Month: September 2015

Book Plunge: God’s Crime Scene

What do I think of Jim Wallace’s latest book published by David C. Cook publishers? Let’s plunge into the Deepest Waters and find out.

I consider J Warner Wallace a friend of mine and I was pleased to see he wrote a new book. Upfront, I’ll say scientific apologetics for the most part I don’t really find very interesting. I find science items quite interesting at times and I find I have questions raised when I read things about science for both sides of the atheism/theism debate, but for the most part, I just don’t get convinced. I also have a concern that we live in a scientism culture and if we marry everything to science, what will happen when the science changes? Hence, I prefer to go with metaphysics that has lasted through the years to demonstrate theism, but let’s talk about Jim’s book.

Jim’s book is written in an attractive format and for the most part it’s easy to follow. While it has a lot of pages, many of these also have illustrations so the book is not as large as it first appears. It’s written in a good chronological format that will help the reader go step by step. I suspect if one had just one issue in mind, that each chapter could be read in a stand-along fashion. Wallace also does not ignore the opposition and he does cite the people who disagree with him and includes them as expert witnesses.

Yet one of the best aspects is that each chapter starts with a story that will draw the reader in. Many of us love mysteries. I know I do. I have been disappointed for instance to find that he Monk mystery series has apparently come to an end. Wallace begins each chapter talking about a crime case that he’s covered and uses that to explain the data. It’s a wonderful illustration, although be warned that there are some crime scenes that you don’t want to hear the description of. Some will also just break your heart especially, like hearing about the deaths of children to violent crime.

Also, while I do not care much for science, there are other areas talked about such as a case for dualism or the case for the argument of objective morality. There’s also the answer to the problem of evil. These are definitely areas that I find more interesting and was pleased to see them discussed.

Now here are some things I would like to see improved if a second edition comes out.

I would like to see more emphasis on the metaphysical arguments that demonstrate God’s existence. I think it’s a shame that Protestants have tended to remove themselves from the classical arguments used by Aquinas. These are excellent arguments that have stood the test of time and do not depend on the science of the day. Another area I would like to see is the addressing of the question that I always get from atheists that I never saw mentioned in the book and that would be “Well you’re telling me God created the universe. Well who created God?” Now I think this is a question that needs to be answered, but not the defeater that many atheists think it is and yes, I think the Thomistic arguments answer it well.

Still, I would hope that Wallace’s book would do what I think he most wants it to do. Start the conversation. That’s why Wallace includes resources on both sides of the argument at the end of the book. Not convinced by your immediate reading? I think he would understand that and in some ways appreciate it. By all means go and look at the evidence, but consider this a book that can get your foot in the door. Again, while I do not speak as an authority on matters of science as science, I think the discussion is interesting and while I am not one much for scientific apologetics, if you are, this is a book you will want in your library. Wallace has done extensive research to make his case just like any good investigator. Being a good juror, you owe it at least a listen.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: The Living Paul

What do I think of Anthony Thiselton’s book published by IVP? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Paul is always an interesting figure to discuss and opinions can be very divided on him. Still, if you are going to talk about the New Testament and the rise of early Christianity, it is essential that you talk about Paul. Thiselton’s book is an aim to bring an easily readable work to the layman audience to better understand Paul. He takes a number of issues and looks to see what Paul says about them.

The book starts with simply looking at the life of Paul. What is the relationship with Paul and Jesus? For instance, a number of people think that Jesus could have very well had this great idea and then Paul came along and messed everything up. Was this true? What did it mean for Paul to be an apostle to the Gentiles? Who was the man Paul and what was his methodology for going through the Mediterranean world and spreading Christianity? There are many of us that like to look at the teachings of Paul without considering Paul the man. We could perhaps better realize how seriously he took the teachings of Jesus if we realize how much he went through to share them.

But of course, doctrine has to be there. We in the West do tend to like that. Thiselton takes a number of issues. Some of them are ones that we would expect to see regularly, such as the Holy Spirit and the person of Jesus and looking to see if there’s Trinitarianism in the writings of Paul. Others are definitely worth mention but sometimes ones we don’t emphasize enough, though there are no doubt groups out there in Christianity that do. These would be his views on baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Thiselton also writes on the ethics of Christianity especially including our sexual ethics and Paul was well ahead of his time with those.

Naturally, there are issues related to salvation, the nature of the church, and eschatology. These are all big debates today and Thiselton does present some of the latest work and speaks about it, such as looking at the idea of justification that is presented by N.T. Wright. He also deals with some objections such as the idea that Paul uses the term “we” in 1 Thess. 4 to describe what happens when Jesus returns and asks if Paul was off on his timing.

