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The Trip to Europe Continued (Twenty-First Post In Total)
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I’ve been asked various people whether we saw different spots in Rome, some of which I’ve said, “No.” At this point in our trip, we had been several places in England, then Scotland and Venice. With a mixed group of four, we discovered that it was best to slow down and not look at so much. When you do that, you make choices not to see something. I don’t know how much different it would have made. I liked visiting Rome, and I would go back, but it wouldn’t bother me if I never made it back either. Some places seem like they are worth going back to.
Two places we didn’t see that come to mind are the Mamertine Prison and the catacombs. We had a thought that we might do the latter attached to a bike ride, but I found on our last day that we couldn’t fly from Rome to Paris. There was an air traffic control strike that weekend. This definitely throws a wrench into a European tour, trying to figure out how now to get from Rome to Paris, when I had never been overseas until this trip. Because of that strike, everybody trying to get into Paris was being affected that weekend. I’ll tell you later how that ended.
I didn’t mention in the last post that we ate at a restaurant in the neighborhood on Thursday night, June 14. What we wanted was something authentic Italian that the locals liked. This was Romolo e Remo, and it was good. Everything we had in Italy, Venice and Rome, was good. I liked it all, but nothing stood out above anything that I had in the United States. I was ready to be impressed and wanted to like it better than anything ever. It was all good. I liked the pasta, the pizza, everything I had in Italy. Nothing was bad. You are in good hands with Italy for Italian food (as if you wouldn’t have known that anyway). You don’t get any kind of chain food feel in Italian restaurants. They seem like they care that you like what they’re doing and giving to you.
We pre-purchased tickets to the Vatican museum after the normal closing time, so we would enter at 7:15pm, and we planned Friday, June 15, around that. The first day we had taken a heart-of-Rome walk and got only as far as Piazza Colonna, and we picked up where we left off, so that we would see the Trevi Fountain and then the Spanish steps before we made our way over the Tiber River by bus.
Rome is a city of many, many fountains and the Trevi fountain is considered the most famous of them all, designed by Nicola Salvi and completed by Giuseppe Pannini in 1762. It is gigantic and there is a huge crowd pressing against it. No one can step into this fountain and the police presence is conspicuous. Someone tried and the reaction from the authorities was instant. One of the traditions is to throw a coin into this found over the shoulder. It’s supposed to mean that you’ll return to Rome. The coins are collected and used for poor people during the year.
From there we walked to the Spanish steps and made our way all the way from bottom to top and back to bottom. The top gives a very nice view of the city of Rome. In the distance, you see the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica.
From the Spanish steps, we caught a bus to get near the Vatican, which is surrounded by a wall. First, our plan was a late lunch or early supper someplace close to Vatican City. It wasn’t crowded there that time of day and, as we walked and looked, a lot of them looked about the same. One of the regular practices was for someone to look at the rating on tripadvisor, and again, they were all about the same. We stopped to eat outdoor on the sidewalk at Trattoria Pizzeria La Caravella di Magistri Luigi. Yes, all those words.
We had time after eating to go into St. Peter’s Basilica. We went into a lot of Cathedrals on this trip. In many ways, they all look the same. The most massive, as one might understand, was St. Peter’s, which is in essence the headquarters for Roman Catholicism. It’s the biggest in the world. It is a massive piece of architecture, the square itself with gigantic columns done by the same person who did a lot of the major buildings we saw on the trip, Bernini. The line was very long, but it moved. It’s free to go in and they keep you moving. In the square, you see a giant statue of Peter, which, of course, no one knows how he looked.
Besides the immensity of St. Peter’s outside and in, one work of art inside is well known. When you walk in, just to the right is the Pieta, by Michelangelo. Of course, statues of Jesus are violations of the second commandment and then all of Europe, especially Rome, elevates Mary to great heights. Despite that, I understand why the piece is famous and moving. Looking at it, one feels sorry for Mary, and in all the sermons I’ve preached about Mary in the various gospel accounts, especially Luke, I feel great pain for Jesus’ mother. Michelangelo captures something there.
We walked through quickly, having seen enough, and then made our way around to the entrance to the Vatican Museum. You may be asking why someone would go there? We wanted to see the Sistine chapel among other aspects of it. Our entrance came with a tour. She was Italian and speaking English, but difficult to understand. Pictures could be taken up to a certain point, including the Vatican area.
However, once you get into the museum, you can’t take pictures anymore. Some of the art in the museum is the greatest. As soon as you walk in, the spiral staircase is impressive. In the papal apartments are famous large frescoes of Raphael and Michelangelo, among the former’s The School of Athens is impressive. Before you walk into the Sistine chapel, you are warned not to talk and not to take pictures. People talk and take pictures. The guards look angry, because they said, don’t talk and people do it anyway. It’s normal for tourists.
I stood and just stared everywhere in the Sistine chapel. What struck me was that the renowned ceiling was lower then I imagined and the whole room was smaller. It was still very large and high, but just smaller and lower than I imagined. Everywhere was something amazing. Again, I do think that God and Adam is blasphemous. The story of the Bible is all over the room and done in an amazing way. I wish I could have sat there with a guide and got a four hour explanation without all the people in there. I was happy to have seen it.
We left there and took various busses to get home. We found ourselves as we did a few times, waiting next to Vittorio Emanuele II Monument, which is lit up at night, very impressive. We ate some gelato, caught our bus, and rode close to home. We packed. We would leave early the next day, Saturday, June 16.
Bart D. Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist? Useful Quotes for Christians, part 4 of 4
the gospel accounts are simply one source, Mark, because of (alleged) literary
dependence—the argument invalid even from a theologically liberal bent:
mythicists . . . have taken . . . [the] thought among New Testament scholars
that both Matthew and Luke had access to the Gospel of Mark and used it for
many of their stories of Jesus . . . to a faulty end to argue that all of our
Gospel accounts (even John, which has very little to do with Mark) ultimately go back to Mark
so that we have only one source, not multiple sources, of the life of
Jesus. Nothing could be further from the
truth. . . . significant portions of both . . . Matthew and Luke . . . are not
related in any way to Mark’s accounts. . . . Matthew and Luke record extensive,
independent traditions about Jesus’s life, teachings, and death. . . . and so
by the year 80 or 85 [the incorrect and false late theologically liberal date
for the period of time Matthew and Luke were written; Matthew was probably
actually written c. A. D. 40, and Luke c. A. D. 55] we have at least three
independent accounts of Jesus’ life . . . all within a generation or so of
Jesus himself. . . . But that is not all.
There are still other independent Gospels. . . . The Gospel of John . .
. does not appear to have received his accounts from any or all of [the
Synoptic Gospels] . . . so within the first century we have four independent
accounts of Jesus’s life and death. . . . [T]he famous Gospel of Thomas . . .
from the early second century, say 110-120 CE . . . is independent . . . not
derive[d] from the canonical texts. To
that extent it is a fifth independent witness to the life and teachings of
Jesus. . . . The same can be said of the Gospel of Peter . . . an independent
narrative . . . of Jesus’s trial, death, and resurrection . . . a sixth
independent Gospel account of Jesus’s life and death. . . . Another independent
account occurs in . . . Papyrus Egerton
2. . . . a seventh independent account. . . . [I]f we restrict ourselves . . .
to a hundred years after the traditional date of Jesus’s death, we have at
least seven independent accounts, some of them quite extensive. (It is important to recall: even if some of these sources are dependent
on one another in some passages—for example, Matthew and Luke on Mark—they are completely
independent in others, and to that extent they are independent witnesses.) And so it is quite wrong to argue that Mark
is our only independent witness to Jesus as a historical person. The other six accounts are either completely
or partially independent as well. For a
historian these provide a wealth of materials to work with, quite unusual for
accounts of anyone, literally anyone, in the ancient world. And that is not nearly all. . . . [O]ur
surviving accounts . . . were based on earlier written sources that no longer
survive . . . Luke . . . knew of “many” earlier authors who had compiled
narratives about the subject matter that he . . . narrate[s], the life of
Jesus. . . . When dealing only with Matthew, Mark, and Luke . . . [w]e are
talking about at least four sources:
Mark, Q, M, and L, the latter two of which could easily have represented
. . . many other written sources. . . . The most . . . authoritative . . .
commentary on Mark . . . contends that Mark used . . . sources . . . even our
earliest surviving Gospel was based on multiple sources. . . . The Gospel of
John too is widely thought to have been based on written sources . . .
