What Can We Historically Know about Jesus of Nazareth?

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By  Brian Chilton 

As we come close to a Christian holiday, people often begin to ask, “Can we know that these events actually took place?” When it comes to Christmas, greater ambiguity exists as to particular elements pertaining to the life of Jesus (e.g. the date of Jesus’ birth) than it does for Easter. Part of this comes from the fact that the Gospels are part of a literary genre known as “bioi” (Licona 2010, 203), or ancient biographies and only focused on the core attributes of the person’s life. While we may not know the precise date of Jesus’ birth with great certainty, this doesn’t mean that we cannot know the most important aspects of Jesus’ life. Many skeptics will ask during the holidays, “How is it that we can know that anything actually took place in history? What can we know about the life of Jesus?” This article will provide a brief—and that is an understatement—evaluation about how history is evaluated and what can be known about the historical Jesus.

Is history knowable?

Skeptics will often claim, “We cannot know anything about history because we cannot know that the person recording a particular event is telling the truth.” This mentality is termed historical subjectivism which is defined by Norman Geisler as the argument “that the substance of history, unlike that studied by empirical science, is not directly observable” (Geisler 1999, 318). But if this is the case, then nothing past the present moment can truly be known with any certainty. What about that precious childhood event that shaped you? Well, extreme historical subjectivists would claim that such an event is unprovable as it is possible that you just thought that the event took place. Taken to its conclusion, the historical subjectivist has no means of knowing whether George Washington was truly the first President of the United States or whether King Henry VIII actually initiated the English Reformation. The historical realist believes that history is knowable. Historians obviously fit within the historical realist category. Luckily, there are ways that an event and/or person is deemed “historical.” The historian uses certain methodological tools to gauge the tenability of an event of history.

How is an event determined “historical”?

Since history is by its nature unobservable, the historian must gauge the probability that an event occurred or that a person lived. Nothing can be known with 100% certainty—not even scientific theories. Thus, history is gauged by the probability that what is written is true. These tools include, but are not limited to, the following.

-Multiple, independent sources (Habermas & Licona 2004, 37)—that is, several voices addressing the same event and/or person.

–Enemy attestation (Habermas & Licona 2004, 37) is the voice of the enemy of the person of history being studied. One can claim bias by a supporter, but if an enemy says the same thing about a person then the person(s) involved in an event can be deemed historical.

-“Embarrassing admonitions” (Habermas & Licona 2004, 38) are statements that are given in a history and/or biography that would bring embarrassment to the writer and/or movement.

-“Eyewitness testimony” (Habermas & Licona 2004, 39) is the account of those who witnessed the event and/or person being studied.

-“Early testimony” (Habermas & Licona, 39) refers to the time that the biography and/or history is written as compared to the event and/or person being addressed. Thus, a writer in the 1700s would hold more credulity than a person writing in the 2010s about the real life of John Adams.

–Arguments to the best explanation (Licona 2010, 108) refers to whether a hypothesis pertaining to an event of history holds the best explanation or whether alternatives do. Licona adds that this practice includes “Explanatory scope…Explanatory power…Plausability…Less ad hoc…[and] Illumination [sic]” (Licona 2010, 109-110). Space will not permit the explanation of these divisions, but may be addressed in future posts.

-Arguments from statistical inference (Licona 2010, 114) is the practice of weighing the possibility that a certain person, fact, or event is more probable existing or occurring than not. So, what can we know of Jesus using these practices?

Using these methodologies, what can we know about the historical Jesus?

Actually, quite a bit! Gary Habermas presents what he calls the Minimal Facts Approach. These are facts about the life of Jesus that are agreed upon by the vast majority of historical scholarship—both skeptical and evangelical alike! They are:

“1) Jesus died by Roman crucifixion.

2) He was buried, most likely in a private tomb.

3) Soon afterward, the disciples were discouraged, bereaved, and despondent, having lost hope.

4) Jesus’ tomb was found empty very soon after his interment.

5) The disciples had experiences that they believed were actual appearances of the risen Jesus.

6) Due to these experiences, the disciples’ lives were thoroughly transformed, even being willing to die for this belief.

7) The proclamation of the resurrection took place very early, at the beginning of church history.

8) The disciples’ public testimony and preaching of the resurrection took place in the city of Jerusalem, where Jesus had been crucified and buried shortly before.

9) The Gospel message centered on the death and resurrection of Jesus.

10) Sunday was the primary day for gathering and worshipping.

11) James, the brother of Jesus and former skeptic, was converted when, he believed, he saw the risen Jesus.

12) Just a few years later, Saul of Tarsus (Paul) became a Christian believer due to an experience that he believed was an appearance of the risen Jesus” (Habermas 2003, 9-10).

That’s quite a bit! But, Habermas also notes that if one accepts the early creeds and early writings of the church fathers, then one can also know that “Jesus was born of Mary (Ignatius), who was a virgin (Ignatius; Justin), and he had a brother named James (Josephus). Jesus was born in the city of Bethlehem, located about five miles from Jerusalem, and it is recorded that his birth could be verified by the records of Cyrenius, who was the first procurator of Judea (Justin). Later, Jesus was visited by Arabian Magi, who had first seen Herod (Justin). He was also from the town of Nazareth (creeds: Acts 2:22; 4:10; 5:38)” (Habermas 244).

