Theology and Christian Apologetics Archives | CrossExamined.org

“You can’t put God in a box.” It’s a popular saying within the Christian community. And it seems reasonable to say. After all, God can do anything He wants to do. Who would question that? I submit that every thinking Christian should question that … because it’s not true. God’s character does put him in a box. And our failure to recognize that creates a false — and therefore dangerous — picture of God. There is a box God needs to be in. And his character defines it.

God Cannot Do Whatever He Wants

God cannot do whatever he wants to do. If you think that sounds sacrilegious, you first have to understand that God cannot do things that are contrary to his nature. Before we can determine if God can do anything he wants to do, we have to first understand what that nature is. There are several elements to God’s nature but here are a few to consider.

God is Logical

God made an orderly universe. He built the laws of logic into our world and made it predictable. This is why we can communicate with one another. It’s the reason we can use science to understand how the world works. If God made the universe that way, it means that he must also be logical. It means that logic is an extension of his character. And that means God cannot do illogical things.

He can’t make a square circle, a married bachelor, or “a rock so big he can’t lift it.” This is an important point to understand as it relates to the rest of his character traits.

God is Omnipotent

God is all-powerful. But having supreme power doesn’t mean God can do anything. It means he can do anything that power can do. Being immeasurably powerful is what allows God to do miracles or create a universe as immense and complex as the one we see around us. But power does not allow God to do illogical, sinful, hateful, or unjust things. That’s an important distinction to make.

God is Goodness

God is pure goodness. He is “the final standard of good and all that God is and does is worthy of approval.” Because he is good, God is willing and able to demonstrate love in all its forms through mercy, patience, and grace. God loves everything he created. And since human beings are the pinnacle of that creation, God loves humanity in a way that we are incapable of comprehending.

God is Just

Justice occurs when someone gets exactly what they deserve. This can be positive or negative. We know that good acts deserve a reward and evil acts deserve punishment. And we know this intuitively. No one had to teach this to us. Even little babies demonstrate that they know it. All of us inherently value — and seek — justice. God is the source and embodiment of that idea. His character demands it. And since his character is morally perfect, any act of rebellion against that moral perfection — no matter how small — deserves to be punished.

God is Eternal and Self-Existent

God is not the type of being who needs a cause for His existence. The fact that anything exists at all means there must be a permanent, unmovable foundation that sustains it. That’s God. He is the foundation of all being. This is why the question, “Who made God?” is such a silly one. God isn’t the type of thing that you make. He upholds all reality at every instant but does not need to be upheld himself.

God is Omnipresent

The fact that God upholds all reality at every instant means that he is present everywhere. Always. He is not limited by time or space. Don’t get this confused with the ideas that God is everything. That’s pantheism. God’s omnipresence means that he is present everywhere in his creation but also distinct from it.

Putting Them All Together

There are plenty of other character traits that theologians use to describe God. If you are interested in digging more deeply into these kinds of topics, I suggest investing in a book on Systematic Theology. But considering the definitions I’ve briefly mentioned here, I doubt that anyone who takes God seriously would find them to be controversial in themselves. Our problems arise when we forget that God exhibits all these character traits simultaneously. All facets of his nature have to work together. He can’t exercise one if it violates another.

Theological Inconsistencies

Focusing on one aspect of God while ignoring another invites us to accept a false view of him. And many Christians unwittingly do this all the time.

“God showed up!”

When they have an emotional experience in worship, it is common to hear some proclaim that “God showed up today!” But God doesn’t “show up” anywhere. He is always everywhere. Don’t confuse the issue. God doesn’t need our praise to show himself. We need to praise him to remind ourselves of our dependence on him.

“God is so good!”

This is a common refrain to hear from someone who has just received good news of some kind. And while it’s great to acknowledge God’s blessings, it’s wrong-thinking to acknowledge them only when things are going our way. God is good regardless of our personal circumstances. It’s easy to express our love for him when things are good. But it’s imperative that we do the same when things are bad.

“Where was God when …?”

On the flip side, we seem to think God has gone missing when catastrophes occur. We assume that God’s omnipotence means he can and should destroy evil forever. But God made the loving decision to create us as free-will beings. He willingly limits his own power to give us the freedom to choose to follow him. And that means that no matter how powerful he is, God has created a world that allows us to make bad choices. The moral evil we witness all around us depends on our actions, not on God’s absence.

“God is love”

This idea is absolutely true. But contrary to the claims of the universalists and inclusivists among us, God is not just love. The idea that “God is love” is true as far as it goes, but there is more to the story. Ultimate goodness and love are different ways of describing God’s moral perfection. Being pure love and goodness means he cannot sin and he cannot lie. And that means he cannot allow moral imperfection into his presence. When our actions violate his moral law, his justice requires that there be consequences for our decisions. God’s character won’t allow him to accept whatever moral choices we make. This is a reality that often gets ignored by those who insist that a loving God would never allow us to be separated from him. The fact that God loves us does not mean he condones anything we do.

The Box God Needs to Be In

These are just a few examples of how our failure to keep God in the proper box leads not only to theological inconsistencies but to a corrupted view of reality itself. That’s what I mean when I say that we have to put God in a box. It’s a box defined by the sum total of all the elements of his character. Isolating our favorite trait is a bad idea because it doesn’t tell the whole story. And, as is always the case, accepting bad ideas leads to bad real-world consequences.

It turns out that we better keep God in a box. And we better understand how that box is defined. It helps us avoid most of the silly, false, and even dangerous ideas that have become all too common among Christians these days. It’s not always an easy thing to do. But being clear-thinking Christian demands that we acknowledge that God puts himself in a box. And we would do well to keep him there.

