Logical Theism - A Tyler Vela Joint

2011-12-28T15:08:00.000-08:00

Letter of Revised Discontentment

Peter stepped out into the biting, stiff air that morning, his letter home ominous in his pocket. The sun was just peeking over the tin roofs of the other hovels that surrounded his. The smell of rot sweltered up into his nostrils, still numb from the moment he had awoken that morning. No heat. He loathed the fact that he had no heat in his shack to keep himself and his companions warm.
“Frozen fingers weren’t in the brochure,” he thought cynically to himself.

They had only the tattered and aged wool blankets that at one point had been new and acceptable, now a thorn in his side. He once had a pillow but lost it to an infestation of some type of beetle that had been foreign to him until then. The town people called them burrowers. His worn bedspread now doubled as both a blanket and a knob to rest his head. His neck was taut. Rigid. His back still ached from sleeping on the cot, or rather, scarcely sleeping on it.

I abhor this place. I barely sleep. The food is nearly intolerable. I only eat when I must. I fear I am beginning to look as sickly and frightful as those I am caring for.

The door squeaked shut behind him. He tugged, forcing it into the door jam. Leaning down, he tucked the towel back under the door, attempting to keep what little heat there was in the house to wait there for his return. His first step fell on the dirt road. Tire tracks lay petrified in the solid mud from last months storm. He started his one-mile hike into town. Peter thought of his first few months here. He remembered the eagerness of the young pastors he was training and the joy in the eyes of the villagers that he prayed over and provided medicinal support to. He felt God in him then. He had known peace. It seemed only the sting of death could embitter that. Unfortunately he now resided in a living graveyard, the dead already assigned their time, just ignorant of it. He gazed around and saw only walking corpses, sapped of all hope and refilled with desperation. Thin. Pale. They hardly had the strength to carry themselves. Their country seemed to care nothing for them. All too quickly Peter’s convictions faded and faith no longer felt sufficient. Each dawning day increasingly appeared worthless and lost to him. His heart ached at times but had become all too desensitized by the horrors he had witnessed in his three years there in the village.

The sick come to me for help. Some crying out in pain, some with no more tears to cry. They look to me as their savior. And I have begun to loathe them for putting me on that pedestal.

He had heard that there were riots, revolution and insurrection running rampant before he decided to come. His heart staggered when he first knew the Lord was calling him to minister to the poor in such a violent and unsure corner of the world. He had often wondered why God couldn’t call him to emulate major champions of faith. A position as executive pastor for a predominate national church would not have been so unpleasant.

Peter kicked a pebble along as he walked. A poignant, distant smile began to creep onto his face, followed shortly by misty tears clotting up in his eyes. His mind drifted to his first day in missionary training. That was when he first met her. She sat two seats over from the chalkboard and only one row up from him. He waited through the short and informal roll call to hear the name she responded to. Rebecca. Nowhere had he ever seen a more beautiful seraph and the name suited her. She looked like a Rebecca. She looked like a girl he could no longer live a normal life without. He wondered which program she was in. His mind, a skipping stone, jumped over waves of thought, from question to question. “Is she going to the same country as me?” “Where is she from?” And of course, “Is she single?” Nowhere in time had someone fallen in love so quickly as Peter did for Rebecca. She, in an instant, was his everything.

Machine gun fire bawled out through his thoughts. His senses returned and now, almost instinctively, he dropped into the mud. Bullets flickered over his head, scattering terror across the hillside beside him. He waited in silent despondency for the ringing of gunfire to conclude. A desperate prayer whispered on His tongue. Simple.

“Please God…” words ceased and the Spirit within him spoke the rest, frantically praying for safekeeping.

Daily there are gunfights. I feel trapped. Like my life will be lost at any moment, with only my small Gideon’s bible and three years of heartache and poverty as my memento. Where was our God then?

His mind digressed to the small, green bible in his pocket, side by side with his letter home. He often mused, in an ironic manner, how of all the locations he could have been called to, he chose one where his devotions could be his demise. He kicked his heart every time he got word of his family back home and their ministry efforts to the poor and illiterate. If only he had stayed…He wondered if he would still carry his faith like a banner instead of the band-aid it was to him now; patching up the occasional scrape but leaving the gaping wound of doubt exposed for this village and its vicious country to prod.

With his nose now buried in a small, solemn patch of crab grass, his thoughts fell to her once more. He remembered how her lips, a soft pink, tasted on his. A sweet taste. A comfortable sensation.

If only you could have seen her. You would have known in an instant why I loved her…still love her. She couldn’t hide anything behind her hazel eyes, but I knew she had nothing to hide. The first time we kissed, I could see her contentment.

His thoughts of her had traveled too deep to notice that the insurrectionists had passed him by, mistaking him for a simple townsman. They saw no need to stop for this lump of cowardice lying in the mud.

He picked himself up, his clothes now heavy in front from the mire, a tugging reminder to him all day of the morning’s events. He took out a small cloth from his breast pocket to wipe the muck from his eyes then pulled it away to replace it in his pocket. Red. Its glaring contrast to the drab gray of the handkerchief is what caught his attention. Again his eyes became doleful. His strength to hold the tears in regressed.

“I too am a man of sorrows.” He muttered to himself. “So why is it I get spat on? Why was she taken?”

His hand melded with hers. Lifeless. The crimson of her blood pouring into his lap from the wound on her back. His denim jeans soaked in her blood. He wore them for three days. No strength to stand. No strength to bat a single eyelid. Peter’s eyes burned through the night. Insomnia is for the rich. He had hollowness to keep him up at night.

He felt like a fraud. She had died for her faith. The faith he had once also. They had tortured her. They had put her to death, and all he could do was struggle with the men who forced him to watch. They marred him far more by allowing him to live. When they loosed their grip on him, Peter plummeted to the soil, now ignorant of the bodily damage he had endured. They were limp together. Lifeless. He crawled to her body, finding her with his palms and fingertips. Salty, warm tears blinded him.

Her blood was warmer than my skin at that moment. Life ripped away from her just moments before. She had only been dead an instant but I suffered as if an eternity without her had just passed all bundled up in that one second. My only reaction was to cocoon her. Cover her lifeless body with my arms. I clasped her to me tighter than I ever had before. I whisked the hair away from her forehead as I had done when she slept in my arms many cold nights before. I pressed my lips to hers, insanely expecting them to kiss me back. They were dormant. I tasted blood. My blood? Her blood? Mixing to be the blood of our covenant… Till death we did part.

The sound of distant battle aroused Peter to the place where he was standing on the road. The mercenaries were still close and might be back soon. He wiped his eyes once more and took one step toward the town. Slowly he made his way down the broken pathway. A gushing sense of loneliness surrounded him as he walked down the side paths toward the village.

While he walked down the erupted paths, the carcasses of dead beasts, half putrefied, reeking of brutal fatality, dotted the fringe of the road. He seized the letter in his pocket, making sure no harm had befallen it during his swim in the mud. Dry. He was unsure of the impact his correspondence might have with his parents. He imagined his mother. She would be sad but supportive. She often wrote to let him know that whenever his missionary work was over he could come home. Frank, Peter’s father missed him as well. Both longed for him to be home, but neither at such a cost. Faith sold upstream. His mom would smile, uneasy, hiding her hurt. Frank would try to veil it for a while. It would take him a week or so to bring it up. And even then would the conversation be so convoluted and awkward that it would only result in an invitation for Peter to attend a church service again. The old man would have a glossy look, his teeth grit shut, tightly holding the tears behind his eyes.

I’m sorry for any hurt that my loss of faith may cause. Dad, you have always been supportive and loving and I feel as if I am letting you down in some way. Like I am walking out on a family tradition. Maybe one day the Lord will call on me again, but until then I have to live in the valley of death. My heart hates it but my soul has made quite a home here.

His foot caught on a rut in the trail. It was just enough to bring him out of his haze. He was almost in town. His stomach turned. Panicky expectation slowed his walk. It was worse than inviting someone on a date for the first time, or anticipating that initial kiss. However, this was his family. His flesh. And he tortured himself at the notion that he in some way was betraying them.

I find myself singing worship at night. Hoping it will help me sleep. I don’t know mom, if it is the nostalgia or the Spirit, but either way it helps. Many times has “My Soul Knows Very Well” lulled me to sleep. But I feel like the words are hollow…

Just a few days over fifteen months ago was the last day he and Rebecca had walked that path. It was on that day that she was ripped from his life. His bride to be. They had been talking of a certain scripture when three patrolling soldiers stopped them. She had this verse memorized. He had recently lost a string of interns to famine, disease, torture and expulsion. His flesh wailed for revenge and revolution. She knew better. Her loving wit could always calm his rage.

She told it to me ten minutes before she died and I committed it to memory to keep the last cheerful moment of my life alive. She told me to calm my soul, my unrest. “To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hand. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the Earth, the refuse of the world.” 1 Corinthians 4:11-13.

He entered the wooded archway that lead to the main sliver of the small village. Everyone knew him by name. The last he had seen of another American was five weeks previous, so by his best count it was Thursday. Neither of his housemates spoke English very well. One was from a small country in eastern Europe that Peter dared not attempt to pronounce and the other was from another small village just thirty miles from this one. An easy walk home in comparison.

On this particular day the agency mailman was supposed to be arriving at 3 o’ clock. Peter detested these days. He only got the occasional letter from home telling him of lavish feasts, running water, and smiling friends. They endorsed his homesickness. Just once he wanted bad news from home, something to draw him back. Just a single funeral to give him a valid excuse to abandon this crypt. Pot roast. Last month was pot roast and a friend’s wedding. The wedding stung.

“…Rebecca…”

His fingers danced over the envelope. His concentration raced. How would his family react? He fiddled with it. It actually felt restless in his hands.

Across the street a little boy played in a muddy puddle. He knelt before it, splashed his hands around, causing ripples to collide and crash into each other, to swallow each other. The bigger consumed the smaller. He thought of what Jesus had said about children. “The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.” He smiled. Sanctity. Only a small reassurance. Peter whistled. The little boy looked up from his amusement and saw Peter kneeling across the street. They both smiled. Peter had always wanted children.

What now? Now that she is gone, I will never know the joy you had in fatherhood.

Peter’s eyes glazed over; a glossy distancing from perception. His lips, cracked and blistered, now barren of the earlier smile. Just then a woman entered his view. She whispered something in the little boy’s ear. He abruptly ceased his wallowing, waved to Peter, then, as if she had told him a great secret, took off down the ally toward his family’s home. The woman looked to him. She grinned. Peter’s heart descended deep into his stomach. Her familiar chocolate eyes glimmered.

I knew her. Her name was Maria. It took me seven breaths to recognize her. She had come into the clinic. She was malnourished, abused… downtrodden. Her face was spiritless and her eyes were so empty I could see the back of her skull. She came a few times and seemed to be healing nicely, physically and spiritually. She was intrigued by what the gospels had to say. Then she stopped showing up. It did not surprise me. I wrote her off as a casualty in my mind. Most ended abruptly in this area of the world.

She stood there. Uneasy. Fidgeting nervously. She stepped one foot out toward him, unsure if she should approach. Peter sat in simple wonderment. He must have appeared beautiful to her. Her eyes swelled, red with joy. Her palms shielded her lips, her knuckles white.

The afternoon haze split the reflected light. Peter shielded his eyes. His stomach hurt. She walked to his side. Her lips quaked. Two fingers danced over a small wooden cross she wore around her neck. She dribbled out six small words…”Thank you…you saved my life…” Her steps hurried away, leaving him alone in the solitude of thought. The smell of astonishment and perplexity wafted in through all his pores. His joints hurt. He wept. Salty, clear tears. Purity. Peter’s heart felt tugged at, ripped apart, left asunder but strangely finally felt freed.

I sat there on that dusty bench and stared at the sky; stared at myself. How could I have been so ignorant? How could I have been such a hypocrite? I preached the good news but my heart sat empty. I taught on being filled with the Spirit but my heart had shut Him out long before. But now I saw it, now I knew what part I had been missing. Obedience; Obedience in the face of tribulation. Jesus never once promised a life free of trials. He told us over and over that we would be tested, hated, spat on and put to death. But our treasure awaits us when we join the Father in heaven. Obedience is the key. Rebecca knew that. She died for that. She told me once that if she would die here in this place, then all she would need to know was that God had used her to help one person; just one person. I never understood that. Not until that moment when I sat face to face with Maria did I understand that. Rebecca had helped me… Rebecca died to help me… She helped me save that woman. She had saved me.

A mist of dust trailed near as Peter sat on his bench now clenching the letter, rolling it up tightly in between his finger tips. An old, filthy station wagon stopped in front of where Peter was sitting. The man rolled his window down and waited for the envelope to be passed over to him. Peter beamed. He looked to the clouds and his heart spoke to him. It uttered unknown chants. Peter replaced the letter to his pocket then lifted his hand and simply waived the man on. He had no mail to send out that day.

Peter’s family would receive a letter from him but it was not the one that had been in his pocket while he lay face down in the mud. It would be a new letter. They would receive Peter’s letter but never would again receive Peter in their arms. He would be buried in a small unmarked grave beside Rebecca. Only the villagers would know where it is and who he was. They would remember the couple for years to come and even their grandchildren would know their names.

The Freed Thinker Podcast - Episode 5.2

2011-12-28T14:36:00.000-08:00

In this episode of The Freed Thinker Podcast we continue our discussion of the Kalam Cosmological Argument by discussing some of the more common objections to the first premise regarding the Principle of Sufficient Reason and evaluate those objections.

We will now be posting video and audio versions of each episode. Due to limited space on my feed server, this will limit the podcast to about 2 episodes a month.

You can stream the episode here, http://freedthinker.podbean.com/ or search for The Freed Thinker Podcast on itunes and upload it directly from there.

Click it! Subscribe to it! Love it!

Guest Appearance on The Skeptics Testament Podcast

2011-12-16T08:14:00.000-08:00

This week I had a great discussion with atheist Nicholas Bruzzese and host of The Skeptics Testament Podcast for their Christmas episode. We looked at some of the common myths surrounding Christmas and discussed some of the historical details surrounding the Jesus birth narratives. I highly recommend this episode and this podcast in general. It is always at the top of my play list.

You can find this episode and previous episodes by searching for the Skeptics Testament Podcast on Itunes or you can stream them live from their webpage, add comments or ask questions at

http://podcastlaboratory.libsyn.com/

Enjoy!

The Freed Thinker Podcast - Episode 5.1 - The Kalam Cosmological Argument

2011-12-10T18:08:00.000-08:00

In this episode of The Freed Thinker Podcast, we continue our discussion about natural theology by starting to examine the Kalam Cosmological Argument. We cover the history of the argument, the logical form of the argument and then reasons to accept the truth of the first premise. In our next episode we will discuss the various objections to the first premise. Hope you all enjoy the show!

This podcast is available on Itunes at the Itunes store. Just search "The Freed Thinker Podcast" or at the freed at: http://freedthinker.podbean.com/2011/12/10/the-freed-thinker-podcast-episode-51-the-kalam/

The Freed Thinker Podcast Episode 4 - Natural Theology and Contingency

2011-12-05T19:07:00.000-08:00

In this episode we begin our look at natural theology and we discuss what natural theology is and then examine the first argument for God's existence - the argument from contingency - and explore several objections raised against it.

As always you view the podcast from my podbean.com page at http://freedthinker.podbean.com/2011/12/05/the-freed-thinker-podcast-episode-4 or you can search for it on Itunes, download it and take it with you on your mobile device.

The Itunes version is an MP4 and so some portable players may not be able to upload it. Just FYI.

Click it! Listen to it! Love it!

The Freed Thinker Podcast Episode 3 - The New Atheism

2011-11-23T17:28:00.000-08:00

The Freed Thinker Podcast - Episode 3

In this episode we take a very brief look at the movement known as The New Atheism. This discussion will be admittedly brief and will focus on the key players and some of the unifying themes that bind them together. For those of you who are familiar with this movement and the literature associated with it, you will undoubtedly realize that this discussion is going to be very brief and somewhat shallow. This is intentional. I did not want this episode to be hours in length and I plan on dealing with the specific arguments and objections that these writers pose throughout this entire series so I will be getting back to most of what I either briefly touched on or did not get to in this current episode. So stay tuned!

http://freedthinker.podbean.com/2011/11/22/the-freed-thinker-podcast-episode-3/

You can also download it on Itunes at The Freed Thinker Podcast! Click it! Subscribe it! Love it!

Suggestions on research articles?

2011-11-17T14:31:00.000-08:00

Well I am knee deep in my research for my next few Podcast episodes dealing with the Theistic arguments for God. I have a lot of books and articles dealing with some of the arguments (such as the cosmological argument, teleological arguments or the ontological arguments) but I dont have a lot on some of them (such as AREs, argument from Desire, argument from the conscious). If any of your have any documents or articles that you think would be helpful in my examination of these arguments (from all sides of the issue) I would greatly appreciate it. If you could message me here or email me at tylervela@gmail.com with a .doc or .pdf file or a link to where they can be found that would be excellent. So you can know what exactly I would discussing, I will be examining the validity of the following arguments:

1. The Kalam Cosmological Argument

2. The Argument from Contingency
3. The Teleological Argument from Design (Strong version)
4. The Teleological Argument from Design Inference (Weak version from Fine-Tuning and Information Theory)
5. The Ontological Argument - Anselm
6. The Ontological Argument - Leibniz
7. The Ontological Argument - Godel
8. The Victorious Ontological Argument - Plantinga
9. The Transcendental Argument - From Laws of Logic
10. The Transcendental Argument- From the Existence of Minds (including the argument from consciousness)
11. The Transcendental Argument - From Natural Laws
12. The Transcendental Argument- From Moral Facts (I know many people treat the Moral Argument as its own kind of argument but I will attempt to show why I believe it is actually a version of a transcendental argument.
13. Arguments from Religious Experience
14. Arguments from History - The Resurrection (Minimal Facts Argument)
15. The Argument from Desire
16. The Argument from The Conscious (not consciousness)
17. The Argument from Fulfilled Prophecy
18. Pascal's Wager

Thanks for your help!

New Atheism Resources

2011-11-02T23:07:00.000-07:00

For some reason blogspot doesnt allow bloggers to upload documents or zip files but my podcast thread does. I have compiled a collection of articles and essays interacting with the New Atheism and am now passing the wealth on to you! I hope you enjoy this intellectual treasure trove!

http://freedthinker.podbean.com/2011/11/03/new-atheism-resources/

The Potter's Field, A Short Story

2011-11-02T17:43:00.000-07:00

Here is a short story that I wrote based on the Gospel narratives about the night of the Last Supper.

The Potter’s Field

The twelve reclined on the cushions around the small stilted table in the upstairs room on that balmy night. The cloth covering the open window let in a faint breeze. It drifted through the still air, collapsing on and cooling their tepid skin. The sun was just falling behind the horizon line, casting a strawberry glow on the world that panned out below it. Hymns could be heard ringing out in the thin alleyways that made up the city streets; they bounced back and forth off the stone walls, intermixing and sporadically harmonizing, fading in and out of existence.

It was Passover and they had gathered as a whole group to eat together. The entire city was packed for the celebration. There was not an open room in the city and latecomers had to find lodging in the surrounding villages. The room they sat in was nearly silent. The outside noise knitted a quiet milieu to the uncertainty about the future that was on all their minds. There was a small water basin and a soaking cloth sitting just a few feet from the table that had been used to wash the feet of the twelve, even the one who would betray. They briefly talked here and there among themselves of the past few weeks. The room smelt thick of perfume and oil.

The occasional cup being set on the table or the sound of someone sipping a drink were all that was heard. Intermittently a cough or a few words spoken in hushed tones to one another would chime out. Some ate more than others. Peter and John both quietly teased their food. They had no appetite that night. They knew something was wrong. They felt the apprehension that boiled in the room. They all did. John crumbled the unleavened bread between his fingers while Peter swished the wine around in his cup. Judas sat at the seat of honor. His feet, although washed, still felt grimy. He scratched at them. Judas looked around at the others. His shoulders slouched from the weight of the day and the stress of the impending decision. He wondered what made the rest so obedient. He wondered how they could love the teacher so much. He felt exiled. Alienated.

Finally their teacher spoke. He started quietly as he rose to his feet.

“I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” His voice broke a little toward the end.

Judas noticed the hesitation. It was the “suffer” that stuck with him. It stung. How could one single word foretell so much? He forced himself to deposit it away in memory, to ignore it for now. Nothing could be changed. It was already done. Everything was already neatly arranged. His thirty silver coins lay buried under a small shrub just outside of town. He only needed Jesus to slip up; to make one mistake, to tell one lie, to commit even the smallest sin. Then he would have him. Judas had begun to lose hope that it would ever happen. He felt the heavy burden of betraying an innocent man.

Judas thought back to the three years he had spent with Jesus. The things he had seen. The words Jesus spoke that he could never understand. “Why was this man such a fool? If he is the messiah why doesn’t he take over like he is destined to?” Judas was expecting his messiah to be something other than what Jesus was willing to be. “Is this man really the savior of Israel?”

“For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.” Jesus’ palms were sweaty from the heat. He spoke slowly, the strong tone returning once again to his words. “You do not realize what I am doing but later you will understand. Unless I wash you, you have no part with me. A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean. And you are clean.” Jesus gazed around the room. His eyes skipped over Judas. He did not bring himself to look into those eyes just yet. “And you are clean, though not every one of you. You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘Lord’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.” He walked around them. Gently touching their shoulders. Showing his adoration and love. His eyes gleamed. Judas felt the weight of Jesus’ hand on his shoulder when it was his turn in the circle. It seemed as if it stayed on his longer than any of the other eleven. Jesus paused behind him and placed one hand on each of Judas’ shoulders. They were warm. Even on this hot night, they still felt warmer than all else in the room.

The cloth in the window veiled the small tinge of light left from the setting sun. They ate by the glow of the few lanterns hanging from the rafters of the room. A handful of small candles littered the table. Incense smoke spiraled up to the ceiling in thick swirls of gray odor.

Jesus seemed unsettled. “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me.” His words sliced the air, pulsating in their ears. Each syllable resonated with shrill displeasure but were free of hate. They almost seem to pity and grieve. They pressed on the hearts of all who heard. The breeze that had bathed them was now of no importance. They felt no heat, nor any cold. Their toes were numb while their chests burned. In their hearts they wondered whom Jesus was speaking of. No one noticed the final beam of light peeking out from the skyline vanish and submit to the darkness, concluding the sun’s time in the heavens. It was in its resting place for the night.

One by one they asked the Rabbi, “Surely not I?”

Jesus swallowed a sip of wine to moisten his lips and appease his scratchy throat. He tightened his hands slightly then released them. “I am not referring to all of you. I know those I have chosen.” His eyes surveyed the room of expectant eyes.

Judas gazed down at the table, his fingers tapping quietly. He didn’t blink. He knew it was coming. He tried not to think about it but he knew it would soon be known. He only wondered if Jesus would announce it to the other eleven. Surely he would be ostracized. He doubted they would still receive him in love. He wondered if they would believe him. He knew he wouldn’t if he were them. “But Jesus can not be the one!” He breathed erratically.

John and Peter, sitting to the left of Jesus, were still in wonder.

“Ask him which one he means,” Peter mumbled to John.

John leaned toward Jesus and in hushed anguish he whispered, “Lord, who is it?”

Jesus, still being watched by the others, continued on with his thought. “But this is to fulfill the scripture. The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him.” With that Jesus mustered the strength to confront his betrayer with his sharp stare. Christ’s eyes fell on Judas sitting hunched over next to him. His eyes still fixed in a glare on the table but yet looking at nothing in particular. His jaw clenched sending pulsating ripples across his jaw line. His face was nearly desolate of color. Only a soft green veiled his cheeks. He couldn’t blink. His eyes burned. His skin pulled tightly over the skull. Judas’ lower lip trembled and every inch of him was in pain.

“But woe to the man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born...” Judas’ eyes shot up from the table to meet Jesus’ fixed stare. His eyes spoke his thoughts to Judas. “Yes, it is you.” For the first time Judas came to the complete realization of what he was actually about to do. His body stopped moving. For that instant, time stopped progressing and all he knew was fear and self-loathing. His heart minced in his chest, almost interrupting his lungs from breathing. A violent hollowness weighed down his stomach.

Jesus stood and took the bread. He broke it and handed out small pieces to the twelve. He spoke a prayer of blessing over it then spoke. “This is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” He signaled for them to all consume what he had given them and they all ate the bread slowly, unsure of what exactly was meant by his words. Judas choked down his piece with his eyes shut tight. He couldn’t bring himself to look anyone in the face. His mouth was dry and the bread, still rough, scratched at his throat. His skin was crawling. He felt his clothes rubbing on his skin.

Jesus then grasped his cup of wine, blessed it and spoke. “This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many. I tell you the truth; I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God. Do this in remembrance of me.” They all drank together.

Judas felt the wine burn in his chest as it passed through him. His hands quivered as he gently replaced his cup on the wooden tabletop. He gnashed his teeth.

Jesus said a brief prayer and the others began to resume their dinner, humming about what he had just revealed to them. Jesus let them speak. He was done talking for the night. He reached for a piece of bread and dipped it into the dish. At that same moment Judas dipped his piece in as well. Their eyes connected. Judas was filled with fear and rage. His nostrils flared. His mind reeled and then in a flash, the words of the past prophets came pouring into his mind. A psalm he had read only nights before came barreling through his consciousness. His lips mouthed the words. Only the occasional hint of a syllable could be heard through his vaporous breaths of recollection. “Even my close friend, whom I trusted, he who shared my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.” Judas knew he was that prophecy fulfilled. His body felt cold and stiff as Jesus sat still peering back at him. The breeze brushed a strand of hair across Jesus’ face. Judas’ heart was filled with the purest hate. His spirit felt hot within his mind. He threw his bread down and left his place at the table to go sit on the windowsill. He peered up at the stars that now flickered in the desert sky. The cloth from the window lay upon him like a burial shroud. It separated him from the rest of room and muffled the noise from the others.

The room was filled with prayer, some started to sing a Passover hymn. As their voices rose into the still night air, Jesus walked and kneeled beside Judas in the corner window. He pulled back the mantle and took both of Judas’ hands, a tear falling down his cheek. Jesus looked into his eyes for a moment. He felt the evil in Judas saturating in his skin, even out through his fingers tips. Just as Judas was about to mock an apology, Jesus spoke.

“What you are about to do,” he moved his eyes from floor up to Judas’ eyes with only a blink to fill the time, “do it quickly.” Christ’s heart welled up with sorrow. It weighed heavy inside of him. For a moment their glares locked. Jesus flashed his glace back and forth from eye to eye.

Judas’ mouth gaped. His eyes switched back and forth over Jesus’. His toes curled and he tore his hands away from Jesus and stormed out of the room, wiping the unbearable tears from his eyes. His sandals scuffled down the wooden steps and through the empty, moonlit street.

Judas wandered along the paths of Jerusalem that night. He walked the same streets over and over. No direction, no ambition, just aimless wandering. He stopped to pray occasionally in a peaceful, secluded corner, or even as he walked, shouting angry words to the heavens. He tore at his clothes in confusion. Finally he found himself in front of the temple. He stood in turmoil for what must have been ten minutes. Just staring at the entrance to the outer courts. He sighed and placed one foot on the bottom step then, as though being pulled inside, he drug his feet through the entryway. Judas found his way to the chief priests who were once again delighted to see him. They had been waiting for his final report.

Judas did not sleep all night. He paced the temple and the alleyways in deep concentration. His feet were bleeding and sore. His scalp was sensitive from pulling at his hair. Finally his soul submitted. He would do what he had started long ago. He would hand over his own friend. He arranged with the soldiers that whomever he would kiss first that morning would be the man they must arrest.

The closing words of a prayer lingered on Jesus’ lips that morning when Judas entered the garden of Gethsemane. The other eleven watched in curiosity. They wondered why Judas was being escorted by a small handful of armed temple guards. Judas walked slowly to Jesus and paused just inches in front of him. He leaned toward Jesus, kissed him on the cheek and gathered enough strength to mutter a few words. His lips barely moved. With a hushed tone he spoke. “Greetings Rabbi.” Judas could not look him in the face.