Conclusion

Seeing that history is knowable, that history can be verified by particular methodologies, and the wealth of information that can be known of Jesus of Nazareth using these methodologies, the Christian should take comfort in knowing that his or her faith is based upon actual events. So, when the believer celebrates this holiday season, they can worship with the full weight of trust in the biblical record without worrying about the doubts that the skeptics may bring. Enjoy the holidays and remember…Jesus is truly the reason for the Christmas season!

Sources Cited:

Geisler, Norman L. Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics. Baker Reference Library. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999.

Habermas, Gary R., and Michael R. Licona. The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2004.

Habermas, Gary R. The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ. Joplin, MO: College Press, 1996.

The Risen Jesus & Future Hope. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.

Licona, Michael R. The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach. Downers Grove; Nottingham, UK: IVP Academic; Apollos, 2010.

 

Brian G. Chilton is the founder of BellatorChristi.com and is the host of The Bellator Christi Podcast. He received his Master of Divinity in Theology from Liberty University (with high distinction); his Bachelor of Science in Religious Studies and Philosophy from Gardner-Webb University (with honors); and received certification in Christian Apologetics from Biola University. Brian is currently enrolled in the Ph.D. program in Theology and Apologetics at Liberty University. Brian has been in the ministry for over 15 years and serves as a pastor in northwestern North Carolina.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2zu8qsx

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Do Objective Moral Truths Exist in Reality

Do Objective Moral Truths Exist in Reality?

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The moral argument for God’s existence is often presented as follows:

Premise 1: If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
Premise 2: Objective moral values and duties do exist.
Conclusion: Therefore, God exists.

As with any valid syllogism, the moral argument can be defeated by proving one of the supporting premises to be false. In many conversations with atheists, I’ve encountered several who agree with premise 1, but deny the truth of premise 2. Is this a rational position, or do we have good reason to believe that objective moral values and duties do in fact exist?

Before we look at the evidence, let’s define clearly the boundaries of the premise. The claim is that our universe contains moral categories of values (good and evil) and duties (right and wrong actions) that exist independently of the opinion of anyone and that apply to the actions and motivations of all persons. Therefore, the topic at hand is a question of ontology—whether these categories actually exist, and not epistemology—how we know these categories. How we come to knowledge of morality is irrelevant to the question; whether we know the speed limit on the streets of our city has no effect on the existence of such a limit. In my hometown, you will still be cited for speeding, even if the road is not posted with speed limit signs!

Secondly, the claim is not interested in whether one believes in objective morality. Belief in, or lack of belief in a truth claim does not make the claim true or false. You may not believe that our town has a speed limit; you can still be given a citation in spite of your lack of belief. What the claim addresses is whether these moral categories exist in reality, not in someone’s belief system.

So the question on the table presents us with two different types of realities; a moral universe in which objective moral categories exist, and an amoral universe that contains only subjective moral categories (where each person’s standard of right, wrong, good, and evil is defined by themselves and applies only to themselves). In order to determine which of these descriptions applies to our own universe, let’s take a look at what both of these realities would be like, and then see which most closely describes the features of our own universe.

In an Amoral Universe, objective moral categories do not exist. No action can be called objectively evil; while one might dislike another’s action, no external standard exists by which any action can be called good or evil. In the overall scheme of things, feeding your child is no better or worse than beheading your child, and any feelings one has to the contrary is simply opinion. In this universe, these moral opinions have no basis in reality; that is to say, nothing objective exists on which to base such a concept.

In a Moral Universe, objective moral categories do exist. Any action can fall into one of three categories:

  • Moral actions — actions that conform to the objective moral standard
  • Immoral actions — actions that violate the objective moral standard
  • Amoral actions — actions which are not addressed by the objective moral standard

While legality is not a synonym for morality, the two are somewhat analogous. It is legal in the United States to peacefully and publicly speak against an policy implemented by our government. It is illegal to murder the government official who is responsible for creating this policy. It is a-legal to read the public information related to the policy. Freedom of speech is expressly permitted by the law, murder is expressly forbidden by the law, and reading public documents is simply not addressed by the law.

As an objective feature of the universe, and not of an individual human, these categories apply to all humans, just as the law of gravity applies to all humans. Just as there’s no escaping the laws of physics for physical creatures, the laws of morality are just as binding on moral creatures. However, the moral categories are necessarily different from other laws of the universe in that they are prescriptive (describing how things ought to be) and not descriptive (describing how things are).

Having described these two universes, let us now consider our own. Which of these two descriptions best describes what we see in our own actual universe? I offer here two reasons why I contend that the description of the moral universe more accurately describes our universe.

The idea of an amoral universe is existentially self-refuting.

The concept of an amoral universe, thought not logically self-refuting, is existentially self-refuting. There is no logical incoherence in the statement “No objective moral values and duties exist.” The problem arises when one attempts to describe how one should live in such a universe… for the instant one makes such an attempt, they have invalidate the concept. In an amoral universe, “how one should live” is meaningless… no standard exists to describe how one should live.

