Book Plunge: Jesus Was Not A Trinitarian Chapter 1

What is the foundation of Christology? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I don’t know if this one will be as long as the prologue since Buzzard’s whole argument seems to be to reference Mark 12:29, Deut 6:4, and say “Shema” and “Monotheism” over and over. He does reference Ken Samples talking about the importance of the Shema, which all Trinitarians would agree with. At the same time, he does seem to reference Ken Samples as if Samples would agree with him. He would not. I have interviewed Samples and he is indeed an orthodox Trinitarian.

Buzzard does say there is not a word of such revolutionary changes in the nature of God in the New Testament, but this could also be because the idea of a multiplicity in the Godhead was not unfamiliar to the Jews. There is no interaction with the intertestamental literature thus far that I have seen that did inform the Jewish background of Second Temple Judaism Jesus lived in. ONe such work would be the Wisdom of Solomon where Wisdom is presented in terms reminiscent of that of God in passages like the Exodus. I highly encourage readers to read How God Became Jesus. (Unfortunately, my copy is back in Tennessee.)

Buzzard also writes about how a Calvinist pastor once called him a heretic. This is seen as an unloving attitude, but is it? If the pastor really thinks that, is that not more of a warning to Buzzard? We can say all we want that perhaps the tact wasn’t there, but how are we to assume it was done out of an unloving spirit.

Despite this, the next part talks about him speaking and some older ladies in the church come up after his talk and beg he and his family to repent lest they face eternal hellfire. Whatever you think about the doctrine of Hell, I have no doubt the ladies came from a place of love, but Buzzard is apparently upset about that as well. It could just be that Buzzard doesn’t like to be challenged. He also says they seemed unaware of the Unitarian creed (Assumption again) of Jesus and any knowledge of the history of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity was absent.

Ah yes. If only those stupid old ladies were as informed as Dr. Buzzard is. They should be grateful that he just graces them with his presence.

When we get to the history of the doctrine, he talks about the controversy after Arius and says that the fact that there was such controversy should alert us that there is a problem. There wasn’t any of this with the doctrine of God in the ministry of Jesus. In this, there is a big question unanswered.

Why were Jews at the time upset about the ministry of the early church following in the footsteps of Jesus? What were Jesus and His followers doing that was so shocking? Buzzard has already said it wasn’t their doctrine of God, so what was it? What created such a scandal? Thus far, I have no idea from Buzzard.

Also, when the Arian controversy started, it wasn’t the Trinity that was the new doctrine bringing about chaos. It was Arianism. In other words, had someone not been upsetting the apple cart, there would have been no controversy. Also, as was said before, there were problems in actions on both sides. Buzzard will only give you one side.

He also writes about how the average Englishman (Which Buzzard is) who believes in the Trinity doesn’t often understand it. So what? For one thing, if you fully understand your doctrine of God, you have a pretty small God. One problem comes with the question of asking if Jesus is God.

While He is, when we say this, we are using shorthand. It is a statement that Jesus fully possesses the nature of God in His being. It does not mean that Jesus is the Father. We are speaking of God in a sense of nature.

Buzzard also says Jesus foresaw a time of killing coming in John 16:2. Why does Buzzard need to look to the Arian controversy? That killing started with Stephen and keep in mind, Buzzard can’t say it was over the doctrine of God by his own position, so what was it?

He also says that in Matthew 16 Jesus could have said about His identity “I am God, and upon this rock, I will build my church.” Sure. That would have solved everything. Then the question would be “Are you the Father?” This is why the understanding of the Trinity was a gradual matter. Jesus had to show who He is and He also had to show He is not the Father. He trusted us to work it out.

Buzzard actually knows this because he says the same thing when replying to Witherington. He goes a step further and says that any claim to be the God of Israel would have been nonsensical. No Jew would understand it. First off, if that’s the case, then it’s obvious why Jesus didn’t say it. Second, would it be nonsensical? Buzzard has not told us why. He has just assumed it.

The final section has Buzzard saying that the creed was unitarian and thus if Jesus was said to be God, then there would have to be two gods since God is unipersonal. Thus, Buzzard’s assumption that the Shema is Unitarian, which he has not demonstrated, drives his doctrine. We all agree that if God is unipersonal, then two persons cannot be God. The question is “Is God unipersonal?” I can fully say I agree with the Shema. How could I not? I just don’t agree with Buzzard’s interpretation of it.

We will continue next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Jesus Was Not A Trinitarian

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

So as one who is interacting a lot with JWs on Facebook, I was looking through my Kindle library to find a book arguing against the Trinity and came across this one. I had read a few years ago a book he co-authored on the Trinity as Christianity’s self-inflicted wound. I figured I would go through this one.

Unfortunately, this book is just awful. If you played a drinking game every time you see the term “Shema” or “Unitarian” or anything of that sort, you would die quickly of alcohol poisoning. Thus far, Buzzard really has one argument and he repeats it over and over and over again.

Let’s look at this first instance.

“In these chapters I return often to the central creed of Jesus, the Shema (Deut. 6: 4; Mark 12: 29). I carry on a running dialogue with many distinguished scholars who have commented on Jesus and his strict monotheism. I propose that a vast amount of Christian literature confirms my thesis that Jesus insisted on this unitarian creed.”

Let’s analyze this. The first sentence has the Shema as the central creed. That’s fine. Every Jew would know the Shema well as the defining statement of monotheism of Israel. However, we have a problem when we get to the second sentence when he talks about Jesus and His strict monotheism.

Question. What is meant by strict monotheism? As a Trinitarian, I contend I am a strict monotheist. Is Buzzard saying that strict monotheism equals Unitarian? Is he stating that Trinitarians aren’t monotheists? He has not said what is meant by this term and is likely packing in some assumptions.

However, the final sentence really clinches that possibility. He makes a statement in the first sentence about this being a creed, in the second about strict monotheism, and then all of a sudden in the last sentence a monotheistic creed has become inextricably a unitarian creed. No argument has been made for this position.

The big problem is that Buzzard consistently does this throughout this book. Mark Twain once said that if you took “And it came to pass” out of the Book of Mormon, you’d have a pamphlet. I wonder what he would say if he read Buzzard’s book where he makes the same argument time and time again.

Looking back at this, this is really a sleight of hand that most readers will not catch. For the sake of argument, Buzzard could be right that the Shema is unitarian. However, he needs to argue that and not just assert it.

He does the same thing again here:

I do not think that the New Testament ever reports Jesus as claiming to be the God of Israel, the one true God. Why then should Jesus’ followers adhere to a belief which Jesus gave no indication of holding? If being a Christian means following Jesus Christ, then a Christian’s first aim would be to share the same view of God as expressed by Jesus. The creed of Jesus would automatically be the creed of his followers. Jesus, as the scriptural records reveal, made it perfectly clear who he believed God to be. But churches have done much to make Jesus’ perception of the identity of God at least bewildering if not incomprehensible.

Look at this. The first part of Jesus’s claims is highly questionable as I will demonstrate in later chapters. However, notice this. At the start, Buzzard says this is his opinion that Jesus never claimed this. Fine. However, then he asks why His followers should hold a belief Jesus gave no indication of holding. There is that switch again. We have gone from opinion to a fact that Jesus gave no indication that He had this opinion of Himself. Then once again, Buzzard points back to the creed, AGAIN.

Later, he says that when the church got power in the time of Constantine, they took to persecuting heretics. There is no mention that the Arians were also doing their own persecution. Why was Athanasius in exile? Why was he falsely accused of crimes? He was accused of murdering the bishop Arsenius.

When the charges were brought, the accusers brought forth a human hand they said belonged to Arsenius. Athanasius had a powerful rebuttal when he brought in Arsenius to the courtroom, alive and well, and showed that he still had two hands. Arians were hardly sugar and spice and everything nice.

Buzzard won’t tell you that. He only tells you about what those evil Trinitarians were doing. He even goes so far as to say that could it be the church held a non-Jewish creed because they were really anti-Semites? Such a statement tells me little about the early church, but it tells me volumes about Buzzard.

So thus far, I hope you’ve seen that this will be an interesting one. We’ll see if we get any interesting arguments sometime and I could possibly do a word search sometime through Kindle to see how many times certain words are overused. Keep an eye out for smuggling in assumptions. It seems to be something Buzzard is proficient at.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: In God We Doubt Conclusion

How shall we wrap this up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In these last two chapters, we find Humphrys being rather charitable. For instance, the main point he wants to get across is how the new atheists want to say we would be better off without religion. John Lennon’s Imagine would have us all think the world would be a better place if we got rid of religion.

Not so fast. Humphrys rightly points out that when you look at the mass killings of people in the 20th century, it wasn’t religion that was largely responsible. It was Communism. When you look at the major wars that happened, religion could be a factor, but it was way down the list if it was.

How about those Muslim suicide bombers? They weren’t the first. It was the Tamil Tigers that came up with the suicide bomber strategy. That was a Marxist-Leninist group in Sri Lanka. He does say that Muslim bombers today are not reflecting mainstream Islam to which I want to say “How are they not?” After all, the first Muslim groups were hardly peaceful.

He also points out that some might say extreme religion is a danger, but materialism and consumerism is also a threat. What about all these kids who are wanting to go on apps like TikTok and become celebrities? What about a culture that wants more and more and more and yet is never happy?

This isn’t to say Humphrys is entirely positive about religion. He says that it’s not that religious people don’t have time to reason out their beliefs. They don’t want to. They don’t want to think about things that have been done in the name of God. His example of this is an alleged Roman Catholic who doesn’t even believe in the deity of Christ, but finds theism comforting.

It is true that God can be a great comfort, but I do not believe in God for comfort. I believe in Him because of the evidence. I am also not bothered by the “Christians have done evil in history.” Yeah. All of us have. That’s because we’re all fallen creatures. I don’t think we should ignore the question, but it’s not a defeater.

In the end, what do I think keeps Humphrys from believing? It’s not reason. He doesn’t really deal with any arguments for the existing of God in this book. If anything, his argument seems to be more emotional. He has a hard time with evil, but if he does, that should make it all the more reason for him to be a theist.

I think about a meme I saw an atheist share yesterday with a woman, presumably in Africa, holding a dead child and crying and for us to think about how easy it is to worship God when we’re not that woman. No doubt, that woman is suffering, but as I have argued before, take away God. What do you have? This is definitely a hypothetical as I think if you take away God, nothing can exist, but you still have the crying woman and the dead child.

The problem is still the same. What you have removed is hope. On Christian theism, there is a God who will deal justly in this situation. There is a God who can bring good out of evil. There is a God who can raise the dead. Atheism takes away the possibility of hope and still leaves the problem. How is that reasonable?

Keep in mind, I am not saying that that makes Christianity true, but it sure gives you reason to consider it seriously and to at least want it to be true on some level, especially if you say you care about the woman involved. If there is no greater source of justice and hope in the universe, well some people just get dealt a very bad hand of cards and it sucks to be you if you get that bad hand. Christianity has someone overseeing the game who will make sure justice will come out right in the end.

That should give us hope and also give us a degree of fear. Justice will come for us as well. We better make sure we are ready.

We can pray that Humphrys reconsiders his opinion. Perhaps those arguments really are better than what an inquisitive child can see through. Perhaps there really is a God who loves Him out there and can give hope and justice.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Divergent Paths of the Restoration

What do I think of Steven Shields’s book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Behold the words of Joseph Smith:

“Come on! ye prosecutors! ye false swearers! All hell, boil over! Ye burning mountains, roll down your lava! for I will come out on top at last. I have more to boast of than ever any man had. I am the only man that has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam. A large majority of the whole have stood by me. Neither Paul, John, Peter, nor Jesus ever did it. I boast that no man ever did such a work as I. The followers of Jesus ran away from Him; but the Latter-day Saints never ran away from me yet…When they can get rid of me, the devil will also go” (History of the Church, Vol. 6, p. 408).

