Foundational Thoughts

The Kingdom of God - Since the Coming of the King

2010-08-18T14:16:00.000-07:00

The last post left off at an apparent low point for the Kingdom of God, “God's kingdom has hit a brick wall, David's throne is has been vacant for centuries, and God's promises are frustrated by disobedience and captivity.” Things don’t appear to be going God’s way.

But then comes a voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight!”

The Message of Jesus

John the Baptist is the herald of the next move God is about to make in establishing his Kingdom forever, fulfilling his prophesies and His promises to David. John prepared the way for Jesus, he fertilized the fields, so to speak, and Jesus pickup exactly were John left off. The first words of Jesus as His ministry began are recorded in Mark 1:15,

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

This message is undisputedly Jesus’ primary and favorite topic, He repeats it constantly:

Luke 4:42-43
And when it was day, he departed and went into a desolate place. And the people sought him and came to him, and would have kept him from leaving them, but he said to them, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.”

Luke 6:20
And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”

Luke 9:23-27
And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.”

Did the Kingdom Come?

One statement that has been repeated over the years is that Jesus came to bring the Kingdom to the Jews but it was removed when they rejected Him and it will not come again until the time of the Christ’s return. A close inspection of the messages of Jesus and the Apostles after His ascension reveals this view to be mistaken.

Throughout his ministry Jesus speaks of the nearness of the Kingdom, and tells certain people that they are not far from finding it (Mark 12:28-34). Matthew, assistant to the Apostle Peter, editorializes on Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey, stating that,

Matthew 21:4-5
This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying,

“Say to the daughter of Zion,
‘Behold, your king is coming to
You,
Humble, and mounted on a
Donkey,
And on a colt, the foal of a
Beast of burden.’”

Even as the unjust trial of Jesus comes to a conclusion and the people of Israel have chosen a murderer over the Son of Man, Jesus bluntly states His Lordship over a Kingdom,

John 18:33-36
So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”

It may seem that Jesus’ claim of Kingship, ruling not from a the throne of David as God promised but rather from Heaven, is somewhat diminished from the nearness of the Kingdom He spoke about previously. After all, if the Kingdom is not of this world, how close can it really be?

But this is precisely the kind of Kingdom about which Jesus was speaking throughout His ministry. A Kingdom not made of land and territory, but a spiritual Kingdom which individuals find their way into as they come to acknowledge the authority of God over them.

Matthew 7:21
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

It turns out that a Kingdom without borders or territory was always the plan from the beginning. In Luke Jesus describes the growth of the Kingdom, a description which mirrors a prophesy that was given nearly 600 years before to the prophet Daniel.

Luke 13:18-21
He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”

And again he said, “To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened.”

Daniel 2:34-35, 44-45
As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth... And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. A great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.”

Both Daniel and Jesus speak of a Kingdom which begins small, like a mustard seed, leaven in a lump of dough, or a stone, and then grows over time, eventually filling the whole earth. This is the kind of Kingdom which Jesus claimed kingship over when He was standing before Pilate. This Kingdom was not taken away from God’s people when Christ ascended into Heaven in the first chapter of Acts.

If it had been taken, then one would expect the apostles would stop talking about the Kingdom as they had when Jesus sent them out to witness in the cities and towns ahead of Him. However, the apostles continued to proclaim the gospel of the Kingdom of God, just as Jesus had before He left them.

Acts 8:12
But when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.

Acts 19:8
And he entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God.

Romans 14:17
For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

1 Corinthians 15:50
I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

2 Thessalonians 1:5
This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering—

The message that the Kingdom is a present reality and is growing to fill the whole earth doesn’t seem to make sense in a world where sin is still rampant, people are more comfortable than ever publicly rejecting God, and injustice is commonplace. Don't such things oppose the view of a present and continually increasing Kingdom?

It’s true that in the Romans 14:17 passage, cited above, Paul tells us that the Kingdom is peace and joy, yet war and suffering have been the constant companions of humanity since before Jesus walked the earth. Paul is clear that the Kingdom is peace and joy, but not in the world. Paul says such peace and joy are found in the Holy Spirit. This dovetails with another statement Jesus made to His followers while He poured out His heart to them in the upper room just hours before his crucifixion.

John 16:33
“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

The peace that Jesus is talking about is not absence of conflict; to the contrary, Jesus says that His subjects will be persecuted. Even so, all the world belongs to Him and His people are safe in His hand. Paul paints a beautiful picture of this idea in his letter to the Colossians,

Colossians 1:13-14
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Are we still within this domain of darkness? We live within it, but it can’t touch us. At worst, it can only kill our bodies; but if that happens for Christ, then our status in the Kingdom is only enhanced. We are subjects of the King and no one can take us out of his hand.

The King has come and his kingdom has been established. He has all authority in earth and in Heaven gathered to Himself. For the present time, this Kingdom is not visible to the naked eye, but every time a person places himself under the authority of Christ and bows before Him the kingdoms of the earth grow a little weaker. Another citizen of the kingdoms of the earth slips away and seeks asylum with the King of kings.

The Kingdom of God in the Old Testament

2010-06-15T14:33:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of misunderstandings regarding the Kingdom of God entrenched in Christian, and some non-Christian, thought today - as was demonstrated in the last post. Such misunderstandings rise, in part, from the wide ranging nature of the Kingdom itself: the Kingdom is not something that can be pinned down in order for us say, “The Kingdom of God is Salvation,” or “ The Kingdom is peace.” It is these things, but it is a great deal more as well. To gain a better understanding of the Kingdom we need to examine it’s history as it is described in the Old and New Testaments.

God Initiates the Kingdom

Before the Exodus, the people of God had very little information about Him, who He was, or even what he desired of them on a day to day basis. They knew that He was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and they knew some of the things He had done for their fathers. That all changed when the Jews were freed from captivity and slavery in Egypt and God met them at Mount Sinai.

In Exodus 19:4-6, God speaks to the refugees from Egypt through Moses:

“You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptian, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

The Children of Israel responded twice, in Exodus 19:8 and 24:3 “All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do,” thus accepting God’s proposed covenant and the conditions He placed upon it.

The modern reader loses some of the power of God’s statement and Israel’s response, because he lives in a world entirely devoid of powerful monarchs. This message was given to the Jews at a time when every nation on earth was a monarchy. In that context, God approaches these people gathered at Sinai and says, “I will be your King.” This isn’t just a metaphor, or a word picture for something else – God meant it literally.

Judges 8 records the defeat of the Midianites by God through his judge, Gideon. After the victory the men of Israel, quickly forgetting that God did all the fighting while they stood by and watched, desired to make Gideon their King and establish his line as a dynasty.

Then the men of Israel said to Gideon, “Rule over us, you and your son and your grandson also, for you have saved us from the hand of Midian.” Gideon said to them, “I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the Lord will rule over you.”

Gideon understood God’s rightful place as king over this people. Unfortunately, some 200 years later, the people would forget God again in their desire for a king that they could see and touch, a human king just like everyone else had.

2 Samuel 8:4-7
Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to him, “Behold you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations. But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.

Stop for a second and reflect on that statement – They have rejected Me! This was treason perpetrated directly against the God of the Universe. They took God off the throne and placed a man there, no different than when other nations violently revolt and replace their old king with a new one. Not surprisingly, God did not take kindly to this usurpation of His proper place by the Jews.

Hosea 13:9-11
He destroys you, O Israel,
for you are against me, against your helper.
Where now is your king, to save you in all your cities?
Where are all your rulers—
those of whom you said,
“Give me a king and princes”?
I gave you a king in my anger,
and I took him away in my wrath.

Despite this statement, God does not stay angry with his people for long, He sets His sights on restoring His rule, this time through a new king; one who will do His will and obey His commands. God finds just such a man in the shepherd David.

During his reign, David expresses interest in building a house for God. At first the prophet Nathan approves, but a few hours later God appears to Nathan in a dream and gives him different directions. God says to David:

2 Samuel 7:5-6,8-9, 11-13
Would you build me a house to dwell in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent for my dwelling. … I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel. And I have been with you wherever you went and have cut off all your enemies from before you. And I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. … And I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house.

When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

God makes a promise to David that a descendents of his will sit on the throne forever. He promises an everlasting dynasty, what the Bible often refers to as “The House of David,” and God will rule his people through this house forever.

Unfortunately, Israel continues to be a “stiff necked people,” they leave God again and again. First, ten of the tribes of Israel split from the tribes of Judah and Benjamin when the ten refuse to accept Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, as their King. The nation breaks in two, the Kingdom of Judah in the south, made up of Judah and Benjamin, and the Kingdom of Israel in the north, made up of the other ten tribes.

While Judah has a small number of good kings who seek after God Israel has none, and proceeds to prostitute herself with other nations and other gods until God wipes them out around 720 BC. The northern kingdom of Israel was so bad that later, when God is warning Judah to return to Him, He says of Israel:

Jeremiah 3:6-8
“Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore? And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me,’ but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce.”

Israel had broken the conditions of covenant given by God at Sinai and the covenant curses, laid out in Deuteronomy 28, all come to pass against that nation.

Because of their few good Kings, Judah lasts a little longer than her sister, but eventually God must punish her as well. In 586 BC God sends the Empire of Babylon, under the leadership of King Nebuchadnezzar, to lay waste to Jerusalem and the entire nation of Judah. And most of the people are carried off into captivity in a foreign land.

While the Kingdom of Israel was utterly destroyed, Judah and Benjamin survive their captivity under the Babylonians and after 70 years God opens the way for the Jews to return to the land of Israel and to Jerusalem; although only a relatively small number actually return. The Jews manage to rebuild their city and the Temple, but for the next 500 years they are continuously under the dominion of foreign nations: the Medes and Persians, then the Greeks, and finally the Romans. They never restore their free nation, nor re-establish the throne of David.

It seems as though God's kingdom has hit a brick wall, David's throne is left vacant for centuries, and God's promises are frustrated by disobedience and captivity. Fortunately, the history of the Kingdom doesn't end there. More than 500 years after the captivity in Babylon ends, God sets about restoring His Kingdom and remaking it in the form it was always intended to take.

The Kingdom of God - What it's Not

2010-04-21T15:07:00.000-07:00

Jesus spoke of the Kingdom frequently, he sent the disciples out to preach it to the people, and he told all his followers to “seek it first.” But what is it?

The message of The Kingdom is perhaps the primary focal point of the entire Bible, yet it is a broad subject – so broad that it might be easiest to begin by discussing what the Kingdom is not and some mistaken ideas about it.

Are the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven different things?

There have been a number of people, particularly dispensationalists, who have taught that the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven are different. In his bible commentary on Matthew 6, C. I. Scofield distinguishes between these Kingdoms in several ways, essentially stating that the Kingdom of God is a "universal spiritual kingdom" while the Kingdom of Heaven is the manifest Davidic Kingdom on earth. But is this distinction accurate?

In Matthew 19:23-24 Jesus says to the disciples,

“Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”

Jesus uses the titles Kingdom of Heaven and Kingdom of God interchangeably. He presents the same teaching twice, repeating himself for emphasis, but in the repetition swaps the title Kingdom of Heaven for Kingdom of God.

The synoptic gospels can often be used to clarify a teaching by comparing how the same speech is rendered by different authors. Mark and Matthew give us a little insight into how these two phrases should be understood:

Mark 1:14-15
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel."
Matthew 4:17
From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

This is the same moment, the same teaching, rendered by Mark as the Kingdom of God and by Matthew as the Kingdom of Heaven. Clearly, the phrases mean the same thing and can be used interchangeably.

Is the Kingdom of God Heaven?

To answer this question one only needs to look back at Jesus’ primary teaching on prayer:

Matthew 6:9-13
Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.

In this model prayer, Jesus teaches the disciples to pray that God’s Kingdom will come on earth, as it already exists in Heaven. Heaven is not the Kingdom of God - the Kingdom does exist there - but we are to pray that the Kingdom “comes” on earth in the same way it already exists in Heaven.

Is the Kingdom the “Millennial Reign” of Christ?

Many evangelicals in the West today hold to a future view of the “Millennial reign” of Christ foretold in Revelation 20 and equate that period with the establishment of the Kingdom of God. Dr. Thomas Ice, a pre-millennial dispensational apologist, writes

“[...] of an interim kingdom following Christ's return but prior to the eternal kingdom of God during which Christ will rule and vanquish all His enemies. [...] Revelation 20 gives the chronology of events and length of Christ's kingdom on this earth prior to the eternal state.”

It is this “interim kingdom" following Christ’s return that is generally known as the “Millennial Reign.”

To be clear, the distinctives of this particular view are that Jesus will return at the end of the future “Tribulation” period and rule the world from Jerusalem for 1000 years. At the end of this 1000 year period there will be a rebellion against Christ, which will be put down and bring about the destruction of the present heaven and earth, which makes room for the “new heaven and earth” and what Dr. Ice calls the “eternal kingdom.”

The most immediate problem with equating the Kingdom of God with the pre-millennial view of the Millennial Reign of Christ is that it ends after 1000 years. However, numerous passages of scripture tell us that the Kingdom will never come to an end.

Isaiah 9:6-7
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace
there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time
forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
Daniel 2:44
And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever,
Luke 1:31-33
And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

The pre-millennial view of the Millennial reign of Christ cannot be the Kingdom of God. It may be included in the Kingdom, it may be part of the Kingdom, but it itself is not the Kingdom of God.

Is the Nation of Israel the Kingdom of God?

Many Jews at the time of Jesus were expecting the Messiah to come to Israel and throw off their Roman oppressors and re-establish Israel as an independent national power. They believed the prophesies made to King David in 2 Samuel 7:10-17 meant that the Messiah would literally sit on the throne of a free Jerusalem and be a powerful political ruler of Israel.

This appears to be the disciples' understanding of the purpose of the Messiah on earth, for after Jesus has been crucified and resurrected from the dead they ask him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel (Acts 1:6)?” But Jesus appears to understand the subject differently than his followers:

Acts 1:7-8
He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

At first glance it appears like Jesus has dodged their question, however, on closer inspection Jesus appears to have answered the question, but in an unexpected way. Instead of directly answering, Jesus speaks of what is about to happen to them: they will receive power and they will witnesses everywhere, even to the end of the earth.

In his statement to the disciples, Jesus makes reference to Psalm 2; the first of what are known as the “Kingdom Psalms.” The psalmist writes in verses 7-8,

“I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.

The opening verses of Romans state that, “concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.” According to Paul, Jesus was, "declared to be the Son of God […] by his resurrection from the dead," which is a direct allusion to verse 7 of the 2^nd Psalm. In Acts 1:8, Jesus refers to the next verse in Psalm 2, stating that the disciples will be his witnesses to “the end of the earth.”

Jesus fulfilled verse Psalm 2:7 by rising from the dead and sends out his disciples to be His witnesses and to fulfill Psalm 2:8. Essentially, Jesus is answering His disciples, “I am setting up the Kingdom at this time, and through your witness to end of the earth it will be established.”

What all this means is that the nation of Israel is not the Kingdom of God either.

Is the Kingdom of God inside everyone?

This is a common claim made by new-agers who want a stamp of approval from Jesus. The claim is based on the King James Version rendering of Luke 17:21:

“Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”

“See,” says the new-ager, “Jesus says that the Kingdom not a real, objective thing. It is inside each of one of us.”

However, Jesus does not agree with this assessment of the Kingdom.

Luke 16:16
“The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it."
John 3:3,5
Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God… Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

Jesus is clear that the Kingdom of God is something external to the individual that not everyone will see, or enter.

A better rendering of Luke 17:21 can be found in most modern translations:

“…nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”

In other words, “See! The Kingdom of God is very nearby at this moment, even within the midst of this crowd!”

What is the Kingdom of God?

After reading about a lot of things the Kingdom is not, it would be good to get a little insight into what the Kingdom is.

John 3:3-7
Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’

The Kingdom is not something that anyone can just walk into, Jesus clearly and unequivocally tells Nicodemus that one must be born again to “see” or enter the Kingdom of God. Jesus says the Kingdom “is spirit” and that to enter into it one must be “born of the Spirit,” not just of flesh.

Romans 14:17
For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

This is the only passage I have found in the entire Bible which comes right out and says, “the Kingdom of God is…” It’s peace. It’s righteousness. It’s joy. But not by themselves. These things
are of the Holy Spirit. He makes them possible and without him, no one will become part of the Kingdom.

While this begins to give us an idea about the Kingdom there is much more to it than just that. To begin to bring the Kingdom into focus we need to examine it's history in both the Old Testament and the New Testament.

Next: The Kingdom of God in the Old Testament

The Kingdom of God – It's Importance

2010-03-18T14:13:00.000-07:00

What is the most important teaching in the Bible? Many would say it is the good news about the saving work of Jesus on the cross. Others could argue it's the assurance of life demonstrated by Christ's resurrection on Sunday morning. One of my favorite radio hosts believes it is found in Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning, God created..." Certainly the argument could be made that the most important teaching is found in Matthew 22:37-40:

And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

All of these teachings are important, and to one degree or another they all answer at least part of the question. That said, I think there is an answer that is straight forward, encompasses all the answers above, and completely pervades both the Old and New Testaments:

The Kingdom of God.

Jesus was obsessed with teaching the Kingdom. Every covenant between God and man related in the Bible is inseparably linked to building the Kingdom. By comparison, the Apostles taught the Kingdom of God and little else.

So what is the Kingdom of God? When did it begin? What does it mean for believers today? Why should we care?

Jesus himself clearly says that The Kingdom should be first on our list of priorities. Starting in Luke 9 there are a series of passages which clearly highlight the importance of The Kingdom to Jesus’ work on Earth.

Luke 9:1-2
And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.

This is the first missionary journey for Jesus’ twelve closest followers. He decides it is time for the disciples to step out on their own, so he gathers them together, gives them power, and sends them out to tell the people to put their trust in Jesus so they might be saved…wait a second, that’s not quite right. Such a message might be part of what Jesus wants them to preach, but instead of that traditional missionary message He explicitly instructs them to “proclaim the kingdom of God” to all who will listen.

The next chapter in Luke begins similarly:

Luke 10:1-2, 8-9
After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go. And he said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest…Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you. Heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’

So Christ sends out another 72 individuals on 36 different missionary journeys to do what? Heal the sick and tell them that The Kingdom is near them.

At the beginning of Chapter 11 of Luke’s gospel the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray. Jesus' answer is somewhat truncated in Luke, but the expanded version can be found in Matthew 6:

Matthew 6:9-13
Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.”

While there is a great deal that could be said about this prayer, simply note that praying for the coming of The Kingdom is second only to exalting God the Father. Is the picture becoming clear yet? The Kingdom is a topic of great importance to Jesus.

While any number of passages could be cited to drive this point home, let's look at only two more:

Matthew 24:9-14
“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
Matthew 6:31-33
Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

There is a lot of baggage that could be unpacked in the 24^th chapter of Matthew, it is highly eschatological and often apocalyptic in nature, making its interpretation less than straightforward. Fortunately, no matter what you believe Jesus is teaching in this chapter it is clear that he highlights the proclamation of the Kingdom of God as the thing of utmost importance. Getting out the message of this kingdom is the thing that must happen before “the end will come.”

Going back to the sixth chapter of Matthew, Jesus follows up his teaching on prayer by speaking at some length about the priorities of his followers. He expounds on things that we normally place foremost in our lives - making a good living, getting food to eat, clothes to wear, and a roof over our heads - and places them behind The Kingdom, saying, “seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness,” and all He’ll worry about that other stuff. The Kingdom should be our ultimate concern.

Christ was obsessed with the Kingdom of God. While I have only highlighted a few passages, Jesus spoke about it nearly non-stop. If He was that concerned about The Kingdom, isn’t it a sign that we should be as well?

Over the next several posts, I want to dig into this subject of the Kingdom of God. I hope you find it as interesting as I have.

Next: What the Kingdom Is Not.

Three Views of Hell, Conclusion

2009-09-05T21:45:00.000-07:00

If you hadn’t noticed, over the last several months I have devoted this blog to an introductory investigation of the actual Biblical teachings on Hell. This series seemed to strike a chord with a lot of people as I have heard from many people I had no idea even knew about this blog who asked questions of me about the topic or expressed thanks for a genuine investigation of teaching. The topic certainly sparked a lot of interest.

Making a Choice Between Views

I have been asked repeatedly over the last few months which interpretation of Hell I favor most. I am still up in the air regarding my preference of view (and feel no great need to come down anytime soon). Actually, this is a very good place to be as it has allowed me to notice something very interesting about how many people decide controversial issues like this one. From the research that I have done on the three views so far it seems clear that one could be Biblically justified in holding to any of them.

The reason this is possible is because no matter which view one subscribes to, he has to interpret some passages literally and some figuratively. Which passages are written literally and which figuratively is up for debate; there are guidelines that one should follow (i.e. context, type of literature, audience, purpose, etc.), but even so, determining the author’s intent is not always clear cut and easy. If you take the passages that talk about sinners receiving the punishment of death literally then you will likely fall into the Conditional Mortality (CM) camp. If you believe that the passages that speak of the death of the soul in a more figurative way and take God literally at His word when He says that He desires that none should perish and that the works of the devil will be totally destroyed, then you will likely fall into the Universal Reconciliation (UR) camp. Like-wise for many passages that speak of the eternality of aspects of the punishment of the wicked and the Eternal Torment (ET) view.

Interestingly, it seems to me that many will be swayed largely by their view of the nature of God Himself. If you are particularly impressed with the holiness of God and the greatness of His offense at our sin, then it’s likely you will be partial to ET. If you are favorable to the vision of God as the ultimate victor over sin, where God expunges every final particle of sin from creation, then you are likely most favorable to UR. If the primary foundation for your understanding of God rests on His total and perfect justice, then you are likely preferable to the CM view.

Why is this interesting and why does it matter? Because I think that our image of who God is and what He is like deeply colors the way we understand the Bible - maybe more than any other factor. Think about it. Why do liberal Christians hold the views they do? In their mind the superceding trait of God is His love; since God so deeply loves, he must be far more accepting than perhaps traditional Christianity has portrayed, or so they think. On the flip side, extremely conservative Christians who likely tend towards legalism have a primary image of God as a righteous judge. If you understand this point it becomes clear that a good, biblically thorough understanding of God’s nature, and particularly His relationship with us, is crucially important as it can and, I think, does affect many other theological issues we engage with.

Consequences for Evangelism

Let’s face it. The vast, vast majority of Christians, at least in the West, hold the Eternal Torment view. One of the primary concerns that many voice when beginning to consider either of the alternate views are the implications to evangelism. Many Christians believe that one of the best tools in the evangelist’s belt is the average unsaved individual’s fear of eternal torment. While throughout this series I have refrained from taking sides, on this point I can’t remain neutral: The threat of Hell is not a good tool for bringing the lost to Christ. Not only that, the apostles never evangelized in using such threats.

If you read the Book of Acts with an eye toward the “evangelism techniques” of the apostles you will notice that they almost never speak about “Hell” when talking to the people. In Acts 2, Peter’s speech to the people gathered at Pentecost simply proclaimed the truth about who Jesus was, the facts surrounding his life and teaching and concluded with the simple statement that He is the Christ, the anointed one, who is the Lord. The simple implication of Peter’s sermon is that Jesus is the one to whom all the people of the earth owe their allegiance. Peter presented the facts, and the facts backed up the claim of Christ. Those who acknowledged the claim were “cut to the heart” and asked the apostles how they could be saved.

In Acts 3 Peter credits Christ with the healing of a crippled man and, taking advantage of the scene this created, convicts the listeners of their injustice in killing “the Holy and Righteous One” and choosing a murderer in His place. He then tells that events had to transpire in this way in order that God might complete His plan to bless all people by turning them from their wickedness.

Likewise, in Acts 4 Peter continues to proclaim the Lordship of Christ, proclaiming that he came to save the lost, and that it was his duty, as Christ was his Lord, that he continue to spread the message of Jesus.

Acts goes on and on in this way, the apostles frequently referring to Christ’s claim over all people and the allegiance they owe Him, and only occasionally making vague references to “punishment” or being “destroyed from the people.” The point is, that someone who decides to follow Jesus because he wants to escape eternal torment has not actually come to Christ, but is simply fleeing destruction - something John Baptist accused the Jewish religious authorities of doing at the beginning of Christ’s ministry. He hasn’t come to Christ for Christ’s sake, but out of a desire to save himself from pain.

If the New Testament is clear about anything, it’s clear that we are to come to Jesus on our hands and knees, broken down by our sin because we know that it was rebellion against Him who has the rightful claim over us as our Lord and Creator. Our sin hurt Him who loved us first so deeply that He chose to suffer and die that He might bless us by turning us from our wickedness and bringing us into His family. This should be our desire and the primary impetuous for our salvation, not necessarily a fear of punishment.

We See Through a Glass Darkly

I love the Paul’s description in 1 Corinthians 13 of the present state of our knowledge as believers:

1 Corinthians 13:9-12

For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I
spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I
became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but
then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have
been fully known.

I like answers and believe that there are more and better answers to many of the questions Christians ask than many realize. That said, Paul acknowledges that even he, the most important figure in Christianity next to Jesus himself, doesn’t have all knowledge, all reason, or all understanding available to him. There are things, many things on many subjects, which will never be known to man in our present state on this Old Earth. As I have studied over the past three years many issues have become more clear to me, whereas others, like the issue of Hell, have become less and less defined the more I study. It appears that God did not give us complete information on many subjects. Like the mirror, or glass, in which we can see only a hazy, clouded image, there are topics in scripture which we cannot see with any specificity, but can only perceive in the most general way.

Hell is clearly one of these subjects. God, apparently, doesn’t feel the need to fill us in on the details of the punishment of the wicked, but gives us just enough to know that it exists and it is a fearful fate. He doesn’t think we need to know. Someday, as Paul says, we who belong to Christ will see face to face and know fully those things about which we have questions or cannot presently comprehend. As someone who likes answers that expectation is exciting and deeply satisfying.

Three Views of Hell, Part 6 - Conditional Mortality

2009-08-06T08:14:00.001-07:00

The doctrine of Conditional Immortality is the final of the three views of Hell left to examine. Like the other two, it has a surprising amount of scripture in it’s favor and should not be brushed off without some serious consideration.

Conditional Immortality, as the name suggests, rests on the idea that human beings are not immortal by nature. This would be opposite to the Eternal Torment view that clearly implies that we are all immortal (if we live forever without the sustaining life of Christ following in us, then we must, by our very nature, possess immortality). Which is right? The Biblical evidence is completely unequivocal.

Only God is immortal:

1 Timothy 1:17
To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
1 Timothy 6:13-16
I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

Human beings do not possess immortality, but receive it as a gift from God, through Christ:

Matthew 19:29
And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.
John 3:16
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:36
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
John 5:24
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
John 6:40
For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
John 6:47
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.
Romans 2:6-7
He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life;
Romans 6:23
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
1 Corinthians 15:53-55
For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
1 John 5:11-12
And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

This is a short list of passages that teach us that eternal life is a gift of God, and that immortality is God’s own possession, which He bestows only on those who seek after Him. On the other side of that coin the Bible has a great deal to say about the fate of the lost; and it isn’t necessarily that they will spend eternity in Hell.

Genesis 2:16-17
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Ezekiel 18:4
Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die.
Matthew 10:28
And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
John 3:16
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
John 10:28
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
Romans 6:23
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
1 John 5:12
Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

The implications of the teaching that immortality is God’s alone, to my mind raises a disturbing dilemma for those who hold to the Eternal Torment view. If it is true that man is, by nature, mortal and can only live an immortal life if God sustains him, then that would mean that God would, unnaturally, have to sustain all those in Hell for eternity. Why would God do such a thing, seeing as He frequently tells us that He takes no joy in the destruction of the wicked? Why would He continue doing something that apparently brings Him pain long after He supposedly has set all things right and all creation is exactly as He intends it to be? I don’t have an answer for that question.

God says repeatedly that those who are guilty will die, perish, be devoured, destroyed, or consumed. The problem is, that when many evangelicals see these words in the context of the passages above what they read instead is “Hell.” This is somewhat understandable given two verses at the end of Revelation:

Revelation 20:13-14
And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.
Revelation 21:7-8
The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

“There you go,” say many Christians, myself included until recently, “eternity in the Lake of Fire is called the second death.” On these grounds, so the argument goes, it’s justified to refer to an eternity in Hell as perishing, death, being devoured, etc. The problem is, as I wrote in an earlier post, while Revelation certainly says that those who aren’t numbered with the saints will be cast into the Lake of Fire after the Judgment, nowhere are we taught that those lost individuals stay there for eternity. It is quite possible that those lost individuals are sent to Hell for a finite period of time in order to pay for their sins and that upon the completion of such a time and lacking the gift of eternal life they simply pass out of existence.

Simply put, until the Book of Revelation was penned there was not the least reason to assume that when God said, “the soul that sins it shall die,” He meant anything more than that. With the acceptance of Revelation into the canon we gain a little more information, but problems in understanding exactly what to make these two passages still exist, as they fall within very apocalyptic sections of the most hyperbolic, apocalyptic book in the Bible (to learn a little more about the apocalyptic style, click here).

Let’s imagine that you tell your child, “If you disobey me you will die;” and then he does disobey you and does indeed die. Then you meet him on the other side and say, “You know, I told you you would die if you disobeyed me. But what I didn’t tell you was that you’ll never actually die but live forever and ever being tormented every moment from now on.” If God had wanted to communicate that the fate of the lost was eternal torment in Hell, say those in the Conditional Immortality camp, then He had a very strange way of doing it. Those who find this view appealing simply say, “God meant what he said about sinners, and we believe He meant what He said.”

As always, there is a great deal more that could be said in defense of this position, so consider this a jumping off point if anything you read here promts you to look into this position more carefully.

Three Views of Hell, Part 5 - Universal Reconciliation

2009-06-22T17:43:00.000-07:00

I realize that many, particularly Calvinists, will take considerably greater exception to the view of Universal Reconciliation than either of the other two views. Given the nearly total acceptance of Eternal Torment and that most who advocate similar doctrines are clearly outside of Christian orthodoxy, it’s not hard to understand why. It wasn’t always like this, though. If you would travel back through the first six centuries of Christianity you would find things turned almost completely on their heads in favor of Universal Reconciliation.

According to the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (Vol. XII, Pg. 96) there “were six known theological schools, of which four (Alexandria…, Antioch, Caesarea, and Edessa…) were Universalist, one (Ephesus) accepted conditional immortality; one (…Rome) taught endless punishment of the wicked.” In the first few centuries following the ascension of Christ, the majority of Christianity, or at least Christian scholarship, taught Universal Reconciliation – leaving the view of Eternal Torment in the small minority!

If you wonder how the widespread acceptance of these two views could have changed so dramatically between then and now, note that the school at Rome was the major institution teaching Eternal Torment in the year 500 A.D. With the rise of the Catholic Church, many views which were widely accepted in the early church were replaced by those of the “Universal Church.” I don’t point out this fact as a smear against Catholicism, it may be that Eternal Torment is the most correct of the three extant views of Hell. However, this information may give some Evangelicals pause in their rejection of Universal Reconciliation were they to realize that most of them hold the view they do largely because the Roman Catholic position overwhelmed the early and more widely accepted view of Universal Reconciliation.

Now that the history lesson is over…

This view begins with the assumption that God wants nothing less than that all people should be saved. The Bible, taken at face value, appears to communicate such a desire on the part of the Father:

Ezekiel 18:23
Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?

John 3:16-17
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

1 Timothy 2:1-6
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.

Nearly all non-Calvinists believe that God would prefer that all people would turn to Jesus and be saved, yet believe that most will never come to such a saving faith. Most people will be lost to Hell, beyond the reach of Salvation. This belief, however, may be the result of a persistent bias for the Eternal Torment view. Not only does the Bible make apparent claims that God desires all men to be saved, but it seems to hint in places that everyone will eventually be saved.

John 12:31-32
Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

Ephesians 1:7-10
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him,
things in heaven and things on earth.

Colossians 1:16-20
For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

It is important to note the distinction between Universal Reconciliation and other forms of universalism. All non-evangelical universalists that I am aware of make claims that all people will be saved regardless of the path they choose to take to God. You want to be a Muslim? Great! You want to be a follower of Buddha? Fantastic! You want to be a atheist? God honors you too! Apparently, according to standard universalists, God is just too nice a guy to punish anyone for anything.

Not so, says Universal Reconciliation. While God may eventually save all men, all men, when they are saved, will be saved by faith in the work of Christ on the cross. In this view, Hell exists for those who die without Jesus, but Hell is not a place of eternal torment but a place of torment which is the final tool that God uses to break the hard-hearted down and bring them to repentance and acceptance of Christ.

In addition to the Biblical statements like those above, there are also concepts taught in the Bible which appear to support Universal Reconciliation.

All Christians agree that even Mao Zedong, or Joseph Stalin, would be saved if they experienced genuine repentance on their death beds. The Universal Reconciliationist asks, “What is it about death that makes it the cut-off point?” If God is willing to accept our repentance just minutes before we die, why wouldn’t he be willing to accept repentance just moments after we die? Does God really say, “You're too late; I wanted to forgive you five minutes ago but I don’t want to forgive you now?” Where is it taught in scripture that one can’t repent after death?

I can think of two passages, off the top of my head, that could be raised in response to this question. The first is the often partially quoted Hebrews 9:27 – “…it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” I have cited this particular verse myself to justify the belief that death cuts off repentance. However, as I look at it again, with a Universal Reconcilationist cap on, this verse says nothing of the kind. If eternal torment is true, and the judgment of God on each of us is final and Hell is eternal, then this passage would confirm that death is the apparent cut-off point for repentance. However, if these assumptions are not true and if Hell is a place of torment used by God to bring the lost to repentance then this verse tells us nothing about the final destination of the lost; only that they are judged; which we knew already. If the Universal Reconciliationist is correct, then this judgment is temporary until the judged turn to Christ. It seems to me that Hebrews 9:27 could be used to support the idea that death is the cut-off point for forgiveness, if one has already concluded that the Eternal Torment view is correct, but if one is attempting to make up his mind about which view to hold then this verse doesn’t help.

I would also point out that the purpose of this passage at the end of the ninth chapter of Hebrews was not written by the author to inform us about the ability of sinners to repent after death. This brief sentence is used within a larger explanation of why, under the Old Covenant, animals had to be sacrificed repeatedly, yet it was only necessary for Christ to die on the cross once. To use it, as I have in the past, to justify death as the cut-off point for forgiveness is to yank the verse somewhat out of context.

The second passage that could be raised against Universal Reconciliation is at the very end of John’s first epistle:

1 John 5:16-17
If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death.

I know that this passage is very confusing to many, and is somewhat controversial. To keep this short I simply say that, for very interesting reasons that I hope to cover in another post, I have come to believe that John is telling his readers that they should pray for those who are still living and trapped in their sin, but not to bother praying for the salvation of those who have died. If I am right about this passage, then this would seem to be strange advice to give if those who have died are still capable of repentance, as Universal Reconciliation suggests.

That said, I try to hard to be realistic and thoughtful about all the views I hold, and would be negligent if I did not repeat that this passage is very mysterious and controversial. It would be advisable to take any person’s interpretation of this passage with a grain of salt (including mine), recognizing that there is no clear answer available to us today as to what exactly the Apostle is referring to.

There is one more argument in favor of Universal Reconciliation that I haven’t touched on yet, and in my mind it is the most powerful of them all. If Christ truly desires that all men should be saved and He paid the price for all men, yet because of Satan’s interference the majority of humanity is lost forever – then who is the real loser and who is the real winner for all eternity? Satan may be cast into the Lake of Fire at the Judgment, but even then he would be able to rejoice that he took the vast majority of men, the pinnacle of God's creation, made in His image, with him into that place to be separated from God forever. God wanted them saved, but the work of the Devil destroyed them, which seems to go against the teaching of scripture.

1 John 3:8
Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.

Hebrews 2:14
Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil,

Christians believe that in the day Christ returns he will raise everyone to judgment. Once judgment has been passed and the sheep have been separated from the goats (Matthew 25:31-46), the creator of all things will remake heaven and earth (Revelation 21-22), restoring what was lost at the fall, reclaiming what the Devil had taken – restoring both Heaven and Earth to their original glory and more (God is not in the business of simply fixing broken things, but of making them better than they ever were before). If God will restore all things, if every knee shall bow and every tongue confess, if all things both in heaven and on earth will be reconciled to Him through the blood of Jesus, then mightn’t God save all men, who are His greatest creation, made in His image, through that blood as well?

I don’t know.

But it certainly seems that such a sweeping salvation, such an incredible, complete restoration of all things could be the ultimate and grand plan of the Almighty God.

Three Views of Hell, Part 4 - Eternal Torment Critique

2009-05-13T06:29:00.000-07:00

When we look at the last post and the list of passages cited there, it certainly looks as though the Eternal Torment view is the only possible interpretation that is Biblically justifiable. However, the case is not as iron-clad as it looks at first glance.

Before I continue, I just want to give credit where it’s due: Several teachers and theologians have made me aware of many of the things that I will be writing on over this and the next several posts, John Stott, Steve Gregg, and Clark Pinnock foremost among them. I would not have been able to see much of what I will be writing about from here on out without reading their work.

Our preconceptions about what the Bible teaches often prevent us from recognizing good alternative theological views and prevent us from seeing problems with our own beliefs. Additionally, legitimate alternative views suffer because most of us don’t know the Bible as well as we should (I most definitely include myself in this). Both of these problems work in favor of the Eternal Torment view of Hell.

Let’s start with the word “eternal,” the backbone of the Eternal Torment view. The regular appearance of this word in describing various attributes of Hell has, understandably, led many to the conclusion that the suffering of the lost in hell lasts forever.

It should be pointed out that the Greek word “aion” or aionios” which is most often translated in these passages as “eternal” is defined by Vine’s Expository Dictionary as,

“Duration, either undefined but not endless, or undefined because endless.”

Right out of the gate, we find that the word we’ve always understood to mean everlasting may not mean that at all. Of course, “eternal” or “everlasting” could just as likely be the proper translation; I am not a Greek scholar by any means, and so far all Greek scholars involved in translating these passages have concluded that “eternal” is the best word. Unfortunately, I am not in a position to judge how justified their choice of translation is, except to say that translators are not free of their preconceptions and are just as capable of being swayed by them as you or I. It also seems that translators believe a great deal in precedence; that is, since aion was first translated as “eternal,” they will also translate the word as “eternal” unless they have a very good reason not to. Since we don’t have an ancient Greek scholar available to us, for the rest of the post let’s assume that “eternal” and other words that imply eternality are translated correctly.

As it turns out, the word “eternal” and similar words only appear eight times in the passages said to be describing Hell, and most of these passages are apocalyptic in style – that is, among other things they make use of hyperbole to make their points. This is the case for what are probably the two strongest passages supporting Eternal Torment: Revelation 14:11 and Mark 9:47-48.

Revelation 14:10-11
…he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.

To anyone who has studied the Book of Revelation in light of the rest of the Bible, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that the Apostle John is borrowing imagery directly from the Old Testament. In Isaiah 34 the prophet records a judgment against the nation of Edom:

Isaiah 34:8-10
For the Lord has a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the cause of Zion. And the streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch, and her soil into sulfur; her land shall become burning pitch. Night and day it shall not be quenched; its smoke shall go up forever. From generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it forever and ever.

While John is not quoting this passage directly, his imagery is borrowed from it. In both texts the picture of judgment brought against the lawbreakers makes use of fire, sulfur, and smoke ascending eternally. But is the unending state pictured in these passages meant to be understood literally? In Isaiah 34, I believe the answer is unquestionably no.

Edom was utterly destroyed by the Nabataeans just as God predicted through Isaiah. The land of Edom is no more, there are no more Edomites (the last known Edomite was Herod the Great), there has not been a descendent of Esau on the face of the Earth for 2000 years. Yet, if we were to travel to the former land of Edom, on the southern shore of the Dead Sea, we would not find the smoke of the Nabataean conquest still rising into sky, yet this passage speaks of the smoke from their burnt land ascending forever. This is a word picture, poetically written, meant to convey the message that Edom would be destroyed and never recover. Smoke is what is left after what has been burned is consumed. That it “go[es] up forever” might be understood to mean the Edomites will remain consumed forever. They are dead and gone two millennia ago, and will never cease to be consumed. Is this the way John means to use this imagery? I can’t say that I know for sure that he does, but it does seem possible.

However, if eternal torment is not what’s in view in verse 11, then why does the end of that sentence read, “and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name?” No rest seems to imply continued consciousness throughout the process that lasts “forever and ever.” While that might be the case, if we read just 2 verses down from this statement it appears that John himself explains:

Revelation 14:13
And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them.”

The rest that John writes about Revelation 14 appears to be another description of Heaven. The saints that die in Christ enter their "rest," those that perish without Him never enter that rest. It is entirely possible that by saying they will never experience rest day or night John is implying that they will not enter Heaven - not that they will remain conscious forever.

Interestingly, the other passage most often cited as teaching that Hell is a place of eternal torment, Mark 9:47-48, is also borrowed from the very last verse of the last chapter in Isaiah:

Mark 9:47-48
And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell [lit. Valley of Hinnom], ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’

Isaiah 66:24
“And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.”

No matter which view of the final six chapters of Isaiah you hold to (these chapters are very controversial) this last verse of the book makes it clear that the prophet is not referring to souls or people in hell eternally suffering worms and flames. The prophet is referring to the bodies of the dead which experience these things, not their conscious souls or their resurrected bodies.
It also appears that undying worms and unquenchable flames should not be taken literally. As I pointed out in an earlier post, in Mark 9:47-48, Jesus refers in the passage specifically to the Valley Hinnom, which was a garbage dump for the city of Jerusalem. When Jesus spoke about Gehenna, or the Valley of Hinnom, his audience would not have thought about a distant future judgment after death, but simply of the valley just outside of Jerusalem's wall. The fires there burned day and night and the worms constantly consumed the garbage, refuse, and the bodies of criminals disposed of in that place.

We in the west make very similar statements all the time, yet for some reason we insist on holding the Biblical writers to a woodenly literal use of language. When you have a problematic ant infestation that you have tried to kill off unsuccessfully, it would not be unusual to complain that these ants “just won’t die.” No one would take you literally and conclude that you were saying these particular ants were immortal or would infest your house for eternity. In this light it is probably safe to say that neither statement about the flames and worms have anything to do with eternity, but are simply common expressions about what one would find in the Valley Hinnom at any given time.

The Valley of Hinnom was also mentioned by the prophet Jeremiah, who spoke of it several times while proclaiming the coming judgment on Israel carried out by Babylon in 586 BC.

Jeremiah 7:31, 32
And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere.

Jeremiah 19:6-9, 11-12
…Therefore, behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when this place shall no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. And in this place I will make void the plans of Judah and Jerusalem, and will cause their people to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hand of those who seek their life. I will give their dead bodies for food to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the earth. And I will make this city a horror, a thing to be hissed at. Everyone who passes by it will be horrified and will hiss because of all its wounds. And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters, and everyone shall eat the flesh of his neighbor in the siege and in the distress, with which their enemies and those who seek their life afflict them’…and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: So will I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter's
vessel, so that it can never be mended. Men shall bury in Topheth because there
will be no place else to bury. Thus will I do to this place, declares the Lord, and to its inhabitants, making this city like Topheth.

The question is, in citing the passage of Isaiah and referring to the place which figures somewhat prominently in Jeremiah’s prophesy of destruction upon Israel, could Jesus be warning of something similar occurring again? It is very possible. The similarities between the Babylonian destruction of Israel and the Roman destruction 600 year later are striking.

Josephus writes extensively about the siege and eventual destruction of Jerusalem in “The Jewish Wars,” and he records that during the height of the Roman siege there were rotting bodies laying in the streets of the city and bodily fluids running in the gutters. The people of Jerusalem cast so many bodies over the walls that they filled the Kidron Valley. While Josephus never mentions the Valley of Hinnom, it may well have seen the same result from this war, especially seeing as this was it’s general use anyway.

These ancient prophets may provide us with a better understanding of these two passages which have long been cited as the support for the view of eternal torment, but they don’t shed any light on Jesus’ statement in Matthew 10:28 that we should “fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell [lit. Gehenna, or Valley of Hinnom]. One explanation that has been suggested is that Jesus is simply saying that when the offending individual is dead God is not done with them yet. I don’t know of any other possible explanations of this particular verse, which I find quite mysterious.

A number of the scriptures that are generally cited in support of the Eternal Torment view of Hell talk about eternal fire. The argument is that the fire of Hell is eternal and so the suffering and torment of those condemned there must be eternal as well. While one can easily see how descriptions of eternal fire would lead one to assume an eternal Hell, the fact is that neither suffering, torment, nor punishment are mentioned in these passages; only eternal fire.
An explanation of this could be that the modifier “eternal” actually refers to something other than duration of torment. It’s quite possible that in describing eternal fire the author is not saying that the fire itself lasts forever but that the fire has it’s source in eternity, which is an attribute solely of God. This idea is not without some scriptural support.

Genesis 19:24
Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven.

Jude 1:7
…just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

As I pointed out before regarding Edom, if you were to travel to the west bank of the Dead Sea, where the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are believed to have been located, you will not see a fire continuing to burn. Genesis tells us that these cities were destroyed with fire “from the Lord out of heaven.” While the fire that burned these cities has long since gone out, the source of the fire is the God who holds eternity in His hand. If this is the case, then to say that the condemned suffer eternal fire would not be saying anything more than that they suffer the judgment of God.

One final point is that the Bible does not say anywhere, that I am aware of, that unbelievers live forever. We often assume it because we understand that those who enter into the New Heaven and the New Earth will reign with God forever; but eternal existence of the damned isn’t taught in the Bible to the best of my knowledge.

Like I said at the beginning of this series, I don’t know what position to believe at the moment. While I have been critical of the Biblical arguments offered in support of the Eternal Torment view Hell, nothing I have laid out is concrete. I have simply offered what I believe to be reasonable questions about the traditional interpretations of the passages used to support the view of Eternal Torment.

Three Views of Hell, Part 3 - Eternal Torment

2009-04-22T21:04:00.000-07:00

What is the nature of Hell? Many of us have heard about it since we were small children in Sunday school. It’s lampooned regularly in the old “Far Side” comic, and references to it are common in English literature and in film. Chances are that even the most theologically uninformed individuals know that Christianity teaches that “bad people go to Hell forever.” But what does the Bible teach about the place that has been set aside for those not found in Christ?

As I stated in my introduction to this series, until last year I would never have given a second thought to this subject. I “knew” that the Bible taught what is referred to as the “Traditional View” or the “Eternal Torment” view and that any other understanding of Hell was straying into the realm of cults and theological liberalism. But when I honestly assessed what I really did know about what the Bible said on Hell, I discovered I knew a lot less than I thought.

I’m going to start with an examination of the Eternal Torment view of Hell. To be clear, this view is the common one, held by the vast majority of conservative Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, which says that those who die without accepting the substitutionary atonement of Christ will be separated from God in Hell and will suffer torment for eternity.

It should be noted beforehand that one of the primary assumptions of those who hold the Eternal Torment view of Hell, whether they know it or not, is that man is by nature immortal. The case for this belief is made by pointing out that the Bible teaches that man is made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27) and one of our shared attributes with the Creator is immortality. Thus, even when man becomes separated from God in Hell he continues to survive forever.

I’m going to spend the rest of this post quoting every passage in the Bible which is generally accepted as saying something about Hell. I won’t need to make the case for this view so much as lay out the passages that are cited for it – most of us in the West, even non-Christians, have grown up with this view so embedded as part of our shared cultural knowledge that we will immediately recognize the view from the following passages.

Matthew 5:22
But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire.

Matthew 5:29-30
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

Matthew 10:28
And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Matthew 23:33
You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?

Matthew 23:15
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land
to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Mark 9:43,45,47
And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire… And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell… And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell.

Note that in each of these quotations the word rendered as “hell” is the Greek word "Gehenna."

What can we learn from these passages? Hell (or specifically, Gehenna) is a place for people who say “You Fool;” it is better to mutilate yourself (cutting off various body parts) than to go there; it is a place of bodies and souls; and it is a place that people are sentenced to go to. While these passages convey the idea that this place is terrible and not one any person would choose to go to, they don’t really give us any specifics, they don’t tell us about the nature of Hell. For that we need to look elsewhere.

None of the following passages explicitly mention hell, however, just because they don't use the word doesn't mean they don't have anything to teach us about it. They also represent the totality of Bible teaching on the subject. Outside of these passages the Bible has nothing else to say about damnation (that I'm aware of).

Matthew 3:12
"His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

Matthew 7:23
And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'

Matthew 8:12, 22:13, 25:30
I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth… Then the king said to the attendants, 'Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth… And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 13:40-42, 50
Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth…The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 25:41,46
"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Romans 2:8-9
…but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and
distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek,

2 Corinthians 5:10
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

1 Thessalonians 5:3
While people are saying, "There is peace and security," then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

2 Thessalonians 1:9
They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might

Hebrews 6:1-2
Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.

Hebrews 10:27
…but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.

2 Peter 2:12, 17
But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction…These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm. For them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved.

Jude 7
…just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

Revelation 14:10-11
…he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its
image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.

Revelation 20:10
…and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

These verses refer repeatedly to separation between the righteous and the unrighteous (the lawbreakers). The unrighteous receive the due sentence for the works that they did “in the body” (that is, while they lived on earth). They will be forced to depart from Christ and be cast into a fiery furnace (called the "lake of fire" in Revelation) where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth and the devil, the beast, and the false prophet are placed to suffer torment “forever and ever.” This fire is said to be "unquenchable" or "eternal" and it has been prepared for the devil and his angels. In addition to fire, “gloom” and “outer darkness” are also referred to. It is place of torment, and the smoke of that torment ascends day and night and those who sufferer it will have no rest. Those who obey unrighteousness will suffer wrath and fury, tribulation and distress. This destruction will be sudden, is called eternal, and will consume the adversaries of God.

After all this, is there any question that the Eternal Torment view has good Biblical support? The fact is, from this list of passages, the traditional view of hell appears unassailable to many and is easily justified. However, we will examine whether this is actually the case or not in the very next post.

Three Views of Hell, Part 2 - Translation Problems

2009-04-13T16:49:00.000-07:00

Before I begin an exploration of what I now consider to be the three Biblically acceptable views of Hell, we need to clear a few misconceptions and problems out of the way. Unfortunately, when it comes to this subject, there is one tremendous roadblock in particular that prevents many people from coming to a clear understanding of what the Bible actually teaches about Hell: The King James Version of the Bible.

No offense to those who love the King James Version of the Bible - for its time it was a marvelous feat of scholarship and it still is the most beautifully rendered of all Bible versions - but we now know that there are a quite a few places where the translation is misleading or simply flat out wrong. This is the case with the KJV use of the word “Hell.” Unfortunately, the wide familiarity of the KJV rendering of many passages has led to quite a few misunderstandings regarding what the Bible actually teaches about Hell (among other subjects).

As we go through these posts on Hell you must keep in mind that no matter which of the three views you accept Hell is place where the unrighteous are condemned to go following the judgment of Christ at His second coming. While there are places described in the Bible that look similar to our understanding of Hell, some of these are described as existing before the Judgment, and therefore cannot be what Christians understand to be Hell. They might be precursors to Hell, but not Hell itself.

If you look up the word “Hell” in the KJV you will find that it appears exactly 31 times in the Old Testament. The Hebrew word that the translators chose to render as “Hell” in the OT is “Sheol,” which scholars now know is a severe mistranslation. Sheol literally means “the place of the dead;” it either refers to the place where everyone, both the righteous and the unrighteous, go when they die or it refers to the physical state of death. There is no notion of suffering or separation from God in the word at all. Few, if any, of the modern translations even attempt to translate sheol, as there is not a good modern English equivalent, most just leave it as it is. Later on, as I go through all the verses that are generally cited as telling us something about Hell, you will notice that none of them come from the OT, which apparently (and interestingly) has nothing to tell us about Hell.

In the New Testament, there are three different Greek words that have been translated as “Hell,” particularly in the KJV, and “Hades” is the most numerous of the three. If you’re familiar with the Greek myths, you know that Hades is the land of the dead. Just like sheol, it is either the place where both the good and the bad go or it is simply the state of physical death. It has no equivalence with Hell, as Christians understand the word, but is instead a direct equivalent of sheol. This is most apparent in the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew scriptures (the Christian Old Testament) into Koine Greek made between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC, which translates all instances of "sheol" as0 "hades."

The second Greek word translated as Hell in the New Testament is “tartarus.” Tartarus only appears once in the entire Bible, in 2 Peter 2:4 which reads:

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into [tartarus]
and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;

This might sound like the Lake of Fire described in Revelation but it can’t be. The verse tells us that the angels who are held in Tartarus are waiting for the judgment day (it’s a temporary prison) while the Lake of Fire in Revelation 19 and 20 appears to be a final holding place for the beast, the false prophet, and anyone whose names are not found in the Book of Life. Unfortunately, little else is known about Tartarus – it could be the name of the location that the rich man, from the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, found himself in; although there are several dissimilarities between the two places. Or it could be somewhere else completely. Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be Hell.

The third and final word often translated as Hell in the New Testament, “Gehenna,” is also the one which is most justifiably translated as "Hell." The word appears several times in the teaching of Jesus and once in the book of James (3:6). Gehenna literally refers to a narrow ravine just outside of Jerusalem, known also as the “Valley of Hinnom” or “Topheth” (pronounced: toff-et) where a number of unsavory things occurred throughout Jewish history.

In the time of the Jewish kings Ahaz and Manasseh the Jews were conducting ritual infant sacrifices to the demon-god Moloch in the Valley (2 Kings 16:2-3, 2 Chron 28:3; 33:6). When King Josiah took the throne of Judah he put an end to this practice by making the Valley unclean through the disposing of bodies of executed criminals and dead animals there and draining the sewage of Jerusalem’s upper city ("Bethso") into it. The fires of Gehenna were kept burning day and night without end to destroy the carcasses and garbage that were dumped there. Apparently, brimstone (that’s sulphur to us) was also used in the valley to assist in the burning of the garbage as well as for it’s disinfectant qualities.

The singular Jamesian reference to Gehenna tells us nothing about the word, other than it has bad undertones. James writes that, “The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by [Gehenna].” While this is a strong warning against undisciplined speech it really doesn’t tell us anything about Hell or Gehenna, as James understood those words.

While the word Gehenna is used by Jesus only 7 unique times (11 times total among the synoptic Gospels), the ways in which it is used lend themselves far better toward being translated as Hell then any of the other three words I covered above. Of course, whether this translation is appropriate remains to be seen; I will go over all the passages that appear to say something about Hell in my next post, which will make the argument for the Eternal Torment view.

Three Views of Hell, Part 1

2009-04-07T12:38:00.000-07:00

Recently, I have been studying the Biblical doctrine of Hell, and have come to a surprising conclusion: I don’t know what to believe about Hell.

As I studied the passages that most Protestant Christians believe speak about Hell, I discovered that the Bible has far less to say on the subject than I ever thought. You’ve probably heard it said that Jesus spoke more about Hell than about any other single subject; I have heard it said countless times in my life, but in studying the subject I found that Jesus either rarely, or never (depending on how you understand several vague passages) spoke about Hell. In reality, He spoke most often about the Kingdom of God, but that’s a subject for another time.

There’s a lot of misinformation out there about this subject, and as my views are now up in the air, I would like to present what I have found and see if any readers have any comments. This will probably take three or four posts (or six or seven), and I imagine that each will be pretty long. That said, I hope this interesting for all.

Three Biblical Views of Hell?

Like most Christians, I grew up believing in what is generally known as the “Eternal Torment” view of Hell. We’re all familiar with it - In brief, it says that all people who die without having accepted the saving work of Christ are judged and then cast in Hell, or more specifically the Lake of Fire, where they are separated from God and suffer torment for eternity. While I was aware that liberal Christians and some groups I would call cults had different beliefs about Hell, I never for a moment considered that anything other than the Eternal Torment view was Biblically justifiable.

Jehovah’s Witnesses believe in “Annihilationism,” that the soul of the unbeliever is destroyed upon death so that there isn’t any hell at all. For the JW, there is only Heaven and non-existence. The Unitarians believe in “Universalism,” that there are many ways to God, and that all people will be accepted into God’s presence upon death. For them Heaven is the only destination. These are not the only pseudo-Christian cults and groups that hold such alternative doctrines about Hell, but they are two of the most prominent.

Neither Annihilationism nor Universalism, as stated above, has any grounding in scripture. Both views primarily emanate from a strong distaste for the eternal torment view – a distaste that most Christians can probably empathize with. I have never been particularly comfortable with the eternal torment understanding of Hell myself, but I have defended it on internet forums and in the High School Sunday School classes I taught because I believed it was what the Bible taught. That said, in conducting a more focused study of the Biblical teachings on Hell I was very surprised to come to the conclusion that two other views, very similar to Annihilationism and Universalism, do have as much Biblical evidence in their favor as the view of Eternal Torment does.

“Universal Reconciliation”

I imagine that most conservative Christians will have a bad reaction to this view instinctively, as on it’s surface it appears almost indistinguishable from Universalism. Like Universalism, Universal Reconciliation teaches that all people will bow the knee, be reconciled with God, and join Him in Heaven. While the end result is the same, there are three key differences which make Universal Reconciliation, I believe, tolerable to Biblical Christianity while Universalism is not.

1. There is a Hell in Universal Reconciliation.
While Universalism teaches that all men go to heaven because God is too loving to send people to hell, that He is pleased with us no matter what we do, Universal Reconciliation teaches that men who die without Christ suffer judgment and Hell for their sins against God.

2. All men will be saved, but that Salvation is only through Christ.
While the god of Universalism loves everyone so much that he will overlook any sin in accepting people into Heaven, Universal Reconciliation holds that it is only because of suffering and Hell that the damned are brought to a place of repentance and repaired relationship with God through Christ.

3. There is a surprisingly (to me) strong Biblical case for Universal Reconciliation.
Universalism is based on a negative emotional response to the doctrine of Hell. Those evangelicals who consider themselves Universal Reconciliationists hold the view not because they hate idea of Hell but because they believe the Bible teaches it.

“Conditional Immortality”

Like Annihilationism, this view teaches that all men not found in Christ when they die, will cease to exist. The ultimate final destination is either Heaven for the saved or non-existence for the lost. Many evangelicals would call this view Annihilationism, and it is very similar to that heretical position except for three points.

1. There is a Hell in Conditional Immortality.
Like Universalism, Annihilationism gets rid of Hell completely, as those who hold to it choose not to believe that a god of love could punish people in Hell. Conditional Immortality recognizes the Biblical teaching of Hell and the requirement of judgment upon those who reject God before they are extinguished from existence.

2. Human Beings are mortal by nature.
Annihilationism holds that God destroys the soul that dies without Christ, that ceasing to exist is the sum total of the punishment that God meets out. Conditional Immortality says that human beings are not innately immortal, and thus there is no need for God to destroy them. Immortality, it is argued, emanates from God, and without God to sustain the soul it passes away.

3. There is a surprisingly (to me) strong Biblical case for Conditional Immortality.
Like Universal Reconciliation, the Biblical argument in favor of Conditional Immortality is surprisingly good. Those who support the view do so not because they hate the idea of hell, like the cultist and the liberal, but because they believe it is taught in the Bible.

Let me reemphasize that I am up in the air, no longer leaning toward Eternal Torment, Universal Reconciliation, or Conditional Immortality. I am totally undecided. As that is the case, I want to present each of the views and the arguments both for and against them as best I can. Because I am undecided, I am very interested in hearing your thoughts and want to know what everyone thinks about each view. I hope everyone will find this interesting.

Nowhere Else to Go

2009-04-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

Have you ever considered whether you could come to a place of total unbelief in God, a place where you could walk away from your Christian faith? I have pondered that question numerous times. Recently, Greg Koukl of Stand To Reason gave the best short answer to that question that I have heard:

"I have never doubted so strongly...that I have been tempted to walk away. And the reason is because I think I know too much. What am I going to walk to?

Am I going to walk to atheism? I couldn't be an atheist if I tried! There's too much evidence for the existence of God. I would have to buy all these atheistic conundrums: everything came from nothing; life came from non-life; consciousness came from matter; morality came from nowhere; law came from chaos. All of these are wildly counter-intuitive.

Maybe some other religion? What other religion doesn't have the same kind of problems I'm facing right now? Whatever it is that I might be disappointed with God about, there is no other religion that is going to offer me something more. I could be a Hindu, I guess, and say that it's all just an illusion anyway, but that doesn't ring true.

I have doubted, I have been challenged, I have been hurt, I have questioned God, I have disbelieved God's goodness many times. But in all I have never been tempted to walk away because there's nothing [else] to go to."

"Jesus Didn't Exist"

2009-02-28T10:44:00.000-08:00

Those of you who have taken the time to talk with atheists and skeptics about the historicity of Christianity have probably engaged someone who has made the claim that Jesus of Nazareth never existed. Generally, when this claim is made we Christians fall all over ourselves attempting to provide evidence to the contrary. We do all the heavy lifting, fruitlessly providing evidence to the contrary. I have to admit that I have done exactly this on more than occasion.

I have recently been reminded of a better option. Do nothing. Don’t engage in the debate on the terms of the one making the ridiculous claim. One of the most important tactics to remember when debating with anyone, no matter what the topic, is, “The one making the claim bears the burden of proof.” When the atheist makes the claim that Jesus never existed, in total contradiction to all the available evidence and virtually the entire community of ancient historians, it’s up to them to support their claim, not for us to refute it.

Instead of immediately jumping into the debate with research and evidence, just sit back and ask, “What’s your proof?” There is none. This is just a claim that atheists make without any support at all, generally because it gets Christians riled up and distracted doing all kinds of leg work to refute the claim. Chances are, you won’t make any headway trying to convince an atheist that their claim is bad by providing evidence, but you might actually get him to back away from such a claim by forcing him support it himself.

Apocalyptic Prophesies

2009-02-07T16:55:00.000-08:00

I want to look at one more prophesy from Isaiah. I separated this one from the three previous examples as it’s not about Jesus, but is an excellent example of what many scholars call
"Apocalyptic literature;" or prophesy in the apocalyptic style.

Apocalyptic literature is particularly strange to us in the West, as it is the only literature type in the Bible for which we do not have a corresponding style. Some of the peculiar hallmarks of this literature type include: symbolic language making frequent use of hyperbole; focus on a coming divine judgment on a people or a nation often referred to as a “visitation” or “coming” of God; often, apocalyptic literature is written in verse, or in poetic form. In my opinion, these distinctive are vitally important to keep in mind when reading Biblical prophecy that is likely apocalyptic in nature.

Isaiah 13 declares itself to be an “oracle concerning Babylon,” and it’s an excellent example of the apocalyptic style. It is also an passage to learn from because we know a great deal about the fulfillment of this prophesy from both the book of Daniel, the historian Herodotus, and modern archeology.

Vs. 9 – Behold, the day of the Lord is coming, Cruel, with fury and burning anger, To make the land a desolation; And He will exterminate its sinners from it.

The second half of this verse didn’t happen. The land wasn’t made desolate in 539 BC, in fact, Babylon remained a large and important city until well after the life of Alexander the Great. Neither did God literally exterminate sinners from the land around Babylon; sinners lived in the city throughout the time of the Medes and the Persians and through the time of the Greeks as well. In fact, there are records in existence that relate the continuation of pagan sacrifices in the city temples until at least 275 BC, 264 years after the event predicted in Isaiah 13.

While this didn’t literally take place, it paints a picture of severe judgment against the Babylonian empire and its people because of their great sin before God. This part is clearly true and, I think, the intended image Isaiah wished to convey.

Vs. 12 13 – I will make mortal man scarcer than pure gold and mankind than
the gold of Ophir. Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, And the earth will
be shaken from it’s place, At the fury of the Lord of hosts, In the day of His
burning anger.

None of these things literally occurred in the fall of the Babylonian empire. There were just as many men in the 5th century BC as there were in the 6th, even in and around Babylon. While none of us can say whether the heavens trembled or not, it seems pretty clear that the earth was not shaken from its place.

This type of language, the shaking of heaven and earth from their place, is not an uncommon image when the author desires to communicate serious and significant changes. In this case, the greatest empire in the world at this time, Babylon, is going to be overthrown, in a single night no less, and replaced by an entirely new power, the Medes and the Persians.

Vs. 19, 20 – And Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms, the glory of the Chaldeans’
pride, Will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It will never be
inhabited or lived in from generation to generation; Nor will the Arab pitch his
tent there, Nor will shepherds make their flocks lie down there.

Verse 17 places the time of this whole prophesy unmistakably in 539 BC at the overthrow of the Babylonian empire by the Medes and Persians, yet none of the things in verses 19 and 20 actually happened. God did not burn Babylon off the face of the earth as He did to Sodom and Gomorrah, but it continued to be an important city in the hands of both the Medes and Persians and the Greeks; it was inhabited and lived in for many generations following the Babylonian overthrow.

However, in another sense, God’s judgment on Babylon is exactly like His judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. In both cases the cities, or nation, under judgment completely vanished in an instant. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed in a moment by fire from heaven, while Babylon was completely supplanted by an entirely new empire in the space of a night. In both cases the entities under judgment ceased to exist in a virtual instant.

We need to understand the writing in the way the author intended it to be understood: The point of the prophesy is that God is going to bring judgment on Babylon and that the tool of that judgment will be the Medes and the Persians and that the changes brought about by this judgment will be significant.

This is very standard hyperbolic language which is used regularly in this type of Ancient Near Eastern literature. Rather than conveying actual events, its purpose was to convey importance and significance. We know this from many examples this style of literature found in both Biblical and extra-Biblical documents.

For example, consider the extra-Biblical prologue and epilogue written for the book of Esther and attributed by the author to Mordecai:

Prologue:
Behold, noise and confusion, thunders and earthquake, tumult upon the earth! And behold, two great dragons came forward, both ready to fight, and they roared terribly. And at their roaring every nation prepared for war, to fight against the nation of the righteous. And behold, a day of darkness and gloom, tribulation and distress, affliction and great tumult upon the earth! And the whole righteous nation was troubled, they feared the evils that threatened them, and were ready to perish. Then they cried to God and from their cry, as though from a tiny spring there came a great river with abundant water, light came, and the sun arose, and the lowly were exalted and consumed those held in honor.

At the end of the book of Esther this epilogue is added:

I remember the dream that I had concerning these matters, and none of them has
failed to be fulfilled. The tiny stream which became a river, and there was light and the sun and abundant water–the river is Esther, whom the King married and became queen. The two dragons are Haman and myself. The nations are those gathered to destroy the name of the Jews. And my nation, this is Israel, who cried out to God and were saved.

You can see how the story of Esther is retold in this apocalyptic paragraph and how the symbols, similar to those found in Isaiah and other apocalyptic passages in the Bible, play a role in depicting the story. I think that from this example we can see how apocalyptic literature tends to retell (or foretell, in the prophets’ case) history in fantastic imagery and sensational symbols. I think the same thing is going on in the case of Isaiah 13, and a number of other passages in the Bible. There certainly is a precedent for it.

It is a mistake to apply the same literal standard to all prophesy in the Bible, nor is it a good way to interpret scripture. Taking the time to examine passages like Isaiah 13, and the extra biblical prologue and epilogue of Esther can give us insight into a style of writing wholly unfamiliar to us, and give us tools for understanding other scriptures where the fulfillment has not been provided.

Are Prophesies Always Fulfilled Literally?

2009-01-27T20:42:00.000-08:00

I recently got into a discussion about Biblical prophecy with an acquaintance who happens to be a dispensationalist. The conversation got started when he told me that prophesy “is always fulfilled literally.” To clarify the point he provided an example: If a prophet declares that it’s going to rain on Tuesday, and it doesn’t rain on Tuesday, then he is a false prophet. He can’t suddenly say, “Well, when I said rain I was referring to spiritual raining down of God’s blessings; not actual rain!” He worried that if fulfillments aren’t “literal” then we have no objective way of determining the truth or untruth of any prophesy.

I don’t think that this is the case at all. We simply have to look at a few prophesies given in the Old Testament whose fulfillment is explicitly recorded elsewhere in the Bible to see that his point is mistaken. Let’s take a look at just a few examples of such prophesies:

Isaiah 22:20-23
Then it will come about in that day, That I will summon My servant Eliakim to the son of Hilkiah, And I will clothe him with your tunic And tie your sash securely about him. I will entrust him with your authority, And he will become a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. Then I will set the key of the house of David on his shoulder, When he opens no one will shut, When he shuts no one will open. I will drive him like a peg in a firm place, And he will become a throne of glory to his father’s house.

The fulfillment, according to the vision of John, is expounded upon in Revelation 3:7:

And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: He who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and who shuts and no one opens, says this…

Although the passage in Isaiah was made about the man Eliakim, in Revelation 3 Jesus claims this prophesy for Himself! This is clearly not a literal fulfillment of Isaiah’s words. Isaiah made his prophesy about someone other than Jesus; in fact, without the passage in Revelation, there would be no reason why anyone would even think to apply Isaiah 22:22 to Christ at all. None of the things which Isaiah predicts for Eliakim ever literally occur during the ministry of Jesus: Jesus never literally had the key to the house of David, nor did He literally shut or open anything of note during his time on earth.

Despite this, Jesus Himself claims that He presently holds the key of David and is the one who opens and the one who shuts. This isn’t about some future time, Jesus says these things are true about Himself now. It seems that the proper understanding of this passage is a spiritual one, not a literal one.

Isaiah 28:16
Therefore thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, A costly cornerstone for the foundation, firmly placed. He who believes in it will not be disturbed.

There are several places in the New Testament where the Apostles point out this fulfilled prophesy (Romans 9:33, 10:11, 1 Peter 2:6, Acts 4:11), yet if I were to apply a literal standard to this passage I could not apply this passage to Christ. Jesus was never a literal stumbling stone, certainly not in the wooden sense that my acquaintance forcefully advocated to me.

The fulfillment of this passage is spiritual: Christ is the spiritual foundation of the present spiritual Kingdom of God. For the Jews (and many others today), Christ was and is a stumbling stone in a spiritual sense – they do not want to believe that He is the Messiah they are waiting for. It’s a spiritual hang-up, not a physical one.

Isaiah 8:7-8
And I will wait for the Lord who is hiding His face from the house of Jacob; I will even look eagerly for Him. Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are for signs and wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion.

The author of Hebrews references this passage and applies it to Jesus in 2:13. While many actual children came to Jesus during His earthly ministry, they are not what the prophesy is referring to. God does not have physical children in view here, but spiritual Children, the author of Hebrews make this clear in vs. 14 and 15:

Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.

We become His children when God becomes our Father through our love of Christ, as Christ Himself stated in John 8:42.

I could give more examples of spiritual fulfillments from the prophesies which the Apostles tell us are fulfilled in Christ, but I think these three make my point clearly.

When my acquaintance provided the example of a prophesy for rain on Tuesday, he was articulating a standard which would require that all outsiders would be able, with simple observation, to independently confirm or refute the accuracy of the prophesy. The point of bringing up these three passages from Isaiah is that, in each case, there is nothing for the observer to observe. Without the divinely inspired writing of the Apostles these passages would have no concrete, observable fulfillment that contemporaries of Jesus could have confirmed or denied. That said, the lack of an observable fulfillment does not make these prophesies any less true or any less fulfilled than Isaiah 7:14:

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call his name Immanuel.

The Proper Place of Science

2008-12-10T23:12:00.000-08:00

Here in The West, we have a love affair with science. It’s completely understandable; science has spread prosperity to an unprecedented level, it has put men on the moon, given us the means to feed the whole planet, created the microwave, and allowed us to carry excessively tiny telephones with us wherever we go. Unfortunately, the ubiquity of science has caused many people to place it on pedestal and rely on it for every answer. For so many, an answer provided by science no matter what the subject, is wrongly valued far above answers provided by its sister disciplines of philosophy and theology.

Science is a tool and like any tool it is good for some jobs and absolutely useless for others. Science can’t explain the deepest questions that we have asked ourselves over the centuries: “Why are we here? (Not “How did we come into being,” which it might be possible for science to answer, although even that answer has so far eluded scientists, but rather “WHY, or for what purpose, are we here?”). Science can’t explain consciousness, kindness, morality, or even free will.

Here are two classic examples of the limitation of science:

A brain surgeon knows a great deal more about the physical brain than I do, yet he has absolutely no access to my mind. He knows nothing about my innermost thoughts, he can’t discover them by looking at my brain, and he can’t tell what I’m thinking about, or what makes me happy, sad, worried, or elated through any scientific means available to him.
(Credit to Philosopher Brian Magee for this example):I am sitting in a room, when the human body sitting opposite me rises out of it’s chair and then moves across the room to a table. On the table it locates a small silver box, out of which it removes a cigarette which it places in it’s mouth. Upon completing this action, the body proceeds to light that same cigarette.

I, and anyone else who observes this action, immediately understand that that person desires a cigarette, even if we have never experienced such a similar desire ourselves before. However, if we try to explain this sequence of events in scientific terms, those of atomic motion and chemical reaction, this sequence suddenly becomes totally incomprehensible.

Science is very limited in its ability to explain the universe around us. It is only a tool, and a flawed tool at that as philosophers David Hume and Thomas Kuhn have so brilliantly pointed out. Yet, it remains the best, most important tool we have for explaining the natural world. That is all. Only what can be examined physically and measured quantitatively and qualitatively is available to science. Everything else falls into the realms of Philosophy or Theology.

You’ve probably heard an atheist say that “science has proven that miracles can’t occur.” This is complete rot. By definition science is the study of order and patterns, usually in the natural world. Miracles, by definition, are events that go against the natural order and established pattern of the world. In other words, miracles are forever outside the realm of science. Trying to explain genuine miracles with science is a little like trying to gauge an individual’s wisdom with a tape measure. It’s the wrong tool.

Science is necessary and useful, but it by no means has the last word (or often any word) on the most important aspects of human life – meaning, morality, love, selflessness, consciousness, or rationality; and the list goes on and on. For each of these areas we need the separate but equally useful tools of philosophy and theology.

Women in Government - An Affront to God?

2008-10-01T16:28:00.000-07:00

In my post In Defense of Deborah I pointed out that adherents to “Biblical Patriarchy” claim that God commands that all positions of authority whether in the home, the church, or any form of civil government, be held by men at all times regardless of the circumstances. In his article Should Christians Support a Woman for the Office of Civil Magistrate?, posted on Vision Forum, William Einwechter writes:

“…as creation establishes the headship of man in the civil sphere by means of man being created first and the woman being created for man, so the law of God sets the headship of man in the civil sphere by means of the stated qualifications for civil rulers.”

Einwechter makes this claim by appealing to several Old Testament (OT) passages for support:

1) The creation of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2:18-24; I have already answered Mr. Einwechter’s arguments from the creation story in my last post, “Biblical Patriarchy from Creation?”

2) Jethro’s council to Moses to set up judges under him to handle common problems and disagreements:

“Furthermore, you shall select out of all the people able men who fear God, men of truth, those who hate dishonest gain; and you shall place these over them as leaders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens." – Exodus 18:21 (NASB)

3) Moses’ restatement of Jethro’s advice in Deuteronomy 1:

'Choose wise and discerning and experienced men from your tribes, and I will appoint them as your heads.' – Deuteronomy 1:13 (NASB)

4) The laws given for the kings of Israel (whenever they should happen to come along):

"When you enter the land which the LORD your God gives you, and you possess it and live in it, and you say, 'I will set a king over me like all the nations who are around me,'…He shall not multiply wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away; nor shall he greatly increase silver and gold for himself. – Deuteronomy 17:14,17 (NASB)

In looking at these passages, Mr. Einwechter notes that the pronoun in each of them is masculine. He correctly points out that these words are gender specific, unlike the word ‘man’ from the creation story which is the gender neutral ‘mankind.’ That the pronoun is gender-specific is particularly meaningful to Patriarchists as they believe that it communicates a God-given requirement of male-ness for all positions of authority.

Mr. Einwechter writes:
“God set for the essential qualifications for civil magistrates for all people and for all time when He spoke through Jethro to Moses…The word “men” chosen by the Holy Spirit in both of these texts is the Hebrew, gender specific word for a man.” (emphasis added)

I think this makes the Exodus 18 passage do far more work than it was ever intended it to do.
The first thing that must be pointed out is that Mr. Einwechter goes well beyond the Biblical text and good Biblical exegesis in making the claim that it was God himself who selected the precise wording of Jethro’s comments, i.e. God “spoke through Jethro to Moses.” Actually, if you read the whole the passage you see that Jethro makes an entirely different claim about his words:

Listen now to me and I will give you some advice, and may God be with you. – Exodus 18:19 (TNIV – emphasis added)

The simple truth is that Jethro offers Moses his advice on how he should handle the burden of leadership over the Jewish people and articulates a desire for God’s blessing on whatever path Moses chooses to follow. Nothing more. I am not claiming that Jethro’s advice was not wise or even that it was not inspired by God, however the Bible never makes this claim. It is good advice from a wise and apparently Godly man; let’s leave it at that.

The second point that must be made is similar to the first; even if these words are spoken by God through Jethro, they come in the form of advice that Moses could choose to follow or not. They are not a command. To claim, as Einwechter does, that this advice from Jethro, along with it’s repetition in Deuteronomy 1, constitutes a law of God regarding civil leadership stretches this passage to the breaking point. Let’s be serious. God was not shy about supplying the people of Israel with very specific laws pertaining to everything from the criminal justice system to the daily washing of various body parts to the proper way to prepare foods, yet He choose to rely on advice from Jethro to communicate His will regarding civil leadership? To quote John Stossel, “Give me a break!” The passage reflects wise counsel, and I often wish that we had leaders who fit that mold, but it’s hardly a command.

The third point is that the actual use of the word “men” in Exodus 18 and Deuteronomy 1 may be culturally bound. For Moses and Jethro to refer only to men when contemplating a candidate for leadership would be completely in line with their culture, which was genuinely patriarchal (not the warmed-over modern interpretation of patriarchy of Vision Forum and others). Think about it. Even today, in a culture that could hardly be called patriarchal, except by the most hardened feminists, we still tend to use masculine pro-nouns when talking generally about the people who hold positions of authority. In the same way, only more so, it would never have occurred to Jethro to even consider a woman for any position of leadership at all.

The forth passage that William Einwechter cites as establishing God’s “essential qualifications for civil magistrates for all people and for all time” is Deuteronomy 17:14-17. About this passage Mr. Einwechter writes:

Furthermore, the directions that God gives concerning the establishment of a king in Israel requires that a man, and not a woman, be chosen (Deut. 17:14-20). The king was to be a “brother,” and he was not to “multiply wives to himself.” Clearly, a man is in view here.

To that I say: Yes, a man is in view here! Or maybe we should say that 44 men are in view here. As “The Lawgiver” and a prophet of God, Moses knows that in several hundred years the people of Israel will demand a king. Armed with this foreknowledge, Moses gives several basic laws by which those kings should abide (although none of them did). Far from making strictly male leadership a command for all people for all time, Moses’ failure to acknowledge Queens in this short set of laws only recognizes that Israel only ever had kings over her for as long as the nation existed. This is a fact of history, not a command.

The final point that needs to made is about the nature of the Old Testament Law itself. Even if we actually did find commands for male-only leadership in each of these passages, the Church is no longer under the Old Testament Law and the obligations that come with it. Such commands would no longer apply to us. The laws given by God through Moses to the Jewish people were for the governance and blessing of the religious theocracy of Israel that God established.

Today the order has changed. Jews and Gentiles alike are no longer under the Old Covenant, but are under a new Law, the New Covenant established not between God and nations, but between God and those who love Him and follow His Son, Jesus. If Jesus had come to establish a political kingdom He would have done it. Instead, He came to establish his Kingdom, for the moment a spiritual Kingdom, made up of people from every creed, nation, and race on Earth.

As this is true, we find the commands for Christians regarding civil government to be few, indeed they can boiled down to the simple statement “Obey the civil authorities.” This sums up Jesus statement regarding tribute to Caesar in Matthew 22:17-21 and Paul’s statement regarding civil obedience in Romans 13:1-7. For the Christian it no more difficult than that. No statement about qualifications and certainly none about gender. What does this tell me? That God has allowed Christians to make their own choices on civil leadership issues, tempered by Godly wisdom.

Am I saying that we should expect numerically equal gender representation in positions of authority? I am not. I believe that God has generally provided men and women with different strengths and abilities that offset each others weaknesses. God has made men in such a way that they will take on the rigors and demands of authority far more naturally than women. However, by acknowledging that I am not saying women can never or should never take on roles of authority. History has shown that there exist great women who have skillfully and effectively taken even the highest positions of authority and held those offices with such grace, dignity, and efficacy that they brought honor to the position and to those over whom they held authority. Is this the normal order of things? It is not, but just because something is not normal does not make it illegitimate or unbiblical.

William Einwechter’s position on women in civil government may look impressive and Biblical at first glance, but when you compare his interpretation with the actual passages he cites and the rest of scripture, his case falls apart so completely that there literally is nothing left for him to hang his argument on.

Biblical Patriarchy from Creation?

2008-09-25T22:26:00.000-07:00

Now that I’m done defending Deborah the big question is whether the Bible teaches anything like “Biblical Patriarchy” at all. I’ll come right out and say that I don’t believe such a teaching can be found anywhere in scripture, at least in the form in which it is presented by Vision Forum. As with my last post, I will mostly be citing verses and arguments as posed by William Einwechter in his article “Should Christians Support a Woman for the Office of Civil Magistrate?” found on Vision Forum’s website.

The Biblical Patriarchist begins his case by going all the way back to the beginning of the Bible. The creation of Adam and Eve as related in Genesis 2 is the Old Testament backbone of the doctrine. In this chapter’s account Adam is created first and spends some length of time with the animals in the garden before God observes that, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him," at which point God places Adam into a deep sleep and removes the rib from which He fashions Eve.

In writing about this story, Mr. Einwechter says,

“The text of Genesis 2:7 and 2:18-24 teaches us that man was made first, and then the woman was made to be man’s helper and companion. The Bible instructs us that this order of creation was by God’s design, and that it establishes the positional authority of the man over the woman in regards to authority and leadership.”

Einwechter and others of this point of view make much of two elements of this chapter: 1) that Adam was created first, and 2) that the text reports that God said, “…I will make a helper suitable for him.” They say that the creation of Adam chronologically prior to the creation of Eve illustrates a natural order of positional authority of the man over the woman. Furthermore, God’s statement in Genesis 2:18 that Eve was created for Adam reinforces this illustration from the natural order of creation. It seems to me that one needs to come to the text of Genesis 2 with this presupposition already in place to get this message from the story.

If we consider the whole creation text of Genesis I think that we find an authority message dramatically different than that in Biblical Patriarchy. There are only two passages which relate the creation of Adam and Eve themselves: Genesis 1:26-27 and 2:7, 18-22. In Chapter 1 of Genesis God states His intention for mankind to exercise dominion over all creation:

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. – Genesis 1:26-27

Einwechter ignores this passage, however, I think it’s interesting to note that here, the first time human authority is presented in the Bible, both the man and the woman share equally in it. The word ‘man’ that appears in this passage is the Hebrew word ‘adam’ (transliterated), which is a generic word for mankind. God states His intention that man, or mankind, should rule over all creation. To make it perfectly clear that God includes all people in this sweeping declaration of authority and not just males the passage ends with the description, “God created man [mankind] in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them.” While it may not contain an explicit teaching on male and female authority, I would say that, if anything, it communicates the equality of the man and the woman, not the authority of the man over the woman.

According to Einwechter, the fact that Adam was created first is indicative of an implicit patriarchy, that it “establishes the positional authority of the man over the woman in regards to authority and leadership.” I beg to differ. The wording chosen by the author of Genesis himself in describing God’s sentiments on Adam’s lonely state in Genesis 2:18 communicates exactly the opposite. God asserts that,

“It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him."

Mr. Einwechter places the emphasis of this passage on the “for him,” there is a sense of ownership laid over the statement. However, God’s expressed purpose for creating a helper for Adam was so that he wouldn’t be lonely; that he should have someone else with him to share in his work.

Additionally, many Bibles include a footnote next to the word ‘suitable’ which reads “Lit. Corresponding to.” All the Jewish scholarship that I could find agree that the literal rendering of the text using the words ‘corresponding to’ instead of ‘suitable for,’ communicates God’s intention to create a helper for Adam who is completely his equal (see here for example). Eve was not merely Adam’s assistant in the garden, she complimented him and was his companion, and shared equally in the authority God gave all mankind over His creation.

While I do believe that the Bible teaches that male headship in families and in the Church is desirable and normal, Einwechter’s claims that the creation order in Genesis establishes a universal positional authority of man over the woman reads too much into the passage. The words of God Himself communicate the equality of His male and female creations.

In Defense of Deborah

2008-09-12T22:30:00.000-07:00

Until recently I have never realized that Deborah, judge of Israel, needed defending. In my mind she has been, like Daniel, one of very few people that the Bible reports only positively about. Silly me.

In the wake of the Republican Vice Presidential Nomination of Sarah Palin, I have discovered a small but vocal subset of Christianity that stands very firmly on what Vision Forum refers to as “Biblical Patriarchy.” This doctrine teaches that there are basically three spheres of influence in the world: The Family (or the home), the (local) church, and civil government. It’s supporters say that in each of these arenas the Bible clearly teaches that female leadership or authority is contrary to God’s order. Given that, they believe that God is better pleased with bad, ineffectual male leadership than even the most capable woman in a position of authority. As a result, some Christians have claimed that they are no longer able to vote for Sen. McCain now that he has selected the female Governor of Alaska to be his VP.

What does this have to do with Deborah? I have serious concerns about the claims of proponents of Biblical Patriarchy both biblically and philosophically. They teach that female leadership is completely unacceptable to God; however, in the fourth chapter of Judges we find an explicit example of female leadership over the Nation of Israel (Judges 2:16) and in a role that God Himself assigned no less. In order to explain this apparent contradiction between Biblical Patriarchy and the leadership of Deborah, the patriarchists teach that her period as judge over Israel was a shame to the men of Israel; they claim that female leadership is a sign of the judgment of God, based on Isaiah 3:12.

Vision Forum published the article Should Christians Support a Woman for the Office of Civil Magistrate? in which William Einwechter presents the doctrine of Biblical Patriarchy. Einwechter attempts to show that Deborah is not a good example of female leadership in the Bible; in fact, he claims she should not be considered a leader at all. I disagree. For the rest of this post, I will be responding directly to the arguments and assertions made in this article.

Einwechter writes:“First, in regard to Deborah, recognize that it would be unwise to cancel out the explicit biblical teaching on the headship of man, the clear statements of the law, the picture of the virtuous woman, and the lament over women ruling on the basis of what took place in Israel in one of the most confused periods in Israel’s history.”

I agree. It can be dangerous and problematic to look at examples of individuals for doctrine, particularly in the Old Testament, as the Bible frequently records peoples’ actions without supplying a judgment as to the righteousness of their actions. The good and the bad are reported together and often judgment is withheld. We should never cancel out Biblical teaching because of a conflicting example. However, if we are careful, we can allow Biblical examples to inform our understanding of Biblical teaching. We can learn things if we examine the text carefully.

What is God doing in this story? God uses Deborah as both an influential judge in Israel and as a prophetess. He speaks to her directly as His agent for freeing Israel from Jabin, king of the Canaanites. Is it appropriate for her to serve in such a leadership position? Biblical patriarchists would say no, her apparent position as a leader only signifies the extent of God’s judgment on Israel. However, Israel was already experiencing God’s judgment – they were captives of their enemies the Canaanites because they had forgotten the one true God and worshipped other gods. Rather than Deborah as evidence of God’s judgment, Deborah is presented as the agent God used to release Israel from judgment.

Is her example a special case? Does it stand out in any way from the other accounts of the judges in this book? No. In every account related in Judges, Israel does “evil in the eyes of the Lord,” thus they are handed over to their enemies for a period of years, after which God raises up a judge to lead Israel back to Him and free them from their captors. This is precisely the pattern followed by Deborah as well.

Einwechter writes: “The judges during this period were more military leaders or ‘avenging deliverers’ than they were civil magistrates (Judges 2:16-19)”

Mr. Einwechter makes this point because Deborah did not personally lead the troops into battle against King Jabin. He uses this detail to question whether we should rightly refer to Deborah as the judge or if it’s more appropriate to conclude that the actual judge of Israel in this story is Barak. This could be a compelling argument if the role of judge is truly said to be a militaristic position. Let’s read the passage:

Then the LORD raised up judges who delivered [Israel] from the hands of those who plundered them. Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they played the harlot after other gods and bowed themselves down to them. They turned aside quickly from the way in which their fathers had walked in obeying the commandments of the LORD; they did not do as their fathers. When the LORD raised up judges for them, the LORD was with the judge and delivered them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the LORD was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who oppressed and afflicted them. But it came about when the judge died, that they would turn back and act more corruptly than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them and bow down to them; they did not abandon their practices or their stubborn ways. – Judges 2:16-19 (NASB)

Does it appear from this passage that the judges were always military leaders, as Mr. Einwechter claimed in his statement above? I certainly don’t find any mention of military leadership or avenging deliverers in this passage. I see nothing in this passage to cause me to ignore the statement in Judges 4:4 – “Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel at that time,” and conclude that Barak was actual the judge if Israel in view here. What I see is a person, the judge, whom God raises up and through whom God affects repentance in the hearts of the people, which leads directly to physical freedom from and victory over their oppressors.

Einwechter writes: “The Song of Deborah and Barak gives some important insight into Deborah’s actual position in Israel.”

Under this statement Mr. Einwechter points out that in Judges 5:7 Deborah claims to be a “mother” in Israel, not a father. He says, “This is significant, given the headship of the father in Israel.” I have to wonder, what else could Deborah have claimed to be? Would it really have been appropriate for her to claim to be a “father” in Israel? Also, the author reads a great deal into a verse that appears to do nothing more than describe Deborah’s simple origins in order to give the glory to God – in essence she’s saying, “Who am I to be used by God to redeem the land and the people of Israel, I’m simply a mother.” She removes the credit anyone might try to give her for the work that was done in Israel and rightfully attributes it to God.

Looking at Judges 5:9, the observation is made that “there were yet governors in Israel,” i.e. the rulers of the tribes, and that this fact invalidates any claim to leadership that could be attributed to Deborah. This is a very strange assertion, as I don’t believe the author would make it about any of the other judges, yet whether these governors were referenced explicitly or not, they were there during the service of every other judge over Israel. The fact that each tribe had its own leadership does not disqualify the judge from being rightfully considered a leader as well.

Another claim that is made about “Deborah’s actual position in Israel” is that in Judges 5:12 “Deborah is exhorted to awake and sing, but Barak is exhorted to arise and ‘lead’.” I’m sorry, but this one is playing a little fast and loose with the text. Mr. Einwechter fails to mention what Barak arises to lead:

Awake, awake, Deborah;
Awake, awake, sing a song!
Arise, Barak, and take away your captives, O son of Abinoam.- Judges 5:12 (NASB)

It can hardly be said that Barak is seen here as the civil leader of the people, but simply as a successful military leader who has taken his enemies captive.

Finally, Mr. Einwechter points out that verse 13 of this chapter “is either a reference to Israel’s victory over Sisera and the Canaanites, or to the gathering of the people to go up to battle; whichever, it does not mean that God has appointed Deborah to the position of civil magistrate.” I might have to give him this one as I can’t say that I disagree. The verse is somewhat ambiguous in each of the Bible translations I looked at, so he could very well be right about this specific verse. However, that really does nothing for or against his case that Deborah was not a civil leader of Israel.

Conclusion

The biggest problem I see with this argument is this: Let’s assume for the moment that everything he says about Deborah is completely true. He still acknowledges that “She judged Israel only in the sense that she was sought out by the people for advice and judgment in the settlement of disputes because of her wisdom from God.” Even if that’s all she was, does it sound like she conformed herself to Mr. Einwechter’s image a Godly woman:

“According to Scripture, the woman was created to be man’s assistant in his dominion task, to function under his headship, to be a mother and nurturer of children, and to manage her home. These “monumental” tasks require married women to be “keepers at home,” i.e., they are to stay at home to give their full time and attention to the enormously important roles that God has given to them”(quote from a post by William Einwechter titled Sarah Palin and the Complementarian Compromise: A Response to Our Brothers Al Mohler and David Kotter on Doug Philips’ blog at Vision Forum, September 8, 2008).

Even if everything Bill Einwechter says about Deborah is true, was she acting as “man’s assistant in his dominion task?” Possibly she fulfilled this role to Barak, but he was not her husband or her child, which Einwechter would find very problematic. Does she “function under [man’s] headship?” Not at all! She goes to Barak and tells him what to do (beyond the pale according to Mr. Einwecter’s beliefs)! Does she act as “a mother and nurturer of children and manage her home.” She does not! Her children and her home are never even mentioned in the account. Did she act as a “keeper at home,” as he would put it? No. She was out in public, serving people who were not in her family, handing out judgments in disputes that undoubtedly involved men as well as women (completely inappropriate by Einwechter’s standards). Did she “stay at home to give her full time and attention to the enormously important role that God gave her?” As I have already answered: NO! She is out judging among the people, she is telling the military leaders what to do, and traveling with them into battle; certainly nothing those who hold to “Biblical Patriarchy” would condone.

Is it normal for woman to hold a civil leadership position? It is not normal even today, but it was exceedingly rare in the days of the judges. Yet despite its rarity and the passages that Mr. Einwechter uses against such a possibility (which I will address on this blog soon), female leadership certainly has been (on occasion) set up by God in order to accomplish good things, and not simply as a sign of God’s anger and judgment against a people. Deborah is still a prime example of that.

Can God Communicate with Us?

2008-08-28T21:36:00.001-07:00

This will be a short one. I hear the objection raised by non-Christians all the time that if God existed, he wouldn't or couldn't have communicated with us. Frankly, I don't understand such arguments, which are so irrational that I just have to shake my head at the person who makes them.

Clearly, if God exists then He is responsible for everything else that exists as well. If God exists then He is responsible for all the matter in the universe, for every physical and natural law, and for life, consciousness, and rationality. To make the claim that God has the power to create everything from nothing at all, but now doesn't have the power to communicate with His creation is a sign of a mind not functioning well. And yet, I cannot count the number of times I have listened to agnostics, and even theists, make this exact claim.

I imagine that this position is taken by people because they have not experienced a personalized communication from God. After all, if He exists and wants us to believe in Him, the best way to achieve this goal would be to throw back the curtain for all to see and announce His presence to the world. Since He doesn't do this, He is either incapable of doing so or He doesn't exist.

The problem with this kind of thinking is glaring. Those who make the argument are assuming that God is just like them, something which actually goes against the teaching of scripture (Numbers 23:19). They assume that God would behave in this way if He could; because that's the way they think they would behave if they were in His place.

Christians believe that God has already communicated the bulk of what He wants or needs to communicate in a little book known as the Bible. The real issue here for most people is not whether God can speak to us, but whether He already has spoken; through the pages in the Bible. But is the Bible reliable? Many people say that it isn't that it's just full of contradictions and errors. Clearly, the Creator God, if He chose to communicate through the pages of a book would have done a better job than what we find in the Bible, or so they say.

We'll take a look at that problem over the next several posts.

So, Where Does This Get Us?

2008-08-14T18:56:00.000-07:00

Over the last three posts I have provided three classic cosmological arguments for the existence of God. Over the course of the next several posts I will probably provide you with some more philosophical arguments for God built upon foundations than origins. However, that can come latter. Right now I want to reset just a little bit.

After those three posts you may be saying to yourself, “That was interesting, but what was the point of that? Where does that get us?” If you look back at my original post that begun this topic, you’ll notice that I proposed to examine several points:

Is it reasonable to believe that God exists?
If such a God did exist, could He communicate with us?
Is belief in miracles reasonable?
Is the Bible trustworthy?
Is the resurrection reasonable?
Does the Biblical worldview comport with reality?
How does Christianity fare against the other leading worldviews of today?

I believe that those arguments, in part, establish my first point that belief in God is reasonable. I only say ‘in part’ because taken individually they are generally written off by skeptics as mental exercises with little merit. But when presented in groups, especially when you have several arguments which support the conclusion from several different premises, they become far more compelling and more difficult to ignore.

Simply put, the point of thinking about these arguments is that they lead to the conclusion that there must be a being who has the creative abilities that we ascribe to God, based not on passages in the Bible but on reason and observation.

Does this mean that we can throw out the Bible, and follow God solely through reason and observation? Absolutely not. But what it does begin to show is that Christians, whether we know it or not, have good reasons to believe what we believe.

In the next post we'll start examining whether such a God, since it appear probable that He does exist, would or could communicate with His creation.

Why Does Anything Exist?

2008-08-12T15:17:00.000-07:00

The final philosophical cosmological argument that I will present here is the Leibnizian Argument. Developed by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), I find this the most compelling of all the cosmological arguments.
While many people equate this with the Thomist arguments the metaphysic undergirding this argument is completely different. Instead of asking the question “Did the universe begin to exist,” like the Kalam argument, or “Is there a necessary cause,” like the Thomist argument, the Leibnizian asks the simple question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

In my opinion, this line of reasoning makes the most direct observation of all the cosmological arguments; No fact can be real or existent, no statement true unless there is a sufficient reason why it is so rather than otherwise. In essence, why are we here? Why is anything here at all? Since it is far simpler that nothing should exist (seeing that non-existence requires no explanation, whereas existence requires one), why then does so much exist? This is the question for which Leibniz was searching for an answer.

The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument:

(1) Something exists.
(2) There must be a sufficient reason or rational basis for why something exists rather than nothing.
(3) This sufficient reason cannot be found in any single thing or in the whole aggregate of things or in the efficient causes for all things.
a. Things in the world are contingent, that is, determined in their being by other things such that if matter and motion were changed, they would not exist.
b. The world is simply the conglomeration of such things and is thus itself contingent.
c. The efficient causes of all things are simply prior state of the world, and these successive states do not explain why there are any states, any world, at all.
(4) Therefore, there must exist outside the world and the states of the world a sufficient reason for the existence of the world.
(5) This sufficient reason will be a metaphysically necessary being, that is, a being whose sufficient reason for existence is self-contained.

At first glance, this argument is harder to follow than the previous two that I posted, however, lets walk through it quickly, and it should become clear.

The first and second points are obvious, clearly something exists rather nothing, and we know that things that exist require reasons for their existence (whether we know what those reasons are or not). Point (3) begins clearly enough, with the observation that the reason for the existence of everything cannot be found in any one thing that exists, or even in the total collection of things that exist.

The sub-points of (3) are where the argument generally becomes confusing; however, if you keep in mind that the sub-points are only there to justify the point that they go with, it may be easier to follow. Essentially, what these points attempt to justify is that the necessary cause (remember the Thomist Argument in the last post) cannot be found in the universe, or in the total collection of things that make up the universe. These arguments don’t look at the reason for any one thing, but ask instead why anything exists rather than nothing. Thus, since the argument concludes that the reason for the existence of anything (and everything) can’t be found with the physical universe we must look beyond into the non-physical world, to find the necessary reason why we, and everything else, exist.

I will leave it up to you to decide what one should call a non-physical, necessary being, who is the reason for everything that exists.

We Require a "Necessary" Cause

2008-07-27T14:34:00.000-07:00

As I hinted at in the last post, there are many different cosmological arguments that have been made over the years, some more persuasive than others. It probably won't come as a shock to anyone to discover that Thomas Aquinas is responsible for several of the most well known arguments.

All of the Thomist arguments are variations on a common theme, Thomas Aquinas was looking for a "first cause" for the universe, but not in a time related sense. He was looking for a "First Cause" in terms of rank. What this means is that the thing that causes must be"big enough" to adaquetely explain the resulting thing that is caused. If the thing that is caused is everything that exists, then it's cause must truly be substantial. In the case of the Thomist arguments, that thing which causes everything else must be so big, so all encompassing, that it transcends the status of "possible" and thus must have the status of a "necessary" thing.

What does this mean?

Everything you see around you is "possible," but not "necessary." Is the world such that the specific chair you are sitting in, or even you yourself, HAVE to exist? Certainly both you and the chair are "possible" since you and it exist, but could the world have been otherwise such that you or that chair did not exist? Of course it could. That is what is meant by "possible," but not "necessary." Is there anything that is absolutely necessary, such that there could be no conceivable world where that thing did not exist? That is the definition of a "necessary" thing, or being, and the question that Thomas Aquinas was trying to answer.

Below is the Thomist argument that I find most compelling:

(1) We see in the world things that exist but do not have to exist, that is to say, their existence is not necessary but merely possible, for we see them coming into and out of being.

(2) All things cannot be merely possible things, because:

(a) If a thing is merely possible, then at some time it did not exist.

(b) And if all things were merely possible, then at some time all things did not exist: there was nothing.

(c) But if at one time nothing existed, then nothing would exist now because something that does not exist cannot bring itself into existence.

(d) But this contradicts observation.

(e) Therefore, all things cannot be merely possible things; there must be something that is necessary.

I have to add a brief comment about point (b). The argument rests on this point, and this will probably be the area where the natural materialist picks his fight. However, because of the nearly universal acceptance of the "Big Bang," natural materialists will not be able to make a strong case that there was a moment in the past when nothing existed. While there have been a few attempts to incorporate the "Big Bang" into theories of an eternal universe (these theories paint a picture of a universe expanding and then reversing to collapse on itself, which in turn causes another "Big Bang," which is followed by another outward expansion, repeated endlessly into eternity) such theories have mostly received little attention and cannot be confirmed, verified, or even refuted in any way, due to our inability to see beyond the Planck Boundary. Such theories with so little to offer scientifically will never rise to a level of importance beyond "sideshow curiosity," and are thus unimportant.

That said, I think the rest of the argument is beyond reproach.

So, if the argument is true then there is such a "necessary" thing. What does that mean? It means that whatever this "necessary" thing is, it is responsible for everything else that exists. Most of us would call such a necessary thing, or being, God.

In the Beginning...

2008-07-26T23:04:00.000-07:00

Over the next several posts I would like to present what I consider to be several compelling philosophical arguments for the existence of a God.

Let’s get started with the classic cosmological arguments. What is a cosmological argument, you ask? A cosmological argument makes the case for God from “universal causation;” that is, it is an argument based on the beginning of the universe. It will probably make more sense once you’ve seen one.

Cosmological Arguments – The Kalam Argument

The Kalam argument was originated by medieval Islamic theologian Al-Ghazali, and is probably the most well known of all the philosophical arguments for God.

(1) Everything that begins to exist requires a cause for its origin.
(2) The world began to exist.
a. There are temporal phenomena in the world
b. These are preceded by other temporal phenomena
c. The series of temporal phenomena cannot regress infinitely because an actually existing infinite series involves various absurdities.
d. Therefore, the series of temporal phenomena must have had a beginning.
(3) Therefore, the world has a cause for its origin: it’s creator.

In plain English, this argument begins with the recognition that nothing comes into being without a cause. That chair you’re sitting on, the computer you’re reading this on, even the rock used in the foundation of your house, all have a cause, whether we can discover it or not.

The next step recognizes that the universe has a beginning before which nothing existed.

The four sub-steps following (2) establish the heart of the argument. In case you didn’t know, “temporal phenomena” are simply occurrences in time; your alarm clock going off on Monday morning would be an example. In fact, everything that happens in this universe is an example of “temporal phenomena.” As we work our way backward through time, we discover that every event was preceded by other events, creating a long series of events over the course of time.

For a moment, suppose the universe had no beginning. If this was the case, then the series of “temporal phenomena,” would stretch away into the past forever – an infinite series of events. The problem is, while infinity may be useful in math, it is actually an “irrational number,” that is, a number that can’t exist. It’s literally absurd.

Allow me to demonstrate: The planet Mercury orbits the Sun once every 88 days while the planet Neptune orbits the Sun once every 60,189 days. Working under the assumption that the universe has no beginning, which planet, Mercury or Neptune, has accumulated more complete orbits of the Sun to date? The natural response would be to say Mercury (after all, it orbits the Sun approximately 684 times for every single orbit of Neptune), but that answer is wrong. Given an eternally existing universe, the correct answer would be “neither,” both would have completed an infinite number orbits.

Because of such absurdities as this one, Al-Ghazali came to the conclusion that the series of “temporal phenomena” must have a beginning, and that beginning had to be the advent of the universe. Going back to (1), everything that begins to exist must have a cause, now having established that the universe itself began to exist, we realize that it too must have a cause and that cause could only be God.

Belief in Unicorns = Belief in Christ?

2008-07-07T15:30:00.000-07:00

Do you ever wonder what sets Christianity apart from other belief systems? Is Christianity truly more worthy of consideration than other religions we simply call myths today? What got me thinking about this was a conversation I recently heard on Dennis Prager’s radio show on May 13^th, 2008. During the third hour Mr. Prager was dialoging with callers about the lack of doubt among atheists on the question of God’s existence when an atheist called up and said (I'm paraphrasing), “Of course we don’t have any doubt. Do you ever doubt the non-existence of unicorns? No you don’t. We see the existence of God the same way you see unicorns.”

This got me thinking. Is what the atheist caller said valid? What would you say to such a person? For the one who doesn’t already follow Christ, is there any reason why Christianity should be given more consideration than other religious systems, such as ancient paganism? After thinking about it for the last several weeks I have come to a conclusion:

Whether you believe in Christianity or not, there are good, objective reasons why this system stands alone on the world stage as being worthy of consideration.

There are a number of reasons that I make such a claim, although I will not be able to touch on them adequately in this post. I guess that means that I will be starting another series to flesh out my thoughts on why Christianity should be considered before other systems, and even if rejected, cannot be put in the same class as unicorns, ancient pagan religions, or even other modern alternatives.

Regarding religious systems, you’ve probably heard people say things to the effect of, “Religions are matters of faith, and matters of faith cannot be proved or disproved.” If what such a claimant means is that it may not be possible to prove the existence of God conclusively enough to sway the hardened skeptic, then I have to agree. However, all religious systems make claims about history and the way the world is that can be checked against what we know about these subjects. If we begin checking such claims and find that, over and over again, the claims don’t comport with reality, then we probably have good reason to reject the system making the claims.

For instance, Hinduism makes the basic claim that the world is an illusion and that we are all figments in the imagination of the divine unconsciousness. Because of this basic Hindu claim, I feel safe in rejecting Hinduism as a whole because the system simply doesn’t agree with reality. If you and I are only figments of some cosmic unconsciousness then why are we aware of ourselves? When you dream, the characters in your dreams don’t have individual consciousness or awareness, they don’t think they exist nor do they know they don’t exist.

To make this as simple as possible, ask yourself this question: Does Mickey Mouse know that he’s a cartoon character? No. In fact, there isn’t even a “he” there, the cartoon character is a figment of the imagination, transferred to film, of Walt Disney. As you and I are aware ourselves we can safely say that we are not figments of anyone’s imagination; or as René Descartes would say, “Cogito ergo sum” (best known as, “I think therefore I am,” but better translated as, “I am thinking therefore I exist”).

Over the next several weeks, I will be attempting to build a case for the reasonableness of Christianity, starting with it’s most basic claims and building upon each post with more and more specific and detailed claims that Christianity makes about world around us. My current schedule (as I’m making it up in head as I write this) will look something like this:

Is it reasonable to believe that God exists?
If such a God did exist, could He communicate with us?
Is belief in miracles reasonable?
Is the Bible trustworthy?
Is the resurrection reasonable?
Does the Biblical worldview comport with reality?
How does Christianity fare against the other leading worldviews of today?

Anyone who has done much reading in the area of theistic Philosophy will recognize these questions and will probably be familiar with most of the answers. However, I hope that my presentation might be somewhat unique in that I am attempting to put these questions together in such a way as to build a progressive case for the validity and the truthfulness of Christianity as opposed to it’s competitors today and other myths.

I have my work cut out for me.

Am I Putting God in a Box?

2008-06-27T12:13:00.000-07:00

Am I Putting God in a Box?

Over the last several posts I have tried to answer several of the most common questions people ask about my view of God’s will and Christian decision. In this last post on this topic (for a while anyway) I want to tackle one final question that is almost always asked about my view on this subject: “Aren’t you putting God in a box?”

This question goes well beyond the boundaries of this series, as it is commonly asked of anyone who questions a “new movement of the Spirit,” such as the Toronto Blessing; which many Christians, myself included, had grave doubts about. In this way, it is often not so much used as a question but a device to shut down inquiries and doubts regarding a given “spiritual” event.

I find this question somewhat illegitimate, although many who ask it are undoubtedly sincere, for one reason: It can be used to justify anything. A number of years ago, Greg Koukl (who, you may figured out by my frequent citations of him, is one of the most influential Christian teachers in my life) responded to this question this way:

What if I told you that you should come with me to a church that has a brand new work of the Spirit? You say, what is it? I say, when the Spirit moves us, we stand in a circle and urinate into a big tub. We pee in a pot. We call it "whizzing in the Spirit." You say, Koukl, that's bizarre. I say, there are no verses against it. Find a verse against it. In fact, I've got a proof text: "From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water." There it is! Works for me! After all, you can't put God in a box, can you? God can do whatever He wants, can't He? So who are you to judge Him?

This is, of course, a humorous example, but it gets at the heart of the problem with the question (or statement), “Aren’t you putting God in a box?”

Whenever we teach about God and what it means to follow Him, we must be exceedingly careful to only teach what is Biblical. Is it possible that God could speak to you through your inner feelings and intuitions? Yes it is. Is it possible that God, if He so chose, could speak to you from a garden gnome under your bed? Yes it is, God certainly could do that if He wanted to. Am I, or you, or anyone else, allowed to teach that God does things in this way? No. The reason is simple: The Bible itself does not teach that God works in these ways. As teachers (all of us are in some capacity or another), the only things we can teach about God and His ways with any authority, or any surety, are the things taught to us first in the Bible.

Series Conclusion (for now, anyway):

Am I saying that I don’t believe that the Holy Spirit interacts with us on a sometimes unconscious level to influence or to assist in bringing to mind some wisdom that we didn’t know we possessed? Not at all, I do believe that God interacts with Christians in such a way. However, the danger begins when we start claiming that our “inward nudges” are instructions from God. Such claims give divine authority to our passing whims and thus shut down the possibility of wise counsel from other Christians who might advocate a different course of action. After all, if God really told you to do X, who are they to say not to?

Whether you have read all my posts on this subject, or only this one, the thing that I want everyone to understand is this: Our inner impressions, the thoughts and “nudges” that we feel from time may be from God, our own mind, or even from the Devil, but we don’t to agonize over the source of their origin as so many Christians do. What I understand to be the Biblical response, is to evaluate every potential course of action in light of God’s moral will and of wisdom. If we follow this Biblical prescription, we will never be far wrong. We will weed out the suggestions of the Devil and our own bad ideas, and (for the most part) follow through on our good ideas and the things of God.

It may be that there are things, many things perhaps, that we attempt that don’t meet with perfect success. That is the nature of life. The thing that counts for the most in the end is not whether our efforts meet with brilliant success at every turn but whether we consistently sought to honor and glorify God with our life through wise and Godly decisions and actions. It is in this way that we will find ourselves in the center of God’s will for our life.

Doesn't God Care What I Do?

2008-06-20T14:28:00.000-07:00

Probably the most common question I have received when discussing my views on decision making and the will of God is, “Are you saying that God doesn’t care what I do?” If you are new to this series you will probably want to check out the post here entitled, Decision Making and the Will of God - Answers, to get up to speed on where I’m coming from on this issue.

If you have always believed that God has a divine blueprint of your life and that He is daily involved in providing you little hints and prompts in order to help bring you “into the center of His perfect will,” then I can understand why the idea that He actually provides Christians with a great deal of freedom in choosing a vocation, a spouse, a ministry, etc. could feel isolating, or even scary. While it may feel that way now, many who have left this “blueprint model,” of a personal will of God, for the wisdom model have described a enormous sense of relief, like a weight of worry had been lifted from their shoulders. Some have even gone as far as describing their time believing in the “blueprint model” as being in bondage; such is the confusion, doubt, and second-guessing that it breeds in the Christian’s life.

The question, “Doesn’t God care what I do,” shows how powerful preconceptions can be. The assumption is: if God isn’t there planning out every detail of my life, then He isn’t interacting with me at all, nor does it matter to Him what I do.

God is interacting with believers (and non-believers) on a daily basis, what Christians need to do is come to a proper, Biblical understanding of the way God does work. Please refer back to my post The Work of the Holy Spirit for more info

Other than that, if we just take a moment to and calm down a little, it should be crystal clear that God cares deeply what we do with our lives, even if He is not personally directing the specifics of our lives on a regular basis. The moral will of God is an extensive, and Christians would say comprehensive, code of morality for the followers of God. Does God care if we steal? If we lie? If we are unfaithful to our spouse? Of course He does, and everyone instinctively knows this.

The real question is: Does God care about the non-moral decisions that we make? It is easiest to provide some examples:

Example: Employment – Does God care about what Job you take?

To a degree, yes. But also no. As a Christian, would God care if you decided that drug-dealing was the job for you? Of course. Not only is it criminal in this country, but such a job destroys lives and minds. So drug-dealing is out. What if you want to be an economist? What would God say about that? Is there anything wrong with such employment legally? No. Morally? Not that I can think of. Therefore, I feel safe in saying that being an economist is an acceptable line of work for a Christian.

Now that we have determined that it is alright for Christians, in general, to become economists, what about for you specifically? Does God care if you take up such a line of work?

That depends. Is this something you have adequate ability in? Has God gifted you in the areas of organization, mathematics, theory, research, and the like necessary to pursue such a career? If not, you should probably consider a different line of work.

Is the action of pursuing a career in economics a wise one, considering your condition right now? Maybe you need several years of schooling before such a job could be earned, and school is not a wise choice at the moment. Are there greater responsibilities that you are currently meeting that would have to be dropped to pursue such a career? Would such a career adversely impact time spent with your wife or children?

If the choice is moral, legal, wise, and you have the ability, the opportunity, and the desire, I would say that you have God’s permission to pursue that course of action. Your earthly father doesn’t want you to come to him for direction every time you face a decision, but is most honored by you when you begin making choices on your own that reflect the values and character he worked to teach you. Likewise, I believe that God wants us to mature to the point where we begin to make choices and decisions on our own that reflect His values and His heart. This is the essence of freedom in Christ, and necessary to continuing our sanctification.

Here’s some Biblical support for the positions I have been taking in this post:

Ephesians 5:15
Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil.

Colossians 4:5
Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity.

Do these verses sound like exhortations to wait for a “word from the Lord” before we make a decision? Not at all, to my mind they sound very much like commands to act according to our wisdom.

Ok, so it looks I might have a case for stating that wisdom is adequate resource for making decisions, but where do I get off stating that personal preferences and desires should carry any weight in Godly decision making?

1 Corinthians 7:40
In my opinion she is happier if she remains as she is (single; this regarding the widow concerning whether she should remarry).

2 Corinthians 9:7
Let each one do just as he has purposed in his heart; not grudgingly or under compulsion; for God loves a cheerful giver.

Romans 14:5
One man regards one day above another, another regards every day alike. Let each man be fully convinced in his own mind.

Romans 14:22-23
The faith which you have, have as your own conviction before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves. But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and whatever is not from faith is sin.

These passages all sound very much like God, through Paul, is letting us know that it is proper to consider personal happiness when facing decisions. I must point, of course, that personal happiness is the least important factor in decision making; if you are faced with a choice between an immoral choice that would make you happy and a moral choice that you’re not tickled about, you really have no choice at all, your way is clear.

Let me finish up with this: I have heard many people refer to James 4:13-14 to refute what I have been saying about planning and wisdom. But in doing so they forget Bible Study Rule #1: Never read a Bible verse. If they read the very next verse down (vs. 15) they would realize that James actually endorses the opinion I have been advocating:

James 4:13-15
Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit." Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that."

