Gregory Koukl's Blog, page 129
July 9, 2013
Is the Bible Legend?
C.S. Lewis, who was a literary scholar long before he was a Christian, makes the scholarly point that the Gospel accounts read nothing like legend or myth. Some critics compare them to historical fiction, but Lewis also points out that that is a fairly modern genre of literature that was unknown until about 400 years ago. Lewis wrote:
I have been reading poems, romances, vision literature, legends, and myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know none of them are like this. Of this text, there are only two possible views. either this is reportage...or else, someone unknown writer...without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern novelistic, realistic narrative...The reader who doesn't see this has simply not learned how to read.
Claiming the Gospels are myth has become popular among atheists recently, but there's a very good reason why experts have never treated the Bible as myth or historical fiction. Literary scholars know the difference between myth and eyewitness accounts. Whether they believe them is different matter. They recognize the characteristics and note the differences.
Timothy Keller makes a number of other observations that count toward the Bible's early historicity. (from Gospel Christianity 1.0 Participants Guide)
Legends are written down long after events they allegedly recount; Mark and Luke wrote just 30-40 years after Jesus' death. All of the Gospels were written in the lifetimes of those who witnessed Jesus.
Jesus' miracles couldn't have been invented in early accounts. Events like Jesus feeding thousands would have been contradicted by eyewitnesses still living.
The Gospels include counter-productive details that wouldn't have been made up if the goal was to promote their message. Jesus expresses a desire to avoid the cross, cries out that God has forsaken Him.
The literary form is detailed in a way legend is not. For example, John 21 mentions 153 fish caught.
Greg takes a close look at the claims that the Gospel mimic other deity myths. The claim just doesn't hold up to fact.
July 8, 2013
Moral Velocitization and Taking the Roof Off (Video)
July 5, 2013
Why It’s Important to Inoculate (Rather Than Isolate) Our Young People
Last Sunday, after the morning church service, I picked my daughter up from the youth ministry where she was still visiting with her pastor, his wife and their two baby daughters. The twins are five months old and were sleeping peacefully in their strollers, even though the room was filled with activity. Students were running back and forth, laughing with one another and playing the worship instruments on the stage. Music was blaring through the PA system and one student was even pounding on the drum set. Through all of this, the babies seemed undeterred. They slept as though they were nestled in the corner of a quiet library. Their mother, Rachael, noticed my interest and said, “Don’t worry about them, they can sleep through anything, they’ve been in this group since the day they were born. They’re used to the noise.” I struck me that Rachael’s babies were a great example of our need to inoculate Christian students rather than isolate them from the noise of our culture.
As a parent of teens, a former youth pastor and now a Christian Case Maker, I’ve given this issue a lot of thought over the years, especially after my first year as a youth leader. In my early years in youth ministry, I witnessed the spiritual exodus of many of my students once they graduated from our youth group. I had to make a decision about my strategy going forward. How could I best prepare young people to face the challenges of the secular culture? Should I equip them with strategies to isolate themselves from the influences they would ultimately face, or would it be better to expose them to the cultural challenges from the onset? Should we encourage isolation or embrace inoculation? I think you probably know my preference. Youth pastors need to think of themselves as “inoculators”; we possess the one true cure that can protect our students from the hazards of the culture. Have we been preparing them in our ministries or simply pacifying them? If we want to move from “entertaining” to “intentional training,” we’re going to need to become good inoculators:
Good Inoculators Prepare Their Inoculation
Inoculations are created from small quantities of the virus we are trying to treat. We expose patients to the virus in a limited, controlled way to allow their immune systems to develop the antibodies necessary to fight the virus should they encounter it more robustly in the future. If we are trying to help students resist the lies of the culture, we’re going to need to prepare an inoculation that exposes them to the secular worldview.
Good Inoculators Have Supply On Hand
Doctors can’t provide an inoculation unless they have a supply from which to draw. If we want to inoculate our students from the false teaching of the culture, we’re going to have to stock up our dispensaries with all the training materials necessary for the task. This means many of us, as youth pastors are going to need to start training ourselves so we will have a deep well from which to draw. We’re going to have to become good Christian Case Makers if we hope to be good inoculators.
Good Inoculators Treat Prior to Exposure
Inoculations are useless once the patient have been exposed to the virus. Inoculations must precede exposure in order to be effective. That’s why we need to start training young Christians very early in order to help them resist the influences of the culture. You might not think junior-highers are capable of (or even interested in) Christian Case Making, but you’re wrong. If we take an approach that is accessible and relevant, we can engage young people on the toughest issues facing us as Christians.
Good Inoculators Are Careful About Dosage
Doctors use a very small dose in order to train the body to resist greater exposure. We need to do something similar as we train young people to resist errant thinking. Start small; begin training logic and critical thinking. Then move on the evidences that support our beliefs as Christians. Finally, begin to address the claims of the culture and the objections to the Christian worldview. Begin modestly, but allow yourself time to eventually address the most critical and vigorous objections. Be careful not to create straw men you can easily overcome; represent the opposing views faithfully and richly. Then take the time to demonstrate the fallacies.
Young people are going to encounter doubts about their Christian worldview. All of us have questions at one time or another. It was my goal as a youth pastor to make sure my students didn’t encounter a single objection in their secular environment they didn’t first encounter (and address) in my youth ministry. I tried to make sure my students weren’t surprised by anything a professor or fellow student might offer. I wanted my students to be fully inoculated and prepared to make a case for Christianity and be a good ambassador for Christ; to stand confidently in a noisy world, just like Rachael’s babies. I knew I couldn’t accomplish that by isolating and entertaining them. Instead I tried to expose my students to the cultural “noise” in an effort to inoculate and train them.
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Conscience and Its Enemies
Robert P. George, the brilliant Princeton philosopher, talks about the eroding worldview that our freedoms and ethics are built on. He says we're "drawing down our moral capitol," and warns that we'll run out of it if we don't do something soon to rebuild the foundational principles that rights and freedoms are founded on. As the Declaration of Independence grounded it, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
You can listen to an interview with George about his new book Conscience and Its Enemies.
July 3, 2013
Late-term Abortion
Here's a recording of the counseling a woman received who went in for a late-term abortion - what she was told about the procedure and what to expect. The callousness with which they discuss killing the baby is disturbing. In fact, they repeatedly refer to the baby as "the pregnancy." They also dissemble when the woman asks about the baby experiencing pain, which babies clearly do by 20 weeks.
(HT: Challies)
Atheists Should Accept the Grim Truth Wherever They Find It
In an article in The Guardian titled “Yes,
life without God can be bleak. Atheism is about facing up to that,” Julian
Baggini argues that atheists shouldn’t hide the fact that life without God can
be “pretty grim”:
[T]here's an…important reason why
we should not choose a word that is "positive, warm, cheerful" [to
brand atheism]: although many atheists are all those things, atheism itself is
none of them….
Atheists should point out that life
without God can be meaningful, moral and happy. But that's "can" not
"is" or even "should usually be." And that means it can
just as easily be meaningless, nihilistic and miserable.
Atheists have to live with the
knowledge that there is no salvation, no redemption, no second chances. Lives
can go terribly wrong in ways that can never be put right…. Not much bright
about that fact.
Stressing the jolly side of atheism
not only glosses over its harsher truths, it also disguises its unique selling
point. The reason to be an atheist is not that it makes us feel better or gives
us a more rewarding life. The reason to be an atheist is simply that there is
no God and we would prefer to live in full recognition of that, accepting the
consequences, even if it makes us less happy. The more brutal facts of life are
harsher for us than they are for those who have a story to tell in which it all
works out right in the end and even the most horrible suffering is part of a
mystifying divine plan. If we don't freely admit this, then we've betrayed the
commitment to the naked truth that atheism has traditionally embraced.
And on the “more disturbing” “threat of moral nihilism”:
Anyone who thinks it's easy to
ground ethics either hasn't done much moral philosophy or wasn't concentrating
when they did…. In an atheist universe, morality can be rejected without
external sanction at any point, and without a clear, compelling reason to believe
in its reality, that's exactly what will sometimes happen.
So I think it's time we atheists
'fessed up and admitted that life without God can sometimes be pretty grim.
I respect very much Baggini’s desire to accept the
consequences of truth and live in light of reality, no matter the cost. But I
think he’s mistaken about this desire being unique to atheists, and
consequently, about this being a selling point, because of course religious
people who similarly care about truth also desire to “live in full recognition”
of the truth about reality, accepting the consequences.
Being convinced that the Christian God exists, we accept the
truth of our sinfulness, the reality of God’s justice and wrath, the existence
of Hell, and our need for redemption through the sacrifice of Christ. And yet,
it is the atheists’ distaste for these very things that they often use to argue
against Christianity.
If atheists want to make their selling point the fact that
they have “traditionally embraced” a “commitment to the naked truth,” whatever
it is, however disturbing, then let them live out this principle when it comes
to assessing Christianity. The question of whether or not God is a monster, or
Hell is unjust, or Jesus was despicable,
or the cross was child abuse shouldn’t enter into the discussion at all until
they determine whether or not these things reflect reality. If, according to
atheists, a distaste for reality (including a non-moral reality) has no bearing
on whether or not a person ought to accept it—and it is, in fact, a selling point to accept a “grim” truth
one finds distasteful—then they shouldn’t allow their distaste for Christianity
to play a part in their arguments.
When they can’t assess Christianity in a way that’s
consistent with their proclaimed principle, it starts to look like they’re more
committed to accepting atheism at any cost than they are committed to accepting
truth at any cost.
July 2, 2013
Monument to Atheism
Atheists dedicated a monument to atheists outside a Florida courthouse in order to "balance" the religious monument there. In our current age, this is a compromise fine by me so that we can keep religious monuments in the public square. Better to have everyone represented than to have religion banished from public view.
When I heard about this yesterday, before I even read the details in this story, I anticipated that the atheist monument would not be able to state what atheism is for without taking a swipe at theism. After all, that the typical MO these days of aggressive atheists. They misrepresent theism in order to make it seem simplistic and dumb. And true to form, here's what this monument says:
An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty banished, war eliminated.
Of course, these are all false dichotomies. Christians don't build churches instead of hospitals. Christians have built both, and have brought medical care to people who never received it otherwise. Christians don't pray instead of engaging in good to others. God requires both from us, and the Bible condemns empty faith without works that testify to faith. The rest is just false, too.
Monuments usually state positively what view it stands for. Christian monuments typically do this without taking potshots at other views. It's fine with me if atheists have their monuments, but it would be preferable if they could make them without misrepresenting.
No Live Webcast Today
Texas Abortion Law
The filibuster in the Texas legislature over the abortion legislation has overshadowed what the law is actually meant to do. One of the primary things the proposed law would do is ban late-term abortions (i.e. D&X abortions) that occur after the 20th week of gestation. Not only are these children usually viable outside the womb, they feel pain, and the procedure is more like infanticide than abortion. Greg describes the procedure in question here. And by the way, a large majority of Americans think late-term abortions should be illegal.
Reading the Bible through the Lens of Your Desire
John Shelby Spong (retired American Bishop of the Episcopal Church) recently wrote an article for the Huffington Post, promoting his new book, The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic. Spong made several dramatic claims about the Gospel of John:
1) There is no way that the Fourth Gospel was written by John Zebedee or by any of the disciples of Jesus.
2) There is probably not a single word attributed to Jesus in this book that the Jesus of history actually spoke.
3) Not one of the signs (the Fourth Gospel's word for miracles) recorded in this book was, in all probability, something that actually happened.
4) Many of the characters who appear in the pages of the Fourth Gospel are literary creations of its author and were never intended to be understood as real people, who actually lived in history.
5) John's Gospel seems to ridicule anyone who might read this book as a work of literal history.
6) The Gospel also exaggerates its details to counter any attempt to read it literally.
These are emphatic and theatrical claims. Spong concludes his article with this revealing statement:
The Council of Nicea in 325 C.E. leaned on the Fourth Gospel as literal history in order to formulate the creeds and ultimately to undergird such doctrines as the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity. The texts used to support that creedal development, my studies have led me to affirm, have nothing to do with an external God entering humanity in the person of Jesus, but are rather attempts to describe the experience of the human breaking the boundaries of consciousness and entering into the transformation available inside a sense of a mystical oneness with God. If that is so, then the Fourth Gospel has the potential to become the primary biblical source upon the basis of which Christianity can be changed dramatically to speak with radical freshness to the 21st century. Christianity is not about the divine becoming human so much as it is about the human becoming divine. That is a paradigm shift of the first order.
Spong ends his article with a paragraph that betrays the way he started his investigation. It’s difficult to understand how any plain reading of the New Testament Gospels (any of the Gospels) would lead one to believe “Christianity is not about the divine becoming human so much as it is about the human becoming divine.” But if this is your starting point, it’s possible to twist and distort the history of the text to make a case (even if that case is unreasonable). This is precisely what Spong has done. Eleven years ago, Spong wrote a book entitled, A New Christianity for a New World: Why Traditional Faith Is Dying and How a New Faith Is Being Born. Spong argued Christian doctrine needed to be reformed in order to bring it into alignment with the modern world:
1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.
2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.
3. The Biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ’s divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
7. Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.
9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.
10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.
12. All human beings bear God’s image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one’s being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.
Spong clearly finds the core teachings of Christianity to be offensive, particularly in light of the values and sensibilities of the world in which he lives. This has been his position for over a decade. If you reject any “external, objective, revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time,” you will, by necessity, find yourself rejecting Jesus “as the incarnation of the theistic deity,” and believe that the “Biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.” Jesus, after all, affirmed the teaching of the Old Testament; if you reject the Old Testament Law, you’ll also need to reject Jesus.
The first rule of investigations (as I describe in my book) is to control your presuppositions. Don’t let a presumption about your suspect change the direction of your investigation; instead, let the evidence lead you where it may. Spong’s presuppositional desires for a “less offensive” Christianity have changed the direction of his investigation. He’s reading the Bible through the lens of this desire and arriving at conclusions that are not supported by the evidence. There is a lesson we can learn from Spong. Truth is often offensive. The right or true way isn’t always the way that feels good, and Christianity has a long and rich history of speaking truth to power, regardless of cultural acceptance. Paul understood the offensive nature of Christian claims; they weren’t even popular in Paul’s day. But Paul, like the other apostles, refused to allow his fallen human nature dictate his interpretation of God’s Word. As Christian Case Makers, we also need to recognize the danger of trying to sanitize the truth in an appeal to desire.
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