Category: Apologetics

Faith Like Paul

What does it take to live like the apostle Paul? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Yesterday, I heard somewhere someone saying about how great it would be to live like Paul. Paul certainly had a great faith and it really transformed his life. He wrote about joy from a prison cell and he dealt with persecution all his life, until in the end he was beheaded for his faith in Christ.

Now I do want to say that when I speak about faith like Paul, I mean faith in what I take to be the biblical sense. Faith is one of the most misused words today. I have written about a true understanding of faith here. Faith biblically is trust in that which has been shown to be reliable. It does not mean belief in the absence of evidence. It’s quite the opposite in fact. It requires evidence.

It’s important to realize Paul is not traveling around the Roman Empire based on what he thinks is a subjective experience or a hope he wants to see fulfilled alone (Though he has had an experience and he does have hope for the future because of Christ), but it is rather because he is because he has seen something in the world outside of his mind that he thinks changes everything about reality.

Years ago, there was a cartoon I watched and one clip advertising said something like “I watched the TV shows. I used to play the card game. Then I found out, this is real.” Imagine what it would mean if the plot of a favorite cartoon of yours was real. How would it change your life? Imagine if you found out that just one fairy tale or Disney movie was a real historical event. What would it change for you? Would you ever see the world the same way again?

Now for Paul, Paul has been a good Jew all his life and has grown up hearing about the hope of Israel, the Messiah, and as a good Pharisee, he has also believed in the resurrection. He has been holding to the Torah all his life. The Law of God is sacred writ for him. He treasures it. He reads it daresay I far more than we’ve ever read our NT. We would not be surprised if we heard Paul had the whole of it memorized.

What happened?

Paul’s claim is that He saw the risen Christ.

So what did that mean for Paul? “Yay! My sins are forgiven!” No. Paul thought he had a system of forgiveness already that worked quite well. He saw himself as blameless before the law. If you preached Jesus to him because he needed forgiveness, Paul would say “No I don’t! I am a faithful observer of Torah! That reveals that I am justified in the eyes of God!”

Of course, Paul did come to realize and teach that forgiveness is found only in Christ, but that is not why he came to Christ and while that is something that he was teaching an unbelieving world, that was not the main change.

What was it? I’d like for you to think about a work like Craig Keener’s book “Miracles.” Now if you’re the atheist reading this, just take a thought experiment with me. Suppose you undeniably witnessed someone praying in the name of Jesus for someone and then saw right before your eyes that they were instantaneously healed. Let’s suppose it was a condition like blindness or paralysis in fact.

Does your worldview change any at that point?

Now you might not come straight across to Christianity at that point (though I would have no complaints if you did), but I would hope at least you would if you were a committed atheist start thinking “Could I be wrong about something? What would it mean if God has broken in?”

In fact, for those of us who are Christians, we might need to start thinking like atheists more. We need to realize that this is something incredible really. God has broken into our world. There is someone out there in the world and He has spoken. There is more to this universe than meets the eye.

The problem is that we’ve grown up with Christianity so much that its become familiar to us. We know the stories so well that we’ve never found them to be incredible. It can sadly seem natural to us that God took on flesh and that Jesus rose from the dead.

They weren’t natural at all to a first century Jew.

For Paul, to see that Jesus is raised expresses so much that I seriously doubt that I can get it all. It is extremely difficult to begin to think like a 1st century Jew, but to understand Jesus as his contemporaries saw him, we must do this.

For Paul, I can wager some guesses.

First, he sees in Jesus that the promises of God are all yes and amen. God has spoken in Jesus which means that the time of renewal is at hand. The Kingdom of God has begun and it has begun with the reign of King Jesus.

Second, since the kingdom of God has begun its reign, then that means that the eschatological hopes of Israel are being fulfilled. God’s glory is being made known throughout the world. The Kingdoms of this world are to eventually bow the knee to the Kingdom of Christ.

Third, moral renewal will begin. The Law will be written on our hearts and we will follow the moral dictates. Paul is not an antinomian. He holds that there is still a law, but the righteous demands are being made known through the Holy Spirit.

Fourth, salvation has changed entirely. No more does it rely on following the sacrificial system, but it relies on trust in the Messiah of Jesus who occupies the throne of Israel. The Davidic and Abrahamic covenantes both find their fulfillment in Christ.

Fifth, God is in the act of making all things new. This includes even the dietary laws and the sacred days of Israel. Creation is being reborn. The curse is being lifted. Paul would have very well understood the claim of Revelation “Behold, I am making all things new.”

Sixth, in the resurrection of Jesus, we find the death of death itself. Death was the stranger that came into the world and ruined humanity. It has had a hold on most everyone save Enoch and Elijah. As long as death reigns, we have no certainty that justice will be done on this Earth. Since Christ has been raised and is the firstfruits of the resurrection, we have certainty.

Seventh, this means that judgment is coming. God has acted which means he’s not kidding around any more. The time of patience is over. It is now time to repent and get right with God. This motivates Paul even more to preach the gospel.

These are just seven I can think of. I do not doubt for a moment that there are many more, but if these facts haven’t fully gripped you, and to confess they haven’t fully gripped me either, then we will not have the faith of Paul that we so want to have.

Today, I urge you to look at your Christianity differently. Only when you see it as changing the world, can you see it as changing your world.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

God, Please Kill My Enemy

How can the Bible speak about the longing for the death of your enemies? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Yesterday, I wrote a review of N.T. Wright’s book “The Case for the Psalms” and so I figured I’d start looking at the Psalms. Why not have some fun and start out with the category of Psalms that we consider to be the hardest? These are Psalms called Imprecatory Psalms.

Imagine living in America during World War 2 and going to a church and when the songs start playing, before too long you find out that you’re singing a song where you’re asking God to kill Hitler. While you could justifiably think that the villain should be dead, you seem a bit out of place singing about this at a church.

Yet when we open up the Psalms, we find the cries for the death of enemies and not just national enemies always, but personal enemies as well. A number of times these strike us as odd to find in the Psalms. Isn’t God the God of peace and love? How could it be that His holy book would contain Psalms like this?

