Month: November 2012

And Then Jesus Showed Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How did we get here?

What do we do now?

Let’s start with the first.

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

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

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

Next came evolution.

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

Evolution is either true or false.

That’s not too difficult is it?

Evolution can be proven true or false by science.

That’s also not too difficult is it?

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

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

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

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

Note also that neither argument is metaphysical.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And then Jesus showed up.”

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

He’s not showing up.

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

That is, we have not been showing up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Mike Licona’s blog entry can be found here

Entertaining Our Youth To Apostasy

Are we failing our youth? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

A recent comment on my post on Do Youth Need Apologetics was about how our youth are being entertained to keep them in the church more instead of being given substance. This is an increasing problem in our church as more and more are falling away and it is not because we lack the resources to help them. We have all we need to win the battles. We’re just not distributing our weapons properly.

Of course, there is something to be said about how we package our material. There is no need to be boring. As much as I love Aristotlean-Thomistic thought, I have said that if someone wants to get a good night’s sleep, then all they need to do is pick up some Aristotle and read it for a little while. His substance is great, but his presentation is incredibly boring. Some have even speculated that Aristotle’s books could be the class notes of those that studied under him.

So making the presentation one that people can pay attention to is important. This does not change the most important part that is being neglected. There is much in the delivery, but the problem is that we are not delivering anything. We are getting youth often caught up in an emotional high and that will only last as long as the emotions do, and we all know that emotions do not last forever.

Of course, this does not mean that emotions are bad. Emotions should be in accordance with our reason. Too often, we have the tail wagging the dog instead of the other way around. If a person no longer feels Christianity is true, then they start thinking it is no longer true, when this is something your emotions cannot tell you. Your emotions can tell you about your response to something, but they cannot tell you about the external something in itself.

Our solution to the apostasy problem is to go with the emotional route. Let’s give our youth even more entertainment! If this works so well, it is a question why we don’t do it in regular services.

Instead of having a sermon, let’s have a comedy show done regularly instead. Adults like to watch Sitcoms after all. Let’s give them a new episode every week. We can make videos of them and let new members to the church see what they missed in past seasons.

Or, we can just find the music the older people in the church will enjoy and put on concerts regularly. We can bring in the greatest names in Contemporary Christian Music. The great entertainment will make sure the adults still keep coming to church.

If that doesn’t work, we can always make sure that every church service has a grand meal to go with it and have everyone bring whatever they like to it.

Surely if we keep entertaining the people in the church, then they will grow into strong and battle-hardy Christians who are ready to go and win the world for Christ.

Or maybe not.

They might be laughing and enjoying themselves, but when they’re out in the battlefield, what are they going to be able to do. They cannot just laugh and expect the threat to go away. That is a great way to shield oneself, but it will not defeat the opposition. Unfortunately, this seems to be our modus operandi in the church. If we just ignore the atheist movement and focus on preaching the gospel, then the atheist movement will just die on its own.

The only problem with this great scenario is that it’s not true.

Non-Christian forces are fighting for our youth and they are having an impact. If we think that we’re going to win the battle on entertainment, let’s just consider a simple question. Which one will the average teenager who is not a Christian want more to go to? Will they want to go to that youth group meeting where they will have pizza and play board games and talk about the Bible, or, will they want to go to that party with loud music, beer, drugs, and wanton sex?

Heck. There are some Christians who could quite likely choose #2, and not for witnessing opportunities.

If we think we’re going to win the entertainment contest, we’re not. This is especially the case if our youth are told they will face great guilt if they drink, do drugs, or have pre-marital sex. The reality is a lot of them when they do this just don’t. They can have pre-marital sex and feel just fine and then wonder “Well this was no big deal despite what the church says. I wonder what else I can do? I also wonder what else the church is wrong about.” Of course, some will feel this guilt, but not all.

This does not mean of course the youth group should never do anything entertaining. I have no problem with pizza parties and CCM concerts per se. The problem is that all of our eggs are being placed in this basket and none of our eggs are being placed in the teaching basket. When our youth go off to college, they are not going to be able to handle the opposition that they face because entertainment will not do it.

The sad truth is that this warning has been raised before and it has been disregarded. We can only hope that the church will wake up and start doing what it needs to do. We have the resources. We have the means. We just aren’t following through.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Miracles: New Essential Reading On The Topic

What do I think of the two volumes of Craig Keener’s “Miracles”? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

For my birthday back in September, my in-laws got me the two-volume set of Craig Keener’s “Miracles.” There are 884 pages of content here and several pages of notes. The message you should definitely get from that at the start is that Keener is not taking a lazy approach. Keener has done plentiful research on the topic of miracles. I can say without reservation that from now on, anyone who has not dealt with the claims found in this book is not qualified to speak on the topic of miracles.

To the surprise of most people, Keener spends relatively little time on the miracles in the gospels at the start and answering questions concerning early Christian claims of miracles. Why? Because he is not writing this to explain how the early Christians saw miracles, as important as that is, or the historicity of the miracles, also an important question, but rather to deal with the treatment of modern thinking today in regards to miracles. Many will say we cannot take the gospels and Acts seriously if they contain miracles since we all know miracles don’t happen. Well, all of us except these ignorant religious people. Educated people know better!

Keener is educated. It seems that he didn’t get that memo.

Of course, he does spend some time looking at the miracles and in conjunction with his main claim that miracles are possible and in fact ongoing, he states on page 25 that none of the sources in antiquity responding to the claim that Jesus did miracles tried to deny that. (Note also to some others out there ignorant on another related front, none of them tried to deny that he even existed) Most of them would say he did his miracles by dark powers. This is an important claim. They realized that strange happenings were connected with the ministry of Jesus and could not be denied. This would mean it was part of the essential historical kerygma, something central to the teaching of the early church, and something so well-attested that no one wanted to deny it.

In fact, Paul in his epistles in Romans 15:18-19 speaks about working wonders, and there is no doubt that Paul wrote Romans. In 2 Corinthians 12:12, Paul lays claim to his right to be called an apostle by telling the Corinthians that he worked miracles amongst them. Note this is a letter where his credibility is being called into question. It will not help that credibility to make a claim that his opponents know to be false. He is appealing to knowledge that they already have.

Of course, when miracles come up, the question asked is “What about Hume?” As one who has done internet debates, I’ve reached the point several times in the debate when miracles comes up that I will say “Okay. Go ahead and give Hume.” You would think that no one else really said anything worthwhile about miracles after Hume came out, as if he put the nail in the coffin with an argument that no one has dealt with.

The reality is its more likely that in philosophy everyone and their mother has dealt with Hume. His argument was criticized then and it is being criticized now. People who automatically assume Hume is the last word are more likely looking for something to cement their beliefs that they already hold and are unwilling to go looking further. It is odd that these people will usually tell us about science being so much better since it can correct its mistakes and relies on the latest study (Which is true by the way, that is the way science works), but they seem to reject that when it comes to philosophical dialogue.

Of course, Hume being 200+ years old does not make him wrong. I am a Thomist, for instance, and I realize Aquinas was around 800 years ago. That does not make him wrong. The difference is I have also done some of the reading in Thomistic thought since then. I realize that people have critiqued Aquinas since his own time. (Yes people. Back in the medieval period, the theologians critiqued one another’s arguments and wanted only the best ones) There are several people who still hold strongly to Thomistic thought today, like myself, but it also does not mean we have to hold everything he did. (I’m Protestant, for instance, although some have argued that Aquinas would be considered a Protestant today as well. That is not the purpose of this review of course.)

In dealing with Hume, Keener does admit that he is not a philosopher, but his sources are the philosophical sources. This is important to admit. Keener knows when he is not speaking from his area of expertise, so he has gone to others who are experts and shared their thoughts. Most devastating is a critique he shares from David Johnson in Cornell University Press:

“The view that there is in Hume’s essay, or in what can be reconstructed from it, any argument or reply or objection that is even superficially good, much less, powerful, or devastating, is simply a philosophical myth. The most willing hearers who have been swayed by Hume on this matter have been held captive by nothing other than Hume’s great eloquence.” (Page 169)

Ouch. That’s quite an indictment.

Looking at the question of history, one statement that has driven my research in this area is that that Bart Ehrman gave to my father-in-law, Mike Licona, in a debate at SES. Ehrman repeatedly made a statement along the lines of “History can only tell you what people do. It cannot tell you about the actions of God.” Keener says in a statement that seems to have Ehrman in mind on page 186 that

“History as history might not pass judgment on whether or not an occurrence (such as the resurrection) was a miracle ( a theological judgment involving philosophic questions about God’s existence and activity), but it can seek to address whether or not an event literally happened.

In a radio debate on Unbelievable? with Licona, Ehrman was stating that historians can agree universally upon a number of events in history, but they don’t agree on the resurrection. How can we treat it as historical then? The problem would be that too many historians are likely approaching with presuppositions beforehand that state miracles cannot happen. Therefore, they come to the account of the resurrection and can say “I don’t know what happened, but I know right off it wasn’t resurrection.” This is no longer doing history. It is doing philosophy under the guise of history.

It is not fair history to come to the data beforehand saying “The conclusion of a miracle cannot happen” and then looking at the data and construing it in such a way to exclude the miracle. In that case, it is clear that the belief one holds is influencing the data rather than the other way around. Of course, for the sake of argument, it could be that the resurrection did not happen, but that needs to be determined on historical grounds and not philosophical ones.

Before we get back to Hume, Keener wants to point us to the Majority World, that is, the world that has not been saturated with Enlightenment thinking. On page 212 Keener states “The claim that no one in the modern world believes in miracles (a claim once seriously offered by some scholars as an answer to the question of miracles, as I have noted) is now too evidently irresponsible to be seriously entertained.”

Will Keener back this statement? Yes. It is a strong statement in the face of academia and if Keener is correct, as I believe he is, it is not because of new data or arguments per se, but it is because of an unwillingness on the part of the academy to consider perspectives apart from their own. It has been by an arrogance that has written off too many people as “uneducated” and thus not worthy of contributing to the conversation.

And sadly, this is shown well in Hume. On pages 223-4, we have a quote from Hume:

“I am apt to suspect the Negroes and in general all of the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No indigenous manufacturers amongst them, no arts, no sciences.”

Some could answer “Okay. Hume was a racist. It doesn’t mean he’s wrong.” On its face, no. It doesn’t. There is something important here. Hume is automatically excluding the testimony of anyone that is not amongst his circle of people he considers educated. Who are the educated? Those are the ones who don’t believe in miracles. If anyone believes in them, surely he cannot be educated. He must be some backwater person. Therefore, all educated people don’t believe in miracles. It is a lovely piece of circular reasoning.

Hume goes on to say

“Not to mention our colonies, there are Negro slaves dispersed all over Europe, of which none ever discovered any symptoms of ingenuity, tho’ low people without education will start up amongst us [whites], and distinguish themselves in every profession. IN Jamaica indeed they talk of one Negro as a man of parts and learning, but ’tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly.”

To say “‘Tis likely” indicates that Hume has heard a claim and has not bothered to really investigate it. He has just made an assumption based on his prior notion of the black race. Keener, however, does know who the Jamaican is and says “The Jamaican whom Hume compares with a parrot stimulating speech was Francis Williams, a Cambridge graduate whose poetry in Latin was well known.”

Sound like an uneducated parrot with slender accomplishments to anyone else? I didn’t think so.

Okay. But surely today claims or miracles aren’t common. If they are, it must be amongst the Pentecostal movement (Of which I am not one) and we know they really like to talk about miracles! No. In fact, under the sub-heading on page 239 of “Such claims not limited to Pentecostals” Keener writes “But those who would simply reject all healing claims today because Hume argued that such claims are too rare to be believable should keep in mind that they are dismissing, almost without argument, the claimed experiences of at least a few hundred million people.”

So let’s give a quick synopsis then of the data that Keener has because it covers several hundred pages all over the world. Keener admits he is not a doctor, but he tries to get medical documentation of such claims. Even if he does not have them, he realizes that we should not reject testimony ipso facto just because it disagrees with our beliefs. People may be wrong about seeing a miracle or interpret some event wrongly or have a psychosomatic healing. Some of these do not fall into this category. If someone knows someone who is blind, as an example, and prays for them, and they suddenly regain their sight, would that person not be justified in believing a miracle has taken place? Keener says some healings could be coincidence, but that they are consistently connected with prayer goes against the idea that they are coincidence.

Keener also points out that many people in these settings are in fact educated. He has testimonies of his own wife who is quite educated. PH.D.s and doctors and others all claim to have seen such events. Again, even if some people are uneducated who see these claims, they may not have the full knowledge of the natural world, but they know enough to know when something happens that does not normally happen.

Keener also readily admits that miracles do not always take place. I took special note to highlight several times in the book that he makes a claim along those lines. There are people who are not healed in response to prayer. That does not negate the fact of the many people who are. If just one of these numerous numerous claims is true, then it seems that the idea that miracles do not happen is highly suspect, and it is quite likely that more than one is true. (Indeed, I found myself praying for the healing of the loved ones in my life. My own wife suffers from depression and when I read about people being healed of depression, I made it a point to pray more for that. I realized in my own thinking I too had taken on more of skepticism than I realized. If God can raise His Son from the dead as I proclaim, then healing depression is simple. Of course, if He does not, then I must just trust He has some reason. He is not obligated to tell me what it is)

Keener also looks at healing ministries. One noted case he looks at is Kathryn Kuhlman. Many of you, like me do get suspicious hearing that name, but Keener wanted to be objective in his analysis. He does point out that Kuhlman said that not everyone gets healed and that she has no problem with modern medicine. God gave us brains and we should use them. She would not have objected to someone checking with a doctor to see about their healing.

In fact, he points out that some journalists sent to investigate the claims of Kuhlman came out believing the cases after research. Of course, not all cases are bona fide. Healing doesn’t always happen and there could be times someone thought themselves healed when they were not. Keener’s warning for times like this is that you do not look at the false reports and lump all the reports in with them.

Keener also does in fact tell of times when people had fingers grow back and legs grow right before the eyes of people. So in answer to the question of “Why doesn’t God heal amputees?” Keener would reply “Who says He doesn’t?” Keener has some cases of such events taking place. It is more likely that those who do not find such cases do not find them because they have not really looked, or perhaps think the only people worth listening to with such a claim would readily have access to YouTube and film such an event, because everyone knows when a miracle is going to take place after all.

Keener spends most of book 2 dealing with objections to his idea, and these are quite weak. He does point out objections even from Christians who would often want to discredit healing ministers who came through an area. Now of course, one should always be cautious. One must also realize that healing does not mean all the particulars of theology are correct. There are healing at Lourdes, a Catholic site, and there are healings in Protestant communities. Still, too many have stacked the deck in advance by saying they will only accept natural explanations or some natural explanation must be forthcoming eventually and one day we’ll find out what it is. Such thinking would fall into a “Naturalism-of-the-gaps” paradigm.

Also, there is the stigma against miracles in the academy where one by claiming a miracle has happened can automatically have their intellectual stature lowered. Such an approach encourages scholars to not really be open to the claims of miracles, which is a tragedy for the history department since one is no longer doing history at that point but more philosophy. Keener contends we need more openness to opposing ideas in the academy. I agree.

Keener also takes the time to answer the question of “What about video tapes?” I find such an objection quite absurd, as one does not normally know when a miraculous event will take place, nor can one set one up as if God was a machine to respond the way we want Him to when we want Him to. Still, there is an obvious problem with video tapes we all know about today.

A show my wife and I have watched together numerous times is “Fact or Faked?” It has a group of investigators trying to see if an event normally caught on video tape is in fact a paranormal event or if it is a mistake or a hoax. There are some times where they approach someone about the video they’ve made and asked “Is this a hoax?” and get the answer of “Yes.” People do hoax videos quite often. We live in a day and age where we can go to a Cinema and watch events that would supposedly be “filmed” that we know are not real. We know about what photoshop can do. Yet with all of this, some people still think that if there had been video tape, that would conclusively settle the matter. Keener does point to some sources on video, but I will contend that to those who are not open, the response will be “faked!”

Finally, Keener ends by looking at cases in the appendices of exorcisms, demonic activity, visions and dreams, and how people saw the natural law in antiquity and later on prior to our time. Each of these sections is worthwhile in themselves. Going through these sections, as well as the rest of the book, I found myself thinking that I need to realize that God could be active in far more ways than I realize. No doubt, I’ll still be skeptical of a lot of claims, but I’ve found myself for my own research asking people if they know of any miracle claims, and it’s quite amazing to see how many people do have such examples.

Overall, Keener’s book is essential reading on the topic of miracles and the question of if they have them today. No one in the academy will be able to argue against the possibility of miracles without dealing with Keener’s excellent research.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Is Sincere Action Enough?

What role do good works play? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

My thanks yesterday to commenter David C. for this comment on my blog why every church should have apologetics.

“Thank you for bursting the overly large bubble of the sincerity myth.

“We need to be really loving to them and do as many good works as possible.” “If we do these, they will see the sincerity of our beliefs and repent.”

As stupid as that sounds, it is pretty much the common response of most pastors and other church leaders I have heard in my decade as a Christian. This is unnerving to me as a Christian, and I can only imagine how much it irritates professional apologists, like yourself. If this myth is not delt with, I fear how it may affect the children and adolescence. Especially the one in public education institutions, like public high schools and universities, where secularism runs rampant”

David is right about this. We have bought wholesale into the sincerity belief. Many of us can admire someone to holds sincerely to their beliefs, but not always. The reason the twin towers were hit in 2001 on 9/11 was because the terrorists flying the planes sincerely believed in Islam. Many of us could say Christians should have that level of devotion to their faith where they’d be willing to die for it, but we would not say that we greatly admire the sincerity of those people.

As has often been said with sincerity, someone can sincerely believe in their beliefs, but that sincerity is not enough. David’s comment speaks of the attitude that Christians just need to go out and do good works and that will be enough to get people to repent. Now note in saying this that no one is condemning good works. There is no outcry that says Christians should cease to be out there doing good. Everyone should agree that Christians should be doing good.

The problem is that good works are not going to lead someone to repentance alone. These people need the gospel, and our wanting to go straight to the gospel conclusion without meeting the person where they are in their doubt, is far more likely because of our hesitance to think that we are capable of defending the gospel, or that it is even defensible at all. It would be interesting to have a study done to see how many students in church youth groups would respond just at the possibility that there could be historical evidence that Jesus rose from the dead.

“But Nick!” someone is saying. “What about Saint Francis of Assisi? He was the one who said to preach the gospel and use words if necessary!”

Did he?

I contend that he did not.

The reality is just doing a good deed for someone might get them to second guess their perception of Christians, but not necessarily of Christianity. You are not going to get past a historical objection by one good deed. You are going to have to work and that will mean your study. You will need to learn something about the gospel in order to share it with someone. You can’t just go and do a good deed like you’re supposed to and think that by doing that, someone automatically entails that Jesus Christ is Lord of all. You are leaving the work to them that belongs to you. You are the one who is a slave of Christ. You are the one who is to study to show yourself approved.

The church has the resources it needs to counter the onslaught from all sides that is facing us today. The only reason it’s not winning the battles is because it’s not properly equipping itself. That is sloth on our part, it is sin, and we need to repent and seek the favor of God so we can go out and win the battles like we’re supposed to be doing.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Why I Observed Halloween

Have I contributed to devil worship? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Halloween has come and gone and now after the holiday, I am hearing that a number of Christians did not observe. I find this to be simply tragic. At our house, we had gone out and got some candy for any kids that would come by. (Unfortunately, we didn’t get any. Now we have a moral dilemma. What are we to do with all that leftover candy? Tough problem huh?) We also had costumes. My wife dressed up as L, a character from her favorite anime, Death Note. I had gone to Wal-Mart and found a costume of a priest and decided to wear that. (Quite interesting going to one party and seeing a monk there)

Ah, but was I not contributing to the worship of the devil by going out on this day?

You can’t seriously be thinking that can you?

Unfortunately, I think some of you are.

As a kid, I went out regularly on Halloween. Heck, even as an adult I still liked a costume. I did not hesitate to go out wearing a red cape to match the Superman look in public even as an adult. Why? Because I don’t really care too much about what other people think. I like being uniquely myself and Halloween is a great day to just pretend. Often, we think on Christmas that we want to be kids again. I do that on Halloween. Had we had trick-or-treaters come by, they would have seen me in my priest costume this year.

Yes. Some of you do fear I gave in to the dark side. What I would ask is how many of you know some children that have gone into witchcraft because they went Trick-or-Treating? Whenever I went out, the thought of darkness was never on my mind. Instead, I simply had one thought. I want to go out with my Dad, show people my costume, let them try to figure out who I am (I often went as a ninja and the mask covered my face), and then get candy. (I was also a strange kid as I rarely could go through all my candy. I’m just not much of a candy guy.)

In fact, if there is anything that is getting our children often, it’s greed and materialism, yet few of you are saying “We refuse to buy Christmas and birthday gifts for our children!” Now when I say this, I’m not saying to ignore witchcraft. By all means, you want your children to avoid the occult, but dressing up and pretending for a day is not going to get them into the occult. Most children do know the difference between reality and fantasy. (I wonder with this if most adults know the difference.)

In fact, it is on this day that you could have children coming to your door. What message do you want to give to those children? My religion forbids me from letting you come to see me in a costume and give you candy? The day when you have people coming to your door and you have so many of them that you can show the love of Christ to and your option is to turn out your lights and have no interaction with them?

Why should we Christians be living out of fear on this day? When we do that, for those of you who are afraid of the devil, you are giving him a victory. You are saying that Jesus Christ owns 364 days of the year, but when it comes to this day, this is the day that belongs to the devil. Jesus Christ is Lord on Halloween just as much as He is Lord on Easter and on Christmas.

But Nick! The holiday has pagan origins!

Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that’s true. I don’t think it is. I’m going to assume for the sake of argument that it is.

My reply?

So what?

Seriously. We have calendars that have pagan names. We have days of the week that have pagan names. Our idea of carrying a bride across the threshold comes from paganism. What is the problem with this exactly? The only pagan activity you need to worry about is if you’re actually doing something like, you know, worshiping pagan gods.

If anything, what does it mean if a holiday was made for a pagan festival and now we celebrate it by dressing up in costumes, going to parties, and giving candy to kids. It seems like by doing this, we are making a mockery of a pagan holiday. We are saying a day dedicated to honoring a pagan deity then has been reduced to being a day to dress up in costumes and to give out candy.

Sounds to me like the pagan lost.

We are to go out as Christians and claim this world for Christ, and that means every day is to be claimed for Christ. That means that we are not live in fear on one day and isolate ourselves. Also, as I have read earlier, don’t be the house that just gives out tracts. That will turn kids off even more. Make sure you give out some of the best candy on the block. Let it be that the Christians are the ones who really know how to celebrate a holiday and have a good time. Don’t be afraid of Halloween. Jesus is Lord then as well.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Is Sandy Prophecy?

When a natural disaster strikes, how are we to understand the situation? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Let me say at the start that this post is not meant to give any consolation to people who are suffering from Hurricane Sandy. Prayers are with you. If you are hurt by this now, this is not the post for you to read at the time. This is providing a rational answer to a question that is risen and is not meant to deal with current emotional suffering. That is the area of a good counselor instead.

A friend of Deeper Waters told me yesterday that her brother is someone who is highly into prophecy and thinks that Hurricane Sandy is a fulfillment of prophecy. Now I have in the past stated that my view on prophecy is that of orthodox Preterism. For all who don’t understand that view, my position is that Jesus Christ is going to physically return some day and that there will be a future resurrection of all the dead. I will put a link at the end of this post to the web site of DeeDee Warren, the best I know of to explain Preterism.

Also, with regards to what I was told yesterday, I have indicated numerous times that I am politically a conservative and that I do vote conservative. It is not essential to this post that you agree with either of the viewpoints that I present. I can easily picture a liberal who is a futurist agreeing with what I have to say.

