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Was Jesus a Jerk? A Response to the Friendly Atheist

By Erik Manning

A few weeks ago, CNN Tonight host Don Lemon said: “But here’s the thing, Jesus Christ, if that’s who you believe in Jesus Christ, admittedly was not perfect when he was here on the Earth. So why are we deifying the Founders?”

As you can imagine, this caused quite a stir over social media and on the blogs, since the Bible clearly teaches Christ’s sinless perfection. While a few right-wing Christian leaders went a little overboard in their denouncements of Lemon, “The Friendly Atheist” took it as an opportunity to take some jabs at Jesus.

Hemant Mehta, the author of the blog, writes:

“Let’s talk about what Jesus did.

* Jesus once got so angry he flipped over tables and benches.

* Jesus cursed a fig tree because it didn’t have anything to eat — because figs weren’t in season — and then the tree died. Jesus killed a tree because He was hangry.

* Jesus admitted to speaking in parables that were difficult for people to understand… and then got mad when people didn’t understand them.

* Jesus got snippy when people asked Him why He didn’t wash His hands.

* Jesus’ actions led to the deaths of a whole bunch of pigs, angering an entire town.

So… either we have to acknowledge Jesus could be a jerk at times despite whatever other redeeming qualities we want to assign Him. Or, like the conservative Christians are doing, we can pretend Jesus was perfect because our faith requires it… even when the Bible itself has plenty of evidence to the contrary.”

So according to Mehta, Jesus was a jerk. But is he really being fair to the texts?

Jesus the table flipper?

Was Jesus just throwing an unjustified temper tantrum when he cleansed the Temple? To answer that, we need to give a little background. The temple market was established after the Babylonian captivity. JB Lightfoot says “There was always a constant market in the temple in that place, which was called ‘the shops;’ where, every day, was sold wine, salt, oil, and other requisites to sacrifices; as also oxen and sheep in the spacious Court of the Gentiles”

Josephus estimated there would be up to 3 million Jews traveling to Jerusalem for the Passover. Seeing their devotion, the money-changers saw an opportunity to get rich. They made a business of accommodating those who didn’t have the half-shekel temple tax. (See Mt 17:24)

Everyone was expected to pay it, rich or poor, in the month of Adar. So it became necessary to change a shekel into two halves, or exchange foreign money for the Jewish half-shekel. (Money that bore the image of “Divine Caesar”, in some cases) These men made a nice profit by charging a percentage for the exchange. The animals were in the courts to be sold as a sacrifice since people traveling from afar weren’t usually able to bring them.

Jesus was upset that in the Court of the Gentiles, the place where non-Jews were designated to worship, people were being deprived of the opportunity to pray because of greedy, irreverent people and this happened under the watch Jerusalem’s religious leaders. Jesus quotes Isaiah 56:7 that the temple was to be a place of prayer for all nations.

This would be like trying to have worship in the middle of Walmart on a normal Black Friday. The Gentiles were pushed out of participation with the Passover. Matthew previously writes “I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt. 8:11)

This event is called “The Cleansing of the Temple” for good reason. Jesus was purifying the temple from defilement. Nearly 200 years before, Judas Maccabeus cleansed the Temple after it was defiled by Antiochus Epiphanes. By cleaning out the Temple, Jesus is saying that the present Jewish leadership had defiled the Temple in the same way the Greeks did when the sacrificed a pig inside of it. Talk about an act of defiant protest! Shortly afterward, Jesus predicts the destruction of the Temple and the coming judgment upon the nation for their lack of response to Jesus’ Gospel. (Mark 13, Matthew 24)

So to sum up, you have noisy people who care nothing for God there to make an easy buck in the place where Gentiles were to worship, exploiting the poor in the process. Jesus taught that we can’t serve both God and money, and to him, this was both oppression, greed, and idolatry blatantly in his Father’s own house. Jesus said that this was to be a place of prayer, not a den of robbers. (Jeremiah 7:11) He was rightfully ticked off.

Not only that, but there’s not a hint that Jesus harmed any human or any animal. He flipped some tables. He fashioned a whip and gave it a good crack or two, but this would sort of like firing a gun in the air in a crowd. It would clear the people and the animals out in a hurry.

Was Jesus angry when he cursed the fig tree?

So what’s going on with the cursing of the fig tree? Jesus and his audience knew the writings of the prophets. They would’ve picked up on what Jesus was laying down. The Old Testament prophets used fig trees and vineyards to typify spiritual fruitfulness (or a lack thereof). Just see Isaiah 28:4, Jeremiah 24:1-10, Hosea 9:16-17, Micah 7:1. Let’s read Micah 7:1 to illustrate.

Woe is me! For I have become as when the summer fruit has been gathered, as when the grapes have been gleaned: there is no cluster to eat, no first-ripe fig that my soul desires.

Jesus cursing the fig tree was allegorical of judgment on fruitless Israel. How do we know that? Just look at the story. First, Jesus curses the fig tree. Then he cleanses the Temple, itself a symbolic judgment of the religious leaders. Then the disciples come back and notice the tree is withered. Shortly after that in Mark 12:1-12 and Matthew 21:33-46, Jesus tells the parable of the vineyard.

This parable tells of Israel’s unfaithfulness, their rejection of God’s prophets and ultimately God’s Son, and their impending judgment. Sandwiched between this is the cursing of the fig tree.

Now you might think this is me stretching things, but I’m not. Here are just a few examples of God’s prophets acting strangely to drive home a serious point:

The prophet Ahijah ripped his clothes in twelve pieces, symbolizing that God was going to tear the kingdom from Solomon and give Jeroboam 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel. (1 Kings 11:29-31)
Isaiah walked around basically naked for three years to warn the Egyptians and Cushites of impending doom against Assyria. (Isaiah 20:1-6)
Ezekiel publicly cooked his food over cow poop (!), warning Jerusalem of impending judgment and famine. (Ezekiel 4:1-15)
And who could forget God commanding Hosea to marry a prostitute as a symbol of Israel’s unfaithfulness? (Hosea 1:2)

Jesus cursing a fig tree is pretty tame in comparison. You might not like that God commanded his prophets to do weird stuff, but extraordinary incoming judgments call for unusual warnings to get people’s attention. God isn’t willing that any should perish and apparently is willing to go to great lengths to shake up the complacent so they would repent and be saved. Last I checked, a nation is more important than a single tree that lacks a nervous system.

So what about the pigs?

Was Jesus a pig-killer? If this incident with the demoniac and the pigs happened today, I can just imagine the headlines: NAZARETH PASTOR CAUSES DEATH OF 2000 PIGS, PETA LAUNCHES PROTEST. Does this put Jesus in the same category as Michael Vick?