For instance, consider the cry of Psalm 5:10

Declare them guilty, O God!
Let their intrigues be their downfall.
Banish them for their many sins,
for they have rebelled against you.

This is such a hard teaching for us to accept! After all, are we not to forgive one another for sins and shouldn’t God be the main one to do this? Why would we pray that someone would actually be judged for their sins? Isn’t this wrong.

Only if you think judging is wrong.

The Psalmist in this case is praying for justice for what he has suffered, but he’s not just pointing to his own suffering, but pointing out in the whole psalm that he has lived a righteous life while his enemies have not. Why should the wicked have the same place with YHWH as the righteous? Why should they get the same treatment?

And this is still our cry today! We often ask why do bad things happen to good people? When evil people suffer, we can expect that and it fits in, but when people we think are good suffer, then we just don’t know what to do. It is as if something is wrong, but the only way we can say something is wrong is if we are willing to admit the world should be a certain way, that the world should be just.

Another example is in Psalm 107.

“6 Appoint someone evil to oppose my enemy;
let an accuser stand at his right hand.
7 When he is tried, let him be found guilty,
and may his prayers condemn him.
8 May his days be few;
may another take his place of leadership.
9 May his children be fatherless
and his wife a widow.
10 May his children be wandering beggars;
may they be driven[a] from their ruined homes.
11 May a creditor seize all he has;
may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.
12 May no one extend kindness to him
or take pity on his fatherless children.
13 May his descendants be cut off,
their names blotted out from the next generation.
14 May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord;
may the sin of his mother never be blotted out.
15 May their sins always remain before the Lord,
that he may blot out their name from the earth.”

Tough words indeed, but yet the Psalmist is again wanting justice in contrast to the life he has lived. Note also that this is a good Middle Eastern way of handling the situation. We today in the West tend to hide our emotions and store them up. It seems like a fine situation until someone cracks one day and gets “road rage” or “goes postal” or something of that sort. Buried hurts don’t go away. They just wait for a time to resurface.

The Middle Easterners instead sought to express their emotions openly and powerfully for the most part. When a person died in the family, you would have professional mourners come by. It’s not that they felt loss or sympathy necessarily for the family, but they were to show the sadness of the people by their mourning. Some of this Christ condemned such as the Pharisees putting on a face to show that they were fasting. Expression done just to draw attention to one’s self was a problem. That would be a way of stealing honor in fact. Expression done to bring glory to God was what was commendable.

Why include the family? Simple. This would shame the person involved. Aristotle, for instance, thought that someone’s happiness in life could be altered after they were dead, and this was from someone who believed you ceased to exist when you died! How could your happiness change? Because your descendants could ruin the good reputation you’d built up. The prayer was for this person to be shamed.

We see an example of this in the book of Jeremiah. We are told that may it be for Jehoiachin that he will be remembered as childless and none of his children take the throne. Childlessness was seen as a curse. In 2 Kings 5, the leprosy of Naaman is said to cling to Gehazi and his descendants forever. In the ancient world, your ancestry mattered much more than it does here and having suffering in the lives of your children would show what a wicked soul you were.

Yet there is one such Psalm that most always gets mentioned by atheists.

It is Psalm 137 with this part.

“7 Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried,
“tear it down to its foundations!”
8 Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who repays you
according to what you have done to us.
9 Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.”

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard Psalm 137 used, I could probably retire right now.

So what is going on here? Why would someone be happy for dashing children against rocks?

In the Psalm, the captives of Judah are in Babylon and being mocked by Babylon. “Sing us a song of that great city of your God that we so royally destroyed!” These people were living in exile far away from their own homes and had seen destruction of their loved ones right before their eyes.

So what do they say? Let justice be done and the same measure done to you that was done to us. Not more. Not less. This was a typical Middle Eastern expression. Note also they’re not telling others to do this nor thinking of doing it themselves. They are pleading to God for this justice.

What are we to make of this today?

First off, justice is still a cry in this world. Whenever anyone speaks of the problem of evil, they are speaking of justice. If you do not think there is such a thing as justice, then you cannot say anything about the problem of evil.

Second, we can learn that all manner of expression, even that which we deem to be negative, is acceptable to God. This does not mean the way we express it always is. Blasphemy is always wrong. What it does mean is that God is interested in the cries of our hearts. In fact, later on, we’ll see in future blogs that even God Himself is spoken of accusingly, and He accepts it.

Third, we understand that ultimately, God is the place to go to for justice. Of course, there are times of self-defense and just war and such, but all justice comes from God even if it comes through secondary causes such as the institutions of man. For the ancients, all causality ultimately ended in God. The supernatural/natural distinction did not exist.

Fourth, we understand the cry for justice is good. God wants us to cry for justice and has promised that He will hear those who do make that cry.

When we look at it in regards to Israel’s place in history, there is grounds for believing in a future judgment somehow and a place in an afterdeath. After all, death would ultimately be the same for everyone in a materialistic universe. You die. That’s it. For there to be a true reversal of judgment would require some compensation after death, perhaps even a resurrection for some.

To long for this was also to believe that the God of Israel was to be on the side of Israel and would bring about righteousness for Israel and act on the behalf of Israel. It meant the promise to Abraham would be fulfilled. Those who blessed Abraham would be blessed. Those who cursed him would be cursed.

Many of us have enemies today and we cry out to God about them. The reality is, that’s not necessarily a wrong thing. There is no wrong in wanting justice despite what our society says, but if God does not act, it could be He has in motion the way of redemption for someone. Judgment is a work of God, but He would much rather forgive to those who are willing. Let’s remember God is a God of justice, but the same God had said of Him “In wrath, remember mercy.”

In Christ,
Nick Peters

An Unarmed Opponent

Would you be willing to fight an opponent who is unarmed? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

If anyone has seen me, they know I’m not much physically. I weigh about 120 pounds and don’t have any muscle mass to me at all. Now I can run pretty good and I do seem to have limitless energy for physical work, but I’d be practically useless in a fight.