The Gospel Authors Knew Palestinian Geography

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

By Ryan Leasure

We’re told by skeptics that eye-witnesses didn’t write the Gospels. Not only that, they say the authors wrote from distant lands like Rome, Egypt, Asia Minor, or Greece. They merely heard the stories of Jesus from others who heard the stories of Jesus from others who heard the stories of Jesus — much like the game telephone.

And as so often happens in the game of telephone, the stories got mixed up along the way. So by the time the writers penned the Gospels, they had a distorted view of Jesus, and thus we can’t know what the real Jesus said or did. Or so the argument goes.

But is that really what happened? A little thought experiment might help us answer this question. Pretend you were given the task of writing a biography on a traveling woman from Bolivia named Carla. Yet you weren’t allowed to visit Bolivia. Furthermore, you couldn’t use the internet, encyclopedias, or maps for research. Your resources would be a couple of Americans who had never met Carla themselves but had heard stories about her travels.

As you undertake this project, how accurately do you think you could convey the geography and landscape of her travels? Would you really be able to give precise locations and distances? Would you know which towns had higher or lower elevations? How accurately could you describe the bodies of water she encountered? Chances are, you’d make a lot of mistakes with these details.

Well, as we think about these so-called authors from distant lands, they wouldn’t have had access to sources that could give them specific details of the Israeli landscape. So as they wrote their stories about Jesus, we would expect them to make lots of geographic blunders, much like your story on Carla. But this isn’t what we find.

Geography of Towns and Regions

The Gospel writers display an incredible familiarity with Palestinian geography. And they don’t just get most of the geography right; they get it all right. This would be truly remarkable if they lived in faraway regions and had only heard of Jesus through secondary sources. But it would be expected for eye-witnesses who followed Jesus from town to town.

Consider this list of towns the Gospel writers mention:1

In total, the Gospel authors list twenty-six different towns. Some are prominent like Jerusalem, while others are obscure like Cana.

Not only do the Gospels include towns, they reference general regions as well. Consider this list:2

In total, the Gospels list thirteen different regions. Compare these lists with some of the apocryphal Gospels, which give us almost no geographical details.

The Gospel of Thomas, for example, mentions Judaea once and no other locations. The Gospel of Judas doesn’t even list a single location, and The Gospel of Philip names just Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Jordan.

Of course, the lack of geographical detail is to be expected in these apocryphal works. After all, non-eye-witnesses wrote them from distant regions some 150 years after Jesus. Naturally, people would have heard of Jerusalem (the capital of Israel), Nazareth (Jesus’ hometown), and Jordan (the river where Jesus was baptized). One wouldn’t need to be an eye-witness to have knowledge of these regions. But Cana, Bethany, and Salim? One would have to have special knowledge to know about these places.

Geography of Bodies of Water

Since the writers had an in-depth knowledge of the towns and regions, it should come as no surprise to learn they also knew about the bodies of water. Consider this list:3

It’s interesting to note the numerous references to “the Sea” of Galilee. For a body of water that’s a mere thirteen miles long, it’s odd that an Egyptian or Roman author would call it “the sea.” For them, the Mediterranean qualifies as a sea, not this tiny body of water that’s less than 1/300th the size of Lake Michigan.

Yet we would expect Galilean fishermen — who spent their entire careers on the body of water — to call it “the sea.” What’s even more interesting is that while the three Jewish authors of the Gospels refer to it as “the sea,” the one non-Jewish author (Luke) does not. Instead, he refers to it as “the lake” (Lk. 5:1, 2; 8:22, 23, 33). This makes sense because from a broader gentile perspective, “lake” was a more accurate description.

The authors also know that Bethsaida and Capernaum are close by the Sea of Galilee and that you can go directly from the Sea of Galilee into the hill country. Furthermore, John knew of a small stream called the Kidron and of two pools in Jerusalem. One pool he describes as having five colonnades, which has been verified by archeological evidence. Again, all of these details would be quite remarkable coming from non-eye-witnesses in distant regions.

Geography of Roads

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus tells the story of a man “going down” from Jerusalem (750 meters above sea level) to Jericho (250 meters below sea level). This was a descent of approximately one kilometer. The writer knew enough to know both Jerusalem and Jericho’s elevations. In fact, all four Gospels describe people “going up” to Jerusalem and “going down” as they left Jerusalem.

In John 2 and 4, leaving Cana (200 meters above sea level) for Capernaum (200 meters below sea level) is described as “going down.” Similarly, Luke describes the travel from Nazareth (350 meters above sea level) to Capernaum (200 meters below sea level) as “going down.”

More impressively, the authors knew the location of a tiny village called Chorazin. In Luke 10:13-15, Jesus chides Chorazin along with Bethsaida and Capernaum for their lack of belief. According to New Testament scholar Peter Williams,

The little-known village of Chorazin is, in fact, on the road to Bethsaida and just a couple of miles north of Capernaum. As far as we know, there was not a single literary source that could have provided this information to a Gospel author.4

The authors also knew that multiple routes existed between Judaea and Galilee — one to avoid Samaria and one right through it. Furthermore, they knew it was short travel from the small villages of Bethany and Bethphage to Jerusalem.

Who Could Know All These Geographical Details?

How could one get all of these obscure details correct? If it’s as the skeptics say, and non-eye-witnesses wrote these accounts from distant places, they got extremely lucky. A more reasonable conclusion, however, is that the writers received detailed information from eye-witnesses or were eye-witnesses themselves. As Peter Williams concludes,

No known sources hold together the particular set of information they (Gospel writers) have, and besides, we would have to suppose that they undertook a level of literary research quite unparalleled in ancient history. If these pieces of information result from hearing, then the reports they heard must have been fairly precise — concerned with stories not merely for their message but also for specific details. Thus it seems that the authors received the information either from their experience or from detailed hearing.5

*For more on this topic, check out Peter Williams’ book Can We Trust the Gospels?