[S]cholars have mounted strenuous arguments that . . . the Gospel of Peter
[and] the Gospel of Thomas . . . go back to written sources[.] . . .
mentioned are earlier than the surviving Gospels; they all corroborate many of the key things
said of Jesus in the Gospels; and most important they are all independent of
one another. . . . We cannot think of the early Christian Gospels as going back
to a solitary source that “invented” the idea that there was a man Jesus. The view that Jesus existed is found in
multiple independent sources that must have been circulating throughout various
regions of the Roman Empire[.] . . . Where would the solitary source that
“invented” Jesus be? Within a couple of
decades of the traditional date of his death, we have numerous accounts of his
life found in a broad geographical span.
In addition to Mark, we have Q, M (which is possibly made of multiple
sources), L (also possibly multiple sources), two or more passion narratives, a
sign source, two discourse sources, the kernel . . . behind the Gospel of
Thomas, and possibly others. And these
are just the ones we know about. . . . Luke says that there were “many” of them
. . . he may well have been right. And
once again, this is not the end of the story. . . . Form Criticism . . .
[indicates that] there were stories being told about Jesus for a very long time
not just before our surviving Gospels but even before their sources had been
produced. . . . Anyone who thinks that Jesus existed has no problem answering
the question . . . [“H]ow far back do these traditions go?[”] . . . [T]hey
ultimately go back to things Jesus said and did while he was engaged in his
public ministry[.] . . . But even anyone who just wonders if Jesus existed has
to assume that there were stories being told about him in the 30s and 40s. For
one thing, . . . how else would someone like Paul have known to persecute the
Christians, if Christians didn’t exist?
And how could they exist if they didn’t know anything about Jesus?[1]
Jesus existing:
should be clear that historians do not need to rely on only one source (say,
the Gospel of Mark) for knowing whether or not the historical Jesus
existed. He is attested clearly by Paul,
independently of the Gospels, and in many other sources as well: the speeches in Acts, which contain material
that predate Paul’s letters, and later in Hebrews, 1 and 2 Peter, Jude,
Revelation, Papias, Ignatius, and 1 Clement.
These are ten witnesses that can be added to our seven independent
Gospels (either entirely or partially independent), giving us a great variety
of sources that broadly corroborate many of the reports about Jesus without
evidence of collaboration. And this is
not counting all of the oral traditions that were in circulation even before
these surviving written accounts.
Moreover, the information about Jesus known to Paul appears to go back
to the early 30s of the Common Era, as arguably does some of the material in
the book of Acts. The information about
Jesus in these sources corroborates as well aspects of the Gospel traditions,
some of which can be dated to the 30s, to Aramaic-speaking Palestine. Together all of these sources combine to make
a powerful argument that Jesus was not simply invented but that he existed as a
historical person in Palestine.[2]
existing:
was personally acquainted with Jesus’s closest disciple, Peter, and Jesus’s own
brother, James. . . . We have several traditions that Jesus actually had
brothers (it is independently affirmed in Mark, John, Paul, and Josephus). In multiple independent sources one of these
brothers is named James. So too Paul
speaks of James as his lord’s brother.
Surely the most obvious, straightforward, and compelling interpretation
is the one held by every scholar of Galatians that, as far as I know, walks the
planet. Paul is referring to Jesus’s own
brother. . . . [I]n the letter to the Galatians Paul states as clearly as
possible that he knew Jesus’s brother.
Can we get any closer to an eyewitness report than this? . . . Paul came to know James around 35-36
CE, just a few years after the traditional date of Jesus’s death. . . . Surely
James, his own brother, would know if he lived. . . . The fact that Paul knew
Jesus’s closest disciple and his own brother throws a real monkey wrench into
the mythicist view that Jesus never lived.[3]
not exist in Christ’s day:
supposedly legendary feature of the Gospels . . . is in fact one of the more
common claims found in the writings of the mythicists. It is that the alleged hometown of Jesus,
Nazareth, in fact did not exist but is itself a myth[.] . . . Many compelling
pieces of archaeological evidence indicate that in fact Nazareth did exist in
Jesus’s day[.] . . . For one thing, archaeologists have excavated a farm
connected with the village, and it dates to the time of Jesus. . . . [A]nother
discovery . . . in ancient Nazareth . . . is a house that dates to the days of
Jesus. . . . Nazareth was an out-of-the-way hamlet of around 50 houses on a patch
of four acres . . . populated by Jews of modest means. . . . No wonder this
place is never mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, Josephus, or the Talmud. It was far too small, poor, and
insignificant. Most people had never heard
of it, and those who had heard didn’t care.
Even though it existed, it is not the place someone would make up as the
hometown of the messiah. Jesus really
came from there, as attested in multiple sources.[4]
a prominent theological skeptic and liberal:
alleged “Q” document does not exist today:
“Q . . . is a document that no longer survives, but [only] appears to
have once existed [to theological liberals, at least].[5]
far as I know there are no longer any form critics among us who agree with the
precise formulations of Schmidt, Dibelius, and Bultmann, the pioneers in this
field.[6]
of Tyana . . . [was] a historical person, a Pythagorean philosopher who lived
some fifty years after Jesus.[7]
is the most important person in the history of the West, looked at from a
historical, social, or cultural perspective, quite apart from his religious
significance. And so of course the
earliest sources of information we have about him, the New Testament Gospels,
are supremely important. And not just
the Gospels, but all the books of the New Testament.[8]
9 . . . [relates] in precise detail what will happen to the people of Jerusalem
over the course of “seventy weeks” . . . [t]he weeks are interpreted within the
text itself to mean seventy “weeks of years”—that is, one week represents seven
years.[9]
Old Testament prophet Micah said the savior would come from Bethlehem . . .
Micah 5:2[.][10]
is true that we have far more manuscripts for the books of the New Testament
than for Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Euripides, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius—name your
ancient author. . . . [T]he Gospels are among the best attested books from the ancient
world[.] . . . [W]e have thousands of manuscripts . . . we are . . . not . . .
lacking manuscripts. . . . If we had no clue what was originally in the
writings of Paul or in the Gospels, [an] objection . . . [based on] . . .
numbers of variations [in NT manuscripts] . . . might carry more weight. But there is not a textual critic on the
planet who thinks this, since not a shred of evidence leads in this direction.
. . . [I]n the vast majority of cases, the wording of these authors is not in
dispute.[11]
. . . the Christian author of the book of Revelation[,] the future kingdom
would be earthly, through and through (Revelation 20-21).[12]
D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The
Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 74-86.
D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The
Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 140-141. See his very convincing summary of the
evidence on 171-174.
D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The
Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 144-146, 151, 156.
D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The
Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 191-197.
D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The
Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 48.
D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The
Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 85.
D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The
Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 209.
D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The
Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 95.
D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The
Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 168.
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical
Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 189.
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical
Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 178, 180-181.
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical
Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 258.
Refreshing Honesty from “Desiring God” on Men Acting Effeminate
I want to keep up my series on Relationship, having finished part one, and I will, but when I saw this article and then read it, I knew I had to write this instead. I will be coming back to finish the Relationship series, Lord-willing, however. I don’t know how many parts it will be, but it could be many.
Apostasy is a real and ongoing threat to Christianity. It has never stopped since sin entered the Garden of Eden. When true believers dwindled to eight out of about eight billion before the Genesis flood, that process took over a thousand years. Churches don’t jump straight to apostasy either. However, it can happen quickly. When Jesus wrote to the church at Laodicia in Revelation 3, it had run its entire course in the space of about 40 years, start to finish.
What often occurs did in Corinth with church members’ denial of the bodily resurrection. Corinthian culture declared all flesh evil and bodily resurrection didn’t conform. Due to pressure of various sorts, the church at Corinth straddled mythology with the actual resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Churches see their own beliefs and practices as a threat to their existence. The world opposes and they negotiate a truce by conceding some of what they believe, convinced that it isn’t important enough to preserve. They relegate biblical teaching that clashes with the world to a secondary matter.
How is apostasy stopped? Someone like Paul mediates, as he did in 1 Corinthians 15, confronting the problem. He also revealed the cause of deceit, which were relationships that exposed them to wrong thinking (cf. 1 Cor 15:33). Likewise, in the six earlier letters to the other churches in Revelation 2-3, Jesus admonished and warned them to repent or face negative consequences.
In the slide toward apostasy, the beliefs and practices that clash most with the world depart first, which of necessity requires a dismissal of biblical authority. God is One. His truth is one. The surrender of any part at least anticipates a total abandonment. A path of deviation reaches a tipping point, one that seems like a place of no return, where Christianity might not be Christianity anymore.
On February 5, Greg Morse published an article for Desiring God, the organization of leading evangelical John Piper, entitled, “Play the Man You Are: Will Effeminacy Keep Anyone from Heaven?” If someone believes the Bible, knows 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, and so cares about the eternal soul of a professing Christian man who exhibits effeminate traits or characteristics, he can’t let this one go. What Morse has written, represented by the following tweet on the Desiring God twitter address, follows very close to scripture on a cultural issue.
If we are faithful to the word of God, we will call men away from the sin of brutality. We will also call them away from the sin of effeminacy. https://t.co/F7h33PBRuv— Desiring God (@desiringGod) February 5, 2019
Men should rejoice in what he’s done, his explanation and application of scripture. I want more of this in evangelicalism and fundamentalism.
What Morse wrote, I don’t know of any fundamentalists right now who would write it. I haven’t read it anywhere, except here on my blog in a two part series December of 2017 (part one, part two). Please reread those two posts and compare them with what Morse writes. Very few joined in my concern. Churches are full of effeminate men and they are doing next to nothing about it. Leaders are afraid, which will result in more and more effeminate men in churches.
What’s At Stake?
Morse writes:
We need not concern ourselves with separating one’s “gender expression” from his biological sex. We need not tell men they must dress a certain way and not another (Deuteronomy 22:5) or call them to “act like men” (1 Corinthians 16:13) — no such thing exists. I believe this all to be gravely mistaken.
As unclear as the distinctions may feel in any given culture, the word of God is surprisingly plain: those who gladly, consistently indulge in effeminacy as a lifestyle are in eternal danger (1 Corinthians 6:9, as we’ll see below). Love will dive headlong into all the sinful aspects of manhood to kill whatever sin Satan has tucked under the veils of cultural acceptance.
In the first paragraph, Morse is doing what Paul calls, speaking as a fool, that is, representing how the other side, the foolish side, thinks or expresses itself. He justifies his article, that church leaders should be concerning themselves with gender expression, even as Deuteronomy 22:5 teaches distinguishes male dress from female, to which he will refer later in the post. If Paul calls on men to act like men, then there must be a way that men act. Moses concerned himself and Paul concerned himself, so Morse does too.
Then, just because the culture makes distinctions unclear (and I would add evangelicalism and fundamentalism) doesn’t mean they’re not. As Morse says, 1 Corinthians 6:9 says the distinctions are clear enough — they would have to be — that an effeminate man would not inherit the kingdom of God. Because of the culture and then concerns of church growth, the attraction of attendees and continued popularity in the world, churches and their leaders would prefer risking someone’s eternal soul than causing waves.
How Satan Covers Sins
Morse writes:
Satan tries to obscure sins by rendering them nearly impossible to define. He smuggles effeminacy into the church by forbidding any specific definition. In the ancient world, effeminacy entailed a moral frailty (acting cowardly or “womanish” in battle), inordinate love for luxury (rendering men delicate and tender), and the sexual deviancy of acting like a woman in one’s demeanor, speech, and gesture. The Bible addresses each, describing men who “become women” on the battlefield (Jeremiah 50:37; Nahum 3:13), go “soft” due to luxury (Matthew 11:7–8), and become sexually deviant (1 Corinthians 6:9). The term effeminacy is not an attack on femininity itself — which is a woman’s glory — but rather on femininity when attached to a male.
What Morse decries here, Satan covering sins, is a norm for evangelicalism, including Desiring God. It’s good he’s talking about it, but he’s pointing out something that I would hope he notices is right where he lives. Obeying scripture always requires a second term. Scripture doesn’t define these terms. The second term comes in a logical syllogism like the following:
Major Premise: The effeminate man shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
Minor Premise: The effeminate man is a man who acts womanish.
Conclusion: Therefore, a man who acts womanish shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
It assumes we can know, what I have called, “truth in the real world.” If someone can’t do this with scripture, then most of scripture means nothing. This is an attack on the meaning of scripture, an attack on the application of scripture, and an attack on the truth itself. In everyone of those, it is an attack on the Word of God, and, therefore, an attack on God. It is common in evangelicalism as another attack on the grace of God, a cheap grace that is used as an occasion of the flesh.
In the next paragraph, Morse gives effeminate traits of men and describes a way that people will condone those traits — excusing each individual trait as not being enough to make a man effeminate. It is essentially defending effeminate traits or explaining them away. By doing so, Morse rightly observes, no one can even judge whether a man is effeminate or not, which just can’t be the case.
I can’t rewrite what Morse wrote. Just read it. He provides these as effeminate traits in our culture and being effeminate is cultural. Cultures are required to create those differences. Godly cultures will. Effeminate characteristics he gives are (each of these picked out of his words):
acting cowardly or “womanish” in battle
inordinate love for luxury
acting like a woman in one’s demeanor, speech, and gesture
lispy sentences, light gestures, soft mannerisms, and flamboyant jokes
American culture associates pink with women, as it does dresses
to walk down the street holding hands with another man
a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him
peak flamboyantly, gesture lightly, or wear lipstick
The Gay Vibe
Morse writes:
On a recent family vacation to Orlando, I witnessed men blatantly, boldly, proudly play the woman in public. What did I observe? They did not commit any sexual acts before me. What I observed was not homosexuality but effeminacy. They were effeminate, sending out what Doug Wilson calls “the gay vibe.” They were living out of step with their nature, and out of step with our cultural expressions of maleness, and denying in their behavior their God-assigned manhood.
A part of the problem here, as I’ve witnessed it, is that Christians make playing the woman no issue today, as if it can’t really be done anymore, when men know it is done. We should not be giving this behavior a pass — those who exhibit effeminate qualities.
Sex Governs ‘Gender Expression’
In the midst of this section, Morse comes back to Deuteronomy 22:5, something we just don’t hear today from either evangelicals or fundamentalists, but it is true:
From the beginning, God clearly wed sex and sex-expression. Under Moses, Deuteronomy 22:5 expresses a timeless prohibition that stood true long before the old covenant and long after the coming of the new covenant: “A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.” God means, in the strongest terms, for men to dress as men, and represent themselves as men, because he desires no observable confusion between the sex he gave and our expression of it.
