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JESUS CHRIST & HIS BEING

 

Did He Even Exist

By Noel Coypel – http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/Noel-Coypel/The-Resurrection-Of-Christ,-1700.html, Public Domain, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28274624

PART THREE (A)

External Evidence:

The Historical Account

So, for the record, let me just state again my purpose in addressing the narrative of the gospel accounts, particularly the gospel of Mark, in establishing the historicity of Jesus in parts one and two. The most voluminous work we have for the existence of Jesus and all that He said and did has for its locus the four gospels. As such it was necessary for me to lay the groundwork there, in an effort to show the veracity and the validity of those accounts. In establishing their veracity, I demonstrated their accuracy in how claims made correspond with what is actually true or factual. In establishing their validity, I have demonstrated that the manuscript evidence is well-grounded and sound. It is so sound in fact that what evidence I have provided to this point should be more than adequate to establish the truth of the claim, Jesus is. For certain skeptics however it is not, in fact it is likely that no amount of evidence provided will convince them, let’s hope I’m wrong about that. Let’s hope that some are open enough to pursue the evidence, wherever it leads. Let’s get started.  

     Among the mass of religious practices which exist globally, Christianity stands out as arguably the most well attested historically, with the establishment as Jesus of Nazareth as an actual historical figure. The view that Jesus Christ never even existed has absolutely no historical value in support of it whatsoever. Such a belief is a late development. From the 1st century up to the 18th century the existence of Jesus of Nazareth had never been brought into question. However, around the conclusion of the 18th century, through the publication of books and essays of the last two hundred years, His existence has been challenged. This being the case, contemporary New Testament scholars have typically viewed their arguments as so weak or bizarre that they relegate them to footnotes, or often ignore them completely.[1]

  1. Mistaken Identity

     Some have argued that the accounts of Jesus are unoriginal and were actually adopted from pagan mythology and adapted to fit the cultural milieu of the region. Are they correct? One of the fallacies regarding parallels between pagan deities and Jesus Christ is that the pagan religions are often lumped together as though they were one religion—and one that is virtually identical to Christianity in many of its most important features. This has been referred to as the composite fallacy. By combining features from various mystery religions, a unified picture emerges that shows strong parallels with the gospel. The only problem is, this unified religion is artificial, a fabrication of the modern writer’s imagination.[2] The emperor [Septimius Severus] felt the need for religious harmony within his territories, and thus settled on a policy of promoting syncretism. He proposed a plan to bring all his subjects together under the worship of Sol Invictus (the “Unconquered Sun”) – and to subsume under that worship all the various religions and philosophies then current. All gods were to be accepted, as long as one acknowledged the Sun that reigned above all.[3] Of course the Jews and the Christians refused to submit to such a ruling defying the practice of syncretism. As a result, Severus instituted an ordinance which stipulated that any converts to Judaism or Christianity should be put to death. It was this practice of syncretism which historians now refer to as “the mystery religions”. Given the syncretism of all these religions, soon they were so intermingled that today it is exceedingly difficult for historians to determine which doctrine or practice arose in which context. Since the deities of the mysteries were not exclusivistic, like the God of the Jews and Christians, many people who were initiated into various of these cults borrowed elements from one to the other.[4] Because of this Christians were viewed as seditious, obstinate, and fanatical.

     One account often cited, that is believed to parallel the gospel accounts of the life of Jesus, is one that comes out of ancient Egyptian mythology. The Egyptian Book of the Dead records an account of the god Horus, the following is a summarized list that most reflects the supposed parallels of the biblical account:

He had a virgin mother.

He was baptized in a river by Anup the baptizer.

He healed the sick

He healed the blind.

He was crucified.

He was resurrected.   

     But are accounts between Jesus and Horus really that similar? Well, if you relayed this information to an Egyptian, the people there would think you had lost your mind. The claim for this “similarity”, so-called, has no basis in history. Firstly, there were multiple books of the dead, so these “parallels” are nothing more than piecemeal. Furthermore, only after the rise of Christianity did mystery religions begin to look suspiciously like the Christian faith. Once Christianity became known, many of the mystery cults consciously adopted Christian ideas so that their deities would be perceived to be on par with Jesus. The shape of the mystery religions prior to the rise of Christianity is vague, ambiguous, and localized. Only by a huge stretch of the imagination, and by playing fast and loose with the historical data, can one see them as having genuine conceptual parallels to the Christian faith of the first century.[5]

     Horus may have had the form of a man, but he had the head of a falcon. As to his virgin birth, his mother Isis took the genitals of his father’s dismembered body to impregnate herself. Very different from the generating power of the Holy Spirit who overshadowed or enveloped Mary. “And the angel answered her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.’” (Luke 1:35a, ESV, Emphasis added)[6] The Greek term καί (kai) translated “and” is a copulative conjunction. Such a conjunction exists to indicate that the following clause conveys additional information or details pertinent to the message being conveyed, “the Holy Spirit will come upon you.” The conjunction καί (kai) appears a second time in between the two declarative clauses. Here also it acts as copulative conjunction, “the power of the Most High will overshadow you”, providing additional, pertinent information to the hearer. The first clause is a Greek noun πνεῦμα (pneuma) meaning, current of air, from the root πνέω (pneō) meaning to breath hard and is translated as “Spirit”.  The Greek adjective ἅγιος (hagios) is comparable to ἁγνός (hagnos) meaning properly clean or pure and morally blameless and translated as “Holy”. Therefore, the properly pure and morally blameless Spirit moved as a current of air upon Mary.

     As to the baptism of Horus, this is nothing more than a fabrication, a ruse. It’s based on an Egyptian depiction of Horus receiving a ritual water cleansing at the time of his coronation. It is not “a baptism of repentance”. Regarding his healing power, there exists no ancient Egyptian documents that record Horus as going around and healing people he came in contact with. Furthermore, certain Egyptian hieroglyphs depict Horus with his arms spread out, but the depiction is not one of crucifixion. Crucifixion is a Roman practice; Egyptians did not engage in this form of capital punishment. Moreover, while depictions of Horus dying and coming back to life do exist, a resuscitation is far different than a resurrection, especially after three days of being wrapped and sealed in a tomb. That would be on par with the truly miraculous.[7]

Even Bible skeptic Bart Ehrman has noted,

The authors provided no evidence for their claims concerning the standard mythology of the godmen. They cite no sources from the ancient world that can be checked. It is not that they have provided an alternative interpretation of the available evidence. They have not even cited the available evidence. And for good reason. No such evidence exists.[8]

      In 1999 authors Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy published a book entitled, The Jesus Mystery: Was the “Original Jesus” a Pagan God? In it they argue that the Jesus of the Bible is a myth, and the story of his life equates to nothing more than a syncretic fabrication riding on the coat tails of certain Greco-Roman deities like Dionysus and Mithras. However, the work is not taken seriously by most scholars of Church, Christian or New Testament history. When N.T. Wright was asked if he would be willing to debate Freke and Gandy on the substance of their book he retorted that it would be like a asking a professional astronomer to debate the author of a book claiming the moon was made of cheese. Bart Ehrman argued that those who take up this gauntlet of attempting to lump in Christianity with the mystery religions are seldom scholarly and their works even less so. He argued that the claims made in their book are simply fabrications, misinterpretations, or bald face assertions that have no historical evidence to support them.

Professor of Philosophy Ronald Nash has stated,

We find that there was no pre-Christian doctrine of rebirth for the Christians to borrow.… The claim that pre-Christian mysteries regarded their initiation rites as a kind of rebirth is unsupported by any evidence contemporary with such alleged practices. Instead, a view found in much later texts is read back into earlier rites, which are then interpreted quite speculatively as dramatic portrayals of the initiate’s “new birth.” The belief that pre-Christian mysteries used rebirth as a technical term is unsupported by even one single text.[9]

     Moreover, Samuel G. F. Brandon, professor of Comparative Religion at the University of Manchester said with regard to the parallels between the Egyptian Osiris cult and Jesus Christ,

Any theory of borrowing on the part of Christianity from the older faith is not to be entertained, for not only can it not be substantiated on the extant evidence, but it is also intrinsically most improbable.[10]

     So, on the one side we have Bible skeptics arguing that much of the material in the gospel accounts were contrived and never actually occurred. So, controversy stories between Jesus and the pharisees were concocted by the early church to address certain problem areas and then inserted back into the narratives pertaining to Jesus of Nazareth. Then, on the other side, we have skeptics downplaying miraculous accounts of Jesus as merely story telling based on myths circulating prior to and following His arrival on the scene via these suspect mystery religions and being inserted into the gospel accounts and applied to Him in order to prop up this new religion. It seems to me that the skeptics are doing a lot more colluding than they accuse the church or the gospel writers of doing. When you have to go to those kinds of extremes, where you need to go way left or way right of the accounts as we have them, perhaps the accounts as they stand are accurate. The vast amounts of manuscript evidence and their historic proximity to the events they record certainly speak to the accuracy of the accounts as we have them. Maybe Jesus really did exist. Maybe He really was who He said He was or is. Maybe the gospel writers were correct in their assertions. Maybe they really are reliable accounts, and we can trust their testimony.

*In Part Three (B) I will address the “Semitic (Hebraic) Sources” for the existence of Christ.

[1] Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Grand Rapids MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2000), 6. Quoting Werner G. Kummel, The New Testament: The History of the Investigation of Its Problems (Nashville: Abingdon, 1972), 447.

[2] J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus: How Contemporary Skeptics Miss the Real Jesus and Mislead Popular Culture (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2006), 223.

[3] Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity Vol. I The Early Church to The Dawn of The Reformation (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publications, 2010), 97.

[4] Ibid., 21.

[5] J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus: How Contemporary Skeptics Miss the Real Jesus and Mislead Popular Culture (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2006) 234

[6] Unless otherwise indicated, all scriptural quotes are from The Holy Bible. English Standard Version, with Strong’s Numbers (Wheaton IL: Crossway, 2008).

[7] Rice Brooks, Man Myth Messiah (Nashville TN: W Publishing Group, 2016) 120-22

[8] Ibid., 131. Quoting Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2013). 26.

[9] J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus: How Contemporary Skeptics Miss the Real Jesus and Mislead Popular Culture (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2006), 224.

[10] Ibid., 228.

Stephen Singleton B.A. (Christian Studies: Biblical Literature & Interpretation)

Ambrose University

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LEX LUTHOR AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL: A THEODICY

  By Warner Bros., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41557090

Part Three: The Existential Problem of Evil    

Everything that I have stated to this point in parts one and two is true, whether you believe it or not is a different matter. But there is another aspect to this whole issue that gets more to the heart of the problem. Though conversations of this nature may commence at the intellectual level, they seldom remain there. The crux of the issue tends to be more of a personal one, the experience of some loss or some deep-seated suffering, mental, emotional or physical. It ultimately falls under the Emotional Problem of Evil (EPE), sometimes referred to as Existential Problem of Evil (ExPoE). But the answer to the problem may be viewed as somewhat paradoxical given the answer to the grief experienced. While accusations for the existence of evil are typically directed at God, He is never the cause of evil, “God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.” (James 1:13b, ESV)[1] He reaches out to comfort us in our grief. But people are generally too angry to respond if they believe He is the cause, or the cure, that was not realized. I’ve experienced such views from family members and coworkers who were angry with God for not curing their ailing loved one.

     If we look to the Old Testament and the prophet Isaiah, he foretold in a vision the kind of man the coming Messiah would be, “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (Isaiah 53:3, Emphasis added) Of import here is what Isaiah says regarding the type of a man the Messiah would be. Two Hebrew words that provide us with that type of information are the nouns מַכְאֹב (maḵ’ôḇ) which is in the plural meaning, suffering, or to be in pain, translated here as sorrows. And the Hebrew noun, חֲלִי (ḥălîy) meaning, sick or to be weak translated here as grief. So, the Messiah would be a man enduring multiple kinds of pains and sorrows and stricken with or weakened by the grief of His experiences. By these alone He is well able to understand our suffering. Moreover, the Hebrew verb בָּזָה (ḇâzâ) has the niphal stem in the Hebrew indicating a passive voice and meaning to make despicable or to be worthless. How demoralizing, that He should also be seen as worthless, holding no value. Ever felt like that? Isaiah continued, “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5, Emphasis added) Notice the singular pronouns he, him, his, contrasted with the plural pronouns our, us, we. This indicates what He did for us in going to the cross. “He was pierced”, “He was crushed”, “on Him was the chastisement”, “by His wounds”. “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8, Emphasis added) We are the recipients of His grace. What He did was done “For our transgressions”, “for our iniquities”, it “brought us peace”, and by it “we are healed”.

     You want to talk about what’s fair? The apostle Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians stated, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”. (2 Corinthians 5:21, Emphasis added) Peter also articulated, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous”. (1 Peter 3:18a, Emphasis added) The just for the unjust, again that doesn’t sound fair, but it was necessary. We may never know the reason or be able to answer the question of why. But Christ has promised, “Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you”. (John 16:7) The Greek noun, παράκλητος (paraklētos) can be translated a number of different ways, helper, intercessor, consoler, advocate, comforter. The word means, a call to aid or to plead the cause of another. One of the tasks of the Holy Spirit is to “comfort” meaning, to come with or give strength when we are suffering. So, He comes with strength, to give us strength. C.S. Lewis had been a confirmed bachelor for nearly his entire life, that is, before he met Helen Joy Davidman late in life. Upon her passing very shortly after they were married, he was overcome by grief at her loss, prompting him to write his little book, A Grief Observed. In it, he began to sense the futility of it all,

And no one ever told me about the laziness of grief. Except at my job – where the machine seems to run on as usual – I loathe the slightest effort. Not only writing but even reading a letter is too much. Even shaving. What does it matter now whether my cheek is rough or smooth? They say an unhappy man wants distractions – something to take him out of himself. Only as a dog-tired man wants an extra blanket on a cold night; he’d rather lie there shivering than get up and find one. It’s easy to see why the lonely become untidy, finally, dirty and disgusting. (C.S. Lewis 2001, 5)

     Solomon’s observations caused him to conclude, “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 1:2) In like manner, Lewis queried, “What does it matter now”, losses such as this are painful, no question. It makes us question the futility of it all, what ultimately matters? Is what I’m doing really matter at all? Is there not something more? Something lasting? Something permanent? All Lewis observed early in his suffering was that God appeared, to him, to be silent. As a door slammed shut, bolted and double bolted. At the beginning of grief all our boisterous flailing about both blinds and deafens us to the One who wants to rescue us.

And so, perhaps, with God. I have gradually been coming to feel that the door is no longer shut and bolted. Was it my own frantic need that slammed it in my face…you are like the drowning man who can’t be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.[2]

     Lewis speculated that there may have been something to be learned in it all. About God and about himself. It wasn’t so much a test of faith or love, “He knew it already”. But that which was needful to be learned in her living, had been completed in her passing and so, as Lewis puts it, “the teacher moves you on”. The whole painful experience brought him to one final conclusion, “I need Christ, not something that resembles Him”.[3] It is as I said before, it’s paradoxical. The very one on whom we heap our verbal abuses, is the very one who can help. It is not a call to arms; it is a call for aid. A.W. Tozer observed, “What comes into our mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us”. The most significant questions a person can contemplate, why am I here? what’s the meaning of life? what happens when I die? These are all important questions that, sooner or later, everyone asks and that need answers. But without God there is no ultimate meaning, value, or purpose to life. Without God man is just an accident of nature with nothing to look forward to. When we die, we just pass out of existence with nothing after. Would it matter that we lived at all? Oh, sure we attempt to create meaning and purpose, but to what end? Without God you would have to create it, but only with God does meaning, value and purpose even exist.

     Francis Schaffer developed a two-story model in which the upper-story represents a life with God and equates to a life with meaning, value, and purpose; while the lower-story functions as its antithesis, it is a life without God and devoid of these same qualities. The man who lives in the lower story without belief in the existence of God cannot do so consistently. So, to give his life meaning he needs to make a leap of faith into the upper story. He needs to manufacture something that will give his life meaning, something to take the place of God. Dr. L.D. Rue calls it, “the noble lie”. Within moral relativism is the pursuit of self-fulfillment to the exclusion of social coherence. But doing so creates anarchy across societies. Conversely, the imposition of social coherence under a relativistic outlook against self-fulfillment creates a regime based on totalitarianism. Thus, the necessity for some “noble lie”; that while not believing in objective, universal truths, the lower story, they create the “noble lie” of the existence of objective truth in order to move to the upper story. They cannot adhere to their own paradigm consistently and happily without manufacturing some noble lie that will move them into the upper story to give their world view some meaning. Blaise Pascal has made reference to “a God-shaped vacuum” or a void, which exists in each of us, and to which Augustine affirmed when he stated,

“Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee”[4]  

     To argue that, in life there is no ultimate meaning, therefore one must create meaning for his life, is entirely inconsistent. A universe without God, is one that exists without meaning, or purpose. Without God life has no value. Atheistic/secular humanism could not argue one way or the other whether something was loving or good, hateful or evil. It’s all relative, there is no objective morality. But a life without God cannot be lived consistently happy in this manner, he must make a leap into the upper story. “For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return.” (Ecclesiastes 3:19-20) why do we suffer so; we may never know, or it may take a lifetime of learning to discover it. Just because we cannot see an apparent purpose to our suffering doesn’t mean there isn’t one, it simply has not yet been revealed. Lewis has said,

“God whispers in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”[5]  

     But must it always be so, regrettably often times it is. An evil man contented to be so needs strong correction, if he learns from it, he has gained; a recompense for the evil he has done if he hasn’t learned. Lewis points out that we progress through life surrounding ourselves with all our creaturely comforts and pleasures, whatever tickles our fancy, until we are abruptly met with some head, heart, or abdominal pain which threatens to bring about some serious illness which causes us to recall our own mortality. He observed,

“I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world and my only real treasure is Christ. And perhaps, by God’s grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources.”[6]

     The danger of course is that once the pain is past, we slip back into those things that distracted us from Him in the first place. For this reason, tribulation becomes a necessity; all those toys with which we pleasured ourselves become meaningless in the shadow of our mortality. Of course, all suffering is not the result of evil acts, death and disease are the outgrowth of a fallen world and God is willing to intervene if we turn to Him. But in my experience and in scripture I have observed that people have one of two responses to the evil they experience, either turning to God or turning away from Him. Pain may seem to us a terrible way for God to gain our attention, but the old adage is still true, “there are no atheists in fox holes” and that may be the extent to which He must go to get it. These three articles I have written on this subject will not, in all likelihood, answer all your questions or settle the issue once and for all. But hopefully in some small way it helps you to understand how much God really loves you. Not by His allowance of certain evils to persist, but that there are reasons we simply do not understand and that may take a lifetime to understand, so in the interval we need to trust Him. Either directly or indirectly we chose this. The human condition was self determined, and we bear the consequences. But He knows us, He loves us, and He can help us if we trust Him. It doesn’t mean that there will be no more pain or death or disease, “For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” (Matthew 5:45), but it does mean that He will go with us through the storms in our lives. And in a day yet to come all these will pass out of existence and not we ourselves,

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4)

[1] Unless otherwise indicated, all scriptural quotes are from The Holy Bible. English Standard Version, with Strong’s Numbers (Wheaton IL: Crossway, 2008).

[2]   C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (HarperOne Publishers, New York: NY, 2001), 46.

[3] Ibid., 65

[4] Augustine of Hippo, “The Confessions of St. Augustin,” in The Confessions and Letters of St. Augustin with a Sketch of His Life and Work, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. J. G. Pilkington, vol. 1, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1886), 45.

[5] C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (HarperOne Publishers, New York: NY 1996), 91.

[6] Ibid., 106-7.

Stephen Singleton B.A. Christian Studies (Biblical Literature & Interpretation)

Ambrose University

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LEX LUTHOR AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL: A THEODICY

By Warner Bros., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41557090    

Part 2:

The

Philosophical 

Problem Of Evil

“What we call God, depends upon our tribe…Because God is tribal, God takes sides. No man in the sky intervened when I was a boy to deliver me from daddy’s fist and abominations. I figured out way back, if God is all-powerful then He cannot be all-good, and if He is all-good, then He cannot be all-powerful.” Lex Luthor – Batman v. Superman

It may prove beneficial to the reader to know exactly what the term “theodicy” actually means.  It is comprised of two Greek words, theos meaning “God” and dice meaning “justice”. A theodicy therefore is an attempt to show that, not only does God exist, but also that He is just, regardless of the existence of evil in the world.

     While it is true that God created all things in existence, it is not true that He created evil. Evil is not a thing or substance but a lack in some good thing, as such God cannot be the author of evil. Augustine argued that evil is privation, the same argument was echoed by Aquinas. Every creation of God is good; evil exists when that good thing is corrupted. That trees exist is a great good. Trees absorb carbon dioxide and expel oxygen; we expel carbon dioxide while taking in oxygen. Disease, decay, or rottenness in a tree is a lack in that good thing. Such decay exists as an evil in that tree, the evil does not exist a se. Some have argued, incorrectly so, that to state evil as a privation is to claim that evil is an absence of good, but that is simply not the case. Evil is a lacking or corruption of some good thing that should be there but is not, as in the instance of lost sight or limbs in those things which should possess them and do not. The fact that a stone cannot see is not evidence of evil because it lacks that ability. By their very nature stones do not possess such an ability, people and animals do, therefore for a person to lack the ability to see is an evil. Explaining evil as a lack in a good thing does not explain where the lack comes from. All it explains is the nature of evil as a real privation in good things. Where the corruption came from is another question.[1] Philosopher Jeremy A. Evans has said,

The concept of evil as a privation of the good has been essential in undermining at least one argument against the existence of God from evil, namely that God caused evil…God created only actual things (or substances). Evil is not an actual thing (or substance). Therefore, God did not create evil.[2]  

     The moral argument for God’s existence attempts to ascertain whether objective moral values and duties actually exist.  If objective moral values and duties do exist, then God exists. If objective moral values do not exist, then God does not exist. Objective moral values and duties do exist therefore, God does exist. If we are going to claim that objective morality does not exist, and that morality only exists subjectively then Hitler did nothing wrong, he was simply doing what he believed was right. But if we know that to perform an act of genocide on a group of people in an effort obliterate them is abhorrently wrong, then we know that certain evils are objectively wrong and that therefore objective morality does exist. 

     When we speak of value, we are speaking of the worth of some thing, this idea is also transferable to persons as well as particular acts or behaviors. When dealing with moral values we are weighing certain particulars regarding whether those things, or persons, or acts, or behaviors are good or bad. Moral duty has to do with moral obligations, what one ought or ought not do.

     A few years ago, I was speaking on Hamartiology, or the Doctrine of Sin, when one gentleman made the comment that “in order for us to know what good is, evil must exist”, but is that really true?  Is there really no other way for us to tell what is good unless evil is present? As I thought about it, I concluded that the statement was false. All that would be truly necessary for Adam and Eve to know what good was, would be for them to know the nature and character of God, which they would have known intimately before the fall. True to his own method of inquiry, Socrates first posed the question, “Is the good good because God wills it? Or does God will it because it is good?” One of the world’s foremost apologists, Dr. William Lane Craig, has put the question this way,

Is something good because God wills it? Or does God will something because it is good? If you say that something is good because God wills it, then what is good becomes arbitrary. But if you say that God wills something because it is good, then what is good or bad is independent of God. In that case, moral values and duties exist independently of God. There’s a third alternative, namely, God wills something because He is good.[3] (Emphasis added).

     In other words, if that which is good is only good “because God wills it”, then what is good is subjective based solely on His own discretion, not based on any legal grounds. If this is how good is determined, then God appears to act capriciously. But if you were to say God wills something because the act, in and of itself, is good or bad then moral values and duties are independent of God. But God, by His very nature, is good, it is not possible for Him to conduct Himself in any other way, He is a law unto Himself, for that reason “God wills something because He is good”. Adam and Eve would have known this.      

     The question comes down to this, can we be good without God? If the answer is yes, what reason could one possibly give for being good?  How would you determine what good is in the first place? Would not all goodness become subjective?  “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes”. (Judges 21:25 ESV)[4] If we are the ones to set the standard for that which is right and wrong then what becomes good for me may not be good for you. “Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.” —Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf).[5]  Again, if that which is good is subjective from one person to another, then Hitler was merely doing what he believed was right and cannot therefore be faulted. For this reason, there must be an objective standard which has been set which states that the act of murder is not just bad, it is categorically wrong. But if there is no objectively set standard of duty, then there is no morally binding obligation weighing on my conscience, and yet my conscience prevails. Moral values and duties do not exist independent of persons, that is, benevolence, mercy, justice, etcetera, do not exist in a vacuum. Each exists as a verb, which can be active or passive. But in order for such to exist bodies must be present for such to bestowed upon another (active), or for one to be the recipient of (passive). Were such properties to exist independent of persons then their effects are non-binding and non-obligatory, yet my “conscience bearing witness” to show mercy to those who are suffering indicates that such properties do not exist independent of persons.     

     There are two aspects to the problem of evil, the Intellectual and the Emotional. The intellectual aspect can be further subdivided into the Logical Problem of Evil (LPE) and the Evidential Problem of Evil (EPE). The former addresses the plausibility of the existence of God and evil simultaneously. The latter addresses how such a God, if there is one, could allow for the existence of such evil in the world. But what would cause someone to question the first argument? Why would it not be possible for God and evil to co-exist?  Do they know something about the nature of God to suggest that the existence of both God and evil is incompatible?  The argument is often made that if God is omnipotent and omni-benevolent why does evil remain?  Thus, leading to the conclusion that if God is powerful enough to remove it, He must be insensitive to it, or if He is all-loving and sensitive to it, then He must not be powerful enough to remove it. Or it may be that He just does not exist at all. But there is one aspect of the nature of God, which is often overlooked, namely, that He is omniscient while we are not. The adjective “omniscient” is derived from two Latin words, Omni meaning all and scient meaning knowledge.  As such, anything that can be known is known completely by God, past, present, and future. He is infinite in knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. 

     Some will argue that if God is all-powerful, He could have created any world He wished, He could have created a world without suffering. But are those two claims necessarily true? Is it really true that God could have created any world He wished? As it turns out, such a claim is actually false. While God is omnipotent, He is nevertheless bound by certain constraints of His own nature. As He is perfect in existence, He must therefore create that which is also perfect, He must create “the best possible world”, to do otherwise would be contrary to His nature. As a perfect being possessing free-will, He must likewise create creatures which are themselves perfect, possessing free-will. The creation of free-will creatures such as we are, is not the problem, our misuse of that freedom is. Moral evil occurs when free persons misuse their freedom in such a way that the content of their will and/or actions violates a moral standard.[6] As such it begs the question, what is that standard, and where did it come from? Furthermore, in response to the question of whether or not God could have created a world without suffering, the answer is, He did. Then the reply invariably comes that, we still see suffering in the world today, so no He did not. For those arguing this point you need to go back and read part one of this article. LEX LUTHOR AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL: A THEODICY – Theology Apologetic (theologyonline.online) Analytic Philosopher Dr. Alvin Plantinga has declared,

A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but he can’t cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if he does so, then they aren’t significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good therefore, he must create creatures capable of moral evil and he can’t give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so.[7]

      Also, God may have good reasons for allowing suffering, some greater good may be realized as a result. Without fail some will raise the question, “what possible good could come from allowing people to suffer”?  But we actually do this all the time, when we take our children to the dentist, or to the doctor to get a shot, there is a measure of suffering and fear, but good will come of it. This brings us to the Evidential Problem of Evil (EPE) and the atheistic argument that it is improbable that God could have good reasons for permitting suffering. In “the Condition of Reasonable Epistemic Access” or “theistic skepticism” is the notion that if there were some greater good that may be realized from God’s permittance of the existence of evil in the world, our cognitive limitations simply do not allow for us to know or comprehend fully His reasons for doing so.  Philosopher Dr. William Alston has stated,

each theodicy provided as a response to evil reveals ‘limits to our cognitive powers, opportunities, and achievements in arguing that we are not in the right position to deny that God could have that kind of reason [some greater good] for various cases of suffering.’[8]

     For the atheist, to make the claim that no greater good could come from the allowance of evil and suffering is ignorant. As persons we are finite, contingent beings, limited by space, time, intellect, and insight. God is an infinite, necessary being, omniscient in existence. “I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ​‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’” (Is.46:9b-10). Due to our own limitations as finite creatures we are, quite simply, in no way able to make so great a judgement on whether or not God could have good reasons for the permittance of suffering. Dr. Stephen Wykstra has argued that,

 the gap between our intellect and God’s is enormous. If there is any charity to be ascribed to a situation, it must be, of necessity, to the God whose intellectual powers have no rival. Thus, ‘if we think carefully about the sort of being theism proposes for our belief, it is entirely expectable—given what we know of our cognitive limits—that the goods by virtue of which this Being allows known suffering should very often be beyond our ken.’[9]

     Does the atheist believe the existence of God is impossible or merely improbable or unlikely? And if so, improbable relative to what? What great enlightenment, what vast knowledge acquired, to lead one to such a conclusion? How many times have I come across this? The existence of evil and suffering in the world is often employed by atheists as a rescuing device when the argument starts to go sideways because the evidence for the existence of God is actually quite extensive. As such, they begin to realize that His existence is not definitively impossible, only that it is equivocally unlikely due to the degree of evil and suffering in the world. Craig has stated,

“I’m convinced that whatever improbability suffering may cast upon God’s existence, it’s outweighed by the arguments for the existence of God”.[10]  

     Furthermore, if we are going to be entirely honest, much of the suffering that people do experience is the result of poor choices or decisions they make themselves. Or, as the result of evil acts of individuals, or groups, perpetrated on another. Should someone move to a region prone to flooding and mudslides and a family home is destroyed, or people have died as a result, God cannot be faulted. If someone should live in a region prone to earthquakes and annual forest fires during the summer months, such as in California, again God cannot be faulted when these things occur. If someone should reside in a region prone to drought and their crops fail, God cannot be held responsible. Should someone reside in the region of “tornado alley” and their home is destroyed by one, you cannot blame God for that. In each of those cases, people choose to live in those regions despite the possible risks. I do not like the cold and snow, but my wife and I chose to have our home built in a region characterized as the “snowbelt”. So, during the winter months we receive more snow in our region than the average, but that was our choice to build there. These are examples of what is referred to as natural evil.