I’m not a Jehovah’s Witness for the same reason I’m not a global warming alarmist

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Wintery Knight

In the summer, a couple of Jehovah’s Witness ladies were going door-to-door, and they stopped by my house while I was out mowing. I decided to talk to them. They asked me why I was an evangelical Protestant rather than a JW. Rather than go into a lot of theology about the Trinity and the Watchtower translation, I decided to just tell them about the false predictions their group has made.

So, let’s just quickly review that using this article from Watchman fellowship, which quotes JW publications:

Initially, the organization taught the “battle of the Great Day of God Almighty” (Armageddon) would end in 1914. Every kingdom of the world would be overthrown in 1914, which was “God’s date” not for the beginning but “for the end” of the time of trouble.

“…we consider it an established truth that the final end of the kingdoms of this world, and the full establishment of the Kingdom of God, will be accomplished by the end of A.D. 1914” (Watchtower founder, Charles Taze Russell, The Time is at Hand, p. 99).

“…the ‘battle of the great day of God Almighty’ (Rev. 16:14), which will end in A.D. 1914 with the complete overthrow of earth’s present rulership, is already commenced” (Ibid., p. 101).

“CAN IT BE DELAYED UNTIL 1914?… our readers are writing to know if there may not be a mistake in the 1914 date. They say that they do not see how present conditions can last so long under the strain. We see no reason for changing the figures – nor could we change them if we would. They are, we believe, God’s dates, not ours. But bear in mind that the end of 1914 is not the date for the beginning, but for the end of the time of trouble” (Watch Tower, 15 July 1894, p. 226).

Clearly, the world did not end in 1914, and it did not end at subsequent JW predictions, either, e.g., 1925, 1975.

So, as the title of the post says that I can’t be a global warming alarmist for the same reason, I can’t be a Jehovah’s Witness: failed predictions.

Here’s an excellent article from Daily Signal by famous black economist Walter Williams, who explains the connection:

As reported in The New York Times (Aug. 1969), Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich warned: “The trouble with almost all environmental problems is that by the time we have enough evidence to convince people, you’re dead. We must realize that unless we’re extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years.”

In 2000, David Viner, a senior research scientist at the University of East Anglia’s climate research unit, predicted that in a few years’ winter snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”

In 2004, the U.S. Pentagon warned President George W. Bush that major European cities would be beneath rising seas. Britain will be plunged into a Siberian climate by 2020. In 2008, Al Gore predicted that the polar ice cap would be gone in a mere 10 years. A U.S. Department of Energy study led by the U.S. Navy predicted the Arctic Ocean would experience an ice-free summer by 2016.

In May 2014, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declared during a joint appearance with Secretary of State John Kerry that “we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos.”

Peter Gunter, professor at North Texas State University, predicted in the spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness:

Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975, widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China, and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions. … By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.

Ecologist Kenneth Watt’s 1970 prediction was, “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000.” He added, “This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”

Williams concludes:

Today’s wild predictions about climate doom are likely to be just as true as yesteryear’s. The major difference is today’s Americans are far more gullible and more likely to spend trillions fighting global warming. And the only result is that we’ll be much poorer and less free.

We have known for decades that the Earth’s temperatures were much warmer during the “Medieval Warming Period,” hundreds of years ago. But some people are just having irrational fears about overpopulation, resource shortages, etc. and so they will promote nonsense to try to scare people into doing what they want. World history is full of pious-sounding attention-seeking hoaxsters who try to scare the gullible masses into giving them money and/or power. It’s not new.

Ambassador at Work – Faith, Vocation, and Apologetics

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Mikel Del Rosario

How do people see you at work? I’ve been thinking about the relationship of your vocational work to spiritual conversations, especially as I reflect on collaborative events I’ve participated in over years, like the National Faith and Work Association Meeting. And here’s the thing: Our apologetic arguments aren’t heard in a vacuum. They’re wrapped in a special packaging called “your life.” In other words, our spiritual conversations are heard in the context of our who we are at work.

Think about it: We spend most of our time at work. And that’s where most of us interact with people who see Christianity differently. Each week, you have the opportunity to break down emotional barriers to the Gospel by the way you work and the way you treat people at work.

In this post, I’ll share two ways your time at work can begin to break down barriers to spiritual conversations with people you see the most. First, your work provides opportunities for building relationships. Second, your job provides opportunities to love your neighbors.

Real Relationships

Building relationships with your co-workers and clients is a great way to break down emotional barriers to spiritual conversations. Part of earning the right to be heard includes doing good work in our vocation. Again, our spiritual conversations, apologetic arguments, and evangelism don’t take place in a vacuum. They are wrapped up in the kind of person you are in the workplace. Walt Larimore, who wrote Workplace Grace along with Bill Peel, says:

“People tend to not want to hear what you say if you are sloppy at work.”

But it’s a lot more than job performance that counts. It’s how you treat people, too.

Neighborly Love

Honoring God with our life includes viewing our work as a ministry—a service to both God and neighbor. This goes beyond the things that we might do outside of our work responsibilities. Although praying for people or leading bible studies after office hours may honor God, we shouldn’t forget that our daily, professional work itself is also a part of our service to the Lord. I like how Greg Forster says that work is “how we serve our neighbors in our everyday activities,” and it “is one of the main ways we reflect the character of Christ” (Theology That Works, 10).