Jesus pulled his cheek away from Judas’ lips. “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?”

Just then the disciples understood and drew their swords. “Lord, should we strike with our swords?” Before Jesus could answer, one did, amputating one of the ears of the servant of the high priest. Before any more blows could be thrown Jesus stepped in and shouted, “No more of this!” All obeyed without hesitation, even the Roman guards. Their hands sat stagnant by their sides as Jesus walked over to the servant lying screaming on the ground. The grass tickled his feet. He knelt down by the weeping man and laid his hand on his shoulder. Jesus touched the man’s ear and it was healed instantly. The man turned his face to toward the sky, up toward Jesus. He noticed a small, loving smile gleaming on Jesus’ lips; His eyes full of piercing beauty. Then the expression fell away to be replaced by that of dismay as Jesus slowly rose to turn and face the soldiers.

“Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs? Everyday I was with you in the temple courts and you did not lay a hand on me. But this is your hour – when darkness reigns – but the scriptures must be fulfilled.” He walked to the guards to be arrested. But he saw them beginning to arrest the others with him in the garden and spoke out once more. “Who is it that you want? I told you that I am he. If you are looking for me then let these men go.”

Judas knew that at one point that Jesus had protected him as he did now with the others. He had always been safe. His heart was once again burdened. He had left the stronghold that once covered his head. “Of whom shall I be afraid?”

As Jesus was leaving the garden he looked to Peter, who still had his sword drawn. “Put your sword away. Shall I not drink the cup my Father has given me?” And with that he was escorted away.

The twelve stood reunited again in the garden. Judus’ head hung to his shoulder, looking down at his feet. His stomach anguished inside of him as though splitting apart, dashed on a sheer cliff. His toes looked dingy and cracked. He suffered the glares of the others. He felt their rage illuminating the entire garden. His heart beat in syncopated rhythm. Judas turned and followed the procession down the hill and back into the city.

Early the next morning there was a meeting of the priests and the elders of the people. They discussed the fate of the one they had arrested, the one who called himself Jesus. They found him guilty of claiming to be king. Only Caesar could be called king, so they knew this would bring Jesus the death penalty. The counsel had Jesus bound and led away to appear before Governor Pilate. Judas watched from the temple courts. He heard the plans. He knew Jesus would be flogged and crucified.

Judas knelt and let his tears fall slowly to the floor. His spirit of hate left him. “What have I done? Even if he is not the messiah, what crime did he commit?” He ran to the chief priest and held out the thirty pieces of silver.

Softly, with remorse in his voice he spoke. “I have sinned. For I have betrayed innocent blood.”

“What is that to us?” They replied. “That is your responsibility.”

Judas looked at them horrified. He wondered how men who were considered to be so pure could commit such a horrible atrocity. His hand, in an instantaneous impulse, threw the silver at the nearest elder. The coins sprinkled across the room, clanging against the polished tile floors. Judas rushed out of the room. He drifted the streets and alleys of the city in a haze of turmoil. He walked with a drunken stagger. He was disoriented and lost.

Just outside the city he found a small potter’s field with a decrepit, twisted tree in an isolated corner. The dust from the field, once wet on his face from his tears, now felt hard and snapped when any wrinkle would emerge on his cheek. The sun blistered overhead. He had found a short rope by the small hut of the man who must have owned the field.

The tree sat over a small bank in the hill. All around the base were small ginger colored flowers. A single branch jetted out over the gully. Judas crawled out on the limb and tied one end of the rope a few feet out from the trunk. His hands trembled as he fastened the other end around his neck. His feet dangled as he sat on the limb. This would be his last few minutes. He sat in awe of the creation that panned out before him. One flower had made its way up the tree and sat beside him. It was almost red. It hinted that a soft breeze was blowing in. Its petals, too small to sway, merely twitched in the wind. The vast dusty plain crept up to the city walls off in the distance. The low hills rolled across the horizon and enclosed all that he could see.

Then his eyes fell upon them; faintly at first. He could barely distinguish them but there they were. Just detached from the furthest point of the city walls he could see them. A row of faint black crosses standing out in contrast against the russet hills. There were three that Judas could see. Two of them were already filled. The other was only the vertical trunk. It was missing its cross bar that would hold the victim up while he suffered.

Judas closed his eyes for the last time then looked up toward the gray open sky. Tasting the bitterness in his mouth, he let out a deep wheeze then let himself drop from the limb.

The sun rose with scorching heat and withered the plant. Its blossom fell and its beauty was destroyed. But Judas’ eyes never closed. They just peered aimlessly in the sun toward that single empty cross in the distance.

The Freed Thinker Podcast Episode 2!!!

2011-10-20T18:00:00.000-07:00

The second episode of The Freed Thinker Podcast is now available on itunes! Today we explore some basic philosophical terms and concepts that will help us in later discussions.

Search for The Freed Thinker Podcast on itunes or upload it from the feed! Click it! Subscribe it! love it!

http://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail?pid=117972

New Freed Thinker Podcast!!!

2011-10-11T17:31:00.000-07:00

UPDATE!!!! The Freed Thinker Podcast is now available on Itunes!!! Just go to the Itunes store and search for Freed Thinker and BAM! There it is! Click it! Subscribe it! Love it!

Yes the time is finally here! After years of encouragement I have finally buckled to pressure and started The Freed Thinker Podcast!

The first series will be a me teaching through about a full semester's worth of material on Apologetics and the New Atheism and I am super excited to make this a VIDEO podcast with the slides and all. This does mean that I need to work a little harder on the production end of it but I hope that this will be rewarding to all of you who decide to follow it!

I have just finished the first episode and am working on how to get it up on to itunes but I will post that first video here:

I hope you enjoy!!!

'Alma' and the Virgin Birth in Matthew and Isaiah

2011-09-24T13:59:00.000-07:00

Did Matthew tear Isaiah out of context in his fulfillment verse about the Virgin birth? This is a brief response to that question.

On main reason to think that he did not was that we know that Jewish Scholars never claimed that ‘alma’ meant anything other than “virgin” until they wanted to deny the virgin birth of Jesus. How do I know this?

1. None of the ancient languages or versions gives any evidence to show that “alma” ever meant a young married woman. It more likely means something like the English “maiden” that is, a young woman of marriageable age” – and in Israel these were assumed to be virgins, especially when it is described as a woman of good moral character.

2. A “n’ara” may not have always been thought of as a virgin. Otherwise it would scarcely have been necessary to define her five times by the word “bethulah” (virgin). Thus an “alma” must have been presumed to be a “virgin” since it is never modified by “bethulah.”

3. Since the Septuagint version was made in the case of Genesis 280 years B. C. and in the case of Isaiah 200 years B. C., it is to be presumed that their rendering of “alma” by “parthenos” (virgin) in Genesis 24:48 and Isaiah 7:14 was in their minds a justifiable rendering. So far as we have any evidence, the citation of Isaiah 7:14 in Matthew 1:23 is thus justified by the Jewish interpretation up to the time when Matthew was written and only objected to AFTER people realized that it affirmed Matthew’s narrative.

4. Since the Peshitto Syriac version of the Old Testament was also probably made by Jews, their rendering of the word “alma” by “bethulah” in Isaiah 7:14 must have been considered proper even as late as the second century A. D. So in other translations of the OT into other languages, the common word to translate it was whatever that language’s word for “virgin” was.

5. Jerome, who studied Hebrew under Jewish rabbis of his time (about 400 A. D.), still thought it possible to render “alma” by “virgo” (virgin) in Genesis 24:43 and Isaiah 7:14.

6. The rendering “ulemta” of the Targum to Isaiah 7:14 cannot possibly argue in favor of the meaning “young married woman” in view of the following three facts: a) “Alma” in the O.T. never has this meaning anywhere else. b) “Ulemta” translates not merely “alma” but also “n’ara,” “yolda,” and “bethulah,” none of which means young married woman. c) “Ulemta” is used of Rebecca when she came to the well and met Eliezer; of Miriam when she was set to watch the infant Moses; of the 400 virgins of Jabesh Gilead (Judges 21:12); of Esther and the other virgins who were selected for the choice of Xerxes as wife.

7. All the versions of the Greek “parthenos” (virgin) — Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Harklensian, Syriac, and Arabic — render the word in both Isaiah 7:14 and Matt. 1:23 by the best word for “virgin” which they possess.

8. The evidence that Mary was a virgin does not after all depend on the meaning of the words “alma” and “parthenos” alone; for it is said, also, of Mary that “she had not known man.” This phrase is used in the Old Testament of Rebecca “a virgin that had not known man” (Gen. 24:16); of Jephthah’s daughter (Judges 11:39); and of the virgins of Jabesh Gilead (Judges 21:12).

Thus we can see that Jews and their scholars had no problem with ‘alma’ meaning virgin (because it nearly universally did) until the Christians started to point to Is. 7:14 and they found themselves wanting to deny the virgin birth.

And these are just a few examples.

Round Three On The Imaginary Friends Show Podcast

2011-08-30T14:24:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I did another interview with the incomparable Jake Farr-Wharton on his show The Imaginary Friends Show Podcast. For those who missed it here is the link to his website or you can find it on Itunes. Listen early, listen often!

http://imaginaryfriendsshow.com/2011/08/03/episode-56-id-like-to-double-your-entendre/

For those interested in hearing the other two episodes you can find them here:

Episode 1: http://imaginaryfriendsshow.com/2011/03/09/a-discussion-with-christian-apologist-tyler-vela/

Episode 2: http://imaginaryfriendsshow.com/2011/03/24/tyler-vela-episode-2/

Critics of Dawkins Unite!

2011-08-30T14:05:00.000-07:00

Here are some really helpful articles on the problems of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins:

· Alvin Plantinga (2007). "The Dawkins Confusion - Naturalism ad absurdum". Books & Culture, a Christian Review. http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/002/1.21.html. Retrieved 2007-03-02.

· Kenny, Anthony (July 2007). "Knowledge, Belief, and Faith". Philosophy 82 (03): 381–397. doi:10.1017/S0031819107000010.

· Nagel, Thomas (2006-10-23). "The Fear of Religion". The New Republic. http://www.tnr.com/article/the-fear-religion. Retrieved 2007-09-12.

· Michael Ruse (December 2007). "Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion". Chicago Journals. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/529280. Retrieved 2008-05-31.

· Swinburne, Richard. "Response to Richard Dawkins' comments on my writings in his book The God Delusion" (PDF). http://users.ox.ac.uk/~orie0087/pdf_files/Responses%20to%20Controversies/Response%20to%20Dawkins%27%20The%20God%20Delusion%20(revised)_copy(1).pdf. Retrieved 2010-03-10.

· John Cornwell (2006-10-01). "A question of respect.". Times Online (London). http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article1085803.ece. Retrieved 2006-11-06.

· John Cornwell. “The Importance of Doubt.” The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/aug/30/religion.uk

· McGrath, Alister (2007). The Dawkins Delusion?. SPCK. p. 20. Also expressed in his review "The Dawkins Delusion".

· H. Allen Orr (January 2007). "A Mission to Convert". New York Review of Books (54.1). http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19775. Retrieved 2007-03-03.

· Terry Eagleton (2006-10-19). "Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching". London Review of Books 28 (20). http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html. Retrieved 2006-11-26.

· Anthony Flew. "Flew Speaks Out: Professor Antony Flew reviews The God Delusion". bethinking.org. http://www.bethinking.org/science-christianity/intermediate/flew-speaks-out-professor-antony-flew-reviews-the-god-delusion.htm. Retrieved 2008-12-25.

· Murrough O'Brien, "Our Teapot, which art in heaven," The Independent, November 26, 2006

· Marilynne Robinson. "The God Delusion". solutions.synearth.net. http://solutions.synearth.net/2006/10/20/. Retrieved 2010-04-04.

· Simon Watson (Spring 2010). "Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Atheist Fundamentalism". Anthropoetics: The Journal of Generative Anthropology 15, no. 2. http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap1502/1502Watson.htm. Retrieved 2010-08-14.

Did Jesus Predict the Rapture within 40 Years of his Death? Part 3

2011-07-21T21:45:00.000-07:00

The Problem of “γενεὰ αὕτη” (“this generation”) and

“πάντα ταῦτα” (“these things”) in Matthew 24

Part 1 - http://logical-theism.blogspot.com/2011/05/did-jesus-predict-rapture-within-40.html

Part 2 - http://logical-theism.blogspot.com/2011/05/did-jesus-predict-rapture-within-40_29.html

Part 3 – Examination of πάντα ταῦτα

For this third installment of the series, I would like to give some brief interpretive comments about Matthew 24 and some of the relevant parallel passages. While a complete commentary of the entire Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24-25; Mark 13; Luke 21) is far beyond the scope of this series, I think that we have reached a point that we can now examine the critical verses that are contained within and look at their theological, historical, and grammatical contexts to determine the best interpretation of Jesus’ comments.

As we discussed above there are several different interpretive possibilities of Matthew 24:34 and what is meant by Jesus’ statement “Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.” We noted that the first class of interpretations hinges on the clause “γενεὰ αὕτη” (“this generation”) and attempts to make it mean something other than the lifetime of those present with Jesus. I gave several different interpretations that expositors have used to formulate this view and also various reasons as to why I think that these main formulations fail to be convincing.

The second class of interpretations see “γενεὰ αὕτη” (“this generation”) as referring to the lifetime of those present with Jesus but interpret “πάντα ταῦτα” (“these things”) as pointing to something other than the last day of the earth at Jesus’ second coming. In the second part of this article I gave a brief summary of various hermeneutical themes such as sensus plenior that I think will be helpful for a full and adequate understanding of this passage. However it will not be until our concluding discussion in Part 4 that I will bring the interpretation of the passage in this section and the hermeneutics of Part 2 to a proper marriage. Here I will be giving a brief sketch of the interpretation of various relevant passages that I find most convincing and the various reasons for that conclusion. It is to that position that I will now turn my attention.

The follow comments will be listed under themes found in the Olivet Discourse and will be more staccato than continuous. The follow metaphors or themes that are expressed in the Olivet Discourse often have deep roots into the Old Testament that will be helpful in understanding how Jesus uses them in this famous sermon.