For women to put on a male garment there has to be one designated and for men to put on a female garment, there must be one. Earlier, Morse said men don’t wear dresses. It is true. Of course, all readers here know that women don’t wear pants either.
Relationship, pt. 1
Most often happiness tops the list of what people want. Most say happiness is the result of strong relationships. Without strong relationships, people say they aren’t happy, and they want to be happy more than anything. Even if people want happiness and require strong relationships to be happy, should happiness and strong relationships be the goal for people?
Sometimes people are not happy, because they don’t have strong relationships. They wanted a strong relationship more than anything else, it never happened, so now they’re not happy. Is it possible that strong relationships were the wrong goal?
Knowing the power of the word “relationship,” taking into consideration what people want, Vox, a left wing political blog or news site, reported the following trend in evangelicalism:
Recent attempts by churches to be more attractive to secular populations have led cool churches to emphasize “relationship” over “religion.” This “seeker sensitive” approach to church has its roots in the megachurch movement of the 1980s and ’90s — churches like Saddleback and Willow Creek — that sought to make church more attractive to nonbelievers by playing songs that weren’t hymns, offering preaching that was relevant to daily life, and designing churches that didn’t look particularly religious, including no crosses or stained-glass windows, no pews, and pastors wearing street clothes instead of collars.
“The Jesus message is not one of religion but of relationship,” Rich Wilkerson Jr., pastor of Miami’s Vous Church and the officiant at Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s wedding, wrote in his book Friend of Sinners.
Carl Lentz, a Hillsong pastor and close friend of Justin Bieber, said, “We don’t use the word ‘religion,’ because it’s hard to get people excited about religion. … Religion has no power. But a relationship with God is a superpower.”
This tonal shift within evangelicalism away from the dour restrictions associated with religion and toward the freedom and dynamism of a relationship has been ushered in by this new breed of Instagram-friendly, celebrity-surrounded pastors. But with the spread of Hillsong in America — it now has campuses in New York, New Jersey, Boston, Connecticut, Los Angeles, Orange Country, and San Francisco — we’re starting to see more and more figures like Lentz in paparazzi photos or Instagram posts with celebrities like Bieber. Some of these pastors are themselves the focus of buzz and reality TV, such as Wilkerson’s short-lived Oxygen series Rich in Faith.
These hipster evangelicals are so transparent in their attractionalism that even Vox gets it — it’s that obvious. Is Vox right? Yes.
Even though the word “relationship” is not in the English Bible, the concept of “relationship” is. Relationship itself is important, but it also can be pirated by professing churches or religious groups like those above that know what people want. They pander to people, taking advantage of the hunger for relationship. It is a kind of bait and switch, because they are offering is relationship, but it isn’t the relationship of God that God reveals in His Word. It is a placebo relationship that inoculates its victims against the real thing.
God created us for relationship, but not just any relationship. The temptation of relationship sends people away from what God wants, which is defined by scripture. Because people are duped by proposals of relationship, they would do well to know what the Bible does say about it.
The world says that relationship is based upon mutual attraction. There are qualities that each person likes about the other. The relationship is not about what each thinks or feels is best for the other, but based upon support no matter what each one chooses to do.
Earlier this year, I preached a short series on Trinity at our church, and then I wrote one post in July, entitled, Who Is God? Trinity the Identity of God. I didn’t use the word “relationship” in the post, but I wrote that God is most identified as Father and then Son, and to be Father and Son, an eternal relationship existed between them. I didn’t write this in that post, but if I had turned it into a series, I would have, and, that is, relationship was the basis of God’s creation. God said, “let us make man in our image” (Gen 1:26). The members of the Trinity, the Godhead, agreed to create mankind. Before God created mankind, the Father was already loving the Son, as seen in John 17:24 and 1 John 4:8-9:
Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
In that same post, I said:
God is love is accompanied by God sending His Son into the world, so love is also associated with the Son. God was already loving the Son and then He manifested His love toward us through His Son, giving life to us through the Son. The Father gave His glory to the Son, loving Him before the foundation of the world.
As one works his way through scripture, he will see that the relationship the Father has with the Son is one He also wants with men, Adam being a sort of second son to Him. Even as the Father and Son have an eternal relationship, they created man in their image, as expressed by plural pronouns in Genesis 1:26, “us” and “our.” That relationship was ruined by sin, but can be returned through the first Adam, the Lord Jesus, so that men can become sons again. The relationship between the Father and the Son can’t, so won’t, be ruined by sin, what ruins relationships.
The relationship of the Father to the Son and the Son to the Father is the model for relationship with God and relationship between people. God, the Author of relationship, lays out His requirements for relationship in the first and second tables of the law, also represented by the commands, love God and love your neighbor. These are God’s rules for a right relationship, rules that people can only keep by the grace of God.
People want happiness and think relationship will bring it. Since relationship originated with God, we need to look to Him in His Word to find out what relationship is supposed to be. Without a right understanding, it can be a powerful tool in the hands of the wrong people.
Kent Brandenburg and Frank Turk Debate on the Preservation of Scripture — Part Two
Introduction to the Debate Part One (please reread the end, Mr. Turk’s question answered here)
by Kent Brandenburg
To Answer Q1
The KJV translators in their preface do not disclose the rectitude of the original language text from which they translate. On a completely different subject, they do comment on the caliber of their translation. However, we cannot logically assume their opinion or belief about the condition of the original language text upon which they relied for translation by their mere silence concerning it. In general, no inferences can be drawn from a lack of evidence. This is often summed up in epigrams such as “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Their silence could as well be interpreted as assent to the purity of the text, since men in that day believed in the perfect preservation of God’s Words.
In his Institutes of Elenctic Theology (I:71), Francis Turretin (1623-1687) wrote:
For if once the authenticity . . . of the Scriptures is taken away (which would result even from the incurable corruption of one passage), how could our faith rest on what remains? And if corruption is admitted in those of lesser importance, why not in others of greater? W ho could assure me that no error or blemish had crept into fundamental passages? Or what reply could be given to a subtle atheist or heretic who should pertinaciously assert that this or that passage less in his favor had been corrupted? It will not do to say that divine providence wished to keep it free from serious corruptions, but not from minor. For besides the fact that this is gratuitous, it cannot be held without injury, as if lacking in the necessary things which are required for the full credibility…of Scripture itself. Nor can we readily believe that God, who dictated and inspired each and every word to these inspired . . . men, would not take care of their entire preservation.
More important than the answer to the question of the negative is the question itself. The question defies accurate definition of terms. The King James Translators did not use a singular “volume of the textus receptus.” They did not rely upon a “volume produced by Erasmus.” There was no single edition of the textus receptus that was the basis for the KJV; however, the Greek words behind the KJV are nearly identical to Bezae 1598 with relatively few exceptions.
Mr. Turk also errs, I believe, in his representation of the work of Erasmus. First, saying he “produce[d]” the Greek NT doesn’t fit what actually occurred. Kenneth W. Clark asserts:
We should not attribute to Erasmus the creation of a “received text,” but only the transmission from a manuscript text, already commonly received, to a printed form, in which this text would continue to prevail for three centuries.
Kurt and Barbara Aland themselves admit:
[W]e remember that in this period [the textus receptus] was regarded as preserving even to the last detail the inspired and infallible word of God himself.
My opponent also speculates that Erasmus “produced” an edition of the TR from “dissimilar texts.” Kenneth W. Clark, a scholar who actually looked at the edition of the TR that Erasmus sent to the printer, wrote: “The Erasmus text is largely a printing of Codex 2, just as the Westcott-Hort text is largely a printing of Codex B.”
Of course, that was the text that Erasmus sent to the printer. In his preface, Erasmus claimed to have consulted the oldest and best manuscripts (p. 100). Another scholar says that “he collected many manuscripts, surrounded himself with the commentaries of the best of the fathers.” Descriptions vary greatly about what Erasmus did. We do know that it was not that edition of the TR that confessing Christianity settled upon. “Among the editions printed about the middle of the sixteenth century those of Robert Stephens claim a special notice, from his having collated many manuscripts which had not before been consulted.” Since God has promised certainty in His Word, we have no basis for receiving a reading that was, for instance, in Erasmus’ second edition and then never appeared again, versus a reading that is practically in every TR that is in print.
Lastly God’s people did not receive the books printed in the original 1611. They rejected the Apocrypha as non-canonical. They did, however, receive the Words of the textus receptus as canonical.
To Comment on A1
Mr. Turk did not answer my question, one that did not make any assumptions, contrary to his accusation. In assertion-[1] he admits that we do not have and have not had one copy of the Greek NT with all of God’s Words in one place at one time. That uncertainty contradicts the second part of his own assertion. He separates “errors” from the “wrong words,” that is, the Greek NT could have the wrong words and yet be without error. What if he applied this same view to inspiration? He would reject verbal inspiration.
In assertion-[2], he embraces some kind of preservation of concepts, theology, or history. He still won’t believe that we know what all the Words of Scripture are, even though God expects us to live by all of them (Matthew 4:4). He doesn’t believe that God has preserved the letters of Scripture, despite God’s explicit promise in Matthew 5:17-19. Based on the only possible usage of “grammatical promises” out of the four on the entire world-wide web, Mr. Turk would be saying that God didn’t make any promises to anyone in the Bible (Genesis 12:1-3?).
In his last paragraph he writes that Scripture has no theological or historical errors in it, which he separates from actual words, so that in his estimation, the words can be non-Divine and yet still give inerrant theology and history. Essentially, he is saying that the Bible is God’s theology and history but written in man’s own words. Based on that definition, unless “Word” means something different than “Word,” Mr. Turk opens “Man’s Word” to find God’s theology and history.
A comparison of the TR with the UBS indicates something different than Mr. Turk’s disconnect of theology/history from words. When someone changes words, he changes theology/history. For example, in Matthew 1:7-8 the KJV/TR reads, “And Solomon begat Roboam; and Roboam begat Abia; and Abia begat Asa; And Asa begat,” etc. The UBS changes “Asa” to “Asaph,” and thus takes king Asa out of the line of Christ to put the Levite Asaph, the author of some of the Psalms, in instead. This is a clear historical/theological error.
The last line of my opponent’s “answer” says that he doesn’t believe that God kept every copyist of Scripture from making errors (strawman I too reject). The Bible warns about adding and taking away from God’s Words (Revelation 22:18-19) because men add to and take away from God’s Word (2 Corinthians 2:17). However, men can’t add or take away words from an unsettled and uncertain text. Because copyists make errors, we depend on God for the preservation of His Word. Of course, that shouldn’t make any difference to Mr. Turk—based on his last assertion he believes that biblical theology and history are actually separate from words at least and perhaps from grammar too.
Since verbal inspiration is required for Scriptural authority, then verbal preservation is also mandated. Bart Ehrman understood and pushed the eject button on Christianity. Daniel Wallace understands, so he simply denies Scripture teaches its own preservation and then he relegates inerrancy of Scripture to a tangential doctrine. My opponent presently evades the question. Rather than believing what the Bible teaches about its own preservation, he chooses as “evidence” the uncertainty spawned by modern criticism of Scripture.
Is the Bible evidence, and if so, is it superior to all other possible or potential evidence from all other sources?
by Frank Turk (I cut and pasted this straight from Mr. Turk, so anything you see is him)
I don’t want to contradict Kent so early in this exchange, but when I said, “God didn’t make any grammatical promises to anyone in the Bible,” I did in fact answer his question. If his concern is that I didn’t cite any Scripture to support this affirmation, you can’t cite what isn’t there.
To answer the first half of his second question plainly, I would say this:
The Bible is not merely evidence, but it is in fact testimony, and as testimony it falls into the unique category of revelation.
I make this qualification to point out that the Bible is not merely a list of true things, or a place where truth resides among other things, but it is in fact Truth. As we work forward in this 10-question exchange, we’ll find that this is a very significant problem for the KJVO advocate.
To answer the second part of Kent’s question plainly:
When we reference the Bible, we are referencing the only text which God Himself has breathed-out. Ontologically, this makes the Bible not only reliable, but metaphysically authoritative.
The issue of “evidence” is of course an interesting category, given Kent’s first answer. For example, Kent has cited Turrentin as an alleged supporter of his (Kent’s) view of the TR, but let’s double-check the link Kent has supplied for us, because Turretin also wrote this:
Although we give to the Scriptures absolute integrity, we do not therefore think that the copyists and printers were inspired (theopneustous), but only that the providence of God watched over the copying of the sacred books, so that although many errors might have crept in, it has not so happened (or they have not so crept into the manuscripts) but that they can be easily corrected by a collation of others (or with the Scriptures themselves). Therefore the foundation of the purity and integrity of the sources is not to be placed in the freedom from fault (anamartesia) of men, but in the providence of God which (however men employed in transcribing the sacred books might possibly mingle various errors) always diligently took care to correct them, or that they might be corrected easily either from a comparison with Scripture itself or from more approve manuscripts….it will be wiser to acknowledge our own ignorance than to suppose any contradiction.
And also again, that same link said this:
An authentic writing is one in which all things are abundantly sufficient to inspire confidence; one to which the fullest credit is due in its own kind; one of which we can be entirely sure that it has proceeded from the author whose name it bears; one in which everything is written just as he himself wished. However, a writing can be authentic in two ways: either primarily and originally or secondarily and derivatively. That writing is primarily authentic which is autopiston (‘of self-inspiring confidence”) and to which credit is and ought to be given on its own account….The secondarily authentic writings are all the copies accurately and faithfully taken from the originals by suitable men….
While Kent may want to appeal to some parts of Turretin as somehow a part of his reasoning, it turns out Turrentin didn’t believe anything like what Kent believes about the texts of the NT which we possessed either in his day, or today — the real irony being that Turrentin was not a native-language English speaker, probably didn’t read the King James, and lumped it in with the various “veracular translations” as “not authentic formally … yet they ought nevertheless to be used in the church because if they are accurate and agree with the sources [notice the plural], they are always authentic materially and as to the things expressed.”
Let’s keep that distinction between “formally authentic” and “materially authentic” in mind as we discuss this matter.
It seems, Kent, that you have overlooked something in the KJV translators’ preface, which I will cite here:
The translation of the Seventy dissenteth from the original in many places, neither doth it come near it for perspicuity, gravity, majesty; yet which of the Apostles did condemn it? Condemn it? Nay, they used it, …which they would not have done, nor by their example of using it, so grace and commend it to the Church, if it had been unworthy the appellation and name of the Word of God.
And so on — to help me to obey my word count, you can read it at this link.
True: not a comment on the question of variant Greek texts of the NT, but a clear comment on their view of the apostolic use of a plainly-aberrant text.
How should we apply the KJV translators’ view of the LXX to modern translations of the NT?
Intelligent Design advocate Michael J. Behe’s new book Darwin Devolves with a free video course and other extras by Dr. Behe
Behe, professor of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University, has written a new
book called Darwin Devolves.
considered the father of the intelligent design movement, and his books Darwin’s
Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution and The Edge
of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism, do a great job
arguing that living system at the molecular level are best explained as being
the result of deliberate intelligent design.
