Tag: God

9/11 And Why Evil Fails Practically

Does the atheistic problem of evil really help? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Since today is the anniversary of 9/11, let us consider a thought experiment. Now I think that it is impossible for anything to exist without God existing, but I am going to put that aside for argument’s sake in this post. I also am going to approach this as if we have no strong evidence for or against the existing of God. This is going to be on a practical level only. In essence, I am asking which worldview would be preferable to be true on theism vs. atheism.

We thus have two different scenarios for a 9/11 event. In world A, theism is true. In world B, atheism is true, and I am taking atheism as the definitive statement that there is no God. That is what it means anyway.

“Atheism is the position that affirms the non-existence of God. It proposes positive disbelief rather than mere suspension of belief.”

William Rowe The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy p.62

“Atheism, as presented in this book, is a definite doctrine, and defending it requires one to engage with religious ideas. An atheist is one who denies the existence of a personal, transcendent creator of the universe, rather than one who simply lives life without reference to such a being.”

Robin Le Poidevin Arguing for Atheism: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion p.xvii

I hate that I have to post so much, but I am sure some atheists would come around and say “Atheism is a lack of belief!”

So now having established my case here is what happens. In both worlds, 9/11 happens and thousands die in one horrible attack.

In world A, there is an eternity that people will spend. Some will spend it in Heaven and some will spend it in Hell, at least on Christian theism. There is the possibility that there will be justice for the people who perpetrated the evil. There is the possibility that there will be the chance that people will see their loved ones again. Justice can still prevail in the world. Of course, some other forms of theism might answer matters differently, but I think a large number would say that there is still a God who can give justice and raise the dead.

In B, well, it was certainly a tragedy, but that was it. The attackers? Dead. The victims? Dead. Chances of justice for them? None. Chances of seeing dead loved ones again? None. I do realize there are some atheists who have postulated an after-death, but this is a very very small minority. Note also I am even granting that there are still ideas such as goodness and justice in an atheist universe which I even then still question.

From a practical standpoint, you could say that in the theistic universe, some people could suffer eternally, but also some will rejoice eternally and some will see dead loved ones again and some of those people who will suffer will very likely be the attackers themselves who pulled off the evil.

This is one reason I just do not think the problem of evil works. Remove God and you still have all the problems. Sure. We might not know why God allowed X to happen, but if we are honest with ourselves, we do not know why we do X in our own lives many times. I am fine with an unknown of why if it comes with a known of someone I can trust.

9/11 is a great tragedy in our nation’s history. It was not the first. It will not be the last. As a Christian, I can be thankful there is a God in every tragedy.

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

The Myth of the Divinity of Jesus Christ Part 4

Does Jesus have the attributes of God? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Early on, Iqbal brings up two passages of Scripture to show Jesus was not omnipotent.

John 5:30 — By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.

And

Mark 6:5 — He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them.

With the former, what does he expect Jesus to say? “I do everything on my own and I make judgments the way I want to regardless of the Father?” This is a claim of strong unity with the Father. He is saying “When I judge, it is the judgment of God. When I act, it is the act of God.”

As for the latter, it seems strange to think Jesus’s ability to do miracles depend on faith when in the Gospels, His followers weren’t expecting His resurrection and yet, there it was. We can grant Muslims don’t believe in the resurrection, but that doesn’t change that it is in the Gospels and thus they are primary sources for Christian doctrine. What is going on is Jesus is responding to loyalty there. Since the people don’t welcome Him and want Him, He doesn’t do many miracles there.

Iqbal also says God does not pray to anyone, but this assumes that God is unipersonal, which is the statement under question. If there are at least two persons who are God, what is wrong with one of them “praying” to the other one? This is especially the case since Jesus was fully human. Iqbal needs to show why this is a problem and not just assume it is.

He then looks at what Warfield said about how Jesus acted in both His humanity and His deity. This is certainly true, but then Iqbal jumps to full Nestorianism saying that this means Jesus had two persons in Him. That was a position the early church called heretical. (And interestingly, could have been the kind of Christianity that Muhammad was most in contact with.)

He also says one idea also among Christians is that Jesus laid aside His powers based on Philippians 2. No. That’s known as the kenotic heresy nowadays and you will not find it espoused, at least by Christians who know what they’re talking about.

He then has D.A. Carson being quoted arguing against this in The Case for Christ and then treats it as if Carson is saying he doesn’t know how to explain the incarnation. Unfortunately, I do not have my copy of the book with me, but I do remember Carson goes on to explain what he thinks is going on in this passage. Strange that Iqbal doesn’t show that part.

Iqbal also stresses that Jesus never says “I forgive you” but “Your sins are forgiven” and saying that Jesus is saying the forgiveness comes from God. Yes. And? This is something a Trinitarian has no problem with. What is unusual is Jesus pronounces forgiveness even without a person actually repenting (Hard for that paralyzed man to repent) and acting as if He is the temple Himself where the presence of God dwelt.

