Click below to see a the PDF of the logical analysis of Richard Dawkins' defense of atheism:
Unpardonable Sin
This question was emailed to me at the ministry by a previous inquirer who knew that I was also a former atheist. Being an atheist himself, this was the first of many questions he had for me. Any reference to the questioner's identity have of course been edited to preserve their privacy.
QUESTION:
don't you think you and I will both go to hell, regardless of future piety? I thought intentionally renouncing God was the only unforgivable sin.
RESPONSE:
When one speaks of the one unpardonable or unforgivable sin in Christianity, they most often are speaking of that which is mentioned in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew:
“Assuredly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they may utter; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal condemnation” – because they said, “He has an unclean spirit.” (Mark 3:28-30)
“Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.” (Matthew 12:31-32)
I will assume these are the teachings that you are referring to simply because there are no other verses in Scripture that speak of any action of man as being unforgivable. Thus we see that Scripture does indeed teach that there is an unpardonable sin, and it is the sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit. We again face the task, as we should every time a reasonable question shows up, of identifying exactly what is being spoken of in these instances. If and when we figure that out, we may have a better idea as far as what sin we may commit that will never be forgiven, even by Christ’s blood.
To come to a correct understanding of these passages, it is absolutely necessary to look at the context in which they were spoken (or written). Some will wave a flippant hand at context, but such people are only proclaiming their ignorance in the realm of logic and meaning. The exact same words can mean something totally different in two different contexts. We are not interested in skewing our final interpretation to meet our own subjective opinions. When it comes to claims to objective truth, of which this is one, we should never ask the question “What does this mean to you, the reader?” Such a question is quite plainly idiotic. That is completely irrelevant. What matters is what Jesus meant when he said them. The author carries the meaning, never the reader.
Before we proceed, I should mention that what we are about to look into necessitates a view of Scripture as being true to begin with. As an atheist, this is not a logically permissible stance. I understand that. If atheism is true, the question itself makes no sense. There is no God and there is no Hell. It would be like asking if my older sister likes to travel by teleportation. I neither have an older sister nor does teleportation exist as a means of travel at the time of this writing. It is a question that should simply be rejected as nonsensical. So, in order to avoid this sort of immediate irrelevance, let’s at least temporarily assume the truth of Scripture and the historical accounts which it records.
In the context of the Mark quotation, Jesus was casting out demons and his Jewish opponents (the political/religious leaders of the Jewish people at the time) were accusing Him of doing so in the name of Beelzebub, ruler of the demons. Famously Jesus responds to them with reason and pronounces that a house divided cannot stand. Of course this must be true. If a house is made up of a unified body of members, and its membership becomes divided, then the house as it was once known cannot exist. It could be that one demon would ACT as if he were opposing another demon, thereby committing deception that favors both of their interests, but they could never directly oppose one another. This is why Satan exists to begin with, as he directly opposed God.
The real issue at hand in the context of this historical event was that the Jewish leaders, upon seeing Jesus cast out demons, KNEW that Jesus COULD NOT be genuinely casting out demons by demonic power. However, their deep seeded emotional pride prompted them to reject what they plainly saw to be true and accuse Jesus of something that simply could not be. There are always multiple “possible” explanations for any event. Upon witnessing the events recorded in Mark, one could have seen reasonably thought that they were hallucinating, but everyone would have been seeing the same hallucination, making that extremely unlikely. They also could have thought that Jesus was a trickster or that the supposedly possessed people were just faking or confused. There were many more possible explanations as well. The truth almost always ends up being the most probable of the possible explanations, but the truth is NEVER one of the logically impossible explanations. Yet, this is what Jesus’ opponents proclaimed to be true.
The Jewish leaders KNEW it was impossible, and so they must have KNOWN that Jesus stood in righteous opposition to demons, and was therefore on the side of God the Father. They were not naturalists, postmoderns, skeptics or atheists. They were people who knew God existed, knew His character, knew His attributes and knew what they were seeing was from God. They knew that in the man of Jesus was something working with the power of God. The Bible tells us it was the Holy Spirit. Yet, they said Jesus was acting the part of a demon that was controlling Jesus and performing these actions. They called the Holy Spirit a damned demon KNOWING (not just suspecting) full well that whatever was working within Jesus was from God.
Jesus then issues the statement we are looking at. Jesus says that blaspheming the Holy Spirit is an unforgivable sin after all of this had taken place. And then the author of Mark offers something more. He tells us WHY Jesus made the statement. Jesus made the statement because the Jewish leaders were saying Jesus had an evil spirit. They knew without a doubt the opposite was true, but their pride welled up and accused that which HAD TO HAVE BEEN entirely good as being evil. They blasphemed the Holy Spirit.
The same situation is described in Matthew. The same people are accusing Jesus and Jesus responds in the same way. However, we are told of one additional comment made by Jesus in Matthew. He declares that He is casting out demons by the “Spirit of God.” So, in essence, Jesus is stating the obvious to the Jewish leaders. They knew that to be true before Jesus said anything. Furthermore, because of Jesus’ additional statement, they KNEW that Jesus KNEW that He was acting by the Holy Spirit! Jesus drew the line, knowing it was obvious and knowing the Jewish leaders knew it was obvious. He may have been warning them not to speak their thoughts, or perhaps he was setting the stage knowing full well that they were going to accuse Him. At any rate, the Jewish leaders openly falsely accuse GOD HIMSELF of EVIL… all the while KNOWING what they were doing.
So that is the context. It is one thing to denounce God because you don’t believe in Him, or don’t like Him, or don’t know about Him. It is another to meet God face to face and call Him Satan. For this reason, many Bible scholars don’t even believe you can commit this sin today, for they say it would be necessary to meet Jesus face to face, being perfectly filled with Holy Spirit in His entirety, and call Him filled with an evil spirit knowing that to be false. I am not convinced of this position myself. The context and the statements do not provide a clear cut definition of what constitutes blaspheming the Holy Spirit, but it does give us some profound insights and a high probability of the truth.
To further dismiss the notion that anyone who denies the deity of Christ and His being filled with the Holy Spirit, we need only flip a few pages to the right. Here we come to the book of Acts where Paul, one of those Jewish leaders who hated Jesus and His followers, is directly approached by the resurrected Christ and is chosen to be saved. If anyone had come close to “blaspheming the Holy Spirit,” that apparently did not do it, it must have been Paul. And yet, Paul is author of most of the New Testament after the gospels. I would think it to be VERY probable indeed that Paul is in Heaven.
So, neither I nor you KNOW with absolute certainty when the Holy Spirit is acting in a given situation. We may suspect He is, or we may reject the notion as ludicrous. However, in our rejection, we are acting out of naivety, or skepticism based on what we perceive to be correct reason. None of these stances were permissible to the people whom Jesus denounced and condemned. For these reasons, I personally do not believe neither you nor I are necessarily condemned. There is no Biblical reason to take such a stance, and it simply does not stand up to proper logical scrutiny.
However, I will also say that it is at least possible that we are both condemned for past actions. There is still the tiniest of cracks in that door, and as such I think we would do well to entertain the implications of such a scenario. First, if it were true that we were to be condemned, then atheism would necessarily be false. Deism would also be false. Deism admits a “divine kickoff” to creation and then a non-active, non-interested deity that, if it didn’t exist, would in no way effect the ways of the universe. Such a god would necessarily be incapable of moral implementation, issuance of any laws, or active judgment of any kind. Thus He could not condemn nor save anyone. The moral framework in deism necessarily follows the moral framework of atheism… there is none.
So, if we were to assume our condemnation be possible, we must assume an active, moral, good God that has the power and desire to judge and to save from judgment. We could construct many gods with these qualities, but for the present purposes, let us say that we are dealing with the true God of the Bible. That is, we must necessarily also assume that an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, just, merciful, gracious, creator of the universe exists and desires the best possible moral life for each individual person He created. If we claim to assume our condemnation is even possible, we must claim to KNOW that to be true.
Faced with that knowledge, let us look at the situation we would be in as condemned people living on earth, if that were the case. We would know God to be absolute good. We would know His decrees are the best things for our lives. We would know that He created us. We would know that disobedience to His will would be fruitless and miserable. We would know with absolute certainty a vast number of truths about ourselves and about God. Some of these truths (including the assumed truth of our condemnation) might make us very angry or sad. They may even cause us to hate God. Yet even our strongest emotions would not change that which is objectively and absolutely true. We would be acting emotionally and idiotically to act in any other way besides in accordance with the truth. Would I be enormously emotional if God were to tell me I was going to Hell for eternity? Yes. Would I deserve it? YES!!
That’s an incredibly important thing to remember throughout this discussion. We don’t make the rules of eternity. God does. He has the right to. He has the perfect ability to. Are we required to like them? No. Are we going to play by them for eternity? Yes. As people who have been disobedient to God, do we deserve any and every bad thing that comes our way? Yes. Do we deserve any objectively good thing at all? No. End of story.
God is not required to save anyone. In fact, if fairness were the only rule in play, God would be REQUIRED to send us all to Hell! Yet, even if that were the case, He would still be God. We could not escape Him and his decrees would still exist. Who would we choose to serve? Ourselves? That doesn’t make much sense, as we would know we are evil and would lead ourselves into despair both in this life and in the next. Would we serve another person, or even Satan? The same logical flaws apply to that scenario as well. No, the only logically reasonable option would be to honor and glorify our creator, accepting His just judgment on us and crediting it to His amazing and perfect righteousness. Our condemnation, if it were true, would be our own doing, not Gods.
In conclusion, no matter which way you slice it, nothing changes. If God is not real, this whole paper is irrelevant. If He is, the only logical choice is to accept His perfection and act accordingly.
QUESTION:
don't you think you and I will both go to hell, regardless of future piety? I thought intentionally renouncing God was the only unforgivable sin.
RESPONSE:
When one speaks of the one unpardonable or unforgivable sin in Christianity, they most often are speaking of that which is mentioned in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew:
“Assuredly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they may utter; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal condemnation” – because they said, “He has an unclean spirit.” (Mark 3:28-30)
“Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.” (Matthew 12:31-32)
I will assume these are the teachings that you are referring to simply because there are no other verses in Scripture that speak of any action of man as being unforgivable. Thus we see that Scripture does indeed teach that there is an unpardonable sin, and it is the sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit. We again face the task, as we should every time a reasonable question shows up, of identifying exactly what is being spoken of in these instances. If and when we figure that out, we may have a better idea as far as what sin we may commit that will never be forgiven, even by Christ’s blood.
To come to a correct understanding of these passages, it is absolutely necessary to look at the context in which they were spoken (or written). Some will wave a flippant hand at context, but such people are only proclaiming their ignorance in the realm of logic and meaning. The exact same words can mean something totally different in two different contexts. We are not interested in skewing our final interpretation to meet our own subjective opinions. When it comes to claims to objective truth, of which this is one, we should never ask the question “What does this mean to you, the reader?” Such a question is quite plainly idiotic. That is completely irrelevant. What matters is what Jesus meant when he said them. The author carries the meaning, never the reader.
Before we proceed, I should mention that what we are about to look into necessitates a view of Scripture as being true to begin with. As an atheist, this is not a logically permissible stance. I understand that. If atheism is true, the question itself makes no sense. There is no God and there is no Hell. It would be like asking if my older sister likes to travel by teleportation. I neither have an older sister nor does teleportation exist as a means of travel at the time of this writing. It is a question that should simply be rejected as nonsensical. So, in order to avoid this sort of immediate irrelevance, let’s at least temporarily assume the truth of Scripture and the historical accounts which it records.
In the context of the Mark quotation, Jesus was casting out demons and his Jewish opponents (the political/religious leaders of the Jewish people at the time) were accusing Him of doing so in the name of Beelzebub, ruler of the demons. Famously Jesus responds to them with reason and pronounces that a house divided cannot stand. Of course this must be true. If a house is made up of a unified body of members, and its membership becomes divided, then the house as it was once known cannot exist. It could be that one demon would ACT as if he were opposing another demon, thereby committing deception that favors both of their interests, but they could never directly oppose one another. This is why Satan exists to begin with, as he directly opposed God.
The real issue at hand in the context of this historical event was that the Jewish leaders, upon seeing Jesus cast out demons, KNEW that Jesus COULD NOT be genuinely casting out demons by demonic power. However, their deep seeded emotional pride prompted them to reject what they plainly saw to be true and accuse Jesus of something that simply could not be. There are always multiple “possible” explanations for any event. Upon witnessing the events recorded in Mark, one could have seen reasonably thought that they were hallucinating, but everyone would have been seeing the same hallucination, making that extremely unlikely. They also could have thought that Jesus was a trickster or that the supposedly possessed people were just faking or confused. There were many more possible explanations as well. The truth almost always ends up being the most probable of the possible explanations, but the truth is NEVER one of the logically impossible explanations. Yet, this is what Jesus’ opponents proclaimed to be true.
The Jewish leaders KNEW it was impossible, and so they must have KNOWN that Jesus stood in righteous opposition to demons, and was therefore on the side of God the Father. They were not naturalists, postmoderns, skeptics or atheists. They were people who knew God existed, knew His character, knew His attributes and knew what they were seeing was from God. They knew that in the man of Jesus was something working with the power of God. The Bible tells us it was the Holy Spirit. Yet, they said Jesus was acting the part of a demon that was controlling Jesus and performing these actions. They called the Holy Spirit a damned demon KNOWING (not just suspecting) full well that whatever was working within Jesus was from God.
Jesus then issues the statement we are looking at. Jesus says that blaspheming the Holy Spirit is an unforgivable sin after all of this had taken place. And then the author of Mark offers something more. He tells us WHY Jesus made the statement. Jesus made the statement because the Jewish leaders were saying Jesus had an evil spirit. They knew without a doubt the opposite was true, but their pride welled up and accused that which HAD TO HAVE BEEN entirely good as being evil. They blasphemed the Holy Spirit.
The same situation is described in Matthew. The same people are accusing Jesus and Jesus responds in the same way. However, we are told of one additional comment made by Jesus in Matthew. He declares that He is casting out demons by the “Spirit of God.” So, in essence, Jesus is stating the obvious to the Jewish leaders. They knew that to be true before Jesus said anything. Furthermore, because of Jesus’ additional statement, they KNEW that Jesus KNEW that He was acting by the Holy Spirit! Jesus drew the line, knowing it was obvious and knowing the Jewish leaders knew it was obvious. He may have been warning them not to speak their thoughts, or perhaps he was setting the stage knowing full well that they were going to accuse Him. At any rate, the Jewish leaders openly falsely accuse GOD HIMSELF of EVIL… all the while KNOWING what they were doing.
So that is the context. It is one thing to denounce God because you don’t believe in Him, or don’t like Him, or don’t know about Him. It is another to meet God face to face and call Him Satan. For this reason, many Bible scholars don’t even believe you can commit this sin today, for they say it would be necessary to meet Jesus face to face, being perfectly filled with Holy Spirit in His entirety, and call Him filled with an evil spirit knowing that to be false. I am not convinced of this position myself. The context and the statements do not provide a clear cut definition of what constitutes blaspheming the Holy Spirit, but it does give us some profound insights and a high probability of the truth.
To further dismiss the notion that anyone who denies the deity of Christ and His being filled with the Holy Spirit, we need only flip a few pages to the right. Here we come to the book of Acts where Paul, one of those Jewish leaders who hated Jesus and His followers, is directly approached by the resurrected Christ and is chosen to be saved. If anyone had come close to “blaspheming the Holy Spirit,” that apparently did not do it, it must have been Paul. And yet, Paul is author of most of the New Testament after the gospels. I would think it to be VERY probable indeed that Paul is in Heaven.
So, neither I nor you KNOW with absolute certainty when the Holy Spirit is acting in a given situation. We may suspect He is, or we may reject the notion as ludicrous. However, in our rejection, we are acting out of naivety, or skepticism based on what we perceive to be correct reason. None of these stances were permissible to the people whom Jesus denounced and condemned. For these reasons, I personally do not believe neither you nor I are necessarily condemned. There is no Biblical reason to take such a stance, and it simply does not stand up to proper logical scrutiny.
However, I will also say that it is at least possible that we are both condemned for past actions. There is still the tiniest of cracks in that door, and as such I think we would do well to entertain the implications of such a scenario. First, if it were true that we were to be condemned, then atheism would necessarily be false. Deism would also be false. Deism admits a “divine kickoff” to creation and then a non-active, non-interested deity that, if it didn’t exist, would in no way effect the ways of the universe. Such a god would necessarily be incapable of moral implementation, issuance of any laws, or active judgment of any kind. Thus He could not condemn nor save anyone. The moral framework in deism necessarily follows the moral framework of atheism… there is none.
So, if we were to assume our condemnation be possible, we must assume an active, moral, good God that has the power and desire to judge and to save from judgment. We could construct many gods with these qualities, but for the present purposes, let us say that we are dealing with the true God of the Bible. That is, we must necessarily also assume that an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, just, merciful, gracious, creator of the universe exists and desires the best possible moral life for each individual person He created. If we claim to assume our condemnation is even possible, we must claim to KNOW that to be true.
Faced with that knowledge, let us look at the situation we would be in as condemned people living on earth, if that were the case. We would know God to be absolute good. We would know His decrees are the best things for our lives. We would know that He created us. We would know that disobedience to His will would be fruitless and miserable. We would know with absolute certainty a vast number of truths about ourselves and about God. Some of these truths (including the assumed truth of our condemnation) might make us very angry or sad. They may even cause us to hate God. Yet even our strongest emotions would not change that which is objectively and absolutely true. We would be acting emotionally and idiotically to act in any other way besides in accordance with the truth. Would I be enormously emotional if God were to tell me I was going to Hell for eternity? Yes. Would I deserve it? YES!!
That’s an incredibly important thing to remember throughout this discussion. We don’t make the rules of eternity. God does. He has the right to. He has the perfect ability to. Are we required to like them? No. Are we going to play by them for eternity? Yes. As people who have been disobedient to God, do we deserve any and every bad thing that comes our way? Yes. Do we deserve any objectively good thing at all? No. End of story.
God is not required to save anyone. In fact, if fairness were the only rule in play, God would be REQUIRED to send us all to Hell! Yet, even if that were the case, He would still be God. We could not escape Him and his decrees would still exist. Who would we choose to serve? Ourselves? That doesn’t make much sense, as we would know we are evil and would lead ourselves into despair both in this life and in the next. Would we serve another person, or even Satan? The same logical flaws apply to that scenario as well. No, the only logically reasonable option would be to honor and glorify our creator, accepting His just judgment on us and crediting it to His amazing and perfect righteousness. Our condemnation, if it were true, would be our own doing, not Gods.
In conclusion, no matter which way you slice it, nothing changes. If God is not real, this whole paper is irrelevant. If He is, the only logical choice is to accept His perfection and act accordingly.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Forgiveness Without Sacrifice
This is a question I received recently at the ministry:
I have read the Bible, as well as Mr. Mcdowell's book The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict. I have read several other books on apologetics, as well as the apologetics study Bible, and am very familiar with scripture. However, I am not a Christian. I am an atheist, with some deistic leanings. The primary reason is because no one can seem to answer me one question- it is in no apologetics book I have read that I can recall, and it should stick in my mind. The only answer I get is "God works in mysterious ways", "Our ways are not God's ways", or some sort of variation- and I feel that's a cop-out. Apparently, God made us in his image, and as such, even though we are not capable of understanding infinity or anything of that nature, we should be able to understand the human parallels to his motivations. So my question is this- Since humans are capable of forgiving without sacrifice, without any sort of tribute, and do so often, and since that is in fact seen as the pinnacle of forgiveness, why is it that God, supposedly loving, caring, and holy, needed to sacrifice his own son, his own blood, in order to forgive man? Why could he not simply forgive, as man can? A man can let go of bitterness, of a grudge deep in his heart- I have done it myself. Why could God not do the same?
Response
Hey (Name Withheld),
That’s a great question. It’s obvious you’ve put a great deal of time into your thoughts on Christianity and its teachings. I very much appreciate your honesty regarding where you stand on God and your beliefs. I too was a staunch atheist with days where I might have thought some deity existed, but if so was largely irrelevant. It’s easy for me to set my mind back to the philosophical and theological views that I once believed to be true. Since you’ve shared a bit about your thoughts, I’ll share a bit about where I was as well. I was raised in church and knew all the Biblical stories. I also believed they were fabrications. Logic and science solved problems, got answers and healed people. Religion did nothing of the sort. Instead, religion seemed to be a very powerful placebo for people to find purpose and meaning in their lives. That is why it existed, to serve as a fictitious comfort to those who had a need for it. Religion was full of logical fallacies and contradictions and as such it was reserved for the intellectually incapable or emotionally needy.
As you can tell, I’ve been intellectually persuaded otherwise over the last decade or so (since I now work as a researcher at a Christian ministry). But that has persuasion took years of asking the right questions to the right people and refusing to accept answers at face value. Knowledge can never be gained without genuine doubt and uncertainty. So I want to encourage you to keep asking questions. Approach every Christian you know with thoughtful questions.
Now, let’s look to the questions at hand regarding forgiveness, God and less-than-satisfying Christian responses. Starting with the sort of Christian responses you’ve encountered, I would say that the issuers of those statements (God works in mysterious ways, etc.) are both correct and incorrect at the same time. Is God an infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being that exists outside of time and space? Yes, He is. In that sense, He is truly a mystery in and of Himself simply because a finite human encased in time and space cannot fathom God in His entirety. However, I would disagree with the context in which that statement is often applied to God’s actions. Everything God does has a purpose. His character as it is described in Scripture prevents the idea of God being a haphazard, random being. Often times, as selfish people, we simply do not LIKE what God is doing but choose to trust Him anyway. These people often attribute what they consider to be “bad” acts of God to be simply “mysterious.” The death of a loved one or a bout of depression could be the culprit. But these things are not mysterious when we realize that if God were simply a fair and just God, we would all be cast into Hell immediately without warning or mercy. If there is a mystery about God at all, it would be why He would EVER love a sinful, dirty, disgusting people like ourselves. The real mystery, in my opinion, is that every single human isn’t suffering at a maximum level every second of their lives until they die and rot for eternity. Yet even this is not a mystery if we acknowledge that God is a sovereign, merciful and loving God.
Yet there is one instance in history where something truly unfair in the negative sense did occur. The death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As you correctly point out, His sacrifice bought redemption for all those that believe in Him. It was an act of un-deserved evil carried out against the only perfect man to ever live. Yet, that act also brought about the most glorious good to a multitude people equally undeserving of good.
Finally, we turn to the topic of forgiveness. It is important in any discussion that one first defines what they are talking about so as to not carry on a dialogue that is being understood on two different levels. If I may quote part of your question, you stated:
“Since humans are capable of forgiving without sacrifice, without any sort of tribute, and do so often, and since that is in fact seen as the pinnacle of forgiveness, why is it that God, supposedly loving, caring, and holy, needed to sacrifice his own son, his own blood, in order to forgive man?”
I would strongly posit that “forgiveness without sacrifice” is not forgiveness at all. Suppose a Canadian friend of yours stole money from you and blew it all on non-refundable airline tickets to Cuba. You could not use the tickets (being an American citizen) and you couldn’t get your money back. However, you exercise forgiveness by not holding the offense against your Canadian friend. If your “forgiveness” is contingent upon repayment of some sort, then true forgiveness has not been exercised. However, if we were to suppose a situation where we FELT wronged and yet there was nothing of our taken, hurt, destroyed, etc… then our feeling of forgiveness would be misled. I do not need to forgive someone for letting their dog defecate on my neighbor’s lawn. Nor do I need to forgive someone for doing something I disapprove of if they have committed no wrong against me. If anything, that person that we FEEL like we should forgive needs to extend forgiveness towards us for passing undue judgment against them! We have wronged them when they have not wronged us.
Therefore, if ones forgiveness is only applicable when one has been wronged, then that wrong that is absorbed by the offended is their sacrifice of forgiveness. In some cases the wrong cannot be undone (in the accidental fatality), and in some cases it can (lost money that was borrowed out without interest). In either case, to demand repayment stands in direct opposition to forgiveness. To sacrifice that which was wronged or taken in favor of reconciling the offender to oneself as if no wrong had taken place is the very definition of forgiveness.
So we ask why God, who is supposedly loving, caring and holy would sacrifice His own Son to forgive us our sins. Yet, in our last sentence we have already answered our own question. Forgiveness, which is an act of love, requires sacrifices in equilibrium with the magnitude of the offense suffered. Now, it could be argued that God (being omnipotent) would be the only one who could forgive without sacrificing anything because… well… He’s God. But let us not be so easily deceived by false logic! God’s omnipotence does not free Him to do that which is logically impossible! God cannot create a square circle and He cannot create a stone so big that He cannot lift it. These are logical impossibilities. It is also logically impossible for the benchmark and foundation of all holiness to act in an unholy and unrighteous way. God’s holiness demands that there be justice served to all those who wrong their infinitely glorious creator. That justice, in the absence of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, is death and eternity in torment for all people(eternal because of the infiniteness of the one offended, not because our sins are infinite in and of themselves). God could not wipe that away and have it disappear. There needed to be an sacrifice of equal weight and magnitude in order for those sins to be forgiven.
What would make such a sacrifice of equal magnitude? Well, since they were the sins of man that were to be forgiven, the sacrifice NEEDED to be in the form of man. Human sins could only rightly be atoned for by a human sacrifice (the Biblical book of Hebrews deals with this exhaustively). However, the sins of a finite person against an infinite God require an infinite sacrifice of that person’s life. That is why mankind is powerless to save themselves from their due judgment. No finite acts of righteousness (which is simply how we ought to act anyway. No one gets extra credit for the things they ought to do in the first place) will ever earn a person right standing before God. One act of disobedience towards a holy and infinite God is enough to cement our rightful place as one condemned. But if this eternality of punishment originates from the infiniteness of the one wronged, then the sacrifice that needs to be made for each individual needs also be infinite.
And thus we have a bit of a conundrum. The only sacrifice that will redeem a man from his sin needs to be another man. Yet, his sin is infinite in scope and thus requires an infinite sacrifice. The only infinite being or thing exists is God. So, the only sacrifice that would qualify to save even a single man from Hell needs to be both fully man and fully God. Nothing else could possibly do. Given the existence and character of God and given the sinfulness and selfishness of mankind, this is the only LOGICAL solution that is self-consistent and not self-refuting.
In summary, forgiveness necessarily requires sacrifice. A man cannot simply “forgive” without giving anything of himself. That would be a logical contradiction against the definition of the word forgive. If we are bitter towards someone, it may be that we subjectively do not like them… and they may not have wronged us at all… and in such a situation it is indeed possible to alter our viewpoint from bitterness to one of a more positive flavor, but let us not confuse such emotional molding as forgiveness. It is not. God sacrificed His son, His own blood, simply because that was the ONLY way that a loving God could forgive mankind and redeem His created people to Himself.
I have read the Bible, as well as Mr. Mcdowell's book The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict. I have read several other books on apologetics, as well as the apologetics study Bible, and am very familiar with scripture. However, I am not a Christian. I am an atheist, with some deistic leanings. The primary reason is because no one can seem to answer me one question- it is in no apologetics book I have read that I can recall, and it should stick in my mind. The only answer I get is "God works in mysterious ways", "Our ways are not God's ways", or some sort of variation- and I feel that's a cop-out. Apparently, God made us in his image, and as such, even though we are not capable of understanding infinity or anything of that nature, we should be able to understand the human parallels to his motivations. So my question is this- Since humans are capable of forgiving without sacrifice, without any sort of tribute, and do so often, and since that is in fact seen as the pinnacle of forgiveness, why is it that God, supposedly loving, caring, and holy, needed to sacrifice his own son, his own blood, in order to forgive man? Why could he not simply forgive, as man can? A man can let go of bitterness, of a grudge deep in his heart- I have done it myself. Why could God not do the same?
Response
Hey (Name Withheld),
That’s a great question. It’s obvious you’ve put a great deal of time into your thoughts on Christianity and its teachings. I very much appreciate your honesty regarding where you stand on God and your beliefs. I too was a staunch atheist with days where I might have thought some deity existed, but if so was largely irrelevant. It’s easy for me to set my mind back to the philosophical and theological views that I once believed to be true. Since you’ve shared a bit about your thoughts, I’ll share a bit about where I was as well. I was raised in church and knew all the Biblical stories. I also believed they were fabrications. Logic and science solved problems, got answers and healed people. Religion did nothing of the sort. Instead, religion seemed to be a very powerful placebo for people to find purpose and meaning in their lives. That is why it existed, to serve as a fictitious comfort to those who had a need for it. Religion was full of logical fallacies and contradictions and as such it was reserved for the intellectually incapable or emotionally needy.
As you can tell, I’ve been intellectually persuaded otherwise over the last decade or so (since I now work as a researcher at a Christian ministry). But that has persuasion took years of asking the right questions to the right people and refusing to accept answers at face value. Knowledge can never be gained without genuine doubt and uncertainty. So I want to encourage you to keep asking questions. Approach every Christian you know with thoughtful questions.
Now, let’s look to the questions at hand regarding forgiveness, God and less-than-satisfying Christian responses. Starting with the sort of Christian responses you’ve encountered, I would say that the issuers of those statements (God works in mysterious ways, etc.) are both correct and incorrect at the same time. Is God an infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being that exists outside of time and space? Yes, He is. In that sense, He is truly a mystery in and of Himself simply because a finite human encased in time and space cannot fathom God in His entirety. However, I would disagree with the context in which that statement is often applied to God’s actions. Everything God does has a purpose. His character as it is described in Scripture prevents the idea of God being a haphazard, random being. Often times, as selfish people, we simply do not LIKE what God is doing but choose to trust Him anyway. These people often attribute what they consider to be “bad” acts of God to be simply “mysterious.” The death of a loved one or a bout of depression could be the culprit. But these things are not mysterious when we realize that if God were simply a fair and just God, we would all be cast into Hell immediately without warning or mercy. If there is a mystery about God at all, it would be why He would EVER love a sinful, dirty, disgusting people like ourselves. The real mystery, in my opinion, is that every single human isn’t suffering at a maximum level every second of their lives until they die and rot for eternity. Yet even this is not a mystery if we acknowledge that God is a sovereign, merciful and loving God.
Yet there is one instance in history where something truly unfair in the negative sense did occur. The death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As you correctly point out, His sacrifice bought redemption for all those that believe in Him. It was an act of un-deserved evil carried out against the only perfect man to ever live. Yet, that act also brought about the most glorious good to a multitude people equally undeserving of good.
Finally, we turn to the topic of forgiveness. It is important in any discussion that one first defines what they are talking about so as to not carry on a dialogue that is being understood on two different levels. If I may quote part of your question, you stated:
“Since humans are capable of forgiving without sacrifice, without any sort of tribute, and do so often, and since that is in fact seen as the pinnacle of forgiveness, why is it that God, supposedly loving, caring, and holy, needed to sacrifice his own son, his own blood, in order to forgive man?”
I would strongly posit that “forgiveness without sacrifice” is not forgiveness at all. Suppose a Canadian friend of yours stole money from you and blew it all on non-refundable airline tickets to Cuba. You could not use the tickets (being an American citizen) and you couldn’t get your money back. However, you exercise forgiveness by not holding the offense against your Canadian friend. If your “forgiveness” is contingent upon repayment of some sort, then true forgiveness has not been exercised. However, if we were to suppose a situation where we FELT wronged and yet there was nothing of our taken, hurt, destroyed, etc… then our feeling of forgiveness would be misled. I do not need to forgive someone for letting their dog defecate on my neighbor’s lawn. Nor do I need to forgive someone for doing something I disapprove of if they have committed no wrong against me. If anything, that person that we FEEL like we should forgive needs to extend forgiveness towards us for passing undue judgment against them! We have wronged them when they have not wronged us.
Therefore, if ones forgiveness is only applicable when one has been wronged, then that wrong that is absorbed by the offended is their sacrifice of forgiveness. In some cases the wrong cannot be undone (in the accidental fatality), and in some cases it can (lost money that was borrowed out without interest). In either case, to demand repayment stands in direct opposition to forgiveness. To sacrifice that which was wronged or taken in favor of reconciling the offender to oneself as if no wrong had taken place is the very definition of forgiveness.
So we ask why God, who is supposedly loving, caring and holy would sacrifice His own Son to forgive us our sins. Yet, in our last sentence we have already answered our own question. Forgiveness, which is an act of love, requires sacrifices in equilibrium with the magnitude of the offense suffered. Now, it could be argued that God (being omnipotent) would be the only one who could forgive without sacrificing anything because… well… He’s God. But let us not be so easily deceived by false logic! God’s omnipotence does not free Him to do that which is logically impossible! God cannot create a square circle and He cannot create a stone so big that He cannot lift it. These are logical impossibilities. It is also logically impossible for the benchmark and foundation of all holiness to act in an unholy and unrighteous way. God’s holiness demands that there be justice served to all those who wrong their infinitely glorious creator. That justice, in the absence of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, is death and eternity in torment for all people(eternal because of the infiniteness of the one offended, not because our sins are infinite in and of themselves). God could not wipe that away and have it disappear. There needed to be an sacrifice of equal weight and magnitude in order for those sins to be forgiven.
What would make such a sacrifice of equal magnitude? Well, since they were the sins of man that were to be forgiven, the sacrifice NEEDED to be in the form of man. Human sins could only rightly be atoned for by a human sacrifice (the Biblical book of Hebrews deals with this exhaustively). However, the sins of a finite person against an infinite God require an infinite sacrifice of that person’s life. That is why mankind is powerless to save themselves from their due judgment. No finite acts of righteousness (which is simply how we ought to act anyway. No one gets extra credit for the things they ought to do in the first place) will ever earn a person right standing before God. One act of disobedience towards a holy and infinite God is enough to cement our rightful place as one condemned. But if this eternality of punishment originates from the infiniteness of the one wronged, then the sacrifice that needs to be made for each individual needs also be infinite.
And thus we have a bit of a conundrum. The only sacrifice that will redeem a man from his sin needs to be another man. Yet, his sin is infinite in scope and thus requires an infinite sacrifice. The only infinite being or thing exists is God. So, the only sacrifice that would qualify to save even a single man from Hell needs to be both fully man and fully God. Nothing else could possibly do. Given the existence and character of God and given the sinfulness and selfishness of mankind, this is the only LOGICAL solution that is self-consistent and not self-refuting.
In summary, forgiveness necessarily requires sacrifice. A man cannot simply “forgive” without giving anything of himself. That would be a logical contradiction against the definition of the word forgive. If we are bitter towards someone, it may be that we subjectively do not like them… and they may not have wronged us at all… and in such a situation it is indeed possible to alter our viewpoint from bitterness to one of a more positive flavor, but let us not confuse such emotional molding as forgiveness. It is not. God sacrificed His son, His own blood, simply because that was the ONLY way that a loving God could forgive mankind and redeem His created people to Himself.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Biblical Changes through the Ages?
Recently, word has spread regarding a soon-to-be-released study that has been carried out by the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. The purpose of this study: to catalog all of the changes that have been made to the New Testament from its origins to modern times. On March 27, 2011, the Times Picayune (New Orleans’ newspaper) featured an article describing this work in some detail. The newspaper article can be seen here:
http://www.nola.com/religion/index.ssf/2011/03/changes_to_the_bible_through_the_ages_are_being_studied_by_new_orleans_scholars.html
The research team is reputable and thorough, and their work would be hard to question. Yet, they have concluded that certain famous New Testament passages and even the some of the words of Christ were never actually recorded in Scripture but added later. Decades of work and thousands of pages of documentation support their findings. The potential destructive consequences of such findings would be difficult to overestimate. Christians believe in the inerrant word of God recorded in the Scriptures. We believe that God is bigger than the subjectivity of man and that He is able and indeed has perfectly preserved His word in Scripture. According to some, including the author of the article in the Times Picayune, Bill Warren and his team at NOBTS are challenging that notion. Their work is among the most popular Christian research going on today. They are being noticed, especially by those who wish to attack Christianity on an intellectually emotional level.
However, is this really what is going on? The author in the Times Picayune appears to think so. When you read the article, pay close attention to what the author presents as “obvious” statements about how Scripture was clearly changed over the centuries. Furthermore, read some of the comments made by readers of the article that follow the text. Many make the same logically flawed observations… that no document ever translated so many times can remain as it was originally preserved. Such an statement may be true when applied to fallible man, but it most certainly does not apply to a sovereign and omnipotent God! Furthermore, many comments on the article lift up the US Constitution as a document to be revered and the Bible as a document that promotes violence and bigotry. It is not my agenda to argue against their place of the US Constitution, however it is quite clear that the commentators are completely naïve when it comes to the teachings and actions of the historical Jesus of Nazareth.
Furthermore, Bill Warren and his team at NOBTS are not at all interested in tearing down Scripture and its authority. To see this, one must only visit their webpage on the Seminary’s website:
http://www.nobts.edu/Publications/News/CNTTSDatabase.html
The video and the text presented here clearly show the unbiased and objective approach the team is taking to meticulously search out the truth of God’s word and to glorify God in their work. They continue to point out, as Josh McDowell and many other have in the past, that the vast majority of textual variants are of little to no concern and do NOT change the meaning of any of the passages. A few notable variants are found (as opposed to the thousands of inconsequential ones), but Dr. Warren and his team have taken great care to explain the cultural context under which such variants may have arisen.
According to the team's webpage, a Scriptural variants "range from spelling differences to the reverential abbreviations of sacred names to the addition of details that can clarify the meaning of the text." Clearly, this is not the catastrophic Christianity-killing homerun that secular society was hoping for. If I write "Dr. Warren" instead of "Doctor Warren," that would constitute a fairly profound variant according to the Biblical research being carried out in New Orleans.
Perhaps the biggest truth that we can gather from this research and the team carrying it out is that NONE of the researchers has questioned their orthodox Christian faith in the face of all that they have found. On the contrary, it appears that all of the men and women involved have been strengthen in their Christian faith and convinced of the validity of claims of Christianity. This research, when viewed objectively, should serve to only solidify our faith in Christ and bolster our arguments against the powers of darkness.
http://www.nola.com/religion/index.ssf/2011/03/changes_to_the_bible_through_the_ages_are_being_studied_by_new_orleans_scholars.html
The research team is reputable and thorough, and their work would be hard to question. Yet, they have concluded that certain famous New Testament passages and even the some of the words of Christ were never actually recorded in Scripture but added later. Decades of work and thousands of pages of documentation support their findings. The potential destructive consequences of such findings would be difficult to overestimate. Christians believe in the inerrant word of God recorded in the Scriptures. We believe that God is bigger than the subjectivity of man and that He is able and indeed has perfectly preserved His word in Scripture. According to some, including the author of the article in the Times Picayune, Bill Warren and his team at NOBTS are challenging that notion. Their work is among the most popular Christian research going on today. They are being noticed, especially by those who wish to attack Christianity on an intellectually emotional level.
However, is this really what is going on? The author in the Times Picayune appears to think so. When you read the article, pay close attention to what the author presents as “obvious” statements about how Scripture was clearly changed over the centuries. Furthermore, read some of the comments made by readers of the article that follow the text. Many make the same logically flawed observations… that no document ever translated so many times can remain as it was originally preserved. Such an statement may be true when applied to fallible man, but it most certainly does not apply to a sovereign and omnipotent God! Furthermore, many comments on the article lift up the US Constitution as a document to be revered and the Bible as a document that promotes violence and bigotry. It is not my agenda to argue against their place of the US Constitution, however it is quite clear that the commentators are completely naïve when it comes to the teachings and actions of the historical Jesus of Nazareth.
Furthermore, Bill Warren and his team at NOBTS are not at all interested in tearing down Scripture and its authority. To see this, one must only visit their webpage on the Seminary’s website:
http://www.nobts.edu/Publications/News/CNTTSDatabase.html
The video and the text presented here clearly show the unbiased and objective approach the team is taking to meticulously search out the truth of God’s word and to glorify God in their work. They continue to point out, as Josh McDowell and many other have in the past, that the vast majority of textual variants are of little to no concern and do NOT change the meaning of any of the passages. A few notable variants are found (as opposed to the thousands of inconsequential ones), but Dr. Warren and his team have taken great care to explain the cultural context under which such variants may have arisen.
According to the team's webpage, a Scriptural variants "range from spelling differences to the reverential abbreviations of sacred names to the addition of details that can clarify the meaning of the text." Clearly, this is not the catastrophic Christianity-killing homerun that secular society was hoping for. If I write "Dr. Warren" instead of "Doctor Warren," that would constitute a fairly profound variant according to the Biblical research being carried out in New Orleans.
Perhaps the biggest truth that we can gather from this research and the team carrying it out is that NONE of the researchers has questioned their orthodox Christian faith in the face of all that they have found. On the contrary, it appears that all of the men and women involved have been strengthen in their Christian faith and convinced of the validity of claims of Christianity. This research, when viewed objectively, should serve to only solidify our faith in Christ and bolster our arguments against the powers of darkness.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Review of Emergent Book, Chapter 1
Chapter 1
In the first chapter of this book, one thing that immediately comes through are the rhetorical questions. A lot of rhetorical questions. In the first chapter alone, at first count there were 109 questions, none of which did the author offer any concrete answers for.
Questions aren’t negative. Questions are often useful and needed for gaining insight. But as a supposedly Christian book, several of these questions must raise some concerns. Here are but some of the questions posed in the first chapter:
“Of all the billions of people who have ever lived, will only a select number “make it to a better place” and every single other person suffer in torment and punishment forever? Is this acceptable to God? Has God created millions of people over tens of thousands of years who are going to spend eternity in anguish? Can God do this, or even allow this, and still claim to be a loving God?
Does God punish people for thousands of years with infinite, eternal torment for things they did in their few finite years of life?
Is that what life is about? Going somewhere else?
Is your future in someone else’s hands? Is someone else’s eternity resting in your hands?
So do we have to forgive others, do the will of the Father, or “stand firm” to be accepted by God?
So demons believe, and washing Jesus’s feet with your tears gets your sins forgiven?”
There are many more, but these questions will suffice as we assess the truth claims of this book. However, assessing its truth claims may turn out to be impossible. With 109 rhetorical questions, one will struggle to find one objective truth claim made by the author. But a lack of straight forward claims does not mean that the author does not have an objective. There is clearly an objective to this book, and it’s dangerously hidden in the questions and in the suggestions.
It should be mentioned that almost every question the author poses should be answered with a yes or a no, but the author refuses to do so himself. He instead talks about “discussions” and “ongoing conversations.” While this sounds warm and fuzzy, these comments are the signature of a postmodern philosophy.
Postmodernism is the philosophical worldview whose foundation is the belief that there is no absolute truth. From the outset, it is clear that this worldview must be false, for if there assertion that there is no absolute truth is true absolutely, then the statement must be false and rejected. The only other alternative is that the statement is false, in which case you must also reject the belief. Postmodernism simply cannot be true.
Yet postmodernism has infiltrated some Christian churches, including the church that the author pastors. Instead of teaching truths, also known as doctrines, these churches teach nothing. Instead they ask around to see what everyone thinks and feels like regarding a certain passage in scripture. They ignore all offensive parts of the Bible and prefer to dwell on those that are emotionally satisfying. In fact, doctrines in general become offensive to these “emergent” churches. They will take core Christian values, those things that DEFINE what it means to be a Christian, and distort them through their ongoing conversation. Jesus said “No one comes to the father except through me.” That is as straight forward as it gets when it comes to Christian truth claims. But the platform of this book is to question this God spoken doctrine and start a “discussion” on what Jesus may have meant by that.
The author latches on to God’s attribute of Love and, in a very deranged way, convolutes it to mean something akin to being nice to everyone at all times. He completely ignores the multiple passages throughout the Bible that talk about God’s wrath, His justice, His goodness and His inability to coexist with sin. In fact, the author hardly makes mention of sin at all. Yet this was foundational to Jesus’ message when He came to earth. He commands us over and over to “repent” of our sins. We are subject to God’s wrath because of our sins, and it is the sacrifice of God in His Son Jesus Christ that allows an undeserving people to be washed from their sin.
The author asks how God could claim to be loving if He sends anyone to hell. A true Christian pastor would never ask such a question. A loving God necessarily disciplines His people just as loving parents will discipline their children. These are not hard theological concepts to grasp, but it is apparent that the author simply does not like what the Bible teaches. Hence, he continues to state Biblical doctrine as questions, innately implying that they might (or must) be false. Here are some doctrines questioned in the Chapter:
Hell, Fallen Nature, Sin, a just God, Assurance of Salvation, the Necessity of the Atonement for Salvation, The existence of “Lost people,” the existence or knowability of truth and the exclusive claims of Christ himself.
It is fine to question doctrines, so long as you are questioning them in an attempt to gain a better understanding. This does not seem to be the approach taken by the author in the first chapter. Rather, the intent of the chapter is to clearly tear down the fundamental truths of Christianity as being “unknowable.” To believe in them is good, but to claim you know for sure is tremendously arrogant. Therefore, such claims should be rejected as absolute and only entertained with all other contradictory ideas in a massive “conversation” where no conclusions or truths are ever reached.
The author claims that when a question is posed to us, we should not venture to have an answer, but rather another question. He cites the fact that Jesus responded to many questions with questions. The author seems to miss the point of these passages, however, in that Jesus and the questioning party would always understand the implications of Jesus questions. Jesus never asked anyone an open ended, non-conclusive question in all of Scripture. Yet this is what the author inexplicitly asserts.
The misuse of Scripture in the first chapter of this book is astounding. There is no exegetical knowledge or foresight to be seen whatsoever in their writing. Instead, the author uses an incredible mix of emotional rhetoric and leading questions that are obviously designed to sway the reader’s heart, but not their mind. And if you get a person emotional enough, you can get them to believe anything.
In the first chapter of this book, one thing that immediately comes through are the rhetorical questions. A lot of rhetorical questions. In the first chapter alone, at first count there were 109 questions, none of which did the author offer any concrete answers for.
Questions aren’t negative. Questions are often useful and needed for gaining insight. But as a supposedly Christian book, several of these questions must raise some concerns. Here are but some of the questions posed in the first chapter:
“Of all the billions of people who have ever lived, will only a select number “make it to a better place” and every single other person suffer in torment and punishment forever? Is this acceptable to God? Has God created millions of people over tens of thousands of years who are going to spend eternity in anguish? Can God do this, or even allow this, and still claim to be a loving God?
Does God punish people for thousands of years with infinite, eternal torment for things they did in their few finite years of life?
Is that what life is about? Going somewhere else?
Is your future in someone else’s hands? Is someone else’s eternity resting in your hands?
So do we have to forgive others, do the will of the Father, or “stand firm” to be accepted by God?
So demons believe, and washing Jesus’s feet with your tears gets your sins forgiven?”
There are many more, but these questions will suffice as we assess the truth claims of this book. However, assessing its truth claims may turn out to be impossible. With 109 rhetorical questions, one will struggle to find one objective truth claim made by the author. But a lack of straight forward claims does not mean that the author does not have an objective. There is clearly an objective to this book, and it’s dangerously hidden in the questions and in the suggestions.
It should be mentioned that almost every question the author poses should be answered with a yes or a no, but the author refuses to do so himself. He instead talks about “discussions” and “ongoing conversations.” While this sounds warm and fuzzy, these comments are the signature of a postmodern philosophy.
Postmodernism is the philosophical worldview whose foundation is the belief that there is no absolute truth. From the outset, it is clear that this worldview must be false, for if there assertion that there is no absolute truth is true absolutely, then the statement must be false and rejected. The only other alternative is that the statement is false, in which case you must also reject the belief. Postmodernism simply cannot be true.
Yet postmodernism has infiltrated some Christian churches, including the church that the author pastors. Instead of teaching truths, also known as doctrines, these churches teach nothing. Instead they ask around to see what everyone thinks and feels like regarding a certain passage in scripture. They ignore all offensive parts of the Bible and prefer to dwell on those that are emotionally satisfying. In fact, doctrines in general become offensive to these “emergent” churches. They will take core Christian values, those things that DEFINE what it means to be a Christian, and distort them through their ongoing conversation. Jesus said “No one comes to the father except through me.” That is as straight forward as it gets when it comes to Christian truth claims. But the platform of this book is to question this God spoken doctrine and start a “discussion” on what Jesus may have meant by that.
The author latches on to God’s attribute of Love and, in a very deranged way, convolutes it to mean something akin to being nice to everyone at all times. He completely ignores the multiple passages throughout the Bible that talk about God’s wrath, His justice, His goodness and His inability to coexist with sin. In fact, the author hardly makes mention of sin at all. Yet this was foundational to Jesus’ message when He came to earth. He commands us over and over to “repent” of our sins. We are subject to God’s wrath because of our sins, and it is the sacrifice of God in His Son Jesus Christ that allows an undeserving people to be washed from their sin.
The author asks how God could claim to be loving if He sends anyone to hell. A true Christian pastor would never ask such a question. A loving God necessarily disciplines His people just as loving parents will discipline their children. These are not hard theological concepts to grasp, but it is apparent that the author simply does not like what the Bible teaches. Hence, he continues to state Biblical doctrine as questions, innately implying that they might (or must) be false. Here are some doctrines questioned in the Chapter:
Hell, Fallen Nature, Sin, a just God, Assurance of Salvation, the Necessity of the Atonement for Salvation, The existence of “Lost people,” the existence or knowability of truth and the exclusive claims of Christ himself.
It is fine to question doctrines, so long as you are questioning them in an attempt to gain a better understanding. This does not seem to be the approach taken by the author in the first chapter. Rather, the intent of the chapter is to clearly tear down the fundamental truths of Christianity as being “unknowable.” To believe in them is good, but to claim you know for sure is tremendously arrogant. Therefore, such claims should be rejected as absolute and only entertained with all other contradictory ideas in a massive “conversation” where no conclusions or truths are ever reached.
The author claims that when a question is posed to us, we should not venture to have an answer, but rather another question. He cites the fact that Jesus responded to many questions with questions. The author seems to miss the point of these passages, however, in that Jesus and the questioning party would always understand the implications of Jesus questions. Jesus never asked anyone an open ended, non-conclusive question in all of Scripture. Yet this is what the author inexplicitly asserts.
The misuse of Scripture in the first chapter of this book is astounding. There is no exegetical knowledge or foresight to be seen whatsoever in their writing. Instead, the author uses an incredible mix of emotional rhetoric and leading questions that are obviously designed to sway the reader’s heart, but not their mind. And if you get a person emotional enough, you can get them to believe anything.
Monday, April 4, 2011
A Great Revolution? or Looming Problems in the Plumbing?
Gold was and has been thee thing to safely invest your finances in since ancient times. It never seems to lose its value, as it's demand by mankind remains high. The demand for other metals has fluctuated as civilization has moved from one stage to another. There is the Stone Age and the Bronze Age and so on. During the time of the Roman Empire there was a well known metal that was used for all sorts of things. It was used for face powders, rouges, and mascaras; the pigment in many paints; a sweet and sour condiment popular for seasoning and adulterating food; a wine preservative perfect for stopping fermentation or disguising inferior vintages; an ingredient in pewter cups, plates, pitchers, pots and pans, and other household artifacts. It was in high demand, it was extremely popular, it was everywhere! It was lead.
Lead was by far the most useful and diverse metals used in ancient Rome, a civilization known, among many other things, for its intricate system of aquafers and water transport. The Romans made pipes to bring water in and take water out of their homes. There are still exit pipes in use in Rome today that have Ceasar's head engraven on them. It was everywhere. The whole empire loved it... the same empire that some historians say fell as a result of mass lead poisoning in the water supply.
Just because something "seems" good does not mean we should immediately drop what we know to be foundational and true and adopt a completely new and untproven method of things. There is a reason we don't have lead in our pipes or our food products. Given the knowledge we have now, such actions would have to be considered outright idiotic. Furthermore, one should never abandon something that is known to be true to follow something that is known to be false. Yet, this is exactly what appears to be happening in the realms of truth, knowledge and Christianity.
One book that has had disastrous consequences on knowledge and truth has been the book “Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America” by Darrell Guder. Its content is nothing new, as it poses a postmodern agenda in a place where it does not belong, Christianity. This isn’t a new phenomenon, and so it usually wouldn’t be regarded as anything but a sideshow of heresy. However, more and more pastors and church leaders have taken to the postmodern and emergent movements that are being taught within it, and that is what makes this book and others like it so dangerous.
These books attempt to make a mathematical analogy between the world of truth (epistemology, ontology, and metaphysics) and the mathematical discipline of set theory. On the one side, there is modernism (the idea that there is absolute truth and that it is at least possible to discover and know what this external absolute truth is). The postmodern will try to corner this position “mathematically” by labeling it as a “bounded set.” A bounded object in mathematics is an object (usually a set or a function) governed by a set finite value such that all members of that set or function are less that that value. In mathematics, a bounded set could be all the numbers that are less than or equal to 100. In a physical situation, one could take the height measurement at an amusement park to separate people into bounded sets. If you are below 5 feet tall, you cannot go on the ride. If you are above 5 feet tall, you can go on the ride. Both are bounded sets.
The Emergent Church has taken upon itself to create a whole new mathematical concept that cannot be found in almost any PhD level mathematical text in order to back their new and inherently flawed and unbiblical view of Christianity. They call this contrived mathematical concept the “centered set.” (To see that this is NOT a mathematical term in set theory, I would invite the reader to visit www.mathworld.wolfram.com, a website I used often during my graduate work in theoretical mathematics including set theory, and search for “centered set.” It simply does not exist.) Taking this fictitious mathematical idea, they claim that there are sets such that all elements within the set are categorized based on a single “central” element within the set. They claim that elements which are moving towards this central element are included within the set. Elements moving away from this element are said to be outside of the set.
A few things must be mentioned about this from a purely mathematical perspective. First of all, elements within a mathematical set DO NOT MOVE. If they were changing, they would be called variables and not elements. In the case that a set is filled with elements that could, at a different instance, gain or lose elements, then the set is necessarily just a function of some variable such as time. The amusement park height restriction is a good example. This year, one might be too short to ride and fall into the “not allowed” bounded set. Next year, however, they may grow enough to be included in the “allowed” bounded set. This IS a concept in mathematics. In other words, if the elements are functions of time, then the set as a whole is a function of time.
But the Emergent Church claims that this sort of centered set mentality blurs the boundaries of the set. Given that we were to even accept their definition of a centered set, this is simply not true. Note again their definition. If one element within the set is moving towards the center element, then that element is in. If an element is moving away from that center element or stationary, then it is out. This is EXACTLY the definition of a bounded set!!! An element is either in or out! No element can be both in and out, for that would be a contradiction which is clearly not allowed by the laws of logic.
(For those in the Emergent Church who deny the law of non-contradiction, they are necessarily wrong. The law of non-contradiction says that a statement “A” cannot both be true and not true at the same time and in the same meaning. For one to deny this law, they must argue that it’s assertion is not true. That is, they must say that for any statement “A,” it is possible that the statement can be both true and false at the same time and in the same meaning. However, if their claim were to be viable, then this must be true for all statements, including the statement of the law of non-contradiction. So let the law of non-contradiction be “A” and suppose the law of non-contradiction is false. This would imply that then that “A” can both be true and false at the same time and in the same meaning. In other words, it would imply that the statement “a statement ‘A’ cannot be both true and false at the same time and in the same meaning” is both true and false simultaneously. So if one were to assert that the law of non-contradiction is false, they MUST be asserting that it is also true BY THEIR OWN ASSERTION THAT THE LAW OF NON-CONTRADICTION IS FALSE! Thus, we see, the law of non-contradiction is always vacuously true.)
And so again, we recognize that the so-called “centered set” is actually just a time dependent bounded set. There is no such thing as a set with what the emergent call a “fuzzy boundary.”
In the Emergent Church, the supposed center element is of course Jesus. Those who are moving towards Jesus are in the set (which we have just clearly shown to be bounded) and those moving away from Jesus are outside of the set. This teaching, in itself, is simply part of orthodox, modernist Christianity. Jesus backed this up with His own teachings. Those who abide in Him, He abides in. Those who are good bear good fruit and those who are not good cannot bear good fruit. A good person cannot bear bad fruit and a bad person cannot bear good fruit. You can tell who is a believer by their fruit. In other words, you can tell who is a Christian by their walk with Christ. Are they moving towards Christ or away from Christ. Our measuring stick for telling this is of course the Bible.
By their own standards then, it is possible to tell who is Christian and who is not Christian based on the Emergent model. For example, the existence of Hell and that people are going to suffer there for eternity is a truth taught directly by Christ. If one is moving towards this truth, they are moving towards Christ. If they reject this truth, then they are actively rejecting Christ. The later, by their own definition, cannot be Christians for they are not moving towards the center element of Jesus. If something is clearly taught by Jesus in the Scripture (which Jesus took to be infallible and inerrant), then we are known as Christian or non-Christian by our heart and reaction to God’s Word. Jesus says He is the ONLY way to God. Does one believe that and act accordingly? If so, you’re moving towards Jesus. If not, you are moving away from Him. The former are Christians. The latter are not. The centered set fallacy is in reality just another way of describing the bounded set reality.
Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” – (Matthew 7:13-14). This is the nature of all truth. It is exclusive. One is either right or wrong. In this case, Jesus was either telling the truth or lying. Either a few will make it into heaven or everyone will. If the latter is true, then Jesus was a liar and Christianity is a farce. Truth leads to polarization, the right versus the wrong. This seems intolerant to the Emergent Church. It even seems arrogant. However, I would like to point out that truth is exactly that. It is both intolerant of lies and arrogant in that it rejects anything that disagrees with it. THAT IS TRUTH! If you purport a truth that does not have these characteristics, then I will save you much time and effort in telling you flat out that what you think CANNOT POSSIBLY BE TRUE.
There are still those in the Emergent Church that will posit that enlightenment thinking is dead and we are moving towards a post-enlightenment culture where there simply is no truth. (This is strikingly absurd, as if the statement “there is no truth” were to be true, it would refute itself and be necessarily false. It should thus be rejected outright, something the Emergent church in their ignorance has yet to do.) Of course there is truth, for their very own stance makes a claim to objective truth, a popular truth that was fabricated by man, which is of course no truth at all, but merely flawed human opinion.
The Emergent Church does have a point in that it does not like to see divisions within the Church. Christ did not want this either. Denominations are the product of personal persuasions, not variation from the foundational Christian teachings. These true teachings, as mentioned already, will necessarily result in good works and deeds towards our fellow man. Those who do not have deeds that match their faith do not have faith at all (See the book of James).
However, the Emergent Church tends to take these acts of good deeds and make them paramount. Yet Jesus promised us that there would be suffering and poverty and war and devastation in this world. He does not teach us to eradicate it, but rather to serve in humility to help those in need get through their ordeals.
Our culture is changing. We can all see that. Christ loved those around them when he despised the way culture was moving. He loved prostitutes, but He NEVER encouraged the act of prostitution. He loved those who believed lies, but He NEVER encouraged those lies. Our current culture believes a vast sea of lies. We, as Christians, are called to love those who believe them and yet firmly set ourselves against any argument or pretense that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. Jesus said that He was the way, the TRUTH and the life. Truth is exclusive. Anything that set’s itself up against Christ is to be destroyed. Postmodernism, the cultural movement that the Emergent Church is following, needs to be destroyed if Christianity is true.
If Christianity is false, then none of this makes any difference. Everyone should be for themselves. There is no reason to act on anyone else’s behalf. If you’re going down, take as many as you can with you. This is the logical conclusion of what the Emergent Church likes to call “love.” It is a flat out rejection of truth, which ultimately leads us to no moral or ethical boundaries at all. As a result, the Emergent Church has more to do with atheism, Stalin and Hitler than it does with Christ. Rejecting the TRUTH is rejecting Christ. And by their own “centered set” definition, the Emergent Church is no Christian church at all. It is body of full blown heretics.
2 Corinthians 10:5:
We are to demolish are arguments and pretenses that set themselves up against the knowledge of God, and we are to take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ (who is the truth).
2 Timothy 4:3:
For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
Lead was by far the most useful and diverse metals used in ancient Rome, a civilization known, among many other things, for its intricate system of aquafers and water transport. The Romans made pipes to bring water in and take water out of their homes. There are still exit pipes in use in Rome today that have Ceasar's head engraven on them. It was everywhere. The whole empire loved it... the same empire that some historians say fell as a result of mass lead poisoning in the water supply.
Just because something "seems" good does not mean we should immediately drop what we know to be foundational and true and adopt a completely new and untproven method of things. There is a reason we don't have lead in our pipes or our food products. Given the knowledge we have now, such actions would have to be considered outright idiotic. Furthermore, one should never abandon something that is known to be true to follow something that is known to be false. Yet, this is exactly what appears to be happening in the realms of truth, knowledge and Christianity.
One book that has had disastrous consequences on knowledge and truth has been the book “Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America” by Darrell Guder. Its content is nothing new, as it poses a postmodern agenda in a place where it does not belong, Christianity. This isn’t a new phenomenon, and so it usually wouldn’t be regarded as anything but a sideshow of heresy. However, more and more pastors and church leaders have taken to the postmodern and emergent movements that are being taught within it, and that is what makes this book and others like it so dangerous.
These books attempt to make a mathematical analogy between the world of truth (epistemology, ontology, and metaphysics) and the mathematical discipline of set theory. On the one side, there is modernism (the idea that there is absolute truth and that it is at least possible to discover and know what this external absolute truth is). The postmodern will try to corner this position “mathematically” by labeling it as a “bounded set.” A bounded object in mathematics is an object (usually a set or a function) governed by a set finite value such that all members of that set or function are less that that value. In mathematics, a bounded set could be all the numbers that are less than or equal to 100. In a physical situation, one could take the height measurement at an amusement park to separate people into bounded sets. If you are below 5 feet tall, you cannot go on the ride. If you are above 5 feet tall, you can go on the ride. Both are bounded sets.
The Emergent Church has taken upon itself to create a whole new mathematical concept that cannot be found in almost any PhD level mathematical text in order to back their new and inherently flawed and unbiblical view of Christianity. They call this contrived mathematical concept the “centered set.” (To see that this is NOT a mathematical term in set theory, I would invite the reader to visit www.mathworld.wolfram.com, a website I used often during my graduate work in theoretical mathematics including set theory, and search for “centered set.” It simply does not exist.) Taking this fictitious mathematical idea, they claim that there are sets such that all elements within the set are categorized based on a single “central” element within the set. They claim that elements which are moving towards this central element are included within the set. Elements moving away from this element are said to be outside of the set.
A few things must be mentioned about this from a purely mathematical perspective. First of all, elements within a mathematical set DO NOT MOVE. If they were changing, they would be called variables and not elements. In the case that a set is filled with elements that could, at a different instance, gain or lose elements, then the set is necessarily just a function of some variable such as time. The amusement park height restriction is a good example. This year, one might be too short to ride and fall into the “not allowed” bounded set. Next year, however, they may grow enough to be included in the “allowed” bounded set. This IS a concept in mathematics. In other words, if the elements are functions of time, then the set as a whole is a function of time.
But the Emergent Church claims that this sort of centered set mentality blurs the boundaries of the set. Given that we were to even accept their definition of a centered set, this is simply not true. Note again their definition. If one element within the set is moving towards the center element, then that element is in. If an element is moving away from that center element or stationary, then it is out. This is EXACTLY the definition of a bounded set!!! An element is either in or out! No element can be both in and out, for that would be a contradiction which is clearly not allowed by the laws of logic.
(For those in the Emergent Church who deny the law of non-contradiction, they are necessarily wrong. The law of non-contradiction says that a statement “A” cannot both be true and not true at the same time and in the same meaning. For one to deny this law, they must argue that it’s assertion is not true. That is, they must say that for any statement “A,” it is possible that the statement can be both true and false at the same time and in the same meaning. However, if their claim were to be viable, then this must be true for all statements, including the statement of the law of non-contradiction. So let the law of non-contradiction be “A” and suppose the law of non-contradiction is false. This would imply that then that “A” can both be true and false at the same time and in the same meaning. In other words, it would imply that the statement “a statement ‘A’ cannot be both true and false at the same time and in the same meaning” is both true and false simultaneously. So if one were to assert that the law of non-contradiction is false, they MUST be asserting that it is also true BY THEIR OWN ASSERTION THAT THE LAW OF NON-CONTRADICTION IS FALSE! Thus, we see, the law of non-contradiction is always vacuously true.)
And so again, we recognize that the so-called “centered set” is actually just a time dependent bounded set. There is no such thing as a set with what the emergent call a “fuzzy boundary.”
In the Emergent Church, the supposed center element is of course Jesus. Those who are moving towards Jesus are in the set (which we have just clearly shown to be bounded) and those moving away from Jesus are outside of the set. This teaching, in itself, is simply part of orthodox, modernist Christianity. Jesus backed this up with His own teachings. Those who abide in Him, He abides in. Those who are good bear good fruit and those who are not good cannot bear good fruit. A good person cannot bear bad fruit and a bad person cannot bear good fruit. You can tell who is a believer by their fruit. In other words, you can tell who is a Christian by their walk with Christ. Are they moving towards Christ or away from Christ. Our measuring stick for telling this is of course the Bible.
By their own standards then, it is possible to tell who is Christian and who is not Christian based on the Emergent model. For example, the existence of Hell and that people are going to suffer there for eternity is a truth taught directly by Christ. If one is moving towards this truth, they are moving towards Christ. If they reject this truth, then they are actively rejecting Christ. The later, by their own definition, cannot be Christians for they are not moving towards the center element of Jesus. If something is clearly taught by Jesus in the Scripture (which Jesus took to be infallible and inerrant), then we are known as Christian or non-Christian by our heart and reaction to God’s Word. Jesus says He is the ONLY way to God. Does one believe that and act accordingly? If so, you’re moving towards Jesus. If not, you are moving away from Him. The former are Christians. The latter are not. The centered set fallacy is in reality just another way of describing the bounded set reality.
Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” – (Matthew 7:13-14). This is the nature of all truth. It is exclusive. One is either right or wrong. In this case, Jesus was either telling the truth or lying. Either a few will make it into heaven or everyone will. If the latter is true, then Jesus was a liar and Christianity is a farce. Truth leads to polarization, the right versus the wrong. This seems intolerant to the Emergent Church. It even seems arrogant. However, I would like to point out that truth is exactly that. It is both intolerant of lies and arrogant in that it rejects anything that disagrees with it. THAT IS TRUTH! If you purport a truth that does not have these characteristics, then I will save you much time and effort in telling you flat out that what you think CANNOT POSSIBLY BE TRUE.
There are still those in the Emergent Church that will posit that enlightenment thinking is dead and we are moving towards a post-enlightenment culture where there simply is no truth. (This is strikingly absurd, as if the statement “there is no truth” were to be true, it would refute itself and be necessarily false. It should thus be rejected outright, something the Emergent church in their ignorance has yet to do.) Of course there is truth, for their very own stance makes a claim to objective truth, a popular truth that was fabricated by man, which is of course no truth at all, but merely flawed human opinion.
The Emergent Church does have a point in that it does not like to see divisions within the Church. Christ did not want this either. Denominations are the product of personal persuasions, not variation from the foundational Christian teachings. These true teachings, as mentioned already, will necessarily result in good works and deeds towards our fellow man. Those who do not have deeds that match their faith do not have faith at all (See the book of James).
However, the Emergent Church tends to take these acts of good deeds and make them paramount. Yet Jesus promised us that there would be suffering and poverty and war and devastation in this world. He does not teach us to eradicate it, but rather to serve in humility to help those in need get through their ordeals.
Our culture is changing. We can all see that. Christ loved those around them when he despised the way culture was moving. He loved prostitutes, but He NEVER encouraged the act of prostitution. He loved those who believed lies, but He NEVER encouraged those lies. Our current culture believes a vast sea of lies. We, as Christians, are called to love those who believe them and yet firmly set ourselves against any argument or pretense that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. Jesus said that He was the way, the TRUTH and the life. Truth is exclusive. Anything that set’s itself up against Christ is to be destroyed. Postmodernism, the cultural movement that the Emergent Church is following, needs to be destroyed if Christianity is true.
If Christianity is false, then none of this makes any difference. Everyone should be for themselves. There is no reason to act on anyone else’s behalf. If you’re going down, take as many as you can with you. This is the logical conclusion of what the Emergent Church likes to call “love.” It is a flat out rejection of truth, which ultimately leads us to no moral or ethical boundaries at all. As a result, the Emergent Church has more to do with atheism, Stalin and Hitler than it does with Christ. Rejecting the TRUTH is rejecting Christ. And by their own “centered set” definition, the Emergent Church is no Christian church at all. It is body of full blown heretics.
2 Corinthians 10:5:
We are to demolish are arguments and pretenses that set themselves up against the knowledge of God, and we are to take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ (who is the truth).
2 Timothy 4:3:
For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Recently a new book has hit the shelves that has caused many to be concerned. The author claims to be a Christian, and the book purports to be Christian as well. However, during the weeks preceding the book’s release, word was going around that there might be some false statements made in the book that could potentially render its contents out of the realm of Christianity and into the realm of Universalism. Now Universalism is a term that could technically be applied to all the Abrahamic religions including Christianity. This is because each of these religions claims to be all inclusive. Anyone and everyone can be a Christian if they so choose. However, this is not the definition that we are concerned with in the context of this article. Rather, we will be looking at Universalism as defined by the group called Religious Tolerance (religioustolerance.org):
Universalism is a religious movement which promotes the belief that every person will go to heaven after death. This is in contrast with the traditional Christian belief that one's natural destination is eternal torment in Hell. Only those who are saved will attain heaven.
It is clear that Universalism and Christianity are incompatible. Logically we must conclude that one MUST be wrong, and it’s possible that both are wrong. The critique that follows will mostly be discussing claims that are blatantly not Christian or that simply cannot be true. I will refrain from using the book’s title and author throughout as I am only concerned in addressing the content and not in attacking any one’s person. This is about acknowledging there is absolute truth which can be known, and once known, should be defended. Ideas have consequences. False ideas can have tragic consequences.
The book begins:
“I’ve written this book for all those, everywhere, who have heard some version of the Jesus story that caused their pulse rate to rise, their stomachs to churn, and their heart to utter those resolute words, “I would never be a part of that.
You are not alone.
There are millions of us.”
Not yet reaching the second page click on a kindle, I must stop and address some truth claims. The author refers to “some version of the Jesus story” as if there are multiple ways that Jesus actually lived. The author may not be meaning that, simply because he does not take a stance. One stance that MUST be taken regarding this issue, however, is which of these “versions” is true! There are not multiple histories of the world. There are no “versions” of George Washington being the first president of the United States. That would imply that some people say he was and some people say it was a concocted story and some flat out deny there was ever a person named George Washington. Furthermore, we would be obligated, according the author’s treatment of historical events, to treat each of these claims regarding George Washington as equal! This is logically absurd.
Furthermore, one is left wondering what the author is speaking of what he refers to “the Jesus story.” When I look back on my Grandfather’s life in photo albums, people tell me stories and memories they have. It is a reality that a person’s life can be categorized as a story. What is not possible is to have multiple contradictory stories all being true and equally valid at the same time and in the same meaning.
A few paragraphs later, we come to this statement:
“A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’s message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.”
Here the author seems to commit logical suicide by refuting his own stance outright. Christianity does make the truth claim that heaven and hell are real places. (See Biblical book of revelation) Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.” (John 14:6) Jesus is the cornerstone of the Christian faith. If Jesus lied about such a thing, then He would have sinned. If Jesus sinned, He could not have been God. If Jesus was not God, then He could not have been able to bear the sins of the whole world, which Christianity claims He did when He was crucified some 2000 years ago.
The foundation and core of the Christian faith can be found in the Biblical book of Romans chapter 5:
“ Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned--for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification. For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” – Romans 5:12-21
In short, the message… the very truth claim of Christianity… is that all people have knowledge of God, all people reject God, all people are guilty before God, and all people are condemned before God. But God, in His grace and mercy, made a way of salvation for the lost in the person of Jesus Christ, His Son and humanity’s Lord. Through faith in Christ alone can anyone come to God.
Of course not everyone has faith in Christ as Savior and Lord. What are the logical implications? If one rejects the person of Jesus, then according the Christian truth claim, they are unable to come to God. Yet, Christianity claims our souls will live for eternity somewhere, so if one’s soul cannot come to God, then where does it spend eternity? Separated from God, cast into what the Bible calls the lake of fire. Jesus called this place hell, and He talked of it many times.
“If your right eye causes you to stumble (referring to sin), gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” Matthew 5:29-30
“It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where
“‘the worms that eat them do not die,
and the fire is not quenched.’
Everyone will be salted with fire.” – Mark 9:47-49
“I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.” – Luke 12:5
Perhaps the passage most pertinent to our discussion here is found in 2 Peter, chapter 2:
“Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.
“For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment; if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment. This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire.” – 2 Peter 2:2-10.
The author of the book acknowledges these Christian truth claims. If someone were to reject the idea that individuals will go to hell, they would be rejecting the exclusivity of Christ’s claim. He is the only way to heaven. If they reject Christ’s exclusive claim, then they necessarily reject the absolute need for Jesus as our Savior. If Jesus is not absolutely needed by everyone, then the Bible is full of lies and cannot be trusted. If the Bible, the foundation of all Christian faith, contains any lies whatsoever, the entire book is compromised and the faith which is based on it dies. Indeed, when the author says (weeding out the unneeded connotative word ploys aimed at your emotion and not at your mind), “people have been taught that …Christians will spend forever in …heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever …in hell... It’s been… communicated …that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus,” he is exactly stating what Christianity teaches. Either this claim is true or it is not. To be Christian, one must believe it to be true. One can doubt and investigate for themselves to see which claim is true, but in the end, a Christian must belief Jesus is the only way to God and those who reject Him are cast into hell. It is essential to the message of the Christian gospel. Put simply, any belief system that denies this claim… is not Christian.
I have not yet made it through the first part of the first chapter. I shall continue my reading and continue to post my logical analysis here for all who care to read.
Universalism is a religious movement which promotes the belief that every person will go to heaven after death. This is in contrast with the traditional Christian belief that one's natural destination is eternal torment in Hell. Only those who are saved will attain heaven.
It is clear that Universalism and Christianity are incompatible. Logically we must conclude that one MUST be wrong, and it’s possible that both are wrong. The critique that follows will mostly be discussing claims that are blatantly not Christian or that simply cannot be true. I will refrain from using the book’s title and author throughout as I am only concerned in addressing the content and not in attacking any one’s person. This is about acknowledging there is absolute truth which can be known, and once known, should be defended. Ideas have consequences. False ideas can have tragic consequences.
The book begins:
“I’ve written this book for all those, everywhere, who have heard some version of the Jesus story that caused their pulse rate to rise, their stomachs to churn, and their heart to utter those resolute words, “I would never be a part of that.
You are not alone.
There are millions of us.”
Not yet reaching the second page click on a kindle, I must stop and address some truth claims. The author refers to “some version of the Jesus story” as if there are multiple ways that Jesus actually lived. The author may not be meaning that, simply because he does not take a stance. One stance that MUST be taken regarding this issue, however, is which of these “versions” is true! There are not multiple histories of the world. There are no “versions” of George Washington being the first president of the United States. That would imply that some people say he was and some people say it was a concocted story and some flat out deny there was ever a person named George Washington. Furthermore, we would be obligated, according the author’s treatment of historical events, to treat each of these claims regarding George Washington as equal! This is logically absurd.
Furthermore, one is left wondering what the author is speaking of what he refers to “the Jesus story.” When I look back on my Grandfather’s life in photo albums, people tell me stories and memories they have. It is a reality that a person’s life can be categorized as a story. What is not possible is to have multiple contradictory stories all being true and equally valid at the same time and in the same meaning.
A few paragraphs later, we come to this statement:
“A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’s message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.”
Here the author seems to commit logical suicide by refuting his own stance outright. Christianity does make the truth claim that heaven and hell are real places. (See Biblical book of revelation) Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.” (John 14:6) Jesus is the cornerstone of the Christian faith. If Jesus lied about such a thing, then He would have sinned. If Jesus sinned, He could not have been God. If Jesus was not God, then He could not have been able to bear the sins of the whole world, which Christianity claims He did when He was crucified some 2000 years ago.
The foundation and core of the Christian faith can be found in the Biblical book of Romans chapter 5:
“ Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned--for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification. For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” – Romans 5:12-21
In short, the message… the very truth claim of Christianity… is that all people have knowledge of God, all people reject God, all people are guilty before God, and all people are condemned before God. But God, in His grace and mercy, made a way of salvation for the lost in the person of Jesus Christ, His Son and humanity’s Lord. Through faith in Christ alone can anyone come to God.
Of course not everyone has faith in Christ as Savior and Lord. What are the logical implications? If one rejects the person of Jesus, then according the Christian truth claim, they are unable to come to God. Yet, Christianity claims our souls will live for eternity somewhere, so if one’s soul cannot come to God, then where does it spend eternity? Separated from God, cast into what the Bible calls the lake of fire. Jesus called this place hell, and He talked of it many times.
“If your right eye causes you to stumble (referring to sin), gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” Matthew 5:29-30
“It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where
“‘the worms that eat them do not die,
and the fire is not quenched.’
Everyone will be salted with fire.” – Mark 9:47-49
“I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.” – Luke 12:5
Perhaps the passage most pertinent to our discussion here is found in 2 Peter, chapter 2:
“Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.
“For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment; if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment. This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire.” – 2 Peter 2:2-10.
The author of the book acknowledges these Christian truth claims. If someone were to reject the idea that individuals will go to hell, they would be rejecting the exclusivity of Christ’s claim. He is the only way to heaven. If they reject Christ’s exclusive claim, then they necessarily reject the absolute need for Jesus as our Savior. If Jesus is not absolutely needed by everyone, then the Bible is full of lies and cannot be trusted. If the Bible, the foundation of all Christian faith, contains any lies whatsoever, the entire book is compromised and the faith which is based on it dies. Indeed, when the author says (weeding out the unneeded connotative word ploys aimed at your emotion and not at your mind), “people have been taught that …Christians will spend forever in …heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever …in hell... It’s been… communicated …that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus,” he is exactly stating what Christianity teaches. Either this claim is true or it is not. To be Christian, one must believe it to be true. One can doubt and investigate for themselves to see which claim is true, but in the end, a Christian must belief Jesus is the only way to God and those who reject Him are cast into hell. It is essential to the message of the Christian gospel. Put simply, any belief system that denies this claim… is not Christian.
I have not yet made it through the first part of the first chapter. I shall continue my reading and continue to post my logical analysis here for all who care to read.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Analogy of the Trinity
When it comes to analogies of the Trinity, we must take care to remember that anything we can think of or encounter will not be exhaustively sufficient to explain the triune nature of God. That’s why they’re called analogies. If any analogy were to describe the Trinity perfectly, it would cease to be an analogy and it would become the Trinity itself. Yet, this does not mean we should not endeavor to understand who God is and how He functions. Thus we strive to find better ways in which our finite minds might grasp the infinite complexities of God.
There are many analogies that float around that attempt to describe certain aspects of the Trinity. The example of the egg is often used. The shell is the Father, the egg white is the Son, and the yolk is the Holy Spirit. There is also the example of the 3 physical forms of material, such as water. Ice, water and steam are all water, yet they serve different purposes. These are great examples for many reasons, and they do wonders when speaking with certain audiences. However, they are but analogies, and as such they each contain notable flaws. The three parts of an egg do indeed make up the totality of an egg. An egg is not a complete egg without these three parts. In this way it explains the Trinity. However, the egg analogy lacks the critical insight in showing that God is One while being three distinct persons. They are inseparable. You cannot take one person of the Trinity in a vacuum. If you could, we could not say that God is One. If you take a shell away from an egg, you still have the other two parts. It’s three parts are distinct and separable. An egg white is not an egg. Nor can an egg shell claim to constitute and entire egg. However, Jesus is God is the Holy Spirit. They are distinct persons, but inseparable in essence.
In a different way, the analogy of the physical states of water has its own shortcomings. Unlike the egg, water is ice is steam. It is the same substance. It is the same essential stuff. However, they cannot physically coexist in the same environment over time. The state of water, as we well know, necessarily depends on the external ambient temperature in which it exists. Yes, it is possible to have ice and water and steam present in a general vicinity at the same time, but those three phases of water will each necessarily have at least one different property than the other two. Assuming Earth’s atmospheric pressure, we know that the ice must be below 0 degree centigrade, the water must be between 0 and 100 C, and the steam must be over 100 C. If this were not the case, they would not be ice, water or steam respectively. It temperature is a defining characteristic of each phase of water. This means that at 40 degrees centigrade, only water can ultimately exist. Yet the Trinity coexists as One God at all times in all situations. God is not compartmentalized by space, temperature, time or any other modes of measurement. He is infinite, and that is the problem that most every analogy cannot overcome.
One way to circumvent the problem of the infinite is to consider something that is not finite. This brings us to the spatial dimension analogy that has been discussed elsewhere. Mathematics and logic are special in that they are not necessarily governed by the existing universe. It is my own personal opinion (one that I would be glad to back up with a plethora of arguments. ) that the physical universe is not infinite in any of its contents or dimensions. However, in a very real sense mathematics and logic do not abide by the rules of this universe. Rather, the universe abides by the laws of logic. For example, imagine that there are exactly 1 trillion “things” in existence, be they quarks, protons, donuts or elephants. We have 1 trillion fundamental things and not a unit more. If that were true, could we still do that mathematical problem 1 trillion + 1 trillion = 2 trillion? Of course we could! But no one would know what 2 trillion things looks like! It exists only in our mind. Similarly the laws of logic are transcendent. The statement “truth exists” must necessarily be true at all times at all places. We know this because the statement “truth does not exist,” if true, would be necessarily false. Thus truth must exist in and outside of any and all dimensions. Logic is transcendent. (This is a great argument for an atheistic friend who wants to use logic to refute the existence of a transcendent being of any kind. It’s a self-refuting position.)
This transcendence is extremely helpful for the human mind to grow in its understanding of its creator. Though I can make a strong argument against the physical existence of the infinite, I would just as vehemently assert that we can dwell upon the concept of the infinite. We can imagine the infinite and often use it in mathematical modeling. (side note: this is another wonderful brain teaser to set before a skeptical friend, especially if they are of the engineering/science/math makeup. They can easily do a limit problem by conceiving the idea of the infinite in their mind. Yet, ask them if they can think of a color that they have never seen! No one will be able to do it! They cannot think of something which they have never experienced or known. So why is it, then, that we can so readily think of and dwell upon the infinite? GREAT rhetorical question! It clearly seems to imply that the human mind has experienced the infinite in some form or fashion) Whereas the other analogies failed in that they were not infinite in nature, a purely theoretical, easily understood, mathematical model would not have to suffer from such a deficiency.
This brings us to the spatial dimension analogy of the Trinity. The first dimension is but a straight, infinite like. There is no up or down, nor is there any forward or back. There is just side to side. Yet this one line must exist for all other things to possibly exist. We cannot even imagine a world in which a first dimension did not exist. It is unfathomable, and thus the first dimension is foundational and necessary for all other spatial entities to exist. In a very real sense, it is the Father of all physical space.
Once we add the second dimension to the first, we begin to see things as an infinite plane. In mathematics, this is usually described by the infinite x and y axis that make up the Cartesian plane. Both the x-axis and the y-axis are single dimensions. They are both infinite lines that are essentially the same. But the second single dimension allows one to see the world around them. We see everything in two dimensions. It is the way we were designed. Even 3D images are seen by our brain as 2 dimensional images. We may interpret them differently, but their appearance to us is always 2 dimensional. It was Jesus who said to Phillip, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” (John 14:9). We see God in the Son.
Lastly, we can add the infinite z-axis that penetrates our 2 dimensional Cartesian plane. This addition of another infinite one dimensional line, essentially the same as the first two, allows us to experience things such as depth. What was only a square that we could see on a plane before can now become a cube that we can lift and touch. Indeed, each of exists in three dimensional space. This is the spatial dimension in which we will live out and experience our entire lives. We cannot be constrained to 1 or 2, and we cannot fathom a fourth. Yet, the Scriptures tell us clearly that the Holy Spirit lives within us as believers (1 Corinthians 2:10). We should not confuse our theology at this point and claim that the Holy Spirit is confined to spatial dimensions. That would infer that God is bound by his own physical creation, a logical absurdity. Rather, we are noting that we experience life in its totality in the third dimension, and that includes how we experience the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We do not simply see Him or acknowledge Him as being foundational. We experience Him.
Thus we see that we have an infinite analogy in which three equivalent things work together in an inseparable way, each to serve its own purpose. Remove one, and space ceases to exist. Yet the only thing that differentiates the x, y and z axis are the letters that we arbitrarily labeled them with. God is Jesus is the Holy Spirit. Essentially the same while serving different, distinct purposes.
Lastly, this analogy also proves useful in that it is eternal. Time is the fourth dimension that governs the physical universe, but it is by its very nature independent of three dimensional space. A unit cube will be the same unit cube yesterday, today and tomorrow. It will never change, or at least not until the universe ceases to be. But at that time, we won’t need an analogy to explain the Trinity. We will see for ourselves.
(We would do well to remember that this is still just an analogy, and it will never be more than that. God is not confined to spatial dimensions. He created space, and thus He cannot be confined within it. However, for the purpsoses stated, the model serves its purposes, and is still one of the best analogies that I have yet come accross when dwelling on the Trinity.) Perhaps God wanted us to see this analogy from the very beginning, as the Psalmist writes:
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands. – Psalm 19:1
There are many analogies that float around that attempt to describe certain aspects of the Trinity. The example of the egg is often used. The shell is the Father, the egg white is the Son, and the yolk is the Holy Spirit. There is also the example of the 3 physical forms of material, such as water. Ice, water and steam are all water, yet they serve different purposes. These are great examples for many reasons, and they do wonders when speaking with certain audiences. However, they are but analogies, and as such they each contain notable flaws. The three parts of an egg do indeed make up the totality of an egg. An egg is not a complete egg without these three parts. In this way it explains the Trinity. However, the egg analogy lacks the critical insight in showing that God is One while being three distinct persons. They are inseparable. You cannot take one person of the Trinity in a vacuum. If you could, we could not say that God is One. If you take a shell away from an egg, you still have the other two parts. It’s three parts are distinct and separable. An egg white is not an egg. Nor can an egg shell claim to constitute and entire egg. However, Jesus is God is the Holy Spirit. They are distinct persons, but inseparable in essence.
In a different way, the analogy of the physical states of water has its own shortcomings. Unlike the egg, water is ice is steam. It is the same substance. It is the same essential stuff. However, they cannot physically coexist in the same environment over time. The state of water, as we well know, necessarily depends on the external ambient temperature in which it exists. Yes, it is possible to have ice and water and steam present in a general vicinity at the same time, but those three phases of water will each necessarily have at least one different property than the other two. Assuming Earth’s atmospheric pressure, we know that the ice must be below 0 degree centigrade, the water must be between 0 and 100 C, and the steam must be over 100 C. If this were not the case, they would not be ice, water or steam respectively. It temperature is a defining characteristic of each phase of water. This means that at 40 degrees centigrade, only water can ultimately exist. Yet the Trinity coexists as One God at all times in all situations. God is not compartmentalized by space, temperature, time or any other modes of measurement. He is infinite, and that is the problem that most every analogy cannot overcome.
One way to circumvent the problem of the infinite is to consider something that is not finite. This brings us to the spatial dimension analogy that has been discussed elsewhere. Mathematics and logic are special in that they are not necessarily governed by the existing universe. It is my own personal opinion (one that I would be glad to back up with a plethora of arguments. ) that the physical universe is not infinite in any of its contents or dimensions. However, in a very real sense mathematics and logic do not abide by the rules of this universe. Rather, the universe abides by the laws of logic. For example, imagine that there are exactly 1 trillion “things” in existence, be they quarks, protons, donuts or elephants. We have 1 trillion fundamental things and not a unit more. If that were true, could we still do that mathematical problem 1 trillion + 1 trillion = 2 trillion? Of course we could! But no one would know what 2 trillion things looks like! It exists only in our mind. Similarly the laws of logic are transcendent. The statement “truth exists” must necessarily be true at all times at all places. We know this because the statement “truth does not exist,” if true, would be necessarily false. Thus truth must exist in and outside of any and all dimensions. Logic is transcendent. (This is a great argument for an atheistic friend who wants to use logic to refute the existence of a transcendent being of any kind. It’s a self-refuting position.)
This transcendence is extremely helpful for the human mind to grow in its understanding of its creator. Though I can make a strong argument against the physical existence of the infinite, I would just as vehemently assert that we can dwell upon the concept of the infinite. We can imagine the infinite and often use it in mathematical modeling. (side note: this is another wonderful brain teaser to set before a skeptical friend, especially if they are of the engineering/science/math makeup. They can easily do a limit problem by conceiving the idea of the infinite in their mind. Yet, ask them if they can think of a color that they have never seen! No one will be able to do it! They cannot think of something which they have never experienced or known. So why is it, then, that we can so readily think of and dwell upon the infinite? GREAT rhetorical question! It clearly seems to imply that the human mind has experienced the infinite in some form or fashion) Whereas the other analogies failed in that they were not infinite in nature, a purely theoretical, easily understood, mathematical model would not have to suffer from such a deficiency.
This brings us to the spatial dimension analogy of the Trinity. The first dimension is but a straight, infinite like. There is no up or down, nor is there any forward or back. There is just side to side. Yet this one line must exist for all other things to possibly exist. We cannot even imagine a world in which a first dimension did not exist. It is unfathomable, and thus the first dimension is foundational and necessary for all other spatial entities to exist. In a very real sense, it is the Father of all physical space.
Once we add the second dimension to the first, we begin to see things as an infinite plane. In mathematics, this is usually described by the infinite x and y axis that make up the Cartesian plane. Both the x-axis and the y-axis are single dimensions. They are both infinite lines that are essentially the same. But the second single dimension allows one to see the world around them. We see everything in two dimensions. It is the way we were designed. Even 3D images are seen by our brain as 2 dimensional images. We may interpret them differently, but their appearance to us is always 2 dimensional. It was Jesus who said to Phillip, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” (John 14:9). We see God in the Son.
Lastly, we can add the infinite z-axis that penetrates our 2 dimensional Cartesian plane. This addition of another infinite one dimensional line, essentially the same as the first two, allows us to experience things such as depth. What was only a square that we could see on a plane before can now become a cube that we can lift and touch. Indeed, each of exists in three dimensional space. This is the spatial dimension in which we will live out and experience our entire lives. We cannot be constrained to 1 or 2, and we cannot fathom a fourth. Yet, the Scriptures tell us clearly that the Holy Spirit lives within us as believers (1 Corinthians 2:10). We should not confuse our theology at this point and claim that the Holy Spirit is confined to spatial dimensions. That would infer that God is bound by his own physical creation, a logical absurdity. Rather, we are noting that we experience life in its totality in the third dimension, and that includes how we experience the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We do not simply see Him or acknowledge Him as being foundational. We experience Him.
Thus we see that we have an infinite analogy in which three equivalent things work together in an inseparable way, each to serve its own purpose. Remove one, and space ceases to exist. Yet the only thing that differentiates the x, y and z axis are the letters that we arbitrarily labeled them with. God is Jesus is the Holy Spirit. Essentially the same while serving different, distinct purposes.
Lastly, this analogy also proves useful in that it is eternal. Time is the fourth dimension that governs the physical universe, but it is by its very nature independent of three dimensional space. A unit cube will be the same unit cube yesterday, today and tomorrow. It will never change, or at least not until the universe ceases to be. But at that time, we won’t need an analogy to explain the Trinity. We will see for ourselves.
(We would do well to remember that this is still just an analogy, and it will never be more than that. God is not confined to spatial dimensions. He created space, and thus He cannot be confined within it. However, for the purpsoses stated, the model serves its purposes, and is still one of the best analogies that I have yet come accross when dwelling on the Trinity.) Perhaps God wanted us to see this analogy from the very beginning, as the Psalmist writes:
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands. – Psalm 19:1
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Why are the Gospels Written in the Third Person?
Some have argued that the gospels should be rejected because they claim to be first hand accounts but are written in the third person. Why would the writers of the first four books of the new testament have written their accounts in the third person?
The 4 gospels consist of the books written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John concerning the life and works of Jesus of Nazareth.
Luke begins his book with this statement, “Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.” This would seem to imply that although Luke may have been present for some of the events, he is writing from a researcher’s perspective who is compiling information gathered from multiple sources. Thus, we should expect the book of Luke to be written in the third person. However, from this passage we can also assume that other written records of the life of Jesus had already been written by the time Luke sat down to write his account. Furthermore, the book of Luke is continued in Acts, where we see the “we passages” in Acts 16:10-17, 20:5-15, 21:1-18, and 27:1-28:16. Here it seems as though Luke personally joins Paul in his journeys and no longer writes in the third person but in the first.
Mark was not an eyewitness of the life of Jesus, but rather recorded Peter’s eyewitness accounts as Peter’s disciple and interpreter. As an Apostle, Peter was an eyewitness and it has been historically recorded that Mark “made no mistake” and did not include “any false statement” as he recorded Peter’s first hand account. Around 180 AD, Irenaeus wrote “Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, …handed down to us in writing the substance of Peter’s preaching.” This would explain why Mark wrote his gospel in the third person, for he himself did not see the events recorded.
John the Apostle, son of Zebedee, is credited with authorship of the gospel that bears his name. There is discussion among Biblical scholars as to if John was indeed the author of the gospel or not. In John 1:14, it can be read “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory.” The use of “us” and “we” as pronouns in the Greek would most reasonably imply that the author had witnessed at least some of the events firsthand. However, there is the possibility that the pronouns refer to all of humanity, and not to a firsthand account. The lack of any reference to the Apostle John in the book (when he is mentioned over 20 times in the other gospels), the referring of John the Baptist as simply “John” and the consistent reference to the “disciple whom Jesus loved” are peculiarities that those denying John’s authorship must address. It is also noteworthy, as per your question, that the other biblical books credited to John in authorship (1,2,3 John and Revelation) are written in the first person.
Matthew is generally thought to be the true author of the gospel that bears his name as well. This leaves John and Matthew as eyewitnesses who likely wrote of their experiences in the third person. So why would they have written in the third person instead of the first person? There are several reasons why this is the case.
It was a fairly standard practice in ancient writing to refer to oneself in the third person. We find this, for example, in Xenophon’s Expedition of Cyrus and Caesar’s Commentaries. Given this fact, it is not particularly surprising that Matthew and John adopt the same convention; it is certainly not evidence against Matthew’s or John’s authorship of the Gospels that bear their names. But what do we make of John’s writing in first person throughout his other biblical books? The main difference between the Gospels and the other books of the New Testament is that the Gospels function primarily as biographies for Christ and His ministry. John’s four other biblical books are either intended for teaching, encouraging and correcting a particular person or group (1,2,3 John) or to report to specific churches what the Lord had revealed to him through revelation regarding the end times and the final judgment (Revelation). These were more personal letters than biographies.
The purpose of all the Gospels is clear. A written account of what happened during Jesus ministry was not needed during the lifetimes of those that had actually been there and witnessed it. This is why we do not need to write textbooks today discussing what happened on September 11, 2001. There are many reputable people who we can ask personally about the happenings of that day when thousands died during the terrorists attacks on the US. However, it should be expected that at some point, someone who was there will take the time to write down everything they deem important about that day so that their memories will not die with them. This would be the case with the Gospels regarding Jesus Christ. However, just as the person writing about 9/11 might see fit to exclude themselves from their written record to maintain a sense of objectivity for the reader (few history books are ever written in first person except when they make quotations), we might expect Matthew and John to put their focus on the objective realities of what Christ said and did, and not on their subjective thoughts or insights. Their deep respect of the subject at hand, namely Jesus, prevented them from inserting themselves as characters in a historical setting that was much bigger than themselves.
(As a side note, it might be argued that the gospel writers were biased in their writings in favor of Christ. The proper response to this would not be to argue against such a bias, but to argue as to how the bias had affected their reporting of the objective historical events. For example, 100 years from now if we had two accounts of 9/11, one from the American perspective, and one from the Chinese perspective, we might hear different biases of the same historical event. However, that does not mean that the objective claims made by these reports should be discarded. Planes did fly into the twin towers, the towers did fall, thousands were killed. Thos are the facts. Similarly, Jesus did do miracles, He did raise people from the dead, He did die on the cross, and He did raise again three days later.)
This is one possible (and I think likely) explanation. For more information on the Gospels and other New Testament books, I strongly recommend Donald Guthrie’s “New Testament Introduction.”
The 4 gospels consist of the books written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John concerning the life and works of Jesus of Nazareth.
Luke begins his book with this statement, “Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.” This would seem to imply that although Luke may have been present for some of the events, he is writing from a researcher’s perspective who is compiling information gathered from multiple sources. Thus, we should expect the book of Luke to be written in the third person. However, from this passage we can also assume that other written records of the life of Jesus had already been written by the time Luke sat down to write his account. Furthermore, the book of Luke is continued in Acts, where we see the “we passages” in Acts 16:10-17, 20:5-15, 21:1-18, and 27:1-28:16. Here it seems as though Luke personally joins Paul in his journeys and no longer writes in the third person but in the first.
Mark was not an eyewitness of the life of Jesus, but rather recorded Peter’s eyewitness accounts as Peter’s disciple and interpreter. As an Apostle, Peter was an eyewitness and it has been historically recorded that Mark “made no mistake” and did not include “any false statement” as he recorded Peter’s first hand account. Around 180 AD, Irenaeus wrote “Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, …handed down to us in writing the substance of Peter’s preaching.” This would explain why Mark wrote his gospel in the third person, for he himself did not see the events recorded.
John the Apostle, son of Zebedee, is credited with authorship of the gospel that bears his name. There is discussion among Biblical scholars as to if John was indeed the author of the gospel or not. In John 1:14, it can be read “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory.” The use of “us” and “we” as pronouns in the Greek would most reasonably imply that the author had witnessed at least some of the events firsthand. However, there is the possibility that the pronouns refer to all of humanity, and not to a firsthand account. The lack of any reference to the Apostle John in the book (when he is mentioned over 20 times in the other gospels), the referring of John the Baptist as simply “John” and the consistent reference to the “disciple whom Jesus loved” are peculiarities that those denying John’s authorship must address. It is also noteworthy, as per your question, that the other biblical books credited to John in authorship (1,2,3 John and Revelation) are written in the first person.
Matthew is generally thought to be the true author of the gospel that bears his name as well. This leaves John and Matthew as eyewitnesses who likely wrote of their experiences in the third person. So why would they have written in the third person instead of the first person? There are several reasons why this is the case.
It was a fairly standard practice in ancient writing to refer to oneself in the third person. We find this, for example, in Xenophon’s Expedition of Cyrus and Caesar’s Commentaries. Given this fact, it is not particularly surprising that Matthew and John adopt the same convention; it is certainly not evidence against Matthew’s or John’s authorship of the Gospels that bear their names. But what do we make of John’s writing in first person throughout his other biblical books? The main difference between the Gospels and the other books of the New Testament is that the Gospels function primarily as biographies for Christ and His ministry. John’s four other biblical books are either intended for teaching, encouraging and correcting a particular person or group (1,2,3 John) or to report to specific churches what the Lord had revealed to him through revelation regarding the end times and the final judgment (Revelation). These were more personal letters than biographies.
The purpose of all the Gospels is clear. A written account of what happened during Jesus ministry was not needed during the lifetimes of those that had actually been there and witnessed it. This is why we do not need to write textbooks today discussing what happened on September 11, 2001. There are many reputable people who we can ask personally about the happenings of that day when thousands died during the terrorists attacks on the US. However, it should be expected that at some point, someone who was there will take the time to write down everything they deem important about that day so that their memories will not die with them. This would be the case with the Gospels regarding Jesus Christ. However, just as the person writing about 9/11 might see fit to exclude themselves from their written record to maintain a sense of objectivity for the reader (few history books are ever written in first person except when they make quotations), we might expect Matthew and John to put their focus on the objective realities of what Christ said and did, and not on their subjective thoughts or insights. Their deep respect of the subject at hand, namely Jesus, prevented them from inserting themselves as characters in a historical setting that was much bigger than themselves.
(As a side note, it might be argued that the gospel writers were biased in their writings in favor of Christ. The proper response to this would not be to argue against such a bias, but to argue as to how the bias had affected their reporting of the objective historical events. For example, 100 years from now if we had two accounts of 9/11, one from the American perspective, and one from the Chinese perspective, we might hear different biases of the same historical event. However, that does not mean that the objective claims made by these reports should be discarded. Planes did fly into the twin towers, the towers did fall, thousands were killed. Thos are the facts. Similarly, Jesus did do miracles, He did raise people from the dead, He did die on the cross, and He did raise again three days later.)
This is one possible (and I think likely) explanation. For more information on the Gospels and other New Testament books, I strongly recommend Donald Guthrie’s “New Testament Introduction.”
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
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