Now let’s suppose that I’m in an alley somewhere and I have an opponent who I know seeks to harm me physically. My opponent is unarmed. I have a gun that I know how to use well and it’s loaded and I’m ready to fire.

Who are you putting your money on in this fight when the guy charges at me?

A gun is a great equalizer.

In our modern age, we are facing an onslaught in the church. Now let’s face it. A lot of us might not be intellectually gifted, and that’s okay. Not all of us are physically gifted, but that doesn’t mean we’re necessarily useless physically. When we look at what’s going on outside the church, we can look at ourselves and wonder if we can do much.

Is there some sort of equalizer like a gun?

There is.

It’s called truth.

Most of the apologists that you know out there and admire are not necessarily intellectually gifted. Many of them are just people who have worked hard, much like someone might have a natural bent towards athletics in the world, but a lot of them get where they are simply because they wanted to and worked out hard at a gym and practiced to get to where they are.

It can be easy to look at the apologetics world and see what is being done and think that you can’t do that much. You’re not really a thinker too much. You don’t know how to do this deep philosophy. You’re someone who considers yourself ordinary.

It is also wrong to think that way.

I honestly do think I have a natural bent towards intellectual matters, but I know most of what I’m doing today is because I work at it. It’s because I’m spending time reading and asking questions and listening to podcasts and taking place in actual arguments. Everyone has to work in this field. Just like in sports, there is no such thing as success without effort.

I’d like you to know something about your opponent also.

They’re not that tough usually.

Seriously. Most opponents I meet are like little dogs. They like to bark a lot and act like they’re big, but they’re not. The majority of arguments you will come across from people have no substance from them.

Which ones do have substance? Usually from the atheists who are taking this seriously, and they’re the ones who are also open to evidence. The ones that tend to bark the loudest are the ones that are most resistant to any real dialogue whatsoever.

What would it take? Just a simple reading of simple apologetics books designed for the layman. Books like “The Case for the Real Jesus” or “Cold-Case Christianity” or “Reinventing Jesus.” Of course, if you want to read more scholarly books, feel free!

It would mean spending your time on a commute to work listening to a podcast like my own Deeper Waters Podcast, or other podcasts like Unbelievable? Keep in mind the reason we do this kind of work is so we can equip you, the layman, so you will be ready. My greatest hope would be that I would be able to help people so much that they don’t really need me any more.

In reality also, most of your opponents have not looked at the arguments that they throw at you. “Christianity was copied from pagan myths!” It is most likely that the person who says this has never read any of these pagan myths. They have just read it online. If you are reading informed people and getting information from them, you will be ahead of the game. If you know what you believe and why you believe it both, you are prepared for much of what you see out there.

And besides, don’t you want to do that anyway? Don’t you do that in every other area of life? Why not do that with the most important area of your life, your worldview you live by every day?

And if enough of us do this, we can start having our Christian revolution. We can start making an impact for Christ. We do not need to fear our opponents. They are little dogs that are making much bark, but their bite is not there. You do not have to be a genius or total academic to defeat your enemy. You just have to be informed.

Something you should be anyway.

Please make sure you are informing yourself. To lower yourself intellectually if that is your concern is not an option. You may not have the kind of mind you desire, but you should love the Lord with all the mind that you have.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Lights Out With Pliny

Did Pliny neglect to talk about the darkness at the time of Christ? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

For the sake of discussion with this post, I’m going to be assuming the darkness at the crucifixion of Christ was an actual event and not an apocalyptic image. Now granted for the sake of argument that that is the case, an objection is raised. “If this was such an event, why did Pliny never mention it? Pliny gives an exhaustive list in book 2 of the eclipses that happened.”

So it is and most people get this kind of idea from Gibbon. Surely when Pliny was recording the history of these events he would have mentioned an event of great darkness like this. Yet the solution to this for anyone is to simply look at the chapter in Pliny.

Most of us will be impressed when we hear of a chapter, but this is a short chapter in Pliny. In Latin, it is eighteen words. The relevant portion when translated reads as follows:

“eclipses are sometimes very long, like that after Cesar’s death, when the sun was pale almost a year.”

Pliny then does not give an exhaustive look at all the eclipses and thus we should not be surprised if he does not mention the one that happened at the time of Christ. What could be said about that if it is a literal event? Most people would chalk it up as some kind of anomaly. It’d be nice to have known what caused it, but they couldn’t know. It might cause some talk for awhile, but when no one could figure anything out and no great disasters happened shortly afterwards, everyone would just move on.

Do we have similar events happening other times? Yes. There was a dark day even in American history. It was back in 1780. What caused it? To this day, no one knows for sure, but no one denies that it was dark all throughout the day on that day. Details of that dark day can be found here.

If there’s one lesson definitely that we can get from this brief little look, it’s that one should always be seeking to test primary sources. On the internet, this is much easier to do. Also, if one has a device like a Kindle, one can download many old books for free and go through them and look and see. This requires just a little bit of research.

Unfortunately, while atheists usually mock Christians as being people who are gullible, too many of them wind up buying into myths like this because it just seems to fit with the idea of people being ignorant and unscientific back then and overly gullible. If there is a story that fits the picture, then the story is true, such as the myth that they believed in a flat Earth.

This is not to say Christians never do this. Unfortunately, they do, and if anyone thinks I am wrong on citing a source on this blog, then please by all means let me know. I realize I am capable of making mistakes too and I encourage everyone to check everyone else for mistakes, including myself. It has been said that a cry of the Reformation was “To the sources!” I think that is a cry we should all agree with.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Lies Your Sunday School Teacher Told You

Did your Sunday School teacher tell you lies? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

I often have this tendency to get into debates with people such as Christ mythers who have no clue what they’re talking about, but think they do. It can be fun for a day or so and then it just gets tiring. I think the same drive often gets me to get books like Alexander Drake’s “Lies Your Sunday School Teacher Told You”, particularly when I’m just trying to see what book I can borrow for free for the month on my Kindle.

If I were to go through and give a refutation of all the points that Drake gets wrong, it would require a book about four times the length. The problem in our society today is that the Bible is a difficult and complex book to understand and people expect it to be custom-wrapped from God and be written in a style and language that they readily understand, after all, it’s the “Word of God.”

