By Evan Minton
You’ve just been introduced to Christian Apologetics and have discovered that there are many good arguments and evidence that demonstrate that Christianity is true. However, you’re not sure that you’re smart enough, have enough free time, or have the financial means to learn this material yourself so that you can be a better witness for Christ.
Can you afford to go to seminary and be trained formally in philosophy and theology? If so, by all means, do that. If you can’t either because you can’t afford it or your current career won’t allow you to go back to school, don’t worry. You don’t have to go to seminary to be a good apologist. Sure, you need letters after your name if you want to read papers at ETS or EPS conferences and if you want your name published in academic journals, but if all your after is the knowledge and the training necessary to win skeptical souls over to Christ, you can do that without ever setting foot on a campus.
I am 100% self-taught in apologetics. Everything you read on my blog, listen to on my podcast, hear in my debates, and see in my social media debates came 100% from reading books, reading blogs, listening to podcasts and lectures, and watching debates. While I would certainly like to have a career in apologetics, as long as I’m winning souls for Christ and equipping my fellow believers, I consider my time as an apologist a success. It may be God’s will for me to just have a blog, write some books, and do a podcast. That’s fine. As long as there will be fewer people in Hell because of the work I’m doing, it is well with my soul. Now, because of my lack of degrees, when I touch upon subjects, I have to heavily cite expert sources and witnesses to back up what I’m saying since I’m not an official authority in these fields. But that’s more of a lesson on how to be, what I call “a credible layman.” I have plans to write an article on that in the future. Right now, I want to give you advice on how to educate yourself so that you can be an effective apologist.
You Are Smart Enough To Learn
First thing’s first. You need to do away with this “I’m not smart enough” mentality that a lot of people have when they encounter apologetics for the first time. I was introduced to apologetics in August of 2010 when I was just 18, but I didn’t put forth the effort to learn the material until the winter of 2011. Why? Because as I watched Lee Strobel’s “The Case for A Creator,” as I listened to William Lane Craig unpack The Kalam Cosmological Argument on YouTube, I thought to myself “This stuff is way too complicated. There’s no way I can remember all of this stuff”. When I would witness to unbelievers and fail to answer their challenges, I would go into my bedroom and pray “God, please send someone like Lee Strobel or William Lane Craig into these peoples’ lives to show them the evidence that you exist, and that Jesus really did die on the cross and rise from the dead.” My game plan was to just preach the gospel, and if anyone brought up hard questions, I’d just pray for God to send a smart person into their path to answer them.
Eventually, God got a hold of me. One day when I was praying for one nasty atheist who badgered me on Twitter when I said: “God, please send them someone to show them the evidence.” I felt God say to me “I want you to show them the evidence.“ Now, this wasn’t an audible voice, and I’m not one of those “I heard a word from God today that said….” kind of guy. But if God does speak to hearts, that moment was definitely one of them. I was confused. I struggled so much to even unpack The Kalam Cosmological Argument in the most basic way, and I could barely regurgitate design arguments. I thought “God. You’ve got the wrong guy. You need to pick someone with a higher IQ.” The very next day as I was scrolling my Facebook timeline, I saw a picture that was captioned “God doesn’t call the qualified. He qualifies the called.” At the moment, I realized that while I wasn’t qualified to share my faith, I could get qualified.
Below is what I did to get to where I am today.
Rule 1: Consume The Same Material Over and Over
It is said that it takes 1,000 hours to master a craft. Don’t get discouraged if you read a book and only get the gist the first time around. The books I bought, I read dozens and dozens of times. I was determined to hammer that content into my head until I could articulate the arguments as well as the authors could. Several of my oldest Christian Apologetics books are falling apart due to overuse. My copy of William Lane Craig’s On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision is one rugged book. My copy of Hugh Ross’ The Creator and The Cosmos has a broken binder, and some of the pages just fell out! My copy of Frank Turek’s and Norman Geisler’s I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist is likewise falling apart. In fact, when I had Norman Geisler autograph this book at the 2017 National Conference On Christian Apologetics, as Dr. Geisler was signing the book, his wife remarked: “You’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of that book, haven’t you!” My copy of The Case for The Resurrection of Jesus written by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona is likewise falling apart. Neil Mammen’s Who Is Agent X: Proving Science and Logic Show It Is More Rational to Believe That God Exists and all of Lee Strobel’s books are holding up pretty well, but you can see some wear on them as well.
I read these books over and over and over and over until the material was burned into my mind. I did this not only with the books that I read but with the lectures and podcasts I listened to. I would listen to lectures I downloaded from the Apologetics 315 website and listen to them on my MP3 Player while I did housework and yard work. I would listen to the same MP3 files over and over and over.
Rule 2: Focus On One Topic At A Time
You won’t get very far if you bounce from subject to subject. Fix your eyes on one or two particular subjects and pursue that one (or two) subjects into the ground. Once you feel that you’ve got a good grasp on those topics, you can move onto another subject. When I first started, the subjects I pursued into the ground were Natural Theology (i.e. arguments for God’s existence like the Kalam and Fine-Tuning arguments) and the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. After I felt I could defend those arguments decently, I studied soteriology and debated the Calvinism issue with my fellow Christians. Eventually, I moved onto investigating Theistic Evolution and then (finally!) eschatology.
Nowadays I revisit all of these subjects frequently, but when I was first trying to learn them, I focused exclusively on them.
Rule 3: Don’t Learn, Train.
In his book, Forensic Faith, J. Warner Wallace writes “Stop teaching your young people. We’ve got lots of great teachers in the church and lots of concerned parents who want to teach their kids. We’ve been teaching young people for generations. But this teaching has obviously become ineffective if the current statistics related to the departure rates of young people in their college years are even remotely accurate. We’ve been teaching, and students have been leaving. It’s time to stop teaching and start training.“[1] (emphasis in original).