Without considering the implications of such a universe deeply, it’s easy to claim, “Objective moral truths do not exist; I have the right to do as I please!” Yet, this statement makes a moral claim to a “right” while denying moral reality. If you believe that others ought to allow you to live according to the dictates of your own will and your own conscience, then you are appealing to objective morality to justify what others “ought” to do.

The logically correct view in an amoral universe is that everyone will do as they do with no moral implications at all. Yet, atheists commonly make moral demands; for example, that theists “stop imposing their morality”. This demand certainly assumes that theists “ought” to act in a particular way.  Yet, without objective morality, no such “ought” can exist.

Or think of it this way; we are beings who can conceive and consider many different possible courses of action. Does any course of action exist that should always happen, if possible? Does any course of action exist that ought never to happen? Ought theists to never torture atheists for fun? Ought atheists to rebut theists who claim that objective moral categories exist?

If one single course of action ought never to happen, then objective morality must exist. But let’s not get ahead of the evidence; whether it is immoral to torture atheists for fun (a question of epistemology) is irrelevant to the point—the only way that such a statement can logically be true is if there is an applicable objective standard by which we can judge the action in question.

The idea of moral categories would be unintelligible in an amoral universe.

In an amoral universe, one is hard-pressed to determine how the idea of moral categories would come to be. While in such a universe, any moral standard is necessarily subjective, such a subjective morality could have absolutely no basis in reality.

While we certainly conceive of ideas that are fictional, most, if not all of these fictional concepts have their roots in reality; unicorns are an extension of horses; werewolves are a blending of human and animal, a cyclops is an oversized human with a single eye. None of these concepts are completely manufactured out of nothingness.

Yet for the concept of subjective morality to appear in an amoral universe is similar to the idea of blue and green appearing in a colorless universe. It is impossible to convey the richness and experience of color to a man blind from birth, because such a man has no basis on which to relate to such a description. While you might explain that blue is a certain wavelength of light, that doesn’t convey to the blind man what light is, or the experience of seeing blue. To the blind man, color and light do not exist in his experience.

But in an amoral universe, moral categories have no basis of existence in reality. In a world where color had no basis of existence in reality, all would be as the blind man above, completely incapable of understanding the concept of color. Even if one conceived of such a thing as green or red in their imagination, they could never communicate this idea to others without a shared reference point. For purely subjective concepts, such shared reference points cannot exist.

It’s been argued that the fact that different cultures and religions have differing concepts of morality is evidence against objective morality. However, this is not the case. My wife and I frequently disagree on colors; I’ll say something is blue, while she insists that it is green. When it’s brought in to sunlight, we usually find that she’s right!

But notice that while we may disagree on the color of the object, neither of us is claiming that it has no color at all! In order for us to have a meaningful conversation about the object’s color, both of us must assume that color exists, and that the object does have a color. If color does not exist, then our conversation is meaningless, unexplainable, and could only be called delusional.

So the fact that every single person who has reached age two seems to have conversations about what men should and should not do seems to be strong evidence that they actually perceive something in the universe that actually exists. Whether politician, priest, parent, or protester, all make the claim that men should behave in a certain way. It seems remarkably myopic to consider all who hold such views to be sharing the same delusion!

For example, Christianity teaches that we should love our enemies, and as much as it is possible, we should live in peace with all men. Some branches of Islam believe that one should behead their enemies. Again, for this point, which view is correct is irrelevant; but in order for anyone to have a meaningful conversation about which view (if either) is correct, one must assume that a correct view does in fact exist. This requires an objective moral standard.

The implications of these two lines of evidence seem inescapable; unless objective moral categories of good, evil, right, and wrong actually exist in reality, our tendency to think in these terms is unexplainable. But to be fair, we’ve only looked at one side of the evidence. In a later post, I will address the arguments against this view.

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God's Crime Scene

God’s Crime Scene

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It’s about 2 a.m. on an August morning in 1979. A beautiful young nurse by the name of Lynne Knight is living in a bungalow behind a larger house in Torrance, California. As two police officers approach her door, they notice a chair overturned in the entryway and bloody footsteps leading back to the rear bedroom. Each officer has his gun drawn, not sure what to expect.

When they switch on the light, they witness the worst murder scene of their careers. Ms. Knight is lying on her bed, undressed. Her throat is deeply severed, and her lifeless body, which had been stabbed repeatedly, is covered in blood.

Under her body is 18 inches of twisted wire strung between two small pieces of wood that had been sawed off from an old broomstick. Although they’ve never seen one in person before, the officers immediately know it’s a garrote—a homemade weapon used to strangle someone in order to commit a murder quietly.

The killer tried to murder Lynne with the garrote, but couldn’t complete the evil act because she fought back. So the killer stabbed her to death and left the garrote behind in a panic.

Could the garrote lead the cops to this monster? Not soon enough. For nearly three decades, the case went cold until cold case homicide detectives J. Warner Wallace, and Rick Glass got involved in 2007. They dusted off the evidence left in a box at the Torrance PD, and Wallace made it his personal mission to analyze every aspect of the garrote. It turned out to be the key to the murder trial that took place last summer in the same LA courtroom where O.J. Simpson was tried. And there was a familiar face in this trial. The defendant, Doug Bradford, hired O.J. lawyer Robert Shapiro to be his defense attorney.