For starters, the demons asked if Jesus was going to torment them now, meaning that their time hadn’t yet come to be judged, so he couldn’t make them just go away. (Mark 5:7) While Jesus is omnipotent, he chose not to fully operate that way as a man. For instance in Mark 6:1-6, we read that Jesus could do no mighty work in Nazareth due to their unbelief. So asking why Jesus didn’t just get rid of the demons is like saying, “why didn’t Jesus get rid of all evil people, evil spirits and every disease and affliction while he was here?”

Not only was Jesus not functioning in full-omnipotence, but he also wasn’t operating in omniscience, either. In the same chapter, he asks, “who touched me?” when the woman with the issue of blood is healed. (Mark 5:31) How can we be sure that Jesus knew what was going to happen to the pigs? That seems unclear.

There’s also nothing in these passages that show that Jesus drove the pigs into the sea and caused them to drown. Satan is the killer, not Jesus. (Jn 8:44) And it doesn’t make a lot of sense to say the demons caused the pigs to commit suicide since they just pleaded with Jesus to use them as their new hosts. One answer that Greg Boyd offers is that the demons just drove the pigs crazy, just the same way that parasites can drive animals crazy and cause them to hurt themselves.

I mean, these demons already drove two men into living naked in tombs, screaming and cutting themselves, and they couldn’t be restrained by chains. This is pretty freaky stuff. If Jesus felt like he had a better option, we can see from his character elsewhere in the Gospels that he would’ve taken it.

What stands out is that after seeing the destructive power of Satan and the delivering power of Jesus, the townspeople ask Jesus to leave. They could see the man now clothed and in his right mind, but they seem to care more about the pigs than the people!

In Matthew 10:31, Jesus says that human lives are worth more than many sparrows, and the same can be said for the pigs. While the man delivered begged to follow Jesus, the townspeople urged him to leave. They valued their unclean livestock more than Jesus and the man.

This shouldn’t need to be said but people are more important than pigs. You see this animals-first attitude in our day with groups like PETA, who’ve said tons of outrageously weird things.

This isn’t a case of Jesus acting carelessly. The man went from cutting himself to testifying throughout the region about what Jesus had done for him. This is an epic battle scene in the spiritual war that was being fought for the souls of people in the city. Don’t miss the deliverance for the pigs.

Was Jesus getting snippy over hand-washing?

There’s a lot more going on here than sanitary issues here, but Mehta conveniently leaves that out. Let’s look at the hand-washing passage in question:

“Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. You hypocrites!” (Matthew 15-1-7)

The concern has little to do with the spread of disease, it’s regarding Jewish laws about uncleanness. If you ate something wrong, you were ritually defiled. These hand-washing traditions of the Pharisees went beyond what the Law actually prescribed — as if accidentally eating something microscopically unclean is sinful.

The Pharisees were constantly criticizing Jesus for healing on the Sabbath. Jesus called them out for their hypocrisy of adding traditions on top of the word of God, which ended up negating the point of the law, which was loving their neighbor ⁠— including their mother and father. He saw people as more important than religious traditions.

I saved this example for last because I find some irony here. Mehta’s blog is chock full of posts dedicated to calling out religious hypocrisy. He should find that Jesus hated phony religious hypocrisy as an admirable trait, not as a character flaw.

Calling Jesus a jerk isn’t a real friendly thing to do, especially when you take a more “friendly” way to look at these texts. I’d argue that it’s probably more of a jerk move to dump a list of gripes against Jesus’ character with no explanation of the context. Contrary to Mehta, we don’t have “plenty of evidence” contrary to the traditional understanding of Jesus’ sinless perfection.

Battling a Disease More Infectious & Deadly Than COVID-19

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Adam Tucker

As hundreds of thousands of people battle COVID-19 following thousands of deaths, lockdowns, and much fear, the world eagerly awaits a proven treatment plan to cure this dreaded virus. I’m sure many of you, like me, often pray for wisdom and protection for those on the frontlines battling this invisible foe. But there is another invisible enemy, one more formidable than COVID-19, that has wreaked havoc on millions of lives for centuries. This unseen tyrant takes many forms and can often be hard to detect. We are all susceptible to this disease, and without the proper precautions, anyone can fall victim. Sadly, the aftermath of this nemesis is often very visible, making it seem as though it is much more foreboding than it actually is. No, it’s not another novel virus. It is the always-lurking disease of bad ideas.

This disease’s most recent high-profile victim is Jon Steingard, lead vocalist for Hawk Nelson, the once very popular Christian rock group. Jon joins Rhett and Link (popular YouTube comedians and former Cru staffers), Marty Sampson (Hillsong worship artist), Michael Gungor (lead singer for Christian duo Gungor), and Joshua Harris (extremely popular Christian author and pastor) who have either renounced Christianity outright or expressed serious misgivings about the faith in recent years. This does not even mention the number of popular Christian leaders, authors, singers, etc. who are drifting, or have drifted, from biblical Christianity to a more liberal/progressive version of “Christianity.”

What can we do to combat this deadly contagion? The following guidelines may, or may not, be endorsed by the CDC. For the past 28 years, however, they are what Southern Evangelical Seminary and Bible College has trained men and women from all walks of life to do effectively.

Recognize the Symptoms

In our brief case study, we will examine Jon’s story since he is the most recent casualty, and the reasons for his “deconstruction” are similar across related cases. In fact, Jon says he shared his doubts with some of his close friends and was “shocked” to discover that his doubts were “shared by nearly every close friend [his] age” who has a similar background to his own.

Jon grew up constantly at church, surrounded by Christians. His dad is a pastor, and Jon says the church wasn’t just part of his family’s life; it was their life. He points out, “When you grow up in a community that holds a shared belief, and that shared belief is so incredibly central to everything, you simply adopt it.” It was in high school that, like many young people, Jon first began to encounter questions and doubts. He says, “I figured I was overthinking all these things. This was the beginning of my doubt, and I began to develop the reflex to simply push it down and soldier on. … I felt it must be true.”

This is symptom number one, putting feelings overthinking. So many Christians and formerly-professing-Christians experience this common symptom. Of course, it’s no wonder that this symptom is so widespread given the fact that our culture has by and large elevated man’s will over his intellect. This usually presents itself in one of two ways, or sometimes as a combination of the two. The first way is that many Christians, like Jon, simply “feel” better if they act as though Christianity is true and never seek answers to their questions or reasons for their beliefs. They ignore their doubts and simply attempt to muster up more “faith.” The second way, and perhaps more problematic, is that feelings cause others to question historic Christianity because they feel as though something like homosexual behavior, for example, must be OK. Or they feel that truly loving someone would never mean telling someone their thoughts or behaviors are wrong. Moreover, they seem certain that their feelings could never be wrong about such things. More and more people are presenting with this system, and it is something about which each practitioner should be aware of.

