What’s coming up on this week’s episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
First off, some of you might be wondering why you haven’t received any updates since the Jerry Walls episode. The answer is that there haven’t been new episodes. We had to cancel the David Marshall interview because I came down with the flu and then Mike Edens had to cancel on us, but hopefully we will this Saturday return to our regular podcasting.
As I hope you know, April is Autism Awareness Month which includes those of us who are Aspies. This month all of our shows will be revolving around this topic. We are going to have an apologist who is a mother later on this month talking about her life with a son with Aspergers. We are going to be having a father come on later who is also an apologist talking about life with his son with Aspergers. Also, we will have Stephen Bedard on who has two children with Autism and he has written a book on how to make your church more autism friendly. So if that’s all coming up later, what’s going to be going on this Saturday?
This Saturday, you’re going to hear from myself and a few others in a round table discussion. What we all have in common is that we’re all apologists and we all have Aspergers. I will be leading this discussion as the host as to how life is for us on the spectrum. Do we have any bonuses in our eyes because of our condition? Are there any negatives that we have to work on? How does it affect our Christian life overall? After all, you can read many books on the subject, and I encourage you to do so, but there is nothing like hearing from someone who is on the spectrum yourself.
At this point, I do not know for sure who all the guests are going to be. My friends Will Herb and Dan Ventress have already said that they will come on. We are hoping that Jonathan McLatchie will also come on. I plan on us not just discussing apologetics but also discussing our day to day lives. How do we do in social situations? Do we have any idiosyncracies that it can be hard for other people to understand? Also, what about social situations? How do we go about making friends and how do we act with them? What about with our family? What about with the opposite sex?
I also hope we will discuss what we think the church can do differently for people who are on the spectrum. Are there any things the church does right now that are problematic for reaching people who are on the spectrum? Could it be that maybe those on the spectrum will more often respond more to intellectual ideas rather than to social ideas? More and more people are being diagnosed as being on the spectrum so this is a group we need to be more aware of.
I hope you’ll be watching your podcast feed! I hope this will be a very informative episode for you.
What has happened and what is going to be happening? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
This post is not going to be one to necessarily get you apologetically equipped, but I do hope in the long run you will find that it does help you with apologetics. I’m sure many of you have noticed that there have been changes here at Deeper Waters. We are no longer on the traditional blog at WordPress.com and are rather using our own site. We also have a sidebar now that has a number of debates that I have done. The podcasts page as well has a listing that is much more easily accessible than the other page was. All of this is done to make Deeper Waters more easily accessible to the public and provide the best information that we can format wise. As far as content goes, it’s still on me, but I am fortunate some people have volunteered to make the web site what it is.
And we want to go further.
Now some suggestions have been made to me such as perhaps setting up a sort of disqus where I’m guessing that means a forum where there can be more communication here, but while I am the one who does the content for this site, this is essentially your site. You are the public that is out there that I am trying to serve. Now when it comes to the content, I don’t really plan on changing much. I have no desire to write on something outside of my expertise so if you want me to write on something like creation vs. evolution or something of that sort, then I will not really be interested. There are plenty more who can speak on those topics. I plan to stick to historical and philosophical questions that I have studied.
So now I leave this post open to you readers and fans of Deeper Waters. What is it that you would like to see at the web site that you think would be much more appealing? Is there anything you would like to not see? I can’t guarantee that we can do everything, but I do plan in taking it into serious consideration and discussing it with the ones who do the work on the site. Of course, we are donor-based and so if the donations are not coming in, then we cannot do as much.
That having been said, I’d like to remind you all of how you can be a further part of Deeper Waters. For one thing, you can come and like us on our Facebook page. You can also be a part of our mailing list for the monthly newsletter. There are two ways to do that. The first is to go to the Facebook page and request to sign up. The second is to email me and ask me to include you in the newsletter. Also, I would really encourage you to be part of our donor support group. We really need your support to keep things going. If you do get benefit out of what goes on here, please really consider it. If you want to do that, there is a link on the side to help you do that. What you will do is click on it and it will take you to Risen Jesus ministries. They take the donations for us. These are then tax-deductible. Once a donation is made, email me or email Debbie Licona and say that you want the donation to be made to Nick Peters or Deeper Waters. If you want to be a monthly donor, let us know and we can set that up. If you’re not in a position to donate financially, please be praying for us.
We want to be a ministry that better serves you. Please let us know what you’d like to see and then please consider taking part in supporting us.
Will the gauntlet be picked up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Not too long ago, upon seeing someone else talk about the book, I wrote a review of David McAfee’s Disproving Christianity. As you might expect, I found the book as sorely lacking in what it needed. The appearance I get is that David McAfee just looked up passages on Bible Gateway and read Wikipedia about them. There was no interaction with scholarly material. There was no bibliography. There was not an argument against the resurrection of Jesus at all. It pretty much boiled down to “If there are contradictions in the Bible, then Christianity is false.”
This has no basis in reality. Not even Bart Ehrman would totally buy this idea as he was a believer in Christianity for awhile even while thinking the Bible was not inerrant. There’s no reason to think the Bible is an all-or-nothing game, as if because we show that because the Bible supposedly contradicts on if man has seen God or not, that that means that Pontius Pilate never existed since the Bible records his existence. This is the way a fundamentalist thinks and this is why I say that McAfee is a fundamentalist as well. He applies the exact same standard the fundamentalist Christians he condemns does and does not engage with scholarship.
He has also written a book called The Belief Book which I plan on reviewing soon. It is designed for children. Remember Christian friends. It’s wrong for you to teach your own children to be Christians, but it’s perfectly okay for atheists to write books teaching atheism to children. Those who are telling you that you can’t teach your own children something are doing so because they have something else in mind that they want to teach your children. Yet in this book, others have told me that he really questions the existence of Jesus even, just as he does in Disproving Christianity. This would be enough to cue the laugh track anywhere else.
Yet it looks like McAfee has supplied himself with a bunch of yes men. These are not scholars, but simply his fan base who aren’t any more educated than he is. In my interactions, I have seen the same disdain for scholarship and the abundance of presuppositional atheism. Not a shock that the idea that Jesus never even existed is right at home there. For some reason, McAfee is treated as if he is an authority of some kind.
So right now, I am really making a public challenge. I have done so on his Facebook page, but I will do so right here. If David McAfee is sure he’s right, he’s free to face me on a debate on the resurrection of Jesus.
Why should he engage me? Well he already has to an extent.
You see, this is part of the modus operandi of David McAfee. He will often put up a response without showing the other side as if what was said was automatically brilliant. Unfortunately, he didn’t bother to respond to my reply. McAfee says my response to the claim of 41,000 denominations was to simply ask “What’s a denomination?” This is not so. I in fact told what a denomination was. A denomination was a self-governing entity. McAfee posted up his response and while he linked to what I said earlier, but we know most people will never click the link. One thing McAfee might want to keep in mind is that if someone answers your response, it doesn’t bode well to put up your response and never return and answer them again, which of course, he never did.
I could also point out that I do happen to already have some scholarly endorsements. I am not saying all are scholars, but a number of them are. As readers of this blog know, I happen to have my own ministry and my own podcast and on my podcast, I have also interacted with the work of scholars. There are also several Ebooks of mine that are available. I have also appeared on shows like Atheist Analysis and had a debate with Ken Humphreys who runs the web site of Jesus Never Existed and one with Matthew Ferguson of Adversus Apologetica which you can download here on if Jesus rose from the dead and one on Unbelievable? where I answered the question of where was God in Haiti after the great 2010 earthquake. This in addition to being a speaker as well, such as at the New Orleans Defend The Faith 2015 Conference.
So if McAfee wants to think he has triumphed in a snippet over me, then he is welcome to come and face me in a debate. He might have an easy time surrounded by all his fans who will not give him a challenge to what he believes, but let’s see if he will be willing to face someone who does disagree with him.
What’s coming up this Saturday on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out!
