Theology and Christian Apologetics Archives | CrossExamined.org

The world is an unpredictable place. But we pretend it isn’t. We like to envision our future and plan our steps, pretending we know how we’ll get there. But the stories we write for ourselves rest on assumptions about how the world works and our place in it. And those assumptions tend to be cheery ones. Most of us never include suffering or vulnerability in our forecasts, especially if we believe that “God is in control.” But when it all goes to hell, our illusions fade to black. The smiling facade vanishes quickly when life unveils our real gods. Our lives are changing rapidly and permanently right before our eyes. But the Church needs to take the lead in influencing the world we will face on the other side of this pandemic.

The World Descends

Between Sunday and Thursday of last week, I saw my own home state shut down all bars and restaurants. Inconvenient? Sure. But then I went to work.

I spent the next three days in hotels in Boston and San Francisco. Boston was a dark, rainy ghost town. There were empty streets and closed businesses in the city by the bay. No trolley cars in sight. You could hear birds singing in the eerie air downtown.

I met a British man in an elevator whose flight to London had been canceled. He had no earthly idea when, or how, he would be able to get home. And no one from his airline would communicate with him.

Salt Lake City, one of my airline’s major hubs, was rocked by an earthquake that closed the airport and caused massive flight diversions.

During the descent on our final leg home, we were informed that the eastern half of the Indianapolis Air Traffic Control Center was shutdown. Two air traffic controllers had tested positive for Coronavirus.

On Tuesday, my airline announced that it would park 300 airplanes and cut flying by 40%. By the time I got home, those numbers had changed to 600 airplanes and 70%.

In short, every time I landed somewhere, I was afraid to turn on my phone. In the space of three and a half days, I felt like I had become a character in a Stephen King novel. And as I write this, the details of this pandemic have only gotten worse.

Paradigm Shifts

In the space of just a few hours on the morning of September 11, 2001, we had a massive paradigm shift in this country. It led to economic calamity, war, and distrust. It’s hard to remember what life was like before that day. Today’s crisis may be happening at a little slower pace, but the consequences will be more severe. And some of them will be permanent.

Welcome to the new reality. The post-Coronavirus world is something few of us could have imagined even a few weeks ago. We’re still not sure what that world will look like. But we’re getting a glimpse.

New Reality?

The stock market is plummeting. The value of our retirement accounts have been cut by more than a third. Leaders are issuing edicts and manipulating “rescue” bills to gain a political advantage. Neighbors hoard food and supplies, depriving their neighbors of the same. “Preppers” are feeling vindicated. Opportunists are trying to sell vital products for obscene profits.

In each of these cases, we see the fruits of the gods who some folks really worship: selfishness, panic, fear, power, greed, and control.

It is an unfortunate reality that challenging times tend to bring out the worst in us. And it is a sad fact that some of that fruit comes from people we sit next to in church every week.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Children of a Greater God

We are free-will beings. And that means nothing is inevitable. We don’t have to accept the rotten fruit of the lower gods.

” … for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” 2 Timothy 1:7

The God of the Bible is a reasonable God. A selfless, loving, compassionate God. A God of mercy and justice.

We are made in His image.

The Church has faced catastrophes before. But instead of languishing with the lunatics of the lesser gods, it made the choice to reflect the character of its King. Here are some ways I can think of to do that. Feel free to add some more if you have them…

Empathize With the Younger Generation

If you’re older than 35 or so, think about the world you grew up in as a kid. It was carefree and mostly serene. You didn’t have to think about “adult things.” And your parents weren’t bombarded with outrage, politics, and flamethrowing 24/7/365 from the news. All you had to do was be a kid.

Now think about those who are under 30 years old. Realize that their lives have been bookended by catastrophes like 9/11 and the Coronavirus pandemic. Their view of the world is different than those of us who are older. Look at it through their eyes and have some compassion. You don’t have to be Pollyanna. Just give them something to be optimistic about … or at least try to understand why they’re not.

Serve Our Neighbors

Christianity exploded during the plagues and persecutions in the ancient world. And it did so precisely because Christians served those who most needed it. They comforted and cared for the sick and dying. This isn’t just a job for healthcare professionals. It’s a duty for us all.

We need to quit being the “takers” our culture encourages us to be. We need to be givers of whatever it is we are able to give.

And let’s be smart about this. Preparing to care for those in need includes caching medical supplies and equipment for future outbreaks like this that will come — instead of fighting each other to hoard things now. And it means retooling our country to produce our own medicine and other medical equipment here where we need it, not overseas where it’s cheap.

Demand Economic Restraint

The economic expectations we have come to accept as normal are reckless, selfish, and short-sighted. We borrow and spend too much. We save too little. Our leaders are more worried about the next election than the next generation. But they are like that because we demand comfort and security from them now. We have mortgaged the future so we can indulge ourselves in the present. And we do it on a national, congregational, and personal scale.

Imagine how different this crisis would be if businesses, churches, and families had conserved the financial means to weather this storm. And imagine what kind of world we will be leaving for our kids and grandkids if we don’t change our ways.

The World On The Other Side

The changes we are facing will be dramatic and long-lasting. There are things we will never do the same way. There are ways we will think about things that have been forever altered. But, since that’s the case, let’s make the world on the other side of this a better one. The circumstances will be challenging. But our response should be far different from the world around us.

If you believe Christianity is true, that means it applies to every aspect of our lives and to every situation in which we find ourselves. Economics and pandemics are no exception. Let’s use the rational minds God gave us to be smart, savvy, and sacrificial.

This kind of thing will happen again. If anybody should be ready to deal with it the next time, it’s the Church.

Is the Historical Jesus Fact or Fiction?

Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Tim Stratton

As a pastor who spends a lot of time on the college campus, I hear the following challenges quite often from young skeptics: “There is no good evidence to think that Jesus ever existed,” or “Christianity has pagan roots!” One might put these common challenges as two questions: (1) Did Jesus of Nazareth really exist? (2) Are the gospel records of this man merely fictional mythology?

In this essay, I want to explore several lines of evidence that will show that the answer to the first question is a clear “Yes!” and to the second “No!”

i. Did Jesus of Nazareth really exist?

Though there are many “street atheists,” or “internet infidels” who espouse their unqualified views and who in the process influence many impressionable young minds, it should be pointed out that there are very few (if any) scholars and historians who would argue that Jesus never existed. There is just too much evidence to the contrary.

Space does not permit a thorough list of primary sources for Jesus’ historical existence outside of the New Testament, but the following will demonstrate that Jesus indeed lived. Further, the evidence cited will show that extra-biblical sources do not contradict the historical accounts in the Gospels. Indeed, they complement that history.[1]

The ancient sources[2] will be arranged in two ways: (1) Sources that specifically use the name “Jesus” or “Christ;” and (2) Sources that specifically reference events associated with Jesus.

Sources that specifically use the name “Jesus” or “Christ.”

a) Letter of Mara Bar-Serapion

This letter—written sometime later than A.D. 73—was sent by a Syrian named Mara Bar-Serapion to his son Serapion to encourage him in the pursuit of wisdom and pointed out that those who persecuted wise men were overtaken by misfortune.

What advantage did the Athenians gain from putting Socrates to death? Famine and plague came upon them as a judgment for their crime. What advantage did the men of Samos gain from burning Pythagoras? In a moment their land was covered with sand. What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise King? It was just after that that their kingdom was abolished…. But Socrates did not die for good; he lived on in the teaching of Plato. Pythagoras did not die for good; he lived on in the statue of Hera. Nor did the wise King die for good; He lived on in the teaching which He had given.[3]

This ancient document corroborates Jesus’ death, death by the Jews, and that His teaching obviously had continued on (i.e., He had followers who were spreading His teachings).

b) Flavius Josephus

Josephus, a Jewish historian, wrote toward the end of the first century AD. There are three valuable references for the historicity of Jesus. One (Antiquities xviii. 5) describes John the Baptist just as the New Testament Gospels do. The second (Antiquities xx. 9) describes the death of James:

(Ananus [Ananias]) convened the judges of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus, who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned.

The reference to Jesus being the brother of James fits the New Testament data, but that Jesus is further identified as the Christ is remarkable in light of the following quotation from Josephus.[4]

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ, and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians so named from him are not extinct at this day.” (Antiquities xviii. 33)[5]

The value of these words of Josephus—though some words are controversial—can not be overstated. The Jesus of the New Testament documents is called a wise “man,” did wonderful works, was a great teacher, was the Messiah, was condemned and crucified by Pilate, reportedly arose from dead on the third day (in fulfillment of the Old Testament), and a movement of “Christians” continued at the time of Josephus’ writing.

c) Plinius Secundus, or Pliny the Younger: Governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor (A.D. 112)

The following is a letter he wrote to the emperor Trajan seeking counsel as to how to treat Christians:

In the case of those who were denounced to me as Christians, I have observed the following procedure: I interrogated these as to whether they were Christians; those who confessed I interrogated a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment; those who persisted I ordered executed…. Those who denied that they were or had been Christians, when they invoked the gods in words dictated by me, offered prayer with incense and wine to your image… and moreover cursed Christ—none of which those who are really Christians, it is said, can be forced to do—these I thought should be discharged…. They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn[6], and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food—but ordinary and innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden political associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition…. For the contagion of this superstition has spread not only to the cities but also to the villages and farms. (Epistles X. 96)

The governor identifies Jesus as “Christ” and says his followers consider him “a god.” Their fault in his judgment is their “superstition” (Jesus’ resurrection?).

d) Cornelius Tacitus (A.D. 55-120)

But not all the relief that could come from man, not all the bounties that the prince could bestow, nor all the atonements which could be presented to the gods, availed to relieve Nero from the infamy of being believed to have ordered the conflagration, the fire of Rome. Hence to suppress the rumor, he falsely charged with the guilt, and punished with the most exquisite tortures, the persons commonly called Christians, who were hated for their enormities. Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate,[7] procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius; but the pernicious superstition,[8] repressed for a time broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also.” (Annals XV. 44)

These are the chief references to Jesus outside of the 27 individual accounts comprised in the New Testament. A number of other sources are cited (here) on the FreeThinking Ministries website.

Sources that specifically reference events associated with Jesus.

a) Thallus, the Samaritan-born historian (A.D. 52)

Thallus wrote a history of the Eastern Mediterranean from the time of the Trojan War to his own time. Though his writings have disappeared, we only know of them from fragments cited by other writers. The citation below is from Julius Africanus, who is alluding to Thallus’ reference to the darkness that covered the earth from noon to 3:00 p.m. during Jesus’ crucifixion:

Thallus, in the third book of his histories, explains away this darkness as an eclipse of the sun-unreasonably, as it seems to me….[9]

It was “unreasonable,” of course because a solar eclipse could not take place at the time of the full moon, and it was at the season of the Paschal full moon that Christ died.

b) Phlegon of Tralles, Chronicles (2nd century).

Though he is known to have written several works, his history—Chronicles—has disappeared. He, however, is quoted by several ancient writers.

During the time of Tiberius Caesar, an eclipse of the sun from the sixth hour to the ninth occurred during the full moon.[10]

Phlegon is also noted by Origen:

“But,” continues Celsus… “although we are able to show the striking and miraculous character of the events which befell Him, yet from what other source can we furnish an answer than from the Gospel narratives, which state that “there was an earthquake, and that the rocks were split asunder, and the tombs opened, and the veil of the temple rent in twain from top to bottom, and that darkness prevailed in the day-time, the sun failing to give light?”

Answer: “With regard to the eclipse in the time of Tiberius Caesar, in whose reign Jesus appears to have been crucified, and the great earthquakes which then took place, Phlegon too, I think, has written in the thirteenth or fourteenth book of his Chronicles” (Origen, Against Celsus, 2.33)…. He (Celsus) imagines also that both the earthquake and the darkness were an invention; but regarding these, we have in the preceding pages, made our defense, according to our ability, adducing the testimony of Phlegon, who relates that these events took place at the time when our Saviour suffered. (Origen, Against Celsus 2.59)[11]

From these references to Phelgon’s history, we see that the gospel account of the darkness (three hours long), which fell upon the land during Christ’s crucifixion and very possibly the earthquake were well-known. Origen’s account is especially helpful because he is responding to an antagonist who questions the New Testament record.

There are numerous other sources that corroborate events associated with Jesus’ life and death, some of which can be found by clicking here.

No reference in the above citations has been made to the New Testament documents, though we must not dismiss them as merely “religious books.” They are primary documents[12] and should be viewed as reliable history unless they fail to meet the muster of other ancient documents. Further, it is apparent in other places in the New Testament that the history of Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels, was commonly affirmed. The Apostle Paul in his first letter to the church at Corinth (15:3-5) gives a creed current in his day (prior to his death in AD 64) which states that Jesus was crucified to pay for our sins; that He died, was buried, and rose from the dead on the third day; and that He was seen by eyewitnesses.

Click here for more information regarding this creed.

ii. Are the gospel records of this man merely fictional mythology?

Though a strong case can be and has been made for the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth, this has not stopped many young skeptics from espousing popular bumper sticker slogans like “Christianity has pagan roots.” I personally have been challenged with the accusation that the story of Jesus being the Son of God and rising from the dead is plagiarism from Egyptian mythological pagan “gods” such as Adonis, Mithras, Osiris, Attis, and Horus, to name a few.

But careful analysis shows that such charges fail for several reasons. First of all, there are far more differences between Christianity and these mysterious stories of pagan religions than any similarities offered. For instance, it is purported that the pagan god Osiris was a dying and rising god, and that Christianity is a “copy cat” religion based on Osiris’ resurrection from the dead.[13] At first glance this appears to be troublesome, but when examining these stories with more scrutiny, the differences become glaring.

Osiris, so the account states, was murdered by his brother, and then his body was torn into fourteen pieces and scattered all across Egypt. Then his wife, Isis, found thirteen of the fourteen pieces of his body, revived him (quite different than a resurrection), and then went on to make him “god of the underworld.” This is nothing like the historical story that Jesus voluntarily went to the cross, which defeated and destroyed sin so that through His atonement we as humans could be reconciled with the Creator of the universe, and then three days later, Jesus rose from the dead in whole, and in a powerful, glorified body that we as Christians can also look forward to one day. The story the Bible teaches as historical fact seems quite different when compared to these mythical pagan stories.

Sean McDowell in an article entitled “Is Christianity a Copycat Religion?” says that “Parallels prove nothing.” He gives an interesting parallel: a British ocean liner that could carry 3,000 passengers, had a top cruising speed of twenty-four knots, had an inadequate number of lifeboats hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage, tore a hole in the side of the ship, and sank along with the 2,000 passengers on board. What ship was that? Most of us immediately conclude that this must be the account of the Titanic, but we are mistaken. Sean was describing the Titan, a fictional ship described in Morgan Robertson’s book, Wreck of the Titan, a fictional story written fourteen years before the sinking of the Titanic actually occurred. While the resemblance between the two accounts is eye-opening, the fictional “Titan” is irrelevant to the historical evidence that the Titanic was, in fact, a real ocean liner that sank in the Atlantic after colliding with an iceberg.

Similarly, even if pagan myths did exist that were comparable to the Gospel records and before the time of Christ, it would not undermine the historical evidence for Jesus’ miraculous life, death, and resurrection. “Parallels alone are inconclusive.”[14]

Up to this point, I have intentionally avoided using the Gospel records as historical evidence of the historicity of Jesus because many skeptics disregard anything the Bible says just because it’s in the Bible! However, just because the Bible reports something as a historical event, doesn’t mean we should immediately disregard it. In fact, the Bible is filled with outstanding historical documents. The “search for the historic Jesus” has been going on for well over a century. During this search, there has not been any “new evidence” supporting the idea that the miracle-working Son of God evolved from pagan myths over time. Conversely, modern discoveries have given more reliability to the content of the Gospel accounts in the New Testament. Greg Koukl’s summary states it well:

We know the Apostle Paul died during the Neronian persecution of A.D. 64. Paul was still alive at the close of Acts, so that writing came some time before A.D. 64. Acts was a continuation of Luke’s Gospel, which must have been written earlier still. The book of Mark predates Luke, even by the Jesus Seminar’s reckoning. This pushes Mark’s Gospel into the 50s, just over twenty years after the crucifixion. It is undisputed that Paul wrote Romans in the mid-50s, yet he proclaims Jesus as the resurrected Son of God in the opening lines of that epistle. Galatians, another uncontested Pauline epistle of the mid-50s, records Paul’s interaction with the principle disciples (Peter and James) at least 14 years earlier (Gal 1:18, cf. 2:1). The Jesus Seminar claims that the humble sage of Nazareth was transformed into a wonder-working Son of God in the late first and early second century. The epistles, though, record a high Christology within 10 to 20 years of the crucifixion. That simply is not enough time for myth and legend to take hold, especially when so many were still alive to contradict the alleged errors of the events they personally witnessed. There is no good reason to assume the Gospels were fabricated or seriously distorted in the retelling. Time and again the New Testament writers claim to be eyewitnesses to the facts. And their accounts were written early on while they’re memories were clear and other witnesses could vouch for their accounts. The Gospels are early accounts of Jesus’ life and deeds.[15]

In sum, the contentions that Jesus never existed or that He was a plagiarized version of mythical pagan deities does not pass the muster of historical research, and, therefore, skepticism regarding the reality of the historical person of Jesus is completely unwarranted. Jesus of Nazareth was a real person of history!

Interestingly, Bart Ehrman, one of the harshest and most critical voices regarding Jesus’ resurrection agrees and concludes,

“Whether we like it or not, Jesus certainly existed.”[16]

Notes

[1] A fuller list can be found at our website and the folder “Historical References to Christ from Non-biblical Sources.”

[2] Much of this material and bibliography can be found—often with further discussion—in Gary R. Habermas, The Historical Jesus; Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands A Verdict; also the updated (by his son, Sean McDowell) Evidence That Demands A Verdict: Life-Changing Truth for a Skeptical World. See also Josh McDowell and Bill Wilson; He Walked Among Us. Some dating is based on J. N. D. Anderson Christianity: The Witness of History (pages 13-37, especially).

[3] The manuscript in the British Museum, preserving the text of this letter is quoted from F. F. Bruce in The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?

[4] Relatively little question is raised about the authenticity of this quotation.

[5] There has been much debate over this quotation, primarily because it is such a strong defense of the New Testament accounts of Jesus. All extant manuscripts of Josephus, however, contain it, which is a strong defense of its authenticity. For all the arguments, see McDowell and Wilson, He Walked among Us, 41-45. Though some have said that this quotation has been “edited” by Christians, the Arabic version still has the explicit reference to the resurrection. The Arabic version: “At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them after his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders” (Arabic summary, presumably of Antiquities 18.63. From Agapios’ Kitab al-‘Unwan (“Book of the Title,” 10th c.). See also James H. Charlesworth, Jesus within Judaism, (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Topics/JewishJesus/josephus.html). See also Habermas’ discussion of this and his reference to the Arabic translation of Josephus’ work.

[6] The time was the early morning on the first day of the week, thus celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. By this time, worship had moved from the Sabbath to Sunday.

[7] This is one of four references to Pilate outside the New Testament.

[8] Anderson: [This reference] “is bearing indirect and unconscious testimony to the conviction of the early church that the Christ who had been crucified had risen from the grave.”

[9] Julius Africanus, Chronography, 18.1.

[10] Julius Africanus, Chronography, 18.1.

[11] Phlegon is also noted by a six-century writer named Philopon: And about this darkness…Phlegon recalls it in his Olympiads….

[12] Especially F. F. Bruce, Are the New Testament Documents Reliable? In a Biola Christian Apologetics Program audio lecture (Craig Hazen, “Evidence for the Resurrection”), Hazen states “When these gospel accounts are scrutinized under the accepted principles of textual and historical analysis, they are found to be trustworthy historical documents and primary source accounts concerning the life, death, and resurrection of the man Jesus of Nazareth.”

[13] Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus, 163.

[14] Sean McDowell, “Is Christianity a Copycat Religion?” quoted in The Apologetics Study Bible for Students, 1366.

[15] Greg Koukl, http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6760, accessed February 11, 2017.

[16] Bart Ehrman, “Did Jesus Exist?”, Huffington Post (March 29, 2012); http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bart-d-ehrman/did-jesus-exist_b_1349544.html, accessed February 11, 2017.

How Investigating Paul’s Conversion Turned A Skeptic Into A Christian Apologist

Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Erik Manning

Here’s a very simple proof for Christianity. I’m warning you though, you’re going to be tempted to dismiss it because it’s sneakily uncomplicated. Are you ready for it? OK, here goes:

Premise 1: Paul converted.

Premise 2: Therefore Christianity is true.

OK, I’m kidding. Sort of. But I think that we sometimes fail to appreciate the evidential power of Paul’s conversion. Investigating Paul’s story is what turned a formerly self-proclaimed infidel into a believer and Christian apologist. His name is George Lyttleton.

Who was George Lyttleton?

Born in the small-town of Hagley, England in 1709, George Lyttleton was a prolific poet, Oxford graduate, and statesman who served as a member of Parliament. He had a friend by the name of Gilbert West.

Living in the “Age of Reason” when deism was all the rage, West and Lyttleton were both critical of Christianity. (For those of you who don’t know, deism rejects divine revelation and miracle claims. God created the world but doesn’t intervene.)

Together the two set out to disprove Christianity. They both agreed that the two strongest proofs for the faith were the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the conversion of Paul. So Lyttleton offered to disprove Paul’s conversion, and West set out to discount the resurrection. After doing so, to their own shock, both became Christians.

West said, “As I have investigated the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, I have come to believe that there is something to it, and I am going to write my book from that perspective.” Lyttleton wrote, “The same thing has happened to me. I have come to see that there was something to the conversion of Saint Paul, and I am going to write my book from that perspective.” So they did. Lyttleton’s book was titled The Observations on the Conversion and Apostleship of Saint Paul.

Now obviously Lyttleton’s argument was a little more complicated than “Paul, therefore Christianity is true”. He looked at Paul’s life in Acts and his epistles and concluded that there were four possible explanations for his conversion:

Either Paul was “an impostor who said what he knew to be false, with an intent to deceive;” or
He was an enthusiast who imposed on himself by the force of “an overheated imagination;” or
He was “deceived by the fraud of others;” or
What he declared to be the cause of his conversion did all really happen; “and, therefore the Christian religion is a divine revelation.”

Lyttleton’s book is only about 70 or so pages, so it makes for some light reading. Let me give you a brief synopsis of his arguments.

Was Paul a deceiver?

Virtually no critic today thinks that Paul’s faith wasn’t genuine for the reasons Lyttleton lays out in about 40 pages of the book. The evidence for Paul’s sincerity is overwhelming. Lyttleton runs through some possible motives that Paul could have had for deceiving the church and finds them wanting.

Wealth

Paul wasn’t in it for the money. He worked with his own hands making tents in order to finance his missionary journeys. He said that while he had the right to financial support, he opted to forego this privilege so no one could question his motives.

We see plenty of evidence for this in Paul’s letters and in Acts. (Acts 18:3, 20:33-35, 1 Cor 4:11-12, 9:6-14, 2 Cor 11:7, 1 Thess 4:11, 2 Thess 3:8) If Paul was in it for the Benjamins he would’ve found a different line of work within his own tribe. (I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist making a lame pun.)

Honor of Men

It’s hard to imagine that Paul was in it for his own personal reputation. Consider why he persecuted the church in the first place. A band of fishermen was saying that the Jewish Messiah was executed on a cross and that this Jesus was the Lord of all. He went from being schooled under Gamaliel and considered a reputable Pharisee to joining a band of illiterate preachers. (Acts 4:13) He said that the preaching of the cross was foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews. (1 Cor. 1:23)

He was persecuted in public and treated like a criminal, being repeatedly imprisoned. Paul obviously wasn’t in it for praises of men.

Power

What about power? Was Paul like so many modern-day “apostles”, lording over the churches? Nope. Paul said he wasn’t even worthy to be called an apostle because he persecuted the church. (1 Tim. 1:13-16, 1 Cor. 15:9)

Even when people were proclaiming the gospel from wrong motives where he was imprisoned, he rejoiced. (Phil 1:18) And when the Corinthians were arguing over who their favorite preacher was, he drew attention off himself and put it onto Jesus (1 Cor. 1:13) When the people of Lystra tried to worship him as a god, he quickly put a stop to it. (Acts 14:11-16)

Passion

Paul clearly didn’t convert to serve his own passions. He lived a celibate life. (1 Cor. 7:7, 9:5) He appealed to his own conduct as an example of what a holy life looks like. (2 Cor 7:2, 1 Thess 2:10) Cult leaders like Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and Mohammed had power and married multiple wives. In comparison, Paul clearly wasn’t in it for sex or otherworldly passions.

Pious Lies

Here Lyttleton appeals to the story of Paul’s conversion found in Acts. While no one else on the Road to Damascus saw Jesus, his traveling companions had some sensory experience of Paul’s encounter. Paul was also blinded and subsequently healed by the prayers of Ananias. (Acts 9:8-19) Before King Agrippa, Paul appealed to public facts that the king would be aware of. (Acts 26:23- 26)

Furthermore, if Paul was a liar then all of his miracles were tricks. Paul wrote of his own miracles to an audience that easily could have called him out. (Rom 15:19, 2 Cor 12:12, 1 Thess 1:5, 1 Cor 2:4-5)

So for these five reasons, Lyttleton concludes that the weight of the evidence is that Paul wasn’t a liar.

Paul Wasn’t an Enthusiast (He wasn’t crazy)

In modern times, this is where most critics land on Paul. He just must’ve had a moment and snapped somehow. But according to Lyttleton, Paul wasn’t ‘cuckoo for cocoa puffs’. Paul, by all accounts, was a pretty cool-tempered guy. Says Lyttleton:

“In indifferent matters be became “all things to all men;” to the Jews, he became a Jew, to them that are without law as without law, to the weak he became weak-all, that he might gain some (1 Cor. 9:19-23). His zeal was eager and warm, but tempered with prudence, and even with the civilities and decorums of life, as appears by his behavior to Agrippa, Festus and Felix; not the blind, inconsiderate, indecent zeal of an enthusiast.”

Paul also doesn’t seem to be depressed. Even when he despaired of life given the nature of his persecutions, he didn’t give up. 2 Cor 1:7-9, Phil 1:21-23. Lyttleton also points out that Paul obviously was a learned man, as we can tell just by reading his letters.