Like any normal human being, Jon finally began to wrestle with the difficult questions of the faith and attempt to think through things about which he was having trouble making sense. He specifically mentions the perennial problem of evil (specifically noting both natural and moral evil), the problem of a loving God sending people to hell, the “pissed off” God of the Old Testament who commands the killing of certain people, and the fact that Jesus would have to die for our sins in order for God to forgive us. Jon also shares that he wrestled with many things he considered to be contradictions in the Bible. He honestly laments, “Suffice it to say that when I began to believe that the Bible was simply a book written by people as flawed and imperfect as I am – that was when my belief in God truly began to unravel. … Once I found that I didn’t believe the Bible was the perfect Word of God – it didn’t take long to realize that I was no longer sure He was there at all.”

This is symptom number two, neglect or absence of prolegomena and natural theology. For those unaware, “prolegomena” is the study of the foundational truths that must be the case in order for Christianity to be true (ex. the nature of truth, the nature of reality, the existence of God, the nature of communication, the reliability of the Bible, etc.). “Natural theology” is the study of what can be known about the existence and nature of God apart from the Bible (i.e., using general revelation to reason from effect [creation] to cause [God]). The neglect/absence of these two areas is one of the most critical symptoms for which to monitor. It typically arises when believers, like Jon, have little or no exposure to philosophy and apologetics that provide the intellectual foundation for the truthfulness of Christianity. They typically make blind appeals to the Bible with no foundational truths upon which to build a confident trust in and proper understanding of the Word of God. Retired academic Dr. Bruce Charlton notes,

“Modern Christianity as experienced by converts tends to be incomplete – precisely because modern Christianity has nothing to build on [i.e., a basic understanding of the nature of reality, natural law, the existence of immaterial realities, etc.]. This means that incomplete modern Christianity lacks explanatory power, seems to have little or nothing to say about what seems to be the main problem of living. For example, modern Christianity seems to have nothing to do with politics, law, art, philosophy, or science; to inhabit a tiny, shrinking realm cut-off from daily concerns.”[1]

Because a solid foundation is often missing, even when believers do have some exposure to these disciplines, the “God” they are learning about is essentially the equivalent to a really big invisible Superman who’s just smarter, more powerful, and supposedly morally better than us; whose sole purpose often seems is to make our lives easy and provide us with endless warm fuzzies. This, however, is not the God of classical Christian thinking (more on this later). One should carefully note the connection between the first two symptoms. When the role of the intellect is neglected in the Christian life, it is easy for this second symptom to manifest.

Thankfully, Jon says that he is “open to the idea that God is there.” Openness is key. However, he goes on to say, “I know my parents pray that God reveals Himself to me. If He’s there, I hope He does.” He then laments the fact that he and his wife “always had this sense that [they] weren’t doing enough of the things [they] were supposed to do as Christians. … It all felt like an obligation, and [their] lack of enthusiasm about those things always made [them] feel like something was wrong with [them].” Jon admits that now they don’t think anything was wrong with them, they “simply didn’t believe” and “were too afraid to admit that to [themselves].”

Once again, Dr. Charlton observes,

“Modern Christianity often feels shallow – it seems to rely on diktat of scripture and the Church – this is because [as noted above] moderns lack a basis in the spontaneous perceptions of Natural Law, animism [i.e. the belief in a supernatural power], the sense of active supernatural power in everyday life. Modern Christianity (after the first flush of the conversion experience) thus feels dry, abstract, legalistic, prohibitive, uninvolving, lacking in purpose.”[2]

This is symptom number three, wrong motives based on false expectations. The disease of bad ideas has so infected vast swathes of Christianity that far too many professing believers simply end up living out a cultural Christianity that has little basis in reality due in large part to the first two symptoms above. When this happens, symptom three typically follows. I know this from my own personal experience. Whether driven by the drive to please loved ones, cultural expectations, fear, or simply a guilty conscience, many believers go through the motions of Christianity in a legalistic fashion with no real substance to their Christian convictions. Likewise, because God is viewed as an invisible Superman, many people struggling with doubts and questions expect God to supernaturally manifest Himself to them personally in such a way that all their questions are answered. They may even wish for God to be real and desire to worship Him, but they only want to do so on their own terms rather than His. Again, a failure to have a proper natural theology of God leads to these confused motives and false expectations.

The above symptoms, among others, are good indicators that someone may be in the midst of, or in danger of beginning, a deconstruction of their Christian convictions. Recognizing these symptoms is just the first step. Preventative measures and even post-infection treatment are both necessary and possible.

Prescribe the Proper Treatment

Imagine if you went to your doctor to get treatment for COVID-19, and you noticed he never washed his hands between patients, he didn’t wear a facemask, never cleaned his exam rooms, used the same tongue depressor for every patient, and used dirty needles to administer shots. Needless to say, he wouldn’t be in business very long. Rather than treating any patient’s condition, he would actually be making matters worse by sharing the same germs from patient to patient. The treatment would be as bad, or worse, than the original issue for which you visited the doctor in the first place. This is the sad state of affairs in which we too often find ourselves in modern apologetics.

So much of what passes for apologetics today is built upon modern philosophical assumptions which suffer from the same disease of bad ideas the apologist is trying to combat. As prolegomena and the classical view of God (derived from natural theology via classical philosophy) were abandoned, an “infected” and impotent version of Christianity began to be defended. Popular apologetics far too often simply shares germs back and forth with the skepticism it seeks to answer. I would refer the reader to HERE and HERE for more on that.

By contrast, a proper treatment for this disease will only occur when the patient is brought back to the basic truths of reality that provide the foundation upon which a full-orbed Christian faith can be built. This is why the classical apologetics approach we teach at SES is so critical (see more HERE and HERE). Starting with the undeniable fact that man knows some truths about reality, we can reason step by step to the truthfulness of Christianity. When done properly, we can see that God is not an invisible Superman. He is wholly other, and the divine attributes stand or fall together. We can also appreciate the thousands of pages that have been written through the centuries by classical Christian thinkers addressing every question and issue that Jon or any other patient has raised.

Remember that some diseases take longer to treat than others. Bad ideas can become ingrained and influence many areas of our thinking. Nevertheless, treatment is possible. As philosopher Edward Feser notes, “Even modern secularists know [the language of natural theology and natural law], for they are no less human than their pagan ancestors. The problem is that they speak it at only a grade school or even kindergarten level, whereas the greatest of the ancients at least had high school level proficiency. But through ‘remedial education,’ they, like the ancient pagans, can be prepared for the graduate-level work afforded by divine revelation.”[3]

We must begin to make progress in this area so that every parent, grandparent, Sunday School teacher, pastor, and missionary have themselves moved beyond grade school in the war against bad ideas and are able to inoculate and treat those entrusted to their care.

Don’t Neglect Underlying Conditions

That brings us to our last point. As we know, COVID-19 is much more serious for people with underlying conditions. Even though we could cure COVID-19, all of us will still die at some point. Likewise, every one of us suffers from the underlying condition of our own sin that makes the disease of bad ideas even worse and ultimately leads to death. We will all succumb to the disease of sin without the ultimate cure, which is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as payment for our sins.