Wallace goes on to say not to get him wrong and that The Bible certainly tells us to teach. Wallace cites 2 Timothy 3:16 which says “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction.” and notes that Paul told Timothy he should use the Scripture to teach, reprove, and correct, but he didn’t stop there. Paul identified another important use for
God’s Word:
2 Timothy 3:16–17
“All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for
reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man
of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”
Wallace wrote “Paul made a distinction between teaching and training. It’s time for us to make a distinction as well. We’ve got to understand the role of teaching within the broader context of training. Teaching is focused on imparting knowledge. Training is focused on preparing for a challenge (“equipping” ourselves “for every good work”). Boxers and MMA fighters train. First responders train. Military personnel train. Why? Because they’re eventually going to deploy in the ring, in the fighting cage, on the street, or on the battlefield. These people know they’re going to be challenged and tested. Unless they prepare for this inevitable reality, they’re going to get hurt.”[2]
Wallace goes on to note that when boxers know that showdown is imminent.
They’ve marked it on their calendars. They know exactly when the showdown is going to take place, they train and train hard. They train relentlessly until the night they step into the ring. Wallace mentioned how he did this with witnessing encounters. In one part of the book, he talked about how he and a group of students made plans to go to Utah on a specific date to engage Mormons. The students didn’t know anything about Mormonism and didn’t know any of the challenges they might be met with when trying to share the gospel with them. But Wallace said, “On this day, we will witness to Mormons.” So the whole time leading up to the trip, the students studied and researched and prepared themselves for the encounters they knew were going to occur. Wallace said that when the time arrived, the students did splendidly!
I can speak from personal experience how Calendaring my showdowns helps me become a quick learner. You know those debates you can watch on this site’s “My Debates” page? I trained for each of those debates. I didn’t always have the same amount of prep time, but whatever prep time I had, I put to good use. The one I had the most prep time was my debate with Nathan Reese on “Did Jesus Really Rise from The Dead?” and a debate with a man named Anthony B called “Are There Sound Arguments for God’s Existence” which got canceled. After those two debates, in particular, I found that I could defend the Cosmological and Fine-Tuning Arguments as well as the historicity of the resurrection better than I ever could before that. Calendaring my showdown caused me to train myself to defend these arguments. The pressure leads me to master the subjects faster. Not that I wasn’t good at defending these arguments before (if that were the case, I wouldn’t have agreed to the debates), what I’m saying is that I was twice as skilled after the month of prepping!
In Forensic Faith, J. Warner Wallace gives us a good acronym to go by T.R.A.I.N
T – Test
Challenge each other to expose our weaknesses.
R – Require
Expect more from each other than we sometimes think we can
handle.
A – Arm
Learn the truth and how to articulate it.
I – Involve
Deploy into the battlefield of ideas.
N – Nurture
Tend to our wounds and model the nature of Jesus.
Rule 4: Be Good at Time Management
You need to learn to use your time wisely. All of us only have 14 hours that we’re awake. Depending on what kind of job you have and what kind of life you lead will depend on how much time you can devote to studying these topics. Now, the one excuse you should not have is “I don’t have time to learn this stuff.” Yes, you do. We all have free time. Maybe some of us have more free time than others, but we all have points in time during the week in which nothing is pressing on us.
The issue is not having enough free time. The issue is what you’re willing to sacrifice in place of what you normally do during your free time. For example, instead of watching 3 hours of television when you get home from work, open up a William Lane Craig or Lee Strobel book (or…an Evan Minton book). Listen to a podcast or watch a debate on YouTube. Instead of spending Sunday afternoon watching football, devote that time to study.
Before I got into studying apologetics, theology, and philosophy, what I did in my free time was watch anime and play video games. That’s how my “Me time” was spent. I have sacrificed those things to a significant degree to become a better ambassador for Christ. Now, I still play video games, and I still watch anime, but I’m not able to do it as much as I would like. Sometimes when I get burned out on studying, I take a little break and do these things in their place. Sometimes I can devote only one hour to a game or a show. This is, in fact, the primary reason why I’m very far behind on many of the shows I like. Instead of spending my evening hours in front of the TV, I spend it in front of an open book. I generally binge my TV shows on the weekends to catch up.
If you’re a trucker and spend most of your time on the road, audiobooks and podcasts are PERFECT for you. You can just plug in your MP3 Player to your truck’s radio and listen and learn while you’re delivering. If your truck is old though, you might need to use a cassette adapter. But, in this case, while you may not have a lot of time for reading, you will have a lot of time for listening. And hopefully, the upcoming Cerebral Faith Podcast will be one of the things you listen to.
I mentioned the trucker vocation because a few of my friends in apologetics do precisely this. If you don’t have time to read, you might have time to listen. And even if you’re not a trucker, you might still be able to listen to podcasts and audiobooks depending on what you do. Janitors are notorious for wearing earphones. If you’re a businessman and do a lot of traveling, your plane flights would be the perfect time for both reading and listening.
If you still have trouble making sufficient time to learn, pray about it. God will help you work out a schedule suited to your lifestyle.
Conclusion
Hopefully, you find this article helpful. Remember, you won’t learn this stuff overnight. I sure didn’t.
NOTES
[1] J. Warner Wallace, “Forensic Faith: A Homicide Detective Makes the Case for A More Reasonable, Evidential Faith” page 87, David C Cook
[2] J. Warner Wallace, “Forensic Faith: A Homicide Detective Makes the Case for A More Reasonable, Evidential Faith” page 88, David C Cook
Evan Minton is a Christian Apologist and blogger at Cerebral Faith (www.cerebralfaith.blogspot.com). He is the author of “Inference to The One True God” and “A Hellacious Doctrine.” He has engaged in several debates which can be viewed on Cerebral Faith’s “My Debates” section. Mr. Minton lives in South Carolina, USA.
Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2rYatjU
How To Become a Self-Taught Apologist
Theology and Christian ApologeticsBy Evan Minton
You’ve just been introduced to Christian Apologetics and have discovered that there are many good arguments and evidence that demonstrate that Christianity is true. However, you’re not sure that you’re smart enough, have enough free time, or have the financial means to learn this material yourself so that you can be a better witness for Christ.
Can you afford to go to seminary and be trained formally in philosophy and theology? If so, by all means, do that. If you can’t either because you can’t afford it or your current career won’t allow you to go back to school, don’t worry. You don’t have to go to seminary to be a good apologist. Sure, you need letters after your name if you want to read papers at ETS or EPS conferences and if you want your name published in academic journals, but if all your after is the knowledge and the training necessary to win skeptical souls over to Christ, you can do that without ever setting foot on a campus.
