Deeper Waters

People who have Loftus’s book will notice I skipped over a couple of chapters. I need to explain. Most anxiously, I’m sure some were looking forward to the review on the chapter on the Problem of Evil. I chose to not do that actually at this time because I have written a research paper on the topic focusing on natural evil and using Loftus’s arguments and explaining why I think they’re fallacious. It is being reviewed by some English major friends of mine and then I’ll edit it and turn it in and after I get it back, I plan on putting it up. It could be a month or two so there will be waiting. Rest assured though, it is one I am looking forward to.

There is also the chapter on Calvinism. I did not review that simply because I am not a Calvinist and I will leave it to the Calvinists to defend Calvinism. I will put up one critique of it though here. I was surprised because in all the writings that I found there, I did not find one quote from John Calvin. I would think a critique of Calvinism would include some of his statements.

For now though, we move to what Loftus calls the Achilles’ heel of Christianity. That is the difference between the modern mind and the ancient mind.

Odd. I find that the Achilles’ Heel of modernity. (What happened to that Outsiders Test?)

He says we must either canonize these standards that are primitive thinking, come to a half-way house in-between, or reject them.
Or we can just realize they’re not primitive thinking. It’s simply Chronological snobbery.

In speaking of the slave being beat for instance, Loftus doesn’t understand that discipline would be used at times and the owner was given the benefit of the doubt. It’s unlikely he’d want to kill a slave. (It’s also worth noting that this was for a theocracy.) Slavery in those days was hardly anything like it was in the Civil War period. In fact, it was Christianity that ended slavery. (Loftus. Go look up Bathilda, wife of Clovis II or get a book like “The Victory of Reason” by Rodney Stark.)

As for science, Loftus says science runs on the assumption that there is a natural explanation for every event. (Page 262) Yes friends. Watch that. It’s an assumption. I don’t see Loftus’s assertions here. I can see God working through natural events just as much as supernatural ones. Even with a grocery store down the street, I can still pray for my daily bread.

Let’s remember the main part though. This is an assumption? Can it be demonstrated? No. He takes it on faith. (Has he read C.S. Lewis’s essay on the Laws of Nature in God in the Dock?) Why should the world be granted as rational? Why should it be that my mind that is the result supposedly of an accident somehow corresponds to a world that is accidental as well? (For an excellent look at this, see Dinesh D’Souza’s “What’s So Great About Christianity?”

Of course, he complains about God in the Gaps. Loftus. Who was the first to despise the God of the Gaps idea? It was Christians! Check a Methodist layspeaker named Charles Coulson as an example. While I am generally against it, let something be admitted. If God did do something fiat, then we are not going to be able to close that gap. We should not ask “What is the best natural explanation for X?” but “What is the best explanation?”

As Loftus goes on, it’s more of the chronological snobbery that we’ve already seen and dealt with. If this is the Achilles’ heel, we are in good hands.

I hope my readers remember what I said last night. I said that when we discuss Hell, we have to make sure that we are being rational and not emotional. Let’s keep that in mind as we go through.

We start with Loftus speaking of Copan’s view as an evangelical conservative. On page 232 he says, “And while it appears Copan is trying to soften the horrors of hell, if correct, such a viw of hell is still a horrible fate for a loving God to inflict upon human beings. The punishment does not fit the crime, period. No thinking person should believe this is what our so-called “sins” deserve.

Unfortunately, there is nothing rational. There is simply an appeal to emotion. Loftus wants you to feel the way he does, and this is evident especially when he speaks about “so-called sins.” Let’s consider this though with the biblical revelation in mind and having its claim of God being who he is granted for the sake of the argument.

If God is who he is, then he is the most awesome, lovely, wonderful, beautiful, holy, etc. being that there is. All sin then is a denial of who he is. It’s an attempt to take his throne. It’s saying that he is not who he claims to be and that we are the ones who deserve that place. It’s divine treason, and I’m guilty of it everyday. Unless you live a perfect life, so are you.

What is God to do with those who commit this? Just say “boys will be boys?” It’s interesting that Loftus complains about the problem of evil so much, but when it comes to God judging and punishing evil, he complains about that as well. What does he want? God’s evil when he doesn’t do something about evil. He’s evil when he does do something about evil. Sorry Loftus. Sin is not breaking an abstract law hanging out there. It’s a violation of God’s very being.

He makes this later quote about God letting us go our own way on the same page:

“However, I find this almost absurd that the Christian God blames us for living our lives as if he didn’t exist, because there simply isn’t enough reason to believe in him over any of the other gods, or no god at all, especially when we usually adopt the religion we were born into! I furthermore find it absurd that God is so upset that we don’t acknowledge him. If he is omniscient, then he knows why we do what we do and why we believe what we do, and I fail to see how such a God cannot empathize with how we live our lives. We all do the best we can do given our environment and brain matter.”

I guess that settles it.

First off, Loftus is complaining that God is unjust. At this though, he needs a moral standard of justice. Where does he get it from? The very thing he’s complaining about is dependent on the very thing that he says doesn’t exist.

Second, he speaks of us choosing the religion we were born into. Was Loftus born into naturalism? He can’t use that excuse for his own beliefs. Also, is this justification? If I am born into a belief system that says that Hell is entirely justified, what’s Loftus to say? Is he to say I should believe it just because I was born into it? No. While we may be more prone to those beliefs, we are not locked into them. I’ve disavowed many beliefs I grew up with.

Third, God does know why we do what we do and if our reasons are no good, he knows it. If there are any excuses we could use for our sins, he knows them better than we do. C.S. Lewis has a marvelous essay on this in The Weight of Glory.

Finally, we don’t all do the best. Much of the time, we all know something is wrong and we do it anyway. If one reads Loftus’s book, it’s clear that he did this. I’ve done things I’ve known are wrong before also. I’m quite certain so have you. The point for us as Christians is that we are to repent and seek forgiveness and move on. Let’s not say we are doing our best though. We’re falling dreadfully short. (That’s what makes grace just so awesome.)

Copan also speaks of the gates of Hell being locked from the inside. Loftus thinks this is absurd. Why would someone choose the anguish of Hell? Unfortunately, Sartre said he would choose the same thing. In a work of his when he and others are in Hell and a door opens, none of them go out. They choose to acknowledge the choice of their freedom.

How would Loftus know otherwise? Is he saying he would be filled with overwhelming love for God in Hell? You want to know the joys of Heaven? The joy of Heaven is God himself. If you have hatred for God himself that you’ve built up over this lifetime, why on Earth would you want to be with him? Look at how Loftus describes God all throughout this book. He suddenly thinks it’d be a joy to be near him?

Loftus thinks if people knew the truth about God with certainty, they would change their minds. Not at all. There are many things we know the truth of any way today but do them. Many of us know that it’s wrong to cheat on our taxes, but it’s done anyway. We know it’s wrong to be lazy, but we’re lazy anyway. Also, this is the time we have to repent. We’re not promised another moment.

Loftus also uses the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. This parable is not meant to tell us about the afterlife per se. It is about how circumstances are differentiated. The Jewish person would have seen the rich man as having God’s blessing and the poor man as God’s curse. It is by seeing the afterlife that we see that that is not the case. Notice though that the rich man anyway never does repent and we have a strong statement about belief. If they do not believe Moses and the prophets, a resurrection won’t convince them either.

Loftus wants to know what if Allah exists? Sure. If Allah exists, I’m in a lot of trouble. (Taking Allah to refer to the specific Muslim deity and not simply the Arabic title for God. Christian Arabs could legitimately call God “Allah.”) Loftus says that no intelligent being would demand that we believe things about him in order to get to Heaven.

Really? How come?

Loftus says that this is an age of diversity. We tolerate many opinions. (Excepting the opinion that people should go to Hell apparently and the opinion that we shouldn’t tolerate many opinions.) I find this absolutely astounding. What you tolerate is not truth. You tolerate error. If we tolerate some beliefs, then we are saying they are false. If we don’t bother to have true beliefs about the most awesome being of all, how seriously are we taking him?

The remedy also is not simply to believe the correct things. The remedy is to believe and live them out. Even the demons believe and tremble. All Christians can indeed say with James that faith without works is dead. I am not saying that works save us, but that true faith eventually produces true works.

I said at the start that we should watch for emotional appeals. We have seen several. Unfortunately, the rational aspect was lacking. So we shall see as we continue.

This is a difficult topic to write about. It’s not because it’s a hard argument to defend rationally. I don’t think it is. It’s because there is such an emotional argument. I think Dwight L. Moody once said that you’d better not preach about Hell unless there are tears in your eyes. I also recall the day Saddam’s sons were killed and someone IMed me on PALtalk and was telling me about it and said it was such good news. My thought I told them was “It’s good that the terror they brought is at an end, but it’s sad because they’ve entered an eternity with no hope.”

That’s really my view. I don’t believe in Hell because I like it. I don’t. I believe in Hell simply because I believe the Bible teaches it and then of course, my Lord teaches it, and if I believe that they teach it, then I, as a Christian, am obligated to agree. I believe it’s just and I believe it’s proper. It does not mean I enjoy the thought of it. Still, I will defend the doctrine. We start by the three options Loftus gives us on Hell.

I will agree with the first view. Hell is not described literally any more than Heaven is described literally. I believe the fires and the worms described indicate a greater reality. They indicate the judgment of God. The remains of sacrifices would be eaten up by worms and the garbage of Jerusalem would be burned at Gehenna, which is where we get our word for Hell.

Hell is a cosmic dump basically. It’s where humans go when they cease to fulfill their potential. It is where God ultimately leaves people alone granting them their wish. C.S. Lewis was one of the best writers on this topic and I highly recommend people read The Great Divorce and the Hell chapter in the Problem of Pain. (For contrast of course, read the Heaven chapter as well. Peter Kreeft’s book of “Heaven: The Heart’s Deepest Longing” is the best book I have ever read on Heaven.)

What about Annihilationism? I don’t believe that simply because I do not see my Lord teaching it. I see Hell in the Bible consistently as conscious punishment. Is language of destruction used? Yes. That language though more refers to ruin than the cessation of existence.

I also believe God is a respecter of the free choices of man and those who hold his image. He will let them live with the choice that they have made rather than destroy that which is good, which is his image. I see passages where the duration of Heaven and Hell are placed alongside each other and both are seen as unending. I also see people described as gnashing teeth in Hell, a picture of great sorrow, indicating consciousness. (For the record, I do not see the parable of the rich man and Lazarus as giving us the furniture of the afterlife but contrasting the view that rich people have the blessing of God and the poor have the curse of God.)

Lastly, there is Loftus’s view that it doesn’t exist. It developed among superstitious and barbaric people.

Now was the idea of Hell developed rather late in biblical chronology? Yes it was. I believe though there are shades of it, but there was never a need to expound nor really a place to do so. The message was simply on getting Israel back on track in the now and not on track for what was to be in the future aside from the coming of the Messiah.

Of course, readers know the real argument will be on the emotional appeal and how this is unjust. We shall look at that tomorrow.

Today, we finally conclude this section and tomorrow, that means we start looking at Hell. So how does Loftus wrap up his argument on prophecy?

Loftus is correct that the prophets were the ones that wrote “Thus sayeth the Lord” and others didn’t really do that. Is there any doubt in Jewish thought though that the words were not the words of God? There was no need to say it there. The prophets were saying it because they were standing out and announcing in the face of false prophets that they were giving the words of the Lord. Their writings weren’t seen as Scripture unless their prophecies came true.

Now we agree that prophecies are conditional in the sense that if people respond, God will not send his judgment. (Or if they are promised blessing and turn, he will not send it.) I don’t see the problem this poses with Deuteronomy 18. There would be prophecies that would clearly be seen as fixed. Some things did take place and the cases where they didn’t are the ones we do see a change on the part of the people.

We are told also that the OT prophecies weren’t much. They could be made by a newspaper columnist of the time. My thought to that is “Name one that would have been made that way.” I especially think of the destruction of Tyre being prophesied. What newspaper columnist in Judah would also write that the temple would fall to the Babylonians?

Loftus also wants to know that if God is telling the future, why not talk about DNA or a global network of computers? This is an argument from Sam Harris.

Right. God should have made prophecies centered on our time just to satisfy curiosity. Why would the church carry around a manuscript for 2,000 years talking about DNA? It would have been seen as nonsense by the church.

If the skeptics do not accept what is given, they won’t accept something else.

And it seems Loftus pretty much argues here the way he usually does. He’s started out with a weak case based on theology, thinking he’s trumped all others he gives a mild look at biblical prophecy, following that, he gives a small small small scattering of interpretations of the OT in the NT, and then thinks he’s refuted his case.

It doesn’t take a prophet to know we’re not convinced.

In our third look at this chapter, we are going to be doing exegesis today and looking at how the NT uses the prophecies of the OT. Of course, this constantly changes in skeptical circles. First, the prophecies are changed to make it look like Jesus is the Messiah, then the prophecies are misinterpreted, then the fulfillments are written after the fact, etc.

Now Loftus is sure that he’s shown the Virgin Birth and incarnation to be nonsense and that not even God can predict the future. For the first part, he hasn’t. For the second, we’ll have to look and see for there are several of these that the more we study them, the easier it is to say that prophecy has been fulfilled. Loftus wants to play the card that the verses were taken out of context. We’ll see as we move along.

Loftus complains about the Psalms. King David though believed that the Holy Spirit was speaking through him even in his prayers. (2 Samuel 23:2) I have no problem believing God guided the praises of his people somehow any more than I have a problem believing that God guided the thinking of Paul and the other writers of the epistles.

Psalm 2 is next on the list. It’s a hope. Yes. That’s correct. That assumes though that a hope can have no predictive fulfillment at all. It’s not an either/or. Psalm 110 is another one which was also seen strongly as messianic in Jewish circles of the time. David is speaking about someone who is greater than he, and this is obviously going beyond his son Solomon.

A humorous example is that Jesus is riding both a donkey and a colt in Matthew 21:2 based upon a misunderstanding of Zechariah 9:9. First off, the passage is actually Matthew 21:7. Secondly, hear what Craig Blomberg says about this passage in the New American Commentary on Matthew.

“The second ‘them’ in verse 7 has as its nearest antecedent in Greek the ‘cloaks’ of which probably more than one were put on each donkey, so there is little or no justification here for the common accusation that Matthw has created an absurd picture of Jesus straddling two animals.”

Please note that all it took was just a couple of minutes with a commentary to find a good explanation for what Loftus finds so unbelievable. Let’s also give the ancients the benefit of the doubt. They would know that one man could not straddle two animals like that at once. These people were probably much more familiar with animals than we are.

The next one we’ll cover is Matthew 2:14-15 with “Out of Egypt, I called my son.” Matthew is accused of misusing the text.

This is simply pesher interpretation which was accepted. Matthew sees Jesus as a new Israel as it were and sees the history of Israel taking place again in Christ. Let’s also consider this with Matthew. He’s writing to convince Jews, and these are Jews that do know their old testament. He’s not going to make a huge blunder like Loftus accuses him of if he’s trying to do that. Now we can say he’s wrong in his interpretation if we want, but let us not say he was ignorant of the OT. This is the same type in the use of Jeremiah with the slaying of the children in Bethlehem.

The last one is Matthew 2:22-23. This is one of my favorites as it talks about the word fulfilled through the prophets that he would be called a Nazarene. There is no direct text. I agree. However, when I studied this once, I noticed something. Every other time, Matthew speaks of “the prophet.” Here, he says, “The prophets.” What’s the point? I think Matthew is trying to show that according to the prophets, the Messiah would be lowly and rejected and Nazarene fits in quite well with that.

Now Loftus is upset about this saying that we wouldn’t use this method today or interpret by it. Oh my. Does anybody remember Loftus talking about the Outsider test and how one needs to begin with the worldview one is examining and understand it from their perspective? Apparently, the Outsider test doesn’t apply when it’s a worldview opposed to atheism.

It’s amazing that in all of this, only a few prophecies are seen. A websearch could give a list of several prophecies that were fulfilled in Christ. A key one would be to go to Daniel 9 and see how Jesus came at the exact time. I also think it’s convincing to look at Matthew 24 and see how Jesus accurately prophecied the destruction of Jerusalem. (So accurately most people think it was written after the fact!)

We shall conclude this section tomorrow.

This will be a short one again. I’m only going to cover a couple of pages. I was out late tonight with some friends from Seminary seeing the movie “Expelled.” I’ll go on and say that I think it’s excellent and everyone else should see it. I want to see it again. However, since I’ve done that, it is late and I am tired so I want to only write on a little portion to do due justice.

Thus, we’re only going to be talking about what prophecy means in a biblical sense. Not the discussion of usages of various prophecies or whether they’ve been fulfilled necessarily or not. It’s simply going to be that how does prophecy relate to the idea of God biblically?

First off, we are told that the Bible says God is eternal. This does not mean though that God always existed or always will exist.

Really?

I’m afraid I don’t know of any other definition of eternal. Now you can make it mean something else I suppose, but it sure would not be eternal. Does the Bible compare God’s existence to man’s existence? Yes it does. It’s done to show how small man is compared to the utter greatness that is God.

I do agree that before and after doesn’t apply to God. How does he act in time then? I’m not sure why this is a problem. I don’t really view it as God being outside of time so much as time being as it were kind of inside of God. There is nothing outside of God in a sense. Because he exists, all else that exists exists. It’s hard for us to imagine of course, but that is a far cry from saying that it cannot be done.

God is said to be unchanging but in those same passages, he is also described as repenting or changing his mind often. What is the case then? One is an anthropomorphism and one isn’t. The one that is describing actions is most likely anthropomorphic. Now we have a quote of Pinnock saying God should be like a dancer responding to us.

He is!

He is eternally responding to us. Every moment I’m at, God is eternally there and eternally giving me all of his love and grace. God eternally knows my heart and thoughts. When I turn to him, he is always there and when he gives his blessing to me, he has always been doing such. It is a far greater God than the God of Pinnock.

As for Impassibility, what’s so hard about that? God is not passive in his emotions. He’s active in them and they’re eternally in accord with his nature. God is not acted on. He is the actor. We are often subject to what goes on around us in our emotions. God is not like that. God is unchanging in his essence and is always acting in accordance with that essence.

Loftus tells us that God cannot know out future free-will choices. No reason is given why though. If God is in eternity, it would seem he can. Loftus wants to ask other questions like “Can God create a rock so big that he can’t lift it?” This answer goes back to Gary Habermas, but I’d like to pass it on to you all. It’s the most profound answer I know to that question.

“No.”

Now we’re ready to move on.

Loftus says that even from a biblical perspective, predictive prophecy can be explained in three ways.

#1-God is telling what he plans to do.

We can agree to a point. However, this is only if God has perfect knowledge of the future. Anything less and there is no agreement.

#2-God knows people so well he can predict what they’ll do and since he knows them so well, he can predict what they’ll do.

Which obviously includes knowing what they’ll name their kids (Cyrus) or where they’ll give birth (Bethlehem) or when or other such details.

#3-It’s a warning and conditional and thus based on human nature.

Please note this. Jonah is mentioned here as an example of how it’s conditional. Please note on page 125 Loftus says that since Jonah’s prediction didn’t come true, then can we really say Jonah was a true prophet? He then tells us there to see his section on prophecy and biblical authority and there, he makes the exact opposite argument that the prophecy can be conditional.
Talk about talking out of both sides of one’s mouth….

You really have to wonder…

And wonder we shall until tomorrow night when we continue.

Hello all my readers again. We will be going through this section in parts. The first part will be the problem itself of prediction. Can God predict the future of free-will human beings? I think at this time of Ravi Zacharias’s quip of “Prediction is always hard to do. Especially about the future.” Is it hard for God though? Let’s find out. (And of course readers, I am no open theist.)

The first question is how does God know the future. One answer Loftus gives is that he sovereignly decrees or determines what will happen. This is not my worldview so I will not be defending that aspect. If a Calvinist that holds to that wishes to do so, then let them. Already though, I think there could be a sense of hyper-Calvinism here instead.

I would instead hold to a timeless God in eternity. We can’t even say God sees the present from his perspective as Loftus does. God sees all things at once in an eternal now. It is true that 2005 B.C. and A.D. are simultaneous in God’s eyes but not in ours. How is this a problem? We are temporal and so bound by time it is hard for us to see outside of it.

The idea of a timeless God assumes all change is bad or good we are told. We want a watch to change to reflect the correct time after all. Yes. We want it to change to reflect that time. That is a change for the better. If it stops reflecting that time, that is a change for the worse. The change is more continuous in the former, but the watch is still changing.

And if God is completely perfect, then how can he change? Can he gain a perfection he did not have before? Then he was not perfect. Can he go to less perfect? Then he is no longer perfect. Either way, there is no need for change, especially if the case is that God is pure actuality. If he is pure actuality, then he has no potential and is incapable of change.

We are told when God began to create the universe, he changed. This is begging the question. To say that God began to do something is assuming that God is linear and in time. God is eternally creating the universe and eternally judging the world. He is actively doing all things at once in an eternal now. You might say you have a hard time grasping such a thing. Join the club.

We are told that to say that God has no new thoughts, does nothing new, or thinks nothing new has him static. Not at all. He’s totally dynamic. He is constantly in action. That action is simply always ongoing. He need not think new thoughts. He eternally has all thoughts going through his mind.  He does not need new thoughts to think. He thinks constantly on all that is knowledge.

The other arguments are views that I do not hold. The first is more open theist and the other is just that God has it innately because he is omniscient. If others hold these views and wish to defend them, fine. Let them do so. I see no need to defend the truth of a view I do not hold. If a view is misrepresented, that is one thing. If not though, then I will not defend it.

We shall see some of how this works on Scripture tomorrow.

And now we come to the devil. What about him? Is he different in the OT than in the NT?

It can be granted the OT doesn’t say much about Satan. Why should it really? It was about the preparation of the coming of the Messiah. The Jews did not have a Satanology nor would they really need one. Of course, writings in the Apocryphal period and in the DSS do feature an evil figure opposed to God and when Jesus is on the scene, he is not making up terminology with Satan. (Or Hell for some who wonder.)

There are a few places. In Zechariah 3, we read about the adversary accusing Joshua before God. It must be granted also that the word “Adversary” does not always apply to Satan. We would have no problem accepting that. Just like any other word, the context will make clear how it should be understood. (An interesting read from the liberal perspective on this is Elaine Pagels’s “The Origins of Satan.”)

Now we are told that YHWH can be translated to mean “He causes to happen what happens.” I would like to see more on this. Our stance here is that God allows at least all that happens. God is not the immediate cause of evil in the world, for instance, although he has allowed for evil to exist and yes, we will later be dealing with the problem of evil and focusing on natural evil.

The census of David is mentioned here, but there is merit to the interpretation that it’s the adversaries of Israel that cause David to do this and not necessarily a celestial adversary. Even if it is, I have no problem with God allowing Satan to do such a thing. It would seem the texts of Samuel and Chronicles can be easily reconciled either way.

As for the garden, I have seen no reason to read it as a parable. It could be that Satan did possess a snake somehow or that Satan was described as a snake.

I do agree also that Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 do not refer to Satan.

So let us go straight to the end as we simply have the usual canard of Satan coming from Zoroastrianism. It would have been nice to have seen some evidence but none is given. Loftus wants to know how an intelligent being like Satan could be in the presence of God and still choose to rebel? That would be a stupid being.

Quite simple. He was not in the presence of God. He had not yet been granted to see all the glory of God. Once he made his choice though for his own glory over God’s, then he was sealed for all eternity. When an angel chooses who he will serve, there is no changing. Let us hope some humans though who have the option of changing and are serving the other side do change their minds while they can.

We are finally on a different chapter and for this one, Loftus wants to discuss the Pharisees. Were they that bad? Now if we mean that these were evil men lurking in the shadows waiting to stomp on anyone who disagreed with them, then no. They weren’t. By and large, most Pharisees were simply ordinary citizens who had a certain view of the Torah and went about their own way. Ironically, I don’t see a mention of the historicity of the Pharisees starting out in the apocryphal writings.

I’d also like to note that Loftus is wanting us to understand the Pharisees. I have no problem with doing such. I just wonder if he’s willing to extend the same grace to the Christians in the Crusades. Are we going to say that they weren’t that bad or are they immediately going to be seen as blood-thirsty warriors who sought to kill all who disagreed?

Now I won’t say either that I think all the Crusades were justified or all that happened in them was. I do believe there is some justification for some of the activity that went on and I’m sure many of the Crusaders were men who thought that they were doing right by going and freeing the holy land of Jerusalem from the hands of the Muslims.

Enough about that. Let’s look at the Pharisees and what Loftus tells us about them.

First, they were patriots. Loftus tells us that they fought for the independence of Jerusalem years earlier. They were largely middle-class and the power they had depended on who was king at the time. They were respected by the people at the time and they were intent on living separatist lives from society. (Though certainly not as much as the Essenes.) They were zealous for the rabbinic traditions.

Second, they were indeed men of the book. These people knew the Tanakh backwards and forwards. This is something we need to grasp when we see how Jesus responded with them and said “Have you not read?” when speaking of the OT. This would have been seen as an insult to the Pharisees. They were, however, quite strict in their interpretation of the Law.

Examples Loftus gives are handwashing and the Sabbath. What is written is quite interesting and does show the point. Loftus wishes to make a caveat though. “It would be a mistake to think that the Pharisees were consciously trying to make life more burdensome for people.” (P. 217) I agree. I don’t think the Pharisees sat down with ill intent to think of ways to make life more miserable for people through the law. However, intent doesn’t tell whether something is right or wrong.

Next, Loftus gives the areas of content. The first is between the oral law and the written law. Jesus saw the oral traditions handed down as burdensome to the people. Again, while the Pharisees did not intend such, it is quite likely that that had happened. Jesus wanted to return to the law itself for them and reminded them that the externals of the law were not enough.

This gets us to the second point in fact. The Pharisees focused on external purity while Jesus emphasized internal purity. I don’t think though, if we considered this statement, that anyone would prefer people have external purity over internal purity. I disagree though that Jesus judged their motives. He judged their actions. The statements he makes in Matthew 23 refer not to the hearts of the Pharisees but their actions, like the oaths and the adding onto the law and the building of tombs for the prophets.

Lastly, the Pharisees wanted to separate themselves from the sinners. Jesus was a friend to them though and his reason was simple. He came not to call the righteous but sinners. In their defense, Loftus says they wanted to associate with people who fulfilled the law. Well and good. I would hope we would want to associate with godly people as Christians. I would hope though we would want to associate with ungodly as well though. That is the only way we are going to be salt and light to them after all.

Perchance, it would be easier to see the reason the Pharisees acted the way they did is not because of who the Pharisees were but who Jesus was. Jesus shocked the very social system of his time and that was not something the Pharisees were taking lightly. There was tremendous religious and political turmoil where Jesus went due to his nature and teachings.

Let us reconsider where the problem lies. It is not with our view of the Pharisees. It is with our view of Christ. Until we realize how revolutionary he was, how much of him have we really grasped?

Rejoice everyone! We are ending this section on the resurrection! (Also note that when the gospels end on the resurrection, that’s cause of rejoicing as well.)

To begin with, Loftus has Spong offering up a reconstruction of what might have happened after the death of Christ. Loftus does say that Spong emphasizes that it is conjecture. Let this be noted though friends. Apparently, Spong can conjecture. When a Christian though tries to harmonize the resurrection accounts, we suddenly can’t make conjectures. History is just unknowable then.

What is it? Why Peter had a vision after his dejection over seeing his teacher crucified and all hopes for the Messiah destroyed. He takes this vision to the other disciples and they go to the feast of tabernacles and from there, the story unfolds. Other voices chime in on this idea saying that over time, the accounts just became more and more legendary until there’s a physical resurrection.

It’s a nice conjecture, but is there any reason to believe it? Is there any reason to believe that Peter and the others would have a vision and believe Jesus was resurrected and base their lives on that while knowing there was a tomb with a body nearby? (The hallucination theory cannot be held in isolation. It has to be combined with some explanation of the empty tomb.)

Not in those days. No Jew would abandon the central tenets of their faith for a new movement unless they were absolutely convinced that it was true. They also would not take a crucified messiah, who would be said to be under God’s curse, and rally to him as their leader. N.T. Wright makes an excellent point here in his work “The Resurrection of the Son of God”, that if they had wanted a new Messiah figure, the logical choice would have been James, the brother of Jesus.

This theory doesn’t explain James either! How do you explain him and Paul converting? It would take more than a psychological experience for someone to suddenly believe that their brother was the Messiah, and even more God. What about Paul? Why would he suddenly leave behind what he’d grown up with and embrace the faith he tried to destroy? These kinds of theories rely on psychology more than facts.

Loftus gives us the real reason for his buying these theories. He says “The sum total of my modern life experience is that truly dead bodies stay dead.” (p.215) Oh really? That’s your experience? You actually think most of us in this world have a different one? Do you really think for a moment that the ancients as well had a different one?

There’s something to be noted. Even if you don’t think the tomb was empty, you can believe Jesus was buried. Now why would they bury Jesus? It’s the same reason they buried anyone. They were dead! They did not expect for dead people to come back to life again. (For Jews, at least not until the final resurrection at the age of the Messiah.)

This is where I’m just stunned at what I see. If you want to come up with theories to counter the resurrection, all right. Go ahead. However, don’t give us this nonsense of dead people stay dead as if we don’t know that. We know it and we expect it. We bury our own dead as well. Barring the second coming of Christ, I’ll be buried someday as well and I don’t expect to come out until the second coming.

That concludes our look at the resurrection. Tomorrow, we shall go to the next section.