Behe’s Darwin Devolves is on prepublication. If you purchase a
copy while it is still on preorder, and the book is very reasonably priced, you
will also get for free a high quality course taught by Dr.
Behe entitled “Michael Behe Investigates Evolution and Intelligent Design.”
$49.95— which in itself is not too bad— but if you preorder this book for under
$20 you will get the course completely free, as well as some other bonuses
described at the Darwin Devolves website.
Dr. Behe’s book at multiple online retailers — I would recommend always going through an
Internet portal to purchase books or just about anything else online to get the
best possible price, as described here, in combination with the book
pricing tool here — and then send the proof of purchase in
at Darwindevolves.com in order to
get the free course and the other free extras.
design advocate, Dr. Behe does not say who the Designer is— he does not
identify Him as Jehovah, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Lord of all
and Author of all the intelligent design in nature, nor does Dr. Behe take the
Biblical view that the earth is young, Noah’s Flood covered the earth, etc. In
other words, he is not a consistent creationist like Dr. Raymond
Damadian, inventor of the MRI scanner, or like the many
other scientists who consistently defend the Biblical worldview (see the
“Scientists who Believe the Bible” link). Nevertheless, his
books contain incisive and scholarly critiques of Darwinism, and are valuable
in strengthening the faith of Christians in the necessity of God’s creative
work for the existence of complex biological systems and in leading atheists,
agnostics, and other skeptics who base their faith on Darwinism to consider
whether the facts are really on their side.
people for whom evolution is a stumbling block to receiving
Christ as Lord and Savior – a sadly high percentage of the population
– Dr. Behe’s books and his free course are very worthwhile. I commend his Darwin
Devolves to you, especially right now when you can get a free course
with it and other extras that on their own are far more valuable than the
book’s purchase price.
Note also the Discovery Institute’s webpage where one can find Dr. Behe’s responses to critiques of the concept of irreducible complexity.
Rearranging the Deck Chairs: Negotiating or Managing the Demise of Evangelicalism
“Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic,” which describes futile activity in the face of impending catastrophe, first appeared in print in 1969 in Time Magazine and with reference to reforms in Roman Catholicism. Its origination is appropriate for the parallel with the present sinking of evangelicalism. An equivalent metaphor might be a spy keeping a handy cyanide capsule. I was reminded of this condition of evangelicalism when reading the latest 9Marks Journal, Feburary 2019 edition, titled, Ecclesiology for Calvinists (pdf edition).
I like the nine marks of 9Marks. In 2008 I wrote the article, Missing the Mark: 9 Marks Aren’t Enough, at the Jackhammer Blog. I extol the original nine that Mark Dever listed. All things considered, I would have enjoyed the Nearer My God to Thee played by the string ensemble in the face of approaching doom. I wish the most recent edition of the 9Marks Journal signaled repentance and change, a return to biblical belief and practice.
Jonathan Leeman, the editorial director for 9Marks, gives introduction with two big concerns I also share with him: revivalism and pragmatism. I’m right with him in his explanation, so much so that my jaw was dropping. Momentarily my hopes were buoyed, but as I continued to read, I could hear the sickening creaking of the ship and the chill in the air.
With few exceptions, the first article was an excellent one by Michael Lawrence, entitled, “Hey Calvinist, Enough of Your Revivalism,” and it started with the question, “How do you grow your church?” So much was good. He even names names throughout, which could have an effect of separating himself from those he identifies. The following quotes are a good sampling:
In other words, it’s the fruit of the Spirit, not enthusiasm or momentum, that demonstrates God is at work.
The tools of modernity produce the culture of modernity, not the kingdom of God. As survey after survey revealed, our growing churches were not filled with the results of Spirit-wrought revival, genuine converts characterized by the fruit of the Spirit, but were filled instead with the results of modern revivalism, religious consumers characterized by the spirit of the age.
Contemporary Christian music emerged from the culture of modernity. Of what was wrong, displaying a contradictory lack of understanding to what was just written, he wrote in the last paragraph: “There’s nothing wrong with having culturally appropriate music,” conflicting with this line earlier in his piece.
From the camp meetings, altar calls, and anxious bench of the Second Great Awakening, to the marriage of emotionally powerful preaching and singing in the ministry of Dwight Moody and Ira Sankey, to the stirring rallies of Billy Graham, the style of revivalism has shifted to match the changing culture.
“Culturally appropriate music” is ‘worship’ that “has shifted to match the changing culture.” It wasn’t appropriate for godly, premodern reasons, and not now. Finney pandered using music. Worship should conform to God, just like everything else in the church. The disconnect baffles me about as much as how good the rest of the article is.
Despite the inconsistencies and a desire for underlying exegesis, Michael Lawrence was refreshing for someone in the Conservative Baptist denomination on the West Coast. I don’t read this much from evangelicals. I’m not sure the 9Marks crowd sees the ship sinking. When they should be manning the life rafts, their eschatology, what they consider a second or third tier doctrine, gives them false hope.
Evangelicals fail to see the pragmatism of managed or negotiated evacuation. Collin Hansen, who in 2018 authored the landmark book, Young Restless and Reformed, wrote in “Still Young, Restless, and Reformed? The New Calvinists at 10”:
Mohler’s [Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary] teaching on theological triage helped YRR pastors avoid some mistakes of previous generations. Men like Graham and Henry were not primarily known as local church figures. There are some uses for mere Christianity, or lowest-common-denominator evangelicalism. But it led to confusion and the neglect of the local church and denominations that had succumbed to liberalism.
Mohler’s triage distinguishes between first-, second-, and third-order issues so that we will learn how seriously we should regard disagreement. By contrast, lowest-common-denominator evangelicalism offered meager resistance to assaults on the character of God such as open theism and universalism. This triage helped sound the alarm bells of such first-order threats as Rob Bell’s Love Wins, published in 2011.
At the same time, triage also helped the YRR avoid the belligerency and isolation of fundamentalism. Second-order doctrines such as baptism, the Lord’s Supper, charismatic gifts, and polity are still vitally important, even if we don’t agree on every conclusion. Triage helped us identify serious flaws in each other without condemning our friends and historical heroes to hell. Otherwise, the YRR would be cut off from much of Christian history and the global church in a kind of untenable Donatist purity. Finally, theological triage sidelined in the YRR certain issues that had formerly divided churches, such as questions surrounding the rapture and millennium. That’s where being connected to history helped. Not everything that seemed so important in late-19th and early 20th centuries is a hill to die on today or going forward.
But triage doesn’t solve all our problems. And now, we’re seeing major disagreements in and among YRR, even within the same churches. Evangelicalism may not survive this transition.
Theological triage itself is pragmatism. Scripture doesn’t teach it. It is rearranging the deck chairs, which Hansen himself concludes in the end, saying, “Evangelicalism may not survive this transition.” If scripture teaches separation from false doctrine, it’s pragmatic not to separate to avoid either condemning historical heroes to hell or Donatist purity. Donatist purity was the cure for what Hansen would see as first order heresies.
Both evangelicalism and fundamentalism are belligerent. I don’t seen any difference between the two. Isolation is a caricature of the doctrine of separation. It’s a term neo-conservatives use to smear nationalist foreign diplomacy. Biblical separation isn’t isolation. It is true unity. It fellowships based on the truth, not by cutting the living child in two, something Solomon never planned to happen.
I can be happy that evangelicals know something is wrong. That is evident in this 9Marks edition of their journal. Some of the teaching in it is very good. To save the ship, much more is needed. Even to save what they call first order doctrines, they will need to separate, what Hansen calls “isolation” as a preventative for plugging the gaping hole.
Hansen’s book was of such impact that several articles and other books proceeded from it (here and here, among others). He coined both “young, restless, and reformed” and “new Calvinist.” In 2009 Peter Masters, pastor of Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, wrote a scathing criticism of the new movement, entitled, “New Calvinism – The Merger of Calvinism with Worldliness.” New Calvinism is another iceberg that will sink evangelicalism even faster.
To preserve organizations like 9Marks, doctrinal and practical triage is necessary. To preserve the truth and the church, separation is necessary. You won’t save them by just rearranging the deck chairs.
Dever and Leeman discuss this edition of their journal here. You can listen to a podcast on it. Take out Calvinism in this instance and think instead “the Bible” or God-centered thinking and it is very good. They are not being totally honest in my opinion, but they are so deluded in many ways, they might not be able to hear. I wish they could. It’s interesting that Dever mentions Spurgeon’s church as an example of what they’re talking about. You wonder if they might consider where Peter Masters is right now in that actual place.
All That Is Written: God’s Transference of Leadership to Joshua and What That Leadership Was
After Moses died and God transferred leadership of His people to Joshua, He commanded Him (Joshua 1:7-9):
7 Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest. 8 This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. 9 Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.
And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
“All that is written” doesn’t mention uncertainty, because scripture doesn’t teach it. God isn’t uncertain. What He has written is certain, which is why He expects it. God would be unjust if He expected us to do something we couldn’t be sure about. However, this is what the “some that is written” will most often say. An underlying testimony of uncertainty or doubt buttresses ranking doctrines.
What some will call this post or this content, whether in a post or not, is “unloving” and “hateful.” Why is it unloving? People will be the victims of thinking they have to do everything God said and might have to suffer some sort of short term loss for it. The loving ones are those who say, go ahead and do what you want a lot of the time. Those who say, do everything, are holding back their audience from the pursuit of happiness, and that can’t be love. The love of God actually washes up on fleshly shores to engulf those who don’t want to do everything God said. No, love compels believers to do everything that God said. “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha” (1 Corinthians 16:22).
Certain doctrines and practices are the ones that become non-essential and expendable, because they are the ones challenged by the world. The leader needs strength and courage, what God commanded Joshua. When you hear someone say, I don’t like separation, referring to what’s needed for the preservation of certain biblical teachings, that’s a lack of strength and courage speaking. Israel needed and the church still needs a man to stand in the gap. We don’t need men who adjudicate the capitulation.
The key for the leadership of Joshua, so for the nation, was taking everything God said and wanted seriously, leaving nothing out. It reads like everything as Israel enters the land, the whole purpose, what some today call “everythingism.” This ensured the right relationship between God and man. The people wouldn’t have better relationships by neglecting or refusing what God wanted for them, yet the instinct of the flesh is I know better than God on what it takes for success. No, in the same context, success comes from knowing, meditating on, and then doing what God said, all of it.
The success of Joshua’s leadership revolved around “all that is written,” not “some of what is written.” Some isn’t acceptable. It wasn’t for Joshua and it wasn’t for the New Testament Joshua, Jesus Himself. It shouldn’t be for us either.
The Trip to Europe Continued (Twentieth Post In Total)
One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen Nineteen
On June 14, 2018, my wife, two youngest daughters, and I rose in our eighth floor apartment in Rome on Via Gallia about a twenty minutes walk south of the Colosseum. We stayed at this place from June 13-16. The owner, who we met, was a very faithful Roman Catholic woman, very bold to call herself a Christian. You could easily see that she was bold in her proclamation to help control what kind of people that might want to stay there.
We walked the entire way to the Colosseum. We had walked so much on this trip. It was warm that day, especially compared to the UK and Scotland just a few days before. If I did it again, I would still take a bus. Even though the walk itself isn’t too far, it just adds to the total amount of walking through the day.
Rome didn’t compare to anyplace I’ve been in the United States. First, nowhere here does America have the ancient history. It’s everywhere in Rome. On a regular walk, you are somewhere often predating Christ. It is a tangled mixture of ancient and modern. Second, if I saw something like it and had to describe it, I would call it Italian. It has its own unique Italian flavor, because it is Italian. Even the McDonalds takes on Italian.
Every place we walked on this trip, the GPS on our phones helped. I would use the phone to get somewhere and then turn it off once we’ve arrived to save the battery. Half the time, I needed someone else’s phone on a trip home in the evening. The GPS usage ate up my battery power. We gradually ascended a narrow road, the crown of which overlooked the Colosseum, which lay lower in a valley area. Topping the crest and peeking the Colosseum astounds at first sight. It is such a complete, whole piece of history, in a condition like it could in little time get back up for business.
We crossed a main street with now a throng of pedestrians, to the modern sidewalk leading around and down toward the outside of the Colosseum. We had already paid for tickets and a time. The outer area is large and crowded with tour guides and trinket sellers confronting with their business. The entrance to the Colosseum is in the Colosseum as if it was a modern stadium. We found the line for those with tickets, which really shortens the time, and we got in fast. We used the Rick Steves mobile travel app for our tour. We four had phones and we took the tour together. Steves himself gives appropriate commentary to give you the basics of what the Colosseum is about.
While walking through the Colosseum, plenty of openings offer various sites on the outside, including the Arch of Constantine, an impressive feature just outside in the direction of the Palatine Hill.
The Colosseum wows with the knowledge that this is not facsimile. We are walking up and around on the stones where it all really happened in Rome a few thousand years ago. It is immense and preserved.
As we walked out of the Colosseum, there is plenty to see in the same area, because you are right in the center of Rome, the classic seven hills of Rome, which includes Palatine Hill, the location of the palaces of Roman emperors. There is the Arch of Titus, hippodrome, the temple of Venus and Rome, the palaces of Domitian, Augustus, and Tiberius, the house of the Vestals, the temple of Castor and Pollux, the Roman Forum, the place of Julius Caesar’s burial, and the Via Sacra, the main street of ancient Rome.
The Roman general Titus, who later became the Roman emperor Titus, destroyed Jerusalem in 70AD and he brought back the pieces of furniture from the temple there, as seen carved into his stone arch there at the start of the Via Sacra.
After looking at these ruins, we took a bus back to the area of the Pantheon and ate before visiting the inside of the Pantheon. The Pantheon is the most pristine ancient building in Rome inside and out. It was commissioned before Christ and finished by Hadrian in 126 A.D. It was a pagan temple, but today it serves as a burial place of some of the most famous more modern Italians, including Vittorio Emanuele II, the first King of a united Italy, and the artist Raphael.
We got a lot covered on that Thursday with a little more for Friday in that general area and then a later night tour of the Vatican museum.
Bart D. Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist? Useful Quotes for Christians, part 3 of 4
Christ very early:
indicates that the traditions about Jesus are ones that he himself inherited
from those who came before him. This is
clearly implied when he says that he “handed over” what he had earlier
“received,” technical language in antiquity for passing on traditions and teachings
among Jewish rabbis. . . . Paul . . . [obtained] this received tradition . . .
in the 30s CE. When scholars crunch all
the numbers that Paul mentions, it appears that he must have converted early in
the 30s, say, the year 32 or 33, just two or three years after the death of Jesus. This means that if Paul went to Jerusalem to
visit Cephas and James three years after his conversion [Galatians 1:18], he
would have seen them, and received the traditions that he later gives in his letters,
around the middle of the decade, say the year 35 or 36. The traditions he inherited, of course, were
older than that and so must date to just a couple of years or so after Jesus’s
death. All this makes it clear as day
that Jesus was known to have lived and died almost immediately after the traditional
date of his death.[1]
. . . have devoted their lives to studying the life and letters of Paul. I personally know scores of scholars who have
spent twenty, thirty, forty, or more years of their lives working to understand
Paul. Some of these are fundamentalists,
some are theologically moderate Christians, some are extremely liberal
Christians, and some are agnostics or atheists.