Moreover, Paul certainly wasn’t credulous. As someone who lived in Jerusalem for a time, there’s no way that Paul was a stranger to hearing about the miracles of Jesus. He had the facts of the resurrection and presumably would have heard the arguments against them. He had heard what happened at Pentecost and of all the miracles worked by Peter and the other apostles up until the death of Stephen. Far from being credulous, Paul had closed his mind against every proof and refused to believe. Says Lyttleton: “Nothing less than the irresistible evidence of his own senses, clear from all possibility of doubt, could have overcome his unbelief.”

Finally, Paul doesn’t fit the bill of someone who suffered some sort of guilt-induced conversion disorder. We have some access to the science of psychology that Lyttleton didn’t have.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV, women are 5:1 more likely to experience conversion psychosis. Adolescents, military persons in battle, people of low economic status and those with a low IQ are also more likely prone to experience this phenomenon. Paul just doesn’t fit the bill.

Also, we see no evidence that Paul felt any guilt regarding his actions. He seemed more than content with his lifestyle. (Phil 3:5-6) Paul was a sane and rational person.

Paul Wasn’t Duped

This third possible explanation Lyttelton dismisses in one page. The other apostles or early Christians couldn’t have deceived him. Why?

It was impossible that the disciples of Christ could have thought of such a fraud given Paul’s persecution. They were against liars (note Ananias and Sapphira) and also were terrified of him.
It was physically impossible for them to do it. Could they produce a light brighter than the noonday sun? Could they cause him to hear a voice speaking out of that light? Could they make him blind for three days and then return his sight with a word? These kinds of special effects didn’t exist yet.
No fraud could have produced those subsequent miracles which Paul worked (Acts 14:7-9, 19:11-12, 28:8, 2 Cor 12:12, Rom 15:19).

Paul’s conversion was legit and Christianity is a Divine Revelation

Lyttleton concludes that unless we’re going to set aside the normal rules of evidence by which facts are determined, we should accept the whole story of Paul’s conversion as historically true. Therefore, the Christian faith is proved to be a revelation from God. Note that this argument is not dependent on the Gospels.

With that said, there is the dicey issue of arguing for the historical reliability of Acts. Lyttleton’s arguments assume it. He could be accused of begging the question, but proving Acts wasn’t his goal. One would surmise that his audience could find those arguments elsewhere.

For good modern arguments in favor of the historicity of Acts, I recommend Colin Hemer’s The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History, Craig Keener’s commentaries on Acts and Lydia McGrew’s Hidden in Plain Sight.

For a good rundown of the arguments for and against Acts – both old and new- here’s an excellent discussion with Dr. Tim McGrew:

Caveats aside, I think Lyttleton’s points are on the money. Paul was either a liar, a lunatic, a dupe or a genuine eyewitness to the resurrected Jesus. The most reasonable option is #4.

YOU CAN READ LYTTLETON’S BOOK IN FULL HERE.

Infinite Punishment for Finite Crimes?

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Al Serrato

Trying to explain how a good God created Hell can be a daunting task for the Christian apologist. In my last post, I considered the challenge that God could not be “good” if he created a place of “torture.” I tried to make the case that there is a difference between torture – which implies intentional infliction of punishment for the pleasure of doing so – and torment, which is the necessary byproduct of God’s legitimate act of separating Himself from those who have rejected Him, who died while still in rebellion against Him. A related challenge often encountered when discussing the doctrine of Hell is the seeming unfairness in endless punishment for what appears to be brief – in some cases, extremely brief – temporal actions. This challenge can put the Christian apologist on the defensive, trying to justify what seems on its face to be wildly excessive punishment. As I suggested in my last post, providing an intellectual response to such challenges may have limited effectiveness when dealing with someone who is approaching the issue from an emotional standpoint; logical answers don’t often make someone feel better about what is bothering them. But, in my experience, at any rate, I have found that some people insist that no intellectually satisfying answer is possible to a challenge such as this. So here goes…

The assumption underlying the challenge here is that there should be some correlation between how long the offending act took to commit and the punishment that is attached to it. The first step in responding is to recognize that from even a human, temporal perspective, the amount of time a crime takes to commit bears very little relationship to the length of punishment it merits. After all, a person’s life can be snuffed out in the wink of an eye, an act which, if committed with premeditation and deliberation, rightly merits a sentence of life in prison. If a person, consequently, spends 80 years in prison for a shot that took three seconds beginning to end, the math could appear a bit excessive. But, obviously, there is more at play when we consider this issue a bit more deeply. Focusing on the time the act took does not capture the essence or quality of the act that made it worthy of punishment.

Consider for a moment two men, each firing a single shot at his intended victim. The first uses a high powered handgun; the second, a plastic air pistol. Each involves a similar action – expelling a projectile from a pistol – and each takes no more than a few seconds. But the one-act, in that instant, stops a vibrant, beating heart, while the other only momentarily stings. We punish these acts differently because the harm of murder has nothing to do with the time it took to commit. No, while the trial may focus on proving what the shooter did, the reason we pursue the matter so earnestly is based entirely on the harm that was inflicted. The murder victim remains dead, after all, despite the fact that a moment earlier, he had every right to live until the point of his natural death, which may have been decades away. The sting of the pellet, on the other hand, causes no lasting harm and is soon forgotten. In a very real sense, every day of living, of planning, of enjoying the company of loved ones, that was ripped from the deceased amounts to a re-infliction of the harm. Moreover, the agony that is inflicted upon the victim’s family and friends will also last for decades. Indeed, many survivors of violent crime are never the same again, daily suffering from the mental trauma that takes root in the moments after the crime. From the killer’s perspective, the criminal conduct for which he suffers punishment may seem quite limited; he merely pulled a trigger and never felt the pain, physical or emotional, that ensued. But, the harm is anything but limited when viewed from the perspective of the victim or the victim’s family.

But, the challenger will respond, how does this possibly apply to God, and to the question of eternal punishment? God, of course, cannot be victimized. We cannot really harm Him, and I am not suggesting here that He suffers as a result of our conduct. But this misses the point. Christians believe that God provides a path to salvation. We do not need to suffer eternal torment in Hell. We are not chosen at random for such punishment. The issue of fairness is answered by the understanding that God has the right to separate Himself from people who have rejected Him.

That this punishment is eternal is the result of the fact that God is eternal, and he made us for eternity as well. Though our bodies will die, our souls live on. Let’s consider for a moment what this means: while we may have forgotten many, or even most, of the times that we erred, the times that we hurt others, the times that we did not live up to what was expected; He has not. Each of our sins, each of the times that we chose to act or think in a way we knew violated His perfect will, each of those instances may seem to be the distant past to us, but God is not limited by time. As an eternal being, He perceives every moment of our past as an endless, eternal present. Consequently, each of our offenses against Him, however incapable they are of injuring Him, is nonetheless eternally present to Him. How does He maintain the attribute of perfect justice if he does not attach a consequence to wrongdoing? A human judge would not be fair if she did nothing in response to crime; how does a perfectly just God ignore what we have all done?

These are harsh realities, and intellectual understanding does not make them easier to embrace. That is why Christians for 2000 years have also provided the good news. While we merit the separation that follows a life of rebellion, there is a means for salvation, through the life and death of Jesus, a means by which we can obtain forgiveness for our sins. In short, Hell awaits only those who persist in their rebellion, who “die in their sins.” And what does this phrase mean? Well, at the very least, it means that rather than seek the forgiveness offered by Jesus, we have instead chosen to ask God for a trial as to our lives. We have chosen to stand before God, unapologetic, demanding that He accept us just as we are, proud of our lives and our choices. Judge us and find us worthy, we demand. What choice does this leave to a perfectly just judge?

Seeing the issue from a non-temporal perspective places the issue in a different light: what else is there for beings who were created for eternity but who have rejected God’s offer of salvation? Thank God, then, that the eternal Son stands in the gap for us, with the power and the love and the eternal will to receive the punishment that would otherwise await us.

Can A Person Be A Committed Christian While Ignoring Apologetics?

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Wintery Knight

I would like to describe a situation that arises frequently that concerns me. The situation I describe below brings out a flaw I see in the way that rank-and-file Christians respond to criticisms of Christianity in the public square.

Here is the situation

Eve is busy programming away at her desk, rushing to check in her unit tests so she can spend her lunch hour reading the latest Stephenie Meyer novel, or check on the schedule for her local sports team, “the Vicariouses” (she has tickets for Thursday). Suddenly Eve hears Alice talking to Bob on the other side of her cubicle. She stops typing to listen to the following unencrypted conversation.

Alice: I was watching a documentary on the Discovery Channel last night that said that the universe has always existed, so there is no God!

Bob: I was watching a documentary on PBS last night showing simulations of how the first life started on Earth! God didn’t do it!

Alice: I saw “Inherit the Spin” on the weekend! The only reason people oppose evolution is because of the Bible! Not because of science!

Bob: I’m going to see “The Va Dinci Code” this weekend! It says that the Gospels are unreliable and that Jesus didn’t even die on the cross!

Alice: I just bought the latest Dichard Rawkins book “Christians Should Be Fed to Lions and the Bible Should Be Burned”!

Bob: I will read that as soon as I finish Histopher Chritchens’ book “Why God is the Evilest, Stupidest Person in the World”!

Eve double-majored in business and computer science at the Indian Institute of Technology and has an MBA from the London School of Economics. She has spent a ton of time, effort and money studying very difficult subjects for her job, and she even publishes research papers. She works full-time and runs her own business part-time, and teaches night classes for a well-known university. She earns about 200K per year. She lives in a huge house, drives an expensive car, and goes on vacation abroad to all the best vacation spots.

Eve thinks she is a Christian. She has attended church since childhood, her husband is a church elder and she sings in the church choir. She reads the Bible and prays every night because it helps her to get sleepy before bed. She gives lots of money to the poor. She teaches Sunday school to very small children. She has even read all of the Narnia novels five times! She even has a calendar filled with nature scenes and itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny Bible verses posted on her office wall at work! Judging from all of these facts, you might expect Eve to get in on that conversation with Alice and Bob, and set them straight.

But she won’t. Why not?

Why won’t Eve stand?

I am wondering if anyone can explain to me why it is that most church Christians are not able or not willing to make a public defense when God’s reputation is called into question. It seems to me that there are two bad effects that follow from Eve’s unwillingness to stand up and invite Alice and Bob to lunch so that she can address their questions and concerns.

God’s reputation is being trashed by Alice and Bob on the basis of lies they’ve swallowed from pop culture. These lies about God’s existence and character could be easily corrected with a minimal amount of study, which Eve is capable of – she is a genius and has amazing entrepreneurial skills. If someone said similar lies about her husband or children, she would speak up, but she won’t speak up for God.
Alice and Bob are bound for Hell unless someone cares enough to correct their mistaken beliefs, which, along with their sinfulness, is what is keeping them from a relationship with God that would go on in Heaven. If Eve’s husband or children were mistakenly about to drink poison thinking it was Aspirin, then Eve would speak up. But to save her co-workers from Hell, she won’t speak up.

Eve is capable of studying to defend the faith, because of her great success in other areas where so much time and effort were required to master difficult material. So why has she not applied herself to answering public challenges to her Christian faith from her professors, teachers, actors, the media, politicians, scientists, historians, etc.? She’s heard these questions about God’s existence and character all through high school and into university and then now in her career. Doesn’t she believe the Bible when it says to prepare a defense? Doesn’t she believe the Bible when it says to acknowledge God before men? Doesn’t she believe the Bible when it says that all authentic believers in Jesus will suffer a little for their faith?

It seems to me that if she did spend some time studying, and then made her defense to her co-workers, then two good things would follow:

Eve would be demonstrating her love for God and her friendship with God by protecting his reputation when it is called into question by unbelievers in public settings. That’s what friends do – if Eve wanted to be God’s friend, she would care that no one believed lies about him and told lies about him in public settings.
Eve would be demonstrating her love for her neighbor if she was able to correct some of these false beliefs, such as that the universe is eternal, or that a historical case cannot be made for the resurrection, or that evil is not compatible with theism. It’s important for Alice and Bob to know that Christianity is not stupid.

So why is it that Eve is able to go to church for 20 years, sing in the choir, read the Bible, read the Narnia stories, pray on her knees, and yet still be unwilling to do the best thing for God and the best thing for her neighbor? If a Christian is smart enough to know how to get a degree and how to hold down a job, then that intelligence should also be used to defend God’s reputation when it is called into question. I don’t see how it is possible to claim that you love God, but then not apply your mind to defending him when you apply your mind to other things like education and work.

Are You Good Without God?

Atheism, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Mikel Del Rosario

While I was driving from Sacramento to the Bay Area, I saw a huge billboard that read, “Are you good without God? Millions Are.” I also noticed a theistic tagger added the words, “Also Lost?” at the end of the message. At first, I wondered if the original question could mean something like, “Do you feel comfortable without a belief in God? Millions feel the same way.” Kind of like if you offer someone a drink, and they say, “No, thanks. I’m good.” But I don’t think that’s what the message is all about.

Can’t People be Good Without God?

So, then it got me thinking, “Can’t people be good without God?” I mean, couldn’t an atheist do some really good things without God? I guess if we mean “doing the right thing while not believing in God,” then sure. An atheist could do the right thing. For example, they could honestly report their income to the government, be faithful to their spouse, and so forth. And why not? But maybe the better question is, “Why?” Why even care about being moral?

Why Do the Right Thing?

Think about it like this: If God’s not real, there’s no moral lawgiver and no such things as objective moral commands. If that’s true, then why not say, “I’ll do the right thing when it makes me feel good or gives me an advantage, and I’ll do the wrong thing when it makes me feel good or gives me an advantage.” Or why not say, “I hereby declare from this day forward that it’s always right to steal.”

If there’s no God and no objective moral standard, there’s no moral difference between abusing someone or taking care of them. Basically, good and evil are reduced to preference. All you could say is, “I don’t like terrorism,” or “I’m not into slavery.” “Human trafficking isn’t my thing.” But who can really live like this? Some things are really wrong. For example, we all know by intuition that it’s better to give a little girl a loving hug than to hurt her for no reason.

Right, Wrong, and the Moral Law

Imagine my 6-year-old asked you who wrote this blog post. It’d be dumb to say “No one. And if you think I’m wrong, don’t forget I can read better than you!” The existence of this post implies an author. And it really doesn’t matter if you can read this post better than a kid. Here’s the point: Moral commands imply a moral lawgiver. They are a form of communication from one mind to another. And it doesn’t matter if a certain atheist happens to do more good deeds than a certain Christian or vice versa.

Interested in exploring this idea further? Check out these links:

Maybe people really can’t be good without God, after all. I mean, if there’s no God, there’s no standard of goodness. On top of that, when we compare ourselves to God’s standard, it turns out no one is good—no one’s lived up to the standard. That’s what Jesus said in Mark 10:18. Keep in mind that niceness isn’t goodness. Don’t you think the Neo-Nazi moms bake cookies for their kids or hand out cupcakes at their birthday parties? Sure they do. Jesus also said it’s no big deal if we’re nice to the people we like (Matt. 5:46-47). How do we treat everyone else?

Yes and No

If “Are you good without God?” just means, “Can you do good things without acknowledging God?” Then, sure. You could say, “Yes” to that. But the real answer to the question, “Are you good without God?” is “No. None of us are.” Without God, there is no objective standard of goodness. But we know such a standard exists. Why? Because while you could have good without evil, you can’t have evil without good.

Think about it: You could have a standard of goodness in a world where nothing falls short of that standard. But you can’t have something falling short of a standard of goodness without the standard itself. And when we recognize a standard greater than ourselves–GOd’s own nature–we can see we need forgiveness. We all for short before God. That’s another reason we need him. Millions and millions do.

Messianic Convergence in the Gospels: A New Way to Frame the Argument from Old Testament Fulfilment

Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

Anyone who has spent considerable time studying the gospels can tell that they are literally saturated with Old Testament fulfilment and allusions. Indeed, the early church used two primary lines of argument to establish the Messianic credentials of Jesus of Nazareth — the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and Messianic prophecy. How useful is fulfilment of the Messianic prophecy in the person of Jesus to the purposes of contemporary, twenty-first-century apologists? In this article, I explore a way to frame the argument in a robust and objective way. First, I will summarise my argument, and then I will dig into the details.

A Summary of the Basic Argument

When it comes to the origins of the gospel narratives, there are three contending hypotheses for explaining their origin. These are:

(1) The gospel authors deliberately fabricated the events that they narrate.

(2) The gospel authors were honestly mistaken in their reporting of the events that they narrate.

(3) The gospel authors faithfully recorded actual events.

Of course, those options could in principle, be correct either individually or in combination with one another. When we discover striking correlations between the gospel narratives and the Old Testament texts (on a level that is unlikely by mere coincidence), then we have evidence against the hypothesis that the gospel authors were honestly mistaken — that is to say, we have positive evidence for design, either on the part of the human authors manipulating the story to impose conformity to the Hebrew Scriptures or on the part of God supernaturally orchestrating the history. The question then becomes, what is the locus of the design?

The first of the above hypotheses — that is, that the gospel authors deliberately fabricated the events that they narrate is significantly undermined when we discover points of historical confirmation of the gospels (a subject that I have written, lectured and debated extensively about elsewhere). I have contended publicly elsewhere that numerous historical points in the gospels can be historically verified and confirmed (e.g., here). This gives rise to an inductive argument for treating the gospel documents as a whole as trustworthy. The numerous points of historical confirmation in the book of Acts, moreover, build us a picture of the pedigree of its author Luke (who also happens to be the author of the third gospel), and thus offers us additional reason to trust what he writes in his gospel. I (and others) have developed that case extensively in various venues, and to argue this is not the primary purpose of the present article.

Having shown the first two of the three options to be improbable, therefore, it is possible to provide evidential support for the third contending hypothesis, namely, that the gospel authors faithfully recorded actual events, and the locus of the design is supernatural divine orchestration of the events to result in convergence between events in Jesus the Messiah’s life and foreshadows written of in the Hebrew Bible. In syllogistic form, this argument can be presented as follows:

Premise 1: The correlation between events recorded in the gospels and Hebrew Scripture is either the product of human design or divine design.

Premise 2: It is not the product of human design.

Conclusion: Therefore, it is the product of divine design.

One can, of course, make the inductive argument I just described for taking the gospels as a whole to be highly reliable. The case, however, is lent even greater force when we can point to specific instances of details in the gospels that are subject to historical confirmation, which also correlates with the Hebrew Bible in some way. We can model this argument probabilistically using Bayesian analysis.

Probabilistic Modelling

The equation given below represents the odds form of Bayes theorem, which is used in developing cumulative cases. Translated, it states that the posterior probability of your hypothesis (H) given the available evidence (E) is equal to the prior probability (given the background information) of the hypothesis being true (expressed as a ratio) multiplied by the ratio of the evidence given the hypothesis against the probability of the evidence given the antithesis.

Dividing the probability of the evidence given the hypothesis by the probability of the evidence given the antithesis gives you what is referred to in probability theory as the Bayes Factor. The Bayes Factor is a measure of the strength of the evidence and indicates how many times more likely it is that you will observe this evidence given that your hypothesis is true than if it were false. For instance, a Bayes Factor of one hundred indicates that your evidence is one hundred times more likely if your hypothesis is true than if it were false.

This form of reasoning is used routinely in the discipline of forensic science. For instance, the presence of a defendant’s fingerprints on the murder weapon may be taken as evidence for the hypothesis of guilt over the hypothesis of non-guilt because the probability of the defendant’s fingerprints being on the murder weapon is much higher on the hypothesis that the defendant is guilty than on the hypothesis that he is not guilty. This is the very same mode of reasoning that I use when evaluating the evidence for the existence of God and for the truth of the Christian gospel. As we examine the data, I will be using to construct this argument; we will assign each a plausible Bayes factor as a way of modeling our cumulative case. We will then be able to more readily see the strength of the argument as a whole. Please note that there is a degree of subjectivity in these assignments, but I have tried as best as I can to err on the side of caution, and I do not think my estimates are unreasonable. In any case, the reader is invited to plug in his or her own numbers and conduct their own analysis. My goal here is to show how an argument of this sort can be mounted.

The Data

I will now consider several instances where we have specific historical confirmations of details in the gospel that, given the Old Testament backdrop, seems to be a bit too striking to be coincidental.

Example #1: Jesus’ Death at Passover

One historical detail that can scarcely be denied is that Jesus died at the time of Passover. This is a detail attested by all four gospels and implied by Paul in 1 Corinthians 5:7. This is not a detail that the gospel authors (or their sources) plausibly misremembered. So many details in the gospels are connected to Jesus’ death being at the time of Passover (e.g., see John 18:28). It is also supported by the next example we will discuss shortly. I will not here get into the discussion of whether John and the synoptic gospels contradict each other on the precise day on which Jesus is crucified (I have already addressed that here). It is clear that the New Testament authors unanimously considered Jesus to be the ultimate fulfilment of the Passover lamb (see John 1:29; John 1:36; 1 Corinthians 5:7; 1 Peter 1:18-19; Revelation 7:14; and Revelation 12:11). The correspondence, therefore, seems too neat to be the result of coincidence. Christ’s execution by the Romans at the time of Passover is a remarkable ‘coincidence’ that would have been difficult for an impostor to engineer.

One caveat to consider is that there are also other days throughout the year, such as the day of atonement, to which we might attach some special significance if Jesus’ death had landed on those days. I will, therefore, assign a conservative Bayes factor of 50 for this correspondence. Remember, this means that the correlation is 50 times more probable on the hypothesis of design than on the hypothesis of coincidence.

Example #2: Selection of the Passover Lamb

There is an additional interesting connection, not wholly independent of the one just discussed but nonetheless certainly worthy of attention. This has to do with Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem five days before the Passover on which He died. Consider John 12:1-2,12-13:

Six days before the Passover, Jesus, therefore, came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 2 So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at the table…12 The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. 13 So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!”

John here has given us a very specific extraneous detail (which none of the other gospels gives us): Jesus arrived at Bethany six days before the Passover, and the following day rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey (which would have been five days before the Passover).

Can we confirm John’s accuracy on this? Yes, we can.

Turn over to Mark 11:1-11, which parallels the arrival at Bethany (although Mark does not give us the time-stamp that John provides):

Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples 2 and said to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it…7 And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it. 8 And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields. 9 And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! 10 Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father, David! Hosanna in the highest!” 11 And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

Mark does not tell us that Jesus approached Bethany six days before the Passover, nor that it was the following day that Jesus rode into Jerusalem. However, it appears implicit that they fetched the colt early in the morning — since the disciples fetch the colt, there is the triumphal entry and Jesus and the disciples entered the temple and “looked around at everything” (which was presumably a whole day’s activities). If then, we assume that Jesus entered Jerusalem five days before Passover, then we can begin counting off the days narrated in Mark’s gospel, to see if the narrative synchronizes with that of John.

Verses 12-14 narrate the cursing of the fig tree, which according to verse 12, happened “the following day” (i.e., four days before the Passover, assuming John’s chronology to be correct). Jesus then cleansed the temple, and according to verse 19, “when evening came, they went out of the city.” In verse 20, we read, “As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots.” We are now, therefore at three days before the Passover. In Mark 13, we read of the Olivet discourse on the Mount of Olives. This we can assume took place in the evening, since the Mount of Olives was mid-way between the temple in Jerusalem and Bethany where Jesus and the disciples were staying. This, then, marks the end of three days before the Passover. When we turn over to Mark 14, we read in verse 1, “It was now two days before the Passover.” Mark and John thus calibrate perfectly, thereby corroborating the time-stamp given to us by John.

Having confirmed that Jesus really did enter Jerusalem five days before the Passover, let us now look to the Old Testament to see if we have any point of striking correlation. Passover itself falls on the fifteenth day of the month of Nisan. That means that five days before the Passover falls on the 10th day of Nisan. Now let us turn over to Exodus 12, where God gives instructions to the people of Israel concerning the first Passover. In verse 3, God says to Moses and Aaron,

Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month [i.e., Nisan] every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household.

Thus, the Passover lamb was to be selected and taken into the household of the men of Israel on the tenth day of the month of Nisan. Given the oft-repeated New Testament imagery of Jesus being the Passover lamb (e.g., 1 Corinthians 5:7), it is thus quite striking that Jesus’ triumphal entrance into Jerusalem and reception by the people happens to fall on the 10th of Nisan, five days before Passover.

How probable is this correlation on the hypothesis that the connection is coincidental? It must be borne in mind that this coincidence is not wholly independent of the previous one since Jesus coming into Jerusalem on Nisan 10 would not matter at all if it weren’t for the fact that he then died subsequently at least around that time. If we take his entry into Jerusalem on Nisan 10 to be significant, we must be assuming that he died right around that time, which means that that one entails the other. The question we can ask, however, is how much additional evidence it provides that Jesus also entered Jerusalem on Nisan 10. Another factor for us to consider is that Passover is a particularly likely time for a Jew to enter Jerusalem and also a time when he could count on ministering to a large crowd of people who had made their pilgrimage to Judea for the feast.

One may object here that a possible explanation of this coincidence is that Jesus Himself, seeing Himself as the fulfilment of the Passover lamb, deliberately entered Jerusalem on Nisan 10th. However, to this, I offer two responses. First, if Jesus saw falsely Himself as Messianic it is far more likely that he would have perceived Himself to be a military leader like Simon Bar Giora, who would lead a revolt against the Roman occupiers, not suffer a humiliating death by crucifixion. Second, the appropriate issue to concern ourselves with is the striking coincidence that it was precisely on the year on which Jesus entered Jerusalem five days before Passover that His death by crucifixion coincidentally took place on the day of Passover.

To be conservative, therefore, I will only assign a Bayes factor of 2 to this fact. Thus far, our cumulative Bayes factor from the two examples we have considered is 50 x 2 = 100.

Example #3: Jesus the First Fruits

In 1 Corinthians 15:20, Paul says of Christ that he is “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”

What is being alluded to here? For the answer, we turn to Leviticus 23:9-14, in which we read of the feast of first fruits.

9 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 10 “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you and reap its harvest, you shall bring the sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest, 11 And he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, so that you may be accepted. On the day after the Sabbath, the priest shall wave it. 12 And on the day when you wave the sheaf, you shall offer a male lamb a year old without blemish as a burnt offering to the Lord. 13 And the grain offering with it shall be two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil, a food offering to the Lord with a pleasing aroma, and the drink offering with it shall be of wine, a fourth of a hin. 14 And you shall eat neither bread nor grain parched or fresh until this same day until you have brought the offering of your God: it is a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings.

The feast of firstfruits is the next Jewish feast following the feasts of Passover and unleavened bread and had to do with the barley harvest, which preceded the slightly later wheat harvest (the former arrived in March / April; the latter around May, according to our calendars). The latter of those was associated with the feast of Weeks (Pentecost). God, therefore, instructed the people of Israel that prior to reaping the barley harvest they were to wave before the Lord a sheaf of the first grain. This would symbolize that the sheaf was representative of the whole crop. It represented their trust that the God who had given them the firstfruits would also bless the rest of the harvest.

How, then, does Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15:20, link Jesus to the feast of first fruits? Christ was the first fruits of the resurrection, having been raised prior to the general resurrection at the end of time. Although previous people (e.g., Lazarus, Jairus’ daughter) had been raised from death, those individuals were not raised to glory and immortality. Eventually, they would die again. Jesus, by contrast, was the first person in all of history to be raised to glory and immortality, with a body transformed such that it was no longer subject to decay or death. Thus, he is the ‘sheaf’ that is waved before the Lord, the first fruits of the harvest.

Now, what is particularly striking is the day on which the feast of first fruits was to take place. According to Leviticus 23:11b, it was to happen “the day after the Sabbath” following Passover. That would be Sunday! It can thus hardly be a coincidence that Christ was raised on the Sunday following the Passover. When we consider the day that Jesus was claimed to be raised as first fruit from among the dead (the Sunday following Passover), we have yet another striking coincidence.

It is largely taken for granted among scholars that the disciples had experiences following Jesus’ death, which they interpreted to be the raised Christ — scholars are largely in agreement that the disciples did not deliberately lie about having seen Jesus raised from the dead. We also have strong evidence that the claim was that Jesus rose from the dead on the Sunday following His crucifixion — not only is it reported in all four gospels (Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:2, Luke 24:1, John 20:1), but there is also the widespread switch from observing the Sabbath to observance of the Lord’s day (Sunday) in the first century. One might object that the gospels only report the discovery of the empty tomb and the appearances taking place on the Sunday but do not tell us when exactly Jesus was raised. However, Jesus repeatedly states that His resurrection will take place “on the third day,” which would have to be the Sunday since His death was on a Friday. Further evidence that the earliest apostolic proclamation was that Jesus had been raised on the Sunday following His death is the allusion in 1 Corinthians 15:4 to Jesus being “raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.” Indeed, Paul’s allusion in verse 20 of the same chapter to Christ being the firstfruits from among the dead may indicate what Paul means by Christ’s resurrection on the third day being “in accordance with the Scriptures.”

It must be stated at this point that the exact interpretation of Leviticus 23:11b was disputed by first-century Jewish interpreters. Most Pharisees took this day to be the day after the annual Sabbath, rather than the weekly Sabbath — that is, the day after the 15th of Nisan, on which fell the feast of unleavened bread (the Jews were not permitted to work on this day according to Leviticus 23:7). They would thus observe the firstfruits offering on the 16th of Nisan, irrespective of the day of the week. Here is what the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus tells us [Antiquities 3:10:5-6]:

But on the second day of unleavened bread, which is the sixteenth day of the month, they first partake of the fruits of the earth, for before that day, they do not touch them.

A minority of Pharisees, and the Sadducees, however, maintained that the offering of first-fruits was to take place the day after the weekly Sabbath which falls during the feast of unleavened bread. According to this view, the firstfruits offering always took place on a Sunday. This view makes more sense to me Biblically because Leviticus 23:15-16 gives the following instruction about when the feast of firstfruits is to be observed:

15 “You shall count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering. 16 You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath. Then you shall present a grain offering of new grain to the Lord.

For the day after the seventh Sabbath to equal exactly 50 days, one has to begin counting from the day after the weekly Sabbath.

Furthermore, according to the gospels, the day following Jesus’ death was itself a weekly Sabbath. For example, in John 19:31, we are told,

Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.

Likewise, Mark 15:42-43 tells us,

42 And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, 43 Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.

The festival of first fruits, therefore, would have to have been celebrated the day following the Sabbath (given the Jewish regulations about what could or could not be performed on the Sabbath). This entails that the Sunday on which Jesus was raised is indeed the feast of first fruits.

Moreover, as long as the second temple stood (i.e., prior to A.D. 70) and the Sadducees were in charge, their interpretation prevailed, and the feast of firstfruits was recognized the day following the first weekly Sabbath after Passover.

Further evidence that the gospel authors understood Jesus to be fulfilling the first fruits comes from Acts 2, where we read that the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples at the time of Pentecost, which fulfils further symbolism relating to the feast of Pentecost that is outlined in Leviticus 23 (which I will not dwell upon here).

What Bayes factor might we assign to this piece of evidence? Of course, this piece of evidence is not wholly independent of the fact that Jesus’ death takes place at the time of Passover. There are also only seven days in the week. For these reasons, I assign a conservative Bayes factor of 5. So far, our cumulative Bayes factor is 50 x 2 x 5 = 500.

Example #4: The Crucifixion

Psalm 22 contains a remarkable text which, centuries before crucifixion was even invented, contains a description of the Messiah’s sufferings that strikingly resemble a crucifixion scene. Consider this excerpt from verses 12-18:

12 Many bulls encompass me; strong bulls of Bashan surround me; 13, they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion. 14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; 15 my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death. 16 For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet— 17 I can count all my bones— they stare and gloat over me; 18 they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.

Dislocation of bones, heart failure, lack of strength, dehydration, and the piercing of the hands and feet are all apt descriptions of a crucifixion scene, not to mention the dividing of his garments and the casting of lots — crucifixion victims would be stripped naked as part of their humiliation. This execution also appears to be public since people stare and gloat over him. For a much more detailed description of the evidence for the Messianic nature of this text, I refer interested readers to Mike Winger’s video on the subject of Psalm 22, or this discussion between Dr. James White and Dr. Michael Brown on the topic. The Messianic interpretation of Psalm 22 is also not a Christian invention but can be found in early Jewish sources (for documentation, see this article).

For this fact, I think it is fair to assign a conservative Bayes factor of 1000 (for justification of this Bayes factor, see McGrew, L. (2013) Probabilistic Issues Concerning Jesus of Nazareth and Messianic Death Prophecies. Philosophia Christi 15:311-328.

Thus far, our cumulative Bayes factor is 50 x 2 x 5 x 1000 = 500,000

Example #5: The Name Jesus

The name Jesus is itself very significant. The reason for calling him Jesus is given in Matthew 1:21:

…you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

Fittingly, Jesus’ name (the same name as Joshua) means “Yahweh is salvation.” Already, this is a striking coincidence.

A second reason why the name Jesus is significant is that a certain Joshua in the Old Testament replaces Moses in leading God’s people into the promised land. Moses represents the embodiment of the law. The law (embodied by Moses) was unable to lead God’s people into the promised land and so was replaced by Joshua.

A third correspondence is to another Joshua in the book of Zechariah and chapter 6. In Zechariah 6:9-13, we read,

9 And the word of the Lord came to me: 10 “Take from the exiles Heldai, Tobijah, and Jedaiah, who have arrived from Babylon, and go the same day to the house of Josiah, the son of Zephaniah. 11 Take from them silver and gold, and make a crown, and set it on the head of Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, the high priest. 12 And say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, “Behold, the man whose name is the Branch: for he shall branch out from his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord. 13 It is he who shall build the temple of the Lord and shall bear royal honor and shall sit and rule on his throne. And there shall be a priest on his throne, and the counsel of peace shall be between them both.”’

This individual is described as “the man whose name is the Branch,” which is a Messianic title used elsewhere (e.g., Zechariah 3:8; Isaiah 11:1; Jeremiah 23:5; Jeremiah 33:15). He is also given the office of both priest and king, a dual office which the Messiah is also said to fulfil (e.g., Psalm 110:4) whereas others were not permitted to occupy both offices.

In a study of 2625 male Jewish names from first-century Palestine (from documentary sources and ossuaries), 99 are reported to bear the name Jesus/Joshua (it being the sixth most popular name). That is approximately 3.77% of the Jewish male population. I will conservatively assign a Bayes factor to this piece of evidence of 2, taking our cumulative Bayes factor to 50 x 2 x 5 x 1000 x 2 = 1000,000.

Example 6

Yet another striking coincidence is the fact that Christianity became the dominant international world religion that it became. Until 313 A.D., the Christian church was the persecuted minority, and powerful rulers and officials attempted to stamp out the Christian religion, destroy its Scriptures and its people. There was a high price to pay for being a follower of Jesus, and your fate could include being nailed to a cross, burned alive, or fed to wild animals. The probability that Christianity would become a dominant global religion was, therefore, vanishingly small. However, this is exactly what was predicted in various passages throughout the Old Testament, namely, that the Messiah would bring representatives of all nations to a recognition and worship of the God of Israel.

As an example, consider Isaiah 49:6:

He says: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

Therefore, on the hypothesis that a given individual is the promised Messiah, the probability that they would bring representatives of all nations of the world to worship the God of Israel is approximately equal to one, whereas on the hypothesis that Jesus is not the Messiah, the probability is vanishingly small. In all history, only Jesus has accomplished this fete. I will assign a conservative Bayes factor of 1000.

At this point, our cumulative Bayes factor is 50 x 2 x 5 x 1000 x 2 x 1000 = 1000,000,000

Conclusion

Various other examples could be given, but I will stop the present analysis at this point. The point of this article was simply to show how a cumulative case can be constructed for the truth of Christianity based upon these striking instances of convergence between the life of Jesus and Old Testament texts in a manner that seems to point towards the conclusion of design rather than coincidence. Since the examples given above enjoy strong historical corroboration, we can safely rule out the human design as being responsible for these correspondences. We, therefore, have good evidence for divine design, and therefore the truth of Christianity.

Of course, it is necessary when doing a Bayesian analysis to give an estimate of the prior probability. Prior probability relates to the intrinsic plausibility of a proposition before the evidence is considered. Normally the prior probability will be somewhere between zero and one. A prior probability of one means that the conclusion is certain. For instance, the fact that two added to two is equal to four has a prior probability of one. It is true by definition. A prior probability of zero, conversely, means that the hypothesis entails some sort of logical contradiction (such as the concept of a married bachelor) and thus cannot be overcome by any amount of evidence. Priors can be established on the basis of past information. For example, suppose we want to know the odds that a particular individual won last week’s Mega Millions jackpot in the United States. The prior probability would be set at 1 in 302.6 million since those are the odds that any individual lottery participant, chosen at random, would win the Mega Millions jackpot. That is a low prior probability, but it could be overcome if the supposed winner were to subsequently quit his job and start routinely investing in private jets, sports cars, and expensive vacations. Perhaps he could even show us his bank statement or the documentary evidence of his winnings. Those different pieces of evidence, taken together, would stack up to provide powerful confirmatory evidence sufficient to overcome a very small prior probability to yield a high posterior probability that the individual did indeed win the Mega Millions jackpot. In other situations, setting an objective prior is more tricky, and in those cases, priors may be determined by a more subjective assessment.

If we suppose for argument’s sake that the prior probability of God sovereignly orchestrating the history is as low as 1 in 10,000,000, this leads us to a posterior probability of 0.99 of the hypothesis being true. Of course, this figure will be highly dependent on the Bayes Factors we have assigned to each piece of evidence. This is, of course, only a mathematical tool for modelling how a cumulative case can provide powerful evidence for our hypothesis, and we haven’t even considered all of the relevant data. I invite readers to plug in their own numbers and see what conclusion they arrive at.

20 Myths About Old Earth Creationism

Philosophy of Science, Theology and Christian Apologetics

Podcast: Play in new window

By Luke Nix

Introduction

Last month I was alerted to a debate on Justin Brierley’s podcast “Unbelievable.” This debate was a discussion between a young-earth creationist (Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis) and an old-earth creationist (Jeff Zweerink of Reasons to Believe). This, of course, caught my attention because of my focus on science/faith issues. I decided to take a listen but found myself quite frustrated within just minutes of Justin giving his introductions. Here is a link to the episode for those who would like to hear it for themselves: Do we live on a young or old earth? Ken Ham vs. Jeff Zweerink

Throughout the discussion, Ken Ham presented many strawmen and misrepresentations of Zweerink’s old-earth creationist view in order to argue against the view. I recognized many of these myths as ones I’ve heard over the years that remain popular today despite their falsehood and countless attempts at correction.

In today’s post, I have compiled twenty of the myths that Ken Ham presented in the “Unbelievable” discussion, and I have provided a short, one-to-three paragraph explanation of how they are false and what the correctly understood old-earth creationist (OEC) position is. Since I have written on many of these topics in the past, I have included links to previous posts where they can offer a more detailed response. My intention for this post is three-fold for both believer and unbeliever.

First, for the unbeliever, I want them to understand that the young-earth view is not the only view held by Christians. They do not have to affirm young-earth creationism (YEC) in order to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and remain logically consistent.

Second, for the believer, I want them to understand that claiming that a logically consistent Christian must hold to the YEC view is simultaneously a detriment to our evangelism and to worshiping the Father in spirit and in truth (John 4:23).

Finally, for those who are honestly investigating the biblical, philosophical, and natural data to resolve this issue (both believer and unbeliever), I pray that this post also serves as a quick stop for addressing many of the myths, strawmen, and other mischaracterizations of the OEC view in a single location.

