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Yes, Bart Ehrman, Jesus is Yahweh

Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

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

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

Ehrman asserts that,

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

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

Early Christian Theologians

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is the Name Yahweh Found in the New Testament?

Ehrman states that,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Does Psalm 110 Preclude Jesus from Being Yahweh?

Ehrman continues,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Angel of the Lord

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Carmen Christi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

Footnotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Andrew Cowley

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

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

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

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

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

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

Note:

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

[2] Isiah 52:11

[3] Martin Luther, The Shorter Catechism

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

[5] Galatians 2:16

[6] Romans 10:4

[7] Ephesians 2:8

[8] Romans 7:15

[9] James Buchanan, The Doctrine of Justification

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

Cancelling Cancel Culture

Podcast

What comes to your mind when you hear “cancel culture”? Words that come to mind are rash, hostile, judgmental, unforgiving, graceless, and subjective. Join Frank as he unpacks some problems with cancel culture and answers this important question: How are Christians supposed to respond when pressured to agree with ideologies that are unbiblical and harmful?

If you want to send us a question for the show, please email us at Hello@CrossExamined.org.

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May 21, 2021/by Frank Turek

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

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Timothy Fox

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3) Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Honorary Mentions

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

1) Anything by Thomas Sowell

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

My verdict?

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

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

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

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

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

2) 1984 by George Orwell

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

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

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

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

Happy reading!

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

Legislating Morality, Culture & Politics, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Wintery Knight

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

The UK Daily Mail reports:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Matthew 19:1-6:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Matt Walsh had a fine article about this issue.

He said:

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

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

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

Why are some church-attending Christians so progressive?

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

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

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

May 17, 2021/by Guest

Is God Fading Away?

2. Does God Exist?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Mia Langford

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

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

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

Classical Theism

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

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

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

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

Who Pulled the Pin?

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

Freedom Requires Restraint

Podcast

What does it really mean to be free? Does it mean that you’re free of all restraints? If it does— as many in our culture seem to think— then exercising that kind of freedom will lead to your demise.

Can you really create your own reality, independent of the facts? You’ll be amazed at what some college students think about this. You’ll hear an unforgettable clip of what they say about what should be uncontroversial and obvious truths. During this show, Frank unpacks the critical difference between being free FROM and being free TO. He also shows why the cancel culture is so joyless and hostile, and why you will never get peace without truth.

If you want to send us a question for the show, please email us at Hello@CrossExamined.org.

May 14, 2021/by Frank Turek

Can Jesus’ Story Still Surprise You?

Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Bob Perry

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

Would You Hire This Guy?

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

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

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

Fall On Your Face

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

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

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

A Novel Character

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

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

Quite a miracle indeed.

Confronting The Skeptics

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

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

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

The Jesus We Take For Granted

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

It’s only happened once.

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

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

Did Jesus Really Rise From the Dead? A Historian, an Atheist, a Skeptic, a Theologian, and an Ex-Con Weigh In

CrossExamined

By Alisa Childers

It’s that time of year again—the time when Christians come together to celebrate the pinnacle of our faith, the resurrection of Jesus. It’s also the time when news outlets like Time, the Discovery Channel, and Newsweek unleash their skepticism about Christianity, the Bible, and the resurrection. It can be confusing to wade through the various historical evidences, personal beliefs, and opinions floating around in scholarship and the blogosphere. Here are quotes from several sources who all have unique qualifications and an interesting take on the evidence:

1. The Historian

Gary Habermas is an American historian, and the Distinguished Research Professor of Apologetics and Philosophy at Liberty University. He is considered to be one of the foremost scholars on the resurrection of Jesus. While researching the resurrection, he combed through the works of both secular and Christian scholars. He wrote:

I recently completed an overview of more than 1,400 sources on the resurrection of Jesus published since 1975. I studied and catalogued about 650 of these texts in English, German, and French. Some of the results of this study are certainly intriguing. For example, perhaps no fact is more widely recognized than that early Christian believers had real experiences that they thought were appearances of the risen Jesus. A critic may claim that what they saw were hallucinations or visions, but he does not deny that they actually experienced something.[1]

There is a virtual consensus among scholars who study Jesus’ resurrection that, subsequent to Jesus’ death by crucifixion, his disciples really believed that he appeared to them risen from the dead.[2]

2. The Atheist

Gerd Ludemann is a German New Testament scholar, historian, and atheist. He was once a professing Christian, but walked away from his faith when he became convinced that very little of what is contained in the New Testament is historically reliable. Even so, he wrote:

It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’s death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.[3]

3. The Skeptic

Bart Ehrman is the Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is one of the most respected scholars in the field of New Testament studies—and he is agnostic. About the resurrection of Jesus, he wrote:

Historians, of course, have no difficulty speaking about the belief in the resurrection of Jesus, since this is a matter of public record. It is a historical fact that some of Jesus’ followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead soon after his execution. We know some of these believers by name; one of them, the Apostle Paul, claims quite plainly to have seen Jesus alive after his death. Thus, for the historian, Christianity begins after the death of Jesus, not with the resurrection itself, but with the belief in the resurrection.[4]

In a recent blog post he wrote:

The most important thing to stress is that there are two historical realities that simply cannot be denied. The followers of Jesus did claim that Jesus came back to life. If they had not claimed that, we would not have Christianity. So they did claim it. Moreover, they did claim that they knew he rose precisely because some of them saw him alive again afterward. No one can doubt that.[5]

4. The Theologian

The type of historical evidence above caused leading New Testament scholar, historian, and theologian N.T. Wright to conclude:

As a historian, I cannot explain the rise of early Christianity unless Jesus rose again, leaving an empty tomb behind him.[6]

5. The Ex-con

Charles Colson, who once served as Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon, famously went to prison for his involvement in the Watergate scandal in the early 70’s. He became a Christian in 1973, largely due to the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. One detail regarding Watergate was similar to the resurrection: in both cases, 12 men claimed something that would affect world history. In the case of Watergate, it only took two weeks for them to crack under pressure:

The real cover-up, the lie, could only be held together for two weeks, and then everybody else jumped ship in order to save themselves. Now, the fact is that all that those around the President were facing was embarrassment, maybe prison. Nobody’s life was at stake.

But what about the disciples? Twelve powerless men, peasants really, were facing not just embarrassment or political disgrace, but beatings, stonings, execution. Every single one of the disciples insisted, to their dying breaths, that they had physically seen Jesus bodily raised from the dead. Don’t you think that one of those apostles would have cracked before being beheaded or stoned? That one of them would have made a deal with the authorities? None did.

Jesus is Lord: That’s the thrilling message of Easter. And it’s an historic fact, one convincingly established by the evidence—and one you can bet your life upon. Go ahead researchers—dig up all the old graves you want. You won’t change a thing. He has risen.[7]

Even the atheists and skeptics confirm that Jesus’ disciples claimed and believed that they had seen Jesus risen from the dead. History tells us that they were willing to suffer and die for that belief. It’s reasonable to confidently agree with what the church has affirmed over the centuries—”Christ is risen. He is risen indeed!”[8]

References:

[1] Gary R. Habermas & Michael R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2004) p. 60 (Emphasis mine)

[2] Ibid., p. 49

[3] Gerd Lüdemann, What Really Happened to Jesus?, trans. John Bowden (Louisville, Kent.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995) p. 80

[4] Bart Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (Oxford University Press, New York, Oxford, 2004) p. 234 (Emphasis mine)

[5] Bart Ehrman, “Questions on the Resurrection and My Personal Spiritual Experiences: Readers’ Mailbag” www.ehrmanblog.org, March 24, 2017, accessed April 6, 2017

[6] N.T. Wright, “The New Unimproved Jesus,” Christianity Today (September 13, 1993), p. 26 (Cited by William Lane Craig, “The Resurrection of Jesus” www.reasonablefaith.org, accessed April 6, 2017)

[7] Charles Colson, “An Unholy Hoax?” www.epm.org, March 29, 2002, accessed April 6, 2017.

[8] John 11:25-26

Unbelievable? With Justin Brierley

Podcast

Justin Brierley, host of the wildly successful debate podcast from the UK called Unbelievable? joins Frank to reveal why he’s still a Christian after hearing atheist arguments for the last 15 years. Justin moderates debates and discussions between Christians and atheists or people of other faiths (Frank has been on the program twice). Justin and Frank discuss the best arguments for atheism, the problems with materialism, and the fact that the new atheism is dying as atheists are becoming increasingly more open to Christianity.

Join Justin, N.T. Wright, Josh, and Sean McDowell, and many others online for the 2021 Unbelievable conference on May 15. Details are here.

If you want to send us a question for the show, please email us at Hello@CrossExamined.org.

May 7, 2021/by Frank Turek

Tag Archive for: apologetics

Early Christian Theologians

Is the Name Yahweh Found in the New Testament?

Does Psalm 110 Preclude Jesus from Being Yahweh?

The Angel of the Lord

The Carmen Christi

Conclusion

Footnotes

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Note:

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Why are some church-attending Christians so progressive?

Classical Theism

Who Pulled the Pin?

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Would You Hire This Guy?

Fall On Your Face

A Novel Character

Confronting The Skeptics

The Jesus We Take For Granted

Recommended resources related to the topic:

​1. The Historian

​2. The Atheist

3. The Skeptic

​4. The Theologian

​5. The Ex-con

​​​​​References:

Recommended resources related to the topic:

1. The Historian

2. The Atheist

4. The Theologian

5. The Ex-con

References: