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The New Testament repeatedly warns its first-century readers that their time is short and that they are to conduct themselves with the knowledge of his imminent return. Yet dozens of generations have come and gone since the time of Jesus, so we are confronted in this generation with the question, Are we more likely to meet God through the return of Jesus or through death?
It is ironic that some who most ardently defend the authority of scripture and object to loose interpretations that justify homosexuality, for example, tend to reverse course when presented with passages that clearly teach the return of Jesus in the first century.
There is a general failure among evangelical apologists to appreciate the power of hearsay to generate firmly held beliefs in a very short time.
The entire edifice of the traditional case for Jesus' resurrection is built on the assumption that we are justified in taking the biblical accounts at face value.
how can one possibly assign a probability to something as inaccessible and untestable as divine intervention?
Even if the circumstances could be tested, if a remarkable explanation was found, it would discount the idea of "divine intervention" simply because we knew what it was! IOW, if it were proven to be divine intervention, people (skeptics) would still not believe if they knew how it happened.
Joseph Smith was murdered by a mob in 1844 in Nauvoo, Illinois. Latter Day Saints believe he was martyred for his unwavering conviction that God revealed himself through golden tablets that Smith had discovered in 1830. Many non-Mormons believe he was killed because he was a criminal. If the facts are so readily disputed for a relatively recent and well-documented event like Joseph Smith's death, how can we say with any confidence how or why Jesus' disciples perished, let alone what was in their minds when they died?
beside the point.
I really disagree with his take on this. Civil laws for Israel should not apply outside the land or after another government has taken power. Similarly, sacrificial laws would be replaced if a better sacrifice had come.
been developed by human apologists attempting to defend their a priori conviction that the Bible contains no errors or contradictions. Why, indeed, does God need ambassadors to explain how apparent contradictions are really nothing of the sort?
why is it more laudable to accept the sometimes convoluted attempts of human inerrantists to harmonize apparent contradictions than to accept that what is "apparent" is, in fact, real?
I am reminded of the contradiction at the Last Supper in which one writer describes the cup then the bread, but another has the bread then the cup. It looks like a contradiction until the Passover tradition is explained: it goes back and forth. IOW, it really does harmonize.
Whenever I have heard a sermon about how to discern God's will for our lives, the pastor has always exhorted us, "God will never tell you to do anything contrary to what is written in the Bible, the Word of God." But Archer would like us to accept the opposite: that God can say one thing in one passage and then ask his servants to violate his commandment in another.
Those who attempt to explain away 1 Kings 22:21-22 in this way should ask themselves whether they are more interested in salvaging the doctrine of inerrancy than in coming to terms with the truth.
Archer tramples on Hosea's clearly expressed opinion.
I agree that there is a contradiction, but disagree that this is Hosea's opinion since in both cases it is God speaking.
Is there a conscious afterlife?
This is a physical versus spiritual perspective, not necessarily a contradiction.
There is no indication in the text that this was a pre-incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity; this is simply an apologetic invention to circumvent two uncomfortable facts: (a) the early Jews believed God had a body, and (b) there are contradictory statements in the Bible concerning whether anyone has seen God.
Are we to make vows?
Religious people at the time took advantage of their oaths. Jesus was opposing this.
namely, that Jesus was denying his perfection out of modesty.
Or, he was using the Socratic Method and not denying anything.
If our works flow from our faith, why does the New Testament exhort us to produce good works?
(notice it's never the wife who can make the decision)
What is the relevance of this?
Given the widespread phenomenon of pseudepigraphal and apocryphal writing during the time in which the Old and New Testaments were being formed, we can make no a priori assumption that the canon itself is immune from the inclusion of such invented material,
we are driven more by our loyalty than by the evidence.
When a friend asked me if there was a particular "straw that broke the camel's back," I reflected and recalled a particular day when I was reading through the Old Testament in a sweltering missionary guest room in the country of Burkina Faso. I told my friend he would think my "straw" to be trivial (I was not mistaken on this count), but that it came on the heels of struggling with a great many other questionable passages during my devotional readings.
what, after all, is the point of insisting that God inspired the original texts without error if he was not interested in preserving them from subsequent copyist errors, especially if we no longer have access to the originals?)
It has been identified by archaeologists with the large and well-watered oasis of Ein el-Qudeirat in eastern Sinai, on the border between modern Israel and Egypt. The name Kadesh was probably preserved over the centuries in the name of a nearby smaller spring called Ein Qadis. A small mound with the remains of a Late Iron Age fort stands at the center of this oasis. Yet repeated excavations and surveys throughout the entire area have not provided even the slightest evidence for activity in the Late Bronze Age, not even a single sherd left by a tiny fleeing band of frightened refugees
Some might wish to warn me against accepting their conclusions uncritically, and they would be right to do so, but I would ask the same in reverse—do not accept the authors of the biblical stories uncritically, keeping in mind their possible political and religious agenda.[74]
That the story of Moses as recounted in the Pentateuch is a late literary construction is supported by a recent and increasingly accepted hypothesis put forward on other grounds, that there was no mass immigration of Israel into Canaan from outside at all! ... [This] view has been supported on both archaeological and sociological grounds. These scholars and those who have followed them maintain that there was no occupation of the land from outside. Rather, the later Israelites were actually descendants of part of the Canaanite population ... There was no "conquest" of Canaan by immigrants, nor
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I've never considered this before. It needs a little research.
the Bible contains a good deal of admirable moral teachings, fascinating stories, and reliable history. But I am not bound by a prior commitment to inerrancy to overlook its many flaws, pretending that they, by virtue of their provenance, are immune from criticism.
such a view runs perilously close to dualism. Where does Satan's power end? No less seriously, how do we distinguish between God's miracles and Satan's? Admitting that Satan can perform such acts invalidates the gospel's argument from miracle. If we cannot determine whether a miracle is from God or from Satan, we cannot determine whether the miracle worker is from God or Satan, unless we have already predetermined in our minds whose side the miracle worker is on, in which case we no longer need the miracle to validate the miracle worker. According to the Gospel of John, the purpose of Jesus'
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This teaching is absent from the synoptic Gospels. To the contrary, they downplay the role of signs as a means of leading one to believe: The Pharisees came and began to question Jesus. To test him, they asked him for a sign from heaven. He sighed deeply and said, "Why does this generation ask for a miraculous sign? I tell you the truth, no sign will be given to it" (Mark 8:11-12). But he said to him, "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead" (Luke 16:31).
But if we find that the religion itself is fraught with logical, historical, and ethical difficulties, we are not bound to accept the claims except under absolute compulsion. To believers, this smacks of "bias against the supernatural." Sometimes, however, biases can be warranted, as even Lewis admits.
So that's how we tell whether a miracle is from God or from Satan: if the miracle is done in the Bible or in the name of our religion, we know it's from God; otherwise, it's from Satan or maybe (but not likely) a hoax. This kind of reasoning removes all apologetic value from miracle.
We never prayed for an amputee's leg to grow back or for a woman with a hysterectomy to have a child; we didn't have enough faith for that sort of miracle. We prayed only for the possible, and those who prayed for the truly impossible and claimed it happened appeared disingenuous like the televangelists.
Most would say that skepticism in this domain is a virtue. But then why is skepticism in the miracle domain not considered a virtue? Why is the skeptic of incredible claims so routinely vilified not only in the church but also throughout the popular media? If the majority of the American populace considers Doubting Thomas a villain rather than a hero for requiring evidence of Jesus' resurrection, should we be surprised at the lack of scrutiny given to alternative quack medicine like homeopathy?
Perhaps those who believe in miracles should do as Elijah advised the priests of Baal: "Shout louder! Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened" (1 Kings 18:27).
In summary, if God exists, it is more reasonable to believe in a god who chooses never to intervene than in one who intervenes in ways that bear the stamp of capricious whim, indistinguishable from random good and bad fortune.[77]
if God knows our needs, and if he is all-good, all-wise, and all-knowing, then what is the point of asking him for anything,
Because it is in the asking -- time spent with him -- that we get to know him.
secular history provides a more nuanced picture, in which Israel enjoyed some of its most prosperous years under the "wicked" Omride kings; see Finkelstien 2001).
her conclusion was based on her adherence to the theological doctrine that true believers cannot lose their faith, and not on any objective evaluation of my prior relationship with Christ.
Perhaps such believers need the assurance that something distinguishes their secure present faith from my insecure former faith so they can rest easy in the guarantee that they will persevere in their faith until death.
Few evangelicals conclude that a Hindu or a humanist who becomes a Christian was never a "true Hindu" or a "true humanist" in the first place.
If my wife wrote me a series of letters before passing away, I might find great comfort in reading her letters, but I could not claim to have an ongoing relationship with her in any real sense.
many strong believers freely confess to experiencing often a "dark night of the soul" when no comfort or sense of God's presence is to be found. This is not how a loving parent relates to her child.
If we experience good fortune, that is evidence of God's love, but if we experience great trials, it is only evidence that God is refining us or that Satan is attacking us.
if God exists and instills in us reason and a conscience, how can unbelievers be blamed for using reason and conscience to come to the conclusion that there is no benevolent force guiding our lives or that the Bible displays the earmarks of human authorship, self-interest, and superstition common to the written works of other peoples?
By thanking God for these medical advances we now enjoy, are we not implicitly indicting him for failing to provide the same benefits to others from a bygone era?
If God made us (assuming the theistic view for a moment), then presumably our sense of right and wrong comes from him. If that's the case, there is no other true sense of right and wrong but his. If he does something wrong, then he is culpable by the very standards of judgment that he has given us as sentient human beings. And murdering babies, starving masses, and allowing—or causing—genocides are wrong
I consider it no coincidence that the two most successful world religions, Christianity and Islam, are the ones that feature most prominently the doctrine hell. As E. O. Wilson observed, "Every major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none ever flourished by tolerating its rivals"
I abhor the use of Pascal's wager as an argument for faith. It is not an argument, but a pusillanimous threat used to compensate for the lack of good arguments for the Christian faith.
Good argument
Can we imagine the effect on our justice system if the jury were offered millions of dollars for making one decision and were threatened with death for making the opposite decision? "Oh, you're not convinced that Christianity is true after all the evidence I've presented in support of it? Well, let me throw this in for your consideration, then: if I'm right and you're wrong, then here's what's in store for you ..." If such cajoling is required to get an individual across the threshold of faith, can we say the new convert is truly inwardly convinced?
What possible purpose can hell serve but to satisfy God's vindictiveness?
How is it "good news" that we can avoid eternal torment if it is too late for our parents who were so dear to us?
