Triablogue: 05/27/2012

Saturday, June 02, 2012

Zombie awareness week

This week has seen a spate of real-life zombie attacks:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/301635/all-you-can-eat-news-buffet-mark-steyn

Needless to say, this is what happens when vegans develop a midnight craving for red meat. They can only get by on tofu for so long before their instinctive appetite for real food becomes overpowering. Instead of dialing Dominos for a midnight snack, they prowl the neighborhood for fresh meat.

It’s therefore incumbent on state and local officials to take precautionary measures.

1. All vegans should register with local authorities. That way we can map their whereabouts and track their movements.

2. Outwardly, vegans appear to be almost normal, although they tend to be young, pale, and undernourished. Vegans may even be philosophy majors at ASU.

3. Bumper stickers like Meat is murder, Give Peas a chance, Eat beans not beings, are a dead giveaway.

4. Cable operators should report subscribers who view Whale Wars to local authorities. Netflix fans of Shawn Roberts flicks are also suspect.

5. When neighborhood dogs and cats go missing, that’s a telltale sign of a ravenous vegan near you. This usually escalates to missing joggers.

6. Local authorities must develop a zombie evacuation plan to coordinate escape routes, including alternate routes, in the event that vegans go zombie en masse.

7. Keep a zombie emergency kit in the backseat of your car. It should include beef jerky to toss out the window when your car is pursued by lumbering hoards of man-eating vegans. That should buy you a little extra time.

8. Maintain a well-stocked bunker in the forest while authorities quarantine marauding vegans and transport them to the zoo.

9. Never let your daughter date a vegan. It’s like dropping a mouse into a fish tank with a boa constrictor.

A Grim Jobs Report for America

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/301599/grim-jobs-report-america-larry-kudlow

Ascribed status

I’m going to evaluate this comment:

http://thedebateinitiative.com/2012/05/25/three-big-problems-with-the-atonement/#comment-3468

bassamzawadi

May 31, 2012 at 5:31 pm

Excellent… we are making progress. We are reaching the stage where one side (clearly not mine) is beginning to really sound desperate.

It’s desperate when Zawadi can’t defend his key assumption.

As I explained already, I didn’t appeal to Romans 2:14-15 as my key argument. It’s already a given and assumed that most people (unlike Steve as I have just come to know) recognize that there are universal moral principles. Many Christians talk about such universal notions.

I didn’t appeal to Romans 2:14-15 as proof that the Christian must accept this notion (since most people do already), rather I only cited it and the Qur’anic passage in order to show that Islam and Christianity have something in common in this regard.

This reflects Zawadi’s simplistic grasp of the issues. There are several basic distinctions he fails to draw:

i) Are there universal moral norms?

ii) Are universal moral norms intuitively accessible to everyone?

iii) Does Rom 2:14-15 attest (i)?

iv) Does Rom 2:14-15 attest (ii)?

v) Is the alleged injustice of penal substitution a universal moral norm?

vi) Is the alleged injustice of penal substitution intuitively accessible and universal?

For instance, (i) is an ontological or metaphysical claim. A claim regarding the existence of universal moral norms.

By contrast, (ii) is epistemic claim. Assuming universal norms exist, how do we know what they are? Is this intuitive? Is there universal knowledge of universal norms?

Likewise, the appeal to Rom 2:14-15 is an exegetical claim. In principle, you could affirm the existence and/or intuitive accessibility of universal moral norms while denying that Rom 2:14-15 bears witness to their existence and/or intuitive accessibility.

Or you could affirm the existence of universal moral norms, but deny that these are intuitively accessible.

Furthermore, Zawadi has yet to actually show that penal substitution is intuitively wrong. All we get from him is a repetitive, question-begging assertion to that effect.

For instance, even if we grant the existence of universal moral norms, and even if we grant the intuitive accessibility of universal moral norms, this doesn’t imply the further claim that penal substitution violates a universal moral norm. Zawadi’s contention is a non sequitur.

Zawadi needs to sort out what, exactly, his claim amounts to, then furnish supporting arguments. Thus far he’s failed on all counts.

