Gregory Koukl's Blog, page 51

Is Friendship with Unbelievers Being Unequally Yoked?

What does it really mean to be unequally yoked?

Original New Testament Manuscripts Could Have Been Copied for Centuries

Michael Kruger reports on an article by Craig Evans, who says ���Autographs and first copies [of the New Testament] may well have remained in circulation until the end of the second century, even the beginning of the third century.��� If Evans is correct, then papyri we possess today (like these) could have been copied while the original documents were still available:

[I]s it really true that we only possess copies of copies of copies? Is there really an enormous gap, as Koester and Ehrman maintain, between the autographs and our earliest copies?

A recent article by Craig Evans of Acadia University suggests otherwise. In the most recent issue of the Bulletin for Biblical Research, Evans explores the question of how long manuscripts would have lasted in the ancient world, and whether that might provide some guidance of how long the autographs might have lasted���and therefore how long they would have been copied.

Evans culls together an insightful and intriguing amount of evidence to suggest that literary manuscripts in the ancient world would last hundreds of years, on average. Appealing to the recent study of G.W. Houston, he argues that manuscripts could last anywhere from 75 to 500 years, with the average being about 150 years���.

The abstract from Evans���s article explains more about the kind of evidence he cites in his paper:

Recent study of libraries and book collections from late antiquity has shown that literary works were read, studied, annotated, corrected, and copied for two or more centuries before being retired or discarded. Given that there is no evidence that early Christian scribal practices differed from pagan practices, we may rightly ask whether early Christian writings, such as the autographs and first copies of the books that eventually would be recognized as canonical Scripture, also remained in use for 100 years or more. The evidence suggests that this was in fact the case. This sort of longevity could mean that at the time our extant Greek NT papyri were written in the late second and early to mid-third centuries, some of the autographs and first copies were still in circulation and in a position to influence the form of the Greek text.

Kruger concludes:

In other words, it is possible (and perhaps even likely) that some of the earliest copies of the New Testament we posses may have been copied directly from one of the autographs. And, if not the autographs, they may have been copied from a manuscript that was directly copied from the autographs. Either way, this makes the gap between our copies and the autographs shrink down to a rather negligible size.

Read the rest of Kruger���s article here. 

Did Paul Know about Homosexuality?

A comment on the blog this week argued that when the Bible was written, ���homosexuality was not a concept,��� and that therefore, the behavior the Bible is really against is not the kind of loving relationships between same-sex partners we see today (this is the main argument currently being made by those trying to reconcile homosexuality with Christianity).

If you haven���t yet read Kevin DeYoung���s book on the Bible���s view of homosexuality, I very highly recommend it (you can also listen to Greg���s interview with DeYoung here). Here���s an excerpt from his chapter titled ���Not That Kind of Homosexuality��� responding to this argument:

Every kind of homosexual relationship was known in the first century, from lesbianism, to orgiastic behavior, to gender-malleable ���marriage,��� to lifelong same-sex companionship. [Non-Christian classics professor Thomas K.] Hubbard���s summary of early imperial Rome [in Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents] is important:

The coincidence of such severity on the part of moralistic writers with the flagrant and open display of every form of homosexual behavior by Nero and other practitioners indicates a culture in which attitude about this issue increasingly defined one���s ideological and moral position. In other words, homosexuality in this era may have ceased to be merely another practice of personal pleasure and began to be viewed as an essential and central category of personal identity, exclusive of and antithetical to heterosexual orientation.

If the ancient world not only had a category for committed same-sex relationships but also some understanding of homosexual orientation (to use our phrase), there is no reason to think the New Testament���s prohibitions against same-sex behavior were only for pederasty and exploitation���.

Nascent ideas about orientation were not unknown in the Greco-Roman era. Consider, for example, Aristophanes���s oration in Plato���s Symposium (ca. 385��� 370 BC), a series of speeches on Love (Eros) given by famous men at a drinking party in 416 BC. At this party we meet Pausanias, who was a lover of the host Agathon���both grown men. Pausanias applauds the naturalness and longevity of same-sex love. In the fourth speech we meet the comic poet Aristophanes, who proposes a convoluted theory, including notions of genetic causation, about why some men and women are attracted to persons of the same sex. Even if the speech is meant to be satire, it only works as satire by playing off the positive view of homosexual practice common in antiquity.

Suggesting that the only kinds of homosexual practice known in the ancient world were those we disapprove of today does not take into account all the evidence. Here, for example, is N. T. Wright���s informed conclusion:

As a classicist, I have to say that when I read Plato���s Symposium, or when I read the accounts from the early Roman empire of the practice of homosexuality, then it seems to me they knew just as much about it as we do. In particular, a point which  is often missed, they knew a great deal about what people today would regard as longer-term, reasonably stable relations between two people of the same gender. This is not a modern invention, it���s already there in Plato. The idea that in Paul���s day it was always a matter of exploitation of younger men by older men or whatever . . . of course there was plenty of that then, as there is today, but it was by no means the only thing. They knew about the whole range of options there.

Read more of what Kevin DeYoung had to say on this subject here or in his book.

What Does God���s Love Look Like?

The biblical phrase ���God is love��� is sometimes used to chastise Christians for ���condemning��� people by teaching that certain behaviors are sinful. Of course the fact that ���God is love��� should affect everything we say and do, but before we can draw any conclusions from the phrase, we must first understand what God���s love looks like. Kevin DeYoung explains:

[W]e cannot settle for a culturally imported understanding of love. The steadfast love of God must not be confused with a blanket affirmation or an inspirational pep talk. No halfway responsible parent would ever think that loving her child means affirming his every desire and finding ways to fulfill whatever wishes he deems important. Parents generally know better what their kids really need, just like God always knows how we ought to live and who we ought to be. Christians cannot be tolerant of all things because God is not tolerant of all things. We can respect differing opinions and treat our opponents with civility, but we cannot give our unqualified, unconditional affirmation to every belief and behavior���.

God is love, but this is quite different from affirming that our culture���s understanding of love must be God. ���In this is love,��� John wrote, ���not that we have loved God but that he has loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins��� (1 John 4:10). Love is what God did in sending his Son to be our substitute on the cross (Rom. 5:8). Love is what we do when we keep Christ���s commands (John 14:15). Love is sharing with our brothers and sisters in need (1 John 3:16���18). Love is treating each other with kindness and patience (1 Cor. 13:4). Love is disciplining the wayward sinner (Prov. 3:11���12). Love is chastising the rebellious saint (Heb. 12:5���6). And love is throwing your arms around the prodigal son when he sees his sin, comes to his senses, and heads for home (Luke 15:17���24).

The God we worship is indeed a God of love. Which does not, according to any verse in the Bible, make sexual sin acceptable. But it does, by the witness of a thousand verses all over the Bible, make every one of our sexual sins changeable, redeemable, and wondrously forgivable.

God���s love does not look like ���blanket affirmation.��� This is what God���s love looks like:

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (John 4:7-11) 

God���s love didn���t affirm and celebrate everyone���s choices. God���s love acknowledged sin. God���s love suffered for the sins of others. God���s love sought repentance and redemption. In the same way, for Christians, the goal of warning people about sin isn���t to condemn, it���s to redeem.

It���s easy to affirm someone���s behavior and go on your way. It���s much harder to act as Jean Lloyd exhorts us to act in an article about her former sexual sin:

Although I appreciate the desire to act in love, [automatic affirmation] isn���t the genuine love that people like me need. Love me better than that! ��� Don���t compromise truth; help me to live in harmony with it.

This cry should be echoed by each and every one of us, because each of us is a sinner living among sinners. Loving in this way involves effort, sacrifice, and sometimes even suffering. But how can we do less when the love of God suffered for others?

Relativism���s Moral Hero Disproves Relativism

In a world that happened to begin, where only dead matter existed at the beginning, and where physical forces happened to bring some of that matter together in a particular way such that it now moves around on its own, the concepts of ���right��� and ���wrong��� are meaningless fictions.

Sure, there might be an objective way for the collections of molecules we call ���humans��� to live that will enable those humans to live longer or maximize their pleasurable feelings, but there is certainly no obligation to do so (and nothing to say that either living longer or having pleasurable feelings is something that ought to be done; they���re merely possibilities). Obligation requires a personal Rule Giver to whom we���re rightly obligated, who will hold us accountable to that obligation. Without obligation, without a higher objective standard of the way things should be, without a mind above us and before us, there isn���t properly a ���right��� and ���wrong.��� There are merely things we choose to do or not do because of preference.

In this world, who are you to judge anyone���s preferences?

If one begins with atheistic materialism, relativism is the logical conclusion. And yet, we find that this relativism doesn���t match up with what we apprehend to be true about the moral aspects of reality. From Greg���s book on relativism:

Given a particular standard of morality, the person who is most moral is the one who practices the specific system���s key moral rule consistently���. [T]he quality of the moral hero���the one who most closely lives the ideal���indicates the quality of the moral system.

What kind of moral champion does [individual] relativism produce? What is the best that relativism has to offer? What do we call those who most thoroughly apply the principles of relativism, caring nothing for others��� ideas of right or wrong, those who are unmoved by others��� notions of ethical standards and instead consistently follow the beat of their own moral drum?

In our society, we have a name for these people; they are a homicide detective���s worst nightmare. The quintessential relativist is a sociopath, one with no conscience. This is what relativism produces. 

Something is terribly wrong with an alleged moral point of view that produces a sociopath as its brightest star.

If there are no binding moral facts higher than the individual, then even the sociopath is moral. And placing the standard on society rather than the individual doesn���t get you out of this mess. If there are no binding moral facts higher than a society���if the community is the moral standard���then even Nazi Germany was moral. At least, those who went along with the Nazis were moral. Any German who resisted them was being immoral. And who are you (or any other country) to say Germany was wrong?

Relativism is a mess any way you look at it. Any worldview that lacks the ability to explain what we know to be true���that there are objective moral facts, regardless of whether an individual or an entire society rejects them���is devastatingly deficient.

Clarifying Biblical and Secular Reasons for Same-Sex Attraction

I recently posted a video answering a challenge: When did you choose your heterosexuality? Someone asked a follow-up question, and I thought I���d share my response.

Here���s the question:

I listened to Alan's challenge about not choosing to be heterosexual. What my question is. Romans 1 says that people who reject God will burn in their lust for the same sex. I don't understand Alan's response. He said that same sex attraction comes from early experiences from age 1 to 5. Children at that age can't reject God because they haven't reached the age of accountability.  

So my question is, does same sex attraction come from a bad experience in early childhood, or does it come as punishment for rejecting God as Paul says in Romans?

Below was my response:

Your question is a good one. I agree with you that my answer sounds confusing in light of Romans 1. That���s my fault. Let me clarify.

In my attempt to explain the causes of same-sex attraction, I did not intend to negate the impact of sin in the world or our sin nature. The world is fallen, we are sinful, and that contributes to a huge amount of the sin we commit. Furthermore, Romans 1 tells us that homosexuality is evidence of man���s deep-seated rebellion against God and how he ordered creation (specifically humans) to function.

Now, I wouldn���t say as you have that ���people who reject God will burn in their lust for the same sex,��� since not every person who rejects God is a homosexual. Rather, sexual desire for the same sex is one possible symptom of rebellion towards God. But you are otherwise correct about the importance of Romans 1 in our understanding of homosexual activity that Paul observed.

Let me add an additional qualification to the video. I often answer the question of what causes same-sex attraction from both a biblical (special revelation) and scientific (general revelation) perspective. Usually, in a teaching environment, I have more time to address the challenge, but these videos are intended to be under five minutes. That���s why I left out the biblical answer. Plus, I was answering the question with the non-Christian skeptic in mind. Since such a person would not consider biblical information as authoritative, I only gave an answer based on secular research.

The secular explanation that I offered, by the way, is only one known pathway towards same-sex attraction. I believe it���s the most common, but it���s certainly not the only one. If you want more detail about developmental pathway in childhood that can contribute to same-sex attraction, I encourage you to check out my short book The Ambassador���s Guide to Understanding Homosexuality that explains it. Or, for an abridged (and free) explanation, check out my article ���Homosexuality: Nature or Nurture��� (that I co-wrote with Greg Koukl) discussing one cause of same-sex attraction.

Anyway, thanks for asking your question and allowing me to clarify and explain myself.

If God Doesn't Heal Amputees, He Doesn't Exist

Brett responds to the claim that God would perform obvious miracles if He really exists.

Our Worldviews Influence the Way We Live

Our worldviews influence the way we live, the values that guide us. Some worldviews support and ground values better than others. Christianity explains human value better than any other worldview, and it was evident in the first centuries of the church.

The way Christians treated women was in stark contrast to the non-Christian world. Contrary to the way many modern people misunderstand the Bible���s teaching about women, Jesus and his followers valued women the same as men. This was quite different from the cultures where Christians lived. Women weren���t valued as highly as men, so infant girls were regularly abandoned to die of exposure, even if the family could afford to raise her. They just didn���t value her so, literally, tossed her out. Rodney Stark explains in his book The Triumph of Christianity:

The superior situation of Christian women vis-��-vis their pagan sisters began at birth. The exposure of unwanted infants was ���widespread��� in the Roman Empire, and girls were far more likely than boys to be exposed. Keep in mind that legally and by custom, the decision to expose an infant rested entirely with the father as reflected in this famous, loving letter to his pregnant wife from a man who was away working: ���If���good luck to you!���you should bear offspring, if it is a male, let it live; if it is female, expose it. You told Aphrodisias, ���Do not forget me.��� How can I forget you? I beg you therefore not to worry.��� Even in large families, ���more than one daughter was hardly ever reared.��� A study based on inscriptions was able to reconstruct six hundred families and found that of these, only six had raised more than one daughter. In keeping with their Jewish origins, Christians condemned the exposure of infants as murder. As Justin Martyr (100���165) put it, ���we have been taught that it is wicked to expose even new-born children...[for] we would then be murderers.��� So, substantially more Christian (and Jewish) female infants lived.���

Christians were known for rescuing these baby girls and raising them as their own.

Christianity taught value and dignity for humans that other worldviews didn���t teach. And they believed women had just as much value as men. 

Finding Truth: How Critical Thinking Saves Faith

This week, we���re discussing the final chapter in Nancy Pearcey���s Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes : ���How Critical Thinking Saves Faith��� (see links to the previous posts below).

In this last chapter of Finding Truth, Nancy Pearcey stresses the necessity of learning how to examine worldviews:

Some Christians seem to think the way to avoid being ���conformed to this world��� (Rom. 12:2) is by avoiding ���worldly��� ideas. A better strategy is to learn the skills to critically evaluate them. (p. 254)

Why is evaluating them a better strategy than avoiding them? Partly because we can't avoid them. We���re all exposed to popular culture all the time, and without the ability to recognize the source of the ideas we���re surrounded by, it���s easy to unthinkingly absorb bits of other worldviews:

[M]ost people pick up their ideas about life [through popular culture]���. Worldviews do not typically come with a warning label attached to tell us what we���re getting. They do not ask permission before invading our mental space. Instead there is what we might call a ���stealth��� secularism that uses images and stories to bypass people���s critical grid and hook them emotionally, sometimes without their even knowing it. That���s why it is imperative to learn the skill of deciphering worldviews when they come to us not in words, where they are easier to recognize, but in the idiom of picture, composition, plot line, and characterization. (p. 258) 

I loved Pearcey���s examples of how worldview ideas have been expressed through art (see her book Saving Leonardo for an in-depth discussion of how the development of philosophy is reflected in literature, art, music, architecture, etc.).

Impressionist art was inspired by empiricism:

Everyone knows what an impressionist painting looks like, with its little dabs and dashes of color. But why did impressionists decide to break up images that way? Because they were influenced by the philosophy of empiricism, which claims that the ultimate foundation of knowledge is sensations. To reach that foundation, empiricism says, we must reach down to the level of sheer sensory input. We must not even interpret sensations in terms of discrete objects standing in three-dimensional space, but only as patches of color filling our field of vision.

That���s why the great impressionist Claude Monet wrote, ���When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you, a tree, a house, a field, or whatever. Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow.��� His goal was to cut through to the level of raw, immediate sense data. Spots. Streaks. Patches of color. (pp. 260-261)

Deconstructionist art came out of postmodernism:

Recall that postmodernism is the claim that there is no ���metanarrative��� or universal story line valid for all people at all times. Each community has its own story line for making sense of the world. How would an artist give that idea visual expression?

By refusing to give a work of art any coherent overall design. This explains why deconstructionist artists favor the pastiche or collage���a patchwork of disconnected images that defy any attempt at interpretation. For example, the famous collages by Robert Rauschenberg, says one art historian, ���juxtaposed images in ways to suggest random incoherence, to which the artist���and viewer���can bring no meaningful order.��� What was Rauschenberg saying with these disconnected images? That ���life���s random occurrences ��� cannot be made to fit in any inherent hierarchy of meaning.��� (pp. 264-265) 

Abstract art was an expression of pantheism: 

Why did some artists stop painting objects at all? Because they were influenced by pantheism. The first abstract painter was Kandinsky, who embraced a blend of Eastern and Western mysticism. He argued that the way to oppose philosophical materialism was to get rid of material objects. In his words, abstract art would liberate the mind from ���the harsh tyranny of the materialistic philosophy,��� becoming ���one of the most powerful agents of the spiritual life.���

The purpose of an abstract painting, then, is to free the mind from its preoccupation with material objects and draw the viewer up to the spiritual realm. (pp. 263-264) 

If you haven���t yet read Pearcey���s Total Truth and Saving Leonardo, I strongly recommend you do���these three books are best read together. We need to be able to recognize these ideas and where they come from when we see them in our culture. If we don���t carefully develop our own worldview, the culture will develop it for us.

But this doesn���t just matter for our sake. We need to understand the worldviews of our neighbors if we���re going to anticipate their questions and respond in a way that���s meaningful to them.

Thanks for reading with me! What did you think of the book overall? Would you like to do this again with another book? If you didn���t read the book, did you still read and enjoy these posts? I���d love to have your feedback on this book study in the comments below.

Posts in this series:

Book Club Introduction (Includes a 15% discount for the book)
Week One: Foreword
Week Two: I Lost My Faith at an Evangelical College
Week Three: Twilight of the Gods
Week Four: False Worldviews Reduce the Human Person
Week Five: Secular Leaps of Faith
Week Six: Why Worldviews Commit Suicide
Week Seven: Free-Loading Atheists
Week Eight: How Critical Thinking Saves Faith

Twitter: #STRread, #FindingTruth

Articles mentioned in this chapter:

Nancy Pearcey: How to Respond to Doubt: ���The researchers uncovered the single most significant factor in whether young people stand firm in their Christian convictions or leave them behind���. [T]he most decisive factor is whether students had a safe place to work through their doubts and questions before leaving home���. The study indicates that students actually grow more confident in their Christian commitment when the adults in their life���parents, pastors, teachers���guide them in grappling with the challenges posed by prevailing secular worldviews. In short, the only way teens become truly ���prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks��� (1 Pet. 3:15) is by wrestling honestly and personally with the questions.���


���We Engage Culture for Jesus���: An Interview of Christian Artist Lecrae: ���What we need to realize is that Christianity is total truth not just religious truth. Because it is total truth, it is relevant and applicable to all areas of life. When we don���t know how to navigate through culture, we miss out on Jesus��� power to shape and transform society. We, as Christians, have the unique privilege of being able to expose how things that this world has taken and intended for evil can be redeemed for their intended purpose, the glory of God.���

Challenge Response: When Did You Choose Your Heterosexuality?

Here's my response to this week's challenge: