Gregory Koukl's Blog, page 96

Student Worldview Training

Summit Ministries has been equipping Christian students to think more deeply and robustly about their Christian convictions, preparing them for the challenges they'll face as they leave home and enter the university and the secular world.  STR's speakers have been part of that training for years, along with many other outstanding Christian teachers like Scott Klusendorf, Frank Beckwith, J.P. Moreland.  

The student conferences have been offered in Colorado and Tennessee, and this year they're partnering with Biola University for a California conference.  Our own Brett Kunkle sent his oldest daughter to a Summit summer conference and it was life altering for her.  He'll be talking about that on the broadcast this afternoon.

Summit is offering a discount for STR friends who register their kids.  Use this code: STR2014

Heaven Is for Real

The movie based on the book releases this week. Since this child's account of his near death experience is consistent with Christianity, it may be tempting for Christians to find this story encouraging. But we've got to be careful accepting people's experiences as confirmation of the truth of Christianity. People of other faiths and no faith have near death experiences that are quite different and supposedly teach us things that are inconsistent with Christianity. So if you take some experiences as reliable testimony, how do you counter the others? That's the problem with finding the experiences themselves authoritative in any sense.

We haven't written on this story in particular. Tim Challies reviewed the book and helps give us a biblical way of evaluating these reports. We have written on other accounts and what we can and can't learn from near death experiences. Here's one of those posts:

The cover story of Newsweek is Dr. Eben Alexander's account of his near death experience and his discovery that his physicalistic worldview was unable to account for a real experience.

Dr. Alexander, a neurologist, contracted bacterial meningitis that shut down his cerebral cortex. There was no higher-order brain activity during the time he was monitored in the hospital. He says he was beyond a vegetative state. During this time, however, his consciousness – his mind – was aware and active. The doctor admits that he previously dismissed such accounts because he was a physicalist. He didn't believe in the mind, only the brain. But he had to abandon that view when his own experience provided counter-evidence. There was no physical explanation for how he could have had conscious experiences when his brain was shut down.

He says there was no "scientific explanation" for this. That's not quite true. There's no physical explanation for his experience. There's no scientific explanation if you define science by the philosophy of physicalism. There is a scientific explanation when his and other experiences are studied carefully and scientifically. It's just that the explanation isn't a physical one.

Gary Habermas and J. P. Moreland co-authored a fascinating book about their careful investigation of near death experiences. Even after discounting many testimonies that can have other explanations, there are many reports, like Dr. Alexander's, that have no other explanation so they must be taken seriously. What this indicates, as Dr. Alexander concluded from his own experience, is that physical explanations are not exhaustive – that there is a non-physical conscious mind and a non-physical world.

What we can't conclude from these experiences that appear to be real is that what they heard and learned during these experiences are necessarily true. An experience can be real without the conclusions of the experience being accurate. That happens to us all the time even in this life. We have an experience, but we're mistaken about what we think about it. It can happen in death, too. After all, once we have evidence for a non-physical world, we have reason to believe from the Bible, which tells us about this world, that there are beings there that deceive us. There are also beings who tell us the truth. But which do people encounter in their near death experiences? It's hard to tell.

The reports from these experiences vary significantly. They can't all be true because they present different claims about that reality. That doesn't mean the experience didn't happen – remember, these are experiences that have no other explanation. We can conclude there is evidence of an afterlife from these reports, just not what the nature of it is. For that, we have to return to the evidence for religious claims we all have access to in this life. Yes, we're back to evidence for the reliability of the Bible – or other religions.

And that's where Dr. Alexander's experience can't inform us. While much of what he experienced during that time could be construed to be consistent with Biblical descriptions of Heaven, that doesn't mean that's what he saw. What he tells us he learned there isn't what the Bible tells us. He was told, "You have nothing to fear....There is nothing you can do wrong." Now, the doctor's own explanation of his religious beliefs prior to this don't make him a Christian, even though he said that's how he thought of himself. So it wasn't that He was being reassured of his salvation. He didn't belief Jesus was the incarnate God who sacrificed Himself for our sins. What he learned during his experience is no more authoritative than his (or anyone's) religious convictions. Despite the extraordinary nature of near death experiences, we're right back to evaluating competing religious claims and the evidence for them.

We can learn from valid near death experiences that the non-physical mind is real and that some kind of life apart from this world is real. The physical isn't all there is. What we can't learn from any near death experience is what we can learn here and now from the Bible.

Here's a very interesting talk from Gary Habermas on near death experiences.

What Our Reaction to the Noah Movie Says about Evangelicals

Hey, did you hear anything about that recent Noah movie?

Ha! Of course you did and are now probably suffering from NMF (Noah-Movie Fatigue). Wow, evangelicals had a lot to say about the movie. To characterize the evangelical reaction as diverse would be a huge understatement. There was Gregory Thornbury's more positive take on the Noah movie, to Brian Mattson's argument that it's a thoroughly Gnostic retelling of the Noah narrative, to Peter Chattaway's response that "No, Noah is not Gnostic," to R.J. Moeller's creative open letter to Darren Aronofsky, to Joe Carter's unimpressed review of Aronofsky's "mediocre midrash," to Barbara Nicolosi's MMA takedown of all things Noah. Evangelicals certainly had a lot to say.

So last week, in response to all the Noah noise, Roberto Rivera over at Breakpoint asked, "Why are Christians fighting so hard about Noah?" His answer:

"Missing in all of this is any consideration about why Christians should be so invested in what comes out of Hollywood. Maybe it’s age or depression, but I think that part of being part of the peculiar people is not looking to Hollywood for validation...In our desperate desire to seem 'relevant,' Christians are clamoring to join this vacuous conversation. We are sold to Hollywood as a great untapped market that Hollywood can’t afford to ignore...Now, I like watching movies at home, although not as much as I used to. But in looking to join the conversation, we are unwittingly accepting the premise that the 'Life Questions' can be answered by reference to what’s onscreen. They can’t."

Sorry, but I think this is a pretty uncharitable take on the Christian response. Yes, there are corners of the evangelical world looking to Hollywood (and acadeimia and politics and the media, etc., etc.) for validation, but I don't think that impulse characterizes the larger movement, and certainly one example like this cannot establish such a claim. Does any Christian really think the big questinos of life will be "answered" onscreen? And does joining the conversation about what Hollywood produces entail that we do "unwittingly" think such a thing? No and no. 

Let me suggest a different explanation for why Christians made so much noise surrounding the Noah movie: we care about ideas. We understand that ideas have consequences. And we care. Notice the kind of response evangelicals gave. For the most part, they were thoughtful reviews (whether you agreed or disagreed with the conclusions), engaging the intellectual content of the movie. Generally, there were not simplistic dismissals or calls for a Hollywood boycott.

We understand that the ideas that come to dominate our culture will have a huge impact over time. We understand that what J. Gresham Machen said almost a hundred years ago is true today: 

“False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of a nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion. Under such circumstances, what God desires us to do is to destroy the obstacle at its root.”

And we understand that a prominent tool to diseeminate ideas in our culture is the screen. Movies, TV shows, YouTube and Vimeo videos, and other visual media are tools that can, over time, take our minds captive by false ideas (Colossians 2:8). So we care. We realize it's important to engage those ideas, wrestle with them, debate them, and ultimately equip the Body of Christ to see everything in the light of God's truth. 

You know what would've been much more concerning to me? Apathy. If Christians just yawned and said, "Whatever." "Who cares?" That would've been a much greater cause for concern. So I'm glad Christians made some noise about the Noah movie. I'll take passionate engagement over apathy any day.

What Our Reaction to the Noah Movie Says About Evangelicals

Hey, did you hear anything about that recent Noah movie?

Ha! Of course you did and are now probably suffering from NMF (Noah-Movie Fatigue). Wow, evangelicals had a lot to say about the movie. To characterize the evangelical reaction as diverse would be a huge understatement. There was Gregory Thornbury's more positive take on the Noah movie, to Brian Mattson's argument that it's a thoroughly Gnostic retelling of the Noah narrative, to Peter Chattaway's response that "No, Noah is not Gnostic," to R.J. Moeller's creative open letter to Darren Aronofsky, to Joe Carter's unimpressed review of Aronofsky's "mediocre midrash," to Barbara Nicolosi's MMA takedown of all things Noah. Evangelicals certainly had a lot to say.

So last week, in response to all the Noah noise, Roberto Rivera over at Breakpoint asked, "Why are Christians fighting so hard about Noah?" His answer:

"Missing in all of this is any consideration about why Christians should be so invested in what comes out of Hollywood. Maybe it’s age or depression, but I think that part of being part of the peculiar people is not looking to Hollywood for validation...In our desperate desire to seem 'relevant,' Christians are clamoring to join this vacuous conversation. We are sold to Hollywood as a great untapped market that Hollywood can’t afford to ignore...Now, I like watching movies at home, although not as much as I used to. But in looking to join the conversation, we are unwittingly accepting the premise that the 'Life Questions' can be answered by reference to what’s onscreen. They can’t."

Sorry, but I think this is a pretty uncharitable take on the Christian response. Yes, there are corners of the evangelical world looking to Hollywood (and acadeimia and politics and the media, etc., etc.) for validation, but I don't think that impulse characterizes the larger movement, and certainly one example like this cannot establish such a claim. Does any Christian really think the big questinos of life will be "answered" onscreen? And does joining the conversation about what Hollywood produces entail that we do "unwittingly" think such a thing? No and no. 

Let me suggest a different explanation for why Christians made so much noise surrounding the Noah movie: we care about ideas. We understand that ideas have consequences. And we care. Notice the kind of response evangelicals gave. For the most part, they were thoughtful reviews (whether you agreed or disagreed with the conclusions), engaging the intellectual content of the movie. Generally, there were not simplistic dismissals or calls for a Hollywood boycott.

We understand that the ideas that come to dominate our culture will have a huge impact over time. We understand that what J. Gresham Machen said almost a hundred years ago is true today: 

“False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of a nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion. Under such circumstances, what God desires us to do is to destroy the obstacle at its root.”

And we understand that a prominent tool to diseeminate ideas in our culture is the screen. Movies, TV shows, YouTube and Vimeo videos, and other visual media are tools that can, over time, take our minds captive by false ideas (Colossians 2:8). So we care. We realize it's important to engage those ideas, wrestle with them, debate them, and ultimately equip the Body of Christ to see everything in the light of God's truth. 

You know what would've been much more concerning to me? Apathy. If Christians just yawned and said, "Whatever." "Who cares?" That would've been a much greater cause for concern. So I'm glad Christians made some noise about the Noah movie. I'll take passionate engagement over apathy any day.

Should Christians Refrain from All Violence?

Greg explains why Christians are not obligated to be pacifists. 

 

How Can I Trust the Gospel Accounts When Some Are Missing Important Details?

A visitor to ColdCaseChristianity.com wrote recently to express her concerns and growing doubts about Christianity. Raised in the Church, she finds herself questioning the reliability of the Gospel authors because some of them failed to mention important events in the life and ministry of Jesus. Why does only one Gospel writer mention the Raising of Lazarus? Why does only one writer mention the dead people who rose from the grave at Jesus’ crucifixion? There are many examples of singular, seemingly important events mentioned by only one of the four Gospel authors. Shouldn’t all of the alleged eyewitnesses have included these events, and doesn’t the absence of information in a particular Gospel cast doubt on whether or not the event actually occurred? My experience working with eyewitnesses may help you think clearly about these issues and objections. You can trust the Gospel eyewitness accounts, even though some are missing important details:

Eyewitness Accounts Vary Based on Their Scope
When I interview an eyewitness, I am very careful to set the parameter for the testimony before I begin. I usually frame the interview by saying something like, “Please tell me everything you saw from the moment the robber came in the bank, to the moment he left.” I make sure to set the constraints the same way for each and every witness. Without these parameters, the resulting testimony would vary wildly from person to person. Some would include details prior to or after the robbery, some would include only the highlights, and some would omit major elements in the event. If I want to be able to compare the testimony of two or three witnesses later, I’m going to have to make sure they begin with the same scope and framework in mind.

The Gospel authors clearly did not testify with the same initial instructions. There was no unifying investigator present to set the framework for their testimony, so their responses vary in the same way they would vary today if the scope of their testimony was not established from the onset. Mark, according to Papias, the 1st Century Bishop of Hierapolis, “became Peter’s interpreter and wrote accurately all that he remembered, not, indeed, in order, of the things said and done by the Lord. For he had not heard the Lord, nor had followed him, but later on, followed Peter, who used to give teaching as necessity demanded but not making, as it were, an arrangement of the Lord’s oracles, so that Mark did nothing wrong in thus writing down single points as he remembered them. For to one thing he gave attention, to leave out nothing of what he had heard and to make no false statements in them.” More concerned about accuracy of individual events than the order in which they occurred, Mark offered details like many of my witnesses who are interviewed without a unified parameter. Mark is simply recording the preaching of Peter, and Peter only referred to portions of Jesus’ life and ministry, making no effort to order them for his listeners.

Eyewitness Accounts Vary Based on Their Perspective and Purpose
In addition, the witnesses I interview often want to highlight a particular element in the crime scene or a particular suspect behavior they think is important. Sometimes their choice of detail is influenced greatly by their own life history. Their values, experiences and personal concerns guide their selection of which details they include, and which they omit. Witnesses also typically try to offer what they think I am looking for as the detective rather than every little thing they actually saw. They are speaking to a specific audience (an investigator), and this has an impact on what they choose to include or omit. When this happens, I have to refocus each witness and ask them to fill in the details they skipped over, including everything they saw, even if they don’t think it’s important to me as a detective. If I don’t encourage eyewitnesses to be more inclusive and specific, they will omit important details.

The Gospel authors were not similarly directed. They had specific audiences in mind and particular perspectives to offer, and none of their testimony was guided by a unifying investigator who could encourage them to fill in the missing details. Luke clearly had a particular reader in mind (Theophilus): “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught (Luke 1).” Like other witnesses and historians, Luke likely allowed his intended audience to influence his selection of details. His testimony was also most certainly shaped by his own life experience (as an educated man),his own personal history, and his values. Matthew did something similar when he highlighted the details of Jesus’ life most relevant to Matthew’s Jewish audience.

Eyewitness Accounts Vary Based on Their Knowledge of Other Testimony
Sometimes an eyewitness will only provide those details he thinks are missing from the testimony of others. This is most likely to occur if the witness is the last one to be interviewed and he (or she) is already familiar with the testimony of the other witnesses. When I see this happening, I ask this last witness to pretend like he or she is the only witness in my case, “Try to include every detail like I’ve never heard anything about the case. Pretend like I know nothing about the event.” Once the witness has done that, I may go back and re-interview the prior witnesses to see why they didn’t mention the late details offered by the final witness. In the end, my reports related to everyone’s testimony will be as complete as possible, including all the details remembered by each person I interviewed.

The gospel authors were not similarly directed and re-interviewed. John was the last person to provide an account, and he clearly selected those events important to him, given his stated goal: “…many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name (John 20).” John knew what had already been provided by others, and he selected specific events (some which were previously unreported) to make his case. He acknowledged his limited choice of data: “…there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written (John 21).” John admitted what we already know: witnesses pick and choose from their own observations unless they are specifically directed to do otherwise.

Skeptics sometimes infer more from omissions (or inclusions) in the Gospels than what is reasonable, especially given the manner in which the Gospels came to be written. Because the four authors were not specifically instructed, guided or re-interviewed by a unifying detective, we simply cannot conclude much from the differences between the accounts. We must, instead, do our best to employ the four part template we use to evaluate eyewitness reliability after the fact. This template (as I’ve described it in Cold-Case Christianity), provides us with confidence in the trustworthy nature of the Biblical narratives. That’s why you can trust the Gospel eyewitness accounts, even though some are missing important details.

Jesus' Wife Fragment

In the fall of 2012, Harvard historian Karen King announced she'd been given a fragment of a manuscript that mentioned Jesus' wife. It's in the news again because studies have indicated it's not a modern forgery. But whether or not it was a forgery isn't the main issue. The date of the manuscript is what's relevant, and even in 2012 when the announcement was made, it was considered to be a few centuries after Jesus – and long after the New Testament documents were written. So it presented no authoritative rival to those documents about Jesus. The recent studies date it to 669-859 CE. And the analysis suggests that the original might date back to the third century, around the same time as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary. Still long after the eyewitness testimonies were written about Jesus. All this fragment may tell us is what some people thought or wrote about Jesus centuries after His life on earth; whereas the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses not long after Jesus.

Here's what we wrote about it in 2012:

A faded piece of papyrus refers to Jesus' wife. Just read the first paragraph of the story and, fortunately, it leads with the most important piece of information – it's from the 4th century. That's 300 years at least after Jesus ministry on earth, and centuries later than the New Testament documents were written. 

The gnostic gospels were rejected by the church because they knew they weren't accounts written close to the time they report, as the New Testament documents were. The gnostic gospels date at least more than 100 years after Jesus, most of them much longer than that. They weren't considered authoritative because they were far removed from Jesus life and the authorship couldn't be traced to an eyewitness. Someone close to Jesus' life was in a much better position to report accurately about his life than someone three centuries removed.

Even if authentic, this fragment is dated way too late to take seriously. Even Karen King, the scholar who revealed the fragment cautions that.

We also don't know what kind of document the fragment is from, what kind of literature it is. There is so much unknown here and the response is way overblown.

Meanwhile, ancient manuscript fragments that support the Bible are discovered and cataloged quite often, but don't get the same press attention.

Michael Kruger cites some key differences between the gnostic gospels and the New Testament documents.

Read what textual scholar Dan Wallace had to say about the text of the fragment when it was discovered.

Challenge Response: Shouldn't Christians Retreat?

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

  

Restoring People: The Leprosy Doctor

Paul Brand was born to missionary parents in India. He became a surgeon in England and returned to India to care for leprosy patients. Dr. Brand's insight was that the damage to patients' limbs was not due to the disease, but injury that they never felt beause the disease dulled their nerves. He established the New Life Center in India, which was a village setting for leprosy patients. "This [kind of residential setting] helped dispel the stigma that was so prevalent even among medical professionals. Correcting deformities to restore the self-respect of patients and to integrate them into society was his cherished goal."

In 1966, after 19 years of service in India, he moved to the U.S.A. on invitation to take up the position of Chief of Rehabilitation Branch at theNational Hensen's Disease Center at Carville, Louisiana. He worked there for 20 years and established a well-equipped and well-staffed research unit to study the complications of insensitive hands and feet, their prevention and management. His methods for prevention and management of plantar ulcers are now extensively used for treatment of patients with diabetes melitus who have similar problems. Brand also popularized the technique of serial casting for the finger deformities that often result from Hansen's disease, a technique that is now widely used by hand therapists to treat contractures from many different hand injuries and conditions.

Dr. Brand's experience treating patients with severe injuries led to his view that pain was actually a valuable feature because when it functions properly, it protects us from more severe injuries. He wrote about this with Phillip Yancey in Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants. "The book contains a foreword by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who said that if he could have chosen to be anyone else besides himself, he would have chosen to be Dr. Paul Brand."

Sexual Expression Is a Worldview Issue

I just came across this piece by Rod Dreher explaining why “gay marriage is not just a social revolution but a cosmological one” and had to post an excerpt. It explores the subject of marriage as a worldview issue—something I discussed in my post this morning:

Rieff, who died in 2006, was an unbeliever, but he understood that religion is the key to understanding any culture. For Rieff, the essence of any and every culture can be identified by what it forbids. Each imposes a series of moral demands on its members, for the sake of serving communal purposes, and helps them cope with these demands. A culture requires a cultus—a sense of sacred order, a cosmology that roots these moral demands within a metaphysical framework….

Paul’s teachings on sexual purity and marriage were adopted as liberating in the pornographic, sexually exploitive Greco-Roman culture of the time—exploitive especially of slaves and women, whose value to pagan males lay chiefly in their ability to produce children and provide sexual pleasure. Christianity, as articulated by Paul, worked a cultural revolution, restraining and channeling male eros, elevating the status of both women and of the human body, and infusing marriage—and marital sexuality—with love.

Christian marriage, Ruden writes, was “as different from anything before or since as the command to turn the other cheek.” The point is not that Christianity was only, or primarily, about redefining and revaluing sexuality, but that within a Christian anthropology sex takes on a new and different meaning, one that mandated a radical change of behavior and cultural norms. In Christianity, what people do with their sexuality cannot be separated from what the human person is….

[A]s Rieff recognizes, Christianity did establish a way to harness the sexual instinct, embed it within a community, and direct it in positive ways.

What makes our own era different from the past, says Rieff, is that we have ceased to believe in the Christian cultural framework, yet we have made it impossible to believe in any other that does what culture must do: restrain individual passions and channel them creatively toward communal purposes.

Rather, in the modern era, we have inverted the role of culture. Instead of teaching us what we must deprive ourselves of to be civilized, we have a society that tells us we find meaning and purpose in releasing ourselves from the old prohibitions.

How this came to be is a complicated story involving the rise of humanism, the advent of the Enlightenment, and the coming of modernity. As philosopher Charles Taylor writes in his magisterial religious and cultural history A Secular Age, “The entire ethical stance of moderns supposes and follows on from the death of God (and of course, of the meaningful cosmos).” To be modern is to believe in one’s individual desires as the locus of authority and self-definition….

[F]reedom and authenticity were to be found not in sexual withholding (the Christian view) but in sexual expression and assertion. That is how the modern American claims his freedom.

To Rieff, ours is a particular kind of “revolutionary epoch” because the revolution cannot by its nature be institutionalized. Because it denies the possibility of communal knowledge of binding truths transcending the individual, the revolution cannot establish a stable social order….

Our post-Christian culture, then, is an “anti-culture.” We are compelled by the logic of modernity and the myth of individual freedom to continue tearing away the last vestiges of the old order, convinced that true happiness and harmony will be ours once all limits have been nullified.

His article is sobering. When our culture lost the Christian view of the human person and each person became his own authority, we started down a dangerous road—one that ultimately won’t be able to sustain culture itself. The important thing to note here is that we can’t patch this up by convincing people to accept a man/woman view of marriage. The problem is much, much deeper than that.

As apologists, we preach Christ to the world because He is worthy, and we love Him, and we hope to help others see Him clearly enough to love Him. Rod Dreher’s article is a reminder that we should never be tempted to think that working to effect social change is more important than calling people to Christ and helping them understand our place in His world. For where He who is the True, the Good, and the Beautiful goes, truth, goodness, and beauty follow.

We don’t realize how much Christianity changed our civilization. And we don’t realize how much we’ll lose once we walk away from it.