Word of advice to Steve….. when you have “belatedly discovered” that you have misunderstood the intent of my statement, either admit it or just drop your argument.

I understand that Zawadi is flailing about for a face-saving exit from the corner he initially painted himself into.

Mooslim miracles

I recently became a Muslim. Or perhaps I should say, a Mooslim. I was convinced by witnessing an irrefutable miracle for Islam:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abY6i3W_Keg

Friday, June 01, 2012

10 Misconceptions about the NT Canon: #5

http://michaeljkruger.com/10-misconceptions-about-the-nt-canon-5-early-christians-disagreed-widely-over-the-books-which-made-it-into-the-canon/

Do Atheists Concede the Ground of Death Too Easily?

Blue Devil Knight said...

It depends which religion, of course, but this seems a quixotic argument to take up.

But wrt Christianity it would be hard to argue that atheists have a leg up in the whole "comforting" category if the afterlife exists and is even 1/1000 as good as they think it will be.

And things atheists can do, like make the world a better place for future generations, the Christians can also do. So there is a real asymmetry here.

This seems like an argument we are doomed to lose. You could cut hairs and say "Well it depends what your preferences are". But that would just come off as disingenuous or blind. Sure, some people would rather be extinguished than eternally at peace and love. But that would just suggest they are deviant.

This is not an argument we are going to win with the Christians, and for good reason.

I also can speak from personal experience, when loved-ones die it is much easier to handle it psychologically thinking they are at eternal peace and able to see that I love them, versus the fact that are simply gone, period, and any issues we had unresolved are going to remain unresolved forever. The grief is much, much worse. I don't know how you can get around that (sure, you can talk about them, make scholarships in their name, etc, but the Christians can do that too).

We should accept that Christians have the upper hand when it comes to tales of the afterlife. The main problem with their view is that it is false.

http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2012/05/do-atheists-concede-ground-of-death-too.html?showComment=1338556154022#c8371239871683979175

Caning babies

This case is getting some buzz:

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/11574-wisc-pastor-gets-two-year-sentence-for-preaching-spanking

We need to be careful not to jump the gun. The case is morally ambiguous. There seems to be blame to go around.

On the one hand, the judge appears to be making law from the bench. She personally disapproves of corporal punishment. But she’s not entitled to make social policy.

In addition, the pastor was convicted for what he said, not what he did. I think that’s legally dubious. So this looks like another rogue judge.

That said, we shouldn’t use corporal punishment on a 2-month-old baby. If that’s what Pastor Caminiti really believes, then the guy is a dufus.

This represents knucklehead prooftexting that quotes chapter and verse without bothering to ask basic hermeneutical questions.

The book of Proverbs is not about raising babies. Rather, it’s about raising adolescent boys. Now, we can certainly age some of that down a bit. But it’s assuredly not commanding parents to cane babies.

All told, this seems to be a case of judicial and pastoral misconduct alike.

Assassin-in-chief

Commentators on both sides of the ideological spectrum have charged Obama with inconsistency in his targeted killings. However, while his policy is undoubtedly incoherent in many respects, there is an underlying consistency. Obama is a social engineer. A radical technocrat.

This means he loves controlling other people. And imagine the adrenal rush it gives him to wield the power of life and death over lesser mortals. To hold somebody’s fate in his hands. To decide who lives and who dies.

No wonder he takes such a personal interest in the kill list. It’s the ultimate power-trip. The next-best thing to godhood.

American Evangelicals Do Not, in Fact, Behave as Badly as Everyone Else

http://stackblog.wordpress.com/2012/05/27/its-just-not-true-american-evangelicals-do-not-in-fact-behave-as-badly-as-everyone-else/

Drone warrior

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/301491

Triablogue Master Index

Welcome to the Triablogue Master Index.

It is an understatement to say that the Triablogue team has been prolific in its literary output. The purpose of this index is to make it easier to access and benefit from this abundance of material, especially those posts that are more substantive and timeless.

Jason Engwer, Steve Hays and Patrick Chan have already done a good deal of work here, and so I draw on their efforts with much appreciation.

If you're new at Triablogue and want to offer a substantial comment, correction, refutation, monologue, diatribe or some such thing, take a moment and browse this selection of posts first, so that you don't spend time repeating stale objections or failing to anticipate obvious counter-replies. Also, if you try to post to an old thread, it will first enter moderation before appearing. (This policy is to minimize undetected spam.)

Sometimes a post is included here because it generated a useful discussion or debate within the comments section, so don't always limit yourself to the main body of the post. I try to indicate the nature of that discussion if it cannot be inferred from the title of the post. (If a discussion happens to have material from a banned poster, you can reveal his or her comments by clicking "Post a Comment" at the bottom of a screen.)

Sometimes material within a post will have links to other material. With necessary exceptions, I've done my best to make it generally unnecessary to follow these links, and rather to include the cited entries in this index.

Occasionally it was difficult to classify a post under one heading. However, in order to minimize redundancy, I have decided to avoid placing the same material under multiple headings.

The topics and posts here are by no means exhaustive (nor are they meant to be), so if you cannot find what you are looking on this page, I recommend an advanced Google search:

http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en

In the field "Search within a site or domain," include triablogue.blogspot.com and proceed with your search. This will helpfully limit all results to Triablogue.

If there are substantial additions to the selection here, we will probably announce the changes with a blog post.

THE MASTER INDEX

Table of Contents

1. Before You Begin
2. Faith and Practice
3. The Culture Wars
4. Politics
5. Theology
6. Atheism and Skepticism
7. Miracles
8. The Resurrection
9. Near Death Experience
10. Inerrancy
11. Calvinism
12. Canonics
13. Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy
14. Other Religions
15. Miscellaneous
16. E-Books
17. Book Reviews

1. Before You Begin

The Rules of Engagement
Posting comments here is a privilege, not a right.

The Role of Apologetics
Why argue when it doesn't change anyone's mind?

2. Faith and Practice

Too Hot to Handle (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)
In this series Steve Hays covers controversial topics: abortion, civil disobedience, deception, divorce, drugs, fornication, incest, marriage, masturbation, obscenity, polygamy, pornography, profanity, slavery and suicide.

Abortion

License to Kill
What are the best arguments for abortion?

Let's Kill Your Child

Valuing Life
The abortion debate goes beyond personhood and autonomy.

The Gift of Life
Common ground arguments against abortion are good as far as they go. But we shouldn't neglect Christian reasons for opposing it.

Art and the Bible

The Second Commandment
Commentary on Exodus 20:4-5, Deuteronomy 5:8-9, Deuteronomy 4:15-19

A Response to TurretinFan on the Second Commandment

What Does the Second Commandment Forbid?

The Human Face of God
More discussion on the Second Commandment and religious art.

Picturing Jesus
Two typical arguments against images of Jesus are mutually incompatible.

Is Mel's Movie Impious? (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)
On Gibson's portrayal of Jesus in "The Passion."

Religious Cartoons

Seeing Jesus
Some Calvinists trade on the same equivocation that Catholics use to say Mary is the mother of God.

Is God Unpicturable?
Daniel 7:9 and verbal imagery.

The Good Shepherd
God uses metaphors that naturally create mental pictures.

"Ungodly Perversions"
A longer discussion and debate.

VanDrunen on Pictures of Christ

What's a Picture of Jesus?

Manichaean Worship
A response to B.C. Hodge.

Church and Creeds

The 4-Door Labyrinth (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5)
For many observers, both inside and outside the church, Christendom presents a bewildering array of squabbling schools and sects.

Justin Bieber Churchmanship
Is it better for a pastor to keep his political views to himself?

Sola Credo
Overemphasis on Reformed creeds is the mirror-image of Eastern Orthodoxy.

Ethics

Christianity's Influence on Friendship

Must Christians Always Forgive?
In the comments, Alan Kurschner provides a bibliography for textual issues surrounding Luke 23:34a.

The One-Armed Man Did It!
Debate over the death penalty.

Heaven

Images of Heaven

Holodeck Heaven

Homosexuality

The Sodomizing of Same-Sex Affection
Acquired Taste
Gay Pride
Starfish and "Doing Away with the Law"
Homosexual Adoption
"Prayers for Bobby"
Loving and Committed Pederasty

Internet Etiquette

Michael and Me
Facebook feeds and expectations of privacy on the Internet.

"Triablogue is Full of Big Meanies"
Peter Pike on what is "loving" in tone and temperament, a discussion continued in the comments.

Knowing God

Show me Your Glory
"Just as we know another person by his body, we know God by his world."

Why Believe the Bible
What are the reasons for believing God inspired the Bible?

Marriage

Is there Sex in Heaven?

Family Life in the Afterlife

Till Death Do Us Part?

Better to Love and Lose Than Never Love At All

"Family Idolatry"
Some pastors put their ministry above their family.

Politics

Morality is Politics
Or is it?

Polygamy

Polygamy is condemned by Scripture

A Literary Approach

Prayer

Praying for the Past
Is it ever appropriate to pray for a past outcome?

The Problem of Answered Prayer
Is unanswered prayer a problem?

Slavery

Economic Justice
The Old Testament attempts as much as possible to curtail slavery.

Sports

Fight Club
What about mixed martial arts?

Are Contact Sports Immoral?

Football vs. Baseball

Suffering

Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings
Some words of comfort to a suffering Christian.

The Death of Pets and the Afterlife

I Will Wait Till My Change Comes

3. The Culture Wars

The Manhattan Declaration

Analysis by Steve Hays

Is the Manhattan Declaration ECT Redux?

Making the Judaizers Orthodox

Education

Child Sacrifice
On the SBC resolution for parents to take their children out of public schools.

Media and Culture

The Twitterati
Every time we have the advent of a new communications technology, we have social critics who bemoan the fall of Western civilization.

Practice Makes Perfect
Real World: San Diego tries to advance a political agenda.

Newsweek Misrepresents Homosexuality and Polygamy

The Moralizing Amoral Moralist
A response to Hector Avalos' column in the Des Moines Register.

Dawn Treader
A review of the movie in light of C. S. Lewis' original novel. And read a follow up review here.

Prince Caspian
Broader literary reflections on Lewis.

THE EVƎNT
On the TV series.

The Rose and the Amaranth
A review of Limitless.

4. Politics

Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth
An overview of the liberal political agenda.

Religion and Law

The Old Testament Today
For some Christians the law of Moses might as well be an electrified fence.

Theonomy

Voting

Marriage, Morality and Politics
What do we make of a candidate's marital history?

War and Peace

War and Peace

Pacifism vs. just-war.

Just War Criteria

What are the criteria? And are they valid criteria?

The Morality of War

Moral Extortion in a Time of War

Counter-terrorism in a just-war framework.

Miscellaneous

On Conspiracy Theories

5. Theology

Creation

No, Virginia, the World is Fake
Bertrand Russel and the apparent age of the universe.

Ecumenicism

How Mere is "Mere Christianity"?

Eschatology

Matthew 16, 24 and Additional Passages on the Second Coming
Did Jesus and the earliest Christians teach that the second coming would occur within Jesus' generation?

One Of The Main Reasons I Think Exapologist's Atheology is Wrong
On an allegedly false prophecy of Jesus. See also here.

Feminism

Biblical Manhood and Womanhood

Hermeneutics

Apostolic Exegesis Redux
Did the Apostles interpret Scripture the way we do?

Justification

Not Once Saved, Never Saved
On Zane Hodges and his antinomian heresy.

The Trinity

Isaiah's Trinity

The Quaternity

6. Atheism and Skepticism*

Ancient Testimony and Eyewitness Accounts

Testing Gullibility Claims

On the alleged gullibility of ancient people.

Were Ancient People Gullible Enough to Sustain Modern Skeptical Theories?

The Significance of Eyewitness Testimony

It isn't limited to establishing the Resurrection.

Early Christian Discernment

Does Origen provide support for the notion that ancient people would not have been suspicious enough to detect Biblical forgeries?

Eusebius and Lying

Does Eusebius advocate lying?

Healthy and Unhealthy Skepticism

The Alleged Unreliability of Eyewitness Testimony

How Much Should We Trust Papias?

What Does Athens Have to do With Jerusalem?

Jason Engwer responds to the idea that Tertullian promoted irrationality.

Josephus Judged by a Different Standard

Is the Slaughter of the Innocents Historical?
Matthew's passage of the slaughter is often considered one of the weakest aspects of the infancy narratives.

Precious Memories
Crossan doubts the reliability of memory.

How to be an Objective Non-Christian Scholar
Bertrand Russel's foot-in-mouth comments.

Existence of Jesus

Early Agreement About the Historical Jesus
The existence of Jesus wasn't an issue among the earliest Christians and their enemies.

Biblical Authorship

Arguing for the New Testament Text (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Was A Large Percentage of The New Testament Attributed to the Wrong Author?

Anonymous Gospels?

Hostile Corroboration of New Testament Authorship (See also here).

The Credibility of Some Critical Theories about New Testament Authorship

Some Lesser Known Evidence Related to Gospel Authorship (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)

Why Trust the Canonical Judgments of the Early Church?

Why Trust Josephus?

Who Wrote the Gospel of John?

Does Romans 11:9 Suggest That Romans is a Forgery?

The Witness of Luke

Thinking Critically for George
A response to liberal dating schema.

The Dual Authorship of Scripture

New Atheism

Three-Hanky Atheism
On atheist deconversion testimonies.

Everyone's to Blame But Me!
John Loftus' deconversion and the true face of apostasy.

Ludicrously Inadequate
Dawkins on the Lewis trilemma.

Christianity and Fideism
Not all Christians take a fideistic approach. See also here.

Creation, Evolution and Teleology

The Principle of Plenitude
Appealing to natural design flaws is rather unscientific.

Light and Shade
A scientific approach to Genesis 1 is apt to misinterpret the chapter.

Is Evolution Falsifiable?

Another Darwinian Bites the Dust

The Problem of Evil

Religion and Evil
One way of explaining the various religions of the world is to see them as offering and modeling different problem-solving strategies in relation to the problem of evil.

Misc

The Moral Standards of the Earliest Christians

Some Early Sources on the Infancy Narratives

Why Did the Early Christians Claim a Virgin Birth?

People often compare the Christian virgin birth accounts to unhistorical birth accounts in Jewish or pagan sources.

Are the Letters of Ignatius and Polycarp Forgeries?

A Review of James White's Debate with Robert Price (Part 1, Part 2)

*Also consult Inerrancy (#10) for related posts.

7. Miracles

Naturalistic Delusions
A discussion of hallucinatory phenomena leads to an exchange over whether natural laws are as problematic for supernatural theories as natural ones.

Bell, Book and Candle
Since miracles don't occur today, it's difficult to believe that one occurred two thousand years ago. We've moved beyond the superstitious, pre-scientific worldview of the ancients.

The Onus of Miracles
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

The Myth of Roger Bannister
A satirical look at skeptical standards of history.

Paul's Conversion
Many important nuances are often neglected.

Unexpected Miracles
On the common skeptical objection that prior expectation makes people more likely to think something happened that didn't actually happen.

Non-Christian Miracle Accounts in a Christian Worldview

Non-Christian Corroboration of the of the Darkness at Jesus' Crucifixion

8. The Resurrection

On the Evidence Generally

The Significance of the Resurrection Evidence

The Resurrection Narratives Came From Sources Who Were Named And Known

Did the Resurrection Accounts Develop Over Time?

How Significant is it When Modern Scholars Affirm the Historicity of Biblical Events?
Does the bias of Christian scholars negate their conclusions?

Matthew Green's Attempts to Dismiss the Resurrection Evidence

The Eyewitness Testimony

"Whether Then It Was I Or They, So We Preach" (1 Corinthians 15:11)
The resurrection witnesses may not have had any physical evidence for their belief in the resurrection. Accounts of physical evidence may not have arisen until around the time when the gospels were written, much later.

Why Didn't the Risen Christ Appear to More People?

Should There Have Been More Witnesses?

Why Didn't Jesus Appear to Everyone?
A stock objection.

Rehabilitating the Hallucination Theory
Does a vague appeal to "visions" overcome the problems with the hallucination theory?

Dawson Bethrick's "Not Impossible" Speculations
More on subjective visions.

Resurrection Witnesses and Acts 26:19

Did the Early Christians Suffer and Die for a Belief in the Resurrection?

The Early Christians' Willingness to Suffer and Die

Harmonizing the Gospel Accounts

The Genre of the Resurrection Narratives

History and Harmonization

Harmonizing the Gospel Accounts

Everybody Harmonizes

From Easter to Pentecost
On the alleged contradictions in the Resurrection accounts.

The Guarded Tomb
Unbelievers dismiss the account of guarded the tomb as a made-up story. But there are two basic problems with this dismissal.

The Empty Tomb
The fact that Jesus’ tomb was found empty is reported early, by multiple sources, by eyewitnesses, and with non-Christian corroboration.

Don't Overestimate the Empty Tomb

The Credibility of the Gospel Resurrection Narratives

Secular Munchkins on the March
Robert Price response to Gary Habermas' article "The Resurrection Appearances of Jesus." Steve Hays comments.

Extra-Biblical Sources

The Alleged Apathy of Christianity's Earliest Enemies

Early Jewish Acknowledgment of the Empty Tomb

The Resurrection Tablet
Did Christianity borrow from ancient resurrection myths?

The Nature of the Resurrection

Why is the Resurrected Jesus so Ordinary?
Its ordinary reporting in the New Testament literature is evidence for its veracity.

Did The Apostle Paul Believe in a Physical Resurrection of Christ?

The Unexpected Nature of the Resurrection

The Licona Controversy and Matthew 27

The Resurrected Saints
Michael Licona has recently come under fire from Norman Geisler, James White, and Jamin Hubner for what he wrote about the resurrection of the saints in Mt 27:52-53.

The Day Hope Died
A practical element of the Licona controversy.

The Blessed Hope
On the underlying principle of Resurrection.

Early Christian And Non-Christian Interpretations Of The Matthew 27 Phenomena

A Bad Argument Against the Resurrection That's Often Repeated
Matthew 27:52-53 demonstrates that the gospel writers either weren’t writing in a historical genre or were willing to believe unlikely resurrection accounts or make them up.

9. Near Death Experiences

An Evangelical View of Near-Death Experiences and Related Phenomena
Jason Engwer has been doing studies on NDEs. This is an index of his posts.

10. Inerrancy

(The interested reader is also encouraged to see Steve Hays' review of Bart Erhman's Jesus Interrupted found in the Book Reviews section below.)

Exodus Redux
A post and subsequent discussion on inerrancy broadly.

Ancient Mythology and Biblical Narrative

The Legend of Sargon
Comparisons between Sargon and the account of Moses are unimpressive. See also the substantial follow up here.

Scripture Versus Myth

Cosmology

The Thick Rotundity of the Earth
Is the flat earth an article of faith?

A Flat Earth, A Mormon View of God, and Other Skeptical Readings of Scripture
John Loftus argues that passages like 2 Samuel 22 and Job 26 present a flat earth.

Arkeology 101
On criticisms of flood geology.

Sacred Time & Sacred Space
The Sceptic’s Annotated Bible on the creation and flood.

Borrowed Cosmology
Gentile influence in areas of cosmology favor the Christian position rather than skeptical theories.

The Flood and the Flat-Earth
"One of the glaring incongruities in reading standard attacks on Noah’s flood is the totally disconnect between the view of the world which critics ascribe to the narrator, and the view of the world which critics use as their frame of reference in attacking the flood account."

The Pillars of the Earth
On flat-earth language in Scripture.

NASA's Flat-Earth Cosmography
"Up" is a phenomenological term.

Journey to the Center of the Flat Earth
Did Calvin and Gill believe hell was physically under the earth?

Flat Earth or Flat Head?
A discussion of various scholars and methods in Biblical cosmology.

The Waters Above
On "primitive" people judging by appearances.

Ascent of Mount Carmel
Does "taking the Bible at its word" require "thinking in terms of a flat earth"?

Jello-O Dome
More the alleged flat-earth disposition of the Biblical writers.

Geoplanar Oceanography

On Paul Seely's Defense of Enns

Gilgamishmash

Does the Enns Justify the Memes?

Enochian Cosmography
On Enoch 32:1-4.

The Firmament
Considering the standard triple-decker universe model.

Physics and Metaphysics

A discussion with a physics student over creationism.

Hard Sayings

Crooked Judges
You and I don't have to like the Bible for it to be true.

Violence in the Old Testament
What are we to make of the emotionally difficult examples of corporate responsibility, brutality and violence throughout the Old Testament?

Miscellaneous Objections

Does the Gospel of Mark Contradict the Infancy Narratives?

One Angel or Two?
How many angels were at the tomb?

Textual Criticism

Why do Textual Criticism?

Some False and Misleading Claims About the Textual Record

Textual Criticism Done Dan Brown Style
"What we have today is a copy of a copy of a mistranslation of a copy of a copy..."

Do We Have the Word of God in Light of Textual Variation?

Dagoods Deadwood
Sometimes skeptical text critical questions are based on ignorance of the relevant literature and cultural considerations. See also the follow up here.
Talking Out of Turn
A response to comments by two Muslim apologists. See also the follow up here.

Misquoting Metzger
What do we make of Metzger's collaboration with Ehrman?

Self-Foot-Shooting Scepticism

11. Calvinism

What is Calvinism?
It is a theology of thanksgiving.

Soul-Murder

When you lose the theological debate, you can always invoke Servetus.

"The Author of Sin"

The Authorship of Evil

Does the Arminian Argument from Authoring Evil Backfire?

Freelancing the Authorship of Sin
Atheists can redeploy the Arminian authorship charge against Christianity generally.

The Authorship of Adam's Sin

The H.M.S. Thibodolt
On properly framing the debate.

Dodging Scripture

Ambidextrous Arminians

12. Canonics

Authorship and Acceptance

Who Wrote the Bible? (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

The Inspiration of Scripture

Broad observations on the process of inspiration.

Canonical Criteria

How were books of the Bible originally received by their target audience?

The Means of Identifying a New Testament Canon
How does someone come to conclude that a particular book is Scripture?

From Apostolicity to the Twenty-Seven-Book New Testament
An extended essay on using the criterion of apostolicity to establish the canon.

Apostolic Authority and the New Testament Canon

Canon & Chronology
Complications with moving the date of the New Testament forward one hundred years.

New Testament

How We Got the New Testament
On the production of the canon.

The Significance of Other New Testament Canons

Marcion and the New Testament

Irenaeus and the Gospel Canon
A passage in Irenaeus that critics of Christianity have been abusing for a long time.

Canonical Implications in John's Gospel
On the use of John 14 - 16 in canonical discussion.

The NT as Scriptures

Did it take a significant amount of time for the NT to be recognized as Scripture?

The Gospels and Acts

The Origin of the Four-Gospel Canon
Comments on C.E. Hill's Who Chose The Gospels?

Do Modern Versions Change Key Doctrines?
This link contains an extended discussion on the longer ending of Mark.

Would Matthew Not Have Used Mark if He Really Wrote Matthew?

Mark's Gospel of Peter

The Historicity of Acts

The Johannine Books and the Theory of Another John

Lazarus Didn't Write the Fourth Gospel
Against Ben Witherington's theory. (See here for an earlier discussion.)

Epistles

Who Wrote 2 Peter?

1 Enoch 1:9
On Jude's use of the apocryphal work, with application to Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox arguments on the subject.

Did the Churches of Revelation 2-3 Reject Revelation?

Old Testament

Bible or Babel? (Part 1, Part 2)
Source criticism and Mosaic authorship.

The OT Witness to the OT Canon

The Making of the Hebrew Bible
Remarks by Richard Hess are quoted.

Why Do Evangelicals Agree With The Christian New Testament Consensus, But Disagree With The Christian Old Testament Consensus?

Hebrews 11 and the Old Testament
OT chronology as discerned in Hebrews 11.

Josephus and the OT Canon

Vanity of Vanities
Did Solomon author Ecclesiastes?

13. Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy

The Historical Roots of the Reformation And Evangelicalism
This is an index by Jason Engwer that links to about fifty posts related to issues such as: apostolic succession; patristic evidence in relation to the canon, the papacy, the eucharist, etc.; infant baptism; mariology; sola Scriptura; etc.

Remembering Halloween and Forgetting the Reformation

The Apocrypha and Canonics

The Canon of Scripture (Part 1, Part 2)
Do Evangelicals have no right to appeal to Scripture because they cannot justify their canon?

Canonics and Catholicism
Steve Hays responds to Bryan Cross in the comments section of Green Baggins.

A Fallen Seraph
Eastern Orthodoxy's official canon?

A History of the Apocrypha
Selections from Metzger's scholarship generates a long discussion.

Orthoducks-Hunting
Extended discussion on the LXX, its use in early Christianity, related textual questions, etc.

The Legendary Alexandrian Canon

Eastern Orthodox Acceptance of the Hebrew Canon

The Multiple Canons of the Eastern Orthodox

Kallistos Ware On the Canon

Poppin-Jay on the Canon
On alleged patristic and/or New Testament citations of the apocrypha.

The Less Conservative Side of Eastern Orthodoxy

Eastern Orthodox scholarship on the longer ending of Mark.

The Bible of the Apostles

Did they use the LXX? Also read the comments for additional, useful information.

The Eucharist

The Eucharist in Ignatius and Other Fathers

An extended discussion on sacramentalism ensues.

Interpreting the Bible and Later Sources on the Eucharist

Some important points are often neglected in discussions of the Eucharist.

Hermeneutics

The Interpretation of Scripture: In Defense of the Historical-Critical Method

A look at mainstream Catholic hermeneutics.

Catholic Christology

Another look at mainstream Catholic hermeneutics

Images and Veneration

The Veneration of Images

Idols & Idolatry
Exodus 20:4-5

Mary

The Perpetual Virginity of Mary

Prayers to the Dead

Attempts to Make a Biblical Case for Prayers to the Dead

Staying Focused in Discussions about Prayer to the Dead

The Significance of Later Patristic Testimony to Prayers to the Dead

Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox take Celsus' Advice
Celsus criticizes Christians for their neglect of angels and other beings lower than God.

Ecclesiology and Tradition

Up for Grabs

On the alleged need for an infallible church.

Inaudible Oral Tradition
Refuting Roman Catholic claims to an oral tradition.

Catholics in Collective Denial
Roman Catholics often employ mutually exclusive argumentation in defense of their denomination.

Verifying Apostolic Succession
The mere presence of a concept does not demonstrate its truth.

Paleocracy
What we call the Catholic church is not an ageless, timeless, suprapersonal being who was born 2000 years ago, and has been of one mind ever since.

The Use of Augustine in Late Medieval and Reformation Studies
Many positions in the medieval church were based on spurious writings attributed to the great theologian.

Liberal Orthodoxy
Protestants are not the only religious movement that deals with liberalization.

Liberal Orthodoxy Encore

The Vitality of Division

Early Church Government

Did The Apostles Require That All Churches Have A Monarchical Episcopate?

Sola Scriptura

Back to Babylon (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)
Steve Hays examines the case for the Magisterium.

The Self-Witness of Scripture to the Canon of Scripture
Catholic epologists allege that sola Scriptura is self-refuting unless the canon of Scripture is self-referential.

The Messiness of the Canon
There are some difficulties involved in making judgments about the canon of scripture. But those difficulties aren't as bad or as unusual as they're often made out to be.

Jude the Obscure
Jude is often thought to pose a problem for Protestantism.

Sola Scriptura and Textual Criticism
There’s a striking parallel between Catholic objections to sola Scriptura and liberal objections to inerrant autographa.

The Twenty-Seven Book New Testament Before Athanasius
Origen is the earliest extant source to advocate the twenty-seven-book New Testament canon.

The Civil Wars of Popery
Division is hardly a Protestant phenomenon.

Soteriology

Faith and Works (Part 1, Part 2)

Epologists