Awhile back, I reviewed the book Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. As it stands, I interviewed Dr. Walls on this book last Monday. That interview will be being worked on and will come out hopefully on Saturday. We spent about forty minutes on Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory each. If you don’t know who Dr. Walls is, let me tell you some about him.
Jerry L. Walls is Scholar in Residence and Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist University. He has authored or edited over a dozen books and over eighty articles and reviews. Among his books are: Hell: The Logic of Damnation (University of Notre Dame Press, 1992); Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy (Oxford University Press, 2002); Purgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation (Oxford University Press, 2012); and The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology, ed. (Oxford University Press, 2008). His co-authored book with David Baggett, Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality (Oxford University Press, 2011) was named the best book in apologetics and evangelism by Christianity Today in their annual book awards in 2012. He is also a big sports fan, and has done two books about basketball: Basketball and Philosophy: Thinking outside the Paint (coedited with Greg Bassham, University of Kentucky Press, 2007); and Wisdom from the Hardwood: Defining a Success Worth Shooting For(Gray Matter Books, 2012).
I should also point out that I found out that Dr. Walls and his son (Who has written an excellent book on the Legend of Zelda) are big tea drinkers and so that definitely shows that they’re on the path of righteousness.
We started with talk about Heaven and the question we had to ask was if Heaven was boring. That was where we started. Why is it that we do not celebrate the idea of Heaven? Why is it that there is just not a lot of appeal to the topic? We talked about how our view of God affects our view of Heaven and how our view of this current world does that as well. It really does make a difference if you have a false view of creation. If all you have is a sort of pie-in-the-sky by and by mindset where you will just fly away, you will not take this world seriously nor the idea that God is really going to redeem this world.
What about Hell? We did ask the hard questions. If God knows what it will take to make me believe, why does He not just do that? What about the question of those who have never heard? Why not go with the idea that God annihilates us in the end instead? How can it possibly be that anyone will be in Heaven if they know that there will be loved ones suffering forever in Hell? These are all hard questions, but Dr. Walls was willing to take them on.
Finally, we got to Purgatory. This was an interesting one. Dr. Walls is not a Catholic, but yet thinks we should try to reclaim this doctrine. We talked about the idea of post-mortem evangelism and we also talked about the importance of sanctification. How does this tie in with the Great Commission? If there is a chance that God will reach people without our activity and even after death, does that change our motivation?
You might not agree with all Dr. Walls says, but you can be sure it will leave you thinking. This was an astounding interview and I hope you’ll listen for it when it comes out.
What’s coming up on the Deeper Waters Podcast this Saturday? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Back in 2013, we were blessed to have John Walton come on the show and talk about The Lost World of Genesis One. Now John Walton has brought us another excellent book, The Lost World of Adam and Eve. As soon as I saw this was coming, I knew I wanted Walton back on the show again and indeed, he was happy to come back again to what I believe could be the first podcast interview on the book that will be done.
So who is John Walton?
According to his bio:
John’s research and his energized presentations are rooted in his passion for drawing people into a better understanding of God’s self-revelation in Scripture. John (PhD, Hebrew Union College) is a professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College and Graduate School. He focuses his research on the literature and cultures of the ancient Near East and the Old Testament, with a particular interest in Genesis. Before his role at Wheaton, John taught for 20 years at Moody Bible Institute.
John’s ministry experience includes church classes for all age groups, high school Bible studies, and adult Sunday school classes, as well as serving as a teacher for “The Bible in 90 Days.”
I have found John Walton’s viewpoint on the Old Testament to be incredibly eye-opening. Prior to reading the book, I had done my own research project on science and Christianity and came to the conclusion that the best arguments I could find are metaphysical arguments and it does not help to marry our apologetics to science. If some want to do scientific apologetics, that’s fine, but it’s really not something that I prefer to use. Also, N.T. Wright had been a scholar definitely helping with my understanding of the New Testament. For years, I had been working to learn how Jews at the time would understand Jesus and thought “How would Jews at the time of Moses understand Genesis?” John Walton provided the answers.
That’s why I’m thrilled to have him come back on the show again. We’re going to be talking about his views on Adam and Eve and asking the hard questions. We will be asking what role scientific data does play and how much impact should it have on our reading? We will be asking him what the impact is of other human beings besides Adam and Eve being around. Doesn’t that go against what Jesus said in the Gospels? We will be asking about the serpent in the Garden and what was the impact of the event called the fall on humanity?
So be watching your podcast feed! You won’t want to miss this one!
Has the breakdown come? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
A little over a week ago, I wrote on Carrier’s decision to come out as polyamorous. You see, Richard Carrier, who is the go-to guy practically for atheists in their apologetic defense, has announced that he is divorcing his wife. Alone, this would be a tragedy and nothing that we should celebrate. Divorce is a sad breaking of a union that was meant to last until death do the lovers part. When it is even something that could be necessary, it is a tragedy that it has come to that point.
What made it worse was Carrier working to justify himself and say “I’m polyamorous.” He had been cheating on his wife and just decided that this had to be his orientation. He was a man who wanted to have sex with many other women, including ones he isn’t married to. With this, Carrier falls into the small category of every single married man on the planet. Most of us just learn to control our desires because we care more about loving our wives properly than we do about women fulfilling our own desires.
In my critique, I was told I should later write on what ethics of Carrier that Carrier was violating. As I was doing some checking for that both in his book and online, I found that some had already been doing that. What was most amusing is it looks like the atheist community has been doing the policing. Let me say first then that it’s wonderful to see the atheist community calling out their own, something we Christians need to do too when one of ours steps out of bounds with a major moral failing.
Now keep in mind that in these blogs we’re not dealing with Christians so the language will be that which we do not normally care for, but in these blog pieces, you can see Carrier being demolished. What makes it more amusing is that when Carrier shows up himself, he actually makes it worse. We could have it said “Better to have people think you’re a polyamorous narcissist than to use your keyboard and remove all doubt.”
Our first posting will come from The Yeti’s Roar.Here, the writer has compiled a number of statements of Carrier and even pointed out how some of them have been edited. It has also been pointed out that he has condemned Michael Shermer, but yet he falls at the same level as Shermer and does not seem to see it. His narcissism has also been pointed out and having him like one of his own comments on the blog page did not really help matters.
I invite the reader to simply read the posts and then read all the replies and yes, I’m in that mix as well if you see a familiar name. I happen to share the question of a recent comment on how Carrier will support himself now. After all, since he’s endorsed the Christ-myth idea, he has pretty much killed any chance of getting a job teaching at an accredited university. If he doesn’t wind up speaking constantly at atheist conferences, what then? Will other women be willing to offer the support when how he treats them, especially his own wife who I make it a point to pray for regularly and I hope you will too?
Another blogger who has been blogging about this is Shermertron over at Orwellian Garbage. He has several posts on the prominent internet blogger Dr. Richard Carrier Ph.D. The first one that I ever read was comic gold. What is fascinating about watching this whole affair is that it’s kind of like watching a disgraced televangelist. Carrier is trying to deflect the criticism that he’s receiving and yet, it’s not working. It also reminds me that indeed, marriage is something that is seen as sacred today. You just don’t cheat on your wife.
On that point also, I have made it even more of a vow to honor Mrs. Peters over here. You see, I have long told men in apologetics, and the same counterpart would apply to women in the field, that if you are able to debate every atheist and answer every question in the field, yet you end up not being a loving husband to your wife, then I count you as a failure in ministry. There are plenty of people in the field who can answer the questions that are out there. Of course, do your part, but you are not the only one. Yet when it comes to loving your wife as Christ loved the church, there is only one person who can do that. If you are an apologist who is married, you cannot be both a good apologist and a bad husband. (This is also why I set up a group on Facebook for Christian men who are married, engaged, dating, or hoping to date, so we could learn to love our wives better and encourage one another. My wife has the counterpart for women.)
To get back to this whole spectacle, it will be interesting to see what the future holds. We in the Christian community should celebrate atheists that are willing to call out their own and remember that we need to be doing the same thing. What will happen to all the atheists who put all their eggs in the Carrier basket meanwhile? Will this damage Carrier’s reputation? Will atheist fathers not want their atheist daughters at his talks? Will atheist husbands not want to go to them with their wives not wanting to get near the guy?
Has Carrier by his actions ended his fifteen minutes of fame? Only time will tell, but we can remember to pray in this situation and see what could happen with that. Who knows? Until then, we have a reminder that ultimately, no one is above criticism in this area and we all know that if you’re married, you are to honor your spouse and to say you’re polyamorous is a way of saying “You’re not enough for me.”
Along those lines, it’s worth pointing out who Carrier dedicated Sense and Goodness Without God to.
For Jen…
My buxom brunette
My wellspring of joy
My north star of sanity.
Sure seems real now. She is certainly getting an example of the sense and goodness without God. Apparently, it’s sensible to admit you’re polyamorous, which means living with the unique desire as a married man to have sex with other women, and it’s good to go out in that and try to live as an ethical human being the best you can, despite cheating on your wife.
Again, I do not know what the future holds here, but I am certainly watching. It will be interesting to see where Carrier is twenty years from now and see if it was worth it. I personally do not doubt that Jen will be much better off and will be much happier.
In the age of the Internet, it’s easy to say we have more access to knowledge than anyone else today, but does that mean we’re smarter?
I’d like you to imagine you live in the ancient world. In fact, you live next to a great bastion of learning, the Library of Alexandria. Within walking distance from where you are is a great collection of knowledge from all over that you can read when you want to. Here is the question then. Does that mean that you automatically know better than anyone else out there?
No. No you don’t. You might have more access to information than the average person, but it doesn’t mean you know better. One person who could make it to the library perhaps once a year, but knows how better to sift through information, will be more informed on topics than you will be. This person will know what books they need to read, how to read them, and how best to process new information when they get it in.
Today, we live in the age of the Internet. Most everyone can have access to the knowledge of the world immediately. It is sitting right at our fingertips. (Though often we miss it while looking at pictures of cats and debating what color a dress is.) There is no doubt that the Internet is a vast reservoir of knowledge overflowing and that a person can give themselves a decent education on a topic by doing some good looking on the net.
And yet, therein lies the danger.
Many of us remember seeing this commercial:
Funny? Indeed. We all laugh at the gullibility of the girl. How could someone possibly believe anything that they read on the Internet? We laugh, but don’t realize that too often, that describes many of us. In the age of the net, it’s easy to have anyone set up a blog or a web site or a podcast or anything of that sort and be seen as an authority. Many of us can self-publish EBooks and have us look like people who know what they’re talking about.
At this point, an obvious rejoinder comes up. “Well you’re not a scholar in the field and you have a blog and web site and podcast! Why should we listen to you? Couldn’t you be wrong?”
I absolutely could be wrong. I would hope you would listen because I do think I read profusely and seek to find out whatever I can in my field. Plus, when I interview someone, they are usually a scholar in the field and that means they are definitely worth listening to. When it comes to my own opinions on here, I will admit it’s really awesome to have so many people respecting and liking what I have to say, but I am not Scripture. I am not infallible at all. I would not want you to believe something just because I say it. Please feel free to research what I say. Even N.T. Wright has said that he can be sure 1/3 of the stuff he teaches is wrong. I would be quite the anomaly if I had everything that I taught be correct.
Too often on the net, people just hear what they want to hear and there is always a voice speaking loud enough on this. Recently for instance, I reviewed David McAfee’s Disproving Christianity. Quite simply, this is a terrible book, but if you go to his Facebook page, his followers, and it looks like there’s a lot of them for some strange reason, are just so impressed by what is being said. All I conclude is that people hear what they want to hear. The claims are not questioned. Rarely can you expect the other side to be read.
Christ mythicism is another example of this. While this position is a joke in the world of NT scholarship, it is seen as if it’s a hotly debated theory on the Internet. See for instance this quote by McAfee as well concerning John 14:6.
“This verse is, however, only one of the many indicating the necessity not of moral behavior to be saved, but of accepting Jesus Christ—who, according to doctrine, is supposed to have lived thousands of years ago and for whose existence we have little to evidence, neither as a man nor as part of the divine Christian God-head”
The tragedy in the atheist community is that this is fallen for hook, line, and sinker. It’s quite interesting that so many people who claim to be freethinkers tend to think exactly alike. Of course, there are exceptions to this. Many of you out there know who you are. For too many atheists, it is as if anything in the Bible is shown to be true, then at this point, one must commit ritual suicide. It cannot be allowed that a worldview like Christianity got anything historically accurate.
Okay. Someone might say I’m picking on the atheists. Christians do the same thing.
Yes. The sad thing is that too many atheists who tend to be all about the evidence will often believe something despite the evidence for it being flimsy and the scholars in the field rejecting it. Too many Christians meanwhile who claim to follow the one who said He is the way, the truth, and the life, and who are told to be on their guard against false doctrine, will too often not bother to do any of the research either. They will believe something just because it already fits in with what they already believe.
To an extent, that does make sense. The problem is our worldview is just often not informed enough to see if we have any reason to believe what we come to the data believing. So you’re a Christian who has grown up all your life believing Jesus is the Son of God and the Bible is God’s infallible and inerrant word. You have not really looked at the evidence, but you believe it. So you have someone email you a story about how NASA scientists had their calculations wrong until someone on a team told a story about Joshua’s missing day. Wow! How incredible! This just confirms what you believe! Unfortunately, that story if you believed it, is bogus.
If you don’t know how to process the information you have already, then any discovery that comes along that fits in with what you already believe will be believed by you. On the Internet, this is especially so if it comes in a nice-looking package, such as a well-designed web site. It can also happen if a speaker knows how to speak persuasively even if his points are nonsense. This is in fact one reason I consider debate helpful. If both participants are well-informed, you can get to hear the views all critiqued. It’s also way counterpoint books can be so fascinating to read.
If what I’m saying is accurate, then having knowledge there to us will not helpful to us if we don’t know how to process it and question it. This is one reason especially churches need to be encouraging their members to ask questions and they need to discuss those questions openly. People who are not questioning what they believe and asking about it quite frankly are not growing as disciples of Christ.
For my non-Christian readers, while you might deplore Christians sitting and just believing everything their pastor says, something I also deplore, make sure you’re not doing the same thing. Have you set your own authorities up as people who are going to be correct on whatever they say? Too often from our perspective, it looks like that is exactly what is happening. There’s a great danger I see, especially in the atheist community, where it is assumed that if you are an atheist, you are a person of reason and evidence. If someone is a Christian, they are a person of faith. Why should anyone listen to faith and why should anyone go against reason and evidence? Therefore, anyone who is rational will be an atheist. I refer to this as presuppositional atheism.
The best antidote to this is to learn how to interact with the opposite viewpoints and check up on the claims. You read something on the net? Go and check and see if it is true first. Don’t just believe something. In all honesty, if my own wife tells me about a story she’s read, I always ask what the source of that story is first. When I have seen people post interesting stories on the Internet, I have often been the bearer of bad news by saying “It’s a good story. Unfortunately, it’s false.”
For Christians, this is especially the case. We claim to be followers of Christ. If people cannot trust what we say on mundane ordinary matters that could be shown to be false by five minutes of research, why should they trust us on ultimate life-changing issues that five minutes worth of research would not be sufficient for?
(btw, along those lines, Christian issues such as the resurrection are deep issues. I do not trust anyone who thinks that a major decision like this can be decided after a brief time of research. There are Ph.D.’s who study these subject in depth and simplistic answers will just not work. This is also why I oppose using memes as arguments. Memes can be humorous illustrations of arguments, but they should not be the arguments themselves.)
It’s easy to pride ourselves as thinking we possess knowledge in the age of the Internet, but let’s be careful about it. We could very well fulfill the Scripture where it says that proclaiming ourselves to be wise, we became fools. Rest assured, every side does have fine and intelligent minds on it, but every side also has their share of fools. Be sure to investigate what you believe. We should not desire to be fools.
What’s coming up this Saturday on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
When I was in New Orleans for the Defend the Faith conference, I met many great speakers there. I met many fine and wonderful minds that are highly skilled in apologetics. I met many that are great inspirations for us all and are simply remarkable with the way that their brilliant intellects work.
I also met Tawa Anderson.
Just having some fun there. 🙂
When we were deciding which breakout sessions to go to, I figured I knew a lot of the material already, so I’d let Allie choose. Allie wanted to go see Tawa speak because she has an interest in worldview thinking and that happened to be the topic that Tawa was speaking on. For many in apologetics, it can be a basic topic, but it’s really quite in-depth and quite central to everything we do, so why not have him discuss it on my show? This Saturday, we’ll see that happen. So who is Tawa Anderson?
According to his bio:
Tawa Anderson is Chair of the Philosophy Department and Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Apologetics at Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, OK. Tawa presents papers regularly at professional philosophical society meetings, has written a number of journal and magazine articles, and is the co-author of a worldview textbook used at OBU (and hopefully soon to be published and accessible to the broader public).
A native of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Tawa earned his B.A. (Political Science) at the University of Alberta, and an M.Div. (Pastoral Ministry) from Edmonton Baptist Seminary (now Taylor Seminary). Tawa served as English Pastor of Edmonton Chinese Baptist Church for seven years before returning to school to earn his Ph.D. in Philosophy, Apologetics & Worldview from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. A husband and father of three, Tawa is passionate about equipping the church to understand, explain, and defend the truth of the Christian faith. He has led apologetic workshops, seminars, and conferences at churches throughout western Canada, Kentucky, Colorado, Texas, and Oklahoma.
Tawa enjoys speaking on a broad range of apologetic topics, with particular passion for matters regarding: (1) Truth, Relativism, and Postmodernism; (2) The Textual Integrity and Historical Reliability of the New Testament; (3) The Historical Jesus; (4) The Resurrection of Christ; (5) Worldview; (6) The Need for Apologetic and Worldview Training in Contemporary Christian Churches; and (7) The Question/Problem of Evil/Pain. Tawa blogs (with intermittent dedication) at www.tawapologetics.blogspot.com
Allie and i got to know Tawa very well at the conference and at some meals got to see him interacting with visitors on very deep levels. Also amusing was getting to see him do a mock debate with Gary Habermas on if Jesus rose from the dead where he played the role of Bart Ehrman. We suspect he won’t want to do that again. That was not recorded and/or streamed by the conference so if you regret missing it, just make sure to come next year!
Tawa did a great job of taking the serious topic of worldview thinking and making it accessible to everyone in the room and we’re sure to see the same on the Deeper Waters Podcast. Be looking for the next episode in your podcast feed soon.
What’s coming up on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Not too long ago, I reviewed a book called The Global Gospel by Werner Mischke. Mischke’s book is one that seeks to bring the honor and shame dynamic to Western readers who aren’t familiar with it. This has long been a point of mine that we have not really understood the Bible properly in many cases because we too often read our own culture into it. Mischke’s book not only brings out the culture of the Bible, but shows from often a pastoral perspective how that can be applied to us in the West today.
According to his bio:
“Werner Mischke has been serving with Mission ONE since 1992. He is currently Executive Vice President and his role is Director of Training Ministries. Mission ONE’s purpose is to train and mobilize the Church, focusing on cross-cultural partnerships to engage the unreached and serve the poor and oppressed. Mission ONE’s indigenous partners are engaged in evangelism, church planting and holistic ministries in such countries as Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, India,
Pakistan, and Thailand. Mission ONE is engaged in a long-term vision to helps its partners develop sustainability through “business for transformation” strategies.
• Werner has a long-term special relationship with Mission ONE’s partner in the Middle East—where Arab nationals are building a network of house churches through holistic ministry among various Muslim peoples. Werner’s experiences there have led him into a passionate pursuit of understanding the pivotal cultural value of honor and shame in Scripture and the cultures of the Majority World.
• Werner’s recently published book is THE GLOBAL GOSPEL: Achieving Missional Impact in Our Multicultural World. The singular issue which this book addresses may be defined by posing this question: How can the honor/shame dynamics common to the Bible and many Majority World societies be used to contextualize the gospel of Christ in order to make it more widely understood and accepted?
• He has done training on the dynamic of honor and shame for ISI, Frontiers, TOAG, as well as various church and ministry groups. His seminars are designed on the basis of adult learning theory for a rich learning experience.
• As Director of Training Ministries for Mission ONE, Werner has designed and produced three resources to equip followers of Christ for cross-cultural missions engagement:
• Operation WorldView is an introductory DVD missions curriculum for small groups inspired by the Perspectives course. Operation WorldView has been used by some 800 churches and mission leaders in America, Canada and other nations.
• The Beauty of Partnership—a six-week small group curriculum based on adult learning theory to help mission teams gain the skills to achieve successful cross-cultural partnerships.
• The Father’s Love Gospel Booklet—a pocket-size booklet to help believers know and share the blessing of Jesus Christ in the language of honor and shame. It is an evangelistic resource based on the story of The Prodigal Son. Available in English and Spanish. Through Mission ONE’s partner in Lebanon, an Arabic version has also been developed and widely shared.
• Since 2004, Werner has served on the Resource Team of COSIM (Coalition on the Support of Indigenous Ministries)—a fellowship of evangelical organizations with a common interest in the support and development of majority-world ministries. Werner has contributed significantly to the design of COSIM’s annual conferences.
Currently living in Scottsdale, Arizona, Werner and his wife Daphne are members of Scottsdale Bible Church, where Daphne serves as a teacher in the Special Needs Ministry. Werner has also been a student at Phoenix Seminary in their Intercultural Studies Program. Werner and Daphne have two adult sons and two grandchildren”
I am looking forward to this show in bringing out an aspect of the culture that many people are likely unfamiliar with. Not only will we discuss it, but we will discuss how it relates to the world we live in in the West today. I hope you’ll be watching your ITunes feed.
What’s coming up on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
In reality, I have actually already recorded this show. Normally, I do it on Saturday afternoons, but I had to make an exception this week. A friend of the family is getting married and while I am not officiating, I am taking a part in some matters with getting everything formalized as an ordained minister, so since that required my attention, I decided to go ahead and record the show in advance. (And it can sometimes take awhile because I am really inept with the technology and have to have a good friend help me out with that.)
Yesterday, I wrote about Dave Sterrett’s book. Really, I had read this book over Christmas, but there were other things that got my attention and I still even have a lot of Christ-myth nonsense to write about, and that’s going to be even harder because when you read one of those books, it is so filled with error that you just have to spend so much time dealing with all the constant mistakes in there.
Dave’s book is a short one you can read quickly and is packed with information. When I interviewed him, one thing we heard about briefly was the need to not be a coward. Dave talked about a time in the past where he backed down from his pro-life convictions and sadly, he did this at the recommendation of a pastor who just did not want to talk about the issue. (And shame on a pastor like that. These are human lives we’re talking about.) Now, he is silent no more.
We talked about the Aristotelian doctrine of substance and what role it plays in the debate. What does it really mean to be a human and could we in our modern age really learn something from those strange ideas of metaphysics that were in the past? We discussed that actually, philosophy is unavoidable. Everyone is going to do philosophy somehow. The question is, are we going to do it well or not. I have sadly found that those with a scientism mindset who want to speak against philosophy and put science on the top inevitably end up doing bad philosophy and often very little science.
We also spoke about why it is that our culture pays so much attention to science on every other issue, but when it comes to the science of humanity, we ignore it. It is quite odd that it is precisely at that point that we jump back to philosophy and metaphysics and try to use those to deny the humanity of what is in the womb, but it is the contention of Dave Sterrett that this will not work.
We’re working on getting these shows up soon and I hope you’ll be watching for them. The interview with Dave was only able to be an hour long, but I think it will be one that is worth your listening to. So please be watching your ITunes feed and thank you for supporting the Deeper Waters Podcast.