Both competence and character are important traits of a Christian ambassador at work. It’s no surprise that thoughtful acts of kindness—like sharing the recognition for corporate victories with our staff or verbally appreciating our coworkers for their contributions—can play an important part in representing the Gospel. The Lord is pleased by Christian ambassadors who do good, honest work while obeying the Second Greatest Commandant: to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Loving your neighbor often paves the way for open spiritual conversations. In a video series on Workplace Grace, Bill Peel explains:

“When actions and words go together in showing appreciation and respect and honor of the value in another person, that speaks volumes. Obviously, if a person doesn’t feel valued by us they’re not going to value what you believe or what you say.”

So, when someone realizes that we have their best in mind, they may find it easier to open the door to honest conversations about some of the most important things in life. As ambassadors, we must begin to develop a biblical perspective on our work. One of the results of doing so is a better witness for Christ at our places of employment.

At the end of the day, our spiritual conversations are always heard in the context of our lives, including our lives at work. As Christian ambassadors, we need to see the value God sees in our work and the opportunities he’s has placed for us to represent Him well in our places of employment.

Take this week to intentionally build relationships with your coworkers, supervisors, customers, and clients, genuinely loving them through your work. By God’s grace, these simple acts of kindness can help open the door to spiritual conversations and even break down emotional barriers to the Gospel.

Mikel Del Rosario helps Christians explain their faith with courage and compassion. He is a doctoral student in the New Testament department at Dallas Theological Seminary. Mikel teaches Christian Apologetics and World Religion at William Jessup University. He is the author of Accessible Apologetics and has published over 20 journal articles on apologetics and cultural engagement with his mentor, Dr. Darrell Bock. Mikel holds an M.A. in Christian Apologetics with highest honors from Biola University and a Master of Theology (Th.M) from Dallas Theological Seminary, where he serves as Cultural Engagement Manager at the Hendricks Center and a host of the Table Podcast. Visit his Web site at ApologeticsGuy.com.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/35ver66

October 23, 2019/by Guest

Clearing Up Cosmos: Fact and Fiction in Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Landmark Series

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

By Terrell Clemmons

Douglas Ell became an atheist as a youth because of misinformation handed down to him in the name of science. It took him thirty years “to climb out of the atheist hole.” Sadly, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, the 2014 series brought to you by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane, and a host of like-minded celebrity atheists, served up thirteen dazzling episodes containing similar misinformation. The series mixed, quoting Jay W. Richards, “one-part illuminating discussion of scientific discoveries, one part fanciful, highly speculative narrative, and one-part rigid ideology disguised as the assured results of scientific research.”

If you like science—science done well, that is—you’ll find invaluable help making sense out of Cosmos with The Unofficial Guide to Cosmos: Fact and Fiction in Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Landmark Science Series, an easily readable volume co-authored by Ell, Richards, David Klinghoffer, and Casey Luskin. The Unofficial Guide to Cosmos sorts out, episode by episode, the legitimate science from the liberal doses of materialist philosophy, revised history, and brazen ideology the makers of the series have carelessly (or intentionally?) stirred into the mix. Here’s a sampling:

Materialist Philosophy. Without acknowledging it, Cosmos presupposes a priori the materialist worldview. This should come no surprise. But the makers deceive themselves if they think they’ve dispensed with the religious. Scientific thought, according to Tyson, is the “light” that has “set us free.” And discovering our “long lost cousins” (organisms with similar DNA sequences) can be a “spiritual experience.”

Science History. With respect to history, there are errors of commission, a deceptive retelling of the Giordano Bruno affair, for example, clearly designed to paint Christianity as a mortal enemy of science. And there are errors of omission, such as the utter desacralization of many revered fathers of science (Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, and more), who were men of open Christian piety.

Ideology. In later episodes, Tyson lectures viewers about a dire need to save the planet, and he casts climate dissenters, who are “in the grip of denial,” as either ignorant or evil—this against a backdrop of cheering Nazis, to round out the propaganda package.

An especially insidious error of omission involves the makers’ failure to even hint that a vigorous debate rages today among scientists. “Cosmos has done a wonderful job of recalling how old mistaken ideas were overturned—ideas about geocentrism, stellar composition, continental drift…and more,” writes Luskin. “However, these are all tales from the annals of scientific history. Cosmos presents current scientific thinking as if it were all correct, with everything figured out…Tyson never discusses evidence that challenges the prevailing evolutionary view.” This is inexcusable.

Even scientists sympathetic to the makers’ agenda have pointed out serious flaws. “Cosmos is a fantastic artifact of scientific myth making,” wrote science historian Joseph Martin of Michigan State University. Yet, he defends the series, including the myth making. Why? Luskin parses Martin’s defense: because Martin thinks it’s permissible to lie if the lie helps “promote greater public trust in science.” Martin calls this kind of useful lie a “taradiddle.”

Luskin furthermore puts his finger on the million-dollar question the thinking public should be asking: If the science academy is condoning telling us ‘taradiddles’ to curry our trust in science, why should we blindly trust them when they claim that only their “science” can explain the origin of life and the cosmos?

The Idea That Faith is Caught and Not Taught is False…and It’s Hurting the Next Generation

Apologetics for Parents, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Natasha Crain

As Christians, we have all kinds of pithy sayings that make their way through churches and establish themselves as generally accepted truths. Some end up on bumper stickers, some on wall decals, and some just get repeated so many times that people think they’re actually in the Bible.

There’s a popular one among parents that I keep hearing lately, and each time I hear it, I cringe. Not only is it false, but it’s particularly damaging to the discipleship of the next generation.

It’s the idea that “Faith is caught, not taught.”