While Bradford was a former lover of Knight, there was no eyewitness or DNA evidence to link Bradford to the murder. And there were several other suspects in the case, some of whom had since died. Wallace, Glass, and LA District Attorney John Lewin had an uphill battle to convince a jury of twelve that Bradford had indeed committed the crime. There would be no conviction unless all twelve agreed.

But Wallace, Glass, and Lewin had been down this road before. They earned convictions on every cold case they had brought to trial so far. Three of those cases were so intriguing that NBC’s Dateline featured them. This case was no different: Keith Morrison and his Dateline crew were filming the case in an episode they called “The Wire.”

Although Dateline didn’t know it going in, their confidence was rewarded: on August 14, 2014, this LA jury returned a guilty verdict. Robert Shapiro, perhaps aware he had been out argued, didn’t even show up for the verdict. Doug Bradford is now serving a life sentence after being free for 35 years.

How did they get the conviction?

They began by asking the question, all detectives ask at a death scene: can this death be explained by staying inside the room, or does it require us to look outside the room? Obviously, this death was a murder and required a suspect outside the room. Had this been a suicide, natural death, or accidental death, the event could be explained by staying inside the room.

Then Detective Wallace used some very ingenious methods to link the garrote back to Bradford. (You can watch the entire Dateline explanation here.) He linked the effect (the garrote) back to the cause (Bradford).

Now Wallace is employing the same investigative principles he uses to solve cold case murders to eight of the greatest questions we ponder as human beings. He does this in his insightful new book, God’s Crime Scene. In the book Wallace seeks to discover if we can stay inside the room (the natural world) or must go outside the room (the supernatural world) for the causes of the following effects:

  • The origin of the universe
  • The fine-tuning of the universe
  • The origin of life
  • The origin of new life forms and biological machines
  • Consciousness
  • Free will
  • Objective Moral Values
  • Evil

Each of the eight chapters starts with the details of a real criminal case and then applies the principles to the question at hand (the Lynne Knight case is in Chapter 4).

Wallace was a committed atheist until age 35. Now he is a highly skilled author and speaker who presents a unique case for the Christian worldview across the country. Columnist Mike Adams and I have recently teamed with J. to equip Christian youth and their parents with the case for Christianity through a dynamic new College Prep program. I can tell you that audiences are captivated by the way he applies forensic principles to build the case for Christianity.

But don’t think Wallace just tows the party line. Since he is a cold-case homicide detective, Wallace presents you with the evidence pro and con, and then leaves you to draw your own conclusions. He does a masterful job of laying out the evidence and even illustrates that evidence with over one hundred of his own drawings, which clarify and summarize some potentially difficult subject matter. (Who said a serious book can’t have pictures?)

God’s Crime Scene is an engaging and very readable work that investigates some of life’s most important questions. I highly recommend you get it regardless of your religious viewpoint. I can’t guarantee you’ll be convicted, but your thinking will be challenged.

 

Dr. Frank Turek (D.Min.) is an award-winning author and frequent college speaker who hosts a weekly TV show on DirectTV and a radio program that airs on 186 stations around the nation.  His books include I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist and Stealing from God:  Why atheists need God to make their case.

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Are Christian High School Seniors Really Ready for College

Are Christian High School Seniors Really Ready for College?

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We have sent this year’s graduating seniors off to college hoping that we as parents and teachers have prepared them for the challenges of college life. We gave them the best education we could, prodded them when they wanted to goof off instead of study, made college visits, wrote recommendations, and helped them write admissions essays. But have we prepared them for the most serious confrontations to their faith that they will face on the university campus?

College can be a dangerous place for the spiritual life of Christian students. What if your child is assigned a Hindu roommate who sets up a shrine to his or her god in the dorm room? Or, what about the increasingly common situation in which your student ends up rooming with someone who self-identifies as homosexual? Showing Christ’s love to persons with whom we disagree is not the only issue. The question is whether your student is prepared to navigate the intimacy of a dorm room setting with a roommate of the same sex who affirms same-sex attraction.

Hickory Grove Christian High School students in Charlotte, NC with apologist J. Warner Wallace

Hickory Grove Christian High School students in Charlotte, NC, with apologist J. Warner Wallace

Peers aren’t the only source of pressure. Many college professors believe that Christian students are naïve and misguided, and see it as their job to disabuse them of their backward, bigoted Christian notions. How will your student respond when an English professor insists that a sentence has no inherent meaning but rather the reader endows the text with meaning? Will your student be swayed by the philosophy professor who insists truth and morality are relative to culture, or by the New Testament professor who argues that the gospels are full of errors and their accounts about the life and words of Christ cannot be trusted?

Just so you don’t think I am exaggerating about the frontal attack Christian students face a mere twelve weeks after high school graduation, let me share what a former student told me happened the first week she entered college orientation.

