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The Pro-Choice Quiz

2012-02-16T12:59:00.000-08:00

Are you really pro-choice? Take this simple quiz to find out now!

Question 1: It is alright to tear apart a newborn infant if...

A) The mother cannot afford to care for the child.
B) The child is mentally handicapped.
C) The mother was raped.
D) All of the above.
E) None of the above.

If you selected (A) through (D), you are pro-choice. If you selected (E), you might be pro-choice; proceed to the next question.

Question 2: Is a human fetus a human (i.e. a member of the species Homo sapiens)?

A) No
B) Yes

If you selected (A), you are pro-choice. If you selected (B), you might be pro-choice; proceed to the next question.

Question 3: The value of a human is determined by…

A) The human's size.
B) The human's level of development.
C) The human's degree of dependency.
D) All of the above.
E) None of the above.

If you selected (A) through (D), you are pro-choice. If you selected (E), you are not pro-choice; welcome to the ranks of the anti-choice fanatics.

Posted here on the Live Action blog.

No Disassembly Required

2012-02-02T11:55:00.000-08:00

“Babies are born perfect.” “Take your whole baby home.” “No disassembly required.” Such are the slogans of a small but vocal movement devoted to ending the practice of infant circumcision. They are not activists; they are “intactivists.”

Several days ago, the Bay Area Intactivists decided to protest the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which recently declined to join their anti-circumcision campaign. On January 21, a small group of intactivists picketed outside of a church where the ACLU was hosting a pro-choice brunch to promote abortion rights. Ironically, intactivist Jonathon Conte claimed that the protest was well received by many of those who attended the brunch:

The reaction towards protesters was overwhelmingly positive by…attendees of the brunch…In addition to giving an enthusiastic thumbs-up while driving into the parking lot, several of those attending the brunch walked over to to voice their support and to thank Bay Area Intactivists for being there. Some were shocked to learn that the ACLU has had such a poor track record in regard to ending the forced genital cutting of boys.

I would love to meet someone who is pro-abortion and anti-circumcision. If any of my readers have met one of these fascinating individuals, please send them my way. I have many questions. What ethical principle leads one to determine that it is wrong to slice off the foreskin of a premature infant, but acceptable to rip off the entire penis, along with the arms, legs, and head, of a viable fetus? If a baby survives an abortion attempt, is it still wrong to circumcise him? Prenatal surgeries are occasionally performed; would prenatal circumcision be acceptable? How about “partial-birth” circumcision, in which the doctor would circumcise the baby before he is completely out of the womb?

In the medical textbook Abortion Practice, abortionist Dr. Warren Hern describes the dilation and evacuation (D&E) procedure used in later abortions:

The procedure changes significantly at 21 weeks because the fetal tissues become much more cohesive and difficult to dismember. This problem is accentuated by the fact that the fetal pelvis may be as much as 5cm in width. The calvaria [head] is no longer the principal problem; it can be collapsed. Other structures, such as the pelvis, present more difficulty…A long curved Mayo scissors may be necessary to decapitate and dismember the fetus.

In sworn testimony before the US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, abortionist Dr. Martin Haskell admitted that the fetus is often still alive throughout much of this procedure: “It’s not unusual at the start of D&E procedures that a limb is acquired first…prior to anything having been done that would have caused the fetal demise.” In a prior interview with Cincinnati Medicine, he explained that the procedure could take up to 45 minutes, due to “the toughness and development of the fetal tissues.”

Regardless of your views on circumcision, those of us in the pro-life community can agree that the intactivists have great slogans. Babies are born perfect. No disassembly required.

Posted here on the Live Action Blog.

Is Abortion Wrong?

2012-01-26T23:58:00.000-08:00

Before we can answer this question, we must first answer three others:

1. What is abortion?
2. What is a fetus?
3. What is wrong?

What is Abortion?

There are essentially two types of surgical abortion procedures: the Suction Curettage procedure used in earlier abortions, and the Dilation and Evacuation (D&E) procedure used in later abortions.

Suction Curettage

This is sworn testimony by abortion doctor Martin Haskell describing the Suction Curettage procedure:

When we do a suction curettage abortion, you know, roughly one of three things is going to happen during the abortion. One would be that the catheter as it approaches the fetus, you know, tears it and kills it at that instant inside the uterus. The second would be that the fetus is small enough and the catheter is large enough that the fetus passes through the catheter and either dies in transit as it’s passing through the catheter or dies in the suction bottle after it’s actually all the way out.

Dilation and Evacuation

This is sworn testimony by Dr. Haskell describing the Dilation and Evacuation procedure:

Let's just say…we left the leg in the uterus just to dismember it. Well, we'd probably have to dismember it at several different levels because we don't have firm control over it, so we would attack the lower part of the lower extremity first, remove, you know, possibly a foot, then the lower leg at the knee and then finally we get to the hip. And typically when the abortion procedure is started we typically know that the fetus is still alive because either we can feel it move as we're making our initial grasps or if we're using some ultrasound visualization when we actually see a heartbeat as we're starting the procedure. It's not unusual at the start of D&E procedures that a limb is acquired first…prior to anything having been done that would have caused the fetal demise.

When you're doing a dismemberment D&E, usually the last part to be removed is the skull itself and it's floating free inside the uterine cavity…So it's rather like a ping-pong ball floating around and the surgeon is using his forceps to reach up to try to grasp something that's freely floating around…So typically there's several misdirections, misattempts to grasp. Finally…the skull is brought out in fragments rather than as a unified piece.

This is an excerpt from the medical textbook Abortion Practice by abortion doctor Warren Hern:

The procedure changes significantly at 21 weeks because the fetal tissues become much more cohesive and difficult to dismember. This problem is accentuated by the fact that the fetal pelvis may be as much as 5cm in width. The calvaria [head] is no longer the principal problem; it can be collapsed. Other structures, such as the pelvis, present more difficulty…A long curved Mayo scissors may be necessary to decapitate and dismember the fetus.

This is an excerpt from an interview with Dr. Haskell in Cincinnati Medicine:

D&E's, the procedure typically used for later abortions, have always been somewhat problematic because of the toughness and development of the fetal tissues.… I just kept doing D&E's because that was what I was comfortable with, up until 24 weeks. But they were very tough. Sometimes it was a 45-minute operation.

In summary, abortion is a procedure to "decapitate and dismember the fetus."

What is a Fetus?

Consider the differences between a human fetus and a human infant:

All of the differences between these two can be summarized as follows:

• Difference in size
• Difference in level of development
• Difference in degree of dependency

A human fetus can move, suck her thumb, sleep, dream, fight with her twin, enjoy music, and feel the pain of an abortion.

Now consider the differences between a human infant and Barrack Obama:

The differences between a human infant and Barack Obama are far greater in degree than the differences between a human fetus and a human infant. However, all of the differences can still be summarized as follows:

• Difference in size
• Difference in level of development
• Difference in degree of dependency

In short, a human fetus and a human infant differ only in those ways in which any human at any stage of development differs from any other human at a different stage of life.

What is Wrong?

Is it wrong to kill a human infant? After all, a strong case can be made for infanticide:

2. Criminalizing infanticide is dangerous for women. In societies where infanticide is illegal, young women who do not want their child, but who have neglected to have an abortion, are forced to secretly dispose of their babies in back alleys or public restrooms. Giving birth alone, without any medical care, is extremely dangerous, especially in such unsanitary environments. When legal, however, infanticide is 100% safe. There are absolutely no health risks associated with the procedure.

3. Women have the right to choose. To rob a woman of her infanticide rights is to rob her of her reproductive freedom. Don’t like infanticide? Then don’t do it!

4. Infanticide prevents unwanted children. For example, some mothers do not know that their child is physically or mentally handicapped until after the child has been born. It is a great injustice that these mothers are now forced by the state to raise a child they do not want.

5. Infanticide is ultimately better for children. Unwanted children are much more likely to experience abuse or neglect; infanticide ensures that every child is a wanted child.

6. Infanticide benefits society. In developing countries, particularly those affected by the Aids epidemic, orphanages are overcrowded and the streets are swarming with homeless children. Countless millions are expended every year to keep these children alive, when the money could be used much more effectively to build economies and create jobs. Infanticide, administered systematically on a large scale, would relieve societies of this burden, thus creating a better world for all.

7. Criminalizing infanticide violates the separation of church and state. Those who oppose infanticide rights do so because they believe it is evil to kill children, but this assertion cannot be proven empirically by the scientific method. Thus it is merely a personal opinion based on religious beliefs, and as such, it cannot form the basis of public policy in a secular democracy.

So do you really believe that infanticide should be illegal? Why?

7 Arguments for Infanticide

2012-01-12T23:19:00.000-08:00

1. Abortion costs money, and many poor people do not have the money to spare on abortion, especially in developing countries. Infanticide, on the other hand, is absolutely free. The procedure requires no doctor’s consultation, no medication, and no follow up visit. It requires no special equipment and can be performed with any number of common household items, such as a kitchen knife or even a shoestring.

2. Criminalizing infanticide is dangerous for women. In societies where infanticide is illegal, young women who do not want their child, but who have neglected to have an abortion, are forced to secretly dispose of their babies in back alleys or public restrooms. Giving birth alone, without any medical care, is extremely dangerous, especially in such unsanitary environments. When legal, however, infanticide is 100% safe. There are absolutely no health risks associated with the procedure.

3. Women have the right to choose. To rob a woman of her infanticide rights is to rob her of her reproductive freedom. Don’t like infanticide? Then don’t do it!

4. Infanticide prevents unwanted children. For example, some mothers do not know that their child is physically or mentally handicapped until after the child has been born. It is a great injustice that these mothers are now forced by the state to raise a child they do not want.

5. Infanticide is ultimately better for children. Unwanted children are much more likely to experience abuse or neglect; infanticide ensures that every child is a wanted child.

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Posted here on the Live Action Blog.
Posted here on LifeNews.com.

Some Questions for Calvinists

2011-12-14T14:17:00.000-08:00

1. Can a preacher of the gospel stand in any pulpit, point to any audience, and confidently proclaim, "God loves you, and Jesus died for your sins"?

2. Why does God decline to grant saving faith to certain men? If it is because their eternal damnation ultimately brings Him glory, why should we mourn the fate of the lost? Should we not rather rejoice that God's true will has been accomplished and His glory has been manifested?

3. William G. T. Shedd claimed, "If God does not decide what will come to pass, he cannot know what will come to pass." Joseph Kony, or one of his associates, came up with the idea of forcing children to murder and eat their parents in order to transform these children into hardened killers for his army. Did this idea originate in the mind of God? In other words, did God decide that Joseph Kony would have this idea?

4. How does the eternal, conscious torment of the non-elect infants who die prior to birth bring glory to God?

5. Paul claimed he was willing to suffer damnation to bring about the salvation of his fellow Israelites (Rom. 9:2). Did Paul love these people more than God loved them?

The Real 99%

2011-11-18T18:06:00.001-08:00

According to this protester, if your annual salary is less than $2,196,124 (or $6,017 dollars per day) you are part of the 99%. Perhaps the calculator function on her iPhone is not working properly. Beside her is a chart showing income distribution in the year 2000 [http://www.gapminder.org/downloads/human-development-trends-2005/]. It appears to me that $6,017 might be a tad bit too high. Maybe the cut-off between 99% and 1% is a little closer to $100.

If your annual salary is greater than $36,500, you are part of the 1%, not the 99%.

According to the United Nations World Food Program, 1 in 7 people “do not eat enough to be healthy,” making hunger the single greatest health risk on the planet, killing more people than Aids, malaria, and tuberculosis combined. According to World Vision, “a child dies from hunger related causes every 15 seconds” and “more than 1/3 of all child deaths are caused by hunger,” though according to the World Food Program, “it costs just US $0.25 per day to provide a child with all of the vitamins and nutrients he or she needs to grow up healthy.”

This cardboard sign depicts a pervasive lie which has come to be known as "the American Dream." If you have full immunizations, if you have chlorinated water pumped into your house, if you are not hungry, if you have been given 12 years of free education, if you are surrounded by fully equipped emergency rooms, if you are protected by the United States Army, if you enjoy the legal rights outlined in the United States Constitution, and if you make more than $36,500 a year, then you are not part of the 99%. You don't even live in the same world as the 99%. And you certainly don't deserve any better.

Those #@&% Calvinists!

2011-11-16T17:07:00.001-08:00

John Piper suggested that Arminians should not be allowed to hold leadership positions in the church. R. C. Sproul said that Arminians are “just barely” saved. But John MacArthur’s recent statement trumps them all. I have heard Arminians accused of being universalists, Pelagians, and open theists, but this was a new one. According to John, Arminian theology is the reason some Christians curse and watch R-rated movies.

If you are interested in learning what Arminians really belive, this is a good place to start: http://evangelicalarminians.org/sof

Who in “the world” does God love?

2011-11-08T14:51:00.000-08:00

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. – John 3:16-17

While children in Sunday School have no difficulty understanding this text, some Reformed scholars struggle to comprehend the meaning of these simple words. In a recent debate here at Biola University concerning his new book entitled For Calvinism, Dr. Michael Horton argued that “the world” in John 3:16 does not encompass every person, but only the minority of the population who is elect. According to Dr. Horton, God loved the elect only and sent Jesus to die for the elect only. His argument was based on 2 Peter 3:6, in which the apostle claims that God destroyed "the world" in the flood. Though “the world” was destroyed, Noah and his family were not killed. Therefore, according to Dr. Horton, the phrase “the world” does not necessarily include everyone, and may in fact be used to describe a relatively small percentage of humanity.

This argument is fundamentally flawed. Even if Peter used the phrase “the world” to refer to all of humanity except for 8 persons, this does not mean that the phrase can be appropriately applied to any number of persons. In other words, even if it is appropriate to say that God destroyed “the world” in the flood, it is certainly not appropriate to say that God delivered “the world” through the ark! Furthermore, Peter was not using the phrase to refer to people at all! “The world” can of course refer to a place, and this is clearly the meaning Peter intended. Peter said, “the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.” People are not “flooded with water”!

Regardless of how the phrase might possibly be used, we can easily determine the meaning John intended by comparing John 3:17 with John 12:47. In John 12:46-48, Jesus ends his ministry to unbelieving Israel with these words:

I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in Me should not abide in darkness. And if anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him – the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day.

Why does Jesus decline to judge the man who “does not believe”? Because he did not come to judge “the world”! This argument only works if the man who “does not believe” is understood to be part of “the world.” While Dr. Horton claims that the Father “did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world [of the elect], but that the world [of the elect] through Him might be saved,” Jesus is clearly under the impression that he “did not come to judge the world [universal] but to save the world [universal].”

Dr. Horton’s treatment of John 3:16-17 is really quite alarming. What is the point of holding to inerrancy if we are prepared to tolerate such a flagrant mishandling of the text? Was Dr. Horton’s claim really any less damaging to our doctrine of Scripture than the claims made by the likes of Bart Ehrman and Dan Brown? What is the significance of possessing an inerrant text if the words can mean whatever we need them to mean?

Why Did Jesus Die?

2011-10-23T17:01:00.000-07:00

A Response to Deacon Andrei Kuraev

Introduction

In his work, To Protestants About Orthodox, Deacon Andrei Kuraev argues that Jesus died, not that we might be forgiven of our sins, but that we might be healed from the damaging consequences of our sins. He states, “In the framework of Protestant ‘forensics,’ God, accepting the sacrifice of Christ, grants forgiveness to people. But in the Orthodox mystics there is little mention of forgiveness.” Kuraev mocks the idea that “the blood of Christ simply shuts the eyes of God to the sins of people” and argues that the blood of Christ did not “appease the Father and give him the ‘legal right’ to grant people a reprieve.” According to Kuraev, Christ “took upon himself the consequences of our sins” when he died on the cross; “he took on Himself our weaknesses and our diseases to dissolve them in the infinity of his divine love.”[4] However, while the death of Christ certainly does heal us from the consequences of our sins, the clear Scriptural teachings concerning the motive, necessity, and result of Christ’s death affirm the doctrine that Jesus died so that sinners might receive God’s forgiveness.

"Isenheim Altarpiece" by Mathias Grünewald

The Motive of Christ’s Death

Kuraev claims, “From the Protestant point of view Christ ‘propitiated’ the Father. He… [changed] the character of the Father….The Father did not want to forgive us, but the Son insisted and as a final argument to persuade the Father he used his own death.”[4] This accusation is patently false. Protestants have always described the death of Christ as the supreme revelation of the Father’s love. It was the cross which opened Luther’s eyes to the true nature of God.

Not by curious inquiries into the nature of God shall we know God...but by taking hold of Christ, who according to the will of the Father has given Himself into death for our sins. When we understand this...then shall we know God to be merciful, and not angry. We shall realize that He loved us wretched sinners so much indeed that He gave His only-begotten Son into death for us.[6]

As Calvin argues in the Institutes, “How could [God] have given in his only-begotten Son a singular pledge of his love to us if he had not already embraced us with his free favor?” Calvin proceeds to quote Augustine at length on this point:

God’s love is incomprehensible and unchangeable. It was not after we were reconciled to him through the blood of his Son that he began to love us. Rather, he has loved us before the world was created…The fact that we were reconciled through Christ’s death must not be understood as if his Son reconciled us to him that he might now begin to love those whom he had hated. Rather, we have already been reconciled to him who loves us, with whom we were enemies on account of sin. The apostle will testify whether I am speaking the truth: “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” [Rom. 5:8]. Therefore, he loved us even when we practiced enmity toward him and committed wickedness.[2]

Kuraev seems to have confused the pagan understanding of propitiation with the Christian doctrine. In the minds of the pagans, the gods were hostile to men, and thus a sacrifice was required – a bribe to induce the gods to change their attitude. This understanding of propitiation is entirely different from the Biblical doctrine which Protestants affirm. As Luther, Calvin, and Augustine stated, God was already favorable to men. The sacrifice was at his initiative and his expense. The sacrifice was offered, not to make God love men, but because God loved men. I believe that this is the central truth of all Christian doctrine, and to deny it would be to deny Scripture itself.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. (John 3:16-17)

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:10)

Nevertheless, despite the clear teaching that God loves sinners and does not desire to condemn them, the Bible is equally clear that sinners are not forgiven apart from the death of Christ.

The Necessity of Christ’s Death

Kaurev’s chief theological mistake is assuming that God can forgive sinners apart from the work of Christ on the cross. He describes the forensic view of the atonement as follows:

Imagine that I am vexed with some people and that I am completely justified to be angry with them, [as] sinners. Later I decide nevertheless to forgive them. I decide to change my attitude toward them and no longer be angry at their ugliness and unworthy acts toward me, and I decide to say that I no more will remember their past. And so to testify to them of their forgiveness, I take my son, kill him, and then send my offenders a telegram: “Well, I am no longer angry with you because I killed my beloved son.” Is that a crazy picture? But is this not the picture of God and the events of Golgotha that Protestant preachers paint for their listeners?[4]

I certainly hope not. Protestants do not believe that God forgave sinners, and then killed his son on a whim. Protestants believe that the death of Jesus was necessary in order to enable God to forgive sinners.

The author of Hebrews explains that the “gifts and sacrifices” offered under the first covenant “cannot make him who performed the service perfect in regard to conscience” (Heb. 9:9).

For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins. (Heb. 10:1-4)

The first covenant was insufficient, and therefore a place was sought for “a better covenant, which was established on better promises” (Heb. 8:6). One of these promises was the forgiveness of sins. The author of Hebrews recalls Jeremiah 31:31-34, in which God said, “I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel…I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” This same event was foretold in Ezekiel 36:25: “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness.”

These promises are realized in Christ. On the night before he died, Jesus took the cup said, “This is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (Mat. 26:28). He was echoing the words Moses spoke in Exodus 24:8 when he instituted the old covenant with the blood of animals. Jesus did what the old covenant could not do by cleansing us from sin, “not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood” (Heb. 9:12). Under the old covenant, sins were covered up year by year, “but now, once at the end of the ages, [Jesus] has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Heb. 9:26). The animal sacrifices were not worthless, but “such spiritual value as the sacrificial ritual might have lay in its being a material foreshadowing or object-lesson of a moral and spiritual reality.”[1]

Men certainly experienced God’s forgiveness before the death of Christ (Psalm 32), but in Romans 3:25, Paul makes it clear that this forgiveness is inseparably tied to the death of Christ.

Whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over [πάρεσις] the sins that were previously committed.

The meaning of πάρεσις is debated. The word may mean “pass over, let go,” or “pardon, remission.”[3] If the word means “pass over,” the verse could be translated, “…in order to demonstrate that God is just, acting in accordance with his own character, because he had passed over sins committed before, in the time of his forbearance;” if the word means “pardon,” the verse could be translated, “…in order to manifest his saving faithfulness through his forgiving of sins committed before, in the time of his forbearance.”[7] In other words, Paul is either saying that God’s leniency in the past required the death of Jesus, or that in the death of Jesus God forgave the sins of the past. Either interpretation affirms that the death of Christ is ultimately necessary in order for sins to be forgiven.

Throughout the entire New Testament, Jesus is repeatedly described as the one through whom we obtain forgiveness. “Through this man is preached to you the forgiveness of sins; and by Him everyone who believes is justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses” (Acts 13:38-39). He came “to give knowledge of salvation to His people by the remission of their sins” (Luke 1:77). In Jesus “we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:14 and Eph. 1:7). We are “justified by his blood” (Rom 5:9). “The blood of Jesus Christ…cleanses us from all sins” (1 John 1:7).

But if God, being omnipotent, loves sinners and truly desires to forgive them, why is he incapable of doing so apart from the death of Christ? The metaphor of 1 John 1:5 is most helpful here: “God is light and in him is no darkness at all.” Light cannot forgive darkness. This says nothing against the power of light or the charity of light; it is simply impossible for light, being what light is, and darkness, being what darkness is, to dwell together in harmony. God is incapable of forgiving sin apart from the death of Christ, just as He is incapable of creating a square circle. Light is by definition fatal to darkness. As C.S. Lewis writes in Till We Have Faces, “The Divine Nature wounds and perhaps destroys us merely by being what it is.”[5]

The Result of Christ’s Death

But how precisely does the death of Christ enable God to forgive sinners? Here we are surely approaching deep mysteries, but the Bible nevertheless has much to say in answer to this question. Firstly, the Bible is abundantly clear that Christ took our sins on himself. Jesus “bore our sins in His own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). Furthermore, the Father was the agent who accomplished this arrangement. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us” (2 Cor. 5:21), and “the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Is. 53:6).

Secondly, the Bible is clear that the death of Christ delivers us from God’s wrath. We must be very careful when we speak of God’s wrath, for some have misconstrued this language to describe a vengeful God who, in the words of Kuraev, “thirsts to punish.”[4] Nothing could be further from the Scripture. God has “no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ez. 33:11). “The Lord is…not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9), and he “desires all men to be saved” (2 Tim. 2:4). Robert Mounce describes a correct understanding of God’s wrath in his commentary on Romans:

We recognize that divine wrath is not the same as human wrath, which normally is self-centered, vindictive, and intent on harming another. God’s wrath is his divine displeasure with sin. We call it “wrath” because it shares certain basic characteristics of human wrath. But because it is God’s wrath is can have none of the sinful qualities of its analogical counterpart.[8]

It is important to understand that God’s wrath is not incompatible with his love. According to Ephesians 2:3-4, we were at once under God’s “wrath” and at the same time recipients of his “great love.” Augustine, quoted by Calvin in the Institutes, explains how this is possible:

Thus in a marvelous and divine way he loved us even when he hated us. For he hated us for what we were that he had not made; yet because our wickedness had not entirely consumed his handiwork, he knew how, at the same time, to hate in each one of us what we had made, and to love what he had made.[2]

The Bible is clear that sinners are under God’s wrath. Because of sins, “the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience” (Eph. 5:6, Col 3:6). “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” (Rom. 1:18). Sinners are “treasuring up for [themselves] wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God” (Rom. 2:5). However, the Bible also declares that through Jesus, sinners can escape God’s wrath. “For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thes. 5:9). Jesus “delivers us from the wrath to come” (Thes. 1:10). “Having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him” (Rom. 5:9). As John 3:36 says, “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”

In delivering us from God’s wrath, Jesus experienced that wrath himself. He became “a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13). Isaiah 53:10 explicitly states that God acted on Christ: “It pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief.” In his commentary on Isaiah, John Oswalt states, “The opening lines of 53:10 are terrible. What good father could wish for his son to be crushed? It is only possible if there is some unquestionably greater good to be obtained.”[9] And, I would add, if this unquestionably greater good could only be obtained through the death of the Son.

Thirdly, the Bible teaches that Christ’s death enables us to dwell with God (Gen. 3). It was because of sin that man was cast out of God’s presence in the garden. On Sinai, God made plans to dwell among men once more, but after the sin of the golden calf, these plans were shattered. God said, “I will not go up in your midst, lest I consume you, for you are a stiff-necked people” (Ex. 33:3). Again, it was sin which prevented a holy God from dwelling among men. This dilemma was solved for a time by the institution of the sacrificial system in Leviticus, which provided a way for the people’s sins to be covered up every year (Leviticus 16). As long as they kept the covenant stipulations, God promised, “I will set My tabernacle among you, and My soul shall not abhor you. I will walk among you” (Lev. 26:11-12). Due to the continual sin of the people, however, God finally reluctantly withdrew his presence from the temple (Ezekiel 10).

Christ, however, brings reconciliation. “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God” (Colossians 1:14). The reconciliation did not consist merely in persuading men to accept God’s love for them; the reconciliation was also contingent upon the sin problem being dealt with. As 2 Corinthians 5:19 explains, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them.” If men were to be reconciled to God, God could not “[impute] their trespasses to them.” Again, this is not something God could do apart from the death of Christ. It is “in Christ” that he is “reconciling the world to Himself.” We “have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:13). He has reconciled us to God “in one body through the cross” (Eph. 2:16). We are now part of that body, “filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:19) and united to the Divine Nature in unspeakable intimacy. In fulfilling the new covenant promise of forgiveness, Christ has also fulfilled the new covenant promise of fellowship. “The Spirit of Christ” (Rom. 9:9) dwells within us, in fulfillment of Ezekiel 36:27 and 37:14, in which God promised, “I will put My Spirit within you.”

Kuraev cites St. Clement of Alexandria, who said, “It was more out of love for us than for satisfaction of divine righteousness that He suffered.”[4] We must reply, however, that these two motives cannot be separated. The second results from the first. Jesus loved us, and it is because of this love that he desired to save us from sin. He did this in the only way possible, by taking our iniquities on himself, bearing in his body the divine displeasure against sin, and thus enabling reconciliation. Kuraev argues that Jesus died merely to heal us from the damaging consequences of sin, but such healing is contingent upon reconciliation with God. Sin damages us only because it separates us from God, who is the only source of all that is good. Therefore, for that damage to be restored, we must be reconnected with God, and the Scriptures teach that this reconnection is only possible through the propitiation made by Christ on the cross.

Conclusion

Kaurev’s arguments are not sound, but in one point at least, they are instructive for Protestants. We have ample Scriptural justification in using forensic language to describe the atonement, but as Kaurev’s work demonstrates, this language lends itself to certain misunderstandings. No analogy is perfect, and the courtroom analogy may lead some to the erroneous conclusion that God is a sadistic judge, intent on destroying sinners until being inexplicably placated by the brutal murder of his righteous Son. Whatever analogies are used, the preacher of the gospel must always present a Biblical description of the motive, necessity, and result of Christ’s death. Calvin sums up all three doctrines nicely.

He is moved by pure and freely given love of us to receive us into grace. Since there is a perpetual and irreconcilable disagreement between righteous and unrighteousness, so long as we remain sinners he cannot receive us completely. Therefore, to take away all cause for enmity and to reconcile us utterly to himself, he wipes out all evil in us by the expiation set forth in the death of Christ.[2]

WORKS CITED

1. Bruce, F. F. The Epistle to the Hebrews. Rev. Ed. The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Edited by Gordon D. Fee. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990.
2. Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Edited by John T. McNeill. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960).
3. Fitzmyer, Joseph A. Romans. The Anchor Bible. Vol. 33. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
4. Kuraev, Andrei. “Christ the Savior – Views East and West.” To Protestants About Orthodox. (Moscow: Trinity Monastery, 1997). Unpublished translation by Mark Saucy.
5. Lewis, C. S. Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Inc., 1956.
6. Luther, Martin. Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians. Translated by Theodore Graebner. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1949.
7. Moo, Douglas J. The Epistle to the Romans. The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Edited by Ned B. Stonehouse, F. F. Bruce, and Gordon D. Fee. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996.
8. Mounce, Robert H. Romans. The New American Commentary. Vol 27. Edited by E. Ray Clendenen. Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995.
9. Oswalt, John N. Isaiah. The NIV Application Commentary. Edited by Terry Muck. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003.

The Second Half of the Gospel

2011-10-01T14:42:00.001-07:00

In Romans 1:16-8:39, Paul lays out the gospel, or “good news,” of Jesus Christ:

Note the progression in Paul's argument. When he begins in chapter 1, men are
     (1) under God’s wrath,
     (2) rebels against God,
     (3) unwilling and incapable of keeping God’s law, and
     (4) given over to dehumanizing passions.

By the time he reaches the end of chapter 8, however, men are
     (1) under no condemnation,
     (2) sons and heirs of God,
     (3) willing and able to fulfill the law, and
     (4) revealed in glory with redeemed bodies.

Unfortunately, almost every gospel tract I have ever read stops at the end of chapter 5. According to these tracts, the “good news” is simply that God provides forgiveness through the death of Christ. No mention is made of the fact that God also provides transformation through the life of Christ. We have forgotten the second half of the gospel.

Understandably, many Christians have grown uncomfortable with this lopsided presentation. They know that the gospel is more than just “believe in Jesus so you can go to heaven.” They know that obedience and good works have got to be in there somewhere.

Unfortunately, however, instead of correcting the presentation of the gospel by supplying the missing half, many Christians have simply tried to fuse elements of the second half into the first half. This leaves us in a worse state than when we began, for not only are we still missing the second half of the gospel, but we have now lost the first half as well. We are left with nothing but a hopeless moralism, which could never qualify as “good news.”

The line goes something like this: we are warned against “easy believism” and told that salvation requires more than a mere “mental assent” to the facts of the atonement. We are told that to truly be born again, one must “make Jesus the Lord of his life.” Now this is a rather silly phrase, because of course Jesus is already the Lord of the universe, and no one can add to or detract from his sovereignty. As best as I can tell, however, what they really mean to say is that one must submit in obedience to the demands of Christ.

The problem is that this task is simply impossible for an unregenerate person to accomplish. You cannot be a slave of Jesus and a slave of sin at the same time, but a man who is not indwelt by the Spirit of God cannot break himself free from the bondage of sin. It is foolishness to tell the typical American pagan, enslaved to pornography, materialism, narcissism, etc., that he needs to “make Jesus the Lord of his life.” You might as well tell him that he needs to fly to the moon. The only thing that he needs to do is to believe in Jesus. Only then can he receive the power to break free from the slavery of sin and live as a slave of Jesus.

A Quota for Hell?

2011-09-22T22:29:00.000-07:00

Mankind is divided between those in whom the power of merciful grace is demonstrated, and those in whom is shown the might of just retribution. Neither of those could be displayed in respect of all mankind; for if all had remained condemned to the punishment entailed by just condemnation, then God’s merciful grace would not have been seen at work in anyone; on the other hand, if all had been transferred from darkness into light, the truth of God’s vengeance would not have been made evident. Now there are many more condemned by vengeance than are released by mercy; and the reason for this is that it should in this way be made plain what was the due of all mankind.

– St. Augustine, The City of God, Book XXI, Chapter 12

St. Augustine is one of the most brilliant thinkers of all time, but in this particular instance, I believe he is quite wrong.

The power of merciful grace…could [not] be displayed in respect of all mankind.

This is a bold statement. Augustine had better have a pretty good argument if he is going to presume to place a limit on what God can do.

If all had been transferred from darkness into light, the truth of God’s vengeance would not have been made evident.

So this is it? This is his argument? Is there really no other way that God’s vengeance could have been "made evident"? How about the cross! Didn’t Jesus already make plain “what was the due of all mankind” when he “bore our sins in his own body on the tree” (1 Pet. 2:24) and “[became] a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13)? Was his death so insufficient that a quota remains to be met in hell in order to vindicate God’s justice?

Now there are many more condemned by vengeance than are released by mercy; and the reason for this is that it should in this way be made plain what was the due of all mankind.

Augustine’s description of God’s love for us is just about as cold and passionless as his description of sex in the Garden of Eden. This mathematical affection, concerned only with quotas and percentages, is a sorry substitute for the amazing grace of the Scriptures. Augustine does not describe a God who is too mean; he describes a God who is too small.

The message of the Scriptures is clear: God loves the world and has demonstrated that love by sending His only Son Jesus to make propitiation for the sins of the world. In so doing, God has made salvation available to all. Of course, only those who accept Christ will be saved. Those who reject him go to hell, but they do not go to hell to fill up some quota. The cross makes hell unnecessary. If every single person on earth believed in Jesus and received eternal life, God’s righteousness would be in no way impugned. Christ’s work on the cross was entirely sufficient to satisfy the divine justice. Hell is now a choice; it is no longer a requisite. As C.S. Lewis said in The Great Divorce, “All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.”

Granddaddy's WWII Adventures

2011-09-17T19:54:00.003-07:00

Enlisting in the Air Force

Henry Murray Huffman
and Betty Sue Huffman

"We joined Aviation Cadets because I would have been drafted to join something later I’m sure, and I thought I would enjoy flying more than I would foot soldiering. It was quite an ordeal before it was all over. I know Sue went with me down to the place where I signed up to be an Aviation Cadet, and she approached some recruiter or someone standing there advertising the war and asked, 'Aviation Cadet is not as dangerous as foot soldier is it?' He said, 'Lady, it’s all dangerous. I’m not going to lie to you. I’m not going to have any widows crying on my shoulder.'"

The Crew

Third Mission: Ragensburg

"I think it was my third mission that we did a shuttle mission where we bombed Ragensburg which is deep in Germany. Then [we] cut off towards North Africa and went inside Italy and flew beside the Alps there to try to avoid the fighter aircraft. They always had an awful lot of them on a return trip from target. I hope it was a surprise to them. I think it was; we didn’t encounter much there. It was about a twelve hour flight, and that was about maximum for the B-17. An awful lot of people started to run out of fuel over the sea there. You could see them ditch and land in the water quite often...We were short too, shorter than some [because] we got off a little early due to missing an extra field order. We were in the air thirty minutes before an awful lot of other people were. We knew we were in trouble so we cut our fuel mixture back to the red line till it was practically unsafe to run any leaner. We had enough fuel to get into the pattern but didn’t have enough to go around again. We just landed, and the runway was there, and we just dove into the landing area and made it alright...Everybody threw their guns away to lighten the planes."

Bombs Exploding on Ragensburg

Over the Alps

Over the Mediterranean Sea

Tenth Mission: Munster

"It was October 12, 1943...It was about the 10th mission...Yeah, it was flack I think, anti-aircraft bursts that come from the ground that came up and you could just see big black bursts everywhere. The ones you could see missed you, and I was always happy for that. One came through our wing and just took the oil tank. The flack burst - I don’t know if it was in it or barely under it or what - it just emptied our oil tank on number three engine, and the engine props feather with oil pressure to stop them from turning. They’d turn the blades into the wind so they don’t windmill. Trying to feather that one just did not work because the oil was all gone. Of course we knew we were going to have problems because the prop was running away. It also controlled the pitch of the prop. It was turning - I think we were trying to run about twenty-eight hundred rpm or so and it was up about five thousand rpm back of the red line. [There was] no oil to lubricate it, and I knew something was going to happen. Pretty soon the prop just started leaning back and chewing into the cowling and moved into the number four engine. It knocked the prop real crooked; the bouncing was so bad I didn’t think we had a chance at all of surviving it. But the oil was there, and it feathered, and we stopped the vibration. We just had two engines, and they were on the same side. One had about half power because the turbo charger was frozen up on it or something. We made it alright on everything except fighters were sticking on us until we picked up our fighters. They looked like they were amazed at our damage. They flew along beside us and looked at the bad side, and [the fighter piolot] shook his head and pulled ahead of [us] to look at the other side, and his prop wash nearly downed us...We didn’t have much more flying speed anyway. But it worked out alright, and he and another one stayed with us all the way there. We got to England, and it was fogged in, and you couldn’t see anything. It was fog, fog, fog. We didn’t know really quite what we were going to do with that. We knew we had a good navigator, and he kept us in the direction of the field. When someone said 'there’s the Fernlinham Castle,' and we knew then we were right at it. We were familiar enough to know what course to take from it to hit the field. When we saw the field it was half covered and half not covered. We didn’t even look for the runway; we just landed crossways and rolled to a successful stop. We ran over a power plant out near an intersection of the runway, but it didn’t hurt anything. We had one man injured, and he wasn’t seriously injured, but he never fought again. We got him off to help, he was tail gunner. That plane was shot up so bad they considered not putting it back in service....They worked on that thing about three weeks and sent it up, and it didn’t come back."

3rd Engine After Munster (no propeller!)

Returning Alive

Was Jesus Invented in A.D. 325?

2011-09-04T16:28:00.000-07:00

"Until [the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325], Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet...a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal."
"Not the Son of God?"

"Right," Teabing said. "Jesus' establishment as 'the Son of God' was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea."

"Hold on. You're saying Jesus’ divinity was the result of a vote?"
"A relatively close vote at that," Teabing added.

This is nonsense. First of all, no one at the Council of Nicaea believed that Jesus was merely a mortal, and no one at the Council of Nicaea disputed that Jesus was “the Son of God.” In fact, it was precisely this phrase which precipitated the debate. Arius’ heretical arguments were based on his belief that Jesus was the only begotten Son of God:

But we say and believe and have taught, and do teach, that the Son is not unbegotten, nor in any way part of the unbegotten; and that he does not derive his subsistence from any matter; but that by his own will and counsel he has subsisted before time and before ages as perfect God, only begotten and unchangeable, and that before he was begotten, or created, or purposed, or established, he was not. For he was not unbegotten. We are persecuted, because we say that the Son has a beginning, but that God is without beginning. – Arius

Arius believed that Jesus was the Lord and creator of the universe. He believed that Jesus existed “before time and before ages as perfect God.” His argument was simply this: if Jesus is in fact the only begotten Son of God, then he must have had a beginning. In other words, he must have been created by the Father.

Collected Writings of the
Ante-Nicene Church Fathers

Furthermore, we know beyond any doubt that Christians worshiped Jesus as the Son of God long before Nicaea. The collected writings of the Ante-Nicene church fathers (Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, etc.) comprise over 6,000 pages of tiny print. We know what they believed.

And of course, the canonical books of the New Testament, which were without any doubt written long before A.D. 325 and referenced extensively by the Ante-Nicene fathers, clearly identify Jesus as the Son of God. Consider how he is described in the opening words of the Epistle to the Hebrews (which I believe must have been written before A.D. 70):

God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. - Hebrews 1:1-4

Finally, if you are still not convinced, here is a bit of anti-Christian graffiti scrawled on a wall in pagan Rome. This is perhaps the earliest surviving depiction we have of Jesus. The inscription reads, “Alexamenos worships his god.” Alexamenos is being mocked because he worshiped Jesus as God (long before A.D. 325).

I have good news for you!

2011-08-25T13:46:00.000-07:00

A commonly used proof text for Total Depravity is Romans 3:11, in which Paul quotes from Psalm 14:1-3 and Psalm 53:2-3:

“There is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God.”

Calvinists have used this verse to teach that unregenerate men are incapable of exercising saving faith in Jesus. However, when the verse is read in context, it becomes clear that this interpretation is impossible. Consider the structure of Paul’s argument in Romans:

The first section of Paul’s argument is from 1:18 to 3:20, and opens with these words: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men.” In this section, Paul begins by setting up God’s standard, claiming that “the doers of the law will be justified” (2:13). He then proceeds to argue that all men, both Jews and Gentiles, have violated God’s law. By the end, Paul has established that “by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified” (3:20). It is here that 3:11 is quoted; it is quoted as evidence for Paul’s assertion that all men have violated God’s law. It is not quoted as evidence that all men are incapable of faith. In fact, neither the word “faith” nor “believe” occur once in this entire section.

The second section of Paul’s argument is from 3:21 to 8:39, and opens with these words: “But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed…even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe.” In this section, Paul argues that “a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law” (3:28).

Now for some reason, Paul seems to think that this is a big deal. He seems to consider it very significant that God has made justification available through faith and not through works. He speaks as if this is somehow gospel, or "good news," for sinful men. But if unregenerate men are just as incapable of exercising faith in Christ as they are of keeping God’s law, how is 3:21-22 good news? It is like calling out to a man who has fallen down into a deep pit and saying, “Listen, chap, I know you can’t jump out of this hole, but I have good news for you! If you simply fly, you can escape!” That is not gospel.

Whenever I argue that unregenerate men are capable of exercising faith in Christ, I am accused of making salvation a co-effort between God and man, but this is absurd! If Bill Gates were to give me a billion dollars, and I were to simply accept it, would that make my wealth a co-effort between Bill and I? Of course not! I did not do one bit of work for that money; Bill Gates earned it for me. I would have no grounds for boasting.

Likewise, I have not done one bit of work for my salvation. Christ did all the work for me on the cross. Faith is not a work! The Bible makes a fierce distinction between the two, and Paul speaks in 4:5 of the man “who does not work, but believes.”

Let us be very clear: if we were left to ourselves, none of us would be saved. But we have not been left to ourselves! “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (5:8). We did not seek God, but God was seeking us. Jesus jumped down into the pit and is offering to lift us out. Now that is good news!

Who is "appointed to eternal life"?

2011-08-24T10:01:00.001-07:00

Acts 13:48 is a commonly used proof text for the doctrines of Unconditional Election and Irresistible Grace:

Now when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.

The two obvious questions are these: (1) what does it mean to be appointed to eternal life, (2) and why were these individuals appointed to eternal life?

The Reformed answers are as follows: (1) to be appointed to eternal life means to be individually selected from before the foundation of the world to believe in Christ, and (2) these individuals were appointed to eternal life because of God’s sovereign grace acting regardless of anything these individuals did. I disagree with both answers.

In context, it is clear that Luke is making a contrast between two groups of people in their relation to eternal life:

So when the Jews went out of the synagogue, the Gentiles [God fearers who attended the synagogue meetings (Acts 13:26)] begged that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath.…On the next Sabbath almost the whole city came together to hear the word of God. But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy; and contradicting and blaspheming, they opposed the things spoken by Paul. Then Paul and Barnabas grew bold and said, “It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first; but since you reject it, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us: ‘I have set you as a light to the Gentiles, That you should be for salvation to the ends of the earth.’” Now when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed. – Acts 13:42-48

If we have on one side those who had been selected to believe before the foundation of the world, without respect to anything they did, then on the other side we would expect to find those who had not been selected, again without respect to anything they did. But this is not what we find. Instead we have those who are “appointed to eternal life” set against those who are “unworthy of everlasting life.” And why were these particular Jews “unworthy of everlasting life”? Clearly, it was because they “rejected” the revelation that God gave them. Then why were these particular Gentiles “appointed to eternal life”? Could it be because they accepted the revelation God gave them, and “begged that these words might be preached to them”?

Luke does not say that these Gentiles “had been appointed to eternal life from before the foundation of the world.” He simply says that they “had been appointed to eternal life.” Now the word “appointed” can also be translated “put in place.” These Gentiles were “put in place” for eternal life.

"Vision of Cornelius the Centurion"
by Gerbrand van den Edkhout

A few chapters earlier, we were told of another God fearer who was “put in place” for eternal life. Cornelius was “a devout man…who feared God, gave alms generously to the people, and prayed to God always” (Acts 10:2). But he didn’t know about Jesus. So God sent him an angel who told him, “Your prayers and your alms have come up for a memorial before God…Send for Simon…He will tell you what you must do” (Acts 10:4-6). Cornelius obediently sent for Simon Peter, and when he arrived, Cornelius told him about the angel. After hearing this, Peter said, “In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality. But in every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him.” Note that Cornelius had not yet believed in Jesus for eternal life, and yet Peter said that the divine arrangements which brought him to Cornelius’ house were evidence that Cornelius had already been “accepted” by God for fearing Him and working righteousness. To be “accepted” by God, then, is not to receive eternal life; it is, shall we say, to be judged worthy of eternal life and therefore "put in place" for it. Peter went on to tell Cornelius that “whoever believes in [Jesus] will receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:43). Before Peter finished preaching, Cornelius believed and received the Holy Spirit.

In conclusion, to be “appointed to eternal life" is to be "put in place" for eternal life because you have been judged, in a sense, worthy of eternal life. In other words, to be "appointed to eternal life" is to be “accepted by God,” just as Cornelius was.

Simple, right?

No humans were harmed in the making of this film?

2011-08-19T13:18:00.000-07:00

On Sunday the Los Angeles Times ran a lengthy article highlighting the abuse of animals in the film industry. Specifically, the article addressed The Hangover Part II, which features a monkey who accompanies a group of men in their parade of debauchery. The American Humane Association was not allowed to monitor the monkey’s treatment on set, and worse still, in one scene the monkey was smoking. (Gasp!) The producers claimed the smoke was added digitally, but the AHA could not verify this. The film did not receive the standard “no animals were harmed” stamp in the end credits.

I find the outrage over the treatment of this monkey sadly ironic, considering that the first Hangover featured a real, live human baby! In the film, three men wake up in Vegas with the baby and no memory of what happened. This “funny” movie is about them trying to piece together the acts of debauchery they committed the night before. One of the men, named Alan, explains that he is not allowed to be in 200 yards of a school, meaning that he is a convicted sex offender. He is the one who carries around the baby, and in one particularly “funny” scene, he grabs the baby’s arm and makes masturbating movements with his hand:

In one of the film's funniest moments, Zach Galifianakis' Alan amuses the other guys by moving the baby's hand back and forth, pretending he's pleasuring himself. As twisted as that may seem, Galifianakis insisted that he didn't intend to do it with the real baby. "We had a stand-in baby doll that looks like a real baby. ... I took the arm and went and did the motion," he remembered. "Todd [Phillips] the director saw it, and then he goes, 'We've got to put that in the movie,' and I'm like, 'No, we don't have to put that in the movie,' and then he went and asked the [real baby's] mom." Added the comedian: "I think a lot of infants that go to the movie are going to tell other infants, 'Don't go to Vegas!' " - MTV

Or don’t go to Hollywood. But they don’t really have that choice, do they? This baby’s legal guardian, evidently not a “mother” in any real sense of the word, does not care about protecting her child from the exploitation of the film industry. And by the way, how is any of this funny?

Of course, The Hangover is not the only film in which the industry has exploited children. The recent film Kick Ass comes to mind, in which, for shock value and “humor,” an eleven-year-old actor is made to portray an incredibly profane, savagely violent anti-hero. In fact, her character was so violent (think Kill Bill style violence), that even many film critics seemed uncomfortable.

The blame for this exploitation lies, of course, with the film industry, but it also lies with the (many) people who purchased this garbage.

The Early Christology of Hebrews

2011-08-02T00:08:00.000-07:00

Some have alleged that the deity of Jesus was a later development in Christian doctrine. According to this view, the historical Jesus was not worshiped by the earliest Christians as the Son of God and Lord of glory, the creator and sustainer of the universe. Rather, such an understanding evolved over time and was solidified through pseudographs written after the first century by authors who were not actually contemporaries of Jesus.

The Epistle to the Hebrews provides a strong argument against this view. The high Christology of Hebrews is unparalleled in the New Testament, and the book must certainly have been written before the destruction of the temple by the Roman general Titus in A.D. 70 (pictured above).

The Christology of Hebrews

Consider how Jesus is described in the opening words of Hebrews:

God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. – Hebrews 1:1-4

Jesus is the Son of God, the “brightness of His glory and the express image of His person.” He is the creator of the worlds and the sustainer of all things. He has been raised from the dead and is seated in heaven at God’s right hand.

Furthermore, the author claims that Psalm 45, addressed to “God,” and Psalm 102, addressed to the “LORD” (Yahweh), are actually speaking of Jesus:

To the Son He says: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever….” And: “You, LORD, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands.” – Hebrews 1:8-10

In Chapter 3 we read that Jesus “built all things” and is “God:”

Consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Christ Jesus, who was faithful to Him who appointed Him, as Moses also was faithful in all His house. For this One has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as He who built the house has more honor than the house. For every house is built by someone, but He who built all things is God. – Hebrews 3:1-4

Jesus “continues forever” (Heb. 7:24), having “neither beginning of days nor end of life” (Heb. 7:3), but “now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” (Heb. 9:26). He was “made like His brethren” (Heb. 4:17) and became a partaker of “flesh and blood” (Heb. 4:14). As a man, he was “in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). He “endured the cross” (Heb. 12:2), but God “brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead” (Heb. 13:20). Thus, “after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever,” Jesus “sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool” (Heb. 10:12-13). He has entered “into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us” (Heb. 9:24), and is “seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens” (Heb. 8:1). One day, he will “appear a second time.” (Heb. 9:28).

The Date of Hebrews

The book of Hebrews is a brilliant, impassioned polemic urging Christians not to return to Judaism. The author argues that Christ is superior in every way to the old covenant priesthood and sacrificial system centered around the temple. Therefore, the book must have been written before A.D. 70; if Hebrews was written after A.D. 70, then the destruction of the temple would certainly have been mentioned. How could such a lengthy epistle be written addressing the insufficiency of the temple cult without mentioning the fact that the temple had been utterly destroyed and the sacrificial system had been permanently abolished? But of course, if the letter had been written after A.D. 70, there would have been no need to write it. If the letter was written after the temple was destroyed, there would be no danger of Christians rejecting the sufficiency of Christ and reverting back to the temple cult.

As one would expect, the current existence of the temple and the sacrificial system is assumed throughout the book. The author states very clearly that "gifts and sacrifices are offered" at "the present time" (Heb. 9:9) and references the current ministry of the priesthood when he states that Christians “have an alter from which those who serve at the tabernacle have no right to eat” (Heb. 13:10). He states that “if [Jesus] were on earth, He would not be a priest, since there are priests who offer the gifts according to the law” (Heb. 8:4). In chapter 10, the author bases his argument on the ongoing nature of the temple cult:

For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. – Hebrews 10:1-3

In short, if Hebrews was written after A.D. 70, it can only be a fake letter, written to a fake audience, addressing a fake problem with fake arguments expressed with a fake sense of urgency. What possible motive can be given for such a composition? Even if one were desperate enough to accept that the book of Hebrews, with all of its elaborate argumentation and soaring rhetoric, is nothing more than a deliberate deception, carefully engineered to make it appear as though it were written before A.D. 70 for the sole purpose of foisting the doctrine of Christ’s deity on the Church, several problems still remain.

First of all, the book is quite awkward as a fabrication. Why go about promoting the deity of Christ in such a roundabout way? Why not simply construct another gospel account?

Secondly, the book is written anonymously. If the book were a fabrication, one would expect it to be attributed to an apostle or a leader in the church to establish the credibility of the message. Instead, the book explicitly claims to be written by someone who was one step removed from Jesus. “[The message of salvation] began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him” (Heb. 2:3).

Finally, the book gives no arguments to support the deity of Christ. His eternal existence, incarnation, sinless life, atoning death, resurrection, and ascension are taken for granted as undisputed facts. The arguments go something like this: “Because Jesus is seated at the right hand of God, He is a better Mediator than the priests who serve in the earthly temple.” No effort is made to defend the assertion that Jesus is seated at the right hand of God. If the readers do not accept this, then the arguments of Hebrews will not persuade them.

The only reasonable conclusion is that the Epistle to the Hebrews was written prior to A.D. 70, and thus reflects the Christology of some of the earliest Christians. Whether or not these Christians were correct in their understanding of Jesus is of course open to debate, but there can be no doubt that Jesus was worshiped as the God of the universe less than 40 years after his death.

Harry Potter and the Devil

2011-07-15T16:28:00.000-07:00

Some Christians have argued that children should not read the Harry Potter novels because these books are all about magic, and the practice of magic is strictly prohibited by the Scriptures. However, an examination of the nature of magic in the ancient world and the nature of magic in fairy tales reveals that the magic in Harry Potter is fundamentally different from the magic which the Bible condemns. Furthermore, the paranoia over the Harry Potter novels reveals a dangerous misunderstanding about the nature of demonic activity.

Magic in the Bible

Magic was extremely prevalent in New Testament times, as it provided the promise of safety and security in a cosmos believed to be populated by dangerous spiritual forces. In the first century, “Magic represented a method of manipulating good and evil spirits to bring harm or to lend help.”[1] Thus magical formulas consisted in the invocation of a wide range of spirits, as illustrated in this love potion discovered in Egypt:

I entrust this charm to you, underworld gods, to Pluto, to Kore, Persephoneia, Ereschigal, and to Adonis and to underworld Hermias Thoth and to mighty Anubis, keeper of the keys of the gates of Hades, and to the underworld gods...Raise yourself up for me from the repose that keeps you and go out into every district and every quarter and every house and every shop, and drive, spellbind Matrona…that she may not…be able to go with any other man than Theodorus… or be healthy or find sleep night or day without Theodorus.[1]

Another example of ancient magic is seen in this curse discovered in Rome:

I conjure you up, holy beings and holy names; join in aiding this spell, and bind, enchant, thwart, strike, overturn, conspire against, destroy, kill, break Eucherius the charioteer, and all his horses tomorrow in the circus at Rome. May he not leave the barriers well; may he not be quick in the contest; may he not outstrip anyone; may he not make the turns well; may he not win any prizes…may he be broken; may he be dragged along by your power, in the morning and afternoon races. Now! Now! Quickly! Quickly![1]

Naturally, the powers afforded by sorcery were greatly coveted and greatly feared, but then into this world of magic came the message of the gospel: Jesus has been given dominion over all other powers, and nothing in heaven or hell can separate us from his love. Christians were commanded to destroy their magical devices and cling only to Christ.

Magic in Fairly Tales

In fairy tales, magic is not “a method of manipulating good and evil spirits to bring harm or to lend help.” In fact, fairy tale magic is not supernatural at all; it is simply a construct of the fantasy world. We often speak of fairy tales as containing supernatural elements, such a dragons, wizards, and spells, but this is not correct. In the world of the fairy tale, these magical elements are no more supernatural than horses, doctors, and mathematics. When Frodo puts on the magic ring, he disappears, but not because of any miraculous intervention by the spirit world into the natural order. Frodo disappears because, in Middle Earth, that is just the way things work.

In “The Ethics of Elfland,” G.K. Chesterton argues that the magic of the fairytale world is the magic we experience daily in the real world:

When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the fairygodmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o’clock. We must answer that it is magic….The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, “charm,” “spell,” “enchantment.” They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. A tree grows fruit because it is a magic tree. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched. The sun shines because it is bewitched.[2]

We enjoy fairy tales, not because they are so strange, but because they are so familiar. Fairy tales open our eyes to the magic that exists all around us. In reading a fairy tale, we experience once again the wonder we felt as children when we encountered our own world for the first time.

Magic in Harry Potter

Clearly, the magic in Harry Potter is the magic of the fairy tale world and not the magic condemned in the Bible. Contact with demons plays no part whatsoever in the magic performed by Harry Potter and his friends.

Some argue that while the magic of Harry Potter is fantasy magic, J.K. Rowling incorporated elements from, for example, “real” spells and curses. Clearly, Rowling drew on a wide range of popular mythology (werewolves, vampires, giants, elves, dragons, centaurs, flying carpets, moving staircases, alchemy, astrology, love potions, transfiguration, and much, much more), but the fact that some of this mythology may have ties to the magic condemned by the Bible does not mean that this magic has anything to do with her fantasy world.

For example, the men of Numenor had palantiri because J. R. R. Tolkien knew that real fortune tellers used crystal balls. The magician Coriakin had a book of magical incantations because C. S. Lewis knew that real magicians used spell books. By drawing on such mythology, Tolkien and Lewis impart a certain element of richness and believability to their fantasy worlds, but this does not mean that they are endorsing the type of magic condemned in the Bible. Crystal balls may be used in our world to channel the spirit world, but in Middle Earth palantiri have nothing to do with spirits. Magical incantations may be used in our world to invoke demons, but in Narnia the magician’s book had nothing to do with demonic activity.

As bizarre as it sounds, I have a theory that among all of the fairy tales Harry Potter has been singled out because of a peculiar sexism. For some reason, the word “witch” has come to carry a strong negative connotation that the word “wizard” does not carry. I have no idea why this is, but I suspect that Harry Potter would never have come under fire if “Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry” had been simply “Hogwarts School of Wizardry.”

Real Demonic Activity

I have heard Christians say things like this: “I don’t read Harry Potter because I believe that Satan is real and I don’t think that we should mess around with witchcraft and that sort of stuff.” Then, these same Christians will go and watch a television show like 24, for example. I believe that this reveals a dangerous misunderstanding about the nature of demonic activity.

I have often heard Christians make statements like this: “Spiritual warfare is much more prevalent in third-world countries than it is here in America.” Really? The devil is more active in Nairobi than he is in LA? I highly doubt it.

Unfortunately many Christians have come to associate “real” demonic activity with the uncanny. To them, demonic activity is seen in voodoo dolls and Ouija boards, not in television shows and billboards outside of their shopping malls. Despite the Christian themes and high morals that permeate the series, they refuse to watch Harry Potter because the characters casts spells, but day after day, they sit down for an hour and let Jack Bauer teach them that torture is entertainment and Matthew 5:44 is absurd. The devil is at work.

Posted here on Mugglenet, the World's #1 Harry Potter site.

[1] Dr. Clinton E. Arnold and Dr. Michael J. Wilkins, course lecture notes for The World of the New Testament (Spring 2011), Talbot School of Theology, La Mirada, CA.
[2] G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy.

Rob Bell on Japan

2011-07-03T22:55:00.000-07:00

Though the question is admittedly quite difficult, I was disappointed with Rob Bell's response. The question is extremely important, and I believe that as God’s representatives on earth, Christians have the responsibility to attempt a better answer.

Martin Bashir asked, “Which of [these] is true: [God] is all-powerful and He [does not care], or He cares and He’s not all-powerful.” Rob Bell responded by stating, “I think this is a paradox at the heart of the divine and some paradoxes are best left exactly as they are.”

If we are to accept the legitimacy of reason, then we must maintain that if a paradoxical proposition is true, the apparent self-contradiction within the proposition is illusory. In other words, if a paradoxical proposition is true, it must be misunderstood or understood incompletely. If it were true, and completely understood, there could be no self-contradiction. If God’s infinite love coupled with His infinite power is “a paradox at the heart of the divine,” and nevertheless a true doctrine, then we must misunderstand either the nature of His infinite love, the nature of His infinite power, or both. Therefore, we should not, as Bell suggests, leave the paradox exactly as it is, but instead seek to correct our misunderstanding of God so that we can accurately represent Him to the world.

Bashir’s question is based on the implicit assumption that if God truly loves us, then he will immediately supernaturally intervene to remove our physical suffering to the full extent that he is capable of doing so. If this assumption is true, then Bashir’s question is legitimate. We are forced to choose one of the two options he presents: given the fact of the suffering in Japan, God either does not care or He is not powerful. However, if this assumption is not true, then Bashir’s question is not legitimate. It is a false dilemma, and a third option is possible, namely that God both cares and is all-powerful.

Instead of avoiding the dilemma, Rob Bell should have demonstrated that the assumption at the heart of the dilemma is incompatible with basic Christian doctrine.

First, the Bible teaches that physical suffering entered the world because of a relational breach between God and His creatures. Therefore, physical pain and death are but symptoms of the real disease, which is this separation from God. God's intervention can only mollify or delay our physical pain; while the spiritual death exists, the physical death must exist as well. Ultimately, God can only remove the symptoms by removing the disease.

Furthermore, the Bible teaches that the disease is incurable. “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). We are separated from God because we are tainted with the darkness of sin, and this separation is irreversible. God cannot “just forgive us” anymore than light can just forgive darkness. It is impossible for God, being what he is, and we, being what we are, to live in fellowship with one another, just as it is impossible for light, being what it is, and darkness, being what it is, to occupy the same space.

Finally, the Bible teaches that God has revealed his love to us by going to the utter extremity to restore relationship with men. At great personal cost, God did the only thing possible to save us. He became a man and took our disease on Himself, experiencing its full outworking in His own body on the cross, and then, being stronger than death, He rose again to new life. If through faith we allow ourselves to be joined together with Him, He will carry us through death and into His eternal life.

I freely admit that God hardly ever supernaturally intervenes to alleviate our physical suffering. The unbeliever will cite this as evidence that God does not exist. The Christian, however, believes that this is because God is seeking to fix the disease, not simply patch over the symptoms. Jesus could have healed everyone on earth with a word, but instead He walked from village to village, healing individual people one at a time. This was not because He did not love the sick. It was because He knew that their real need was not to see or to walk; it was to hear His voice and feel His touch. Everyone He healed, even those He raised from the dead, became sick again and died, but the ones who believed in Him received a life that transcended death (John 11:25).

Troubling Statistics on Christian Giving

2011-05-14T11:20:00.000-07:00

In 2002, Christianity Today International conducted a survey among the 150,000 churches who receive their publication entitled Your Church. According to the results of the survey, these 150,000 congregations represent a combined annual budget of $57 billion, or $380,000 per congregation. Payroll accounted for $23.9 billion (42%), building projects and facility expenses account for $12 billion (21%), programming costs account for $9.1 billion (16%), and both domestic and international missions account for $8.6 billion (15%).[1] (For reference, the Hartford Institute has estimated that there are roughly 322,000 Christian congregations in America.[2])

These numbers are quite troubling when contrasted with the global pandemic of hunger. According to the United Nations World Food Program, 1 in 7 people “do not eat enough to be healthy,” making hunger the single greatest health risk on the planet, killing more people than Aids, malaria, and tuberculosis combined. The World Food Program also claims that it only cost about $92 annually “to provide a child with all of the vitamins and nutrients he or she needs to grow up healthy” [3], and yet World Vision claims that nearly 5 million “hungry children” die every year [4]. While I believe the problem of hunger is too complex for a simple price tag, it is troubling to note that according to these statistics, all of the children who starved to death last year could have been fed if the churches surveyed by Christianity Today had cut their building expenses by 3.8%. It is also quite concerning that Christians require $23.9 billion to staff 150,000 churches (about $160,000 per church), while 1.4 billion people in this world live on less than $457 a year [5].

It is also troubling to compare the budgets of these 150,000 churches with the budgets of prominent evangelical relief agencies. In 2010, World Vision reported about $779,241,000 in contributions [6], Samaritan’s Purse reported $382,582,851 in contributions [7], and Compassion International reported $359,344,737 in contributions [8]. Therefore, the total amount of money that all Christians everywhere gave to World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse, and Compassion International was only about $1.5 billion, or 12.7% of the amount that 150,000 congregations spent on their buildings.

Unfortunately, the reason for this discrepancy is quite clear to anyone who has spent much time in the church: the command to provide for the needs of brothers and sisters, both local and around the world, has been replaced by the command to give 10% of one’s income to the local church budget, a concept never once taught either directly or indirectly in Scripture. It is sadly ironic that passages such as 2 Corinthians 9:6 are used to encourage Christians in the West to contribute to their overinflated budges when Paul originally spoke these words to encourage Christians to give to their less-fortunate brothers on the other side of the world. In exhorting the believers to give generously, Paul’s intentions were crystal clear:

I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened; but by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may supply their lack, that their abundance also may supply your lack – that there may be equality. As it is written, “He who gathered much had nothing left over, and he who gathered little had no lack” (2 Cor. 8:13-15).
Tragically, it is not equality but scandalous disparity that characterizes the modern Church.

1. http://www.christianitytoday.com/cbg/2002/sepoct/27.136.html?start=1
2. http://hirr.hartsem.edu/research/fastfacts/fast_facts.html#numcong
3. http://www.wfp.org/stories/10-hunger-facts
4. http://www.worldvision.org/content.nsf/learn/hunger-facts?open&lpos=rgt_ctr_more-facts
5. http://www.compassion.com/NR/rdonlyres/edev4iilfeo3ft5ab7aefhrije3hl6qnjm2zrusia4askek3ptude7jv5fv4fqpqq5qaxulxla5zh5ohk7ls2qjkp3h/poverty-fact-sheet.pdf
6. http://www.worldvision.org/resources.nsf/Main/annual-review-2010-resources/$FILE/AR_2010AuditedFinancialStatement.pdf
7. http://issuu.com/samaritanspurse/docs/4288_sp_2010_financials.final?viewMode=presentation&mode=embed
8. http://www.compassion.com/NR/rdonlyres/eok7ipdppfmucq5t6stwetjyehtzkybqnjxvjmobme2dqd4elg4i5njyaj2ltokn7xe44mt57je7wsfrfam7f67vzbc/FSFinalFY10.pdf

Inclination and Volition

2011-05-13T10:51:00.000-07:00

“When I say, ‘I will pick up that stone,’ this is volition….But when I say, ‘I will love God supremely,’ this is inclination….Inclination is the central action of the will; volition is the superficial action. The inclination is the source of volitions….All the volitionary acts of particular choice are performed in order to gratify the prevailing inclination or determination of the will….[Inclination] has only three points at which it may begin (1) the instant of creation, when a holy inclination commenced by being concreated in the will of the specific Adam; (2) the instant of apostasy, when a sinful inclination commenced in the will of the specific Adam by solitary self-determination without divine cooperation; or (3) the instant of regeneration, when a holy inclination is reoriginated in the sinful will of the individual man by the Holy Spirit.” – Shedd

According to Shedd, men are free because they do what they desire; in other words, they obey their inclination. Unregenerate men are inclined to sin, thus they freely sin. Regenerate men are inclined to holiness, thus they freely obey. The fact that neither the unregenerate nor the regenerate can change their inclination does not mean that they are not free and therefore not responsible for their actions.

However, if “volitionary acts” are performed “in order to gratify the prevailing inclination,” and at the moment of regeneration the sinful man is given a “holy inclination” by the Holy Spirit, then why do the regenerate choose to sin? While Shedd acknowledges that they do, he merely attributes their choice to “indwelling sin,” that is, to “the remainder of original sin” whose “workings are described in Rom. 7:14-8:27.” However, he does not address the obvious discrepancy: Paul’s struggle in Romans 7:16 is in direct contradiction to Shedd’s claim that “volitionary acts of particular choice are performed in order to gratify the prevailing inclination.” Paul clearly says, “I do the very thing I do not want to do.”

One must therefore modify Shedd’s statement. I suggest that the following modification would solve the problem of Romans 7:16 while remaining consistent with Shedd’s theology: “Volitionary acts of particular choice are performed in order to gratify the prevailing inclination, except to the degree that a previous prevailing inclination has incapacitated the will in volition.”

However, a far greater problem remains. Paul claims that the “righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit,” (Rom 8:4). In other words, indwelling sin is powerless over those who walk according to the Spirit. Therefore, Paul commands Christians to “walk in the Spirit” so as not to “fulfill the lust of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16). The obvious implication is that not all who “live in the Spirit” will necessarily “walk in the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25); at times the regenerate will choose to walk in the flesh.

What possible explanation can Shedd give for the act of the regenerate will in choosing to walk in “the flesh” instead of “the Spirit?” Is this an act of the will in inclination or in volition?

If it is an act of the will in volition, then it must be dictated by indwelling sin, and if the choice to walk in the flesh instead of the Spirit is dictated by indwelling sin, then the Spirit gives no victory over indwelling sin. In other words, while the act of walking in the Spirit enables the volition to resist indwelling sin, if that indwelling sin renders the volition of certain Christians incapable of walking in the Spirit, then to these Christians the Spirit is of no avail.

However, if it is an act of the will in inclination, then Shedd’s theory that the regenerate are given a permanent, once-for-all, “holy inclination” is false, and his argument collapses.
If Christians cannot control their prevailing inclination, why are they commanded not to love the world instead of God (1 John 2:15) and labeled “adulterers and adulteress” when they do (James 4:4)? The teachings of Scripture simply cannot be explained apart from the understanding that God has endowed men with the ability to either embrace him or to resist him, to love him or to hate him, to accept his grace or to reject it. In the unregenerate man, this ability is seen in the ability to accept the free gift of eternal life or to reject it, and in the regenerate man, this ability is seen it is seen in the ability to accept the empowerment of the Holy Spirit or to remain under the domination of sin. This ability to choose between inclinations is what constitutes human freedom, not the inclinations themselves.

In ancient times men sought love potions which would compel the woman they loved to love them in return. As attractive as this may sound, I think all of us would be ultimately unsatisfied with such a solution to our unrequited loves. If God intended us for relationship with Himself, we should not be surprised to learn that He created us with the ability to reject him.

Foreknowledge and Predestination

2011-05-11T11:43:00.000-07:00

“If God does not decide what will come to pass, He cannot know what will come to pass.” – Shedd

Shedd is claiming that God, by reason of his omniscience, is rendered incapable of creating a creature with the capacity to make autonomous decisions, despite the fact that this creature would be always subject to both the limitations imposed on him by God and the possibility of God’s miraculous intervention at any time and to any extent. According to Shedd, God simply cannot create creatures with libertarian free will.

This is really a very bold statement. It is one thing to say that God has not created humans with libertarian free will. It is quite another thing to say that God cannot create humans with libertarian free will.

Is there really a sufficient basis for placing this limitation on God? God cannot be tempted to sin, and God cannot create a square circle, but apart from activities which are logically meaningless or contrary to His nature, there is absolutely nothing which God cannot do. God is sovereign. If He wishes to create creatures with libertarian free will, He can do so. The limitation described by Shedd applies to finite beings bound by time; it is meaningless when applied God, who is outside time and experiences all moments in the present. God does not need to decide the future in order to know the future. For God, there is no future! He knows what will come to pass because he has seen it, is seeing it, and will always see it. As C. S. Lewis observed in the Screwtape Letters, "[God] does not foresee the humans making their free contributions in a future, but sees them doing so in His unbounded Now. And obviously to watch a man doing something is not to make him do it."

Therefore, the question is not “can God create creatures with libertarian free will?” but “has God created creatures with libertarian free will?” To answer this question, we must examine the Scriptures. Has God created (a) a system in which all decisions are made in accordance to His will or (b) a system in which, according to His will, creatures are allowed to make decisions which conflict with His will? Which scenario is more consistent with the language employed by Scripture? I believe that the answer to this question is abundantly clear. Furthermore, I would suggest that this clarity is the reason why the professional theologians have been largely unsuccessful in their efforts to convince the common laymen that libertarian free-will does not exist.

Predestination in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gospel of John

2011-04-21T14:14:00.000-07:00

Introduction

The Dead Sea Scrolls include the remnants of over 850 documents found in 11 caves near the Qumran ruins on the north-west shore of the Dead Sea. Based on the style of script, most of these manuscripts were probably written between 130 BC and AD 50. In addition to Old Testament canonical, apocryphal, and pseudepigraphal texts, the scrolls include many previously unknown documents, some of which were apparently composed by members of an Essene community at Qumran. These particular documents are characterized by a rigid dualism, resulting in a soteriology dictated by unconditional individual election. Striking similarities exist between these documents and the Gospel of John, but while the Gospel of John and the Dead Sea Scrolls appear to utilize much of the same conceptual framework, the theology of the evangelist differs radically from Qumran in that it is entirely centered in the person of Jesus Christ. While expressed with similar terminology, the dualism presented in the Gospel of John is fundamentally different from the dualism of Qumran, and accordingly, the predestination which pervades the Dead Sea Scrolls finds no place in John’s Gospel.

Predestination in the Dead Sea Scrolls

Josephus described the Essenes as believing “that fate governs all things, and that nothing befalls men but what is according to its determination.”[1] While this simplistic description is certainly true of Qumran, the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal a complex theology undergirding this belief. This theology is most thoroughly explained in the Rule of the Community (1QS), a document serving as the charter for the community and describing its foundation by the enigmatic Teacher of Righteousness. As demonstrated in the following passage, the “marked determinism was a corollary of the cosmic dualism of Qumran.”[2] The passage begins with a statement affirming God’s complete sovereignty over all events.

All that is now and ever shall be originates with the God of knowledge. Before things come to be, He has ordered all their designs, so that when they do come to exist…they fulfill their destiny, a destiny impossible to change. – 1QS 3:15-16[3]

The author goes on to explain the dualistic mechanism by which God’s absolute control is exercised over humanity.

He created humankind…appointing for them two spirits in which to walk until the time ordained for his visitation…The authority of the Prince of Light extends to the governance of all righteous people; therefore, they walk in the paths of light. Correspondingly, the authority of the Angel of Darkness embraces the governance of all wicked people, so they walk in the paths of darkness. The authority of the Angle of Darkness further extends to the corruption of all the righteous. All their sins, iniquities, shameful and rebellious deeds are at his prompting, a situation God in His mysteries allows to continue until His era dawns…It is actually He who created the spirits of light and darkness, making them the cornerstone of every deed, their impulses the premise of every action. – 1QS 3:17-26

The Prince of Light “enlightens a man’s mind…causing his heart to fear the laws of God” (1QS 4:2-3), but evil choices are prompted by the Angel of Darkness. In this scheme, all evil is ultimately attributed to the direct action of God, for the Angel of Darkness is created, not fallen, an idea unique in the Jewish literature of the time.[4]

The author continues to explain how “the character and fate of all humankind reside with these spirits” (1QS 4:15), determined by “the measure of which spirit predominates in hi[m]” (1QS 4:26).

All the hosts of humanity…are heirs to these spiritual divisions, walking according to their ways; the outworking of every deed inheres in these division according to each person’s spiritual heritage, whether great or small...As is a person’s endowment of truth and righteousness, so shall he hate perversity; conversely, in proportion to bequest in the lot of evil, one will act wickedly and abominate truth. – 1QS 3:15-4:25

While never explained in such systematic detail, this theology is reflected in other documents from Qumran, such as an astrological text which explains how a person’s spiritual heritage correlates with the alignment of the heavenly bodies. Most of the document is lost, but surviving fragments explain that those born under Taurus will have “six (parts) spirit in the House of Light, and three in the Pit of Darkness.” On the other hand, a less favored soul born under another sign “has [ei]ght (parts) spirit in the House of [Darkness] and one (part) from the House of light.”[5]

The War Scroll (1QM), a manual for the final battle between “sons of righteousness” and the “sons of darkness,” also presents the doctrine that men are predestined according to their “lot” with either the “Prince of Light” or “Belial.”

You, [O God], created us for Yourself as an eternal people, and into the lot of light You cast us…You appointed the Prince of Light from of old to assist us, for in [His] l[ot are all sons of righteous]ness…You yourself made Belial for the pit…All the spirits of his lot – the angels of destruction – walk in accord with the rule of darkness, for it is their only [des]ire. But we, in the lot of Your truth, rejoice in Your mighty hand…annihilate all the Sons of Darkness and bring joy to [al]l [the Sons of Light.] – 1QM 13:9-16

The Damascus Covenant (CD), a document originally discovered outside of Qumran and comparable to the Rule of the Community, also speaks of the “children of light” and contains traces of the same cosmic dualism: “For in times past Moses and Aaron stood in the power of the Prince of Lights and Belial raised up Yannes and his brother” (CD 5:17-19).

In the Thanksgiving Psalms (1QH), perhaps written by the Teacher of Righteousness himself, “the basic theme…is a predestination involving a rather rigid dualism.”[6] The following passage clearly teaches that the choices of men are unalterably determined by the prior decision of God.

A man’s way is [not] in himself, nor is a person able to determine his step. But I know that in Your hand is the inclination of every spirit […and all] his [works] you have determined before ever you created him. How should any be able to change Your words? – 1QH 7:12-14

The psalmist proceeds to apply this understanding to the realm of morality.

You alone have [creat]ed the righteous one, and from the womb You established him to give heed to Your covenant at the appointed time of grace…for an eternal salvation…But the wicked You created for [the time of] Your [w]rath, and from the womb You set them apart for the day of slaughter. For they walk in a way which is not profitable, and they reject Your covenant and their soul abhors Your truth. They have no delight in all that You have commanded, but they chose that which You hate...You have prepared them in order to execute great judgments among them before all Your creatures that they might be a sign. – 1QH 7:14-20

The righteous and the wicked are both “created,” and both “from the womb” are “set apart” either for “salvation” or for “slaughter.” Taken alone, the above passage seems to leave room for the possibility that God’s decision is based upon His foreknowledge of what the wicked would themselves choose. However, the author has already argued that the choices of men are determined by God, and the passage concludes with a restatement of this theme.

How is dust able to determine its step? You Yourself have formed the spirit, and its activity you have determined. - 1QH 7:21-22

Another passage in 1QH clearly teaching predestination is column 9, which associates the doctrine of creation with an “intense belief in divine foreknowledge and predestination…expressed with a fervor and certainty unparalleled in the Jewish literature of late antiquity.”[7] In 1QH 9:27-29, the psalmist states, “You created breath for the tongue, and You know its words. You determined the fruit of the lips before they came about.”

Predestination in the Gospel of John

Scholars have observed many parallels between the Gospel of John and the Dead Sea Scrolls, particularly 1QH 3:13-4:26. The following is a list assembled by James Charlesworth of literary expressions common to both sources [8]:

The Gospel of John - 1QH 3:13-4:26
the Spirit of Truth - Spirit of Truth
the Holy Spirit - by the Spirit of Holiness
sons of light - sons of light
eternal life - in perpetual life
the light of life - in the light of life
and he who walks in the darkness - he will not walk in the darkness
walk in the ways of darkness - walk in all the ways of darkness
the wrath of God - by the furious wrath of the God of vengeance
the eyes of the blind - blindness of eyes
full of grace - in the fullness of his grace; and the fullness of grace
the works of God - the works of God
the men…because their works were evil - the works of abomination; all the works of a man

Charlesworth notes that “there is no closer parallel to John’s dualistic mythology either in contemporary or in earlier Jewish or Hellenistic literature” and concludes that, while John’s theology differs from Qumran, he “probably borrowed some of his dualistic terminology and mythology from 1QS 3:13-4:26.”[9]

Despite the similarities in terminology, however, the theological differences are profound. Though both are expressed with the same motif of light and darkness, the dualism of 1QS is between a good spirit and an evil spirit both created by God, while the dualism of John is between God and the world, that is, between God and His rebellious creation. According to 1QS, men are born as either “sons of light” or “sons of darkness.” In John, however, all men are in darkness, but all are invited to “become sons of light” through faith in Jesus (John 12:36).[10] “As many as receive” Jesus will be “born again” as “children of God,” a supernatural transformation accomplished by God alone (John 1:12, 3:3). Furthermore, according to 1QS, much of humanity was created as objects of God’s wrath in order to reveal His righteous judgment; thus God is motivated by His own glory and not by His love for man.

For You atone for iniquity and purify man from guilt by Your righteousness. But not for man, but for Your glory You have worked, for You created both the righteous and the wicked. – 1QH 12:37-38

In John, however, “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16). According to Qumran, God has created the “sons of darkness” to destroy them, but according to John, God has entered history, subjecting Himself to death and torment in order to offer light and life to everyone in darkness. In the theology of John, there is no room for unconditional, individual election.

Some commentators see predestination in John 6:44, in which Jesus states, “No one can come to me, unless the Father who sent me draws Him.” However, such an interpretation is entirely dependent on the assumption that the individuals whom God draws are drawn simply because He has elected them to salvation in eternity past, an idea which is not present in the Gospel of John. As Charlesworth notes, “One must not remove this verse from its context. Jesus has addressed himself to the Jews who have just turned their backs on the present revelation; consequently they are not drawn by God because of their own actions.”[11] Jesus said, “If you believed Moses, you would believe Me,” but nowhere does He imply that the Jews were predestined to disbelieve Moses (John 5:46). Furthermore, in John 6:45, Jesus says, “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to me;” therefore, as Charlesworth observes, “everyone has the potential of being drawn by the Father.”[12] Those who do not come to Christ do not come because they have not been drawn by God, and those who have not been drawn by God have not been drawn because they have refused to hear and learn from Him.

Throughout the Gospel, Jesus emphasizes that a rejection of Him reveals a prior rejection of God, for He comes from God and speaks God’s words; conversely, faith in Him marks the true people of God, who are entrusted to Him by God:

But you do not have His word abiding in you, because whom He sent, Him you do not believe. – John 5:38

My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent Me. If any man is willing to do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God. – John 7:16-17

If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God. – John 8:42

He who is of God hears God’s words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God. – John 8:47

My sheep hear My voice…[My Father] has given them to me. – John 10:27-29

He who hates me hates my Father also. – John 15:23

Finally, in John 12:32, Jesus seems to be teaching that His death will issue in a new era of grace in which He will “draw all men” to Himself, even those who were not previously God’s people.

Some commentators also see predestination in John 12:39-40:

For this cause they could not believe, for Isaiah said again, “He has blinded their eyes, and He hardened their heart; lest they see with their eyes, and perceive with their heart, and be converted, and I heal them.”

However, such an interpretation is based on an incorrect understanding of Isaiah 6. God blinded Israel, not because He had predestined them in eternity past, but as a final punishment for prior rebellion. All of this was foretold in Deuteronomy 28: “But it shall come about, if you will not obey the LORD your God…the LORD will smite you with madness and with blindness and with bewilderment of heart; and you shall grope at noon, as the blind man gropes in darkness” (Deut. 28:15,28-29). In Isaiah 29:9-14, God explicitly states that He has blinded Israel “because they remove their hearts far from Me.”

Conclusion

The rigid predestination that pervades the Dead Sea Scrolls is based on a cosmic dualism in which God has created two spirits, one good and one evil, to govern mankind. Every person is assigned to one of these spirits “purely as a result of the will or ‘pleasure’ of God.”[13] Thus at birth mankind is divided by God into two groups: “the sons of light” who receive His eternal salvation, and the “sons of darkness” who receive His eternal destruction. The Gospel of John borrows much of the terminology used in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but according to the Gospel of John, all men are the objects of God’s love revealed in Jesus (John 3:16). All men have the opportunity to become “sons of light” (John 12:36) if they believe in Jesus, the “light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man” (John 1:9). The radical nature of John’s message is apparent when viewed against the backdrop of the religious sensibilities of the time, a backdrop provided by the Dead Sea Scrolls.

[1] Flavius Josephus, “The Antiquities of the Jews,” in The Works of Josephus, trans. William Whitston, (Peabody, PA: Hendrickson Publishes, Inc., 1987), 13.5.9.
[2] James L. Price, “Light from Qumran upon Some Aspects of Johannine Theology,” in John and the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. James H. Charlesworth, (New York: Crossroads, 1990), 24.
[3] Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from the Dead Sea Scrolls are taken from the translation by Wise, Abegg, and Cook. Note that the arrangement of the columns in 1QH differs from some earlier publications.
[4] James H. Charlesworth, “A Critical Comparison of the Dualism in 1QS 3:13-4:26 and the ‘Dualism’ Contained in the Gospel of John,” in John and the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. James H. Charlesworth, (New York: Crossroads, 1990), 80-81.
[5] J. M. Allegro, “An Astrological Cryptic Document from Qumran,” in Journal of Semitic Studies vol. 9, (1964), 291.
[6] Eugene H. Merrill, Qumran and Predestination: A Theological Study of the Thanksgiving Hymns, (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1975), 57.
[7] Price, 13.
[8] Charlesworth, 101-02.
[9] Charlesworth, 103-104.
[10] All Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible.
[11] Charlesworth, 95.
[12] Charlesworth, 95.
[13] Merrill, 57.

Young Earth, Progressive, or Fully Gifted Creation?

2011-03-05T17:13:00.000-08:00

The "Pillars of Creation" within
the Eagle Nebula

This is a response to the book entitled Three Views on Creation and Evolution. The general editors are J. P. Moreland & John Mark Reynolds, and the contributors include Paul Nelson & John Mark Reynolds (young earth creationism), Robert C. Newman (old earth or progressive creationism), and Howard J. Van Till (theistic evolution or fully gifted creation).

I. Young Earth Creationism
A. Strongest Argument

In my opinion, the strongest argument for young earth creationism is that the theory allows for animal death to begin after the fall of man, a scenario which fits well with the Biblical data. Genesis 1:31 teaches that God created a world that was “very good,” but Romans 8:20 teaches that “the creation was subjected to futility” by God. Because Paul states that the creation was “subjected” to futility and not “created” in futility, and because Genesis 1 does not seem to describe a creation enslaved to futility, we must conclude that there was a time after creation when God acted, either directly or indirectly, to subject the creation to futility. This time is evidently recorded in Genesis 3:17-18, which states that God introduced a fundamental change in the economy of creation: “Cursed is the ground…Both thorns and thistles it shall grow.” This fundamental change included human death (Gen. 3:19, Rom. 5:12).

Is the cycle of animal death, with all of the agony it entails, a result of this fundamental change, or is it part of the “very good” creation? While this question is not explicitly addressed in Scripture, the answer seems obvious. Even in our fallen state, we are deeply troubled by the stark reality of animal pain, especially when we first encounter it as children. There are certainly rays of beauty and tranquility in this world, but the present economy is characterized by brutal competition for survival. Surely Paul had something of this in mind when he stated that “the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth.” The vision of a world in which none will “hurt or destroy” and in which “the wolf will dwell with the lamb” resonates deeply within us (Isaiah 11:6-9). If this is to be the final state of creation after it has been freed from its burden of futility, surely it is reflective of its initial “good” state. Furthermore, directly prior to His judgment that the earth was “very good,” God stated that he had given “every green plant” to “everything that moves on the earth which has life” as food (Gen. 1:29-30). According to these verses, no animals were carnivores prior to the fall.

Nevertheless, even young earth creation does not solve the problem entirely. Many animals appear to be designed to kill and eat other animals; therefore, if animal death did not begin until after the fall of man, it seems that the curse in Genesis 3:17-19 must have entailed nothing less than a complete recreation of the basic systems of many creatures. God could certainly have done this, but it seems rather awkward. Furthermore, it must be admitted that the visions of the coming kingdom are not entirely consistent in this regard, for Isaiah 25:6 states that the redeemed will not only drink “aged wine,” but eat “choice pieces [of meat] with marrow.”

B. Weakest Argument
The weakest argument for young earth creationism is that the preponderance of scientific data indicating an old earth is due to fictitious history. Nelson and Reynolds are to be commended for admitting that “natural science at the moment seems to overwhelmingly point to an old cosmos” and that “most recent creationists are motivated by religious concerns,” but I disagree with their claim that “one could imagine good reasons for God to create with the appearance of history.” It is one thing for God to create Adam with a naval; it is quite another for God to create him with detailed memories of a childhood that he never had. Likewise, it is one thing for God to create the light from distant stars in transit so that our skies would not be black, but it is quite another for him to create light in transit from stars which never existed. (If we observe the death of a star which is a million light years away, and if the light we are seeing was created in transit about ten thousand years ago, then the star itself never existed. If it had existed at creation, we would have observed its light for a million years before we watched it explode.) If there is a good reason for God to do such things, I for one cannot imagine it.

II. Progressive Creationism

A. Strongest Argument
The strongest argument for progressive creationism is that the theory harmonizes the Biblical data with the scientific data. (Fully gifted creationism makes the same claim, but I believe it does so with less validity.) Concerning the scientific data, progressive creation adequately explains the “big bang,” the origin of life, the sudden diversification of life as seen in the “Cambrian explosion,” and the appearance of irreducibly complex structures. All of these events provide serious problems for naturalism, and the latter three provide serious problems for fully gifted creationism.

Concerning the Scriptural data, the theory of progressive creation affirms that God performed multiple acts of special creation, including the creation of a historic Adam and Eve as described in Genesis 2:4-25. Some might argue that progressive creationism conflicts with Genesis 1:2-2:3, but I believe that this is false. The rigidly literal interpretation which is imposed on Genesis 1:2-2:3 by young earth creationists seems entirely inappropriate given the poetic structure of the passage, a structure which contrasts sharply with the narrative of Genesis 2:4-25. The passage begins with the statement that the earth was “formless” and “void.” During the first three days God addresses the “formless” by giving the world structure, and during the next three days God addresses the “void” by filling each of these structures in the same order that he created them. The refrain “and there was evening and there was morning, a … day” is repeated after each stanza as in a poem or a song.

