Lest You Forget...

The current President has demonstrated he is not equal to the enormous responsibilities of his office; he cannot rise to meet challenges large or small. Thanks to his disdainful attitude and his failures, our allies no longer trust or respect us, and our enemies no longer fear us.

That's a pretty harsh indictment of Biden.

What?

That was the letter signed by more than 200 retired generals against Trump last year?

Oh.

Well, at least there are no mean tweets anymore. 

Surely this isn't evidence that God is upset with people who preach, but do not practice. Who tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and give rules like "don't misgender" and "check your privilege." God's not going to be upset with people who do their good deeds on Twitter for all to see while in secret they grope their interns. These people who cross sea and land to gain a single convert, and once they have that convert they turn them twice as woke as they themselves.

Don't harsh my buzz, and other things Boomers say. God is love. He understands you did your best.

I mean, you didn't, but you would have if it hadn't been for Netflix.  And that's the important part.

The Vastness of Space

Last month, the Pentagon released its report on UFOs. Since then, I've been musing a bit on whether or not extraterrestrial life could exist. In itself, this is probably a pointless excursion, given that God can do whatever He wants and He may or may not have made other life out there somewhere without telling us. But something struck me as I thought about the various arguments put forth.

One argument is that there surely must be life out there since there are so many trillions of stars that there must be countless planets just like ours in solar systems far away, and if evolution can have life form here then surely life can form in these other planets too. Setting aside the fact that evolution already presupposes the existence of life in the first place and therefore can't create it, this argument seems to fly in the face of the “anthropic principal” presented by secularists. That is, the anthropic principal is the claim that the necessary fine tuning of all the variables needed in our local solar system for life to exist on Earth is not evidence of design, but rather is simply the result of the vastness of space. Given how big the universe is and how many “rolls of the dice” individual locations were enabled to have, some place had to have the ideal conditions which resulted in our existence.

The reason these two explanations run counter to each other is easily displayed by a simple question. Which is it? Is life so easy to form that the vastness of the universe is why aliens are probably out there, or is life so difficult to form because it needs such precise values that the vastness of the universe is needed for us to exist in our seemingly designed location?

The sad thing is, I don't think most secularists even realize these two views are at odds with each other.

When Your Breath Shall Grow Cold

"Youth, ordinarily, is a post and ready servant for Satan, to run errands; for it is a nest for lust, cursing, drunkenness, blaspheming of God, lying, pride, and vanity. Oh, that there were such an heart in you as to fear the Lord, and to dedicate your soul and body to His service! When the time cometh that your eye-strings shall break, and your face wax pale, and legs and arms tremble, and your breath shall grow cold, and your poor soul look out at your prison house of clay, to be set at liberty; then a good conscience, and your Lord's favour, shall be worth all the world's glory. Seek it as your garland and crown." (Samuel Rutherford, Letters Of Samuel Rutherford [Carlisle, Pennsylvania: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2012], 287-88)

May The Lamb That Was Slain Receive The Reward Of His Suffering

"The Moravians were not the only missionaries inspired by Revelation 5, but probably the Moravians gave expression to the beauty of the missionary implications of this text better than anybody. And in the middle of the eighteenth century, they would get on their ships in North Germany to disappear forever out of their families' lives to peoples they had no idea whether they'd eat them or not, and as the ships pulled out from shore, they would lift their hands and say, 'May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of his suffering.' That comes straight out of Revelation 5:9. 'May the Lamb that was slain, in my ministry, receive the reward of his suffering. He was slain for them, and I'm going to go be the means by which he gets his reward for his suffering.' I cannot imagine a vision of life more precious than that. I mean, if you could wake up every morning and preach to yourself, 'I am the instrument in the hands of the grace of God by which the Lamb slain will receive the reward of his suffering.'" (John Piper, at 27:20 in the video here)

Support For Christianity From Ancient Non-Christian Sources

A decade ago, I collected some links to many of Triablogue's articles on corroboration of Christianity from ancient non-Christian sources. I recently updated the post. Some links have been added, and some have been changed. I've also revised the text below the links.