Mrs. Scribner,

I just wanted to let you know how much you were right! (Not that there was ever a question:)) I went to college orientation last week and they taught us about tolerance and not pushing your beliefs on others. ‘Your beliefs are your beliefs and let’s keep them that way’ was a major thing. We had to play a ‘get to know you’ game and we were asked about religion. I freely told people I was a Christian and afterward definitely got the cold shoulder. This was at the end of the day so I had already made some friends, but after I told them that it was almost as if the [person] that they had met earlier had ceased to exist. When our group leader talked to us about accepting everyone as they are and not trying to change them it was almost like he was talking directly to me. A couple of the students made it their personal mission to either offend me or change my beliefs; I’m not sure which they had in mind. One made a comment and started out with, ‘Let’s say God  ACTUALLY exists. . . .’  I was most upset by the fact that they were allowed to attack me like this. Not that I would have, but had I made a mean comment about their atheism or unitarianism I feel certain I would have gotten in trouble. I’m already sickened by the double standards and a school hasn’t even started yet!! 

Fortunately, this student was not swayed by the hostile attitudes of teachers and students. In high school apologetics class, we had talked many times about this inevitable reality of college life. Not only was she not swayed, but she was also ready to exercise her apologetics muscles in conversations. She shared one example in which she talked with someone who raised difficult spiritual questions.

I immediately thought back to apologetics and I was ready to discuss! He asked really good questions and at first, I was nervous about answering them. I took a deep breath and remembered my training! I began to ask him questions about what he specifically believed. I used the ‘what do you mean by…?’ question multiple times. I was so excited that I could keep up and even ask questions that took [him] a minute to answer! I just wanted to thank you for everything. You have not only shown me the information but how to use it most effectively. I honestly think your class was the most important one I will ever take. It answered some of my questions and also gave me more. I now have the ability to think for myself and the confidence that I actually know what I’m talking about!!

Now, to be honest, if you asked most of my students what they thought of the apologetics course, they would describe it is far less glowing terms. Studying the evidences for Christianity is hard work, sometimes tedious, and even doubt provoking, as students grapple with questions they have never before asked. Nevertheless, my prayer is that while students may not recall all that we have studied, they will remember that we talked about the questions with which they are later faced, and know where to go for answers.

I applaud this young woman for her perceptive recognition of the disparity between espoused tolerance and the way that students are perceived and treated once they self-identify as Christians. She also was willing to practice what she had learned in class, which requires a willingness to take risks. She even employed effective communication skills in dialogue.

Her story affirms my own conviction that before leaving high school, Christian students need to learn and practice sharing the rational evidences from science, history, philosophy, and logic, for the truth claims of Christianity. Apologetics is not a luxury but a necessity. In fact, a Christian student’s education is incomplete if it has not included focused study of the rationale for Christianity’s claims that:

  • the existence of objective truth and morality is undeniable.
  • the evidence for the God Who created the universe in its entirety and created humans as new and distinctly unique beings in His own image is morally, scientifically, and philosophically overwhelming.
  • Jesus Christ’s deity, miracles, atoning death, and physical resurrection were forecasted in the Old Testament and confirmed in the New Testament.

How do we accomplish this overwhelming task? Parents can proactively teach how to analyze and evaluate truth assertions made by diverse worldviews and share evidences for the truth of Christianity. Church student leaders can incorporate apologetics courses in discipleship plans. Teachers in Christian schools can integrate not only the biblical worldview but also the rationale for that view vertically from pre-K through 12th grade and horizontally across disciplines. We’ll talk more about how to integrate apologetics at home, church, and school in upcoming posts. For now, a good place to start is by equipping yourself as a parent or teacher of elementary, middle school or high school students. Get a good apologetics primer such as I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist and dig in so that you can start the dialogue.

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Introducing BeliefMap.org

If you’re an apologist in training, I want to call your attention to a really neat resource.

BeliefMap.org is a pretty neat Christian apologetics website, which is building online “pocket-apologist” for believers and nonbelievers to use. Imagine an encyclopedia that allows users to interact with academic material in a point-counterpoint debate format. That is to say, navigating the site feels like debating an expert Christian apologist, and you can get to information really quickly from it. All I can say is, try it out! Above is a 3 minute video tutorial of how it works.

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Turek-Shermer Debate: Is Morality Better Explained by God or Science?

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Last week our friends at NewYorkApologetics.com hosted a debate on morality between me and Dr. Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine. You can see the raw streaming video from the debate here (a three camera professional video is forthcoming, but I’m not sure when).

You’ll notice that while both Michael and I agree that there are objective moral values, I am more interested in explaining why objective moral values exist (ontology), whereas Michael is more interested in how we know them (epistemology).  Of course, before you can know something it has to exist (this is the difference between the “order of being” and the “order of knowing”).  So why do objective moral values exist?  What grounds them (what is their foundation)?   I’ll leave it to you to judge who made the better case. (The first 30 minutes is just pre-debate happenings; you may want to skip that to get the opening statements).

Please tune in this morning at 10:05 am ET because I’ll be interviewing Michael Shermer for the full hour on CrossExamined radio.  If you miss the interview, please download the app.  It should be posted there by Monday.

(A special thanks goes out to Nick Mitchell and Anthony Uvenio of NewYorkApologetics.com who did a superb job organizing the debate and all the ensuing events in New York.  Want to learn how they did it?  Join them and others at CIA this year.  Hope to see you there.)