I am 100% self-taught in apologetics. Everything you read on my blog, listen to on my podcast, hear in my debates, and see in my social media debates came 100% from reading books, reading blogs, listening to podcasts and lectures, and watching debates. While I would certainly like to have a career in apologetics, as long as I’m winning souls for Christ and equipping my fellow believers, I consider my time as an apologist a success. It may be God’s will for me to just have a blog, write some books, and do a podcast. That’s fine. As long as there will be fewer people in Hell because of the work I’m doing, it is well with my soul. Now, because of my lack of degrees, when I touch upon subjects, I have to heavily cite expert sources and witnesses to back up what I’m saying since I’m not an official authority in these fields. But that’s more of a lesson on how to be, what I call “a credible layman.” I have plans to write an article on that in the future. Right now, I want to give you advice on how to educate yourself so that you can be an effective apologist.
You Are Smart Enough To Learn
First thing’s first. You need to do away with this “I’m not smart enough” mentality that a lot of people have when they encounter apologetics for the first time. I was introduced to apologetics in August of 2010 when I was just 18, but I didn’t put forth the effort to learn the material until the winter of 2011. Why? Because as I watched Lee Strobel’s “The Case for A Creator,” as I listened to William Lane Craig unpack The Kalam Cosmological Argument on YouTube, I thought to myself “This stuff is way too complicated. There’s no way I can remember all of this stuff”. When I would witness to unbelievers and fail to answer their challenges, I would go into my bedroom and pray “God, please send someone like Lee Strobel or William Lane Craig into these peoples’ lives to show them the evidence that you exist, and that Jesus really did die on the cross and rise from the dead.” My game plan was to just preach the gospel, and if anyone brought up hard questions, I’d just pray for God to send a smart person into their path to answer them.
Eventually, God got a hold of me. One day when I was praying for one nasty atheist who badgered me on Twitter when I said: “God, please send them someone to show them the evidence.” I felt God say to me “I want you to show them the evidence.“ Now, this wasn’t an audible voice, and I’m not one of those “I heard a word from God today that said….” kind of guy. But if God does speak to hearts, that moment was definitely one of them. I was confused. I struggled so much to even unpack The Kalam Cosmological Argument in the most basic way, and I could barely regurgitate design arguments. I thought “God. You’ve got the wrong guy. You need to pick someone with a higher IQ.” The very next day as I was scrolling my Facebook timeline, I saw a picture that was captioned “God doesn’t call the qualified. He qualifies the called.” At the moment, I realized that while I wasn’t qualified to share my faith, I could get qualified.
Below is what I did to get to where I am today.
Rule 1: Consume The Same Material Over and Over
It is said that it takes 1,000 hours to master a craft. Don’t get discouraged if you read a book and only get the gist the first time around. The books I bought, I read dozens and dozens of times. I was determined to hammer that content into my head until I could articulate the arguments as well as the authors could. Several of my oldest Christian Apologetics books are falling apart due to overuse. My copy of William Lane Craig’s On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision is one rugged book. My copy of Hugh Ross’ The Creator and The Cosmos has a broken binder, and some of the pages just fell out! My copy of Frank Turek’s and Norman Geisler’s I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist is likewise falling apart. In fact, when I had Norman Geisler autograph this book at the 2017 National Conference On Christian Apologetics, as Dr. Geisler was signing the book, his wife remarked: “You’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of that book, haven’t you!” My copy of The Case for The Resurrection of Jesus written by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona is likewise falling apart. Neil Mammen’s Who Is Agent X: Proving Science and Logic Show It Is More Rational to Believe That God Exists and all of Lee Strobel’s books are holding up pretty well, but you can see some wear on them as well.
I read these books over and over and over and over until the material was burned into my mind. I did this not only with the books that I read but with the lectures and podcasts I listened to. I would listen to lectures I downloaded from the Apologetics 315 website and listen to them on my MP3 Player while I did housework and yard work. I would listen to the same MP3 files over and over and over.
Rule 2: Focus On One Topic At A Time
You won’t get very far if you bounce from subject to subject. Fix your eyes on one or two particular subjects and pursue that one (or two) subjects into the ground. Once you feel that you’ve got a good grasp on those topics, you can move onto another subject. When I first started, the subjects I pursued into the ground were Natural Theology (i.e. arguments for God’s existence like the Kalam and Fine-Tuning arguments) and the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. After I felt I could defend those arguments decently, I studied soteriology and debated the Calvinism issue with my fellow Christians. Eventually, I moved onto investigating Theistic Evolution and then (finally!) eschatology.
Nowadays I revisit all of these subjects frequently, but when I was first trying to learn them, I focused exclusively on them.
Rule 3: Don’t Learn, Train.
In his book, Forensic Faith, J. Warner Wallace writes “Stop teaching your young people. We’ve got lots of great teachers in the church and lots of concerned parents who want to teach their kids. We’ve been teaching young people for generations. But this teaching has obviously become ineffective if the current statistics related to the departure rates of young people in their college years are even remotely accurate. We’ve been teaching, and students have been leaving. It’s time to stop teaching and start training.“[1] (emphasis in original).
Wallace goes on to say not to get him wrong and that The Bible certainly tells us to teach. Wallace cites 2 Timothy 3:16 which says “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction.” and notes that Paul told Timothy he should use the Scripture to teach, reprove, and correct, but he didn’t stop there. Paul identified another important use for
God’s Word:
2 Timothy 3:16–17
“All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for
reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man
of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”
Wallace wrote “Paul made a distinction between teaching and training. It’s time for us to make a distinction as well. We’ve got to understand the role of teaching within the broader context of training. Teaching is focused on imparting knowledge. Training is focused on preparing for a challenge (“equipping” ourselves “for every good work”). Boxers and MMA fighters train. First responders train. Military personnel train. Why? Because they’re eventually going to deploy in the ring, in the fighting cage, on the street, or on the battlefield. These people know they’re going to be challenged and tested. Unless they prepare for this inevitable reality, they’re going to get hurt.”[2]
Wallace goes on to note that when boxers know that showdown is imminent.
They’ve marked it on their calendars. They know exactly when the showdown is going to take place, they train and train hard. They train relentlessly until the night they step into the ring. Wallace mentioned how he did this with witnessing encounters. In one part of the book, he talked about how he and a group of students made plans to go to Utah on a specific date to engage Mormons. The students didn’t know anything about Mormonism and didn’t know any of the challenges they might be met with when trying to share the gospel with them. But Wallace said, “On this day, we will witness to Mormons.” So the whole time leading up to the trip, the students studied and researched and prepared themselves for the encounters they knew were going to occur. Wallace said that when the time arrived, the students did splendidly!
I can speak from personal experience how Calendaring my showdowns helps me become a quick learner. You know those debates you can watch on this site’s “My Debates” page? I trained for each of those debates. I didn’t always have the same amount of prep time, but whatever prep time I had, I put to good use. The one I had the most prep time was my debate with Nathan Reese on “Did Jesus Really Rise from The Dead?” and a debate with a man named Anthony B called “Are There Sound Arguments for God’s Existence” which got canceled. After those two debates, in particular, I found that I could defend the Cosmological and Fine-Tuning Arguments as well as the historicity of the resurrection better than I ever could before that. Calendaring my showdown caused me to train myself to defend these arguments. The pressure leads me to master the subjects faster. Not that I wasn’t good at defending these arguments before (if that were the case, I wouldn’t have agreed to the debates), what I’m saying is that I was twice as skilled after the month of prepping!
In Forensic Faith, J. Warner Wallace gives us a good acronym to go by T.R.A.I.N
T – Test
Challenge each other to expose our weaknesses.
R – Require
Expect more from each other than we sometimes think we can
handle.
A – Arm
Learn the truth and how to articulate it.
I – Involve
Deploy into the battlefield of ideas.
N – Nurture
Tend to our wounds and model the nature of Jesus.
Rule 4: Be Good at Time Management
You need to learn to use your time wisely. All of us only have 14 hours that we’re awake. Depending on what kind of job you have and what kind of life you lead will depend on how much time you can devote to studying these topics. Now, the one excuse you should not have is “I don’t have time to learn this stuff.” Yes, you do. We all have free time. Maybe some of us have more free time than others, but we all have points in time during the week in which nothing is pressing on us.
The issue is not having enough free time. The issue is what you’re willing to sacrifice in place of what you normally do during your free time. For example, instead of watching 3 hours of television when you get home from work, open up a William Lane Craig or Lee Strobel book (or…an Evan Minton book). Listen to a podcast or watch a debate on YouTube. Instead of spending Sunday afternoon watching football, devote that time to study.
Before I got into studying apologetics, theology, and philosophy, what I did in my free time was watch anime and play video games. That’s how my “Me time” was spent. I have sacrificed those things to a significant degree to become a better ambassador for Christ. Now, I still play video games, and I still watch anime, but I’m not able to do it as much as I would like. Sometimes when I get burned out on studying, I take a little break and do these things in their place. Sometimes I can devote only one hour to a game or a show. This is, in fact, the primary reason why I’m very far behind on many of the shows I like. Instead of spending my evening hours in front of the TV, I spend it in front of an open book. I generally binge my TV shows on the weekends to catch up.
If you’re a trucker and spend most of your time on the road, audiobooks and podcasts are PERFECT for you. You can just plug in your MP3 Player to your truck’s radio and listen and learn while you’re delivering. If your truck is old though, you might need to use a cassette adapter. But, in this case, while you may not have a lot of time for reading, you will have a lot of time for listening. And hopefully, the upcoming Cerebral Faith Podcast will be one of the things you listen to.
I mentioned the trucker vocation because a few of my friends in apologetics do precisely this. If you don’t have time to read, you might have time to listen. And even if you’re not a trucker, you might still be able to listen to podcasts and audiobooks depending on what you do. Janitors are notorious for wearing earphones. If you’re a businessman and do a lot of traveling, your plane flights would be the perfect time for both reading and listening.
If you still have trouble making sufficient time to learn, pray about it. God will help you work out a schedule suited to your lifestyle.
Conclusion
Hopefully, you find this article helpful. Remember, you won’t learn this stuff overnight. I sure didn’t.
NOTES
[1] J. Warner Wallace, “Forensic Faith: A Homicide Detective Makes the Case for A More Reasonable, Evidential Faith” page 87, David C Cook
[2] J. Warner Wallace, “Forensic Faith: A Homicide Detective Makes the Case for A More Reasonable, Evidential Faith” page 88, David C Cook
Evan Minton is a Christian Apologist and blogger at Cerebral Faith (www.cerebralfaith.blogspot.com). He is the author of “Inference to The One True God” and “A Hellacious Doctrine.” He has engaged in several debates which can be viewed on Cerebral Faith’s “My Debates” section. Mr. Minton lives in South Carolina, USA.
Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2rYatjU
Does Religion Really Matter in America?
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The latest Gallup poll shows a continuing decline of religious influence in America. A dramatic shift has taken place in America related to the way we view religious beliefs. Hidden in the data from the Gallup research lies a clue to the reason for this change in public opinion. Why do fewer Americans think religion matters? Listen to the podcast to hear the answer to this question. Frank and Detective J. Warner Wallace tackle this issue and others in this episode. Don’t miss it!
Keep Frank busy by sending your questions to Hello@CrossExamined.org and don’t miss this episode!
Subscribe on iTunes: http://bit.ly/CrossExamined_Podcast rate and review! Thanks!!!
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If it Feels Right it must Be Right… Right?
Legislating Morality, Culture & Politics, Theology and Christian ApologeticsBy Jeremy Linn
How could something that feels so right be called immoral?
That is basically the question Imagine Dragons singer Dan Reynolds proposed on a recent interview on the Ellen Show. In the interview, Dan talked about his upbringing as a Mormon and his tendency to rebel against the moral cues of his culture. When he attended BYU (the “Mormon college”), he started sleeping with his girlfriend. BYU somehow found out about Dan’s actions, and the school decided to kick him out. That’s when he asked the question – “Why is this thing that feels right also something that gets me kicked out of college and shames me in my community and made me feel all this guilt?”
Now a few warnings before continuing. I am NOT about to advocate for the moral validity of the Mormon faith. I am also not about to tear down Imagine Dragons – I would say they’re in my top 5 favorite bands. Finally, I am not going to analyze BYU’s response to Dan’s actions or the effect that response had in Dan’s life.