Some might be surprised that the last section in the book is a look at Paul and postmodernism. There were ideas back in the time of Paul that could be considered postmodern or at least pre-postmodern (There’s an odd concept to think about) just like there was a proto form of Gnosticism going around in Paul’s day. Thiselton looks at some of the postmoderns today and sees what Paul would have to say in relation to their claims about reality.

Thiselton’s read is one that will help inform the layman on the life of Paul. There were times I would have liked a little bit more and the pace seemed to move a bit slowly for me, but much of the information is quite good and would be helpful to any student wanting to study Paul.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Thoughts on War Room

What did I think of this movie? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

If you’re wondering about last week, I was away in Atlanta visiting my in-laws. I had a hard time connecting to the site with my wife’s laptop so I thought “Forget it. I can go a week without. I’ll just focus on my family.” That’s what I did. Right now, it looks like things are back to normal as we’re back home in Knoxville again and the first subject I want to talk about is a movie that we went to see with Allie’s parents and that’s War Room.

It’s no secret that Christian movies lately have been really cheesy. Most filmmakers of Christian movies have this idea that your audience is really stupid and think that if we are going to make this a Christian movie, we must somehow shove the Gospel right in your face because that’s the only way that you’re going to get it. War Room is certainly a step up and what I thought to be an excellent Christian movie. Does that mean I agree with everything? No. It only means that the parts that I favored stood out above the parts that I did not.

The movie involves the story of a real estate agent helping an elderly widow move out of her house. The widow shows the real estate agent all the rooms of her house and then points out eventually what her favorite room is and calls it her War Room. It’s a room where there are prayers and Bible verses written on the wall. In fact, it’s hardly a room as it really is a closet. The widow then begins talking to the real estate agent, Elizabeth, about her marriage and what she needs to do to win back her husband Tony when they are in a terrible place in their marriage. Elizabeth is also reminded that she can’t be the one to directly change Tony. She needs to work on herself. In this way, the movie also gives some great marriage advice.

Elizabeth is encouraged to develop a prayer time, though we can all relate when the first time she tries her daughter and her daughter’s best friend interrupt her lounging on the floor drinking sprite and eating chips. Most of us don’t start out too well. Still, she keeps going and she gets better and better and her daughter soon follows suit. Probably the only scene that I didn’t really think was fitting was Elizabeth after praying hard and realizing a problem in her marriage starts yelling at the devil and telling him he’s not going to have her marriage or her husband.

I find this problematic because I really don’t see anything in the Bible telling us to get into a shouting match with the devil and also too often we treat him like he’s omnipresent and can hear everything we say. Yet even if demons aren’t directly involved, I think in every marital destruction we experience the work of demons in the long-term, not as if they directly caused it, but it has been the work of the devil from the beginning to destroy the things of God, including marriage, and that destruction to today continues. Even if no evil entity ever tries to act on your marriage, you can still feel the effects of that from other marriages. (Our divorce culture has given us the idea that giving up or abandoning one another is okay for any reason and just fine for a Christian. That affects Christians who have no desire to divorce either.)

Elizabeth instead keeps changing around her husband and yes, this change gets her husband’s attention. She does not give back sarcastic answers when tragedies strike and she seeks to respect her husband. Men respond to this. After all, we crave respect and we go where the respect is. I found myself smiling at her actions in that I knew that she was reclaiming her marriage. What happens then? Well I’m not going to tell you the plot of the movie that far!

And I can also say this had an effect on my life. I’ve seen my wife going through some hard times and I’ve been doing everything in the world for her except seriously seriously praying for her. If you’re like me and wanting to do better, I have some suggestions. First, try to find a quiet place where you can be alone. Second, if you want to be good with time, don’t start off with a goal like an hour of prayer. You’re setting yourself up for failure that way. Set a short time like ten minutes and work up and if you have a device with a timer on it, feel free to use it so you’re not constantly wondering about the time. On my Kindle Fire, I have an app called Mobile Knee. I can write down prayer requests that I have and times those prayers have been answered as well as journal entries and Bible verses that help me.

In the end, I can say I encourage you to see this movie. It is an entertaining and touching film and I can say it made me take prayer more seriously and I “pray” I keep that up. If that was the goal of the producers, it has worked with at least one and I hope Christian movies keep improving like this one.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Resurrections on the Internet

What happens to bad ideas when the internet comes around? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Christian Vision For Men (CVM) has a video up today on the idea that Jesus is copied from dying and rising gods of the time. The concept isn’t taken seriously by scholars, but you go on the internet and you will find this touted around like it’s an obvious fact. I just did a quick search in fact and didn’t take long to find an example of an image that goes around with this.