In that sense, Drake is just like the Christians that he wants to open the eyes of. His work shows no interaction with the scholarly community. Instead, the appeal is far more emotional with questions about slavery, hell, God’s behavior in the OT, etc.

Now if we had just the title alone, even that is inaccurate, but it does point to a problem in the church definitely. The only way you can say the Sunday School teacher is telling you lies is if the following is true. It must be the case that the teacher is teaching you one thing. It must then be the case the teacher knows that what they are teaching you is not true. To teach something that is wrong is not a lie, any more than a child getting the wrong answer on a math quiz is lying. To teach something you know to be wrong is a lie.

Unfortunately, most Sunday School teachers, and for that matter, most pastors today, don’t really do in-depth study of the Bible to be able to handle objections like Drake’s, which are really simple and childish. That Drake found them convincing does not say anything about Drake’s abilities as a researcher, but it speaks volumes about the failure of the church to educate. When people like Drake fall away, they become stronger evangelists for their new worldview and are more than happy to speak about what the church has not spoken about.

Now Drake does think his readers haven’t read the Bible or they’d know it’s fiction. I have in fact read the Bible well over a dozen times straight through. When I get done going straight through, I start all over again doing the same thing. Bible reading is an important part of my life. Also important, is reading the best in scholarship on the Bible from all perspectives.

Reading Drake, one sees very little scholarship, save one can tell he’s read about critical theories such as the JEPD hypothesis. There is no indication he has interacted with Licona, Bauckham, Wright, Evans, Keener, Witherington, etc. The inability of many of these writers to interact with the other side is a disservice they do to themselves and to their readers.

To be fair, there are times that Drake does make some points that he sees as being parallels in the Bible. These are also sad points to think about because it shows that if Drake had done the work, he could have seen even more ways the Bible refers to its own self and how later passages were to be seen in light of earlier ones.

What people with objections like Drake’s need to do first is go and see if anyone else in church history has asked their question, and that will require research. Chances are, you will not come across a new “Bible contradiction” that someone somewhere in church history has not answered. You might think the answer is inadequate, but you owe it to yourself and your audience to show you have interacted with that side. An argument can be seen as easily convincing after all if you only give one side of it.

Were Drake interested, he could readily find volumes written on the interpretation of Scripture and how it fits in with its own culture. A volume coming out soon that would deal with much of what is said would be “The Lost World of Scripture” and I highly recommend any curious reader get it.

That people like Drake are out there who don’t know better but think they do is a tragedy. It is exactly what we can expect though when we see the church failing to do one of the jobs that Christ gave us to do, teach. When the church gets moving and starts educating its ranks, we will find fewer and fewer Drakes in our midst.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The Problem of Conversion

Are we doing something wrong in the church today? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

In popular thinking today, it’s often asked how we can get more converts into the church. I state instead to others that I have no desire whatsoever to get converts.

“How can you say that? Do you not care about bringing people to Jesus?”

Of course I do. I would not be doing what I do all day if I did not, but I choose to follow what Christ said. Go and make disciples of all nations.

Let’s consider an analogy. It is rightly said that marriage is on the decline in our country. So let’s suppose the goal then is to make more married people? That’s easy enough. I have men who are friends and single. If they wanted to, they could go out and find someone and get married today. They could encourage all their friends to do likewise and their friends could encourage their friends, etc.

Voila! Problem solved! Marriage is back!

Well, no. We might create a lot of married men, but would we really create a lot of husbands? Would we be creating men that are devoted to loving their wives and seeking to grow in that love or not?

Getting married is easy. Any one can do that. Being a husband or wife? That takes work! The same has been said about children. Anyone can make a baby but it takes a man to be a father. Unless there’s something wrong biologically with the man or the woman, any man can get a woman pregnant. Not a big deal. I know of no way that there’s a secret technique that a man must use in the bedroom and only if he pulls it off rightly will his wife get pregnant. (If such was the case, then we’re sure wasting a lot of money on birth control and the abortion advocates can stop complaining)

Making the baby is simple. The guy’s work is usually done pretty quickly. Raising that baby as a father? That’s a lifetime of work.

So now back to the illustration of the church. In the church, we often go and make converts. What happens in our evangelism? We have someone who has come to the church and filled out a card. We go out to them. We talk with them about Jesus. We get them to say the prayer and then celebrate about our success!

It would be better if we kept tabs of such people and see how many of them actually come back to the church and how many of them grow in Christ? I’m sure some do, but do most?

Now granted if you just go with converts, you can grow a church pretty quickly. You can have several people sign up and come in to the church and be active members, but are they really going to be growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus? Or, are they more just going through the motions?

How many marriages do you know of where the love died a long time ago and today, people are going through the motions just because it beats the alternative?

Worse, these people are absolutely unprepared for what waits outside the church. Atheism has gone popular in the new atheists. The internet has made information of all worldviews easily accessible. Worse still, someone with no knowledge can be seen as someone with knowledge just because they have a web site. To those untrained in a field, an argument from even a Christ-myther seems sophisticated.

There’s also the cults that are out there. Walter Martin of the Christian Research Institute said that the average Jehovah’s Witness can turn the average Christian into a doctrinal pretzel in 90 seconds or less. I would not hesitate to say the average Jehovah’s Witness knows the Bible far better than the average Christian.

This isn’t even counting moral problems! Affairs take place right within the church. 1 in 3 men in the church are said to struggle with pornography. A pastor dare not speak about homosexuality or sex outside of marriage or couples living together lest it offend those people in the church or put him on the political radar of the enemies of the church.

Our youth are often the biggest consequence of this. In their classrooms, they will no doubt hear of evolution. Now I as a non-scientist do not speak on evolution. I see it as an irrelevant question to Christian belief, but we all know there are atheists who see it as the most relevant question. If evolution is true, Christianity is false for them, and they will no doubt proclaim this letting their students know you either go with modern science or go with the Bible. It gets even worse if they make it that the Bible can only be read to say the Earth is 6,000 years old. (Do note I have friends who are YEC, my ministry partner is YEC, and my wife is YEC. In fact, a person who is an evangelical and told me about the dangers of making YEC an essential part of Christianity is himself a YEC)

And of course, the youth will have the moral issues as well. If they’re on YouTube looking up their favorite song, they could see an atheistic video on the side. Just one click is all it takes. In Middle and High School, they will be tempted sexually since all their friends are doing it and why not? It’s so much fun and it doesn’t hurt anyone! We’re just sharing love! It will get even stronger in college where professors are more upfront with an atheistic agenda and co-ed dorms are becoming more and more common and parties will involve alcohol and sex abundantly.

And hey, a young person wants to be cool.

In the past, I have written profusely on why apologetics is a necessity for the “relevant” church today such as found here, here, here, here, here, and here. This is just a snippet of it all.

In fact, to say otherwise for our youth is to say it is important for them to have pizza and to attend concerts for their growth in being like Christ, but it is not important for them to actually learn anything about Jesus Christ. You might as well tell a newlywed couple it’s not important for them to really learn anything about each other. Just have a lot of sex together and you’ll be fine!

If you want to grow closer to your spouse in marriage, you will need to learn about your spouse, devote time to your spouse, and actively do things for your spouse, and you have to do that regardless of how you might be feeling at the time. Even if you feel unloving, you are to be loving.

If you want to grow closer to Jesus Christ, you will need to learn about Jesus, devote time to Jesus, and actively do things for Jesus, and you have to do that regardless of how you might be feeling at the time. Even if you feel like you don’t care, you are to care.

When we make converts, we get people who are not prepared to deal with what is outside. When persecution comes, they will either fall away, which is the most disastrous of all, or they will simply hole up within themselves, which is fortunately going to keep them in the Kingdom, but they will be carrying weight for the those who are active and be a hindrance to demonstrating Christlikeness.

Let’s take the first example. What happens? It usually results in fundy atheists. Christians who did not get any answers and became convinced that there were no answers because no one takes their questions seriously. I meet these people most every day on the net. They have a grudge against their former belief system and are some of the hardest people to reason with.

Now let’s take the latter group. These people hole up inside themselves or with others of the same mindset. They might be helping each other be good people, but they cannot effectively evangelize. Once someone challenges their perspective, they’re sunk. In such a world, this person is going to be a hindrance in evangelism as others of the fundy atheist mindset will look at them and say “Yep. All Christians are as deluded as I was.” Others might be nicer and will have no problem letting them keep their beliefs, just so long as they “don’t hurt anyone” or “force your view on me.”

Also for this latter group, what will keep them going? Their experiences. Now experiences are a good thing, but you cannot make a regular diet out of them, at least not the grand ones. Those do not happen on demand after all and we cannot will them that easily.

There’s also a great danger that we have other groups that have experiences. I know of a Muslim man who claimed he was miraculously healed of pancreatic cancer. Prima facie, I have no reason to deny this claim. Why should I? Should I deny that he is wrong about his own life just because his worldview is different from mine? What about Mormons who claim to have a burning in the bosom? Should I claim they do not? Of course not. If all you have is your experience vs. another person’s experience with nothing else to fall back on, then there is no reason to choose one over the other except personal preference.

But what if you did have something you could use? What if you could use truth? Ah. Now we’re getting somewhere. Note that I am not saying the church must be full of scholars, though I am hopeful all would take part in scholarly information. The church should have people who have some basic knowledge about their worldview. Here are the basics they need I think.

Each person needs some reason to hold to the existence of God be it cosmological, moral, or even an argument like the resurrection of Jesus.
Each person needs to know how they can make a case for something being right or wrong.
Each person needs a basic understanding of biblical interpretation.
Every person needs a basic understanding of the reliability of Scripture including textual criticism.
Each person needs to be able to make a historical defense for the resurrection, at least a basic minimal facts approach.
Each person needs to be able to show the Trinity in the Bible.
Each person needs to make a case for their view of the atonement.

Well geez. That sounds hard.

Yes. Sounds hard to those of us who realize we live in a society where you can still remember how to get to every dungeon in the original Legend of Zelda, follow the plot of your favorite TV show with myriads of characters, know the statistics of your favorite sports teams, and memorize songs, jokes, and recipes.

This will take work. No denying that. The question that must be asked then is “Is Jesus Christ worth that work?” If He is, then act accordingly. If He is not, then also act accordingly. We can easily boast about how we would die for Jesus and how much we love Him and what He means to us. If such is true, then one should look at this and say “No problem.”

And what happens then? We get disciples. We get people who are actively learning to seek to grow in their faith. Here’s another tip for those of you out there. Get at least one good mentor. I have several mentors that I still go to today, but I have one main one that I email every night who helps hold me accountable and has been my friend and confidante in many tough situations. I say that as one who considers myself mature in the faith. I need a mentor. I am thankful to have one.

What will disciples mean? It will mean pastors also preach more informed sermons. Why? Because the congregation will know most of the basic stuff already that you’re sharing. If you want to teach them, you’ll have to go deeper than they are. If not, then they will leave you because those who are actively seeking to grow in their faith want more than just milk at church.

It will also mean we have a better presence of evangelism. Imagine how much it would mean if all Christians could at least make a case that there was a historical Jesus instead of just saying “Well you have to have faith!” Would nonsense like Richard Dawkins’s “The God Delusion” even make a dent in the Christian community? Not a bit.

It will also mean people living holier lives. Why? Because those who are disciples of Jesus are the ones that will be taking His commands more seriously and holding one another accountable for what they do. These people will be thinking with a well-informed mind on Christian issues and know how they apply to the current situation in the world and to their own personal lives.

Dare I say it, I think this one change alone could bring about the revolution in America we’ve been waiting for. Why is our situation the way it is? Is it because of the gospel? No. We know the gospel has the power to transform lives and culture. Well if it’s not on the end of the gospel, then it must be on our end. The problem is not the message. The problem is us. If we want to change the world, we must start with changing us.

