Category: Apologetics

A Defense of the Minimal Facts

Have the minimal facts been knocked down? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

I was recently sent an article by Matthew Ferguson of Adversus Apologetica where he attempts to knock down the minimal facts approach. Looking through the article, I am largely unimpressed. For those interested, it can be found here.

The minimal facts approach is the one offered by Gary Habermas and Mike Licona. The idea is to take facts that even liberal scholarship will acknowledge that are attested to early and argue from there that the best conclusion that can be reached from what we know is that Jesus rose from the dead.

Much of this is done to avoid going to the gospels. As Habermas has said in many talks, the gospels are by liberal standards 40-70 years afterwards. You can go that route, but it’s much more difficult. It’s also done this way to just avoid “The Bible says it happened, therefore it did,” approach, as Habermas and Licona take facts that have been held by non-Christian scholars in the field.

So looking at Ferguson, I have a problem right off with this sentence.

“When investigating virtually every other past event outside of the origins of Christianity, historians operate under the principle of methodological naturalism.”

He goes on to say that

“If they did not responsibly limit the historical method to a purely secular epistemology, as I have discussed before, supernatural events such as witchcraft at Salem in the late 17th century would be fair game for being considered “historical” and we would have far greater evidence to support such miracles than the resurrection of Jesus. We can all see the absurdity of the former example and yet apologists (who exercise the same skepticism towards supernatural events outside of their religion) consider it an unfair bias to bracket Jesus’ resurrection as a religious, rather than historical, matter.”

Actually, no. I don’t see the absurdity of the former. I happen to know people who have been involved in the occult and have no reason to discount a number of claims that I hear from them. Also, even if we had greater evidence for Salem, so what? That means the evidence for the resurrection is not reliable? Does any historical claim become false if we have more evidence for another claim along the same lines? If we have more evidence for Hitler, does that mean that Napoleon is a myth? If we have more evidence for Napoleon, does that mean Alexander the Great is a myth?

Ferguson also has this idea that we’re all anathema to miracles in other religions. Licona himself asked me about this once in discussing miracles and said “What about miracles outside of Christianity like Apollonius and Vespasian?” My reply was “What about them?” If these people did miracles, so what. Questions need to be asked.

“Is there any particular religious message that is to be conveyed if the miracle is true?”
“What is the evidence for the claim?”
“Who reports the claim?”
“How close to the time is it?”

Personally, I would in fact welcome a strong case for Vespasian or Apollonius doing miracles. Why? Because doing miracles is not anathema to my worldview but is so to a worldview that is rooted in naturalistic thinking. That just opens up even more the possibility that Jesus rose from the dead since we can say “We have clear evidence of a miracle in this case. Why not the other?”

Of course, there is also the fact that Craig Keener has written a massive tour de force demonstrating miracle claims going on today. These have eyewitness testimony and have often medical reports backing them. In the volume, Keener also includes numerous arguments against the position of Hume.

So if we have miracle claims going on today, why should we ipso facto disregard all of them? Let’s open them up. While most atheists tell me about how we shouldn’t let bias deal with the data, if any side will have bias here, it will be the atheistic side. If all of Keener’s miracles were shown to be false I’d think it was a shame, but it would not disprove either his argument against Hume or the resurrection of Jesus. If just one of the hundreds of miracles Keener writes about is an accurate account, then atheism needs to come up with a better explanation.

So at the start, I do not see a good reason to accept methodological naturalism. When I look at history, I want to know what really happened and I cannot do that if I rule out explanations that I disagree with right at the start. If a miraculous event happened in history, the only way we can know that is if we allow ourselves to be open to it, and if we are not open to it when a miracle had in fact occurred, then we can never know true history.

Ferguson goes on to say

“I have, on the other hand, met several apologists who converted for personal reasons and later sought rational and evidential justifications when they were trying to convert other people who do not share such personal experience.”

Of course, some people come to Christianity for various reasons and then when looking into their belief system, find there are rational reasons for believing it. There are many of us who would prefer that apologists not use personal experience as an argument. I cringe every time Bill Craig uses his fifth way for instance. It’s way too much like Mormonism.

On the other hand, there are some people who start out critical and investigate the evidence and come away Christians. Lee Strobel, J. Warner Wallace, and Frank Morison come to mind. What really matters is the evidence that each side presents. If one comes to Christianity first and finds the reasons later, they cannot help that. Their arguments should not be discounted for that reason.

Going on we are told

“Such apologists, seeking to hijack the field of ancient history, are desperate to slap the label “historical” onto the resurrection. This goal is derived in no sense whatsoever from legitimate academic concerns, but instead is one born purely out of the desire to evangelize. Once Jesus’ resurrection is considered “historical,” you just have to accept it and apologists can cram their religion down people’s throats. It was to avoid such non-academic agendas that historians bracketed such religious questions in the first place. I myself was originally content with letting the resurrection be a religious, rather than historical question, but apologists have fired the first shot in attempting to invade the field of ancient history. Since they are now targeting a lay audience with a variety of oversimplified slogans aimed at converting the public rather than seriously engaging historical issues, my duty here on Κέλσος is to correct their misconceptions.”

It is a wonder how Ferguson has this great insight into the mind of everyone who has written on the resurrection from an evangelical perspective. I, for instance, have no desire to shove religion down someone’s throat. Do I wish to share my view? Of course! Who doesn’t? Can I force someone to accept the resurrection? Not at all! I can present the evidence that I see and let them decide and if they disagree, let them disagree with me on historical grounds.

When one considers the last sentence, I hope that Ferguson in turn is going after the new atheists who are targeting the lay audience with simplified slogans and even worse, not doing real research into philosophy and theology at all! This is evidenced by P.Z. Myers’s “Courtier’s Reply.”

Furthermore, I do not see how he could look at a work like Licona’s “The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach” which is actually Licona’s PH.D. with a few updates and say that that it has oversimplified slogans and does not seriously engage historical issues. Could he say the same about a work like N.T. Wright’s “The Resurrection of the Son of God”?

To be fair, I will not dispute that there is much out there that is garbage. There are works by Christian apologists that I myself have taken to task for being so light and fluffy. One such work even had Wikipedia cited in the back.

Moving on we read

“One such slogan is the so-called “minimal facts” apologetic, spawned by the likes of Gary Habermas and William Craig.”

Right here, I can tell the study has not been done on this. Craig’s approach is not the minimal facts approach of Habermas. In fact, Habermas himself says that some of Craig’s material are not facts that he would use. Craig’s material relies on the gospels. Habermas’s (And Licona’s in turn) does not. Thus, I will be spending this work defending the real minimal facts approach. If something is not part of the minimal facts, I will not waste time with it.

Ferguson continues,

“This “minimal facts” apologetic attempts to provide a minimal case for believing in just one of Jesus’ miracles: the resurrection. First, I find it to be completely disingenuous for apologists to pretend that they are trying to convince you of “only one” miracle. What if I believed in the resurrection, but thought Jesus did it through sorcery or simply left open-ended the question of its religious significance?”

That’s fine. Go ahead. Habermas has even said in public talks that at the start, he’s not saying God raised Jesus from the dead. He’s saying that Jesus rose. You come up with your explanation. You want to say it was sorcery. Fine. Say it was sorcery. Just give a reason why you think it was and why you think my explanation that it was God who raised Him is lacking. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be doing?

“Apologists would not accept this and would obviously want to convince me that Elohim had raised their Messiah. What apologists don’t tell you is that in the fine print of the “minimal facts” apologetic there is a clause stating that by accepting the free trial of the resurrection miracle, you are signing yourself up for a lifetime subscription to a fundamentalist, conservative Christian worldview.”

No you’re not. There. An assertion made without an argument can be dismissed just the same way. All you have to do is get that Jesus rose. Don’t want to believe the Bible is Inerrant? Sure. Go ahead. There are some Christian scholars who hold to the bodily resurrection and don’t think the Bible is inerrant. Want to believe in theistic evolution? Sure. Go ahead. There are some like that as well. There are Christians of all stripes who believe Jesus rose from the dead and do not hold to a “conservative and fundamentalist approach.”

Besides, if a fear of accepting such an approach is behind Ferguson, then could it not be said that his worldview is shaping his looking at the evidence instead of the other way around?

“But furthermore, the “minimal facts” apologetic is not rooted in facts to begin with, and when stated honestly boils down to the argument: “If you accept the Bible as factual, how can you deny the fact of Jesus’ resurrection?”

This is not the minimal facts argument. In fact, the minimal facts argument is done to AVOID such a statement. One can take a quite liberal approach to the Bible and still accept the minimal facts. This is simply a straw man on Fergusons’s part. Of course, if the facts are wrong, then they are wrong and that is problematic, but we will see if they are.

“This apologetic takes a variety of forms, but is most commonly represented in the following manner. Apologists claim that there are “four facts” about Jesus’ resurrection:

After his crucifixion Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in a tomb.
On the Sunday after the crucifixion, Jesus’ tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers.
On different occasions and under various circumstances different individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive from the dead.
The original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that Jesus was risen from the dead despite their having every predisposition to the contrary.”

This is Craig’s list. It is not the approach of Habermas and Licona. For instance, Habermas and Licona do not use Joseph of Arimathea at all. In fact, they don’t even get to the gospels. Therefore, I will not be wasting my time dealing with any arguments concerning Joseph or the reliability of the gospels or anything along those lines.

“Apologists love to use the term “facts,” so that these issues are treated as non-negotiable [1]. Of course, where do we learn of the details of these “facts”? From ancient secular sources disinterested in proving a resurrection? Nope, from the New Testament, in the works of authors who had a religious agenda to spread belief in Jesus’ resurrection. I won’t dismiss the argument on the grounds of bias alone, however, and will further demonstrate how the first two “facts” are not facts at all, the third is poorly worded, and the fourth exaggerates and oversimplifies the early belief in the resurrection.”

The NT which is also in fact said to be the best source for the life of Jesus, even according to skeptics like Bart Ehrman. An exception to this could be found perhaps in John Dominic Crossan who uses sources like the Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of Thomas or in other scholars in the Jesus Seminar who give much weight to Q, which would in reality be found in the NT anyway, but even these would not dispute that the NT contains historical information.

Also, did these people have a bias? Yep. You bet. So did everyone else who wrote anything historical. There was no such thing as uninterested historical writing. Writing was not done just because someone wanted to write something. Ferguson writes about this because he cares about it. I write in response because I care about the topic.

