valid criticisms. However, to judge by what he writes, his alternatives seem to be deficient:

Sadly, I grew up in a time when it was common for Christians to bash homosexuals rather than to lovingly call them to repentance and faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I often heard preachers stand in the pulpit and ridicule homosexuals to the laughter of the audience. Even as a teenager, I was appalled to hear many Christians openly belittle homosexuals. No one struggling with that sin would openly admit their sinful condition before a church that would treat them as nothing more than an object of derision.

When I became a pastor, I was committed to our church being a safe place to confess any sin without fear of ridicule. Churches who commit to making their congregations safe places, while remaining committed to a clear call to repentance, have seen individuals set free from homosexuality by the power of the Gospel.

1. I agree with him that homosexuals won't turn to a church that treats them as nothing more than objects of ridicule. 

2. That said, there's a balance to be struck. When I was a teenager, attending junior high and high school back in the 70s, normal boys openly stigmatized homosexuals, and while that can be carried too far, it can also be a useful disincentive which deterrs some closet homosexuals from going in that fateful direction. 

3. Likewise, transgenderism needs to be lampooned. 

4. I'm puzzled by what he envisions when he says church should be a safe space for homosexuals to openly confess their sinful condition before the church. In principle or practice, confession can take different forms:

i) An elder leads the congregation in the public, corporate confession of sins. The elder is the speaker. He recites a prayer of confession for generic sins, while the congregation silently assents. In my experience, that's a Presbyterian practice.

ii) The congregation recites in unison a prayer of confession for generic sins. That's a public, corporate confession of sins. That's an Anglican practice. I forget what Lutherans do.

iii) Auricular confession, where a laymen confesses his sin to a priest, in private, and receives absolution. That's a Roman Catholic practice.

iv) A parishioner who wrongs another parishioner, then seeks to be reconciled with the parishioner he wronged. That's a private transaction, between the two concerned parties. 

v) Divulging to a pastor or elder a besetting sin.

vi) Divulging to the entire congregation a besetting sin. 

5. Pastor Buck seems to envision a combination of (v-vi). If so:

i) Does he think there's a duty to confess a besetting sin to a pastor or the congregation? Why is that any of their business? This isn't a case where one person wrongs another, and then tries to make amends with the person he wronged. 

ii) Doesn't it foster a culture of gossip if everyone is privy to everyone else's misdeeds? Isn't that voyeuristic? 

iii) A pastor can't dispense magic pills to cure someone of their besetting sin. Pastor Buck talks vaguely about the mortification of sin, but that's optimistic. While there's evidence that some homosexuals are able to break free and transition to normal relationships, that's not a guarantee. 

Once again, no faithful pastor would give this counsel to a heterosexual man that is dealing with his lusts. Think of a single man telling his pastor that he finds a particular woman in the church beautiful, is sexually attracted to her, and desires to be “united to her.” I could never imagine any pastor saying, “This is simply your natural response to beauty as you were created to respond. You should appreciate the beauty, but do not let it drift into a sexual fantasy.”

i) To begin with, heterosexual attraction isn't morally equivalent to homosexual attraction. What exactly is wrong with appreciating a winsome member of the opposite sex, short of sexual fantasy? Buck says it's unimaginable that a pastor would say that, as if that's self-evidently wrong. Perhaps Mt 5:28 is hovering in the background. If so, I think Don Carson has the most reasonable interpretation:

ii) One thing homosexuals need is friendships with normal men and women. For instance, a homosexual male needs to have friendships with heterosexual men and women. He needs to have normal male role models and confidants. And he needs to consider the possibility of forming a normal relationship with a woman. 

What homosexuals don't need is homosexual friends. Even if that's platonic, they reinforce each other's weaknesses, as mutually deficient role models of masculinity or femininity.   


Having looked at ways Christians sometimes misunderstand Islam, I shifted to talking about the three major misunderstandings that many Muslims have about Christians, and I think these are deeper and more significant.
I began by tackling the fact that many Muslims tend assume that all Westerners are Christian. That means Muslims often look at the things that are wrong in the West (e.g. sexual immorality, violence etc.) and think that those things are ‘Christian.’ So we disentangled that a little bit. At the same time, many Muslims fail to appreciate that for Christians, conversion is apersonal decision. You are not a Christian because you were born in a Christian country, or born to Christian parents; rather you have to have a personal point of deciding to follow Christ to be a Christian. So that gave me the opportunity to share what commitment to Christ looks like.
The second Muslim misunderstanding of Christianity is that they misunderstand the Bible. They frequently think that it has been corrupted and changed. However, I showed the Muslims in Edinburgh that that idea is not actually in the Qur’an (which strongly affirms the Bible in many verses)—rather  it is an idea that developed about 200 years later in Islam, arising  during the debates between Muslims and Christians in the 2nd century of Islam. In fact, if Muslims took their own Qur’an seriously, it would challenges them to take the Bible seriously. I also talked the audience through a lot of the recent critical work on the early manuscripts of the Qur’an, which reveal the many textual variants and scribal changes in the early text. Many Muslims assume they have a “perfect text” with no difficult textual issues—I gently deconstructed that assumption.
And third and finally, I spoke about how Muslims often misunderstand Jesus. Many Muslims think that Christians have taken a mere man and elevated him to a position of deity. I said that that actually fails to understand the words of Jesus himself: the reason that Christians believe what we do about Jesus because of his own words and actions. Many of Jesus’s words would have been blasphemous if he wasn’t God (such as forgiving sin, for example). All of Jesus’s claims about himself culminate in Jesus’s trial before Caiaphas the High Priest, where Jesus was outrightly accused of blasphemy and asked, “Are you the Son of God?” Rather than say, “no”, Jesus quoted Daniel chapter 7, about the Son of Man coming on the clouds of glory, which is an incredible passage which claims divinity. When Caiaphas heard this, he tore his robe, and cried, “Blasphemy!” and sentenced Jesus to death. So, Jesus’s whole life and ministry was about this claim that he is more than a man, and of course the authorities knew what he was claiming and crucified him for it. Now if Jesus has stayed dead that would have been that, but he rose from the dead three days later, the divine vindication of the claims Jesus had made.


It was an incredible privilege to be standing in front of an almost entirely Muslim audience, unpacking the scriptures and sharing about Jesus. After the talk, we launched straight into the Q&A and it was very friendly, but pretty lively! Many of the Muslim audience had never heard any of this stuff, more than one of them saying they’d never heard a Christian explain and defend what Christians believed.
Perhaps the topic that drew the most the questions were the critical issues on the Qur’an. Muslims are fond of pointing to textual variants in biblical manuscripts, but I simply pointed out that all ancient texts have variants in their manuscripts, including the Qur’an (I have 3,000 or more on my computer, easily accessible and browsable through the Qur’an Gateway software package). The question is not “does a text have variants?” but “has the scholarship been done to ensure we can trust the text we have today?” Christians have always been open and honest about our manuscripts and indeed it is Christians who have built the best tools for studying biblical manuscripts. By contrast, Muslims have tended to ignore or hide the issues in early Qur’an manuscripts, which is why we are only finally now seeing good computer databases of early Qur’an manuscript variants made available. When I put some of these textual variants up on PowerPoint slides in Edinburgh, there were at times almost audible gasps from the audience who had never seen these kind of problems in their earliest manuscripts.

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

True love can't be "forced"

1. One of the flash cards objections to Calvinism is that true love can't be "forced". Of course, even on its own terms, that's a clueless objection. If everything predestined, then God isn't "forcing" himself on anyone. Force presumes resistance. But if everything is predestined, then there can't be any tension between the plan and the execution. It isn't possible to resist predestination and providence if everything we think and do is the effect of predestination and providence. No doubt freewill theists will find that equally objectionable, but that's a different objection than "forcing" agents to love him. 

2. In their rhetorically knee-jerk way, what they seem to mean by "force" is that we didn't choose to love God in return. So let's consider some comparisons:

i) In this clip, David Platt talks about adopting a young boy:

At that age, the boy didn't choose to be adopted. He never consented to be adopted. At that age, the love was one-sided. It was all from his adoptive parents. 

ii) Sometimes it's a virtue to befriend someone who wants to be left alone. Suppose I'm a high school student. I notice another student who's a brooding, standoffish loner. 

He has no friends, and it's a vicious cycle. He dislikes the other students, so they dislike him in return. They sense each other's antipathy. And that reinforces his social alienation.  

Suppose I make an effort to cultivate him. I reach out to him. He resents my gestures of friendship. But I persist. I "force" myself on him, in hopes of wearing down his resistance. I impose on him because he clearly needs of friend. I try to gain his trust. Break through the barrier. 

Maybe I won't succeed, but even if I fail, he will know that there was one person who cared about him. And maybe that will initiate a thawing process. Perhaps, a few years later, I'll bump into him, and at that point he will be more open. 

iii) I'm no expert an autism, but it's impression that for severe autistics, love has to come from the parental side. Perhaps severe autistics lack the psychological makeup to reciprocate. At the very least, it takes the infinite patience of caring parents to draw them out. That's very lopsided love. They can't enter your world, so you must enter theirs–as best you can. 

iv) I once saw a scene on TV of a drunken partier who climbed out the window onto the ledge of a fourth story apartment, then tried to climb onto the roof. He slipped. He avoided falling to his death by gabbing onto the rails of balconies as he went down. Although he couldn't hold on, it broke the force of the fall, so that while he landed hard, he didn't kill himself or break any bones.

But after he got up, dazed, he tried to climb back up the outside of the apartment. Having narrowly eluded death, he went right back to more insanely dangerous behavior. At that point two guys intervened to pull him down before he got too far up, and hauled him off until he dried out. They physically overpowered him for his own protection. If would be interesting if they showed him the footage, after he was sober.

World's Dumbest Partiers

Every so often I eat at a sports bar. Good food at a good price. A side effect is seeing episodes of TV shows I don't normally watch. Indeed, I stopped watching TV altogether a few years ago. 

One time when I was waiting for my order, there was an episode of the World's Dumbest Partiers. First and only time I've see it. Apparently, it's one of those reality shows. 

The partiers in these scenes have no center, no purpose in life. They are impulsive, reacting to circumstances. Acting on the spur of the moment, heedless of consequences. 

And these are teens and twenty-somethings, in the prime of life. In many ways, that ought to be the best time of life. When they're young and healthy, have lots of opportunities, have their whole future ahead of them. Some of they will wake up at at 60-70, if they live that long, and wonder where the years went. 

I say that to say this: apostasy and atheism are routinely glamorized as liberating. To be emancipated from the shackles of conventional morality. No more guilt. Be free to do whatever you want. No God, no heaven, no hell. So live it up in the here-and-now. 

The results, on display in a show like this, are utter mayhem. Behavior that's destructive to themselves as well as to others. Mindless, undirected passion. 

The collusion delusion

Unsurprisingly, rightwing pundits are hammering the mainstream media for bungling the "Russia collusion" story, but in one respect that misreads the issue. 

Now it's true that the "news" media was self-deceived because the liberal establishment reflexively believes the worst about the opposing side. In that respect, this was a monumental failure.

However, failure depends on missing the target. While I don't think the mainstream media in general has a consistent strategy, I suspect there is to some degree an instinctive or even calculated strategy at work. I suspect many radical activists think it's a worthwhile risk. Success builds on success. Winning short-term victories creates political momentum, upping the odds of winning in the long-term. 

In that respect, I don't think the media failed, because it was aiming for something else. The "Russia collusion" hoax may well have put a low ceiling on Trump's job performance ratings. And it may have contributed to Democrat gains in the 2018 midterms. 

That doesn't mean the strategy can't backfire. We'll see. But my immediate point is that I think many rightwing pundits are  overlooking the real game plan. Mind you, it's still a good idea for them to hammer away at how this discredits the mainstream media. 

The fixer

i) To begin with, it seems unlikely that the police could link your sibling to a hit-n-run from ten years ago. How could they establish that your sibling was there at that precise time and place? Unless he still owned the car and there was still trace evidence, what is there to connect a particular driver to the crime?

It's unlikely that the driver will confess, unless they lie to him about what they know. So confronting him is pointless. He will deny the crime. 

ii) What exactly could your sibling do at this stage to restore the victim–assuming he was seriously injured (much less killed)? 

iii) Since you're not responsible for what your sibling did, are you responsible for turning him in? This isn't an ongoing thing, as if he's a career criminal. This isn't about preempting a future crime, as if your sibling threatens to go on a shooting rampage. 

iv) A problem with Rauser's poll is the forced options. But consider another option: suppose, by comparing news reports with what my sibling told me, I'm able to ID the hit-n-run victim. Suppose I make discreet inquires to find out how he's doing. Suppose I'm in a position to befriend him and help him out in certain ways. I never tell him about my relation to the perp. I just make this seem like a random friendship. I'm vicariously making restitution for my sibling's crime. I'm the fixer. That might be more productive than reporting my sibling to the police. 

Astronomy and the date of the crucifixion

We have to be cautious about these correlations. It is, however, an interesting example of how extrabiblical data might illuminate the text. That would be obvious to the observer, but not to a reader who wasn't there:

Biblical chronology

Traditionally, the royal chronologies in Kings and Chronicles appear to be a hopeless jumble to modern readers. The solution required distinctions in terms of different calendars at different times and places, regnal years, and coregencies. This was facilitated by biblical archeology, which provided a cross-check in terms of ancient Near Eastern calendrical methods. So what initially seems to be irresolvable discrepancies turns out to be a witness to the minute factual accuracy of Kings and Chronicles. 

The official start of the new year was different in Judah (Tishri) than in Israel (Nisan). Judah initially used accession year reckoning whereas Israel used non-accession year reckoning. For a while Judah switched to non-accession year reckoning before switching back to accession year reckoning. Israel eventually changed to accession year reckoning. For Judah, there was the matter of coregencies. 

By recognizing that Uzziah's reign was reckoned according to Judah's Tishri-based year while the northern kingdom observed a Niasan-based year for its kings, what otherwise seem to be occasional discordancies in the synchronisms all fall into place. This six-month difference in when the year began then provided to be a useful aid in determining the half-year in which some of these kings terminated their reign, and in the the cases of Jeroboam II through Shallum, the actual month of the kings' death could be determined…The basic data that allows this kind of precision in dating could never have been provided by a late-date editor; the data must have come from contemporary accounts, probably from the official court records of these two kingdoms. A. Steinmann, From Abraham to Paul: A Biblical Chronology (Concordia 2011), 128, 139-40; cf. 38-39.

Monday, March 25, 2019


Seven Days in May

One of the fascinating and alarming spectacles of the Obama administration was the contempt for our system of gov't. In the case of Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, that was unsurprising–which doesn't make it any better.

Then you had the infamous Lois Lerner. In addition, it was fascinating to see John Kerry's seditious role in the Iran deal. A Middle-eastern foreign policy driven by Obama's veneration for Islam and corollary antipathy for the Jewish state of Israel. 

But perhaps most striking: officials at the highest levels of law enforcement and the intelligence communities who lack any trace of patriotism, viz. James Comey, Andrew McCabe, James Clapper, Peter Strzok, John Brennan, Rod Rosenstein. How they consorted to sabotage the democratic process to prevent the election of Donald Trump or–failing that–to overthrow a duly elected president. How easily they were turned. How unhesitatingly they did Obama's bidding. No insulation between us and tyranny. 

Victor Davis Hanson has documented some of this: 

Why Mueller caved

Easter Resources 2019

For several years, I've been posting a collection of resources for each Easter season:


You can find an archive of our posts with the Easter label here. You can also search for posts with other labels by replacing the word Easter in the URL with another phrase (Resurrection, Empty Tomb, etc.). And keep clicking on Older Posts at the bottom of the screen to see more posts.

We've also written some e-books that address Easter issues. See the e-books section of the sidebar to the right.

A few years ago, I posted a collection of articles on skeptical myths about the church fathers. Many of those articles address Easter issues.

Here are some examples of posts we've written on Easter subjects over the years:

Resurrection Evidence Outside The New Testament
Evidence For The Empty Tomb
Early Affirmation Of The Empty Tomb From Gentile Non-Christians
Jesus' Burial And Empty Tomb Outside The Gospels And Acts
Early Non-Extant Documents On The Resurrection
Evidence For The Shroud Of Turin
The 1982 Carbon Dating Of The Shroud Of Turin
Easter Prophecy Fulfillment
Alleged Errors And Contradictions In The Resurrection Accounts
Fifty Agreements Among The Resurrection Accounts
The Consistencies Among The Resurrection Accounts In 1 Corinthians 15, The Gospels, And Acts
The Restrained Nature Of The Resurrection Accounts
The Context In Which The Gospels Were Composed
How Early The Synoptics And Acts Were Written
The Authorship Of Matthew
The Authorship Of Mark
The Authorship Of Luke And Acts
The Authorship Of John
The Authorship Of The Pauline Letters (see the comments section)
The Historicity Of Acts
Why It's Significant That The Earliest Sources Don't Narrate The Resurrection Appearance To James
Evidence That Saul Of Tarsus Saw Jesus Risen From The Dead
The Spiritual Body Of 1 Corinthians 15
Why Didn't The Risen Jesus Appear To More And Different People?
Why Doesn't Jesus Appear To Everybody?
Matthew 27:52-53
How The Apostles Died
Miracles In The Modern World
Reviews Of Debates On Jesus' Resurrection
How To Make A Case For The Resurrection
Independent, Converging Lines Of Evidence For Jesus' Resurrection
What If Alleged Miracles, Like Jesus' Resurrection, Were Caused By A Currently Unknown Natural Process?

We wrote a lot of posts on Easter-related issues after the 2018 Easter resources post linked above. I posted about why we don't have any sources on Jesus written prior to his death. I also wrote about acceptance of the empty tomb among early non-Christian Gentiles. I then put up a post on evidence for Jesus' burial and empty tomb outside the gospels and Acts. Later, I wrote about how a lot of the evidence for Jesus' resurrection comes from former opponents of Christianity. Steve Hays addressed some alleged parallels between accounts about Romulus and the accounts we have of Jesus' death and resurrection. He also discussed some corroboration from Richard Carrier of Christian views of Easter prophecy fulfillment. He then addressed some of Carrier's comments on the nature of the resurrection appearances. I wrote a post about early, non-extant documents related to Jesus' resurrection. Steve wrote about the historicity and consistency of what the gospels say Jesus spoke while on the cross. I posted on Jesus' fulfillment of Psalm 22. Steve linked a discussion of the empty tomb and Jesus' resurrection, involving Darrell Bock and Gary Habermas. He also posted about the possibility that an angel at Jesus' tomb would be visible to one individual, but not another. And here and here are some posts he put up linking Easter music videos. I wrote about how Jesus' work on the cross and in his resurrection has changed the world. Steve wrote a response to Bart Ehrman on the significance of the empty tomb. He also linked an article by Lydia McGrew responding to William Lane Craig on minimalism with regard to the resurrection and other issues. In a later post, Steve addressed some objections to Matthew 27:51-53. And he wrote about what the resurrection of the just might look like. In a response to a book by Thomas Joseph White, Steve addressed topics related to the resurrection body, among other issues. He also linked an article by Joseph Bergeron and Gary Habermas on the hallucination hypothesis. Then he responded to Frank Turek on the resurrection and Biblical inerrancy. In another post, he discussed views of apologetics that take the resurrection as a starting point. He later addressed some unusual aspects of the resurrection accounts in John's gospel, such as why Mary Magdalene initially didn't recognize Jesus. He also wrote about the scars Jesus retained after his resurrection and why resurrected individuals might retain scars. In another post, he discussed different views of resurrection. He later responded to a book by Michael Martin and Keith Augustine that, in part, addresses issues surrounding the resurrection and the afterlife. He also linked a video of the Hallelujah chorus. In another post, he summarized the evidence for a Christian view of Jesus. He later wrote about how Jesus' death and resurrection illustrate the roles of providence and miracles. And he addressed the notion that the resurrection entails the deity of Christ. He also linked an article by Lydia McGrew on the historicity of the raising of the saints in Matthew 27:52-53. He later wrote about why people react so differently to Christmas than to Easter. In another post, he addressed the possibility that alleged miracles, like Jesus' resurrection, were caused by a currently unknown natural process. He also linked an article by Timothy McGrew on the historicity of the guard at the tomb, then an article on whether Jesus' mother and John were at the foot of the cross, followed by an article on the historicity of the early accounts of Jesus' burial. Then he addressed the significance of the resurrection. He also linked an article by Wesley Huff on Lent, Easter, and the hope of spring. In another post, he discussed some alleged Bible contradictions, including some related to Easter. He then wrote about supposed inconsistencies among the accounts of the women who went to the tomb.

Sunday, March 24, 2019

The Mueller report

Some preliminary observations on the Mueller report.

1. It's been said that while it clears the president of "collusion with Russia," the report is more ambivalent about obstruction of justice. One issue is whether it's obstruction of justice if a president refuses to cooperate fully with a subordinate. The special prosecutor is not independent, but operates under the aegis of the Executive branch. He is answerable to higher ups at DOJ.

2. Even more to the point, if there was no "collusion," then obstruction would be a purely process crime–a manufactured crime with no underlying crime. That's a pernicious practice. 

3. Moreover, according to Andrew McCarthy (NRO), "collusion" is not even a crime. 

4. The investigation was a distraction, deflecting attention away from concerted efforts by the FBI, IRS, CIA, NSA, DOJ to steal the election for Hillary. And failing that, to stage a coup d'état. A complete subversion of the electoral process. That's the real scandal. There are officials of the Obama administration who ought to be prosecuted. 

5. One claim being made is that if the Mueller report accused Trump or his campaign of "collusion", or obstruction, Trump supporters would be laboring to discredit the report, but because it cleared him, they've done an about-face. (Of course, the same applies to the liberal establishment in reverse.) But while that may be psychologically valid in some cases, it's not essentially hypocritical or inconsistent:

i) From my viewpoint, this is a tu quoque argument. Even if, for argument's sake, we play by liberal rules, they lost. They championed the Mueller investigation. So they came up short by their own yardstick. I don't have to endorse their standards to point out that even on their own grounds, Trump was exonerated. 

ii) In addition, to the extent that Mueller's team were partisan Democrats, the report constitutes hostile testimony. And hostile testimony has an asymmetrical evidential force. You expect it to cast doubt on the other side. But if, despite the bias, it ends up supporting the other side, then that's unexpected. That's a strong kind of testimony. And that's not interchangeable with sympathetic testimony. If the report accused Trump of collusion or obstruction, that would be par for the course. So the evidentiary value is not reversible, in that eventuality. 

5. This doesn't make Mueller a straight shooter. It may simply mean he was unable to find what he was looking for because it wasn't there–try as he might. 

Was Jesus Buried in Joseph of Arimathea's New Tomb?

Near miss

Yes, there is hype and over-reporting. But as I've asked ordinary people whether they have ever seen a miracle, I've heard many credible stories. None of them has been widely reported. In fact, sometimes the persons's own family has never heard the story. 

Dale Flowers, my pastor, told me of a mission trip he took to China with a group of pastors in 1993. They were being chauffeured in a minibus down a remote, narrow road clogged with trucks. Vehicles, including their own, were passing each other at every opportunity. It was dusk, raining, and tense driving conditions, when an oncoming truck loaded with logs attempted pass. As the truck swerved into their lane, the load of logs shifted and lifted the truck off two of its wheels. To Dale and his fellow passengers, it appeared that only one of two things could happen: either the truck would tip over in their lane and they would crash into it, or the truck with its load of logs would fall on their minibus. They had nowhere to escape and no time to slow down. In an instant it became clear that they would all die. Dale didn't even have time to pray.

Then, defying the laws of gravity, the leaning truck was righted back on all four wheels and completed its pass without crashing into their vehicle. It was as if God had caught the falling truck, lifted it, and moved it out of the way of their minibus. Absolutely stunned by their escape, the pastors–ordinarily a talkative bunch–didn't say a word. Afterward, no one mentioned what had happened. And certainly, though I have heard Dale talk about the incident privately, I have never heard him preach of it in all his years of preaching.

You can understand why. The miracle made a difference to those pastors, but what difference would it make for others? If they weren't there to see it for themselves, they would probably be skeptical. Why press it? 

My friend Tim Hostetler became a Christian in the California Jesus movement:

At the age of twenty-one, I was a new Christian and I badly needed $20 to pay a bill. I remember getting down on my knees and asking God to somehow provide me with that money. I went to my mailbox, and there was a letter from someone I didn't know, with a check off $20.

I later found out that two weeks earlier, my sister had been talking to a lady who said she liked to send out checks to people in need. My sister told her that I probably needed some money, and she wrote me a check. When I learned about it I was amazed that God was not constrained by time. He put the answer to my prayer in motion two weeks before I prayed. There was no limit to what he could do in answering our prayers.

Lots of people have miraculous experiences like that when they are new Christians. Like little children when they pray, they see God's answers in direct and beautiful ways. 

Forty years later, Tim still knows that God has no limits, but he also knows that God does not always answer our prayers as we want. Tim has prayed for many people who were healed, yet he himself has suffered from chronic illness–disabling back pain, terrible digestive pain, regular migraine headaches. He's been on disability for decades. He's visited every doctor possible, and Christians all over the state have prayed for him. He's still very sick. 

"I've had thousands of migraine headaches, and I've had people pray for me hundreds of times. Only once have I been healed, when a man put his hand on my head and the pain went away immediately. I started praying for the research people in the labs. Since God wasn't healing my migraines through prayer, I thought medicine might be the way. And I thank God for Imitrex, because it really helps". Tim Stafford, Miracles (Bethany 2012), 120-21; 193-94.