Everything above regarding treating the disease of bad ideas is what Thomas Aquinas called the preambles to the articles of faith. They alone do not constitute the fullness of the faith. Rather, biblical faith is an active trust in the authority of what God has revealed because we have reason to believe He is trustworthy. Reason provides the foundation upon which faith can take root. Salvation through Jesus (i.e., the Gospel) is itself a revealed truth to which we cannot reason. Nevertheless, it is not unreasonable, and we have excellent reasons to believe it is true. Being a revealed truth is what makes the Gospel an article of faith to which we willfully ascent and act upon through the power of the Holy Spirit. Only then will we find ultimate healing.

In the meantime, wear your facemask, practice social distancing, and protect yourself from COVID-19. Be on guard, however, for the ever-present invisible contagion of bad ideas. Monitor yourself and others for symptoms, and remember the proper treatment. As Clement of Alexandria said regarding the foundational role of philosophy in the life of the believer,

“Perspicuity accordingly aids in the communication of truth and logic in preventing us from falling under the heresies by which we are assailed. But the teaching, which is according to the Saviour (sic), is complete in itself and without defect, being ‘the power and wisdom of God;’ and the Hellenic philosophy does not, by its approach, make the truth more powerful; but rendering powerless the assault of sophistry against it, and frustrating the treacherous plots laid against the truth, is said to be the proper ‘fence and wall [or facemask in this case!] of the vineyard.’[4]

Endnotes

[1] Please note that this reference does not imply agreement with all of Dr. Charlton’s views: http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/12/six-problems-for-modern-christian.html

[2] Ibid.

[3] https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/01/point-of-contact.html

[4] Clement of Alexandria, “The Stromata, or Miscellanies,” in Fathers of the Second Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria (Entire), ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 2, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 323.

An Accurate Picture Of The World

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Bob Perry

Jesus is the Logos. The Logos is a combination of truth, goodness, and beauty. Truth, goodness, and beauty are the references that give us a grounded Christian spirituality. That’s the True Horizon model — spirituality based on an accurate picture of the world. But what does a spirituality grounded in the real world look like?

More Than An Analogy

I have used an aviation analogy as a model for visualizing what it means to be spiritual. But an analogy is just a way to represent something real. And analogies can only go so far. Please don’t miss the purpose behind it. My point is simply that the culture has convinced too many of us that spirituality is disconnected from reality. That it is some free-floating source of emotional comfort. What I’m suggesting is that that is not what Christianity teaches. Christianity is grounded in the Logos. It produces a spiritual life that is attached to, and reflects, the real world.

Grounded In Truth

The dictionary definition of truth is “correspondence to reality.” In other words, if what you believe about something matches the way the world actually is, then what you believe is true. Again, truth doesn’t exist in our minds. To seek truth is to want to believe things about how the world is, not about how we would like it to be.

Christianity matches what we find in the world in several different ways.

Common Observations and Experiences

Here are a few things that every one of us can see when we look at the world around us:

Human life is inherently unique and valuable.

This matches our common experience of the human condition. We don’t need anyone to teach us to respect and value human life.

The universe we live in owes its existence to an external source.

The universe had a beginning that requires an explanation. This is a conclusion that both science and philosophy lead us to.

Lies and deception are destructive.

We see this all around us every day. No one wants to be lied to. Everyone recognizes the harm that lies can bring to us individually and as a society.

Evil repulses us. Goodness attracts us.

Remember, we are talking about a feature of reality here. This is not about how we know good and evil. It is about the fact that both exist.

There is an order, intelligence, and purpose to the universe.

There are laws of logic and mathematics that describe the universe. Our location in time and space is fine-tuned to an incomprehensibly unlikely level. There is a digital code more complex than any computer algorithm ever written that controls and sustains every form of life on the planet.

There are many more examples, but all of these are different forms of truth, goodness, and beauty. And here’s the point…

A Grounded Spirituality

Based on just these things, a grounded spirituality should:

Pursue a life that values other human life.
Recognize that we are created beings, not gods unto ourselves.
Make us truthseekers and truth-tellers.
Understand that goodness, and the morality it demands is not based on our feelings and experiences, but in the nature of the Creator who made us.
Stand in awe of the miraculous nature of our very existence.

And each of these holds three things in common:

We can learn them directly from our observations and experiences in the world.
We don’t need the Bible to know any of them.
They are perfectly consistent with Christianity.

This is what I mean by a “grounded spirituality.” It matches what the Bible says — and it is supported by reality itself.

Common Ground

Don’t misunderstand. When I say, “we don’t need the Bible to know any of them,” I am not diminishing the importance of the Bible in our spiritual life. I am simply pointing out that this gives us confidence that truth is grounded in the Bible — and that the Bible is grounded in the truth.

Both come from the same Source.

When we understand that, it gives us common ground for discussing spirituality with everyone. Whether they are a hardcore atheist or a spiritually disoriented Christian, they live in the same world as you and me. And we should love them enough to have the courage to confidently, but respectfully, help them re-orient their thinking.

How Jesus “Emptied Himself”

Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Ryan Leasure

Few biblical texts receive as much attention as Philippians 2:5-8. It reads:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Theologians have spilt much ink over this text. After all, it’s a rich Christological text which proclaims significant truths about the nature of Christ. But far and away, the most controversial part is the phrase “but emptied himself.” What does this statement mean?

The Dilemma

Does this mean that Jesus emptied himself of his deity, thus ceasing to be God during his incarnation? After all, if he was fully God, how could he also be a human at the same time? This seems like a logical contradiction.

Or, perhaps the phrase means that he set aside certain divine attributes while maintaining others. In other words, he still kept some of his divine nature — holiness, love, wisdom — but willingly set aside other parts of his divinity — omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience — in order to be human. This view has attracted many supporters because it seeks to reconcile how an all-powerful, all-knowing, and present everywhere God could also possess qualities such as limited wisdom and limited spatial presence.

Or, does this phrase mean something else entirely? In fact, I do believe it means something else entirely, and I think I have good reasons for believing this. Allow me to explain.

The Deity Of Christ

There’s little doubt that this text proclaims Jesus as the pre-existent God of the universe. This text gives us two reasons for reaching this conclusion.

First, it states that Jesus was “in the form of God.” The word for “form” in the Greek is morphe, which denotes the exact substance or nature of something. Therefore, by declaring that Jesus was “in the form of God,” Paul emphatically states that Jesus shares the exact same nature as God. He is eternal, self-existent, all-powerful, all-knowing, holy, love, and so forth.

Second, Paul tells us that Jesus was equal with God when he wrote, “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped.” Nothing, however, is equal to God except God. God even declares in Isaiah 46:9, “I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me.” If what God says in Isaiah is true, how then could Paul make Jesus out to be God’s equal? It must be that Jesus himself is also God.

The Meaning Of “Emptied Himself”

We now come to the most controversial part of the text. What does Paul mean when he says Jesus emptied himself? I believe he tells us in the next part of the text when he asserts, “[Jesus] emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” Here, Paul indicates that the emptying of Christ doesn’t include losing any of his deity. Rather, the emptying includes adding a human nature to himself. In other words, it’s the formula of subtraction by addition.¹

Notice the text doesn’t state that Jesus emptied “part of himself.” That would indicate that he set aside portions of his divine nature in order to become a human. No, it simply states that he “emptied himself” by taking on the nature of a human.

Paul expresses that, even though Jesus had a divine nature and an exulted status in glory, he willingly chose to “empty himself” by coming to earth to experience all the limitations and sufferings of a human, ultimately culminating in his death on the cross.

This view is consistent with the historic orthodox view of the nature of Christ. At the Council at Chalcedon (AD 451), the church declared that Jesus was one unique person who possessed both a human and divine nature. That is to say; he was fully God and fully human, not part God part man. And for clarification, he wasn’t two persons. Rather, he was one person who had an eternal divine nature and an added human nature in the incarnation. Again, subtraction by addition.

“Emptied Himself” Illustrated

Let me give you an illustration to explain how adding something could look like subtraction.² Imagine that one day you decided to go to a luxury car dealership to test drive the nicest car in the showroom. The salesman gave you permission, so you took the shiny car out for a spin.

As you were driving down the road on that rainy day, you noticed a field off to your right and decided to take the car off-roading to see how well it could do donuts. After about fifteen minutes of spinning around in the field, sufficiently caking the car in mud, you took the car back to the dealership, handed the keys to the salesman, and thanked him for allowing you to test drive the car.

As you can imagine, the salesman demanded an explanation for why you plastered his new shiny car with mud. To which you responded, “hey buddy, why are you so upset? Did I take anything away from the car? No, I only added to it. I added mud!”

You see, even after the fifteen-minute test drive, the new luxurious car was still a new luxurious car. The full coating of mud, however, disguised its glory, so it wasn’t as obvious as before. In the same way, as Jesus added a human nature — much like mud in our illustration — he didn’t cease being God. Instead, the human nature merely disguised his glory like the mud disguised the glory of the new luxurious car.

As you read through the Gospels, you will find that Jesus’ humanity made it difficult to see his divinity. We even read of times where Jesus became hungry or tired or didn’t know certain details about future events. In a sense, this is the mud disguising his glory. It doesn’t mean he ceased being glorious, it simply means his human nature veiled his divine nature during the incarnation.

Why It Matters

Jesus adding a human nature has massive implications. After all, Paul tells us that Jesus emptied himself to become “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” If he only had a divine nature, he could not have died for our sins, because God cannot die. The reason Jesus could die was because he possessed a human nature.

Thus, without his added human nature, we would still be lost in our sins. Thank God Jesus emptied himself.

The Best Kind of Love

Culture CrossExamined, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Tim Stratton

Question:

Dear Dr. Stratton,

In your interview with Jorge Gil on Cross Examined’s Hope One, you attempted to answer “all the problems of evil” by appealing to love. In fact, you said that “the best kind of love requires libertarian free will.” Surely this is false, for I can think of a counter-example that clearly shows this to be false.

After all, the members of the Trinity are the epitome of perfect love and they do not have libertarian free will. They cannot do otherwise. They must love by necessity. So how can “the best kind of love” require libertarian free will?

– Phillip

Tim’s Response

I am thankful for your question, Phillip! When I read it I could have kicked myself for not providing this vital clarification in my interview with Jorge Gil. Your question provides this opportunity.

Contrary to your assertion, the members of the Trinity (God) do possess libertarian freedom. This is easy to demonstrate when considering creation. The vast majority of theologians agree that God possessed the ability — the power — to create the universe or to refrain from creation. This is the epitome of libertarian freedom. Moreover, if nothing other than God causally determined Him to create the universe, then God possesses libertarian freedom. In fact, this conclusion can be reached by merely thinking about the rational implications of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. The cause and creator of the universe must possess libertarian freedom.

If God possesses the libertarian freedom, for example, to create the universe or not to create the universe, then this is an “ability to do otherwise” kind of freedom. With that said, however, we are not discussing the creation of the universe, but something different. We are discussing the “best kind of love,” or the “kind of love worth wanting.” You aptly pointed out that God does not possess the “ability to do otherwise” when it comes to love — namely the love between the Trinity which you noted is the epitome of the “best kind of love.”

I agree that each member of the Trinity does not possess the ability to NOT love the other members. For example, it is impossible for the Holy Spirit not to love the Son, and it is impossible for the Son, not to love the Father. Does this not “destroy” my claim — that the best kind of love requires libertarian freedom?

Not at all!

Just because God might not have the ability to do otherwise when it comes to love, it does not follow that God does not possess the libertarian freedom to love. This is the case because NOTHING other than God causally determines God to love. Moreover, nothing other than the Father causally determines His love for the Son and the Spirit.

It is vital to remember that there are basically two definitions of libertarian freedom:
1- The PAP/”ability to do otherwise” version.

2- The source-hood version (which simply means that a person is not causally determined by something other than the person).

When it comes to love, God possesses the source-hood version of libertarian freedom. God is not causally determined by something other than Him to love. As 1 John 4:8 makes clear: “God IS love.”

So, with all the data in mind, the best kind of love still requires libertarian freedom to be possessed by each person in the relationship. The best kind of love is when persons are not causally determined to love the other. In fact, it is simply oxymoronic to refer to a relationship where at least one person in the union was causally determined to enter the relationship as a “love relationship.” It is not love at all, rather, it is simply an incoherent combination of words.

Since it would be impossible for God to create a contingent being whose nature is necessarily loving (like God is), without causally determining the nature of the creature, God creates humans with an “ability to do otherwise” kind of libertarian freedom so that a true love relationship with humanity can be attained. Humans, then, unlike God, possess both the source-hood version and the PAP version of the libertarian freedom to love. God only has the source-hood version.

Robots have neither!

Bottom line: The best kind of love, or the kind of love worth wanting, requires libertarian freedom.

Stay reasonable (Isaiah 1:18),

Tim Stratton

Have You Thought About Marriage Lately?

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Bob Perry

Have you spent much time thinking about marriage lately? You should. It doesn’t matter if a wedding is something in your future or in your past. It doesn’t even matter if you have no intention of ever getting married. The fact is that the institution of marriage is important to us all. Our culture has devalued it in many ways, but marriage is the foundation of a healthy society. For that reason, we all ought to contemplate the true meaning and value of marriage.

An Honor And A Privilege

My wife and I have been happily married for 33 years. When you’ve done anything for that long, it’s easy to think you have it all figured out. But in July, my son and his fiancé asked me to perform their October wedding ceremony. Suddenly, I found myself thinking about marriage nearly every waking minute.