Ferguson also says the first is not a fact. Again, so what? Even if it isn’t, the minimal facts approach is untouched. He also says the second is not a fact, which is interesting as well since this is the one minimal fact that Habermas himself says is not as well attested as the others. What about the third and fourth? Well we’ll see when we get there.

So let’s move on to the empty tomb. Ferguson thinks that dispatching with the claim about Joseph of Arimathea’s burial of Jesus deals with the empty tomb. No. It would just mean one account of the burial was wrong. It would not mean that there was no burial and thus no empty tomb.

Ferguson writes about the women being at the tomb and how the argument is they were not allowed to testify in a court of law and due to the criterion of embarrassment, the gospel writers would not make up such an account. The problem is that this is irrelevant to the minimal facts approach. The minimal facts approach does not deal with women coming to the tomb. It simply deals with the reality of the tomb. We could come here for extra evidence if need be, but it is not necessary.

Therefore, after giving an explanation for why he thinks the writers would use women based largely on MacDonald’s thesis of Mark basing his work on Homer, Ferguson thinks he’s disproven the empty tomb. Not at all. The basis for the empty tomb in the minimal facts approach is 1 Cor. 15. There, we find that Christ was buried and that Christ was raised. The raising would mean that there was an empty tomb left behind. A Jew would not accept the fact of a resurrection that left behind a body. Resurrection was bodily.

So therefore, I do not see fact two dealt with according to the methodology of the minimal facts approach. Let’s look at what he says about point three, the appearances.

““Fact three” of this apologetic is poorly worded, but this one does have a kernel of historical truth. I don’t think any skeptic denies that the early Christians claimed to have experiences of Jesus risen from the dead.”

Ferguson claims that we have such stories today and there were claims of post-mortem appearances in the ancient world. Fair enough. In fact, I could grant some of them, but do we have any claims of other people in the ancient world being raised to life, especially in the Greco-Roman culture where they were clear that resurrection did not happen?

Ferguson goes on to say that

“Do we have anything better? Well, we do have the apostle Paul, who wasn’t an eye-witness of Jesus, but who claims to have had a vision of him. Paul (2 Corinthians 12:2-4) elsewhere claims that he was once raptured up to “third heaven” in a experience that is very similar to the ones told by crazed street preacher, Clarence “Bro” Cope, who likewise claims to have been raptured to heaven twice and to have had Jesus appear to him. Are we to trust the testimony of people who for all purposes appear to be schizophrenic?”

It is hardly a fair comparison to compare Paul to Clarence “Bro” Cope, and the link that Ferguson has is in a post loaded with argument from outrage. Even if this had been a hallucination on Paul’s part, that does not equate to him being schizophrenic. Ferguson should leave such psychological judgments to those who do study history.

Should we trust Paul as well? NT critics seem to think so! Paul is quite well accepted. I don’t know any NT scholar who looks at what Paul says and says “Paul was crazy! Therefore we don’t need to deal with what he says.” Paul shows himself to be a learned man, a scholar of his day, and someone we should take seriously. Is Ferguson also allowing his bias (What he condemns in others) to interpret the facts to say that this did not happen? Note that in 1 Cor. 15, this is not described as a vision but put alongside appearances to Peter, James, the twelve, and five hundred.

What Ferguson wants us to think then is that all these people conveniently had the same hallucinations, that a rare event like a mass hallucination (Something Licona and Habermas have both dealt with) happened (It can even be disputed that one has happened), that it was a resurrection they thought they saw and that they did not instead see Jesus in Abraham’s bosom vindicated, and this still would not answer the question of where the body was anyway!

Ferguson continues,

“Paul’s testimony is useful, however, since Paul is writing only a couple decades after Jesus and he claims to have known Peter and other eye-witnesses of Jesus. What does Paul relate in 1 Corinthians 15? Nothing about an empty tomb being discovered by women. It is not even clear that Paul believed Jesus had physically resurrected in the same body rather than a spiritual one [4]. Paul instead reports that Jesus ὤφθη (“appeared to him”). This is the passive form of the verb ὁράω (“to see”), which very often means “to be seen in visions.”

To begin with, even Dale Martin in “The Corinthian Body” argues that the body Paul speaks of was physical. The idea that spiritual was opposed to physical was put to the test best by Licona who examined the word translated as physical by translations such as the RSV. He looked at every instance of the word from the 8th century B.C. to the 3rd century A.D. Not once was it translated “physical.” Spiritual would in fact mean something along the lines of “animated by the spirit.”

Furthermore, Licona says about ὤφθη in its Pauline usage in “The Resurrection of Jesus” that there are 29 usages of it by Paul in the NT. 16 refer to physical sight, 12 have the meaning of behold, understand, etc. Only one refers to a vision. However, this is still a problem in that the creed is not Pauline language really but language Paul got from elsewhere.

Where can we go to see? We can consider Luke. Luke uses the word to describe Jesus’s body appearing and Jesus eating food. One could say that this did not happen, but Luke believes that it did and Luke believes in a bodily resurrection. He uses the language of something that can be seen with the eyes. If Paul also agrees that resurrection is what happens to a corpse, then it’s reasonable to say that he thinks these appearances were of a body that had been a corpse and resurrected and thus, physical. One can say Paul is wrong, but let us be clear on what he means.

“Paul, who describes his own visions of Jesus in no physical terms at all (e.g. Galatians 1:15-16) likewise uses the same vocabulary to describe the early disciples’ visions of Jesus. Accordingly, the early post-mortem sightings of Jesus could have been little more than hallucinations and visionary experiences, perfectly explicable in natural terms. This would not at all be surprising for an early apocalyptic cult, in light of of the psychological conditions we observe of cult members today.”

The translation of Galatians 1 this way might be appealing to some in the Carrier type school of thought, but it is problematic still. For one thing, the wording in Galatians is highly ambiguous and most likely will be driven by one’s view of the resurrection. It is not wise to build a case on an ambiguous passage.

These could have been hallucinations? Okay. I need to see evidence of that. Why would the apostles have come up with this? It would have been the most easily disprovable theory and ended up costing them everything, especially in the society of the time where they would have received ostracism and of course, be going against the covenant of YHWH which means they would face His judgment. Paul himself would be in no position to have such an experience. He was a persecutor of the church and the conversion accounts in Acts include objective phenomena which means that this was not something that just took place in Paul’s mind.

It will not work to just say “This case is a cult that has hallucinations, therefore another case is like that.” We need to examine what makes the groups different. In Christianity, the differences are vast in comparison to other movements.

“Stories, of course, change over time, which is why the later Gospel accounts describe the post-mortem appearances in more physical terms. Consider a diachronic analaysis of how the resurrection stories developed over time:

Paul, the earliest source, has no empty tomb and just “appearances” of Jesus.
Mark, half a century later, then has an empty tomb.
Matthew, after him, then has guards at the tomb to confirm it was empty.
Luke then has a Jesus who can teleport and is at first not recognizable to his followers.
Finally, John has Thomas be able to touch Jesus’ wounds.
If you go later into the Gospel of Peter, Jesus emerges as a giant from the tomb with giant angels accompanying him.”

As has been argued earlier, for Paul to have buried and then resurrection would mean that there was an empty tomb left behind. If that is the case, one could then say Mark downplayed what happened with Paul as he left out the appearances! Furthermore, a writer like Hurtado has written showing the earliest view of Jesus would have been him seen as the Lord. Hard to go up from that one!

Now we move on to the fourth fact.

“First off, the ancient Jews and the people around the wider Mediterranean did not have carbon copy beliefs. There were all sorts of strange religions and new beliefs floating around the region at the time. Often times new religions are started by deviating from previous expectations towards new and radical ones. This certainly has a higher probability for explaining the origins of Christianity than a magical resurrection.”

Ferguson is writing against the idea that Christians would have a crucified messiah as their savior. To be sure, there were new beliefs floating around. How having a more radical belief is more probable than a resurrection has not been shown. The term magical is just a bit of well poisoning on Ferguson’s part. Magic in the ancient world does not correspond to what we have in the resurrection.

“But belief in the resurrection need not even be unlikely. Kris Komarnitksy has written an excellent article about how “Cognitive Dissonance Theory” can explain the early Christian belief in the resurrection. This theory observes that among religious groups and cults, when something occurs that violates the adherents’ previous expectations and beliefs, rather than abandon their cherished religious beliefs, they instead invent new and radical ad hoc assumptions to rationalize the alarming information. Just look at liberal Christians today who are “evolution-friendly” and think that Christianity is compatible with Darwin’s theory, after thousands of years of Christianity teaching Six Day Creation and a century and a half of Christians battling evolutionary science. Rather than drop their warm and comforting beliefs about their religion, they merely invent new stories to explain away how utterly discredited it has been.”

Let’s look at the first part. Why should I be held accountable for what Christians did for a century and a half. I am not a theistic evolutionist, but I have no problem with evolution. I just leave it to the sciences. I could not argue for it. I could not argue against it. Furthermore, Ferguson does not realize that there have been a wide variety of accounts of the age of the Earth in church history. This was the case even before the rise of the information we have today.

In fact, if this is what counts for a liberal Christian, then Ferguson has discounted his own theory that believing in the minimal facts requires you be a conservative fundamentalist since I believe in the minimal facts and I have no problem with evolution and hold to an old Earth.

Cognitive dissonance does occur, but should I think it has here? In every single case in ancient history that I know of, when the would-be Messiah died, the movement died. Why was Jesus’s case different? Why again did they go the hard way with a physical resurrection? Why not just divine vindication? Why would Paul and James have converted? Paul was a persecutor. James was a skeptic. What would it take to make you convinced your dead brother was really the Messiah?

“So the early Christians, when their Messiah was crucified, instead of abandoning their faith, rationalized the story through ad hoc assumptions. “Perhaps Jesus had only temporarily died!” “Maybe he will return soon from Heaven and avenge his death!” Such rationalizations could have easily triggered some of the mentally unstable cult members to start having hallucinations and visionary experiences of Jesus. They could tell others, who would then have a prior expectation that triggers similar visions or who would simply delude themselves through placebo effects, and suddenly a new rumor starts circulating that Jesus has been raised from the dead as the “first fruits of the resurrection.” The cult regains its confidence with a new expectation: “Soon all the saints will resurrect!” “Soon Jesus will return in this very generation!” (cf. Mark 13:28-30; 1 John 2:18) tick tock tick tock … “Okay, well maybe we have to wait for a couple new signs, but then he will return!” (cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:1-4) tick tock tick tock … And so every generation of Christians has had its expectations reversed and yet believers just keep inventing new ad hoc assumptions to rationalize a worldview that has consistently and repeatedly failed to deliver.”