He goes on to list eleven signs Jesus was a human, which no one is disputing. One is that Jesus died on the cross, but God cannot die. When people present this to me, I ask them what it means to die. If they say it means the person ceases to exist, then yes, God cannot cease to exist. But if that is the case, then what happens to passages like Colossians 1 that say the Son holds all things together? The Son could never cease to exist. If instead it means, the soul of Jesus left the body of Jesus, then we have no problem.

It’s odd to see that he says Jesus is guilty of falsehood. In one case, Jesus says to the thief that the thief will be with Him in Paradise, but Jesus went to hell for three days. I take hell to be best understood as the realm of the dead. I do happen to think Jesus did go to Paradise with the thief. Iqbal also talks about Jesus’s harsh language like calling the Pharisees broods of vipers. Statements like this are allegedly unbecoming of the Son of God. We are not told why this is.

Finally, there’s the idea Jesus got prophecy wrong. Just do a search on this blog for Preterism and what I have said about it. There are far too many to link to.

We’ll continue next time.

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

 

Book Plunge: Still Unbelievable Part 3

What about the cause of the universe? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I will say in his defense that chapters by Skydive Phil tend to be well-researched and better than most other chapters. That’s not saying a lot, but that is something. Unlike many other authors, he does have a copious list of notes for what he says. Seeing as this chapter is largely scientific, as you all should know by now, I will not comment on science as science. However, when we get to philosophical points, I will say something.

So let’s get to one:

When we think of causes though, we always do so in the context of time. We could say all events that have causes have prior moments in time. If the universe had a beginning then there was no prior moment of time and hence we have no right to demand there must be some prior cause. Causality may also be a consequence of the laws of physics and the arrow of time. If we had some state with no space or time, no laws of physics and no arrow of time, are we really in a position to demand there must still be a cause?

Johnson, David; Knight, Andrew; Atkinson, Ed; Skydivephil; Taylor, Matthew; Brady, Michael; Dumas, Sophie. Still Unbelievable: Why after listening to Christian arguments we are still skeptics . Reason Press. Kindle Edition.

Ah, but this is assuming chronological causation. Now I fully grant that there is time in that A causes B. My hands are typing on this keyboard which is causing letters to pop up and my hands typing were caused by my willing them to type. That is all well and good. Could it be possible for something to be eternal and still have a cause?

Yes.

Imagine a mirror that has been standing for all eternity. In front of this mirror stands a man who is also somehow eternal. This man is eternally looking in the mirror unmoving. The man sees his reflection eternally in the mirror.

Is his reflection caused?

Yes, and yet it is eternal.

Hard to fathom and get your head around? Sure, but it doesn’t change reality.

The point is all of this is in the context of the Kalam and Phil deals with the modern version that is about the origin of the universe. The historical version of it is not.

In Q. 46 and article 2 of the Prima Pars of the Summa Theologica, it is asked if the beginning of the universe is an article of faith. This doesn’t mean blind belief. It means if this is something that is taken on authority revealed from God. Now were people like Phil correct, Aquinas would say “Of course not! Our argument shows the universe has a beginning!”

He does not.

On the contrary, The articles of faith cannot be proved demonstratively, because faith is of things “that appear not” (Hebrews 11:1). But that God is the Creator of the world: hence that the world began, is an article of faith; for we say, “I believe in one God,” etc. And again, Gregory says (Hom. i in Ezech.), that Moses prophesied of the past, saying, “In the beginning God created heaven and earth”: in which words the newness of the world is stated. Therefore the newness of the world is known only by revelation; and therefore it cannot be proved demonstratively.

Ah! But doesn’t he in his first way assume a beginning?

No. He does not. After all, the ways are built on truths that can be known from reason alone. Therefore, Aquinas’s arguments do not depend on the universe having a beginning. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t nor does it mean that were he here today he would hold the same opinion on if the universe had a beginning. We don’t know what he would say today, but we know what he said then.

Phil goes on to say:

What then caused God? Theists must agree that there is something that doesn’t need a cause. And whilst acausal interpretations of quantum mechanics are still on the table it seems they have the advantage over God because at least we know that quantum mechanics actually exist. The theistic response is that only things that begin to exist need causes. As God didn’t begin to exist then he doesn’t need a cause. An obvious question to ask is how do theists know this? It seems to me like a pure assertion. But what if the universe didn’t begin to exist? Then it wouldn’t need a cause and we will not require God.

Johnson, David; Knight, Andrew; Atkinson, Ed; Skydivephil; Taylor, Matthew; Brady, Michael; Dumas, Sophie. Still Unbelievable: Why after listening to Christian arguments we are still skeptics . Reason Press. Kindle Edition.

From a Thomistic perspective, we know this because God’s nature is to be. His nature is existence itself. What does it mean to be? Look at God. What does it mean to be limited in being? Look at everything else. Saying “What made God?” is like asking “What created existence?” It is by no means an assertion. The great classical theists gave arguments for it. You might think they were wrong, but it was by no means an assertion.

And as for the final part, I have argued that that is just wrong. Saying the universe is eternal does not mean it doesn’t have a cause. Unless the universe contains within itself the principle of its own existing, in other words, it exists somehow by its own power it needs a cause.

From a Thomistic perspective, since the universe is changing, it is limited in its being, and thus needs a cause. My formulation of Kalam in the style of a syllogism goes like this.