Furthermore, if every detail of Genesis 1:2-2:3 is taken in a strict, literal sense, the two creation stories are in conflict. According to Genesis 2:4, there was a single “day” in which God “made earth and heaven.” On that day, God did not create any “plant of the field” until he had created man to “cultivate” the ground (see Gen. 2:5, 2:9, and 2:15). Note that in the first creation story, the plants were created on the third day and man was created on the sixth day.

Finally, the insistence that the days are literal twenty-four hour periods seems absurd, particularly on the first day, when there was no sun and the earth was “formless.” The Church entertained fluid interpretations of Genesis 1:2-2:3 long before Darwin, as evidenced by this statement of St. Augustine in his unfinished book entitled A Literal Interpretation of Genesis: “The account of the things that God made is broken down most conveniently as if in periods of time so that the very arrangement which weaker souls could not look upon with a firm gaze could be discerned as if by these eyes, when it is set forth through the order of such a discourse.”

Nevertheless, progressive creation does not provide perfect harmonization with the Scriptural data. Newman does not give a clear explanation for the relationship of the historic Adam and Eve to primitive humans. Even more problematic is the existence of animal death prior to the fall.

B. Weakest Argument
The weakest argument for progressive creationism is the argument that the Biblical data is compatible with animal death prior to the fall of man. Newman argues that those who claim the contrary are “overinterpreting” Scripture in the same way as those who claim that there were three wise men. While Newman is correct in his observation that Scripture never explicitly states that animal death began after the fall, this seems to be strongly implied, as explained in detail above.

III. Fully Gifted Creation

A. Strongest Argument
The strongest argument for fully gifted creation is that the theory is entirely consistent with the doctrine of divine creation and antithetical to the doctrine of naturalism. Most special creationists would not contest that stars and galaxies form by natural processes over long periods of time, and if one can allow that God used such processes in the creative events of day four without detracting from His power, surely one can also allow that God used such processes in the creative events of days five and six. Van Till correctly observed that the equation of evolution with naturalism is a tragic and unfounded concession to naturalism. If life did appear through evolution working apart from any unusual divine intervention, then the atheist has grounds for contesting the validity of the doctrine of Scripture. However, he does not have grounds for contesting the validity of the doctrine of creation; he must still answer the question, Why is there something instead of nothing? Evolution is not an answer; it simply pushes the question back further in time.

B. Weakest Argument
The weakest argument for fully gifted creation is that one should accept that life appeared without any unusual divine intervention based on the majority consensus of the scientific community. Even if Van Till is correct in his assertion that Christians should accept all theories held by the scientific community, in the case of the origin of the first living cell, there is no theory to accept! To my knowledge, there is no detailed, widely accepted theory describing how life began. It is certainly true that the vast majority of the scientific community accepts that life came from non-life through natural processes, but this is not, as Van Till seems to describe it, an informed judgment based on advanced degrees and years of research. The idea that life came from non-life through natural processes is not the conclusion, but the starting point. Most scientists conduct their science based on the assumption that all observable effects are the results of natural causes. Therefore, Van Till is essentially arguing that the Christian should appeal to the scientific community for the answer to a question that the scientific community has declined to entertain.

Van Till seems to believe that any unusual divine intervention, apart from the initial creation, would diminish creation by showing it to have inherent deficiencies which needed to be overcome. In his mind, progressive creationists present the cosmos like an old jalopy that continually needs direct input from a mechanic to keep on running. However, God often works in stages to accomplish his purposes (just look at redemption). More importantly, no matter how loosely one interprets Genesis 1-2, the Bible clearly has no qualms about describing creation as a series of unusual divine interventions.

IV. The Superior View
I do not yet have a fully defined position, but I am somewhere under the umbrella of progressive creationism. The theory of young earth creation requires me to believe that the cosmos is around ten thousand years old, and the theory of fully gifted creation requires me to believe that life arose from non-living material through natural process. I find both of these positions untenable given the available scientific data. While I do not yet have a satisfactory answer for the problem of animal death or the relationship of Adam to prehistoric man, I believe that progressive creationism provides the most flexible framework and therefore has the most potential for accommodating both the scientific data and the Biblical data.

(Some may argue here that I am basing my position primarily on the scientific data and not the Biblical data. There is some truth to this, because even though I believe young earth creationists make several interpretive errors, one could argue that their theory has the least tension with the Biblical data. However, I believe that the Biblical data and the scientific data are both valid means of discovering truth, and I believe that if both are interpreted correctly, there will be no conflict. Therefore, in the event of an apparent conflict, it is not a question of which has the more authority, but of which interpretation is more secure. In questions concerning the details of how and when God created the world, the interpretation of the scientific data is generally more secure than the interpretation of the Biblical data for the reason that the Bible is usually not addressing these questions directly. Therefore the interpretation of the Biblical data is usually more speculative.)

The L.A. Times on the Pence Amendment

2011-03-05T09:28:00.000-08:00

.It was not published, but this is the letter I wrote to the Editor:

The article entitled “Reading Between the Budget Lines” claimed the Pence Amendment “eliminates funding for clinics, including Planned Parenthood, that provide cancer screenings, contraception and reproductive services.” This bill does not eliminate any Title X funding; it simply bars Planned Parenthood from receiving these funds, thus diverting $317 million from Planned Parenthood to the thousands of other Title X clinics. These clinics provide the same services as Planned Parenthood, along with more comprehensive health care. No federal funds may subsidize abortions; therefore, assuming Planned Parenthood has been operating lawfully, this bill will not impact abortion services.

Because of Planned Parenthood’s alarming willingness to cover up rape, those who are pro-choice and concerned for the welfare of women should support this bill. When activists entered several clinics posing as traffickers seeking contraceptives and abortions for 14 year-old girls, employees in 4 different states complied without hesitation. One employee described sex acts the girls could perform after an abortion, and another advised the trafficker to sign as a legal guardian. These encounters were filmed, and the full unedited footage (almost 2 hours) is available at www.liveaction.org. The Pence Amendment ensures that federal funding will be taken away from an abusive organization and given to clinics that have both the ability and the intention to care for women.

Why Can't We Boast?

2011-03-03T23:22:00.000-08:00

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that* not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

*I.e., that salvation

– Ephesians 2:8-9, NASB

According to Paul, the saved cannot boast about their salvation. But why? Two very different answers have been proposed:

1. The saved cannot boast about their salvation because their salvation did not result from anything that they did.
2. The saved cannot boast about their salvation because their salvation resulted from their faith and not their works.

Those who hold to the first view disagree with the translation note in my NASB and claim the word “that” references faith. The fact that faith is a gift is the basis for the assertion that no one can boast, for if faith were not a gift, then men could boast in exercising it. On this account, the text would read like this: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that [faith is] not of yourself; [that faith] is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast [about attaining faith]."

Those who hold to the second view claim the word “that” references salvation. The fact that salvation is a gift is the basis for the assertion that no one can boast, for if salvation were not a gift, then men could boast in earning it. On this account, the text would read like this: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that [salvation is] not of yourself; [that salvation] is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast [about attaining salvation]."

I think there is an easy way to determine which view is correct. Let’s simply look at Romans 3:27-4:5 and ask the same question: Why cannot the saved boast about their salvation?

Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law....What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? "ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS CREDITED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS." Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness. – Romans 3:27-4:5, NASB

Pretty simple, right? In this passage, there is none of the ambiguity that exists in Ephesians 2:8-9. Paul is obviously arguing that the saved cannot boast about their salvation because their salvation resulted from their faith and not their works.

When asked, “What must I do to be saved?” Paul did not reply, “Nothing.” He said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.” Faith is not a work. In exercising faith, we do not contribute one bit to the work of our salvation. Those who say otherwise blur the distinction between faith and works.

The Best Worst-Case Scenario

2011-01-31T12:47:00.000-08:00

This album is one of my all-time favorites, but sadly, it is virtually unknown. I decided to upload a few tracks to youtube:

Some discerning individual has already uploaded my favorite track:

3:05 to the end...simply magnificent.

You can buy it for a mere $4.21 right here:
http://www.gohastings.com/product/POPMUSIC/Best-Worst-Case-Scenario/sku/214460311.uts

Legalists Watch The Hangover

2011-01-13T23:38:00.000-08:00

When asked to explain why they believe it is not wrong to watch a certain movie, listen to a certain song, or play a certain video game, Christians invariably appeal to some variation of the same basic claim: “It doesn’t affect me.”

If understood literally, this claim is clearly false. If the movie truly had absolutely no effect on the Christian, then the Christian would not have watched it. If the movie did not humor, thrill, or entertain the Christian in any way whatsoever, then he would not have wasted his time. The Christian would not have sat watching the movie for the same reason he would not have sat staring at a blank wall.

However, this claim is not intended literally. The claim, “It doesn’t affect me,” is really intended to mean, “It does not (adversely) affect the way I behave.” This claim is perhaps naïve, but more importantly, this claim reveals one of the most fundamental and devastating misunderstandings of the Christian life. The argument, “It does not adversely affect the way I behave; therefore, it is not wrong,” is built on the pervasive assumption that the Christian life consists in good behavior.

Ironically, the Christian who holds that moral categories are applicable to media is often viewed as a legalist, while the Christian who refuses to apply such categories is the last to receive this title. Such a distinction would be valid if a legalist could be defined as anyone who condemns a specific activity not explicitly condemned in Scripture. However, this is a very anemic definition of a legalist, and on such a definition, all Christians who condemn slavery, pornography, or abortion would be legalists, because none of these are explicitly condemned in Scripture.

A true legalists is one who believes that righteousness consists in the external. Legalists have clean hands but filthy hearts. Legalists are "white-washed tombs." The essence of legalism is the attempt to drive a wedge between inner and outer, between heart and hands, between soul and body.

The popular slogan, “What Would Jesus Do?” fails to capture the goal of the Christian life, which is nothing short of total conformity to the image of Christ. Such conformity does indeed include our actions, but it also includes our affections. Not only are we to do what Jesus would do, we are to enjoy what Jesus would enjoy. Such a goal is unattainable in our own strength, but realized through death and resurrection with Christ.

In reality, therefore, it is the Christian who refuses to apply rigid moral categories to media who is the true legalist. Such a Christian can view immorality as “comedy” or torture as “thriller,” and yet feel self-righteous because he has not committed either act himself.

Nowhere is this division between the internal and the external seen more clearly than in video games, where the player is allowed to act freely in a virtual world. I have heard friends laughing about beating a prostitute to death with baseball bats (in order to get their money back). I have watched a friend pummel a homosexual to death (so that he would stop flirting with him). I have heard the screams as another friend gunned down a crowd of civilians (in order to win the game).

In such games, the Christian commits a series of unthinkable acts, experiencing many of the same emotions and sensory perceptions that would accompany these actions if they were performed on real human beings; then he turns off the console and walks away, without believing that he has made any moral choices. In his mind, an activity which is not external, and therefore does no harm to another person, is not subject to moral categories. In short, he is a thorough legalist.

Notes on Luke 16:1-13

2010-10-31T15:00:00.000-07:00

He also said to the disciples, "There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions.

The word translated “wasting” may also be translated “squandering.” It is noteworthy that the steward’s fault was not stealing, but spending the wealth foolishly.

“And he called him and said to him, 'What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.'

Apparently the manager is to hand over the financial records which are in his possession.

“And the manager said to himself, 'What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.' So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he said to the first, 'How much do you owe my master?' He said, 'A hundred measures of oil.' He said to him, 'Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.' Then he said to another, 'And how much do you owe?' He said, 'A hundred measures of wheat.' He said to him, 'Take your bill, and write eighty.'

These debts are enormous. One hundred measures of oil was equal to over three years pay for an daily worker, and one hundred measures of wheat was equal to seven or eight years pay. Some have proposed explanations that justify the manger’s actions, but all such explanations seem to be forced on the text for theological reasons. Based on a straightforward reading, it seems undeniable that the manger’s actions are dishonest, and indeed, he is identified as dishonest in the very next verse.

“The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness.

Apparently, the master happened to identify the last minute changes that the manager had made to the financial records. It seems unrealistic that he would commend the manager for swindling him, but of course the parable is not intended to give a story that is necessarily probable, but instead to give a story that illustrates a certain truth. The point is not that the steward’s actions were legal or moral; the point is that they were very shrewd. The fact that the master was so impressed that he praised the steward for his cleverness even though it was he who was swindled emphasizes this point. In the beginning the steward was rebuked by his master for wasting wealth, but now the master praises him, seeing that the steward has learned how to use wealth effectively.

“For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.

Jesus explains that the actions of the manger are typical of the sons of this world, that is, those who do not belong to God’s heavenly kingdom. Clearly then, the manager is not intended to represent a wise Christian, nor for that matter is the master intended to represent God, or Satan, or anyone else. Like all parables, this story should not necessarily be interpreted as a strict allegory, in which all of the characters and events have a direct parallel to something in the real world. Rather, the interpreter should seek to find the central truth that the parable is intended to illustrate, which in this case is simply that a shrewd man or woman will use wealth to secure future benefits. The “sons of this world” demonstrate this shrewdness, and Jesus desires that the “sons of light” would demonstrate the same. It is the very fact that such wisdom and foresight are found even in the wicked that gives such force to His exhortation to the righteous. Forcing an interpretation on the parable which justifies the manager’s dishonesty ultimately weakens its message.

“And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.

Here Jesus is essentially teaching the same truth that he taught his disciples before in 12:33: “Sell what you have and give alms; provide yourselves money bags which do not grow old, a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches nor moth destroys.” There is nothing to indicate that reception into the eternal dwellings is the same thing as entrance into heaven itself. According to the very next parable in 16:19-31, entrance into heaven is not something that can be granted by even the greatest of the saints: “But Abraham said…between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us” (16:25-26). As 12:33 implies, it is possible to be poor in heaven; according to 16:9, it is apparently possible to be homeless as well! Of course, the language is at least somewhat figurative. It seems highly unlikely that some will carry literal purses with literal currency in heaven, just as it seems unlikely that others will be wandering through golden alleyways looking for a place to sleep. Jesus is simply teaching that if you use your money to help others, you will receive blessing, honor, and status in heaven. That the saints who were poor on earth should have the authority to deal out such blessings in the heavenly kingdom should not surprise us; according to Luke 6:20 (and Mathew 5:3), they own the place.

"One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own?

These verses further support the idea that it is wealth in heaven (“true riches”), and not entrance into heaven, which Jesus has in mind. The teaching here that faithfulness in small things will result in more responsibility is one that is repeated several times in Luke. In 8:18 Jesus stated that “whoever has will be given more,” apparently in reference to spiritual understanding. Later in 19:26 he states that “to everyone who has, more will be given,” in reference to authority in the kingdom.

“No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money."

Though our use of money has a bearing on one’s condition in the afterlife, perhaps more importantly, it reveals who one really loves; thus Jesus’ last statement gives a fitting climax to his teaching. Love of God and love of money are mutually exclusive. Serving God means relinquishing money.

Science and Christianity

2010-04-03T02:50:00.000-07:00

http://atheist-online.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/sciencevsreligion.jpg

This week I spoke in youth group about Science and Christianity. I began by showing the cartoon above and asking how Christians should respond. The answers I received were that (1) there was “real evidence” to support the Bible, and (2) “real evidence” did not necessarily support evolution. I stated that while both of these responses are correct, they do not address the central error.

The professor in the cartoon discovers truth through “real evidence,” and by “real evidence” he means things that can be touched and seen – things that can be perceived through the physical senses. (A fossil, for example, is “real evidence” because it can be examined, handled, weighed, measured, etc.) The character in the robe, on the other hand, discovers truth through faith in the Bible, and he is mocked by the students for doing so. The cartoonist is making the argument that the only rational way to discover truth is through the physical senses.

In an effort to demonstrate the weakness of this argument, I showed a clip from the opening scenes of The Hiding Place, in which Corrie ten Boom comes upon a group of boys methodically destroying a shop, taking out the articles one by one and smashing them on the ground before the shop owner, who is forced to watch. A young German soldier overseeing the activity explains to Corrie that the shop owner was heard to make public statements against the Reich.

After the scene was finished, I went to the marker board and wrote at the top: “It is true that…” Beneath this I drew a line down the center of the board, dividing it into two sections. I then asked the students to list in one section all of the truths about the event which could be perceived through the physical senses. For example, we listed that “…the boys destroyed the shop.” We all agreed this was true. When I asked the students how they knew it was true, they responded by saying that they had seen the men destroy the shop and heard the glass breaking.

When we had filled up one side of the board with similar statements, I asked the students if we had listed all of the truths concerning this event, or if there were any important truths which we were still missing. After no response, I went to the board and wrote “…what the boys did was wrong” in the empty section.

Before I had finished writing “wrong,” one of the students protested, “That’s not true, that’s an opinion!”

I had intended to demonstrate that this was the response the cartoonist would be forced to give, but I had expected the students themselves to realize at once the absurdity of this claim. However, when I turned around and faced the class, I was shocked to see everyone nodding in agreement.

“So you mean you don’t believe this statement is true?” I asked, pointing to what I had just written.

“No, it’s an opinion,” someone answered confidently.

“It’s true from the Christian perspective,” another student explained easily, “but obviously the soldier doesn’t believe it’s true, so it’s just an opinion.”

I pressed the question further, but not a single student in the junior high group believed the statement I had written was true. Furthermore, it seemed that they considered the answer so obvious that they felt the question I was asking to be silly. Later, when I presented the same lesson to the high school group, the students seemed a bit more reluctant to label the statement an opinion; it was clear that some of them were beginning to realize what was at stake. Nevertheless, almost all agreed that it had to be an opinion. Again they expressed the belief that, since the officer disagreed with the statement, it must only be an opinion, unlike the destruction of the store – an objective truth that could not be contested.

“So you mean if just one person disagrees with this statement, it’s not true?” I asked, pointing again to what I had written. Many nodded in agreement.

I had listened to many academic discussions about moral relativism and its prevalence, but I was not prepared for this: a roomful of mature, thoughtful students who knew the Bible well and had grown up in the church were not prepared to admit that the actions of the Nazis in the second world war were objectively wrong.

I continued with my lesson, arguing that truth is not discovered through the physical senses alone, but also through some other, non-physical sense. I explained that if a bystander had been blind and deaf, the statement that the boys destroyed the shop would nevertheless be true. A man’s physical senses may be damaged such that he cannot perceive the destruction of the shop, but the shop is destroyed nevertheless. In the same way, a man’s moral senses may be damaged such that he cannot perceive the evil of the act, but the act is evil nevertheless. The truth exists apart from those who perceive it, and all of the statements which we wrote on the board would still be true even if none of us had ever been born.

I emphasized that if we accept the cartoonist’s proposition that truth is discovered only through the physical senses, we have swept away all ground for making any statement concerning morality or value. To show where this must inevitably lead, I read the following account from Ravi Zacharia:

“When I was at Oxford University in February this year, a student came up with a horde of other students and made the comment that he did not believe that objective moral values existed, that they were just contrived and thrust upon them by religious people and so on. I said to him, ‘Are you telling me if I took a one year old baby and brought it on to this platform and took a sharp butcher knife and cut that baby up into bits I would not have done anything morally wrong?’ He paused, looked at me as an intelligent fellow, a product of Oxford…he looked at me and said, ‘To be honest with you…I would not like what you did but I can't really say that [you] would have done anything objectively, morally wrong.’”

This young man was not foolish; he simply believed what his professors taught, namely that our moral sense is not a means of discovering objective truth; it is merely an instinct produced by evolution. We have evolved to feel that we should do certain things, because these are the things that promote the advancement of the human species as a whole. But ought we to obey this instinct? Ought we to be concerned with the advancement of the human species? Ought we to help others at our own expense? To these questions science can provide no answer, and thus neither will the young man from Oxford.

I concluded the lesson with these words from Jesus: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.”

His moral teachings were rooted in the character of God, for the Christian explanation of our moral sense is much different than the scientific explanation. Christianity teaches that in creating us God left the imprint of His personality on our souls; thus we have an inherent knowledge of what He likes and what He dislikes. Those who persist in doing what He does not like will grow further apart from Him and ultimately become creatures unable to experience the joy of His Kingdom, while those who come to Him for forgiveness and seek to do those things which please Him will experience His friendship and reign in glory as His Sons and Daughters. Thus Christianity provides what science cannot provide: a basis for moral truth.

Limited Atonement Rap

2010-02-13T23:29:00.000-08:00

Well excuse me Mr. Linne, but I think you’re confused,
And there are one or two verses which you have misused.
It’s true – God only saves the group He’s elected,
But that doesn’t mean we’re born preselected.
The ‘children of promise’ He’s chosen to save;
All who seek God through works remain in the grave.
God truly desires all men to believe;
His words in The Book weren’t meant to deceive.

And the elect themselves were just like all others,
Once 'children of wrath,' just like their brothers.
So even if His death was selective,
Was the atonement He made somehow defective?
See, the blood only protects when it’s spread on the door,
And the rod only heals when you look from the floor.
Now faith isn't a work; it gives us no merit.
Of itself, it’s not any credit.
Faith alone cannot save, unless it’s in Jesus,
It's His passage through death that's freed us.
Faith is the bond; it’s only the tether;
It’s the thing that ties you and Christ together.
That’s why we can believe, even when we’re depraved,
We can obey the gospel even when we’re enslaved.

Now here’s what I feel I must simply decry:
You don’t even know why Christ came to die!
You think He came to win some sort of game?
A no-risk endeavor to garner more fame?
There is only one reason He came down from above:
Sheer, incomprehensible, disinterested love.
This one central truth of Christianity
Has been flippin’ the world since 30 AD.
And yes, when we step back and look at God’s plan,
We admit he failed miserably to woo every man.
But don’t you see? He knew this from the start.
That’s what sets our God apart.
He willing opened Himself up to rejection,
Knowing that we would ignore His affection.
And yes He was ‘crushed,’ and yes He cried.
He had no dignity; He laid it aside.
And He prayed for those who killed Him as He died.

But when it comes to the billions going to hell,
You think God is up there saying, “Oh well”?
As He looks on the throngs, condemned to die,
Mutters, “Could’ve saved them to, if I’d bothered to try”?

He would still be fair and just, that much is true,
But is that really the way Jesus sounded to you?

The Word of Hope Broadcast

2009-12-13T00:28:00.000-08:00

Check out my dad's radio program!

http://www.wordofhopeteaching.org/

Notes on Romans 9-11

2009-10-25T23:16:00.000-07:00

Romans 9-11
· 9:1-5 – Paul turns to the question of Israel. The salvation that comes through Christ was promised to Israel (Ez 36:27 – Rom 8:3-4; Ez 37:14 – Rom 8:11), yet Israel is cut off from Christ. Has God’s word failed? (Have His promises not come true?)
· 9:6-9 – Paul answers this question by explaining that the promises were not to the physical descendents, but to all who follow in the faith of Abraham (4:11-16). He argues that God’s choice of Isaac over Ishmael was symbolic of His sovereign choice in salvation (Gal 4:22-28). Isaac was the child of God’s promise; Ishmael was the child of Abraham’s own effort and scheming. Just as God chose to fulfill His promises to Abraham through Isaac instead of Ishmael, He has chosen to save the children of promise, those who follow in the faith of Abraham, and not the children of the flesh, the physical descendents of Abraham who still seek to attain God’s righteousness through human effort. Paul is arguing that God has chosen to save all who have faith; He is not arguing that God has chosen who will have faith.
· 9:10-13 – Paul then argues that God’s choice of Jacob over Esau was also symbolic of His sovereign choice in salvation. Jacob bargained, lied, cheated, stole, and struggled to attain God’s blessing, but the Irony of the story is that God was going to bless Him despite what He did (Gen 28:15 – Gen 32:26). Paul stresses that God chose to fulfill His promises through Jacob instead of Esau, without regard to their works.
· 9:14-18 – Paul anticipates that His readers might argue that it is unfair for God to save people without regard to their works. He responds by arguing that God is just in choosing not to save Israel, even though they pursued (9:30) and diligently sought (11:7) salvation, because God has the prerogative to save whomever He wants to. Paul cites Ex 33:19, in which God told Moses that He shows mercy on whomever He wills, and Ex 9:16, in which God told Pharaoh that He raised him up so that He could demonstrate His power in him. Paul’s conclusion is that salvation does not depend on “human desire or exertion,” but on God who shows mercy to whomever He wills and hardens whomever He wills (see 11:1-10 for comments on hardening). Calvinists assume that because God saves whomever he wants, there is no evident basis for His choice; they assume that God selects people for a secret, seemingly random reason, which has nothing to do with any quality in the people themselves. This is absurd; there are clear differences between Pharaoh and Moses which explain why God treated them so differently. Paul is arguing that God has the right to decide which type of people will receive His favor and which type of people will receive his judgment; he is not arguing that this decision is arbitrary. The application of this argument is that God is not unjust in choosing to save the children of promise and not to save the children of the flesh.
· 9:19-29 – Paul continues with the illustration of a potter and clay vessels. Note that vessels are formed, not created. God did not create unbelievers who were objects of his wrath, he formed unbelieving Israel into objects of his wrath. Like Pharaoh, He hardened them and blinded them so that they would incur His judgment (see comments on 11:1-10). In this illustration, Paul is arguing that God has the right to do whatever he pleases with unbelieving Israel and He has the right to do whatever he pleases with the believing remnant. As shown in Jeremiah 18:1-11, the potter’s choice of what to form the clay into is not independent of the clay.
· 9:30-33 – In 9:14, “what shall we say then?” preceded the improper response, which Paul refuted. Here, “what shall we say then?” precedes the correct response. Paul confronts the fact that Israel sought salvation but did not receive it while the Gentiles did not seek salvation but received it, and he recognizes that this was because Israel did not seek it by faith. Based on the preceding argument in 9:14-9:29, this does not evidence injustice with God, because God has the right to choose which type of people He will save. God has chosen to save anyone who believes in Christ (9:33).
· 10:1-17 – Paul then gives one of the most explicit statements in Scripture of the universal offer of salvation. Anyone can believe. Hearing (not regeneration) is the prerequisite for belief.
· 10:18-21 – Paul then emphasizes that Israel is culpable for their unbelief. They heard but they refused to believe. Of course, God truly desired them to believe (Mat 23:37); He was “crushed” by their rejection of Him (Ez 6:9).
· 11:1-10 – However, even though they have rejected Him, God has not rejected Israel. Paul points back to 1 Kings 19:18, in which God said that in the midst of Israel’s national rejection of Him, He had preserved a small remnant of His followers. Paul argues that God, in the same way, has preserved a remnant of His people in the midst of unbelieving Israel. Again, Paul emphasizes that the remnant was chosen by God’s grace (His undeserved favor), and not because of their merit (11:6). Even though Israel was diligently seeking God’s righteousness (11:7, 9:30-31), they did not attain it but were hardened. Paul quotes from Isaiah 29:9-14, in which God explicitly says that he hardened Israel because they “removed their hearts far from [Him].” When God first made His covenant with Israel, he warned them that if they did not keep His commands, He would blind them (Deut 28:28-29). Israel did not keep His covenant, and in the end, God’s final punishment was to harden their hearts and blind their eyes so that they could not escape His wrath (Is 6:9-10). In Matthew 13:10-17, Jesus quoted Is 6:9-10 when explaining why He spoke in parables. He stated that “whomever has, to him more will be given…but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away.” Clearly, God has hardened Israel as a judgment for prior unbelief. (See also 2 Thes 2:9-11.)
· 11:11-31 – Furthermore, God’s ultimate purpose in hardening Israel is to bring about their salvation! Because of their unbelief, God removed Israel from being the people of His favor by hardening their hearts and blinding their eyes; He formed them into objects of His wrath. However, the reason he has thus confirmed them in a state of disobedience and separation is so that they will ultimately realize their desperate need and come to Christ for salvation! (Paul does not explain when this will happen or what circumstances will surround it, but we infer that this will occur during the Great Tribulation.) Romans 11 was foretold in Hosea 3:4-5. One day, all Israel will be true Israel, and the promises of the Old Testament will be literally fulfilled to the physical descendents of Abraham.
[In verse 20-22, Paul is not warning believers that they can lose eternal life; he is warning them that they can cease to be the people of God's favor. (Jesus used similar language in John 15 when teaching his disciples to abide in him.) 1 Corinthians 10:1-12 is another passage in which Paul points to God's rejection of Israel as warning for Christians.]
· 11:32 – See Galatians 3:22. The first step in salvation is understanding your need. Jesus said in John 9:35-41 that he came to blind the people who could see. This was their only hope.
· 11:33-36 – Paul concludes by marveling at God’s wisdom.

Conclusion: Romans 9-11 does not present a God who arbitrarily picks a small minority of the human race to save and confines the rest to reprobation. Instead, we see a God who desires to save everyone and keeps on loving, even when He is rejected.

bridge to terabithia

2008-11-14T12:06:00.000-08:00

In The Bridge to Terabithia, two children form a close friendship as they together escape the painful experiences of life by building their own imaginary kingdom. In one scene, the girl visits the boy’s church. On their way home, she says that she thinks the stuff about Jesus dying on the cross is beautiful, but that she does not feel she has to believe what the Bible says. The boy’s younger sister says she does, or God will damn her to hell. At the end of the movie, the girl dies. In one of the last scenes, the boy runs off into the woods and collapses on the ground in tears. His Father comes up to comfort him, and the boy asks, “Is she going to hell?” His Father replies, “I don’t know everything about God, but I know He is not sending that little girl to hell.”

If you have read my post entitled “a Biblical view of hell,” you know that I do not view hell as some sort of fiery torture chamber, but even without the flames and demons, it is difficult to understand why God would withhold the infinite happiness of heaven from a child who simply had the misfortune of growing up in a home that was too open minded.

This is not a question that we can lightly dismiss, and I believe that as we struggle to find an answer, we will enter into the suffering of the One who loves the lost more than we could ever imagine.

I do not believe that God would send that girl to hell; I believe that girl was already in hell. When Jesus approached the woman at the well, he did not warn her of a terrible thirst that God would inflict upon her after she died. Instead, he offered her “living water” to quench the thirst that He knew she already felt. It is this thirst that makes us long for places like Terabithia. It is the thirst that results from our separation from the One who made us, and loves us, and left enough of Himself inside of us that we can never fully be home until we arrive in His arms.

Behind the sins that we deem so trivial, there is an awful spiritual reality; the ravages of sin on our world testify to the extent of the disease. Something is broken inside of us, and we have become beings who are eternally incompatible with the infinite happiness that longs to envelop us.

God does not desire to “send people to hell;” He desires to save people from the hell in which we find ourselves. He sent His Son to die for us, and now we have the opportunity to identify with Christ in His death and receive His new life. This is the only way of salvation, for we cannot be fixed or cured. Our nature must die and be replaced with the nature of Christ.

If we desire this transformation, we must receive it willingly through faith. God desires to save all, but He will not kill us and force His life upon us. Indeed, maybe the nature of the transformation is such that He cannot do so; maybe our willing surrender is an inherent element of that death, without which we cannot be reborn.

I do not know all the mysteries of God, and He has not told us much about what happens after we die. Maybe C. S. Lewis hit upon some bit of the truth in The Great Divorce, and maybe God’s love pursues the lost even after death. All I know is that God “is not willing that any should perish,” and that He has done all that can be done.

the true pro-life candidate

2008-10-08T18:16:00.000-07:00

Many Christians who believe abortion is wrong vote for candidates who support legalized abortion.

The argument goes something like this: Even though the candidate supports legalized abortion, his positions on the economy and foreign policy make him the true pro-life candidate.

However, it is nothing more than inflammatory rhetoric to label a candidate “pro-life” on issues concerning the economy or foreign policy. Both Republicans and Democrats desire to alleviate poverty and bring about peace; they just disagree on how. When we adopt a self-righteous attitude and demean the other party as uncharitable, we are naively ignoring the complexity of the issues involved.

Republicans care for the poor: they believe that their policies will enable the poor to become rich. Likewise, Democrats care for the poor: they believe that their policies will bring economic equality.

Republicans want peace: they believe that their policies will enable people all around the globe to live in security and safety. Likewise, Democrats want peace: they believe that their policies will end an unnecessary conflict.

When we label a candidate “pro-life” on the issue of abortion, we are referring to their answer to one specific question: “Should the law allow a woman to choose to kill her unborn child.”

Of course, we are all agreed that it would be better if the woman never had to make that choice. Both Republicans and Democrats want to reduce the number of abortions – that goes without saying. This is not what is meant by the term “pro-life.” The terms “pro-life” and “pro-choice” do not indicate that a certain side is against life or against choice; instead they clarify which one is insisted upon when both cannot be realized.

Obama Lied at Saddleback

2008-09-03T18:31:00.000-07:00

On August 16th, in a brief interview after the Saddleback forum, Obama made this statement in response to a question about the Born Alive Infant Protection Act:

"I have said repeatedly that I would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill that everybody supported - which was to say - that you should provide assistance to any infant that was born - even if it was as a consequence of an induced abortion. That was not the bill that was presented at the state level."

This is a lie. The Illinois bill that Obama opposed in the state Senate differed from the federal Born Alive Infant Protection Act (which passed unanimously in the US Senate in 2002) in that it lacked a clause which clarified that "nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being born alive as defined in this section." It differed, that is, until August 13, 2003 when, in a committee which Obama chaired, the bill was amended to include this statement. Then, on August 13, 2003, Obama voted against it.

On August 11, 2008, the National Right to Life released documents which proved that the amended bill came up for a vote, and Obama voted against it. I assume Obama was not aware of this when, 5 days later, he lied about his position.

This is a photograph of the Senate Committee Action Report. The votes on the right are to amend the state bill to be identical to the federal bill. The votes on the left are to pass the bill as amended.

This is the Senate Republican Staff Analysis which shows the same information.

This is the text of the bill that Obama opposed.

Perhaps Obama shows that he is "completely in, fully in support" of a bill by voting against it. That would sure explain another statement he made that night:

"I am in favor, for example, of limits on late-term abortions, if there is an exception for the mother's health."

pain and suffering

2008-03-02T21:17:00.000-08:00

"Why doesn't your god alleviate all pain and suffering? (I'm assuming for the sake of discussion that your god exists)."

**********************************************************************************

I believe that God can not eliminate pain and suffering without eliminating free will, not because I believe God to be impotent, but because it seems illogical that free will could exist without the genuine possibility of choosing evil. So I believe that God can not eliminate pain and suffering without eliminating free will in the same way that I believe God cannot create a square circle.

Therefore, in answer to your question, God has not eliminate all pain and suffering because He has a compelling desire to allow humans free will.

However, he has promised to one day eliminate all pain and suffering (and therefore eliminate free will). The illustration that the Bible uses is of an engagement. Christ is currently offering a “proposal” to all people. If they accept through faith, they enter into a time between the choice and the consummation of that choice. This is where Christians find themselves now. In the future, they will be “married” to Christ. (This imagery is used over and over in the Pauline epistles and Revelation.) Just as the Bible describes marriage as becoming “one flesh,” we will be united to Christ in a way that we never have been before.

Therefore, through the plan of redemption, God is bringing into existence a perfect world, yet he is allowing people to choose whether or not they wish to be a part of this world. God has offered them the choice of surrendering their fallen will to Him and becoming a part of Him, or of remaining as they are. He has created a place where those who do not wish to be a part of this world can go; hell is simply the place where those who reject God are allowed to live without Him.

Now, even though God can not eliminate all pain and suffering without removing free will, it is clear he could alleviate many aspects of our pain and suffering without infringing on our free will. I believe that the reason He does not take a direct role in alleviating our pain and suffering is because the ultimate good which God seeks for us is not an end to our physical suffering but a relationship with Him.

Some argue that this is selfish of God, yet on this same thread people have argued that if a perfect good exists, then one should not have to choose between doing something that benefits oneself and doing something that benefits another. They are right in realizing that this would be the perfect good, and this is exactly what we see in God’s interaction with man. The bible teaches that man was created to be in fellowship with God, and can only be fully satisfied and happy when He is with God.

Therefore, since the ultimate good that God seeks for humans is a relationship with Him, He does not directly alleviate suffering, but works through that suffering to draw people to Himself. He does this primarily through His followers. Instead of speaking a word and eliminating the aids virus, He sends thousands of Christians (“little Christs”) to interact with the victims of this disease; to sacrificially provide for their physical needs; to comfort them in their fears; and to introduce them to the One who conquered death.

Remember that when Jesus came to earth, his method of healing was extremely inefficient. Why did people have to come to Him one by one? He could have just snapped his fingers and erased all disease, but that was not the point! Yes, they needed to be healed, but they needed so much more to be touched by Him and to hear His words.

review of mere discipleship

2008-02-22T22:55:00.000-08:00

Mere Discipleship by Lee Camp is divided into 3 sections. In “Reenvisioning Discipleship,” Camp argues that the church has lost sight of what it means to be true disciples of Christ. He attributes this to what he terms the “Constantinian cataract,” a distortion of spiritual vision that resulted when Church was merged with Empire. Camp primarily focuses on pacifism, castigating Christians for their nationalism and endorsement of war while maintaining that the forgotten way of Christ is one of love and forgiveness. In “What Disciples Believe,” Camp paints a picture of the Gospel that he contrasts with the presentation that “God gave his own Son in our place, so that we don’t have to die.” His understanding of the Gospel focuses on the redemption of creation initiated at the advent of the Kingdom of Heaven: “Jesus’ obedience even unto death unmasked the rebellious powers of this world for what they are – weak, paltry, concerned only with their own pitiful self-existence. Thus the Father raised him from the grave – and offers that same power of renewal to be at work in his covenant people, embodying the new creation.” He states that the “sovereignty and control” of the “principalities and powers,” which are “behind the institutions and religions and empires and tyrants that govern and order our world,” “must be broken, so that both we who are enslaved by the powers, and the powers themselves, might experience redemption.” Camp stresses that “Jesus overcame the rebellious principalities and powers through his suffering and service, rather than through powermongering and controlling and domination, even on behalf of the ‘good guys.’” He stresses that “the one who has conquered…is none other than the slaughtered lamb.” In the final section, “What Disciples Do,” Camp focuses on worship, baptism, prayer, communion, and evangelism, in each instance tying them back to his underlying theme: the disciple is one walks in the way of Christ and not in the way of the powers of this world.

Camp uses Scripture selectively. He relies on Scripture heavily to bolster the points of his argument upon which there is very little disagreement among believers: Jesus conquered through suffering, believers participate in the Kingdom of God which has invaded earth, a true disciple follows in the way of Christ, etc. However, when he enters into areas that are hotly disputed, he makes only a cursory nod to the Scriptures. Central to Camp’s argument is the assertion that following in the way of Jesus means embracing strict non-violence, but he gives little Scriptural support for this crucial argument.

If complete non-violence is so central to the life of the disciple, one would think that Jesus would have mentioned it. His command to “turn the other cheek” is a command to let yourself be abused and pushed around, yet it is quite a stretch to interpret this as a complete prohibition of violence. Being struck on the cheek can hardly be seen as a life threatening attack, and Jesus gave no instruction concerning what one should do if someone else was struck on the cheek. As C.S. Lewis asks, “Does anyone suppose that Our Lord’s hearers understood Him to mean that if a homicidal maniac, attempting to murder a third party, tried to knock me out of the way, I must stand aside and let him get his victim?”

In addition to the absence of an explicit proscription of violence, the Scriptures clearly teach that the government is authorized by God to use force. Camp gives this brief explanation: “it would not have been possible for the Roman Christians, nor should we think it possible for us, to interpret Romans 13 as authorization for disciples to take up the ethic of the rebellious principalities and powers in the name of ‘good.’” This argument is absurd, for the reason Paul and Peter give Christians the command to submit to government is precisely because the government is acting according to the will God. When the government uses force, they are not being “rebellious,” they are being obedient to the mandate that God has given them to “[punish] evildoers” (1 Peter 2:14). One may argue that while the government’s use of force pleases God, Christians should not be involved in government. However, this is an argument from silence with absolutely no basis in the teachings of Scripture.

Camp does give this argument from Scripture: Jesus did not use force when he conquered the Powers, so neither should his followers. But, according to Ephesians 6, we are unable to use physical force to defeat the “the powers of this dark world and...the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms!” They are not made of “flesh and blood.” Therefore, the analogy is seriously flawed. It is true that there are malevolent, demonic forces behind the evils in this world, but we can not use force to conquer them in the sense that Jesus conquered them or in the sense that Paul urges us to conquer them. That does not mean that we should not use physical means to combat the outworkings of these powers on earth. For example, just because Jesus did not use medicine to conquer the powers does not mean that the Christian doctor should not use medicine to combat disease.

From beginning to end, Camp’s argument for pacifism is little more than a rant against the strawman he has constructed. He argues that Christians should embrace strict non-violence for these reasons: Christians should not hold nationalism above allegiance to Christ, Christians should not hate their enemies, Christians should not assume that the ends justify the means, Christians should not believe that the teachings of Christ are irrelevant to the real world, etc. However, none of these arguments address the legitimate concerns about pacifism that Christians throughout the millennia have expressed. Instead they focus on a crude stereotype of American evangelicals: “USA kick *** and take names! God bless America!”

I do not want Camp to tell me what I should do if someone breaks into my house and starts stealing my things; I want Camp to tell me what I should do if someone beaks into my house and starts attacking my wife. I do not want Camp to tell me why the US should not have invaded Iraq; I want Camp to tell me why the UN should not send peacekeepers to Darfur. I do not want Camp to tell me why I should follow Jesus; I want Camp to show me where Jesus forbade me to use potentially lethal force to defend the weak and vulnerable. In the end, Camp's argument for pacifism is not very compelling because he ignores the difficult questions and relies on inflammatory statements about the war in Iraq and American nationalism.

In the last chapter, Camp lists certain possible outworkings of the version of discipleship that he extols. Even though the book has almost exclusively dealt with pacifism, none of the actions which he suggests have anything to do with non-violence. Instead, they frame current political issues with decidedly liberal propaganda. He speaks of paying workers a “living wage” and suggests that “profiteering hospitals” should not turn away patients who cannot pay. In embracing these oversimplifications, Camp reflects the false dichotomy that one can love the poor or be a Republican. In addition to this, he often berates Bush for not “turning the other cheek,” but at the same time quotes Bonhoeffer to bolster his argument. (Bonhoeffer was a member of the German resistance who was executed after a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler.) He indirectly disparages the pro-life movement for seeking to make abortion illegal, yet often praises Martin Luther King Jr. for his peaceful efforts to make racial segregation illegal. In these inconsistencies, Camp reveals that he is more concerned with providing a provocative critique of conservative evangelicals than he is of providing a compelling and intellectually honest argument for pacifism.

response to sarah jones

2008-02-22T22:50:00.000-08:00

In the latest issue of Cedars, Sarah Jones wrote a letter responding to an article I wrote.

Jones stated that “[the fetus] is merely a potential human being. As such it does not possess the same rights we ascribe to human beings.” A human being is defined as a member of the species Homo sapiens. The fetus is a member of the species Homo sapiens. To argue that the contrary is absurd. Kevin Cole and I are in complete agreement on this point. The human fetus is human because of her DNA; it does not matter if she “breathes air” or amniotic fluid.

Jones also complains that I provided “no evidence to prove that the fetuses really are so self-aware.” I was limited by space, but any student who wishes documentation to support this claim may e-mail the Students for Life account. The fetus dreams, moves around, exhibits emotion and memory, responds to stimuli, and experiences the excruciating pain of an abortion. This article on fetal psychology is a great starting point for those who are interested in researching fetal development.

Jones states that the fetus is not equal to a “mature human being.” I wonder how much a human being has to mature before “choice” becomes “murder”? Has an infant matured enough? Why? Perhaps Jones could explain more clearly the criterion she uses to determine which human beings are valuable, and which human beings are expendable.

Jones claimed I made a “bizarre leap of logic” by arguing that Cole’s statement “indicates an attitude of ambiguity concerning the personhood of a human being.” Note that Jones is not using the term “human being” in the scientific sense (a member of the species Homo sapiens); she is referring only to a human being who has been born. Cole’s statement was that he did not know “when or how a person becomes/is a person.” My logical question was simply this: how can Cole be sure that a "person" becomes a "person" at birth, since he admits that he does not know when a "person" becomes a "person"?

I was also castigated for making no mention of the “insensible tragedy that is war.” The reason for this omission was simply that the article was on abortion, not war. However, just so it is clear, I am against senseless war, torture, poverty, global warming, and people who kick puppies. I just do not have enough time or money to advocate against every single injustice. Those of us who were involved in the movement protesting the genocide in Darfur received similar criticism for not talking about the loss of life in Iraq, North Korea, etc. We can not address every issue effectively; we do all that we can to save as many people as we can. I suggest that our critics, instead of wasting their anger on us, take up a cause of their own.

Jones claimed to be “saddened to see that the president of Students for Life considers such poor arguments effective.” I am sorry to disappoint Jones’ high expectations, but my argument against abortion will remain simple: abortion is the brutal murder of an innocent human being, simply because she is in the way and can not defend herself.

response to kevin cole

2008-02-22T22:49:00.001-08:00

Over the past few years, I have been involved in organizing events to protest the genocide in Darfur. I was encouraged by the enthusiasm with which students spoke out in defense of the vulnerable and forgotten. However, when I began a pro-life organization on campus, I was disappointed to see this enthusiasm replaced with caustic criticism.

The following sarcastic response to our prayer vigil outside of a late term abortion clinic in Dayton demonstrates the way in which abortion is viewed differently than other social injustices: “Let me know one day your place of business so I can stand outside and tell the people that are coming in that they shouldn’t go in, and then let me tell them about alternatives to what you do. All the while slowing down your business so that your employees and you have to take a pay cut […] sounds like something Christ would do.”

Recently Kevin Cole wrote an article in Cedarville's student newspaper defending the validity of the “Christian pro-choice perspective,” arguing that “following Christ might mean refusing rigid moral categories when it comes to abortion.” While Kevin affirms that the unborn are human beings (members of the species Homo sapiens), he questions if they are really “persons.”

Some argue that a fetus is not a “person” because it is not self-aware; yet a fetus is no less self-aware than a newborn infant. Others argue that a fetus is not a “person” because it can not survive on its own, yet neither can an infant. There is no objective definition of personhood that exclusively excludes the unborn.

Nevertheless, Kevin argues that “we don’t know when or how a person becomes/is a person,” and so Christians should not dogmatically assert that abortion is evil. I wonder, then, if Kevin believes that infanticide is wrong. How is it that this ambiguity concerning the personhood of the unborn does not extend to Tutsis, Armenians, homosexuals, or Jews?

Kevin suggests that abortion is not evil because it is ambiguous if the unborn are really persons. I view this with the same disgust as I would the suggestion that the genocide in Darfur is not evil because it is ambiguous if black Africans are really persons. We may cloak our prejudices in sophisticated terms, but behind every social injustice is the assertion that certain human beings are less valuable than others.

Kevin’s postmodernism may allow us to say that based on our western democratic mindset we believe black Africans should not be killed, but it gives us no basis for affirming that this statement is universally true. Therefore, such agnosticism gives us no justification for imposing this belief on others who do not share our preferences. True humanitarianism finds its basis only in the revolutionary teaching of Jesus Christ: that every human being is loved by God and has inestimable value in his sight. It is my certain belief in this truth that will not allow me to stand silently by the brutal murder of children, whether in Darfur or in Dayton.

a biblical view of hell

2008-02-22T22:05:00.000-08:00

This is a portion of a paper I wrote in response to an article by John Stott:

I deeply appreciated John Stott’s article entitled “Taking a Closer Look at Eternal Torture.” Stott addressed many questions that I have also struggled with for years. While I disagree with some of the conclusions that he has drawn, I strongly agree with his approach towards this subject. Like him, I am repulsed by the “glibness, what almost appears to be the glee, with which some evangelicals speak about hell” and I share his desire that “we in some small way stand in the tearful tradition of Jeremiah, Jesus and Paul.” I also believe that an incorrect understanding of hell is prevalent among conservative evangelicals.

...

Now we must return to the question of justice. John Stott argues that eternal torment in hell is incompatible with the Biblical concept of justice. I agree that it would be wrong for God to subject even the most wicked of people to the torment of literally burning in fire for all of eternity. The injustice of this unimaginable cruelty is so clear that even our own depraved and vindictive natures are repulsed by the very thought of such sadism. Evangelist-turned-skeptic Charles Templeton once said, “I couldn’t hold someone’s had to a flame for a moment. Not an instant. How could a loving God, just because you don’t obey him and do what He wants, torture you forever, not allowing you to die, but to continue in that pain for eternity. There is no criminal who would do this.” Many Christians try to ignore this truth, but it is one that I have been unable to set aside. Some would argue that we just do not understand the severity of our offense against God. I agree that we certainly do not and never will comprehend how much our rejection has “crushed” God (Ezekiel 6:9) and broken his heart, but this view of hell presents God as a jilted lover planning a brutal and sadistic revenge!

Nevertheless, I still disagree with John Stott’s conclusion that unbelievers will be annihilated. No matter how much I may dislike the doctrine of eternal torment in hell, I believe that it is supported by the Scriptures. However, there is a crucial aspect to this discussion that has been overlooked. The Bible is very vague on what will be the extent of the torment that the unbeliever experiences in hell. Despite this ambiguity, the imagery of fire has led many Christians to adamantly maintain that unbelievers will literally feel their flesh burning for trillions upon trillions of years. This repulsive doctrine has led many people to reject Christianity all together. However, I do not believe that this doctrine is justified by the Scriptures.

First, the Bible teaches that people will experience different levels of torment in hell (Luke 10:14, Mathew 11:24). Romans 2:5-6 teaches that the punishment one experiences will be based on his life, “according to what he has done.” Revelation 20:13 teaches that unbelievers will be judged “each one according to his works.” It is extremely difficult to reconcile the belief that all people will literally feel their flesh burning for all of eternity with the belief that they will be in different levels of torment!

Secondly, the imagery of fire is a metaphoric depiction of the judgment of God. In Exodus 15:7, the “burning anger” of God was said to have “consumed” the Egyptian soldiers “like chaff,” but in reality they were drowned in the Red Sea. In Isaiah 42:25, the Lord unleashed “the fury of His anger” on Israel, and it “set him on fire” and “burned him.” In Zephaniah 1:18, the destruction of Judah is foretold in that “the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of His jealousy.” In John 15:6, Jesus described the believers who did not abide in him as braches that would be thrown “into the fire” and “burned.” In Hebrews 10:26-30, we read that the Lord will judge “His people” with “fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries.” In 1 Corinthians 3:12-15, Paul says that the believer whose “work is burned” will be saved, “yet so as through fire.” Unless one imagines that there will be literal structures in heaven representing each person’s work, this fire must once again be understood as a figurative expression of God’s judgment. It is also interesting to note that while many believe there to be literal fire in hell, no one supposes that there is a host of undying worms in hell (Mark 9:43-44 in reference to Isaiah 66:24, 14:11). Clearly figurative language is being used!

Finally, and most importantly, the belief that hell involves a literal burning seriously conflicts with the single glimpse into hell that the Scriptures give us:

[see Luke 16:22b-30]

Even though this man is being tormented in “flames,” he is still able to carry on a thoughtful dialogue. Though I have never experienced this, I would imagine that if even part of my hand was dipped in gasoline and lit on fire, I would not be able to carry on a coherent conversation: I would be screaming uncontrollably! (Also, my first request would not be for a drink.) Those who hold to a literal interpretation of the Scriptures should abandon the idea that hell involves an eternal sensation of burning identical to what we experience in this body. Those in hell will have different bodies (of which we know very little) and the fire in hell will not be a physical oxidation process (since it burns forever). It is also important to remember that this was a wicked man (Luke 16:19-21) who knew the commands of God (Luke 16:29), and therefore the degree of torment that he was experiencing was certainly much more severe than what most in hell will endure.

It bothers me that this passage has been so willfully ignored. No matter how you deal with it, the doctrine of hell is the most difficult doctrine in the Scriptures. For this reason, one would have expected Christians to have watered it down a bit over the ages. On the contrary, they seem to have eagerly extended the terrors of hell to a level unwarranted by the Scriptures. Growing up I often heard “hell-fire and brimstone” evangelists give graphic depictions of unbelievers watching the flesh literally melt off of their bones for all of eternity. I cannot see how they truly believed this to be true and did not go insane, especially when this belief was coupled with the (unscriptural) belief that God chose those who would be saved and only chose a relative few.

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Of course, this discussion would not be complete without mentioning Jesus’ offer of salvation. He is “not willing that any should perish” (2 Peter 3:9). He loved us so much that He chose to endured torture, shame, death, and separation from God so that we would not have to. Through his punishment and death, we can have forgiveness and life. That kind of love is beyond imagination, and all of my questions are drowned in it.

In conclusion, I believe hell to be a literal place of conscious torment, but I believe that the torment will be much, much less severe than most Christian’s imagine. I also believe that the degree of torment will vary greatly depending on what one has done in this life. I believe that God is just, and that people will get the punishment that they deserve in hell and nothing more. Most importantly, I believe that Jesus Christ loved every individual person so much that he voluntarily endured the cross in order to offer the free gift of salvation to anyone anywhere who simply believes. Nevertheless, I am still left with a crushing sadness for the lost, especially for my friends who have rejected the salvation that Christ has offered. In the end, all I can do is leave them in the hands of the One who created them and loves them so much more than I could ever imagine.