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My Mother’s Faith, My Faith

Four Generations: (L to R) Sara (Tricia's daughter), Mimi (Tricia's mom), Tricia, Jessica (sis's daughter), LynnaRea (Tricia's sis), Ashleigh (sis's daughter) and her daughter, Ally, and Charlie Mac

Four Generations: (L to R) Sara (Tricia’s daughter), Mimi (Tricia’s mom), Tricia, Jessica (sis’s daughter), Lynna Rea (Tricia’s sis), Ashleigh (sis’s daughter) and her daughter, Ally

My Mother’s Faith, My Faith

Just after Christmas this past year my husband, Randy, and I traveled with our daughter, Sara, and her family to Louisiana to celebrate Christmas with my sister’s family, including her two daughters and families, and my mom. It’s a long drive to Springhill, Louisiana, from Charlotte, North Carolina, especially with toddlers. But it was worth it. Though our festivities wouldn’t be on Christmas day, we didn’t care. It had been years since we had all been together. We were glad just to be in the same place at one time, no matter what day we celebrated.

The evening after we arrived all sixteen of us piled into my mom’s living room to share presents. Four generations listened to the reading of Luke’s account describing the Savior’s birth. As we finished the reading, my mom, called Mimi by the grand- and great-grandchildren, spoke. “It’s our responsibility as the older generation to tell the younger generation about how God has shown his love to us. I want you to know that God has been faithful. He has done everything He said He would do. He keeps his promises.”

Through the background noise of rowdy little ones anxious to open presents, for several minutes my 83-year-old mom shared from her heart how the Lord had provided for her every need through life’s transitions, difficult times, and losses. She told us that God loved each one of us uniquely and she did, too. Then she encouraged us to face aging with joy.

“I don’t want you to be afraid of getting old, ever. It’s some of the most beautiful times. God has been so sweet to me.” As she finished, I thought, What a heritage I’ve been given. Lord, help me be faithful to pass on this legacy.

My mom is the godliest woman I know. In fact, if you ask other people who know her, many would say that she is the godliest woman they know, too. But my mom’s godliness is not due to her perfection. She is a sinner saved by God’s grace, with faults and failures like all of us. What makes her godly is that she has trusted God’s provision for her life. She has trusted His offered remedy for her sins through faith in Christ. She has abandoned her days, her sins, and her eternity, to Him. My mom has no plan B. No other options. If Jesus is not all that He claimed to be—God in the flesh—she has no other hope. And from the first time she introduced to me why I needed a Savior at age five, she has made it clear that I have a choice. I can choose to accept or reject this God. She will love me either way.

My mom’s passion to pass on her faith in the one true God reminds me of Naomi and Ruth, two women who lived during the era of the judges in the Old Testament. When Naomi’s husband and sons died—one who was Ruth’s husband—she felt empty and afraid. Her precious daughter-in-law, Ruth, a Moabitess, loyally followed Naomi back to Naomi’s homeland, Israel. Ruth gave up everything familiar in order to follow Naomi. The magnitude of her decision was revealed in her words, “Your people shall be my people. Your God my God” (Ruth 1:16b ESV). Ruth abandoned herself not only to Naomi’s people but also to Naomi’s God.

What a heritage she received. At the end of the book, Ruth, an alien, once separated from God, joined herself to God’s people by faith. She then married Boaz and had a child, becoming the ancestress of King David, from whose line would come the Messiah Himself. Ruth was not a queen, or a woman of prestige or station. She was just a simple woman who went about her daily life in seeming obscurity, and, through her faith, God changed history.

Whether we know it or not, God changes history through us, as well. He has changed my story because my mom shared the truth with me. If the Lord were to take my mother home today and I never heard another word from her lips in this life, she has passed on the sweetest treasure any daughter could receive—how to know the one true God. May my daughters be able to say the same of me.

*Maybe you have a story of your mother—biological, adoptive, or spiritual—who shared with you the heritage of faith in the one true God. I’d love to hear from you. On the other hand, if your story is painful, and you were not given a heritage of faith but of grief, know that God’s gift of forgiveness and hope is offered to you now. To learn how to trust Christ as your Savior, click here. Then you can become the one who passes on this legacy of faith.

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To Trust Christ as Savior

To Trust Christ as Savior

Recognize God Created You with Purpose.

*God is the Creator. God created everything, including you; therefore He knows what is best for you. Colossians 1:16, Psalm 139

*God is Holy. He cannot “wink” at sin. If He did not judge sin as evil, then He would not be a holy God. Isaiah 5:16

*God is Love.  He loves you & wants the best for you. Ephesians 5:2; John 3:16

Acknowledge You Have a Sin Problem.  

*We all have sinned and we cannot fix it on our own. Romans 3:10, 23

*Sin is thinking and acting as the boss of ourselves, against God. It is missing the mark, like when you shoot an arrow and miss the bull’s eye. No matter how hard we try, we cannot be perfect and holy as God is. Since Adam sinned we have all sinned just as he did, being sinners by nature and by choice. Romans 5:12, 3:23, Isaiah 53:6

*Because God is holy, sin separates us from Him. “Death” in the Bible means both physical separation of the soul from body and spiritual separation of the soul from God. We have earned death because of our sin and rebellion. Romans 6:23, Isaiah 59:2

*As enemies of God, we cannot make things right by doing “good” things. Isaiah 64:6

Believe God Sent Jesus to Pay the Penalty for Your Sin on Your Behalf.