But I do want to point out that in his question, Dan implied that he believed what he was doing was okay because it felt right to do. His assessment of his moral actions was not based on an objective moral code laid out by Mormonism, or any other objective moral code for that matter. It was based on a subjective standard – how those actions felt to him.
This notion is common for people in our culture to hold – if something feels right, it must be morally right. But do feelings actually provide us a solid basis to assess the moral quality of our actions? To address complex questions like this one, I like to start with the most obvious points, and then continue from there. So I will do just that with this question.
One obvious point is that using feelings as a basis for moral assessment doesn’t work logically. If we’re going off a purely feelings-based standard, any action could be morally justified with that standard. For example, I would not be surprised if some people who are charged with child pornography felt that accessing that content was an okay thing to do. Yet they are still prosecuted, and many people who base morality off individual feelings would be outraged by their actions.
Another point is feelings are temporary and can change. What feels right one day may feel not-so-right the next. What if Dan suddenly started to feel like sleeping with his girlfriend was a wrong thing to do? It seems that under the feelings-based standard, the action would turn suddenly from morally right to evidently wrong.
Based on these two concepts alone, it’s clear that feelings are not a solid basis for us to assess the moral quality of our actions. Certainly less obvious points could be thrown in as well. There’s the question of how to determine who is right when two people’s feelings conflict. Then there’s the question of how to govern with moral principles when the standard for morality is the feelings of each individual in a society.
So what is a proper standard to assess moral actions? Again, I turn to the obvious points to address this question. First, a proper standard involves something that goes beyond what an individual feels since feelings are a poor basis for making moral judgments. Second, the standard is one that will not change quickly, as moral assessment would be nearly impossible if the standard can change on a dime. Third, the standard must transcend cultural norms in order for us to be able to evaluate the moral actions of people from a different culture.
This criteria for a proper moral standard is in line with theism – the notion that a good and personal God exists. In theism, goodness is inherent in God’s nature, and thus the moral standard comes from reflection about God’s nature. This nature goes beyond individual feelings, never changes, and transcends cultures.
It is possible that a non-theistic standard could meet the same criteria. But whether a moral standard comes from a theistic or non-theistic viewpoint, one thing’s for sure:
If something we do feels right, it does not necessarily follow that we are doing the right thing.
Jeremy is an accountant for a law firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He’s also going to Bethel Seminary for a graduate degree in a program called Christian Thought (basically Apologetics!). Outside of Apologetics, Jeremy enjoys sports, playing guitar, and making videos.
Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2BijtEO
A Quick History Lesson
Atheism, Theology and Christian ApologeticsBy Nick Peters
Objection:
The Bible is a compendium of fireside tales and fables recounted orally for generations by goat herders and primitive tribes from the stone age until writing was invented, and then again many different sources, transliterations, and versions were written down.
There were no grand central universities to organize the many various versions of these origin stories. They were for entertainment, and to answer the questions of the many fears and mysteries of our universe since there was no science yet. This is the Old Testament.
The ‘new’ Testes is also hearsay since these letters, ‘gospels’ and stories were written by the loyal faithful, the camp followers, not by objective historians at that particular time, or by any contemporary writers, and these tales were written many years after the supposed events of this mythical Jesus. Thus, there is no verifiable evidence of a Jesus in real history.
Then many of these stories, but not all, were compiled for one self-absorbed converted Roman Emperor for his expressed purpose of conquest and control of the people of Europe for his Holy Roman Empire. He recognized that this was the perfect religion/mythology for domination of the populace. Half the stories were ignored by the Nicean Bishops, and none have been proven to be based on fact.
This ‘Bable’ is backed up by absolutely no facts and evidence.
– Brien
Nick Peters’ Response:
I have been asked by Tim Stratton to write a reply to Brien as he has been making these same objections in various groups on social media — including the FreeThinking Ministries Facebook page. Tim refers to it as a “softball objection.” I really think that’s inappropriate because when you play softball, there’s an actual target to swing at.
Let’s go through and consider Brien’s objections:
Let’s begin by noting that no evidence is given to support any of these assertions. It’s all a “just so” story. Somehow, Brien knows these stories go back to the Stone Age. How? What evidence has been brought forward? Nothing. There’s also this implication that people who are goat herders specifically — and all primitives — must be therefore stupid. It’s one of my favorite claims to see: “Ancient People Were Stupid!”
Then we are told writing was invented and many different sources, transliterations, and versions were written down. Well, a source is something that’s used when writing, so that part doesn’t make sense. Then transliteration supposedly, but that’s using another alphabet to write a message, so what message was being transliterated if the alphabet hadn’t been written? Then he claims there are many versions, but where are these versions? Can Brien show them? We could recommend that he read a book like this, but that’s likely too much work. (By the way, for those financially challenged libraries offer these books for free.)
That’s true. There were no grand central universities. After all, there was no Christianity yet, and Christians started the majority of those universities, including the universities that were founded in America. In the medieval period, there were plenty of universities founded by Christians. As for why the stories were written, again, we have a “just so” story. It’s also assumed the accounts are meant to be read as scientific accounts. I disagree. I go with John Walton in saying the accounts are aimed at dealing with God declaring the function of creation in being a cosmos for Him to dwell in. Still, Brien has given zero evidences or sources for any of this.
Awwww. “The New Testes.” Isn’t that cute? I bet Brien sure feels like a big boy using terminology like that. Well, give him a cookie. So the first statement we have is that the Gospels are hearsay. On what grounds? First, they were written by the loyal faithful.
I was not aware that being loyal to a cause meant that your account was hearsay or even dare I say it, unreliable. They are also contrasted to objective historians. Keep in mind, Jews today have the best holocaust museums out there, and I’m quite sure they have a bias. As for objective historians, no historian is purely objective. If you write about something, it’s because you care about it.
Besides that, which historians should have written about Jesus? How many of them are going to take seriously the claims of a crucified criminal in the backwaters of Judea being a Messiah figure? No more than most elite will go and track down a Benny Hinn claim.
Well, usually historical accounts are written after the events. That’s the way it works. Next, this is also common in the ancient world. Plutarch would write about events that took place centuries before he lived. The first biographies of Alexander the Great that we have come centuries later.
Next, there is still no evidence given. Perhaps Brien could someday learn to interact with a work like this one. Does Brien have any methodology whereby to date an ancient manuscript? Does he have a methodology to determine authorship?