Spiritual Fire

"And that thou mayest learn, consider Paul, I pray thee. What is there fearful that he did not suffer, and that he did not submit to? But he bore all nobly. Let us imitate him, for so shall we be able to land in the tranquil havens with much merchandise. Let us then stretch our mind towards Heaven, let us be held fast by that desire, let us clothe ourselves with spiritual fire, let us gird ourselves with its flame. No man who bears flame fears those who meet him; be it wild beast, be it man, be it snares innumerable, so long as he is armed with fire, all things stand out of his way, all things retire. The flame is intolerable, the fire cannot be endured, it consumes all. With this fire let us clothe ourselves, offering up glory to our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom to the Father, together with the Holy Ghost, be glory, might, honor, now and ever and world without end." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On Hebrews, 34:8)

The Use And Abuse Of Typology

Gavin Ortlund recently posted a good video on the subject. It's based on a recent debate on the papacy he participated in, which is also worth watching.

Harmless as an enemy, treacherous as a friend

As we plod through the second year of "14 days to flatten the curve", I see that the relativity of time raises it's head once again.  "It will be three months before the Taliban can occupy Kabul" turned out to be closer to three days.  1975 is a bit before my time, but the pictures from Saigon and the pictures from Kabul bear a striking resemblance to each other.  Almost as though there is nothing new under the sun (I think I read that someplace).

The whole situation reminds me of a quote Mark Steyn attributes to Bernard Lewis sometime around the year 2010 or so: "The danger here is that America risks being seen as harmless as an enemy, and treacherous as a friend."  Well, I think America has gotten the "treacherous as a friend" part down pat, and has been that way for years.

This is why Christians should never put faith in governments, which are composed of sinners after all. Ours has been more interested in flying rainbow flags and keeping the military woke than it has been in planning how to exit a battlefield. Living your life as if God isn't watching is all fun and games until you find out He was watching.  Woe to you if God should find you not only harmless as an enemy, but treacherous as a friend too.

The Overlap Between The Synoptics And John

Critics make much of the alleged differences between the Synoptic gospels and John. The amount of overlap between them is often underestimated, including by conservative Christians. I want to gather some links to posts we've written on the subject over the years. These examples are far from exhaustive. You can search our archives for more.

On how much overlap we should expect, see here.

Jesus' family.

His childhood.

His career.

His viewing himself as the figure of Isaiah 9:1-7 and how he interpreted the passage.

The "I am" statements.

How he referred to Peter.

The prominence of Philip.

And here's one on some agreements about unusual terminology used by Jesus.

Regarding his nonverbal characteristics, see here and here.

His use of mountains.

Double healing.

How he raised the dead.

His use of object lessons.

Soteriology.

The prominence of love.

The character of the apostles.

The events surrounding Jesus' death and resurrection.

Undesigned coincidences among various passages.

I wrote a post discussing similarities between the Jesus of the book of Revelation and what's said about Jesus elsewhere. That post discusses some similarities between the Synoptics and John in the process: Jesus' telling people not to fear, his use of the "truly" language, his references to doing things in "my name", and his calling for repentance, for example.

You can find many other examples of agreements between the Synoptics and John in Lydia McGrew's Hidden In Plain View (Chillicothe, Ohio: DeWard, 2017) and The Eye Of The Beholder (Tampa, Florida: DeWard, 2021).

The Goods Of The Throne And The Goods Of The Footstool

"O my heart, my haughty heart! Dost thou well to be discontent, when God has given thee the whole tree, with all the clusters of comfort growing on it, because he suffers the wind to blow down a few leaves? Christians have two kinds of goods; the goods of the throne and the goods of the footstool; immoveables and moveables. If God has secured those, never let my heart be troubled at the loss of these: indeed, if he had cut off his love, or discovenanted my soul, I had reason to be cast down; but this he hath not done, nor can he do it." (John Flavel, Keeping The Heart [Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 2019], 42)

A High View Of Fiction And A Low View Of Life

If you're so moved by fictional characters accomplishing things that are supposed to be great in fictional books and movies, what are you trying to accomplish in your life?

The Widespread Absence Of A Papacy

One of the reasons for rejecting the papacy is the lack of justification for it. There are apparent contradictions of the concept of the papacy in some New Testament documents and other early sources, but the lack of evidence for the office would be enough reason to not accept it, even if such contradictions didn't exist.

However, Protestants often focus on too narrow a range of contexts in which the papacy is absent in the early sources. A lot of attention is given to passages about Peter in the gospels and Acts and material about church government in the early sources, for example, but we ought to think more broadly about where a papacy could have been mentioned if it existed. A papacy wouldn't have to be mentioned at every conceivable opportunity. But the larger the number and variety of contexts in which a papacy could have been mentioned, but wasn't, the more likely it is that the office didn't exist. What I want to do in this post is provide a few examples of contexts that are often neglected.

The apostles sometimes discussed their upcoming death, what was being done to preserve their teachings, and how Christians should conduct themselves going forward (e.g., Acts 20:17-38, 2 Timothy 3:10-4:8, 2 Peter 1:12-21). If the papacy was considered the foundation of the church, the infallible center of Christian unity throughout church history, the absence of any mention of such a resource in passages like these is significant.

Another group of relevant contexts is the imagery used to refer to relevant entities, such as what imagery is used to refer to the apostles or the church. We get twelve thrones without Peter's throne being differentiated (Matthew 19:28), three pillars without Peter's being differentiated (Galatians 2:9), twelve foundation stones without Peter's being differentiated (Ephesians 2:20, Revelation 21:14), etc.

The early Christians often interact with the objections of their opponents. The gospels respond to the charge that Jesus performed miracles by the power of Satan, Paul responds to his critics in his letters, Justin Martyr wrote a response to Jewish arguments against Christianity, Origen wrote a response to Celsus' anti-Christian treatise, and so on. See here regarding the lack of reference to a papacy in such contexts.

It's important for Protestants (and other opponents of the papacy) to bring up considerations like these, since the absence of early references to a papacy becomes more significant when the absence occurs across a broader range of contexts. If only two pages of early Christian literature were extant, the absence of a papacy (or whatever other concept) would be much less significant than its absence across two million pages. The number of pages matters (assuming the usual diversity of topics you'd get with an increase in such a page number).

One of the reasons why it's become so popular for Catholics to argue for the papacy by an appeal to something like typology or Old Testament precedent is that there's such a lack of evidence in the New Testament and the early patristic literature. So, there's a turn to other sources to try to find what isn't present where we'd most expect to see it.

How can Jesus see seed in Isaiah 53:10?

Michael Brown just posted a good video on the subject. He's responding to Tovia Singer, and one of the points Brown makes is that Singer not only neglects some points Christians have made about the passage, but also neglects what other Jewish sources have said on these issues. I made the same point in an exchange I had with Singer in one of his YouTube threads last year. (You can find other responses to Singer in our archives.)

For more about the Suffering Servant prophecy and the Servant Songs in general, see here.

The Historicity Of Jesus' Burial And Empty Tomb

Mike Winger recently posted a video that makes some good points about the historicity of the account of Jesus' burial in Mark's gospel.

Though the empty tomb is a different issue than the burial of Jesus, some of the information we have about the former has implications for the latter. Regarding the evidence outside the gospels and Acts, see here. On the letters of Peter in particular, see here. And here's something I wrote on Justin Martyr a few years ago, including his citation of a first-century Jewish source acknowledging the empty tomb. In another post, I discussed some of the cumulative effects of the evidence.

The Impossible Achievement

U.S. Women's Soccer has accomplished the impossible. They have made the majority of red-blooded Americans cheer for a women's soccer team.

It was the Canadian soccer team, but still...

Come Thursday, when the US Women's Soccer team goes to play for the Bronze, Americans will proudly cheer on the Australian team.

One cannot diminish the massive impact of what U.S. Women's Soccer has done.  Virtually any sports team representing their country would have the support of the majority of their country, so the fact that they got nearly everyone to cheer their failure truly is an achievement.

Then again, one can hardly say this was a "sports team representing their country".  That's why I can't just say, "When the US goes to play for the Bronze." Because they do not represent our country. They represent themselves.  

Perhaps that's why the country didn't support them in return.

Rapinoe famously went on a crusade a mere four years ago to eject Jaelene Hinkle from the team because Hinkle is an evangelical who refused to play in a scrimmage after U.S. Soccer required players to wear a rainbow jersey in it. That makes it all the more delightful that Rapinoe just lost to a Canadian team that has a transgender player on it.

Megan Rapinoe once famously yelled, "I deserve this!"

Yes.  Yes you do.

Was the Enfield case faked for money?

The recent release of The Conjuring 3 has brought up issues about the Warrens and their financial interests in the paranormal cases they investigated. I discussed the subject in a post about the latest Conjuring movie several weeks ago. I want to address a related issue concerning the subject of the second movie in the series, the Enfield Poltergeist. What financial motives might the people involved in that case have had? One of the most common motives proposed for any sort of fraud is a desire to make money. That's relevant not just to the Warrens, but also to the rest of the people involved in the Enfield case.

Movies can, and often do, make people wealthy. But The Conjuring 2 came along too late to be a good candidate for motivating anybody to fabricate the Enfield case. The same can be said of the television series on Enfield that came out in 2015. Nobody in 1977 was expecting that sort of television series or movie, much less would anybody have been expecting it to make a lot of money. Something like a movie that comes out nearly four decades after a poltergeist case started offers a poor explanation for why the case originated. What critics of the Enfield case need to be more focused on is the opportunities for making money early on, such as by means of media coverage or the publishing of books.

In the process of discussing these issues, I'll be making reference to Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair's Enfield tapes. I'm going to use "MG" to refer to tapes from Grosse's collection. "GP" will refer to those from Playfair's. MG64B is tape 64B in Grosse's collection, GP3A is Playfair's tape 3A, and so on.

Does the gospel of John put words in Jesus' mouth?

"Notice, too, that the narrator puts his own gloss on Jesus' words [in John 7:39] - namely, that he was referring to the Holy Spirit - but he scrupulously refrains from putting this gloss into Jesus' mouth….New Testament scholars are far too ready to assume that the evangelists, and John in particular, felt free to put words into Jesus' mouth if they thought that something was what he would have said and was consonant with his other teaching. But this is not what we find in John. Instead, when John has some interpretation to give his readers, he distinguishes his own interpretation from what Jesus actually says, as in this passage." (Lydia McGrew, The Eye Of The Beholder [Tampa, Florida: DeWard Publishing, 2021], 76)

Lydia McGrew also has a lot of good material on John and the other gospels on her YouTube Channel.

The Priorities Of A Christian

Jesus said that loving God is the greatest commandment (Matthew 22:37-38), and similar themes are found elsewhere in scripture (e.g., Proverbs 9:10). We should often ask ourselves how much we're improving the quantity and quality of our thoughts and others' thoughts about God. (For a discussion of some ways to go about doing that, see here. The post just linked is about evangelism, but has broader applications.) People often refer to improving a culture through something like political action, having more influence on the arts, or changing people's moral standards on a particular issue or series of issues. But how people view God is more foundational. If you want to change yourself and change the culture and the world for the better, start with how God is viewed.

To get some idea of how important it is to do that work, see here regarding the state of the culture. (The post just linked is mostly about the United States, but also addresses other countries to some extent.) Most Americans are so ignorant of the Bible (and other subjects) that they can't name the four gospels, among other religious information they're ignorant about. The Department of Labor just released its annual research on how Americans use their time. In 2020, Americans spent an average of 5.53 hours a day on leisure and sports and about 0.09 hours (around five minutes) on religious and spiritual activities. That doesn't mean everybody was involved in religious and spiritual activities, but only to a small extent. Rather, it looks like a large majority of Americans spend no or almost no time on such things, but that the higher level of activity among a small minority of the population raised the average. See the page just linked for further details. How much is God talked about in schools, in the workplace, on television, in the most popular music, on the most popular web sites, at family gatherings, etc.?

The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father. There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can compass and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go our way with the thought, “Behold I am wise.” But when we come to this master-science, finding that our plumb-line cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought, that vain man would be wise, but he is like a wild ass’s colt; and with the solemn exclamation, “I am but of yesterday, and know nothing.” No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God….

But while the subject humbles the mind it also expands it. He who often thinks of God, will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe. He may be a naturalist, boasting of his ability to dissect a beetle, anatomize a fly, or arrange insects and animals in classes with well nigh unutterable names; he may be a geologist, able to discourse of the megatherium and the plesiosaurus, and all kinds of extinct animals; he may imagine that his science, whatever it is, ennobles and enlarges his mind. I dare say it does, but after all, the most excellent study for expanding the soul, is the science of Christ, and him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity. Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity. And, whilst humbling and expanding, this subject is eminently consolatory. Oh, there is, in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost, there is a balsam for every sore. Would you lose your sorrows? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. (Charles Spurgeon)

Craig Keener And Michael Brown On Their Upcoming Commentaries

Michael Brown recently interviewed Craig Keener. During the course of the interview, both men talked about some Biblical commentaries they're working on, Keener on Mark and Brown on Isaiah. Go here for the beginning of that discussion and here for some further comments during a later segment of the interview. It looks like both commentaries are a long way from being completed, and Keener's should be a multi-volume one.

Over the Garden Wall

I thoroughly enjoyed watching the miniseries Over the Garden Wall (2014). It's one of the most unique and quirky series in recent memory.

There are a hodgepodge of influences. The setting is predominantly but not exclusively 18th-19th century New England or the Midwest. The specific season is Autumn; I suppose Halloween best suits. Aesthetically it elicits an old timey wimey Americana feel. Other influences I noticed: the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, gothic horror, Peter Rabbit, the Wind in the Willows, Betty Boop, Shirley Temple, Little Nemo, Studio Ghibli, even Disney (e.g. a songbird albeit a sarcastic one). Likewise I detected shades of Dante. For example, the opening chapter begins with the characters lost in a deep dark wood. Our protagonist is "midway" between childhood and adulthood. Also, Beatrice serves as a guide. And the ten shorts seem to roughly correspond to Dante's ten divisions in Inferno.

Story-wise, it's about a pair of brothers on a journey or pilgrimage to return home. One wonders if the story is allegory or reality. Is the pilgrimage in the similitude of a dream (cf. Bunyan) or is it meant to be real - a world between worlds, perhaps a limbo between life and death (cf. Dante)?

The characters are universal archetypes. Wirt is a Byronic hero. Greg is a knight of faith. It's interesting the two brothers are juxtaposed with one another like this - one the prototypical heathen, the other a kind of Christian. The Woodsman is a wild-eyed prophet in the wilderness. The Beast, in my view, is the personification of hopelessness: cue Dante's "abandon hope, all ye who enter here". Same with places and events. For instance, the Unknown seems to represent the afterlife or something like it. At the same time, there's a subversion of expectations in Over the Garden's archetypes (e.g. the big bad wolf is a tame pup).

Pilgrimage stories typically consummate in reaching a destination where the end is the narratival summum bonum. The Pilgrim's Progress' end is the celestial city where God and his people dwell. The Paradiso's end is the beatific vision: "l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle". Over the Garden Wall's end seems to be romantic love in the guise of a girl named Sara. If so, I'm afraid that's a bit of a letdown, for it would suggest (among other things) that even the best secular pilgrimage or journey stories like Over the Garden Wall haven't evolved much since Homer's Odyssey in which Odysseus longs to return home to reunite with his beloved Penelope. Perhaps this is what adolescent or youthful love finds most grand, but then it'd better suit springtime rather than the autumnal themes which are what pervade the entire series. Perhaps this reflects the sad fact that our secular culture has no higher aim or ideal in life to live for than romantic love.