When people say this, they’re usually trying to emphasize that faith is a matter of the heart, not a cold belief in a set of facts that someone has taught them. And of course, there’s truth to that sentiment. But nine times out of ten that someone relays this saying to me, there’s an implication that our kids’ spiritual development has little to do with the “intellectual stuff” of apologetics, but rather everything to do with how well we live our faith in front of them (apologetics is the study of why there’s good reason to believe Christianity is true).

This belief is desperately wrong. At best, it results in a passive approach to discipleship. At worst, it’s an excuse for intellectual laziness.

Let’s look at why.

First, we have to clearly understand what faith is.

Faith, in its most basic sense, is trust.

A blind faith is a trust that has little or no justification. For example, imagine that I claimed there’s an invisible unicorn living outside my house. When you ask me what reasons I have for that belief, I tell you, “I don’t need reasons. I just have faith.” In this case, I would be acknowledging that I hold a blind faith in my invisible unicorn—it’s a faith without reason.

At the other end of the faith, spectrum is a person trusting in something they have good reason to believe is true. For example, I’m willing to get on an airplane because I have faith that it will safely get me to where I need to be. I can’t be certain, but I know there is a good reason to place my trust in the process.

Importantly, this means that faith is not a way of knowing something. It’s how you respond to what you know. This is such an important distinction. Atheists often suggest that faith is inferior to science as a way of knowing about the world, but faith isn’t a way of knowing about the world at all. It’s trust that we place in Jesus in response to what we know about the world (and that knowledge comes from many sources).

In short, biblical faith is not blind faith. Biblical faith is trusting in what we have good reason to believe is true, based on the extensive evidence God has given us.

Now that we’ve established an accurate understanding of what faith is, we can see two major problems with the idea that “faith is caught, not taught.”

It emphasizes passing on our trust rather than the reasons for our trust.

If faith is trust, then what this saying effectively states is that our trust is something that should rub off on our kids as they see how we live our lives.

Our trust in Jesus may or may not rub off on our kids, but regardless, that shouldn’t be our primary goal in discipleship.

Instead, we need to pass on the good reasons that should lead to our kids’ trust in Jesus. Otherwise, they’re just borrowing our own trust without knowing the justification for it. That’s a faith that’s waiting to crumble as soon as it’s significantly challenged.

It’s worth a side note here that parents shouldn’t assume a well-lived Christian faith is even desirable to their kids. There are numerous kids who grow up in loving Christian homes, with parents who truly “walk the walk,” but abandon their faith. Why? Those kids might admire the sincerity of their parents’ convictions but feel no desire to “catch” that same faith because they don’t believe it’s built on good reason. Once again, this points back to the need to pass on the reasons for the hope we have (1 Peter 3:15), not simply our own trust.

A deep understanding of the reasons for faith is not something that’s simply “caught.”

Even if we restate the saying as “Reasons for faith are caught, not taught,” it still doesn’t work.

Here are just a few major concepts that will never be passively caught based on how you live out your Christian faith:

What objective evidence is there for the existence of God?

Do science and God contradict one another?

Can all religions point to the same truth?

What historical evidence is there for the resurrection?

Was Christianity copied from pagan religions?

How do we know that the Gospels are based on reliable eye witness testimony?

How do we know that the Bible we have today hasn’t been corrupted in the copying process over hundreds of years?

How can a good God permit so much evil and suffering?

Between my two books, I cover 70 of these critical questions that kids need to understand today. My new book, coming in March, focuses on 30 more questions specifically about Jesus (Talking with Your Kids about Jesus: 30 Conversations Every Christian Parent Must Have). That’s one hundred important questions kids need to understand given the challenges today…and that’s one hundred important questions they won’t grasp deeply just by watching how you live your faith.

These things are taught.

And the need to proactively teach is woven throughout Scripture:

“Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them” (Deuteronomy 4:9).

“…he commanded our ancestors to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they, in turn, would tell their children” (Psalm 78:5-6).

“Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching” (Proverbs 1:8).

“Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4).

There’s good reason the Bible tells us to teach and train and not just keep walking with the Lord while kids look on. Those eyes can’t physically see all that needs to be mentally learned. And as long as Christian parents think all they need to do is model what it looks like to put their trust in Jesus, kids will keep struggling when challenged on the justification for such a life.

Does passing on an understanding of all the good reasons for faith means a child will necessarily follow Jesus? Not at all. But when we’re obedient in our calling to be teachers (not just walkers!), we can be confident that we have given our kids the opportunity to develop their own trust in Jesus and didn’t simply encourage them to borrow our convictions.

A borrowed faith is readily handed back.

What is Truth? A Description of the Nature of Truth in the Gospel of John

1. Does Truth Exist?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Brian Chilton

“What is truth?’ said Pilate” (John 18:38). This classic question was asked by Pilate to Jesus during Jesus’s trial. This question does not resonate with Pilate only. In fact, people throughout generations have asked the same. What is truth? What is the nature of truth? Can truth be known?

While Jesus did not answer Pilate’s question during his trial, the nature of truth was already taught in John’s Gospel in three ways. First, one must define what is meant by truth. Aletheia is the Greek term which is translated as truth. It describes something as it exists in reality. So, when Jesus or John describes truth, they are noting the reality of their point of reference. Thus, the term aletheia holds that truth exists and is knowable.