     What about when people contract an illness? Certainly, some of the illnesses that people experience is again the result of choices we have made. Poor diet can lead to heart disease as well as certain cancers. Substance abuse like alcohol, tobacco, and drugs, legal or illegal can result in serious illness and/or death. Use of alcohol and/or tobacco can also lead to various forms of cancer. This type of evil is referred to as physical evil. Though some have encompassed physical evil with natural evil as being one and the same. Regardless, there is another aspect to this whole issue that runs at a deeper level. Making sense of these deep and often emotional experiences, this I will address in part three.     

[1] Geisler, Norman L.. If God, Why Evil?: A New Way to Think About the Question (p. 26). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[2] Evans, Jeremy A.. The Problem of Evil: The Challenge to Essential Christian Beliefs (B&H Studies in Christian Apologetics) (p. 1). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[3] Craig, William Lane. On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision (Kindle Locations 2207-2208). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition

[4] Unless otherwise indicated, all scriptural quotes are from The Holy Bible. English Standard Version, with Strong’s Numbers (Wheaton IL: Crossway, 2008).

[5] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/excerpts-from-mein-kampf

[6] Evans, Jeremy A.. The Problem of Evil: The Challenge to Essential Christian Beliefs (B&H Studies in Christian Apologetics) (p. 2). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[7] Ibid., 18. Quoting Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 30.

[8] Evans, Jeremy A.. The Problem of Evil: The Challenge to Essential Christian Beliefs (B&h Studies in Christian Apologetics) (pp. 28-29). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. Quoting Alston, “Inductive Argument from Evil,” 59.

[9] Ibid., (p. 30). Quoting Stephen Wykstra, “The Humean Obstacle to Evidential Arguments from Suffering: On Avoiding the Evils of Appearance,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 16 (1984): 91.

[10] Craig, William Lane. On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision (Kindle Locations 2639-2642). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition.

Stephen Singleton B.A. Christian Studies: Biblical Literature & Interpretation 

Ambrose University

Posted on

JESUS CHRIST & HIS BEING

Did He Even Exist

By Noel Coypel – http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/Noel-Coypel/The-Resurrection-Of-Christ,-1700.html, Public Domain, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28274624  

PART TWO

Internal Evidence:

The Gospel Account

  1. The Objection of Unreliable Testimony

In dispute here is the belief that Mark’s attestation about Jesus of Nazareth is unreliable as he was not even present during Jesus’ public ministry. Former atheist Clive Staples Lewis, (a.k.a. C.S. Lewis), though born in Ireland, was a British scholar with degrees in English Literature from Oxford and Cambridge University. Upon his conversion to Christianity, he developed what became known as the “Trilemma” of Jesus Christ. He stated,

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God’ [and thus a liar]. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. [1](Emphasis added)

     The model of his trilemma follows a pattern of Jesus as either a liar, lunatic or Lord. However, biblical skeptic Bart Ehrman believes there is a fourth option, that the accounts of Jesus are merely “legend” and that He never actually claimed to be God. But on what lofty criteria does Ehrman base this claim? German Philologist Max Muller speculated that there was likely a period in which belief in the mythological was non-existent but became utilized as a language tool to explain the natural world by means of poetic rhetoric. When studying the relatedness existing between language and Greek mythology, he discovered that people had misappropriated poetic language of the natural world as narrative language regarding divine beings.[2]  In other words, Greek mythology was written in a poetic style language, but interpretation was misapplied as literal narrative. By contrast, any declarations of divinity in Jesus of Nazareth, either by himself or by others in the Greek of the New Testament, is historical narrative, not poetic and therefore such claims are not based on Greek mythology. His claims to deity are not legend as Ehrman supposes.   

     In Correspondence Theory propositions can be either true or false, if the proposition corresponds to reality (or to the facts), then the proposition is true, if it does not then it is false. Jesus was either telling us the truth about His claims to be God, or He wasn’t. So, this leaves us with three options, first, maybe Jesus didn’t know that he wasn’t telling the truth, in which case that would implicate him as a lunatic. Two, Jesus wasn’t telling the truth, and He knew He wasn’t telling the truth. This would implicate Him as a liar or a deceiver. Or three, Jesus was telling the truth, in which case He is Lord.

     The Old Testament testifies to the deity of Christ, (Ps. 2:7, 45:6-7, 110:1; Prov. 30:4; Isaiah. 9:6, 63:7-9; Zech. 1:12, 12:10, 14:16). In the New Testament Jesus Himself testifies to His own deity, (Matt. 4:10, 16:17-18, 24:35; Mk. 2:5-7; John 4:25-26, 5:23, 8:58, 12:48, 14:13, 14:61-62, 20:28). Then there are others throughout scripture who testify to the deity of Jesus Christ, (Matt. 3:16, 8:29, 16:16, 17:5; Lk. 1:32, 35, 2:11; John 1:1, 8:58, 20:28; Rom. 9:5; Col. 1:16-17, 2:9; Titus 2:13; Heb. 1:3,5,6,8). Of course, there are those who object to the notion that Jesus ascribed to His own deity by citing Mark 10:18 as an example of His denial, “And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, ’Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ And Jesus said to him, ’Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.’” (Mark 10:17-18, ESV)[3] His statement here is not one of denial, but of inquiry. Jesus is attempting to determine if this young man recognizes the implications of his query. If only God is good in the truest sense of the word, and this young man truly believes Jesus is good, as he refers to Him, then Jesus is God, at least by implication. Still others will reference John 14:28 as an example of Jesus denial of deity. “You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.” (John 14:28, Emphasis added). Again, this is not a denial, God the Father is greater in office, not in nature to God the Son – Jesus. To believe otherwise borders on Arianism which was deemed heresy in A.D. 325 at the council of Nicaea and discussed in more detail in my article at  https://theologyonline.online/of-anakin-skywalker-and-jesus-christ/ . Some have attempted to argue on an intellectual level that Jesus as God and man is a violation of the law of non-contraction; you cannot have “A” (Jesus as God) and not “A” (Jesus as man, therefore not God) in the same sense to the same extent. But Jesus can be both God and man at the same time because the sense is not the same, therefore there is no logical contradiction. It is possible for someone to be both a husband and a father at the same time, but not in the same sense. Jesus has both a divine and human nature, but they are not in the same sense.

     The basic presupposition of the higher critics like Bart Ehrman is that much of the material in the gospel accounts were contrived and never actually occurred. So, controversy stories between Jesus and the pharisees were concocted by the early church to address certain problem areas and then inserted back into the narratives pertaining to Jesus of Nazareth. It was also argued that teaching passages like the Sermon on the Mount were merely innovations to provide instruction for new converts. Then, miracle narratives were believed to have been inserted simply as apologetic proofs. While these views were initially confined to the realm of academia, they have since made their way into the general population via advocates of the Jesus Seminar. But remember that in correspondence theory the propositions made can be either true or false and if those propositions correspond to the facts, then the propositions are true. The question then becomes do the propositions of the higher critics correspond to the facts or not?

     From the perspective of the historian, the interval of time from Jesus to the recording of the events of Mark’s gospel was so brief there would not have been adequate enough time to develop the so-called fictional manufacture of those events concerning Jesus as the Son of God and all that He said and did, His death and resurrection, if they were not actually true. Firstly, Titus Livius, more commonly known as Livy, was a Roman historian and penned a report of “the Law of the Twelve Tables” based on Roman civil law and Plutarch’s chronicling of the life of Alexander the Great, were both written 400 – 450+ years after the events took place. Secondly, despite the disparity in the time interval, they are still valued as reliable key sources. By contrast, the events of Mark’s gospel, whom liberal scholars argue is not truly reliable, has a time differential of just 25 – 30 years from the time of their occurring to the time their transcribing. When taking into account correspondence theory, that propositions are true if they correspond to the facts, or square with reality, then the composition of Mark’s gospel and the events it records should be considered even more reliable than what we have for Livy or Plutarch.

     In reply to the declarations of the higher critics regarding oral tradition. An ancient Egyptian artifact was discovered which indicated an inquiry by three men requesting to be accepted as deacons by the Coptic (Christian) church dated 3rd – 4th century. In order to be considered, those men had to memorize the gospel of John by the time of Pentecost (lit. the fiftieth day) and perform a recitation before the congregation. Furthermore, there is an account of a pastor requiring a deacon at the time of ordination to memorize 25 Psalms, two letters from Paul and a portion of any gospel. So, orality was standard practice. Very few people had access to scrolls in the ancient world to read. When letters were sent to the churches, the pastors of those churches would read them to the assembly, so parishioners had to commit to memory what they heard, or read if they were able to do so.

     The internal evidence provided by Mark’s gospel argues against his gospel existing as a document simply made up to portray a positive picture of someone who was not very glamorous in this life. The primary scriptural reference on this subject is found in John’s gospel, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” (John 14:26, Emphasis added) Verbs function as past, present, or future, active, or passive. Passive verbs are those in which the subject is the one being acted upon; active verbs are those in which the subject is the one performing the act. The Greek verb ὑπομιμνήσκω (hypomimnēskō) meaning “to remind” or bring to remembrance”, is a future tense, active verb. The subject and direct object of the verb is determined by the case endings. Case endings can be either nominative or accusative in the Greek. If the case ending is nominative, it is the subject of the verse, if the case ending is accusative then it is the direct object of the verse. The pronoun ἐκεῖνος (ekeinos) translated “he” (lit. that one) has the nominative case ending indicating it as the subject of the verse. But who is “that one”? Locating an earlier nominative case ending we find it in the adjective, ἅγιος (hagios) translated “Holy”. It’s followed by the noun πνεῦμα (pneuma) translated “Spirit”, also nominative. The plural pronoun σύ (sy) translated “you”, speaking of the disciples, is accusative indicating it as the direct object of the verse. Therefore, this verse points to a time in the distant future in which the powers of recall, if you will, will be impressed upon hearts and minds of the disciples (direct object) via the working of the Holy Spirit (subject) when it came time for the writing of the gospel account.

     Remember that I mentioned earlier that higher critics like biblical skeptic Bart Ehrman believed that controversy stories between Jesus and the pharisees were concocted by the early church to address certain problem areas and then inserted back into the narratives pertaining to Jesus of Nazareth. That is, Mark’s gospel does not simply contain what Jesus really said and did, rather it contains a lot of details regarding controversies that were occurring during the era between the events of the gospel and their actual recording of those events. But if that’s all true then we ought to find them in Mark’s gospel. The problem is that the proposition doesn’t square with the facts, the claim doesn’t correspond with reality, to what’s actually true. Firstly, there are many topics we know of which went unaddressed in the book of Acts and throughout Paul’s letters. Secondly, what few controversies existed, neither Paul nor Luke, in the book of Acts, employed any of the sayings of Jesus in order to resolve them. They were not referring back to what Jesus taught in order to settle those issues.  

     Furthermore, Mark’s gospel includes some rather uncomplimentary portrayals of Jesus. In doing so however, this indicates that Mark was willing to tell us the truth about Jesus. Why provide details that are unflattering if you’re trying to prop up some religious conviction? You wouldn’t, you would attempt to portray positive aspects, not seemingly negative ones. For example, Mark’s gospel states that John’s baptism was “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” (Mark 1:4) While v.9 states that, “Jesus…was baptized by John in the Jordan”. Why would a sinless saviour need to be baptized? Mark further indicates that Jesus couldn’t do any miracles in his hometown save for a few ill people (6:5). Matthew echoes Mark saying that Jesus did not do many miracles there (Matt. 13:58). Doubtless there are those who believe themselves to be pretty good people. But Mark records Jesus as saying, “No one is good except God alone” (10:18). If Mark really wanted to portray a complimentary picture of Jesus, he would not have included these details. But this indicates his willingness to give us the truth about Jesus. In 16:1-8 of Mark’s gospel he indicates that three women discovered the empty tomb. If Mark was making up this account, he would not have included women as the first witnesses to the resurrection. But again, Mark is willing to give us the truth. 

     Moreover, there exist a multiplicity of independent witnesses to the events recorded in Mark’s gospel, in addition to an early, high Christology. The claims of the higher critics are first, it took many years to develop that high Christology and two, those independent sources for the gospels had very different views of Jesus. However, Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians not only shows a high Christology but also has this writing being dated at ca. A.D. 51 – 52. “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received” (1 Cor. 15:3, Emphasis added). A view held by many scholars both liberal and conservative are that independent witnesses like John, Q, M, and L show evidence of early, high Christology without being in collaboration with one another. 90% of what is recorded in Mark is also in Matthew, often word-for-word in the Greek. Due to this observation, it is believed that Matthew utilized Mark as a source. 60% of what is in Mark’s gospel is also in Luke’s gospel. Again, often word-for-word in the Greek. It is therefore believed that Luke used Mark’s gospel as a source. This would also indicate that there is information in Matthew and Luke that is not in Mark and are unique to them. For that information not found in Mark, it is believed Matthew and Luke utilized an alternative source referred to as “Q” from the German word quella meaning “source”.  There are also some things that appear in Matthew that are not in Mark or Luke. In that case it is believed Matthew used a third source, “M”. Likewise, there are some things in Luke that do not appear in Matthew or Mark. In this case it is believed Luke used a third source, “L”.  

     While many scholars ascribe to “source theory” some do not. The reservation here is that it creates some confusion on where the work of the Holy Spirit comes in, which of course is a legitimate concern. In Independence Theory it is argued that the synoptic gospels originated independently without borrowing from one another. Rather, the similarity of the accounts is the result of the work of the Holy Spirit which is a valid argument. However, could it be that the similarity between the accounts is due to borrowing while the mystery sources of “Q”, “M” and “L” are actually the work of the Holy Spirit? If Mark’s gospel was the first written, as the majority of scholars believe, then the entirety of Mark’s gospel would include no other source than that of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, there were still multiple independent sources writing with no collaboration. Yet they all show evidence of a high Christology. Luke’s gospel makes reference to multiple accounts. “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us” this suggests multiple sources were circulating. “Just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us”. These sources based their accounts on eyewitness testimony and those involved in the ministry. “It seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus”. Luke was not new to the subject and completed a detailed analysis of the information he had access to. “That you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught. (Lk. 1:1-4, Emphasis added) This phrase shows Luke’s purpose in writing his account. For the purpose of surety and to preserve the oral accounts in a documented form.

