Tag: Christianity

Deeper Waters Podcast 3/8/2014: Mary Jo Sharp

What’s coming up on this Saturday’s episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

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As listeners know, our podcast is all about Christian apologetics, but why do we study it? Does it really matter? What difference does it make? Are we just busy bolstering up one another? Is this the kind of activity that should be done in the Kingdom of God? Does the Bible really tell us to do apologetics?

To discuss these, I figured why not have a guest who could come on and give the personal importance of apologetics and who teaches it today. For that, I called Mary Jo Sharp of Houston Baptist University, who herself was an atheist at one point in time.

In Mary Jo’s own words….

“Mary Jo Sharp is a former atheist from the Pacific Northwest who thought religion was for the weak-minded. She now holds a Masters in Christian Apologetics from Biola University and is the first woman to become a Certified Apologetics Instructor through the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. Mary Jo is an Assistant Professor at Houston Baptist University, on faculty with Summit Ministries, an author with Kregel Publications and B&H Publications, and has recently produced a new DVD Bible Study with LifeWay Resources. A clear communicator with a heart for people, she finds great joy in sharing the deep truths of her Lord and Savior. She administrates the website, Confident Christianity, and has engaged in two formal, public debates with Muslims.
– See more at: http://www.confidentchristianity.blogspot.com/p/mary-jo-sharp.html#sthash.v0wwM8b4.dpuf

Mary Jo will be talking about the benefits that come to Christians from doing apologetics and what role it plays in the Kingdom of God. If that gets you interested, then she will also be glad to discuss on our show the latest resources that she has available for the purposes of teaching apologetics.

I invite you all to join in and listen to this important show on the nature of apologetics. I am sure you’ll find Mary Jo to be an exciting guest and hopefully bring out why it is that our churches are seriously lacking in their duty to our Lord and His Great Commission when we fail to heed the apologetics enterprise we’ve been given.

As many of you know, this has also been a penchant of mine as I have long been angered by the lack of serious discipleship in the churches and serious engaging with issues relating to the biblical text and a Christian worldview. I am thankful that there are Christians out there like Mary Jo Sharp who are willing to stand on the front lines and face the opposition head on.

In our day and age, we must take a stand for what it is that we hold to be true or else we have no reason to think that it will be around for the next generation in America. Oh it will survive somewhere else, but we will be robbing our children and their children of Christian truth.

The show will air this Saturday from 3-5 PM EST. The call in number is 714-242-5180. The link can be found here.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Sense and Goodness Without God Part 12

Does Carrier give us any good reasons to be godless? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

It’s been awhile since we’ve gone through Carrier’s book, but it’s time to continue. This time, we’re going to at least start a look at his reasons to be godless. Carrier starts off with his conclusion that God doesn’t exist based on years of study and investigation and examining all the evidence of every argument presented in its defense.

All of them? Every single piece of evidence for every single argument?

So that means that for proponents of Intelligent Design, for instance, Carrier has read every book, every article, and heard every lecture on the topic?

That for Craig’s Kalam argument, Carrier has also done the same with that one?

For Aquinas’s five ways, that Carrier has read every book and philosophical treatise on the topic?

Well aside from this unbelievable claim right at the start, I can inform you I went into this chapter eager to receive a good argument against the positions that I normally use. So therefore I set out to find a refutation in there against the five ways of Aquinas.

Which weren’t covered….

Well, maybe those just aren’t commonly used as much! Let’s look at the argument that Bill Craig uses, the Kalam Cosmological Argument.

Which also isn’t covered….

Could it be he deals with the ontological argument? I don’t like that argument, but Plantinga and Craig both like it. I think it’s fallacious, but it’s an important one that philosophers have had something to say about. Surely that’s there.

And no, it isn’t….

Well definitely the argument from morality! He has a chapter on morality later on. Surely there’s an argument at least here.

And again, there’s nothing….

I consider it quite important that a chapter claiming to show that there is no God at all does not argue with any of the arguments put forward. It’s just a statement of faith.

Would anyone find it convincing if I wrote a book and said “Some people make strong arguments that God doesn’t exist. Reality is, He does. I know this because I studied every argument against His existence and every piece of evidence used and found them all lacking.”

If you were convinced by that, shame on you.

On page 254, we also have a howler with him talking about religious claims and saying that they all believe love has something to do with the meaning of life. “On virtually everything else they disagree–so virtually everything else is probably false.”

It’s because of statements like this that philosophers everywhere should cringe when Carrier describes himself as one.

For instance, classical Buddhism is atheistic. Christianity is theistic. Since virtually everything else is probably false aside from love, we can assume theism is false, but we can also assume that atheism is false.

Islam says that you should kill the infidels wherever you find them. Christianity says you should love your enemies and forgive them. Neither of these have to do with the meaning of life, so both of these claims are probably false.

We don’t even have to stay there. Let’s go to worldviews.

Christianity and atheism both agree that there is a material world, but on everything else they disagree, so every other position is probably false. Therefore, again, atheism and theism are both false by Carrier’s argument.

More examples could surely be given.

On pages 254-5, we are told that atheism is simply a way of saying you lack God belief, but this does not work. Let’s consider for the sake of argument that God does exist. (Yes. Atheists reading this blog please try this thought experiment.)

By this standard, theism is true.

Now if atheism is lacking God-belief, then well, there are still atheists out there.

But in Greek, the a in front of a word is the negation of it.

Therefore, theism and atheism can be both be true. One claim and its contradiction are both true. In order to hold Carrier’s view, you have to deny the Law of Noncontradiction then.

Also, quite problematic is that the atheist is then seeking to make a statement not about reality but about their personal beliefs. If that’s all it is, why should I care? This atheism cannot be refuted because after all, you cannot refute one’s psychology in this sense. If I come to you and I say “I’m depressed today,” you can’t say “No you’re not! You feel great!” You don’t argue against the feeling. You argue against why I feel that way.

Yet despite this claim, Carrier does say he denies the existence of God as on this page he has the argument of “believers deny the existence of hundreds of gods. I just go one god further.”

“Gentlemen of the jury! You believe several persons in this room did not commit the murder. I just ask that you look at my client and go one person further!”

I happen to look at Carrier’s work and realize he rejects many views of atheistic cosmology. Unlike him, I just go one view further.

The same applies to views of atheistic morality.

On 257 Carrier says that there is no reason to think that God would need billions of years and trillions of galaxies to work his purpose, but that is what we’d expect in a godless universe.

How can we make this comparison though? We have no other universes we know of that we can compare to to say this is the kind of universe a god would create and this isn’t one? This is the way a universe will naturally run and this is an example of a universe that did not naturally run! The only way a comparative statement can be made is if there are two things to compare, and there aren’t.

On this page also, we see him argue that if he was God, he would give clear evidence, and yet he doesn’t see that, and since Carrier could not be better intentioned than God, then it follows that God does not exist.

There’s something amusing about making an argument against God based on what you’d do.

Let’s look at this claim of clear evidence.

There are many claims that we often think are quite clear and some people still deny. I think it’s clear that the material world exists. Some people deny it. Most of us would say it’s clear that other minds exist, but yet Solipsists exist. I would say it’s clear that it’s wrong to torture babies for fun, but yet moral relativists exist. Carrier and I would both agree that truth exists, but yet so do postmoderns who deny objective moral truths exist.

Basically, there are arguments to believe anything and while some people want to believe in God for emotional reasons, there are also emotional reasons some would have for not believing in God, such as anger at growing up in a highly fundamentalist home, personal evil in one’s life, or not wanting to believe in God so you can keep having sex with your girlfriend.

Now we’ll move on to some of Carrier’s complaints about religious texts, starting with the Bible, which is the only one we’ll cover. Leave it to others to defend their holy books.

We’ll start with Deut. 13:6-11. (Carrier mistakenly says it’s only 8-10)

6 If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, 7 gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), 8 do not yield to them or listen to them. Show them no pity. Do not spare them or shield them. 9 You must certainly put them to death. Your hand must be the first in putting them to death, and then the hands of all the people. 10 Stone them to death, because they tried to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 11 Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again.

Carrier might want to know we still treat treason seriously in this country. In Israelite society, they did too. They were under a covenant relationship with YHWH and to have someone come and move them away from that relationship would spell disaster for the populace. (As we see in their judgment later on.) Carrier will need to say more than “I don’t like this.”

“The fool says in his heart,
“There is no God.”
They are corrupt, their deeds are vile;
there is no one who does good.”

This is Psalm 14:1 and yet Carrier does not consider that this is hyperbole. (Keep in mind at the beginning of the book, Carrier said you should read his own works with charity. Apparently, you are to do as he says, not as he does.) Had Carrier read the Psalm, he would have known that the Psalmist was not just describing atheists, but he was describing EVERYONE! He was saying all are corrupt and none do good. This is the way that Jews often thought. We can do the same when we get depressed and think about our problems and say things like “No one cares about me.”

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26)

This is one of the most often quoted passages by atheists and one misunderstood. It occurs to no one apparently that Jesus’s own followers had families whom they loved and according to Paul in 1 Cor. 9, many apostles took their wives with them on their journey.

So what is being said? It is a comparative statement. Your family is certainly a great and important reality in your life, but if you put it above the Kingdom of God, you are not going to be worthy of the Kingdom. The Kingdom must be your first priority.

“Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” Mark 16:16

“Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” John 3:18.

“49 This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous 50 and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew 13:49-50.

What of it? God is a God who judges. (Note I do of course contest that Mark 16:16 was part of the original writing) For Carrier to show that it is wrong for God to do this, he will need a better argument than “I don’t like it.”

Carrier goes on to state that since there is a threat delivered, it must be a wicked belief, because threats are the hallmark of a wicked creed. I suppose we must say the military has a wicked creed when they deliver a deadline to an enemy. A parent must have a wicked creed when they tell a child they will be spanked if they do something. Police must have a wicked creed if they warn someone about the consequences of their actions under the law.

Carrier says that Christianity started to flourish in 313 A.D. after the Edict of Milan. I would like to know how it even got to that point. It’s quite interesting to hear that Christianity was one of the most intolerant religions in history.

Why does Carrier say that? Because Christians denied the existence of the Roman gods and said there was only one God and he had revealed Himself in Christ. In other words, the Christians were killed for being intolerant.

It’s quite amusing isn’t it to read about people killing other people because those killed were not being tolerant….

Rome itself obviously was not tolerant since they could not handle dissent. (Where would Carrier find himself in Rome since he denies the existence of all gods? Would he be suddenly complaining that the Romans weren’t intolerant.) Yet Carrier sees Rome killing the Christians and decides that the Christians brought it upon themselves. It never seems to occur to him that maybe the people who were doing the killing were not the tolerant ones.

And Rome would have no problem with other gods, provided you included them in the Roman pantheon and still did your service to the emperor. Step outside of that and all of a sudden, you are not going to be tolerated. As has been said before, tolerance is always a one-way street.

Carrier says on page 266 that salvation belongs only to those who have faith in Christ is the very heart of New Testament teaching.)

Don’t get me wrong on this. Salvation by grace through faith in Christ is indeed an important teaching, but it is not the heart of the NT. It is a result of another teaching. That is the teaching that Jesus is the resurrected king of this universe. Trusting in Him for salvation is a result of having that prior belief. Does Carrier really know the NT he claims to critique?

Well that’s enough for now. Next time we’ll look further at Carrier’s reasons to be godless.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Defending The Resurrection

What do I think of Holding’s book on the Resurrection? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

 

DefendingTheResurrection

 

In the interest of being upfront, I am Holding’s ministry partner.

Defending the Resurrection (DTR) is really a different book from other books you will find on the resurrection. Many books will examine many of the historical details. If you read Licona, you will hear about the eyewitness appearances, the empty tomb, the conversion of Paul, etc. If you read Wright, you will hear about the place of Jesus in the story of Israel.

I think both of these are excellent and absolutely essential.

I’d also round them all off by reading DTR. DTR will not go into the history of Israel. It also will not make many claims about the creed in 1 Cor. 15 or why scholars think that Jesus did in fact appear to eyewitnesses. It’s not that these don’t matter, as DTR does have an extensive chapter on the topic of hallucinations, but that DTR wishes to focus its work on another area altogether.

DTR mainly focuses on the social setting of the NT and why resurrection was so important and why we can indeed believe it happened. It goes into extensive detail of the relationship of Christianity to the Roman Empire with such ideas as tolerance, the rejection of the new, claims of exclusivity, and others.

An interesting one for many readers will be the concept of resurrection itself. Today, we tend to view resurrection as a good thing, provided we have a new body. Who wouldn’t want another go around in life? Yet to the world of the NT, it was a different story.

In that world, the body was a prison to be escaped and you did not want to return to it. This is why so many of the lower class did in fact flock to the mystery religions. Christianity did not even really offer them something that they wanted, which would be another strike against it. It could have easily gone with the docetic heresies that were floating around, and yet it didn’t.

DTR also compares the survival of the Christian religion in comparison to Mormonism, Mithraism, and Muhammad. Readers of Holding will realize that this is pointing back to another work of his, The Impossible Faith, and that only Christianity truly qualifies as an Impossible Faith.

Also, you will find responses here to the internet theories that you won’t find responses to in many other books. What about the idea for instance of Cavin that Jesus had an identical twin show up who acted like he was the resurrected Lord? Most don’t take that one seriously for a reason, but DTR doesn’t want to leave you unprepared and will give you what you need to know in order to meet the objections that you will normally find on the internet.

In conclusion, I do recommend this book, though I recommend you read works like Licona and Wright first to get the case entirely there and then get this one to answer the objections that come up afterwards. DTR will be a valuable reference in any library for dealing with those.

In Christ,

Nick Peters

Sense and Goodness Without God Part 10

Why do I not buy Carrier’s “refutation” of the resurrection story? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

As we continue through Richard Carrier’s “Sense and Goodness Without God” we come to a favorite piece of mine. In this, Carrier compares the evidence for the crossing of the Rubicon by Caesar to that of the evidence for the resurrection.

Now to be sure, I am not making any claim about the quality of the evidence for Caesar crossing the Rubicon in 49 B.C. I am simply looking at Carrier’s argument to see if it holds up or not and I contend that it does not.

So what are the points? Carrier’s first is that this event is a physical necessity. Rome’s history would not go as it had without it. Yet is this the case? Caesar did have to move his troops into Italy of course, but did he have to cross the Rubicon? We can say that would be the most convenient way to do so, but it was not the only way that it could have happened.

Carrier says all that is needed to explain Christianity is a belief, but this is not the case. Of course one would need to believe in a resurrection, but what events would have to happen for there to be a belief in the resurrection?

First, you would need a historical Jesus, which Carrier does not accept

Second, you need to have it known that he died.

Third, you need something to explain that this death was not the end.

This isn’t even counting all the social factors that go into play with Christianity.

The next piece Carrier points to is physical evidence. To begin with, what kind of physical evidence does Carrier want to see? He really thinks the evidence for a crucified Jew in Palestine should be compared to that of a major event by Julius Caesar?

Well actually, we do have some physical evidence. We do in fact have documents. We have the Gospels, the Pauline Epistles, Acts, and of course the rest of the New Testament. We also have writings outside of the NT such as Tacitus, Josephus, Suetonius, etc.

We also have the claim that the tomb was empty, which would be a physical claim that could be checked, and the claim that one could talk to eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen the risen Jesus. Carrier also says it has been proven the Shroud of Turin is a forgery. Unfortunately, he does not say by who or when this was done. Perhaps he wants me to take it by faith.

Carrier also says we have unbiased or counterbiased corroboration for Caesar. Well not really. His enemies could attest to this in fact to show that Caesar was a threat. It is also interesting that Carrier says we have unbiased sources when he says his friends wrote about it. How are those unbiased?

Yet what does he expect for the resurrection? Obviously, if someone believes Jesus was raised, then they are going to be biased. Who will write a testimony saying Jesus was raised and still reject Christianity in Jesus’s day? (I say then because today, Pinchas Lapides is a Jew who holds that Jesus was raised but does not believe He was the Messiah.)

On the other hand, if someone writes against the resurrection, we can just as well say they are biased. The resurrection would focus on the claims Jesus made for Himself so you could not approach the subject or speak about it without some bias.

The fourth one is my favorite. In this, Carrier says the crossing of the Rubicon appears in almost every history of the age, and this is by the most prominent scholars. Who are these guys? Suetonius, Appian, Cassius Dio, and Plutarch.

What about the resurrection? It’s not mentioned until two to three decades later. There’s also the point that the ones who wrote about the Rubicon were quite scholarly and show a wide range of reading and citation of sources, whereas the historians of Christianity in the first century did not.

Yes. Paul was definitely a slouch in scholarship. Only trained under the best of his time and his writing shows a great skill in Greco-Roman rhetoric and argumentation.

Also, the Gospels do cite eyewitnesses in their own way. For an example, in Mark’s Gospel, Peter is the first and last disciple mentioned. What’s the point of this? It shows it’s an inclusio account whereby Peter is thus known to be the source. Aspects like this can be found in “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses” by Richard Bauckham.

But what’s most interesting about this is the fact of every scholar of the age. Let’s use a site like this.

Here we find Suetonius was born in 71 A.D. At the start, this puts us at 120 years+. Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that Suetonius waits until he’s 30 to begin writing. That would mean this reliable account is 150+ years later.

Appian?

He was born in 95 A.D. That puts us at 144 years+. Let’s suppose he waited until the age of 30, and it’s more likely he waited until later. If we give 30, then that means he wrote 174+ years later.

Cassius Dio? He was born in 164. This puts at at 213 years+. He started writing the Roman Histories at the earliest in 211. That puts us at 260 years+.

Someone had said something about the accounts of the resurrection being two to three centuries later….

But strangely enough, Cassius Dio two to three centuries later is okay.

Plutarch would be the earliest being born in 46 A.D., but this puts us at 95 years+ and if he waits till thirty, well that’s 125 years+.

That means not ONE of these sources could have talked to an eyewitness of the event. Not one of them was a contemporary of Caesar either. Not one of them would have been a firsthand account.

And yet they’re all accepted.

And you know what? I have no problem with that. That’s the way ancient history is done, but when Carrier gives these names, he doesn’t tell the audience when these people lived and wrote. It’s a double-standard.

The final piece of evidence is that apparently, we have Caesar’s own words. Unfortunately, we have no such statement of “I crossed the Rubicon” or “I crossed the river” that I know of in relation to this event. So how do we have Caesar’s own words?

Carrier then says we don’t have any writings of Jesus. This is true. We also don’t have writings of Socrates. As is pointed out in “The Lost World of Scripture” most teachers did not write out their works. Instead, they left it to their disciples. Most teachers also did not care for writing their works since they feared their works could be misunderstood. For those interested in where to find information on this, see here and here.

Carrier also says the names of the Gospels were applied later and on questionable grounds. What were these grounds? Well he doesn’t tell us. Here you can listen to Tim McGrew answering this question and if one is interested in charges of forgery, go here.

Carrier also says Paul saw Jesus in a vision. Evidence of this given? None. Of course, if Jesus did not rise, it would have to be a vision, but what if He did rise? And further, did Paul really think He had just had a vision, or did he think that Jesus physically appeared to him?

In the end, I conclude that Carrier’s argument is just based on false assumptions all throughout and at times, not entirely honest.

We’ll wrap up on history next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Is Harry Potter True?

Can one dismiss the gospel accounts by pointing to the boy wizard? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

It’s amazing that the group that likes to call themselves freethinkers all seem to think exactly alike and follow the exact same thought patterns. One idea catches on in the group and those who make the most out of condemning gullibility are immediately shouting it from the rooftops unaware that a few minutes worth of research could have prevented them from making such blunders.

A major one going around today is to say that if you believe the stories of Jesus are true, what about the stories of Harry Potter?

Because we all know there’s just a one-to-one parallel right there.

If we are to say it’s because of fantastical elements, well nearly every ancient writing of the time had some fantastical elements. We would have to throw out all of ancient history by this. Of course, not all did this, but it was something common still.

For instance, biographies of Alexander the Great that we have and even consider authoritative state of him that he was virgin born. Do we throw them out? No. We just look and say “Well this is a late tradition with not much behind it and we should be skeptical.” A mistake many critics make is thinking that history is an all-or-nothing game. An account is totally reliable in everything or it’s totally false in everything.

Unfortunately, many Christians make the same mistake with Scripture.

For the sake of argument Christian, what would it mean to you if you found out that there was one error in the Bible? Would you pack everything up immediately, conclude Jesus didn’t rise from the dead and that you can’t know anything about Him, and then abandon your Christian faith?

If your answer is yes, then you have a problem.

For me, if it was true, I’d still have an incredibly strong case for the resurrection, but I would have to change my views on inspiration and inerrancy. My overall method of historiography however would remain unchanged. I would just say I’d been wrong in some usages of it.

Now the comparison going around the net just doesn’t work. It says that Harry Potter has stories in it that are magical and therefore, it is untrue. The gospels also have stories in them that are magical. If we were being consistent, we’d say the gospels are untrue.

To begin with, the objection assumes that such a thing as magic does not exist. We do not know that for sure. Now is it fine to be skeptical of such a claim. In fact, I encourage skepticism, but if your worldview automatically precludes such a thing, then you are reaching a decision before examining the evidence.

Furthermore, the Harry Potter novels are in fact written to be fiction. No one has any idea that Rowling considered herself to be writing an authentic account of events that were taking place. The gospels by contrast are Greco-Roman biographies. They are not hagiographies, those came later. They must be judged by what was there at the time and at the time, they were written as Greco-Roman Biographies, accounts written to be historical. (The only exception could be Luke which could be a historiography with Acts being part 2 of it.) Those wanting more information on this are encouraged to read Richard Burridge’s “What are the Gospels?”

Now if we are to say that the problem is the gospels contain miracles, we come to the same objection. Has it been shown that miracles cannot happen? In fact, given Craig Keener’s book “Miracles” we can have a strong case that miracles do in fact happen and are still abundantly claimed today.

“Yeah. Well you’ll accept miracles in Christianity, but what about those outside your Christian tradition?”

That’s simple. If you show me a miracle that has good evidence backing it, I will believe it happened. It doesn’t have to be within my Christian tradition at all. If you can show me there’s a strong case that Vespasian healed blind men for instance, I’ll be more than happy to say that he did even if I can’t explain it, but good luck doing that.

Incredulity is not an argument. You may think miracles are ridiculous. Fine. It doesn’t work against my worldview to say that your worldview is different. You will need to give me an argument for your own worldview.

In fact, whenever I see someone use the Harry Potter analogy to explain away the gospels, I already am certain that I am meeting someone who is unfamiliar with historiographical standards at all. To skeptics of the NT, I encourage you to get a better argument. Start by reading good scholarship on both sides. Maybe in the end you’ll still disagree with me, but I hope it will be an informed disagreement.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Reading the Christian Spiritual Classics

Is there a proper way for evangelicals to engage the spiritual classics? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Reading The Christian Spiritual Classics is a work edited by James Goggin and Kyle Strobel. If the last name sounds familiar, it’s not a coincidence. That is Lee Strobel’s son and this has been his area of study. Lee is a friend of mine who got me a copy because frankly, a book on spiritual classics is quite frankly something I would not have picked up on my own.

In the area of apologetics after all, we’re trying to keep up as much as we can. There are so many new books that we need to read and then there’s all the research and we at the same time are family men who need our own time as well and then there’s still time that we have to spend with prayer, Bible study, etc.

People don’t often realize how big a job ministry is and in ministry, one often thinks they carry the burden of others around them. To an extent, of course we do, but we are not alone and part of the essential process of a Christian is sanctification. This is why I’ve surrounded myself as well with mentors, including a mentor I email every night to make sure I have been keeping up with prayer, an area I need to improve on, and seek advice for problems in my life.

I say all this because this review could sound negative at the start, but it really isn’t. When I started reading, I felt like I was having to push myself through. That is not because this book is a problem. Not at all! It is because I know that this is not what I am used to reading.

This is not to say I never read anything dealing with sanctification, but it is not something that I think we commonly read, much like an apologist I interacted with recently said apologists need to spend more time reading fiction. We should have our place in the academy of course, but we are not to be just in the academy. The best apologists I know are the ones that can also be real people. If I can laugh and joke with someone in my field, I know they’re real. It’s also why I make sure to take time for non-academic interests, such as the Mrs. and I watching our favorite shows most every night.

Reading a book about spiritual classics then is stretching someone in the field, but we need to be stretched. Part of Christian sanctification is being made uncomfortable unfortunately. It’s about doing things that we normally wouldn’t do. I would in fact encourage someone who just reads spiritual classics that they need to pick up books like Lee Strobel’s “The Case for Christ.” Every bit of sanctification we have must be grounded in truth. All that we do must be grounded in truth.

The book in its work tells why they should be read but also gives a warning in our day and age and one that applies greatly to apologists. This book is for evangelicals and so it assumes evangelical positions and tells us we could be reading a spiritual classic and it will talk about the veneration of Mary, for instance, and some of us who might be staunchly against the Catholic position could raise our defenses up and unfortunately, miss all the good stuff that is there.

And yes, this book recommends reading the Catholic classics. It also recommends reading the Orthodox classics. I do not doubt that people in both of those camps would also recommend reading works by people in the other branches just as much. Wisdom can be found in all manner of places in the Christian tradition.

Reading this book gave me a challenge to consider these kinds of areas more seriously and even had me looking on my Kindle to see from time to time if I could find any of these books that were talked about for download.

Christians are called to be holy people and of course, people of truth. It is easy to miss out on any one side. In our church today, we can often reflect on holiness and our experience, without remembering that these have to be grounded in truth. In more apologetic circles, we forget that truth that has no impact on us is just what is going to puff us up. If we believe something is true, we should act accordingly. If we believe in the Lordship of Christ and the advance of His kingdom, we should act accordingly.

It is because of that then that while I read the book as dry at first, I saw myself becoming more receptive over time, and realized the dryness said nothing about the book but about myself. If I went through again, I still think it would be difficult, but I think I would be still getting more out of it. I recommend this book then knowing that it will be a challenge, but a way that we need to be challenged.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Why I Encourage Waiting Until Marriage

Is it harmless to have you fun before you say “I do?” Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Recently, at Reclaiming The Mind, Michael Patton posted on the topic of if the Bible condemns pre-marital sex. His idea was “Yes.” Then shortly after that on TheologyWeb someone shows up who in the midst of his posting saying he is a Christian, starts saying Christ has no problem with sex before marriage and that the legalism of Christians on the issue is sickening. (Wouldn’t surprise me from what I saw if the guy was really an atheist.) There are a number of Christians who have questions on this issue. I figured I should throw in my own two cents.

To give a personal background, when I first lived in Knoxville, I had a circle of friends and around me, I saw people getting married. I was in a position of wondering if it’d ever happen to me. Many people I chatted with online knew that this was my perennial question. It was the great sadness I had in my life. When I went to Charlotte and got on Facebook while there, I saw many people I went to high school with had married and were having kids as well.

Ironically, I formed a new circle of friends, many of whom were in my wedding party. As it turns out, this time, I was the first one in my circle to get married. Allie and I have been married for nearly 2 and a half years. I was 29 when we married and she was 19. (I waited a long time. I tell her often she’s fortunate that she got something many girls dream about, a good husband, pretty much right out of high school) Add in that we both have Asperger’s, and that makes things even more interesting.

Sex is definitely an important part of a marriage. Some people might suspect that I’m going to say what some Christians give the impression of. Sex is something dirty and you shouldn’t think about it.

Um. No.

I’m a married man. I consider that practically blasphemy to say that about sex. It’s something special and awesome and wonderful. God created it. It was all His idea. He designed the parts, the system, and even the engine that runs it. The pleasurable aspect of it, He made for us.

Yes. God intends for us to enjoy this.

I also don’t want to say the usual stuff that we get. Most often we are told “You could get STDs,” or “You could get a girl pregnant or get pregnant yourself” or “You will have guilt for what you did.” First off, it’s true that you could get an STD or pregnancy outside of marriage could result, but what if that was eliminated, and to an extent it can be. Does that mean we no longer have an argument? Our stance must be on moral grounds and not just practical grounds.

As for guilt, some people do have guilt. Some don’t. We do a great danger to those who don’t because they could say “Wow. I had a really good time. The church was wrong about this. I wonder what else they’ve been wrong about as well?” After all, if guilt always resulted from doing something wrong, our society would not have the sin problem to the extent that it does. (Note that not feeling guilty does not mean one has not incurred actual guilt before God)

So now, eliminating STDs, pregnancy, and feelings of guilt, is there any reason to not have sex before one is married?

Yes. Yes there is.

To begin with, our society has its view of sex very much wrong. When we watch a TV show or a movie for instance, it’s usually just what every person is thinking about entirely 24/7. The media doesn’t seem to show all the other aspects of sex that can happen. It seems foreign to them that a woman might not be turned on immediately but needs to be loved over time. It seems to forget that men can also want some emotional closeness and that one does not just play the sex card every time as if every man will be immediately subservient to that. Watch just the media and you can get the idea that we’re all just big bundles of hormones walking around waiting for our next fulfillment.

Yet even still there is an inconsistency. One can find a prostitute as a shameful place to have in society, but one does not seem to find that sleeping around personally is. If anything, it would seem at least the prostitute who is just giving out sex could be said to at least be making money out of the deal. When I see this, I just cannot figure out the irony of it all.

Also, there is a tendency to view the person as just an object. For we men, it can be that a woman could be seen as nothing more than a means to have sexual release. C.S. Lewis once wrote about a man with strong sexual desire and how it would be said “He needs a woman.” Lewis responded that’s the last thing he needs. If he found a real woman, he wouldn’t know what to do. He just wants sex and a woman happens to be the apparatus by which he desires that. We men in marriage need to be on guard against this attitude.

Now someone can say “Well you wouldn’t drive a car without taking it for a test drive would you?” No. You wouldn’t, but this gets to the problem as it is treating people as if they were mechanical and dare I say it, treating sex as if it was nothing but a mechanical process. Of course, there is nothing wrong with technique and such, but this is not just two physical objects coming together. This is two persons, persons with wills and emotions and desires.

When you take the car off the lot to test it out, the car is not thinking “Oh my. I’d better do good for this driver.” The car is not worried about its performance. The car has no pressure. If you reject it, the car does not pine away in the dealer’s lot. The car does not have fear for the next person to come along wondering if it will be rejected again. The car is just still right there and neither knows nor cares.

It’s usually interesting that most people see themselves as the driver instead of the car. Implicitly, the other person in that case is being watched to see if they please you.

In marriage on the other hand, it becomes different. Yes. We men want our own pleasure very much, and to an extent there is nothing wrong with that. We need to know what we like as well so we can tell our wives, but many men will also say, and I would agree, that there is something unsatisfying if we don’t think we’re pleasing our wives at the same time. We’re not just focused on us. We’re focused on making our wives know how much they mean to us, and bluntly, for us, this is one of the best ways we know how to do it. (I understand that Gary Chapman, author of The Five Love Languages, has said that this is the sixth love language every man speaks.)

The difference is we have that trust built in beforehand through the covenant that has been made. There is no pressure to perform. There is, of course, or should be, desire to perform and to perform well. It is not for fear of rejection in marriage, or at least it shouldn’t be, but for a desire to build up that trust.

Besides, how much can someone be trusted when they seek total and complete vulnerability from you, but are not willing to make a commitment to you in marriage. “Well they will in the future!” Okay. If they will in the future, and you’re certain of that, then what’s the harm with waiting for that commitment?

Of course, that is a struggle and a battle. Allie and I dated for less than a year, but it was a battle until then. She knows I was very hesitant about physical touch. I was always afraid to go too far. I am not for a moment denying that this is a struggle for people who are not married and for people who are in a dating relationship. In fact, that’s good and normal. Sexual desire is a good and healthy thing.

It’s just that sex is something incredibly powerful and explosive. It is a little dynamite in a marriage relationship that adds a powerful spark. For my friends who are single, yes, this is something that changes your life. I tell people that the reason I have so much confidence now as opposed to the way I was before marriage, is because of the validation that I have in marriage. It is like nothing else. It is the strongest way I can be told “I love you.” Men and women both want romance. We just want it in different ways, and we men definitely need to realize especially that women are creatures that need and deserve romance and not just objects to turn off and on for our pleasure.

In the marriage covenant, this becomes something that solidifies the relationship and strengthens it. The deeper bond that comes produces love as the man and woman see each other in a different light. They start responding to each other differently than they did before. In public, one can think they know their spouse in a way no one else does.

Because of this, each person then seeks to please the other more and more and put to death their own desires, and that can be a battle. There are many times, for instance, that one can be in an argument with a spouse and think of a “zinger” that one could use to really win the argument. I can think of times that I have held back when it was right there waiting to be said. Unfortunately, I can think of times when I’ve been an idiot and let it out only to sincerely and deeply be apologizing minutes later. (And men, please do make it a point to apologize and seek forgiveness when you screw up, because you will as will I.)

Many women can enter a sexual relationship seeing it as if it is a precursor to marriage. Many men are quite happy with the relationship at the level that it’s at, and why shouldn’t they be? They get to have their fun and they don’t even have to make a lifelong commitment to the woman. This is also why statistically, living together before marriage increases the likelihood that you will get a divorce.

And speaking of divorce, some of you could be thinking that a trust relationship isn’t really there in marriage because there’s always divorce. Note what I am going to say at the start. I am not going to say that divorce is ALWAYS wrong. There are sad times where I think it is highly recommended, such as the case of an abusive relationship that does not end even after separation and counseling. I also think it is justifiable in the case of marital infidelity. Of course, in the latter, it is also possible to work through it, and I would encourage that route first. Divorce can be an option, but it should be a last resort. We set the bar way too low and inevitably, people will hit a low target. Treating marriage as if it can be ended at any time for any reason destroys trust. Realize you are in a lifelong relationship with that person so do what you can to build it up, not to tear it down, and don’t test the other person.

Some of you are also surprised I haven’t been quoting Scripture in this. I don’t think there is an explicit reference in the Bible, but I think implicitly, true sexuality in the Bible is always seen to be between husband and wife. In Jewish culture, when a couple was betrothed, they did everything except live together and have sex, which would mean this did not need to be spelled out. Also, the point of marriage would in many cases be the first time of having sex. Having sex with someone, as Paul says, makes you one with that person. I can look back and be thankful that I’m one with only one other person and she has only been one with me as well. I am thankful to have this in my life now, but also thankful that I waited.

The reason ultimately we guard sex between a husband and wife is not because we are prudes, although some of us are. It is for the opposite reason. It is because this is like the objects one keeps in a safe-deposit box. You don’t keep dirty laundry or old banana peels or your grocery list in there. You keep what is valuable in there. We protect sex because it is so valuable and realize that releasing this dynamite outside of the setting it was meant to be used in leads to disaster. The hook-up culture is a fine example of this.

For further information, I think one of the best books a parent can get their Christian child before sending them off to college is “How To Stay Christian In College” by J. Budziszewski. In that book, he has a chapter with several reasons to avoid pre-marital sex. Also, Lauren Winner’s book “Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity.” For couples who are engaged or about to be, I highly recommend Kevin Leman’s “Sheet Music” and Ed Wheat’s “Intended for Pleasure.”

Go forward and enjoy, but enjoy the way the Creator intended, and you will get the most out of it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

And Then Jesus Showed Up

Where do we go from here? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Like several of you, I’m quite depressed today. Let me tell a little bit about where I’m coming from.

My birthday is September 19, 1980. That means politically, that when I was born, Carter was finishing his term as president. I grew up then in the Reagan years. My dad worked for USA Today and my mother worked at an Elementary school. I also have an older sister. Now, she lives in Nashville and is trying to make it in the music business. (She goes by the name of Angela Ross over there if anyone is interested in finding her music.) My family is conservative and I grew up conservative, but they said nothing about politics really growing up. They decided to let me make my own decisions. I did grow up in church, and I did make my faith my own at the age of 11. Today, chances are both of my parents would say I know more about both politics and the matters of the church due to a large amount of reading.

We did have financial struggles growing up. My father lost his job when the company was being transferred seeing as my sister was about to graduate. Things have been more difficult since then. The reason I got to go to college was because of disability (Asperger’s). Vocational Rehabilitation was willing to help me. I did graduate and was the first in my family in a long time to have a college degree.

I went on to SES to pursue a Master’s in Philosophy. While there, I got married to Allie, who as readers know is the daughter of Mike Licona and his wife. I bring that up because about a year after that, a controversy broke out over if my father-in-law was denying Inerrancy or not. Readers know I spent much time writing up on that topic. I don’t let anyone mess with my family. It did mean that my education there was pretty much done on my own part as well. I was sure I’d developed some opposition.

Also, three months before my wedding, I had lost my job. It was later that I got a part-time position at a Wal-Mart which later became a job on the night shift. Unfortunately, that job was too stressing for me. Before too long, I got fired, and that has been a black mark on me. I had appealed to managers and told them about the difficulties of the job beforehand, but they did not listen. My wife and I moved back to Knoxville and we live in my grandmother’s old house. (She passed away in November of 2010) We are right next door to my parents. We depend highly on our families to make it as no job has come in yet and donations are down to Deeper Waters. (Keep in mind that any reader who is interested in our newsletter can leave a comment and let me know. Also, we have a page on Facebook that you can like and support)

Seeing all of this, I was hoping for a conservative win last night. I’ve seen the economy dropping and people are not hiring. Any time I have gone on Careerbuilder or Monster, I have been disappointed. My skills are in the area of ministry and there are many jobs I cannot do and do not have the credentials for. Meanwhile, in my field, I see several in the church who have no business being in that position.

So last night, it looks like much of our path got cemented. Not only that, for the first time, marriage lost in some states. We dropped our guard. So the questions are two.

How did we get here?

What do we do now?

Let’s start with the first.

I have several speculations on how it began, but I’ll list a few points.

When the Reformation began, which I think needed to be done, there were still unintended consequences. People tend to move on a pendulum and make great swings from one side to the other. We had trust in the authority of the church and then all of a sudden, that authority was gone. The sad reality is that often at those times some can think “Well what else have we been misled about?” Unfortunately, few people were willing to look for the answers that needed to come. This led to the coming of the Enlightenment. In many ways, our societies were acting like rebellious teenagers. We didn’t like what our parents did so we would grow up and rebel against them.

Like rebels, we sought to see how much we could do on our own. Let’s try to make it without God. Let’s see what we can do. It’s my stance that this led to a greater emphasis on the material world to exclude the world of God. What could be done then? Science is pretty much eventually the only answer. In saying this, it does not mean that science is bad. It most certainly is not. It just means that our society had a wrong focus. We started thinking of science without philosophy or sound metaphysics. After all, to do those could get us into the realm of the divine again.

Next came evolution.

The church made a big blunder here. Let’s realize something immediately at the outset.

Evolution is either true or false.

That’s not too difficult is it?

Evolution can be proven true or false by science.

That’s also not too difficult is it?

The problem is we too quickly took evolution into the religious field. If there’s something I’ve seen lately, it’s been the danger of the Inerrancy of interpretation. Now let’s suppose a macroevolutionary theory would contradict our reading of Genesis. Does that mean that Genesis is wrong? Not necessarily. It means that our interpretation is wrong and what we have to ask is “Is our interpretation correct?” Note that to establish that, we can also use literary methods to study the text.

In fact, recent studies are showing that our interpretation could be wrong. Some works on this include John Walton’s “The Lost World of Genesis One” and Henri Blocher’s “In The Beginning.” Does this mean they’re right automatically? No. But like anything else, we need to just say “Bring forward your case and let’s examine it.” Too often, the church has had a habit of deciding the case before the evidence has come in. This can only cost us.

What our actions did made it a case of science vs. the Bible instead of realizing that if we believe the Bible is true, then if something is true scientifically, it will contradict the Bible. Instead of firing shots, we should have said “Okay. We’ll wait and see what the evidence is on your side.” If the Bible is true and Inerrant, nothing in science can go against it. If we believed in the Inerrancy of Scripture, there would be no need to worry. We could wait and see what happens.

Note also that Darwin’s argument was meant to counter Paley, who had a design argument different from that which has been the case historically. The fifth way of Aquinas, for instance, is not about the internal make-up of objects, but about things working for a final cause, the cause that Aristotle said was the most important cause of all. Darwin dealt with an argument that is not the one the church should have been relying on to begin with.

Note also that neither argument is metaphysical.

When we made a battle go on between science and religion, some decided to return the favor. This includes the works of Draper and A.D. White whose works have largely been found to be lacking in substance, but at the time, people were believing them simply because they did not do the background work and check up on what was said. This is always a problem for us. In fact, it’s a problem for anyone.

Well what happens if we think the external world is no longer our friend?

That’s right! We go to the internal world. Christianity then became a system that is meant to give us good feelings and became a more personal belief system than one that described the world as it is. Religion slowly becomes a personal preference just like a favorite ice cream flavor. We were in fact doing Stephen Jay Gould’s NOMA long before he came up with it. There was an emphasis on internalization to demonstrate that Christianity is true. In other words, we became anti-intellectuals. We withdrew from the world.

And this rift has grown. The church has become less effective in its approach. People have grown more individualistic and more focused on what is going on internally.

Those of us watching last night should see the results of this. A lot of Christians were saying that we cannot support a Mormon. If that is the case, then why did we not have a Christian out there? Could it be because we have so isolated ourselves from the world that we are no longer raising up good Christians in the area of politics? How is it we are to be salt and light in the world and think that we cannot directly influence the governments of our world?

Instead, we became a society that was interested in what can be done for us, or rather for each of us, me. Claims were not studied. Few people have really read anything on economics. People often go by what is going on with them personally instead of looking at the big picture of all the world. We should not be surprised if the world has a self-focus. We should be extremely disappointed if the church is doing the same thing.

As we were sitting here today watching a movie with Allie trying to lift up my spirits, Allie’s Mom called her. I had the phone on speaker as I was sitting here, which is what I usually do, and she wanted to speak to Allie. She told Allie that she was thankful for her. Why? Because she’s seen too many who are compromising with the world. They are looking out for themselves and the great example she had was the marriage debate and how it turned out in some states last night. She was thankful Allie had not compromised and agreed to meet the world halfway. I’m thankful for that as well. She did her own research to decide, something a lot of people don’t do.

That gets us into what we do from here, the second question.

Mike Licona wrote a piece that made it onto Parchment and Pen. I will have a link to it at the end. One term showed up in there. Before the claim, let me show what he said.

“In the first century, the Roman Empire was, for most people, a brutal place to live. Rome ruled with an iron fist and crushed everyone who challenged it and even many who didn’t. An overwhelming majority of those under Roman rule lived below the poverty level.”

This is a hopeless situation. What happened then? Mike Licona goes on to say:

“And then Jesus showed up.”

That changed everything. The world has been going up because Jesus showed up. Jesus turned everything around. Today, we are asking what is going on in our world. Where is Jesus?

He’s not showing up.

Now does this mean I expect Jesus to physically return to save us? Well he will eventually, I know, but I’m not saying that that was the only solution and until that happens, we give up. No. Not at all. There is one way Jesus can show up and that is the way He has not been showing up.

That is, we have not been showing up.

We are to be the body of Jesus, and how are we showing Jesus? We are not. We are withdrawing into ourselves when Jesus went out into the world and confronted others who disagreed. He raised up disciples who went forward with his message. The Roman Empire was a hopeless situation and unlike us, the Christians could not say “We’ll wait until the next election comes about and then we’ll get our Christian choice for emperor on the ballot and we’ll make sure he gets the vote.”

What hope did they have? The government was against them. Heck. It was persecuting them regularly. The other people were looking down on them. They were in the minority. They were a new group and they could not look to past precedent. None of them could say “We can look at the past Christians hundreds of years ago and see what they did.” What did they do? They first off made the arguments that they needed to make. The apologists were busy constantly.

Not every Christian could do this of course, but several were then busy being what the apologists proclaimed. When plague struck, Christians would often care for those no one else would. The lives of Christians were a constant testimony to the world around them. It was unbelievable to people that they were so willing to die for the faith that they were claiming. As Tertullian said “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”

The Christians were salt and light in their world. Intellectual grounds were being manned and people were living for Christ. Today, we are living for ourselves and not willing to face any discomfort. Meanwhile, in other places, the church is being persecuted and we are not really taking that into consideration. In fact, in those places, the church there is often praying for us to be persecuted. Why? Because that will get us going.

Many of us talk about dying for Christ. That’s a thought we might have to consider. Some of us could have to do that, and it is not a pleasant thought to think about. There is a great danger in some of us that are so quick to say we’d be willing to die for Christ. Let’s keep in mind that the head apostle also made the same claim and later denied that he even knew who Jesus was. There was a lot of talk, but there was no substance behind it. (Kind of like politicians and preachers today and it is a great fault of us that we fall for style instead of substance)

Dying for Christ is a moment and it’s done. Of course, there could be exceptions where a death is drawn out, but if anything is longer than that, it is life itself. Few of us talk about living for Christ. We cannot fault the world for acting the way it does. Yes. It’s sin. Yes. God will hold to account. The big failure last night was not on the part of the world. We cannot expect the world to live like Christians when Christians are living like the world. If there is no difference between how we live and how they live, why should we be surprised?

What that means for us is that we need a revolution. No. I am not talking about a physical battle. I do not oppose the right to bear arms. If we are in physical danger at times, I think physical fighting is justified, but it is not the final solution to our problems. We need a revolution of the mind. We need the church to stand up and say “We are here and we will not be silent any longer.”

We also need to avoid this fear we have of offending people. The world is more than ready to do what it can to the church and we think that if we bend over and do nothing, that the world will just stop what it’s doing. It won’t. We’ve got a long track record to show that. We cannot expect to live as non-Christians and have the world come to embrace the Christian message. Christ did not raise up the church to be reactive. He raised it up to be proactive.

The church is supposed to be a force that the gates of Hades will not stand against. Gates are defensive. We are to be offensive. Do we believe that we are to be that force?

The church is supposed to be yeast filling through the dough. We are to spread our influence. Do we believe that?

The church is supposed to be a mustard seed growing into a tree to fill the Earth. Do we believe that?

If we believe that, then we realize that there is no real “Game Over.” (Yes. I grew up a gamer as well and still am.) We just have to start playing a better game. We should realize that the person behind the game knows that in the end, the good guys always win. We can realize that our world is a really dark place, but that a dark place is a place where heroes can rise up. Right now, the church needs that. It needs us to stand up and lead the charge.

If you’re reading this blog and a Christian, I’m going to assume you’re a Christian who at least somewhat takes your faith seriously. Do it more so. Do your part. It could be tempting to lie down and surrender and I will say part of me is having a “Why bother?” attitude. What I write I write not only for you, but also for myself. This is not the case for us. The early church won the battle overall, and they did not have America to do it with. They didn’t even have free elections.

We can’t guarantee America will last. Great empires do fall. The gospel will not fall. If we believe that, we must live it. We must stand up to our age and say “No. You will not marginalize and bully us. You will not trample on us. You will not deny us our right to speak. We will get our message out. We will live our message. We are going to be what Christ wanted us to be. We will say what we believe and we will make no apology for it.”

It is only by the church standing up and being the body of Christ can we hope to make an impact. Let’s hope we do it here in America. If we do not, we can know that someone else will somewhere, maybe in China, but when we stand before God, the line of “It was someone else’s job” won’t work.

Let’s do our part. Our Lord deserves 110% and still more.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Mike Licona’s blog entry can be found here

Presenting Jesus as Real

Is Jesus truly as real as the air we breathe? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

To begin with, this post is not about making an apologetics case. That does not mean that this post is useless with apologetics. On the contrary, I think it is of utmost importance for how we do apologetics today and also how we do evangelism. It is a concern that the methods we have that are so successful may not be as successful as we think.

I was thinking this today outside of a church responsible for a large local revival. If I met the pastor, I might ask how many conversions took place. I am sure I would get a sizable number. How many disciples then? Ah. That might be a more difficult question. How many times was Jesus really presented as a historical reality who walked among us? That could be a bit ambiguous.

Of course Jesus is presented that way! We open up our Bibles and there he is!

Indeed, there he is, but do we not pause to consider that the early church did not have a gospel save the Old Testament and the Old Testament does not include in it the life and death of Jesus. One can point to prophecies, but there is no explicit message as there is in the New Testament.

To say we open up our Bibles is excellent if you’re talking to people who already know the Bible is from God. It is not for those who do not. When asked by many why they should believe the Bible, it is quite likely that the answer that one will get is “faith.”

By what reason should one not believe the Book of Mormon? By what reason should one not believe the Koran? If these are not by faith, the great danger is that there will simply be an appeal to emotion. The sad problem is that the Mormon will quite easily also point to an emotion and say by what basis do you accept your emotion as being from God and not His?

This can also happen with miracle claims as well and we must admit that. It can often be assumed that the Christian rejects all virgin births and all resurrections, except for in the case of Jesus. There is absent any notion that Jesus’s are the ones that actually do have a historical case for them.

Let us be upfront about miracles then. There is no reason to reject miracles from other religions prima facie. Let us be open-minded with them as we want others to be with ours. We do not want to accept all claims blindly, but it is just as bad to reject all claims blindly.

So what are we to do?

In Season 3 of Smallville, Clark Kent finds out that his father Jor-El might actually have visited Earth at one time and even passed through Smallville. Clark tells his father Jonathan that up until now Jor-El had been a distant and powerful friend, but what if he really had come down here? Maybe he was more like Clark than Clark realized.

To be sure, Jesus did become fully human, but let us not think that God is like us. He is not. We are to be like Him instead. I am not like the image that I see in the mirror. The image that I see in the mirror is like me. That being said, what of the distant and powerful friend?

That is often how Jesus can be presented. Jesus is at a distance and He’s powerful, but what is it that He is doing in life? Too often, it is presented as if Jesus is there to fix a lot of your problems. Financial struggles? Jesus can help you. Struggle with alcoholism? Try Jesus. Problematic children at home? Jesus can help you be a good parent. Marriage problems? Jesus can help you be a good spouse.

I am not disagreeing with any of these in reality. I do think that if you truly follow Jesus, it should affect your lifestyle in various ways. My concern is that this reduces Jesus to simply the latest self-help cure. Do we have any evidence that this is what Jesus was like for the first century Christians?

Doubtful. To be a Christian then was to sign your own death warrant. How many would sign a death warrant just because the children were a problem when the cult just down the street could help me with that as well and as a special bonus, you get to participate in these great orgies rather than having to live the strict moral code the Christians followed. Oh yes. Let’s not forget that also the emperor didn’t care if you joined that group so your life could be safe.

So what does it mean if we present Jesus that way and instead get the answer back that “Medication does that for me” or “I happen to be seeing a really good therapist and he’s helped me immensely” or “Have you not read the latest self-help book?”

Now once again, I am not against any of the above mentioned, but I am against presenting Jesus as if He’s just the better product amongst competition. It’s not as if we want to make an infomercial saying “Try Jesus. We guarantee full satisfaction or your money back!”

When it comes to presenting Him, are we presenting Him as real? We can often ask people how they know the reality of Jesus and we are presented with an emotional response. The Mormons will also give the exact same answer for how they know that Joseph Smith is a prophet.

This puts us in a danger. What if your sole basis for knowing that Jesus is real is a feeling? You are a sitting duck then for the Mormon. When you have that contrary feeling from the Mormons, will you suddenly switch to Joseph Smith? Will he be a better product?

What also when you hear atheistic and liberal professors go against your most cherished beliefs that you hold on that basis? Will you go on believing but with a cognitive dissonance that thinks you have to jettison reality in order to be a Christian, or will you just abandon the faith? In either case, you will be useless for the Kingdom if not even a detriment.

The other danger is that basing it on a feeling will instead produce a chasing not after Jesus, not after holiness, but rather after a feeling. When you feel X, then the world is right, but there could be all manner of reasons for not feeling X at a point in time. Perhaps you have a cold or you had a bad night’s sleep or you ate the wrong thing or had an argument with your spouse.

This is how addictions are made and with an addiction, one does not seek the object of the addiction but rather one seeks the feeling that comes from the object. The person does not want drugs for drugs but drugs for a high. The person does not want sex out of love for the other, but rather out of seeking a strong experience and really good sensations.

Using the last example, how many people would like their marriage to be based on a feeling? Most would say that if they did that, they would have to get a new spouse every two to three years. What woman would like to know that her husband likes having her around for sexual joy, but other than that, oh well?

Now am I totally opposed to feelings in all of this? Absolutely not! Some of you out there are very emotionally oriented and praise God for it. I have no problem. Some of you like myself are more rationally oriented. Let us make sure that neither looks down on the other. We need both types. I am against a blind emotionalism. I am also against a cold intellectualism.

What I am saying is that the emotional person needs to have an emotion that is rooted in truth. A rational person needs to have an argument that produces a difference in the world. That gets us to the point then of presenting Jesus as real.

If we claim that Jesus is as real to us as the air that we breathe, we need to live that out. Jesus cannot be just the end of a syllogism or a study of historical research. He also cannot be the quick fix in our lives alone. Jesus can be the one who helps us with our problems and also the result of a historical study, but He is surely much more than that.

Jesus made the claim that He is the king of all creation. All of eternity depends on Him. If He is risen, then life has meaning. If He is not, then let us eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. Jesus did not come down here to do miracles alone as if He was showing off His divinity. Each miracle He did had a greater purpose than just helping the person in need.

Jesus also did not come solely to forgive us of our sins. He came for that, but He did not come for just that. He came to bring life to a world that was dying. That would include the forgiveness of sins, but it would also include the transformation of lives and then that of society.

Yet for us, the transformation seems to be what we can get through self-help, therapy, or medication and the goods that He gives us are really happy feelings whenever we think about Him. Would the such have been said for another king at the time, such as Caesar? “Try Caesar as king! You’ll like him and you’ll be a better parent too!”

It is when we realize that Jesus is King, Lord, and Judge, that we come to realize how it is that we must live. History is not about us and our feelings and pitiful little desires. It is all about Him. He is really the central focus of the universe. All roads do truly end at Jesus. Some end with Him as friend. Others end with Him as foe. All end with Him as Judge giving the ultimate verdict.

Perhaps when we realize that, we will be partaking in a Kingdom agenda and with that will come again what came in the first century and onward, the transformation of society. Perhaps when we put Jesus on the throne again and take ourselves off we will come to see the good He can do. Perhaps when we realize that the way of Christ is better than our way will we start living our lives accordingly. We will realize Jesus is not distant. He is ever-present and at any time can take us out of the picture if He so desires. He does not need us for anything. We need Him for everything.

It is my sincere hope that when we do all of this, we will then get to the apologetic of backing our evangelism with the case for Jesus as the Risen King and why we believe such. When we do such, could it be that then we will have our revolution that we need to stop a world in moral decline?

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Hashing It Out With Hashmalah

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. Tonight, I’d like to look at something that was sent to me by Ratio Christi on the topic of Paul. There is a web site that has the claim that Paul was the false teacher that Jesus warned about.

You would have thought the claim of Paul creating Christianity as it is today would have died out since E.P. Sanders gave it a death blow so long ago, but this is the internet. I am reminded of how Mark Twain is reported to have once said “When the world comes to an end, I want to be in Kentucky because everything happens twenty years later in Kentucky.” (No offense to my readers in Kentucky.) I think a similar saying could be “If you want to find a false teaching highly supported, find it on the internet because everything scholarship has refuted already takes fifty more years on the internet.”

The link to their site will be shown below.

Let’s look at their first argument made concerning 1 Cor. 4:16

Here Paul claims that HE, not “Christ” had “begotten you.” He “beseeches you” to be HIS followers, HIS imitators. The impostor claims are not made out rightly so as to astonish, but to subtly influence and brainwash the masses over a long term, strategic ministry of indoctrination (one which continued well on past 65 C.E.).

Swing and a miss here. Paul also claimed to be in a motherly position earlier giving them milk. It’s a metaphor. What does it mean to say he fathered them? It means he established the Corinthian church and he saw himself as responsible for their being united and a witness to the world. It is not at all taking the place of Christ.

Does he call them to be imitators of him? Yes he does. That was the typical way a rabbi, to which Paul was one, talked in those days. The students were to observe the rabbi and follow life as he did it. Paul says in Philippians however that he imitates Christ, the ultimate rabbi. Thus, Paul is telling them to imitate him as he imitates Christ, which is really placing a large responsibility on his head.

Hash, which is what we will call the site from here on, sees this as an ego trip, but there is no basis for that in Rabbinic thought. Rabbis were to live lives before their students in such a way that they would be ready examples to follow of being imitated. A little bit of study of the social context of 1 Corinthians and the Mediterranean culture would have gone a long way.

Moving on we see the following:

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” Galatians 2:20

Paul says it is not really “him” that you see, the “he” was crucified, and it is “not I but Christ” living in his body. He is claiming that he is essentially Christ, and for this reason he is superior to all of Christ’s Disciples who opposed him at every turn.

One wonders just how much fail can be packed in an argument. No again. The Galatians knew that Jesus was crucified. They knew Paul wasn’t and they knew Paul had been in their midst. So what is Paul saying?

Paul is simply identifying himself with Christ as all Christians should. To become a Christian was to identify yourself with the carpenter from Nazareth. Which one? The one that was put on a cross under the curse of YHWH? Yep. The one that was given the death penalty for being treasonous to Rome? Yep. That was quite a claim to make.

For the ancient world, your identity came from who you identified with. As Don Matzat teaches in his book “Christ-Esteem” we have too much of a problem with self-esteem in our world. We need Christ-esteem. We need to find our identity in Christ and realize the good that we have is His good.

If one lives as if the Law is still the force that determines righteousness, then one is saying that Christ died for nothing. If one lives however knowing that Jesus has fulfilled the Law, then one lives knowing that they are righteous in Christ and not in the Law. Their righteousness comes from being identified with Christ.

Hash’s statement is simply wild speculation about Paul claiming to be superior to the other apostles. Do they have any scholarly sources that will say such a thing? Do they have a work such as Ken Bailey’s newest book, a look at 1 Corinthians from a Mediterranean perspective, or do they have the work of the context group with scholars like Pilch and Malina?

Nope.

And some people wonder why I have such a problem with the idea that we need no study to understand the Bible….

Jesus’ Brother Yaqov or “James” is almost entirely written out of the picture, and is referred to in a butchered historical account of Acts (an account which is retold in original, more precise terms in the Dead Sea Scrolls), by a descriptive noun “Stephen” (`Atarah, or the “Crown”), rather than by his true name.

What is this source that Hash is using? We don’t know. He doesn’t say, but supposedly we are to believe that Stephen is not really a real person but is rather a made-up name for James. This despite the fact that Josephus tells us that it was after the death of Festus that James was stoned. This can be found in book 20 and chapter 9 of the Antiquities.

So upon what basis are we to believe that Stephen is really James? Beats me. Apparently, Hash thinks that asserting it is the case. Is it because both are killed by stoning? Then to reference what Chesterton said in “The Everlasting Man”, we might as well think the baptism of John and the great flood are the same event. Both of them have people going underwater.

However, neither the censored Gospel accounts – relegated to the “Apocryphal works” that didn’t make the Council of Nicea’s “cut” in 325 C.E. – nor the “early Church fathers” were silent in regards to James and this outright war on Paul.

Source for this? None is given. I had no idea the canon was decided at Nicea. Oh wait. It wasn’t. Will we see citations from the church fathers soon? I sure hope so. Keep in mind Clement, the disciple of Peter, and Polycarp, the disciple of John, both spoke highly of Paul.

For instance, consider this from 1 Clement.

1Clem 47:1
Take up the epistle of the blessed Paul the Apostle.

Or what Polycarp said in Polycarp 3:2

Polycarp 3:2
For neither am I, nor is any other like unto me, able to follow the
wisdom of the blessed and glorious Paul, who when he came among you
taught face to face with the men of that day the word which
concerneth truth carefully and surely; who also, when he was absent,
wrote a letter unto you, into the which if ye look diligently, ye
shall be able to be builded up unto the faith given to you,

And in 11:3

But I have not found any such thing in you, neither have heard
thereof, among whom the blessed Paul labored, who were his
letters in the beginning. For he boasteth of you in all those
churches which alone at that time knew God; for we knew Him not as
yet.

Yep. Great war going on there.

Moving on with Hash:

For instance, Paul said: “Yet knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Torah but through the faith of Jesus Christ, even we believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the Torah, because no flesh will be justified by the works of the Torah.” Galatians 2:16

Yaqov poignantly rebuked this statement, saying: “What does it profit, my brothers, if a man says he has faith, and doesn’t have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled, without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it doesn’t have works, is dead.” James 2:14-17

Paul and James are speaking to two different situations. Paul is speaking of righteousness before God. James is speaking of our righteousness as displayed before man. James is telling us that if you just say “I have faith” with no actions to back it, one can really question that you have faith.

In 2 Corinthians 12:16, Paul makes a perplexing, yet revealing, statement: “But be it so, I did not burden you: being crafty, I took you in by deceit.”

Does Christianity accept “taking in by deceit” as a means of “ministering,” and propagandizing?

Ever heard of sarcasm? Paul is using it. He’s stating something that’s obviously not true so his audience will realize it. Leave it to a site like Hash to totally miss the point. Paul is saying that he in fact did not do what it is that the super-apostles at Corinth were doing.

The Torah, the “Law,” which Paul mocked and considered a “yoke” and “bondage,” says: “Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not deceive one another.” Leviticus 19:11

Where does Paul say this? We aren’t told. We’re just told that he does. This despite the fact that in Romans 7, he affirms the goodness of the Law.

We find more disagreement supposedly between Paul and James which I believe has been dealt with. Then we find the complaint that Paul never met Jesus in person, which has what to do with the price of tea in China, I have no idea. I can just as easily say Hash hasn’t met Jesus in person nor have I, so therefore we have no authority on what Jesus taught? This despite the fact that in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul is very careful to distinguish his words from the Jesus tradition.

What do we find next?

In short, the case against Paul doesn’t look too good. Aside from being named out rightly in the Habakkuk Pesher of the Qumran “Dead Sea Scrolls” and found consonantally named in the Book of Habakkuk (which, recall, didn’t have diacritical vowel marking ascribed to it until absolutely no earlier than the 6th century C.E., and possibly not until the 10th or 11th century), Paul was also blind in the right eye, fitting the Book of Zechariah’s prophecy of the Antichrist called “the Worthless Shepherd” (Zechariah 11:17), and also the many Islaamic “Ahadeeth” (oral traditions) speaking of the “Antichrist” (Maseehu-d-Dajjaal), as being blind in the right eye.

References? Not a one. We have no idea where this is found. Blind in the right eye? News to me. Where is the scholarly information that backs this?

Beyond that, Paul was an admitted murderer who never stood trial for his crimes. He merely claimed that the “blood of Jesus” had absolved him from his sins. What civilized person would accept such a defense from admitted murderers wishing to escape justice today or 2,000 years ago?

And who would Paul have stood trial with considering the very organization that he was working for is the one that would have jurisdiction? They were ordering the murders. Paul repented. He never claimed it justified his actions. Paul is not escaping justice. He is in fact going against the system that was wanting to put Christians to death.

Interestingly, Paul himself never once admits that he was from Tarsus, Greek mythology’s entrance to “Hades” or “Sheol” in Hebrew (consonantally the same spelling as Paul’s Hebrew name “Sha’ul”). This fact is written in his biography, the book of Acts, after his mysterious disappearance and presumed death in 65 C.E. Why does Paul himself keep his Roman origins from us if not for the fact that Jews has long known from oral tradition that the Antichrist or “Armilus” was to be a “Roman Jew?”

Why should Paul spend epistles talking about his growing up? We’re not told. Where is this tradition about the antichrist being a Roman Jew? We’re not told. Hash expects us to be people of great faith obviously.

Now we also have complaints about Paul boasting, but Paul is simply using mockery and sarcasm again against his opponents. This was part of rhetoric in the ancient world. Paul himself said in 1 Cor. 13 that love does not boast.

As well, Paul admitted to theft and swindling churches. These are his own words: “I robbed other churches, taking wages of them, to do you service.” 2 Corinthians 11:8

Once again, Paul is using sarcasm. He is being accused of using the Corinthian churches, and instead he is saying that he took money from the other churches instead. The use of robbery is again Paul being sarcastic.

Hash also shares Matthew 5:17-20 and how Jesus had said he did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it. Supposedly in contrast to this, Paul says:

However, in utter contradiction to Jesus Christ’s affirmation of the eternal validity of the Torah, as long as Heaven and Earth are extant, Paul blasphemously claims that the Messiah came to “destroy the barrier… by abolishing in his flesh the Torah.” This alone is proof that Paul is an outright Impostor and Liar, the Great Pretender.

“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the Law with its commandments and regulations.” Ephesians 2:13-15

What is gone is the distinction between Jew and Gentile based on the Law so the people of God can become one. Note also that Jesus said he came to fulfill the Law, which He did. The purpose of the Law was a guardian to lead people to Christ. Now that Christ has come, the Law is no longer the identification of righteousness.

As we reach the conclusion, once again, there is nothing scholarly in what is said. There are just assertions piled upon assertions. As it turns out, there is not much to hash out with Hash.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Link to Hash is here.

Link to First Clement is here.

Link to Polycarp is here.