Finally, this would only apply to the Gospels. Seven of the thirteen epistles attributed to Paul are universally accepted in scholarship, and those seven are all we need to make a case for the resurrection of Jesus.
At this point, we just put our heads back and roar in laughter! Jesus mythicism is to history what Intelligent Design (ID) is said to be to science. (I am not a supporter of ID anyway.) Wait. That’s not accurate. There are far more Ph.D.’s in science that will give some backing to it than there are Ph.D.’s in the New Testament or ancient history that will support mythicism. In other words, if you think ID and/or any denial of evolution is junk science, you have no grounds to be supporting mythicism.
Bart Ehrman and Maurice Casey are both serious NT scholars who have written on this topic. They definitely represent the position of most skeptical scholars on this issue. It’s just not a serious claim. It leaves too many questions to explain and lacks much explanatory power itself.
Poor Brien doesn’t know his history. The Holy Roman Empire started in 800 with Charlemagne. The Council of Nicea was under Constantine in 325. Constantine didn’t have much to do with it and Athanasius, the grand hero of the event, went into exile numerous times afterward as Arians took power. Brien tells us half the stories were ignored by the bishops. No evidence is given of this, and the Council of Nicea was about the Arian controversy. It was not about the canon of Scripture. The first listing we have that mirrors the Protestant Bible comes from Athanasius in 367.
Brien tells us this was the perfect mythology to control the populace. Why? No reason is given. All we have is assertions of faith.
You might think this if you ignore all scholarship and archaeology and everything else. It seems as if Brien has never read any scholarship. In an irony, he is like many pastors in many pulpits that he would decry. Reading Brien’s writing reminds me of the joke about the fundamentalist pastor writing the sermon outline for Sunday and putting on the side, “Weak point. Pound pulpit harder.” It would remind me more if there were any points here at all. Brien is just a “fundamentalist pastor” for the other side giving statements of faith without evidence.
Irony is funny, isn’t it?
Nick Peters has a passion for apologetics. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in preaching and Bible from Johnson University and is currently working on a Master’s in the New Testament. He and his wife are both diagnosed with Aspergers and have a cat named Shiro. His other interests include reading, video games, and popular TV shows like The Big Bang Theory and The Flash. Nick says that he is extremely sarcastic, so you’ve been warned! Make sure to check out his Deeper Waters website here at www.deeperwatersapologetics.com
Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2UGvMUe
Is missionary work full of “cultural imperialism and insane arrogance?”
Legislating Morality, Culture & Politics, Theology and Christian ApologeticsBy Erik Manning
John Allen Chau’s death has sparked questions about the morality of Christian missions. Is missionary work full of “cultural imperialism and insane arrogance?”
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, by now you’ve heard about the death of John Allen Chau. The 26-year old missionary traveled to a remote Indian island in hopes of sharing his faith with an isolated and uncivilized tribe called the Sentinelese. This group was known for their aggression towards outsiders and even fired arrows on his approaching boat. Unmoved, Chau made it to the island only to have been killed the next day. To avoid conflict with the Sentinelese, local authorities have given up trying to recover his body.
Chau’s death has sparked a lot of debate about the morality of Christian missions. Let’s just say that the reaction has not been all that empathetic. Social media have called him all kinds of names. Some have even made him the subject of some pretty appalling and mean-spirited memes.
The press has also chimed in. Many have raised questions of arrogance and imperialism. Here’s just a little sampling:
Was Chau “a violator of human rights?” Are Christian missionaries practicing a “form of violence?”
If your smug-detector is working, you’re probably picking up on some thinly veiled arrogance in statements like these. There are some hidden assumptions going on here.
First, these statements assume some sort of religious relativism. Either all religions are equally valid paths to God. Or none of them really are, but people ought to be left alone to determine the truth for themselves.
Furthermore, these statements assume that Christians are wrong about the uniqueness of Christ.
It seems like that in our day the only heresy is to say that religious truth can be exclusive. This runs cross-grain against the message of the early church. Before the Sanhedrin, Peter said:
If there is no resurrection, then all Christian missionaries are wasting their lives.
St. Paul is the paradigm of Christian missionaries. He traveled all over the Greco-Roman world, spreading the gospel to people who never heard about Jesus. He tried to convert Jews, and he tried converting idol-worshipers. He said he had an obligation to the civilized and the savage. (Romans 1:14) And he had a lot of success, but he also experienced great persecution.
In his letters and in the Book of Acts we read about what hardship he endured. He was in and out of prison. He was repeatedly whipped, beaten with rods, was once stoned and left for dead. He survived three shipwrecks trying to take the gospels to other nations. (2 Corinthians 11:23–27) And he eventually was beheaded by the Romans.
Was Paul some kind of crazy, arrogant imperialist? What were his motives? Paul himself said:
Now if the resurrection of Jesus isn’t historical, and if the religions of those he preached to were as equally valid as his, then what he did was wrong. We can say with confidence he wasted his life. Paul himself said as much:
Now, I’m not at all saying Chau is a modern-day Paul. I’m not in a position to judge his motives or the wisdom of his actions. Other people who understand the complexity of world missions have weighed in, and I’ll defer to their expertise. But what I will say is that he seemed to be motivated by love to share what he believed to be true and important. That’s not arrogance and imperialism. That would be the true motive of any missionary or evangelist.
If we’re arrogant for thinking what we believe is true, then we’re all arrogant.
Think about it for a second. If you say Christianity is evil because it’s exclusive, you too are being exclusive. By making saying something is immoral you’re excluding it by calling it evil. The whole arrogance charge simply backfires. How can you not believe what you think is true?
Allow me to illustrate with a moral analogy. If you believe in global warming and others don’t, does that make you arrogant? You could believe based on the evidence you’ve examined. Or you could believe on the authority of others you trust.
That would make you, in some sense, an exclusivist. In your mind, those who doubt global warming would be believing something false and even harmful. You might even become a climate change “evangelist”. You’ll encourage others to use renewable energy, weatherize their homes, drive hybrids and stump for certain kinds of legislation. You’ll want to share with people the evidence you’ve heard. I mean, the planet depends on it. It’s a big deal. Those beliefs do not make you arrogant, imperialistic or disrespectful.
If there’s evidence for the resurrection — and I believe that there is in spades — then sharing the gospel can’t possibly be arrogant or imperialistic. Considering the implications of the Gospel, the Christian sharing this would be no worse than the outspoken environmentalist.
Christians who don’t share their faith are the real moral failures
You probably have heard of Penn Jillette. He’s best known for his work with fellow magician Teller as half of the team Penn & Teller. He’s also a very outspoken atheist. In an interview, he said that Christians who don’t share their faith are the ones who have a real moral problem. Quoting Penn:
“I mean, if I believed, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that a truck was coming at you, and you didn’t believe that truck was bearing down on you, there is a certain point where I tackle you. And this is more important than that.”
This is what real tolerance looks like. He doesn’t agree with Christianity. But he doesn’t assume that people are jerks for sharing their faith with him. He respects their concern even if he feels they’re mistaken.
As for Chau, I don’t write to make him some kind of a paradigm of what real Christianity should look like. Yet in a day where Christians are so tight-lipped about sharing their faith to avoid being awkward, I gotta say that I at least respect his guts. What I’m getting at is that missions and Christian evangelism is not based on a lack of respect. Nor is it a form of violence against others. Rather, it would be a lack of respect and love to always remain silent.
To Explore More:
Here’s Jillette’s statement on proselytizing, if you’re interested:
And here is the famous Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga on the topic of arrogance and Christian exclusivism:
Erik Manning is graduated of Rhema Bible Training College and is interested in the intersection of culture, evangelism and Christian apologetics. isjesusalive.com
Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2A2RnNU
True for you but not for me? Plus More Q&A!
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Frank continues to answer questions from you, our amazing audience! He got the following question via email “Yesterday, I had a discussion with a friend who is a postmodernist. He believes in the statement, “it’s true for you, but not for me.” I pulled up the CrossExamined app and showed him the example of the customer and the bank teller. My friend’s response to that example was, “the customer and the bank teller are both absolute in their truth.” How do you answer that? Listen to this podcast to find out as Frank answer that questions and many more during this episode of the CrossExamined Podcast!
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Why You, Yes You, Need to Defend What Is True
Theology and Christian ApologeticsBy Michael Sherrard
What is going on? Can you imagine if you fell into a coma and woke up in 2015? Or if you had a Delorean and traveled from 1985 to 2015? So there’s no hoverboards, but there are computers that fit in your pocket and boys that think they are girls and are allowed to shower in the girl’s locker room. And they win awards for their bravery.
Anybody angry? Anybody feel overwhelmed? Anybody want to run and start a commune? Anyone ready to fight? Anybody just feels broken over the lostness? Hearing these stories causes a lot of different emotions, doesn’t it? It’s a troubling time for many? And it has brought much confusion.
What are we to do in the midst of all that is going on?
First, Christians we do not lose heart. And we certainly aren’t going to fear what is going on.
We trust in a mighty God and our hope will not be disappointed. We are to be strong and courageous. We are to act. Jesus did not redeem us for irrelevance. So what are we to do?
The way forward must involve these three things if we wish to see our culture flourish once again. We, the true followers of Jesus Christ, need to clean up our house, learn how to defend our beliefs, and expose sin for what it is.
This excerpt from “Where Do We Go From Here” highlights the need for all believers to be able to defend Christianity, show images like aborted children, and tell our redemptive stories.
Hear:
Michael C. Sherrard is a pastor, the director of Ratio Christi College Prep, and the author of Relational Apologetics. Booking info and such can be found at michaelcsherrard.com.
Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2LidfJE
Is Isaiah 7:14 a Messianic Prophecy?
Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian ApologeticsBy Brian Chilton
More and more scholars are becoming skeptical of Messianic prophecy in the Hebrew Bible—that is, the Old Testament. Michael Rydelniknotes that “Although evangelical scholarship still recognizes that there is something messianic about the Hebrew Bible, for the most part, it sees it as a story that finds its climax in Jesus, not as predictions that Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled” (Rydelnik, The Messianic Hope,3-4). Yet, such skepticism is not justified. Sure, some passages in the Hebrew Bible have been stretched beyond its scope, something that can become a dangerous trend. Nevertheless, certain passages in the Hebrew Bible enjoy a status of being both Messianic in context and in its history.
One such Messianic prophecy is found in Isaiah 7:14. Four schools of thought have developed on how one should interpret Isaiah 7:14. Some hold to direct fulfillment indicating that the text only speaks to the fulfillment found in Messiah. Others hold to a historical fulfillment which claims that the text only addresses the birth of a child in Isaiah’s day. A third view holds to a double fulfillment in that the prophecy was fulfilled to a degree in Isaiah’s day and later in the Messiah. A fourth view is espoused by Arnold Fruchtenbaum. He calls it a double reference (Fruchtenbaum, Yeshua, 364). A double reference “states that one piece of Scripture actually contains two prophecies, each having its own fulfillment” (Fruchtenbaum, Yeshua,364). After researching the passage, I must agree that in Isaiah 7:14 one finds a double reference. Although Isaiah 7:14 is among the most controversial of Messianic prophecies (Rydelnik, The Messianic Hope, 147), several good reasons exist to accept the prophecy as Messianic in scope.
Isaiah 7:14 is a glorious passage that prophesies the birth of a royal, divine king that was to be born in the most miraculous of fashions. In our attempt to properly interpret the Bible, let us not be drawn to a hyper-skepticism that very well could combat the very thinking of the writers of the New Testament. They held the text to be Messianic not because they made it that way, but because that was the prophetic intention of the text.
Sources
Fruchtenbaum, Arnold G. Yeshua: The Life of Messiah from a Messianic Jewish Perspective. Volume One. San Antonio, TX: Ariel, 2017.
Rydelnik, Michael. The Messianic Hope: Is the Hebrew Bible Really Messianic? NAC Studies in Bible & Theology. Edited by E. Ray Clendenen. Nashville: B&H Academic, 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 LibertyUniversity and is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society and the Evangelical Philosophical Society. Brian has been in the ministry for over 15 years and serves as the Senior Pastor of Westfield Baptist Church in northwestern North Carolina.
Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2zWk139
Were Jesus’ Temptations Real If He Couldn’t Sin?
Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian ApologeticsBy Ryan Leasure
Historic Christianity affirms that Jesus Christ, though fully human, is also fully divine. He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end (Rev. 22:13) — the eternal creator of all things (Jn. 1:3). The Nicene Creed (AD 325) declares of Jesus that he is:
God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made; of the same essence as the Father. Through him, all things were made.1
With Jesus’ deity established, can we honestly say Jesus could experience genuine temptations? After all, James 1:13 declares that “God cannot be tempted by evil.” Doesn’t this present a bit of a dilemma for the biblical Christian? If Jesus was impeccable, that is, he was unable to sin, to what extent can we say that his temptations really affected him?
On the surface, it seems that Christians can’t take much comfort from Hebrews 4:15 which reads, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet he did not sin.”
Can we really say he was tempted in every way as we are? I experience temptation all the time and give in to those temptations more than I’d like to admit. That wasn’t a problem for Jesus, though. He couldn’t give in to his temptations. Doesn’t this seem like apples and oranges to you?
While I affirm that Jesus was unable to sin due to being fully divine, in the remaining space, I want to demonstrate that he experienced genuine temptations as a human. And I want to show that we can believe both truths simultaneously.
A SPIRIT-FILLED HUMAN
I contend that the reason Jesus could not sin and the reason he did not sin are for different reasons. I believe Jesus could not sin because he is the second person of the Triune God who is incapable of sinning (Js. 1:13). The reason he didn’t sin, however, was because, as a human, he was filled and empowered by the Spirit. That is, Jesus lived his life on earth fundamentally as a human and relied on the Spirit to perfectly obey his Father. Let me give you a few texts of Scripture to support this claim:
And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon [the Messiah], the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD (Isa. 11:2).
The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me (the Messiah), because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound (Isa. 61:1).
And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about him went out through all the surrounding country (Lk. 4:14).
But if it is by the Spirit of God that I (Jesus) cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you (Mt. 12:28).
How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him (Acts 10:38).
I believe this small sample size of texts demonstrates that Jesus lived his earthly life fundamentally as a human. If, in the incarnation, Jesus lived primarily as a deity, the filling of the Holy Spirit would have been both redundant and unnecessary for his mission.
JESUS’ SINLESSNESS ILLUSTRATED
A few years back, daredevil Nik Wallenda tightrope across Niagara Falls on national television. As I watched Wallenda make the successful 1,800-foot journey across the falls, I remember feeling nervous for him, but I wasn’t worried he was going to die. Why? Because the television producers forced him to wear a safety harness to ensure he wouldn’t fall to his death while the entire world watched.
Now, could Wallenda have died on his walk across the tightrope? No, the safety harness protected him from falling. But, how did Wallenda make it across the tightrope? He balanced himself and walked across. The harness didn’t help him one bit. You see, the reason he could not ave died and the reason he made it across are for two completely different reasons.
In the same way, Jesus could not have sinned because he was fully divine. This was his safety harness if you will. But Jesus didn’t sin because he perfectly obeyed the Father as a human in the power of the Holy Spirit. That is to say, he experienced genuine temptations but never once did he give into them.
THE EXTENT OF JESUS’ TEMPTATIONS
Some still object and say Jesus’ temptations were of a lesser nature than ours. After all, he didn’t have a sin nature. He didn’t battle the same kind of internal temptations we do. This much is true. But it doesn’t mean his temptations were less severe than ours.
Think about it. Whatever internal temptations Jesus didn’t experience, he more than made for up it by going toe-to-toe with Satan. Satan gave Jesus his best shot. He knew what was at stake during Jesus’ life. If he could get Jesus to sin, he wins. Game over. You and I probably won’t ever get Satan’s full onslaught like Jesus did.
Also, consider the fact that you and I often break in the face of temptation. Whether we’re tempted to lust, lash out in anger, or grow impatient, we typically can only handle so much before we eventually give in. The temptation builds and builds until we can’t withstand any longer and we snap. Jesus, on the other hand, saw temptations all the way through to the very end, and even as the pressure built, he never once sinned. He stood firm in the face of the most intense feelings of temptation — something we often don’t get to because we cave earlier.
Consider, as an illustration, the world’s strongest man. He picks up a twig, holds it by both ends, and snaps it with ease. Next, he picks up an iron bar and attempts to do the same. He bends with every bit of force he can muster for a few minutes, but the bar remains unscathed. As you think about twig and the iron bar, which of the two-faced more intense pressure from the world’s strongest man? The iron bar of course.
Well, we’re like the twig and Jesus is like the bar. We snap before we can feel the full force of the temptation. Jesus, however, experiences the full force of the temptation and never once snaps. It seems naive, therefore, to suggest that we face more difficult temptations than he did.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
When God the Son took on human flesh — or emptied himself according to Philippians 2 — he set out to live as much like a human as was possible for him to do. This means he couldn’t conjure his divine powers every time he got himself in a quandary. For example, when Satan tempted Jesus to turn the stones into bread, he tempted him to rely on his deity instead of his humanity in that situation.
Think about the problem we’d have if every time Jesus faced a difficult situation he simply performed a miracle to make his life easier. If he healed himself every time he got sick, or if he teleported to Jerusalem instead of taking the long journey just like everyone else, in no real sense could he be one of us and represent us as our high priest before the Father (Heb. 4:15). Jesus, however, can be our faithful high priest because he lived his life on earth fundamentally as a human (Heb. 2:17-18). And as a human, he perfectly obeyed his Father because he was filled completely with the Spirit.
So, could Jesus have sinned? No. He was God. But did he experience genuine temptations as a human? Yes. Both are true at the same time.
Ryan Leasure holds an M.A. from Furman University and an M.Div. from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He currently serves as a pastor at Grace Bible Church in Moore, SC.
Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2CdkyiK
Are Christmas Traditions Really Christian?
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Now, this is an episode you CANNOT miss! A Christmas episode about Christmas traditions with the brilliant William J. Federer. Frank and Bill talk about, Santa Claus (the real one), why the use of Xmas instead of Christmas, why celebrating Christ birth on December 25th, the Christmas tree and many more great insights. Then he answers the controversial question: Should Christians celebrate Christmas? Tons of fascinating stuff that you should know!
Merry Christmas to all of our listeners and don’t forget to gift us a 5-star rating and a positive review on iTunes!
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