The Early Prominence Of Luke's Gospel And Its Christmas Material

Trent Horn recently put out a video that largely reiterates some points he's made before about sola scriptura. In the process, he repeated the claim that none of the New Testament documents were "prominent" before Irenaeus wrote in the late second century. I want to respond to that claim with an example that's relevant to the current Christmas context. On the other issues brought up in his video, see my earlier responses to Trent here and here.

Go here to watch Trent citing Lee McDonald's remarks about the lack of prominence of the New Testament documents before Irenaeus. What I want to do in the remainder of this post is focus on the gospel of Luke as a counterexample. With Christmas coming up later in the week and the popularity among skeptics of denying that the earliest chapters of Luke's gospel were part of the original document, I want to discuss not only the early prominence of the gospel of Luke, but also the inclusion of our first two chapters and other Christmas material in the gospel. (For more about the Christmas material in Luke outside the earliest chapters, see this post.)

Matthew As A Source On Jesus' Childhood

The authorship of the gospel of Matthew has important implications for issues related to the childhood of Jesus. The gospel says a lot about his childhood, including in chapter 3 and beyond. The apostle Matthew would have been in a good position to have had a lot of reliable information on Jesus' background. But the evidence for his authorship of the gospel has been largely neglected, including among conservative scholars. You can find a collection of articles we've written about that evidence here. See the comments section of the thread for notes about how the collection has been updated over the years. For example, I added a link a few years ago to an article about the significance of Matthew's living and working in the area of Capernaum. More recently, I added a link to a post about evidence for Matthean authorship in the lists of Jesus' disciples in the Synoptics and Acts. That post also discusses the significance of the use of Hosea 6:6 in the gospel of Matthew. And I added a link to a post about evidence for the financial interests of the author. See the collection of links for more evidence of Matthew's authorship of the document and responses to objections.

Did John 19:27 actually happen?

Last year, I wrote about the implications of John 19:27 for Mary's influence on the apostle John, the church of Ephesus, and other sources. But what reason do we have to think John 19:27 is historically accurate?

Why People Prefer Christmas To Easter

Regardless of whether you have that preference yourself or approve of it, it seems that most people have it. I think Susan Roll is right about some of the reasons for that preference:

Disproving Luke's Census Wouldn't Disprove The Bethlehem Birthplace

Nor would disproving the star of Bethlehem, the Slaughter of the Innocents, etc. Events like those are relevant to Jesus' place of birth. They can offer evidence pertaining to it. But the truthfulness of his birth in Bethlehem doesn't depend on something like the accuracy of Luke's census account or whether the Slaughter of the Innocents occurred. In his video I responded to in my last post, Bart Ehrman addressed events like the ones I just mentioned while ignoring the large majority of the evidence relevant to where Jesus was born.

Bart Ehrman Is Wrong About Jesus' Birthplace

He just posted a video arguing against the Bethlehem birthplace. There are a lot of problems with his argument:

Why would early sources who believed in the virgin birth not mention it?

Critics of the virgin birth often suggest that it surely would have been mentioned by sources like Paul and the authors of the gospels of Mark and John if those individuals believed in it. I've discussed the evidence for the virgin birth elsewhere, including evidence for the earliness of belief in it, and that evidence is weightier than objections like the one I'm considering in this post. Still, I want to say more about that objection.

How plausible is Augustus' initiation of a census in Israel around the time of Jesus' birth?

It's often claimed that the Romans wouldn't have enacted a census in a client kingdom, which Israel was at the time of Jesus' birth. See Glenn Miller's argument to the contrary here and here. And Augustus wouldn't have to be directly responsible for the census in order for Luke's account to be accurate. Indirect involvement would be sufficient. If Herod implemented a census in an effort to please Augustus and conform Israel to Roman culture, as Herod did in other contexts, that would be enough to justify Luke's comments. The process of taking a census of the empire was initiated by Augustus. Whether that led to a census in Israel in a more direct or more indirect manner is a secondary issue, and the accuracy of Luke's account doesn't depend on it.

Another common objection is the alleged silence of sources other than Luke on the existence of a census in Israel at the time of Jesus' birth. I've addressed that subject before, such as in a post a couple of years ago. But here are some other points that can be made about both of the objections under consideration:

How To Argue That The Early Sources Agree About Jesus' Childhood More Than Critics Suggest

I've discussed forty examples of agreements between Matthew and Luke about Jesus' childhood. More examples could be cited. Yet, critics often suggest that Matthew and Luke only agree about a few things, or they list some higher single-digit number of agreements, for example. Even lists that consist of some low double-digit number are way off in the direction of underestimating the amount of agreement.

Though these discussions are often framed in terms of what Matthew and Luke have in common, we don't have to limit ourselves to those two sources (or just the infancy narratives within those two sources). There are many agreements among many early sources, not just Matthew and Luke.

One way to effectively remember and illustrate some of the agreements is to place them in categories, such as chronological issues or geographical issues. Think, for instance, of how many agreements there are between two or more sources on issues related to Jesus' familial circumstances:

What relationship did Joseph have with Bethlehem?

People often suggest that Joseph lived in Nazareth at the time of the opening verses of Luke 2 and that his only relationship with Bethlehem was one of distant ancestry. In a post several years ago, I explained why Luke probably wasn't saying that the census in Luke 2 required people to go to their places of ancestry, much less distant ancestry. When considering Joseph's relationship with Bethlehem in general, we can go beyond the census account, though that account is part of the evidence that needs addressed. Here are several reasons for thinking Joseph's relationship with Bethlehem was more than ancestral:

Christmas Resources 2024

A couple of years ago, I put together a collection of approaches that can be taken to begin an argument for a traditional Christian view of Jesus' childhood. I've added more material to the post since then. You can find it here.

An important topic to inform yourself about is how much Matthew and Luke agree concerning the childhood of Jesus. They agree more than people typically suggest. See the post here for forty examples of the agreements between Matthew and Luke. For a discussion of the agreements among other early sources, see here.

Isaiah 9:1-7 is significant in the context of Christmas for a lot of reasons (Jesus' self-perception, demonstrating continuity between the accounts of his childhood and the accounts of his adulthood, etc.). Here's a collection of posts addressing the passage.

We've also addressed many other Christmas issues over the years. For example:

Comradeship in battle? Or company for dinner?

"David is struggling with loneliness. This often goes in hand with a life devoted to radical obedience and hardship. People pull back. You are uneasy to be around, and it is too threatening. It happened to Paul at the end of his life in prison (2 Timothy 4:16) and it happened to Jesus in Gethsemane….You know who your friends are when trouble strikes and life together is comradeship in battle not just company for dinner." (John Piper)

I Cannot Go Broke

"Give me ten million dollars, and one reversal of fortune may scatter it. Give me a spiritual hold on the divine assurance that 'the Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want' (Ps. 23:1), and I am set for life. I cannot go broke with this stock in my hand. I can never be bankrupt with this security." (Charles Spurgeon, in Roy Clarke, ed., Beside Still Waters [Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 1999], 60)

Video Resources On The Non-Pagan Origins Of Christmas

Some good videos on the subject have come out in recent years, and some of them haven't gotten much attention. Here and here are a couple of interviews with Philipp Nothaft, a scholar who's done a lot of work on the early history of the Christmas holiday. And here's an interview with Tom Schmidt, another scholar who's done a lot of work on the subject, especially on Hippolytus. Here's Tim O'Neill and a couple of other skeptics of Christianity discussing the evidence against the pagan origins of Christmas.

Does Christmas have pagan origins?

In my last post, I discussed some disagreements I have with Jozef Naumowicz's recent book on the origins of the Christmas holiday, The Origin Of The Feast Of The Nativity In The Patristic Perspective (Berlin, Germany: Peter Lang GmbH, 2024). I now want to quote some portions of his book that I'm more in agreement with, where he argues that paganism didn't have any significant influence on the origins of Christmas. I can't quote every relevant part of the book here, but I'll cite some significant parts of it.

Is there support for December 25 as Jesus' birthdate prior to the Council of Nicaea?

A book on the origins of the Christmas holiday came out earlier this year, Jozef Naumowicz's The Origin Of The Feast Of The Nativity In The Patristic Perspective (Berlin, Germany: Peter Lang GmbH, 2024). A section of the book describing the author refers to Naumowicz as "a member of the Committee of Historical Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is the author and editor of many publications in the field of ancient Christianity and patrology, as well as the editor of the Library of the Church Fathers series." He argues that the December 25 date for Jesus' birth and the celebration of his birth on that day aren't found in any source prior to the Council of Nicaea, but he also argues that the date and the holiday weren't influenced by paganism in any significant way. So, he assigns a late date to the holiday, but denies that it's pagan or an attempt to compete with paganism. I disagree with him on the first point, but agree with him on the second. I'll explain why I disagree with him in this post, then I'll cite some of his comments where I agree with him in a later post. The book is worth getting for his material on the pagan influence issue, even if you disagree with him on the dating of the December 25 date and the holiday.

His Enemies Cannot Shake Or Unsettle Him From His Throne

"But if God is the object of our love, we should share in his infinite happiness without contamination or the possibility of it being diminished. We should constantly rejoice in beholding the glory of God and receive comfort and pleasure from all the praises with which men and angels extol him. It should delight us beyond all expression to consider that the one who is beloved in our own souls is infinitely happy in himself and that all his enemies cannot shake or unsettle him from his throne. What a sure foundation does the soul have whose happiness is built on divine love, whose will is transformed into the will of God, and whose greatest desire is that his Maker should be pleased. Oh, the peace, the rest, the satisfaction that comes from such an attitude of mind!" (Henry Scougal, in Robin Taylor, ed., The Life Of God In The Soul Of Man [Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2022], approximate Kindle location 466)

Where's James the son of Zebedee in later New Testament history?

Acts 12:2 reports his martyrdom. Notice the corroboration of that account elsewhere in the New Testament. Though James is so prominent in the gospels and was the first apostle taken by Herod in Acts 12, he's not referred to as still alive, much less prominent, in the portions of the New Testament covering later history. The James of Galatians 2:9 is most naturally taken as the James of chapter 1, the brother of Jesus, and the James of chapter 2 isn't mentioned next to John in 2:9, as the son of Zebedee probably would be. So, James the son of Zebedee is conspicuous by his absence in Galatians 2. He's also not mentioned elsewhere in the material that covers post-Acts-12 history, and none of the apostolic documents are attributed to him.

Turning Back To Make Progress

"Progress means not just changing, but changing for the better….We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man." (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity [New York, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2021], approximate Kindle locations 355, 533)

Early Non-Christian Ignorance Of A False Date For Jesus' Second Coming

The charge that Jesus and the earliest Christians set a false date for Jesus' second coming is a common objection to Christianity. I've said a lot about it over the years. One of the points I've made is that the early opponents of Christianity show no awareness of such a false prediction, which makes far more sense if there wasn't such a prediction. See here, for example. In that post, I brought up Celsus' treatise against Christianity. It's valuable for a variety of reasons. It's a second-century source, which is early. It was written by a pagan who consulted one or more Jewish sources, so it represents not only the views of multiple non-Christian sources, but also sources of significant diversity (pagan and Jewish). And a large percentage of the treatise has been preserved through Origen's interactions with it. (See my post linked above for documentation.) However, something I didn't do in that post was mention that the topic of false prophets comes up in the treatise. For example, Celsus objected to false prophets in Judaism and elsewhere, even ones he allegedly had met himself:

"And Celsus is not to be believed when he says that he has heard such men prophesy; for no prophets bearing any resemblance to the ancient prophets have appeared in the time of Celsus. If there had been any, those who heard and admired them would have followed the example of the ancients, and have recorded the prophecies in writing. And it seems quite clear that Celsus is speaking falsely, when he says that 'those prophets' whom he had heard, on being pressed by him, 'confessed their true motives, and acknowledged that the ambiguous words they used really meant nothing.' He ought to have given the names of those whom he says he had heard, if he had any to give, so that those who were competent to judge might decide whether his allegations were true or false." (in Origen, Against Celsus, 7:11)

So, it isn't just that Celsus and his Jewish source(s) don't refer to a false date set for Jesus' second coming. Rather, it goes even further than that. They're silent about such a false prediction even though the topic of false prophecy came up, and they objected to false prophecies in other contexts. And the alleged false date for Jesus' second coming isn't brought up in other relevant contexts either (e.g., discussions of eschatology).

What if Christian miracles don't come from God?

In a recent podcast, Stand To Reason addressed the following question:

"All supposed revelation of religions involves a subjective experience of receiving that revelation, so how do we know the biblical authors (Moses, the prophets, etc.) were interpreting their experiences correctly as opposed to Mohammed or Joseph Smith?"

I don't know how much the questioner was thinking of something like a scenario in which Christianity is a demonic deception. But that objection comes up occasionally and doesn't get addressed much, so I want to take this opportunity to address it again. Go here for a couple of comments I wrote on the topic a few years ago, then read this one that I wrote shortly afterward. The second thread just linked also has some comments from Hawk on the subject. For a response to the notion that Christian miracles are just manifestations of human paranormal capacities, see here.

I've given a couple of examples above, namely demons and human paranormal abilities. But the same principles are applicable to other non-Divine sources (e.g., an alien trying to deceive us). A Christian just has to argue that God is the best explanation, not that no other explanation is possible.

The Gravest Question Before The Church

"A.W. Tozer wisely wrote, 'What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us….For this reason, the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at any given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.' And that's why the most important thing about us is not our self-image, but our God-image. The gospel transforms us by transforming our vision of God….A Christian should never feel threatened by the world. Circling the wagons is not what people do when they have a great vision of God, an Isaianic vision of God, alive in their hearts….Father, we do ask that you would so release us from our emotional attachment to the things of this world, and you would so grip us and compel us with the triumph of Christ, that we no longer look like typical Americans." (Ray Ortlund, 6:03, 14:14, 38:36 in the audio of his October 27, 2002 sermon here)

Who Martin Luther Was Above All Else

"The first endeavor must be to understand the man. One will not move far in this direction unless one recognizes at the outset that Luther was above all else a man of religion. The great outward crises of his life which bedazzle the eyes of dramatic biographers were to Luther himself trivial in comparison with the inner upheavals of his questing after God." (Roland Bainton, Here I Stand [Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 1978], 6)

That's something to keep in mind as so many Christians in our day keep going after the false lead of the media, whatever is prominent in the news at the moment, and giving so much attention to gender issues, the family, politics, and such while doing so little in religious contexts.

Christians Raking Leaves

"The best things have to be dug for. If you rake, you get leaves. If you dig, you get diamonds. And if you've got a raking mind, you'll settle for leaves. If you've got a digging mind, you'll get diamonds." (John Piper, 14:13 in the audio here)

The Abuse Of Water-Related Language In The Bible To Support Baptismal Regeneration

I've written before about the many Biblical passages that refer to water, cleansing, and such in relevant contexts without having baptism in mind. But advocates of baptismal regeneration take certain passages out of context to make them seem supportive of baptismal regeneration because of the water-related terminology that's used. Even where the context goes in the opposite direction, they appeal to phrases that can be made to appear supportive of baptismal regeneration if taken in isolation (e.g., citing the reference to water in John 3:5, even though Jesus goes on to refer to the Old Testament background of his comments and keeps referring to people being justified apart from baptism elsewhere in the gospels; citing the reference to washing in Titus 3:5, even though it's accompanied by an exclusion of works). I want to expand on my previous post, linked above, with a discussion of some other relevant passages.

"Simply Literal" Scripture Interpretation Long Before The Reformation

Critics of Protestantism often make much of the large amount of allegorizing in the church fathers' interpretations of scripture. But there was a lot of diversity in how scripture was interpreted, including interpretive approaches of a more literal nature, long before the Reformation. Though Jerome allegorized a lot, he acknowledged that other people in his day didn't:

"In the Scriptures, the words are not simply literal, as some think." (in Thomas Scheck, trans., St. Jerome: Commentary On Isaiah [Mahwah, New Jersey: The Newman Press, 2015], p. 938, Letter 18A:12)

You often come across comments like those in pre-Reformation sources. Whether they name who they have in mind or not, they refer to a diversity of interpretive methods and interpretations. Even among those who allegorized a lot, there was a lot of variation in terms of how they did so, the extent to which they did it, etc. There's diversity among those who interpret scripture more literally as well.

How Jesus Identified Himself By His Actions

Here's something I recently posted on the subject in a YouTube thread:

Claims About What "All Of The Apostolic Churches" And "The Protestant Reformers" Believed

When it's shown that there are significant historical problems with something like the perpetual virginity of Mary, her assumption, or praying to saints (e.g., the early absence of the belief, early sources contradicting it, sources being agnostic about it as late as the medieval era), a common response is to say that all apostolic churches accept the belief in question. Or we'll be told that some or all of the foremost leaders of the Reformation accepted it, that early Protestants in general did, or something else along those lines. We'll be told about how all of the apostolic churches practice prayer to the saints, how high of a Mariology the leaders of the Reformation had, and so on.

Several things need to be kept in mind when that sort of response comes up:

Limits On Our Knowledge Of Pre-Reformation History

It's common for critics of Protestantism to claim that various Protestant beliefs are absent in the historical record prior to the Reformation, were only held by a small number of people during that timeframe, etc. For documentation that those Protestant beliefs were more widespread than critics suggest, see here. But another point that should be made is that we sometimes have significantly little record of individuals and groups who plausibly, sometimes probably, held the views in question.

For example, I've written a lot over the years about the beliefs of pre-Reformation groups like the Waldensians and Lollards. Yet, it's often the case that what we know about them comes from their opponents. We're going by trial records, for instance. Think of Norman Tanner's Heresy Trials In The Diocese Of Norwich, 1428-31 (London, England: Royal Historical Society, 1977). In their trial records, the Lollards Tanner wrote about were frequently asked about certain issues: who we should pray to, purgatory, issues pertaining to the sacraments, etc. But there were other issues that were never brought up, at least in the English portions of the trial records Tanner cites. I've documented widespread opposition to and agnosticism about the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary among mainstream patristic and medieval sources, for example, even into the second millennium of church history. How likely is it that Lollards who opposed praying to Mary, opposed venerating images of her, and so on never opposed the idea that she was immaculately conceived or the idea that she was bodily assumed to heaven? But if the church officials who conducted the trials didn't ask them about those issues, and we have no or inadequate records of the beliefs of those Lollards elsewhere, then we don't have any explicit testimony from them on those subjects. We should keep in mind how incomplete our records sometimes are and how plausible it is that the beliefs in question were more widespread than we can document with explicit testimony.

Resources For Evaluating The Enfield Levitations

The BBC recently reaired a television program about the Enfield Poltergeist that came out a couple of years ago. So, there's been another round of media coverage of the Enfield case (e.g., here and here). One of the issues that's come up, as usual, is levitation, including discussion of the levitation photos.

I've said a lot about the evidence for the Enfield levitations in other posts. For an overview, see here. And here's a lengthy discussion of the evidence for the famous December 15, 1977 levitations. Janet Hodgson produced some paranormal results in a scientific experiment conducted in 1982 that was related to levitation. Here's a discussion of that experiment, and here's a lengthy discussion I had with David Robertson (one of the researchers involved) about the experiment and other scientific testing that was done on Janet. You can watch Maurice Grosse discussing the experiment I'm focused on in a 1998 television program here. And there's some photographic evidence for some of the levitations. The post linked above that provides an overview of the levitation issue discusses some of the photographic evidence. Below is a photographic sequence that wasn't mentioned in that post, one that I got from Apple TV's Enfield documentary that came out last year. As Graham Morris explains starting a little after the 30:12 mark in the second part of the documentary, there was one-sixth of a second between the two photos in this sequence:

That's not as good as video evidence, but it's close. (For a discussion of the segment of the documentary featuring Morris' comments, go here and do a Ctrl F search for "30:12". For a discussion of the video evidence for some other Enfield phenomena, see this post. Regarding the common skeptical objection that there isn't more video evidence, start listening here in a 1978 documentary on the Enfield case. The relevant segment is less than three minutes long. You'll hear two professional camera operators, Ron Denney of Pye Business Communications and Graham Morris of the Daily Mirror, commenting on how their camera equipment malfunctioned in extremely unusual ways while they were in the Hodgsons' house and attempting to film the poltergeist's activities. They use the phrases "impossible", "absolutely impossible", and "one chance in a million" to describe the likelihood that these malfunctions would occur by normal means. Their testimony is important for multiple reasons. They're professionals whose jobs involved working with that camera equipment. So, that addresses their competence to assess what's involved and skeptical claims about a need to have professional analysis of such events. Furthermore, the events in question not only provide evidence that something paranormal was going on, but also provide evidence that the entity involved sometimes didn't want to be filmed. The researchers did attempt to film it, though, and were occasionally successful.) For a discussion of the evidential value of some of Morris' other levitation photos, see my overview post mentioned above.

The post here discusses some other levitations. Do a Ctrl F search for "One doctor's" to read about a levitation that occurred while Janet was incapacitated with Valium and, therefore, not in a condition to fake the event. During the course of the Enfield case, a double-digit number of witnesses reported seeing one or more levitations. Do a Ctrl F search for "Edwards" in the post just linked. Read on for a while, and you'll get to a transcript of a discussion between Maurice Grosse and another individual who witnessed some paranormal events, including some levitations. Another subject that comes up in that post and others is audio evidence for these levitations (how tapes of the events corroborate the testimony of the witnesses, a lack of creaking noises from beds and floorboards in circumstances in which those sounds are relevant to fraud, throwing incidents that involved landing with a louder noise than jumping produces, etc.).

I'm just giving several examples here. There's a lot more in the posts linked above and elsewhere. Keep these things in mind when you see skeptics making their typical claims about Enfield and the levitation photos.

What's the significance of the extrabiblical sources?

We need to keep in mind that the significance of extrabiblical sources varies, and can vary widely, from one context to another. On a subject like eternal security, which I've been addressing a lot in recent months, we're in a context in which the Biblical sources provide us with a large amount of information. It's not as though eternal security is some minor issue that never came up or only came up on rare occasions in the Biblical record. It's not something with as little significance as what year Isaiah died or how many times Paul visited a particular city. The potential to lose justification has existed since the time of Adam and Eve, instead of being something that only came up toward the end of the Biblical era or afterward. The Bible provides us with relevant information in dozens of documents from dozens of authors over more than a thousand years. A supposed lack of clarity in one Biblical source can be resolved by consulting another passage or group of passages elsewhere in that source or by consulting one or more other Biblical sources. The nature of eternal security is such that our dependence on extrabiblical sources is much less in that context than it is on other issues.

Something like a universal or nearly universal absence of or opposition to eternal security among the extrabiblical sources would give us reason to reconsider our view on the subject, but any conclusion we'd reach would still have to interact with the large amount of Biblical data we have on the topic. But there isn't a universal or nearly universal absence of or opposition to eternal security among the extrabiblical sources, as I've demonstrated in my posts on the subject. Since eternal security is addressed so much in scripture and is neither universally nor almost universally absent or contradicted in the extrabiblical sources, we have a situation in which the extrabiblical sources are less significant accordingly.

Whether the topic is eternal security or something else, we need to remember what's involved when people refer to something like "the Bible" or "scripture". There's a sense in which only one source is involved, but there's also a sense in which there isn't. We could similarly refer to the church fathers collectively as "the church fathers" or refer to medieval sources collectively as "medieval sources", for example. But the Bible, like those other collections of documents, consists of many sources who wrote in many contexts. Extrabiblical sources have some value in assisting us in interpreting the Biblical documents, and some people underestimate the value of those extrabiblical sources (because of ignorance, laziness, dishonesty, or whatever other reason), but there's also a danger of overestimating them. And the level of significance they have varies from one context to another.

Remembering William Tyndale And Thomas Bilney

Gavin Ortlund recently produced a good video about William Tyndale. It also briefly discusses another martyr of the Reformation era, one who's discussed much less than he should be, Thomas Bilney. If you go here and here, you can watch a couple of segments on Bilney in a documentary. The first segment is about his conversion. The second is about his martyrdom.

Potential Objections To The Immediacy Of Justification

I've written before about the Biblical theme of the nearness of redemption, the concept that you can be justified at any moment through a means you always have access to. That theme is inconsistent with baptismal regeneration and every other form of justification through works.

But somebody could raise an objection along the lines that what these passages (2 Corinthians 6:2, etc.) are addressing is the nearness of starting the process of getting justified, not obtaining justification itself. There are some problems with that view.

What type of extrabiblical tradition?

Since so many Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox evaluations of Protestantism involve criticizing sola scriptura without making much of a case for an alternative, we should consider what's at stake. Not only does rejecting sola scriptura not leave you with Catholicism and Orthodoxy as the only Christian options to choose from, but it doesn't even come close to doing so.

Let's say that somebody found Papias' extrabiblical traditions about premillennialism convincing and added those to scripture as his rule of faith. Would accepting such extrabiblical traditions give you Roman Catholicism? No. Would it give you Eastern Orthodoxy? No. Would it give you the rule of faith of any of the other groups outside of Protestantism that claim apostolic succession, for example? No. Rather, it would give you something different than sola scriptura, but vastly closer to Protestantism than to those alternatives.

We need to keep in mind that there's a large gap separating sola scriptura from something like the rule of faith of Roman Catholicism or that of Eastern Orthodoxy. You can reject the former (sola scriptura) while still being much closer to the former than the latter (the rule of faith of the groups mentioned). When people refer to the importance of sola scriptura, they often have alternatives like Catholicism and Orthodoxy in mind. It doesn't follow that there's so much at stake when alternatives to sola scriptura are considered more broadly. When a Catholic or Orthodox tries to cast doubt on sola scriptura in a way that would still leave you a long distance from those two alternatives to sola scriptura, that long distance is important to note. We should also note the shortness of the distance between sola scriptura and other alternatives. In my example involving Papias and premillennialism, much less is at stake than would be involved in something like a conversion to Catholicism or a conversion to Orthodoxy. Or think of how individuals like Irenaeus (Against Heresies, 1:10:1-2) and Tertullian (The Prescription Against Heretics, 13) defined the apostolic tradition of their day. It was vastly different than what Catholics and Orthodox are advocating in our day.

Often, it seems that those who suggest that there's a narrower range of alternatives to sola scriptura have certain assumptions in mind that they haven't articulated or justified, assumptions their opponents don't accept. If the narrower range of alternatives to sola scriptura depends on those assumptions, then framing the discussion around that narrower range of alternatives is only as good as those assumptions.

No, Extrabiblical Evidence Isn't Roman Catholic Or Eastern Orthodox Tradition

Reliance on extrabiblical evidence is often equated with dependence on the alleged traditions of a group like Catholicism or Orthodoxy. But it doesn't make sense to equate extrabiblical evidence with tradition as those groups define it in any relevant way.

For example, all of our Bibles are based on many manuscripts produced by unknown individuals. There's no reason to classify those manuscripts as part of the Sacred Tradition of Catholicism or some equivalent in Orthodoxy. How we define the terminology used by the Bible, what we know about the surrounding historical context, and so forth are largely shaped by a variety of extrabiblical sources, including many archeological artifacts and documents that come from sources who didn't even claim to be Christian. Getting information from those sources isn't equivalent to depending on Catholic tradition, Orthodox tradition, etc. Even when we're assisted by one or more church fathers or what are commonly referred to as patristic documents, we aren't thereby relying on something like the Sacred Tradition of Catholicism or Orthodoxy. There's no reason to think the Didache, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Augustine, and other such sources were Catholic or Orthodox. Similarly, when a modern Catholic or Orthodox uses information found in Tacitus, an archeological artifact from an unknown Christian source, or a modern translation of a patristic document produced by a publisher outside his ecclesial affiliation, he isn't thereby violating his rule of faith, obligated to agree with the rule of faith of those sources, or any other such thing.

Reformation Resources

Reformation Day is coming up later this month. Here's a collection of resources on Reformation issues. I occasionally update that post. Since last October, I've added a new link on infant baptism. I also updated the eternal security link to go to a series I wrote on the topic earlier this year. The collection of links on baptismal regeneration has been updated as well. And I added a link to a post about the claim that Luke 1:34 reflects a vow of perpetual virginity Mary had taken. I also added a new link on sola scriptura. A new link was added on Roman Catholic miracles. One of the posts on the perpetual virginity of Mary had a link added concerning ongoing opposition to Mary's perpetual virginity in the late patristic and early medieval eras, from the fourth century onward. And I added a link about how those who believed in some form of justification through works before the Reformation disagreed about which works justify.

The Death Of John Warwick Montgomery

When I was a teenager, shortly before the internet came along, I got a lot of my information about Christianity from television. One of the few individuals on Christian television (and television in general) who spoke highly of the evidence for Christianity and often articulated it well was John Warwick Montgomery. I remember occasionally seeing him on John Ankerberg's program, and I probably saw him elsewhere (maybe on D. James Kennedy's show, for example). Montgomery represented a more intellectual and generally more mature form of Christianity than what you typically encounter in modern Evangelical circles. He had a positive effect on my early thinking about religious issues, and I'm grateful for his influence in my life.

He died last week. Shane Rosenthal posted an article about Montgomery just after his death. In that article, Rosenthal links the audio of a radio program Montgomery appeared on with Rosenthal and others. I recommend listening to it. You can access it here. They interviewed some people at a pastors' conference (pastors, their wives, etc.) and asked the attendees some questions related to apologetics. The large majority wanted to use their conversion testimony or something similar in discussions with non-Christians rather than take an apologetic approach, made derogatory comments about apologetics, etc. Montgomery made a lot of good points in response, and the responses of the hosts of the program are often good. Here are a few examples of Montgomery's comments, but these aren't all of the good ones he made. I recommend listening to the whole program:

Silently Allowing The Master To Be So Insulted

"It is no common zeal for the house of God which ought to penetrate and engross the hearts of believers. When, therefore, the Divine glory was polluted, or rather lacerated, in so many ways, would it not have been perfidy if we had winked or been silent? A dog, seeing any violence offered to his master, will instantly bark; could we, in silence, see the sacred name of God dishonored so blasphemously?...Were a dog to see an injury offered to his master, equal to the insult which is offered to God in the sacraments, he would instantly bark, and expose his own life to danger, sooner than silently allow his master to be so insulted. Ought we to show less devotedness to God than a brute is wont to show to man?" (John Calvin)

Love Starts With God

"So that when He biddeth thee love Him, He then most of all showeth that He loves thee. For nothing doth so secure our salvation as to love Him." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On Second Corinthians, 30:4)

Biblical Interpretation In Support Of Eternal Security Before The Reformation

Over the years, as I've read pre-Reformation sources who advocated some form of eternal security, I've noticed that they often cite some of the same Biblical passages advocates of eternal security bring up today. That's significant, given how often critics of eternal security suggest that nobody believed in the concept before the Reformation, that modern interpretations of the relevant Biblical passages are novel and wouldn't have occurred to the pre-Reformation sources, etc. See, for example, my comments in the posts here and here concerning the use of 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 by proponents of eternal security more than a thousand years before the Reformation. In a previous post, I mentioned a book on Gottschalk by Victor Genke and Francis Gumerlock. When I read that book, I repeatedly came across examples of Gottschalk citing certain passages of scripture in the same way or a way significantly similar to how I and other advocates of eternal security interpret those passages (e.g., the citations of John 6:37 and 10:28-29 on page 129, the discussion of Romans 5:9 on page 63 in Gottschalk And A Medieval Predestination Controversy [Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Marquette University Press, 2010]).

Even when a particular Biblical passage isn't brought up, we have indirect evidence for how the passage was interpreted. As I've said before, if a Jehovah's Witness were to interpret a passage of scripture in a manner that contradicts the deity of Christ, we wouldn't need to have an extant document in which Athanasius comments on that passage in order to conclude that he probably didn't view the passage as the Jehovah's Witness does. Since Athanasius affirmed the deity of Christ, we would assume that he didn't interpret the passage as the Jehovah's Witness interprets it. The same principles apply to how scripture was likely interpreted by the people who held to eternal security in the pre-Reformation era.

James and John, not full biological brothers?

The late Roman Catholic scholar John Meier made a good point about the perpetual virginity of Mary that should be brought up more often. What's our initial impression when the terminology that's applied to Jesus is applied to other individuals? When the New Testament refers to James and John, the sons of Zebedee, as brothers, what's our initial impression about their relationship? That they're full biological siblings. Most likely, we retain that initial impression for the rest of our lives, unless we encounter overriding evidence. Terminology is sometimes applied in unusual ways. The term "son" can refer to an adoptive rather than biological relationship, for example, but that doesn't prevent us from recognizing that the biological meaning is more common. The New Testament qualifies Jesus' familial relationships with the virgin birth, but it never qualifies those relationships with something involving perpetual virginity on Mary's part. The absence of any effort to provide such a qualifier by so many authors across so many contexts is significant. My main point here, though, is that advocates of the perpetual virginity of Mary need to provide an overriding justification for interpreting the terminology the way they do. The way we interpret the relationship between James and John is an illustration of that.

What You Really Get Excited About

"I know that some of you are not the least interested in these [religious] things. You have no emotional resonance with what I am saying at all. What you really get excited about is a new CD. Or a new outfit. Or losing five pounds. Or watching a ballgame. Or adding a room to your house. Or getting a new car or computer. To you – children, teenagers, adults – I plead, along with the apostle Paul, 'Wake up, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light' (Ephesians 5:14). Don't be like the person who goes to the Grand Canyon with a little garden shovel in his hand, and on the precipice of that majesty turns his back to the Canyon, kneels down, and digs a little trough with his shovel and shouts, 'Hey, look at this! Look at my trough!'" (John Piper)

How common was opposition to the perpetual virginity of Mary in the late patristic and early medieval eras?

I've said a lot over the years about early evidence against the perpetual virginity of Mary, in the New Testament and in early extrabiblical sources. See my recent post on Irenaeus, for example. What I want to do in this post is say more about the later sources. Helvidius will often be mentioned without much or any discussion of others, but he was far from an isolated individual on the subject in his day or in the centuries that followed.

A King Who Beholds Us

"Even in the very palaces among us, should one introduce a harlot and enjoy her, or be oppressed by excess of wine, or commit any other like indecency, he would suffer extreme punishment. But if it be intolerable that men should dare such things in palaces, much more when the King is everywhere present, and observes what is done, shall we if we dare them undergo severest chastisement. Wherefore let us, I exhort you, show forth in our life much gentleness, much purity, for we have a King who beholds all our actions continually." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On John, 5:5)

Evidence For Luke's Authorship

Michael Jones (InspiringPhilosophy) recently released a good video on the subject. We've written a lot about it as well. You can click on some of the post labels below, like the Luke one and the Authorship one, to find relevant posts. For example, here's a post about how the widespread traveling of the author of Luke/Acts makes it harder to dismiss the widespread identification of that author as Luke. And here's one about the importance of what early Roman sources reported concerning the authorship of Luke and Acts. Here's one about the best and earliest evidence for the authorship of the gospels in general, not just Luke.

Problems With A Demonic View Of Near-Death Experiences

I've said before that many Christians, including Evangelicals, have a problem with attributing too much to demons. It's a problem in multiple contexts, such as people blaming their sins on alleged demonic influence, but the context I'm focused on here is the paranormal. It's commonplace for Evangelicals to allege that a variety of paranormal phenomena are demonic or to give the demonic hypothesis too much attention and to give alternative views too little attention. I've often noted that Christians typically seem ignorant of some of the major explanatory options, such as a non-personal source, like we see with the stone tape hypothesis or place memories. It's also common for Christians to dismiss deceased humans (ghosts) as an explanatory option, even though the Bible is so supportive of the existence of ghosts. And we have good reason to think living humans have paranormal abilities to some extent, and living humans are capable of evil, so that gives us further reason to not assume that any paranormal activity of an evil nature must be demonic. But demonic activity has become a simple (simplistic) explanation for many Christians, who apparently don't know much about the issues involved and don't want to know much.

What about Roman Catholic miracles?

One of the first points to make is that this isn't a one-way street. Just as there are Catholic miracles that need to be addressed by Protestants, there are non-Catholic miracles that need to be addressed by Catholics. And they'll have to appeal to the same kinds of explanations Protestants appeal to, even though Protestants are often accused of acting like atheists and such when they do so. I want to provide some examples of non-Catholic miracles that Catholics need to explain, then outline some of the explanatory options.

Irenaeus' Opposition To The Perpetual Virginity Of Mary

I want to quote and comment on a few of the relevant passages.

Early Opposition To The Perpetual Virginity Of Mary

The large majority of discussions of the topic ignore a lot of the evidence against Mary's perpetual virginity. Hegesippus and Irenaeus, for example, probably rejected the concept that Mary was a perpetual virgin, yet few opponents of the doctrine cite those church fathers. Often, opponents of the doctrine don't cite any extrabiblical sources or only cite one or two. They need to get better at handling the issue.

For an overview of the evidence against the perpetual virginity of Mary in both Biblical and extrabiblical sources, see here (including the comments section) and here.

Even as late as the fourth century, a supporter of Mary's perpetual virginity, Basil of Caesarea, conceded some significant points on the subject. Philip Donnelly wrote:

The Value Of A Human Psi Hypothesis

Since I appealed to human paranormal activity as the best explanation of UFOs in my last post, in the process of commenting on Lue Elizondo's recent book, I thought I'd reiterate and expand upon an important point in that context. One of the values of a human psi hypothesis is that it includes both living and deceased humans. That can be thought of in contrast to what people often refer to as a living agent psi hypothesis, one that involves the paranormal activity of living humans. I believe in postmortem survival, because of the evidence for Christianity and for other reasons. So, I don't limit human activity to this life. One of the things that follows from including deceased humans in a paranormal explanation is that it allows for more advanced forms of paranormal activity while retaining the human element. A deceased human may have developed his paranormal abilities with the passing of time (which can span a lengthy period in the context of the afterlife), some of the actual or potential contexts of the afterlife can provide humans with knowledge or motives they wouldn't have in this life, etc. It's important that we keep in mind that a human psi hypothesis doesn't have to limit itself to living humans. That's one of the strengths of the hypothesis.

Lue Elizondo's New Book On UFOs

Elizondo, a former high-ranking official in the United States government's efforts to research UFOs, recently published a book on the subject, Imminent (New York, New York: William Morrow, 2024). I've listened to the audio version of it, and I've listened to a couple of recent interviews with Elizondo, one by Joe Rogan and another by Ross Coulthart. It's a significant book with a lot of valuable information in it. It will be read by many people and influence even more.

One of the reasons why I want to discuss it here is that it addresses some religious issues, more than I expected, and I want to discuss the behavior of some of the Christians Elizondo refers to. The book is also worth discussing for other reasons, some of which I'll get into below.

The Value Of Less Dramatic Conversions

He's commenting on passages like Romans 16:19 and the value of avoiding evil rather than having a more dramatic conversion from sin:

"I remember David Michael used to stand up and give a testimony. He said, 'God delivered me from drugs and alcohol and sexual immorality when I was six years old.' It was a great testimony. Don't even be a beginner [in sin]." (John Piper, 13:00 here)

Does an audience's hatred of God justify an abandonment of apologetics?

People make a lot of excuses for neglecting apologetics, and one of the more popular excuses is that the audience involved can't be influenced by apologetics because of their hatred of God. Supposedly, we shouldn't even attempt to persuade them, because of that hatred, because they like their sin too much to be reasoned with, etc. There are a lot of problems with that line of thought.

An infallible church in 1 Timothy 3:15?

Gavin Ortlund recently produced a video on the subject that makes some good points. Another passage that's often brought up in this context is Acts 15. On that passage, see the relevant parts of my posts here and here.

Is there support for praying to angels in Origen's Homilies On Ezekiel?

You can access a recent English translation of the homilies here. In section 1:7:2 (pp. 39 and 41 of the e-book just linked), Origen writes as if he's addressing an angel:

Similarities Between UFOs And Other Paranormal Phenomena

Michael Nahm has published an article that discusses similarities between UFO-related events and other paranormal phenomena.

Examples Of First-Century Sources Passing On Information To Second-Century Sources About New Testament Origins

When skeptics put forward hypotheses in which second-century Christians speculated about New Testament origins without having received much information on those issues from their predecessors, those hypotheses aren't just highly unlikely in the abstract. They're also contrary to the testimony we have from multiple first- and early-second-century sources. So, one way you can respond to such skeptical claims is by citing such testimony. Here are a few examples.

Talk About Weird

Since there's been a lot of talk about alleged weirdness in politics lately:

"And we have to fight our way every day through this God-trivializing fog that we live in. We can hardly mention God in polite society. You don't need any reason to talk to a friend about the Atlanta Braves, but you actually have to have a reason to talk about God in a conversation. Think about how wrong that is. Almighty God, who sustains everything every moment of every day, is not front-page news. That's weird. Why? An idol has taken over." (Ray Ortlund, 4:12 in the audio of his April 20, 2003 sermon here)

Who are you going to offend?

"Let us rather offend those men who are foolish, and inconsiderate, and lifted up, and who glory in the pride of their speech, than offend God." (Clement of Rome, First Clement, 21)

The Apologetic Task

"Our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ was silent when false witnesses spoke against him, and answered nothing when he was accused; he was convinced that all his life and actions among the Jews were better than any speech in refutation of the false witness and superior to any words that he might say in reply to the accusations.…Whereas it is our task, since we try to confirm men's faith by arguments and treatises, to do all in our power that we may be called 'workmen who need not to be ashamed, handling rightly the word of truth'. One of all these tasks seems to us to be that of demolishing Celsus' plausible arguments to the best of our ability, and to perform faithfully the work which you have enjoined upon us." (Origen, Against Celsus, Preface:1, 5:1, in Henry Chadwick, ed., Origen: Contra Celsum [New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003], 3, 264)

What if Papias wasn't referring to the canonical gospels?

It's become popular to argue that when Papias attributed some documents to Mark and Matthew, he wasn't referring to the canonical gospels we have today. Here's a response I recently wrote to that objection in a YouTube thread:

Jesus' Use Of Mountains

Something the Synoptics, the fourth gospel, and Acts have in common is that they refer to Jesus' use of mountains. And we often see two or more of those sources referring to his using mountains in similar ways (to teach, to be with the Twelve, to be alone, to pray, etc.). For example:

Set Your Minds To Think About The Biggest Issues

"Oh how many times I heard my father say the ominous words of Ecclesiastes 12:1: 'Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come, and the years draw nigh, when you will say, 'I have no pleasure in them.''…Do not presume that you will get serious about eternity when you are old. Do it now. And all you married couples and single people in the prime of your life, beware of being swept into the all-consuming demands of your careers only to find yourselves gasping for some fun and entertainment on the weekend, finding your relief from worldly work in worldly fun. And waking — perhaps — someday to realize you have no taste for things of God. You have become a connoisseur of restaurants, and videos, and movies, and sports, and stocks, and computers, and a hundred transient things. And all the while, your sense of heaven and of hell has died. Wake up before it is too late. And tremble at these things today. And set your minds to think about the biggest issues" (John Piper)

The Apostolic Tradition Of Praying Only To God

Gavin Ortlund recently made some good comments on Twitter about the evidence against praying to saints. What he said is also applicable to praying to angels.

As the comments section of his thread illustrates, though, we need to also be prepared to discuss a lot of other issues relevant to the subject. And Protestants seldom know much about the topic or make much of an effort to argue for their position.

Gavin's comments are primarily about the evidence from the Biblical era, but see here regarding extrabiblical sources. And we've addressed other extrabiblical and Biblical evidence in other posts, like this one on Psalm 103:20-21, this one on Matthew 27:47, here on Hebrews 12:1, and here on Revelation 5:8 and 8:4. Regarding the idea that attempting to contact the deceased is acceptable, since Jesus and Peter spoke to some individuals they raised from the dead, see here and here. And see my posts in the YouTube thread here for a discussion of some sources that are brought up less often, such as Eusebius of Caesarea and the Gospel Of Bartholomew. In that thread, I also interacted with some advocates of praying to saints and angels. See here for my interactions with the arguments of Joe Heschmeyer of Catholic Answers and here for a thread in which I interacted with some Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox opponents. If you search our archives, you can find a large number and variety of relevant topics addressed in a lot of posts.

I'm not going to repeat everything I've said before, but I'll reiterate some points about issues that keep coming up (such as in Gavin's Twitter thread). Our focus should be on the material most relevant to praying to saints and angels, such as narrative passages in which prayer can be and often is narrated and comments and documents about prayer. To go, instead, to contexts like poetry and catacomb inscriptions, all the while ignoring or underestimating the widespread absence and contradictions of prayer to saints and angels in more relevant contexts, is irresponsible. Yet, we see Catholics, Orthodox, and other advocates of prayer to saints and angels doing that over and over and over again. It's like trying to prove that Protestants believe in prayer to saints and angels by citing Psalm 103:20, the singing of "Angels From The Realms Of Glory" in a Protestant church service, or a Protestant gravestone with an inscription that's written as if it's addressed to a deceased person. In addition to ignoring the relevant genre issues, advocates of praying to saints and angels frequently do things like assume without argument the earliest date for a source whose dating is disputed if that source seems favorable to their position, appeal to forgeries, or cite anonymous sources, even though they so often dismiss anonymous sources and even significant named sources (e.g., Tertullian, Origen) in other contexts. You have to watch for that kind of behavior at every step along the way. If we judge the evidence as it would normally be judged in other contexts, it heavily favors the conclusion that we should pray only to God. But if you're going to argue for that conclusion, you have to be vigilant and diligent at every step, so that you and your audience aren't taken off course by all sorts of diversions. Protestants need to care enough about God and the people and issues involved to do that work.

A Warning About Lee Brickley And His Enfield Book

I recently saw Nemo Mörck link a review by Melvyn Willin of a new book on the Enfield Poltergeist. I was surprised and interested, since there aren't many book-length treatments of the Enfield case. After reading Melvyn's review, I was less interested in the book, given what the review says about it. I decided to read it anyway, since it might have some valuable material in spite of its weaknesses. It was even worse than I expected, and it's bad enough, including unethical enough, that I think people should be warned about it.

Let Us Arise And Be Doing, And The Lord Will Be With Us

Don't use your dependence on God as an excuse for doing less than God has enabled you to do:

The Fountain Of Our Happiness

"Our heart when it rises to Him is His altar; the priest who intercedes for us is His Only-begotten; we sacrifice to Him bleeding victims when we contend for His truth even unto blood; to Him we offer the sweetest incense when we come before Him burning with holy and pious love; to Him we devote and surrender ourselves and His gifts in us; to Him, by solemn feasts and on appointed days, we consecrate the memory of His benefits, lest through the lapse of time ungrateful oblivion should steal upon us; to Him we offer on the altar of our heart the sacrifice of humility and praise, kindled by the fire of burning love. It is that we may see Him, so far as He can be seen; it is that we may cleave to Him, that we are cleansed from all stain of sins and evil passions, and are consecrated in His name. For He is the fountain of our happiness, He the end of all our desires." (Augustine, The City Of God, 10:3)

God Is No Fonder Of Intellectual Slackers Than Of Any Other Slackers

"[God] wants a child's heart, but a grown-up's head. He wants us to be simple, single-minded, affectionate, and teachable, as good children are; but He also wants every bit of intelligence we have to be alert at its job, and in first-class fighting trim. The fact that you are giving money to a charity does not mean that you need not try to find out whether that charity is a fraud or not. The fact that what you are thinking about is God Himself (for example, when you are praying) does not mean that you can be content with the same babyish ideas which you had when you were a five-year-old. It is, of course, quite true that God will not love you any the less, or have less use for you, if you happen to have been born with a very second-rate brain. He has room for people with very little sense, but He wants every one to use what sense they have. The proper motto is not 'Be good, sweet maid and let who can be clever,' but 'Be good, sweet maid, and don't forget that this involves being as clever as you can.' God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers. If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you, you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all." (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity [New York, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2021], approximate Kindle location 1057)

The Life Of A Soldier

Scripture likens believers to soldiers (Philippians 2:25, 2 Timothy 2:3-4, Philemon 2). And we're often told that we're pilgrims passing through a foreign land and that our citizenship is in heaven rather than on earth (Philippians 3:20, Hebrews 11:9-10, 11:16, 12:22, 13:14, 1 Peter 1:1, 2:11). Paul wrote, "No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier." (2 Timothy 2:4)

Read what Jesus said in the gospels, over and over again, about the sword of division, how he would divide families, how his followers must take up a cross, and so on. Jesus was crucified, and Paul was beheaded after spending a lot of time in prison, for doing highly controversial Christian work.

What if the Christians of past generations had behaved the way you do? Future generations are going to be affected by what you're doing today.

Should Christians oppose polygamy?

Polygamy is getting increasingly popular in the United States, as I've discussed before. Go here and do a Ctrl F search for "polygamy". Notice that almost a quarter of Americans find it morally acceptable now, and notice that the percentage has more than tripled in about two decades. For an overview of the Biblical and patristic evidence against polygamy, see my thread on the subject (including the comments section, where a lot of further discussion took place) here. And though I cited some patristic sources against polygamy, I wasn't trying to be exhaustive. More could be mentioned. The Octavius of Minucius Felix, for example, refers to how "we [Christians] know either one wife, or none at all" (31).

Evidence Against The Assumption Of Mary In Acacius And Other Sources

I discussed Jerome's Letter 119 in my last post. I was focused on the subject of eternal security, but the letter also has some significant material on another topic, including in the same section of the letter (7). So, what I said in my last post regarding whether Jerome was presenting his own views in that section of the letter is relevant to what I'm addressing in this post as well. For reasons explained in my last post, I think section 7 of the letter is presenting the views of Acacius of Caesarea, not Jerome. But either way, here's the relevant portion of that section of the letter:

More About Eternal Security In Jerome

In a post several weeks ago discussing some support for eternal security found in Jerome, I mentioned that I was waiting for the publication of an English translation of his Letter 119. That translation was delayed, but recently came out (Thomas Scheck, trans., St. Jerome: Exegetical Epistles, Volume 2 [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Of America Press, 2024]). I've now read it.

Some Church Fathers On The Efficaciousness Of Prebaptismal Faith

Some of the church fathers who use highly efficacious language about baptism also use highly efficacious language, including language about the new birth and salvation, when discussing prebaptismal faith. However you explain that (that they viewed justification as a multistep process, that they were inconsistent, or whatever), it offers partial corroboration for the view that we're justified through prebaptismal faith. They ascribe more to prebaptismal faith than advocates of baptismal regeneration typically do. It also provides another example of the diversity of the baptismal beliefs of the pre-Reformation sources. The historian Nick Needham writes that the view of these fathers "effectively makes initial justification itself a twofold process: faith introduces us to salvation, and baptism perfects the introduction" (in Bruce McCormack, ed., Justification In Perspective [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2006], 42). He cites Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Basil of Caesarea as examples. He goes on, "Basil's use of 'seal' imagery may indicate that he regarded baptism as the public and official declaration of a justification that until then has been private and unofficial" (ibid.). Whether you explain these fathers' comments as Needham does, explain them in some other way, or remain agnostic about it, I agree that such comments are found in the three fathers he mentions. At least in the passages I've read, it's clearer in Cyril and Basil than in Origen, but seems likely to be present in Origen as well. It may also be present in a Western source of the fourth century, Fortunatianus, though his comments are highly metaphorical and harder to interpret. He wrote in his Commentary On The Gospels:

An Important Point To Keep In Mind In Baptismal Discussions

Advocates of baptismal regeneration make their position seem more plausible and historically popular than it actually is by assuming the presence of baptism in passages (in the Bible or elsewhere) that don't mention it. Even if an entire document or everything we have that was written by a particular individual says nothing about baptism, it will be assumed that baptism is meant to be included in any reference to faith, repentance, justification, or whatever. Something similar is done by advocates of infant baptism. If baptism is discussed without any mention of baptizing infants, even if the comments on baptism seem to be of a highly credobaptist nature, it will be assumed that the author believed in infant baptism. Supposedly, there was no need for him to spell out his belief in infant baptism, since it's so obvious, was part of the background knowledge of his audience, etc.

One of the problems with that sort of approach, in the context of baptismal regeneration or in the context of infant baptism, is that some of the relevant documents were addressed to non-Christian audiences. I've discussed some examples in the past (e.g., The Epistle To Diognetus, Justin Martyr). See this post on Aristides, for example. The best explanation for why these authors don't mention baptism in the relevant contexts is that they didn't think baptism was involved. It would be problematic to conclude that Christian audiences assumed the inclusion of baptism without any mention of it in these contexts, and it's even more problematic to make that assumption about non-Christian audiences.

Television Fame

"After I had appeared on Thames Television's evening news discussing my fourth book, I was greeted excitedly by one of the counter staff at my bank with, 'Oh, I saw you on telly last night!' She had seen me at least once a week for a couple of years and never mentioned having read anything of mine. Now, after five minutes' chat on the screen, I was somebody famous. Television fame, I learned, meant being famous not for actually having done anything but just for being on television." (Guy Playfair, The Evil Eye [London, England: Jonathan Cape, 1990], 21)

Belief In Faith Alone And Eternal Security At The Time Of Caesarius Of Arles

Caesarius lived in the fifth and sixth centuries. I've occasionally mentioned him in other posts. I recently saw a quotation from him related to sola fide and eternal security, from his Sermon 186. I'd read some of his other material, but not that sermon. Having read it since then, I want to quote a relevant portion of it, then comment on it:

Filling Their Heads And Hearts With Trifles

"Alas! that Christians should stand at the door of eternity, having more work upon their hands than their time is sufficient for, and yet be filling their heads and hearts with trifles!" (John Flavel, Keeping The Heart [Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 2019], 110)

The Historicity Of The "I Am" Statements Of Jesus

Critics often object to the historicity of the gospel of John on the basis of the presence of "I am" statements of Jesus there that aren't found in the Synoptics ("I am the light of the world", "I am the good shepherd", etc.). Whether such statements are absent from the Synoptics is a disputed issue, but to whatever extent they are, their presence in John is much less problematic than is typically suggested. We don't need to know why the statements weren't included in the Synoptics in order to have sufficient reason to believe in the historicity of the statements. But it's easier than critics suggest to explain why the "I am" statements would be absent from the Synoptics if the statements were made by Jesus.

Will we tell them it's a false hope?

Jeffrey Long, a prominent researcher in the field of near-death experiences (NDEs), recently did an interview with Danny Jones. Long has collected a large database of NDEs at the NDERF web site. He and his collection of NDEs are often mentioned in discussions of NDEs and related phenomena. I want to comment on some significant parts of his recent interview with Jones.

The Recent Disputes Over Baptismal Regeneration And The Southern Baptist Convention

There's been a lot of discussion lately about how Southern Baptists view the reference to baptism in the Nicene Creed. I've seen the usual false claims about how everybody in the early church believed in baptismal regeneration, all of the church fathers believed in it, nobody opposed it before the Reformation, and so on. Few opponents of baptismal regeneration say anything significant about the extrabiblical evidence for their position, and the few who speak up typically only mention a small percentage of that evidence. For example, it's seldom mentioned that the ancient sources who held some kind of highly efficacious view of baptism widely disagreed about the nature of that efficaciousness. Christians of the patristic era disagreed about the meaning of "baptism for the forgiveness of sins". That's not a later development. There's a major need for opponents of baptismal regeneration to improve their handling of the issue. Here are some resources to that end.

Evaluating Arguments From Silence

Lydia McGrew recently produced a few videos that make some good points on the subject: here, here, and here.

Faith Alone In Celsus And His Sources

I've often mentioned that we need to take more than the church fathers into account when thinking about the patristic era. (See here for one of my posts discussing the topic.) Several decades ago, Thomas Torrance published a book that was highly critical (overly critical) of how the earliest church fathers viewed grace (The Doctrine Of Grace In The Apostolic Fathers [Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 1996]). Despite being so negative about the earliest fathers, he was more positive about some sources later in the second century:

What standard, if not the standard of the day of judgment?

"Every one of us must answer for himself. We can never be justified or made to feel secure by the practices of others. It is the greatest folly to regulate ourselves by any other standard than that by which we shall be judged." (Henry Scougal, in Robin Taylor, ed., The Life Of God In The Soul Of Man [Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2022], approximate Kindle location 703)

More About The Name Statistics Argument

Luuk van de Weghe and Jason Wilson recently published an article furthering the argument for the historicity of the gospels and Acts based on name statistics. Here's a short video Michael Jones recently produced about that article, and here's a longer one by Than Christopoulos.

What type of justification through works?

Critics of Protestantism often appeal to the popularity of justification through works among pre-Reformation sources as an argument against justification through faith alone. There's some merit to that argument, but it's often overestimated. The significance of the Biblical evidence is often underestimated, along the lines of what I've referred to elsewhere. And the amount of support for justification through works among the extrabiblical sources is often exaggerated.

Another point that should be made, which isn't made often enough, is that the extrabiblical sources who advocate justification through works widely disagree in what form of it they advocate. I've provided many examples with regard to what might be called initiatory rites, for example (baptism, the laying on of hands, anointing with oil, etc.). See here. And there was widespread disagreement about the issues surrounding whether justification can be lost and, if so, which sins are mortal. Think, for example, of what Hermas wrote about the concept of limited forgiveness or limited penance (The Shepherd, Visions, 2:2). Or see the post here for further examples. In the medieval era, think of Pope Boniface VIII's claim in 1302 that "it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff" (Unam Sanctam).

It could be objected that people have also disagreed about what type of faith is justificatory. But justification through works includes faith alongside the works, so the same objection can be raised against justification through works. And proponents of justification through works disagree with each other about the nature of the works that justify, just as people disagree about the nature of justifying faith. When you add something to faith, whatever that something else is, you have a more complicated situation. And there have been many something elses added over the years, with widespread disagreements from the earliest centuries onward about what those something elses should be. So, the appeal to an alleged unified opposition to sola fide is weakened accordingly.

Your Lot In Life

"Wherefore did David, who was both a prophet and a king, himself also live all his time in toils? whereas Solomon his son spent forty years in security above all men, in the enjoyment of profound peace, glory, and honor, and going through every kind of deliciousness? What again could be the reason, that among the prophets also one was afflicted more, and another less? Because so it was expedient for each. Wherefore upon each our remark must be, 'Thy judgments are a great deep.' [Psalm 36:6] For if those great and wonderful men were not alike exercised by God, but one by poverty, and another by riches; one by ease, and another by trouble; much more ought we now to bear these things in mind." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On First Corinthians, 29:7)

Protestants Should Make More Of An Issue Of Who We Pray To

One of Stand To Reason's podcasts took a question yesterday about prayer to saints. I've noticed for years that Protestants seldom bring the subject up on their own initiative, even though they should. They don't even address it defensively much, and they bring it up as evidence for Protestantism even less. There are multiple Biblical and multiple extrabiblical lines of evidence for praying only to God. For a collection of resources on the topic, see here.

More Examples Of Extrabiblical, Pre-Reformation Support For Eternal Security

In the ninth century, Rabanus Maurus wrote:

When The Church Lies Down At Ease

"What the arms of Rome could not do against Hannibal, his Capuan holidays are said to have accomplished; his soldiers were conquered by luxury, though invincible by force. When the church lies down at ease, she is apt to feel the diseases of abundance." (Charles Spurgeon)

Exchange Everything For Him

"If you value other things more than God, if your life is really driven by another value, then you exchange the imperishable for the perishable. You trade the diamond for a peach forgotten at the back of the refrigerator. You trade the ruby for a banana sitting in the sun. You trade a bar of gold for a bolt rusting in the rain….Let's be like Secretary of State William Seward in 1867 who helped America buy Alaska from the Russians for $7,200,000. Oh, the ridicule of the people: 'Seward's folly,' they called it. Exchanging seven million dollars for ice! Well in the last 130 years Alaska has yielded billions upon billions of dollars in resources to America. Things are not what they seem. I plead with you, open your eyes. And do not exchange your God for anything. Exchange everything for him." (John Piper)

The Day Of Salvation Is Several Months From Now

I recently came across an article I'd read many years ago about the conversion of Bernard Nathanson, a former abortion doctor, to Roman Catholicism. The article quotes some comments he made about his upcoming baptism: "'I will be free from sin,' he says. 'For the first time in my life, I will feel the shelter and warmth of faith.'" That's an illustration of a point I've made before about how baptismal regeneration interferes with the Biblical theme of the nearness of redemption.

The title of this post is meant to draw attention to the contrast between the Biblical theme of the nearness of redemption, such as the reference to how "now is 'the day of salvation'" in 2 Corinthians 6:2, and the absurd putting of off redemption under baptismal regeneration. The inconsistency between baptismal regeneration and how Jesus redeemed people independent of baptism in the gospels led Tertullian to concede to the critics of baptismal regeneration in his day, "Grant that, in days gone by, there was salvation by means of bare faith, before the passion and resurrection of the Lord." (On Baptism, 13) But John's gospel emphasizes Jesus' statements about salvation during his earthly ministry (John 3:16, 5:24, 11:25-26, etc.), and John tells us that he wrote his gospel to lead people to salvation (John 20:31), using language similar to Jesus' language earlier in the gospel. If the means of being justified had changed so much after the resurrection, then John's emphasis on Jesus' pre-resurrection teachings about justification makes less sense. Paul, like Jesus and others, thought of Abraham as the Christian's spiritual father, citing Genesis 15:6 as the paradigm example of how we're justified. No baptism was involved, and the phenomenon of justification apart from baptism continues beyond the gospels (Cornelius, Paul's expectation of the reception of the Spirit "when you believed" in Acts 19:2, Galatians 3:2, etc.). The reason why Abraham, the tax collector in Luke 18, and Cornelius are all justified through faith alone rather than through faith and baptism is that it's how God has been justifying people "from the beginning" (Clement of Rome, First Clement, 32). They're not exceptions. They're the rule.

As I've discussed elsewhere, there are many problems with baptismal regeneration. Its inconsistency with the Biblical theme of the nearness of redemption is one that gets discussed far less than it should. As I mentioned in a post last year, we've seen many and widely contradictory views of the efficaciousness of baptism over the centuries, and, unsurprisingly, it also became popular to add various other works along with baptism as initiatory rites, means of receiving the Holy Spirit, means of remitting sin, etc. Once the door is opened to making baptism a means of obtaining justification, people often let other works through the door as well. The response to somebody like Bernard Nathanson isn't to tell him to wait several months for baptism or whatever other initiatory rite or group of rites. You tell him, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace." (Luke 7:50)

Half-Hearted, Weak, And Following The Crowd

"The assent that people usually give to divine truths is very faint and half-hearted, weak and ineffectual. It stems only from a blind inclination to follow the religion that is currently in fashion or from a lazy indifference and unconcernedness as to whether religious truth is indeed either certain or important. Men are unwilling to quarrel with the religion of their country, and since all their neighbors are Christians, they are content to be so too. However, seldom are they at pains to consider the evidences for Christian truths or to ponder the importance or consequences of them. Thus it is that their affections and practice are so little influenced by them….We must therefore endeavor to stir our minds toward serious belief and firm persuasion of divine truths and a deeper sense and awareness of spiritual things." (Henry Scougal, in Robin Taylor, ed., The Life Of God In The Soul Of Man [Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2022], approximate Kindle location 865)

Patterns In Jesus' Teaching

I want to discuss some other points Peter Williams brings up in The Surprising Genius Of Jesus (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2023). He mentions that the gospels often have Jesus beginning and ending parables or other comments he's making in certain ways (95-99). For example, he often opens a parable with a question. He uses phrases like "which father among you" (Matthew 7:9) and "which of you" (Luke 11:5). Or "was it not necessary" (Matthew 18:33) and "it was necessary" (Luke 15:32). Williams also notes that the parables in these passages are both about "a forgiving authority figure with two subordinates and one refusing to forgive the other" (98-99).

He goes on to note how often male and female examples are set beside each other in Jesus' teaching (99-101): the two men in the field in Matthew 24:40 and the two women at the mill in the verse that follows, the parable of the female virgins (Matthew 25:1-13) followed by the parable of the talents involving men (Matthew 25:14-30), "the Queen of the South" in Luke 11:31 paired with "the men of Ninevah" in the verse that follows, etc.

For further evidence that teachings like what we find in these passages came from Jesus, not some later source or group of sources, see Williams' comments in another book quoted here.

Jesus And Pigs And Dogs

Peter Williams' recent book, The Surprising Genius Of Jesus (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2023), discusses some agreements that are often overlooked among the gospels. For example, Jesus' parables in the gospel of Luke bring up some "proverbially unclean" animals, pigs (15:16) and dogs (16:21). The surrounding context of both parables suggests that the association with those animals is something negative. Similarly, Matthew 7:6 refers to dogs and pigs in that sort of negative manner. Another point that could be made, which I don't recall Williams making in his book, is how easily such a pairing of dogs and pigs could have been avoided in early Christian circles. Paul makes a negative reference to dogs (Philippians 3:2), but not pigs. The same is true of John (Revelation 22:15). And John brought up a wide variety of animals and other beasts in Revelation, which increases the potential for him to have included pigs and dogs as often as Jesus did, which John didn't. Peter combined the two animals (2 Peter 2:22), but most New Testament authors didn't, including ones who wrote as extensively as Paul and John did. Another point that I don't recall seeing in Williams' book is the episode with the Gerasene demoniac, which involved casting the demons into pigs. The demons asked to be cast into the pigs, so they're the ones who initiated it. But Jesus' willingness to go along with the request suggests that he found it fitting. And that account is found in Mark's gospel, which means that Jesus' expression of that sort of view of pigs is found in three of the gospels. I'm not suggesting that such a view of pigs is something highly unusual. But the expression of such a view seems unusual enough to be significant. Given how seldom pigs come up in that sort of way in the rest of the New Testament, it's notable that the gospels have Jesus expressing that sort of view of pigs a few times, in a few different contexts that are so diverse (in material found in only one gospel, in material found in multiple gospels, both in parables and elsewhere, etc.). Jesus also seems to refer to dogs in that sort of way more often than we see in other early Christian sources. In addition to the passages cited above, see Matthew 15:26 and the parallel passage in Mark. These are more examples of agreements among the gospels that are of a more subtle nature, and therefore are often overlooked, and which are best explained as coming from the historical Jesus.

(See here for a discussion of how one of these passages involving pigs is significant in another context.)

Looking Beyond Initial Reactions

"We are, indeed, desirous, as we ought to be, that our ministry may prove salutary to the world…If, to punish, partly the ingratitude, and partly the stubbornness of those to whom we desire to do good, success must prove desperate, and all things go to worse, I will say what it befits a Christian man to say, and what all who are true to this holy profession will subscribe:—We will die, but in death even be conquerors, not only because through it we shall have a sure passage to a better life, but because we know that our blood will be as seed to propagate the Divine truth which men now despise." (John Calvin)

What should we make of the discussion of confession in Romans 10?

Somebody wrote to me on Facebook:

The Problems For Baptismal Regeneration In Romans 10

I want to expand on what I've said about the subject in other posts (like here and here). Notice that baptism is absent across multiple contexts addressed in Romans 10: the activities of the justified person and others involved (no getting baptized, no baptizing, no sending a baptizer), the means by which justification is received (no baptism), the nearness of redemption (as referenced in verses 8-11, and both the theme of nearness in general and what this passage in particular says about it make more sense if you don't have to wait until baptism to be justified), and the Old Testament passages cited (involving no baptism or equivalent of it). The absence of baptism across such a large number and variety of contexts is conspicuous and is best explained by justification apart from baptism.

Why does God interest you so little?

"Is not the public interest of Christ and his cause infinitely more important than any interest of your own, and should you not prefer his glory and the welfare of his kingdom before everything else? Should any temporary suffering, or any sacrifice which you can be called to make, be suffered to come into competition with the honour of his name?" (John Flavel, Keeping The Heart [Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 2019], 101)

Corroboration Of The Gospels And Acts In Paul's Letters

The documents are written in different genres and at different lengths (the shortness of some of Paul's letters), among other differences. We shouldn't expect Paul to say much about the contents of the gospels and Acts. But he does say more than people typically suggest.

In addition to the more obvious references - the timing of Jesus' life, his crucifixion, the Last Supper, his being betrayed, his having multiple brothers, that one of the brothers was named James, the names of some of Jesus' disciples, etc. - there are many less obvious corroborations. I want to link some examples I've discussed in the past. See here on Jesus' childhood in Paul's letters. And here on Jesus' performance of miracles. Or here on undesigned coincidences, some of which involve the letters of Paul. Here's something on the details involved in Galatians 2:9. Go here and here for posts about details related to Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection. See this post on the soteriology of the gospels, and notice the parallels in Paul (the significance of Abraham, justification through faith alone, etc.). Or the posts here and here on relational and moral issues, like the primacy of love and opposition to polygamy.

These examples, which are large in number and variety, are far from exhaustive. There's so much more that could be cited regarding Trinitarianism, moral issues, etc. And skeptics typically accept some facts about Jesus that aren't referred to anywhere in what they consider the genuine letters of Paul (e.g., Jesus' residence in Nazareth, his baptism by John the Baptist, the initial unbelief of his brothers).