Not one of them, to my knowledge, thinks that Paul did not believe there
was a historical Jesus. The evidence is
simply too obvious and straightforward.[2]
Person are not interpolations in Paul’s writings:
Pauline scholars who have devoted many years of their lives to studying Romans
and Galatians and 1 Corinthians are not the ones who argue that Paul never
mentioned the details of Jesus’s life—that he was born of a woman, as a Jew,
and a descendant of David; that he ministered to Jews, had a last meal at
night, and delivered several important teachings [all of which are clearly
affirmed in Romans and Galatians and 1 Corinthians]. It is only the mythicists, who have a vested
interest in claiming that Paul did not know of a historical Jesus, who insist
that these passages were not originally in Paul’s writings. . . . Apart from
the mythicist desire not to find such passages in Paul, there is no textual evidence
that these passages were not originally in Paul (they appear in every single
manuscript that we have) and no solid literary grounds for thinking they were
not in Paul.[3]
positive case:
case that most mythicists make against the historical existence of Jesus
involves both negative and positive arguments, with far more of the former.[4]
Himself did not write anything (so He allegedly did not exist) and an absence
of archaeological evidence for Him:
is no archaeological evidence for anyone else living in Palestine in Jesus’s
day except for the very upper-crust elite aristocrats, who are occasionally
mentioned in inscriptions (we have no other archaeological evidence even for
any of these). In fact, we don’t have
archaeological remains for any nonaristocratic Jew of the 20s CE, when Jesus
would have been an adult. And absolutely
no one thinks that Jesus was an upper-class aristocrat. So why would we have archaeological evidence
of his existence?
from Jesus . . . [T]here is nothing strange about having nothing in writing
from him. I should point out that we
have nothing in writing from over 99.99 percent of people who lived in
antiquity. That doesn’t mean, of course,
that they didn’t live.[5]
really is not fair to use Caesar Augustus as the criterion by which we evaluate
whether one of the other sixty million people of his day actually existed. If I wanted to prove that my former colleague
Jim Sanford really existed, I would not do so by comparing his press coverage
to that of Ronald Reagan.[6]
have non-Christian sources from the 1st century for Christ:
is also true, as the mythicists have been quick to point out, that no Greek or
Roman author from the first century mentions Jesus. . . . At the same time, the
fact is again a bit irrelevant since these same sources do not mention many
millions of people who actually did live.
Jesus stands here with the vast majority of living, breathing human
beings of earlier ages. . . . it is no surprise that these same sources never
mention any of his uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces, or nephews—or in fact nearly
any other Jew of his day.
reiterate that it is a complete “myth” (in the mythicist sense) that Romans
kept detailed records of everything and that as a result we are inordinately
well informed about the world of Roman Palestine and should expect then to hear
about Jesus if he really lived. If
Romans kept such records, where are they? We certainly don’t have any. Think of everything we do not know about the
reign of Pontius Pilate as governor of Judea.
We know from the Jewish historian Josephus that Pilate ruled for ten
years, between 26 and 36 CE. It would be
easy to argue that he was the single most important figure of Roman Palestine
for the entire length of his rule. And
what records from that decade do we have from his reign—what Roman records of
his major accomplishments, his daily itinerary, the decrees he passed, the laws
he issued, the prisoners he put on trial, the death warrants he signed, his scandals,
his interviews, his judicial proceedings?
We have none. Nothing at all. . .
. What archaeological evidence do we have about Pilate’s rule in Palestine? We have some coins that were issued during
his reign (One would not expect coins about Jesus since he didn’t issue any),
and one—only one—fragmentary inscription discovered in Caesarea Maritima in
1961 that indicates that he was the Roman prefect. Nothing else.
And what writings do we have from him?
Not a single word. Does that mean
he didn’t exist? No, he is mentioned in
several passages in Josephus and in the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher Philo
and in the Gospels. He certainly existed
even though, like Jesus, we have no records from his day or writings from his
hand. And what is striking is that we
have far more information about Pilate than about any other governor of Judea
in Roman times. And so it is a modern
“myth” to say that we would have extensive Roman records from antiquity that
surely would have mentioned someone like Jesus had he existed.
Pilate is mentioned only in passing in the writing of the one Roman historian,
Tacitus, who does name him. Moreover,
that happens to be in a passage that also refers to Jesus (Annals 15). If an important
Roman aristocratic ruler of a major province is not mentioned any more than
that in the Greek and Roman writings, what are the chances that a lower-class
Jewish teacher (which Jesus must have been, as everyone who thinks he lived
agrees) would be mentioned in them?
Almost none.
source of knowledge about Jewish Palestine in the days of Jesus comes from the
historian Josephus, a prominent aristocratic Jew who was extremely influential
in the social and political affairs of his day.
And how often is Josephus mentioned in Greek and Roman sources of his
own day, the first century CE? Never.[7]
mythicists’ rejection of it:
. [who] wrote his famous Annals of
Imperial Rome in 115 CE as a history of the empire from 14 to 68 CE . . .
explains that “Nero falsely accused those whom . . . the populace called
Christians. The author of this name,
Christ, was put to death by the procurator, Pontius Pilate, while Tiberius was
emperor; but the dangerous superstition, though suppressed for the moment,
broke out again not only in Judea, but even in the city [of Rome].” . . . Some
mythicists argue that this reference in Tacitus was not actually written by him
. . . but were inserted into his writings (interpolated) by Christians who
copied them, producing the manuscripts of Tacitus we have today. . . . I don’t
know of any trained classicists or scholars of ancient Rome who think this, and
it seems highly unlikely. . . . [S]urely the best way to deal with evidence is
not simply to dismiss it when it happens to be inconvenient. Tacitus evidently did know some things about
Jesus.[8]
Jesus Christ:
. . . Pliny . . . Suetonius . . . [are] three references . . . that survive
from pagan sources within a hundred years of the traditional date of Jesus
death. . . . Josephus . . . from within Palestine, the only surviving author of
the time . . . refer[s] to Jesus twice.[9]
a long time scholars treated the Talmud as if it presented historically
accurate information about Jewish life, law, and custom . . . back to the first
century. . . . Jesus . . . appears . . . [under the name] “Ben [son of]
Panthera.” . . . Scholars have long recognized that this tradition appears to
represent a subtle attack on the Christian view of Jesus’ birth as the “son of
a virgin.” In Greek, the word for virgin
is parthenos, close in spelling to Panthera. In other references in the Talmud we learn
that Jesus was a sorcerer who acquired his black magic in Egypt. Recall the Gospel accounts of how Jesus fled
with his family to Egypt soon after his birth and his abilities later in life
to perform miracles. He is said in the
Talmud to have gathered . . . disciples . . . and to have been hanged on the
eve of the Passover[.] . . . Here again we may have a biased version of the
Gospel accounts, where Jesus is killed during the Passover[.][10]
historical value:
and the other Gospel writers . . . were historical persons giving reports of
things they had heard, using historically situated modes of rhetoric and
persuasion. The fact that their books .
. . became documents of faith has no bearing on the question of whether the
books can be used for historical purposes.
To dismiss the Gospels from the historical record is neither fair nor
scholarly. . . . [T]he Gospels . . . [w]hatever one thinks of them as inspired
scripture, . . . can be seen and used as significant historical sources.[11]
D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The
Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 131.
D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The
Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 132.
D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The
Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 133.
D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The
Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 30.
D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The
Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 42-43.
D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The
Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 217.
D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The
Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 43-45.
D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The
Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 54-55.
D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The
Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 55-57.
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical
Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 67-68.
Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical
Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012) 73-74.
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