*Despite your sin, there is hope. As your Creator, God can fix your sin problem. He can give you forgiveness, new life, and hope. Romans 8:3-4, 1 Peter 1:18-19

*Because God created you, your life’s purpose is relationship with Him. Ephesians 2:10

*Because God loves you, He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, to pay the penalty, dying in your place, for your sin, so you would not have to. Death could not defeat Jesus, and three days later, He arose physically to live forever. He offers you spiritual and eternal life, as well. Romans 5:8, 6:4

*If you agree with God (confess) about your sinfulness, and trust His offer of forgiveness through Jesus, He will forgive your sin, restoring your relationship with God. Romans 10:9-10, 1 John 1:9-10

*You can have new life. Through the Holy Spirit, He gives you His very Life. He will lead you into all truth and give you power over sin. 2 Corinthians 5:17, Galatians 5:16

*You have eternal life. You will live with God forever. John 3:16. He will never leave you. Hebrews 13:5.

Trust in Christ as Your Savior.

To accept Jesus’s free gift of salvation, turn from your sin to believe Jesus is God in the flesh, who died in your place for your sin, and rose again to life. Receive His gift of salvation by trusting Him as Savior. Then you will experience peace with God and become His child.  Romans 10:9-10, Ephesians 2:8-9, John 1:12. To talk with God you might say: Jesus, I am a sinner and I cannot fix my sin problem. Thank you for coming to earth as God in the flesh and paying the penalty for my sin. I believe you arose from the dead. I trust you to forgive my sin, live in my life, and give me the sure hope of heaven. Amen.

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Atheists Steal Rights From God

Atheists Steal Rights From God

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Atheist Richard Dawkins has declared, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference… DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.”

But Dawkins doesn’t act like he actually believes that. He recently affirmed a woman has the right to choose an abortion and asserted that it would be “immoral” to give birth to a baby with Down syndrome. According to Dawkins, the “right to choose” is a good thing and giving birth to Down syndrome children is a bad thing.

Well, which is it? Is there really good and evil, or are we just moist robots dancing to the music of our DNA?

Atheists like Dawkins are often ardent supporters of rights to abortion, same-sex marriage, taxpayer-provided healthcare, welfare, contraceptives, and several other entitlements. But who says those are rights? By what objective standard are abortion, same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption, taxpayer-provided healthcare, and the like, moral rights? There isn’t such a standard in the materialistic universe of atheism. So atheists must steal the grounds for objective moral rights from God while arguing that God doesn’t exist.

Now, I am not saying that you have to believe in God to be a good person or that atheists are immoral people. Some atheists live more moral lives than many Christians. I am also not saying that atheists don’t know morality. Everyone knows basic right and wrong whether they believe in God or not. In fact, that’s exactly what the Bible teaches (see Romans 2:14-15).

What I am saying is that atheists can’t justify morality. Atheists routinely confuse knowing what’s right with justifying what’s right. They say it’s right to love. I agree, but why is it right to love. Why are we obligated to do so? The issue isn’t how we know what’s Right, but why an authoritative standard of Rightness exists in the first place.

You may come to know about objective morality in many different ways: from parents, teachers, society, your conscience, etc. And you can know it while denying God exists. But that’s like saying you can know what a book says while denying there’s an author. Of course, you can do that, but there would be no book to know unless there was an author! In other words, atheists can know objective morality while denying God exists, but there would be no objective morality unless God exists.

If material nature is all that exists, which is what most atheist’s claim, then there is no such thing as an immaterial moral law.  Therefore, atheists must smuggle a moral standard into their materialistic system to get it to work, whether it’s “human flourishing,” the Golden Rule, doing what’s “best” for the most, etc. Such standards don’t exist in a materialistic universe where creatures just “dance” to the music of their DNA.

Atheists are caught in a dilemma. If God doesn’t exist, then everything is a matter of human opinion and objective moral rights don’t exist, including all those that atheists support. If God does exist, then objective moral rights exist. But those rights clearly don’t include cutting up babies in the womb, same-sex marriage, and their other invented absolutes contrary to every major religion and natural law.

Now, an atheist might say, “In our country, we have a constitution that the majority approved. We have no need to appeal to God.” True, you don’t have to appeal to God to write laws, but you do have to appeal to God if you want to ground them in anything other than human opinion. Otherwise, your “rights” are mere preferences that can be voted out of existence at the ballot box or at the whim of an activist judge or dictator. That’s why our Declaration of Independence grounds our rights in the Creator. It recognizes the fact that even if someone changes the constitution you still have certain rights because they come from God, not man-made law.

However, my point isn’t about how we should put objective God-given rights into human law. My point is, without God, there are no objective human rights. There is no right to abortion or same-sex marriage. Of course, without God, there is no right to life or natural marriage either!

In other words, no matter what side of the political aisle you’re on — no matter how passionate you believe in certain causes or rights — without God they aren’t really rights at all. Human rights amount to no more than your subjective preferences. So atheists can believe in and fight for rights to abortion, same-sex marriage, and taxpayer-provided entitlements, but they can’t justify them as truly being rights.

In fact, to be a consistent atheist — and this is going to sound outrageous, but it’s true — you can’t believe that anyone has ever actually changed the world for the better. Objectively good political or moral reform is impossibleif atheism is true. Which means you have to believe that everything Wilberforce, Lincoln, and Martin Luther King did to abolish slavery and racism wasn’t really good; it was just different. It means you have to believe that rescuing Jews from the ovens was not objectively better than murdering them. It means you have to believe that gay marriage is no better than gay bashing. (Since we’re all just “dancing to our DNA,” the gay basher was just born with the anti-gay gene. You can’t blame him!) It means you have to believe that loving people is no better than raping them.

You may be thinking, “That’s outrageous! Racism, murder, assault, and rape are objectively wrong, and people do have a right not to be harmed!” I agree. But that’s true only if God exists. In an atheistic universe, there is nothing objectively wrong with anything at any time. There are no limits. Anything goes. Which means to be a consistent atheist you have to believe in the outrageous.

If you are mad at me for these comments, then you agree with me in a very important sense. If you don’t like the behaviors and ideas I am advocating here, you are admitting that all behaviors and ideas are not equal — that some are closer to the real objective moral truth than others. But what is the source of that objective truth? It can’t be changeable, fallible human beings like you or me. It can only be God whose unchangeable nature is the ground of all moral value. That’s why atheists are unwittingly stealing from God whenever they claim a right to anything.

But how do we know that’s the Christian God? Doesn’t he do evil in the Old Testament? And what about the “separation of church and state”? Those are some of the many questions I address in my new book, Stealing from God: Why atheists need God to make their case, from which this column was adapted.

Atheists Steal Rights From God

 

Dr. Frank Turek (D.Min.) is an award-winning author and frequent college speaker who hosts a weekly TV show on DirectTV and a radio program that airs on 186 stations around the nation.  His books include I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist and Stealing from God:  Why atheists need God to make their case

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Does Scripture Prohibit Women from Doing Apologetics?

Often the idea of doing apologetics evokes the image of men debating on a stage, or speaking to or teaching an audience. Because of a misunderstanding of what apologetics is, some Christians who believe scripture passages such as 1 Timothy 2:11-12 and 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 do not permit a woman to speak in the church worship setting, or to teach or exercise authority over a man in the home or church argue that these passages also prohibit a Christian woman from doing apologetics.

But do they really?

My purpose here is not to debate the correct interpretation and application of 1 Timothy 2:11-12 or 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, but to point out that if these passages do prohibit these ministries for Christian women, it does not follow that women cannot do apologetics. Here are a few reasons why.

1. The command of Christ calls Christian women to disciple-making (Matt 28:19-20). If every woman is called to share the Gospel message with her family members, her friends, and her co-workers in order to obey Christ’s Great Commission of Matthew 28, then every woman is also called to share the rational evidences for her faith in Christ as a part of that evangelistic message. Apologetics enables her to explain why a rational person should consider the truth claims of Christianity and has been characterized as pre-evangelism, since it entails sharing logical, historical, scientific and philosophical reasons for believing Christianity is true in order to dismantle objections (2 Cor 10:4-5) and open hearts to receive the Gospel. Multitudes of godly women throughout history have died as martyrs alongside their brothers in Christ for their defense of the Gospel, and we mock their sacrifice if we fail to bear witness to the evidences supporting the truth claims of Christianity.

2. The heart of apologetics ministry beats within one-to-one relationship. Though on-stage debates and conference or church classes certainly fill an important place in the overall apologetics ministry, most apologetics interactions take place in one-to-one relationships with family, friends and co-workers. Even if a Christian woman never taught in any assembly of believers, she would still have numerous opportunities to share good reasons for believing Christianity is true and also would be held accountable to God for the stewardship of that knowledge.

For example, when a co-worker asks me how I think the world began and I say I believe God created it, he is likely to ask me why I believe that. He may think my belief is unfounded and expect me to respond with, “You just have to have faith.” As a Christian man or woman I should be prepared to share the evidence supporting my assertion in order to earn a hearing regarding the Gospel’s claims about Jesus Christ.

3. The reach of a Christian woman’s apologetics ministry is vast. If a Christian woman never teaches a conference or church class in which men are present, her potential audience still consists of the majority of the human population: all other women and children. Since Paul in Titus 2:3-5 commands mature women to mentor younger women, teaching younger women apologetics is a legitimate pursuit to equip younger women to love their husbands, their children, and their neighbors as themselves. The women she mentors return home equipped to share with their unbelieving husbands the reasons belief in God makes sense based on evidence and are able to answer their college students’ questions about whether truth is relative and evolution is supported by evidence.

It’s not a matter of whether she is permitted to do this sort of ministry, but that she is commanded to do so, as verified by Paul. In 2 Timothy 1:5 Paul commends Timothy’s grandmother and mother for taking seriously the task of passing on the rich heritage of their faith to their children and grandchildren. Christian women answer to God for the stewarding of their knowledge of the Gospel and the evidence supporting its truth claims.

So, regardless of one’s interpretation of passages discussing the woman’s role in the home and church, a Christian woman not only can do apologetics, but must, in order to obey Christ’s authoritative command to make disciples.

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