This part is quite amusing for me since, as an orthodox Preterist, I do hold that Jesus’s coming did take place within a generation! Jesus was right on time! Yet Ferguson’s account relies on possibility after possibility and doesn’t explain more likely options nor does it explain what really happened to the body. Was it eaten by dogs as Crossan says? We’d need an argument for that. Why would Paul and James go for this placebo effect? What did they have to gain from it? This relies on simply psychological history, something that is laden with problems. It’s hard enough to do psychoanalysis when you have the patient right there and can ask him questions. It’s even harder to do it for ancient people.

“Furthermore, thinking that their Messiah had only temporarily suffered, but would soon return in an apocalypse is not even that odd of a new development. Historical Jesus studies have found that Jesus was most likely an apocalyptic prophet teaching that a new “Kingdom of God” would soon come about through divine intervention, but that the righteous for the present would have to endure hardships and wait for their future reward. Sure, if Jesus had been a military Messiah, then faith in him probably would have dissipated following his crucifixion. But Jesus was talking about suffering followed by divine intervention in the first place. Is it really that hard to create an ad hoc assumption that Jesus had only been crucified because of temporary suffering, but that he would be returning soon as the agent carrying out the divine intervention they were awaiting? Not at all. Of course, the divine intervention never happened, but it does explain how belief in the resurrection could emerge through cognitive dissonance, visions, and hallucinations, followed by later legendary developments of a physically resurrected Messiah interacting with his followers.”

Once again, as a Preterist, I say that yes, the divine intervention did happen and is in fact happening. Ferguson reads the Olivet Discourse I suspect the way that a conservative fundamentalist does. You remember them? Those are the people that were condemned earlier. Again, why would this belief have been invented? If anything, it would have most likely been a belief that Jesus would judge Rome as Israel hoped. It would not be that Jesus would judge Jerusalem, the holy city!

And of course, the apostles had nothing to gain from this! They received ostracism and were social pariahs. Paul describes what he had to gain from all of this in 2 Cor. 11. James we know was put to death for what he believed.

In his conclusion, Ferguson says

“The ironic thing about apologetic attempts to “prove” the resurrection is that if god really existed, we would not have to rely on such a fantastical historical quest to prove it. God could just provide miracles today making it clear that he exists and he could tell us that Christianity is the correct religion.”

This is more along the lines of “God must do my work for me.” If Keener is right, God is doing miracles today. Furthermore, much of this has been dealt with in my writing recently on the argument from locality, an argument I find full of problems. See here.

Looking at this from Ferguson, again the question is “Is Ferguson’s worldview shaping the evidence or is the evidence shaping his worldview?” This is an indication that it is the former that is taking place.

Of course, it is not surprising since Ferguson did not even get Habermas’s approach correct. Perhaps he will do better next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

A Response To Khan

Does creation ex nihilo present a problem for the problem of evil. Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

A friend sent me a video from a Mormon on YouTube who goes by the name of Khhaaan1. The video can be found here. I will refer to the producer as Khan from here out. The video is an attempt to show that if you accept creation ex nihilo, you have a problem with the problem of evil.

Khan says at the start that there was no official statement on creation ex nihilo from the church until the 4th Lateran Council in 1215 A.D. This is true, but the reason is why was it mentioned then? It was because of the Albigenses, a sect much like the Manichaean teaching that Augustine dealt with years ago. Matter was seen as the creation of an evil power and spirit was good and the creation of the god of the NT.

Noteworthy at the start is that Khan in this video does not address biblical verses used to support ex nihilo. Perhaps he has done so elsewhere, but in this video there is nothing.

Also, I will state at the start that I have no marriage to creation ex nihilo. It has been a principle I have followed for some time that my Christianity is not dependent on my doctrine of creation but on the essential, the resurrection. I do hold to ex nihilo, but I am open to a better interpretation if one can be found that fits the facts. An eternal universe would not shake my faith. Neither would a multiverse or any scientific discovery like that. I leave that area to the scientists anyway.

Khan goes on to say that the church has been wrong before and uses Galileo as an example. I do not think this is the best example. The church had not entirely closed the door on heliocentrism. Copernicus had had his book on it dedicated to the Pope and the Pope had no problem with it. The problem with Galileo is that Galileo was egotistical, refused to admit any errors, spoke on theology and Scriptural interpretation without being trained in that area and while being asked to not do so, and wanted immediate acceptance of his ideas instead of waiting for more evidence. It didn’t help that he also mocked the Pope, who I think was frankly quite egotistical himself.

I do not doubt the church handled it poorly, but Galileo is really an exception to the normal way the church handled scientific advancement. We can look back and say “They were wrong,” but we must also be frank and admit that the evidence really was not in conclusively yet. A great problem for heliocentrism, Obler’s Paradox, was not even answered until the 19th century. It is easy for us to look back and say they were wrong, but we can be sure some scientists centuries from now will look back on and us and wonder how we missed some truths that they deem to be obvious. We should approach the past with as much charity as we want the future to approach us.

When we start getting to the heart of the matter, Khan to his credit does give a definition of evil. He says evil is an act or event whereby existence would be better if it had not occurred.

I find this troublesome due to the largely subjective nature of the claim. If someone does not want to donate to Deeper Waters for instance, does that mean that is an evil since I think existence would be better if that had occurred? What about all of creation? Would it have been better if God had not created at all, even if the Mormon view was correct and there were spirit children with God? How about eternity? Would Heaven be better if there were one more person in it? If so, then one would have to create an infinite quantity, an impossibility, for there not to be evil there.

For my view, there is no problem, since I think the mistake is that Khan nowhere defined good. There are so many problems you can dispense with at the start if you have a definition of good, such as the so-called Euthyphro dilemma. The good is that at which all things aim.

The good is that at which all things aim said Aristotle, which means that it is something that is desirable. Aquinas took this then and said that something is good insofar as it is an instance of its kind. To be perfect, it must be actual and insofar as it is actual, it is perfect. Since everything desires perfection and that which is the most perfect is the most actual, then we see that goodness and being are the same thing. Goodness just speaks to the thing being desirable. (See Feser’s book “Aquinas” for more.)

Now there is something that must be said about desirable. This does not mean a conscious desire as Aristotle said all things aim for the good, but very few things are conscious in the grand scheme of things. So how do they aim? It is based on their final cause, that is, the end for which they are meant. For Aristotle, this was the most important cause of all. Unfortunately for many of us today, it is the least important cause.

To give an example, a plant has no conscious nature that we know of, but the plant still moves towards water and towards the sun. The plant wishes to be even if it does not realize that or do so consciously. Our cat here often gets scared and will run away when someone he doesn’t know or trust comes over. Why? He naturally wants to live even if he is not consciously thinking “I want to live.” We can also have an end we were made for and actively resist it and try to find it elsewhere. For instance, in Christian thought, we were all made to reflect God and His love and rule with Him forever. Many of us deny this and seek our good in other places like sex, money, power, etc.

As far as I’m concerned, the lack of really establishing a philosophy of good and evil is the Achilles’s heel of Khan’s argument. Note in fact that by my definition, one has an explanation for moral goodness and evil, but also goodness of nature.

So what is evil then? Evil is the privation of that which should be present but is not. If goodness is being, then its opposite, evil, is a kind of non-being, and nothing positive can be said about non-being. We must be clear on this point here. It is not evil that a rock does not have sight, since it is not in the nature of a rock to have sight, but it is an evil that a man has blindness, since it is of the nature of a man to have sight. Blindness is not a positive principle in something, but it is an absence of a good that should be there, the good of sight. It is a name given to a specific absence, but not an existent reality on its own.

I’m also concerned about Khan’s definition of omnipotence. Can God create a square circle is a question He asks. I do not know from his talk if he means this seriously or not, but the answer is no. God cannot do that because that involves a contradiction, and omnipotence has not been historically understood to mean that contradictions can be done. The following lengthy quote from the Summa Theologica, q. 25, article 3, will show Aquinas’s stance.

“It remains therefore, that God is called omnipotent because He can do all things that are possible absolutely; which is the second way of saying a thing is possible. For a thing is said to be possible or impossible absolutely, according to the relation in which the very terms stand to one another, possible if the predicate is not incompatible with the subject, as that Socrates sits; and absolutely impossible when the predicate is altogether incompatible with the subject, as, for instance, that a man is a donkey.

It must, however, be remembered that since every agent produces an effect like itself, to each active power there corresponds a thing possible as its proper object according to the nature of that act on which its active power is founded; for instance, the power of giving warmth is related as to its proper object to the being capable of being warmed. The divine existence, however, upon which the nature of power in God is founded, is infinite, and is not limited to any genus of being; but possesses within itself the perfection of all being. Whence, whatsoever has or can have the nature of being, is numbered among the absolutely possible things, in respect of which God is called omnipotent. Now nothing is opposed to the idea of being except non-being. Therefore, that which implies being and non-being at the same time is repugnant to the idea of an absolutely possible thing, within the scope of the divine omnipotence. For such cannot come under the divine omnipotence, not because of any defect in the power of God, but because it has not the nature of a feasible or possible thing. Therefore, everything that does not imply a contradiction in terms, is numbered amongst those possible things, in respect of which God is called omnipotent: whereas whatever implies contradiction does not come within the scope of divine omnipotence, because it cannot have the aspect of possibility. Hence it is better to say that such things cannot be done, than that God cannot do them. Nor is this contrary to the word of the angel, saying: “No word shall be impossible with God.” For whatever implies a contradiction cannot be a word, because no intellect can possibly conceive such a thing.”

In essence then, God cannot do a contradiction since that would involve being and non-being both and God can only do that which is possible. As C.S. Lewis said in “The Problem of Pain.”

“His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. There is no limit to His power.

If you choose to say, ‘God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,’ you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prifex to them the two other words, ‘God can.’

It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”

This then gets us into the free-will defense. To his credit, Khan does bring up Plantinga, Khan does argue that he does not believe that free-will exists, but will grant it for the sake of argument. I come from the approach that free-will exists and that divine sovereignty exists. How are these two reconciled? Much has been written on that question and I do not expect a clear answer. I just see Scripture teaches both and accept both of them. There are some who have God so sovereign that there is no free-will. I find this much more problematic as it makes God the ultimate cause of evil. There are some who say God is not all-knowing with regards to the future and man has free-will, but I find this to be a limitation on God with no metaphysical basis and not compatible with Scripture.

Khan says God could have created people to be more rational or more sensitive. If they were more of these, they would have made better decisions, but I question the premise. For instance, in order to make a person to be perfectly good in nature entirely and perfectly rational, God would have to make someone else like Him, but He cannot do that. He cannot make another being who has no beginning.