1. Hyperbole is a kind a literary exaggeration used to illustrate severity or extreme degrees. It is used intentionally as a literary device. What we find in a vast majority of ancient, Biblical, and even modern texts, is a wide usages of hyperbole for rhetorical effect. Here we will show that not only was hyperbole common in the Old Testament, but it was also very frequent surrounding the theme of divine judgment. Here are a handful of examples that can be drawn primarily from the Old Testament, but also in some cases eluded to elsewhere in the New Testament:

a. Great Tribulation

i. Exodus 11:6 – “There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again.”

ii. Daniel 9:12 – “You have fulfilled the words spoken against us and against our rulers by bringing on us great disaster. Under the whole heaven nothing has ever been done like what has been done to Jerusalem.”

iii. Daniel 12:1 – “At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered.”

                                                          iv.      Joel 2:2 – “a day of darkness and gloom,
   a day of clouds and blackness.
Like dawn spreading across the mountains
   a large and mighty army comes,
such as never was in ancient times
   nor ever will be in ages to come.”

v. Ezekiel 5:9 – “Because of all your detestable idols, I will do to you what I have never done before and will never do again.”

a) In this verse we have almost a direct corollary between Ezekiel’s pronouncement of judgment on Jerusalem by Babylon in 586 BCE and Jesus’ pronouncement of judgment on Jerusalem in the Olivet Discourse.

b. Sun, Moon, and Stars

i. Isaiah 13:10 – judgment of Babylon (539 BCE) - The stars of heaven and their constellations will not show their light. The rising sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light.

ii. Isaiah 34:4 – judgment of Edom (703 BCE) - All the stars in the sky will be dissolved
and the heavens rolled up like a scroll; all the starry host will fall like withered leaves from the vine, like shriveled figs from the fig tree.

iii. Ezekiel 32:7 – judgment of Egypt (568 BCE)- When I snuff you out, I will cover the heavens and darken their stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon will not give its light.

iv. Joel 2:10 – judgment of Judah (586 BCE)- Before them the earth shakes,
the heavens tremble, the sun and moon are darkened, and the stars no longer shine.

v. Amos 8:9 – judgment of the northern kingdom (722 BCE)- “In that day,” declares the Sovereign LORD, “I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight.

c. Sign of the Son

i. Daniel 7:13-14 - “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man,coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. ¹⁴ He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

ii. Mathew 26:64 - “You have said so,” Jesus replied. “But I say to all of you: From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

a) This one is particularly interesting because at Jesus’ ascension he now tells the apostles that from then on they will see him “coming on the clouds.” This was not to be a one-time future event but rather a perpetual state of authority that Christ would be seen in. What does this mean for our passage when we look back two chapters? We will find out.

d. Gathering the Elect

i. “Angels” can be “messengers”. In fact some have thought that rather than angelic intervention, that preaching may be what is in view.

ii. “gather” (συνάγω) being used in a non-physical sense can be seen in John 11:51-52 rather than some kind of eschatological end time gathering. It can refer to a spiritual calling and gathering rather than a physical one.

2. It is also helpful at this point to see v34-35 as a transitional statements: ^33”So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates. ³⁴ Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. ³⁵ Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

a. V34 is a conclusion statement. If Jesus was not changing subjects, the placement of this verse here would be unintelligible. There would be no reason to add a conclusion and transition statement at this point what Jesus was not changing the subject.

b. Distinct move from “this generation” to “that day” between the two sections. One referring to events that will take place in the timeframe of an approximate generation, and the other using the standard Hebraic term for the final eschatological period, “that day.”

i. Before v34 it speaks of “days” after v34 it speaks of “day” (a common Jesus term meaning the final judgment).

c. Before v34 there are signs of what Jesus is addressing and it is possible for people to know what is coming (notice the warnings for people to take heed, abandon their possession, take for the hills, etc.) After v35 there are no signs and no one can know. One will be taken and one will be left. They will not know the time or hour. This ability to know is drastically different on either side of this transition statement.

i. In addition to this, Jesus claims that he doesn’t know the time of his second coming (v36) but that he does know the time of the destruction of Jerusalem (24:6, 25, 29, 30, 34)

ii. In fact, as a historical aside, what is interesting to note is that when the siege of Jerusalem took place, it was actually the Christians who survived largely because they believed it was the fulfillment of this very passage and fled for the hills. What no one seems to ever mention when discussing this passage is that if the early church thought that Jesus’ second coming was going to happen in that generation and that the fall of Jerusalem was the culmination of history, then what would have been the point to abandon their goods and seek refuge in the hills? If they were going to be “raptured” (a somewhat anachronistic usage I know) then what would be the point in warning them to flee the wrath on the city?

d. Before v34 the time frame is a short 40 years, after v34 there is a long period 24:48, 25:5, 19)

e. Notice that the summation statement of “these things” expressly EXCLUDES the second coming. When we see “these things” then we will know that Jesus is NEAR. The coming is not included in “these things” and thus when a generation will not pass before all of “these things” takes place, does NOT include the second coming. What follows after v35 then deals with the second coming AFTER the signs and shows that it will be unknown and will be preceded by a LONG period of expectation.

f. Vv.25:31 begins final judgment descriptions. This is AFTER a period of LONG expectation.

We find a helpful summary statement from D.A. Carson in his commentary on Matthew in the Expositor’s Commentary Series. He states,

“If our interpretation of this chapter is right, all that v34 demands is that the distress of vv.4-28, including Jerusalem’s fall, happen within the life time of the generation then living. This does not mean that the distress must end within that time but only that ‘all these things’ must happen within it. Therefore v34 set a terminus a quo for the Parousia; it cannot happen till the events in vv4-28 take place, all within a generation of A.D. 30. But there is no terminus ad quem to this distress other than the Parousia itself, and ‘only the Father’ knows when it will happen” (p507).

In our final section of this series we will make some final interpretive conclusions about the passage and address the question once and for all, Did Jesus err when he said “Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place”?

Part 1 - http://logical-theism.blogspot.com/2011/05/did-jesus-predict-rapture-within-40.html

Part 2 - http://logical-theism.blogspot.com/2011/05/did-jesus-predict-rapture-within-40_29.html

Is Atheism a Belief?

2011-07-20T15:33:00.000-07:00

We have all heard it over and over, “atheism isn’t a belief; it’s a non-belief.” Well besides the obvious blunder in that statement – since atheism, while a lack of a belief in God, is commonly also a belief in a state of affairs in which it is improbable, or even impossible, for God to exist – it also seems strange to even call it atheism, or an adherent and atheist. We more often than not, describe objects, ourselves, or our beliefs, by ontology – what they and we are – not by what is not. I do not call myself an Arussian – I’m an American. I do not call myself an Aliberal – I’m a conservative. I do not call myself an Ablonde – I’m a brunette. And on and on. While I am not the kind who believes that words intrinsically create reality, I do think that words reveal our real (and often subconscious – something like a Freudian slip, minus the phallic obsession) thoughts about reality - what we label things reveals sometimes as much about us, as the thing we label. In the same way that I believe in universal moral objectivity (and that everyone else does to, regardless of how much they may protest) by the fact that every person uses objective moral language of obligation, I also think the way we label ourselves reveals what and how we think about our own worldviews. Even though “atheism” may technically amount to simply a lack of belief in a deity, the fact that atheists commonly label themselves “atheists”, (and ascribe attributes to such a label, such as rationalism, empirical validity, etc.) reveals that functionally speaking “atheism” may in fact actually be what people say that it isn’t – a belief; a system of thought. And if they treat it as a belief, then so will I. What’s good for the goose…

However, what I find most bewildering about this kind of hermetic statement is the sheer unassailability of it. It is declared in such a way as to isolate the speaker from any scrutiny of their own and actual worldview. While atheism, strictly speaking, is not a worldview, terminologically speaking atheism has come to be nearly synonymous with philosophical naturalism, empiricism, scientism, or materialism (or some abominable Frankenteinean amalgamation of them). But this blending of lexicography is not only found in Christian or theistic literature and thought on the issue. If you were to ask an atheist what their worldview is, they often label themselves as “atheists”, as if the nomenclature of “atheism” defines who they are and what they believe – a role classically and principally held by one’s worldview. They will not say, “I am a philosophical naturalist”; they say “I am an atheist”, unless pressured during a debate to defend their position – however since “atheism” tends to be their instinctive result, it again shows that they themselves think of it, practically speaking, as a belief or a positive position. This linguistic slight of hand however, has the desired effect of deflection away from any real scrutiny of their position, let alone their worldview since supplanting “atheism” for “philosophical naturalism” and then calling “atheism” a non-belief makes it seem as if the atheist has no worldview to assail – that they are the pillars of objectivity with no presuppositions or assumptions to scrutinize. It is reminiscent of the Obi Wan mind trick – “this is not the worldview you are looking for” – even though it undoubtedly is.

So what comes of this? Well the atheist gets to treat their atheism as a worldview from which to launch assaults on theism or supernaturalism without fear of reprisal or even the slightest whiff skeptical examination. They get to hold their atheism dogmatically and even possibly “religiously” – having conventions, conferences, publishing journals and periodicals, dedicating books, marketing for the belief in unbelief, forming societies, having weekly/monthly gatherings (worship services?), all while saying that it is not actually a belief. (I wonder if Christians could so easily self-insolate their beliefs if we start calling ourselves “A-atheists”, and positing our beliefs as simply negations of other beliefs/non-beliefs. We would then be able to object “A-atheism is not a belief – we simply reject the rejection of God” and declare all objections henceforth hum drum and be on our merry way. I can see the vein on Hitchens’ forehead throbbing already.) There is even the formation of something like a shared language and mythos - Atheistamese – common clichés, verbiage, and talking points started by the canonized Apostles of Ditchkins (Terry Eagleton’s conflation of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens), Harris and Dennett and company, which has trickled down to the teeming masses of sophomoric bloggers and countless skeptical acolytes - we are on the verge of something like confessional atheism replete with orthodoxy, creeds, apostates and inquisitors. Add in a healthy scoop of social liberalism, a lavish portion of assumptive scientism, and a pinch of western, upper to middle class elitism, and we have the tell-tale savory taste of fundamentalist stew.

Many people have pointed out the absurdity of the position that atheism is not a belief. A common statement, I believe first coined by Dinesh D’Souza, is that I don’t believe in unicorns, but I don’t go around writing books like “Unicorns are not Great” or “The Unicorn Delusion.” No, I simply continue on my way as if unicorns do not exist. I can hear the rumblings of the atheists now. “But no one really believes in unicorns! We write and meet because people still actually believe in God!” Even in my weaker moments, where I am tempted to see the logic in this objection, I still have the intellectual honesty to simply say, “Who cares?” I am not a conservative because other people still actually believe in liberalism, I am one because I believe in conservative principles. As noted above, we never identify ourselves or our beliefs by what we don’t believe. Atheists are not philosophical naturalists or empiricists because there are people who believe in theism, but because they have read too much Hume (or maybe not enough), Dawkins, Harris, or, possibly even too much modern, anti-intellectual, Pelagian, fundamentalistic Christian authors -nothing kills belief in Christianity quite like a healthy dose of irrational, self-righteous, legalistic and explicitly anti-scientific Christianity-lite. But the fact still remains, we simply do not identify ourselves by what we don’t believe - I am not sure why this case of atheism should be any different.

We form social groupings around things that we have in common. It is possible for us to form communities around shared distaste for things – like the Klu Klux Klan’s distaste for other races or the Nazi distaste for Jews – but there is almost always a shared belief – like, again for the Klu Klux Klan and the Nazis, the superiority of the white race. While atheists may say that they gather together for shared unbelief, I suspect that it is actually the sense of shared belief in naturalism that has the strongest pull. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Singer, Dennett and others, are widely read because people want to disagree with what they disagree with, but also because there is a community of belief implicit in the writer-reader relationship. It is shared belief, not unbelief, that gets us to pick up a book and nod our head along with the author when they express more eloquently than we ever could, our very own thoughts and presuppositions – when what they say has that good ol’ ring of truth in our ears.

I have seen this with many of my friends on various blog sites – post after post is dedicated to knocking Christians, religion, faith, the Bible, or those who would disagree with him – but rarely (I am tempted to say never since so long as I have been on here I have not witnessed it) do any of them post anything on what they positively believes. We only can infer what they believes based on what he rejects and by gathering fragmented statements throughout the threads – by the philosophical naturalism that oozes between every letter like the grout that holds tiles in place. Maybe this is like the elementary boy likes girl syndrome. Since he doesn’t know how to express his affection for God, he lashes out in fits of rage. The more vitriolic it gets, the more impassioned he actually becomes; the more he wants to sit at her table the more alone he feels and thus the more he lashes out – just a thought. But then again, why would someone actually publish their worldview and leave it open for scrutiny when they can simply attack someone else’s, forever sheltering themselves from any kind of honest reflection or hostile examination. It is the irony of the skeptic that they are skeptical of everything except their own skepticism, that they demand empirical evidence for everything except their own Empiricism. This is just one more example of the Bible’s true insight – the atheists may want to claim that atheism is not a belief, but we really will know them by their fruit.

Israel in Egypt – Historical Fact or Later Fiction? Part 2

2011-06-20T20:53:00.000-07:00

Israel in Egypt – Historical Fact or Later Fiction?

Part 2

Part 1 - http://logical-theism.blogspot.com/2011/05/israel-in-egypt-historical-fact-or.html

I will here be continuing the argumentation that Israel in Egypt and the Exodus cycle was not a late priestly invention but was a historical reality. You can find part 1 of this article in the link directly above.

1. The intentional lack of a proper name for the Pharaoh during the Moses cycle reveals an earlier Egyptian form of polemics, rather than a later Babylonian or Assyrian one.

a. It has been long debated whether or not the omission of Pharaoh’s name in the Moses cycle was accidental (due to ignorance) or intentional. Considering the evidence listed above, IF the Moses cycle was a product of a returning scribe in the middle of the First Millennium he would have been unlike any writer before or after until the modern era in the light of his massive and complex knowledge of socio-rhetorical devices, linguistical structures, centuries past etymologies, and various historical and cultural nuances. Should we really expect that a writer literally 2000 years ahead of his time (who knew methods of historical analysis that we didn’t even invent until the 20^th century) would simply forget a main character’s name?

b. In light of this, many scholars have come to think that the omission of the Pharaoh’s name in the exodus tradition to be an intentional polemical device. It is no accident that in the same narrative that the reader learns the personal name of the Hebrew God (YHWH) and how powerful he is, that his arch rival in the story is left anonymous and shown to be totally impotent in the events.

c. This was a very common (almost universal) polemical device used during the New Kingdom and found in many inscriptions. (We find good examples of this in the annuls of Thutmose III, Amenhotep II, and Seti I during the Ramisside period).

i. It was used to show the total domination of one’s enemies. They were shown to be dominated by being omitted by name from history (a funny modern illustration can be seen in Harry Potter’s “he who is not to be named”).

d. If the narratives were written later during the First Millennium after Israel returned to the land and its scribes had all been educated in Babylonian or Assyrian courts, then we should expect the narrative to reflect their practice later titled by historians as “damnatio memoriae” – literally, damnation of memory. In this practice the conquered enemies names would be meticulously kept on record and would often be written on pots and dashed to the ground – symbolically demolishing them.

i. This practice was almost universal in all Assyrian, Babylonian and Aramean texts and only developed very late in Egyptian history.

ii. In fact we find in later Biblical traditions (such as Kings and Chronicles) that were written contemporaneous with Babylon and Assyria that we find the scrupulous record keeping of the defeated kings of Israel. So we find the two traditions (that of the exodus and that of the monarchy) actually using the polemical devices that were common during their time of composition.

2. The details of the opposition of the Hebrews dovetails well with the traditional dating and of its political climate.

a. We know that during early to middle Second Millennium (ca 2000-1400BCE), large numbers of Semites were present in Egypt not only due to famine and drought in the land but also as a result of military captivity. Egypt was literally teeming with Semitic immigrants. These conditions simply did not exist to such a degree after the expulsion of the Hyksos. For The children of Abraham to migrate to Egypt to escape famine in Canaan would have been common faire during that time period but would have been out of place during the later post-exile period.

b. There is a strange comment in Exodus 12:38 that says a “mixed multitude” went up with Israel. This is most likely a reference to the large number of other Semites who joined with Israel and likely converted to Judaism in response to the mighty works of YHWH. This would also explain why Israel went from being quite small to a powerhouse so rapidly. We sometimes are fooled by the later legal pronouncements of God to not comingle with other Semitic tribes and assume that this was always the case. But we have to remember that the Exodus event and the giving of the law following WERE the nationalizing events and would have included this “mixed multitude” who came up out of Egypt with the children of Abraham. It may not be too far off to say that proto-Israel was actual a melting pot of many different Semitic people. (This may also explain the some of the obscure dietary and custom laws that would need to be put in place to conform outsiders to their new tribe.)

c. Moses request for the Israelites to have time off to worship their God was actually common practice during this period. He was actually quite right to reasonably expect Pharaoh to give his people a furlough to go and worship. It would have been actually quite culturally shocking that the request was not initially granted.

d. I do not identify the Hyksos with the Hebrews (nor the Apiru – lit. habiru) but we do know that after the Hyksos expulsion, Semites were commonly viewed as possible subversives. We now have evidence of massive building projects during the 18^th dynasty following the expulsion of the Hyksos in their previous territory of Avaris/Pi-Ramesses. It is unquestioned that Semites were the primary labor force for these building projects.

3. Many words in Exodus cycle are clearly Egyptian in their etymology, something that we would not expect if the texts were written centuries later by authors trained in Babylonian and Assyrian culture.

English Hebrew Egyptian

a. “Basket” tebat db3t

b. “papyrus” gome’ km3

c. “pitch” zapet dft/sft

d. “reeds” sup twfy

e. “river” haye’or itrw

i. What is so interesting about this one is that the normal Hebrew word for river (nahar) is not used but rather haye’or is used which is a transliteration of the Egyptian word itrw. In fact the absence of the t from the Hebrew transliteration poses even further proof for an early composition because the omission of the t would match perfectly with the 18^th Dynasty vocalization that was no longer used in the middle of the First Millennium. So how would a post-exile Jewish scribe know how to transliterate into Hebrew a specific Egyptian vocalization from 1000 years before?

f. River’s “brink” sapah spt

i. This one is also interesting because again the Hebrew is not one of the the normal words for a river bank or edge (yad, peh/panim, gadah or qaseh) but is a transliteration of one commonly used in Second Millennium Egyptian specifically for the edge of the Nile. (This same oddity also occurs in the Joseph cycle at Genesis 41:3 and 17)

There will be much more to follow.

Part 1 - http://logical-theism.blogspot.com/2011/05/israel-in-egypt-historical-fact-or.html

The Noetic Affects and Effects of Sin and Grace

2011-06-05T17:11:00.001-07:00

Directed Study - The Noetic Affects and Effects of Sin and Grace

Even Now - A Poem

2011-06-01T23:18:00.000-07:00

Even Now

By Tyler Vela

Even now sit I In rags of waste

Garments stained, Prayers in haste

Eyes afoul, Lips unclean

Wayward heart and envy green

But even so, with death drawn near

My head is high, I have no fear

For if my soul should lose its way

I have this hope, No deep dismay

The Lord of hosts in heaven crowned

Sin cast out and justice found

A feeble man no more am I

All find rest in vast supply

So I’ll tarry here for my time

Until I’m called to joy sublime

And if you must seek me out

Follow the fold amongst the devout

And there be I in humbled state

Til my Lord ends my wait

So singeth I my song of love

For the Glorious God, Christ above

Did Jesus Predict the Rapture within 40 Years of his Death? Part 2

2011-05-29T17:39:00.000-07:00

The Problem of “γενεὰ αὕτη” (“this generation”) and

“πάντα ταῦτα” (“these things”) in Matthew 24

Part 1 - http://logical-theism.blogspot.com/2011/05/did-jesus-predict-rapture-within-40.html

Part 2 – Sensus Plenior and Progressive Revelation

Introduction

Before I continue on with an examination of the specific passage under discussion, it seems necessary to take a step back and make some methodological and theological qualifications that will be of significant importance to our examination of the text. While entire books can and have been written on the topics of this section of our discussion, due to the limited space my treatment of it here will be almost hopelessly brief. However we simply cannot proceed any further without at least an introductory knowledge of these topics.

Within hermeneutics (the art and science of interpretation) theologians have long recognized the literary use of typology in Hebrew literature. While it is present and even prevalent in other texts besides the Bible, one simply cannot adequately read the Bible without recognizing the wide spread, and often foundational uses of sensus plenior in types (shadows), theme resolution, and double fulfillment. The import of these various hermeneutical methods may not be immediately clear until they are applied in further sections of this series. Since I am seeking brevity to a degree, this section will primarily involve some brief definitions and then several examples from Biblical passages to illustrate their usage.

Progressive Revelation

Genesis 3:15 has long been dubbed the Proto-Evangelion, which translates to the “first gospel.” However useful this title is for this specific verse is beside the point. What is of importance to our discussion here is that it is a prime example of what Christians mean when we talk about progressive revelation. Genesis 3:15 reads,

¹⁵ And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel.

Here we find God pronouncing his judgment on the serpent for his role in instigating the fall of humanity into sin and death. This curse is at the same time immediate and eschatological. It is like a judge pounding his hammer in sentencing capital punishment, but without reference to the date of execution. From this day forth the serpent is on death row, desperately raging against the dying of the light. Christians have long seen this as the very first Biblical proclamation of the victory that will be achieved by Jesus’ death on the cross. They notice that it will be a human (seed of the woman) who will be the final victor over Satan. And while the serpent may bruise the heel of Christ (when he dies for a time) it will ultimately be that very heel that crushes the head the of the serpent. Yet what we notice instantly from a passage like this is that not everything that can be said is mentioned about this struggle between the powers and principalities of this world and the people of God throughout history. Not everything that can be said about the reason for or the outcome of the death and resurrection of Jesus can be found within Genesis 3:15. It makes no mention of the substitutionary nature of the atonement, the sheer grace of God’s election, justification or sanctification of believers. Nothing is said to the effect that we are only saved by grace, through faith, and not by works. In fact, the proto-evangelion is only a slightest foreshadow of the later reality, the most minute taste of the what is to come. Yet it is vitally important to driving the narrative of redemption of the first Adam to the second. It propels the story forward as the people of God, languishing under sin, death and condemnation, constantly look to the hills for the first sign of the coming savior, the seed of the woman who was promised, the Anointed One, the Christ.

And it is in this propulsion that the concept of progressive revelation is most prominent. We see that God did not desire to reveal everything that there is to know about himself, about us, about the cosmos, about sin and death and redemption. In fact, what we find over and over is that God is God who is pleased to address his people in their historic context, condescend to speak to them in language accessible to them, and to reveal as much of himself as is needed to guide the people of that time forward toward redemption. We must remember that there was a time when not everyone had the full counsel of a complete Bible to inform their lives. They lived at a certain time in history in which the world was viewed entirely differently than how we view it today. The ancient world had different views of the nature of the cosmos, the meaning of life, the priorities of daily life, of government, religion, culture, and even a fundamentally different worldview. For example, it becomes almost impossible for us to understand the world of Genesis 1 through the functional ontology of the time, because we are so steeped in a modern, scientifically driven material ontology.

This is all to say that God spoke to people where they were. He did not require them to change their cognitive structures, worldviews, or cultures in an instant just to understand who God was, what humanity’s place in the cosmos was, and what God was doing in history. When missionaries go into other cultures they often have to “contextualize” their message in order to effectively minister in a foreign culture. This means that they must find a way to communicate using that culture’s language, history, worldview and iconography but maintain the core message that they want to convey. We could say that God was the ultimate contextualizer. God did not give lectures about everything that a person would need to know about the nature of the universe, of matter, of disease, of evolution, of science, art, literature, morality, etc. God gave us stories. And in a sense, a story can more easily endure, transcend, motivate and undermine any one culture to appreciated the world over.

This then brings us to our main area of discussion for this section. That God, being the grand author, the one who saw redemptive history from beginning to end, like a master story crafter, sets certain balls in motion that will find fuller significance later in the story. This really is a sign of a master literary mind. How often have you marveled when reading your favorite book or watching your favorite movie, that you notice something that seemed so trivial or at least less than profound coming to a full blossom at the dénouement of the story; when all loose ends are fastened and all questions answered. Even the stories that end with a mystery, a question, a new quest for the truth, are so powerful because they have been building toward such a conclusion – the quest, the question itself had been there the entire time, lurking in the shadows; growing, building, gaining speed and significance. This is the difference between stories where the climax fails, at which we are angered to have wasted our time on the story, and the ones that the ending question excites us to delve into the story again in a perpetual quest for answers that we know will never come. It is only when we realize that the story itself is fully expressed in the quest, that it all points to the fact that in the end there will be no finish line, just another bend in the road, that we fully appreciate these stories.

Should it not surprise us then that the Bible, “the greatest story ever told,” should have elements of both? That a theme or an image or event that seemed to have one significance early in the story should come to full blossom to another in its climax? But that it would also lead us so powerfully to a quest? To unanswered questions? Is it not fitting that Revelation, the final book in the canon, should be so littered with Old Testament imagery that the only way to really understand it is to start over at the beginning of the narrative, when God created the heavens and earth that came to renewal at the close of Revelation?

Before moving on we should note however that progressive revelation is not quite the same as an evolved revelation. It does not mean that what is said early in the story evolves or changes as the story progresses. As we will see, what can be considered a type will go unmentioned for nearly the entire canon before it gets picked up again. It does not go through changes. It is simply planted, germinates, then blossoms in its full splendor later on. It also does not mean that God will say one thing early in the narrative, change his mind, and say something later. While some skeptics want to say that the Bible will often contradict previous statements, I am fairly convinced that this is simply not the case, and I have never been presented with any veridical examples of it. (The examples are often given by those of very little education in material they are addressing, following a total lack or even explicit rejection of study of the historical, cultural, theological and linguistic contexts of the passage, based on inexcusably shallow interpretations of the ENGLISH text, and without any awareness of their own ineptitude.)

Sensus Plenior

Sensus plenior (SP) in Bible is actually a kind of umbrella category for the other terms that will follow as they are more specific applications of SP. Sensus plenior is a latin term that means, literally, “fuller sense” or “deeper meaning” and is used to refer to those passages that speak of a person(s), event, or theme that has an immediate meaning in its original context but that looks beyond them to a fuller or deeper realization, recapitulation, application or resolution in a future person(s) or event. While some definitions treat these meanings are primary and secondary meaning, I find these categories to be less than helpful since the secondary (plenary) meaning often has a more weighty importance in the overall scope of the Bible.

SP is often expressed in terms of typology, theme-resolution, and double fulfillment. Here I will only be giving a brief definition of each followed by an example or two for each. I recognize that entire books can and have been written on these issues and that the extent to which we should observe each of these in Scripture is hotly debated, and thus am under no delusion that the remainder of this section will be a sufficient treatment of these topics. What I am hoping for however is simply to present the concepts as they will be employed in our later discussion of Jesus’ statements in Matthew 24 and other passages we will explore.

Two major expressions of SP are typology and double fulfillment. (There are others such as theme fulfillment, metaphor, etc. but we are only concerned to address these two here.)

1. Typology

a. A prior person, place or event is the prototype or indicator of a future antitype. Theologians also talk in terms of “shadow” and “fulfillment” when addressing these passages.

b. Examples:

i. Adam – This is a common example and one that Paul in Romans 5 himself teases out. We see that while Adam was the first human to enter into a covenantal relationship with God, that Jesus is the fulfillment of that. Where Adam broke the covenant and brought death to all those whom he represented in the covenant of works after him, Jesus succeeded and brought life to all those whom he represented in the covenant of redemption. Adam’s failure as a covenant breaker, pointed toward the need for a covenant keeper. Adam as the bringer of death, pointed toward one who would be the bringer of life.

ii. Israel – Where Israel wandered and failed for 40 years in the desert, Jesus was directed and succeeded in the wilderness for 40 days. Where the Israelites sinned in their disdain for the bread that God had provided for them, Jesus succeeded in his love for the bread (the word of God) that he had been provided. Where Israel was called like a “son” by God when called from Egypt (Hosea 11:1-4), Jesus was God’s son whom was called as a child out of Egypt.

iii. Prophet, Priest and King – A prophet was one who spoke to the people for God. Jesus spoke to the people as God. A priest was one who interceded for the people before God, Jesus interceded as God for the people. A priest needed to atone for themselves before they brought an offering to God that was imperfect and would only suffice for a time. Jesus was the perfect priest who needed no cleansing or atonement for himself and who offered the perfect sacrifice once and for all. The king ruled over Israel under the guidance of God in attempt to bring about justice and righteousness but only ruled for a time, and often unsuccessfully. Jesus is the eternal king who rules as God in perfect justice and righteousness.

2. Double Fulfillment

a. A statement, prophecy or theme may have not only an immediate application but will also have perpetual later application as history unfolds. A common illustration given to show what is meant here is that of a mountain range. In fig. 2.4 we see first a mountain from a great distance. It appears to be far off but when we draw closer we find that it is not only one mountain, but a range of mountains. So with double fulfillment it is that the author may see only one fulfillment when they pen their verses, but as history unfolds we find that there may be several actualized fulfillments of the verse. What is important to note here however is that contained within the original contexts of the passages are hints that it is referring to more than one fulfillment.

b. Examples

i. Immanuel. In Isaiah 7 we find this statement: ⁴Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. ¹⁵He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. ¹⁶ For before the boy knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted. ¹⁷ The LORD will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father’s house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah—the king of Assyria."

Many people have done wonderful work on full expositions of this text and I myself preached an entire sermon on it (listen to it here: http://logical-theism.blogspot.com/2010/08/ahaz-at-crossroads-isaiah-71-17.html). Here I am simply going to state that the Immanuel child was likely a child born to the prophet prior to Judah’s fall to the Assyrian King Tiglath Pileser III. Yet when we look at the passage we can see that this child could not have been the only referent of the passage. As we keep reading further down past the citation above, we see that the child points to another child, another Immanuel. Not a child who would show us “Immanuel” (“God with us”) but a child who would actually be Immanuel. A child who would be God come to dwell among us. (Incidentally this points us also to the significance of the tabernacle. God would dwell with his people in the tabernacle, but would later quite literally dwell with his people in the person of Jesus.)

ii. The abomination that causes desolation. Daniel 9:27 says, And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.” While commentators go back and forth about what is actually meant, what they all agree on is that what is being referred to is an act that is considered “unclean” by the Jews being performed in the temple. This text will be vital to our later discussion so I will be very brief here, but we can ask, when was this or will it be fulfilled? Well some want to say that it refers to Antiochus IV Epiphanes in the mid-second century BCE. Antiochus had set up an alter to Zeus in the Second Temple and then to add insult to injury, sacrificed a pig on the alter of God sometime around 167 BCE. Other scholars point to a similar incident with the Romans who destroyed Jerusalem and set up the standards of the Emperor (considered by many to be divine) in the temple courts. Other scholars would look a few years previous to Nero, while others look to a future Antichrist who will fit the bill. Some see it in Hitler, others Stalin, some Bin Ladin. Others think he has yet to be identified. The problem here is that each of these commentators is looking for one and only one fulfillment While it is possible that none of these are the events that Daniel was referring to, it is possible that each of these (admittedly more drastic than the previous one) are growing fulfillments of the passage? In fact when we look at John’s 1^st epistle we see that he does not have in his mind one single Antichrist but says that “it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come” (1 John 2:18). Does this mean that John does not think that there will not be one final and antitypal antichrist? Not at all. But it does show that John is comfortable identifying many fulfillments of the antichrist motif. It is possible that he has Antiochus, Nero, the Roman armies and a future Antichrist in mind.

Now that we have examined (though admittedly extremely briefly) these concepts, we will be prepared in our next section to begin our examination of the interpretation of the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 that I find to be most compelling; not because it simply “works” to save an inerrantist view of the Bible, but because it is the most plausible interpretation given the theology, hermeneutic, and worldview of a 1^st century Jewish teacher like Jesus.

In the following sections I will be arguing that Jesus did intend his statements to be fulfilled within approximately 40 years but that what he was referring to was not his Second Coming or the end of the world, but to the coming of the kingdom of God as expressed in the judgment and destruction of the temple in CE 70. In addition, Jesus most likely was using typology and double fulfillment to point beyond these events to fuller and more complete realizations of these events. As he was warning his listeners to be prepared and well equipped for the end of Jerusalem which they could see the signs for and be ready for (thus the warning to head to the hills which would be utterly futile at the end of the world), how much more so should they attempt to prepare their souls for the final coming of Jesus to usher in culmination of all redemptive history? I intend to show that Jesus did not falsely predict anything, but was rather using an event such as the judgment on Jerusalem to point beyond itself to a greater eschatological reality.

For further study on these topics I recommend the following books:

The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses by Vern Poythress

Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture by Graeme Goldsworthy

Gospel Centered Hermeneutics by Graeme Goldsworthy

Knowing Scripture by R.C. Sproul

Look to the Rock by Alec Motyer

Primary and Plenary Sense by F.F. Bruce (article) http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/plenary-sense_bruce.pdf

Part 3 - http://logical-theism.blogspot.com/2011/07/did-jesus-predict-rapture-within-40.html

Israel in Egypt – Historical Fact or Later Fiction? Part 1

2011-05-27T22:56:00.000-07:00

Israel in Egypt – Historical Fact or Later Fiction?

Part 1

After listening to the recent episode of the Imaginary Friends Show podcast that I was a guess on, I have received many comments from my friends here on facebook. Many of them have been very encouraging and appreciative of my comments on the show. Others have been challenging in their comments – both from Christians and Atheists. But one of the most common questions that people have been asking me is concerning the section on this history of Israel. I was surprised by many of the comments usually for one of two reasons. They either seemed blissfully unaware that any real problems existed in the dating of the composition of the Exodus narrative (let alone in the historicity of a proto-Israel outside of the Levant), or they thought it was such an open and shut case that the narratives were composed in the late First Millennium and that the Biblical accounts were total fabrications. Both extremes seem totally out of touch with the research on the issue.

In response to these questions/comments, I will be spending several sections dedicated to explaining why I believe in the historicity of the Egypt/Exodus narrative and hold to the traditional early dating of their compositions. This does not mean that I do not recognize that there are difficulties in adopting such a position. I simply think the weight of the evidence is in that direction.

Before I begin I want to also deal with one objection that I know will be raised against my overall method and then state one presupposition that I will be working off of. The objection is that because I believe the Bible already that I am simply arguing in a circle in order to affirm the Bible. I think that any commonsense reading of what I am about to present will refute that claim on its own, but I would also like to specifically state that I am giving arguments here for exactly WHY I believe the Biblical accounts. We Christians are commonly asked for “evidence” for why we believe what we believe. It is to that end that I wish to attempt to achieve in these next few notes. I will not be arguing that the Bible is true because it is inspired or anything of that nature – but rather that the accounts are historically reliable, composed at the traditional early dates and accord with everything we know about the Ancient Near East (ANE) during that time frame. I think this objection is more ideologically driven against anyone who attempts to defend the Bible in any manner and is not substantive in the slightest.

The presupposition that I will be working with is one that I think any historian or any student of history will have no problem conceding. That presupposition is merely that ancient writers are not modern writers. It seems somewhat redundant and unnecessary to make this point explicitly but let me hash it out a little bit. By this assumption I mean to imply several things. Firstly, the ancient writer should be understood to write within the confines of normal literary structures that were contemporaneous with their culture and should not be forced to keep a standard of modern historiography our journalistic exactitude (if we can even say that is accomplished today). This means that the ancient author should be read according to his original authorial intent within the structures of literature at the time – including factors such as genre, context (historical, cultural, political, etc), themes, polemics, rhetoric, etc. Secondly, is that ancient writers did not spend 4 years for an undergraduate degree, several years for a Masters, even countless more for a PhD or post doctorate work, all focused on the historical insights of centuries of historical study, archeology, epigraphy, onomasiology, etc. They would have been almost completely unaware of the cultural practices, linguistical structures, etymologies, rhetorical devices, etc. from generations past of their own culture, let alone centuries removed from another culture. This will come into play most dramatically when we realize that a late First Millennium Hebrew scribe would have known next to nothing about the finer nuances of Second Intermediate or Empire Age Egyptian culture, politics, rhetoric, polemical devices, culture, etc.

Let me also list my sources for the next few notes that I will be composing on this subject. I will primarily be relying on the following texts (though this list is not even close to being exhaustive)

ed. Block, Darrell. Israel: Ancient Kingdom or Late Invention (collection of essays)

Currid, John. Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament.

Hoffmeier, James. Israel in Egypt.

Kitchen, Kenneth A. On The Reliability of the Old Testament.

ed. Long, Baker, and Wenham. Windows into Old Testament History.

None of these books are really “page turners” and are sometimes quite technical and dry – which may explain the endurance of the leftist extreme who rejects all arguments for the traditional dating as passé. Though this may also be due to the limited range of “evidence” allowed to be part of the discussion. Many of you who listened to the episode will undoubtedly remember Jake’s comments about the total lack of “shits” found in the Sinai desert. While the discussion was not nearly deep enough to evaluate Jake’s range of acceptable evidences, what I commonly find is that many skeptics will preclude many arguments that do not rely solely on empirically verifiable “evidences”. However, any trained in historical study knows that while these kinds of evidences are great, they are rarer than we think. Yet historical study moves on just fine due to the many other kinds of evidences are arguments available to us.

And now let us look at some of these evidences. Many of them will be of the kind that I call “dovetail” evidence. That is, that the cumulative evidence is better explained by one context than others. For much of this we will see that an earlier Second Intermediate Period or Empire Period Egyptian context fits the composition of the Egypt/Exodus narrative rather than a later post-exilic one.

1. Source criticism is being strongly reexamined and often abandoned in favor or more literary approaches to the text.

a. When someone now tries to tout source criticism as if it is gospel truth and not what it really is these days (a theory in crisis) they reveal a reliance of quite outdated research and information. We can find good examples of this in the works of such scholars as Charles Isbell, Gordon Davies, G. Fischer, Thomas Thompson, etc.

i. In fact speaking of source theory, Thompson says that it is “no longer sufficient to maintain such a radical interpretation of narrative, one which carries us so far from any immediate reading of the text.” (Thompson, Origin Tradition. p155)

b. We have come to find that key words, themes, and whole narrative “units” OFTEN cross the boundaries set down by traditional source critics.

2. There was a massive influx of Semites into Egypt during the Old Kingdom (ca. 2190BCE) to the Second Intermediate Period (ca. 1786-1550 BCE).

a. Epigraphic and archeological evidence all point to the fact this massive immigration to Egypt from the Levant was to seek relief from drought and famine in Canaan. (we will also see later that there was also some who were brought during this period as military captives).

b. If a later date is assumed (commonly suggested to be post-exile during the mid to late First Millennium) there seems to be no corresponding period in which the narrative would dovetail with these historical conditions. After the expulsion of the Hyksos at the end of the Seventeenth Dynasty, there seems to be a drastic decline in Semetic presence with no other possible periods of massive migration to Egypt that would correspond to the Biblical events. These massive levels of Semitic presence in Egypt and the common pattern of migration to escape drought and famine correspond nicely with the “Patriarchical period” of Israel’s history.

3. Onomasiology (the study of names) reveals that the names used in the Joseph/Moses/Exodus cycles are clearly Egyptian in etymology (though their exact etymological roots are not always agreed upon) and some are only present in their forms during the Second Intermediate and Empire Periods.

a. Examples are:

i. Potiphar

ii. Asenath

iii. Zaphenath-paneah

iv. Hartummim (the “magicians”)

4. Joseph’s title as ruler over Egypt had no known comparative during Israel’s monarchy – but was present during the Second Intermediate and Empire Periods in Egypt.

5. The use of the city names “Rameses” and “Raameses” almost a Millennia after the delta capital was abandoned in 1100 BCE would make little to no sense.

6. Joseph was bought as a slave for 20 shekels.

a. The average slave price during the first half of the second millennium was 20 shekels. During the second half of the second millennium, due to inflation, the average price was 30 shekels. By the middle of the first millennium (when many critics want to place the composition of exodus) the average price was between 50 to 60 shekels. Should we expect that the author redacted his own narrative to account for inflation just to try and fool historians that he did not know would ever exist nearly 3000 years later?

These are just an introductory handful of examples. I will be going through my notes that I have made in the past in the sources I listed above and will be compiling a more comprehensive list as I go. But I hope this will be a good start for those who were interested in this topic. There is much more to come.

Did Jesus Predict the Rapture within 40 Years of his Death? Part 1

2011-05-24T11:42:00.000-07:00

The Problem of “γενεὰ αὕτη” (“this generation”) and
“πάντα ταῦτα” (“these things”) in Matthew 24

Part 1 – Introduction and Summation of Categories of Possible Solutions

Preliminary Thoughts on Methodology:

I would like to start with a preliminary statement about the exhortation to read the passage in its “plain” or “literal” sense. This exhortation comes not surprisingly from both the literalists and the critics. (I use “literalist” in a technical sense to refer to those who ascribe to the method of hermeneutics known as the “literal method” and not merely to all people who hold a “literal” understanding of the Bible because, in some sense, this would include all readers to some degree; and I use “critic” to refer to those skeptics who, despite a total lack of hermeneutical, historical, linguistic or Biblical/theological training deem themselves experts in the field but often reveal a surprising lack of clarity, understanding or even basic skills to read an interpret ancient texts). This is not surprising because the literalists often demand that a text can have but one meaning and that meaning is found in a prima facie reading of the text. (However, they often violate their own hermeneutic when it suits their theological framework and will often interpret clear passages by ambiguous ones thus violating the hermeneutical principle of the analogy of faith – or in plain terms, that the clear and explicit should always interpret the ambiguous and metaphorical.) On the other hand, the critics will often only interact with the literalists and thus assume that their reading of the passage is the only valid one and thus that any Christian who wants to hold to a “literal” reading of the passage (an equivocation of the meaning of “literal” is often glossed over) must understand it as the literalists do or else be in violation of some abhorrent scripture twisting. It is almost humorous that neither perspective sees how much in agreement they actually are even though they think they are diametrically opposed to one another.

However, is a “plain” or “literal” reading of a passage the best? Well the answer is complicated. It seems that it should be yes and no. A “plain” reading is a virtue but what constitutes a plain or literal meaning is much more nuanced than we are aware of at first. The problem should becoming immediately obvious when we consider what the “plain” reading of a text would be for a first century Jew and a 21st century American. They would be drastically different. We must never forget that the Bible was written at a specific time in history, at a specific location, was steeped the normal worldview of the culture, and employed symbols, illustrations, metaphors, grammar, rhetoric, etc. of that time period. A humorous example can be seen if we were to look at the use of “heart” in the Old Testament. If we were to translate “heart” literally from the Hebrew we should actually use a term like “bowels” or “pit of the stomach”. So why do we use heart? Because our English translators have taken the concept meant by the Hebrew (the bowels were seen as the seat of emotion and personhood in the Ancient Jewish world) and translated it into the English parallel (“heart” is the organ we use to represent the seat of emotion and personhood in our western culture). If the translators had simply left it as “bowels” can we imagine what kind of strange interpretations people would have if they had no understanding of the historical and cultural contexts of that idiom?

To make problems even more severe for our text, we can also consider that in writing his Gospel, Matthew was a 1st century Jew, translating the Aramaic sayings of Jesus into Koine Greek in order to present his message to Roman gentiles. In light of this we can see how layers of meaning or contexts begin to build layer upon layer so that a “plain” reading becomes much more work than simply reading it and deciding what makes the best sense to our modern worldviews.

Thus for us to understand the “plain” reading of a passage, it is imperative that we are willing to do the leg work to understand in historical, cultural, political, religious, literary, rhetorical, polemical, grammatical, etc. contexts that may be operating within our given text.

The Problem Stated:

In Matthew 24:34 we find Jesus making the statement “Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.” If “these things” refers to all of the statements made previously in the chapter, and if those statements refer to what will happen immediately preceding the return of Christ and the end of the world, and if “this generation” means the 40 year generation of those present while Jesus was speaking, then it seems that Jesus made a false prediction.

If Jesus was predicting his return within 40 years of the Olivet Discourse, and now nearly 2000 years have passed, the Jesus would have been clearly mistaken. This is an obvious problem for those that want to say Jesus is a messenger from God, let alone the perfect incarnation of the 2nd person of the God-head.

Categories of Possible Solutions:

There are two categories of solutions to this problem. The first has to do with the interpretation of “γενεὰ αὕτη” and the second has to do with the interpretation of “πάντα ταῦτα”.

Let us look at the three possible solutions that fall under the first category.

1.      “γενεὰ αὕτη” means something other than a 40 year generation. It is possible that “γενεὰ αὕτη” could mean something other than the generation following Jesus’ sermon. The Greek word γενεὰ is commonly used as a synonym for γενóς (“race,” “stock,” “people”) and thus may refer to the Jewish race, or even to a kind of people (such as sinful humanity). However, this seems to be unlikely since ever Biblical example of this kind of usage of the Greek word γενεὰ always has an adjectival modifier. For example, we can see Matthew 12:39, 16:4 - “γενεὰ πονηρὰ καὶ μοιχαλὶς” (“an evil and adulterous generation”); or Mark 8:38 – “τῇ γενεᾷ ταύτῃ τῇ μοιχαλίδι καὶ ἁμαρτωλῷ,” (“in this adulterous and sinful generation”). In all these examples we can see that “generation” could easily be understand as “people” (i.e. in Matthew 12:39 “An evil and adulterous PEOPLE seeks for a sign…” is quite a legitimate rendering). However in Matthew 24:34 such a rendering would seem strained. While we do have extra-Biblical examples of an unmodified γενεὰ referring to kind of people rather than a generation (such as in Homer or Herodotus), and thus is possible in Matthew 24:34, this seems to strain at credulity considering no other Biblical example can be found.

2.      “γενεὰ αὕτη” means something other than the generation of Jesus’ audience. Another option is that “γενεὰ αὕτη” could refer to a generation, but rather than being the generation of Jesus’ audience, it could be the people he referred to previously who would see the signs of his coming. If the signs do not begin until 5000 CE then Jesus would be referring to that generation. It will be that generation who sees the signs that will not perish prior to Jesus’ second coming. However there seems to be two major problems with this view.

     a.       The first problem is that one would have explain why Jesus would use the near demonstrative “αὕτη” (“this”) rather than a form of the far demonstrative “ἐκεῖνος” (“that”). While grammatically both are technically acceptable (since, if this interpretation is correct Jesus had introduced the subject and thus can legitimately refer to it as “this”), it simply strains at feasibility to read “this” as “that” in a future prediction; especially considering that Jesus had no issues with it previously.
     b.      The second problem is that this interpretation seems to make the statement just utterly inconsequential. What sense would it make to explicitly refer to something that is necessarily implied by something else? If the tribulation would only last 7 years (the view commonly held by those who attempt to use this objection to the problem in order to say that Jesus was referring to the generation of Jews living at the time of the tribulation), then what sense would it make to say that that generation would not perish before the end of the tribulation. It would be like stating that a generation would not pass away before Obama will leave office. Well if Obama can only be in office a maximum of 5 more years, then obviously 40 years will not pass before 5 years will. This interpretation simply makes the statement utterly trivial.

3.      “γενεὰ αὕτη”, when reverse translated into Aramaic, means something other than a 40 year generation. While this interpretation is similar to that of the first it has one major advantage. It states that the problem is only an apparent problem with the Greek text, and not a substantive problem for Jesus as a prediction. In fact, in other translations of the NT the problem is also not readily apparent – such as the Syriac Peshitta which uses the term sharbetā which almost equally can mean generation or race. Thus the problem is only in Matthew’s Greek translation (though “γενεὰ” still may have been his best option) and not in Jesus’ actual prediction. In Aramaic it would be equally likely that Jesus could have meant “this generation” as he would have meant “this race/people”. In fact, I will come back to this as a possible double entendre when we consider that the Olivet Discourse often employs the concepts of double fulfillment and typology.

The second part of this essay will deal with the second, and in my opinion the strongest, solutions to the problem. This is the solution that says the problem is resolved not by looking at what “γενεὰ αὕτη” means, but at what “πάντα ταῦτα” refers to. I will argue that “γενεὰ αὕτη” does in fact refer to the generation of Jesus’ audience (though with some implicit and intentional winks to double fulfillment and typology) but that “πάντα ταῦτα” does not primarily refer to the events surrounding the second coming of Christ at the end of the world, but the judgment of God executed against the Temple at the end of the age of the Old Covenant in 70 CE. These events only typologically point us to the return of Christ and the end of the world.

It will be my contention that this would have been the “plain” reading of the passage as it was understood by both Jesus and his 1st century Jewish audience.

Part 2 - http://logical-theism.blogspot.com/2011/05/did-jesus-predict-rapture-within-40_29.html

God Loves a Cheerful Giver

2010-11-10T22:02:00.000-08:00

“God loves a cheerful giver.”
(2 Corinthians 9:7)

It is interesting to notice that in the Bible, God’s love for his people is almost always said in the past tense with the occasional “everlasting” or “steadfast” modifier attached. While I am positive of God’s love for the saints past, present, and future and that for anyone to deny any of these is to deny the very heart of the gospel, it is still very curious that God’s word only uses the present tense to describe God’s love for us in reference to two categories: cheerfully giving and disciplining those He loves (Pr. 3:13; Heb 12:6; Rev 3:19). While books can be written, (and probably should be), on God’s discipline of those He loves, this article will only deal with giving cheerfully.
For over a decade I have worked everything from retail to restaurants, cafes to coffee shops, and family dining to fine dining, so it is needless to say that I have had a fair share of exposure to the public as a whole. In doing so, I have noticed a troubling trend among Christians in the marketplace. We are, on a whole, far from generous and can be quite tightfisted or at best calculatingly exact. On Sundays following church services around the nation, Christians flood their local coffee shops, cafes, diners, malls, and supermarkets. One would expect that after being in the presence of God and singing praise of his graciousness to us, we would, in turn, reflect that light to others. If I told you that I had been hit by a semi-truck going 90mph but showed not even a single bruise, you would know that I was either lying or the biggest miracle you had possibly ever seen. Yet Christians do this week in and week out. How can we have an encounter with the Living God and walk away unchanged? Sundays should be the best day of work for those of us who find ourselves in situations where we must work. Sadly it is the worst day for nearly every employee in every customer service based industry. Waiter’s around the country know the cliché, “Well, they gave 10% to God so how could they afford giving 15% to me?” This is an indictment upon the church.
Please do not hear that I am a disgruntled server who is fed up with low percentage tips. Please do hear that I am a disgruntled Christian who is very fed up with my witness being damaged week in and week out because of the undercurrent of tightfistedness among my fellow saints. I am a fellow believer who is tired of hearing my faith, my family and my God mocked because my people are penny-pinching and make sure to tip, down to the penny, the absolute minimum they feel they can get away with.
I do not believe that when God said to be a cheerful giver, he had in mind only what we give at church in tithes and offerings, but rather in every area of our life where money is involved. We do not teach our children to share only so they will share with us alone, but so that they will cultivate an attitude of generosity with everyone that they meet. Our Father is the very same with us and with our possessions. We do not teach our children that the best way to share is so exact that they should only share for 15 minutes if the other child only shared for 15 minutes, or to only share their old doll because their new doll is too precious to them and cost too much for us. Nor do we even teach them to share only with someone who has shared previously with them, but rather to share even in spite of the selfishness of others. Again, this is also what our Father wants for us. Imagine if God sacrificed His only Son’s life just for those of us who shared first! Is this not the gospel? That in spite of our sins, Jesus died for us? (Rom. 5:7)
At Bible college, many of may classmates would be confused on the proper tipping procedure. They would sometimes understand why I would tip $25-$35 on a $100 dinner check, even if they would never do it themselves. Yet when I would tip $5 on a $7 or $8 bill they would protest that it was over 50%. I told them then and I still firmly believe that generosity is not slave to a percentage. The difference between 15% and 65% on a $8 bill is only a couple dollars for me but can make a world of difference for my server. The difference between 15% and 25% on a $100 is two lattes at Starbucks for me, but can completely turn the worst night around for a server. Don’t believe me? Ask anyone you know who works for tips.
Buying a drink at Starbucks can average around $3.50. Will it really hurt to leave them the change for our $5? I guarantee that while you wont feel the difference in your wallet, your barista will remember you from then on out. To prove this point, I once did an experiment with two of my local coffee shops. At one I would tip only the coinage that I received with my change, usually around $.30 to $.50. At the other, I would round up to $5 no matter what I got. This would sometimes be a $2 tip but if all I got was a drip coffee it could sometimes be almost $4. At the end of the month I was just another regular customer at the first coffee shop but at the second I knew all the baristas names, their life stories, who had kids, who was taking what classes and was even invited to several birthday dinners and other special events. What a difference in the opportunities that were now available to witness. A couple dollars here and there can smash down doors to witnessing. Maybe it is possible that God knew what He was talking about with this whole generosity thing?
Another common mistake people make is to give out tracts as replacement for a tip or part of a tip. While it is hard to argue with the logic that a clear presentation of the gospel is of more value than the tip could ever be (in the final analysis), I find that in these instances I must. I promise that a generous tip will have a greater impact when placed in tandem with the tract and not replaced by it. If a tract is given with a stingy tip or no tip at all, it will actually bring more scorn upon it than the person may know. Now, some may say that this is the normal reaction of the lost to mock the gospel which they see as foolishness. While this is true for some who will mock it no matter what, it is more common that the person who leaves the tract is mocked rather than the message of the tract itself when they are stingy.
Remember what Jesus said about giving good gifts, “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?” (Mt. 7:9-10) Your server is hoping for a generous tip, but substituting the tract for it is on par with giving them the stone or the serpent. Imagine that your boss replaced a portion of your salary with catalogues or a magazine subscription that you had no interest in. How many of us would be excited about the new change in our pay scale? Your server feels the same. A tract can be a nice supplement to a tip, but should never replace or decrease it.
A co-worker of mine once had a rare Sunday afternoon. She had Christians who actually knew how to be generous. After three or four tables of 25% tips, a table left a nice tip and a tract. This same woman would have normally ridiculed it with everyone in the kitchen, but I saw her tuck it away with her tips in her purse at the end of the night. She did not convert to Christ right then and there because of money, but old stereotypes of cheap Christians were shattered and she was open to something she would have normally had nothing to do with.
Our Lord said that we cannot serve both God and money. When we pull out our calculators and find out the exact tip down to the penny that we can give to just meet the minimum we show an attitude of heart that we are not cheerfully giving but doing it begrudgingly. When we use a coupon and tip on the total after the discount, we tell the server that we don’t want to be generous with them but want to skate by spending the least money possible. What does a cheerful giver look like? Is it someone with an accountants hat on with a calculator in hand, counting out pennies and rounding down where possible? Or is it someone who wants to bless others in a meaningful way to the glory of God because He was so generous with us?
As a server my witness at work is more dependant on the other Christians who walk through the doors than they can ever know. And I am not alone. Christians in the service industry around the country struggle almost every shift with this. If someone tips 8% after saying “we loved the service and may God bless you,” we hear about it. If someone invites their server to church but doesn’t leave more than a few coins, we hear about it. When someone leaves a tract about the generous love of God but then hypocritically cannot even reflect that generosity themselves, we hear about.
Please take seriously when God says that He loves a cheerful giver. We are not buying converts, but we are smashing down barriers that we have sadly placed ourselves.

Book Review

2010-09-15T17:37:00.000-07:00

The book review of David McAfee's book Disproving Christianity: Refuting the World's Most Followed Religion is now up and posted. Because of the formatting and footnotes. I thought it would be best to post it on Scribd as a pdf. file so that anyone who wants to read it can either read it there, or upload the pdf. file and read it on any system that supports that file.

The review can be found at:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/37521446/Book-Review-of-Disproving-Christianity

I hope you enjoy it and are challenged by it - no matter what your worldview may be.

Book Review

2010-09-11T09:16:00.000-07:00

I am currently in the process of writing a lengthy book review for David McAfee's book Disproving Christianity: Refuting the World's Most Followed Religion. I am finished with the first draft and right now it is in the process of being edited. Once it is publishable, I will post it here, and on Scribd . (Since there is footnoting and those do not translate well on blogspot, I will probably just link the Scribd file here.) I have also been given some offers by Jake Farr-Wharton, host of The Imaginary Friends Show Podcast, and by Nicholas Bruzzese, one of the hosts of The Skeptic's Testament Podcast to come on and do response interviews to the book and answer some questions about the review. McAfee and I have also very briefly discussed a joint point/counterpoint publication as well as possible public debates. We will see what comes of it. Please keep your eyes open for these and other up coming events.

This is Our King

2010-08-09T19:55:00.000-07:00

This is a sermon that I preached on Palm Sunday, 2009 at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Hinsdale IL.

Sodom - A Salvation Story

2010-08-09T19:31:00.000-07:00

This is a sermon that I preached on the Sodom narrative in Genesis 19. I preached it at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Hinsdale, IL last year.

Ahaz at the Crossroads - Isaiah 7:1-17

2010-08-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

This is the sermon that I preached on August 1st at my church (Church in the Canyon, Calabasas CA). I had several requests to post this for people who were unable to make it or live far away.

I hope it blesses you.

The Great Debate - Part II

2010-08-08T15:48:00.000-07:00

This is Part II but wow, the resolution on this one turned out pretty poor because I tried formatting it to use up less space. But the audio should sound the same.

The Great Debate - Part I

2010-08-08T15:37:00.000-07:00

My bad... This is part one even though the graphic says that it is part 2. But really, this is part 1.

Secularism's Ongoing Debt to Christianity

2010-06-02T15:15:00.000-07:00

In his recent post in the online journal American Thinker called “Secularism Ongoing Debt to Christianity,” Secular Atheist and author John D. Steinrucken made quite a surprising admission. One only need to read the title of the article to see that what followed was a drastic departure from the normal anti-religious rhetoric coming from more prominent Atheists and Secularists. And what a change indeed. Rather than claiming that “religion poisons everything,” Steinrucken actually asserts that religion, more specifically the Judeo-Christian conviction, actually is the efficient cause for the wide-spread liberty and freedom that secularism has enjoyed in the West since its inception. Not only does he assert that Secularism was fostered in what could loosely be called “Christendom”, but actually that the fate of Western Secularism is intertwined with the survival of the Judeo-Christian worldview in the West as well. As goes the latter, so goes the former as it were.

What is most striking about his article is the forthright admission of the inability of Secularism to ground any kind of moral standard. This has been a topic of interest on RL for quite some time now, and on this, Steinrucken seems to be on the side of the faithful. Score one for the home team. Now, before all my fellow theists get too elated, Steinrucken is not making the case that such morals are REAL, only that the BELIEF in objective morals, such as can only be grounded by religious convictions about the justice of God, objective truth, and the real and universal value of human persons, is pivotal to the survival of a free Western society.

To that end he says, “Those who doubt the effect of religion on morality should seriously ask the question: Just what are the immutable moral laws of secularism? Be prepared to answer, if you are honest, that such laws simply do not exist! The best answer we can ever hear from secularists to this question is a hodgepodge of strained relativist talk of situational ethics. They can cite no overriding authority other than that of fashion. For the great majority in the West, it is the Judeo-Christian tradition which offers a template assuring a life of inner peace toward the world at large -- a peace which translates to a workable liberal society. ”

Well put. Later he even goes so far as to say, “Secularism has never offered the people a practical substitute for religion.” He briefly alludes to the failed attempt at Secular utopias that ended up causing some of the worst crimes against humanity ever perpetrated in the history of mankind. Those secular attempts for utopia, “when actually put to the test, have not merely come to naught. Attempts during those two centuries to put into practice utopian visions have caused huge sufferings. “ Sadly, we have no want of examples that affirm his statement – Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, Hitler’s Germany, Hoxha’s Albania, Castro’s Cuba, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and on and on. It is no small thing that the most secular century has been, hands down, the bloodiest century in human history – a fulfillment of Nietzsche’s dark prediction that the death of belief God would mark the beginning of the most violent era in human history. People would replace their faith in God with faith in the state – “barbaric nationalistic brotherhoods” as he called them.

We get a sense that Steinrucken has read Nietzsche and has imagined the same fate. What most people don’t know is that Nietzsche did not only make a prediction about the 20th century, but also the 21st - and it doesn’t get any better. Nietzsche saw that the 20th century would at the very least have some residual moral sentiment left over from the 19th century and such a sentiment would curb the barbarism. The 21st century however would have no such sentiment. He predicted a “total eclipse of values.” If it was so easy for the Secular Utopias to marginalize, then criminalize, then euthanize vast swaths of their citizens even with residual values, how much more easy will it be to do so when values are entirely passé? However, where Nietzsche saw the inevitable, Steinrucken desires to avoid such a societal collapse.

Here again I must remind my fellow theists not to get too excited. Steinrucken is not advocating for some widespread conversion to faith. His point is that it is in the secularists’ best interest to see to it that the moral grounding found in the Judeo-Christian tradition is preserved. This is because should secularism do away with that foundation, and then one day find itself in disfavor and itself under the thumb of some radical ideologue hell-bent on purging society of the godless and the infidel, the secularist will have no one to defend them because no one will be left to decry the real injustice of it all.

I will end where he ends, “It is not critical that they themselves believe, only that they should publicly hold in high esteem the institutions of Christianity and Judaism, and to respect those who do believe and to encourage and to give leeway to those who, in truth, will be foremost in the trenches defending us against those who would have us all bow down to a different and unaccommodating faith.”

Article found at: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/secularisms_ongoing_debt_to_ch.html

Mr. T gets it right again! Watch out Chuck Norris!

2010-02-28T17:25:00.000-08:00

On so many anti-theistic and atheistic blogs there are tons of image jokes about theists. Just thought I'd ebb the tide a little bit.

Question about Evolution

2010-02-28T15:03:00.000-08:00

Honest And Open Question

I have always had a question for evolutionists of the Neo-Darwinian persuasion that I have yet to have cogently answered.

I thought of it when reading Coyne’s Why Evolution is True. Coyne states,

“if evolution meant only gradual genetic change within a species, we’d have only one species today—a single highly evolved descendant of the first species. Yet we have many… How does this diversity arise from one ancestral form?” It arises because of “splitting, or, more accurately, speciation,” which “simply means the evolution of different groups that can’t interbreed.” - Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, pp. 5-6.

Here is my question, if speciation involves mutation that creates a new species that can no longer interbreed (since otherwise all life really would all be one genetic species with only varied morphology), then how does an advantageous mutation get spread?

If parent species A births an offspring B with such a significant mutation as to be a new species and incapable of breeding with species A, then how would B reproduce? Would there need to be the EXACT same mutation at the same moment in history and in the same geographical location so that male-B would find female-B and copulate?

I really do hope that someone can explain this since this is one problem with evolution that just seems so fundamentally flawed that I doubt no one has addressed it. Any thoughts?

Logical Arguments for the Existence of God

2010-02-17T15:39:00.000-08:00

There are many arguments for the existence of God that I believe are both valid and sound. However, some I think are more compelling (or should be) than others.

The following are what I believe to be the best logical arguments for the existence of God:

The Transcendental Argument:

1. Laws of logic exist and are binding on human thought.
2. If there is no God, 1 would not hold.
3. 1 does hold.
4. Therefore God exists.

(this is the abbreviated version. For a full version see: http://www.carm.org/transcendental-argument)

The Ontological Argument (Plantinga’s “victorious” model):

(Your understanding of this model will be greatly influenced depending on your understanding of modal logic.)

Definitions:

Maximal excellence: To have omnipotence, omniscience and moral perfection in some world.

Maximal greatness: To have maximal excellence in every possible world.

1. There is a possible world (W) in which there is a being (X) with maximal greatness.
2. But X is maximally great only if X has maximal excellence in every possible world.
3. Therefore X is maximally great only if X has omnipotence, omniscience and moral perfection in every possible world.
4. In W, the proposition "There is no omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect being" would be impossible—that is, necessarily false.
5. But what is impossible does not vary from world to world.
6. Therefore, the proposition, "There is no omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect being" is necessarily false in this actual world, too.
7. Therefore, there actually exists in this world, and must exist in every possible world, an omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect being.

The Moral Argument:

1. Real moral obligation is a fact. We are really, truly, objectively obligated to do good and avoid evil.
2. Either the atheistic view of reality is correct or the "religious" one.
3. But the atheistic one is incompatible with there being moral obligation.
4. Therefore the "religious" view of reality is correct.

The Argument from Conscience:

This is actually not a formulated argument, but a follow up to the moral argument if someone objects to real or objective morality. We can then point out that they will all, no matter their convictions, universally accept that we should obey our conscience. Besides the fact that this actually functions as a universal, objective, obligation (“we OUGHT to obey our conscience”) we can still ask where did conscience get such an absolute authority—an authority admitted even by the moral subjectivist and relativist? There are only four possibilities.

1. From something less than me (nature)
2. From me (individual)
3. From others equal to me (society)
4. From something above me (God)

Let's consider each of these possibilities in order.

1. How can I be absolutely obligated by something less than me—for example, by animal instinct or practical need for material survival?
2. How can I obligate myself absolutely? Am I absolute? Do I have the right to demand absolute obedience from anyone, even myself? And if I am the one who locked myself in this prison of obligation, I can also let myself out, thus destroying the absoluteness of the obligation which we admitted as our premise.
3. How can society obligate me? What right do my equals have to impose their values on me? Does quantity make quality? Do a million human beings make a relative into an absolute? Is "society" God?
4. The only source of absolute moral obligation left is something superior to me. This binds my will, morally, with rightful demands for complete obedience.

Thus God, or something like God, is the only adequate source and ground for the absolute moral obligation we all feel to obey our conscience. Conscience is thus explainable only as the voice of God in the soul.

The Argument from Desire:

1. Every natural, innate desire in us corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that desire.
2. But there exists in us a desire which nothing in time, nothing on earth, no creature can satisfy.
3. Therefore there must exist something more than time, earth and creatures, which can satisfy this desire.
4. This something is what people call "God" and "life with God forever."

Response to Werleman Post on Morality

2010-02-05T20:19:00.000-08:00

A quick response to a blog posted by Courtenay Werleman on his blog (http://rationalists.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/morality-is-subjective-done/):

First, his summation of the theistic argument (known as the transcendental argument) is a poor representation (if “representation” is even a proper description) of the actual argument. Though any of you who are actually familiar with Werleman and his argumentation style should not expect anything else since he more often than not degenerates to ad hominems or straw men where he “summarizes” his opponents arguments in such a manner that makes them less than they actually are in order to be able to easily dismiss them.

Second, he then goes on to make his own hypothetical argument (I call it “hypothetical” because his premises do not function as premises but as unsubstantiable claims). He says that “if God exists, then it would would be in God’s interest and within his capacity for all human beings to know his ethics perfectly.” While it is within His capabilities, it is not necessarily true that it is “in his best interest.” This is something that Werleman would find convenient, but it is not a necessity.

It is also interesting that God HAS actually made his ethics known to all humanity. The fact that we do not know “God’s ethics perfectly” is precisely what, in Christianity, is called sin. Werleman wants to affirm heads while denying tails. The problem is that one comes with the other. God HAS revealed His will to all humanity AND we don’t know perfectly his will because of our sin. Werleman wants to create a false dichotomy that it is either one or the other when in fact it seems likely to be both.

Thirdly, Werleman shows that he claims to be a rationalist but in fact does not even understand basic logical forms. How so? When his 1st premise plays no function in the syllogism and is thus, by Occam’s Razor, unnecessary. Also his syllogism is set up in the following modus tollens:

1. If p then q.
2. Not-q
3. Therefore Not-p.

The problem is that premise 2 (not-q) is actually not a direct negation of q. Notice q is “then it would be in God’s interest…” while in premise 2, God’s interest is not mentioned. In order for the syllogism to be valid, premise 2 would have to be altered to read “It is not in God’s interest…”. This, while it would make the syllogism valid, however would make it blatantly unsound. It would argue that if God exists, it would be in his interest to do q. But in order to negate q, one must presuppose God’s interest in order to deny God’s existence. It would be unsound because one would necessarily presuppose God’s existence in order to say what is/is not in his interest, within an argument to deny his existence.

Fourth, Werleman argues that God revealing something to some and not to others is unfair and in contradiction to God’s benevolence. This again does not seem necessary. Justice does not always require uniform application to all people. Imagine the ramifications of this in our every day life if we really believed this to be the case. This is only a stipulation that skeptics pull out when they think it will help their argument. (Yet here we should again point out that God HAS in fact revealed his “ethics” to all both in the imago dei and in his revelation. Werleman wants us to ignore the 500lb gorilla in the room.)

Werleman then poses several dilemmas. By doing so he shows that he has actually not thought deeply about these issues and does not know the difference between objective moral values and situational ethics, where we have the dilemma of reconciling several objective moral values when they collide. See, what Werleman seems to miss is that these dilemmas are only dilemmas within a system of objective morals. Lets look at the Trolly example. Why is it a dilemma? Because we recognize that two objective morals are conflicting. But one could ask Werleman, who believes that morality is relative, WHY this is a dilemma if either response would be equally moral since both would be the absolute correct decision relative to the person? Werleman PRESUPPOSES objective morality even when he attempts to dismantle it.

Finally, Werleman shows, yet again, that he not only cannot dismantle the theistic argument, but that he really does not even understand it. Is the argument that the basis for morality is the Bible? NO! The argument is that the basis for morality is the ontological nature of God Himself. Werleman reveals nothing about the theistic argument or the nature of God, but rather that he is a fundamentalist for anti-theism who is completely unable, or maybe even simply uninterested, in dealing with the logical arguments, evidence, and reality that is placed before him.