So we are often told by Mormons. Look at how much the church has split. Look at how many denominations there are! However, Joseph Smith held his church together. I mean, we know about some groups, but there’s only a small number. Right?

Nope.

As it turns out, there were differences even in the lifetime of Joseph Smith. After he died, there was more and more separation radiating out of the church. To be fair, not all splinter groups are major groups. Some would only have a few people. Some, however, did have sizable followings.

Not only this, many Mormons will point to the Scripture they have, the translations of plates that they did, and the revelations that Joseph Smith received. The hard part here is that many of these other groups claimed the exact same thing. Many of these groups had people who claimed that they had revelations and that God had called them to carry on the work of Joseph Smith or sometimes that even during the time of Smith, the church had gone astray.

It’s as if many of them followed the exact same blueprint.

Many of these also get very far away from Mormonism. Some of them come to embrace New Age teachings. You have some that are extremely friendly to the LGBTQ position. There are some that get into a sort of Gnosticism.

The author has done in-depth research on these with references at the end of each section. He does point out that some of these are more unverified and some of these do just exist on the internet. There are, of course, many of these groups that are real and there come to be splinters of the splinters.

This is a great book to read also because you can get plenty of these groups and I just go to Mormons I interact with and ask “Why not this group? They have the exact same credentials as your group does with claiming revelation. Why do you not accept them?” We are also often accused of having a closed canon. Well, the main LDS church has a closed canon with regard to these other groups.

This book is also very large. There are over 900 pages of information. Still, if you want to know more about what happened in the life and after of Joseph Smith in relation to the unity of the church, this is the place to go. You can find it here.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Things Atheists Say That Simply Make No Sense

What do I think of Patrick Prill’s book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I was given this book by a friend when he told me he had an extra copy and I found it intriguing. I was pleased to see in the table of contents that indeed, there was something saying that one dumb thing that is said is that Jesus never existed. Seriously atheist community. If you meet one of your own who is saying this, it’s best to ask him to please be quiet on your behalf.

I would ultimately describe this book as a gateway book. Each chapter is short and thus good for the purpose of small group discussion. You don’t have to read any prior chapter to understand the latter ones. You can just go to whatever you’re dealing with to see what is said.

This is also largely dealing with the new atheists, which is just fine because it’s more likely the lay Christian will also be engaging with your common internet atheist types who will be using new atheist material. The book deals with objections relating to the universe, to God, to Jesus specifically, to morality, etc. There is a final section introducing atheists who became theists. Not all of them became Christians, but they became theists.

So the positives. First off, as I have said, the chapters are short and they do have several references so you can look beyond this book and get more information. Notes are extremely helpful to see and yes, they are footnotes. Prill lets you know where he gets his information from.

I think my favorite chapter was the one on religion leading to war. There is information here that I found quite helpful for this common question. As I said, this is entry-level, but on this question this is an excellent entry.

For some criticisms, I do think that when Josephus is talked about, there is not enough said about the different versions we have of what Josephus said. Your average internet atheist will know about this and it could very well catch a  Christian unaware. This is also important since sadly, this is one of the most common objections I come across. (Again atheists, please clean up your own house. I know there are a lot of you that recognize this claim as nonsense thankfully.)

My biggest criticism though is in a chapter on asking if God is required for objective moral values to exist. If I had a hand in any sort of rewriting of a second edition of the book, this is the chapter I would change the most. As a Thomistic thinker, I was really stunned when I got to one part of this.

Prill asks if the question of if morality could exist if God didn’t and the answer is, perhaps.

Whoa.

This isn’t just about morality anymore. This is dealing with everything else. If it is possible for something to exist if God does not, then this means that ultimately, God is not the grounding of everything that exists. Scripture says about Jesus regularly in the New Testament in places like John 1, 1 Cor 8, Col, 1, and Hebrews 1, that Jesus is the means by which God created everything else and without Him, nothing else would exist. The logical conclusion, one I am sure Prill would deny but unfortunately a statement like this leads to, is that God is not foundational for existence. It would mean that it is not God’s nature to be, but that being is something He possesses.

Definitely fix that in any future entries. After all, if God doesn’t exist, then really nothing else exists at all. There is no ground of being.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

An Open Letter To Elon Musk

Has Twitter changed? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Dear Mr. Musk.

When you bought Twitter, I saw a breath of fresh air come in. Finally, conservatives could be just as free as anyone else to share their thoughts. No more would we see anything about hate speech. I found I could actually enjoy Twitter again. The first day, I came on saying statements such as if you were born a man you would die a man and vice-versa, that marriage is between a man and a woman, that Elaine Page was and always would be a woman, etc.

It felt good again to have a place to interact with some of my favorite conservative influencers. I was especially pleased to see when you freed the Babylon Bee. However, last night, I got disappointed.

As a conservative, I regularly go to the Biden Twitter page to see what is being said there. Last night, I saw he had posted something about mental health hotlines. The people on them were trained to especially handle Veteran’s issues and LGBTQ issues.

Now with Veterans, many of us can understand. PTSD is not uncommon in the world of those who serve. Also, many of them do struggle with suicide if they have that. LGBT was an interesting inclusion so I just asked “Funny you seem to imply that a lot of LGBTQ people have mental health issues.”

Within seconds, BAM! I get hit with my account being restricted. Why? I had said something hateful.

Excuse me? How do you know the state of my own heart? What is this great power that Twitter has that they think they can read that?

You see, I am on the Autism spectrum. If you asked me if myself and my fellow human beings on this spectrum have a mental health problem, I would say yes. That’s not being hateful. That’s being honest.

Now if I say the same about the LGBTQ community, does that mean that I hate them? Not at all. I don’t hate them any more than I hate myself and my own community, which is not at all. If anything, I am an advocate for people in my own mental health community. If I meet someone who is absolutely convinced that they are a girl when they are really a boy, my thought is not hatred. It’s sadness. I want them to see themselves as they truly are, a boy. I want them to embrace their identity that they have by virtue of being born male. I want them to avoid what I think is a dangerous and horrible mistake.

You can disagree with me all you want. That’s cool. If there is disagreement, then we discuss it.

But if that is not allowed, then why should I think Twitter is any different from what it was in the past? The Babylon Bee got banned for making a statement that was deemed anti-LGBTQ. I was thankful when you brought them back, regardless of what anyone thinks of the Bee. The old adage is that it’s better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.

As I write this, of course, I am sure that you, Mr. Musk, were not personally involved with the decision. You could see this and read it and immediately agree 100% with what I have said. If anything, you might actually disagree with my belief, but agree that I have the right to express it. I have in no way said anything that implies hatred towards a group or that we should bring violence to them.

I did appeal, naturally, but what good does that do? No one discusses my case with me. I have a small area in which to state my reasons why I did not violate any rules. I am not allowed to hear why they think I am wrong. Your staff becomes judge, jury, and executioner. If anything, you are making me guilty of fault crimes, which is very Orwellian.

I encounter beliefs every day that I disagree with. Some of them I think are quite stupid. I also encounter people who say things that are quite vicious about my Christian community. I have no wish to ban them from areas I am in charge of. When I was married, about the only way I dropped a banhammer on my Facebook was if someone insulted my wife. That was it.

Why do I do this? Because I really value disagreement. That leads to debates and that leads to discussing the issues that are important to us as Americans. Part of freedom means that even if I don’t like what you say, I will fully agree you have the right to say it.

Now I would agree if someone were threatening actual violence against someone, yes, something needs to be done. Even in that case though, I say bring in the police. Let them handle it. If someone says something completely ignorant against my belief system, I don’t ban them. If anything, I want them on display. I want people to see the other side for what it is.

When the LGBT community acts in this way, it becomes apparent that they are the sacred group of the day that you dare not speak against. How far does it extend? If we are going to start banning people from expressing opinions, we are going down a very dangerous slope.

I urge you Mr. Musk, if you read this someday, to make sure Twitter doesn’t become what it used to be. As far as I am concerned, right now, it is.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

False Common Knowledge: All Sin Is The Same In God’s Eyes

Does God really see all sin as the same? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

There are some ideas that are so commonly heard in the church that most of us never question them. The problem is that if we never question them, they are assumed at the start when really, there’s no basis for them. One common one is one I heard recently and it occurred to me I have never written about as far as I can remember. This is the idea that all sin is the same in God’s eyes.

Let’s suppose you never had a police record at all. Then one day you’re going down the interstate and you wind up going 20 MPH over the speed limit. An officer pulls you over and lo and behold, you no longer have a perfect record. It just takes one ticket to do that.

Let’s suppose again you never had a police record at all. Then one day your neighbor is playing loud music way too much and you go over to his house and when he opens the door you pull out a gun and shoot him several times in the chest resulting in his death. You go back over to your place thinking no one else saw you and no need to arouse suspicion, but you were heard and the police come over and arrest you. You no longer have a perfect record. One crime did that.

With sin, all it takes is one to remove a perfect record, but that does not mean that all the sins are the same any more than speeding and murder are the same.

In John 19:11, Jesus says to Pilate that the one who handed Him over is guilty of a greater sin. In the Gospels, Jesus also says the sin of blasphemy of the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven in this age or the age to come. He says that if someone leads a child to stumble, it would be better for him to have a millstone attached to him and be thrown into the sea.

In the epistles, Paul writes to the church in Corinth that is heavily messed up and calls them out for many sins, but when he gets to the man who is sleeping with his father’s wife, he says to hand this one over to Satan. He says that some have died because of how they handled the Lord’s Supper. He regularly has listings of sins that if one is practicing these shows that he is not of the kingdom.

If we look at the Old Testament, we see there were some sins that led to death and some that led to much lesser penalties. We see from Jesus that the Old Testament had some commandments that were greater than others. (Which wouldn’t make much sense if all sins were the same.) We also see the dilemmas caused with the question of Rahab and the Hebrew midwives lying. If all sins are the same, then does it really matter?

I really can think of no Scripture that gives any indication that all sins are the same. Somehow, we got this idea and it has been spoken so much that we have come to believe it. It just isn’t so. We should strive to avoid all sins to be sure, but that does not mean all sins are the same.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Quests Matter

Do we need something to do? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I don’t know if school was like this for you, but for the most part for me it was. I was the kind of student who did all my work in class, came home and played video games and other such things. Most reading I did was things like Peanuts, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, etc. Of course, I did read the Bible. I had that read for the first time in middle school.

Do I remember a lot of things I studied in school? Nope.

I thought about this listening to Timcast yesterday where Vivek Ramaswamy was on a livecast and discussing his philosophy. He did talk about the God-shaped hole, but he also applied it to purpose. Man needs a purpose in his life. Man needs something to do.

Question. Why is it that when a child gets home from school, things like video games and playing sports with friends matters more than the schoolwork does? Why is it that can still be the way today? If you don’t want to go with video games, go with something else. How many guys know more about their favorite sports team than their jobs? How about their favorite TV shows?

In these cases, we’re getting involved in something greater than ourselves. Reading a good fictional book can get you into a story that is different from your own and if you get caught up in it, you can literally lose track of the world around you. I have read many a mystery when I go to bed at night and I am still working out trying to figure out who it is. I remember reading Odd Billy Todd and when the story ended, felt disappointed because now I knew my interaction with these people I had read about was all done.

This can happen when you watch a movie or a TV show. To this day, I remember the first time I watched Smallville (Spoiler alert coming) and I got to season 5 and saw the death of Jonathan Kent. That was painful for me when I saw it. I respected that man so much he was like another father to me. I’m sure many of you can think of a similar case.

And as a gamer, when I play a game, I find myself getting caught in a story and I want the story to succeed and I want to be the best that I can be at the story. I want to learn what I need to learn to bring about the best outcome in the story. All of these get us caught in something greater than ourselves and from the world of gaming, I call them quests.

I remember talking to a professor here who told me thinks tests are the best way to have students learn something. I disagreed. Any student can spend all night cramming and memorizing the information and then ace the test and just a bit later, forget it all. It was not learned to succeed outside the classroom. It was learned to succeed at the class.

However, what classes can you be interested in? Ones where you see something that is immediately relevant to your life outside of the classroom. If you enjoy philosophy and history, you will readily learn those and really, the tests won’t matter to you. Instilling a love of the subject and seeing its relevance helps you learn it.

Now what about Christianity? I have often written about a major problem we have in the church is we make evangelism being all about going to Heaven. Why do you get saved? So you can go to Heaven. Why do you repent? So you can go to Heaven.

What if we make it about something else? What if we say Christianity is the story of good conquering evil. Peter Kreeft once said about apologetics that it’s the closest you get to saving the world. That’s a statement I remember. What if Christianity was not about you? What if it was about your role in a story greater than yourself?

What if you learned this stuff from the Bible not just so you could know it, but so you could apply it in the battle? What if it was not just about being a good person, but being a heroic person? What if it was depicted as a battle to win the souls of the lost and stop the spread of evil in the world?

This is one reason my PhD research at this point is set to be on video games and Christianity, with an emphasis on the importance of quests. Games draw us in because we get drawn into something greater than ourselves. Hopefully, we will do the same with Christianity.

And in the end, maybe that could help our evangelism.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Book Plunge: In God We Doubt Part 13

Are we just serving our genes? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In this chapter, Humphrys makes a list of heroic people and why they did what they did. An atheist like Richard Dawkins will write that we are living in service of our selfish genes. It’s a reversal of sorts of the Christian view. In our view, we are doing what we do in service of God, but in the atheist view, it is in service of ourselves. (Not sure how aborting your children works with that considering they can’t pass on any more genes for you or sterilizing your children through “gender-affirming care”, but that’s another point.)

But Humphrys doesn’t think this works. He talks about the Virginia Tech shooting as one example. Liviu Librescu, a 76 year-old math teacher, held the door shut so his students could escape through the windows knowing this would lead to his death. On another aside, it is disappointing that in these cases, many of us can bring to mind the shooter, but not the heroes that held back the shooter to some extent. Was Librescu doing this to serve his genes?

Humphrys doesn’t find this credible, and again, I agree. In a sense, genes have become a sort of god for Dawkins and others who go this route. Whatever the genes are commanding, this must be obeyed. This is not to say that we don’t have base desires that we all fall prey to. If we didn’t, there wouldn’t be a problem with obesity, broken marriages, STDs, etc. in our world today.

Humphrys goes on to list a number of heroes and it’s worth reading this chapter just to hear what their stories are. Too often when we think about evil, we ask what is it that makes evil people do what they do? Could it perhaps be better to ask “What is it that makes good people do what they do?” and then find ways to make that far more likely to happen? Just a long shot here, but maybe we should consider the virtues that lead to people doing that and celebrate those virtues and condemn the vices that go the other way.

However, there is an unfortunate statement in this chapter in that Humphrys concludes that atheists have the best arguments. What they don’t have is a grasp of what it is that makes human beings what we are. I agree with the latter, but I definitely disagree with the former.

On the latter point, could we not consider that if atheists don’t have that, could that lead to the idea that man is more than just a material being? Could it lead to the idea of essences and substances? Could it lead to a soul, a spirit, or something of that sort? Would this not be a problematic position for atheism to explain anyway? If human beings are just material objects and we have been studying matter for so long and have personal experience with this matter, shouldn’t we have a good idea of what we are?

However, throughout this book, there has been little attention paid to theistic arguments. Even in the chapter featuring Craig, the only response given was that it was nonsense, all of it, and then Humphrys goes on to criticize Craig instead of asking his side how they can better answer Craig. I don’t see the Thomistic arguments ever dealt with nor do I see the philosophers used that have taken on the problem of evil.

Humphrys then is too dismissive. It seems that evil is just something that controls his thinking and that is the real draw. How can a good God allow evil? The problem is this is often a much more emotional argument than a rational one. We see this when Humphrys says that when a cab driver murders his wife and four children, that overpowers an argument.

Could it be atheists actually have the more emotional opinion?

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)