There is no other being that can Have being define its essence. Everything else partakes of God in some way. Each can only be a perfection of its kind. God is not looking to create a being exactly like Him. That’s impossible. He is looking to create a being that reflects Him, albeit imperfectly if one means not a total duplicate, but perfectly if we just mean, insofar as we are able.

Even if we granted other spirit beings, the problem would be the same. Michael the archangel cannot be exactly like God. Only God is goodness itself by nature and love itself by nature and being itself by nature. Everything else has being and is loving and good and existent insofar as it exists. (Even the devil. The devil has will, power, and existence, which are good things, and the devil seeks his own good, which is to say he loves his own good. The problem is that his will is bent morally)

So, if God wants to create beings who are to be good, that goodness is to be a choice for them, just as it was for Michael and the devil. If he creates spirit children supposedly, even those must choose for if love for us is to be a free decision, it cannot be a forced free decision. That is a contradiction.

Khan’s situation is problematic because to say we could be more rational means we are better able to think and know all the information needed, but eventually, one will have to reach omniscience, which we cannot, seeing as we are always going to be finite beings by nature and God alone is infinite.

If we go with spirit beings, we just push the problem back a step and then can just as easily say why God allowed these spirit beings who He knew to be evil to come to Earth and do evil here. Perhaps Khan will point to a greater good, but then I can just as well say “That is why God allows people to choose evil here. He uses their evil for a greater good.”

For the problem of evil to be shown to be a problem, it must be shown that God can have no good reason for doing it this way, and I do not think that that can be shown from Khan, though He is welcome to try. I also think that for a larger perspective on this, he might want to try the work “God and Evil” By Meister and Dew Jr.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

A Response To The Argument From Locality

Has there been a defeater for all forms of theism? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

A friend sent me an article recently about “The Argument From Locality” wanting to see if I’d answer. For those interested, the piece can be found here. This is a variant of an argument that has gone around several times. I do not see an author so since the web site is daylight atheism, I will refer to the author as DA. DA starts this way:

“I have formalized an argument that I have seen presented on other occasions in support of the conclusion that no version of theism is true. While other atheist writers have used aspects of it, it has not, as far as I know, been given a concise name. If I may remedy this, I would like to propose that this argument, which I present below, be henceforth referred to as the Argument from Locality.”

Already, this start is problematic. Every form of theism? How about deism? Could it be a deistic God exists? How about a God who might do a worldwide universal display at some later time? Note also that this argument does not deal with ANY of the traditional arguments from God’s existence. If one of those holds, the argument from locality is false. Why? The other arguments are built on metaphysical principles that one follow from the other in a syllogistic sense. We’ll find this argument depends on speculations about what God would or should do, presuppositions we’d find hard to test.

“The Argument from Locality runs as follows. Every religion currently being practiced on this planet, as well as every past religion which no longer has followers, has a definite, discernible origin in time and space. Even if the exact beginnings of a religion are murky, that religion still originated in a definite area and in a definite time period.”

Okay. No problem here.

“However, I argue that any god or gods which existed and which desired to reveal themselves to humanity would not do this – they would not provide a revelation to only one culture, at one time, in one place. There are several good reasons to believe this, and if it holds, then any religion which did have only a single point of origin cannot possibly be true. In short: The fact that all religions originated in one specific culture, at one specific time and place, points strongly to their being the product of that culture, time and place – and not the product of divine revelation.”

Note we already have the presuppositions setting in. “No god would do this!” How DA learned the ways of beings he doesn’t think exist is a question to ponder for sure. Still, we’ll see if DA’s contention holds up.

“For the Argument from Locality to hold, its key proposition – that no rational deity would create a religion with a single point of origin – must be defended. I believe it can be defended, for the following reasons:”

I believe it can’t be. Let’s see who’s right.

“Any deity which desired to be believed in would reveal itself to everyone, not just to a specific person, culture, race or nation. As discussed in “The One True Religion“, there can be no doubt that any religion that had it right would be universal. Modern science has taught us that all humans are the same on fundamental genetic and cognitive levels and that race is a social construct as much as it is a biological one.”

And here we have our first problem. DA is assuming all people would be just like him. Why? Well look at our scientific information! No mention of doing study in anthropology! No mention of going to different cultures and seeing how people act! As should be known, when comparing two things or more, what matters most is not their similarities, but their differences.

Imagine DA going to Japan for instance and coming into someone’s house and walking around with shoes on. They would be stunned. Imagine DA going into the home of a Middle Eastern man and being told “Welcome my guest. Everything I have is yours! I am your servant!” He would think the man insane instead of realizing this can be a way of greeting. Even here in America different groups of people have different customs and behaviors and what seems innocent to one person is a grave insult to another.

“In light of these facts, it is not rational to insist that a god – plainly not a creature of biology, with no special ties or allegiance to any subgroup of humanity – would select any single specific people or ethnicity to be its chosen. (It can hardly be a coincidence that every religion which claims God has a chosen people was founded by those who claimed they were the chosen people.)”

This just does not follow. I’m looking at this over and over and wondering what the connection is. Could it be perhaps that God does have reasons for not doing a sudden grand show that DA doesn’t know about? Could it be that God is more patient than DA realizes and is willing to use a plan to get His message out?

To which, if that was His plan and Christianity is the religion, it seems odd that DA is saying God did not do a good job revealing Himself since billions all over the world today believe in a religion that was revealed at a place and time 2,000 years ago. It looks like the plan worked well.

“It therefore follows that any god which founded a religion would probably provide its initial revelation to multiple peoples – preferably scattered throughout time and space, to ensure as wide a distribution of followers as possible – or, failing that, the initial revelation would be given to one group of people with instructions to spread it to others.”

This is odd since the first point didn’t even follow. Yet how is this revelation to be done? Does DA not realize that people speak different languages? Does he not realize that these people would have to translate this message? Who does he think would do the translating? Could this not easily be controlled by the powerful? What would be the content? Repent? Repent to who? Who is this God? What is He like? Without past action, why should I trust Him?

Amusingly, DA ends by saying the revelation would be given to one group of people with instructions to spread it to others.

But I thought a rational God would not choose one group of people….

And isn’t that exactly what was done through the people of Israel? With a statement like this, DA has buried his own argument.

“But there are other points, detailed below, which tell against the second possibility; and while the first possibility would be virtually indisputable evidence of divine origin, it is a possibility which no known religion, present or past, embodies. It would be extraordinary for people from across the globe and throughout history who had no contact with each other to independently invent the exact same religion, without a god giving them all the same information through revelation. But again, this situation describes no religion in existence today or ever.”

It would be, and it gives me not a single reason to believe it either. Could I not just say this is a delusion? There are several people who claim religious experiences today. An atheist would say the content of them is a delusion. Yet again, we still have the problem of how this message would come about, how it would be translated, what the content would be, etc.

“If there is a reward for believing, it is fundamentally unfair that some would receive more and more reliable evidence than others.”

The first objection here is who told him that this was unfair supposedly? Where did this moral standard come from?

Second, could it also be that those who get more evidence are the ones who are seeking more evidence? As we’ll see in this post, DA has not done a good job of seeking.

Third, while some people can get more evidence depending on certain events, all that is needed is sufficient evidence. Do people have sufficient evidence that God has revealed Himself in Christ?

“An example may best elucidate this point. In Christianity, those who believe and worship God as he instructs are rewarded with a blissful eternity in Heaven. But not everyone has an equal chance to attain this reward.”

I’d say at the start that my view of Heaven is quite different from DA’s and it’s quite noteworthy that the Bible seems to spend more time talking about the resurrection than it does about Heaven.

Yet what is meant by an equal chance? Does this mean everyone has to have the exact same evidence? As we’ll see, this is problematic.

“According to Christianity, some people, such as Jesus’ apostles, were eyewitnesses to his life, his miracles, and his resurrection from the dead. Skeptics such as Doubting Thomas were able to assuage their doubts by examining Jesus’ empty tomb and touching his resurrected body. But modern skeptics do not have access to this evidence.”

Let’s suppose the incarnation and death and resurrection are essential for Christianity to be true. Is DA saying that for Chritsianity to be true, then Jesus must appear in every culture repeatedly and appear to everyone and be murdered and raised again? Wouldn’t a culture learn about this eventually and, I don’t know, stop murdering the God-man that comes down? And again, could not one culture still tell another they have the story wrong? Could there not be just as much religious conflict?

“No one alive today witnessed any of Jesus’ miracles, including the resurrection; even if they actually happened, the only evidence we now possess of them is a book, a copy of copies translated from an ancient language that contradicts itself in many places, that claims to contain the accounts of eyewitnesses.”

Absent is any mention of a work such as Craig Keener’s “Miracles” that offers eyewitness claims of miracles around the world today. Absent is any mention of Richard Bauckham’s study “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.” Absent is any mention of works on the historical evidence for the resurrection such as N.T. Wright’s “The Resurrection of the Son of God” or Mike Licona’s “The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach.”

Furthermore, I see the same line here about copy of copies. This is meant to call the textual process into question. If that is the case, I think DA should be acquainted with the words of an authority on the subject who is a NT scholar of textual criticism. This scholar says:

“If the primary purpose of this discipline is to get back to the original text, we may as well admit either defeat or victory, depending on how one chooses to look at it, because we’re not going to get much closer to the original text than we already are.… At this stage, our work on the original amounts to little more than tinkering. There’s something about historical scholarship that refuses to concede that a major task has been accomplished, but there it is.”

He also says:

“In spite of these remarkable [textual] differences, scholars are convinced that we can reconstruct the original words of the New Testament with reasonable (although probably not 100 percent) accuracy.”

Who is this scholar? His name is Bart Ehrman.

The first quote is here: Novum Testamentum Graecum Editio Critica Maior: An Evaluation: TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism, 1998, a revision of a paper presented at the Textual Criticism section of the 1997 Society of Biblical Literature in San Francisco. http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/vol03/Ehrman1998.html

The second is from here: The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 481.

It is doubtful that DA has read anything other than Bart Ehrman on textual criticism. Has he read anything by Daniel Wallace? Has he read “The Reliability of the New Testament” edited by Rob Stewart. Has he read Wegner’s “A Student’s Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible?”

Furthermore, where does he think most of our information about ancient history comes from? Most of it comes from books! Does he treat the accounts of Plutarch the same way? What about the life of Alexander the Great?

As for contradictions, does he automatically throw out anything that has any contradiction in it? Suppose he comes across what he thinks is a contradiction? Does he bother to study it? Does he consider that perhaps a different culture wrote differently than he does? Does he consider that a writer like Plutarch could write about the same event in different accounts in ways that would seem contradictory?

“Even if Jesus’ life happened exactly as the Bible describes it, the Bible itself is the only witness to that fact, and our historical knowledge is so murky and the evidence so scanty that some people have argued that Jesus never existed at all.”

Some people have argued that. You won’t really find them in NT scholarship. For most scholars, that’s an idea that is lucky to even get a footnote. DA says the evidence is murky and scant and the Bible is the only witness. Absent then is any mention of the cases that people have made of what can be known about Jesus if we don’t use the Bible, and the list is pretty impressive. What if we only used Lucian, Tacitus, Josephus, Mara Bar-Serapion, Pliny, Seutonius, etc.? None of these are Christian writers.

But we don’t have just that. We have four gospels which are first century manuscripts, and it would be wonderful to have four accounts within 70 years of a person that lived in the ancient world. We have not only that, but we also have the letters of Paul and other letters like Hebrews. Once again, DA has not done the work of interacting with what is presented. Dismissal is not an argument.

“But while people currently living must muddle through this tortuous mess if they are to arrive at the correct conclusion for salvation, that same conclusion was effortless for Jesus’ contemporaries, those who were witnesses to his life and his ministry.”

And if we followed church tradition, that same evidence led to their martyrdom. One suspects DA would not be as longing for evidence if he figured that would be the cost. Note in fact that our same principle applies. Those who were seeking during the ministry of Jesus would get the light revealed to them. Those who weren’t, would not.

Also, if DA thinks a case can be made that Jesus never even existed, it is clear he has not at all begun wading through this “tortuous mess.”

“This cannot be considered fair. Why should God pick a small number of people and overwhelm them with so much first-hand evidence that their coming to the correct conclusion is virtually assured, while all the rest of us are forced to subsist on scraps of handed-down hearsay? Is salvation like winning the lottery – a matter of luck? How can God be a god of justice if he gives some people a much better chance than others?”

DA once again appeals to some standard of morality that we have no idea of. Furthermore, what evidence is there that we have scraps of handed-down hearsay? The gospels and Pauline epistles are not short little reads always.

Not only that, for a faith that was revealed so badly apparently, why is DA arguing against it 2,000 years later in a locale and culture quite foreign to the original? The fact that he’s arguing indicates that the plan of revelation worked well. Furthermore, we still have the problem of what if this is a historical religion meant to take place in one time and place?

In fact, it could be argued that this was the best time and place. The world had a language that was universal. There was a travel system that allowed for travel from place to place. The philosophical categories to understand Christianity were in place. The Second Temple mindset was there as well. If this was to be revealed at one time, could this not be a good time?

“The answer is: he cannot. If God’s system of salvation is to be considered fair, then it must be a level playing field, giving everyone the same chance and the same evidence on which to base a decision. Plainly, in this case it is not. It does no good to say that the apostles who had first-hand evidence balanced this by paying in much greater persecution and hardship – many more recent Christians with nothing but hearsay to go on were subjected to persecutions at least as great for their faith. While I have used Christianity as an example, an analogous argument could be applied to any religion purportedly founded or sustained by specific miraculous events at a specific place and time.”

Indeed, many have suffered, but it is the assumption that they have just hearsay. First, it has not been established that this is what the gospel accounts are. Second, if Keener is right, miracles taking place are also testimony to what has happened. Third, if my position on this being a historical faith is right, then DA’s contention is just not possible. Again, we don’t need equal evidence. We need sufficient evidence.

“If there is a punishment for not believing, it is fundamentally unfair that some would receive less evidence than others, or no evidence at all. This is the flip side of the previous point, but is different in subtle yet important ways. If a religion claims to be the exclusive way to salvation and threatens Hell for those who do not believe in it, then what happens to those who never even heard of it due to distance in time or space? What chance do they have of escaping damnation?

For example, if Christianity is the correct religion, then generation after generation – dozens of indigenous cultures, thousands of tribes, millions and millions of people – in North, Central and South America, in Europe, in Africa, in Asia, in Australia and Indonesia – all lived and died in total, tragic ignorance of the one true god, without ever being given a chance to know the love of Jesus or hear about the sacrifice he made. This holds true both for those people who lived before Jesus as well as those who lived during or after his time but before missionaries arrived there. They were never told about the Bible, never got to witness or benefit from any miracles, and never even had one single prophet raised up from among their number. Why did God neglect these people? ”

This is a long section, but simply one argument. To start with, DA needs to know someone does not go to Hell for failing to believe. They go to Hell for their sins. Believing in Jesus is the antidote to that judgment, but if you go to judgment and don’t have Jesus, what will God judge you by?

Your works.

God is also not arbitrary. He gives the same standard. It’s perfection. What other system could be used? Would it be a points system? How would we know how many points? Would that not be arbitrary anyway? How many points does a good deed give? How many points does a bad one take away? How many per deed?

DA also assumes that in the Christian worldview that all such people go straight to Hell. This is not a common evangelical position. It is instead argued that people are judged by the light that they have. In fact, in passages like Revelation 7, we are told a great number from all over the world experience the presence of God in joy.

Also, DA assumes there has been no miracle done or revelation sent. DA is unaware then of dreams Muslims have today of Jesus appearing to them. (In fact, I have a good friend who is a convert from Islam who had such an event where Jesus revealed Himself in a dream.) DA is unaware of missionaries that go to deliver the gospel and are told by the people that they have been waiting for them because they were told to look for people with a book who would be giving a revelation of the one true God. DA assumes that no miracle has taken place. Again, any reaction to Keener? Has DA even heard of Keener?

“More importantly, what is the fate of those who never heard? Did they all go to Hell when they died, simply because God chose not to tell them the way to salvation? Or did they somehow get to Heaven without the redemptive powers of Jesus or even the Jewish law? And if so, if this is possible, then what was the point of sending Jesus or giving the law at all?”

DA has a false assumption here as well. Either they’ve heard of Jesus and therefore have access, or else they have not heard and if they get there then, Jesus was not necessary. Could it be that Jesus is necessary even if people have not heard of Him?

For instance, OT saints are saved by looking forward to the coming Messiah. None of them had to know that His name was Jesus and He’d die on a cross and rose again. They had to show loyalty to what had been revealed to them by YHWH. Why could not the same apply to pagans?

Indeed, it does! Romans 1 states that at the start, this knowledge of God was revealed not through special revelation, but through creation itself, but man chose to instead look to the creation itself instead of through it and worship the creation. Romans 2 goes along with this saying that people know right and wrong not through special revelation, but rather through a general revelation written on their own hearts. If someone does not follow the evidence they have, upon what grounds is more owed?

“The Bible, supposedly God’s instruction book to humanity, nowhere addresses this crucial problem. Since the Bible is supposed to contain all relevant information regarding God’s plan of salvation, it is exceedingly strange and hard to explain, at least for those who believe in it, that it does not answer such an obviously important question.”

No it’s not. Why should it explain it? Considering the cost it took to write something in the ancient world and the time it took to do so, a writer would want to be concise and hit on the central issues. Speculation about those who never heard would not be of interest.

Also, DA has an understanding that the message is salvation. It’s not. The message is the kingdom of God with Christ ruling as king. Salvation is a part of that, but that is not the main thing. Salvation is saying that this is your proper response to the rule of God in Christ. That makes no sense without that rule being established.

Furthermore, why consider the Bible as God’s instruction book? It is a common understanding that the Bible is meant to be an ethical guide for us. No one would dispute that the Bible has ethical statements in it to be followed, but that is not the central purpose. It is also not written to tell us everything about salvation. How could it?

“The most relevant thing it says is its dictum that no man gets to Heaven without Jesus Christ, which implies that all those millions of people who lived and died without ever hearing of him were all damned through no fault of their own, but merely because they were born in the wrong place or at the wrong time.”

Again, this does not follow. One could say the death and resurrection of Jesus is necessary, but hearing about it is not. Christians would in a sense have to say this because we believe in the salvation of OT saints. Why could this not just as well apply to others who are “righteous pagans” and follow the light that they have?

“This is horrendously unfair – an infinite atrocity from a god one of whose main characteristics is supposed to be justice.”

As we have seen, DA has not dealt with problems to his theory and has not given a moral standard. If my case is right, nothing unfair has been done.

“Lacking biblical guidance, some Christian apologists have attempted to solve this problem themselves. But the answers they have come up with are extremely weak, self-evidently flawed, and give rise to more questions than they answer. A typical example can be found in Jack Chick’s book “The Soul-Winner’s Handy Guide“, which hedges on the matter by offering a variety of poor solutions.”

So DA wants to interact with Christian apologists and he goes to Jack Chick?

Jack Chick?

Yep. No need to interact with real scholarship here. Don’t interact with Paul Copan or Peter Kreeft or other Christian philosophers on this issue. Just go straight to Jack Chick.

“Firstly, it claims that all people are sinners and that God always judges righteously, though this does not in any way answer the problem; in fact, it is a refusal to face the problem.”

Actually, no. This can just as easily be the start of a case presented later, but to be fair, I don’t read Jack Chick. I prefer to read actual authorities.

“Secondly, it asserts of these people that “God’s laws are already written in their hearts”. If that is the case, then why was it necessary for God to give the laws to anyone? Why do Christian groups today go to all the effort of sending missionaries to other countries if they will only tell people what they already know? And even if people do have such innate knowledge, this does not change the fact that those who were born elsewhere and elsewhen still had much less evidence to go on than those who lived in a time and a place where God was regularly dispensing miracles. Surely the vague promptings of conscience cannot be as powerful an impetus toward salvation as an eyewitness experience to the power of God.”

DA doesn’t realize the purpose of the Law in Israel was not so they would be good boys and girls, but so that they would enter into covenant with Him. The Law of Israel also included laws that are not part of general revelation, such as ceremonial and civil laws. These laws have never been a requirement for all to follow.

Why send missionaries then? Clearly to share specific revelation and because the truth of Christ is not written on the hearts, only the truth of morality.

“Finally, Chick’s book reluctantly offers, “Perhaps God, in his foreknowledge, had already known these people would not believe even if they were presented the gospel.” This is ludicrous. Are we to believe that in all these cultures – millions of people who lived throughout thousands of years – there wasn’t one single person who would have accepted the gospel if he had heard it? Humans are not so monolithic and never have been. And when Christian missionaries did arrive to conquer and colonize these cultures, they seemed to have little enough difficulty finding converts.”

I have no wish to defend Chick’s point here. I’m just including this to show I am being thorough.

“Besides, throughout the New Testament, God repeatedly reveals his message to people whom he must know will reject it. (See Matthew 10:5-6, for example, where Jesus tells his disciples to go and preach to the Jews, despite his lamentation in chapter 8 that most if not all of them are going to Hell.) And this does make sense. After all, if God had decided not to reveal his message to people whom he knows will not accept it, there would be no reason for him to reveal his message to anyone at all. He could just use his omniscient foreknowledge to pick out the people who would accept it if they heard it, save them, and condemn the rest. For Christians to say that God places a high emphasis on evangelism, then turn around and say that he doesn’t bother spreading his word to everyone, is profoundly inconsistent, not to mention unjust.”

Only the last point needs to be addressed about evangelism. No inconsistency exists. God is the master. We are the servants. Why should the servant expect the master to do all the work? Again also, no standard of justice has been given.

“Similar situations arise with many other religions. According to Judaism, God chose the Israelites as his people and gave his laws only to them. So what happens to everyone else? Do they have no chance? Is God a racist, condemning people to eternal exclusion from his kingdom based on the situation of their birth? Likewise Islam. Does the Qur’an, God’s final revelation to humankind, anywhere explicitly tell us the fate of those who lived and died without ever hearing of monotheism? Since Allah states he does not forgive idolatry, are the pagans and polytheists of ancient times damned to infinite torment for circumstances beyond their control?”

We have already addressed the purpose of the law and what is general revelation and what isn’t. Also, a passage like Amos 3:2 shows that because Israel was chosen, that was the basis for their judgment. It has not yet been mentioned that DA likely has an assumption that punishment and reward is the same for everyone. There are degrees in both cases.

“A religion which strongly reflects the beliefs of its time is more likely to be a product of its time than of revelation. If a given religion was purely the invention of human beings, we would expect that that religion would bear similarities to its culture of origin. On the other hand, a transcendent or all-knowing deity, or even one that was merely far wiser than human beings, would not be limited by what was known or believed at the time he dispensed a revelation, but could provide new information of which people were not previously aware and which did not correspond to any concepts in their experience. However, when we examine religions, we find that the former and not the latter situation invariably applies.”

Why new information would have to be revealed is not spelled out, but in fact, in Christianity, new information was revealed. We had a fuller revelation of the nature of God in Christ. We have a deeper understanding of morality based on the life of Christ. It could be DA is being like Dawkins expecting scientific information would be revealed. Why should it be?

“Christianity, again, is a perfect example of this. The theology of this religion blends apocalyptic fears, Jewish monotheistic ideals, Greek ethical philosophy, and the worship practices and beliefs of the mystery cults at precisely the time when those things were mixing at a cosmopolitan crossroads of the Roman Empire. Granted, God could decide to reveal his wisdom to humanity at a time and place when it would exactly resemble a syncretistic fusion of the prevailing theologies of the day. However, all else being equal, the principle of Occam’s Razor should lead us to conclude that it is nothing more than that. Positing a deity is an extra assumption that is not necessary and gives no additional explanatory power to any attempt to explain the origins of the Christian religion.”

DA is free to see if he can make a historical basis for when Mithras, Osiris, Dionyuss, Horus, Attis, etc. lived on this Earth and what eyewitnesses wrote about them if he wishes. Again, it is more likely that DA has brought into modern copycat nonsense that not even Bart Ehrman takes seriously.

“Another way in which this aspect of the Argument from Locality applies is in regard to those religious tenets which state beliefs and approve practices that were widely agreed upon at the time, but that today are recognized to be false or morally wrong. One particularly glaring example is the way the Christian and Jewish scriptures both implicitly and explicitly approve of the practices of human slavery and the institutional inequality of women.”

Absent is any interaction with works on slavery in the Ancient Near East culture. In fact, the seeds of the destruction of slavery are rooted in Scripture and the basis for its destruction the first time was the idea that man is in the image of God. Slavery was a less than desirable condition tolerated for the time being until its non-existence was more feasible. Poor people had to have someone to work for after all and they could not go to the local Wal-Mart and get a job.

As for women, has DA not heard of Ruth and Esther? How about Deborah and Hannah and other women celebrated in the OT? This OT is also the same one that says men and women both bear the image of God fully in the very first chapter!

Does he not see how Jesus interacted with women in his ministry? Does he not note that Paul said there is no male or female in Christ, or even slave and free? If anything uplifted women to where they are today, it was Christianity.

“Likewise, these writings show no special insight into the workings of the universe other than what was widely known to the people of their time, and make many mistakes common to those who lived in that era – for example, the belief that mental illness and physical disability were caused by demon possession.”

Nowhere do I see the NT saying that all mental illness and physical disability are the result of demon possession. It does indicate that some can be. Has DA proven otherwise? Has he examined every case past and present and shown none of them are the result of demonic activity? Note there are several healings in the NT that aren’t connected to demons. This even includes raisings of the dead.

“Again, under the Argument from Locality this is exactly what we should expect: these religions, being the product of those time periods, cannot be expected to show knowledge advanced beyond what the people of those periods possessed.”

And given the time and cost of writing and not to mention delivery of writing, we would not expect them to waste time writing so much on secondary issues. The apostles were not made to be scientists but made to be deliverers of the message of the Kingdom.

“In closing, consider what would refute the Argument from Locality. We could have found ourselves living in a world with only one religion, spread throughout the globe, with prophets from among every people. We could have found that, when we first contacted isolated native tribes, their religion was identical to one that already existed rather than being entirely their own. We could have found religions that bore no resemblance to the culture of their time and place of origin, in possession of advanced scientific knowledge or advanced ethical principles totally unlike what was commonly believed at the time. These are reasonable things to expect if there really was a god genuinely interested in revealing itself to humanity and being worshipped.”

No. What refutes it is a reasonable case. DA once again has the mindset often shown. “If God were as smart as I am, He would know how He ought to reveal Himself. Since He did not do so, He does not exist.” DA will need to interact with our reasons.

“But in reality, we find none of these things. What we find are numerous contradictory and conflicting religions, some with specific “chosen” races or ethnicities, and the further separated they are in time and space, the more their beliefs clash. When we encounter previously isolated tribes, their religions are always new and unique. When we examine the ethical codes and scientific knowledge of religions, they always bear strong resemblances to the times and places where those religions originated. Under the assumption of atheism, this is precisely what we should expect.”

Part of the problem is DA writes as a Post-Gutenberg Post-Enlightenment thinker who assumes scientific knowledge is what everyone cares about. Not so. DA will need to interact with our arguments and the reasons put forward and with real scholarship instead of Jack Chick. Note that not ONE theistic argument has been countered thus far.

“One could, of course, argue that this does not prove anything, that God deliberately intended things to be this way. Maybe he has reasons of his own, unknowable to us, for sending his messengers to only one people. Maybe he decided not to disclose advanced knowledge to primitive people. Maybe he allows evil spirits to delude people into creating false religions. Maybe, maybe, maybe – but that is precisely the point. When one believes in supernatural beings that can violate the laws of nature at will and that have motivations inscrutable to humans, all grounds for believing one proposition over another vanish, all knowledge disappears. There is no longer any reason to expect any state of affairs rather than any other. Such a doctrine is impossible to falsify and leads to nothing but epistemic chaos. In explaining anything, theism turns out to explain nothing.”

Unlike DA, I don’t hold to a natural-supernatural distinction. Yet DA has naught but speculation here. Who says God’s motivation is inscrutable? Numerous Christian phlosophers have written on this. Why also believe that all grounds for belieiving propositions vanish? They don’t. The propositions to be believed are consistent propositions backed by evidence. DA has this idea that if you allow a miracle, anything goes, and then looks at the world and says “Why aren’t there miracles?” If we present evidence of one DA will say “If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.” In essence, he is arguing in a circle.

“But atheism does not have the luxury of infinitely imaginative explanations unconstrained by fact. Given a few first principles – physical laws and observations whose existence no one disputes – atheism requires that the world can only be one way, and that is the way we in fact find it to be. Believers may argue why God set up the world in just the one way we would expect it to be if he did not exist, but for a freethinker, the conclusion is obvious.”

It could only be one way? Why? Why could it not be a brute fact as some atheist thinkers said? Why should I think on atheism that the laws of nature will be consistent? Why think the universe will not just pop out of existence? These are questions that philosophers regularly do argue about.

Of course, we could just as well ask where the first principles come from. DA has not given any argument. He has not given a metaphysical basis for existence or countered a single theistic argument and has said his own speculations are enough.

In conclusion, we find DA’s approach highly lacking and raising more problems than it solves, but such is what we are used to. It is easier to just speculate than to actually interact with real scholarship and contend with it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Waves Come Crashing Down Part 5

Has the new wave come to a crash again? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Dealing with our opponent with massive hubris once again, we come across this claim:

“5)…100% FACT: the gospels are overflowing (jam packed) with what we call SCI-FI material (like superhero comic books) (voice coming from the sky, a guy floating up into the heavens, zombies breaking from their graves and marching into a major city, a flesh and bone man vanishing into thin air [puff, gone], etc, etc, etc) …RED FLAG!!!!”

This is simply an argument from credulity. The argument goes like this.

The gospels contain events considered miraculous.
Miraculous events do not happen.
Therefore, the gospels are not historical.

If this were the case, this would be a good argument, but the problem is that this has not been shown to be the case. It has not been shown that miraculous events do not happen. Someone could say “I have never seen good evidence” but that only means that they have never seen it. It does not mean that no one ever has, and considering after Keener’s research there are numerous claims all around the world, no one can say that there are no longer being claimed today miracles, which would mean at least some people claim to have evidence.

So where are we going to go to see if miracles do not happen?

The first place most people go to today is the sciences, but this plan will not work. Someone can believe in the sciences fully and still believe in miracles. Why? The sciences only tell you what will happen if there is no interference from another agent outside the chain of events. They cannot tell you that there can be no interference.

In fact, to believe in miracles, one must have a basic idea of science. Now of course, the ancients did not know all about science that we do, but they did know some facts that we would not contest. They knew it took sex to make a baby. They knew it took an object like a boat to move on water. They knew that water does not suddenly turn to wine on its own.. They knew dead people stay dead.

In fact, this is how they recognized a miracle had taken place. This was an event outside of the ordinary that they had no explanation for. In fact, we today still have no explanation for many of these events. Imagine being a doctor verifying that your patient was dead and had been dead for a number of hours and then come some Christians wanting to pray anyway. You grant them their request figuring “What can be the harm?” and lo and behold, the dead patient comes back to life and moves around on his own and is in good health.

Would you be justified in thinking a miracle had taken place?

Now do you have to abandon atheism to be open to miracles? Not at all! Of course, finding a miracle could make you abandon it, but at this point, all you need is a non-dogmatic approach to miracles. You can say all you want “I’m skeptical of miracles, but I want to keep an open mind.” Of course, you also want to make sure that you don’t stack the deck way too high. All that is needed is sufficient evidence.

Another place to go to would be history. Does history show that miracles have taken place?

Unfortunately, the problem is that usually our metaphysics drives the way our history goes. If you come to the evidence and have as an a priori that miracles cannot happen, then what do you do when you find a miraculous event happening in any piece of literature? Well that can’t be a real event!

There are some miracles in the Bible that one would be at difficulty to demonstrate happened. For instance, did Jesus turn water into wine at the Wedding of Cana? It is highly doubtful we will ever find a drop of wine in Cana still that we can say came from this wedding. We can look at the story and ask on its own some questions.

Is the story in a generally reliable account?
Does it contain anachronisms?
Is it an eyewitness account or does it have an eyewitness source?
Has the story remained unchanged?
What is the length of time between the event and the writing?
Etc.

We could ask this about several miracles. Was a blind man healed? Did a centurion have his servant healed? Did Jairus’s daughter get raised from the dead? Some of these miracles we might find something that can corroborate them. We could make an archaeological finding that showed someone honored a site where such an event was to take place, but that would not demonstrate the event.

A greater exception to this would be the resurrection of Jesus since we have numerous claims afterwards that need to be explained as well as the rise of the Christian church that needs to be explained. Due to the greater effects of this miracle, there is far more evidence.

So if we look at history and realize our metaphysics is driving us, then the place to go to is our metaphysics. For those who don’t know, metaphysics refers to the study of being as being. Biology studies material being that lives. Physics studies being in motion. Theology studies the being of God. Mathematics studies being in so far as its numeral. Ethics studies being in so far as it is related to the good. Metaphysics studies being as just being.

This gets us into questions of what is the basis for existence, what is existence, and is there any existence outside of our material world? I have written elsewhere on this blog on reasons for believing in God’s existence. (See my posts on the Five Ways of Aquinas.)

If we find that God exists, what is there to stop Him from acting on the natural world? Then this gets us into theology. Why should one choose theism over deism? Yet if there is historical evidence for miracles, such as the resurrection or the works of Keener, then deism has a problem.

Note in fact it could be the case that there have been no miracles in history. It does not mean there can be no miracles in the future. If we say God exists and realize He has not done any miracles yet, it does not mean He never can do them.

In conclusion, the irrefutable fact seems quite refutable. An argument from credulity is not an argument.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

J.P. Holding also replies here.

Wave Comes Crashing Down Part 3 and 4

What shall we find as we turn again to low hanging atheist fruit? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Today, we’ll be looking briefly at two bogus claims. Let’s see the first.

“3)…100% FACT: and these unknown/anonymous/hidden writers blatantly copied each other (or other sources like the alleged Q, L, M documents), virtually word for word in many places …RED FLAG!!!! ”

In some places, yes, they are identical, and this would be the case with a strong oral tradition. In many places, they are not. Yet the gospels were written in a time where there were no plagiarism laws and material that was put out there would be considered the property of the community and thus could be shared. In fact, the gospel writers would want to make sure that it was shared.

Furthermore, our critic says nothing about the times when the writings are quite different. Did God speak to Jesus or to the crowd at the baptism of Jesus? Was Jairus’s daughter dead when he came to Jesus or was she about to die? A good theory of the production of the gospel documents needs to take into account not only the similarities between the accounts, known often as the synoptic problem, but also the differences.

“4)…100% FACT: and worse yet, these unknown/anonymous/hidden writers wrote scenes impossible to eyewitness (like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane) …RED FLAG!!!! ”

The Garden is a poor choice. Personally, I don’t know many people that can fall asleep at the drop of a hat, especially if it was a stressful situation like what was going on. All that would be needed was one disciple to be watching to see what was going on, and that’s entirely plausible, even if as they watched they started to doze off.

Another situation that our critic might have chosen to use could be the trial of Jesus, but this is also faulty. Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that none of the disciples were privy to what happened at the trial of Jesus. Does that mean there would be no record?

Not at all! In fact, a strong case can be made that Joseph of Arimathea did in fact bury Jesus. If so, could he not have been a witness to what happened at the trial of Jesus? What about Nicodemus? Is it possible he might have been a witness to what happened?

Noteworthy is that our critic also has not interacted with the latest research on this, such as Bauckham’s “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.” The pitfall of our critic is that he has no idea on how history is done and instead bases his arguments on credulity, which is simply circular reasoning.

Let this be an example to critics everywhere. There is nothing wrong with being skeptical of the accounts in the gospels. That’s in fact understandable. They contain quite incredible claims. What is wrong is having a hyperskepticism that only the most unreasonable of conditions must be met before one accepts the claims that are found in them. Do real history. Treat them like any other document and see what happens.

J.P. Holding’s critiques can be found here

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Salvation Doubt

Did you pray the right prayer? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

One of the worst kinds of emotional doubt a Christian can go through is the doubt over their salvation. Many a Christian has gone through this and are relieved to find that it is a common doubt in fact. (Yes. Even I have gone through this kind of doubt and in fact am glad I did since it ultimately got me into apologetics.)

Gary Habermas has said he’s collected statistics from people on how many times they’ve prayed the prayer. Top place goes to a lady who prayed for her salvation over 5,000 times. Second place went to a police officer who prayed over 3,000 times. As said, this is common and while maybe not that severe for some people, it is still a troubling doubt.

Much of the problem with this doubt is that the person who is doubting doesn’t “feel saved.” Of course, the Bible never tells us what it’s like to feel saved, so it is a wonder how someone could know what it is supposed to feel like. Also, this is based often on the silence of God, yet it is not realized that the Bible rarely has God communicating with people. These people are a select few and the speaking is clear and rare both. The concept we have is a modern concept foreign to the Bible.

Yet this doesn’t answer the question. What is a Christian to do who is doubtful that they prayed the prayer right and is worried that if they died in their sleep or in some accident or something, that they’d be in Hell forever?

Here are my suggestions.

First off, keep in mind that the fact that you are even concerned about this is a sure sign of your salvation. People who do not care about the things of Christ do not worry about if they are saved or not. If you are worried you are not right with God and did not do things right, consider it evidence about how much God means to you, which is again, evidence of salvation.

Second, if you still have any doubt about certain behaviors, just take care of them. For instance, in the Restoration churches, it is held that baptism is essential for salvation. I do not agree. What do I agree with? Baptism is a command of Christ, so go ahead and do it anyway! (By the way, for all interested, I am hydrophobic with a steel rod on my spine. Getting baptized was quite frightening for me, but I did it anyway)

If you are concerned that you did not pray right, then just pray. Aren’t you supposed to be praying regularly anyway? If you are concerned about a sin in your life, then work on giving it up! Aren’t you supposed to be doing that anyway?

Third, realize that God cares more about salvation than you do. He’s the one who initiated the whole thing, and that’s something Calvinists and Arminians both can agree on. We do love because He first loved us and apart from His act through the work of the cross and the empty tomb, no one would be saved. God is the initiator.

If God is doing the work to make sure salvation is available, then realize it matters to Him. God is not looking for reasons to send people to Hell. He’s looking for reasons to get them into His manifest presence. That includes you. God is not one who gets sheer delight out of the thought of condemning someone but wishes to bring them to salvation.

Fourth, look at what you believe. Ask yourself these questions. Do you believe Jesus is fully deity? Do you believe He died for your sins? Do you believe He rose from the dead? Do you believe that He is Lord? Sounds good to me. Now if you have doubts over questions such as the resurrection and the deity of Christ, this is the time for apologetics. This is the time to go to your library and get the books and do the reading to answer those questions.

Fifth, there are many debates that ask if we can lose salvation or not. That debate is useless to this question. After all, if you think like an Arminian you can say “I lost it.” If you think like a Calvinist you can say “Never had it and not one of the elect.” Instead, take a stance that both sides will say is essential for salvation. Just ask yourself if you’re trusting in Christ. As long as you keep trusting in Christ in fact, the whole debate really won’t matter in the long run.

Sixth, go and listen to what others are telling you in this case. Chances are, you would not ever tell someone who is in doubt over their salvation like this that they do not have it. In fact, it’s not just being nice. You wouldn’t say it because you don’t believe it. (Which it usually is good to try to think through doubt as if you were a third party listening in.)

Doubt like this is usually just a way to shut you down and keep you from living with the joy of salvation. For those skeptical, this is not just for you, but what I had to do with my own doubts. You might think I might not be taking your salvation as seriously, but I am definitely taking mine seriously, and I would not give you advice I do not think would work in my case. (This is said simply for the person who is ultra-skeptical. My real reason in writing this is of course great concern for those who do suffer with this, having been there before.)

Next time, we’ll look at more emotional concerns.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

What if?

What is a sign of emotional doubt? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Imagine you’re a Christian with some background in apologetics. Now you have someone who is coming to you who’s also a Christian and is doubting and you present a case to them and make it clear throughout that this is where the overwhelming evidence leads. The person you’re trying to help agrees that all that evidence is extremely strong, but ah, here comes the objection.

“But what if?”

This person isn’t disputing all the evidence you’ve brought forward. They have no argument against it. There’s just this little thing in the back of their mind that says “Yeah, but what if all of that is wrong?” When this happens, you can be sure that you are dealing with an emotional doubter.

It has been said that emotional doubt is the most common kind of doubt. Based on my experience, I agree with it. Men and women can both be emotional doubters. For women, they have the advantage that they usually know that. Men are more stubborn and wanting to say “It’s not my emotions. It’s not my emotions.” I have encountered a number of men telling me their doubts are intellectual and I’m listening to them and hearing all the warning signs with my mind telling me “Emotional doubter. Emotional doubter. Emotional doubter.”

For instance, my former roommate and I once regularly met with someone who was agnostic and tried to answer his questions, to which I think we did successfully. At one point, we were out having lunch with him and his Christian wife when he said “I know in the end you two are just going to fall back on your feelings and experiences to confirm Christianity,” to which both of us immediately went “NO!” It is a kind of approach we both couldn’t stand and still can’t. He was quite surprised at that not knowing how to handle it.

So what is to be done with this kind of doubt?