That which has passive potential which is actualized depends on something else for its being.
The universe has passive potential which is actualized.
The universe depends on something else for its being.

Passive potential is capacity for change and being actualized means the bringing about of that change. This doesn’t apply to God since He has no passive potential.

When the steady state theory was popular, theologians appealed to passages that describe God’s continual sustaining of creation to make the bible compatible with that too. So it seems that it is not so hard to find passages in the bible whose meaning can be molded to support whatever narrative suits.

Johnson, David; Knight, Andrew; Atkinson, Ed; Skydivephil; Taylor, Matthew; Brady, Michael; Dumas, Sophie. Still Unbelievable: Why after listening to Christian arguments we are still skeptics . Reason Press. Kindle Edition.

This can be done, unfortunately, but that is not the fault of the Bible, but of modern man. It’s why I reject Concordism. The Bible is not meant to be read as a modern scientific text and Christians and atheists both make this mistake.

As for design arguments:

What about design? Well the problem here is that Justin isn’t just asking us to believe in a designer, but an immaterial one. Whenever we see design by agents we see they are physical, they need external energy to do their design work. We also see that complex creatures capable of design arise after long periods of evolution. We also see that the more complicated a designed object is, the more the number of designers are needed. Think of the Large Hadron Collider, one of the most complex objects on Earth. It wasn’t designed by one person. So if cosmic design is like Earthly design, shouldn’t we presume there are many designers? Design by a single immaterial being that didn’t undergo evolution and doesn’t need any external energy source, doesn’t seem to fit what we know about design at all. Theists merely appeal to the similarities that suit and ignore the ones that don’t.  As an atheist then it seems this type of design is the least plausible of Justin three explanations.

Johnson, David; Knight, Andrew; Atkinson, Ed; Skydivephil; Taylor, Matthew; Brady, Michael; Dumas, Sophie. Still Unbelievable: Why after listening to Christian arguments we are still skeptics . Reason Press. Kindle Edition.

The problem here is that this is a sort of part to whole fallacy. All designers we see are material designers, therefore all designers are material. That doesn’t follow. It depends on the nature of the designer and again, classical theism argues for a God who is simple since He is not material and has no parts to Him. Were it otherwise, He would need a designer. Whether design arguments work overall, I leave to my friends who are more scientifically inclined.

In a later statement on miracles, Phil says:

If God frequently performs miracles, can we really say  there is so much regularity in the world? We are being asked to believe that God sets up immutable mathematical relationships in the world only to suspend them every time he does a miracle.

Johnson, David; Knight, Andrew; Atkinson, Ed; Skydivephil; Taylor, Matthew; Brady, Michael; Dumas, Sophie. Still Unbelievable: Why after listening to Christian arguments we are still skeptics . Reason Press. Kindle Edition.

As said in earlier posts on this, not only can we, we have to. If there is no regular order, there is no way to recognize a miracle. Miracles only make sense if there is a regular order where all things being equal, A consistently causes B in C.

There is a whole lot in this chapter I have not replied to because I realize I am not trained in the area to do so. I leave that to the more scientific among you. Next time we look at this book, we’ll discuss morality.

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

 

 

Book Plunge: Atheist Universe Part 3

Is God a loving God? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Okay. I suspect we can wrap up this first chapter today so let’s dig in.

The Bible does indeed say that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). It also says that “Love is not jealous” (1 Corinthians 13:4). Then we are told that “I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God” (Exodus 20:5). “God is love” when He is not torturing billions of non-Christians in Hell or ordering the Israelites to “keep the virgins for yourselves” but massacre all the innocent men, women and male children in the confiscated Promised Land (Numbers 31:18).

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (p. 44). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

I have addressed the question of jealousy in another post. As for Numbers 31, that has also been addressed. Ultimately, Mills just keeps having emotional arguments. It’s basically “God does stuff I don’t like so He doesn’t exist.”

While it is unfair to hold Christianity responsible for perversions of its teachings, it is nonetheless indisputable that, historically, more people have been slaughtered in the name of the Christian religion than for any reason connected to atheism. For 1500 years, the Christian Church systematically operated torture chambers throughout Europe. Torture was the rule, not the exception. Next to the Bible, the most influential and venerated book in Christian history was the Malleus Maleficarum [Hammer of Witches], which was a step-by-step tutorial in how to torture “witches” and “sorcerers.”

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (p. 48). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

It is unfair to hold Christianity responsible for the perversion of its teachings, but I’m going to do it anyway!

Naturally, there is no historical information for any of this. Mills gives no names of these people who were tortured for anything related to atheism. As for the Malleus Maleficarum being the most venerated and influential book in Christianity apart from the Bible, I would love to see the data for that. I would much more expect something like the Summa Theologica, Pilgrim’s Progress, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, The Imitation of Christ, or in our time, Mere Christianity.

Aside from the wholesale extermination of “witches,” the Christian Church fought bitterly throughout its history—and is still fighting today—to impede scientific progress. Galileo, remember, was nearly put to death by the Church for constructing his telescope and discovering the moons of Jupiter.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (p. 48). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

I can’t think of a single medieval historian who would go with this. I recommend again reading Tim O’Neill on this, especially this one. Galileo was not near being put to death for inventing a telescope and discovering Jupiter’s moons. The Catholic Church had its own telescope and heavily invested in astronomy.

The ancient Greeks and Egyptians, for example, made amazing scientific discoveries and wrote detailed scientific analyses that the Christian Church later destroyed and suppressed for centuries.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (p. 49). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

Again, it is not said where this happened. The Christian church was the one who was preserving these writings. If they were destroyed, how does Mills know about them? If they were suppressed, when were they no longer suppressed and rediscovered? He also says elsewhere here that the church didn’t allow cadavers to be studied, and again, you can find more on that here.

Ethical disputes between atheists and Christians almost invariably center around malum prohibitum conduct—usually sexual conduct. The atheist would argue that two consenting, unmarried adults who used proper disease and pregnancy prevention could engage in sexual intercourse without being “unethical” or “immoral.” The Christian, however, would necessarily label this sexual tryst as “wrong” because it was prohibited, supposedly, by God.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (p. 54). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

I would say it is wrong for a number of social reasons I have gone into in this blog. It’s not just “God says no.” Mills needs to read some books on Christian ethics where we actually make arguments beyond Scripture says it, I believe it, that settles it. Mills later says he was a Christian for a time, and his mindset is still really the same. His loyalty is all that changed.

I frequently hear this [C. S. Lewis-inspired] reasoning from Christians, but the argument is entirely definitional rather than substantive. Murder, by definition, is an unjustified killing. Of course everyone agrees that an unjustified killing is wrong. We’re simply agreeing that an unjustified killing is unjustified. But what constitutes an unjustified killing? Here, we’ll face heated debate. Is abortion murder or a sometimes-prudent medical procedure? Is euthanasia murder or a humane and compassionate way to end pointless suffering? Is the death penalty a state-sponsored murder, or justice served? Like many Americans, I’m pro-choice, pro-euthanasia and anti-death-penalty, but few Christians agree with these positions. So where’s our “common conscience”? It exists only by wordplay.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (p. 55). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

And that is a great question. What does constitute an unjustified killing? Anotner one is, what does it even mean to say something is justified or unjustified? That already assumes a moral background and an objective idea of good and evil. Looking at his political views, I do find it interesting Mills wants to kill the innocent often, but to let the guilty live. Also, why is it that when “God kills the children” in Numbers 31, that’s awful, but when a mother wants to do it to the child in her womb, that’s her moral right?

Mills is then asked about the Shroud of Turin.

You have cited a perfect illustration of how religious belief absolutely paralyzes the critical reasoning of Christian apologists and Creation “scientists.” Back in 1988, the Shroud was tested in three separate laboratories using radiocarbon dating techniques. All three laboratories, in Arizona, Oxford and Zurich, reported independently that the Shroud dates back only to the Middle Ages. This radiometric timeframe for the Shroud’s origin coincides precisely with the first historical references to the Shroud, which likewise first appear during the Middle Ages. Any rational person would therefore conclude that the Shroud had its origins during the Middle Ages, not during the time of Christ.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (pp. 58-59). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

And goes on to say:

For example, a team of Creation “scientists” in Colorado Springs, Colorado, claims that all of the radiocarbon tests performed on the Shroud were inaccurate because the Shroud was once in close proximity to a neighborhood fire!

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (p. 59). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

Mills is sadly revealing great ignorance here. The Shroud was involved in a fire and was reconstructed to an extent. The case for the lab tests also has several questions and reading any Shroud expert would tell you this. Finally, Mills says nothing about what really caused the image on the Shroud and not only that, but the other effects of it, like the negative images that couldn’t have been done back in that time.

Mills sadly has become a perfect example of how atheist “reasoning” leads him to reject real study on a subject.

During the early days of Christianity, believers tried to persuade the ruling authorities to establish a legal holiday to commemorate Jesus’ birth. But the governing authorities refused. So the Christians decided that “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” and thereafter celebrated Jesus’ birth on an already-established holiday: the Winter Solstice, December 25th.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (p. 60). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

No information is given on this. Also, the Winter Solstice was not celebrated on December 25th ever. There is no looking at any source talking about the data on the birth of Christ.

Easter is likewise a Christian hijacking of an ancient pagan holiday, the Vernal Equinox, a day when darkness and light are equally divided. Even today, the date of Easter is set each year by calculating the first Sunday after the first full moon after March 21st, the Vernal Equinox.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (p. 61). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

And again, we go the other way. Easter is more based on Passover than anything else. Of course, you can’t count on Mills to actually study this. He just believes whatever he’s read as long as it argues against Christianity.

Christian Fundamentalists have been devilishly successful in their propaganda campaign that all communists are atheists, and all atheists are communists. But these “facts” are altogether erroneous. First, I strongly challenge the assumption that communism is a truly atheistic philosophy. It seems to me that the omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent god of Christianity is simply replaced by the omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent god of the State. Under the communist system, the State is supposedly all-wise, all-good and all-powerful. Communism is therefore just as nutty as religion in its unrealistic, utopian fantasies and pie-in-the-sky promises.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (p. 63). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

Communism is a truly atheistic philosophy. They persecuted religion for a reason dynamiting many churches. But hey, they supposedly act religious in what they do, so it’s not atheism, it’s religion.

I would say this is a perversion of atheism, but is it? What in atheism says you cannot do XYZ to your neighbor? All atheism says is there is no God. If there is no God, then how does killing your neighbor go against that? Sure, atheists can be fine and moral people, but is it because they are atheists? Nothing in atheism requires it. I contend still it’s because they have a thoroughly Christian background they don’t realize.

So finally, that’s the end of chapter 1.

We’ll continue next time.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prophets On Eternal Progression

What do Mormon Prophets say? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

By prophets, I don’t mean biblical prophets. I mean Mormon prophets. These are the people that speak authoritatively for the church and give the new revelation that is coming down.  Many people might not know that Mormons have a doctrine called eternal progression. In the words of one of their presidents, Lorenzo Snow

“As man is, God once was.
As God is, man may become.”

This isn’t like the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of theosis, which even Protestants can accept. This is saying something that would be blasphemous to the position of theosis. This is one of the great exaltations of man and one of the great lowerings of God. It means that God literally was once just an ordinary man and He progressed to Godhood and now we are His creation and one day we will progress to His level. Not only that, He is still progressing.

The source of these quotes is a book by a Mormon named Daniel Ludlow. The book is called Latter-Day Prophets Speak, which is a great source of Mormon claims. Let’s take a look at a small sample of some of these claims.

If I improve upon what the Lord has given me , and continue to improve , I shall become like those who have gone before me ; I shall be exalted in the celestial kingdom and be filled to overflowing with all the power I can wield ; and all the keys of knowledge I can manage will be committed unto me . What do we want more ? I shall be just like every other man – have all that I can , in my capacity , comprehend and manage . – Brigham Young , Journal of Discourses 6 : 276 , August 28 , 1852
We understand that we are to be made kings and priests unto God ; now if I be made the king and lawgiver to my family , and if I have many sons , I shall become the father of ready fathers , for they will have sons , and their sons will have sons , and so on , from generation to generation , and , in this way , I may become the father of many fathers , or the king of ready kings . This will constitute every man a prince , king , lord , or whatever the Father sees fit to confer upon us.In this way we can become King of kings , the Lord of lords , or , Father of fathers , or Prince of princes , and this is the only course , for another man is not going to raise up a kingdom for you . – Brigham Young , Journal of Discourses 8 : 265 – 266 , July 14 , 1855 76
MEN , AS GODS , SHALL ORGANIZE NEW WORLDSI expect , if … faithful , … that we shah see the time … that we shall know how to prepare to organize an earth like this – know how to prepare that earth , how to redeem it , how to sanctify it , and how to glorify it , with those who live upon it who hearken to our counsels.The Father and the Son have attained to this point already ; I am on the way , and so are you , and every faithful servant Of God … After men have got their exaltations and their crowns – have become Gods , even the sons of God – are made Kings of kings and Lords of lords , they have the power then of propagating their species in spirit ; and that is the first of their operations with regard to organizing a world . Power is then given to them to organize the elements , and then commence the organization of tabernacles . How can they do it ? Have they to go to that earth ? Yes , an Adam will have to go there , and he cannot do without Eve ; he must have Eve to commence the work of generation , and they will go into the garden , and continue to eat and drink of the fruits of the corporeal world , until this grosser matter is diffused sufficiently through their celestial bodies to enable them , according to the established laws , to produce mortal tabernacles for their spiritual children.This is the key for you . The faithful will become Gods , even the sons of God . – Brigham Young , Journal of Discourses 6 : 274 – 275 , August 28 , 1852
We shall go on from one step to another , reaching forth into the eternities until we become like the Gods , and shall be able to frame for ourselves , by the behest and command of the Almighty . All those who are counted worthy to be exalted and to become Gods , even the sons of God , will go forth and have earths and worlds like those who framed this and millions on millions of others . – Brigham Young , Journal of Discourses 17 : 143 , July 19 , 1874
If there was a point where man in his progression could not proceed any further , the very idea would throw a gloom over every intelligent and reflecting mind . God Himself is increasing and progressing in knowledge , power , and dominion , and will do so , worlds without end . It is just so with us . – Wilford Woodruff , Journal of Discourses 6 : 120 , December 6 , 1857
I will fully grant that Mormons are good and kind people when they come to your door. They are delightful. Many of you would love to have Mormons for neighbors. However, there is still the reality that our righteousness is as filthy rags.
Honestly, it could be that many missionaries that come to your door might not know this. I’m not sure. Don’t presume that they do. However, this is the same lie that comes in the Garden of Eden that led to the fall of man. It’s philosophically incoherent and impossible, but anti-biblical and theologically corrupt.
I knew about this doctrine already and I knew the defenses for it, but when I read these quotes, I realized I was reading something truly evil. Again, none of this is said to disparage the Mormons as people. I love them greatly and I want to see them come to the true gospel where God is infinitely greater than you are and you will never be as He is. Still, this God far greater than you reaches down in love to you and seeks to make you holy and pure. He wants to make you a reflection of Him in some sense still.
I definitely thus far recommend this book to people who want to reach Mormons. Since they came to see me even while living on a seminary campus and visiting the seminary, I have been even more regularly reading material on Mormonism. It is a fascinating belief system in so many ways and it’s a shame to see so many Mormons falling for a false Jesus.
Let’s give them the real one.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Jesus Was Not A Trinitarian Chapter 2

Who was the God of Jesus? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So we’re continuing our look at Anthony “Have I mentioned the Shema enough” Buzzard’s horrid book. In this second chapter, he’s going to ask who the God of Jesus was. At the start, if you’re an Arian and say Jesus has a God, that’s not going to be a problem to us. Jesus was also a human being who wasn’t an atheist.

So right off, Buzzard tells us that it’s a problem that nowhere in the New Testament does God mean the triune God and that’s a problem. Even if that is true, the response is “So what?” Buzzard doesn’t tell us why this is a problem. If what is being discussed is the relationship between Christ and the Father, then of course we won’t expect the word “Theos” to refer to the Trinity.

He later will say that God is never described as begotten, but Jesus is, which means Jesus had a beginning of His existence. Of course, this entirely begs the question and Buzzard posts this as if no one in church history ever said “Wow. Jesus is begotten! Imagine that!”

Trinitarian relations in understanding have always noted differences in how the persons are. The Son is begotten. The Holy Spirit proceeds. The Orthodox branch of Christianity can disagree with Catholics and Protestants on the filoque, but there is agreement that the Spirit proceeds. Since this is part and parcel of Trinitarian doctrine, it’s hard to see how this is an objection to it.

Here is what the Athanasian Creed says. (Keep in mind Orthodox Churches would disagree with “And the Son” in describing the proceeding of the Holy Spirit, but that is not our focus here.)

The Father was neither made nor created nor begotten; the Son was neither made nor created, but was alone begotten of the Father; the Spirit was neither made nor created, but is proceeding from the Father and the Son.

So here we have something saying the Father is not begotten and saying the Son is and somehow, Buzzard saying the same thing is supposed to be a problem? Also, the writers of the creed didn’t see a problem with the Son being begotten and also being eternal. Either they were all idiots who didn’t recognize a contradiction, or Buzzard is the one who isn’t understanding something. Decisions, decisions….

For those wondering, I view Jesus as begotten in the sense of that which is always in the Father being brought forth from Him. Since God is eternal, this is an eternal activity. The same follows with the Holy Spirit regardless of how many persons in the Trinity were involved.

Continuing in my look, more highlights I have are simply Buzzard making the same claims of Unitarianism over and over. There is a little change when we get to Paul and Buzzard says

Only a very deficient sense of history would permit the impossible notion that Paul believed the God of Israel to have been the Trinitarian God. This is widely admitted.

Unfortunately, Buzzard doesn’t tell us who this is widely admitted by. One wonders what he would think about the things Bart Ehrman would say are widely admitted in New Testament scholarship. There is plenty of scholarship out there anyway that will say Paul did believe in a triune concept of God, but Buzzard is not seriously interacting with that.

He then goes on to quote The New Bible Dictionary.

The Old Testament witness is fundamentally to the oneness of God. In their daily prayer, Jews repeated the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4, 5: “The Lord our God the Lord is one.” In this they confessed the God of Israel to be the transcendent creator without peer or rival. Without the titanic disclosure of the Christ event no one would have taken the Old Testament to affirm anything but the exclusive, i.e., unipersonal monotheism that is the hallmark of Judaism and Islam. Note carefully this candid admission. Reading the Hebrew Bible , on which Jesus was reared and which he affirmed as holy Scripture and which Paul claimed he believed, no one could possibly have imagined God to be more than one divine Person. The Hebrew Bible, says the dictionary, affirmed the unipersonal, non-Trinitarian God. Jesus echoed that affirmation precisely.

First, this can be debated as the intertestamental literature, as pointed out in the Wisdom of Solomon speaks of Wisdom in deified terms. This is not an exception. That being said, is it really a powerful argument to say no one understood it this way until Jesus came?

No, because it’s also true no one understood the Messiah would be born of a virgin (Which I do affirm), grow up among men, live a sinless life, die on a cross as a sacrifice for sins, be buried and raised again bodily in the middle of space and time instead of at the end of the age as would be understood, and would ascend to the right hand of God. Notice in this I didn’t include the deity of Christ since Buzzard wouldn’t agree to that.

So based on Buzzard’s words, since no Jew would have understood that from the Old Testament before, then we should reject it today. That would be nonsense for us. Now that we know the gospel, we can look back and see it there, much like once you know who the criminal is, you can look back on the mystery later and reailze it.

He then quotes someone else who says the Trinity in the New Testament is left implicit and undefined. He says the reader is left to wonder what that means. I could figure it out easily. It means the Trinity is there, but it is not spelled out. It is drawn out from taking the Scripture as a whole and it’s undefined meaning there’s no explicit definition of the Trinity.

