Gregory Koukl's Blog, page 146

Links Mentioned on the Show

The following are links that were either mentioned on this week's show or inspired by it, as posted live on the @STRtweets Twitter feed:

In Search of Christian Vertebrates by Bill Muehlenberg


Tactics in Defending the Faith – DVD Curriculum by Greg Koukl 



TrueU: Does God Exist? – DVD Curriculum


TrueU: Is the Bible Reliabile? – DVD Curriculum


SeanMcDowell.org – Apologetics resources and curriculum suggestions


Frank Beckwith on why "pulling the plug" on a brain dead person is not analogous to abortion (the full article can be found here)


Andy Steiger of Apologetics Canada


Brett Kunkle's apologetics mission trips (see a video about them )


Confident Christianity – Mary Jo Sharp's apologetics website


Why Do You Believe That? A Faith Conversation by Mary Jo Sharp

Listen to today's show or download any  show for free.

Why the Trinity Is So Important in the First Place

I’ve been writing this week about the truth of the triune nature of God, so I thought it might be appropriate to list a few reasons why this doctrine (commonly called the Trinity) is so important. It is certainly true that according to the claims of Christianity, salvation actually requires the triune God of the Bible. As believers, our redemption is originated by the Father (see Galatians 4:4), achieved through His Son (see 1 Peter 3:18), and then applied by the Spirit (see Titus 3:5). Every member of the Trinity has a role to play. But there are a few other reasons why the Trinity is important to those of us who call ourselves Christians:

The Trinity Accounts for the Description of Evidence
The Bible describes the existence of one true God, yet also attributes the characteristics of this God to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit individually. The Biblical evidence requires us to seek a solution that acknowledges the singularity of God while respecting the Deity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For this reason, the Trinity is not a creative whim, it is an effective solution.

The Trinity Accounts for the Derivation of Love
God is love (I John 4:8) and He has been love from all eternity. How could this be possible if God could ever exist without someone to love? Did God create humans so He could experience love? Was this the first time that God experienced relational love of this nature? The Triune nature of God explains why love is an innate quality of God; the three eternal Persons of the Godhead are in eternal relationship with one another.

The Trinity Accounts for the Deity of Jesus
This is often over looked, but make no mistake about it: all deviations from historical Trinitarianism have compromised the eternal divine nature of Jesus. It’s that simple. The Early Church Councils corrected the errors of Adoptionism (2nd Century), Docetism (2nd Century), Monarchianism (2nd and 3rd Century), Sabellianism (3rd Century), Arianism (4th Century), and Socinianism (16th and 17th Century). In addition to these historic mischaracterizations of the triune nature of God, there are several current mischaracterizations, including the polytheism of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and the denial of the Trinity present in many Unitarian groups, including the Christadelphians. When the Trinity is denied, Jesus is typically demoted from divinity or subjugated as a lessor being.

All worldviews (including theistic worldviews) have distinctive beliefs that characterize and distinguish them from other ways of viewing the world. Christianity is no different. When it comes to the nature of God, Trinitarianism is a Christian distinctive for several very good reasons.

A Gift for Your Support for STR

Support STR this month with a donation and you can request a copy of J. Warner Wallace's new book "Cold Case Christianity" as STR's gift to you.

When Greg wrote his review of Jim’s new book, here’s how he summed it up:  "Cold
Case Christianity is simply the most clever and compelling defense I’ve
ever read for the reliability of the New Testament record.  Case closed."

Radio Sunday

Clear-thinking Christianity is live on the air Sunday 2-5 p.m. P.T. with J. Warner Wallace manning the mic.  Call with your questions or comments. Jim will talk with Mary Jo Sharp, author of Why Do You BelieveThat?

live on the air or stream it on the STR app or online. Follow STRtweets during the program and use #STRtalk to engage other listeners.

Challenge Response: God Doesn't Teach Children to Be Good

Here is my response to this week's challenge, "God Doesn't Teach Children to Be Good." 

 

Pluralism & Christianity

One of the most offensive claims of Christianity to modern people is that Jesus is the only way to be reconciled to God.  We're encouraged within the church and without to update the Gospel to a contemporary world.  Drop this offensive element because we have to make it more palatable to modern people.

I heard Timothy Keller make a great point.  It's rather obvious, but I've never heard anyone make it plainly before.  Christianity was born in a pluralistic society.  This is nothing modern.  And if it began in a pluralist society with that narrow claim, there's nothing about contemporary circumstances that should motivate us to change it.

First century Judea was a Roman colony.  The Romans told Christians they could worship their Jesus as long as they also called Caesar Lord.  They didn't do it and paid with their lives.  Paul preached on Mars Hill to people who believed in a variety of gods, and He told them who the one true God was.  Even ancient Israel lived in a pluralistic society with Canaanites deities and Egyptian gods, but they were people of the One True God.

There's nothing new about religious pluralism.  And there's nothing new about the pressures from culture to compromise the central truth of Christianity that there is one God and Jesus, His Son, is the only one who can reconcile us with Himself.

And what is the modern pluralist appeal based on? The fact-faith divide, which is a European Enlightenment idea, which pretty much only western white people believe.  How narrow and imperialist is that!

Abortion and Slavery: The Same Old Arguments

In an article on Slate, pro-choicer
Mary Elizabeth Williams argues
that the unborn are living human beings:

I know women who have
been relieved at their abortions and grieved over their miscarriages. Why can’t
we agree that how they felt about their pregnancies was vastly different, but
that it’s pretty silly to pretend that what was growing inside of them wasn’t
the same? Fetuses aren’t selective like that. They don’t qualify as human life
only if they’re intended to be born.

When we try to act
like a pregnancy doesn’t involve human life, we wind up drawing stupid semantic
lines in the sand: first trimester abortion vs. second trimester vs. late term,
dancing around the issue trying to decide if there’s a single magic moment when
a fetus becomes a person. Are you human only when you’re born? Only when you’re
viable outside of the womb? Are you less of a human life when you look like a
tadpole than when you can suck on your thumb?

But then she says, “So what?”

Here’s the
complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That’s a difficult
thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like
death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers.
Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in
whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her
circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the
non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.

Yesterday
I wrote about how our worldview affects our view of human beings, which affects
the way we treat human beings. For Williams, the live, unborn human being is, as she says, “a
life worth sacrificing”—worth sacrificing if “the boss” wants to get rid of him
for the sake of the life she would rather have.

How is this complete power of one human
being over another not slavery? For Williams, this isn’t a problem, because in
her view, “all life is not equal.” She’s bought the idea of instrumental human
value—that is, the idea that human beings are on a scale of worth, according to
their characteristics and abilities. And apparently, if you’re higher up on
that scale, then your desires trump the natural rights of someone who is lower.

Abraham Lincoln commented on the
absurdity and danger of citing instrumental value to justify the use of power to
impose one’s will on other human beings (thanks to Scott
Klusendorf for pointing to this):

You say A. is white,
and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to
enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first
man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.

You do not mean color
exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the
blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this
rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior
to your own.

But, say you, it is a
question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest; you
have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his
interest, he has the right to enslave you.

The arguments for slavery were the same
as the arguments now for abortion: Human
beings are only instrumentally valuable. Some people are worth less than others
because they lack particular qualities that I have. Therefore, my desires trump
their rights.

The arguments against slavery were the
same as the arguments now against abortion: All
human beings are intrinsically valuable and have equal natural rights,
regardless of their characteristics.

The arguments are the same then and now
because the two options presenting themselves to us haven’t changed and won’t
ever change. Slavery and abortion aren’t just random, unconnected controversial
issues, they’re rooted in our view of human beings, and they illustrate the two
possible directions in which our country can go as we move forward. Will we
embrace intrinsic human value or instrumental human value?

Whatever we decide as a nation, don’t
think for a moment that the principle we settle on will only be applied to abortion.

Why Not Use Ridicule?

Should we use ridicule as a tool of persuasion? Atheist John
Loftus says yes.

Christopher Hitchens famously used to ask Christians to “name
one moral action performed by a believer that could not have been done by a
nonbeliever.” One of the problems with answering Hitchens’s challenge (see a
more detailed discussion here)
is that a person who has a naturalistic worldview is unlikely to have exactly
the same understanding of right and wrong as that of a Christian. Of course an
atheist can act within his moral framework and do what he considers to be good,
but if his ideas about what is moral are incorrect, then his actions will
follow. And there are too many questions about who we are as human beings, the
purpose of life, the diagnosis of what’s gone wrong and the prescription for
fixing it, etc., etc. that we answer differently for us to come to the exact
same conclusions about what is right and what is wrong.

For this reason, Hitchens’s charge is logically
unanswerable. It’s simply the case that if there truly exists something moral a
believer can do that a nonbeliever can’t, it’s because the believer sees it as
moral because he’s a believer while
the nonbeliever fails to see it as moral because
he’s a nonbeliever (worshiping God would be one example of this). And if the
atheist fails to see that action as moral, he won’t accept it as an example of
a moral action he can’t (or won’t) perform. Therefore, no answer will ever
satisfy him, even if it’s true.

So I don’t expect atheists to see this
post as a challenge to their morality either. They reject the idea that
we’re made in the image of God, so they reject the morality that flows from
that idea. That’s to be expected. Proving to atheists that their morality
is faulty is not my purpose in writing this (though I’d be happy for their
moral intuition to be stirred). Instead, what I hope this will do is shed some
light on how our different worldviews affect our understanding of what is
moral. We live in a society that’s been soaked in the Christian worldview for
centuries, and we’ve come to think that what we believe to be moral is just
“obvious.” People haven’t thought about how their understanding of morality has
been shaped
by Christianity, nor have they considered the consequences
of stripping it away (though a look through past cultures would reveal that not
everything is obvious).

Atheists don’t need to believe in God to do good—that
is, they can follow moral precepts, informed by their moral intuition, which is capable of apprehending real moral truths. But what
happens when their moral precepts (and malleable
consciences) are wrongly shaped by their idea that
there is no God?

Consider how John Loftus of Debunking
Christianity reasons to the conclusion that one ought
to use ridicule as a method of persuasion:

The use of ridicule can be
justified pragmatically. It works well under the right circumstances, depending
on the issue and the potential effectiveness of using it. It is best used when
the arguments are there to back it up, and when more people agree against the
ideas that are being ridiculed…. That is, because we know Christianity is a
delusion, and since deluded people cannot usually be argued out of their faith
because they were never argued into it in the first place, the use of
persuasion techniques like ridicule are rationally justifiable. So satire,
ridicule and mockery are weapons that should be in our arsenal in this
important cultural war of ideas.

He explains how ridicule works:

These people cannot be convinced by
satire, so satire is not written to change their minds. It's written to
marginalize them by laughing at them. It persuades people who don't yet have a
settled opinion on the issue, in part by using social pressure. No one wants to
be a laughingstock. No one wants to be the butt of a joke. If people are
laughing at a particular view it pressures the undecided to distance themselves
from it. It draws a line in the sand, so to speak. It can also silence people
who think otherwise, for they won't want to speak up in a class on behalf of
something most others will laugh at….

When something cannot
be taken seriously it deserves our laughter…. It's a way to "come out of
the closet," so to speak, to let others know they will be laughed at if
they espouse certain ideas with a straight face. There is power in social
pressure. There is power in numbers.

Ridicule is an effective tool, so why not use it? Why not use power to
move people over to your side, if it “works”? There’s only one reason, and it’s
a reason from the Christian worldview: human dignity.

For Loftus and others who do not
believe in the sacred intrinsic value of every individual, the greater goal
outweighs the damage to individual human persons—the simple moral precept of
maintaining another’s dignity crumbles before a lofty cause. The morality of
Christianity, on the other hand, offers no such exemption, as Jordan Ballor explains
in his excellent post “The
Mundane Morality of Les Misérables.” In Christianity, because of who God is and who we
are as human beings under God, no one is excused from the everyday morality of
treating people well, regardless of his goal, or his power, or whether or not doing
otherwise would “work”:

We find that the
obligations of the moral order fall equally upon all human beings; we are all,
regardless of our wealth, power, or fame, moral agents responsible for our
actions before God and toward others….

It is tempting to
think sometimes that the basic rules of morality do not apply to us, that we
are somehow above or beyond the law. But the reality is that there is no
special morality for those who exercise greater responsibilities, whether in
familial, economic, ecclesiastical, or political contexts. It is true that
there is often in such cases greater moral complexity, but there is no
dispensation for those in places of authority [or influence] from mundane moral
obligations.

One of those mundane moral obligations
is the obligation to respect the dignity of human beings because they are made
in the image of God. God values individuals, not movements, so our actions had
better reflect that. We’re commanded to reflect God—His undeserved grace and
love—through the means of our
persuasion as well as the ends (as I wrote about here).

Why does Loftus reach such a different
conclusion about how to treat his ideological enemies? Why is his determining
question, “What works to achieve the desired goal?” rather than, “What would be
in keeping with the dignity of human persons?” In an article titled “Why I Raise My
Children Without God,” another atheist gives us a clue:

When we raise kids
without God, we tell them the truth—we are no more special than the next
creature. We are just a very, very small part of a big, big machine….

And Loftus’s approach is the result of
that “truth.”

Training Case Makers in Women’s Ministry with Mary Jo Sharp

Defending The Faith: Apologetics in Women’s Ministry
Mary Jo Sharp, Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids Michigan 2012

Why Do You Believe That? A Faith Conversation
Mary Jo Sharp, Lifeway Press, Nashville Tennessee 2012

When Greg first interviewed Mary Jo Sharp on the Stand To Reason radio show, he described her as a “strange bird”. Doesn’t sound like much of an introduction for a Christian Case Maker, does it? But Greg was trying to make a point about the rarity of women apologists on the Christian landscape. If you’re interested in apologetics, you’ve probably already noticed the conspicuous lack of women in this field. Why is this the case? Is it a lack of interest or understanding on the part of women’s ministries? Maybe. Is it a lack of resources that are specifically designed for women? Could be. Enter Mary Jo Sharp.

Mary Jo burst onto the case-making scene several years ago when she grew her Two Chix Apologetics Facebook page into ConfidentChristianity.com and began speaking around the country. After a few key debates and conference appearances, Mary Jo is now channeling her energy with a directed effort to encourage and train women to become Christian Case Makers. Mary Jo has two new books, Defending The Faith: Apologetics in Women’s Ministry and Why Do You Believe That? A Faith Conversation; together they form a powerful set of resources that will help train and integrate apologetics into women’s ministry.

Defending The Faith: Apologetics in Women’s Ministry is a succinct, readable six-chapter book that seeks a new model for women’s ministry “that addresses the basic need of women to know the truth about God and thus to trust Him: the study of apologetics specifically for women so that they can learn the truth about God, believe in Him, and live out their faith through their actions.” Mary Jo follows this outline carefully, utilizing personal stories (her background as an atheist growing up in a “Portland, Oregon, where there is not a church on every corner,” was particularly interesting to me) and illustrations from her adventures as a speaker to help readers understand the importance of Christian case making and the impact it can have on our behavior as Christians. Mary Jo then does something even more important (in my view) as she provides her readers with two chapters, “What You Can Do Right Now” and “What You Can Do In Women’s Ministry”. More than just a general encouragement, Defending The Faith, provides readers with a plan of action.

Why Do You Believe That? A Faith Conversation then seeks to continue this effort by providing a comprehensive introductory apologetics Bible study that is a perfect “first step” for any women’s group that wants to take Mary Jo up on her call to action. Mary Jo’s curriculum is detailed and robust; it would be valuable to any group within the Church. Drawing upon Mary Jo’s years of experience in Women’s Ministry, the curriculum engages the reader in an interactive conversation even as it teaches students how to engage the world around them in “faith conversations” of their own. Mary Jo begins by examining the definition and nature of “apologetics” and defining key beliefs related to the nature of Jesus. She then spends the next four weeks examining and teaching key principles of communication, from important listening and questioning skills, to valuable tactical response skills. The curriculum includes several unique features. Each week begins with a group lesson (video introductions are available for online download to assist each presentation), followed by a daily self-directed study that explores key concepts in detail. Additional terms and concepts are explored in breakout boxes throughout the text and each weekly set of lessons also includes a “Confidence Builder” suggestion that will encourage students to stretch out of their comfort zone. The book includes plenty of room for student responses and note taking and Mary Jo also included the leader guide within the text as an appendix.

Mary Jo has been speaking around the country for several years now, often in Women’s ministries, encouraging women to engage Christian Case Making as a way of life. She’s now provided the Christian community with two valuable resources that will demonstrate the importance of apologetics in Women’s ministry and provide a path forward for those who want to accept the challenge to become effective Christian Case Makers.

Mary Jo will be our guest on Stand to Reason radio on Sunday, February 3rd, 2013.

Challenge: God Doesn't Teach Children to Be Good

A CNN iReport titled "Why I Raise My Children Without God" has been making some waves, so I thought I'd choose a portion of it for this week's challenge. We've already covered some of the objections in the article about evil (most of the objections in the article come down to the problem of evil) and prayer, so I went with the one on morality: 

God Does Not Teach Children to Be Good: A child should make moral choices for the right reasons. Telling him
that he must behave because God is watching means that his morality will
be externally focused rather than internally structured. It’s like
telling a child to behave or Santa won’t bring presents. When we take
God out of the picture, we place responsibility of doing the right thing
onto the shoulders of our children. No, they won’t go to heaven or rule
their own planets when they die, but they can sleep better at night.
They will make their family proud. They will feel better about who they
are. They will be decent people.

Does an "internally focused" morality create better people than one that's enforced by God? What do you think? Respond to this objection in the comments below, and then we'll hear Brett's response on Thursday.