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.
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
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