He also refers to 1 Cor. 8:4-6. Buzzard is aware of Bauckham’s work, but doesn’t interact with him on this. Bauckham sees this passage as Paul actually putting Jesus in the Shema with the one God being the Father and the one Lord being Jesus. If Bauckham is right, then this totally blows apart Buzzard’s understanding as you have Paul, a devout Jew, seeing Jesus in the divine nature and this early on.

Buzzard later says

Admissions that “language is inadequate” to spell out the Trinity clearly have not prevented the printing of oceans of words attempting to explain the Trinity, using the non-biblical language of Greek philosophy, that the One God of the Bible is three hypostases in one essence, and that the Son of God was, incredibly, “man” but not “a man.” ( Did you know that this is what official Christendom believes?) The Bible nowhere, however, calls God “an essence” and never speaks of “three hypostases.” And any reader of the New Testament should be able to see that Jesus was a man.

This is such a bewildering statement! First, this is what official Christendom believes? Show where. Not just that’s what you think we believe, but show the statement. It doesn’t exist. Finally, we all agree Jesus was a man. Either Buzzard is incredibly ignorant here or he is incredibly dishonest. Neither is good.

He also says Paul had a warning against those trying to define God in terms of philosophy in Colossians 2:8. No. He had a warning against vain philosophy. That’s not the same thing.

So once again, I walk away from Buzzard’s work more convinced. Will anything be remotely persuasive in here? We’ll find out.

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)

Can God Be Tempted?

If Jesus is fully God, how can He be tempted? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I was in a JW discussion group on Facebook recently and one of them shared about how in James, it says that God cannot be tempted, but in Matthew 4, Jesus is tempted. Well, that seems to be a problem. If Jesus is God, how can He be tempted?

Let’s right off say that when someone says Jesus is God, they are using theological shorthand. We are not saying Jesus is the Trinity or Jesus is the Father, something 99% of the arguments in this group are unaware of. We are saying that Jesus fully partakes of the divine substance.

We can say also that Jesus in His deity cannot be tempted, but in His humanity that is a different matter. That would be enough to settle the matter. However, there is another nuance I want to bring to this.

When James talks about temptation, he is talking about temptation from within. Where do our struggles ultimately come from? They come from within because of wrong desires we have within us. James is saying that God is not tempted from within.

In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, in Psalm 105:14 and 77:41 (Psalm 106 and 78 for us), both of them use the exact same word for tempted that James uses to describe what Israel did to God in the wilderness. My opponent in the group had said that temptation is tempted when I tried to explain the different temptations. The problem with this is that if you play that route, then you will have a contradiction. After all, if that is the case, then James is wrong and God was tempted.

James is not wrong. James is saying that the Israelites were trying to get God to do something and God wasn’t having it. It was completely ineffectual. After all, what could you tempt God with anyway? Can you make some kind of threat to Him? Can you offer Him anything that He needs? It’s nonsensical.

If anything, we could even perhaps see a parallel here. Israel tempts God in the wilderness. The devil tempts Jesus in the wilderness. This is not saying Israel is the devil, but both of them were playing roles of tempting the deity. Neither of them were successful.

The problem with anti-Trinitarian arguments like this and so many others is that they are basically lazy arguments. There is no attempt to look and see if anyone in 2,000 years of church history has ever answered such a question before. This is what I largely see from Jehovah’s Witnesses, unfortunately. They don’t know what their opponents believe and most of their arguments are against modalism.

The other sad news is that many Christians are unaware of this and will fall for weak arguments because they were never taught about what is really meant by the doctrine of the Trinity. We need to do better. We have a unique doctrine of a unique God and we need to be able to better defend that and show what a difference it makes.

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

Book Plunge: All That is in God

What do I think about James Dolezal’s book published by Reformation Heritage? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

James Dolezal could be the leading voice in Protestantism on the simplicity of  God and how important it is. What is striking about all of this is that you have someone here saying how important this is and the majority of Protestants I fear have no idea what simplicity is. If you go to most of them and say God is simple, they will be thinking you are talking about God being an easy concept to understand, such as saying 2 + 2 = 4 or something of that sort.

That is not at all what is meant. Dolezal says it is the underlying and inviolable conviction that God does not derive any aspect of His being from outside Himself and is not in any way caused to be. Ultimately, all that is in God, is God. He has no parts. He is not composed. No one puts God together.

Sometimes, some people think that this means that God has no physical body. That is important, to be sure, but that is not the main emphasis of simplicity. It goes beyond that. It means you cannot alter God in anyway and that God does not change and that He is not a composite being at all even in His attributes. God does not have love, for example. God IS love.

Dolezal’s main interaction in the book is with a side of theistic mutualism whereby it is said that God needs to have what is called a real relationship with us or else it isn’t real. God has to be able to experience our love in a sort of real-time scenario and be able to experience rejection from us. Our love has to affect God in some way.

The problem is that classical theism, as especially emphasized in Aquinas, held that God was loving already and the source of joy and that we should pray to Him and seek His blessings. Mutualism has not given us anything new. It has instead taken something away.

Too often, the idea starts out with “Well, I’m a person and this is how I function and God is like that.” God is not like us. He is not like us in anyway. This is putting the cart before the horse. It’s like saying the Mona Lisa is like the copy of the Mona Lisa. No. The copy is like the original. The original is the standard. It is not that God is like us. It is that we are to be like Him.

Consider that Scripture says He’s the Father from whom all fatherhood comes. If someone is a father, it is not that they are a father and God is like that. It’s that God is a Father and they are something like that.

When Aquinas wrote his Summa Theologica on the doctrine of God, he first established that God exists. After that, he went on to describe God and the first doctrine he started with was simplicity. Why? Because if you don’t do that, then all the attributes that are described are seen as parts of God and God is a composite being.

But isn’t God a composite being? What about the Trinity?! It’s odd that today, we say, how can the doctrine of simplicity work with the Trinity? For the early church, it was the opposite. How does the doctrine of the Trinity work with simplicity? When Nicea took place, no one disagreed with simplicity or questioned it. What was questioned was the person of Jesus.

Without simplicity, one statement you can see is that each person is part of God, which is denying the great creeds that indicate that each person is fully God. There is no division of the substance. If there is no simplicity, how is it that God is one also? Why not tritheism?

There is plenty in this book to chew on and I will be pondering it more. If anyone wants to learn about simplicity, I really urge them to read this book. If there was anything I would like more on, it would have been the way this works with the incarnation. It’s not that the Son took on a body, but it does look like an entering into time at one specific point.

However, while God is simple, theology rarely is. We cannot comprehend fully any aspect of the doctrine of God. We can only apprehend. I can say reading this book did leave me in more awe of who God is, something I am sure Dolezal would be pleased with.

Another note along those lines though is that this book is very much Calvinistic. I would have liked to have seen it stated that this is not a Calvinist doctrine, but a Christian one. I do not consider myself Calvinist at all and I hold definitely to simplicity.

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

Joy in God’s Absence

Can someone be happy when giving up on God? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

As I continue looking at the news of Tyler, one aspect of it that didn’t surprise me was when he talked about being in a good mood even after abandoning God, not in the sense of going atheist, but in the sense of abandoning Christianity. This sounds like a shock to many people. I get that. After all, if God is the greatest source of joy in your life, then surely losing that would be misery wouldn’t it?

But notice the conditional statement.

If God is the greatest source of joy in your life.

What if He isn’t?

What if He’s a misery, actually?

What if you think God is someone who doesn’t care about you, doesn’t want to help you, and refuses to be there in your suffering? If your idea of God is of a God who is cruel and uncaring, what if you lost that idea? What if that idea was gone from your mind? It could be relieving. You no longer have to work to please this tyrant then.

I contend that when people turn their back on God or refuse to believe in Him, they often have an extremely negative view of Him. N.T. Wright has talked about new students entering a university when he was on duty as a chaplain there and when asked about their religion that they didn’t believe in God. He would say “Tell me about this God you don’t believe in. I probably don’t believe in that God either.” Sometimes, they would smile thinking that they had heard many of the clergy there were secretly atheists.

So if you tell me that there is a god who stands absent in your suffering and doesn’t care about your pain at all, then I will say, “Yes. I don’t believe in that god either.” My concern at this point is the idea that when you answer the question of God differently, how your worldview changes is a result of what place you gave Him in your worldview. Consider a parallel.

I live in New Orleans. This is a city that has a problem of crime. I could watch the local news tonight and hear hypothetically about a resident of the city who was murdered and think “Well that sucks”, but I won’t stay awake at night thinking about them. Now if it turned out that someone I know well here on the campus was murdered and I would never see them again, that would hit me very differently.

We are all like that. If we weren’t, there are people dying every day everywhere and somehow many of us can have joy and sleep peacefully at night. What hits us hard is based on how close someone was to us. We can hear about thousands dying in a disaster somewhere and it is saddening, but when we hear about the death of one person close to us that we know, that is far harder for us to take.

If you remove God from your worldview and it doesn’t change, then that is an indicator of what place He played in your worldview. If God was mainly there for emotional support, well you can get that in several other places. If God is just there to fill in the gaps in scientific thinking, then that means the study of science leads to that kind of atheism.

Yet what if God is the foundation for everything? I find it fascinating so many atheists question if God exists, but they don’t stop to think about what it means to exist. It sounds like a simple question, but it isn’t. This is a gift that Classical Theism brings to the table.

To get back to the joy of the absence, it makes sense that if someone you perceive as a negative influence in your life is gone, there can be joy. That shouldn’t be surprising. The concern is that if we look at the emotions as the guide, they are always temporary. They will fade. What then? Also, what if the emotions guide the worldview? What if we say “I feel this, so now I must fit my idea of God to correspond with this emotion.”?

When I get in the point of wondering if God cares for me, I have to go back to what I know. Does God exist? Yes. There are too many good arguments I know of. Did Jesus rise from the dead? Yes. I know no other way to explain the data and the person of Jesus is hard to explain outside of Christianity. Then I have to interpret everything in light of that.

I also know if you go the way of skepticism, you eventually have to lower Jesus. It’s the question of if someone is willing to do that or not. Time will tell.

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