Second, Jesus describes the nature of truth throughout John’s Gospel. Jesus noted that anyone who lived by the truth, desiring to know what was real, would come into the light of God’s glory and his revelation so that his or her works would be shown to be accomplished by God (John 3:21). That is, a person living for the truth acknowledges God’s existence and desires to live for God. Jesus teaches that God desires people to worship him in spirit and truth (John 4:23). Jesus not only noted that truth exists and can be known, but he also taught that the truth brings freedom (John 8:32). Jesus contrasts the truthfulness of God from the lies of the devil (John 8:44). By doing so, Jesus acknowledges the laws of logic by pointing out that truth exists, that the opposite of truth is a lie, and that something cannot both be true and false. Jesus denotes that he is the exclusive way to God the Father because of him being the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). Jesus also teaches about the truthful nature of God’s Holy Spirit (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:7, 13). Jesus prays that the Father would sanctify, or set apart, his children by their devotion to God’s truth (John 17:17). Before Pilate’s epic philosophical question, Jesus had already noted that he came to “testify to the truth” (John 18:37, CSB) and that “Everyone who is of the truth listens to [his] voice” (John 18:37, CSB).

Third, John also acknowledges the existence of truth in his opening epilogue. When discussing the Logos (i.e., the “Word”), John notes how the Logos became flesh. That is, the Wisdom of God became a human being. As a disciple, John states that he was one of those who observed the glory of the incarnate Logos. He also stated that the Logos was sent from the Father and was full of “grace and truth” (John 1:14, CSB). John acknowledges that Jesus spoke the truth in all that he said and done. Furthermore, while Moses gave the law, grace and truth came from Jesus (John 1:17). In the Gospel’s postscript, either John or an editor of the Gospel noted that John was a witness to the events of Christ’s life and that his testimony is verified to be true.

So, what can we know about the truth from John’s Gospel? First, we find that truth does exist. Truth is not personal, but it is objective. Truth is what exists in reality. It is the way things really are and the way things operate. Truth is the opposite of a lie, and something cannot both be true and false. Finally, the Gospel of John notes that true leads to the reality of certain theological truths: 1) God’s existence, 2) a salvific relationship with God through Christ, and 3) redeeming and freeing aspects which bring about transformational living.

To answer Pilate’s question, truth is found in a transcendent, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent reality known as God. This God is the basis for all truth and all reality. For without God, nothing would exist that exists (John 1:3; Col. 1:16–18; Heb. 2:10).

4 Critical Tips for New Apologists

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Timothy Fox

I’m no professional apologist by any means, but I’ve been around the scene long enough to have witnessed plenty of apologetics presentations. I’ve also seen many of the same mistakes being made by new apologists. Here are four critical tips to avoid common rookie mistakes:

1) Beware the curse of knowledge – Too many new apologists rush into presentations without realizing that their listeners have probably never heard of cosmological constants or Hilbert’s Hotel. When crafting your lectures, think about your target audience and their background knowledge. Take baby steps and explain things carefully. It’s better to teach more than you think you need to than to assume that your audience knows more than they do.

2) Be responsible with quotes and statistics – Statistics and scholarly quotes can greatly strengthen your apologetics talks. But you must be responsible with them for the sake of academic integrity and personal credibility. Because of the dreaded curse of knowledge, many new apologists give quotes without references and drop scholarly names without an explanation of who they are.

When providing a quote, you must answer three important questions: 1) Who said it? 2) Why does their opinion matter? 3) Where is this quote from? And don’t rely on second-hand references from other apologists. Find the source of the quote or statistic so you can verify it with your own eyes. There are many fake quotes and statistics circulating on the internet, so be diligent and verify everything you can. Thanks to smartphones and Google, your audience can instantly fact-check your every point, so make sure your quotes and stats are valid. If not, there goes your credibility.

3) Be relevant – While scholarly quotes bolster your apologetics arguments, pop culture references help engage your audience. But pop culture references can get old very quickly, so keep your presentations up to date. And what you may think is a great reference might be lost on your listeners, once again due to the curse of knowledge. Also, be careful not to try too hard to gain “cool” points with an audience, as it may backfire and make you look lame instead. Which leads to my final tip…

4) Be yourself – I’ve seen many presentations that were nearly word-for-word rip-offs of famous apologists. That’s fine when you’re just starting out and gaining confidence in your public speaking skills. But don’t just be an apologetics cover band; make your presentations your own. Find original examples and fresh illustrations. While the premises of the Kalam Cosmological Argument will never change, you can still explain it your way. And whenever possible, provide examples from your own life. Authenticity and a personal connection can make a larger impact with an audience than impeccable logic or rhetorical skill.

These are four tips to avoid the common mistakes that I see new apologists make in their presentations. They will prevent you from looking like an amateur and will take your apologetics presentations to the next level.

Forgery in the Bible: Were 1 and 2 Timothy really forged? Part II

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

By Erik Manning

In his letter to the Romans, we learn that Paul was accused of lying in order to bring more glory to God. Some slanderously claimed that Paul would say, “let us do evil that good may result.” Paul, not known to mince words, responded tersely: “their condemnation is just!” (Romans 3:4-8)

For Paul, lying in the name of God was definitely not OK, even if it was for a good cause. But that is precisely what the Pastoral epistles do, according to critical scholars like Bart Ehrman. Allegedly someone wanted to borrow Paul’s gravitas and so used his name to address some in-house church issues, particularly in 1 and 2 Timothy.

In my first post, I went into detail the positive case for the Pauline authorship of the letters to Timothy. Today we’ll listen to the critics and see just how strong their arguments are.

UnPauline Vocabulary?

One of the more popular objections to Pauline authorship is the difference in vocabulary between the undisputed letters of Paul and the Pastorals. Here’s noted biblical scholar Bart Ehrman:

“There are 848 different words used in the pastoral letters. Of that number 306-over, one-third of them! –do not occur in any of the other Pauline letters of the New Testament. That’s an inordinately high number; especially given the fact that about two-thirds of these 306 words are used by Christian authors living in the second century. This suggests the author is using a vocabulary that was becoming more common after the days of Paul, and that he too, therefore, lived after Paul.” (Forged: Writing in The Name of God – Why The Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. Pg 112)

If you don’t find this too persuasive of an argument, I can’t say that I blame you. We all know that we use a different range of vocabulary based upon our audience. Paul’s letter to Timothy was a personal letter written to one of his spiritual sons and a fellow minister of the gospel, unlike his letter to the Romans, a large church body whom he hadn’t met yet. It’s not hard to see why his vocabulary is different.

Allow me to give an example from everyday life. I’ve been a supervisor before. I’m going to write an email differently writing to an individual under me who I’ve built some rapport with vs. an email that I’d address the whole company with. Moreover, even in my own blogs, I’ve written about sports and apologetics. My vocabulary changes quite a bit, depending on my audience. I don’t tend to write about baseball the way I write about apologetics. And I certainly don’t text my wife the way I blog for an audience! (I can’t see myself using the word “moreover” in a text to my wife.)

Even Ehrman himself suggests that this isn’t all that strong of an objection to Pauline authorship. Quoting Ehrman: “Probably not too much stock should be placed in mere numbers. Everyone, after all, uses different words on different occasions, and most of us have a much richer stock of vocabulary than shows up in any given set of letters we write.”

Does Faith Mean Something Different in The Pastorals Than It Does in Paul’s Other Writings?

So Ehrman moves his focus from the word-statistics to how the way the words are used in the Pastorals. Here’s Bart again:

“In books such as Romans and Galatians faith refers to the trust a person has in Christ to bring about salvation through his death. In other words, the term describes a relationship with another; faith is a trust “in” Christ. The author of the Pastorals also uses the term “faith.” But here it is not about a relationship with Christ; faith now means the body of teaching that makes up the Christian religion. That is “the faith” (see Titus 1:13) Same word, different meaning.” (Forged, p 113)

But hang on a second! That just isn’t true. Paul mostly does use the word ‘faith’ in the manner that Bart says, but he also does use it to refer to a body of doctrine at times in his undisputed letters. Here are some examples:

1 Corinthians 16:13 (ESV) “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.”

2 Cor 13:5 “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith…”

Gal 1:23 “They only were hearing it said, “He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.”

Phil 1:27 “Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.”

I’d argue that Ehrman’s just wrong here to suggest that Paul doesn’t use different shades of meaning when he’s using the word ‘faith.’ He doesn’t use it in a wooden manner that has only one definition.

Do The Pastorals Disagree with Paul’s Teaching On Marriage in 1 Corinthians 7?

Another objection that Bart raises is Paul’s idea of marriage elsewhere doesn’t match in the Pastoral letters. Here again, is Dr. Ehrman:

“In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul is insistent that people who are single should try and remain single, just as he is. His reason is that the end of all things is near, and people should devote themselves to spreading the word, not establishing their social lives. But how does that square with the view in the Pastorals? Here the author insists that the leaders of the church be married. In Paul’s letter, it’s better to not be married; in the Pastorals, it is required that people (at least church leaders) be married.” (Forged p 114)

But this ignores the context of 1 Corinthians 7. Paul says that he wishes that all were as he was (celibate), but he says that not everyone has the same gift, and his wish was not the same as a command. He starts off the chapter by saying, “because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.” (v2)

It’s not hard to imagine Paul, thinking prudentially and wanting to avoid sexual scandal, saying that pastors should be the husband of one wife. While Paul thought that celibacy might be the best for some, it wasn’t practical for all. With pastors leading the flock, the less temptation they have to deal with, the better.

Is The Idea of Bishops and Deacons Foreign to Paul?

Bart’s final objection has to do with the church hierarchy. He says that this “probably the biggest problem with accepting the Pastorals as coming from Paul.”

“The one thing Paul does not do is write to the leaders at the church of Corinth and tell them to get their parishioners in order. Why is that? Because there were no leaders at the church of Corinth. There were no bishops and deacons. There were no pastors. There was a group of individuals, each of whom had a gift of the Spirit, in this brief time before the end came. Contrast that with what you have in the Pastorals. Here you do not have individuals endowed by the Spirit working together to form the community. Here you have the pastors Timothy and Titus. You have the church leaders: bishops and deacons. You have hierarchy, structure, organization. That is to say; you have a different historical situation than you had in the days of Paul.” (Forged p 116)

This strikes me as patently false. In Paul’s undisputed letters, there are offices of overseers and deacons.

Paul opens his letter to the Philippians with “Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons.” (Phil 1:1) Here the word overseer and bishop are interchangeable. While not as explicit, Paul also does mention that the Thessalonians had church leaders: “We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you” (1 Thess 5:12). He also states in Romans that some are gifted to lead (Rom 12:7) and mentions specific church leaders in other places. (Romans 16:1, 1 Cor 16:15-17) If this is the strongest objection against the genuineness of the Pastoral epistles, then color me unimpressed.

The critics’ case for forgery in the name of Paul just doesn’t seem to be all that remarkable. When we weigh the positive case vs. the negative, it seems to be far more probable that the early church got it right. If the critical scholars think that Pastorals are obviously not Pauline based on such flimsy arguments, then why should we not trust them when they tell us that Ephesians or Colossians isn’t Pauline as well? This just goes to show that we shouldn’t uncritically trust the consensus of scholars without carefully examining their arguments.

Materialism Cannot Explain the Origin of Life on Earth

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

By Bob Perry

As I’ve discussed elsewhere, Darwinian Evolution tells a great story. But that story is wholly disconnected from the actual evidence of life on Earth. That’s especially true when it comes to the origin of life. To be fair, Darwinian Evolution insists it has nothing to do with the question of the origin of life. But that doesn’t let materialism off the hook. If there is no God, there must be a materialist explanation for the origin and diversity of the life we see around us. But there isn’t one. Darwinian Evolution fails to explain the diversity of life on Earth. And Materialism cannot explain the origin of life.

Nothing to Select

Natural selection is the core mechanism in the Darwinian model for explaining life. This is the source of the “survival of the fittest” idea with which we are all familiar. Mutations in some organisms provide them with a competitive advantage over others. These more adaptive traits are “selected” and further enhance the propagation of those species. This seems to make sense. But it cannot apply to the origin of life. A lifeless Earth would have contained no organisms. There was nothing to mutate, so there could not have been any “helpful” mutations. Natural selection had nothing to work with. It may help us understand the diversity of life. But what it cannot do is explain life’s origin. So, evolutionary biologists have been trying for decades to find a way to explain how life got started using only stuff available in the material world.

And they’ve failed.

The Miller-Urey Experiment

In 1953, biochemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey of the University of Chicago conducted an experiment to demonstrate how life began. Their goal was to show that life could have arisen through purely chemical processes. For that reason, they could only use the elements that were available on the early Earth. Their experiment passed electrical impulses through a mixture of methane, hydrogen, and ammonia. These were the elements they thought made up the atmosphere of the early Earth. Their goal was to confirm Charles Darwin’s speculations about the origin of life. Darwin believed that life arose from a “primordial soup” of pure chemicals in a “warm little pond.”

A Myth Repeated

On their first attempt, Miller and Urey were able to form some simple amino acids. They believed they had proved that the origin of life on Earth was no longer a mystery. To this day, you will still see the staggering success of this experiment touted in science textbooks.

But it’s not true. Reports of the success of their experiment have been greatly exaggerated.

For starters, it turns out Miller-Urey assumed the wrong initial conditions that existed on the early Earth. Most importantly, they neglected to include oxygen as being part of the early atmosphere.

The Oxygen Conundrum

As it turns out, oxygen was not only present; it is also required to support life. The problem is that if there is oxygen in the atmosphere, or dissolved in water; it shuts down pre-biotic chemical pathways. But that’s not all. If oxygen is not present, pre-biotic chemistry doesn’t work either. So, whether oxygen is present or absent, it ruins Darwin’s infamous “primordial soup.” Pre-biotic molecules cannot form.

Explaining the origin of life requires that oxygen be present. But the presence of oxygen also wrecks the process. The oxygen conundrum is that both of these have to be true at the same time.

But that’s not all.

Chicken and Egg Scenarios

There are regular conferences that meet to discuss the Origin of Life. If you attend one, you will find that oxygen is not the only problem with explaining how life got started. And they keep piling up. The more biochemists learn, the worse the problem gets.

Metabolism and Replication

Cellular life must be able to use the energy it gets from its surroundings. To survive, it has to transform that energy so that it can develop, grow, and sustain itself. This is known as metabolism. No matter how simple the life form is, it must also have the ability to copy and reproduce itself. This is what we call replication. This means that the very first life form must also have had these processes in place. And both of these processes had to have arisen simultaneously.

Proteins and DNA

Along with the replication issue, there is an even more intractable problem. Replication requires proteins which act to copy DNA and use that copy to form a new cell. But without DNA, the cell cannot produce proteins. DNA is the ‘blueprint” used to build an organism. Proteins are the “workers” that follow the blueprint to assemble the cell. And therein lies the problem.

You can’t create the blueprint (DNA) without the workers.

But you can’t assemble the workers without the blueprint.

You need both the blueprint and the workers to be in place right from the beginning.

An Inevitable Conclusion

You can read more about the origin of life issue in Fazale “Fuz” Rana‘s book linked below. But here’s the bottom line. There is no materialistic explanation for the emergence of life from non-life. Wishful thinking and Darwinian “just-so” stories are easy to concoct. But the evidence against them continues to pile up. The more we learn, the more the existence of life seems to depend on the intervention of an intelligent agent. But one thing is certain — materialism cannot explain the origin of life.

Life and a Creator God

But there is another line of evidence that is sitting right in front of our faces. It may be the most astounding evidence of all. The evidence I’m referring to is the evidence about the origin and nature of life itself. This is just one more aspect of the world we live in that is best explained by an intelligent, powerful being. Someone you might refer to as God.

Here is a great summary of why the evidence for the origin of life points straight to God.

God Cannot Do Whatever He Wants

God is Logical

God is Omnipotent

God is Goodness

God is Just

God is Eternal and Self-Existent

God is Omnipresent

Putting Them All Together

Theological Inconsistencies

“God showed up!”

“God is so good!”

“Where was God when …?”

“God is love”

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Geography of Towns and Regions

Geography of Bodies of Water

Geography of Roads

Who Could Know All These Geographical Details?

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Real Relationships

Neighborly Love

Recommended resources related to the topic:

First, we have to clearly understand what faith is.

It emphasizes passing on our trust rather than the reasons for our trust.

A deep understanding of the reasons for faith is not something that’s simply “caught.”

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Recommended resources related to the topic:

UnPauline Vocabulary?

Does Faith Mean Something Different in The Pastorals Than It Does in Paul’s Other Writings?

Do The Pastorals Disagree with Paul’s Teaching On Marriage in 1 Corinthians 7?

Is The Idea of Bishops and Deacons Foreign to Paul?

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Nothing to Select

The Miller-Urey Experiment

A Myth Repeated

The Oxygen Conundrum

Chicken and Egg Scenarios

Metabolism and Replication

Proteins and DNA

An Inevitable Conclusion

Life and a Creator God

Recommended resources related to the topic: