Dembski on Thurman Scrivner

I'm going to comment on Dembski's assessment of Thurman Scrivner:

https://billdembski.com/theology-and-religion/faces-of-miracles-chapter-3/

i) I think Dembski sets the bar too high for miracles. The purpose of many miracles isn't to prove God's existence but to provide for a need that's humanly hopeless. Of course, miracles like that are still a witness to God's existence, omniscience, and omnipotence, but they're limited to the need.

ii) Apropos (i), even in the case of miracles whose primary purpose is evidentiary, they are not designed to satisfy a Cartesian skeptic. Setting the bar artificially high is like skeptical thought-experiments (e.g. the Matrix, brain-in-vat). 

Reported miracles vary in their conclusiveness, and in some cases we ought to grant a strong presumption that this was a miracle. It needn't rule out every conceivable naturalistic explanation–although some miracles do so. The issue is not whether it's the only possible explanation but the best explanation, given the evidence at hand. 

Many would argue that there’s no way to predict who will receive a miracle and who will ask in vain. The decision is God’s alone and God’s plans and reasons are beyond our ability to understand. 

Agreed. 

Later in his professional life, Scrivner began a healing ministry after hearing God’s voice speak to him for the first time in 1977...When asked how he knew it was his prayers alone that led to healing, Scrivner answered, “I just know that. I just know. Because God speaks to me.” He adds that the sound of God’s voice is “just like a normal man,” just like the interviewer’s (AT).

i) I'm highly skeptical of people who say God speaks to them on a regular basis. I think God speaks to some Christians on rare occasion, like an emergency. 

ii) Moreover, his ministry is so dangerous and damaging that I think his impression is delusional. 

Scrivner bases his belief on several key Bible verses. Others often interpret these verses very differently, saying that they refer specifically to Jesus or his disciples or to specific situations, and that applying them without qualification takes them out of context and distorts their meaning. Scrivner, by contrast, accepts the words at their most literal face value. To him there is no room for debate or discussion: anything other than his reading is simply misguided and wrong.

In Deuteronomy 28:1-2, Moses promises the people of Israel, “And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I commanded you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations and the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you…” Moses then lists both the many blessings in store for those who obey God and the even greater multitude of curses that await the disobedient. According to Scrivner, this passage affirms his belief that you have to do exactly what God commands in order to get a miracle.

i) That's a corporate threat/promise.

ii) Moreover, it's a promise to OT Jews, not to Gentiles under the new covenant. Even if, for argument's sake, God restores the promised land to ethnic Jews in the world to come, the promise is irrelevant to Christian Gentiles. 

Scrivner believes that the message of Romans 10:17 is that the faith we need for healing comes from the teachings of Jesus: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” 

That's a promise for salvation–contingent on faith, not a promise for healing, contingent on faith. 

Faith makes it possible to please God, who then rewards us by healing us, as explained in Hebrews 11:6: “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”

But that doesn't say or imply a promise to heal on condition of faith. 

Not only do Scriptures tell Scrivner he can heal, but they also tell him he can do a better job of it than Jesus. He derives this conclusion from John 14:12-14, Jesus’ words to His disciples following the Last Supper: “Truly, truly I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.”

I'll revisit that. 

Furthermore, according to Scrivner, anyone, not just Jesus, has the power to forgive sin. To justify that claim, and thus his own authority to forgive sins, Scrivner points to John 20:23, in which Jesus appears to the disciples after the resurrection and declares, “If you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld.”

This verse gives a good example of how Scrivner interprets Scripture and why his approach is controversial. Backing up to verse 21, we read, “‘As the father has sent me, even so I am sending you.’ And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive … etc.’” To many biblical interpreters, Jesus appears to be saying these words specifically and exclusively to his disciples, not to you or Thurman Scrivner or anybody else. Scrivner politely but firmly disagrees.

Agreed. 

Standing beside his granddaughter’s hospital bed, Scrivner recited John 15:7: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” Then he followed with an assurance of his own: “He is my God. He honors faith, and so I’m going to ask Him to raise that little girl up and make her well. And He will.”

Thurman fed his granddaughter by mouth against doctor’s orders based on his reading of Mark 11:24: “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” He prayed that she would be able to eat solid food and then gave it to her. He fed her applesauce and orange juice that day and she has been eating normally ever since. Furthermore, she seems to have recovered completely from her injuries.

Thurman Scrivner’s theology hinges on two points. First is absolute reliance on what the Bible literally says. The tricky part here is that people have to accept his interpretations of Scripture without question or variation, absolute and unwavering. Yet from Bible scholars on down, credible people see the meaning of Scripture very differently.

i). A basic problem with his face-value hermeneutic is the mismatch with his own experience. His prayers aren't uniformly answered. Even if he gets a few hits, that falls far short of how his prooftexts are worded. 

ii) He falls back on the lack of faith escape clause, yet his prooftexts don't condition the efficacy of healing prayer on the faith of who is prayed for but at best on who offers the prayer on their behalf.

What happens when you take the Bible out of context? We looked earlier at John 14:12-14, where Jesus speaks to his disciples following the Last Supper, “Truly, truly I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.”

Many Bible students and scholars agree that these words are specific to the disciples, who were invested with healing powers to demonstrate they were acting in Jesus’ name as human representatives — deputies, if you will — designated specifically and personally by Christ. Of course, other interpretations are possible. What if Jesus, in talking of greater works performed by his disciples, was referring not to healing but to the suffering of martyrdom? Indeed, it’s not clear that Jesus’ miracles have been exceeded by his disciples, but their suffering for his name has in some cases been more extreme than crucifixion.

i) I have serious reservations about that interpretation. It's true, of course, that some promises which Jesus addresses to the disciples are exclusive to the disciples and not Christians in general. Many readers stumble because they fail to make allowance for that distinction.

ii) In Johannine usage, the works denote miracles, not martyrdom. Just consult standard commentaries. Moreover, martyrdom is hardly exclusive to the Eleven. 

iii) If the promise is exclusive to the Eleven, that excludes St. Paul. 

iv) It's a misleading way to phrase a promise restricted to just eleven people. 

v) Consider other promises in the Upper Room Discourse:

13:34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

14: 2 In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.” 5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

12 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. 13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask me[e] anything in my name, I will do it.

15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.

18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.

23 Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

15 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. 9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 

Are these exclusive to the Eleven just because they were the initial audience? Do these not extend to Christians in general? 

A better explanation is that Jesus frequently employs hyperbole in his teaching. Although Jn 14:12 isn't confined to the Eleven, the promise is hyperbolic.  The promise includes garden-variety Christians but not all (or even most) Christians–and even among the subset, not all (or even most) of their petitions are granted.

Dembski on Eben Alexander's "heavenly" NDE

I'm going to discuss Dembski's analysis of Eben Alexander's reported NDE:

https://billdembski.com/theology-and-religion/faces-of-miracles-chapter-4/

This is one of the most interesting cases for all the reasons detailed in Dembski's chapter. I'll begin by laying my cards on the table, although I'm not saying anything I haven't said before:

1. I think some people encounter God, heaven, or hell during NDEs. It's the real thing. 

2. I use the Bible as a benchmark to interpret and assess NDEs. 

3. Another consideration is what they come back as. Does an unbeliever prior to the NDE come back a Christian or a New Ager? That affects whether I think this is from God.

4. I think it's undoubtedly the case that at least some children have heavenly NDEs. That's not based on any particular report, but the fact that children have immortal souls. Their minds don't pass into temporarily oblivion during brain death.

5. That said, I put no stock in reported NDEs about kids. If it was my own kid, then depending on the details, I might find his report convincing–because I'm getting it in his own words. And he's telling me what he remembers right after the event. But when it comes to books by parents, I'm highly skeptical. 

6. Some NDEs reportedly penetrate much deeper into the beyond than others. In many cases it's the tunnel of light, meeting a luminous being, and not much more. In other cases the patient claims to have seen far more. 

7. Some Christians chalk it up to the demonic. That's worthy exploring, but I'm going to pursue a different approach.

8. From what I've read, there seems to be a false dichotomy in the explanatory options. According to physicalism, NDEs are hallucinations. Figments of a delirious brain. 

It is, of course, true, that people hallucinate under certain circumstances, but that typically involves an intact, functioning brain, not a brain with no higher cortical functions or no neurological activity at all.

Veridical NDEs pose another problem for a physicalist explanation. According to physicalism, the only sources of knowledge are instinct or sensory perception. But some NDEs report seeing or overhearing things in the ER, or other rooms of the hospital, or miles away at home. But that requires ESP, which physicalism disavows. Another cliche line of evidence is the patient discovering a relative in the afterlife they didn't know existed. 

9. As a result, Christian apologists argue that these experiences can't be subjective or merely psychological. They can't originate in the brain. So they must reflect objective encounters. 

And I think that's true in however many cases. But it overlooks a third explanation. Either memory and imagination are located in the brain or else they are located in the soul. If we have an immortal, immaterial mind, then in some cases the NDE could still be "imaginary". 

That would explain the cartoonish or unorthodox "heaven" that some patients report. When higher cortical functions shut down or when there's a complete cessation of neurological activity, the mind may remain active, and what they perceive is like a dream. 

Many unbelievers have a preconception of heaven. They don't believe in heaven, but they think that's what heaven is supposed to be like if only it was real. That's "heaven" in their imagination. In this case, the "heavenly" NDE doesn't originate in the brain but the mind. Their mind already has stock imagery and characters about heaven. A generic, pop cultural notion of heaven. 

Facing temptation

A common assumption is that temptation isn't real unless you are free either to withstand or succumb to temptation. Many Christians find that persuasive, even self-evident. I don't. 

To me, the key dynamic in moral temptation is the psychological tension between duty and desire. You want to do one thing but you'e morally compelled to refrain. 

A classic example is missionary Eric Liddell. Both before and after the initial Japanese invasion of China, he has a chance escape. Instead, he sent his wife and daughter out of the country while he stayed behind. As a result, he became a captive in a civilian war camp, where he died. He undoubtedly felt an overwhelming urge to be with his wife and kids, not to mention putting the Japanese invasion at a comfortable distance. 

But as a devout Christian, it was unthinkable to abandon his students in their dire hour. A betray of trust. Imagine the message that would send if him left them behind to elude suffering while leaving them to face the Japanese army. They'd conclude that he didn't take seriously the faith he  taught them. His sense of Christian honor and Christian witness made that prospect inconceivable. The precise point of tension lay in the unresolvable emotional conflict.

The genealogies of Jesus

https://www.wesleyhuff.com/blog/2019/12/16/9isw5vxv8ju5aj6gk5y92nqpdvto57

Some Enfield Photos Rarely Seen

In 1983, the now-defunct magazine The Unexplained ran a series of articles on the Enfield Poltergeist. The first two were written by Guy Playfair, and the third was written by Anita Gregory (vol. 11, issue 121, "Enfield: The Trouble Begins", 2401-5; vol. 11, issue 122, "Enfield: Whatever Next?", 2426-29; vol. 11, issue 123, "Enfield On Trial", 2458-60). All three articles feature a lot of photographs, with accompanying captions providing some context. Many of the photos are ones I'd never seen before. What I want to do here is post several that I consider the most significant ones. I don't think they're available anywhere else on the web. I'll provide some additional information based on what I know of the context of the photos. I also want to discuss some significant information provided in the caption for one of the photos that's better known.

Go here to see a floor plan of the house where the poltergeist's activities typically occurred. References to Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair's tapes will use "MG" to designate Grosse's tapes and "GP" to designate Playfair's. MG43A is Grosse's tape 43A, GP32A is Playfair's tape 32A, etc.

What's below is a picture of Janet Hodgson either leaving a bed or landing (on her neck or head) during a throwing incident. The photo is attributed to Grosse. I doubt he'd have told the magazine (or have told Playfair, if Playfair gave Grosse's photo to the magazine) that Janet was being thrown if that wasn't the context. Based on what I know of his behavior on his tapes and elsewhere, I'd expect him to have had good evidence that what he was photographing was a throwing incident. When the subject of levitation comes up, people usually talk about the photos of Janet in a posture that resembles jumping, but the poltergeist lifted her or threw her in a large variety of ways. There are some photographs, like the one below, in which Janet's posture doesn't resemble jumping. (And see here for evidence that the ones with a jumping posture are authentic.) The magazine has two photos overlapping. The upper right portion of the photo below is covered by the bottom left of another one:

How Much Did Papias Influence Gospel Authorship Attributions?

I just had an exchange on Facebook regarding the popular claim that a large percentage of ancient gospel authorship attributions, if not all of them, were based on the testimony of Papias. I'll indent the other person's comments and leave mine without indentation.

Jason, I hope you don't mind me asking, but I was wondering if in your studies on Origen of Alexandria you ever came across discussions of what sources were behind Origen's Gospel attributions. I checked Monte Shank's book on Papian fragments and it looks like Origen never mentioned Papias anywhere in his writings - so it seems like Origen was naming the Gospels independent of Papias. Thanks for any information you may be able to relay.

John Lennox: I’m a Christian because I was encouraged to think

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaFedEd7bso

Ruth 4 And Christmas

The last chapter of Ruth should get more attention than it does during the Christmas season. Notice the references to Gentile inclusion, building the house of Israel, fame related to Bethlehem, a supernatural conception, and Davidic ancestry, for example. Much of what's in the passage is somewhat reminiscent of Christmas themes, and some of what's anticipated has been fulfilled more by Jesus than by David:

"'I have acquired Ruth the Moabitess [a Gentile]'…'May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, both of whom built the house of Israel; and may you achieve wealth in Ephrathah and become famous in Bethlehem.'…So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife, and he went in to her. And the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son. Then the women said to Naomi, 'Blessed is the Lord who has not left you without a redeemer'…to Boaz [was born], Obed, and to Obed was born Jesse, and to Jesse, David." (Ruth 4:10-11, 4:13-14, 4:21-22)

"The stories of Jesus's birth are the foundation of the world's most widely observed holiday. Christmas is celebrated by the world's two billion Christians, a number about twice that of the next largest religion, Islam. Moreover, because of the cultural and commercial importance of Christmas in Western culture and beyond, it is observed by many non-Christians as well. Indeed, no other religious holiday is so widely commemorated by people who are outside of the tradition that originated it....Since Matthew and Luke agree independently on those two points about Jesus - that he was descended from David's lineage and born in David's city [Bethlehem] - those must come from an earlier tradition than either of their Christmas stories. And, in fact, we find both of those points elsewhere in the New Testament." (Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The First Christmas [New York, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007], vii, 130)

Enfield Miscellany (Part 2)

(For an explanation of what this series is about, see part 1 here. I'll cite Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair's Enfield tapes below. I'm using "MG" to refer to a tape from Grosse's collection and "GP" to refer to one from Playfair's. MG13A refers to tape 13A in Grosse's collection, GP44A refers to 44A in Playfair's, and so forth.)

Apports And Teleportation

Objects would often appear in a paranormal way, such as by seemingly falling from a ceiling. Probably the most significant apports in the case were the ones that occurred on May 30, 1978, which I've discussed before (e.g., here) and are discussed in Playfair's book (This House Is Haunted [United States: White Crow Books, 2011], 226-27). A particularly significant episode on another occasion involved a large number of objects appearing from the ceiling and walls of the main bedroom upstairs, witnessed by a few members of the family, including Peggy Hodgson (MG84A, 4:28). The items included marbles, pieces of plastic, and Legos. Apparently, a lot of them came out of the ceiling and walls in rapid succession within a short period of time. The poltergeist would sometimes make coins appear, often dropping them from a ceiling. Talking to the poltergeist voice on one occasion, Grosse commented, "But I want to know how you make them [coins] come into this house and drop from the air onto the floor. I mean, we've seen this happen, and I've got some of those pennies." (GP24B, 4:55) Playfair refers to how John Burcombe saw a coin drop in front of him (GP26B, 23:43). Billy Hodgson saw a coin fall from a ceiling as well (MG59B, 49:25). Peggy and Margaret Hodgson saw some plastic spoons appear in a standing position (GP51A, 5:30). Shortly after (6:59), Peggy discusses an incident in which some ice cubes from the Nottinghams' house teleported through a wall into the Hodgsons' kitchen. In another context, Peggy was looking for Billy's socks, and they apparently were teleported to her and dropped at her feet while she was in one of the other bedrooms by herself (MG48A, 42:49, 44:02)! Peggy also mentions that a coin dropped around the same time the socks appeared. There were many other such incidents, like the teleportation of a cushion onto the roof on December 15, 1977, which I've discussed before. I'm just providing several examples here.

Snowman

The poltergeist voice calls Grosse "snowman" on one occasion (MG51A, 14:27). I don't think it called him or anybody else a snowman at any other point. He responded by saying he's never been called that before, and he didn't seem to understand why the voice was doing it. I suspect the poltergeist was referring to Grosse's resemblance to Sam the Snowman from the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas program:

They have similar mustaches, and both wear dress clothes. I don't remember ever seeing a photograph or video of Grosse at the Hodgsons' house without a suit and tie. (Even when wrestling with Janet while she was in a trance state!) Those kinds of similarities are probably enough to explain the voice's comment, especially since the comment was made during a Christmas season (December 19, 1977), and the voice made television references in other contexts.

Interview with James N. Anderson, author of DAVID HUME

https://www.booksataglance.com/author-interviews/interview-with-james-n-anderson-author-of-david-hume/

The Bad Roots And Fruits Of Polygamy In Scripture And History

Southern Seminary recently put out a brief video by Peter Gentry on polygamy in the Bible. He makes some good points, and his argument is somewhat reminiscent of an article Matthew Schultz wrote on polygamy several years ago. You can also read my thread here that addresses polygamy in the Old and New Testaments and in patristic Christianity.

For a discussion of some of the reasons why it's important to be informed about polygamy in our culture, see this article by Andrew Dugan of Gallup. He not only notes that polygamy has become significantly more accepted by Americans in recent years, but also explains that their change in opinion seems to have been influenced by television (and surely other sources of a similar nature). He notes that acceptance of polygamy is especially high among the non-religious, being accepted by almost a third of those who don't affiliate themselves with any religion.

That article by Dugan was written in 2017. Here's a listing of Gallup's results on moral issues year-by-year. Polygamy went up to 19% acceptance in 2018 and is at 18% this year.

The Mirror Or The Mask

Lydia McGrew's book on literary devices and the gospels, The Mirror Or The Mask (Tampa, Florida: DeWard, 2019), just came out. It makes some references to Steve Hays and Triablogue.

taking a break

I've been blogging nonstop for 15 years. I'll probably take a break for Christmastide.

A flat earth

https://historyforatheists.com/2016/06/the-great-myths-1-the-medieval-flat-earth/

How To Concisely Argue For A Traditional View Of Jesus' Childhood

There are a lot of ways to argue for a traditional view of the childhood of Jesus, and we've been making those arguments for a long time. But it's often helpful to be able to argue concisely for what you believe. That can be hard to do when a subject is as large and complicated as the earliest years of Jesus' life. We are addressing years of his life, after all, unlike the narrower focus of Easter, for example. But here are a few summary arguments I recommend using:

- Reliable sources on Jesus' childhood were available to the early Christians and their opponents for a long time. Close relatives of Jesus lived for more than half a century after his birth. For a discussion of the credibility of the early reports about Jesus' relatives in general, see here. Regarding how long individuals like Mary and James lived, see here and here. And those relatives held some prominent positions in the early church, as we see in Acts, Galatians 1:19, 2:9-12, 1 Corinthians 9:5, the letters of James and Jude, etc. Keep in mind that Jesus' relatives were critical of him at times, so his enemies would have had an interest in and ability to get information about his background from those relatives. Some of Jesus' neighbors, coworkers, and contemporaries in places like Bethlehem and Nazareth also would have lived past the time of his death, even for decades in some cases. The same is true of the religious authorities and others who opposed him and had him executed. Just as the early Christians passed on information from generation to generation, so did their enemies. The early Christians and their opponents produced many documents in the earliest decades of Christianity, not just the ones we possess today, as I argue here. And see here for some comments from Larry Hurtado about how the literacy of the early Christians is often underestimated.

- We have a lot of evidence for a traditional view of Jesus' childhood. Much of what the early Christians report about the childhood of Jesus meets modern historical standards, like multiple attestation, the criterion of embarrassment, and the criterion of coherence. For some examples, see here and here.

- There's a significant lack of support in the ancient sources for skeptical alternatives to a traditional Christian view of the childhood of Jesus. For example, the early opponents of Christianity not only don't seem to have opposed the Bethlehem birthplace of Jesus, but even corroborated it. Not only does Celsus not agree with the popular modern notion that the virgin birth claim didn't arise until decades after Jesus' death, but he even attributes the claim of a virgin birth to Jesus himself (in Origen, Against Celsus, 1:28). See here for a further discussion of how inconsistent many modern skeptical views of the virgin birth are with ancient non-Christian sources. For more examples of what ancient non-Christian sources said about Jesus' childhood, see here. On the modern skeptical assertion that Luke's census account is radically inaccurate, see this post. On modern skeptical claims about the authorship of the gospels, see here. And so on. As with the other two points above, you'd have to be selective in choosing one or more examples to illustrate the point, but we've provided many to choose from.

To summarize these three points even further:

1. the presence of reliable sources
2. the presence of evidence for a traditional Christian view
3. the absence of support for skeptical alternatives among the ancient sources

And you could make it even easier to remember as: presence, presence, absence.

The importance of these three points can be seen by thinking about how easily the relevant circumstances could have been different than they are and what implications would follow if they were different. What if individuals like Mary and James hadn't lived as long as they did, the earliest Christians hadn't shown so much interest in writing, etc.? What if there wasn't so much information about Jesus' childhood that meets the evidential standards for historically reliable material? What if the early opponents of Christianity had made significantly different claims about Jesus' childhood, such as by corroborating the Christian claims much less than they did?

This approach I've outlined doesn't cover every issue, and you still have to address whatever objections are raised. It's a good way to start a discussion and summarize your view, even if it doesn't end the discussion.

Day and night on the flat earth

This is an issue I keep coming back to, in part because it's gaining ground in "evangelical" scholarship, and in part because it's open to different lines of attack. In this article, Paul Seely attempts to document a monolithic view of the cosmos in primitive, pre-scientific cultures: "The Geographical Meaning of 'Earth' and 'Seas' in Genesis 1:10." WTJ 59 (1997) 231–55. The point I've always made is that the textbound orientation of scholars who support this view has the wrong starting-point. For one thing, there are ancient pictorial representations of the cosmos that are inconsistent with other pictorial representations, as well as inconsistent with observable reality. 

Scholars who espouse flat-earth cosmography disregard the observable world in which ancient people lived. Let's recap one example I've given. The phenomenon of the seasons makes no sense on a flat-earth model. On that model, there should be one season year round. It's a static system. There's no room for variation in the angle or duration of sunlight. As a boy, I used to notice that sunrise and sunset lay further apart on the horizon in summer and closer together in winter. 

Now let's take a related example. The length of day and night isn't just variable by season but latitude. At one extreme are equatorial regions while at the other extreme is the Arctic circle, with polar days and polar nights. 

It might be objected that ancient people lacked a comparative frame of reference to notice the variation. They lived in the same area. 

But that's not true. There were ancient mariners who sailed up and down coastlines. They were in a position to observe rapid changes in the duration of day and night as they sailed up and down coastlines. Changes that didn't correspond to seasons, but location. Once again, that's incompatible with a flat-earth cosmography. 

Ancient mariners would disseminate stories about their adventures. People would be interested in stories by ancient mariners about their discoveries. 

My point is that even from a prescientific standpoint, there were multiple lines of evidence that falsify flat-earth cosmography. Some of these are blatant while others are more subtle. Some require you to think about the incongruence. Not everyone is thoughtful. But some people are. 

I didn't get the answers

Churches need to do more apologetics. That said, apostates can't blame it on the church. Take the initiative. There's no lack of apologetic material, much of which is a mouse click away, available for free. But people are so passive and lazy. Moreover, asking the wrong people. Why think the people who attend your church are qualified to answer tough questions when they have no training in the relevant fields.

It's like saying, "I was having car trouble, so I asked all my friends what the problem was and how to fix it, but none of them had good answers, so I lost my faith in automechanics". Did it ever occur to you to ask an automechanic?

Or like saying, "My dog was sick. I asked all my friends what was wrong with her but none of them had the answer so I lost my faith in veterinary medicine!" Uh...what about asking a veterinarian?

Predestined regret

https://www.proginosko.com/2019/11/calvinism-and-the-problem-of-contrition/

Another way to approach it that if I have regrets, God predestined me to have regrets, so there's no tension between my regret and God's decretal will. 

By the same token, there's no inconsistency in God willing one thing at one time, then willing something else at a later time, because each serves its purpose at its respective time. Like a screenwriter willing that a character initially be a villain, then, during a later plot development, willing that the character has a life-transforming experience which makes him act heroic. 

What the original objection overlooks is the instrumental value of regret. Consider people whose epitaph is "I regret nothing". That's a cringingly superficial outlook on life. A related motto is "Never look back!" In fairness, some folks have such wretched lives that there may be some wisdom to the advice in their case.

Consider two brothers who take each other for granted. They don't dislike each other, but there's no rapport. They aren't close. And there's no urgency since they have decades ahead of them.

Then one day there's a phone call from the ER saying one of the brothers died in a traffic accident. In an instant it goes from seeing each other every day, or being able to see/talk to each other whenever they want, to never seeing each other for the rest of the surviving brother's life. In a fateful moment it goes from total access to total inaccess. 

The surviving brother is overwhelmed with regret, because it's too late to make up for all the lost opportunities. However, it's not useless. Having learned from bitter experience, he can apply that retrospective insight to other neglected (or future) relationships in his life. 

Boy with no brain

https://www.christian.org.uk/news/boy-with-no-brain-continues-to-defy-expectations/

Inerrancy is the enemy!

As is well-known, there are believers who lose their faith in Christianity when they lose their faith in biblical inerrancy. As a result, there's an increasing number of apologists–with W. L. Craig as the ringleader–who regard inerrancy as expendable–a "house of cards". By the same token, they regard inerrancy as a stumbling block to conversion. On that view, inerrancy should be permanently bracketed. 

But there's a flip side to this. A paradox that hasn't received the same attention. There are believers who'd lose their faith in Christianity if inerrancy is true. Their faith requires a fallible Bible because there's too much in Scripture they find intolerable. They disagree with many biblical teachings, viz. exclusivism, eternal punishment, spanking, "slavery," "misogyny," "homophobia," "genocide," &c. Inerrancy poses a threat to their faith, not if it's false, but if it's true. There are things in the Bible they're just not prepared to accept, and biblical fallibility gives them the elbow room they require to avoid a hard choice. Not because the offending teachings might be wrong, but because their truth is incompatible with a progressive worldview. So the can't afford for Scripture to be too true. Ultimately, they need a different religion than biblical theism, and biblical fallibility gives them the loophole to have a designer religion. 

Of course, a religion that conveniently changes whenever you change your beliefs can't be objectively true. It becomes a mirror rather than a guidepost. It takes its lead from you, not vice versa.  

Fires At Enfield

Poltergeist cases often involve fires that are paranormal in some way (fires that start, proceed, and/or stop paranormally). In her doctoral thesis (187), Anita Gregory mentions that at least one incident involving fire was reported at the Hodgsons' house as early as the night of August 31, going into September 1, 1977. So, fire incidents were occurring in the Enfield case much earlier than is suggested in Playfair's book (This House Is Haunted [United States: White Crow Books, 2011], 187) and elsewhere.

It's useful to have some knowledge of the layout of the Hodgsons' house, so go here to see a floor plan. I'll be citing Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair's Enfield tapes, using "MG" to designate Grosse's tapes and "GP" to designate Playfair's. MG30B refers to Grosse's tape 30B, and GP15A refers to Playfair's tape 15A, for example.

As far as I recall, all of the fire incidents occurred in the kitchen, for whatever reason. (Click here for a photograph of the kitchen. The man in the photo is John Burcombe, and he's facing the living room. The back hallway is behind him.) It may be that the poltergeist needed something found only in the kitchen to produce these phenomena or preferred to do it in the kitchen for some other reason. There could be a psychological factor involved, such as a tendency to associate fire with kitchens (stoves, matchboxes kept in kitchens, etc.). Whatever the reason for only producing these events in the kitchen, Peggy Hodgson noted at one point that the poltergeist fires used to happen after they'd left the kitchen, but now happen while they're there (GP52B, 7:39).

Razon de la esperanza

https://razondelaesperanza.com/2014/06/29/resena-de-macarthur-fuego-extrano-por-craig-keener/

Weak Christian Responses To Weak Christmas Objections

A site affiliated with the BBC recently ran a story by Spencer Mizen on the historicity of a traditional Christian view of Jesus' childhood. It repeats a lot of claims that are frequently made. I'll point those who are interested to my collection of resources on Christmas issues. To Mizen's credit, he often cites Ben Witherington's defense of a traditional Christian perspective. But Witherington, at least in what Mizen quotes, just repeats common observations that don't go into enough depth. Christians, especially scholars like Witherington, never should have been so focused on such insignificant arguments to begin with, and it's even worse when they keep repeating those arguments each year. I'll cite one example to illustrate the problematic nature of how the issues are approached by both Mizen and Witherington:

Matthew and Luke both tell us that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and that his mother, Mary, was a virgin when she gave birth. But these are the only episodes of the nativity story in which the two accounts converge….

For some academics, the discrepancies between Luke and Matthew’s accounts cast further doubt on the nativity’s historical credibility, but not everyone agrees. “If the evangelists were going to make up a story about the origins of Jesus, and keep their story straight, you would expect their stories not to differ in detail,” argues Ben Witherington, a New Testament scholar at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky. “The fact that they do, suggests we are dealing with two independent witnesses talking about the same events, with the same core substance affirmed by both.”

There's some truth to Witherington's response, but the core substance that Matthew and Luke have in common is far larger than Mizen suggests. Christians seldom make that point, and it's even rarer for them to make the point as persuasively as they should. See my article here that discusses forty examples of agreements between Matthew and Luke. The number of agreements is significant, but so is the nature of the agreements, as I discussed in another article:

Matthew and Luke agree about Jesus' childhood in ways that meet the criterion of embarrassment. They agree in exercising restraint in contexts in which it would have benefited them to have not been so restrained. They agree on unusual details that couldn't have been anticipated by Old Testament Messianic expectations, the culture of their day, or some other such source. They agree on points that add coherence to what we read in Paul, Mark, and other early sources.

Anybody who's interested in getting more information about these issues can read the two articles I've linked above. Even conservative Christian scholars typically cite less than half the agreements between Matthew and Luke that they could mention, often citing numbers as small as eight or ten, if even that many. The nature of the agreements is typically underestimated as well. Mizen bears more responsibility than Witherington for the problems with the article I'm responding to. But we wouldn't be getting so many articles like that if Christians were putting more effort into arguing as they should on these issues.

Tips on parenting

Generally good advice, although, in the age of film and TV drama, we have to strike a balance. It can't all be literary fiction. Film is not an inferior art form to the novel. Also, he has a Catholic bias. 

Tony Esolen

Enchanting the world ...

Or rather, allowing the world, which is an enchanted place, to be present to your children in all its wonder ...

Or again, how to scrub away the grime of DISENCHANTMENT, which grime is the stock in trade of our schools ...

I've gotten some requests recently about what to do to work against the grime. Here are my recommendations:

1. Get your kids the hell out of the schools.

2. Find the list of the Thousand Good Books, by John Senior. A very fine list it is. I might have a couple of quibbles here and there, but in general it is terrific.

https://d2y1pz2y630308.cloudfront.net/15750/documents/2017/10/John%20Senior%20The%20Thousand%20Good%20Books%20List.pdf

3. Get your kids outdoors. Do things. Make things. Play games. Visit people. Find food and cook it.

4. Teach your boys to chop wood, hunt, fish, find their way in the woods, etc.; if your girls are interested, take them too.

5. Learn to play a musical instrument. Learn the stars in the sky. Get a pair of binoculars and use them. Get a small telescope. Things like those ....

6. As for BOOKS: Anything by Charles Dickens -- or rather EVERYTHING. Dickens is the greatest creator of literary characters this side of Shakespeare. For that one capacity, he can even stand the comparison with the Bard. Nobody else can, with the possible exception of Dante -- for characterization, I mean. Dickens is a comic genius, and is underrated, because anybody can read him. Read the other great novelists of the 19th century: Jane Austen, Alexandre Dumas, George Eliot, Walter Scott, Anthony Trollope, Victor Hugo, Alessandro Manzoni, Mark Twain, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathanael Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Gogol ...

7. Don't ignore art, music, and poetry. Get the 19th century, before the 20th century meltdown in poetry: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, etc. Poetry delivers a lot in a small space: it is TNT. Read Tennyson's Idylls of the King. Read Browning's dramatic monologues: "My Last Duchess," "The Bishop Orders His Tomb etc.", "The Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister," "An Epistle of Karshish," "Andrea del Sarto," "Caliban Upon Setebos," "Fra Lippo Lippi," "How It Strikes a Contemporary," "Cleon," ....

8. Don't go down the Lord of the Flies route, for starters. Lord of the Flies is a great work of art and thought. But it is not for beginners. It is not for your disillusioned young people, nor is Walker Percy, nor is Fitzgerald, nor is Orwell ... Not for starters. They come later ...

Do miracles have a higher burden of proof?

This is something I frequently discuss because it's a mainstay of atheism. Atheists typically say there's an overwhelming presumption against miracles. In addition there are Christian Bayesian theorists who say miracles have a higher burden of proof, but it's not insurmountable. Let's take a couple of comparisons.

Suppose I'm abducted and sedated. Next thing I know I wake up in the middle of nowhere. A wilderness with a river nearby. Is it safe for me to wade in the river?

Some rivers are hazardous.  Some rivers are frequented by crocodiles, anacondas, electric eels, or bull sharks.

What's the antecedent probability that the river is safe or hazardous to wade in? Unless I know where I am, I have no frame of reference. There's no presumption one way or the other to overcome.

I can't begin to calculate the probabilities in a vacuum. I need to know where I am. 

Or take another example. Suppose a driver spots a license plate in the parking lot. What are the odds that that car would be at the same time and place he was? In principle, you could consider the number of in-state license plates, and make an educated guess about out-of-state drivers. 

But suppose the driver is a bookie on the run from the mafia, and the car with that particular license plate belongs to triggermen who are shadowing him. That drastically changes the odds.

Now in Bayesian probability theory, as I understand it, you divvy up the odds into prior and posterior probabilities. The prior improbability may be high, but that can be overcome with more specific evidence. 

But my problem is that if the probability theorist already has all the information when he begins his analysis, why bifurcate the evidence into prior and posterior compartments? Why artificially bracket off some of what he knows to assign a prior probability value, which creates a presumption that must then be overcome? What's the point? It's not like he discovered new evidence in the process of his analysis. 

I don't think it's meaningful to lay odds on miracles in the abstract. It depends on the kind for world we live in as well as specific evidence for specific reports. 

Near miss

A stock objection to Christianity is that if God existed, he'd intervene to prevent evil. But as I've remarked on more than one occasion, that's circular in the sense that there's no trace evidence for nonevents. If something never happened, it leaves no record. 

To take a concrete example, during summer break I used to go for walks at the football field of my old junior high. One time two adolescent boys, friends or brothers, were there when I arrived. They brought their Rottweiler with them. They were fooling around inside the field, I was walking around the track, while the dog was lying in the shadows beyond the track. At one point I came between the boys and the dog. It suddenly rose up and began to snarl. The boys were too foolish to anticipate the danger of taking a dog like that into the public arena. They were able to verbally retrain it, but it was clearly untrained, with a hair-trigger reaction. They had no real control over what it did. That dog was a mauling just waiting to happen.

For me, that was a near miss. If it attacked me, I would have been hospitalized...or worse. That's a concrete illustration of a tragedy that didn't happen. And it's forgettable in a way that the alternative is not. We don't generally remember a close call because it didn't come to a head. It's the tragedies that make an impression. 

Prayer mojo

I think it likely that some Christians have more prayer mojo than others. 1 Cor 12:9 refers to a gift of faith. In context, that can't mean garden-variety Christian faith, since every Christian has to have that kind of faith to be Christian in the first place. Moreover, the whole passage is about different Christians having different gifts. So it must refer to a special kind of faith. And prayer would be a natural outlet. So it's likely that some Christians have more prayer hits than others. Some Christians may well have a gift for petitionary/intercessory prayer. God makes greater demands on some Christians that others, so there can be compensations or corresponding abilities. 

BDD and amputees

A recent popular atheist trope is the taunt, "Why won't God heal amputees?" Two assumptions or motivations lie behind the taunt:

i) Candidates for miracles are ambiguous. The test is an unambiguous example which rules out naturalistic explanations. 

ii) If God healed amputees, a spectacular miracle like that would be widely reported. 

Since there's no evidence that amputees are healed, there's no evidence that a miracle-performing God exists. So goes the argument. 

I've discussed this before, but now I'd like to approach it from a different angle. There's a mental health disorder known as body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). The patient feels alienated from a body part. They imagine their body part to be defective, despite the fact that it's perfectly healthy and normal. 

Nowadays, some patients take the next step by undergoing surgical mutilation to fix the perceived problem. They have normal functional body parts amputated for cosmetic reasons. 

Suppose God routinely healed amputees with BDD. That would encourage some people to test God by becoming amputees. That would be their fallback. If I change my mind, God will restore the body part!

Would that be a better kind of world or worse kind of world? Should we expect God to encourage that behavior? 

Now a village atheist will complain that my explanation is special pleading. And I agree that if there was no good evidence for bona fide miracles, then attempts to explain away the nonoccurrence of miracles consistent with the existence of a miracle-performing God are special pleading. But to the contrary, it's atheists who obsess over one arbitrarily chosen example to be the test case who are guilty of special pleading. There's plenty of evidence for unambiguous miracles. 

Killing body and soul

Jesus also said the following:

Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. (Emphasis added) (Matthew 10:28)

Hell is where God will destroy the soul! Some say that “destroy” doesn’t mean destruction in a literal sense, that it instead means conscious “ruin” or “loss.” However, aside from the consistent use of the word for “destroy” referring to killing and slaying3 when describing what one person does to another in the synoptic gospels,4 we have an indication of what is meant within the immediate context. Jesus directly contrasts what man cannot do (“kill the soul”) with what God can do. If Jesus meant that God would “ruin” body and soul in hell or something like that, then why would he directly contrast it to ability of men to kill the body and their inability to do likewise to the soul? It would amount to him saying, “don’t fear those who cannot kill the soul; instead, fear the one who isn’t going to kill the soul either.”

If God doesn’t do to the soul what humans can do only to the body (i.e. kill it, make it as vivacious and conscious as a corpse), then why would Jesus have even brought it up?

One might argue that even if annihilation5 was meant, Jesus only said that God can do it, not that he will. But, that raises the question of why Jesus would have warned about what God could do if God would never do it, even to the wicked, no matter what. If this were so, “then the same purpose would be served by some absurd warning like ‘be afraid of the One who can turn you into a melon.'”6

The meaning is simple. Man cannot render a soul as dead and lifeless as a corpse (which they can do to the body). But what man cannot do, God can and will do, which is to kill the soul, thereby destroying it as a living, conscious entity.

http://rethinkinghell.com/2013/10/29/introduction-to-evangelical-conditionalism-5-surprising-things-that-the-bible-says-about-hell/

There are some problems with this analysis:

i) What does Joseph Dear mean by "hell"? Does he simply mean the realm of the dead (hades)? What happens after you die?

ii) In that sense, hades is not where the body is destroyed. It's not as if decedents pass into hades, body and soul, then their body is destroyed in hades. Rather, when they die they leave their body behind, in this world. The body is destroyed by the natural process of dissolution. This is the place where the body undergoes destruction. So the parallel poses an obstacle for annihilationist dualists and physicalists alike. And that raises questions about what is meant by "destroy" in this context. 

iii) Many annihilationists are physicalists rather than dualists. So they don't think the soul is destroyed in hades inasmuch as man doesn't have a soul to destroy. 

iv) Physicalists believe that everyone passes into oblivion at the moment of death–the righteous and wicked alike. So everyone is destroyed in hades. That's not a fate reserved for the wicked. True, annihilationists believe the righteous will be resurrected, but that's in tension with this prooftext–in combination with physicalism.

v) I think the gist of the passage is that there's a fate worse than death. There's more to fear in the after life than in this life.

"He is not here"

"He is not here" (Paul Helm)

End-of-life testimonies

There's a genre of conversion testimonies. I believe this originated in the evangelical faith. After all, if you're a cradle Catholic, you were supposedly born again during infant baptism. 

There are variations on the formula. Most common is how individuals became Christian in their teens or twenties. Another variation is individuals raised in the faith. They never rejected the faith, but the testimony is about how they came to personally embrace the faith they were raised in. This may often include a crisis of faith in college. 

These testimonies can be inspirational, which is why it's a popular genre. I read an edifying example just recently:

Tony

I'm an ex-Sikh, I grew up going to a c of e school and we sang hymns every morning in assembly. I was only a child but many of those hymns had something about them that even as a Sikh child I felt moved and imagined the scene of a green hill and Christ being nailed to a cross on top of the hill. This was one of my very favourite hymns. Now when I was hit 23-yrs of age I converted to Christianity after an experience with the Lord. It's been 28 yrs and I'm so glad Jesus died for me. Glory to God for His saving grace.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0ybUpuLn8M&lc=UgxJ1czjFGh1ePjiWgV4AaABAg

But there are limitations to the genre. It freezes the individual in the past. But not everyone who begins the race crosses the finish line. Some drop out. And even for those who persevere, at that age their reasons are thinner. Over a lifetime, the reasons may change, evolve, be augmented, or replaced with deeper reasons. Approaching the end of life, they will have thicker reasons for their faith, due to all the life experience under their belt. 

Some Christians suffer a crisis of faith later in life. Although it may be intellectual, it's my impression that it's more likely to be an emotional crisis of faith brought on personal tragedy and disappointment, like a family tragedy. Some pilgrims survive the crisis, but it leaves them emotionally damaged. They get through it but they don't get over it. A classic example is Jeremiah. Surely he was emotionally damaged by all the pain.

Some trees flourish and grow into shapely specimens. Others are killed by lightning, forest fire, or parasites. Others survive, but battered and broken. Disfigured. In a way, that's more inspiring that picture perfect trees. 

More useful than conversion testimonies are end-of-life testimonies. That's a gift which pilgrims on the way out should share with pilgrims on the way in. 

Jesus' Childhood In Isaiah's Servant Songs

This past Easter season, I posted an article about Jesus' fulfillment of Isaiah's first three Servant Songs. And I've often written about his fulfillment of the fourth one. It's worth noting how much relevance the passages have to Christmas issues.

Isaiah 49 opens with a reference to how the Servant had been called and named by God from the womb (verse 1; see, also, verse 5). Isaiah 42:6 uses the imagery of being held by the hand, which pictures the Servant as a child, but somewhat older than an infant. He's initially lowly and even despised (49:7), including in his origins (53:2-3). As I discuss in my posts linked above, the Servant is referred to as God, and he's referred to (especially in the Isaiah 50 passage) as unusually righteous, probably sinless, throughout his life. That includes his childhood. The plant imagery in 53:2 probably alludes to the common prophetic theme of the Messiah as a root of Jesse, a branch, etc. (e.g., 11:1, 11:10). That has implications for the Servant's (Davidic) ancestry, birth in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), and other issues.

The Servant Songs also expand upon what Luke tells us in his gospel about Jesus' growth as a child. Luke tells us that Jesus "continued to grow and become strong, increasing in wisdom; and the grace of God was upon him….And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men." (2:40, 2:52) When he was twelve years old, people were "amazed at his understanding and his answers" (2:47), including "teachers" (2:46). While Jesus did learn from people like his parents and those teachers, as 2:46 indicates, he had a level of knowledge and wisdom that went beyond that sort of education. How did he acquire those attributes as a child and become the sort of teacher he was as an adult? Isaiah gives us a window into how that occurred. "The Lord God has given me the tongue of disciples, that I may know how to sustain the weary one with a word. He awakens me morning by morning, he awakens my ear to listen as a disciple. The Lord God has opened my ear; and I was not disobedient nor did I turn back." (50:4-5) When the Father refers to holding his hand and watching over him (42:6), and we're told that the Servant grew up before him "like a tender shoot, and like a root out of parched ground" (53:2), we're getting a glimpse of how Jesus was loved, sustained, and taught by the Father when none of the relatives, teachers, and other people around him knew much about him or why he had come into the world.

In a post on Isaiah 9 last year, I discussed some connections between that passage and the Servant Songs. So, the implications of those connections should be considered here as well.

We need to be careful to not underestimate the significance of these issues. For example, not all ancient Jews expected the Messiah to have a childhood like the one Jesus had. As Raymond Brown wrote, "I mentioned in the previous Appendix (footnote 6) the expectation of a hidden Messiah who would appear suddenly, without people knowing where he came from. (This expectation is described in John 7:27, in contrast to 7:42 which involves the expectation of the Messiah's birth at Bethlehem.)" (The Birth Of The Messiah [New York, New York: Doubleday, 1999], 514) Think of the theophanies and angelophanies we see in the Old Testament. The Messiah could have arrived on earth as an adult. And if the Messiah was to be born into the world like other humans, wouldn't it be appropriate for him to have grown up in a royal setting, like Moses, or a sanctuary setting, like Samuel? So, when the Servant Songs refer to the Servant as arriving on earth in the womb of a mother and growing up in a humble setting and even being despised, that's significant. The Messiah didn't have to arrive that way, and many people expected otherwise and considered Jesus' origins inappropriate. When Isaiah 49:1 refers to the Servant as named by God while in the womb, something that occurred with Jesus (Matthew 1:21), we should keep in mind that naming typically didn't occur that way. In the Old Testament, the parents or other people frequently chose the child's name, including in cases that involved a pregnancy that was supernatural in some manner (Genesis 5:28-9, 25:25-6, 30:6-24, Exodus 2:10, 2:22, Judges 13:24, Ruth 4:17, 1 Samuel 1:20).

We usually think of the Servant Songs in the context of Easter. But they illustrate the strong connection that exists between Easter and Christmas. I hope this post will motivate you to remember the Servant Songs at Christmastime and to incorporate them into your celebration of the season.

A Santa for everybody

Mark Jones 

What does Santa give to children based on their denomination?

Woke Santa steals presents from some kids and gives them to others. 

Lutheran Santa gives children nothing because they possess all in justification.

Presbyterian Santa gives children gifts with a clear conscience because they are holy.

Baptist Santa wakes up children and evangelizes them.

Catholic Santa leaves a note that they better watch out if they aren't good and leaves a donation card for the church.

Scottish Covenanter Santa comes in and tears apart anything resembling Christmas. He leaves a Psalter.

Anglican Santa gives children an advent calendar they never asked for.

Dutch Reformed Santa just takes the cookies and is too cheap to leave presents.

Reformed Baptist Santa Leaves suits and ties so all the children can look like their dad at church.

Pentecostal Santa leaves a note where he hid the presents in gibberish that no one can understand.

Eastern Orthodox Santa refused to dress up as Santa because he didn't want to remove his vestment.

Southern Baptist Santa stole a drink of alcohol because everyone was sleeping. And he left a bunch of Albert Mohler books for the kids to read.

Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/atheism-is-inconsistent-with-the-scientific-method-prizewinning-physicist-says/