Gregory Koukl's Blog, page 147
January 28, 2013
What Is Social Justice? (Video)
January 27, 2013
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:
The Dawkins Confusion – Review by Alvin Plantinga of The God Delusion
The Ambassador's Guide to the New Atheists by Greg Koukl
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards
My Greatest Fear by Greg Koukl
Apologetics conference in Strasbourg – July 9-20, 2013
In the Beginning...We Misunderstood: Interpreting Genesis 1 in Its Original Context by John Soden and Johnny Miller
Listen to today's show or download any show for free.
January 25, 2013
Radio Sunday
Greg is live on the air Sunday 2-5 p.m. P.T. Call with your questions or comments. Greg will talk with John Soden, coauthor of In the Beginning We Misunderstood: Interpreting Genesis 1 in It's Original Context.
January 24, 2013
STR's Anniversary Conference!
How Do We Know That Jesus Really Died?
A recent podcast listener offered the following objection: Couldn’t the disciples have been wrong about the death of Jesus? After all, when Paul was stoned by the Jews from Antioch and Iconium (in Acts 14) they drug him out of the city and left him for dead. “While the disciples stood around him, he got up and entered the city” (verse 20). If the disciples were wrong about Paul, couldn’t they also have been wrong about Jesus? As I always say, anything and everything is possible, but not everything is reasonable. There are good reasons to believe that the disciples were not wrong about the death of Jesus:
1. Extended Contact
Unlike the their contact with Paul after his stoning, the disciples were in intimate and extended contact with the body of Jesus. We have a tendency to read over the following verses very quickly:
Mark 15:43-46
“So as evening approached, Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council... …bought some linen cloth, took down the body, wrapped it in the linen, and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock.”
But stop and think about it for a minute. The disciples had to remove the nails, collect the body, carry it some distance to the tomb, treat the body thoroughly with the customary ointments and spices used in such situations, wrap the body and then place it in the tomb. While we can read through this process in minutes, it takes a lot longer to actually complete. Surely the disciples were also deeply grieved by the death of Jesus. In all this extended contact with his body, do we really think they wouldn’t do everything possible to prove to themselves that he wasn’t really dead? In all of this time, is it reasonable to believe that they wouldn’t have noticed the three inconvenient properties of dead bodies? I’ve been around enough dead people to recognize that properties that appear when a heart stops beating:
Loss of Temperature
When the heart stops pumping, the body begins to cool. In the time it would take to prepare Jesus for the tomb, the disciples would certainly have observed this feature of death.
Rigidity
When blood is not circulating, the body begins to stiffen. Dead bodies begin to feel and behave differently than unconscious bodies with a beating heart.
Lividity
Gravity begins to act on un-circulating blood. As blood settles in those extremities that are closest to the ground, discoloration is notable.
In all the time it took to prepare Jesus’ body, with all the extended contact the disciples had, is it really reasonable to think they would not have repeatedly checked to see if he was still breathing and that they would not have noticed the three inconvenient properties of dead people?
2. Un-Expected Corroboration
John, a disciple of Jesus, was raised as a fisherman. I doubt that he had any medical training. Yet look at what he reports in his gospel:
John 19:31-34
“The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.”
John seems to record an aspect of Jesus’ body that is common when people are fatally wounded. Critical injuries typically cause people to enter Circulatory Shock, a condition I often see at assault or accident scenes. When people die of their injuries, their death is often accompanied with Pericardial or Pleural Effusion, a condition that causes water to accumulate around the heart or within the lungs. It appears that the uneducated fisherman is reporting this condition in his gospel. Think he might have done this intentionally in an effort to deceive us, or is it more reasonable to attribute this description to a true observation?
3. External Confirmation
History tells us that there was a tremendous penalty to be paid by Roman soldiers if they allowed a capital criminal to either escape or avoid the penalty for which they were sentenced. For this reason, Roman soldiers were brutal and meticulous, executing their orders with precision. Look again at how the Bible describes the death of Jesus:
John 19:31-35
Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jews did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs.
According to the non-Christians at the scene, Jesus was dead on the cross.
4. Eyewitness Connection
Take a look at the description of the burial of Jesus offered in the Gospel of Mark. Notice the description of Joseph of Arimathea:
Mark 15:42-46
It was Preparation Day (that is, the day before the Sabbath). So as evening approached, Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. Pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had already died. When he learned from the centurion that it was so, he gave the body to Joseph. So Joseph bought some linen cloth, took down the body, wrapped it in the linen, and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock.
Mark appears to be describing the same scene as John, but Mark includes a character that John omits. Why would Mark writing many years prior to John, include Joseph? It’s reasonable that Joseph was still alive when Mark wrote his account; Mark may be including Joseph so that the early readers could contact Joseph as an living eyewitness who not only saw the crucifixion, but also touched and wrapped the dead body of Jesus.
The experience the disciples had with Jesus was very different than the experience the disciples had with Paul at his point of his stoning. The disciples simply “stood around” Paul after the stoning; they did far more with the body of Jesus following his crucifixion.
The Presence of Death
Our world is so different from a mere century ago. Today we
routinely undergo minor surgeries, hardly giving a second thought to the
anesthesia and antibiotics that make them minor.
But what we consider minor today could have easily been a
life and death (not to mention terrifyingly painful) situation in a time
without these medical advances. What would it have been like to live then, when
an awareness of death was a constant part of life? When one’s own death, even
from a minor accident, was always a real possibility? And what have we lost
because of our current lack of awareness?
Ecclesiastes 7:2 says, “It is better to go to a house of
mourning than to go to a house of feasting, because that is the end of every
man, and the living takes it to heart.” Our chances of meeting death are still
100%, but we rarely contemplate this because we rarely bump into this reality.
And what happens when we don’t “take our impending death to heart”? We can slip
right into living smaller lives, where the big questions of existence and
meaning surrounding death are easily overrun by the constant stream of
trivialities right in front of us.
What have we lost, both as individuals and as a culture,
without the presence of death? When I look at the depth and beauty of the
music, art, literature, and theology of the past, I have to wonder. There’s a
good possibility our comfort has led to much of our cultural sickness and
spiritual apathy (just as it did for the ancient Israelites). I certainly don’t
want to go back to the days when a broken leg could result in death. Still,
it’s sobering to think our relief from present pain and death has come at such
a cost.
And that cost is an unsettling reminder of who we are as
fallen creatures, because it means our sinfulness and rebellion against God
corrupts even moral goods like the use of antibiotics to alleviate suffering.
Rather than translating the comfort and ease medicine brings us into unhindered
opportunities to seek and worship God, we’ve turned it into a tool to enable us
to avoid thinking about Him.
January 23, 2013
The Circumstantial Case For John’s Authorship
I am a big fan of Sententias, the ministry of Max Andrews, although I’ll admit there are times when I have to stop and read (and re-read) his blog posts to get my hands around his impressive reasoning skills. Max recently wrote a post that even I could quickly understand and appreciate, and he did an excellent of illustrating the process and power that results from assembling a circumstantial case.
Max focused on the case for the authorship of John’s gospel. He correctly noted that Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–215) attributed the authorship of the fourth gospel to someone named John: “John, last of all … composed a spiritual Gospel” (quoted by Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. 6.14.7). But who is this “John” described by Clement? As Max writes, “Those who doubt apostolic authorship take their point of departure from a quote of Papias (c. 60–130) by Eusebius (c. 260–340). Papias appeared to refer to a John other than the apostle: ‘And if anyone chanced to come who had actually been a follower of the elders, I would enquire as to the discourses of the elders, what Andrew or what Peter said, or what Philip, or what Thomas or James, or what John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples; and the things which Aristion and John the Elder, disciples of the Lord, say’ (Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. 3.39.4–5, emphasis added).”
Max then takes the time to assemble the evidence related to the authorship of this gospel, making the case in a fashion very similar to how I might make a case for a particular point in a criminal trial. Check out his reasoning:
1. The author identified himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (21:20, 24), a prominent figure in the Johannine narrative (13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7, 20).
2. The author used the first person in 1:14, “we have seen his glory,” revealing that he was an eyewitness to the accounts contained in his Gospel.
3. The “we” of 1:14 refers to the same people as does 2:11, Jesus’ disciples. Thus the writer was an apostle, an eyewitness, and a disciple of Jesus.
4. Since the author never referred to himself by name, he cannot be any of the named disciples at the Last Supper: Judas Iscariot (13:2, 26–27), Peter (13:6–9), Thomas (14:5), Philip (14:8–9), or Judas the son of James (14:22).
5. The disciple that Jesus loved is also one of the seven mentioned in the last chapter: “Simon Peter, Thomas (called ‘Twin’), Nathanael from Cana of Galilee, Zebedee’s sons, and two other of his disciples” (21:2; see 21:7).
6. Peter and Thomas have already been eliminated. Nathanael is also ruled out as a possible author since the author remains unnamed in John’s Gospel.
7. The author must be either one of “Zebedee’s [two] sons” or one of the “two other of [Jesus’] disciples.”
8. Of the two sons of Zebedee, James and John, James can safely be ruled out since he was martyred in the year 42 (see Acts 12:2).
9. This leaves John the son of Zebedee as the probably author of the Gospel. Irenaeus (c. 130–200): “John the disciple of the Lord, who leaned back on his breast, published the Gospel while he was a resident at Ephesus in Asia” (Against Heresies 3.1.2).
Well done. Circumstantial cases are not built on a singular piece of direct evidence. Instead, they are assembled from a collection of reasonable inferences. In our state of California, jurors are instructed, “If a witness testifies he saw it raining outside before he came into the courthouse, that testimony is direct evidence that it was raining.” In essence, this testimony (if it is trustworthy) is enough, in and of itself, to prove that it is raining. But you can also conclude it’s raining on the basis of circumstantial evidence. Jurors are also instructed, “For example, if a witness testifies that he saw someone come inside wearing a raincoat covered with drops of water, that testimony is circumstantial evidence because it may support a conclusion that it was raining outside.”
Max has done a good job of assembling facts that reasonably demonstrate the Apostle John is the author of the fourth gospel. Is the available evidence “complete”? No, but I’ve never worked a case where every piece of possible piece of evidence was available for consideration. While potentially incomplete, the case for John’s authorship is none-the-less sufficient. It’s reasonable. It’s reliable. It meets the standard I’m most concerned about: beyond a reasonable doubt. Good job Max, you’re a fine circumstantial case maker.
The New Atheists and the Old Testament
I came across a lecture
by Peter J. Williams that I found to be an excellent complement to this month’s
Solid Ground (if you haven’t yet read Greg’s “The Canaanites: Genocide or
Judgment?” you should download it here).
The lecture is worth taking the time to watch (see below) or download as an MP3.
Williams points out that the New Atheists often
make a very elementary mistake in the way they critique the morality of stories
like the judgment of the Canaanites in the Old Testament: They don’t evaluate
the whole story as it is, they
critique a naturalistic story of their own making—a story where God doesn’t
really exist and men are evilly using the idea of God to achieve their own
nefarious ends (for example, as an excuse to commit genocide). When they
examine the Bible this way, surprise! They find evil.
I’ve encountered this many times before (read these comments
to see one of these conversations in action), so it’s something you need to be
aware of and know how to counteract. Here’s how Williams responds to this move
by the New Atheists:
If we’re going to look at the
fairness of something, it doesn’t matter whether it happened or not. We look at
the fairness of the story. We could
look at that in Tom and Jerry’s world, we could look at it in any story,
whether something is fair or not. But if I’m going to judge the fairness of the
story, I think it’s only fair to look at the story world that I’m looking at. I can’t judge the morality of
Jerry’s actions against Tom, thinking of our physical laws. That’s not actually
entering properly into understanding the story.