But, before I get to the perpetuated myths of old earth creationism, it is important to recognize where Ken Ham (YEC) and Jeff Zweerink (OEC) hold much common ground in their two views. Even though there are significant differences, there are even more significant commonalities that they can shake hands with each other and give them a hardy “Amen, brother!” I compiled a list a while back that is certainly not comprehensive, but is a large list to see where the differences between YEC and OEC may be fewer than is commonly understood:

What Do Young Earth and Old Earth Creationists Agree Upon Regarding Origins?

Now, on to the myths of Old Earth Creationism!

Myth #1: The debate is not about whether the universe is young or old, it is about whether you believe God’s Word or not.

Fact:
Ken Ham began with this myth. It implies that anyone who disagrees with him on the interpretation of Genesis 1-11 does not believe God’s Word. This could not be further from the truth. It is the very belief that God’s Word is true and authoritative in the Christian’s life that Christians try to understand what it means. In order for a proposition (or collection of propositions, such as the Bible) to be believed and applied to our lives, we need to correctly understand the meaning of the proposition(s). If we did not believe that the collection of propositions that constitute God’s Word is true and authoritative over our lives, then we wouldn’t bother with trying to understand what the author (and Author) meant to communicate in it. Saying that a Christian, who interprets differently, does not believe God’s Word is simply false. The debate is not about belief but rather about correct meaning.
For more, see “Man’s Fallible Ideas vs. God’s Infallible Word.”

Myth #2: Big bang cosmology is based on naturalism.

Fact:
Naturalism holds that there is nothing that exists outside this physical universe. Big bang cosmology has two requirements that necessarily exist outside this physical universe. Firstly, because big bang cosmology posits an absolute beginning to the universe and nothing that begins to exist can cause its own beginning to exist, the big bang necessarily requires a cause that is outside itself (this physical universe). Secondly, because of the fact that the universe’s physical laws are finely-tuned to support advanced life, the cause of the universe not only has to be super-natural, but it also has to be intelligent and purpose-driving in His creative act. These are attributes of a purposeful agent, not just another mechanism (naturalism), or deism (we’ve now left naturalism behind), or even basic theism. These attributes of the Cause mirror those of the Christian God. Not only is it false that big bang cosmology is based on naturalism big bang cosmology necessarily implies that the Christian God exists by the attributes of the Cause required to produce what is observed in the universe.

Myth #3: You cannot see “age” in nature.

Fact:
One of the foundational beliefs of science (that allow it to discover events of even the recent past) is constant laws of physics. For the Christian, this foundational belief for science is even affirmed in Jeremiah 33:26 (see my post “How Naturalism Defeats Science As A Knowledge Discipline“). What is very nice about constant laws of physics is that if we have a correct understanding of processes from one moment to the next, we can work backward in time (via deductive reasoning) to come to sound (necessarily true) conclusions about the past, including the age of things. This is done for trees and corals using the number of rings and layers, respectively, and the well-understood rate of the formation of those layers. The idea that age cannot be determined by observing nature alone is correct, but when combined with the constant laws of physics and deductive reasoning, the ability to accurately determine age by observing God’s creation cannot be escaped by the Bible-believing Christian.

Myth #4: The same people who promote big bang cosmology deny the virgin birth of Jesus.

Fact:
This is quite a sweeping statement. In this myth, Ken Ham places all who affirm big bang cosmology into the same naturalistic category of those who deny miracles and God’s interaction with creation (including the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity and the Resurrection of Jesus). It is obvious, though, that Christians do not belong in the same category as naturalists when it comes to miracles. Some YECs who insist on this categorization, though, insist that Christians can believe both but only inconsistently.

The problem here is that affirmation of big bang cosmology in no way implies that supernatural miracles are not possible. In fact, as shown above, in Myth #2, the big bang assumes a supernatural miracle for the universe’s existence! If anyone is being inconsistent in their beliefs regarding the big bang and miracles, it is the naturalist who affirms the big bang yet denies supernatural miracles are possible. So, Christians who affirm big bang cosmology do not deny supernatural miracles such as the virgin birth of Jesus and are under no compulsion by logic to even entertain such a ridiculous claim. We do not deny the virgin birth of Jesus, and our view does not imply even the possibility of such a denial. While naturalists do deny the virgin birth of Jesus, inconsistently, the Christian affirms it consistently.

Myth #5: People only debate the meaning of the word “yom” in Genesis 1 because they want to fit millions of years into the Bible.

Fact:
Implied in this myth is the idea that “yom” was never debated until it was discovered that the universe was billions of years old and/or when Darwin came along and proposed evolution, which presumably would require billions of years of slow changes over time. However, this is demonstrably false. The meaning of “yom” has been debated for centuries before scientists posited billions of years for the age of the universe. St. Augustine, for instance, defended the contention that “yom” was different from a 24-hour day. Numerous other Church Fathers also debated “yom”‘s meaning. Since it was debated before scientists posited billions of years for the age of the universe and earth, such a discovery cannot serve as the motivation for the debate continuing to this day. For more on the Church Fathers and their debates over the meaning of the word “yom” in Genesis 1, I recommend checking out “Coming to Grips With The Early Church Fathers’ Perspective On Genesis” by Dr. John Millam.

Myth #6: The idea that the universe is young has been well-established in Church history; therefore, it is true.

Fact:
This is an interesting argument. The falsehood is not found in the first part; young-earth creationism (along with other views) we debated and held by many Church Fathers; the falsehood is found in the logic. A well-established doctrine is not necessarily a correct doctrine (this goes for all sides of the age debate). Ken Ham, as a member of the Protestant tradition of the Church, would hold that many well-established doctrines of the Church (Catholic Church, at the time) were false. So, being well-established does not mean true, even for Ken Ham. Anyone who argues this way is simply incorrect.

Now, many people try to claim that young-earth creationism originated with the Seventh Day Adventist “prophetess” Ellen G. White, but since some of the Church Fathers already held to this view, it can hardly be said to have originated recently. But, again, that early origin does not mean true. Young-earth Christians need to be careful about which conclusion they are drawing from the early articulation of their view, and old-earth Christians need to be careful about which conclusion they are drawing from a later (more developed) articulation of the young-earth view.

Myth #7: Believing that the universe is old undermines God’s Word.

Fact:
Many young-earth Christians (but not all) are not even open to alternative views because they have heard this myth so many times, presented in so many different ways, that they believe it. As mentioned in my response to Myth #1, this is not true, as demonstrated by the very attempt to reconcile God’s Word with God’s actions (creation). That recognition is enough to demonstrate the falsehood of the myth in general. But what about the more specific forms of the myth (additional myths, in themselves)? In a past post, I took on five common ways that this myth is articulated. Take a look at these additional myths in the post “Does Old Earth Creationism Compromise Scripture” to see if you have fallen victim to believing them.

Myth #8: You weren’t there to witness the creation; therefore, you cannot know what happened except by an eyewitness testimony (God’s Word).

Fact:
This myth attempts to strike at the foundation of scientific claims about origins: the ability to know origins. In this myth the young-earth creationist takes a hyper-empiricist view of knowledge that states that only the five senses can reveal truth about the physical world: in order to know anything that happened in the past, you had to be there to witness whether it happened or not, and since we were not there to witness the creation, we cannot know how it happened. They then say that we can only rely upon the eyewitness record in Genesis 1, which they assume is only compatible with their view (see Myths #1 and #7 above).

Even if we were to grant that the Genesis 1 account was only compatible with the young-earth view, they have a serious problem. If we cannot know something happened in the past unless we witnessed it, then how do we know that Genesis 1 was reliably handed down through the generations? We were not there to witness each transcription. In order to defend the reliable transmission of the text to today, we rely upon another source of knowledge that uses inductive and abductive reasoning (neither of which are sense-based). If those are valid sources of truth to discover past events, then the young-earth creationist must allow such sources of truth in the debate over origins. So, by their own epistemology (how we know what we know), this myth falls and falling further, their attempt to use the process of elimination to get to their view also fails. This myth is so prevalent in the origins debate that I have written quite a bit about this it in the past.

Myth #9: Only the YEC believes the eyewitness of God’s Word.

Fact:
As demonstrated in my answer to Myth #8, this myth falls flat immediately. However, it gets worse for the YEC, not only can they not know that they have the eyewitness account about origins as it was originally recorded, they cannot know that they have a reliable eyewitness account about the Resurrection of Jesus as it was originally recorded! The staunch YEC may be able to live with not having a reliable account of the events of creation, but I do not believe for one second that they are willing to follow the logic to its necessary conclusion and accept that we then also do not have reliable accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. For such a necessary implication would give us no confidence whatsoever in the truth of Christianity, which would then give them no foundation for holding onto their YEC view. The ground crumbles beneath them.

This is not a problem of belief (I know Ken Ham believes that the Bible we have today was reliably transmitted through the generations), but rather it is a problem of a lack of a foundational explanation for the belief in the reliability of the transmission of the Bible. If Ken Ham is to maintain the “you weren’t there” mantra, then he has no explanation for the reliable transmission of the Bible, and worse he has unwittingly provided an explanation for precisely why the Bible he holds in hands cannot be trusted as what was originally inspired by God! This is the myth, among all other ones because it strikes at the very foundation of the Christian worldview, that must die in the Church:

Historical Science, Deception, and Blind Faith
Is It Biblical to Have An Evidential Faith?
The Historical Jesus
Cold Cast Christianity
Forensic Faith
Did The Historical Jesus Rise From The Dead?

Myth #10: Animal death and suffering are incompatible with the all-powerful and all-loving God of the Bible.

Fact:
I find it very interesting that young-earth creationists often raise the logical problem of evil against God in these discussions. Simply put, the logical problem of evil has been a go-to challenge to God’s existence for atheists for centuries (and still is today in popular/internet atheist circles), but such a challenge is no challenge at all. The challenge relies upon the idea that an all-powerful and all-loving God could not possibly have justifiable reasons for allowing evil, pain, and suffering in the world. However, since we cannot possibly know all of God’s purposes comprehensively, this challenge fails on epistemic grounds- no one has enough knowledge to make such a grandiose claim. And not only that, the Bible teaches that any suffering that God does allow does has an ultimate, eternal purpose.

So we do have enough knowledge to claim the very opposite: that God does have a purpose for allowing all pain and suffering, even if we cannot specifically identify that purpose with our current amount of knowledge. This would include any and all animal suffering. So for the young-earth creationist to be in the company of atheists with raising this challenge is to simply place the God of the Bible in the same box that the atheist attempts to place Him: “since I cannot see what purpose God may have for suffering, He must not have one.” This is only one way to demonstrate the falsehood of this myth, but others exist as well.

Myth #11: Having animal death before The Fall makes God responsible for moral evil.

Fact:
Related to Myth #10 above, Ken Ham tries to show how God is responsible for moral evil if animal death existed before the Fall of Adam and Eve. Since the Christian God is not responsible for moral evil, then if there is a view that necessarily implies that God is responsible for moral evil, then it is false, and its god is not the Christian God. Ken Ham argues that animal death is a moral evil, and since old-earth creation requires that God is responsible for it, then old-earth creationism must be false. He attempts to release God from the responsibility of animal death by saying that the Fall introduced death to the animal kingdom. Many YECs have proposed different models for the Fall introducing death into the natural order (changed laws of physics, attributing creative power to sin, and punctuated equilibrium are just a few) in order to escape the implications of their own accusation.
But all this effort is actually unnecessary because animal death is not morally evil. For an event, action, or behavior to be morally evil, the perpetrator must be a moral agent with the free will to choose to do otherwise, and the offended party must be of intrinsic value. Both of those features are necessary, but neither are present in the physical creation prior to God’s creation of Adam and Eve. Animals are not moral agents, and they are not created in the Image of God, which would be the source of intrinsic value. These are precisely why we do not classify animals killing other animals as murder. “Murder” is “killing” with moral status. Without the moral status, animal killing is just killing, not murder. Since animals killing animals is not performed by moral, free agents and animals are not intrinsically valuable, there is no foundation for calling such death “morally” evil. It does not matter how much death happened before the Fall of Adam and Eve; it was not morally evil. So even though God is the Creator of the natural order (which includes animal death), He is NOT responsible for any moral evil here. Thus this myth is demonstrably false. I go into more detail in these posts:

Myth #12: If you can understand the general message of the Gospel without the scholarship, then you can understand the details of creation without scholarship.

Fact:
This myth implies that because the basics of the Gospel can be understood and acted upon by the youngest and least educated among us, that the deeper and more refined details of the Gospel can also be discovered without the need for a scholarship. Ken Ham holds that the same applies to ideas of origins: if the basics of creation can be understood without scholarship, then so can the details be known without scholarship. In the podcast, Ken Ham appeals to biblical scholarship to make his case; then, he comes back later to deny the value of such biblical scholarship. He seems to hold that the “plain reading” (as would be understood the first time a person reads a passage) is the correct and comprehensive understanding- there is no need for further scholarship to determine details. Because Ham both uses and denies the value of biblical scholarship in the same conversation, it is hard to determine which of the mutually exclusive views he takes. But since he pounds the drum of “the plain reading” so much, it is reasonable to think that he (at least by his words and his actions) denies the value of biblical scholarship and affirms that there is no need to pursue further study beyond one’s initial reading of the text.