First off, it can happen to anyone. Being an atheist does not make you less emotional. Being a Christian does not make you more emotional. There are emotional atheists and unemotional Christians. There are Christians who believe for emotional reasons. There are atheists who disbelieve for emotional reasons. To be clear, I consider it wrong to believe or disbelieve for those reasons.

Second, when one is in a state of high emotion, it’s not the time to be making decisions that are major, including choosing to follow a religion or abandon it. Around our house, when one of us is in a state where we know the emotions are taking the lead, it’s important to let the other person be the surrogate frontal lobe as it were. Let the person whose mind is not clouded at the time speak and help the other. Of course, this is still resisted to a degree, but it is an important step. If you can’t trust your thinking at one time due to emotion, then talk to people you do trust. At times, this could be a wise professional counselor as well.

Third, realize that this does not mean emotions are bad things. We should be thankful we have them. I do have a friend who is actually a sociopath. Not in the sense that he’s a vicious murderer or anything, but in the sense that he really feels no emotion. When he has lost loved ones in the past, he has not felt anything about the event. I am quite thankful I am not like that. I have a friend who is in ministry who has said that the relationship I have with my wife is unusual on the spectrum and says I should thank God every day that I am a lover. Sometimes I forget, but I try to give thanks every day. It’s a good thing!

Fourth, remember the parable in Luke 14 of building a tower and the king going to war. The choice for Christ is best not to be made as a sudden decision, although growing up in the church many of us did that. One should really consider what one is getting into (Or in the case of apostasy getting out of) before one decides.

Fifth, trying reason might not work. That is, arguing against yourself. It can often be best to realize this is a season and it will pass. Let your emotions die down. You don’t stay on edge forever. Until you’re not on edge, you can always rely on others.

Next time, we’ll look at more about emotional doubt and dealing with it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Who Was Jesus?

Is Wright right and Spong wrong? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

I am an avid fan of N.T. Wright and try to read absolutely anything that he writes. My latest read of his came from reading “Fabricating Jesus” where Evans dispenses with people like Barbara Thiering yet says N.T. Wright has written a response to her in “Who Was Jesus?”

That’s enough to get me looking for that on my next library visit!

Thiering is not Wright’s only target. Wright has other chapters on A.N. Wilson and John Shelby Spong.

It’s hard to read this book without thinking that seeing N.T. Wright go after these guys is like watching a tank be used to squish an ant.

Wright’s book starts off with a brief summary of Jesus studies to this point, largely by looking at what Schweitzer did. He goes on from there to say where the studies have led us and then brings out Thiering, Wilson, and Spong as examples of how not to do these kinds of studies, all the while still commending some good points that can be found in them.

Reading Thiering, it’s a wonder how such a work as hers got published. Thiering’s idea is that practically everything in the gospels is code and the way to understand the code is by looking at the Dead Sea Scrolls. As Wright points out, Thiering is quick to dispense with her idea of a code whenever it is convenient for her to do so. Based on her reading, Thiering has dates on when Jesus escaped death, married Mary Magdalene, later left her and married Lydia of Philippi, (Seriously. I’m not kidding), and eventually died.

Yes. Wright takes the time to dispense with such a bizarre theory as this. One cannot help but imagine the reaction these three authors might have had knowing who was critiquing their work.

A.N. Wilson comes from another angle. For Wilson, Jesus was a Galilean holy man, but Paul came along and messed everything up! Wilson does have more right than Thiering (Granted, not much of an accomplishment), but there is still too much that is wrong. Wilson does not interact with the latest of scholarship on the issue and gives the impression of being stuck in works from the 1960’s. Amazingly, some parts of his writing are quite accurate and had I not known they were from him, I would have thought they were from a conservative Christian.

One of Wilson’s great weaknesses is his idea about seeking unbiased sources. As Wright points out, they don’t exist. Everyone wrote with a motive. No one is neutral on the Jesus question and it is a mistake to think anyone is. Yet as Wright has said elsewhere, even if the sportscaster has a bias for which team he thinks is the best and wants to win, that doesn’t mean you must doubt the score he reports.

Furthermore, if we wanted an unbiased work, it would not be Wilson who makes it clear he has a hammer to use against anything that is religious. As usual, it is the ones who are claiming the most to have no bias who in fact do have the most bias.

Finally, we come to Spong, who has a hang-up over the virgin birth. Wright is just perplexed, as am I, over the idea that Spong has that we today know better. As Wright points out, they might not have known as many details about sex as we do, but they certainly knew what it took to make a baby. That’s why Joseph sought to divorce Mary at first. He knew what it took to make a baby, and he knew he hadn’t done it.

Spong also has a vendetta against literalism, which I can understand, but yet praises the Reformation and goes against the ECF. Yet it was the ECF who were more pron to going with an allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures and the Reformers who wanted to return more to a literal interpretation.

Spong also includes a comment about what Midrash is, an account that Wright thinks is nonsense, and that scholars of Midrash would disagree with. Like the other writers, Spong can sound impressive on paper and the notes and bibliography of the books Wright comments on can make them seem scholarly, but it is only a veneer. The real heart of the works is anything but.

As with any Wright work, I do recommend this one. Wright gives an excellent example of how to deal with so much misinformation in the popular culture. It is a shame more people will read Thiering, Wilson, and Spong, but never get around to Wright. I am thankful for Wright and thankful indeed that Wright is right and Spong is wrong.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

What Is Emotional Doubt?

What is the problem being discussed today? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Yesterday, I wrote about intellectual doubt. Emotional doubt is a different animal, but one that can be closely related. Emotional doubt usually likes to hide behind intellectual doubt. No one really likes to admit that they are an emotional doubter. Thus, the presence of an intellectual question does not preclude emotional doubt. I would like to spend some of this series looking at various objections raised by emotional doubters and ideas on how to handle them, but first, we must discuss what the problem is.

I used the example of phobias yesterday. A phobia takes a fear that has a slight bit of truth to it and magnifies it out of proportion. The effect does not fit in with the cause well at all. Is it possible that the plane could crash. Yes, it is, but statistically you are safer in the air even more than when you are driving, and most people don’t panic as much about driving as they do about flying.

Emotional doubt works the same way and can come about for all manner of reasons. It could be because one is sick with something and their thinking is not as sound. It could be one is in a personal crisis in their life and in an unbalanced state is examining truth claims. It could be one just hasn’t got sufficient sleep or has an insufficient diet. It could be hurt feelings from an event or comment of someone else.

A way you can usually recognize these is that they get presented with a solid intellectual answer and then ask a “But what if?” You can answer that and you’ll get a “But what if?” The chain of “What ifs” never dies. There is no reason that it should. This kind of person wants to have absolute 100% certainty on everything that they believe.

This doesn’t just have to be about the truth of Christianity. One can be absolutely sure that Jesus rose from the dead and still be unsure about one’s relationship to Him. “Maybe when I prayed the prayer to accept Christ, I didn’t say the right thing.” Fortunately for many Christians, they can take comfort in that doubt about salvation is extremely common. This also doesn’t depend on if you’re a Calvinist or Arminian. People on both sides of that fence can doubt.

Thus, as we look at emotional doubt, we will not be looking at answers for questions so much as what is causing the questions. What is the emotional root that needs to be plucked in order for the person to be able to access the question on their own? Also, none of us have perfected these techniques as each person is prone to emotional difficulties from time to time. I personally still have to practice the techniques that I am going to be recommending to you. As the old adage goes, those who can’t do, teach, and those who can’t teach, teach gym.

Let’s hope it’s not entirely like that. With the techniques I am giving, the problem is not going to be them themselves, but our inability to follow through on them. When we learn to practice good control of our emotions, we will find ourselves better able to reason.

One final note. None of this should be seen as anti-emotional. Emotions are good, but they are to be in a balance. Too often, it is the cart that is pulling the horse.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Intellectual Doubt

What’s the solution for intellectual doubt? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

I recently wrote about dealing with doubt. Intellectual doubt is often thought to be the most common, but in reality, it isn’t. Matters can have a start that is intellectual, but can move beyond the intellect. This happens in paranoia and phobias for instance.

To use a personal example, when my spouse and I went on our honeymoon, we went to Ocean Isle Beach. My wife loves the water. I don’t really. I enjoy the beach because of the beauty and I can handle the waves lapping at my feet, but not much beyond that. Allie wanted to see me do more, so she got me out into waist high water in the ocean. That was scary enough.

Even more scary was the pool. I never go beyond 4 feet and I never move away from the edge. To put matters in perspective, I’m about 5’7″. I also should point out I cannot swim a lick and I never even go underwater, yet Allie wanted me to hold on to her as I went out into the 5′ section with her.

Did I do it? Yep.

Thinking the whole time? “This is it. I’m going to die right here.”

Rational? Not at all. Even if I had slipped, Allie would have rescued me, but there is still an intellectual seed in there somewhere. It’s the idea that people can drown in water and die. That’s true. If you can’t swim, you’d be more prone to drown, that’s also true.

Yet looking at what happened, it’s quite clear that the emotions took hold of what I was thinking and blew it out of proportion. A good way to see this is the constant raising of “What if?” questions. One can have a good intellectual answer but still come back with a “Yeah, but what if?” This often happens with Christians who doubt their salvation for instance.

In reality, doubt that is intellectual is the easiest to treat. Just learn more. If all your learning doesn’t answer your doubt any, you could have emotional doubt instead. Only you and God know that one. It is important to note that emotional doubt often disguises itself under intellectual doubt.

It could be your view is incorrect and then you would have to change it. If you are intellectually convinced Christianity is false, then don’t be a Christian. If you’re just unsure, then by all means keep looking. As a Christian, I am confident the answers are out there, but I have no problem telling you to keep an open mind. No Christian should. If what you believe is true, further study should bring that out.

There are times reading apologetics books will not do any good. That is with strong emotional doubt. Your mind will dismiss everything you read then. If not that, it will often think it has also explained it away when it could possibly be a quite sound defense of what you doubt. The dealing of emotional doubt will be covered later so that is not to be addressed now.

Besides, it can not hurt any of us to be more informed not only of what we believe but of what others believe. This is one reason I encourage people to not read the new atheists for instance. That includes atheists! The new atheists do not know what they’re talking about and present an uninformed critique. I in fact think the church should thank God for them. They’re getting the discussion in the public square and they get a weak demonstration of it out there as well. (To be fair, too many Christian apologetics works do the same thing.)

The cure for intellectual doubt then? More knowledge? That doesn’t work? Then it could be your doubt is only masked by intellectual difficulties. We’ll deal with that another time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters