Category: Apologetics

Did Masada Happen?

Did this event really take place? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I’m reading through Bart Ehrman’s latest book and so yes, expect to see a review of it, and yes, it’s got the same kinds of issues as all his other books. Still, something I read last night caught my attention.  That is what Bart Ehrman says about Masada.

Most of us know about Masada likely today from the Peter O’Toole series. This does not include me. I only know about it since Ehrman mentions it. I know about Masada from reading history books. For those who don’t know, in the Jewish War in which Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 A.D. there was a holdout at Masada that was a last-ditch effort and ending up with a mass suicide. Josephus, the great Jewish historian, was one at this event. One would think it was remembered in a great and glorious way. Ehrman disagrees.

“But Masada was not always remembered that way, as modern scholars of collective memory have shown so well. A seminal article written by the aforementioned Barry Schwartz, along with fellow memory experts Zael Zerubavel and Bernice Barnett, has shown that Masada in fact played no role in Jewish collective consciousness from antiquity to modern times.15 It is not mentioned in the Jewish Talmud or in any other sacred text. There is no holiday associated with it. Jews throughout history never said anything about it in writing. It was forgotten for nearly two millennia.” (Jesus Before The Gospels p.222)

What does this have to do with the price of tea in China?

A lot of you know that one of my favorite ideas to go after is mythicism, the idea that Jesus never existed, and mythicism thrives on arguments from silence. Now if we were going by those arguments from silence, then to be consistent, a mythicist would need to say Masada never happened. Why? Because it’s not mentioned by all these other sources and you would think it would be something that is mentioned, but strangely enough, it is not.

Fortunately, the reason it is not mentioned is simple to figure out. For one thing, it’s doubtful Jews would really want to commemorate an event whereby their destruction was finalized and ended in a mass suicide due to the onslaught of pagans. We have a holiday to celebrate the birth of people like Martin Luther King. We don’t have one to celebrate the day he got assassinated.

So it is with Jesus also. Many people think Jesus should have been talked about profusely. Why? As I have said earlier, in his day and time, Jesus was not worth talking about. The problem for the mythicist position is that this, like so many other cases in history with no contemporary mention of great figures whose existence is not doubted, does not receive mention by so many sources that we would expect to mention it.

If someone wants to be an atheist, well I think you’re wrong, but at least don’t jump on the bandwagon of mythicism. Mythicism is a conspiracy theory for atheists and it just ends in the holder not being taken seriously. He’s mainly answered for the sake of those on the outside.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Is Romans 7 About Paul?

Is Romans 7 about Paul’s struggle with sin? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In yesterday’s blog, I wrote about Romans 7 and briefly stated that it’s not autobiographical. To some readers, this was a bit of a surprise. They had always read it as Paul describing his struggle with sin and I have heard more than enough sermons describing it that way. Is it really the case that Paul is not describing himself?

First off, this isn’t a minority view. This is a common view found in scholarship. It was also the view of Origen just a couple of centuries or so after the writing of Romans. What has really got it going more is that we’ve come to realize that in the West, we are very introspective and we often read our culture into the Bible. The people in the Bible were not really introspective and they did not live in our culture.

So let’s start by looking at the passage itself.

7 What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”8 But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead. 9 Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 10 I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. 11 For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment,deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. 12 So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.

13 Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! Nevertheless, in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it used what is good to bring about my death, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.

14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

Seems straight forward enough. In fact, one reason we go to it is that so many of us can relate. Many of us know about not doing something that we really know we should and doing something that we know we shouldn’t. It seems common so it’s not a shock that we read this passage and think that Paul is speaking about us and that he went through the same thing.

But let’s go somewhere else. How about Philippians 3. How does Paul describe himself there?

Further, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord! It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you. 2 Watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh. 3 For it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh— 4 though I myself have reasons for such confidence.

If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.

We often have this view of Jews wrestling under the Law like it was the Islamic system and just hoping that they were good enough to merit the favor of God. They weren’t. In fact, the larger question for them was not their faithfulness to the covenant, but God’s. After all, they had done what they were to do, and yet here they were in their land which is being dominated by these wicked Gentiles from Rome. It’s too easy to take a Reformation scenario and project it back onto Judaism.

Paul has no wrestling going on in Philippians 3. We don’t see any death when the law comes. In fact, how can we even speak of Paul having life apart from the Law? That would not make sense to a Jew. Your whole life was the Law.

In fact, there’s a great danger that if we identify so much with Romans 7, we will fail to identify with Romans 8, and Romans 8 is all about how we live by the Spirit instead of by the Law. If we are living by the Law, we are not living by the Spirit. If we are not living by the Spirit, then the great promises of Romans 8 won’t apply to us and we can miss out on the victory over sin.

I don’t want to scare anyone though into thinking that I am calling into question your salvation. Not at all. I am calling into question though your identification. Do you identify with Romans 7 or Romans 8, and Romans 8 indicates at the end that we still struggle, but who can bring a charge against us?

So what is going on in Romans 7 if it’s not autobiographical?

There are many ideas, but I think Paul is speaking as Adam who he has mentioned in Romans 5. Ben Witherington in What’s In The Word? points out that for the rabbis, coveting was also the sin in the garden. This would mean that Adam had life, and then came the law and through that he fell into sin and died. Now the question for Paul’s audience is if they identify with Adam or with Christ.

It’s also your question today.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

What Is The Gospel?

When we speak about the Gospel, what are we talking about? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Recently, someone alerted me to something that was said on James White’s Facebook page which is the following:

Without using Google, who said the following, providing a classic example of what I call the “Mere Christianity” movement, which defines the faith *apart from* the Gospel itself:

While I’m an evangelical by choice, I recognize one does not need to be an evangelical to be a Christian. If one embraces the essentials of the Christian faith, I’m happy to call that person my brother or sister and work alongside them in ministry, whether they are Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, or whatever.

For some fun, I sent it to a few people that I know to see what they thought also. One of those people was Mike Licona. He told me that he read the statement and found that he agreed with it.

Which is good since he’s the one who made it.

I, however, will stay that I stand by that statement. There are a number of us who have supported Mike with what he went through with the accusations that he was denying inerrancy. In this number are Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox. I have some of each on my Facebook friends list. I would have no problem having guests of either persuasion on my show and in fact I do know I have had Catholics on there before. All of these people I see as my brothers and sisters in Christ.

Now do I think they’re off on some doctrines? Yep. You bet. You know who else is? Most everyone I know. In fact, I’m off on some doctrines. Why do I hold to them then? Because I don’t know what they are! I just know that the field of Christianity is a complex field and it would be quite arrogant of me to think I’m the one person who got everything right.

But let’s look at this charge. What is this with defining faith apart from the Gospel itself. As I told my wife that evening, I think too often we misunderstand the Gospel. We think the Gospel is justification by faith. It’s not. I do not deny justification by faith, but justification by faith is I think a response to the Gospel and not the Gospel itself.

In a book I recently reviewed called One Gospel For All Nations, biblical scholar Jackson Wu presents a viewpoint from China on how different cultures see different things in the Bible. Of course, this doesn’t change what the Bible says, but we all have a danger of reading our culture into the Bible. Consider a passage like Romans 7 with the supposed autobiography of Paul. We all read that as if it is Paul describing what we go through, but it isn’t. Most scholars agree this is not autobiographical and is more a speech in character. If we go this route in fact, we could be putting us in that position and making us opposed to the good news in Romans 8 unintentionally.

Wu says that wherever the Gospel is mentioned, you find at least one of these three themes in the text. Those are creation, covenant, and Kingdom. The problem for most of us is we can go straight from Genesis 3 to the Romans Road and think all that stuff isn’t important. I think of what N.T. Wright said when he hears the creed that talks about Jesus “Born of the Virgin Mary”, and then “Suffered under Pontius Pilate.” Wright says he can picture the four Gospel writers in the background saying “We spent a lot of time on that stuff in the middle and we think it’s important.”

I find it odd then to think about defining faith apart from the Gospel itself. Perhaps we should hear what the Gospel is. Romans 1 for instance begins this way.

1 Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— 2 the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures 3 regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, 4 and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. 5 Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake. 6 And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

Some commentators will think that the Gospel doesn’t really start until later around verse 16 or 17. This is false. It begins right here. What do we have? We have a descendant of David which points back to the covenant made with David. We then have the resurrection of Jesus by which Jesus was declared to the world to be the Son of God. Because of this, we have received grace.

If we make something like justification the Gospel, then really we have to ask “What is the point of Israel?” Does the Bible just have a lot of filler stuff in it? What is the point of Jesus teaching the Kingdom of God? Could it be that maybe He actually meant there was a Kingdom and He was the king?

So what is the purpose of justification then in all of this? It’s realizing that there is indeed a new king in town and He calls for your allegiance. Justification is admitting that God is in the right and you are in the wrong and submitting to the Lordship of Christ. In doing so, God welcomes you to His family. God then looks at you and pronounces you to be in the right.

So let’s look at the above list. Protestants. Catholics. Orthodox. Would these agree that God created the world and yet it fell into sin through our actions? Yep. Would they agree that God made covenants with Abraham, Israel, and David? Yep. Would they agree that God revealed Himself in Christ, the God-man, who physically rose from the dead? Yep. Would they agree that we should all submit to Jesus as Lord? Yep. (And would they all fall short still in that submission. Yep.)