From now on, do what Jesus said. Don’t go out and make converts. Go out and make disciples. Just as importantly, be one yourself.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Thoughts on Joseph Atwill

Did the Romans invent the Christians? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

There has been much talk lately about Joseph Atwill and his claim that Jesus was invented by the Romans. It’s still bizarre to think the Romans would create a religion that they would go out and persecute. Still, many are claiming that Atwill is a biblical scholar as even the press release about the announcement said.

Reality? He’s not.

Is that the opinion of someone like me, a Christian who believes strongly in the reliability of the NT? No. That’s even the opinion of a Christ myther himself like Richard Carrier. Unfortunately as Carrier points out, news of this has not reached Richard Dawkins. Carrier also adds that Robert Price and Acharya S. disagree with this idea. As Carrier says about these people like Atwill:

They make mythicism look ridiculous. So I have to waste time (oh by the gods, so much time) explaining how I am not arguing anything like their theories or using anything like their terrible methods, and unlike them I actually know what I am talking about, and have an actual Ph.D. in a relevant subject from a real university.

If those three, some of the biggest names in Christ-mythicism, say that your theory is bunk, it’s quite likely that it is.

Now it’s rare to find scholarly talk about an idea such as this. Why? Because by and large scholarship ignores crank theories like this. In fact, most people if they really thought they had something would want to take their idea to the scholars first. Larry Hurtado has said that

I haven’t heard of the guy before either (Joseph Atwill), largely because, well, he’s a nobody in the field of biblical studies. No PhD in the subject (or related subject), never held an academic post, never (so far as I can tell) published anything in any reputable journal that’s peer-reviewed, or in any reputable monograph series, or presented at any academic conference where competent people could assess his claims. Instead, per the flimflam drill, he directs his claims to the general public, knowing that they are unable to assess them, and so, by sheer novelty of the claim he hopes to attract a crowd, sales, and publicity. It’s a living, I guess (of sorts).

In saying why he doesn’t bother with it that much, Hurtado says that

It’s not necesssary to engage something so self-evidently unfounded and incompetent. If his press releases at all reflect his stance, it’s not worth the time. We scholars have enough to do engaging work that is by people with some competence. There isn’t time or value in dealing with nonsense. And Atwill and his ilk don’t really want scholarly engagement anyway. Again, let it go.

And when told Atwill would want scholarly engagement Hurtado says

No. He wouldn’t. Otherwise, he wouldn’t avoid the normal scholarly venues to test theories. These people know that they would be shredded by competent scholars.

And yet, it’s making a buzz. Fortunately, even some atheists like P.Z. Myers are condemning it. Myers does not hold back.

I think a few too many atheists are seeing “Scholar Says Jesus Was Fake” and are not thinking any more deeply than that. The whole idea is ridiculous.

If you’re one of the many atheists who gleefully forwarded this to me or credulously mentioned it on twitter…hello, there. I see you’ve already met the good friend of so many half-baked wackos in the world, Confirmation Bias.

That many atheists did in fact spread this immediately and treated it seriously shows that there is indeed a great deal of ignorance in the atheistic community. “Well what about your Christian community?!” I’ve been saying for years the church has failed to educate its members and their fear at something like this is a prime example of it. Our tendency to want to protect ourselves more than anything else keeps us from really isolating with these issues going on in the real world. As I told one skeptic recently, I condemn ignorance on all sides.

Here are some of my problems with the whole theory.

First off, it will HAVE to deal with all the counter-evidence. Can he deal with Tacitus? Can he deal with Josephus? (I know his theory claims to rely on Josephus, but will scholars of Josephus support it?) Can he deal with Mara Bar-Serapion? How about a question of the reliability of the NT? Can he deal with claims for that?

Second, what about the Pauline epistles. The earliest epistles come before Josephus wrote. These epistles also include a creed such as in 1 Cor. 15 that comes to within a few years at most of the resurrection event. Can Atwill’s theory deal with this?

Third, can he demonstrate that the gospels in the genre of Greco-Roman biographies would be able to be read in this way? This theory has been tried over and over by so many people and it has never ended well. Why give Atwill any credit?

Fourth, does he have any evidence from the Roman perspective? Does he have some ancient mention of Jesus that we have never found even though scholars have been looking through works of ancient society? What would this say for Christ mythers who say that there is no mention of Jesus? Why mention Jesus if Jesus was not being talked about?

Fifth, can his theory account for the dating of the NT? Would this not presuppose that the gospels were written after the writings of Josephus? Has he made a case for that? If Josephus based his account on the gospels, which he didn’t, then Atwill’s theory is in trouble. Atwill will require a late date. It would also require the writings of Josephus to also be in Jerusalem at the time already and being read, which will be problematic enough even if just Mark dates to before 70 A.D.

Now by all means, let Atwill present his evidence, but keep in mind he’s trying to bypass the scholarly community and go straight to the sensationalist route. That might be a more popular approach, but it’s not the proper approach to academic work of this nature. The reason one seeks to bypass the scholarly community is most likely because one cannot survive scrutiny under that community.

Check the sources always on claims like this. That so many atheists have passed this on shows that there is just as much blind faith and lack of biblical scholarship in the atheistic community as in the Christian community they rail against. That so many Christians get scared of something like this is an important demonstration of why the church needs a good education in basic apologetics.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Why I Read What I Read

Is all reading done out of the same desire? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Recently, I got into a conversation with my family about Bill O’Reilly’s book “Killing Jesus.” Now I’ll be blunt. I wasn’t too impressed with Killing Lincoln. There was some information in there that was historical, but the style of the whole work seemed to be dry. I read it because my mother checked it out from the library and couldn’t get into it so she let me have it for her time. I did read the whole thing, but I just felt I was having to push myself to finish it.

Also, I haven’t been too impressed with Bill O’Reilly lately. On the issue of the marriage debate, he has been notified numerous times that there are more reasons for the traditional position than just “The Bible says so.” As far as I know, he has not corrected that. Also, when he has people come on to debate religion, I just don’t think he’s in his league.

This is not to say Bill O’Reilly is not a Christian or he’s unintelligent. It’s just that there are specialized areas of study and studying in one area does not give you the authority in another area. For those concerned, I try to be consistent with this. I don’t enter debates on science as science. I will talk about the history, such as how it was done in the Middle Ages and what happened with Galileo, but I will not talk about the theories as theories. Do I believe the Earth goes around the sun? Yep. Could I begin to make a case for it? Not at all. It’s the same with questions like evolution. If I was a theistic evolutionist, I could not make a case for it. If I take the other side, I also could not make a case for that. I instead choose to simply grant evolution to the atheist, who will naturally accept it, for the sake of argument.

So to get back to Bill, my folks had been telling me to read O’Reilly’s book first in response to hearing about him debating against Candida Moss. I immediately went on my Facebook and asked if anyone in my area had a copy I’d be willing to borrow. Someone did post and ask along the lines of “Why would you want to read that? There are better sources you could go to.”

This was a non-Christian also who has debated me in the past and I consider it important to answer this question as I think Christians should by and large use the best sources. If that’s the case, am I being a hypocrite for going to what is considered the best source? Well that depends on the reason why one reads a book. Let’s list some.

First, most of us do reads just for fun. For instance, when a new Monk mystery novel comes out, I have it in my hands pretty quickly. I was a big fan of the TV series and I think the books are an excellent way to keep the series going. Usually I finish a book in a couple of days and spend all my time thinking about who did the crime, why, etc. I suspect in our day and age, most reads are reads for fun. I also think those of us who consider ourselves serious academics do still need reads for fun.

Second, another reason we read today will be for schoolwork. Most of us in High School and College read books that we would never ever have read on our own because they were put on the syllabus for us to read and frankly, most of us would never ever read them again as well!

Third, some of us read books as well for our own information. I recently used some Amazon points and ordered my wife a book on Fennec Foxes. That’s an interest of hers. Most books I have in my library here I’d say are along these lines. I read the books because I want to be informed on the subject matter.

Fourth, another reason to read a book is because it’s popular non-fiction. An example of this would be Bill O’Reilly’s “Killing Jesus.” I want to read this one because it’s in an area I consider myself an authority on and people are talking about it. If this is what people are interested in, I want to know if they’re really getting good information. When someone comes to me asking “What do you think of X?” and X is the latest popular book going around, I want to be able to answer them.

Fifth, another reason to read a book is because it is an informed position you disagree with. For something like this, I could consider a work like Richard Dawkins’s “The Blind Watchmaker.” To be sure, “The God Delusion” is not an informed book. Dawkins did write about subjects he had not studied and those of us who have studied those subjects wince at how bad he gets them. It would be just as bad as reading something of mine on “How to Fix Your Car” or “How to Play Basketball Like a Pro” or “Evolutionary Biology for Everyone.”

Better examples from my field would be books published by academic publishers of non-Christian scholarship, people like John Dominic Crossan or Gerd Ludemann or Bart Ehrman. It’s important that these books have publishers with high credentials as they only want the best to come through their publishing houses.

Sixth, you could read because it’s not an informed position that you disagree with. This would include works like The God Delusion. These are read because enough people are talking about them and when they’re being talked about, you need to be able to answer them. You can’t tell people what’s wrong in a book without having read it yourself. This is why apologists were reading “The Da Vinci Code” when it came out. (To its credit, I found as a novel the story itself was entertaining. The information was still hideous. Don’t talk to me about the movie. The movie was just terrible.)

Seventh, you could read something fictional to see what people are talking about even though you could enjoy it as well. When I started going through the Harry Potter series, it was so I could have an informed opinion on it for people who asked me. In the end, I turned out to thoroughly enjoy the series and now I own all the movies. I had read the books on audio from the library and have two of them. When the final book came out, I was one of those people waiting at the bookstore at midnight.

Of course, one eighth reason that comes up for Christians often is edification. You read a book to learn how to be more devout in what you believe. For us, Scripture is the central book here, though this can also be read for historical information as well and should be. We could also include great Christian classics such as “Pilgrim’s Progress” or “Knowing God” or “Practicing The Presence of God.” Many Christians read works so they can learn how to be closer to God.

Ninth, one can read just for self-development in an area. For instance, I recommend people read “Telling Yourself The Truth” and learn to practice it, something I’m still working on! Another book I’ve recommended along those lines is David Burns’s “Feeling Good.” Some of us could read books on an area we want to improve on, such as public speaking, overcoming a phobia, learning to cook, or learning the best way to exercise.

A final reason I can think of why I read some books is because I’ve been asked to. Sometimes people ask me to review books and I do so for them. Some of them I like. Some of them I don’t. In either case, I make sure to give a fully honest review. I don’t want to give a book a good review just so the author will feel better. I want to give it an honest review. If someones respects my opinion enough to share a work of theirs with me, I owe it to them to have enough respect to be forthright about it.

I hope also that this writing has helped you look at why you read what you read and take the time to think about it. For those who are interested, I am on Goodreads.com and there’s a link on this blog where you can find me. If you want to send a book for me to review, just ask. Generally, I’ve been just fine with taking the time to do so. That could change when I start Master’s work and move on to PH.D. work, but for now, I’m doing that.

And to everyone, please keep reading period.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Hardwired

What do I think of James Miller’s book? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Hardwired was for me a mixed bag. I agree with much of what was said, but the methodology didn’t seem to strike me right. I do agree that mankind is hardwired for God, designed if you will, to find His purpose in God alone. Yet I disagree with the approach that Miller takes.

Those who read me regularly know I come from a more classical/evidentialist approach to apologetics. I have my arguments for God’s existence and then I have my arguments for the resurrection of Jesus and I leave it at that. I also have had my own major concerns with a presuppositionalist approach.

That’s what struck me the most about Miller’s approach. He does not come out as a presuppositionalist, but that is where I saw him leaning the most. This was particularly evident when he said approaches taken like those in “The Case for Christ” by Lee Strobel are not going to work.

Now this I disagree with entirely. Miller has a problem with the idea that we need to become scholars in the field to understand Scripture. For a basic understanding of Scripture, you don’t need to be a scholar. The central message anyone can pick up. For an informed understanding, well you simply need to be more informed. While you don’t have to be a scholar yourself, you certainly need to learn from them.

It struck me as odd in fact for Miller to state something against this kind of approach when throughout the book he uses evidences and apologists from a perspective he would not agree with such as William Lane Craig.

I venture that the problem is not the approach. It is not the information. The problem is the people. The people just don’t care enough and while Miller does point to how things are known through an internal understanding, I wish to suggest that that could in fact be part of the problem. People are making decisions based on internal subjective views rather than the objective evidences.

For instance, what is the basis for marrying someone? It is how you feel supposedly. What happens when the day comes that you don’t feel any love? Well you move on with a divorce. Why are you to give in the church? Because you “feel led.” (Terminology not in Scripture at all!) If anything, our culture is too feelings oriented. (Consider also how often we say “feel” when we really mean “think.”)

The normal verse, Romans 1:20, used in this idea, in fact works best with an empirical approach much like my own. How does it say we know God? It is not by the things that are within, but it is by the things that are seen! We know God exists based on the evidences.

It was problematic as well to have Miller be so opposed to the idea of the blank slate. This is the belief that man is born without knowing anything. There is no a priori knowledge. On page 48, this is called a relatively new idea. What is the new idea is in fact epistemology. There have always been ideas on how we know what we know, but there being a branch called epistemology is rather new. Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas all talked about knowledge of course, but they did not have formal theories in a category called epistemology.

Miller writes about how we have an internal GPS, a God Positioning System. For Miller, this is opposed to the blank slate. Yet a Thomist like myself who believes in a blank slate has no problem with the idea of a GPS like that in us. The two work hand in hand. In classical Thomism, all that one seeks after is the good. Some don’t make it to the ultimate good, but they all want that which is good.

This can include our hardwiring in fact. There is nothing contradictory in the idea. The problem I was having then was seeing this either/or paradigm being put out where you either believe in a blank slate or you believe in a GPS. One can have a GPS and still have an empiricist approach that rejects a priori ideas. If Miller wants us to choose between the two, this will hurt his approach.

For Miller, the hardwiring is evidence we already know God exists. For my position, we’ve been presented with enough evidence that there’s no basis for the denial to begin with. Miller on page 33 says some won’t come to God still because of pride and having to confess sins and matters of that sort.

Yet isn’t that a problem with any approach? There is no silver bullet in evangelism after all! There is no argument that will convince everyone because everyone is different and some people have hardened their wills. There are all manner of doubts that can occur. Miller gives the impression that other apologetic methods only interact with the head and not with the heart. As he says on page 153 “Traditional apologists think they can satisfy the mind without engaging the soul.” I wonder how this can be said since an evidentialist like Gary Habermas spends so much time talking about emotional doubt and how the emotions affect how we view the evidence.

That having been said, I do think Miller offers many good arguments that seem rather evidentialist. I also think he has some excellent questions which I think would be good for small groups wanting to discuss this.

My main concern is still that I would really like Miller to realize that this is a rather both/and. It’s a mixture of the head and heart both and that can come through internal experiences to be sure, but also through outward evidences. The problem in the church is not the methodology so much but rather the mindset of the church.

Now as for much of the material in the book, otherwise, it is excellent. I did not find much I disagreed with, but yet I found it odd that all this evidence was amassed when an evidentialist approach was disagreed with at the beginning, an approach might I add, I see the apostles themselves using with their claims to eyewitness testimony.

If you want a good experiential argument for why one should be a theist, I think you’ve got an excellent idea. I would just hope in further works that if Millers want to go against the blank slate idea, that he does deal with it in a more rigorous fashion. I, a Thomistic empiricist, have no problem with man being hardwired and having a blank slate both.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: How To Think About God On A Plane

What do I think about Benjamin Wiker’s book? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Benjamin Wiker has been a favorite author of mine ever since my best man years ago on my birthday gave me a copy of “Ten Books That Screwed Up The World And Five Others That Didn’t Help.” Wiker’s latest work is an incredibly short one, but don’t confuse size with lack of power. This is an excellent work that serves its purpose.

The whole idea of this book is to be part of a series that is meant to be read while on a plane and while getting ready to board and leave a plane. (Okay. To be fair, it’d probably need a 1,000 pages in today’s system to be able to encompass all that time.) Wiker wants to see you reading something meaty on the flight and who knows, maybe something the person next to you will want to talk about.

Now if you’re a Grammar Nazi looking at the title of this book, you’re internally going berserk thinking about a dangling modifier. You will be amused to know that this is where Wiker because this is where the book begins. Are we on the plane thinking about God, or are we thinking about the possibility of God being on a plane, or is it both?

Wiker goes from there to the different ways religions view God including how the Christian can think about God being on a plane and not in the sense of omniscience! It’s a truly fascinating look! The work goes on at that point in more of a kind of stream-of-consciousness thinking.

There won’t be interaction with much Scripture in here. Wiker’s book is largely about simple reasoning and not doing a full examination of the Bible or the Koran or Book of Mormon or any other work that a religious group deems sacred. It’s more natural revelation, although it does include general ideas about major world religions.

Within the book, there is also interaction with the ideas of atheism and for such a short work, Wiker does make a very strong argument. Quite amusing to readers should be his sections on the interaction between science and religion, including a look at the astounding hypothesis of Francis Crick.

The read is definitely a short read so it could feasibly be read on a plane ride. I had finished the book within one-two hours of reading time. The steady stream will engage the reader in a conversation with Wiker and is easily accessible to any reader out there.

I conclude that this is definitely a good book that would be worth having with you on a plane ride. This is the kind of meat that people should be spending more time reading and it could be that something like this could in fact be a great conversation starter. After all, when you talk about God on a plane with someone next to you, it’s not like they have much option on where else to go. Not only that, the book has some excellent humor thrown in that will keep the reader amused.

If you have a flight to go on soon, get a copy of this book. You won’t be disappointed.

In Christ,
Nick Peters