To begin with, I’m not sure what prophecy Sandy is said to fulfill as none was given, but I do know the habit of going to the Bible, finding one verse that agrees with you, and then wresting it from its historical context and plopping it right down in modern times and saying that it is a fulfillment of prophecy, because we all know that in ancient Israel 2,500 years or so ago, God was warning them about a hurricane that would happen in a totally separate country today.

This does not mean the prophecies are irrelevant to us if they have already been fulfilled. We can still see a precedent on the kind of behavior God universally opposes, particularly when He speaks about behavior outside of Israel. Why? Because that nation is not one that is under the law of Israel that is civic and ceremonial, although to be fair, most of the criticisms of Israel were the failure of the moral law.

The problem is that when we have these disasters, there is always someone claiming it was a fulfillment of prophecy. It doesn’t matter that this “prophecy” has been fulfilled several times before. This time, this is it. This is our generation! We are the one! It’s irrelevant that every other generation has had someone who has thought that before. We are obviously the exception this time.

Of course, this could be the generation that the kingdom comes into full realization. We should always be open to that. We dare not proclaim it without clear revelation from God however. We play a dangerous game when we do that. There were numerous books that were written that showed Saddam Hussein was the antichrist. Some were saying Bin Laden was the antichrist. What are those books doing now? They’re gathering dust on bookshelves somewhere. They have embarrassed the Christian faith and the authors are going to go out and try it again. To use an extreme example, what do you think someone like Harold Camping does to the Christian faith?

Still, I would not be surprised if someone like Pat Robertson will go out or has already gone out and said that the east coast is being judged and Hurricane Sandy is the proof. This lady I was talking to about her brother said that we are being judged with this election. Look at the states that are hit the most. Those states are New York and New Jersey. These states are blue on the map and so they are being judged for supporting Obama.

Now I find this just odd. To begin with, you’d think if this was the kind of thing being done, we’d see the disaster on the West Coast which is even more liberal. We don’t. Instead, we see the hurricane come and people say “Obviously God is directing this hurricane. This hurricane has to be judgment. Why could these states be being judged? Look! They’re both blue states! That has to be it!”

I was also told that hurricanes aren’t common at this time of year. Common? Perhaps not. Unheard of? No. Hurricanes have happened. Back in 1993 here in Tennessee, in March, we had a blizzard come. Blizzards don’t normally come at that time of year and I as a young boy thought I would never see it again. The reality is, I did. I saw it in APRIL of 1996. Should I have concluded both were a divine act of God for some reason? To say something is unusual and uncommon does not mean that it is a judgment of God.

Of course, this does not mean that God cannot use a hurricane to judge, but I need a clear reason to think that it is. What message we can get out of such things is to realize the fragility of life and we dare not grow complacent where we are. We can look at Luke 13 where tragedies happen and the reply of Jesus is “You repent just in case!” (And from my viewpoint of course, they had a really big disaster come 40 years later and unfortunately, they did not repent.)

When we have situations like this happen, it leads to further embarrassment of the Christian faith and more attention paid to non-essentials. As I told my friend yesterday, it is a tragedy that Christians today tend to spend more time seeking to understand who the antichrist is rather than spend that time seeking to understand who Christ is.

Having said that, I do want to make it clear that I have no problem seeing my futurist friends as Christians. I would rather you be right on the Jesus question and wrong on the eschatology question, than be right on the eschatology question and be wrong on the Jesus question. This is an in-house debate. I have no problem with futurists. I’m married to one after all. I do have a problem with dogmatism either way. I have a problem with preterists seeing futurists as second-class Christians and I have a problem with futurists who like to accuse me of just wanting to “Allegorize” or “spiritualize” the Word of God.

Let’s be careful with how we are presenting ourselves to the world and handling our interpretation of Scripture. We must always try to first find out what it meant to the people then before finding the application for our own day and age. If we are reckless with how we interpret it, we will pay the price. Let’s also remember that there are people who are hurting from Sandy and the last thing we need to tell them is that God is judging them.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The preterist site can be found here.