Copycat Jesus

This is just one of many.

Will you find scholarly support for this idea? Nope. Well not unless you redefine scholar to mean something like anyone who can write a blog and put forward an argument. If you’re talking about people in the field with actual Ph.D.’s, good luck. I’ve in fact done a show on this topic interviewing Joe Mulvihill. Of course, right along with this goes the idea that Jesus never existed. Frankly, if any atheist wants to say young-earth creationism should be rejected because it goes so against the grain of the scientific community (And I am not a YEC), then they have no grounds for using the Christ Myth theory because it goes even more against the grain of scholarship in the field.

All this goes to demonstrate is that resurrection is certainly a reality on the internet, because ideas that have no basis in reality come up time and time again and they are believed and embraced because, hey, they argue against Christianity.

It’s really hard to take internet atheism seriously when I see the same canards thrown out time and time again.

“The church was anti-science in the Dark Ages!”

“Christians used to believe the Earth was flat!”

“There are X number of denominations out there!” (X has to be used because the number changes in range from 22,000 to 42,000)

“Look at all these writers of the time who never mentioned Jesus!”

“The New Testament was formed at the Council of Nicea!”

These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I’m sure many more could be added. Even sadder is the idea that every time statements like this are made up, it’s as if no Christian has ever thought about them before and we’ve never heard of them. At this rate, we could easily make an internet atheist drinking game.

Now let’s be fair also. Christians can be just as gullible sadly. I’ve written on this before with internet quotes and such. I hate to do that because most of my Facebook friends are Christians and sadly, they’re the ones that I usually see spreading misinformation. My own wife could tell you that if she reads something on the internet that I haven’t heard, the first reply I always give is “Source?” Most of us don’t bother to check because the claim goes with what we already believe so surely it must be true.

Debates will be going on and on until the return of Christ I am sure, but we can all seek to do what we can to improve the quality of the debates. One such way is by checking the claims that we come across. If we are not sure of a claim, we dare not share it as fact. This is especially so for Christians who are called to be people of the truth. After all, if people cannot trust us with the mundane things they can easily check, why should they believe us on grander claims, like the resurrection?

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 9/5/2015: Roger Maxson

What’s coming up on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Long have I stressed the importance of discipleship to the church. I have said that we cannot live in a world where we isolate ourselves from the culture and expect to produce strong people of faith. We might produce good people, but we will not convince a world that has intellectual difficulties with what it is that we believe. There have been too many tragedies down this path as even people in Seminary and Bible College can lose their faith, largely because they do not have a strong grounding to begin with. So many of these tragedies could have been prevented and perhaps having someone around to answer the questions could help. One such tragedy that was prevented is Roger Maxson.

And he’s my guest to talk about his story.

Who is he?

RogerMaxson

Roger Maxson earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Biblical Studies, with a focus on Pastoral Ministry, from Crown College of the Bible in Knoxville, TN. He is an ordained minister, and served as an assistant pastor for three years. He is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Apologetics from Houston Baptist University, and is preparing to launch an apologetics lifestyle blog.

I know Roger’s story well because I was a part of it. More of the details will come out on the show, but Roger and I did work together at Wal-Mart once and we got along well, although we were quite different in our approaches to ministry. I moved to Charlotte eventually and Roger went his own way. It was nice knowing him I thought and maybe one day I will see him again. It was a shock when I did get in touch with him later on and found out that he was struggling with his faith. Unfortunately, it was his growing up in a highly highly conservative Christian culture that made his faith vulnerable to criticisms. He’d read writers like the new atheists and others and didn’t know what to do. In a last act hoping to find some light at the end of the tunnel, he emailed me.

Thus began a long period of emails and questions back and forth as I helped him with the doubts that he was wrestling with and helped him to see the objections he was encountering were not really as powerful as he thought. Where is he today? Today he is preparing for ministry studying at Houston Baptist University. He is a bright and shining light for Christianity and I think his story is worth sharing.

You see, Roger was fortunate that someone like me was around, but I can’t be there for everyone and there are plenty of people who will go through this and they won’t know that someone like me is around wherever they live, or sadly enough, there might not be an apologist in their area, and then what will happen? Roger’s story is a story on the importance of having a good and firm backing of your faith. It’s also a story of the difference that can be made when that backing is had. It is not going to be a hindrance to one’s witness. It will in fact be an aid.

Please join me on the next episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast and parents with young children especially listen. You need to hear Roger’s story.

Book Plunge: Elements of Biblical Exegesis

What do I think of Michael Gorman’s book published by Baker Academic? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Elements of Biblical Exegesis is meant to be a guide for students who are writing exegetical papers, and indeed it will be a helpful one. Gorman works with writers on all levels, including those who know the Biblical languages well and those who have no real knowledge of them. The rules listed in this book can help you if you’re writing an exegetical paper, but they can just as much help you out if you are sitting in a Sunday School class or small group meeting and you’re discussing a passage of Scripture and people are sitting together all talking about what the passage “means to them.”

Of interest from an apologetic nature is the discussion on textual criticism as well as the listing of Bible translations and dealing with the hermeneutic of suspicion where the text is seen as guilty until proven innocent. In fact, Gorman rightly says we should read from all perspectives, not just our own. After all, it is the critics of our position that can often open our eyes the most to the problems that we need to answer for our position. Gorman regularly says that all such reading is going to be beneficial. (Even reading mythicist material as that shows you just how crazy you can go when you don’t really know how to do history.)

Of course, internet atheists I regularly encounter will want nothing to do with a work like this, and sadly too many Christians won’t either who just have this idea that the text should be plain and clear to them. One of the great problems we have in the church is that people no longer work at the text. We go to seminars to learn how to improve our marriage and work at that, and we should! We go to seminars to learn how to be better parents and work on that, and we should! We go to seminars to learn how to better manage our money and work on that, and we should! We go to all of these and while we think we should work at every other area of our life, when it comes to understanding what we say is the greatest facet of our lives (Or we should say it is), we think all the answers should be handed to us.

Also, towards the end of the book, Gorman gives a long list of recommended resources. I am sure that the list is helpful, but if you go straight through a book like I do, then it can be a bit tedious in reading. Still, if you just pop open the book and want to know if a resource is a good one, then that is a helpful tool to have.

Finally, the book concludes with three exegetical papers, two on a NT passage and one on an OT passage. These are helpful examples to have nearby and the reader of the book will be pleased with how simple the final product looks and even without thorough knowledge of the original languages.

This will be a helpful guide to those who really do want to study the text for all that it’s worth.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Do We Need A Bible 2.0?

If God wants us to know His truth, why doesn’t He just give us a new Bible?

Yesterday I wrote on the importance of hermeneutics, and this because the Bible is so hard to understand for so many people. So then the question comes up “Well why doesn’t God just give us a new Bible?” This sounds like a simple concept at first, but let’s consider it further to see some problems.

First off, most of us might think this should be in English, but which English? I live in the South (You know, where English was perfected) and we have a different way of speaking English. If you go to England, there are terms used over there that mean something entirely different than what they do over here. Now you might say “Well each of these different forms of English would get their own Bible. Okay, but even then we still have differences of interpretation. What happens when I communicate with someone who lives in England over what the Bible says? He will interpret his text a still different way than I do.

And this is only in one language! What happens when we add in multiple languages? What happens when we have multiple languages in German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Italian, Chinese, and other languages? Keep in mind I’m speaking about languages that most of us know well. There are languages that we do not even have the Bible as it is today translated into yet. What about those languages? If you think the battles that can take place over which translation should be used in a church are intense today, what’s going to happen when there are many different Bibles and each one is supposed to be directly from God?

Second, how are these Bibles going to be sent? Are we going to have to have different people write them again and if so, will we not have the exact same problem we have now where so many people will say that this is the Word of man instead of the Word of God? Are we going to go with the fax from Heaven idea where a Bible will fall from the sky? If so, will this not lead to the possibility of idolatry, or perhaps even certain people absconding with these Bibles and then telling everyone else what they supposedly say and taking advantage of those who do not have Bibles who have fallen from the sky?

Third, are these claims really going to be believed? Let’s suppose one fell from the sky that said “Around 2,000 years ago my Son came to the Earth, was crucified, buried, and rose again to bring about my kingdom on Earth.” How many skeptics are going to say “Great! Now we know?” We could again have the same charges of “These are aliens doing this” or “This whole thing is a fraud anyway.” We’re not going to be able to bypass just simply doing research.

And therein lies the problem. Too many of us today, Christians and skeptics both, are people that want everything just spelled out for us and made simple. Most things worth doing are not going to be easy. They’re going to take hard work, and work is a dirty word to many Americans today. Few of us bother with any kind of struggle whatsoever. We want to have what we want immediately or we don’t want it at all and surely God should make things easy for us. Reality is He very rarely does. Christ wants disciples and disciples are people who are willing to work for the truth and don’t expect it to be delivered to them.

If you want to know if Christianity is true, it will require work on your part if you have hard questions.

In Christ,
Nick Peters