With that, I have no problem calling any of them my brothers and sisters in Christ. I would have no problem working alongside them in ministry. If I minister to someone and he comes to Jesus and wants to be Orthodox or Roman Catholic, okay. I don’t have a problem with that. I would hope my Orthodox and Roman Catholic brothers would think likewise if he wanted to join the other community or be a Protestant after they evangelized him.

So if Mike Licona is in the wrong for being willing to see Christians outside of evangelicalism and to fellowship with Roman Catholics and Orthodox brothers and sisters, well I guess I’ll be in the wrong too. I just see us all as learning to submit to Jesus as Lord. Do we have some differences and can we discuss them? Yeah. We do and we can, but that should not stop us from doing the real Kingdom work together.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Why Affection Should Be A Regular Occurrence In Your Marriage

Do you need to do more than just show up on those special days? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I did an interview with Chris Tilling recently that unfortunately due to malfunctions with recording equipment didn’t record, but I remember one thing distinctly. Tilling has a claim about the NT that if we look at the Pauline epistles, we can see a high Christology that puts Jesus on a divine level showing up consistently. I made an analogy that he liked that this approach works better because with most approaches, you go through and see a key verse and then pop that out and then there’s nothing for awhile. It’s like a husband who thinks he’s a romantic husband because he does something on her birthday, Valentine’s Day, and their anniversary.

So that’s something I’d like to talk to you about today. One important aspect I’ve found in marriage is that proper affection must be something consistent. There’s an old joke that if a wife wants to get a loving husband, she should marry a nerd, because nerds are not expecting to get anyone and when they get someone, they will want to continuously show how happy and appreciative they are. It’s certainly true in my case and by all standards, I am a nerd.

Now granted as you know, we don’t have much money, but when we do have something come in, I do try to do something. I am involved with a number of programs to help me get Amazon gift cards for free. Of course I want to get myself some books, but usually, I wind up getting something for the Princess.

You see, Allie’s love language is gifts and when we’re out in public and I hear her say something about something she’d like to have and I don’t think it’d be bad for her, I make a mental note of it. She can be absolutely stunned when that random item she pointed to at Wal-Mart arrives in the mail about a week or so later. I also try when I go by a crane game at a grocery store to win her a prize if I have a couple of quarters in my pocket. It might be small, but if I win, she’s happy. If I don’t, she at least knows that I tried.

It’s also important that whatever you do, it be something that really speaks love to your wife. Gifts is by far the highest for Allie. I could do acts of service all day long and it just wouldn’t really register as much. It’d be nice and appreciated, but it’s not really what gets her to feel the most love and affection. Affection must be something that the other person appreciates or else it’s just something nice and if they don’t appreciate it, it’s just annoyance.

Usually, men are much easier to do this with. Last Valentine’s Day, I made the remark to Allie that when you look at stores, all you see are pretty much gifts for the women. You don’t see them for the men. She responded with what I already knew. They don’t sell gifts for the men because the men want the same thing.

Valentine’s Day? Celebrate with sex.

Anniversary? Sex.

Birthday? Sex.

Labor Day? Sex.

Halloween? Sex.

Arbor Day? Sex.

You get the idea.

Of course, men do have other things that they like and appreciate so if you’re not married, you can still do something for the man in your life. It could be you might show a little bit extra physical affection that day. A great step would be for you two to go through the love languages together and learn how to speak the language of the other person.

The important step to emphasize today is that this should be something regular in your marriage. You don’t need to wait for a special day. Do you really think you’re a loving spouse if you do something loving on a day where you’re expected to do something loving? By all means do something special on the days meant to celebrate the other person specifically, but don’t do it on just those days. The facet that is special is not so much the day but the person, and that person is special 24/7.

“Well my spouse isn’t doing all the things that I want.” Yeah. I get that. You know what? That’s their problem. Is your idea going to be “I’m going to do the same back!”? Be the better person. Be the one who does what you’re supposed to do regardless because you don’t do the right thing just because of the benefits you get. You do it just because it’s the right thing to do. Maybe your spouse will change in response to what you do. Maybe not. Either way, when you stand before God, you will have done the right thing.

If you had a garden, it would not survive if you only tended it on special days. Your spouse is your garden. Make sure you tend to them and keep them going well so that they can bloom the best they can. If they don’t, at least you have done your part.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: One Gospel For All Nations

What do I think of Jackson Wu’s book published by the William Carey Library? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Would you like to hear the good news of the Gospel? You would? Okay. Long ago our ancestors Adam and Eve disobeyed God and were banished from His presence. In order to bring us back, God sent His Son to us. He lived among us and died on a cross, but God raised Him from the dead and all who believe on Him can find forgiveness in His name.

Such is the way that a Gospel presentation can usually go. Now of course, when presenting the story of the Bible, one cannot give a full presentation of everything in the Bible, but isn’t it amazing how much is left out of this? Where is the history of Israel in this presentation? Does Israel have no purpose in God’s story? Where is the mention of Jesus being a king? You can see Him as savior, but will you see Him as King?

Jackson Wu is a Chinese scholar who writes about how to interact with Scripture in a more practical way to present the Gospel to all nations. After all, such an approach might work fine here in America to an extent (And that extent is lessening), but go to a more Eastern mindset and you could find it less effective. Wu primarily shows his own people of China as a different culture that contrasts heavily with our modern Western culture.

In doing so, Wu takes us back to Scripture and says we must look for the themes of covenant, creation, and kingdom. Whenever the Gospel is presented, we will find something of this there. You might not find all the themes, but you will find at least one of the themes.

This means also that when we go to another culture, that we can see how they interact with Scripture and find grounds of agreement first. We can disagree with the Marxist ideologically for instance, but could we find something we can agree on? We can agree with the desire to find a perfect society together. We can agree with the idea of removing distinctions that separate people. We can then show that these are also part of the new covenant in Christ.

The book also contains some interesting insight into Chinese culture where the goal is often to save face. How you look to the people around you means everything and if you don’t have a good reputation, it is as if you were already dead. There is also emphasis on how one treats their family, especially their parents. Picture going to this culture with the Gospel of the man who talks about how He must be more important to you than your own family and suddenly those ideas take on a whole new meaning.

Wu’s approach is contextualization. It means that we don’t just read the Scripture at face value alone, but try to interact and see the culture behind the Scripture as well. An honor-shame context is a better approach to understanding the Bible and as Wu shows by an example of Chinese culture, is still very much active in the world today.

Wu’s book is an excellent resource for missionaries or for anyone serious about evangelism. After all, to do missionary work today, you don’t have to go to another country. You can find people of another culture in our own neighborhood and you can turn on your computer and find people of a different culture. Wu’s book is one to read to better understand how Scripture and culture should interact together.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

What is Praise?

What does it mean to praise? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

My wife and I read a passage of Scripture together every night and lately we’ve been going through the Psalms. Last night, we read a Psalm where praise was highly emphasized and I try to think about what we read at night as I go to sleep and I wondered what praise was. It’s one of those questions that we would think is so easy to answer, but maybe it isn’t.

Praise is a matter of giving honor where honor is due. It is saying that God deserves all that we give Him. In the ancient society, everyone was clamoring for honor, and in fact, this was not condemned, but what was needed was to point out that God deserves honor. God is the one who has the most honor by virtue of His being, but we can give Him even more honor by giving Him more to show His reputation and worth in our eyes.

Could it be that sometimes one of our problems with worship services with music is that it has all become about entertainment and application. We leave a worship service wanting to feel better about ourselves often by hearing how the music has benefited us. We want to hear a sermon about how we can be good people in the world. How often are we allowed to enter into the grandeur of God by worship?

For us to have a worship service and we look at only the benefit we get is to picture a wife making love to her husband and at the end only saying “Well that felt good” and not giving her husband and thanks or praise for his great love for her. True worship could leave us feeling good, but it could be it could leave us feeling miserable. It could leave us feeling convicted. A true sermon will have application for our lives, but it will be more than just self-help. It will draw us into the grandeur and glory of God and knowing who He is.

Praise will also result in dying to ourselves. It will mean that we realize we are not the center of the universe and that God is greater than we are. This is something that believe it or not, we have to realize. Many times it can be hard for us to think about God, and this includes myself. It’s mind-blowing to think that everything in this world is usually more interesting to us than God.

When we come to realize who God is and what He has done for us and live lives of gratitude and honor to God, we will find ourselves more focused on His Name than on ours. We will be looking at what we can do for the glory of God instead of what God can do for the glory of us. True praise will result not necessarily in good emotions, though it can do that, and good behavior, though it can do that, but go beyond that and result in holiness and Christlikeness on our lives. If we are not growing in those areas, perhaps we should ask if we are truly praising God.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Taking Rites Seriously

What do I think of Francis Beckwith’s book published by Cambridge University Press? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In the interest of full disclosure, I want to say at the start that I was provided with this review copy by Beckwith himself to see if I wanted him to come on my podcast. Rest assured, I do. Beckwith’s book is not just a book I want to get in the hands of many Christians I interact with, but also in the hands of many atheists I interact with.

Beckwith’s main contention is that we have often misunderstood arguments and said that as long as we say that they are “religious” or have a religious motive, then that means we do not need to consider them as real intellectual arguments. This is simply false. It could be someone holds a position for religious reasons and it could even be that someone holds a position (Such as the wrongness of homosexual behavior) just because the Bible says so, but that does not mean that that is the only reason that there is or the only motive that there is.

Something I like about Beckwith’s book is that he tries to give everyone a fair shake. Even if it is a position that he disagrees with, he tries to give it a fair look. When looking at some court rulings, even if the ruling would be favorable towards his position, Beckwith can still point out why he thinks it is an unwise ruling. This is something that we should all learn from. Just because the conclusion agrees with us does not mean that the decision was the right one. You can make the right decision for all the wrong reasons.

Some readers will also be surprised to find that Beckwith disagrees with Intelligent Design. I in fact would find myself closer to his position seeing as I think that we have married Christianity to modern science and what happens if this is explained another way? Wouldn’t it be best to have our apologetic built on something that cannot be shown false by scientific discovery? Why not base our theism on metaphysical principles, especially since the question of God is not really a scientific question but a metaphysical one. (This does not mean it does not have ramifications for science, but the final arbiter is metaphysics.)

Also, the reader will find some very helpful points on the issue of redefining marriage. This is one of the major issues of our time and Beckwith rightly shows that in reality, the people that are not being tolerant and not allowing liberty are more often the ones on the left. Beckwith has a great familiarity with the literature on both sides. One will also find similarity with the abortion debate as well.

If there was one thing I’d like differently in Beckwith’s books, it’d be that I’d like reading them sometimes to be more like listening to him speak. It’s my understanding that Beckwith grew up in the Las Vegas area and knows about the comedians and if you hear him speak, it is absolutely hysterical. Andy Bannister has managed to pull off great humor in a book. It would be interesting to see Beckwith do the same.

Still, this is a book that should be read by anyone interested in religious debates. As I said earlier also, Beckwith has the great virtue as well of wanting to treat the arguments of his opponents seriously as well. Beckwith is not just wanting to reach right conclusions, but wanting to reach them the right way and will settle for nothing less.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The Internet and Organized Religion

Does the internet spell the death knell of religion? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Like many of you, I quite depend on the internet. It is a great place that I have used to find my own voice and when I was dating my now wife, since we lived so far away, we often depended on emails and instant messages to communicate. It’s also been the place where I’ve been allowed to do the most ministry by far, including my podcast and this blog.

Of course, some people think that the internet means the death of religion. These include people like Valerie Tarico. Tarico is really a funny figure that I have dealt with before. Whenever I see an article and she is listed as the author, I know I’m in for some laughs. Especially since she has even gone on record in defending Jesus mythicism.

Tarico goes on with some nonsense about Christianity wanting to keep people from outside opinion. No doubt, this is true in fundamentalist circles, but not so historically. Christians often interacted with the best literature around them. Who was it that kept those pagan writings around and copied them for us today? Why it was those darn closed-off Christians who would never read anything that challenged them or disagreed with them.

Let’s skip to the main points though on how she thinks the internet is the death of religion.

The first piece is radically cool science articles and videos. Why should this be a problem? Now again, you will of course find people of a more fundamental persuasion who are anti-science. On the other hand, I find people of the fundamentalist persuasion on the atheist side who are anti-anything but science. Both treat science way too seriously. The Christian side ignores wonderful truths of science. The atheist side ignores wonderful truths everywhere else.

Unfortunately, the idea of a warfare between science and religion has largely been based on a myth. Many of these start with the words of Andrew Dickson-White and John Draper where many of the accounts cannot be found to have any historical basis whatsoever. It’s almost as if some of it was just made up. (And of course, our modern-day atheists are happy to just believe it entirely because, hey, it argues against Christianity so it must be true.)

But what about evolution? Yeah? What about it? As a Thomist, I can hold to evolution and have zero problem. This doesn’t mean that I do however. My opinion on is it I’m not an authority on science so frankly, I don’t know and I don’t care. I in fact have problems with people in the ID camp who want to say that now because of ID, theism has a strong argument. No. Theism has always had strong arguments. The Aristotelian-Thomistic arguments do not depend for a moment on the findings of modern science. It’s why I don’t even use the first two ways of William Lane Craig.

Ironically, if anyone had a real bias in this camp, it would be the atheist since for many of them, evolution is the only game in town so that just has to be true. For me, it can go either way and my arguments are just fine and my interpretation of Genesis is just fine. I’m thankful there are cool science videos and articles online. Maybe some people will learn something.

The next point is the collection of ridiculous beliefs. Now here we have a problem since Tarico has engaged in atheistic presuppositionalism. It works like this.

My view, which is the rational one, is that miracles do not happen.

Therefore, anything outside of my worldview is ridiculous if it includes miracles.

Since your belief includes miracles then, it is ridiculous.

This would work if the first premise could be established, but it isn’t, and incredulity is not an argument. You will not at all find Tarico interacting with a scholar like Craig Keener. It’s understandable though. Fundamentalists like Tarico tend to not interact with viewpoints that disagree with them. Not only that, but it’s bizarre for someone who holds to mythicism or at least defends it to talk about other people having ridiculous beliefs, but hey. Let’s have some fun and look at these beliefs she writes about. I’m going to stick to the ones that are said to be part of evangelical Christianity.

“A race of giants once roamed the earth, the result of women and demi-gods interbreeding. They lived at the same time as fire breathing dragons.”

I am an evangelical. I do not hold to this. I do not know evangelicals who hold to this. The only possibility would be Young-Earth creationists, and so again, Tarico takes a swipe at one brand of Christianity and thinks she has struck everyone in Christianity. Hardly.

“Evil spirits can take control of pigs.”

We eagerly await Tarico’s arguments with the evidence given by Keener of encounters involving demonic beings. In fact, for many anthropologists as he points out, to deny the strange events that often happen is akin to believing in a flat Earth. Sure, many anthropologists will think it’s not demonic, but there are quite bizarre happenings.

All Tarico has done is said “These obviously don’t exist and so obviously can’t affect pigs.” This is just atheistic presuppositionalism. It’s just fine if you assume that there are no demonic spirits and there is no God ultimately and that strange events cannot happen. Get rid of that belief and you might find you could actually be open to something. That doesn’t mean it’s true, but incredulity is not an argument and saying something is ridiculous does not make it so. A claim is not ridiculous just because it contradicts your worldview.

“A talking donkey scolded a prophet.”

Of course, the same applies here. Since I hold to theism, I find it possible indeed that God could enable a donkey to talk. Tarico needs to establish her atheism instead of just arguing from it and assuming that anything contrary to it is automatically nonsense.

“Believers can drink poison or get bit by snakes without being harmed.”

First off, I would like to point out that this is in Mark 16:9-20 which most scholars do not think is authentic to Mark. Okay. Let’s assume that it is the real deal. So what? Am I to think that if there is a God, which I have many reasons to believe there is, and that He raised Jesus from the dead, which I have many reasons to believe He did, that somehow blocking the effects of poison and snakes is beyond His reach?

“[A holy one] climbed a mountain and could see the whole earth from the mountain peak.”

Tarico is quite the literalist. I take this to a be a vision that was given to Jesus. Anyone in Judea would know that from a mountain in Judea you could not see all the world. Instead, going to the mountain was to put Jesus in a place of honor and then He is given a vision to show what great honor He could have.

But now, let’s go to a favorite one.

“[A supernatural being] cares tremendously what you do with your penis or vagina.”

We are very surprised to learn that Tarico doesn’t have a problem with rape, promiscuity, adultery, or pedophilia. I mean, those are all activities you do with your genitalia and it’s ridiculous to think God would care about those and if God doesn’t, why should anyone else? Tarico might be surprised it we have a whole field devoted to this. It’s called sexual ethics. A lot of non-Christians in fact think that you can’t just do anything you want sexually. A lot of people think sexual behavior might actually mean something.

Meanwhile on Tarico’s side, we have incredulity.

Incredulity is not an argument.

From there we move to the kinky and violent sides of religion. It’s amusing that after the humorous piece shared where God doesn’t care what you do with genitalia, we immediately have a complaint that the Bible is full of sex. Yes. It’s no big deal how you use your genitals but you should avoid the Bible because it has a lot of ways people use their genitals that they shouldn’t have! Naturally, Tarico goes to evilbible.com (A work of brilliant scholars of religion no doubt!) and not to more scholarly sources in the field. Tarico also thinks pointing to an event in 1676 somehow works against Jesus rising from the dead around 33 A.D. So do we have any mention of the violence of atheism under Stalin, Pol-Pot, and Mao? Nope. Not a bit. Funny thing that.

Tarico also points to supportive communities for people coming out of religion. Yes. And? Somehow people who disagree with religion and coming out talking to other people somehow counts as a way to show that religion is doomed? Curious if Tarico also would think she could find such people being free to publicly voice their opinion in openly Muslim countries….

The next fits in with this by looking at the lifestyles of those without God. Yes. What a shock. Religion is obviously doomed by thinking that people live just fine without a belief in God. Oh wait. Why should that be the case? That’s a common complaint in the Bible itself! Tarico seems to live in a world where she thinks that Christians and others believe that if you’re a Christian, life should be just awesome, and if you’re an unbeliever, you should be experiencing constant judgment and knowing it.

I don’t know Christians who think that way.

The last is interspiritual okayness which just boils down to people of different faiths interacting. Again, so what? We can interact and we can also disagree. This happens regularly. People with different political persuasions could both volunteer at a soup kitchen for instance. I can happily interact with people of different faiths.

Now if this isn’t the main issue, what is?

The main issue is that we live in an age of rampant narcissism where people think they know everything about a subject just by having an opinion and they don’t need to do any study whatsoever. Tell these people to read a scholarly book? Forget it. They’re more interested in just what they can find on Google and Wikipedia. Unfortunately, without the necessary background knowledge, one does not know how to verify claims. This happens on both sides.

Religion, like many other topics, is not a simple topic and requires great study. Too many atheists think it’s just automatically nonsense. To be fair, too many Christians see persecution where it isn’t and can just as easily spread rumors and untrue accounts on Facebook and other social media.

We live in a culture where students at a university will not want a speaker to come who disagrees with what they already believe. Look at what happened in Missouri recently with the complaining going on there. Our young people do not want to work for answers or anything else for that matter. They think everything should be delivered to their doorstep automatically. Of course, this isn’t across the board entirely, but too many fit into this viewpoint. They do not read. They just use the internet.

The problem is not the internet. The problem is the mindset of ignorance. Fundamentalists on both sides are increasing it, including people like Valerie Tarico.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Thoughts on Risen

What do I think about this new movie? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We’ve lately seen a slew of movies that are based on the Bible. Some of these have been good. Some have not been so good. (Noah and Exodus) The latest one to come out is a movie called Risen. Today, I went to see that one with the in-laws and my wife. All of us agreed that it was a good movie. (For those interested, Mike Licona’s endorsement since he was right next to me was “awesome.”)

My thoughts on it were a mix. I thought the movie was good in that it was good to see the resurrection being treated as a real event of history, which it is, and it’s good that a company like Sony is behind it. I also do think that it was largely respectful to the Biblical worldview. I cannot comment on the acting or matters like that. It’s hard to explain, but unless it’s just outright awful, I don’t really notice that.

Some people I know did not like the fact that Mary Magdalene was depicted as a prostitute. This indeed is an old myth that has been around for well over a thousand years but really has no historical credibility. Still, my other issues were more the fact that I think the film is something a Western audience would appreciate, but I did not find fit too well with the biblical culture.

For those who don’t know, the plot revolves around a Roman tribune who is told to investigate what has happened to Jesus since rumors are flying that he has been resurrected. The tribune approaches it much like the skeptic calling in anyone who says that Jesus is risen and finding out who told them that and trying to track down the disciples. I really do not want to go into it much beyond that because I really do want people to go and see the film.

One aspect that did not fit in was when Mary Magdalene comes in and is asked where Jesus is, she replies that the tribune should open his heart. This could be what we would say in a Western culture, but I can imagine it would be quite meaningless to an Eastern culture. We have a concept of looking within that is so basic to us that we miss the fact that this is really something unique in history and different from the majority world.

The main message was also said to be that we have eternal life. Now I think there is of course truth to that, but I think if we just make it eternal life, we miss a lot. (And it is odd to say that as eternal life is something grand in itself.) This is the problem that we have in our culture. We have a disconnect quite often. Why do we have eternal life because Jesus rose from the dead?

A Jew when asked what a difference it makes that Jesus is risen would likely speak about God having come to His people and the Kingdom being here at last. We miss a lot in our culture because we don’t know what difference it makes to say that Jesus is the Messiah and we don’t know what difference the story of Israel makes in all of this. We could often in our evangelism go straight from Genesis 3 to the resurrection of Jesus. All that stuff in the middle matters a great deal.

Still, the greatest challenge is the practical challenge. We today would say “If I saw that Jesus was risen, my life would never be the same.” The problem is so many of us have immense evidence that Jesus is who He said He was and did rise from the dead, but what change do we have? Everyone in Risen who came to believe spoke about what a great difference it made. Why is it that we in the modern Western church don’t seem to see that great difference?

So in conclusion, are there some matters to be worked on? Yeah. There still are, but this is still a film that we as Christians should be standing behind and supporting. We can want the perfect film, but if we keep shooting down films and not supporting them because they don’t reach such a high standard, it will easily stop filmmakers from even trying. Let’s encourage this one.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

What Shiro Taught Me About Trust

Can our feline friends have something to teach us? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

If you’re a reader of my blog, there are facts about me you might have noticed. One you might have known is that my wife and I recently moved to Atlanta where I could assist my father-in-law, Michael Licona, with his ministry. The second is that we are cat owners. Our kitty is a white ball of fur named Shiro, the Japanese word for white.

Shiro

Shiropose

We moved on Wednesday and the Tuesday night before, we cleared all the furniture out of our old house. We spent the night next door with my parents. We did, aside from our little Shiro since my parents have two cats already and Shiro up there would have been a recipe for chaos. Shiro stayed at the old house on Tuesday night. We stopped by to feed him on our way home from going out to eat of course.

When we went down the next morning, and we had been eager to check on him, he really wanted nothing to do with us. It took awhile to even get him to eat anything, but he looked at us entirely with distrust. From a cat’s perspective, it’s understandable. He had just had his world turned upside down. Unfortunately, to get him in his kitty carrier, we essentially had to trap him in a room and I had to just grab him and he had to be put inside it, and of course, he never likes that.

We had given him something from the vet meant to calm him down and we were pleased that he did not whine as much as we thought he would on the trip, but at the same time, I wondered if he had a defeatist attitude. Had he resigned himself to a negative fate? After all, we had rescued Shiro at an apartment complex where his old owners had abandoned him. What if he had thought that was happening again?

All the while I kept wanting to explain to him that he would like where he was going. We were doing this to him because we love him and we wanted to have him with us on our journey. We got him here and I had Allie go to a master bathroom connected with the master bedroom and just stay with him. When we got more furniture in the bedroom, we were able to let him out and let him stay in those two rooms.

He ran and hid under the dresser.

The next few days were concerning for us. It was like we couldn’t get Shiro to eat anything. He stayed hidden all day long. We talked to our vet back home and several friends who are cat owners who assured us that this was normal behavior. It was really hard on us that we did all this for Shiro because we wanted to have him with us everywhere and yet he hid and treated us like threats.

Already now, it looks like things are back to normal. As I sit here and write this, it is almost time to feed him and he is doing his best to make sure that I know that. I regularly hear him whining. He has a new cat tree now courtesy of my mother-in-law. He still hasn’t really explored it yet, but give it time. He sometimes still wakes us up at night, but he’s just getting used to the timing.

So what does this have to do with anything?

The difference between a human being and a cat is quite large. What difference is even larger? The difference between God and a human being. We’re talking with God about a being who knows everything, including all of the future, and He knows how everything will work out. We’re also talking about, if we’re Christians, a being who has done more than enough to demonstrate His love for us.

And yet as soon as something happens that we don’t understand, we’re just as prone to think that God has wronged us or is going to abandon us or isn’t looking out for us. It never occurs to us that things that seem painful and disturbing to us could be for our good. We just look at what we’re going through and then think only about that experience and don’t look at how God will use it.

We cannot literally do it, but in some ways we try to hide from God. We don’t go about our lives as we normally would when we think we have His favor. Oh when we think we have His favor we can tell everyone about the goodness of God and we can pray and read our Bibles and worship happily, but when evil strikes or even just something we don’t understand, we quickly change all of that.

A lot of times we might want an answer, but could we really handle one? What all might God have to explain about the future that we couldn’t possibly understand? I would have loved to have been able to talk to Shiro and tell him why everything was happening as it was, but he would not understand. If I cannot explain the ways of man to a cat, how much harder would it be to explain the ways of God to us, mere human beings?

What’s really sad is that with a cat, we could say a cat doesn’t know better, and in essence we’d be right, but we do know better. We as Christians do know all that God has done for us in the past. We know that He sent His son for us, and yet when evil strikes, we forget all about that.

In fact, this is often where our pride steps in. We treat ourselves like the exception. Oh sure, God will do that for everyone else and God loves everyone else, but not me. It’s like we go to John 3:16 and see that God so loved the world, except there’s that little asterisk that has next to it supposedly “Except Steve” or “Except Kim” or “Except Mark.” We read in Romans 5 that God demonstrates His love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us, unless you’re John, Margaret, or Tyler.

Pride and shame are two sides of the same coin. In both cases today, we use them to treat ourselves as if we’re exceptional. We’re either exceptionally greater than we think or exceptionally worse than we think and we put whatever that is on God. Unfortunately, we are being just like Shiro. There is a world of good out there waiting for us and we refuse to come out and enjoy it because we do not trust in God.

You see, I can look at Shiro and think “Shiro. We do everything for you. We shower you with love constantly. We protect you from everything and give you so many good things. Why is it that as soon as we do something that seems different, you act like we’re out to get you?” Whenever I think like that though, I can often picture God looking at me and saying “Good questions. I’ve been asking you them for years.”

So right now, there’s a little white ball of fur in the doorway of my office here. I’m about to go feed him soon and he knows again that he can rely on my hand to take care of him. Will I not take this time to learn more that there is a hand greater than mine that is taking care of me even when it might not look like it?

In Christ,
Nick Peters