Interestingly enough, the Apostle Paul denies such a view explicitly in 1 Corinthians 3:2. Paul tells the Corinthian church that he gave them the theological basics and called it “milk,” but affirmed that the theological details, which he called “solid food,” still remained to be grasped by them. A deeper study (scholarship) is required if we are to get to the truth of a view. If we eschew biblical scholarship, then we run the same risk of the Corinthian church and being satisfied only with “milk” and never graduating to “solid food.” When we look deeper into the first chapters of Genesis, we discover that the YEC view is not the only view compatible with the inerrant text. In fact, a range of views are fully compatible. If a person is to pursue the correct understanding, they must begin with the correct list of available options, then use further scholarship and sources of truth to determine which of those available options is the correct interpretation. This myth denies such a pursuit, which is in direct contradiction to Paul, so it must be false.

Myth #13: OEC takes something from outside the Bible to use it to reinterpret God’s Word.

Fact:
What is very dangerous about this myth is that it makes a simple statement but never explicitly states the conclusion or the logic to the conclusion. It is true that OEC takes something from outside the Bible and uses it to interpret God’s Word. What does OEC take from outside the Bible? God’s actions: His creation. Time after time, the Bible affirms that God’s actions (His creation) are a valid source of truth. Psalm 19 states that the heavens declare the glory of God; Romans 1 affirms that the knowledge (truth) available to all in creation is so reliable and visible that it is enough to condemn a person; and Jeremiah 33:25-26 states that the laws that govern the universe are as constant as God Himself! (see Myths #16 and #20 below for more on this).

Not only is it biblical to use God’s actions, it is perfectly logical to use a person’s actions to help interpret what their words mean. We do this every day. We even do this when trying to interpret what America’s Founding Fathers meant when they penned the Constitution (see my post “Deconstructionism, The Constitution, and Biblical Interpretation“)
This myth is simply an attempt at a scare-tactic. It is presented as if OEC is concluded because people have approached Scripture with an atheistic presupposition (see Myth #2 above and Myth #14 below) and are trying to make Scripture subject to atheism. If God tells us that His actions are reliable sources of truth, then it is perfectly legitimate to use His actions to help us interpret His words. And to refuse to allow God’s actions to guide our interpretation is another way that we refuse to accept “solid food” and remain satisfied with “milk” (see Myth #12 above).

Myth #14: OEC tries to fit millions of years into the Bible because the secularist needs it for evolution.

Fact:
Similar to Myth #2, Ken Ham attempts to discredit using God’s actions (His creation) to interpret His words by appealing to atheism. Myth #2 already demonstrated that big bang cosmology not only does not indicate atheism, but it requires theism. This myth is necessarily dependent upon the idea that the currently measured age of the universe (~13.7 billion years) is enough time for unguided evolution to produce what we see today. This could not be further from the truth.

Big bang cosmology and a 13.7 billion-year-old universe was not a relief for the naturalist when it was discovered; it was a brick wall that evolution slammed against then and continues to slam against today. This was one of the key reasons that big bang cosmology was rejected by naturalists for so long! 13.7 billion years is orders of magnitude too young for unguided evolution to produce what we see today! In fact, many naturalists are positing that an infinite multiverse exists that would provide them with enough time across all of reality just for evolution to produce what we see today even one time! Big bang cosmology is no friend to the secularist. Not only does big bang cosmology require a Cause and a Designer, it chronologically constricts the naturalist’s evolutionary story to suffocation! Big bang cosmology is rather a powerful enemy to the naturalist, which adds yet another reason for its truth (see my post “Evidence for the Empty Tomb of Jesus and Big Bang Cosmology“).

Myth #15: Allowing nature to interpret Scripture opens the doors to immoral, secular views (including gay marriage).

Fact:
Since Ken Ham is under the mistaken impression that allowing God’s creation to help us interpret Scripture sneaks in an amoral view (naturalism), I can understand why he would be scared of this myth (and propagate the same fear to his followers). However, it is not the act of allowing nature to interpret Scripture that is the source of moral conclusions; rather, it is the presupposition that one approaches the Scripture. If one already has the view that atheism is true, then all behaviors are permissible in their view. However, as seen in Myth #13, the usage of God’s actions (His creation) to help interpret His words is grounded in Scripture, which already holds that the Scripture (which includes the ethical claims) is inerrant and authoritative. A Christian allowing God’s creation to help them interpret God’s words does nothing to damage the ethical claims of God’s words and actually affirms their truth by affirming the truth of the biblical claims of the physical world.
Ham is also fond of saying that a Christian can follow biblical ethics and believe in the big bang, but they are doing so inconsistently. As discussed in Myths #2 and #14 above, though, big bang cosmology is not an atheistic but rather theistic view of the origin of the cosmos, so there is no logical inconsistency between the Christian who agrees with both biblical ethics and big bang cosmology. This myth is simply false.

Myth #16: Allowing nature to interpret Scripture undermines the authority of God’s Word.

Fact:
If it is not clear from the previous fifteen myths that this myth, too, is false, then allow me to offer these additional points. First, if Christians who affirm OEC did not believe that God’s Word was both true and authoritative, they would not bother with trying to find the correct interpretation. Nobody looks at a work of fiction (on a page or on-screen) and attempts to reconcile its claims with the real world. We simply do not do that for stories that we believe are false and have no moral authority over our lives. The very fact that Christians take so much time to dig into biblical and scientific scholarship (the “solid food” of 1 Corinthians 3:2) to find the correct understanding (what the author and Author intended to communicate to their respective audiences) demonstrates their respect, belief, and submission to the content of Scripture.

Second, the only thing that is undermined by deeper scholarship is falsehood. Unlike God, man is not infallible, so his interpretations can be incorrect. It is through deeper scholarship that these incorrect interpretations are discovered and can be rejected. While it is important to study God’s Word to discover the range of possible interpretations that are compatible with an inerrant (and reliably transmitted) text, it would be irresponsible of us to neglect God’s actions (His creation) to rule out possible interpretations or even positively identify the correct interpretation. To refuse to conduct such a study and submit ourselves to God’s actions (as well as God’s Word), and even encourage others not to as well, is to affirm one’s own infallibility- something that no humble Christian should do, even implicitly. This is not to say that deeper scholarship will always lead to what is true (many scholars hold many different views about origins, many of them are mutually exclusive), but the more knowledge we have from the sources of truth that God has given us, the more information we have to reason with and come nearer to the correct view in the details.

Myth #17: OEC is a compromise in the Church.

Fact:
By this time, one should see how this myth is completely unfounded. OEC has compromised, nothing true nor important. OEC does not compromise the truth of God’s Word nor its authority in the Christian’s life. OEC only compromises the YEC interpretation, which is a human interpretation that is not infallible anyway. What has been compromised is falsehood, which is precisely what the Christian wants to compromise! This myth may have rhetorical power on the surface, but when we dig deeper into the scholarship (again, the “solid food” of 1 Cor 3:2), we find that the myth loses its rhetorical power with us because it is a lie. Now, I know that many young-earth creationists are concerned about more than just the age of creation (as well they should), so I have two posts that directly addresses (40) areas of full agreement with YECs and other common areas where “compromise” is claimed against OEC:

Myth #18: OECs talk about nature as the 67th book of the Bible.

Fact:
This myth originates from a claim made by Dr. Hugh Ross back in the 90s (if I recall the timing correctly) that was misunderstood. He stated that nature, as a trustworthy and infallible source of truth (since it is from the infallible God), was akin to a 67th book in the inerrant Bible. But many Christians misunderstood and misrepresented his analogy as his attempt to “add to Scripture” and was trying to say that nature can provide enough information to save a person. Of course, Dr. Ross never intended for either of these to be communicated by his analogy because he does not believe them, nor does his view logically imply or even indicate them. His attempts to correct the misunderstandings over several years were not accepted by his critics, so because of these misunderstandings and to attempt to avoid further misunderstandings of his view, Dr. Ross abandoned this analogy in the mid-2000s. Ken Ham was one of these critics and, to this day, still claims that OECs use this analogy. Today, OECs do not talk about nature as a 67th book of the Bible and have not for well over a decade precisely because we do not wish to be further misunderstood and misrepresented. Because the myth is dependent upon a misunderstanding of an analogy, and that analogy is no longer even used, the myth is false on two counts.

Myth #19: The creation is cursed; therefore, it cannot be trusted to reveal the truth.

Fact:
If we refer back to myth #3, we see that this myth is false already on that count alone. However, when we further study the Bible, specifically Psalm 19 and Romans 1, we see that the authors affirm (through divine inspiration) that the creation can be trusted to reveal the truth. This is not a debate about over whether God’s creation reveals the truth or whether or not the creation is cursed (as also affirmed by the Bible). The debate is over the nature and extent of the curse. Since Jeremiah 33:25-26 affirms constant laws of physics, we must exclude limitations on the creation’s ability to reveal the truth (again, see Myth #3 above). If we are to include limitations of the creation’s ability to reveal the truth as part of the curse, then we essentially must deny biblical inerrancy since Psalm 19’s and Romans 1’s (along with the numerous other passages that affirm creation’s revelation of truth) would be false. The creation was not cursed in a way that prevents it from revealing the truth. Creation was indeed cursed, but its ability to reveal truth being removed was not part of that curse. The creation’s ability to reveal truth remains intact despite the curse.
While this myth is incorrect on biblical grounds, let’s also not forget that Ken Ham attempts to use the creation to demonstrate the truth that it was created by a Designer. Old-earth creationists agree with this; however, if the creation cannot reveal the truth, then Ken Ham’s appeal to it to tell us something true about its origins is a pointless appeal- why would Ken Ham use an untrustworthy source to reveal truth? The reality is that Ken Ham’s own defense of his view using God’s creation is logically incompatible with his view of the curse in Genesis- every “scientific” critique that he offers against big bang cosmology is without a foundation. If God’s creation cannot reveal truth, then it also cannot reveal a defeater or even a mere challenge to any view of reality because it would be challenging a truth-claim. Challenges to truth claims, based upon God’s creation, is philosophically off-limits on Ken Ham’s view of the curse. But, lucky for Ken Ham, this myth has been biblically demonstrated to be false, so he can continue to bring his critiques, see them undermined, and be faced with what God’s creation actually reveals about its supernatural and awesome history.

Myth #20: Children are leaving the Church because they see the conflict between millions of years and the Bible.

Fact:
This myth capitalizes on Christian parents’ greatest fear: that their children will reject Christ. As we’ve seen, though, there is no actual conflict between the universe being billions of years old and the Bible. The reason children see conflict is because Ken Ham still perpetuates the idea that there is a conflict by consistently presenting these myths as fact. By perpetuating these myths, Ham is essentially presenting children the false dichotomy of “accept YEC or deny Christ.” God’s creation denies YEC (both deductively and abductively), yet God’s Word (and history) affirms Christ, so our children are caught between a rock and a hard place. Their sinful nature tends to make this decision easy, though: deny Christ. By presenting the false dichotomy of “YEC or atheism,” Ken Ham is unwittingly setting up our children for spiritual failure; it is this false dichotomy combined with their sin nature that is the reason our children are leaving the Church. Ken Ham perpetuates this problem then complains about it saying that his view is the cure, but if he is perpetuating the problem using a false dichotomy, false accusations against competing views, and a scientifically (the testimony of God’s creation, itself) demonstrably false alternative, how in the world can he hold the cure? Are our children leaving the Church because they see this conflict? Yep! But the conflict they see is a false conflict, perpetuated by Ken Ham. This is the only myth in this list that is true, but the myth testifies not against old-earth creationism but against the false dichotomy of “believe YEC or reject Christ” that Ken Ham claims that logically consistent people must choose between.

Conclusion – Post-Modernism Has Sneaked Into The Church

None of these myths are new. I remember hearing many of them in my teens when I first became aware of the origins debate within the Church. What is really disheartening, though, is that while Ken Ham has been corrected numerous times over the decades, he still insists on using these strawmen to argue against a view he disagrees with.

I recently finished reading the book “Time for Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin” by Os Guinness. As I was reading through the part of this book where Guinness talks about the importance to the post-modernist of controlling the narrative (whether with truth or falsehood) in order to preserve and promote a relative or subjective “greater good,” I couldn’t help but think of how so many Christians misrepresent and communicate myths about views they disagree with, in an effort to defeat that view in the market place of ideas. As Christians, when we refuse to correct our own misrepresentations of a view we’re critical about, we treat truth with no more respect than does the post-modernist. Let’s ensure that we are not guilty of this ourselves.

The Cure For Spiritual Disorientation

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Bob Perry

I have made the case that the church is suffering from spiritual disorientation. There are many Christians who are flying through this life in much the same way as a pilot who is spatially disoriented. Like that pilot, they’ve lost all reference to the ground. And that’s a dangerous position to be in. The first thing a pilot must do to correct his situation is to find the true horizon. Grounding our faith is no different. And the horizon line of faith is truth itself. Truth, in all its forms, is the reference for a grounded spirituality. It aligns us with reality. The Greeks believed in an impersonal force that was the source of truth, goodness, and beauty. They called it the logos. But the Bible tells us that the Logos is Jesus himself. Aligning ourselves with the Logos is the only way to correct our spiritual disorientation.

Getting Aligned With The World

If you want to fly safely through the sky, you need to have a constant reference to the ground. That seems simple enough. If it’s a nice day, you can see the horizon line just fine. But if you’re in the clouds, you need another method. For that reason, a tremendous amount of effort has gone into designing cockpit instruments that display an artificial horizon to the pilot. But that line has to be trustworthy. It has to replicate the real one. We always need a way to be able to see the “true horizon.”