James is not saying that we shouldn’t make plans and carry them out, but that we should be humble enough to acknowledge that it is God’s prerogative to override our plans and bring us into circumstances that we had not initially foreseen. By all means, plan for the future, and make Godly and wise decisions about where to take your life, but never forget that God is sovereign over all things and He sometimes forces us to change our plans.

Work of the Holy Spirit

2008-06-17T09:02:00.000-07:00

This next post has taken me a long time to write, partly because I have been very busy, but also because I have thought long and hard about what I would like to say and how I want to say it. The issue of the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer is a difficult subject, the “Third Person of Trinity” often appears as a mysterious figure in the background or is only seen implicitly in many passages. In my experience, many Christians admit to a very limited understanding of role of the Holy Spirit. In that light, let me share some of the conclusions I have come to about the Holy Spirit, and as always, if you have anything to add, or any disagreements, I want to hear both.

The Bible communicates that the Holy works within several arenas in both the believer’s and the non-believer’s life. I have roughly broken the Holy Spirit’s work into five areas:

The Holy Spirit Draws the non-believer to God/Is the Agent of Salvation

Whenever the Bible talks about the work of God in pursuing individuals to bring into His kingdom, the Holy Spirit is mentioned as the active party involved in that work.

Titus 3:4-7
But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

1 Corinthians 12:1-3
Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware. You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to the mute idols, however you were led. Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, "Jesus is accursed"; and no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit.

Before a person even makes a decision to follow Christ, the Holy Spirit begins the work of drawing him God. There are many influences working on an individual in the time before he makes a decision, the witness of friends and family, the surmounting of intellectual “road blocks,” a burgeoning awareness of spiritual emptiness, etc. But throughout the process the Holy Spirit is actively preparing the heart and mind to be open to the good news of Christ.

In John 10:1-29 Jesus relates the famous parable of the Good Shepherd. Perhaps unfortunately, the most well known verse of this passage is, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me” (vs 27). In isolation, many Christians have mistaken this to be a promise that Jesus will guide them in their decision making processes (i.e. I hear His voice telling me to move to Kentucky). However, in the context of the entire chapter it becomes clear that the voice is the call to salvation (made through the Holy Spirit) that the true seekers of God will recognize and respond to; not a promise of individual guidance.

Romans 8:9-11 and Titus 3:4-7 make it explicitly clear that life/resurrection from the dead is granted on the basis of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It is through the washing and regeneration of the Holy Spirit that believers are justified and progressively sanctified.

The Holy Spirit Acts as the “Bridge” between God and Man

The Holy Spirit is a “bridge” between believers and God. When the New Testament talks about our access to God, or about God being “with us,” it is often qualified with the words “in the Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is the member of the Trinity who is “with us,” and in whom we find our place with God the Father.

Ephesians 2:17-22
AND HE CAME AND PREACHED PEACE TO YOU WHO WERE FAR AWAY, AND PEACE TO THOSE WHO WERE NEAR; for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

1 Corinthians 12:12-14
For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many.

1 John 4:11-13
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.

The Holy Spirit Comforts/Encourages the Followers of God

One of the primary roles of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believing followers of Jesus is to uplift, encourage, and sustain them, despite their circumstances. Besides the passages below, one only needs to read the accounts of the early believers and Apostles in the book of Acts, or the grisly accounts of persecution in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, to see the utterly unnatural peace with which believers faced torture and death for their allegiance to Christ.

Romans 8:16-17
The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.

Romans 14:15-18
For if because of food your brother is hurt, you are no longer walking according to love. Do not destroy with your food him for whom Christ died. Therefore do not let what is for you a good thing be spoken of as evil; for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who in this way serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men.

Romans 15:13
Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit "Amplifies" the Conscience

As the follower of Jesus grows in maturity and his relationship with The Savior, the Holy Spirit convicts of sin and is tirelessly working to mold him more and more to the image of Christ. This is what the Bible refers to as "Sanctification."

John 16:7-11
“But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.”

Romans 8:10-14
If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.

A brief comment on Romans 8:14: When read in isolation (and when a specific meaning is poured into the word “led”) it can appear to be saying that Christians will be “led by Spirit,” as in “led to the job God wants me to have,” “led to marry this person,” or “led to go into this ministry.” However, I hope that it’s clear from the context of the passage that “being led by the spirit” means helping the believer to “[put] to death the deeds of the body;” i.e., the Spirit convicts the believer of sin and “leads” him to live in a righteous manner.

The Holy Spirit Provides Insight/Inspiration

These are interesting passages which not only exemplify the work of the Spirit in inspiring the prophets and apostles, but seem to provide for some manner of similar inspiration in the lives of all believers. I’m sure many of you know of people who came to Jesus later in life and have described the Bible as being unintelligible before their acceptance of salvation, but clear after such acceptance (at least the essentials were). While I’m not entirely sure how I feel about such statements as a whole, I don’t doubt that the Spirit did play a role in helping these new believers to a place of some increased understanding.

2 Peter 1:20-21
But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

Acts 1:15-17
At this time Peter stood up in the midst of the brethren (a gathering of about one hundred and twenty persons was there together), and said, "Brethren, the Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit foretold by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus. For he was counted among us and received his share in this ministry."

John 16:12-15
“I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.”

Conclusion

As I wrote at the beginning, my main purpose for this post was to touch briefly on a large part of God's work in the lives of believers that is often a mystery to us. In case you didn’t notice there were not any passages that identified a role of the Holy Spirit in guiding believers to the specific decisions that God wants them to make . The Holy Spirit accomplishes many works in the lives of believers, but offering specific guidance in day-to-day decisions doesn’t appear to be one of them.

P.S. As always, if you disagree, or have something to add, please post it. I want to know when I’m wrong and if I have missed wonderful point that could have been made.

Bible Study: Rule #1

2008-06-13T13:02:00.000-07:00

Before I put up my next post addressing four of the most common questions I receive when talking about the “Wisdom Method” of understanding God’s will (next post will be on the Work of the Holy Spirit), I want to take a brief moment to talk about my thoughts on the proper reading of scripture itself. Whole books have been written on this subject, but I want to focus on one guideline that, more than any other, prevents the misuse and abuse of scripture.

This guideline has been labeled “Never Read a Bible Verse,” by Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason. Upon hearing this, one may think, “That’s easy, I do that already. Can’t remember the last time I even cracked my Bible.” Obviously, this isn’t the point the title is meant to drive home. What it means is: never read a Bible verse, read at least a passage, better yet several paragraphs, in order to get the flavor of what the author wants to communicate.

We Christians would never read any other book the way we often read the Bible, and the way many pastors and teachers teach from the Bible: single verses snatched, almost at random from various places throughout the book. If you think about it for just a moment, the problems with this approach are clear. Reading just one verse, without taking the time to read the context can lead to incorrect conclusions about the passage. For example: What if the author is being sarcastic (as Paul and even Jesus were known to be from time to time)? Reading a single, sarcastic verse divorced from the greater context would prevent virtually anyone from catching the sarcasm and cause him to take what was being said in precisely the wrong way. Even the meanings of common words can be easily misunderstood and a wrong understanding of them arrived at (thus changing the meaning of the verse) without the larger picture of the author’s subject and line of thought clear in the minds of the reader (I will address a specific example of this precise error in my next post on the Holy Spirit).

This single-verse-grabbed-here-and-there approach many often take when reading the Bible causes us to think of the Bible more as a collection of single sentence sayings rather than well thought out, coherent ideas developed over many pages, as most books in the Bible actually are (I don’t even exclude Proverbs, as I can think of several passages that I have seen regularly misused because the verse was removed from it’s context).

I write all this as an explanation of the way I tend to quote verses, particularly when I write. As you will see in my next post, which will be unusually heavy on scripture quotation (sorry), I am often primarily interested in one verse, but will post several more surrounding verses as well in order to confirm that I am not misusing the verse and to provide the context for understanding the idea I believe is communicated in the verse.

There is a method to my madness. Unfortunately, that means you have to plough through a lot more text.

Ask For Wisdom

2008-05-16T12:29:00.000-07:00

I wanted to expand on one important aspect of prayer: asking God for wisdom.

Maybe the most famous command to do so in the Bible appears in James 1:5:

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.

This instruction falls in the “Give us this day our daily bread” category of the prayer of Jesus. It is important to highlight wisdom because far too often, when faced with a difficult decision, we send up a quick “God tell me what to do,” instead of prayerfully considering the options.

Here are three examples which detail God’s desire for us to seek after and employ wisdom in our daily life:

Shortly after Kings David’s death, God speaks to King Solomon, offering him anything he would request. At this offer Solomon expresses his concern over not knowing how to lead the people of Israel, but instead of asking that God tell him what to do (as he could have done), he asks for wisdom – which God is so happy to grant that He freely gives Solomon riches, honor, and long life as well, if only he will continue to follow God (1 Kings 3:5-15).
Every single one of Proverbs’ 31 chapters mentions wisdom by name and encourages the reader to seek after it; I don’t believe there is any more highly regarded quality in Proverbs than true wisdom.
In Mathew 10:16 Jesus Himself advises His disciples to prepare themselves for the work to come by being “shrewd as serpents.” Even a cursory examination of the scriptures will reveal that wisdom is a quality held in extremely high regard by God and His people.

The Bible seems to communicate that God holds human beings in very high regard, we are made in His image and He humbled Himself to point of sharing in our humanity and taking upon Himself a crushing punishment, death on Roman cross, to provide us with the chance to find Him. The Bible is clear, God doesn’t want followers He must move like so many chess pieces around the world, but like any good father, He wants us to become so familiar with His desires that we automatically apply the things He has taught us to every situation; that we begin to make Christ-like decisions on our own.

How Should We Pray?

2008-05-12T13:30:00.000-07:00

As promised, this next post is on prayer, particularly in light of what I consider the Biblical teaching on decision making and God’s will.

There are many areas of my walk with God that have come easily to me, however prayer is not one of them despite my desire that it be otherwise. Because of this, I hope for three things in this piece:

That writing this will me organize my own thoughts on the subject.
That what I have learned can help someone else (particularly in the area of decision making).
That anyone with insight into this subject will share it and perhaps deepen my own prayer life.

Recently, my wife and I were discussing prayer in light of what I believe to be the Biblical teaching on decision making. When I pointed out that the Bible doesn’t appear to teach that we should pray for specific guidance from the Lord (i.e. “God, please tell me if I should do x or y”), she said she basically agreed, but asked “If we’re not praying for guidance, how should we be praying?” (If I characterized your statement incorrectly, Dear, please let me know!) From talking with other Christians about these ideas, I have heard many ask exactly the same question: “If this true, then what do I pray for? What is the purpose of prayer?”

To answer this question, let’s breakdown “the Lord’s prayer,” the teaching Jesus gave His disciples when they asked Him, “Lord, teach us now to pray!”

Matthew 6:9-15 (NASB)

This, then, is how you should pray:
'Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
Your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one. For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.’

The prayer starts with an act of worship: it acknowledges God’s proper place in Heaven and the Holiness of His being in implied contrast to our own, which is the essence of true worship – attributing worth to God.

Next comes a request for God’s will to be done in this world, as it is done in the dwelling place of God. It seems that this verse is referring to God’s sovereign will, for two reasons: Moral will appears to be addressed later in the prayer, and the nature of the will described is one of authority. The will that we are told to pray for is the same type of will God exercises in Heaven – That sovereign king.

Jesus teaches us to pray for our physical needs, our daily bread. Something that just occurred to me as look at the Lord’s prayer right now is that the prayer is for daily bread, which communicates an immediate need. I’m not going to say that one should not pray for future needs to be met, but it’s interesting to note that this matches up with the nature of God’s provision of manna to the Israelites in the desert. He provided only what they would need for that day, leaving them to trust Him for provision for tomorrow (Exodus 16:4-24).

The final section of the prayer has to do with sin and forgiveness. The model Jesus teaches us to ask for forgiveness from God for our “debts” and reminders us to forgive those who owe “debts” to us, concluding with a request for help in overcoming temptation. Jesus explains what He means by “debts” in the next sentence: He restates that sentence again by noting that God will forgive you of your sins if only you are willing to forgive the sins of others against you.

It seems to me that this prayer is complete and perfectly balanced. When we pray, we should worship God, we should pray for the advancement of His Kingdom on earth, we should present our needs to Him, and we need to beg His forgiveness of us and ask for help in walking in the manner of a true servant.

Introduction: Decision Making and the Will of God - Answers

2008-04-30T16:21:00.000-07:00

This post was brought on by the beginning by a comment my brother in law made, and my subsequent response, to an older post of mine, entitled “God and Your Job.” If you have not done so already, please take the time to read this post and the subsequent comments as they will give a better handle on where I’m coming from on these subjects.

In addition, as with all of my posts, I wrote it in order to help me think through an issue that is troubling me at the moment, and I greatly appreciate the insight of all Christians into this issue whether you agree or completely disagree. Maybe you can add something I have never thought of, or perhaps you understand where I have made an error in my thinking. Either way, I appreciate all feedback.

God and Your Job was a vehicle to present, in part, my understanding of the Biblical teaching on God’s will and Christian decision making, two inexorably linked subjects. The topic is a hot one for me as I have deep and thoroughgoing disagreements with modern evangelicalism on this matter. In my opinion, the modern church’s teaching on this question breeds deep confusion, pseudo-Christian mysticism, and genuine bondage to doubt and loneliness among many believers. In short, the almost universal understanding of these subjects presents a shallow and impoverished picture of God’s will, His sovereignty, and His love for and response to us.

Aside: If you would like to understand my view on the duel subjects of God’s Will and Christian decision making in full, please read ‘Decision Making and the Will of God’ by Dr. Garry Friesen, or listen to the lectures of the same title by Greg Koukl, founder of Stand to Reason. If you are genuinely interested in hearing those lectures or reading the book, I have both and would be more than happy to let you borrow either.

When Christians face a decision where no best choice is clearly evident, we are taught to respond in many different ways; We ask God to show the choice He wants for us; We wait to see if we “feel a peace” about one of the options before us; We interpret “open and closed doors” as indicators of God’s will; We look for “confirmations” in favor of one choice or the other; We even sometimes put out “fleeces,” a la Gideon, in an effort to get God to reveal His will on the matter.

The problem is that none of these responses appear to be taught in the Bible as a means of decision making, and the one approach that is clearly taught is missed completely. I am referring to what Dr. Garry Friesen has called, The Way of Wisdom, for lack of better term. Allow me to (very) briefly outline this teaching:

God does not have an individual plan, His so-called “Individual Will,” laid out for every person that we only have to discover, piece by piece, as we move through life.
God does have a “Sovereign Will,” but this is mostly unrevealed to us and we don’t need to know it anyway, as there is no way for us to thwart it or to intentionally bring it about. God’s sovereign will will come to pass, no matter what.
God does have a clearly and thoroughly revealed “Moral Will,” which every person is obligated to obey.
We should not expect (or even seek after) personalized guidance from God for any decision we are faced with. The key word here is expect; occasionally, as happened in the Bible, God does break in to provide detailed guidance to individuals.
When God does provide guidance there several things we note from the Biblical narrative about the nature of these communications:

It’s rare – We only a handful of examples of God speaking directly to an individual, spread out over a period of 6000+ years.
It’s unexpected – The instruction from God was never requested by the individual who received it.
It’s clear – The message is always unmistakable as anything other than a message from God.
It’s supernatural – In every example, God breaks in to our physical world in some way to communicate and authenticate His message.
It often goes against wisdom – If the directions from God did not otherwise appear to be an unwise course of action, there would be no need for Him to break in to provide the direction.

We are told to seek after genuine wisdom.
We should employ wisdom, expediency, and God refined desires in making decisions, as we are admonished over and over in Bible to do.

When these Biblical principles are taught to those who have absorbed what both Dr. Friesen and J.I. Packer refer to as the “Tradional View” (despite it’s relative newness), commonly several questions and objections are raised:

“Are you saying that God doesn’t care what I do?”
“Are you saying the Spirit can’t work in my life?”
“If what you’re saying is true, what’s the purpose of prayer?”
“Aren’t you putting God in a box?”

As I have written this post, it has developed into something different than I originally intended. I had originally planned to write exclusively about prayer, but as this piece has developed, I see that rather it’s going to be an introduction to several posts on my thoughts and understanding of the Biblical teachings on Prayer, the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers, What God wants from each one of us, and what kind of ideas about Christianity are we “allowed” to teach.

Thanks for reading. Hopefully I will get the next post, probably on prayer (seeing as it was what I wanted write about in the first place) up soon.

No Loving God

2008-04-21T17:11:00.000-07:00

In a recent hour of Dennis Prager’s radio show, Bart Eherman, professor and author of many books critical of Christianity, was the guest brought on to discuss belief in God. During the discussion, Mr. Eherman articulated what may be the most classic argument against the God of Judaism and Christianity.

"In the Judeo-Christian tradition, people have typically made three assertions [1) God is all powerful. 2) God is all loving. 3) There is suffering.]. Each one of which seems to be true on it’s own, but when you put them together there seems to be some kind of contradiction. The reason it creates a problem is because if God is all powerful then he is able to do anything that he wants, and if he’s all loving then he doesn’t want people to suffer and yet there is suffering. Why did this world have to be created in such a way as to cause such suffering…there is nothing written into the rules of the universe that says the world has to be this way.”

Apparently, to the atheist/skeptic this argument is very convincing, judging from the frequency with which it is raised.

I bring up this little episode because there is one thing this particular argument demonstrates very effectively, unfortunately for people like Eherman it’s not that the God of the Bible is rationally inconsistent, but rather that otherwise intelligent and well-educated people are not immune to believing wholly foolish things.

The argument, as Eherman correctly posits it, relies entirely on three assumptions:
1) The understanding of what “all-powerful” means.
2) That one knows what God would do in a certain situation.
3) Related to 1), that the world could function differently than it does.

I will take 1) and 3) together since I believe them to be related. Many people, Christians included, labor under the impression that being “all powerful,” or “omnipotent” as the Bible puts it, means that any being who possessed that quality, i.e. God, could do anything. This is simply not true.

The problem arises because most people confuse power with ability. Some Christians may want to write me off after they read the next sentence, but please hear me out. God is limited in His ability, not in His power; there are things that He cannot do. He cannot do anything against His own nature (unloving, unjust, unrighteous, etc.) nor can he do anything irrational (He can’t create a square-circle, for instance).

This brings me to the third point, that the world could function differently than it does. Possibly. But theologians have argued for millennia that for God to create a creature (man) that was truly in His image that creature must be capable of a number of qualities, love among them. For love to be genuine it must be freely given, there is no such thing as forced love. Thus for man to be made in God’s image and to love Him, man required the ability to reject God and engage in behavior disobedient to His laws. We call this disobedience immorality which often results in suffering. Theologians and philosophers have long understood that for man to be genuinely created in God’s image, the world could not other than it is.

Point 2) is far easier to clear up than even 1) and 3). How do we, with our limited understanding of the world, claim to know what a being such as the Judeo-Christian God would do in any given situation? In reality, all Mr. Eherman has done is tell us what he would do with limitless power, but with incredibly finite foreknowledge and understanding. This is truly incredible arrogance.

Sorry Bart, the old argument doesn't wash. If you want to indict the Bible for inconsistencies, then you need to do so on it’s terms and not pour your own presuppositions into the text.

What is a Christian to Say?

2008-04-16T13:39:00.000-07:00

The famous British philosopher and noted atheist, Bertrand Russell, asked the following question of Christianity in his book ‘Why I am Not a Christian’: What is a Christian to say when seated at the bedside of a dying child?

For many atheists and agnostics, this question is a powerful one. They see it as striking at one of the core belief of Christianity – that God all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly loving. Would not the fact of a child dying of leukemia, for instance, have to contradict one of those beliefs? Because the child will die, and thousands upon thousands do die all the time, then if there is a God He must be deficient in one or more of those three areas (I will address this precise objection in another post).

However Christian philosopher and apologist William Lane Craig was able to turn the question around and answer it in a brilliant and satisfying way: What is the atheist to say when he’s seated at the bedside of a dying child? (Tough luck?).

His observation is powerful. For the atheist, that child was dealt a terrible draw in life’s lottery. Oh well, that’s just the way things go. For the Christian, we acknowledge that life is full suffering, nothing about our beliefs shy away from that fact, the Bible clearly teaches us to expect that. But it goes so far beyond the transient nature of this life! That child can know that death is not the end of the line, that that child, through the grace of the Father and the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, can expect to raised to life again and live forever with God and His followers. That at such a time God will address all injustices and all wrongs will be made right. What a powerful message.

P.S. For another brief post on why the problem of evil and suffering doesn't contradict the concept of a good, loving, and powerful God, see this post.

Things I Learned on the Train

2008-04-14T15:37:00.000-07:00

I used to ride the “Coaster” to and from work every day, a trip from the North County area of San Diego into the city of San Diego itself; about a 50 minute ride. Surrounded by professionals commuting back and forth everyday, the train car is fertile ground for interesting discussion, at least when I sit near someone interested in talking. Twice I have had very interesting conversations with an older gentleman, an aggressive atheist who claimed to be writing a book that would put the final nail in the coffin of Christianity.

I would like to take a few moments today to focus on tactics; what did I do right during these conversations? What did I do wrong? Hopefully, I (and you) can learn a little bit through this self-examination on my part and be better prepared next we are faced with a similar opportunity.

In thinking over the conversations, I have identified one primary misstep that I made several times throughout the discussion: I allowed him to dominate the conversation. I don’t mean that he spent most of the time talking, but rather that I spent most of my time responding to his claims rather than making him work as hard as he worked me.

In conversations such as this one, the gentleman I was debating is known as a “steamroller.” The general M.O. of a steamroller is to ask a question, listen to the answer for a few moments and then either interrupt with his own thoughts on the subject, cutting the other person off, or ask a completely new question, without responding to anything the other has said or allowing him (me in this case) to finish the thought he had begun.

My “opponent” was a classic steamroller who jumped from topic to topic, the gospels aren’t reliable, the genealogy of Joseph is contradictory, the two versions of the ten-commandments are different, various failings of early church writers, morally problematic passages in the Law, without letting me finish a single thought or ever responding to any of the arguments I made. What can one do if caught is a conversation like this?

The answer, in hindsight, is perfectly clear.

I have spent the last third of my life studying history, culture, theology, textural criticism and philosophy - in short apologetics, and was well prepared for most of my fellow conversationalist’s questions; I felt that I gave very good responses to most of them. However, by allowing him to control the topics, I let him get away from arguments without ever truly engaging them.

I should have taken control of the situation. Allowing the atheist or skeptic to control conversations is one of the most common mistakes that Christians make. It always goes like this: The atheist makes a claim. The Christian does an enormous amount of heavy lifting in the arenas of Scripture, History, Culture, Archeology, etc. to refute the claim. The atheist makes a new claim and the process is repeated until the Christian doesn’t have a satisfactory response and the atheist claims victory.

I should have kindly and politely interrupted the gentleman, saying something to the effect of, “Excuse me, but you claimed that the events of Jesus’ life, as reported in the Gospels are identical to many of the events in the life of the Pagan deity Mithra. I have demonstrated that this simply is not the case. What do think?” In other words, politely request that he finish the conversation that he began. This is not rude, or aggressive; it is asking him to do the courteous thing and respond to my comments on his original claim. Not only is it respectful for him to address my comments, but his failure to do so allows him to skate through the conversation without doing any of the intellectual heavy lifting.

In thinking back on the conversations, I believe that I did two things right in particular.

The first thing that anyone must know, particularly Christians as we are always hot to defend Christianity, is that the one who makes the claim bears the burden of proof. For example, while engaged in another conversation with an atheist, he made the claim, “Belief in God is irrational.” What many Christians do, and what I used to do, at this point is launch into a full scale argument demonstrating why this claim is false. Instead, the right response is to say, “Oh really? What do you mean?” and then to wait.

You see, my friend made a claim, but if he can’t back it up with evidence or an argument, why should I (or you) have to put yourself through all the trouble of refuting it. In addition, allowing him to expand on and defend his claim lets you know exactly how you should address it. Maybe he has a specific beef with the rationality of belief in God that you might miss completely if you just launch into a full fledged defense of it.

This occurred several times during my conversations on the train, and thankfully I recognized them and bounced that ball right back into my friends court with a simple, “What do you mean by that?”

The second thing I did right, on several occasions, was to recognize when an a claim was irrelevant. In my second conversation with this atheist gentleman he kept bringing up examples of self-professed Christians who have engaged in gross immorality during some time in their life after openly accepting Christ. It should be immediately apparent to everyone that immorality or criminality in the lives of certain self-professed followers of Christ has little to do the main topic we were discussing; namely the reality of God and the truth claims of Jesus and the Bible.

I thank God that he gave me the insight during these conversations to not fall into the trap of defending or rejecting the imperfect lives of certain believers, but to simply point out that Pope so-and-so had multiple children out of wedlock and murdered his rivals says nothing about the truth of Jesus, only that we human beings are sinful (which the Bible points out numerous times itself).

Two closing thoughts: Some Christians object the term ‘tactics’ when thinking about how we should engage unbelievers in conversations; they believe the use of rhetorical tactics is somehow tricking the unbeliever or is unchristian in some way. I disagree, tactics, when used fairly, are simply the wise application of knowledge in a conversation. All Christians should be able to condone that.

Secondly, many Christians question the value of discussing apologetics with hardened atheists. They claim that we should just give them the gospel and let them do with it what they will, allow God to work on them. This is true, we do need to give everyone the gospel and God will work on them; but some, like the gentleman on the train, have erected mental road blocks to God which need to be torn down before they can genuinely accept the gospel message. God often uses other believers to accomplish this.

As I was getting off the train, this man thanked me for the conversation and then said something that floored me: “I have never spoken with a Christian believer like you before.” This man has gone his whole life, apparently, believing that Christians are irrational and must ignore science, history, and culture in addition to doing mental gymnastics to get around supposed Biblical contradictions. In me, by the grace of God, he saw a follower of Christ who doesn’t do any of those things, one who didn’t fit his mold. Maybe, just maybe, his first mental road-block has fallen away.

Moral Foundations, Necessary or Not?

2007-08-29T08:04:00.000-07:00

All laws must have a moral backing, that is, a moral law as their foundation. Contrary to those who say that "You can't legislate morality," I say, "If you don't legislate morality, what do you legislate?" Without that moral foundation, any legislation is simply argumentum ad baculum, or (paraphrased) in English, "persuasion from the barrel of a gun." You will do what we say simply because we want you to do it. The only obligation that you have is to the government and there is no one greater than us to whom we are accountable. And if you don't like it, lump it.

Without some higher authority morality is reduced to ice cream; you like vanilla, I like mocha almond fudge. Except we're talking about morality here, so it becomes, you prefer not taking other peoples' stuff, I like to help myself to any of your possessions that catch my eye. Who's to say who's right? In fact, without that objective, authoritative moral standard, even asking the question "who is right," is nonsensical. If there is no higher standard there is no right or wrong, just personal preference; your decision not to steal is no better than my decision to steal.

Some people who want to deny the necessity of an objective, authoritative (thus God-based) moral foundation argue that we get our morality through periods of trial and error, discovering what works.

But who's to say what works for any given society? Certainly, cutting the hearts out of living victims kidnapped from other local tribes by the thousands seemed to work quite well for the Aztec civilization. African slavery worked great for most of the world (including most of Africa) for hundreds of years. Purging their society of the aged, the handicapped, and the Jews looked like it might "work" for the purposes of the Nazis. Without a moral standard outside of human government and culture, these atrocities cannot be judged as "wrong." Without an authoritative moral standard, the strongest statement one can make about these events is, "Personally, I don't like that." Seems pretty weak to me.

"But," the secularist argues, "all those examples involve hurting other people. Thus, we can say such actions are immoral." Really? Where does one, outside of an objective, authoritative moral standard, have the ability to say that hurting people is wrong? Let me put it another way: You claim there are no transcendent moral standards, but we shouldn't hurt people. If that's true, then isn't "not hurting people" a transcendent moral law? To say that there is not an authoritative Law Giver who we are obligated to obey, but at the same time claim that we are obligated not to hurt people is a contradiction. May I also point out that if we agree that "not hurting people" IS a transcendent moral law, then couldn't there be other transcendent moral laws as well?

The strongest statement the secular legal scholar can make is, "I don't like being hurt, therefore I chose not to hurt other people." Wonderful! That's an excellent reason for you not to hurt people, not for anybody else not to hurt people. What if I like hurting people? By what authority, other than one's personal preferences, could I then be told to change my behavior? There is none.

Without a God, who is The Moral Authority, people have no obligation to help or be concerned for others, all societies from the most violent and degraded to the most kind and altruistic are on the same level, one can't be said to be better than the other (the idea of "better" implies an objective standard). Words like "corruption" and "justice" become meaningless. There can never be such a thing as a moral reformer, such as Martin Luther King, Jr.; in fact, in what 99.8% of people would surely consider a bizarre twist, in a world where culture, society, or government truly was the highest authority, M. L. King, Jr. would be considered immoral (I'm not going to take up more space here demonstrating why that would be).

Without God, the whole philosophical basis for a justice system or a legal system breaks down completely. And the result are truly ugly to behold.

God and Your Job

2007-08-22T16:16:00.000-07:00

Recently, I have handled a number of questions from friends and acquaintances asking about "God's will for their life" with a particular emphasis on jobs and vocation. Does God have a specific job he wants you to do, or a specific company He wants you to work for?

The question is closely tied to the common Christian assumption, widely held today, that God has some special blueprint for your life; where you will live, who you will marry, what job you will have, etc., etc,. Certainly God knows all of these things, but the question is whether God is making these decisions for you and if you need to figure out what His choices are before you can make a move.

Does God have this blueprint for you and He's dropping little hints here and there, trying to get you to figure out what He wants you to do? Personally, I have a hard time thinking of a more hurtful or confusing teaching within the mainstream Christian Church today than this one.

Having studied the Bible with the same questions in mind, I found that the Bible communcates God's will in two different and distinct ways; what many have come to refer to as "God's Sovereign Will," and "God's Moral Will:"

God's Sovereign Will: What God designs or decrees. We can only discover what God's sovereign will is in two ways, through hindsight and through what is revealed in scripture. We see what happened yesterday and realize that what occured did so by God's sovereign will. God establishes rulers and authorities, kings and kingdoms; He has supreme authority overeverything that happens. It is God's sovereign will that lost be condemned and the saved be sanctified and redeemed; we see this in scripture. There are a number of prophesies in scripture which inform us of God's sovereign will for the future. That said, the vast majority of the time we don't have access to God's sovereign will for the purpose of decision making.

God's Moral Will: What God desires. This tells us how we should live: that we should submit ourselves to His authority, that we should live righteously and not sin. God's Moral will is completely revealed to us in Scripture. It does not give individual guidence to Christians, but applies to all Christains equally.

As far as what many Christians call "God's Individual Will" for each one of us, I can't find that taught anywhere in scripture. I know of many passages which are used to justify such a teaching, but when read in context they don't actually have anything to do with such an "Individual Will". It appears clear from the Bible that God doesn't decide things like occupation, spouse, and living location for us, He dignifies us with the responsibility of making significant choices ourselves.

Please don't misunderstand, I am not saying that God doesn't care about the decisions that we make, but that he allows us to make the decisions that are best for us, and is pleased with our choices as long as they are in accordance with His moral will as revealed in scripture. As far as how to apply God's will to your life, it really is very simple: The Bible doesn't tell us where we should live, but what kind of neighbor we should be. It doesn't tell us what job we should take, but what kind of employee or employer we should be. It doesn't tell us who we should marry, but what kind of spouse we should be. The Bible doesn't tell us who we should have a freind, but what kind of friend we should be.

In short, if you think that you need to change occupations...DO IT! If you truly desire to honor God, you will honor him whether you decide to stay in your current position, or leave to do something new, as long as your decision is in line with His moral will as clearly communicated in the Bible.

Why Not Civil Unions?

2007-08-16T13:53:00.001-07:00

My last post was addressing the inherent errors most people who are for same-sex marriage make when forming their argument. This week, I want to address a problem nearly everyone on the side of keeping marriage one-man one-woman makes, the problem with so-called civil-unions.

Nearly every time I hear anyone from the pro-opposite sex marriage side argue this issue (please don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to imply that those who would like to see same sex marriage are anti-opposite sex marriage), I hear them say things like:

“Marriage should remain one-man, one-woman, but I would be in favor of some sort of civil unions for gay people.”

This thinking always bothered me, and I just recently figured out why:

I don’t care about the word ‘marriage;’ for all I care, we could make up any name for it we wanted. Why not start calling marriage the ‘perpetual state of intense personal togetherness” (as in, “Meet John and Martha, they were recently joined in a perpetual state of intense personal togetherness.”); aside from being incredibly cumbersome and a complete pain in the neck, I mean.

I don’t care about marriage the word; I care about marriage the thing. That’s what we are really trying to protect: the institution, not it’s title.

Marriage is worth protecting because of the reasons I went over in my previous article. If we, as a society, create another differently named but otherwise exactly the same institution, we’ve given away the farm. We will have provided the gay lobby with everything it wants but the word, and in doing so we’ll have given them an excellent place to argue from for that as well. Within a couple years of creating ‘civil unions,’ the activists will be saying, “Why not just call it marriage? It’s the same in every other way already.”

And they would be right. Civil unions and marriage are a distinction without a difference. At that point, we, the defenders of the so-called ‘Nuclear Family’ would have given away all the cards, and there would be no more argument to be made in our defense.

What's Wrong with "Gay Marriage?"

2007-07-30T13:07:00.000-07:00

There may not be a more confusing moral or social issue in the United States today than "same-sex marriage." Most supporters argue for same-sex marriage using very bad reasoning, and those who oppose it usually do no better.

First, the issue is “same-sex marriage,” not “gay marriage.” I know this seems like a tiny, nit-picky little point, but it’s not. Language matters, and when we talk about some thing incorrectly or imprecisely we change the that thing is understood.

In this county, homosexual people have every right to marry that heterosexual people do, as long as they choose to marry someone of the opposite sex. To define the issue as “gay marriage” comes dangerously close to implying that over at the marriage license office they’re systematically weeding out homosexuals:

Marriage license worker (MLW): “Open your mouth.”
License applicant (LA): “Why?”
MLW: “Gay screenings. We need to get a swab of your saliva in order to determine whether you’re homosexual..”
LA: “What!”
MLW: “Gay people aren’t allowed to marry, or didn’t you know that? If you don’t want to open your month, here’s a cup. The bathroom is over there.”

This, of course, is completely silly. The issue is not whether homosexuals have the right to marry, but whether anyone has the right to marry someone of the same sex. Hence “Same sex marriage,” not “gay marriage.”

This is not an issue of the law treating people differently, a gay man has exactly the same right to marry that I, a heterosexual man, do. We both have the right to legally marry any other unmarried woman who will have us. Likewise, we both have exactly the same marriage restrictions placed on us: he is not allowed to legally marry a man, and neither am I.

Of course, same-sex marriage advocates cry foul at this. “But you don’t want to marry a man,” they say to me, “and Joe Rainbow over there does!”

True. But why does that matter the least little bit?

Even as a small government conservative, I acknowledge that government has legitimate objective reasons to endorse opposite-sex marriage; such relationships create and raise the next generation, and that generation is the most precious resource society has. Homosexual relationships produce nothing that the government has an interest in promoting, endorsing, or protecting.

Like social security? No more security net without the new generation. Like the economy? Kiss it goodbye without the next generation. The next generation is incredibly important, if only tangentially, to every government program, every government office, the economy and your personal job. Want your business to expand and grow? You need a new generation of young, productive, contributing members of society to both work for and patronize your business; unless, that is, your business is “prison guard.”

Where do young productive, law-abiding, members of society come from? Members who will perpetuate themselves, the culture, and the good values necessary to maintain a free society? Primarily, they come from stable two parent households, where the parents represent both the major genders - Combinations like a man and a woman, or possibly even a woman and a man.

But gay people can adopt, and what about single parents? Certainly single parents do a yeoman’s job raising their children. But should government be encouraging such arrangements? That is the question. That is what the legal protections and that status that accompanies marriage are all about: government encouragement.

Government has an interest in encouraging the traditional marriage relationship, because it is clearly the best environment to raise children in; and not just any children, but children who will grow up to become productive, happy, contributing members of society. It's not that this can't be done outside of marriage, it's just that no other arrangement has anything near the success rate that marriage does. This is the sole reason government is involved in promoting and protecting traditional marriage.

Government shouldn’t be involved in fulfilling the whims and desires of every individual citizen it governs. It would be nice to have a special tax credit or subsidy making it easier for first time home buyers who live in high-priced markets to buy their first house; such as San Diego where I live. However, government shouldn't spend our tax dollars that way because that type of handout is entirely self-serving and ends up punishing those people who choose not to live in a place like San Diego. If I want to pay less than $550,000 for a starter home then I should look for a job in Indianapolis (Nothing against Indianapolis, they just have much cheaper housing there).

Government doesn’t exist to serve the interests of individuals but to provide a safe, stable environment for people to work, live, and hopefully make a better life for themselves and their children in.

Advice for Young People Considering College

2007-06-13T12:19:00.000-07:00

I work a great deal with the High School kids in my Church; I teach on Sunday mornings and I am considering facilitating another small discussion group one night a week; so I am exposed to a lot of the issues, problems, and questions that young people today, especially in the Christian tradition, are dealing with. One issue that I am particularly passionate about is decision making, how one goes about making wise decisions.

This subject is especially relevant to high-schoolers as they are quickly approaching some major changes in their life, some major decisions that will have very real and serious ramifications for years to come, possibly for the rest of their lives. What do I do after high-school? Should I go to college? What school should I attend? What career do I want to pursue? Should I get married?

In this vein, a friend recently wrote me to ask how I had decided on pursuing (and eventually completing) my degree in Engineering. I would like to share my response, as I think it contains some good advise (if I do say so myself), specifically about picking a career, but also how to deal with life questions generally.

I got into engineering for two reasons:

I liked technical drawings. I always enjoyed looking at technical drawings and I figured I would probably enjoy creating them too. It turns out that I was right, and that had I natural talent for it (I was far-and-away the top student in every technical drawing class I ever took).

I wanted a career that would provide a comfortable income and relative job security. Engineering does both. Engineers are paid well and there is always a demand for them.

While I started with technical drawing classes, which I continued to love, I found that I also enjoyed most of the other engineering classes I that began taking (advanced math, physics, dynamics, testing, technical writing, problem solving, etc.). My enjoyment of the material I was studying and the potential for a solid, respectable career, confirmed the wisdom of the choice for me. That’s pretty much it.

Apart from that, let me give you some advice. I don’t have a very high view of going to college simply for the sake of getting a degree. I know too many people who have spent a great deal of time and money getting degrees in things like theater or “liberal arts” and upon graduating have no career prospects. Three years after completing their education they are working at Safeway, a decent job, but not what most people want to do for the rest of their life.

In my opinion, college is a tool to provide one with the resources that one needs to get started in the career of his choice. Think hard about what you want to do after college, and then take classes and get a degree that will help you achieve that goal. Maybe the career you want to have in 15 years doesn’t require a college education (there are plenty of great options that don’t), if your ideal career doesn’t require college then the 4+ years and all the money you will spend there are wasted. Start working toward what you want right now instead of waiting years and wasting money that could be better used in achieving your specific goals.

If you don't know what you want to do right now, then go out and experience real life for a while. Get a job, work, and see what it really takes to get by in real life. A year or two of doing this and most young people will discover what they would like to do with themselves. I cannot tell you how valuable this is! Until you know what you really want to do you'll just float in University limbo, or worse, spend a lot of time and money getting a degree you have no use for and setting yourself back four, or five, or six years.

My point is this: Decide what you want to be doing in 15 years, both in your working life and in your domestic life. Think hard about what you need to do to achieve those goals and make realistic plans. If you have an idea about a specific career, seek out people who work in that field and ask for their advise about what to do, most people like helping.

Once you have a plan, buckle down and get to work. Nothing worth having is going to be easy; I worked for nearly seven years in college before graduating, and even then I had difficulty finding a stable job. It’s taken me almost 4 years since graduating to get into a career I enjoy, want to continue in, and will provide my family with a decent living.

I hope that helps. It’s the best advice I can give you right now.

The Bible and Women in the Church

2007-06-05T09:44:00.000-07:00

Recently, I was asked by an acquaintance what I thought the Bible says regarding women teaching in church. This is one of the questions that elicits gut emotional responses in most Christians; I have known commentators on every side of the debate ignore information that needed to be dealt with and make dogmatic stands when they have no reason to do so. To the best of my recollection, I have only ever heard one commentator make a truly convincing argument on this Biblical issue. I hope that I did better in the letter to my friend, which is reproduced below:

The issue you raised of women teaching in regard to the Church/Bible being out of step with what we consider modern "human rights" is an interesting one. May women teach in the Church?

There are only three passages that I am aware of that are appealed to in order to make the argument that God doesn’t allow women to teach. In 1 Timothy 3, Paul spells out the requirements that one must meet who desires to be a leader in the local church:

1 Timothy 3:1-2
It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do. An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach…

Paul goes on and on. Clearly, this level of leadership is restricted to men, as that leader must be married to a woman. But this passage says nothing about whether women should be allowed to teach. We know there were a great many members of the local church who taught and yet were not members of the leadership; this is true today, I myself have held lengthy teaching positions in two churches, yet I would never have been considered a member of the Church leadership. Therefore, women cannot be excluded from teaching based upon this passage.

The next is located in 1 Corinthians 14:33a-35, in which Paul writes:
As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

It seems clear, taken in isolation, but what is really going on in this passage? If you read the paragraphs above this section, and the paragraphs below this section, Paul is addressing problems that are disrupting worship in the church at Corinth. This section is only one small part of a larger passage in which Paul is attempting to promote orderly worship.

Look at the sentence that immediately follows verse 34 (the verse cited to support women not teaching):
If they [the women] want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

Verse 34 provides insight into the specific problem Paul is writing to address in the previous verse. Apparently, women (who were generally far less educated at that time) were asking questions of each other, or their husbands, or the teachers during the service, and thus were causing a disruption of worship.

Paul doesn’t address teaching in this paragraph, he addresses talking during the service; much like kids today who disrupt the lesson for everyone else when they speak out of turn in class. If what Paul means here is that women shouldn’t be teaching, then verse 34 is a non sequitur. It makes absolutely no sense.

This leaves us with the final passage:

1 Timothy 2:11-15
A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

I know this seems to be set in concrete, but let me put forward a possible alternative interpretation that I believe does complete justice to the text and to all of Paul’s other teaching.

The Greek word for ‘woman’ in this passage is ‘Gune.’ While 'gune' is the most common Greek word found in the NT for ‘woman,’ it also happens to be the most common word in the NT for ‘wife’ as well. The Greek word used for ‘man’ in this passage is ‘aner.’ 'Aner' also happens to be the most common word in the NT for husband. It was the translators’ decision to interpret these two words as ‘man’ and ‘woman’ because they believed that the context of the passage called for it to be this way.

But is this right? The vast majority of the time, when these two Greek words are found together in a passage, they are translated as ‘husband’ and ‘wife,’ unless there is very clear reason not to. Although I am not a Greek scholar, I don’t see any such reason in this passage, nor have I ever heard one presented beyond the personal beliefs of the interpreters on this issue.

So let’s insert the other linguistically acceptable translation and see if it works as well or better than the traditional one:

A wife should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a wife to teach or to have authority over a husband; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the wife who was deceived and became a sinner. But wives will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

This alternative works. It does justice to Paul’s teaching in other letters and it makes sense in light of the surrounding passages. What was the relationship between Adam and Eve, seeing as Paul is justifying his preceding argument upon the relationship that existed between them? Nearly all who point to this verse as a prohibition on women teachers say the relationship in view was the first man and women. Maybe. But, in my humble opinion, the relationship could just as easily be that of the first husband and wife! In fact, I find this possibility more likely, as this is how Adam and Eve would have related to each other.

It also makes sense in light of the following passages where Paul asks the Church in Rome to greet his fellow servants in Christ:

Romans 16:1-4, 6, 12, 15
I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church in Cenchrea. I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been a great help to many people, including me. Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus. They risked their lives for me. Not only I but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them…Greet Mary, who worked very hard for you…Greet Tryphena and Tryphosa, those women who work hard in the Lord. Greet my dear friend Persis, another woman who has worked very hard in the Lord…Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas and all the saints with them.

(Aside: It is unclear whether Julia is a man or a woman. In every instance of this name in ancient texts but two the sex of the bearer of that name is unknown. In one of those instances the bearer is female, in the other the bearer is male. So without further information, it is impossible to say whether the Julia in this passage is a man or a woman.)

I don’t believe that when Paul is talking about the great work these women have done for him and the church, he is referring to baking food for the local meeting. These women’s names are mixed up with men’s names, men who we know were teachers.

Acts 18:24-26
Meanwhile a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor and taught about Jesus accurately, though he knew only the baptism of John. He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.

In both the Old and New Testaments there were prophetesses, teachers of the people (I might also point out that prophet’s spoke with the authority of God, so when a prophetess spoke it would behoove both women and men to listen and learn):

Exodus 15:20
Miriam the prophetess, Aaron's sister, took the timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dancing.

Judges 4:4
Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel at that time.

Luke 2:36-37
And there was a prophetess, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher She was advanced in years and had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple, serving night and day with fastings and prayers.

Acts 21:8-10 On the next day we left and came to Caesarea, and entering the house of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven, we stayed with him. Now this man had four virgin daughters who were prophetesses.

It seems pretty clear that there is no prohibition on women teaching, and even teaching men, but rather on women holding leadership positions in the church. So again, your stated opinion that the Bible in some way contradicts our ideas of human rights (at least on this issue of the equality of the sexes) is flat out wrong (I hope you’re pleased to hear that). Instead, the Bible was far ahead of its time.

The Problem of God and Evil

2007-05-29T15:35:00.000-07:00

I have not addressed "God and the Problem of Evil" yet on this blog, it is a very interesting argument (at least I find it so) but it can also get very detailed and complicated. I don't want to go in depth right now, but just give the lay theist who might find this blog a very powerful little tool to help them out if they are ever asked about this issue.

This tool is short and sweet and was first proposed by Rabbi Milton Steinberg, and it goes something like this:

"The believer in God has to account for the existence of two things: evil and suffering. The atheist has to account for the existence of everything else."

If one is intellectually honest, and one wants to use the problem of evil and suffering against God, then one must also acknowledge that all the good and just in the world can justifiably be used as evidence for God.

Does God Punish Us for What We Believe?

2007-04-30T17:33:00.000-07:00

In recent months I have become increasingly aware of a problem many Christians are creating which is keeping them from reaching the irreligious who otherwise might be very open to the gospel message. Christians are giving unbelievers wrong ideas about God, salvation, and judgment, the primary messages of Christianity, by responding to the question, “why do I need Jesus?” with the answer, “If you don’t believe in Jesus you will go to hell.”

What’s the problem with this statement? Isn’t it true? Well…Yes and no.

When Christians hear the phrase, “If you don’t believe in Jesus you will go to hell,” there are a lot of other things that come packaged with it, salvation by grace, mercy, justice, etc. When a non-Christian hears that phrase they hear that God is capricious, caring more about what you believe than what you do. This is a major stumbling block for non-Christians considering Christianity, and it’s a completely unnecessary one if only Christians would be more careful in how they communicate the Gospel. The gospel is offensive enough without Christ’s followers adding to the offense with badly chosen words.

So how should we communicate the truth of “If you don’t believe in Jesus you go hell,” in a more effective, more precise manner?

We need to understand the Gospel better. While it’s true that those who don’t believe in Jesus will go to hell, their lack of belief is not the reason they go there. People go to hell because of their moral transgressions against God. While it is true that those who die without Christ will face judgment and hell, it is not one’s beliefs that earn hell, but one’s actions. God does not judge based on belief, He judges and condemns those standing before Him based on their rebellion and moral criminality. It is only because of the grace of God offered through Christ, that I and other Christians can receive the mercy of God, which we have not earned and don’t deserve.

We Christians have failed in communicating the need for Jesus to the unbelieving world. We have gotten so caught up in talking about Christianity with other Christians that many of us have forgotten that non-Christians don’t understand our buzzwords; and speaking “christianese” confuses them at best and gives them the wrong impressions about what God really does and offers at worst.

Head Knowledge Versus Heart Knowledge

2007-04-11T14:57:00.000-07:00

Growing up in the Church, I have often heard people say, “The problem is you only have head knowledge, but you don’t have heart knowledge.” The thinking is this: You can have all the “head knowledge” you want, but if you don’t engage the heart (an emotional response) with that knowledge, you will be a spiritually dead (or at least spiritually weak) Christian; and will be more likely to fall-away or backslide should you run up against an intellectual roadblock.

The fact that I have never once heard this idea reversed (i.e. “The problem is, all you have is heart knowledge; you need to get a little head knowledge.”) exemplifies the preference among much of evangelical Christianity for emotion over thought when it comes to the Christian walk.

Favoring emotion over knowledge is a tremendous problem facing the Church today. Like many troubling sayings in the Church, the problem arises not from the saying itself but because the saying has been repeated so often for so long and without any explanation or supporting scripture that it has taken on a whole new meaning in the minds of many people. This misunderstanding has caused Christians, in some cases, to completely discount and eliminate the rational aspect of the Christian life in favor of an almost exclusively emotional response.

This really hit home for me while I was perusing a discussion thread titled, “Discerning God’s Voice,” on one of the Christian Internet forums that I visit from time to time. The thread posed the question how one knows the “will of God,” with a specific example of a decision being faced by the thread originator. Nearly all of the responses leaned heavily toward an emotional answer to the question; here are several examples:

“..if you don't know shelf it, set it aside until you can discern it more in your heart and with God.”

“God’s will always leaves us with a sense of peace at the end.” (sense of peace = emotional tranquility. Apparently, this sense of peace is how we know we are within God’s will, according to many of the posters.)

“…when you heard those words in your head, did the feeling after leave you at peace or with more confusion and questions?” (The originator of the post talked about “hearing a voice in his head” and was wondering how to tell whether the voice was from God.)

“Yes, if you are feeling peace in everything, that is the Holy Spirit.”

The most egregious example was this one:

“God leads us by peace! God doesn’t scare us! God speaks in a still small voice, in our bowels = in our belly. Never listen to your head; the mind is at enmity against God. Listen to your belly, close your eyes and listen, focus on where the voice comes from, either head or gut.” Go with the gut!!!” (I could do another long post responding to all the problematic statements here. I disagree emphatically with every sentence this poster wrote.)

(Emphasis added in each example)

The problem as I see it is this: While it may be that having only “head knowledge” can lead to a spiritually dead Christian, it is almost inevitably true that having only “heart knowledge” leads to immature Christians; which, in the present evangelical landscape, is a far larger problem than spiritually dead Christians, in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of spiritual deadness out there as well, but almost by definition all the spiritually dead are also immature, and when you add them to all the “spiritually alive” (or at least emotional) Christians who are fundamentally immature as well, you get a problem which affects a huge percentage of Christianity (and the fact is, those who are spiritually mature are unlikely to be spiritually dead).

I am drawing a parallel between “head knowledge” and maturity because without information about God and his law/will, one will never move beyond a purely emotional response to Him and grow out of immaturity. Such “thoughtful maturity” is often called “wisdom” by the Biblical authors. Wisdom doesn’t come through emotional “heart knowledge,” it requires information which only comes through the study of and meditation on the Word of God. In other words, it requires “head knowledge.”

While there is encouragement for the believer to seek after and/or apply human wisdom in countless passages in both the Old and New Testaments, I can’t think of a single example of a Biblical exhortation for the believer to seek an emotional experience. If you know of any, please provide me with the citation (obviously, we are told to love God, but as any married couple can tell you, and in the immortal words of DC Talk: “Love is a verb.” Love can be associated with an emotion, but true love persists even when the emotions fade away, as they do in every relationship from time to time). Let me highlight just a few examples of wisdom from the Bible:

Proverbs 4:5-13
Acquire wisdom! Acquire understanding!
Do not forget nor turn away from the words of my mouth.
"Do not forsake her, and she will guard you;
Love her, and she will watch over you.
"The beginning of wisdom is: Acquire wisdom;
And with all your acquiring, get understanding.
"Prize her, and she will exalt you;
She will honor you if you embrace her.
"She will place on your head a garland of grace;
She will present you with a crown of beauty."
Hear, my son, and accept my sayings
And the years of your life will be many.
I have directed you in the way of wisdom;
I have led you in upright paths.
When you walk, your steps will not be impeded;
And if you run, you will not stumble.
Take hold of instruction; do not let go
Guard her, for she is your life.

Not only does this passage encourage the acquisition of wisdom, at the very end it points out that instruction (or learning) is absolutely essential to gaining and retaining wisdom, and wisdom is absolutely essential to life.

Ephesians 5:15-16
Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil.

Ecclesiastes 10:10
Wisdom has the advantage of giving success.

Proverbs 24:6
For by wise guidance you will wage war, and in abundance of counselors there is victory.

Matthew 10:16
Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.

1 Thessalonians 3:1-2
Therefore when we could endure it no longer, we thought it best to be left behind at Athens alone, and we sent Timothy, our brother and God's fellow worker in the gospel of Christ, to strengthen and encourage you as to your faith…

(This passage is a demonstration of the application of wisdom)

Acts 15:1-12, in which the early Church elders gathered to discuss the issue of circumcision for gentile believers, clearly highlights the need for wisdom over an emotional response. We are told that the Church elders discussed and debated the issue, not that they waited for a feeling of peace about the subject or a word spoken to them from God. Although they doubtlessly prayed for wisdom throughout their debate, in the end they made their decision based upon the words of Jesus and the prophets, and the work they clearly saw God doing amongst the gentile believers. This decision had everything to do with the knowledge they had from their study of the Scriptures and the teachings of Jesus. Head knowledge.

There are many, many more examples that could be cited (especially from the Book of Acts), but this article is already plenty long.

My point is this: Head knowledge is essential for wisdom and maturity in Christ, both of which believers are instructed to pursue. Heart knowledge bolsters faith and helps us in enthusiastically serving God. However, when heart knowledge unsupported by head knowledge fails (as all emotions do from time to time) the believer has nothing to support him and is lost in confusion and darkness. Head knowledge supports the believer through the emotional deserts that all Christians go through.

Study your Bible; study the thoughts of great thinkers and philosophers in the Faith. Acquaint yourself with the workings of the world. Don’t be naïve. Take the time to acquire some head knowledge; it will serve you well and maintain your faith through hard times, help you make good decisions, and it will guard your heart.

New "Documentary" Questions the Resurrection

2007-02-26T16:08:00.001-08:00

Academy Award winning director James “Titanic” Cameron’s latest work, “The Lost Tomb of Christ,” will be airing March 4th, 2007, on the Discovery Channel. In it the director and creator of the FOX series “Dark Angel” and the "Terminator" movies, claims that 10 ancient ossuaries, or small caskets used to store bones, discovered in Jerusalem approximately 25 years ago may have contained, among others, the bones Jesus of Nazareth.

I read about this “documentary,” for the first time only this morning (February 26, 2007) in a brief article by Marshall Thompson of the Associated Press entitled, “Scholars, Clergy Slam Jesus Documentary.”

According to this article, Mr. Cameron even goes so far as to suggest that one of the other ossuaries found with the one which allegedly contained the bones of Jesus, was inscribed with the words “Judah, son of Jesus,” thus “proving” that Jesus even had a son.

Apparently, the Cameron piece is not the first work to cover these particular ossuaries. Ten years ago the BBC ran a similar documentary making the same claims. Mr. Thompson writes in his article that Amos Kloner, the first archeologist to examine the burial site where these ossuaries where found is saying the same now regarding the Cameron work that he when the BBC produced their piece.

“They just want to get money for it,” states Mr. Kloner, adding that the idea does not hold up to archeological standards.

So far, there appears to be little to no scholarly support, from any arena, for the ideas and theories of “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” as they were put forward in the press release issued by the Discovery Channel.

This is nothing new. It seems like we Christians are taking these types of hits from such high-profile sources about every 3-6 months these days. Fortunately, this new “documentary” sounds like a lightweight hit piece; I’ll be looking forward to finding out more about it as the broadcast date approaches.

I only have two real comments at this time, the first about the documentary, and the second regarding the one pastor’s response to the show as he is quoted by the AP writer, Mr. Thompson:

First, even if the ossuary bears the name “Jesus” (transliterated, of course), it does not prove anything. The name “Jesus” was one of the more common names of that time among the Jews; it was, after all, the contemporary equivalent of the more ancient form of “Joshua,” arguably the most revered Jewish leader of the Nation of Israel next to King David. This “Jesus” is just one among hundreds or thousands of other individuals of the same name that lived in early first century Israel.

Frankly, if James Cameron is trying to make the case that this ossuary is that of Jesus of Nazareth, he is either very ignorant, has a great deal of prejudice against Christianity, or has some other evidence that this article fails to mention. I will withhold judgment on which it is until after the documentary is broadcast.

Second, Attallah Hana, orthodox clergyman in Jerusalem made the following statement as reported by AP writer Marshall Thompson:“The historical, religious and archaeological evidence show that the place where Christ was buried is the Church of the Resurrection…[this documentary] contradicts the religious principles and the historic and spiritual principles that we hold tightly to.”

The article demonstrates a basic misunderstanding of the point that (hopefully) most Christians will make about this documentary in his selection of this one statement from Mr. Hana. This statement is simply explicatory; describing the nature of the claim Mr. Cameron is promoting, rather than addressing the substance of the claim. Christians (I hope) shouldn’t care whether the documentary “contradicts the religious principles…[that Christians] hold tightly to;” I hope we would care whether the claims are true or not. If they are true then I for one want to know, as I would rather not waste my time following a false religion. If they are not true (and I would bet a great deal of money that all such claims Mr. Cameron will make in the documentary are not only false but rather silly and ridiculous as well) then we should let everyone know exactly why the documentary is wrong and then go about our business, as the documentary will be forgotten in less than two months time (although, rabid anti-Christians will continue to tout the documentary as proof of the bankruptcy Christianity for months, and possibly years to come).

Let’s not get worked up about this, if it’s stupid (as it probably will be) then we Christians can pretty much ignore it. If it has some substance, then we can do what we did with the “Da Vinci Code” and methodically take it apart with good scholarship. Either way, it should be interesting coming from a skilled filmmaker like James Cameron. I’ll keep you updated as I find out more.

Divine Judgment from a Four-Year-Old

2007-02-20T14:29:00.000-08:00

I know I haven’t put up a post in a great while, I hope to change that in the future.

Right now I have another story about my oldest son, Daniel.

I was returning home from an errand with Daniel, and watching the rain come down on Monday afternoon.

“Dad?” asks my son, “why won’t God send another flood?”

“You mean like Noah’s flood?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” I responded, “Because God promised us that he would never flood the world again.”

Looking for the right words Daniel sputtered, “But Dad…North Korea!”

All I could reply through the laughter, “You make a good point, Dan!”

And now for something completely different...

2006-11-22T11:19:00.000-08:00

My oldest son, Daniel, is starting to ask all kinds of questions (he’s four), and thinking deeply about all manner of subjects. One of my favorite Biblical teachers, Steve Gregg (‘The Narrow Path’), says of children, “Children, especially those about six to ten years old are the deepest thinkers and greatest philosophers you will ever find. How many of you have recently contemplated, for any length of time, what you would be like if you were a tree? These are the kind of things children think about.”

Anyway, Daniel has been asking questions about Heaven lately, and as I have recently studied the topic and am currently teaching our Church’s High School class on it, I am full of all kinds of fun information to share with him.

Daniel was concerned recently about dying, and I (and my wife) had re-assured him that there will be a time when God will give His followers their own bodies back to them, but in a perfected form that will never get sick or break again. After thinking about this for awhile, apparently trying to get his head around the idea that our resurrection bodies will not break or grow old ever again, he asked, “Will we be made of concrete? ‘Cause I don’t want to be concrete. Not ever.”

Obviously, in his mind, concrete is the only possible substance capable of such imperviousness to injury and illness.

A day or so later, my wife had drawn a hopscotch diagram on the slab deck in our backyard, and Daniel was trying to play on it. Suddenly, my wife, working away in the kitchen, hears him shouting from the backyard, “Help, Mom, I need help!”

Running into the backyard, she finds Danny standing on the number two square of the hopscotch diagram. “What’s the matter, Danny?” she asked him.

“Help, Mom, I can’t do this!”

“Why? What’s the matter?”
“Because,” said Daniel, while looking at the number 3 square, “I don’t have three legs.”

God Speaking

2006-11-14T12:32:00.000-08:00

(Caption: Greg Koukl, founder and President of the Christian Apologetics organization Stand to Reason.)

Last week I was listening to a great lecture on “Decision Making and the Will of God,” given by Greg Kouk l of Stand to Reason when this summary of some of his material jumped out at me. It is so insightful that I couldn't help sharing it with you.

To setup his comments, Mr. Koukl had spent the previous hour discussing the idea, much touted in the Christian community today, of listening for God’s private, personal messages and guidance when it comes to everyday decision making (should I marry this person, take this job, buy this house, etc.).

After exegeting numerous Biblical examples of God speaking, Mr. Koukl deducted several key points of commonality from the texts regarding how God speaks and the nature of messages He communicates when He does:

It’s very rare – There is no indication that God’s intervention to tell a person do something particular is the standard way of doing business in the Bible (think Peter’s dream on the roof top).

It’s an intrusion – You don’t see Paul or any of the Apostles stuck where they are, waiting to hear from God so they can know what do next. It always happens while people are on the move. God stops them, and redirects them in some fashion.

It’s supernatural – It’s a voice out of Heaven, it’s Jesus appearing in a vision, it’s an angel tapping you on the shoulder (literally).

It’s Clear – Whenever God speaks, the audience gets the message. It’s never up to us to listen carefully to try to hear what God is saying (often we are told that we don't hear from God because we are not listening). It’s up to us to obey when He does communicate. You can’t obey an unclear message.

It’s often against wisdom – If it was with wisdom the followers of God would (hopefully) be doing it anyway, they wouldn’t need to be told by God.

It becomes God’s moral will for you – It must be obeyed.

Now for Greg’s summery:

"Frankly, I don’t think we really take our own belief in God speaking very seriously. I had to speak at an engagement once and the person in charge of was giving me some information about the details, and I said “Well, what should I speak about here?” And the person said, “We prayed about it and we think that God wants you to address this topic or that topic. But you can do whatever you want.” By the way, this from a very spiritually mature and astute person. And I questioned that; I said “If God said it, then how is it that I have the liberty to ignore it?”

We do that all the time, as I mentioned before; “God told me to do this" one day and the next day they were doing something opposite. We don’t really take it seriously. I don’t know if you realize how serious a claim it is when you tell others that God told you to do something. When the prophets in the Old Testament did that they put their lives on the line. Step back just a minute from Christian lingo and just imagine, is it a serious thing to say that God told you to do something? I mean, is that serious or what?

But these kind of words trip out of our mouths every single day and we don’t give it a thought, and then we hear someone say “Oh God!” and we say “How dare you use God’s name in vain!” Yet you have been vainly spewing out the name of God on a regular basis with damage! “Oh God,” that does no damage, the other does. Stop it! It’s misleading to young Christians it’s destructive to all Christians."

By the way, if you haven’t ever checked out the articles and resources on Stand to Reason’s web page, I highly recommend it. It’s very left-brained kind of stuff (which is why it appeals so much to me), and it is some of the best stuff out there on the topics they cover; hard-hitting, well thought-out, clearly communicated, easy to understand, and solidly grounded Biblically.

Check them out.

More of the Truth: 9-11

2006-11-06T08:22:00.000-08:00

(Caption: This is a photo of the Pentagon lawn taken moments after the airliner struck the building. The piece of aircraft skin in the foreground clearly bears United Airlines markings.)

When I wrote the previous post, I could not remember the address of the very first myth-debunking site that I came across. Titled "9-11 Research," this site appears to be setup with the intention of drawing in unsuspecting conspiracists. If you read the introduction on the index page of the website it appears that the creators of the site disbelieve the "official story."

However, nothing could be further from the truth. While 911myths.com is devoted to hard science and expert analysis, 9-11 Research is devoted to what can be shown of the tragic attack through photos, news reports, and eyewitness accounts.

This site has the largest quantity of unique photographs from 9-11-2001 and the following days that I have seen, plus a comprehensive archive of eyewitness testimony regarding the Boeing 757 that struck the Pentagon and the crash of United Flight 93 (If you haven't seen the movie of the same title, I highly recommend it).

Another site that I couldn't remember is "Debunking 9-11 Conspiracy Theories," which may be an even better science and analysis site than 911myths.com. It contains a huge number of photos, and analysis from world-renowned experts in the fields they are commenting on (whereas, the doctors and experts on the side of "9-11 truth," tend to be from other, non-related fields of research). I highly recommend spending some time at this page.

If you know someone who doubts the "official story," or is be wavering on the brink of conspiracism because of "facts" (oft-repeated lies) put forward by the "9-11 Truth" movement, please send them to these two sites in particular, they are the best of the sites I have discovered:

debunking911.com - maybe my favorite (even though it was created by a self-described "flaming liberal;" just goes to show that even liberals can exercise common sense when they really want to)
911research.com - Please spend some time at this site, especially reading the eyewitness accounts, if you have any doubt at all of the truthfulness of the "official story."

Standing Up for 9-11 Truth

2006-11-03T09:11:00.000-08:00

Over the last several years, few things have bothered me as much as the so-called "9-11 Truth" movement. For the uninitiated, this movement is a large and diverse group of people, comprised primarly of private citizens and university professors all over the world who believe that the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, were perpetrated by President George W. Bush, or others high-up in the government. There are many theories floating around the net as to what actually happened, but most focus on the "facts" that the WTC towers and WTC 7 were destroyed in controlled demolitions; the Pentegon was not hit by United Airlines Boeing 757 (current favorite: it was probably a missile fired by a small commuter plane, like a Learjet); and United 93 did not crash but was diverted to somewhere in Ohio (no one can say what happened to the passengers).

I have spent many hours scouring the internet for good information, photo archives, anything that challenges the conspiracy theories currently running roughshod over the truth. But finding information on the web that supports the truth is a much harder task than you might imagine. If you go to any major seach engine and type "9-11 attacks," "9-11 photos," "World Trade Center attacks," "Pentagon attack," etc., you will be presented with am enormous list of websites all supporting one conspiracy theory or another.

A recent poll have shown that nearly 50% of New Yorkers believed that the U.S. Government had some complicity in the attacks (it should be noted that this poll was conducted on behalf of 911Truth.org, a very extreme conspiracy website). I believe that that numbers like that reflect the difficulty the average citizen has in getting good information about what happened that day; all they see are websites peddling lies (repeated so often and in so many places they have become "common knowledge"), non-expert analysis (although well written, well presented, and with enough technical jargon to convince the average Joe of it's veracity), and cherry-picked facts and qoutes that support the claims of the conspiracy theorists.

In that light, I would like to put out some links to some webpages with good information and analysis that I have finally discovered after hours of seaching. I hope you find them informational and informative:

Memri.org - Middle East Media Research Institute. Contains a number of good reports on items like the supposed Israeli and Jewish involvement in the attacks.
Political Research Association - This group is very concerned about the "Religious Right's" involvement in politics, so I wouldn't normally recommend them, but they do have good stuff on 9-11 conspiracism, which this link goes directly to.
911Myths.com - This should be your one stop shop for all things debunking 9-11 conspiracies. Execelent analysis, plenty of photos, and links to other good information.
Mike J. Wilson's 9/11 Report - An excellent computer recreation of what happened at the Pentagon.

There are more, I will add them as I have time. But many of the better sites are linked to at 911Myths.com.

What is “Contra Mundum?”

2006-10-31T12:33:00.000-08:00

When I first began this blog, it was entitled "Contra Mundum," which I proceeded to explain. However, since then, this blog has gone well outside the bounds, in terms of posts, that I had originally intended and the name only captured part of what I was writing about (what am I writing about, anyway?). So I changed the title to the one you now see at the top of the page, "Foundational Thoughts," which is far more broad and (I believe) better captures the eclectic nature of the various topics I write on (when I write). Still, it is an interesting post, so enjoy.

First, let me state that I am not a Catholic of any kind, nor have I ever been, despite what the title of my blog may lead some of you to believe. The title is taken from the expression “Athanasius contra mundum,” or “Athanasius against the world” used to describe Athanasius of Alexandria, who is best known for his opposition to Arianism in his everyday work, but specifically during the First Council of Nicaea in 325AD.

Arianism was the belief that there was a time when Jesus did not exist and that he had been created by God. In opposition to Arianism Athanasius wrote the Three Discourses Against the Arians in which he stressed that the Father's begetting of the Son, or uttering of the Word, was an eternal relationship between them, not an event that took place within time. In other words, that the Son was, is, and always will be eternal (is that redundant?) and was not created by the Father but has always existed as part of the Godhead.

Among Athanasius’ other works is Against the Gentiles – On the Incarnation which forcefully affirmed and explained that Jesus was both God and Man.

Because of his aggressive defense of the truth of Christianity Athanasius was banished, but later restored as many as seven separate times. This independent streak and hard-headedness concerning the truth of Jesus Christ lead his contemporaries to coin the phrase “Athanasius contra mundum.”

While he was a member of what is now the Roman Catholic Church, his defence of the truth of Christianity and the nature of Jesus Christ himself no matter who opposed him, makes Athanasius an admirable role-model for any aspiring Christian Apollogist/philosopher like myself.