It was an honor and privilege to take part in my own son and daughter-in-law’s wedding. But it ended up being more than that. Preparing what I wanted to say to them on such an important day became a powerful reminder for me about the eternal significance of marriage. The whole experience reminded me of some things I had been taking for granted for far too long.

The Grand Story

We are all part of that bigger story. It’s a story that began with a God who wanted to allow free-will beings to choose to follow him. He designed a world for that purpose. And when it was exactly the way he wanted it, he created two very different beings to begin multiplying and filling it. These two complemented one another in every way — physically, psychologically, and spiritually. So, God joined them together in the world’s first wedding.

Later, that same God chose to step out of eternity to implement his plan of redemption for all of us. And when he was ready to begin his ministry, he chose to show the world who he really was by changing water into wine … at a wedding.

We are told the story will eventually come full circle. The descendants of that first couple who have chosen to devote themselves to God forever are called the church. And the church will be joined together for eternity with Christ. The Book of Revelation refers to the church as the “bride of Christ.” Jesus is the bridegroom.

In other words, the Grand Story begins and ends with a wedding.

A Picture Of Eternal Life

It seems like God really likes weddings. That’s because every wedding is meant to be a small picture of the ultimate wedding. It is in that context that all of us should think about marriage.

The covenant of marriage honors the personal stories of individual men and women. But it does so in light of the Grand Story of God’s redemptive love.

When you think of it that way, you understand marriage as it was meant to be — a God-centered, submissive commitment for life.

God’s Spirit At The Center

Marriage should never be an agreement between two “needy” people who are looking for someone else to “fill up their tanks.”

Only the Spirit of God can do that.

Both the bride and groom must be people who have considered life’s biggest questions…together. They don’t have to agree on everything, but neither can they redirect worldviews that are on opposite trajectories. The Bible calls this being “unequally yoked.” It’s a picture that any ancient-near-east, agrarian listener would have understood immediately. Think of two oxen pulling a cart in different directions. It doesn’t work. It only leads to trouble.

With God at the center of the relationship, drawing closer to him can’t help but draw husband and wife closer to each other.

A Covenant Of Submission

To the world — and the culture we live in — nothing sounds more old archaic, ridiculous, oppressive, or horrific than the words of Ephesians 5:22:

“Wives, submit to your husbands.”

But that’s because the world has a short attention span. Three sentences later, Paul continues:

“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her …”

Do you want submission? There is no greater form of submission than for a man to offer up his own life for his wife.

But there’s more.

The sentence that leads into this passage says that we are to “give thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

This is not a one-sided submission. It’s not even a fifty-fifty proposition. Marriage is a covenant in which both parties agree to give 100% of themselves.

The Beautiful Fruits Of The Covenant

The Greek word for “submit” that Paul uses in this passage has its roots in a military term. It’s about surrendering your independence to be part of something greater. It’s all about grace, forgiveness, patience, and compassion.

It has all the features of an authentic friendship — constancy, transparency, and sympathy.

This covenant is nothing like the worldly promise too many see in their marriage vows — a promise of conditional love that feeds your happiness in the moment. Instead, it’s a love that will include painful days and survive hurt feelings. It’s a love that faces obstacles and tough decisions together. This covenant is for future, sacrificial love that doesn’t depend on circumstances.

How many marriages built on that kind of selfless bond do you think would fail?

The Power Of The Covenant

When you are enmeshed in an intimate, selfless relationship like that, both participants take on superpowers. You get two of them. First, you have the capacity to hurt each other’s feelings more deeply than any other person on Earth. Second, you have the power to heal, affirm, and build each other up more than anyone else ever could.

Married folks need to be forever aware of their superpowers. They have the capacity to make or break a marriage. Never get near the first one. And use the second one every chance you get.

The Purpose Of Marriage

Can you even begin to imagine the kind of society we would be living in if everyone took this view of marriage to heart?

When I say that, I’m not trying to paint some kind utopian picture of heaven on earth. The truth is that fallen human beings would still be involved. But the beauty of the marriage covenant is that it is a vehicle for tempering our sinful natures. Being committed to a lifetime of submission to another makes one a better person. I may not be a good man, but I know that I am a better man for having married my wife. Every aspect of our complementary nature forces me to be.

And that’s why marriage matters. It creates the building block of a stable, thriving society — the human family. Marriage is the cement that holds that society together. The union of a husband and wife is supposed to be a snapshot of the church’s ultimate reunion with its Creator. It builds communities that are focused on God. It makes us think eternally.

And that’s the kind of thinking we should all be doing.

What, Me Worry?

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Al Serrato

Alfred E. Neumann, the famous face of Mad Magazine for many decades, popularized this slogan. While he wasn’t referring to the question of salvation, this saying does seem to describe the way many people view that question today. Yes, there may be a God; they will concede. But “I’m not worried,” they say. “I’m a good person, after all, and God will judge me accordingly.”

In my last post, I considered one of the ways to address this modern mindset, by making the point that expecting God to grade on a curve may not be a smart bet. This time, I’d like to explore a different approach, by examining what people mean when they say they are “good” and why a God they never bothered to get to know should care.

We can be “good” at things that do not involve others. For instance, we can be good at building sandcastles or doing crossword puzzles. But usually, when we say we are good at something, we mean that our performance is meeting or surpassing expectations. While we might not be aware of it, we are sneaking in a standard against which we judge what we have done. For instance, if we’re talking about sports, we mean we possess the skillset, discipline, and experience necessary to play effectively and to win. If we’re dealing with academics, we mean that we are sufficiently bright, hardworking, and knowledgeable to demonstrate our mastery of the subject on the test or in the class we have taken. If we’re thinking about the work environment, we mean that we know what is expected in our role, and we have the skills, experience, and dedication to accomplish our goals.

In each of these scenarios, we are buying into a game that we know we did not ourselves create. Someone who came before us outlined the parameters of what was expected and set the rules. While new games, new challenges, develop over time, we seem to be built to intuitively look for the rules of the “game” and seek to compete. And while often there is a specific reward we have a mind, a moment’s reflection should demonstrate that we seem to be, by nature, hardwired to try to surpass a standard we know is there.

Pursuing this line of thought to the next step, what else do these ways of “doing good,” of surpassing expectations, have in common? In addition to measuring up to a standard deriving from some preceding standard-setter, they all involve some form of relationship with the one, or the group, that sets the standard. We measure the good based on what performance is expected of us by someone who is in charge and who, in the end, will measure the performance. Whether the ref, the teacher or the boss, if we really want to stand out as good – no, as truly excellent and worthy of praise and a reward – we’d be well advised to find out what the particular judge thinks qualifies as good. An Olympic skater waiting for the judges’ score has in mind a clear understanding of exactly what performance is being measured, and what gaffs or missteps would qualify as a failure. And, the more powerful the judge and the more important the competition or event, the more crucial it is to understand the standard and to get it right. After all, it’s more important for the employee or the prison inmate to understand what good means than the person who is trying to finish a crossword puzzle.