     New Testament scholar John A.T. Robinson places the writing of Matthew’s gospel at A.D 40 – 60, Mark’s gospel at A.D. 45 – 60, Luke’s gospel at A.D. 57 – 60, and John’s gospel he places at A.D. 40 – 65. This would indicate a time differential of just 7 – 12 years between the crucifixion and composition of the some of the gospels. (Geisler 2002, 474) Furthermore, Spanish paleographer Jose O’Callahan observed that some of manuscripts found at Qumran were of Mark’s gospel and of the passages discovered each was dated at A.D 50. The date of those manuscripts has never been disputed as it aligns with other ancient manuscripts discovered at Qumran. The use of Greek uncials in the writing indicates the work as an early first century document. Scholars estimate the crucifixion of Christ to be in the vicinity of A.D. 26 – 33.  If correct it would corroborate Robinson’s time differential to within just a few years. Noted Roman historian A. N. Sherwin-White has indicated that,

Herodotus enables us to test the tempo of myth – making, and the tests suggest that even two generations are too short a span to allow the mythical tendency to prevail over the hard historic core of the oral tradition.[4]    

     This is a further indication that even if there was an oral tradition to speak of, which some doubt due to the time frame, the gospel accounts cannot be legend as the evidence does not square with the facts or correspond to what’s actually true in reality. What the evidence shows is that the accounts given fall well within a single generation and therefore do not qualify as myth or legend because the time necessary to develop such, is simply not available. The NT account of the life of Jesus is factually true given the evidence. But there is more available. In part three, I will address the External Evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ. Those references which exist outside the biblical text.       

[1] C.S. Lewis. Mere Christianity. (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2015), 52.

[2] Winfried Corduan. In the Beginning God: A Fresh Look at the Case for Original Monotheism. (B&H Academic Publishing, 2013), 21-2.

[3] Unless otherwise indicated, all scriptural references are from The Holy Bible. English Standard Version, with Strong’s Numbers (Wheaton IL: Crossway, 2008).

[4] A.N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963), 190. Quoted in Norman Geisler, Systematic Theology Vol. 1 (Minneapolis MN: Harper Collins Press, 2002), 476.

Stephen Singleton B.A. Christian Studies: Biblical Literature & Interpretation (Ambrose University)

Posted on

JESUS CHRIST & HIS BEING

Did He Even Exist

By Noel Coypel – http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/Noel-Coypel/The-Resurrection-Of-Christ,-1700.html, Public Domain, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28274624    

PART ONE

Internal Evidence:

The Gospel Account

Ostensively the gospel accounts provide the most extensive volume of information about Jesus and all that He supposedly said and did. But what is at issue for those arguing against the historicity of Jesus has to do firstly with the credibility of the gospel accounts themselves.

     Primarily, the collective sacred scriptura that comprise the ancient MSS of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek that encompass the Biblical account, as a whole, is self-attesting. In other words, its truth claims are verified, corroborated, or authenticated by what it avers of itself. Additionally, the Holy Spirit authenticates our sense that this is the word of God. However, these views are unpersuasive to those who do not share the Christian world view. As a result, a more intellectual, academic study seems to be necessary. As such, the locus of my inquest will center squarely on the Gospel of Mark. Not so much the language of the text itself, but more specifically on the criteria that has been agreed upon by historians who examine ancient documents and test their reliability, whether they themselves be scholars of the Christian persuasion or not. My thesis is namely this, that my English translation of the gospel of Mark is a historically reliable account of selected events surrounding the life, death, and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. I have employed the adjective “selected” to indicate that while Mark’s gospel does not divulge every detail concerning the life of Jesus of Nazareth, nevertheless, what he does relay is ipso facto, historically reliable.

     No other name has been put forward by any other church historian, or church father, regarding the unanimous designation of John – Mark as the author of the gospel that bears his name. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, Jerome et al were all in agreement on this point. The most ancient reference we have of Mark as its author is that of Papias of Hierapolis (A.D. 60 – 130), who was most active in his written compositions during A.D. 90 – 110. It is believed by some that Papias was a companion of John and acquainted with Polycarp of Smyrna, (A.D. 69 – 155), also a disciple of John, therefore closest to the time of Mark’s autograph. Church historian Eusebius, quoting Papias, has stated:

And John the Presbyter also said this, Mark being the interpreter of Peter whatsoever he recorded he wrote with great accuracy but not however, in the order in which it was spoken or done by our Lord, for he neither heard nor followed our Lord, but as before said, he was in company with Peter, who gave him such instruction as was necessary, but not to give a history of our Lord’s discourses: wherefore Mark has not erred in anything, by writing some things as he has recorded them; for he was carefully attentive to one thing, not to pass by anything that he heard, or to state anything falsely in these accounts. (Emphasis added)[1]

So, John the disciple, or John the elder, affirmed to Papias who spoke with him that Mark was the author of the gospel attributed to him.

     The question invariably arises, why is Marks’ gospel central to this particular study? Two reasons, first, the gospel of Mark is reasoned to be the first of the four gospels written, and second, it appears to be the source for the gospels of Mathew and Luke. Utilizing the gospel of Mark as a test case for the veracity of the gospels, we need to cross three bridges. First, we need to get from Jesus to John-Mark. John-Mark must offer reliable testimony to inform us of the truth regarding Jesus of Nazareth and be close enough to the events in question, so as not to embellish the accounts that he offers. Bridge two, the original document which Mark wrote, his autograph, is no longer available, but Greek copies of his work do exist. So, we must determine if extant Greek manuscripts of Mark’s original autograph have been faithfully transmitted. Incidentally it is worth noting that there exist no autographs for any other ancient document for any other figure or event of antiquity, only copies. Bridge three will address the discipline of translation. Have the translators of those ancient Greek manuscripts faithfully transcribed what the text states? I am going to accomplish this by looking at three objections that correspond to the three bridges I just mentioned. First, biased translation – this is the view that the church historically has messed with the translation and therefore our English Bibles are unreliable. Second, tainted transmission – this is the view that Mark may have been trustworthy to the original autograph he wrote, but can we trust the current, extant Greek MSS, the copies of Mark’s autograph? Third, unreliable testimony – this is the view that early Christians were unable, or unwilling, to tell the truth about who Jesus was. Believing that Jesus was merely a Jewish peasant who they aggrandized into some demi-god.

  1. The Objection of Inaccurate Translation

     At issue here is the belief that the church has somehow biased the translation. Among scholars however this belief is nothing more than mere posturing. But among the general populace this view holds significant sway. Hermeneutics is the science and art of biblical interpretation. It is considered a science because it has rules, and these rules can be classified into an orderly system. It is considered an art because communication is flexible, and therefore a mechanical and rigid application of rules will sometimes distort the true meaning of a communication.[2] But in what sense is hermeneutics a science? Hermeneutics is considered a science because it deals with what the “rules of interpretation” are. For example, the golden rule, the law of first mention, the law of double reference, the law of recurrence, and the law of context. In what sense then is hermeneutics an art?  The art of hermeneutics deals with how those rules of interpretation should be applied. In other words, when translating from the source language, Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek, into the receptor language, in our case English, translation can employ the functional, thought-for-thought approach known as dynamic equivalency, or a more literal, word-for-word approach known as formal equivalency. The dynamic equivalency approach to translation attempts to convey what the original text means. The formal equivalency approach to translation attempts to convey what the original text says, leaving its meaning up to the reader to determine.

     With the golden rule of interpretation, when the plain sense of scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense; therefore, take every word, at its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning unless the facts of the immediate context, which is another of the rules of interpretation, studied in the light of related passages and axiomatic and fundamental truths, indicate clearly otherwise. Another of the rules of interpretation is the law of first mention. This rule of interpretation states that the first occurrence in scripture of a particular Christian doctrine provides the simplest most fundamental, inherent meaning of that doctrine with the understanding that additional scriptural references to it will expand our understanding of that particular doctrine. A third rule of interpretation is the law of double reference which is closely associated with the fourth rule of interpretation, the law of recurrence. In the law of double reference, a passage of scripture speaks of two different persons or events that are separated by a lengthy period of time. The fact that a gap of time exists is known because of other scriptures. In the law of recurrence, two blocks of scripture record the same event; the second block adds more information and provides additional details to the first. The final rule of interpretation is the rule of context. In this law any passage apart from its context, is pretext. A pretext is a purpose or motive alleged or an appearance assumed in order to cloak the real intention or state of affairs.[3] In the rule of context, passages of scripture are not interpreted in isolation. In other words, surrounding words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, passages, chapters, genera, and testaments are all taken into consideration. 

     When a team of translators sit down, their first task is to determine if the translation they wish to produce will be formal or dynamic equivalency. In a formal approach, translators will attempt to convey exact wording as found in ancient manuscripts. In a dynamic approach, translators will attempt to convey ideas or meanings expressed in those same ancient manuscripts. It is worth pointing out that even a formal approach to translation will require some reworking to the text for two reasons. One, Hebrew and Greek have fewer characters in their alphabet, 22 and 24 respectively, compared to the 26 found in the English language. This results in fewer words that can be formed. Secondly, sentence structure in Hebrew is verb, subject, object; while English is subject, verb, object, style language. To read Hebrew in literal English would be awkward requiring a reworking of sentence structure to improve syntax to make reading it in English easier. Although Greek does possess more characters than Hebrew in its alphabet, we have the same problem, not as many words can be formed as in English. This observation necessitates insertion to the text to improve comprehension of what is being conveyed to the reader in the passage. A number of translations exist across the spectrum, from formal to functional (dynamic). The chart below indicates this.

Regardless of which approach to translation is employed, Greek scholars, Christian or non-Christian, affirm the process as accurate and unbiased.

2. The Objection of Tainted Transmission

     As I mentioned previously, we don’t possess the original autograph of Mark; we have copies of it. We actually don’t have the original of any ancient document, only copies. As an example, Paul’s letters were passed around from church to church and in the process of time would start to decay, so copies were necessary. The question isn’t whether we have Mark’s original writing, the question is how many copies of the original do we have? How early were they written? And how closely do they date to the original autograph? Roman Historian Tacitus wrote “The Annals”, a History of the Roman Empire ca. A.D. 100. The earliest extant copy of his work indicates an almost 1,000-year span between those copies and its original writing. The same could be said of Athenian Historian Thucydides’ work, “History”. Only 20 copies exist of Tacitus’ Annals, and just 8 copies for Thucydides’ History, yet we trust them implicitly as accurate accounts. By contrast, the gospel of Mark was written, scholars estimate, between A.D. 40 – 60. The first MSS of his gospel date back to A.D. 200, a differential of 140 – 160 years and there are thousands of extant MSS of his gospel. As an example, the Chester Beatty Papyri, discovered in the 1930’s, date back to the 2nd and 3rd centuries and written in the Greek language. There are eleven manuscripts in all, seven of the Old Testament, three of the New Testament, and one of the book of Enoch. P45 was a codex of 110 leaves containing portions of all four gospels as well as the book of Acts. Two small leaves in this collection contain chapters 4:36 – 9:31 of Mark’s gospel.

     With respect to textual variants, these are sections within manuscripts where there is a measure of uncertainty about the text. One manuscript will have a word or a phrase where another manuscript will have a different word or phrase. NT textual commentators Westcott and Hort have indicated the only one sixtieth rise above “trivialities” and can be called “substantial variations”. In short, the NT is 98.33% pure. Greek scholar Ezra Abbott has stated that about 19/20 (95%) of the readings are “various” rather than “rival” readings, and about 19/20 (95%) of the rest make no appreciable difference in the sense of the passage. NT Greek scholar John A.T. Robertson has said that the real concern is with about “a thousandth part of the entire text”. So, the reconstructed text of the New Testament is 99.9% free of any real concern. Theologian and Church Historian Philip Schaff has estimated that of the 150,000 variants known, only 400 have affected the sense; and of those, fifty were of any real significance; and of those, not one has affected any article of faith. In fact, multiple variants can help to establish the original.

  1. Y#u have won ten million dollars.
  2. Yo# have won ten million dollars.
  3. You #ave won ten million dollars.

In this example you have three variant readings. We can see from two and three, that one is missing the vowel “O”. We can see from one and three, that two is missing the vowel “U”; and we can see from one and two, that three is missing the consonant “H”. So, this indicates that even with mistakes occurring, 100% of the message conveyed still comes through. Biblical critic Bart Ehrman has admitted,

In fact, most of the changes found in early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology. Far and away the most changes are the result of mistakes pure and simple – slips of the pen, accidental omissions, inadvertent additions, misspelled words, blunders of one sort or another. (Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 55; Emphasis added).  

Manuscript expert Sir Frederick Kenyon has stated,

The interval between the dates of the original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the scriptures have come down substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established. (Kenyon, Bible and Archaeology, 288; Emphasis added).

     The gospel of Mark is the shortest of the four in the biblical canon. Among historical scholars when studying ancient documents, the shorter reading is usually the earliest, or the original. Variant readings are few and insignificant enough, and the science of textual criticism is sophisticated enough to guarantee a virtually 99% reconstruction of Mark’s original words. There is no major doctrine or article of faith that is affected by textual variants. In Mark 1:1, some MSS do not include the phrase, “the Son of God”. But this is by no means an enigma because if you look further down in the text, you will notice in v.11, God the Father refers to Jesus as the Son of God, “You are My beloved Son”. In fact, Jesus is referred to as the Son of God thirty-nine times in the NT. So, a single verse which does not contain that particular phrase in an earlier manuscript is not going to affect that doctrine adversely as the claim exists at various points throughout the NT. Furthermore, those other thirty-nine occurrences, do not exist as variants. Mark 3:14 states that Jesus appointed twelve “apostles”, yet the noun “apostle” does not appear in some earlier manuscripts. Nevertheless, they are referred to as “apostles” at other points in the NT. There are other variants in Mark’s gospel, but again, no doctrine or article of faith has been negatively affected. My English Bible has been translated from a manuscript tradition which guarantees the reliable transmission of the Greek original of Mark and all that he had asserted about the existence of Jesus and all that He said and did. If we have to throw that out as unreliable, then we better throw out every other translation of ancient document, because we have far more on Mark and the NT than any other ancient document accepted as factual.

Note: Part Two will address, The Reliability of Mark’s Testimony and the issue of, Multiple Attestation or The Presence of Independent Witnesses.  

[1] C.F. Cruse, Translator.  Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History: Complete and Unabridged 3.39.15, Eusebius quoting Papias (Peabody, MASS.: Hendrickson Publishers, 2018), 105.

[2] ​Henry A. Virkler and Karelynne G. Ayayo, Hermeneutics: Principles and Processes of Biblical Interpretation ed.2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1981), 16.  

[3] “Pretext.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pretext. Accessed 25 Mar. 2023.

Stephen Singleton (B.A. Christian Studies: Biblical Literature & Interpretation) Ambrose University

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WONDER WOMAN & THE GOD KILLER

By Wonder Woman Movie Poster (#6 of 16) – IMP Awards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51137764

“My dear child, that is not the god killer, you are. Only a god can kill another god” – Ares.

Wonder Woman (2017)

 

The back story for this movie comes from Greek mythology. Earth was ruled by the gods, chief among them was Zeus king of the gods. He was the creator of men who initially were good, but Ares, who was recognized as the god of war, and son of Zeus and Hera, corrupted the hearts of men so the gods created the Amazons “to influence men’s hearts with love and restore peace to the Earth”. Hippolyta was queen of the Amazons with whom Zeus had intimate relations the offspring of which was Diana of Themyscira. But this was not the story Diana received from her mother Hippolyta. She informed Diana that she created her out of clay and plead with Zeus to give her life. So, Diana came to believe that she had no father.

     As the story goes, the Amazons went to war against Ares, the god of war. Zeus led the gods to the defence of the Amazons, but Ares killed all the gods with the exception of Zeus who exhausted the last of his power to strike Ares down, causing him to retreat. Suspecting that Ares may return someday, Zeus left the Amazons a weapon, one strong enough to kill a god. The god killer. “With his dying breath, Zeus created this island to hide us from the outside world, somewhere Ares could not find us”.

     There are a number of problems with the statement by Ares that, “only a god can kill another god”. Firstly, any god who is truly God would be infinite in existence. Ares and Diana are created beings which would indicate that they are finite, contingent beings. Everything which exists is only able to exist in one of two ways, either contingently or necessarily. A contingent being is one that can not exist. In other words, a contingent being is that which has the potential not to exist at all. Its existence is predicated on the existence of something, or someone else already in existence. Secondly, it is not possible for an infinite being who exists necessarily, to create another infinite being who also exists necessarily, as a Necessary Being is that which cannot not exist. A necessary being does not have the potential not to exist. Such a notion would invoke a contradiction. Necessary existence indicates that that thing cannot come into existence nor is it able to go out of existence. Its existence is perpetual. Necessary existence is intrinsic to the nature of that which possesses it, shapes and numbers are said to exist necessarily. But shapes and numbers lack the capacity to create, only personalities are capable of that. Thomas Aquinas has noted,

“that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing.[i] Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus, even now nothing would be in existence–which is absurd…but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary…. Therefore, we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another…This all men speak of as God”.[1]  

     In other words, Aquinas is speaking of Gods’ necessary existence and His divine aseity. God exists a se from the Latin meaning “by itself” or “in itself” indicating that He is self-existent, requiring nothing, and no one, for his being. So, enquiries into Gods’ origin are meaningless given how He exists. He simply exists. Novatian has stated,

 He is always like and equal to Himself. And what is not born cannot be changed: for only those things undergo change which are made, or which are begotten; in that those things which had not been at one time, learn to be by coming into being, and therefore to suffer change by being born. Moreover, those things which neither have nativity nor maker, have excluded from themselves the capacity of change, not having a beginning wherein is cause of change. And thus, He is declared to be one, having no equal. For whatever can be God, must as God be of necessity the Highest. But whatever is the Highest, must certainly be the Highest in such sense as to be without any equal. And thus, that must needs be alone and one on which nothing can be conferred, having no peer; because there cannot be two infinites, as the very nature of things dictates. And that is infinite which neither has any sort of beginning nor end.[2] (Emphasis added)

     In other words, necessary existence is intrinsic to His nature and therefore lacks all potentiality, He could not be otherwise; “what is not born cannot be changed”. That which is born, or created, exists contingently and is therefore subject to change.

     Furthermore, the existence of gods and demi-gods is squarely refuted biblically and historically. “Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me”. (Isaiah 43:10, ESV)[3] In the Hebrew the phrase is rendered, לֹא־נ֣וֹצַר (not, be formed) אֵ֔ל (god) וְאַחֲרַ֖י (and; after; I) לֹ֥א (god) יִהְיֶֽה׃ ס (be). In reality there is no “before me” with God, nor is there an “after me”. He just is. Being is in its proper sense peculiar to God, and belongs to Him entirely, and is not limited or cut short by any Before or After, for indeed in him there is no past or future.[4] Furthermore, Cyril has noted,

God is the source of all things, but he himself has no origin. Everything that exists came into being through him, but he was not born of anyone – he is the one who is and who is to come.[5]  

     The term פָּנִים (p̱âniym) from the root word פָּנָה (p̱ânâ) translates as “before”. In the receptor language, or English, it means, “to be in advance of” or “prior to”, but in the source language, in this case Hebrew, the term is not a time reference but a positional one and functions as an adverb which modifies the first person, personal pronoun which follows it, “me”. Literally meaning “in front of” or “before my face”. The adverb לֹא meaning “not” but translated as “no”, modifies the noun which follows it, “god”, by way of negation. The noun “was” functions as a past indicative of “be” or “to be” in respect of that which exists. Or in this instance, that which does not, or did not exist. The verb יָצַר (yâṣar) meaning to “be formed”, “fashioned” or “created”. So, the first part of this verse (10.a) literally translates as, “Before my face, no god was ever fashioned”.  What may be called gods are in actuality no gods at all, for “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; they have eyes, but do not see; they have ears, but do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths. (Psalms 135:15-17)

     In the second part of the verse, (10.b) “nor shall there be any after me”, the Hebrew term לֹה (lôh) is the same as the term utilized in 10.a. It is a primitive particle meaning “not”, translated here as “nor” and as previously noted, is a negation modifying the verb which follows, הָיָה (hâyâh) translated as “be” and meaning “to exist” or “to have” existence and functions as a present-tense verb, and always in the emphatic sense. The verb “shall” does not appear in the original Hebrew MSS, it is added for the purpose of clarity, to improve syntax. Typically, present day usage is interchangeable between “shall” and “will”, though “will” is more common. Historically, the two verbs have differing meanings. The verb “shall” was applied in instances referring to future actions, “will” was used in instances referring to present actions. The use of “shall” in this translation indicates a reference to future actions. Like the verb that precedes it, “shall”, the term “there” does not appear in the original Hebrew MSS its inclusion can be applied a number of different ways, subject to the context. Given the context the term “there”, functions as a noun which refers to place or position. I have already parsed the Hebrew verb הָיָה (hâyâh) which appears in 10.a and is repeated here in 10.b, so there is no need to traverse that ground again. The term “any” exists as a pronoun which typically reference persons but can reference things or objects. In 10.b the latter would be true. The term is a numerical or quantifiable reference in the negative as in “not any”.  The Hebrew adverb אַחַר (’aḥar) meaning literally “the hind part” and translated here as “after”, qualifies the verb which precedes it, “be”.  As an adverb it can reference a particular place, as in behind. Or a particular time, as in afterwards. The context of 10.b suggest that this is a time reference, not a positional one, as in 10.a. The first person, personal pronoun אֲנִי (ănı̂y) meaning “I” but translated as “me” answers the question of who the verse is in reference to, as the Hebrew only uses the pronoun once in the verse, though it appears twice in translation to improve clarity. So, 10.b literally translates as, “There shall never exist even one from this time forward”. The verse in its entirety literally translates, “Before my face, no god was ever fashioned. There shall never exist, even one, from this time forward”. As Tatian has indicated,

Our God did not begin to be in time: He alone is without beginning, and He Himself is the beginning of all things. (Emphasis added)[6]

Contrasted with the gods which are of human contrivance and innovation, to usurp that which was true from the beginning, that God is, and there is no other. “In the beginning God” (Gen. 1:1) and as He says to Moses, “I Am” (Ex. 3:14).

     Moreover, not only are Diana of Themyscira and Ares the god of war created beings, as I previously indicated, but Zeus also is a created being, the son of Cronos and Rhea. They are therefore, by definition, finite, contingent beings. They posses the potential not to exist at all. If they are truly gods what need would there be of procreation? Their existence as gods would be perpetual. Given that it is not, they therefore cannot exist as gods. Lactantius has stated,   

Wherefore, as I often reflect on the subject of such great majesty, they who worship the gods sometimes appear so blind, so incapable of reflection, so senseless, so little removed from the mute animals, as to believe that those who are born from the natural intercourse of the sexes could have had anything of majesty and divine influence; since the Erythræan Sibyl says: “It is impossible for a God to be fashioned from the loins of a man and the womb of a woman.” And if this is true, as it really is, it is evident that Hercules, Apollo, Bacchus, Mercury, and Jupiter, with the rest, were but men, since they were born from the two sexes. But what is so far removed from the nature of God as that operation which He Himself assigned to mortals for the propagation of their race, and which cannot be affected without corporeal substance?[7]

Therefore, if the gods are immortal and eternal, what need is there of the other sex, when they themselves do not require succession, since they are always about to exist?

     Furthermore, the creation of Diana as “the god killer” is redundant if it’s true that “Ares killed all the other gods with the exception of Zeus”, after all “only a god can kill another god” according to Ares. Moreover, in defeating Ares, Zeus “exhausted the last of his power” to do so, therefore he cannot be infinite in power if that is true. If that weren’t enough to convince you that Zeus is a contingent being, in the movie Zeus uses “his dying breath” to create Themyscira to hide the Amazons from Ares. These statements indicate that Zeus is limited in power and finite in existence, how then does he remain a god? The Judaeo-Christian conception of God in the scriptures indicates that He “does not faint or grow weary”. Isaiah 40:28 The power of Zeus is finite, it possesses a limit which requires rest. The God of the Bible is omnipotent. There is no limit to His power, it is never in short supply, and it certainly does not run out. Furthermore, the existence of God is perpetual, and lacks all potentiality, which indicates that He has neither beginning nor ending. He exists necessarily. He exists eternally; “from everlasting to everlasting, you are God” (Psalms 90:2), “the number of his years is unsearchable” (Job 36:26). Zeus, it is said, died creating Themyscira to protect the Amazons from Ares. Zeus of Olympus, bows to the God of the Bible the great “I Am.”

[1] Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica (Complete & Unabridged) (p. 10). Coyote Canyon Press. Kindle Edition.

[2] Novatian, “A Treatise of Novatian Concerning the Trinity,” in Fathers of the Third Century: Hippolytus, Cyprian, Novatian, Appendix, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, trans. Robert Ernest Wallis, vol. 5, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1886), 614–615.

[3] Unless otherwise noted, all scriptural references are from The Holy Bible. English Standard Version, with Strong’s Numbers (Wheaton IL: Crossway, 2008).

[4] Gregory Nazianzen, “Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen,” in S. Cyril of Jerusalem, S. Gregory Nazianzen, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow, vol. 7, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1894), 316.

[5] Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Isaiah 4.2., PG 70:924. Quoted in Gerald L. Bray: Editor and Thomas C. Oden: Series Editor, Ancient Christian Doctrine Vol.1: We Believe in One God (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2009), 43.

[6] Tatian, “Address of Tatian to the Greeks,” in Fathers of the Second Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria (Entire), ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, trans. J. E. Ryland, vol. 2, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 66.

[7]Lactantius, “The Divine Institutes,” in Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries: Lactantius, Venantius, Asterius, Victorinus, Dionysius, Apostolic Teaching and Constitutions, Homily, and Liturgies, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, trans. William Fletcher, vol. 7, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1886), 17–18.

[i] In other words, that things being is contingent. Its existence is predicated on that which exists necessarily.

Stephen Singleton (B.A. Christian Studies: Biblical Literature & interpretation) Ambrose University

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OF ANAKIN SKYWALKER AND JESUS CHRIST

By http://www.impawards.com/1999/star_wars_episode_one_the_phantom_menace_ver2.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=899074

“Who is the boy’s father?” – Qui-Gon

“He had no father” – Shmi

In the Principle of Causality, nothing in existence has come into existence without some cause. It follows the Latin maxim ex nihilo nihil fit, “out of nothing, nothing comes”. Typically, this maxim is applied in a cosmological sense regarding the origin of the universe but will also work in a chemical or biological sense regarding the origin of life. The fact that all flora and fauna exist requires that they have a cause. Everything which exists is only capable of existing in one of two ways, either as contingent or as necessary. It cannot be both contingent and necessary as that would violate a law of logic, the law of non-contradiction (LNC) which states that you cannot have “A” and yet have “A” at the same time to the same extent.  Those things which exist contingently indicate that it is possible for them not to exist. Those things which exist necessarily, do so by their own nature, it is not possible that they should not exist, shapes and numbers are said to exist in this fashion. But shapes and numbers lack a creative force. Furthermore, there exists two different types of causes, efficient cause, and instrumental cause. For Shmi to claim Anakin had no father is a logical impossibility. Given that Anakin had a beginning indicates that he exists contingently, it is therefore possible for him not to exist, and therefore he must have a cause. But what type of cause? It would have to be an efficient cause, a father. An efficient cause is that by which something comes to be in existence, an instrumental cause is that through which something comes to be in existence. That which is the efficient cause of some thing (or someone) indicates that being must create being, or that like produces like. As Anakin is a contingent being his cause must be efficient and not instrumental as like must produce like. Being, or existence, cannot give what it does not have. It follows logically therefore that he must have a father; the midi-chlorians cannot be the father of Anakin. Just as bacteria have only ever been observed to produce other bacteria, midi-chlorians can only produce other midi-chlorians, like produces like, as it has this type of genetic information to give. It cannot give what it does not have. A father can produce a child in his own “likeness” as he has the genetic information available to do so.

Even Jesus of Nazareth has a father. I am not speaking of Joseph the husband of Mary as he acted as more of a surrogate to Christ’s actual Father. His birth did not come about in the usual, natural way, but exists as a singular supernatural event. Luke’s gospel records the exchange between Mary and the angel Gabriel. διὸ καὶ τὸ γεννώμενον ἅγιον κληθήσεται, υἱὸς θεοῦ· Which translates, “therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.” (Lk. 1:35b, ESV)[1] The verb γεννώμενον (gennomenon) meaning, to be born, is a passive, present – tense verb. Passive verbs are those in which the subject is the one being acted upon (35b). Active verbs are those in which the subject is the one performing the act. The adjective ἅγιον (agion) meaning, holy, has the nominative case ending in the Greek, indicating that it is the subject of the verb γεννώμενον, “to be born”. The verse in its entirety shows a cause-and-effect type relationship. If “B” is the effect (35b), then “A” (35a) must be its efficient cause. So, what does the first part of the verse say (35a)? “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you”. If “A” (35a) is true, then it follows logically that “B” (35b) is necessarily true. Adjectives like ἅγιον (holy) are descriptors, they describe or modify the verb. Therefore, the adjective here describes that the one “to be born”, the verb, will by nature, be “holy”. A character or attribute that only God Himself possesses perfectly. The nouns υἱὸς θεοῦ (huios theou) translated “Son of God” have the nominative and dative case endings respectively. υἱὸς (Son) is nominative, indicating it as the subject of the verb κληθήσεται (klethesetai) meaning, to call or to name, and θεοῦ (God) has the genitive case ending indicating possession, meaning that the one to be born will be “the Son of God” or literally, “God’s Son.”

Moreover, there does not appear to exist within the biblical or historical framework of the church, any contention over Christ Jesus being the Son of God, save for the incident concerning Arianism which I will address later. The heretic Marcion promulgated the notion that Jesus existed as a phantom and did not come in the flesh. “Marcion… has attempted to overthrow the doctrine of the Incarnation and has vented a diabolical utterance declaring that He did not become flesh, nor was clothed with it, but that this was mere fancy, and illusion, a piece of acting and pretence….” (Emphasis added)[2] Such a notion wars against itself in light of the scriptural account of His person being in the flesh and he was therefore soundly denounced by various church fathers including Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Hippolytus et al., so they designated him a heretic. It was Tertullian who infamously stated, “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? what between heretics and Christians?… Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition!”[3] As for Marcion, he could not reconcile that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament were one and the same, so he devised a notion that there were two distinct gods. The angry God of the Old Testament and the loving God of the New Testament. As such, he rejected the Old Testament and embraced only portions of the New Testament and in doing so, created his own canon of the Bible. In it he included an abbreviated version of Luke’s gospel and only ten of Paul’s letters. I suppose he didn’t like what John had to say in his gospel, “by this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. (1 John 4:2-3a, emphasis added) He also stated that, “those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. (2 John 1:7, emphasis added) So, Marcion did not ultimately deny the Sonship of Jesus Christ, only His being incarnatus.