If the church wants to address its spiritual disorientation problem, it needs to make it a priority to invest in doing the same kind of thing. The church needs a way to stabilize its vision of reality. And the place to begin doing that is with the basics of reality itself.

The Ground You Cannot See

Apologists like me love to talk about the origins, design, archaeology, and the scientific evidence that points to the existence of God. We are known to make a case for God as the Creator, Designer, and Sustainer of the world. That’s great. We need to do all those things. In fact, Christianity is unique among the world religions in its ability to offer tangible evidence for its trustworthiness.

But if the church is going to be properly grounded, we need to go beyond that kind of evidence. We need to re-emphasize things that are vital to rational thought, but that our culture has corrupted. I’m talking about the features of our world that you can’t see, but that are just as real as the ground you walk on. The kinds of things you have to know and understand to think clearly about anything at all. I’m talking about the philosophical triumvirate of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

For thousands of years, thinking people have recognized each of these as objective features of the world. If you want to understand how we’ve gotten disoriented, you have to start with them.

Hijacking Objective Reality

Think about it. For thousands of years, human beings saw Truth, Goodness, and Beauty as objective features of the world. But they weren’t just things that existed outside of us. We understood that they were important and reliable because they were grounded in the nature of God himself.

But contemporary culture has hijacked each of them. It has relativized them. Told us they were things we could decide for ourselves. The results have been disastrous. But there is a way to fix it. And the first step in confirming the church’s true horizon is to put truth, goodness, and beauty back where they belong — as the unmoving reference points for all we do and think.

Truth Is The Essence Of God

Truth has always been central to the human relationship with God. The Prophets of the Old Testament lamented it’s passing.

Isaiah 59:14-15— “truth stumbled in the streets. Truth is nowhere to be found”
Jeremiah 7:28— “truth has perished; it has vanished from their lips.”

Jesus refers to truth more than 75 times. In the Book of John alone, he uses the double emphatic phrase, “Truly, truly I say to you …” twenty-five times. Truth was the reason he came to Earth at all:

John 18:37— “For this reason I was born, and for this reason, I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

Ultimately, he transformed our understanding of the nature of truth itself. He personalized it.

John 14:6— “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me …”

If we want our churches to be properly oriented, we have to defend the truth. We have to know that truth before it can set us free.

Goodness Is The Character Of God

Every one of us recognizes what C. S. Lewis put so succinctly:

“Across cultures universally, there are common principles that everybody knows and lives as if they are true.”

You can’t torture toddlers for fun. It is wrong to murder an innocent person. You shouldn’t steal your neighbor’s iPhone. Rape is wrong. We all have human rights.

Where do these ideas come from? As I have discussed elsewhere, the existence of these kinds of things points to the fact that there is a standard we all use to determine morality. Individuals cannot create that standard for themselves. It would lead to chaos. Neither can we agree on them by accepting the consensus of our communities. If that were the case, there would be no way to argue against the actions of the Nazis or southern slave owners. After all, they governed by the consensus of their respective communities.

There is only one other possible explanation for these kinds of things. There is an external standard that defines them. And the only other source of such a standard of goodness is the character of God himself.

Beauty Is The Reflection Of God

As my article, “A Mind For The Beautiful,” points out in great detail, the classic understanding of beauty was that it was a property of objects. Beautiful things displayed symmetry, order, balance, unity, and proportion. They gave the inference of design and purpose.

As an example, the Wright Brothers were not the first ones to build an airplane. They were the first to be able to control an airplane. That’s why you know about them today. And they were able to do that because they spent countless hours studying and cataloging the movement and structure of birds. They watched their feathers warp and twist. They observed how the birds set their wings before takeoff and after landing. In other words, they owed their unique success to their ability to replicate nature.

We don’t create beauty. We recreate it. Beauty is something we find in the world around us. The best we can do is mimic it.

The Divine Mind

As it turns out, Truth, Goodness, and Beauty are each objective features of the world. They always have been. We do not create them. We discover them. They are foundational to reality itself. And they are what we need to know to properly orient ourselves to the world. They help form a true horizon.

Even the Greek philosophers knew this. They talked about truth, goodness, and beauty as elements of a concept they saw behind the orderly nature of the universe.

This concept was rich in meaning. It included reason, choice, reflection, and calculation. It explained the relational harmony between belief and actuality. The Greeks considered this to be some kind of impersonal force — a “divine mind.” And they had a name for it.

They called it the Logos.

The Impersonal Comes To Life

When the Apostle John begins his gospel, it is no coincidence that he does so with this Greek idea in mind. He makes it clear that the “force” is far from impersonal. In fact, he knows exactly who it is.

“In the beginning was the Word (“Logos” ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life and the life was the Light of men.”

It turns out that Jesus is the Logos. He is the Divine Mind behind the universe. The foundation of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Jesus obliterated any notion that the spiritual and physical worlds are disconnected. He is the place where they merge.

If the church is spiritually disoriented, we know where to look to get ourselves right-side up.

As the God who became a man, Jesus showed us that he is our true horizon — the reference for where we should be living our lives. When we focus on truth, goodness, and beauty, we are really focusing on him.

He gives life meaning. He makes life safe.

Jesus — and the Truth, Goodness, and Beauty he defines — is the cure for our spiritual disorientation.

White-Knuckling It

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Brady Cone

As a man who loves Jesus, is in a heterosexual marriage and still experiences some same-sex attraction that is lingering from my previous gay life, I spend a lot of time talking to Christian men about what life as a same-sex attracted (SSA) Christian man should look like. Much of the conversation centers on behavior. “How do I go the rest of my life without acting on these desires which seem so innate and natural?” they ask many times.

It is an important conversation. Denying oneself for the sake of the Gospel is essential to our Gospel witness, the flourishing of our faith, and the wellbeing of our soul. Denying what our flesh so strongly craves is difficult, painful, and can’t be done without the sustainment of the Holy Spirit working in our lives. However, I believe that there is an even more important conversation to be had with these men: what do they do with their attractions?

White-Knuckling It

I went through many years of my 20s “white-knuckling” it. Fighting hard. My desires for men was so strong, but I was determined to fight for purity for the glory of Christ. It was a fight which I fought under much of my own power, and it was leaving me exhausted. It wasn’t until I went to seminary and started to better understand the human heart, the idols they serve, and the true hope we have in Christ that I started to see that God wanted something better for me. He helped me see that He not only helps us control our behavior but also works to untangle what our hearts have twisted. I have heard it said many times that “same-sex attraction is not sin, only acting on it is.” But is that always true? Are desires for what is sinful at all sinful? Is it okay to feel desire for something God forbids? The answer to that question was something deep down; my soul didn’t want to hear. Because for years, in my own pridefulness, I thought I had arrived. I thought my heart and my life were pleasing to God because I had taken the steps of leaving my LGBTQ life behind and was denying myself daily. But finally, in His grace, God brought me to my knees to confront a difficult truth: God not only wanted to transform my behavior, He wanted to transform my heart. And that included my same-sex attraction.

Can Attraction Be Sinful?

It is said repeatedly that “temptation is not sinful. After all, Jesus was tempted, and yet he never sinned.” It is prudent to ask, though, is our temptation the same as that of Jesus experienced? Many know the story of Jesus being tempted, as told in Mathew 4. Jesus went to the wilderness, and the Devil came to tempt and entice him. The results are clear: Jesus never gave into temptation. But, was his temptation the same as the temptation which is manifested in same-sex attraction? The temptation which Jesus experienced was that of an outside force: The Devil. The Devil came and tried to entice Jesus to sinful behavior. And certainly, every believer experiences this type of temptation. We have an enemy who is out to “steal and deceive and destroy.” (John 10:10). However, scripture also speaks of a different type of temptation. James 1:14 states, “each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.” This passage speaks of temptation that is the result of our own evil desire. Now that is a type of temptation which Jesus never experienced. Whereas Jesus only experienced temptation by outside forces, people experience temptation that is a result of the evil in their own hearts. We know that Jesus never experienced such temptation because there was no evil in his heart.

Shifting from the Old Testament law to the Law of Christ in the New Testament, scripture repeatedly raises the bar for what is expected from God’s people. Whereas the Old Testament says, “Do not murder” and “do not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:13), the expectations for people who know Christ are “do not hate” and “do not lust in your heart.” (Matt 5:28). Jesus shifted the focus from external behavior to internal, heart-level desire. Under the Law of Christ, it is no longer good enough to merely not act on our desire for what is evil. Jesus commands that we repent of our desire to do so.

It can be hard to tell the difference between temptation and lust. The question many men seem to ask (with any form of sexual desire) is “how far can I go?” I think a much better question to ask is “how Holy can I be?”

Romans 1: It All Starts With a Lie

The first chapter of Romans is one of the infamous passages in scripture which speaks of homosexuality. Throughout the chapter, we see a progression:

1) They became futile, and their foolish hearts were darkened. (Romans 1:21)

2) They traded God’s truth for a lie. (Romans 1:25)

3) They worshiped created things instead of the Creator. (Romans 1:25)

4) They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal man. (Romans 1:23)

5) They developed a sinful desire for sexual impurity in their hearts for one another. (Romans 1:24)

6) They acted on their desire, resulting in men having sex with men and women having sex with women. (Romans 1:26-27)

We see this pattern in all areas of sin in our lives: Our foolish hearts are darkened. We trade truth for a lie. We worship the creation. We develop sinful lust for God’s creation. We act on that desire.

Through God’s grace, He desires to take us down the reverse course: Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we gain control over our behavior. But it doesn’t have to stop with behavior change! Through the lifelong process of sanctification, God allows us to untwist what our darkened hearts had twisted. He trades the lies which we had believed for his truth. The lies that had led us to lustful desires are exposed and replaced with the truth of scripture. And in doing so, He frees us from the desires which once enslaved us!

Freedom In Christ

Although my romantic and sexual feelings towards other men have so greatly dwindled, occasionally, a man catches my eyes and my heart in a way which another man shouldn’t. I instantly know that there is idolatry happening in my heart. My heart is looking for redemption and wholeness…and it foolishly thinks it can find it in another man. My brokenness tells me that I can acquire what my heart thinks I am missing (usually in the categories of personality traits, talents and abilities, and physical characteristics) from an emotional or sexual connection with another man. In the moment, it feels so natural and normal. However, there is freedom in repentance. Instead of letting the desire for this man grow in my heart, I can repent of trying to acquire from him what is not mine (the sin of coveting). I can go to the Lord and find my wholeness in Him, instead of trying to acquire it from another person. And when I do so, He frees me from the attraction that previously gripped my heart so deeply. In the 13 years since I surrendered my life to the Lord, the process of identifying the idolatry behind my attraction towards a man and finding my wholeness in Christ has gone from months to a matter of hours, minutes, or even seconds. As the Lord has continued to peel back layers of my heart and reveal lies which had led to this evil in my heart, He gives me the grace to repent and see Him untwist what my heart had twisted. That is the promise He gives us in sanctification. It is not completed on this side of the cross, but we can all be “confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6) This sanctification is such a sweet gift from our precious Savior.

The World Descends

Paradigm Shifts

New Reality?

Children of a Greater God

Empathize With the Younger Generation

Serve Our Neighbors

Demand Economic Restraint

The World On The Other Side

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ii. Are the gospel records of this man merely fictional mythology?

Notes

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Who was George Lyttleton?

Was Paul a deceiver?

Wealth

Honor of Men

Power

Passion

Pious Lies

Paul Wasn’t an Enthusiast (He wasn’t crazy)

Paul Wasn’t Duped

Paul’s conversion was legit and Christianity is a Divine Revelation

YOU CAN READ LYTTLETON’S BOOK IN FULL HERE.

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Conclusion

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Introduction

Now, on to the myths of Old Earth Creationism!

Myth #1: The debate is not about whether the universe is young or old, it is about whether you believe God’s Word or not.

Myth #2: Big bang cosmology is based on naturalism.

Myth #3: You cannot see “age” in nature.

Myth #4: The same people who promote big bang cosmology deny the virgin birth of Jesus.

Myth #5: People only debate the meaning of the word “yom” in Genesis 1 because they want to fit millions of years into the Bible.

Myth #6: The idea that the universe is young has been well-established in Church history; therefore, it is true.

Myth #7: Believing that the universe is old undermines God’s Word.

Myth #8: You weren’t there to witness the creation; therefore, you cannot know what happened except by an eyewitness testimony (God’s Word).

Myth #9: Only the YEC believes the eyewitness of God’s Word.

Myth #10: Animal death and suffering are incompatible with the all-powerful and all-loving God of the Bible.

Myth #11: Having animal death before The Fall makes God responsible for moral evil.

Myth #12: If you can understand the general message of the Gospel without the scholarship, then you can understand the details of creation without scholarship.

Myth #13: OEC takes something from outside the Bible to use it to reinterpret God’s Word.

Myth #14: OEC tries to fit millions of years into the Bible because the secularist needs it for evolution.

Myth #15: Allowing nature to interpret Scripture opens the doors to immoral, secular views (including gay marriage).

Myth #16: Allowing nature to interpret Scripture undermines the authority of God’s Word.

Myth #17: OEC is a compromise in the Church.

Myth #18: OECs talk about nature as the 67th book of the Bible.

Myth #19: The creation is cursed; therefore, it cannot be trusted to reveal the truth.

Myth #20: Children are leaving the Church because they see the conflict between millions of years and the Bible.

Conclusion – Post-Modernism Has Sneaked Into The Church

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