Now, of course, for any particular event or competition we have in mind, the only sure way we can know with certainty what qualifies as good is to get to know the one who will be judging the performance. However, successful in other areas of their lives, the modern secularist simply does not see the point in doing this with the ultimate question – why am I here and who or what put me here? They are not troubled by the apparent disconnect – why does it matter in every other pursuit in life but not to the central pursuit, the most basic and ultimate one regarding origins…and the ultimate destination. The modern secularist doesn’t know anything about the One who, in the end, will judge his performance, the One who is going to say whether all these so-called good works amounted to anything of value. More importantly, they don’t even care. How odd this seems, to be so concerned about being “good” at lesser things and not put any effort into asking the right question about the “whole thing.” No doubt if pressed, they would say that God hasn’t bothered to communicate the standard to them, hasn’t made Himself known in the right way. Perhaps they think that justifies not trying harder to see if this is true.

I suspect most nonbelievers expect that God if he is actually there, will appreciate all the “good deeds” they did over the years and be happy with them. Perhaps they are picturing a sort of cosmic subway station; their many good deeds over the years will act like coins in the gate, allowing it to swing open for them if they’ve guessed wrongly and there really is a judge awaiting their arrival.

Christians, by contrast, know that our good works don’t earn us admission into heaven. But the secularist isn’t thinking that way. When he tells you he is good, he means he expects God to see this as well. You should remind him that by his own standard, he may be in a bit more trouble than he thinks. The coins he is depositing are from a different realm, and they don’t work with the guardian of the gate. It’s actually the wrong currency.

Think of it this way: can I ask the teacher of a different class to give me an A based on the good work I am doing in my class? Can I ask your employer to pay me for the good work I am doing for my employer? Should I expect my friend to give my son an allowance for the chores he performs at my home? If you weren’t doing the work for someone you knew, the way you knew he wanted it, why would you expect to be compensated, let alone rewarded?

Why then should the secularist who knows nothing about God, and cares even less, expect God to recognize any of his works as good?

Does Paul’s Silence About Jesus Prove That He Didn’t Exist?

Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Erik Manning

Over 99% of historical scholarship acknowledges that Jesus was a real person. It doesn’t matter if that scholar is liberal or conservative, or Christian, atheist, agnostic or Jewish. The <1% of historians that believe Jesus is a myth are mostly atheists or agnostics. And it’s only the ‘internet infidel’ crowd that takes their arguments seriously.

One of the arguments that Jesus mythicists will often push is that Paul was mostly silent about the historical Jesus. Here’s GA Wells, one of the minority voices, who writes:

“Paul’s letters have no allusion to the parents of Jesus, let alone to the virgin birth. They never refer to a place of birth…. They give no indication of the time or place of his earthly existence. They do not refer to his trial before a Roman official, nor to Jerusalem as the place of execution. They mention neither John the Baptist, nor Judas, nor Peter’s denial of his master…. These letters also fail to mention any miracles Jesus is supposed to have worked, a particularly striking omission, since, according to the gospels he worked so many.” (The Historical Evidence for Jesus, 22)

And why didn’t Paul quote Jesus’ praise of celibacy in 1 Corinthians 7? Or why not quote the Sermon on the Mount when Paul was teaching the Romans to bless their persecutors to give his message more authority? (Romans 12:14) Or why did Paul say, “we don’t know how to pray as we ought” (Romans 8:26-27) when Jesus taught his followers how to pray in Matthew 6:8-13?

One of those famous internet atheists, Dan Barker, sides with the Wells, writing: “The earliest Christian writings, the letters of Paul, are silent about the man Jesus: Paul, who never met Jesus, fails to mention a single deed or saying of Jesus…and sometimes contradicts what Jesus supposedly said. To Paul, Jesus was a heavenly disembodied Christ figure, not a man of flesh and blood.”

At first glance, the mythicists seem like they have a point. But there are a few problems here.

Arguing From Silence Is Usually A Poor Way To Prove Your Point

For starters, arguing from silence is usually a terrible way to argue. For example, Union General Ulysses S Grant says nothing about the Emancipation Proclamation. The famous explorer Marco Polo traveled to China but never mentions the Great Wall. The archives of Portugal do not allude to the travels of Amerigo Vespucci.

An estimated 16,000-60,000 people died in 79 AD due to the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. But we only hear about this event in a personal letter of Pliny’s. The relative silence of historians we’d expect to mention these events doesn’t cause scholars to doubt their occurrence.

Regarding arguments from silence, philosopher Tim McGrew writes: “Such arguments from silence are pervasive in New Testament scholarship, but they are tenuous at best….it is a risky business to speculate upon the motives of authors for including or omitting various facts. To create an appearance of inconsistency by this device…is methodologically unsound.” (Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology)

Paul’s Letters Were Occasional

There’s also the fact that most of Paul’s letters were occasional. Paul often wrote to combat error, or to provide specific guidance to churches. So, for example, Paul writes his entire letter to the Galatians to fight the doctrine of the Judaizers. Or there are the specific answers Paul gives about marriage, meat sacrificed to idols, spiritual gifts, and public worship in 1 Corinthians.

And think about it for a minute. If there weren’t some false teachers in Corinth saying there’s no resurrection, the great resurrection teaching in 1 Corinthians 15 would be missing from our Bibles! Jesus’ miracles, parables, virgin birth, arguments with the Pharisees, and so forth weren’t relevant to Paul’s purposes in writing those particular letters.

The Silence Of Paul…About Paul

In his book Did Jesus Exist?, agnostic Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman points out that Paul wasn’t just silent about some historical facts about Jesus, he also didn’t tell us a lot about himself. Like for instance: Who taught Paul? Where did he grow up? What did he do for a living? What did he do during his three years in Arabia or Damascus before meeting with Peter and James in Jerusalem? Or in the following fourteen years? Where did he go? Paul doesn’t tell us in his letters. We only learn about a few of these things from reading Acts.

Wells mentions that we don’t learn about Jesus’ miracles from Paul. But Paul said he had miracles in his ministry, and that was proof he was an apostle. (Romans 15:19, 2 Corinthians 12:12) Does Wells expect us to believe that Paul believed he and the other apostles had miracles, but Jesus didn’t?

The Silence Of Other Early Christians

But we can take it a step further. We have three letters from John, or at least attributed to him. Scholars believe he was writing to combat the proto-gnostics who were saying that sin wasn’t really a thing, and Jesus wasn’t a physical being. (1 John 1:1-3, 8) But the writer of these epistles, who wrote just like the writer of John’s Gospel, (I think they are both written by John, but scholars debate that) doesn’t mention Jesus turning water into wine, healing a man born blind, feeding the 5,000, walking on water or raising Lazarus from the dead. He doesn’t even quote the words of Jesus from that gospel. Why was the writer of 1-3 John silent about these things? Because they didn’t suit his purposes, not because he didn’t think that they happened.