The heresy of Valentinus is connected with the Pythagorean and Platonic theory. Plato, in the Timæus, derived his impressions from Pythagoras and they derived their tenets originally from the Egyptians, and introduced their novel opinions among the Greeks. Valentinus took his opinions from them, he endeavoured to construct a doctrine of his own, yet, in point of fact, all he did was alter the doctrines of those thinkers in names only, and numbers, and had adopted a peculiar terminology of his own. Hippolytus remarked, “And from this (system), not from the Gospels, Valentinus, as we have proved, has collected the (materials of) heresy—I mean his own (heresy)—and may (therefore) justly be reckoned a Pythagorean and Platonist, not a Christian.”[4] Valentinus was a contemporary of Marcion, and like Marcion adopted many of the same views; that all matter is evil, and as a result Jesus could not have come in the flesh and by extension there can be no physical resurrection. But again, like Marcion, he did not deny Jesus as the Son of God.

As for Arius, “he reasoned that the expression ‘eternal father and son’ was an oxymoron. For the Father to have begotten the Son, He must be older than the Son; so there must have been a time when the Son did not exist…Arius argued that if the Son were without a beginning, then he would be a brother of God, and not a son.”[5] Arius attempted an appellation of Luke’s declarative phrase, in Acts 2:36 which states, “God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Emphasis added) and Paul’s descriptor of Christ’s person as “the firstborn of all creation” (Col. 1:15, emphasis added) as evidence for his contention that Christ was a created being, “there was once when he was not” and therefore not co-eternal with the Father. What Arius failed to understand was that both these references are positional, referring to His pre-eminence over all of creation, not His origin. The implication of Arius’ views did insinuate a denial of the Sonship of Christ. That “Son of God” was merely his epithet, not who He was in point of fact. But “in point of fact”, there is much evidence against such a view, and little to none in support of it.

In response to the heretical behaviour of the Gnostic Maricon (A.D. 85-160), the gnostic Valentinus (A.D. 100-180), Arius (A.D. 256-336), et al., church fathers developed what become recognized as The Apostles Creed in the 2nd century ca. A.D. 140 which states in part, “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord….” (Emphasis added)[6] In A.D. 325 an ecumenical council was convened at Nicaea in response to the heresy of Arius. Out of which was developed the Nicene Creed that states in part, “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God….” (Emphasis added)[7]. The second ecumenical council, The Council of Constantinople I in A.D. 381, echoed the council of Nicaea stating, “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God….”[8] (Emphasis added). Generally speaking, all councils and creeds were uniform in their construction, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

[1] Unless otherwise indicated, all Biblical passages referenced are in the English Standard Version, with Strong’s Numbers (Wheaton IL: Crossway, 2008). 

[2] John Chrysostom, “Against Marcionists and Manichæans,” in Saint Chrysostom: On the Priesthood, Ascetic Treatises, Select Homilies and Letters, Homilies on the Statues, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. W. R. W. Stephens, vol. 9, A.

[3] Tertullian, “The Prescription against Heretics,” in Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, trans. Peter Holmes, vol. 3, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 246.

[4] Hippolytus of Rome, “The Refutation of All Heresies,” in Fathers of the Third Century: Hippolytus, Cyprian, Novatian, Appendix, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, trans. J. H. MacMahon, vol. 5, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1886), 85.

[5] David Beale, Historical Theology In-Depth: Themes and Contexts of Doctrinal Development since the First Century Vol.1. (Greenville, SC.: Bob Jones University Press, 2013), 232

[6] Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1889), 205.

[7] David Beale, Historical Theology In-Depth: Themes and Contexts of Doctrinal Development since the First Century Vol.1. (Greenville, SC.: Bob Jones University Press, 2013), 241.

[8] Ibid., 281-2.

Stephen Singleton (B.A. Christian Studies: Biblical Literature & Interpretation)

Ambrose University

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MR. SPOCK AND THE EXISTENCE OF MIRACLES

By http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/6843/528235-elrond_silver_shirt.jpg, Fair use,  https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22826291                                                                                                                                        “It’s a miracle!” – ensign Darwin,                                                         “There are no such things.” – Mr. Spock.                                       Star Trek: Into Darkness

The circumstances under which this statement was made by Mr. Spock, centered around the impending demise of the Enterprise due to the ships’ warp-core being knocked offline. With no power to run the ship, the Enterprise began to plummet putting it in danger of crashing into the Earth if the warp-core could not be re-aligned. Kirk endeavored to re-align the warp-core by entering the housing compartment that contained it. The problem was the compartment was filled with radiation and although Kirk was able to restore it, doing so came at a cost. Its realignment inspired ensign Darwin to cry out, “It’s a miracle!” to which Mr. Spock retorted, “There are no such things”.

     How does Mr. Spock know that miracles do not exist? Or is it simply that he does not believe miracles exist? If it’s a matter of belief, would that make Spock something of a deist? The primary tenets of deism are three, first, God exists, second, miracles do not occur, and third, God is unitary.  It is this second tenet that concerns us.  Some deists stress the uniformity of natural law. God set up the laws of the natural world, and he cannot (or will not) violate the law he established in the natural world. A miracle would be a violation of an inviolable law. But the inviolable cannot be violated. Hence, miracles cannot happen.[i] But deistic beliefs concerning the existence of God are incongruent taking into account that God performed the miracle of creation ex nihilo (from nothing), it follows from the very nature and power of this kind of God that other lesser miracles are possible. Walking on water is little problem for a God who created water to begin with.[ii] Nevertheless, I can find no indication that Mr. Spock had any belief in the existence of God so this would disqualify him as a deist. More likely he would identify as an atheist, or at best an agnostic. But if God exists, then miracles are possible. If miracles do not exist, then,

  1. The Bible is not the word of God, as the Bible is full of the miracles of God.
  2. If these miracles did not occur, then the Bible is not credible.
  3. So, if these miracles are not credible then neither are the Bibles’ claims.

Furthermore, if miracles do not exist, then,

  1. Jesus cannot be the Son of God since the Bible tells us that He is.
  2. Jesus did not preform miracles to prove His claims as the Bible tells us that He did. (Matt.12:40; Mk. 2:10-11)
  3. So, if these miracles are not credible then neither are Jesus’ claims.

     If miracles do not exist salvation cannot be an act of God since the Bible says that it is (Ps. 37:39; 1 Cor. 15:1-8; Rom. 1:16, 10:9) and that Jesus rose from the dead, if He did not, we are still in our sins (1 Cor. 15:17). Miracles are not anomalies, which are unusual, but simply have an unknown natural cause. Miracles are not providential, which may be uncommon, but have a known natural cause. Miracles are not magical, which are strange, but have a secrete natural cause, illusion or slight of hand et cetera. Miracles are not satanic, which are unusual but are characterized by an evil spiritual cause.

     A miracle, by definition, is a divine intervention in the natural world that produces an event that would not have resulted from purely natural causes. Antony Flew has stated that, “A miracle is something which would never have happened had nature, as it were, been left to its own devices.”[iii]  During the 17th century pantheist Benedict Spinoza, argued against the existence of miracles claiming essentially that,

  1. Miracles are violations of natural laws.
  2. Natural laws are immutable.
  3. It is impossible to violate immutable laws.
  4. Therefore, miracles are impossible.[iv]

     The problem with Spinoza’s argument is that it begs the question. The problem with question begging is that the premises assume the conclusion instead of supporting it. If you’re going to argue that natural laws are immutable (2) and that immutable laws cannot be violated (3), then obviously miracles would not be possible. Spinoza’s first premise is actually incorrect. Miracles do not “violate” the laws of nature, they are a suspension of them for the purpose of an intervention. Natural laws are not necessarily immutable, they are suspended all the time. When SpaceX launches into space or airplanes lift off from the runway, the law of gravity is not violated or negated, it is overpowered by certain forces applied against it, to accomplish a particular end, namely flight. If finite creatures such as we are, are able to overpower certain physical laws, certainly the creator of such laws is able to overpower them. Spinoza’s particular perturbation respecting the existence of miracles was predicated on his belief that God as the creator and sustainer of the known universe would not alter the laws that He Himself set in motion by causing such an occurrence that would contradict those laws. Spinoza believed that by altering the laws of nature for the sake of some miraculous event, He would in fact be contradicting His own nature. As a pantheist, he would have believed that the universe, indeed, the entire natural world, is God. Philosopher and Christian apologist Dr. William Lane Craig, summarised English philosopher/theologian Samuel Clarke by stating,

“The so-called natural forces, like gravitation, are properly speaking the effect of God’s acting on matter at every moment.  The upshot of this is that the so-called ‘course of nature’ is a fiction – what we call the course of nature is in reality nothing other than God’s producing certain effects in a continual and uniform manner. Thus, a miracle is not contrary to the course of nature, which does not really exist; it is simply an unusual event that God does. Moreover, since God is omnipotent, miraculous events are no more difficult for him than regular events. So, the regular order of nature proves the existence and attributes of God, and miracles prove the interposition of God into the regular order in which he acts.”[v]

     In other words, when we read that Jesus was the agent of the creation, “upholding all things by the word of His power” (Heb. 1:3 NKJV), this is an indication “of God’s acting on matter at every moment”. The phrase ὑποστάσεως (upostaseos) αὐτοῦ, (aptou) φέρων (pheron) translates as “nature (or essence), he, to sustain”.  The genitive case ending (ως) in ὑποστάσεως (upostaseos) and (ῦ) in αὐτοῦ, (aptou) indicate possession. The only difference is the first is feminine and the second masculine and the two together indicate that Jesus possesses the same nature or essence as the Father (hypostatic union).  The nominative case endings in ἀπαύγασμα (apaugasma) and χαρακτὴρ (charaktēr) indicate that God’s “radiance” and “character” are the subject of the verse. The accusative case ending ν in φέρων (pheron) indicates it as the direct object of the verse. The Greek verb φέρω (pherō) meaning “to uphold” or “maintain” is an active, presentence verb. Active verbs are those in which the subject is the one performing the act, denoting that it is He who upholds, maintains, or sustains all things presently “by the word of his power”, cf. Col. 1:17. Therefore, “a miracle is not contrary to the course of nature”, in actuality there is no such thing, “it is simply an unusual event that God does”.  

     The purpose of a miracle is to confirm a message from God (Jn. 3:2; Acts 2:22; Heb. 2:3). Theism makes miracles possible. If a supernatural God exists, then supernatural acts of God are possible. If there is a creation by God, then there can be an intervention by God.

  1. If God exists, miracles are possible.
  2. To disprove miracles, one must disprove God.
  3. No one has disproved God. (A disbelief in His existence is not a proof against it).                                                                                     a. Few have attempted it.                                                                     b. I contend that those who have attempted it, have failed at it.

     Expanding on premise 3b., those who have attempted to disprove the existence of God, have struggled mightily in their efforts to do so, either employing unjustifiable arguments or arguments which are self defeating. One of the supposed disproof’s for God’s existence include the existence of “moral imperfections in the world”, leading to the assumption that a morally perfect God would not allow for the existence of moral imperfections, therefore, causing them to conclude, no morally perfect God can exist. But how would you know what was morally imperfect unless you know what is morally perfect? Therefore, there must be a morally perfect standard in order to know the world is morally imperfect. A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.[vi]

     The Scottish agnostic philosopher David Hume, like Spinoza, argued against the concept of the miraculous by contending,

  1. Natural law is by definition a description of a regular occurrence.
  2. A miracle is by definition a rare occurrence.
  3. The evidence for the regular is always greater than that for the rare.
  4. A wise man always basis his belief on the greater evidence.
  5. Therefore, a wise man should never believe in miracles. [vii]

     Hume’s first premise is correct, typically, natural laws are constant and consistent, occurring at regular intervals, behaving in predictable ways that are rarely altered, that is, unless constrained by some external factor which Hume has not considered. His second premise is also correct, miraculous occurrences are rare and irregular, transpiring at random intervals that are unpredictable.  It is Hume’s third premise that raises some red flags. Is it really true that evidence for the regular unfailingly, perpetually, eternally supersedes that of the rare? Is it truly “always greater”? If Hume is alluding to the quantity of evidence available for the regular occurrence of natural law, against the evidence available for the miraculous, then it follows logically that the volume of evidence available should fall on the side of the regular. A corollary of which is that a miracle is a rare occurrence and must be in order to qualify as such, if it was not, it would fall into the category of those things which occur at regular intervals, following natural laws. Which clearly a miracle supersedes, it is not a violation of it. It therefore would require the requisite power of the supernatural over the natural order of things, or its regular occurrence under natural law. But therein lies the problem with Hume’s argument, it confuses the quantity of evidence against the quality of the evidence which should be weighed, not added.  It may be that the event which we call a miracle was brought on not by a suspension of the laws in ordinary operation, but by the super addition of something not ordinarily in operation.[viii] In other words, miracles don’t violate the regular laws of cause and effect, they simply have a cause that transcends nature.[ix]

     Nevertheless, Hume insists that a miracle could be more believable if it occurred more frequently, more consistently, with greater regularity. Doing so however would disqualify it as a miracle as previously noted, as well as Hume’s own premise that a miracle is a rare occurrence.  In these two statements Hume commits a logical fallacy. The law of non-contradiction states that you cannot have “A” and yet have “A” in the same sense to the same extent. You cannot have a miracle existing as both a “rare” and “regular” occurrence at the same time, it would have to be one or the other. Furthermore, in the law of bivalence a propositional statement is either true or false. If Hume’s premise that “a miracle is by definition a rare event” is true, then it follows logically that it cannot be false, so Hume’s argument that, should miracles occur with greater regularity they would be more believable, well this turns out to be a logical fallacy.

     Some have thought that if God would only reveal Himself repeatedly in miraculous occurrences then surely belief in Him would be universal. But, as Dr. Samuel Harris pointed out, repetition of the miraculous would, with repeated acquaintance with it, soon lead many to discount or deny it as miraculous or as a revelation of God. (O. Wiley 1946, 38)

     If, however, Hume’s 3rd premise that, “evidence for the regular supersedes, or is aways greater than that of the rare,” as a reference to their respective magnitude, then clearly, he has not thought this through enough. Case in point, the origin of the universe is a singular occurrence which would qualify it as miraculous on two fronts. First, the origin of the universe is by all accounts, a rare occurrence.  If it is true that, “a miracle is by definition a rare occurrence” then it follows that the cause of the universe must be miraculous and not natural. Second, how could the cause be of natural origin when, as yet no natural laws were in existence? Physicist Paul Davies has stated that, “[The big bang] represents the instantaneous suspension of physical laws, the sudden abrupt flash of lawlessness that allowed something to come out of nothing. It represents a true miracle…” (emphasis added)[x]  When Physicists argue that the universe sprang into existence “out of nothing”, it is far different from a theist arguing that God brought the universe into existence ex nihilo, out of nothing. Indeed, it would be a fantastic notion to argue that nothing produced everything we now see in existence, which is quite frankly a logical absurdity. Ancient Romans coined the maxim on logic, ex nihilo nihil fit or “out of nothing, nothing comes”. No one has ever observed “nothing” create a single thing. It would be a greater miracle than arguing that God created all of time space and matter out of nothing (Gen.1:1; Jn.1:3).

     Moreover, the sheer magnitude of the creation has no comparable. Considering the immensity of space and the celestial bodies which occupy it (Psalms 19:1-6), along with minute intricacies and complexity of the human cell, it is exceptionally difficult to believe that it all came into existence out of absolutely nothing, unless of course it didn’t. Even very slight alterations in the values of many factors, such as the expansion rate of the universe, the strength of gravitational or electromagnetic attraction, or the value of Planck’s constant, would render life impossible.[xi] Furthermore, given the improbability of the precise ensemble of values represented by these constants, and their specificity relative to the requirements of  a life-sustaining universe, many physicists have noted that the fine tuning strongly suggests design by a pre-existent intelligence. As well-known British physicist Paul Davies has put it, “the impression of design is overwhelming.”[xii]

     Additionally, the technology of the 20th century has delved into the tiniest particles of life and has revealed that the cell is the most complex system mankind has ever confronted. Today we know that the cell contains power stations producing the energy to be used by the cell, factories manufacturing the enzymes and hormones essential for life, a databank where all the necessary information about all products to be produced is recorded, complex transportation systems and pipelines for carrying raw materials and products from one place to another, advanced laboratories and refineries for breaking down external raw materials into their useable parts, and specialized cell membrane proteins to control the incoming and outgoing materials. And these constitute only a small part of this incredibly complex system.[xiii] 

     It is no accident that these analogies of “power stations”, “manufacturing”, a “databank”, “transportation”, “pipelines”, “laboratories” and “refineries” are used to describe the variety of functions that take place in every single cell of the human body, of which they are an estimated 100 million cells. Furthermore, for many years, Francis Crick believed in the theory of molecular evolution, but eventually even he had to admit to himself that such a complex molecule could not have emerged spontaneously by coincidence, as the result of an evolutionary process:

“An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that, in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle.”[xiv] (Emphasis added)

     So, in light of all this, what could we conclude? Is Spock’s claim that “there are no such things” as miracles legitimate? Has he, like Spinoza, contended that because God created and sustains the laws He put in place, that He would contradict Himself by performing a miracle, as miracles are violations of the natural laws He created. If so, Mr. Spock has failed to understand that a miracle is not a violation of natural law, it is a result of an intervention by God into the natural world He created. If He created it, He can intervene in any way He deems necessary. Either by superposition, superseding, addendum, or avulsion. Or has Mr. Spock, like Hume, simply added up the evidence against the existence of miracles without weighing what the evidence actually shows? Hume’s whole approach to the argument seems to be one of dismissal. According to Hume, even if a miracle had occurred, it should not be believed. So, he doesn’t actually argue against their occurring, only their believability. It is patently absurd, however, to claim that an event should be disbelieved, even if it has occurred, that is, when the evidence is overwhelming that the purported miracle has occurred.[xv] Remember that the biggest evidence for the miraculous has already occurred, the creation of the universe ex nihilo.

[i] Norman L. Geisler, Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academics, 2013 2nd Ed.). 153.

[ii] Ibid., 155.

[iii] Antony Flew, “Miracles,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Paul Edwards, ed., vol. 5 (New York: Macmillan and the Free Press, 1967), 346. Quoted in Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2004), 201.

[iv]Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2004), 204.

[v] William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3rd ed., (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2008), 252.

[vi] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1980 Ed.), 38.

[vii] Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2004), 205.

[viii] Physicist Sir George Stokes, International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, p.2036. Quoted in Norman L. Geisler and Ronald M. Brooks, When Skeptics Ask: A Handbook on Christian Evidences, (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Books, 2013), 70.  

[ix] Norman L. Geisler and Ronald M. Brooks, When Skeptics Ask: A Handbook on Christian Evidences, (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Books, 2013), 70.

[x] Paul Davies, physicist, in his book – The Edge of Infinity

[xi] Michael J. Behe, William A. Dembski and Stephen C. Meyer, Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe, (San Francisco, CA. Ignatius Press, 2000), 57.

[xii] Paul Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 203. Quoted in Ibid.

[xiii] http://www.esalq.usp.br/lepse/imgs/conteudo_thumb/The-Complexity-of-the-Cell.pdf#:~:text=THE%20COMPLEXITY%20OF%20THE%20CELL%20The%20cell%20is,life%20as%20it%20has%20been%20revealed%20by%20molecular site accessed August 15, 2022.

[xiv] Ibid.

[xv] Douglas Geivett and Gary R. Habermas, eds., In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God’s Action in History (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 80.

Stephen Singleton (B.A. Christian Studies: Biblical Literature and Interpretation) 

Ambrose University

Posted on

ADAM WAS A HERMAPHRODITE?

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness….  So, God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them”. (Genesis 1:26, 27)[1]

Rabbi Sandra Kviat is a progressive liberal who has written various, somewhat controversial, articles on numerous biblical topics in a series entitled, “The Bible says What”? In January of 2019 she wrote an article in Jewish News entitled, “The Bible says What? Adam is Male and Female in the First Creation Story”. 

     There are a number of items in this article that I take issue with.  The first has to do with one word in the scriptural quote she uses, “And God created Adam in God’s image, in the image of God, God created it”.[2]  I have searched various versions, nearly 60 different translations both English and Hebrew, in addition to various lexicons and commentaries and found nothing indicating that this Hebrew word could be translated as “it”.  Furthermore, this word may not even appear in the original Hebrew in this passage, that being said, it does appear in the LXX.  As such, later Hebrew translations insert the word אֹתָֽם which translates into English as either “they” or “them”, not “it”.  Its insertion in the LXX indicates it as a plural pronoun. The word is considered to be a dummy pronoun.  Dummy pronouns are utilized where antecedents are not present, unlike traditional pronouns which can stand in the place of a noun, phrase, or a clause.  Dummy pronouns reference nothing in particular but can still function grammatically.

      This term “it”, as it appears in the dictionary, can be applied in a number of different ways. Its function is as a non-specific, relaying no particular type of information, something unknown. The second way in which the word is defined in the dictionary is as, “used to represent a person or animal understood, previously mentioned, or about to be mentioned whose gender is unknown or disregarded”. [3] (Emphasis added) Its primary use is in reference to things inanimate.  What it looks like is that Rabbi Kviat has performed an eisegetical approach to interpretation of the text, which is the opposite of an exegetical approach.  In exegesis, the interpreter draws from the text its particular meaning based on the reading as it is.  By contrast, eisegesis expresses the interpreter’s own ideas or particular bias.  אֹת֑וֹ (hu) translates as his, him, it, them, their et cetera. So, the verse could have used “it” as a translation.  But as with all interpretations of scripture, one of the rules of interpretation in hermeneutics is the rule of context. The entire first chapter of Genesis is divided by 10-11 paragraphs, depending which translation you use.  Each paragraph commences with a conjunction, “and” or “then”.  This type of conjunction is referred to as a co-ordinating conjunction.  This type of conjunction works to connect words, phases, and clauses. The primary co-ordinating conjunctions include the words and, or, and but.  Some authors do not view “then” as a conjunction, while many others do.  Therefore, you may find some translations which include the word “then” for each paragraph of Genesis one, while others will use “and”. 

     One of the distinguishing features of Hebrew narrative grammar is the regular use of one single particle (Heb. vav.) prefixed to the first word of a clause to connect one clause after the other.  Often it simply means “and”, but it can mean “then”, “so”, or “now”, depending on the kind of word to which it is attached and the flow of the narrative.  In general, if it attaches to a finite verb at the beginning of a clause it keeps the narrative action going forward in some way.  If it attaches to a anything other than a verb (i.e., a noun, adjective, preposition, another particle) it is called disjunctive and insets information into the narrative but does not move the narrative forward.[4]  Genesis 1 comprises a list of the creation of the world, or the history of creation.  In virtually every instance, the vav is attached to a verb in that list making the vav consecutive which indicates that narrative keeps moving forward as part of that list as indicated by the phrase “And (or “then”) God said” repeated at the beginning of each paragraph.  As such, no new information is being added to the text, Adam’s being created as a hermaphrodite for example. Rabbi Kviat argues that there are two creation accounts, there are not.  The first creation “story” is a generalized creation account.  The second creation account is more specifically focused on the creation of man, and 2:18 further indicates that Adam was alone.

     The whole idea of Adam’s being created as a hermaphrodite fly in the face of God’s instruction in verse 28 to “be fruitful and multiply” as in a majority of cases hermaphrodites are infertile or sterile.  Furthermore, why would God create Adam as a hermaphrodite and not the animals that preceded him? There is no indication from the text that they were created as hermaphrodites so to do that with the creation of Adam would be inconsistent. Also, verse 22 states that after He created the sea creatures and the birds, He gave the instruction to “be fruitful and multiply”. Following through on that imperative is not possible if the creatures God made were created as hermaphrodites. Furthermore, the problem is that, given the definition, the term “it” is used to represent a person…whose gender is unknown, it is contrary even to Jewish mysticism as the gender is known to be both male and female, a hermaphrodite.  A hermaphrodite is an animal or plant having both male and female reproductive organs, structures, or tissue.[5]  This being the case, a hermaphrodite is not a third gender, it is an amalgam of male and female structures which appear as part of the organism. 

     Some have argued that the Jewish Talmud lists eight different genders. While it is true that this list exists within the Talmud, it is not true that the list represents eight separate genders. I will explain. 1. Zachar, means male, 2. Nekevah, means female. After this the waters get a little murky. 3. Androgynos, refer to those who possess both male and female characteristics. 4. Tumtum, refers to those who lack sexual characteristics. 5. Aylonit hamah, are those who identify as female at birth but later naturally develop male characteristics. 6. Aylonit adam, refers to those who identify as female at birth but later develop male characteristics through human intervention. 7. Saris hamah, are those who identify as male at birth but later naturally develop female characteristics. 8. Saris adam, are those who identify as male at birth and later develop female characteristics through human intervention. You will notice that I have underscored the only two genders which actually exist for each. Number four, Tumtum, is the only one from the list that does not specifically refer to any particular gender. However, it is a safe bet that if the other seven do mention the specific genders of male and female, that the reference to “sexual characteristics” in number four probably refer to male and female characteristics as well. So, you are still left with only two genders. 

     But did God really create Adam as a hermaphrodite and split the two of them later?  This view is only expressed in the Jewish mystic writings.  Rabbi Kviat is not the first to suggest that Adam may have been a hermaphrodite, such a view is believed by many, especially those who follow Jewish mysticism.  The Zohar is a medieval publication ca.1300 A.D. which is a multi-volume commentary of The Kabbalah.  Some have argued that Spanish Rabbi Moses de León was the author of the Zohar though orthodox Jews attribute it to 2nd century Rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai. The term Kabbalah translates as, reception, tradition, or correspondence and is a form of mystic Jewish thought and interpretation of the Midrash, which is a commentary of Torah.

     “When the blessed Holy One created Adam, he created him with two faces.  So the yod faces backward…they were not turned face-to-face…The blessed Holy One said to her, ‘turn back for I intend to split you and transfigure you face-to-face, but you will arise elsewhere’”.  (The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, Vol. One).  The pronoun “her” is a reference to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet as they present themselves to the Holy One requesting, he use them as the first letter to create the world. 

     Furthermore, Rabbi Yirmeya ben Elazar has said, “Adam was first created with two [deyo] faces, one male and the other female. As it is stated: ‘You have formed me behind and before and laid Your hand upon me’ (Psalms 139:5). Similarly, it is written: ‘And the tzela, which the Lord, God, had taken from the man, He made a woman, and brought her unto the man’ (Genesis 2:22). Rav and Shmuel disagree over the meaning of the word tzela: One said: It means a female face, from which God created Eve; and one said: Adam was created with a tail [zanav], which God removed from him and from which He created Eve”.[6]

     The Hebrew verb צוּר (ṣûr), in Psalms 139:5, means to bind, confine, or barricade, not “formed” as Rabbi Elazar has translated the word.  Verbs can be passive or active, they can contain past, present, or future tenses.  Passive verbs are terms in which the subject is the one being acted upon; active verbs are terms in which the subject is the one performing the act.  Though many translations insert the English verb “have”, it does not appear in the Hebrew, nevertheless, the verb which follows it, previously indicated, is a passive past tense transitive verb.  A literal reading of the Hebrew simply reads, “behind and in front, encircle I (me), and place/put, upon I (me), palm/hand you (your)”. While translation of the Hebrew verb into English indicates a present indicative, in the Hebrew the verb צוּר (ṣûr) is in the past tense.  Stems used with Hebrew verbs appear as either qal, pa’al, or niphal.  The verb צוּר (ṣûr) is a Qal stem of which there are three possible ways this verb it could be translated.  Three of the primary possibilities I have already listed, but the very last possible way the verb could be translated is “formed”, which Rabbi Elazar has used as the primary, which clearly, it is not. The qal stem translates as “little” or “simple”.  So, David is indicating that God binds, confines, or barricades him presently.  Rabbi Elazar is indicating that the verb is past tense, which is correct, but he then refers it back to the creation of Adam, which is not correct.  If you analyze the context in which the verse appears you will notice that this chapter is divided by 6 paragraphs depending on the translation.  The first paragraph comprises six verses which indicate a pattern of use.  Four of the six verses employ the words “know(n)” יָדַע (yâḏa‘) or “knowledge” דַּעַת (ḏa‘aṯ) and terms related to it, indicating God’s knowledge of us and all our ways.  The context suggests nothing relatable to creation or the creation of Adam in particular.  The Hebrew word for “formed” is an entirely different word, קָנָה (qânâ) which appears in v.13 and, in context, refers to the “inward parts” not the outward appearance.  Furthermore, David uses personal pronouns in reference to himself regarding his own creation, “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made”. (vv.13-14, emphasis added) Those pronouns are not in reference to Adam’s creation.

     Furthermore, the Hebrew term which appears in Genesis 2:22 specifically states that God took one of the ṣēlāʿ of man. Almost without exception this word has been translated as “rib” but has also been translated as “side”. 

     But even given the preference of “side” for “rib,” we should not conclude either from this verse or from 1:27 that the first human being was androgynous. This particular concept goes back at least to Aristophanes’ discourse on love in Plato’s Symposium (189–93). According to Plato there were originally three kinds of beings, who were joined back-to-back, like Siamese triplets. Each being had the faculties of two human bodies. These creatures could be either masculine, feminine, or bisexual. After an unsuccessful attempt to rebel against the gods, Zeus carved each of the three types of being, splitting them into either two men, or two women, or one man and one woman. Upon demonstrations of remorse for their rebellion, Zeus rejoined the severed halves by making possible their copulation.

      A similar teaching prevails in later Jewish (Tannaitic) tradition. Thus, to the question “How did male and female come into being?” the answer was given that God took a side of man and from this half, made woman; only the two together restore the wholeness of God’s original creation (Midrash Rabbah Gen. 8:1). But when God created Adam, he created him bisexual (ʾndrwgynws). Parallel remarks are made by Rabbi Shemuel ben Nahman (see Midrash Rabbah Lev. 14:1).

 Such teaching goes beyond the statements of Genesis.[7] (emphasis added)

      In the aforementioned quotation we have the introduction of a new term, “androgynous”. What is the difference between someone who is androgynous and someone who is a hermaphrodite?  Is there a difference?  Historically the words have been used interchangeably to refer to an individual with male and female reproductive organs. But the latter term has fallen out of favour with most people, preferring “androgynous” or “bisexual” as an adequate replacement.  It is believed that this term more adequately encapsulates the ideology of the LGBTQ2S+ community as the term is also used in reference to someone with an attraction to someone of the same sex. It is also used as a sexually exclusive claim, in other words someone who wishes to identify as neither male nor female, someone who considers themselves to be gender neutral or non-binary.  However, the etymology of the term “androgynous” is used exclusively in reference to someone with both male and female reproductive organs. Certainly, the quote above bears this out.  So, for those who wish to argue that Adam was not a hermaphrodite but was simply androgynous, it wouldn’t matter as both references attribute male and female reproductive organs are present with the individual, regardless of what term you wish to use.

     My contention is that the passage Rabbi Kviat refers to, does not support that Adam was created as a hermaphrodite or androgynous. Regardless of how she wants to spin her interpretation of the text.

[1] Unless otherwise noted, all Biblical references are in the English Standard Version, with Strong’s Numbers (Wheaton IL: Crossway, 2008).

[2] https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/the-bible-says-what-adam-is-male-and-female-in-the-first-creation-story/

[3] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/it?s=t

[4] J. Daryl Charles, ed., Reading Genesis 1-2: An Evangelical Conversation (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2013), 9.

[5] “Hermaphrodite.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hermaphrodite. Accessed 23 Aug. 2021.

[6] https://www.sefaria.org/Eruvin.18a.15?lang=bi

[7] Victor P. Hamilton, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (NICOT): The Book of Genesis 1-17 (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), OliveTree Bible Software.

Stephen Singleton (B.A. Christian Studies: Biblical Literature & Interpretation)

Ambrose University

Posted on

THE VERACITY OF THE BIBLE

By NYC Wanderer (Kevin Eng) – originally posted to Flickr as Gutenberg Bible, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9914015

The Bible “isn’t the Word of God…inerrant or infallible.”

https://www.theblaze.com/news/progressive-church-bible-not-word-of-god [i]

When speaking of the veracity of some thing, what we are endeavouring to show is that that thing conforms with, or is committed to, those things which are considered to be true.  Therefore, the purpose of this article is to show that all of that which the scripture declares to be true, is actually true in all it asserts regarding life, faith, and practice.  The International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI) convened an assembly of more than 300 theologians and ministers in the fall of 1978 who authored what became recognized as The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.  Of the 19 articles penned, Article III states, in part, “we affirm the written word in its entirety is revelation given by God.”[i]  Added to that, Article XII states, in part, “that Scripture in its entirety is inerrant, being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit.”[ii] (Italics added)

     On February 19th of 2021 “The Blaze” posted an article by Dave Urbanski regarding a statement by Pastor Josh Scott of GracePointe Church in Nashville Tennessee who had made the statement that the Bible “isn’t the Word of God…inerrant or infallible”. As a qualifier, he argued that only parts of the Bible can be considered God’s Word. In essence he contends that only parts of the Bible are inspired. As a result, pastor Scott ascribed to a view referred to as, limited inspiration.  Those associated with this belief argue that the scriptures are only inspired in areas of religious dogma and anything outside of that, like historical accounts, matters of fact, et cetera that fall outside the realm of doctrine or precept are subject to debate.  But the conclusion follows logically from the premises.  1. the Bible is the Word of God, 2. God cannot err, 3. therefore, the Bible cannot err.  For Pastor Scott to hold the view that he does, that the Bible is not inerrant et cetera, then he must believe that at least one of the first two premises is false.  Furthermore, two verses of scripture contradict his belief, 2 Timothy 3:16 states that, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness…” and 2 Peter 1:21, “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit”. (Italics added).[iii]

πᾶσα (all) γραφὴ (scripture) θεόπνευστος (inspired by God).[iv]

     For our purposes, I am only going to focus on the first part of 2 Timothy 3:16.  In the Greek, the adjective πᾶσα (pasa) translates as “all” or “every.”  Adjectives typically serve as a modifiers of a noun to denote a quality of the thing named, to indicate its quantity or extent, in this instance the noun γραφὴ (graphē) which translates as “writing” or “scripture.”  Here the adjective “all” has to do with quantity. In contrast to the adjective “some” which is defined as that which is unknown, undetermined, or unspecified number of some thing.

     The Old Testament had already been received as authenticated scripture, but Paul would have also been referring to some New Testament writings which had also been received as scripture. Paul wrote, “For the Scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,’ and, ‘the laborer deserves his wages.’”  (1 Tim. 5:18, italics added). Paul understood the first reference (Deut. 25:4) from the O.T. as scripture, along with his quote of Luke’s gospel (Lk. 10:7), from the N.T. in the second reference, also as scripture. Likewise, Peter had credited Paul’s writings as scripture. Speaking of Paul, Peter writes, “There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.” (2 Peter 3:16, italics added). So, Peter had accepted Paul’s writings as scripture along with the “other scriptures” which comprise the O.T.

     Returning to our exegete of 2 Timothy 3:16, the verb είναι (einai) translated “is” functions as a present infinitive meaning to be, or to exist.  The adjective θεόπνευστος (theopneustos) translates literally as “God[‘s] Spirit.”  The phrase, “breathed out by” does not appear in the original Greek. Its insertion in the English transliteration has a functional purpose, for reasons of clarity. Its intercalation in the English is based on Paul’s word for God, which conjoins two Greek words, the noun θεός (God) and the adjective πνευστος (pneustos) which is derived from the Greek πνίγω (pneō) meaning, “to breathe hard.”  This Greek word of Paul’s is used nowhere else in scripture. Paul created the word to emphasize its divine origin, a corollary of which would be the authority and inspiration of scripture.  I wonder if Pastor Scott would argue that, where Paul states “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God” (NKJV), that “this verse itself is not the word of God and therefore it is not inspired”.  Or that, “the verse is in error at that point”.

     In summary then, this verse states that the sum total of “all” scripture, or all that was received as inspired “scripture”, including the Old Testament in addition to Peter and Paul’s “writings” at a minimum, were breathed out, or spoken by God.

ἀλλὰ (but) ὑπὸ (by) πνεύματος (spirit) ἁγίου (holy) φερόμενοι (to carry, bring) ἐλάλησαν (to speak) ἀπὸ (from) θεοῦ (God) ἄνθρωποι (man).[v]

     Again, for our purposes I am only going to focus on the second part of 2 Peter 1:21.  The co-ordinating conjunction ἀλλὰ (alla) translates as “but” and functions as a connective term meaning notwithstanding or nevertheless, contrasting the declarative phrase of 21a with 21b. The preposition ὑπὸ (hypo) translated as “by” functions as a qualifier of the noun which follows. It answers to the question of how. What the how is in reference to, will be determined as we continue our study.  The noun πνεύματος (pneumatos) translated as “spirit” is derived from the root word πνεῦμα (pneuma) meaning a current of air, a variant of πνέω (pneō) meaning, to breathe hard, as previously noted.  The noun “spirit’ is never categorized as an impersonal force.  The adjective ἁγίου (hagiou) translated as “holy” functions as a modifier of the noun which precedes it.  This Greek word possesses a singular genitive case ending which indicates possession denoting this spirit is holy and is an attribute of His nature.  The verb φερόμενοι (pheromenoi) meaning, “to bring or carry” is a present tense, passive verb.  Active verbs indicate that the subject is the one performing the act, passive verbs indicate the subject is the one being acted upon.  So, what is the subject in this verse?  The noun ἄνθρωποι (anthropoi) translated “man” has the case ending, οι which is nominative plural.  Words that have the nominative case endings indicate the subject, therefore, anthropoi “man” is the subject of the verb pheromenoi “to bring” ὑπὸ “by” means of the ἁγίου “holy” πνεύματος “spirit”.  The subject “Man” is also plural in the Greek.

     In summary then, contrary to the declarative phrase of 21a that no prophecy of scripture had man for its origin but originated with God by the spirit who is holy by his very nature and moved upon these men in such a fashion so as to bare them up or carry them along as they penned the scriptures that God delivered to them.

     Furthermore, many of the church fathers espoused the inspiration and inerrancy of scripture. Clement of Rome had stated that, “the Scriptures… are the true utterances of the Holy Spirit.”[vi]  Justin Martyr added that those, “who spoke by the Divine Spirit…both saw and announced the truth to men, neither reverencing nor fearing any man, not influenced by a desire for glory, by speaking those things alone which they saw and which they heard, being filled with the Holy Spirit.”[vii] Also that, “the holy Spirit of prophecy taught us this, telling us by Moses that God spoke thus”[viii]  and that, “Moses… wrote in the Hebrew character by the divine inspiration.”[ix]  Origen also stated that, “the Scriptures themselves are divine, i.e., were inspired by the Spirit of God.”[x]  In addition Irenaeus declared that, “the Scriptures are indeed perfect, since they were spoken by the Word of God and His Spirit”[xi]  Thomas Aquinas, quoting Augustine, stated that, “the authority of the canonical Scripture” is “an incontrovertible proof” and that “only those books of Scripture which are called canonical have I learned to hold in such honor as to believe their authors have not erred in any way in writing them.”[xii] Aquinas himself had stated, “A true prophet is always inspired by the Spirit of truth, in Whom there is no falsehood.”[xiii] (Italics added)

     Finally, the scriptures themselves attest to their own inspiration and inerrancy.  The International Council on Biblical Inerrancy article XV states, “We affirm that the doctrine of inerrancy is grounded in the teaching of the Bible about inspiration.”[xiv] A further statement issued by the ICBI declared that, “Holy Scripture, being God’s own word, written by men prepared and superintended by his spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: it is to believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it affirms; obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises.”[xv] (Italics added)

     Regarding inspiration/inerrancy of the Old Testament Moses recorded, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.” (Deut. 18:18) The scribe Baruch, recorded the prophecy of Jeremiah stating, “Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me, ’Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.’” (Jer. 1:9) David testified that, “The Spirit of the Lord speaks by me; his word is on my tongue.” (2 Sam. 23:2) and that, “The words of the Lord are pure…” (Ps. 12:6), “The law of the Lord is perfect”, (Ps. 19:7), to the words of Agur, “Every word of God proves true” (Prov. 30:5). The Lord, referring to the prophet Isaiah said, “my words… I have put in your mouth” (Isa. 59:21, 51:16; Deut. 4:10) and the writer of the book of Zechariah records that, “the words that the Lord of hosts had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets.” (Zech. 7:12; Neh. 9:30), (Italics added).

     With respect to the New Testament, and apart from the two passages previously cited (2 Timothy 3:16, 2 Peter 1:21), Jesus queried, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord” (Matthew 22:43), “through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit” (Acts 4:25).  Paul declared, “And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:13), and again “If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord” (14:37).  Regarding the gospel that Paul was preaching he declared that “I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:12).  The writer of Hebrews stated that it is “impossible for God to lie” (6:18).  Jesus also declared that “Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35).

     What about textual variants?  Perhaps this is what Pastor Scott is thinking about when he claims that the scriptures are not infallible or inerrant.  For this part, I am only going to address the largest area of variants.  Simply because we find variants in MSS (manuscripts), does not indicate the scriptures are in error.  The Greek New Testament contains an estimated 138,000 words, all total, there are between 300,000 to 400,000 variants. A textual variant is any place among the manuscripts of the New Testament where there is not uniformity of wording.[xvi]  That number sounds rather significant, but there is no cause for concern if you understand what those variants consist of.

Quality of Variants Among New Testament Manuscripts

1=spelling errors

2=variants that do not affect translation

3=meaningful, but not viable variants

4=meaningful and viable variants[1]

     As you can see in the chart, the vast number of variants are nothing more than spelling errors, so, if the quantity of variants number 400,000, then nearly 275,000 – 300,000 of them are spelling errors.  As an example, the name for John is spelled in Greek two different ways, either Iōannēs or Iōanēs. The same person is in view either way; the only difference is whether the name has two n’s or one. One of the most common textual variants involves what is called a movable nu. The Greek letter nu (n) can occur at the end of certain words when they precede a word that starts with a vowel. This is similar to the two forms of the indefinite article in English: a or an. But whether the nu appears in these words or not, there is absolutely no difference in meaning. It is so insignificant that most textual critics simply ignore the variants involving a movable nu when transcribing the words of a manuscript. It affects nothing.[i]  Furthermore, if  a word is spelled incorrectly, and the same word occurs some 5,000 times, it is counted as 5,000 variants, not one. The most significant type of variant include variants which are both meaningful and viable, “meaningful” in the sense that the variant changes the meaning of the text to some degree.  “Viable” in the sense that the variants are plausible as differing from the original.  However, only about one percent of the total exist as this type of variant and none of the variants adversely affect any accepted doctrine.

     In conclusion, if the Bible is not inspired, then it cannot be from God and contradicts 2 Timothy 3:16 that “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God” (NKJV).  If the scriptures are inspired of God, then they cannot be in error, if they are in error, then God is in error, and that is simply not possible. 

[i] https://www.theblaze.com/news/progressive-church-bible-not-word-of-god

[i] Norman L. Geisler and William C. Roach, Defending Inerrancy: Affirming the Accuracy of Scripture for a New Generation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing Group, 2011), 27.

[ii] Ibid., 29.

[iii] Unless otherwise noted, all Biblical references are in the English Standard Version, with Strong’s Numbers (Wheaton IL: Crossway, 2008).

[iv] Michael W. Holmes, The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition (Lexham Press; Society of Biblical Literature, 2011–2013), 2 Ti 3:16.

[v] Ibid., 2 Pe 1:21.

[vi] Clement of Rome, “The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians,” in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 1, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 17.

[vii] Justin Martyr, “Dialogue of Justin with Trypho, a Jew,” in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 1, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 198.

[viii] Justin Martyr, “The First Apology of Justin,” in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 1, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 177.

[ix] Justin Martyr, “Justin’s Hortatory Address to the Greeks,” in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, trans. M. Dods, vol. 1, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 278–288.

[x] Origen, “De Principiis,” in Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Part Fourth; Minucius Felix; Commodian; Origen, Parts First and Second, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, trans. Frederick Crombie, vol. 4, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 349.

[xi] Irenaeus of Lyons, “Irenæus against Heresies,” in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 1, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 399.

[xii] Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica (Complete & Unabridged) (p. 5). Coyote Canyon Press. Kindle Edition.

[xiii]  Ibid., 556.

[xiv] Norman L. Geisler and William C. Roach, Defending Inerrancy: Affirming the Accuracy of Scripture for a New Generation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing Group, 2011), 283.

[xv] Ibid.

[xvi] J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus: How Contemporary Skeptics Miss the Real Jesus and Mislead Popular Culture (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2006), 54.

[xvii] Ibid., 56.

[1] J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus: How Contemporary Skeptics Miss the Real Jesus and Mislead Popular Culture (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2006), 63.

Stephen Singleton (B.A. Christian Studies: Biblical Literature & Interpretation) 

Ambrose University

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