Theology and Christian Apologetics Archives | CrossExamined.org

Yes, Bart Ehrman, Jesus is Yahweh

Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

Bart Ehrman is a professor of religious studies at UNC-Chapel Hill in North Carolina. He is well known for his best-selling popular-level books that are critical of the core tenets of evangelical Christianity and in particular the reliability of the New Testament sources. Frequent readers of my articles will already know that Ehrman is not the most careful scholar when it comes to his utilization of ancient sources. A few days ago, Ehrman published two blog posts (here and here) on his website, claiming that the idea that Jesus is Himself Yahweh is a recent doctrinal innovation, completely foreign to the New Testament and the ancient church. Ehrman even goes so far as to say that this is the view of only “some conservative evangelical Christians” and that “I’ve never even heard the claim (let alone a discussion of it) until very recently.” Furthermore, Ehrman adds,

I, frankly, had never even heard of such a thing until six years ago. Maybe I wasn’t listening in Sunday School, or maybe I was sleeping through those particular lectures at Moody Bible Institute; or maybe … Nah, I don’t think so. If someone knows differently, please let me know. But I can’t think of any ancient Christian source that talks about Jesus as Yahweh himself. Jesus is the son of Yahweh.

Ehrman asserts that,

The first time I heard someone authoritatively say that Jesus was Yahweh and that this was standard Christian teaching was in a debate I had with Justin Bass in 2015 – you can listen to it on Youtube. I can’t remember when in the debate he said it but he made some comment about Jesus being Yahweh, and I was floored. I thought: theologians have never called Jesus Yahweh!

For a scholar of Ehrman’s stature to be uninformed regarding Christian orthodox teaching on such a fundamental matter is absolutely astounding. In this article, I respond to Ehrman’s articles and show that he is profoundly mistaken about the teaching of the New Testament and the ancient church.

Early Christian Theologians

Ehrman wonders “if there are any early Christian theologians who have this view.” Yes, there are plenty. For example, Justin Martyr (~100-165), in his dialogue with Trypho the Jew, wrote[1],

…now you will permit me first to recount the prophecies, which I wish to do in order to prove that Christ is called both God and Lord of hosts…

I do not know how one can get much clearer than that. Irenaeus (~130-202) likewise states[2],

For I have shown from the Scriptures, that no one of the sons of Adam is as to everything, and absolutely, called God, or named Lord. But that He is Himself in His own right, beyond all men who ever lived, God, and Lord, and King Eternal, and the Incarnate Word, proclaimed by all the prophets, the apostles, and by the Spirit Himself, may be seen by all who have attained to even a small portion of the truth.

Ignatius of Antioch (~50-108) also affirmed Christ’s full deity. For example, in his epistle to the Ephesians, he wrote[3],

We have also as a Physician the Lord our God, Jesus the Christ, the only begotten Son and Word, before time began, but who afterwards became also man, of Mary the virgin.

I could continue to quote early church fathers for quite some time, but this should suffice to show that the view that Jesus is Yahweh, the eternal God, is not a new idea but rather goes back to the ancient church. I will now turn to Ehrman’s comments on the New Testament.

Is the Name Yahweh Found in the New Testament?

Ehrman states that,

Of course, the name Yahweh is not found in the NT at all, since it is a Hebrew word, and the NT is written in Greek. The NT does not give God a personal name.

This is obviously true since the New Testament was written in Greek, not in Hebrew. However, the New Testament does use an equivalent word — indeed, the word that is substituted for the Hebrew tetragrammaton YHWH in the Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible. This word is κύριος, which is translated “Lord” in our English Bibles. Of course, it is true that this word had a broader range of meaning than simply denoting Yahweh (for example, Paul uses it of earthly masters — see Eph 6:5). However, the meaning of Greek words, as intended by the original author, can be shaved down through an examination of context. For example, Hebrews 1:10-12 quotes from Psalm 102:25-27:

You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands; 11 they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment, 12 like a robe you will roll them up, like a garment they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will have no end.

Verse 10 uses the word κύριος, which evidently (given the fact that the author is quoting an Old Testament Psalm concerning the Lord God) is intended to denote Yahweh. What makes this text especially noteworthy for our purposes here is that the author of Hebrews applies the words of this Psalm to Jesus. Indeed, this Hebrew Biblical text is one of several applied to Jesus in Hebrews 1, as the author compares and contrasts the exaltation of the Son with that of the angelic beings.

To take another example, consider Paul’s quotation of Joel 2:32 in Romans 10:13: “For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’” Again, this alludes to an Old Testament text that concerns Yahweh. But Paul introduces this text only a few verses after Paul declared that “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom 10:9). The implication here is that the κύριος of verse 9 is the same referent as in verse 13 — namely, Jesus. In other words, Jesus is the Yahweh of Joel 2:32, on whose name we are to call. This point is drawn out even more explicitly by Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:2: “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.” This text again clearly alludes to Joel 2:32, except the Lord (κύριος) upon which we are to call is none other than Jesus Christ.

Another example is found in 1 Peter 2:2-4:

2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. 4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious…

Verse 3 quotes from Psalm 34:8 (“Oh, taste and see that the LORD [Yahweh] is good!”). However, verse 4 identifies the κύριος of Psalm 34:8 as none other than Jesus Himself (the nearest antecedent of the pronoun “him” in verse 4 is “the Lord” from verse 3). This implies that Jesus is the Yahweh of Psalm 34:8.

Yet a further example can be found in 1 Peter 3:14-15:

14 But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, 15 but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy The Holy…

Admittedly, there exists some level of ambiguity about the original reading of verse 15, since the majority of later manuscripts read θεόν (“God”) instead of Χριστόν (“Christ”). However, Bruce Metzger notes that[4],

The reading Χριστόν, however, is strongly supported by early and diversified external evidence…as well as by transcriptional probability, the more familiar expression (κύριον τὸν θεόν) replacing the less usual expression (κύριον τὸν Χριστόν). The omission of τὸν Χριστόν in the patristic treatise de Promissionibus attributed to Quodvultdeus must be due to accidental oversight on the part of either translator or copyist.

If (as seems likely) the original reading is indeed “Christ the Lord”, then we have another example of an Old Testament text that concerns Yahweh being applied to Jesus. Compare 1 Peter 3:14-15, above, with Isaiah 8:12-13:

12 “Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. 13 But the LORD of hosts, him you shall honor as holy.

Isaiah 8:12 is quoted by 1 Peter 3:14. Isaiah 8:13 is quoted by 1 Peter 3:15, except instead of calling his readers to honor the Lord of hosts as holy (as Isaiah did), Peter implores his readers to honor Christ the Lord as holy. Thus, we have yet another instance of the title κύριος (which is properly interpreted here as a substitute for the Hebrew tetragrammaton) being applied to Jesus.

I could continue in a similar vein for a considerable time. However, I trust that this is sufficient to dispel Ehrman’s contention that the New Testament does not use the name Yahweh and therefore never calls Jesus Yahweh.

Does Psalm 110 Preclude Jesus from Being Yahweh?

Ehrman continues,

When Christians wanted to find another divine being in the OT to identify as Christ, they went to passages like Psalm 110: “The LORD said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” Based on what I said in my previous post, you can reconstruct who is talking to whom here (notice the first LORD is in caps and the second not): “YHWH said to Adonai….”

Ehrman’s entire argument here implicitly presupposes Unitarianism. If the doctrine of the Trinity is true, then there is no problem with persons within the being or essence of Yahweh being distinguished from one another and even participating in conversation with each other. Nor is there a problem with the Father exalting the Son, since the Son had previously voluntarily humbled Himself through His incarnation and death on the cross. No Trinitarian is identifying the Son with the Father. Rather, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are each distinctive persons who together totally share the essence of Yahweh, each possessing the divine attributes fully and completely.

Ehrman’s representation of the words used in Psalm 110:1 is not quite accurate, since it does not say that “YHWH said to Adonai…” but rather “YHWH said to Adoni.” This difference make look trivial (especially as these two words are distinguished only by a difference in Masoretic vowel pointing) but it is actually important. The title “Adonai” is exclusively used as a divine title (essentially as a synonym for YHWH). In fact, the ancient Hebrews would, instead of pronouncing the divine name, say “Adonai” instead. The word “Adoni”, by contrast, is simply the possessive form of the Hebrew word “Adon”, which means “Lord” or “Master” (the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek word κύριος). The word can be used of Yahweh, depending on the context, but it is not exclusively reserved for Yahweh. The upshot of this is that, though many Christians have used this text to argue for a plurality of divine persons (and, indeed, the deity of Christ), the reality is that any such argument based on this text is going to require more work and nuance than it often receives. I do not believe this text to be as conclusive as the previous texts discussed in the foregoing. However, it is, I would argue, certainly suggestive as we shall see. The context sheds some light on the intended referent of verse 1. In verse 5-7 of Psalm 110, we read,

The Lord is at your right hand; he will crush kings on the day of his wrath. He will judge the nations, heaping up the dead and crushing the rulers of the whole earth. He will drink from a brook along the way, and so he will lift his head high.

In the Hebrew, verse 5 does indeed identify the one seated at Yahweh’s right hand as none other than Adonai, a word used only ever of deity. Thus, Psalm 110 implies a plurality of divine persons within the Godhead. One possible reply to this is that Psalm 110:5 is merely the reversal of Psalm 110:1. Just as David’s Lord sits at the right hand of Yahweh, so also Yahweh is at the right hand of David’s Lord. For instance, in Psalm 109:31, Yahweh is at the right hand of the needy one, and in Psalm 16:8, Yahweh is at the right hand of the Psalmist David. The problem with this argument is that if one continues reading Psalm 110, it is clear that the “He’s” of verses 5-7 all refer back to Adonai, and in verse 7 this individual is said to drink from a brook — a human function. Thus, the individual seated at Yahweh’s right hand in Psalm 110 appears to be a divine-human person.

Furthermore, Jesus Himself Jesus makes the argument that “David himself calls him ‘Lord.’ How then can he be his son?” (Mk 12:37). The point Jesus is making is that none of David’s descendants could be greater than David. This, then, cannot be referring to an ordinary human descendent of David. The question is thus raised as to what sort of Lord this could possibly be referring to. But we can go even further than that. David’s Lord also cannot be any human king, since in Psalm 2:10-12 all kings are to be subject to David, and Psalm 89:26-27 tells us that,

I will appoint him [David] to be my firstborn, the most exalted of the kings of the earth.

It also cannot be a mere angelic creature since angels serve God’s elect and are servants themselves (c.f. Heb 1:7, 14; Rev 19:10 and 22:8-9). Who, then, is left? God.

The Angel of the Lord

Ehrman notes that Christians (such as Justin Martyr in the second century) have often identified the angel of Yahweh, in the Hebrew Bible, as a pre-incarnate manifestation of Christ. He writes,

I wonder if the confusion among some evangelicals about the Christian understanding of Christ (when they say he is Yahweh) is because the “Angel” of the LORD is so fully representative of YHWH himself that he is sometimes called YHWH after he is clearly identified NOT as YHWH but his angel. Why would he be called YHWH if he was YHWH’s messenger? It would be kind of like if a messenger of the king comes to you and orders you to do something, you tell your neighbors that the “king” has told you to do something. Well, actually, his messenger did, but he was so fully representative of the king that his words were the king’s.

This interpretation, however, fails to account for the fact that various people throughout the Hebrew Bible marvel at the fact that they have seen the angel of Yahweh and yet their lives have been spared (people aren’t supposed to be able to see Yahweh and live — Exodus 33:20). For example, consider the words of Jacob after having wrestled with a man in Genesis 32, one who is identified in Hosea 12:4 as the angel of Yahweh: “So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.’” Further support for the individual with whom Jacob wrestled being the angel of Yahweh comes from the parallel between Genesis 32:29 and Judges 13:18, in which the man and the angel of Yahweh respectively say, upon being asked for their name, “Why do you ask my name?”

Another occurrence of this is in Judges 6 where we read of Gideon’s encounter with the angel of Yahweh. In verses 22-24, we read,

22 Then Gideon perceived that he was the angel of the LORD. And Gideon said, “Alas, O LORD God! For now I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face.” 23 But the Lord said to him, “Peace be to you. Do not fear; you shall not die.” 24 Then Gideon built an altar there to the LORD and called it, The LORD Is Peace. To this day it still stands at Ophrah, which belongs to the Abiezrites.

Yet a further instance occurs in Judges 13, which records the appearance of the angel of Yahweh to Manoah and his wife to announce the birth of Samson. In verse 21-22, we read,

21 The angel of the Lord appeared no more to Manoah and to his wife. Then Manoah knew that he was the angel of the Lord. 22 And Manoah said to his wife, “We shall surely die, for we have seen God.”

Thus, we see that numerous texts (and there are plenty that I have not mentioned) bear witness to the deity of the angel of Yahweh. While Ehrman is correct to note that many of these texts also distinguish the angel of Yahweh from God, this is very consistent with a Trinitarian paradigm that views the messenger of God to be Yahweh and yet in another sense somehow distinct from Yahweh.

Ehrman’s interpretation of the angel of the Lord passages also fails to account for the parallelism observed in Genesis 48:15-16, in which we read of Jacob’s blessing of the sons of Joseph. He said,

15 “The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day, 16 the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, may he bless the boys…”

Here, we see a poetic parallelism where the angel is identified as God. In fact, in the Hebrew, verse 16b uses the singular pronoun, “may he bless the boys”, implying that the angel and God are one and the same.

I discuss the subject of the angel of the Lord in much more detail here and here.

The Carmen Christi

Ehrman next turns his attention to the Christ poem in Philippians 2:5-11. He writes,

When Christ is exalted after his death, God gives him “the name that is above every name” so that all creation will worship and confess him. That is a reference to Isaiah 45 where Yahweh alone has the name above every name so that all worship and confess him alone.

Possibly these modern Christians are thinking that Christ, therefore, must have been given the name YHWH, and therefore he *is* YHWH. But the passage doesn’t seem to mean that. The ultimate LORD of all, YHWH, is the one who *gives* Jesus the name that is above all others. It’s worth noting that in this very passage, when God gives Jesus his “name,” it does not mean that he’s made a name switch for Jesus. On the contrary, the passage says that the name to which everyone will bow in worship and confess is *Jesus*! (Not YHWH): “That at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess.” Jesus’ own name is exalted.

This, however, is not the argument at all. I do not interpret the “name” of verse 9 to be a personal name. Rather, this in my opinion is best understood as referring to Christ’s reputation that He received as a consequence of His humiliation and death upon the cross.

There are at least three mutually supporting arguments for Christ’s deity that may be adduced from this text. First, this text is chiefly concerned with Christ’s humility, since “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped” (Phil 2:6). This only makes sense if Christ is equal in status to God, since one is not commended for humility for not exalting oneself to a higher status than one had a right to. If I refrain from overthrowing the monarchy and exalting myself as king, I am not due praise for my humility in so restraining myself. The text, then, is best understood if Christ voluntarily laid aside the divine privilege that was rightfully His. This reading is also supported by the Greek. Indeed, the construction is known as a double accusative of object-complement. Daniel Wallace explains that[5],

An object-complement double accusative is a construction in which one accusative substantive is the direct object of the verb and the other accusative (either noun, adjective, participle, or infinitive) complements the object in that it predicates something about it.

In this case, the verb is οὐχ ἡγήσατο (“did not count”), the direct object is τὸ εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ (“equality with God”) and the object complement is ἁρπαγμὸν (“a thing to be grasped”). Thus, the relationship between the direct object and the object complement is rather like an equal’s sign. In other words, Jesus did not count equality with God to be a thing to be grasped (ἁρπαγμὸν). Furthermore, Roy Hoover has argued that this is in fact an idiomatic expression, which “refers to something already present and at one’s disposal. The question… [is] whether or not one chooses to exploit something.”[6] Hoover observes that in every instance where this noun ἁρπαγμός is the object compliment in a construction such as this (where the verb is one of regarding or seeing or consideration), it always means something like an exploitable advantage. Thus, argues Hoover, one could reasonably translate this text to be saying that Christ did not regard being equal with God as something to take advantage of.