Furthermore, most scholars believe that the author of Luke’s Gospel is the same author of Acts. Acts is Luke’s sequel. But in Acts, Lukes makes little use of the Jesus tradition he’s obviously familiar with. Clearly the lack of references to Jesus’ teachings in Acts doesn’t show that Luke was ignorant about what Jesus taught!

And what about the writings of some of the early church fathers? 1 Clement, Barnabas, and Polycarp’s letters to the Philippians. These letters fail to mention:

Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.
His parables.
That he healed the sick and cast out demons.
That he was transfigured on the mountain.
That he got into arguments with the Pharisees.
That he cleansed the temple.
That Judas betrayed him.
That Pilate had him crucified.

Do we conclude that these writers didn’t think Jesus existed? No, we don’t. In the case of Polycarp, he quotes Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but these other traditions were not relevant to why he was writing, so he fails to mention them.

Paul’s “Silence” Doesn’t Prove What The Mythicists Claim

Finally, Paul wasn’t silent about the historical Jesus. As I’ve written elsewhere, Paul knows a lot about Jesus. He knows that Jesus was a descendant of David, that he had a mother, a brother named James and other siblings, a disciple named Peter, 12 disciples, that he shared the last supper with his followers, was betrayed, abused, crucified, and he alludes to several of Jesus’ teachings. (Rom 1:3-4, Gal 1:18-19, 1 Cor 9:5, 1 Cor 15:5, 1 Cor 11:22-24, Rom 15:3, 1 Cor 1:23, 1 Cor 7:10-12, 1 Cor 9:14, 11:22-24, 1 Thess 4:15)

But Paul’s main focus was Christ and him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:2) It is what the cross and resurrection accomplish for the believer is what Paul is obsessed with. He’s interested in unpacking that teaching to the young churches. But his alleged silence isn’t a good argument to think that Jesus didn’t really exist. Bart Ehrman, no friend of traditional Christianity concludes that the so-called silence of Paul is a really bad way to argue, writing:

“What do these silences show? They do not show that these authors did not know about the historical Jesus because they clearly did. If anything, the silences simply show that these traditions about Jesus were not relevant to their purposes…What we can know is that Paul certainly thought that Jesus existed. He had a clear knowledge of important aspects of Jesus’s life—a completely human life, in which he was born as a Jew to a Jewish woman and became a minister to the Jews before they rejected him, leading to his death. He knew some of Jesus’s teachings. And he knew how Jesus died by crucifixion. For whatever reason, that was the most important aspect of Jesus’s life: his death. And Paul could scarcely have thought that Jesus died if he hadn’t lived”. (Did Jesus Exist? p. 145)

While I’ve disagreed with Dr. Ehrman many, many times, I have to offer a hearty amen here.

La ciencia y el nuevo ateísmo son incompatibles

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Por Shadow To Light

Uno de los argumentos centrales del movimiento del Nuevo Ateismo insiste en que la ciencia y la religión son «incompatibles”. Los científicos no deben ser religiosos y si alguien realmente valora la ciencia, se supone que deben abandonar su religión. El argumento es convincente solo para nuevos ateos, simplemente porque es más un tema de conversación para su propaganda anti-religiosa que cualquier tipo de argumento sólido. De hecho, podemos decir que es solo un tema de conversación debido a la naturaleza injustificada selectiva de la comparación. Es decir, si la ciencia es incompatible con la religión, ¿no podría ser también incompatible con otras formas de expresión humana?

Jerry Coyne recientemente escribió un post racionalizando su uso de ad hominems y el lenguaje inflamatorio:

¿Sabes qué? Me importa un pepino el tono de las declaraciones. Esto es exactamente lo que es de esperar en los sitios web (no en revistas académicas, nota), en un caso que no es puramente académico, sino político. [….] las invectivas del DI me resbalan por la espalda. Hubo un tiempo en ellos -yo creo que fue William Dembski-, que publicaron una foto de mí junto a una de Herman Munster, señalando el parecido.

Con el tiempo la quitaron, pero no me molestó en absoluto. La sátira es una de las armas en esta batalla entre la racionalidad y la superstición.

Claro. En política, la invectiva y la sátira tienen un lugar. En lo político, se busca cambiar la opinión y el comportamiento con el uso de invectivas, la sátira, y otras formas de propaganda. Pero aquí está la cosa.

Este enfoque es incompatible con el enfoque científico. En la ciencia, podemos cambiar opiniones con los resultados experimentales. Cambiamos de opinión con la evidencia científica. Al tratar de comprender cómo la comunidad científica llegó a aceptar la idea de que el ADN era el material genético, sólo tenemos que tener en cuenta algunos de los famosos experimentos que demostraron esto. La invectiva y la sátira no jugaron un papel.

El mismo Coyne reconoce la diferencia cuando escribe: “Esto es exactamente lo que es de esperar en los sitios web (no en revistas académicas, nota), en un caso que no es puramente académico, sino político”.

Sitios web, revistas no académicas.

No es puramente académico, sino político.

En otras palabras, la ciencia y la política son incompatibles. En las ciencias cambiamos opiniones con los resultados experimentales y en la política cambiamos opiniones con la invectiva y la sátira. La ciencia cambia de opinión, apelando a la razón, Mientras la política cambia de opiniones mediante la manipulación de las emociones.

Ahora, recordemos que los nuevos ateos argumentan que los científicos no deben ser religiosos y si alguien realmente valora la ciencia, se supone que abandonará su religión. La misma lógica también significaría que los científicos no se suponga que sean políticos y si alguien realmente valora la ciencia, deben abandonar toda postura y actividad política. Los científicos, y todos los que valoran la ciencia, deben ser completamente apolíticos.

Por supuesto, El Nuevo Ateísmo, por su propia naturaleza, es político. Lo que significa que El Nuevo ateísmo es incompatible con la ciencia. Los Nuevos Ateos nunca lo admitirían, dado que su movimiento es puramente político y no tiene ningún compromiso con la razón.

Traducido por Jorge Gil Calderón

Blog Original: https://bit.ly/2Y1Aq3s

May 4, 2020/by Guest

Is the Historical Jesus Fact or Fiction?

Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Tim Stratton

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

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

i. Did Jesus of Nazareth really exist?

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

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

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

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

a) Letter of Mara Bar-Serapion

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

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

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

b) Flavius Josephus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources that specifically reference events associated with Jesus.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phlegon is also noted by Origen:

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

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

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

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

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

Click here for more information regarding this creed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[9] Julius Africanus, Chronography, 18.1.

[10] Julius Africanus, Chronography, 18.1.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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