So I believe that in order for an
atheist to critique the morality of the story in the Old Testament, they have
to enter into that story…. If we’re going to consider the story, we have to
consider all of the details in the
story, including all of the characters in the story—and one of them, by the
way, is called “God.” He’s a character in the story, and I can’t just say,
“Well I don’t believe in God, so as I’m judging the story, I’ll sort of omit
Him from the story.” That’s not fair….
When Dawkins tells the story [of
the Old Testament], it goes like this: God doesn’t speak to anyone, no miracles
are performed, there's no massive exodus. But then, I can judge all of the
characters as if God hadn’t actually told them to do anything.
So in other words, he’s got his own
naturalistic, watered-down version of Exodus, and that’s the thing that he attacks.
What’s the reality? When we look at
the story in the Old Testament, firstly we have to go back to the beginning.
And to understand God, we have to understand what He set up in the beginning.
In the beginning God gave everyone life. That’s part of the story. I can’t
just miss that out—it’s actually there. I could also say that God clearly
doesn’t think violence is good, because in the beginning there was none. When
I look at the end of His story in the Old Testament, as outlined in the
prophets, I can see again His vision of peace—that the wolf shall dwell with
the lamb, and so on.
So that gives me some guidance as
to how to understand the story. Trying to understand a bit of a story without
reading the beginning and the end usually isn’t the best way before you write
your literary criticism.
When you’re having a conversation about the morality of the
Bible, be sure that you’re actually discussing the story in the Bible, not a blend of the Bible’s story about God
and the atheist’s naturalistic story without God. You need to hold the atheist
to the idea that in order to judge the morality of a story (not its truthfulness, but its morality) and the
characters in that story, one must take the story as it is and look at what it portrays from within that story.
Williams goes on in the lecture to evaluate the story of the judgment of the Canaanites in its
own context and then concludes by noting how their destruction clarifies
the gospel:
Arguably, we could say that if the
destruction of the Canaanites is the punishment for their sins, then that’s
what sin deserved. And if Christ on the cross took our sins on Himself, then
what happened to the Canaanites becomes [in] some way a picture for us of how
awful sin is and how much Jesus Christ did on the cross for us, taking on
Himself—that one person—the
punishment for so many.
That’s truly a staggering thought, when you consider it.
(HT: Apologetics
315)
See also:
The
Judgment that Led to Salvation
Not
Genocide, but Capital Punishment
Israel’s
Failure Led to Evil and Suffering
January 22, 2013
You Don't Care About Children After They're Born
With all the discussion about abortion today, you might be
hearing a charge frequently leveled against pro-life activists: “You only care
about children in the womb. You don’t care about them after they’re born!”
The problem is that this is really just a slogan (which
ultimately, I think is a partisan political slogan meant to promote larger
government), and as a slogan, it will take a little work to get past because
your friend might not have thought it through very carefully. Ask questions:
“What do you mean, I ‘don’t care about them’?” “What actions do you think I
would take if I really did care about them?” If the answer is a political
solution you disagree with, then: “Are you open to the idea that I think there’s a better way to
care for them than your way? Maybe you’ve missed the ways that I and my fellow
pro-lifers have been caring for them.”
Sometimes a conversation about this will reveal the
objection is just a smoke screen. Greg spoke to a woman on the radio a few
years ago about this charge of inconsistency, and when it came down to it,
there was nothing Greg could have done that would have been enough for her. The
discussion is instructive:
So don’t let this charge neutralize you. Don’t be afraid of it.
Dive into it and see if you can work through it with your friend.
And because speaking out for defenseless human beings whose
lives are at stake is a worthy cause in itself, here’s a final question to ask:
“Do you understand that even though I can’t do everything, saving people’s
lives is still a worthy cause to devote myself to?”
Scott Klusendorf captured
this idea well:
Joe found the young
girl unconscious in her upstairs closet. By the time he got there, the
structure was a raging inferno. No one else dared go inside. Scooping up the
girl, he took his only exit, straight out the second story window and into the
bushes below. The girl lived. For his part, Joe sustained three cuts and two
sprained ankles—and an avalanche of questions. The media wanted to know how he
planned to pay for the girl’s food, clothing, and health care now that he’d
rescued her. The evangelical pastor asked if the time spent saving the girl
from temporal flames might be better spent saving people from eternal ones. The
social justice coordinator of the Catholic parish insisted that if Joe truly
cared about saving lives, he’d care about all life and spend equal time
rescuing poor workers from corrupt corporations. The local Congressman asked if
he supported tax hikes aimed at reducing fire risk. Joe just kept looking at
the girl.
You Can Change Our Culture's Mind on Abortion
Today is the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. In
2012, over a million human lives were ended through abortion in the United
States, bringing the number of abortions up to 55 million since the Supreme
Court decision in 1973.
Sanctity of Human Life Sunday—the Sunday closest to the January
22nd anniversary—was last weekend, and you may have heard your
pastor preach on intrinsic human value and the horror of abortion. Maybe you’ve
resolved to support pro-life organizations or individuals who you think are
making a significant difference. That’s valuable, but I don’t want you to think
that the fight is “out there” in the hands of some elite group of influencers
and policy makers. When our culture turns around on this issue, it will not be
mainly because of big-name activists. The change will occur because of small-scale
interactions, through millions of conversations where people like you convince
one person at a time to protect the weakest members of our human family.
Making the pro-life case is completely within your ability,
I promise you. You just need to arm yourself with some information, a game
plan, and some tools to help you get started. So I’ve put together a short list
of resources, chosen for their simplicity, clarity, and accessibility. There
are no textbooks in this list, and you don’t have to be a philosopher to
understand any of this material. There are many resources available that go
into greater depth, but I confined my list to a few essentials that cover the
basics and will effectively equip anyone wanting to enter into this fight for universal
human rights.
Pro-Life
Crash Course : This post gives an overview of how to argue for the pro-life
position and includes links to resources that can clarify the points further,
if you’d like to learn more. Familiarize yourself with the main points you’ll
need to cover. Pro-life arguments are simple—that is, you do not have to learn
heaps of information in order to address the most important question: what is
the unborn?
Pro-Life
101 : Now that you have the outline in mind, Scott Klusendorf fills in the
details in these CDs. The set also includes a debate (so you can hear how he
responds to objections) and a booklet, Pro-Life
101: A Step-by-Step Guide to Making Your Case Persuasively.
Tactics :
It doesn’t matter how much you know about abortion if you don’t have the
confidence to enter into conversations about controversial topics with people
you’d like to persuade. Greg Koukl’s Tactics material (available as a book,
CDs, MP3s, or DVD—whichever format works best with your learning style) will
teach you how to do this effectively, and it’s the most valuable material I’ve
ever encountered as an apologist. And again, the skills taught in Tactics can
be learned and used by anyone.
The
Unaborted Socrates : This book is short and brilliant. The best way to
describe it is a cross between Pro-Life 101 and Tactics (see above). See what
it looks like when you put the material from those two resources together, and learn
by example how to use what you learned in Pro-Life 101 in a persuasive,
non-threatening conversation. This book is the simple and powerful pro-life
arguments spoken with clarity through a fictional dialogue between Socrates, a
doctor, a philosopher, and a psychologist.
This Is Abortion : The
ancient Roman poet Horace said, "Less vividly is the mind stirred by what
finds entrance through the ears than by what is brought before the trusty
eyes...." Abortion is mostly hidden from our eyes, and that makes it easy
to forget what we’re talking about—the deaths of young human beings. This video
takes the term “choice” out of the dark and truthfully shows us the victims of
abortion (but see the next link before you watch).
How
Should We Use Graphic Images? : The graphic images are powerful and painful.
If we’re going to respect the people we’re trying to persuade, there’s a right
way and a wrong way to introduce these images and the truths they reveal. This
short video of Scott Klusendorf serves as a good example of how to
compassionately prepare people for what they’re about to see. He also gives a
defense of using graphic pictures as a persuasive tool, citing an example of
how true, yet brutal, images helped to end human rights abuses in the past.
It’s up to you now. Won’t you join the fight?