A second consideration is that Paul uses the Greek word μορφῇ in verse 6 to describe Christ being in the form of God and uses this exact same word in verse 7 to describe Christ taking the form of a servant. This implies that Christ was in the form of God in the same sense as He took upon Himself the form of a servant. Since Christ was very literally a servant, “being born in the likeness of men” (v. 7b), it follows that Christ was also literally God.

Third, Ehrman rightly points out that verses 10-11 allude to Isaiah 45:23, in which we read, “To me [that is, Yahweh] every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance.” However, in the context of Philippians 2:10-11, every knee is bowing and every tongue swearing allegiance to Jesus. Indeed, that is what is meant by confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord (κύριος), which literally means master.

Conclusion

To conclude, contrary to Ehrman’s assertions, the view that Jesus is Yahweh has been the orthodox Christian position for nearly two millennia, and it is taught in the New Testament. Ehrman claims that the name Yahweh is never used in the New Testament and so could not be applied by the New Testament authors to Jesus. However, the New Testament does use the equivalent Greek term κύριος. Although this word is also used to describe earthly masters, the word is often used to denote Yahweh when the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, and often these texts are explicitly applied to the person of Jesus. Ehrman’s argument from the New Testament’s usage of Psalm 110 presupposes a Unitarian paradigm. Though Ehrman argues that the angel of the Lord in the Hebrew Bible is only the agent of Yahweh who is invested with divine authority, this argument collapses on the basis of the various exclamations of surprise, following an encounter with the angel of the Lord, that one has survived despite having seen God face-to-face. Finally, Ehrman is mistaken about Philippians 2:5-11, which is best read as indicating that Christ voluntarily laid aside the divine privilege that was rightfully His in order to take upon Himself the form of a servant.

Footnotes

[1] Justin Martyr, “Dialogue of Justin with Trypho, a Jew,” in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 1, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 212.

[2] Irenaeus of Lyons, “Irenæus against Heresies,” in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 1, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 449.

[3] Ignatius of Antioch, “The Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians,” in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 1, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 52–200.

[4] Bruce Manning Metzger, United Bible Societies, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Second Edition a Companion Volume to the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (4th Rev. Ed.) (London; New York: United Bible Societies, 1994), 621–622.

[5] Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 182.

[6] Roy W. Hoover, “The Harpagmos Enigma,” Harvard Theological Review 64 (1971).

“Sanctification” and “Justification”… What’s the Difference and Why Does It Matter

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Andrew Cowley

Defining and explaining the meaning of “sanctification” and “justification” can be a daunting task—yet a task that every believer should thoroughly dedicate themselves to. It is imperative that we understand what these two terms mean, how they apply to our faith, and how that affects our Christian theology. Make no mistake, each and every Christian believer is a theologian who is called on to not only proclaim the Good News but defend it with love and care as well.[1] In order to have reasonable, logical conviction, you must truly understand the subject matter. Here, I will first define both “sanctification” and “justification” while explaining the implications thereof.

Sanctification, as understood by the Old Testament, meant that something had been set aside, or set apart, for the sole purpose of serving or honoring God. During Moses’ exodus, The Tabernacle was used as a sanctified vessel set apart for God’s purpose, and later a Temple was made to “house” God. Priests followed very specific rules and guidelines to ensure the proper steps were taken to sanctify sacrifices, offerings, and holy places. These things were set apart from everything else to serve a very special purpose: serving God’s will and God’s will alone. If it was not sanctified, it could not be used for that purpose—and would most likely be discarded or disposed of.[2] The pinnacle of Old Testament sanctification came when God literally dwelled among His people by inhabiting the first Temple built by King Solomon. The Temple had been sanctified, set apart, as a dwelling place for God. We can see that whatever is “sanctified” is something very special indeed and has been set apart from everything else in the world as a special offering or vessel for God’s own purpose. The standard for what is deemed “sanctified” or “clean” is near perfect—or as perfect as one can make it. If you didn’t follow every single step in the process to make something sanctified, it was seen as unclean and unusable. The ultimate standard here is extremely high and is a standard set directly by God.

As we work our way to the New Testament, we see that sanctification takes on a more robust meaning and is made much more applicable to us. The Holy Spirit has been introduced to the world as a means for humankind’s chance at sanctification.[3] Now, we are the sanctified temple for the Holy Spirit, we are God’s dwelling place, and we have become a clean offering for God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.[4] We are all sanctified because our Lord and Savior gave himself to the world as the perfect offering to God. Essentially, we are sanctified because Christ died for us—through no work of our own.[5] We have become God’s chosen people, set apart from everything else, as we are made holy through Christ’s atonement. The “old” sanctification has been realized through the fulfillment of the Law, which has given us the gift of grace, by our perfect sanctification.[6] Don’t think the old Law has been abolished, that the old way of sanctifying has been done away with—instead, Christ fulfilled the old Law and lived the perfect life so we didn’t have to. The result? We are God’s people, sanctified for the purpose of serving God.

Although different, but directly related to sanctification, justification must be understood as the cornerstone for salvation. As sanctification is the means for the Holy Spirit to dwell and work within you (making us holy), justification is the result of the inner-dwelling and works of the Holy Spirit. Simply put, sanctification is the cause, justification is the effect. Without one, there cannot be another. However, both come by God’s good grace and no work of our own.[7] This means that mankind can be both sinner and saint, lustful with desires and made righteous by the Holy Spirit, clean and unclean.[8] The only way this is possible is by the gift of sanctification, through the Holy Spirit, resulting in justification by faith in Christ alone.

Justification is work done entirely by God alone (as we learned from sanctification). We are saved and justified in the eyes of God because we have faith in Christ and nothing more. When Christ sacrificed Himself for our sins, His righteousness was imputed to us through our faith.[9] Christ acted on our behalf, which means we are free to accept God’s grace through nothing we’ve done ourselves. Through Christ’s sacrifice, we are freely justified, without our merits, by the grace of God, through faith alone. Justification is the process that took place by Christ dying on the cross and rising from the dead three days later. We have all been justified to receive God’s grace through our faith in Christ and nothing more. Essentially, this is the true essence of the Gospel and truth we should never surrender, ignore, or compromise.[10]

The Gospel is a real, living thing in our lives—it is not something mystical, out of reach, or unknowable. As we’ve learned, we are all sanctified and justified to receive God’s good grace and salvation through our faith. We are all sinners, we all fall short of the glory of God, and we all need to be saved from sin and death. The Good News has been spread to all corners of the earth—we have been made righteous and have been saved through the works of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Faith is all that is required.

Note:

[1] Dr. William Lane Craig, Christian Apologetics: Who Needs It?

[2] Isiah 52:11

[3] Martin Luther, The Shorter Catechism

[4] 1 Corinthians 6:19, Hebrews 10:10

[5] Galatians 2:16

[6] Romans 10:4

[7] Ephesians 2:8

[8] Romans 7:15

[9] James Buchanan, The Doctrine of Justification

[10] Martin Luther, The Smalcald Articles of Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions

5 Important Books I Read During 1 Year of COVID (That You Should Read Too)

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Timothy Fox

I’ve always enjoyed reading. And when the COVID lockdowns began in March 2020, there wasn’t much else to do for a long time. I took full advantage of this, though, and over the next year, I read a lot of books over a wide range of topics. For instance, I read the entire Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis with my son (in the correct order), which was wonderful.

But not all of my reading was for fun. I focused mostly on current cultural issues, given all that went down in 2020. I wanted to better understand what was going on, how things got so bad, and maybe get some ideas on how to fix it. Since I’ve recommended many of these books to others, I figured I would just share my list with everyone. Here are the five most important books on culture that I read from March 2020 to March 2021, along with some honorary mentions:

1) Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents by Rod Dreher

If you only read one book on the list, this one should be it. Rod Dreher compares our modern society to totalitarian regimes around the world, and the similarities are scary. He warns of the loss of our religious freedoms as well as the Church’s impending persecution. Dreher discusses many important topics, such as surveillance capitalism (“Alexa, please record all of my conversations.”) and soft totalitarianism (cultural coercion instead of government coercion), as well as what Christians must do to stand firm in the face of increasing hostility. After reading Live Not by Lies, Dreher’s Benedict Option looks more appealing than ever.

2) The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt

This book addresses the harm that well-meaning adults have caused young people by sheltering them within a culture of safetyism—absolute safety at all costs. Such coddling has impeded young people’s ability to develop grit and autonomy, making them overly dependent on moral authority and unable to withstand conflict. While this has had the greatest impact on college campuses, we can all see how it has spilled into society at large. The authors seek to expose the three lies of safetyism and teach parents, educators, and everyone else how to raise the next generation to be resilient and independent.

To learn more about The Coddling of the American Mind, visit the book’s website.

3) Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay

If you’ve been paying any attention to current events, you’ve likely heard of Critical Theory (CT) or Critical Race Theory. Simply put, CT is a motivating school of thought behind many political and academic movements within our society, an ideology that is capable of destroying any type of open-minded, liberal debate. Cynical Theories is a thoroughly-researched academic (yet accessible) book that teaches the history of CT and how it has influenced the modern Social Justice movement. While some topics may seem outrageous to uninformed readers, such as fat studies (yes, that’s a thing), the authors give all of the content a fair and honest evaluation.

If you wish to seriously study the influence that CT has had on practically every modern field of study, you need to read Cynical Theories. Oh, and did I mention that the authors are atheists? CT isn’t just a Christian boogeyman; it’s a problem for everyone.

To read a more thorough overview, see Neil Shenvi’s review.

4) The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity by Douglas Murray

As the title states, this book examines three of the most divisive issues in our culture today: gender, race, and identity. It focuses on how news media and social media are destroying our society through mob mentality and tribalism. Just be warned: this book is very spicy. If you haven’t been following the cultural narrative regarding gender, race, and identity, prepare to be shocked, and possibly outraged.

Again, for a greater overview, read the review by Neil Shenvi.

5) The Rise of Victimhood Culture by Bradley Keith Campbell and Jason Manning

Canceling. Safe spaces. Trigger warnings. Microaggressions. These are all features of victimhood culture, a moral culture in which victimhood is a sort of social currency—the greater one’s victimhood, the higher one’s social or moral status. This book traces the rise of victimhood within our society, noting how it stems from our general dignity culture, which stresses the dignity for all persons, while adding elements of honor culture, in which even the slightest of insults cannot be tolerated. If you wish to understand how our society has become obsessed with victimhood and offended about practically everything, you need to read this book.

These are 5 of the most important cultural books I read from March 2020 to March 2021, which I highly recommend to you as well. Note that only one of the books criticizing our modern culture is Christian, so it’s good to know that there are people across the religious and political spectrum who are concerned with the current state of our society.

Honorary Mentions

Now, if you’ve already read all five books above, or you’re looking for even more recommendations, here are some honorary mentions:

1) Anything by Thomas Sowell

Not everything I read during the pandemic was good. I saw Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility referenced and recommended far and wide, so I thought I should see for myself what all the fuss was about.

My verdict?

It’s terrible. Stay far away from it. This book is mental poison, filled with gross generalizations and slander of whites, unprovable and unfalsifiable assumptions, cherry-picked anecdotal evidence, and extremely poor reasoning. White Fragility peddles racism and white guilt and it will only fuel greater racial animus and division within our society. Shame on anyone foolish enough to be manipulated by the nonsense DiAngelo spews in this book.

And lest you think this is all just an example of my own fragility, it’s been trashed by plenty of others as well, such as us at FreeThinking Ministries, Samuel Sey, Neil Shenvi, Ben Shapiro, James Lindsay, John McWhorter… just to name a few.

Why do I mention all of this? As a mental detox for torturing myself with White Fragility, I read a few books by Thomas Sowell (thanks to Wintery Knight’s constant recommendations). Now, some accuse Sowell of being too conservative (as if that’s a bad thing), but his work still serves as a counterbalance to many progressive racial and economic talking points.

During the pandemic lockdowns, I read (or listened to – another thanks to WK for turning me on to audiobooks) Disparities and Discrimination, Economic Facts and Fallacies, Charter Schools and their Enemies, and White Liberals and Black Rednecks. They’re all great, and I would recommend any of them based on your individual interest.

But is there one book by Thomas Sowell that I recommend to beginners? Again, it depends. If you want a response specifically to economic claims along racial lines, read Disparities and Discrimination. If you want a general response to progressive economic talking points, read Economic Facts and Fallacies.

2) 1984 by George Orwell

No, this isn’t a joke. The only reason I didn’t include it on the main list was to limit it to non-fiction books about modern cultural issues. However, the events of 1984 are quickly becoming current events. While I vaguely remembered much of the book from past readings, I was alarmed by how many of its events are now happening in our culture, such as blatant doublethink, erasing history down memory holes, and punishing people for thought crimes.

If you haven’t read 1984 since high school, or you’ve never read it before, do yourself a favor and read it. You’ll be shocked by how much the events of this dystopian novel written in the mid-20th century parallel our current society.

3) The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman

This book isn’t on my main recommendation list since it’s a long, tough, academic read. Also, I’m still working through it… slowly. But it’s very important in how it traces the psychological history of how our society has come to value expressive individualism over all else, and how gender and sexuality have become such important aspects of personal identity.

Happy reading!

UK Police Arrest 71-Year-Old Pastor For Defining Marriage The Way Jesus Defined Marriage

Legislating Morality, Culture & Politics, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Wintery Knight

I think it’s important for American Christians to learn lessons about what happens to religious liberty by looking at what happens to Christians in other times and places when Democrats (secular leftists) take power. This time, let’s look at a story from the UK, which has been on a 30-year-run into far-left socialism. They’ve embraced atheism, feminism, and socialism. Here’s the result.

The UK Daily Mail reports:

A Christian pastor who was arrested after he preached from the Bible said yesterday he had been treated ‘shamefully’.

John Sherwood, 71, was led away in handcuffs, questioned in a police station and held overnight after being accused of making homophobic comments outside Uxbridge Station in west London.

The grandfather claimed he was left bruised after police pulled him from a mini-stepladder he was using and cuffed his hands behind his back.

Police said they had received complaints the man had been making ‘allegedly homophobic comments’ and arrested him under the Public Order Act, which can be used under the vague proviso that someone is using ‘abusive or insulting words’ that cause ‘harm’ to someone else.

[…]Mr Sherwood, a pastor for 35 years, said: ‘I wasn’t making any homophobic comments, I was just defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman. I was only saying what the Bible says – I wasn’t wanting to hurt anyone or cause offence.

‘I was doing what my job description says, which is to preach the gospel in open air as well as in a church building.

‘When the police approached me, I explained that I was exercising my religious liberty and my conscience. I was forcibly pulled down from the steps and suffered some injury to my wrist and to my elbow. I do believe I was treated shamefully. It should never have happened.’

Mr Sherwood, who preaches at an independent evangelical church in north London, was arrested under the Public Order Act for allegedly causing alarm or distress.

Before we go too far, let’s just settle the question of what Bible-believing Christians should believe about the definition of marriage.

Matthew 19:1-6:

1 Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan.

2 And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.

3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?”

4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female,

5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?

6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

To be a Christian, minimally, is to be a follower of Jesus Christ. That means that we accept what Jesus teaches, on whatever he teaches about. We don’t overturn the teachings of Jesus in order to make people who are rebelling against God feel better about their rebellion. It is central to the Christian worldview that Christians care more about what God thinks of them than what non-Christians think of them. In fact, Christians are supposed to be willing to endure suffering rather than side with non-Christians against God’s authority.

Matt Walsh had a fine article about this issue.

He said:

As Christians, our goal is not to avoid being like the big bad “other Christians,” but to strive to be like Christ Himself. This is one of the advantages to having an Incarnate God. He went around acting and speaking and teaching and generally functioning in our realm, thereby giving us a model to follow. This is the model of a loving and merciful man, and also a man of perfect virtue who fought against the forces of evil, condemned sin, defended his Father in Heaven with sometimes violent force, spoke truth, and eventually laid down His life for those He loved (which would be all of us).

[…]This is what it means to believe in Christ. Not just to believe that He existed, but to believe that Christ is Truth itself, and that everything He said and did was totally and absolutely and irreversibly true forever and always. Many Christians today — not only the ones in the video, but millions alongside them — seem to think we can rightly claim to have “faith” in Jesus or a “relationship” with Him while still categorically denying much of His Word. This is a ridiculous proposition. We can’t declare, in one breath, that Christ is Lord, and in the next suggest that maybe God got it wrong on this or that point. Well, we can make that declaration, but we expose our belief as fraudulent and self-serving. We worship a God we either invented in our heads, which is a false idol, or a God who is fallible, which is a false idol.

If you really accept Jesus as God, then you can’t think he is wrong when he explains what marriage is. Period. End of issue. And yet today, so many church-attending Christians are anxious to change the definition of marriage so that non-Christians will like them.

Why are some church-attending Christians so progressive?

So, I have quite a few evangelical Christian acquaintances who think they are Christians because they got married, had kids, and attend church. You know. They’re “Christians” culturally. But instead of thinking about what policies are supported by the Bible, all their policy-deciding is done for them by NPR, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, etc. That’s because they want to appear “smart” to non-Christians. And having to read books on your own by people like Thomas Sowell (economics), Heather Mac Donald (crime), Douglas Murray (immigration), John Lott (self-defense), Christopher Kaczor (abortion), Ryan T. Anderson (marriage), etc. is just TOO MUCH WORK. Reading is hard. It makes churchy Christians feel bad. Much better to watch Star Wars / Ellen and read fantasy/romance novels and buy video games/handbags.

The point of having political views, they say, is to look smart and good to others. Not to promote policies that are consistent with the Bible, or that allow Christians to act consistently with the Bible. So you get church-attending Christians voting against the small government, free speech, religious liberty, the rule of law, private property, school choice, etc. because forming beliefs by consuming secular left radio and TV is easier than reading.

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Original Blog Source: https://cutt.ly/dbYqTMe

May 17, 2021/by Guest

Is God Fading Away?

2. Does God Exist?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Mia Langford

The “omnis” of theology – omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, etc. – are under increasing attack, and not just from what are recognized as more theologically liberal camps of Christianity. Examples abound – even from within evangelicalism — of various attributes of God being seemingly “picked off” by scholarly fire, or compromised among the laity to the point the meaning of the term is lost, and along with it, the force that would inspire worship and awe.

What is at the root of this “fading away” of a traditional understanding of God? It’s almost as if a lynch pin has been removed that kept these attributes anchored in place.

On this week’s episode of Why Do You Believe? Dr. Richard Howe gives name to that lynch pin: classical theism.

Classical Theism

Classical theism is a theology of God emphasizing His simplicity. The term classical here means grounded along the contours and categories of Western thinking arising from the ancient Greeks, the Christian church fathers, and subsequently the medieval Scholastics.

Under this framework, God is pure actuality, or infinite, unchanging existence, and not a being composed of metaphysical parts like everything in the created order (e.g. angels are composed of form and existence, human beings are composed of form, matter, and existence, etc.).

All God’s attributes, such as the “omnis,” immutability, and more, follow from this metaphysical principle of simplicity (attribute being a characteristic of God’s nature or His actions that can be known from creation [general revelation] and from His word [special revelation]). God’s attributes are entailed and connected in such a way as to imply and support one another, and if one attribute is removed or altered, the others collapse as well.

In other words, the ostensible individuation of God’s attributes is really the attempt of our finite human understanding to break God’s magnitude and majesty into digestible bites, and when we tamper with the cornerstone of divine simplicity, or any individual attribute, the entire house shakes.

Who Pulled the Pin?

So, if simplicity is the grounding for the various attributes of God, why has simplicity largely fallen by the wayside in modernity? Dr. Howe credits this discard largely to a lack of skill in hermeneutics. He demonstrates in this episode that a compromised and erroneous view of the nature and attributes of God will follow the discard of this cherished and enduring principle of theology, which followed an inconsistent and inappropriate interpretation of the text. Where classical theism honors God as being in a class by himself as a necessary and simple being, other systems can often impose human, finite, and compromised characteristics onto God.

Can Jesus’ Story Still Surprise You?

Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Bob Perry

History shows that prudence and wisdom are rarely on the side of new ways of looking at Scripture. This is especially true of the “progressive” bent toward remaking Jesus in a postmodern image. So, when I first heard about Tom Gilson’s new book, Too Good To Be False, I have to admit I was confused. Gilson is a solid Christian thinker. But the back cover of his book told me that “Christians reading [it] will encounter Jesus in fresh, worshipful new ways.” Had he gone to the dark side? Ten pages in my fears were allayed. It turns out Jesus’ story can still surprise you. Gilson’s book is not a new interpretation of Jesus. It’s a challenge to see ancient words with fresh eyes. And the picture he paints is astonishing.

Would You Hire This Guy?

Imagine receiving a memo from someone you work with. Its purpose is to introduce an individual he wants you to consider for a job opening you have in your office. In the memo, he describes the candidate as someone who never learns from experience, certainly not from his own mistakes. In fact, he’s never admitted to making a mistake. His leadership skills haven’t improved in the least. He shows no sign of character growth. When you ask him questions, he rarely gives you a straight answer. In his view, you can disagree with him, but that would just make you wrong. And he commands those who work with him to do things his way without exception (51-52).

Would you hire him? Or would you ask yourself, “Who does this guy think he is?”

That’s Jesus as you’ve probably never thought of him before.

Fall On Your Face

The insights in Too Good To Be False are not based on rethinking Jesus’ doctrines or deity. Quite the opposite. They are reminders that we are too used to the populist Jesus we’ve all been encouraged to befriend. When you focus on what he actually said and did, there is no temptation to punch Jesus in the shoulder and laugh. Instead, you are overwhelmed with the urge to fall down on your face and worship him. Yet, he invites you into his circle of trust anyway.

The real Jesus is a leader unlike any the world has ever seen. He speaks and acts with authority, confidence, and power. But he never misuses that power. He never even uses it to his own advantage. Instead, he directs that power toward loving others. He commands respect. And he is always the smartest person in the room.

The combination of these character traits describes a man who cannot be of this world. He’s unlike anyone any of us has ever met or even heard about. And while it’s tempting to say that makes him too good to be true, history tells us differently. The facts are more compelling. They make him too good to be false.

A Novel Character

Jesus’ persona is so outrageously superior it demands an explanation. After all, he’s the most memorable character ever created. And that could make it tempting to write him off as the invention of someone’s very fertile imagination. But you don’t have that option. Dismissing the Jesus of the Gospels that way would be tantamount to subscribing to the most outrageous conspiracy theory in human history. A coordinated forgery made by multiple authors all possessed of the same fanciful delusion. But it’s even worse than that.

To hear the skeptics tell it, this Jesus story is some grand version of the Telephone Game. It got invented, embellished, retold, and passed down through multiple storytellers in various locations. Yet, somehow, the legendary character this process created turns out to be exactly the same guy everywhere we look. He lives in all four Gospels (five if you join the ones who invoke ‘Q’). Somehow, this scrambled mess “produced a greater miracle than the resurrection: the greatest story of all time, with the greatest character in all literature, presenting moral teaching that’s changed every civilization it’s touched for the better.” (133)

Quite a miracle indeed.

Confronting The Skeptics

The usual skeptics won’t take this lying down, of course. But Tom Gilson has been engaging them and their ideas on his Thinking Christian blog since 2004. He’s heard all of their arguments hundreds of times. So, when it comes to handling objections to his thesis, he does so with style, grace, and simplicity. They’re all there — Dawkins, Spong, Aslan, Ehrman, Carrier, Price, Armstrong, Hitchens, and others — and Gilson acknowledges their points. But instead of trying to cut down each tree, he focuses on the forest. Jesus of Nazareth is a character no one could make up.

There are ways to respond to the details of the so-called Gospel “contradictions.” But some skeptics just refuse to recognize them as simple differences in point-of-view. It’s tempting to feel compelled to explain why Jesus didn’t talk about today’s hot-button moral and social issues. They don’t care that, throughout history, the solution to every moral dilemma has come through the actions of Jesus’ followers. We’ve heard the bluster about how Jesus “became God” (Ehrman) or how he was simply another rehashed legend (Dawkins, Armstrong). We’ve even been told that he didn’t really exist at all (Carrier). None of these gets to the heart of the problem.

With all the corruption and shenanigans entailed in passing down a made-up legend, how could the Synoptic authors have pulled it off? How could they have each arrived at the same God-man Jesus when the Telephone Game hadn’t had time to invent his deity before they wrote their Gospels?

The Jesus We Take For Granted

Jesus was a media influencer before it was cool. But what made him popular with those who knew him best also made him notorious with the political and religious leaders of his day. Nobody likes a guy who thinks he’s God incarnate. People like that need to be eliminated. But when those same people reappear shortly thereafter, those who tried to eliminate them know they’ve got a real problem on their hands.

It’s only happened once.

Today, the most vehement opponents of Christianity still invoke his name. They do so to try to expose the “hypocrisy” of modern Christians. But when they do, they’re making Tom Gilson’s point. Even they admire the one character in human history who “no author, no poet and no playwright has ever devised … a character of perfect power and perfect love like Jesus” (126).

He is the standard by which every other character is measured. Too loving to be a liar. Too compelling to be a lunatic. He only leaves us one choice. And Too Good To Be False reminds us that it is a choice we have too often taken for granted.

What Our Perpetual Fight With Entropy Tells Us

2. Does God Exist?, Atheism, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Al Serrato

Many years ago, when I was younger and much less wise, I decided it would be a good father-son project to invest in an older car that I could restore. (Note to fathers: it’s a much better bonding idea to find something your kids like than the other way around). So, after some searching, and mindful of my meager budget, I ended up finding an ’87 Mustang convertible that was in pretty good shape overall. It wasn’t difficult for me to envision that with a little elbow grease, and a website that specializes in Mustang parts, I could make this car showroom quality in no time.

After the novelty wore off, and my kids’ interest waned from little to none, I found that I had a solitary project on my hands that had this very annoying habit of making negative progress. That’s right. No matter how many items I crossed off the to-do list, more kept getting added. And I found that things always went from good to bad, from working to broken, from clean to dirty. Window switches that were working one day stopped working the next. Motors that keep the windows moving smoothly up and down began to groan and then stopped. Fuses blew, over and over again. Amazingly, the process never worked the other way. No matter how long I waited, broken switches never fixed themselves. Cracked pieces of trim, or a broken taillight, never repaired themselves. Rust in the metal always appeared, where it wasn’t before, and never gave way to clean and shiny metal. Yes, the law of entropy was fully in effect, and the only way to reverse that process was to invest time, energy, and money.

This of course comes as no surprise to anyone who has ever owned anything. Nor is it a surprise to anyone who has considered the way nature operates. Scientists tell us that this law – entropy – is a characteristic of the universe. Entropy is, put simply, a measure of disorder, and it seems that a universal law is in operation moving everything from states of higher to states of lower order. In other words, nature has a particular direction to it, and that direction is down.

Christianity and atheism are competing worldviews. Each one claims to be able to make sense of the world so as to explain the way things really are. And despite the increasing popularity of atheism, and the increasing disdain for historic Christianity, the atheistic worldview is utterly incapable of making sense of the world. As it relates to entropy, atheism must explain why it is that the “evolution” of life has escaped this universal law. How is it that incredibly complex human beings evolved from lower life forms? When DNA is subjected to random change, the result is often lethal – it’s called cancer. But somehow, atheists insist, given enough time, a simple single-celled life form acquired the instructions necessary to produce a complete human life, instructions that must perfectly direct the assembly and interworking of dozens of systems. And if that were not hard enough, how can life have emerged from inert – lifeless – material? Leave a rock alone for a few millennia and you end up with, well, a rock.

The Christian worldview, by contrast, can provide that explanation. The Big Bang event that started this downward slide in progress is the result of a massively powerful and immensely intelligent being, who provided the laws we see in nature, and who wrote the instructions that scientists are beginning to decipher within DNA. The reason life “evolved” on earth is because an Intelligent Designer designed it to and provided the energy source to power the process. Recognizing the need for such a “first cause” is not unscientific. Indeed, modern science began with the presupposition that intelligent minds could untangle the mysteries of nature because these mysteries were not random but were themselves the product of an ordered mind, of intelligence.

Fighting the obvious, as atheists do, is even less successful than fighting entropy. They would be better off using their time in more productive pursuits.

Simon of Cyrene, Cleopas, and the Eyewitness Testimony of the Gospels

4. Is the NT True?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Ryan Leasure

Modern critics doubt that eyewitnesses stand behind the four Gospels. In fact, they argue that the first followers of Jesus told others about Jesus who told others about Jesus who told others about Jesus, and eventually someone wrote all those stories down—much like the game of telephone. According to this theory, anonymous figures wrote the Gospels in places like Turkey, Greece, and Rome.

Biblical scholar Richard Bauckham begs to differ. One of the more brilliant ways Bauckham pushed back against the form criticism of the early twentieth century was to highlight that the names in the Gospels correspond to the names in the broader Palestinian record. In other words, one would expect a slew of unrealistic Palestinian names (like Marcus or Gaius) if someone was merely writing hearsay from across the Roman Empire. This point is especially true when one considers that the Jewish names across the Empire were radically different from the Palestinian Jewish names. The fact that the Gospels give realistic names suggests that the accounts can be traced back to Palestine itself.

But Bauckham also looks at the names from a different angle to provide further support for eyewitness testimony. He argues that the presence of certain names seems highly unusual unless they were the eyewitness sources behind their stories.

Anonymous by Default

Most of the people in the Gospels are anonymous. Besides the disciples, government officials, and a few key figures, just about everyone else remains anonymous. Allow me to give you some samples from Luke:

Luke 5:12 — “While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy.”
Luke 6:6 — “On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered.”
Luke 7:2 — “Now a centurion had a servant who was sick and at the point of death, who was highly valued by him.”
Luke 8:43 — “And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone.”
Luke 10:25 — “And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, ‘Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’”
Luke 13:14 — “But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, ‘There are six days in which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.’”

I could list more. By my count fifty-one anonymous characters appear in Luke. This does not count large groups such as the five thousand or the seventy-two. Nor does this list include generic statements where Jesus heals “many” or interacts with a crowd.

Since obscure characters are usually anonymous, we should take notice when one of them gets mentioned.

Simon of Cyrene

Mark mentions three obscure figures in Mark 15:21. He notes, “And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.” It’s noteworthy that none of these three figures show up anywhere else in the narrative. Moreover, while Matthew and Luke also mention Simon of Cyrene, they leave out his two sons. What best explains this phenomena?

Church tradition suggests that Mark’s Gospel is more or less Peter’s account of things. Yet, Peter wasn’t in all places at all times. In fact, he drops out of the narrative in the previous chapter. He’s presumably in hiding after Jesus’ arrest. So how would Peter or Mark know that Simon carried Jesus’ cross? Who’s testimony stands behind this story?

It most certainly has to be Simon of Cyrene. Furthermore, the mention of his two sons Alexander and Rufus suggests that Mark expected his readers to know who they were. In fact, if Mark wrote his Gospel in Rome (as tradition suggests), it’s reasonable to believe that the church heard this story from Alexander and Rufus themselves. Think about it. Alexander and Rufus must have heard the story dozens of times from their dad. And now as they relayed this same story to the church in Rome, imagine how proud they must have felt. That’s our dad! He carried Jesus’ cross! Since neither Matthew nor Luke mention these two sons, we can assume that their audiences (places other than Rome) would not have been familiar with them.

Cleopas

After his resurrection from the dead, Jesus appears to two individuals on the road to Emmaus — Cleopas and an anonymous figure. Why mention Cleopas and not the other? The story obviously does not require him to be named.

The most reasonable explanation is that Cleopas must be the source for this specific account. Again, none of the disciples were present. Luke himself was not present. But as Luke mentioned in his prologue, he spoke with different eyewitnesses before compiling his Gospel account (Luke 1:1-3). Cleopas was one such eyewitness.

Also worth noting is that Cleopas was probably Jesus’ uncle. Elsewhere, John reports, “but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene” (John 19:25). While the spelling is different in John, Bauckham argues that “Clopas is a very rare Semitic form of the Greek name Cleopas, so rare that we can be certain this is the Clopas who, according to Hegesippus, was the brother of Jesus’ father Joseph.”[1]

Writing in the early fourth century, church historian Eusebius references Hegesippus’ quote on Clopas. He writes:

After the martyrdom of James and the conquest of Jerusalem which immediately followed, it is said that those of the apostles and disciples of the Lord that were still living came together from all directions with those that were related to the Lord according to the flesh (for the majority of them also were still alive) to take counsel as to who was worthy to succeed James. They all with one consent pronounced Symeon, the son of Clopas, of whom the Gospel also makes mention; to be worthy of the episcopal throne of that parish. He was a cousin, as they say, of the Saviour. For Hegesippus records that Clopas was a brother of Joseph.[2]

According to church tradition, Clopas’ son, Symeon, the cousin of Jesus and James, became the overseer of the church in Jerusalem after James’ martyrdom in AD 62. Thus, we can see why Clopas’ testimony might carry some significant weight in the early church. He was the uncle of Jesus, and his son was a prominent leader in the Jerusalem church.

Names and Eyewitnesses

A few other names also fit this same description (Jairus, Bartimaeus, and Zacchaeus to name a few). By looking at the general pattern in the Gospels, these obscure figures should have remained anonymous. Therefore, their names seem rather significant. I believe Bauckham is correct when he suggests “that many of these named characters were eyewitnesses who not only originated the traditions to which their names are attached but also continued to tell these stories as authoritative guarantors of their traditions.”[3]

Notes

[1] Richard Bauckham, Jesus, and the Eyewitnesses, 47.

[2] Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.11.

[3] Richard Bauckham, Jesus, and the Eyewitnesses, 39.

Resurrection Defense Series: Early Eyewitness Testimony and the Failure of Hallucinations to Account for Them

Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Brian Chilton

Regardless of whether an event is recent or of antiquity, the researched event holds greater historical probability if it holds a higher number of eyewitnesses. The more eyes on the event, the greater chance the historian has in understanding what transpired. When it comes to the resurrection of Jesus, numerous individuals encountered the risen Jesus in a variety of locations and over the course of 40 days (Acts 1:3). The number of witnesses is recorded in an early creed which is accepted by even critical scholars. Even Bart Ehrman, Rudolf Bultmann, and Gerd Ludemann—individuals who are highly skeptical of biblical claims—accept the credibility of the early NT creeds, which includes 1 Corinthians 15:3-9 (Bultmann, NTT, 42; Ehrman, Forged, 92-93; Ludemann, Paulus, 142). The creed of 1 Corinthians 15 represents material that Paul obtained from the early Christian leaders in Jerusalem when he met with them a few years after his conversion. NT scholar Luke Timothy Johnson notes that “the most critical historian can affirm without hesitation. Can anyone doubt, for example … a meeting between Paul and the Jerusalem Church leadership concerning the legitimacy of the gentile mission” (Johnson, Real Jesus, 103)? How many witnesses are listed in the earliest material? Furthermore, is it possible that the groups of individuals listed could have had a hallucination?

The Early Witnesses

Examining the 1 Corinthians 15 creed, the following individuals are listed: Peter, as noted by his Aramaic name Cephas; the twelve disciples; over five hundred believers; James the brother of Jesus; and Paul. Thus far, the number is up to 514. The Gospels note that the women also served as eyewitnesses of the risen Jesus which included Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Salome, Joanna, and other unnamed women (Luke 24:10). This adds at least 5 witnesses. If Mary the mother of Jesus is not the same as Mary the mother of James, one could assuredly add her to the list. If Jesus appeared to James and the other disciples, he certainly would have appeared to his mother also. Thus, an additional person could be added making 6 people added to the running tally equaling 520. Luke also adds Cleopas and another disciple, perhaps his wife, to the list of witnesses when they met Jesus on the Road to Emmaus (Luke 24:18-35). The additional two witnesses increase the total to 522. Matthew and Luke add two other times when numerous witnesses saw the risen Jesus at the same time. Matthew 28 denotes an occasion where the risen Jesus taught a large crowd in Galilee when he provided the Great Commission (Matt. 28:16-20) While the eleven disciples are mentioned, the text leaves open the possibility that Jesus communicates to a group as he notes that some among them doubted. In Acts, Luke records the ascension of the risen Jesus which was encountered by a large group that witnessed his ascension from the Mount of Olives near Jerusalem. Given that this was a public event, many others may have seen Jesus. While 521 are specifically identified and the addition of Mary the mother of Jesus making the number 522, it is possible that the NT could refer to over a thousand people witnessing the risen Jesus given the possibility that 1) women may not be included in the 500 number in 1 Corinthians 15, and 2) that large groups of an unidentifiable number witnessed Jesus on separate occasions. Given that Jesus had previously ordained 70 to go out two-by-two, most assuredly they would have seen the risen Jesus as well if they were not included in the previous lists.

Impossibility of the Hallucination Theory to Explain

As noted, the NT provides solid reasons for believing that numerous people witnessed Jesus over a span of 40 days. However, the skeptic will counter by saying that the disciples merely had a hallucination which led them to believe that Jesus had risen. The hallucination theory fails on several accounts.

The disciples do not hold the traits of those who hallucinate. Those who hallucinate are either induced by drugs, have a mental illness, or are deprived. However, none of the disciples exhibited these characteristics.
The empty tomb does not permit the hallucination theory as an acceptable alternative. All that would be necessary would be the presentation of the dead body of Jesus, but this never happened. The tomb was still found empty in Jerusalem.
The resurrection appearances occurred in different places and by different means (e.g., some occurred indoors while others occurred outdoors, some occurred while standing while others appeared while seated). The disciples would not be in the proper frame of mind for a mass hallucination.
Hallucinations do not normally stop suddenly. Yet the resurrection appearances stopped after 40 days.
The disciples were not anticipating a resurrection event. Thus, the hallucination would have made no sense to the disciples.
Some of the disciples physically touched Jesus (Luke 24:38-40; John 20:24-25) which debunks the possibility of a hallucination.
Hallucinations are individualized events that occur internally and cannot occur in groups. Illusions can occur in groups, hallucinations cannot.
Hallucinations do not account for the enemies of Jesus (i.e., James and John) becoming disciples. If they were hallucinating, they would not have been transformed by the experience. Additionally, the empty tomb would have further debunked the experience.
Hallucinations are relatively rare. As such, they cannot account for the numerous individuals who had the experiences.
Even with people who have drug-induced hallucinations, the person can normally tell that a hallucination is a falsified event compared to items known to be real.

Conclusion

The numerous eyewitnesses of the risen Jesus cannot be attributed to hallucinations or even the development of legendary material. It is believed that the early creeds, including 1 Corinthians 15:3-9 could date to as early as a few months after the resurrection of Jesus and no later than AD 35. The evidence is so strong that early eyewitnesses encountered something that transformed them that it is included in Gary Habermas’s minimal facts. Habermas’s list of minimal facts is data concerning Jesus that are held to over 90% of scholarship, both progressive and conservative alike. Not only this, Richard Bauckham notes given the early nature of the NT creeds that “The earliest Christology was already the highest Christology” (Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel, x). Therefore, neither legendary material nor hallucinations account for these eyewitness encounters. The best interpretation is that Jesus literally rose from the dead and appeared to the numerous individuals who encountered him. These resurrection encounters transformed the witnesses to the point that they were willing to die for what they knew to be true—that Jesus has indeed risen!

Sources

Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament Christology of Divine Identity. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008.

Bultmann, Rudolf. New Testament Theology. Volume One. New York: Charles Sribner’s Sons, 1951.

Ehrman, Bart. Forged: Writing in the Name of God – Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. New York: Harper One, 2011.

Johnson, Luke Timothy. The Real Jesus. San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco, 1996.

Lüdemann, Gerd. Paulus, der Grunder des Christentums. Lüneburg: zu Klampen, 2001.

Missing Melanchthon

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Tim Stratton

Recently I have been accused of “historical eisegesis.”[1]

According to Wikipedia, “eisegesis is the process of interpreting text in such a way as to introduce one’s own presuppositions . . . It is commonly referred to as reading into the text.” This is definitely a problem when someone does this when reading Scripture, but it’s never a compliment to be accused of this in any context.

The context of this accusation is regarding my book, Human Freedom, Divine Knowledge, and Mere Molinism. After surveying Luther, Calvin, and Philip Melanchthon, I concluded that the original Reformers were quite open to the concept of “limited libertarian freedom.” That is to say, although they might have rejected libertarian freedom when it comes to soteriological matters, they seemed to affirm the libertarian freedom to make choices regarding issues not related to salvation.

Indeed, the eminent Reformed scholar Richard Muller has reached similar conclusions in his book, Divine Will and Human Choice (p 222-223):

“Not a few of the proponents and critics of the Reformed doctrine of free choice and divine willing have confused the specifically soteriological determination of the Reformed doctrine of predestination with a ‘divine determinism of all human actions.”

Although I am not the first to point this out, the charge of “historical eisegesis” seems to have been lodged against me alone which left me scratching my head. How could anyone reach this conclusion after reading multiple quotes from the great Reformers I shared in my dissertation/book? One quote from Melanchthon particularly stood out to me. Although I thought Luther and Calvin were clear enough, if there were still any doubt, the great systematic theologian of the Reformation made it clear that humans seem to possess the freedom, opportunity, and categorical ability to do otherwise (libertarian freedom) in mundane matters not related to soteriology (salvation). Indeed, it is my favorite quote from the historical survey. Here is how it reads in my dissertation submitted to North-West University (also found on pg. 111 of my book):

Melanchthon (1521b:151)—the acknowledged theologian to Lutheranism—explains Luther’s position more thoroughly:

“Nor, indeed, do we deny liberty to the human will. The human will has liberty in the choice of works and things which reason comprehends by itself. It can to a certain extent render civil righteousness or the righteousness of works; it can speak of God, offer to God a certain service by an outward work, obey magistrates, parents; in the choice of an outward work it can restrain the hands from murder, from adultery, from theft. Since there is left in human nature reason and judgement concerning objects subjected to the senses, choice between these things, and the liberty and power to render civil righteousness, are also left…. Therefore, although we concede free will the liberty and power to perform the outward works of the Law, yet we do not ascribe to free will these spiritual matters, namely, truly to fear God, truly to believe God, truly to be confident and hold that God regards us, hears us, forgives us, etc.” [151].

Following this quote, I included one more from Melanchthon which seems to seal the deal. In fact, this is my favorite quote from any Reformer because he seems to be explicitly clear in describing libertarian freedom noting that we have power to choose or choose otherwise:

In another place Melanchthon (1521b:151) says: “You yourself have experienced that it is in your power to greet or not to greet him, to put on this coat or not put it on, to eat or not to do so…. By contrast, internal affections are not in our power.”

If that does not sound like the limited libertarian freedom to choose or choose otherwise, I’m not sure what does.

After reading the words of the Reformed systematic theologian, how could anyone accuse me of “historical eisegesis?” Indeed, it seems to me that anyone reading the Reformers in their own words and reaching a different conclusion could be accused of the same. After contemplating this charge, I went to my book and was met with horror . . . Melanchthon’s key quote somehow did not make the final cut!

I have no idea how this happened. One of the most important and key quotes from my dissertation did not make it to my book for some reason (I am sure I am to blame — or gremlins)! I will rectify this situation in the second edition of my book. I’m currently working on a “Mere Molinism Study Guide” (which will be published by Wipf and Stock) co-authored with Timothy Fox. We will find a way to include it in the study guide when we write the section on the historical survey. Stay tuned!

Bottom line: There is good reason to believe that the original Reformers, although they rejected the idea of libertarian freedom regarding salvation issues, would also reject the idea of exhaustive divine determinism (EDD). It seems that they affirmed the idea of limited libertarian freedom in external matters (libertarian freedom limited to things unrelated to salvation issues).

Oswald Bayer seems to affirm libertarian freedom in these “external matters.” In fact, he contends that even the unregenerate can freely choose to do “good” things (or not). These “good” choices in the context of the community of the external world are meaningless regarding issues pertaining to salvation. Bayer summarizes the views that Luther, Melanchthon, and the majority of Reformers probably shared:

A human being has the freedom to order his or her own life. He or she carries responsibility for the way in which this occurs. A Christian acts in the realm of worldly justice together with those who are not Christians. In this realm, God preserves the reason and freedom of both Christians and non-Christians.[2]

Bayer (along with multiple other scholars) vindicates me from the charge of historical eisegesis.[3]Moreover, and more importantly, if Bayer is right about the beliefs of the original Reformers regarding limited libertarian freedom, and the Reformers also believed that an omniscient God knows these limited libertarian free choices logically prior to the divine creative decree and that God is still sovereign over these libertarian choices, then the original Reformers were “mere Molinists” whether they realized it or not!

Stay reasonable (Isaiah 1:18),

Dr. Tim Stratton

Notes

[1] Guillaume Bignon, A critical review and fairly comprehensive refutation of “Human Freedom, Divine Knowledge, and Mere Molinism” by Timothy A. Stratton, http://www.associationaxiome.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Response-to-Tim-Stratton.pdf. See my 50-page response here: Bignons’ Review of Mere Molinism: A Rejoinder.

[2] Freedom? The Anthropological Concepts in Luther and Melanchthon Compared Author(s): Oswald Bayer Source: The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 91, No. 4 (Oct.,1998), pp. 373-387 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Harvard Divinity School Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1509856 Accessed: 08-03-2018 20:23 UTC (Pg 385)

[3] Consider the words of Shedd (a Reformed systematic theologian) who affirms the sourcehood libertarian freedom of Adam:

“In respect to its having no sinful antecedent out of which it is made, sin is origination ex nihilo. Sin is the beginning of something from nothing, and there is this resemblance between it and creation proper. In holy Adam, there was no sinful inclination or corruption that prompted the first transgression. Adam started the wicked inclination itself ex nihilo, by a causative act of self-determination.”

William Greenough Thayer Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, ed. Alan W. Gomes, 3rd ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Pub., 2003), p. 521

Early Christian Theologians

Is the Name Yahweh Found in the New Testament?

Does Psalm 110 Preclude Jesus from Being Yahweh?

The Angel of the Lord

The Carmen Christi

Conclusion

Footnotes

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Note:

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Why are some church-attending Christians so progressive?

Classical Theism

Who Pulled the Pin?

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Would You Hire This Guy?

Fall On Your Face

A Novel Character

Confronting The Skeptics

The Jesus We Take For Granted

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Anonymous by Default

Simon of Cyrene

Cleopas

Names and Eyewitnesses

Notes

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The Early Witnesses

Impossibility of the Hallucination Theory to Explain

Conclusion

Sources

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Notes

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