At Ease In Zion

"I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God which cost me nothing." (2 Samuel 24:24)

At ease in Zion! Where is then the cross,
The Master's cross, all pain and shame defying?
Where is the true disciple's cross and cup,
The daily conflict and the daily dying,
The fearless front of faith, the noble self-denying?

At ease in Zion! Shall no sense of shame
Arouse us from our self-indulgent dreaming?
No pity for the world? No love to Him
Who braved life's sorrow and man's disesteeming,
Us to God's light and joy by His dark death redeeming?
(Horatius Bonar, "At Ease In Zion", Hymns Of The Nativity [London, England: James Nisbet & Co., 1879], 35-36)

The Credibility Of Jesus' Relatives As Witnesses

Their testimony is significant in a lot of contexts, such as the events surrounding Christmas and Easter. Here's a summary of the factors involved, taken from a post I wrote last year:

Thousands Of Pigs

People often make much of the large number of witnesses to an event, such as the hundreds of resurrection witnesses mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15:5-8 or the thousands Jesus fed in the feedings of the four thousand and the five thousand. That's appropriate. The large numbers involved give us some useful information about the plausibility of explaining the reports by appealing to hallucinations, dishonesty, and so forth.

But there are other numbers involved that often don't get as much attention as they should. Referring to an empty tomb belonging to a named member of the Jewish Sanhedrin in a known location doesn't involve a claim that a large number of people verified the emptiness of the tomb. But the nature of the circumstances is such that the empty tomb would have been verifiable by a large number of people and probably would have been verified by some.

The main example I want to focus on here, though, is one that I don't think has gotten much attention. The episode with the possessed man in Mark 5:1-20 didn't involve hundreds or thousands of people, as far as we can tell, but it did involve thousands of pigs (verse 13). That should have been memorable, if it happened. And expensive for the owners of the pigs. And would have stood out in other ways. When Jesus tells the man who was exorcized to tell others what happened, he does so (verses 19-20).

Critics sometimes make an issue of the private nature of Biblical miracle accounts (e.g., Gabriel's annunciation to Mary, the Mount of Transfiguration). But much of what the gospels (and other Biblical sources) report is of a highly public nature. The account in Mark 5 is strikingly public, publicized, and verifiable and falsifiable to a first-century audience.

Christians In The United States Government Trying To Stop UFO Research

Lue Elizondo, a former high-ranking official in the United States government's efforts to research UFOs, has said that he encountered significant opposition within the Department of Defense and Pentagon from Christians who said that the research should stop. According to them, we already know that UFOs are demons, and we shouldn't research them any further. Here's Ron James, of the UFO organization MUFON, discussing the topic. And here's Michael Knowles of the Daily Wire expressing agreement with Elizondo's Christian critics. Knowles' video includes a clip of Elizondo talking about the subject. James refers to other Christians who hold other views. And Elizondo may be oversimplifying the situation in some relevant way. But many Christians are like the critics Elizondo referred to, with Knowles being an example.

Would you have expected UFOs and aliens to be like this?

I want to make a point about UFOs that I've made in the past about near-death experiences (NDEs). Let's say it's the 1920s. Somebody tells you that over the next century, there's going to be a lot of work done in a couple of areas, NDEs and UFOs. They tell you about all of the research, documentation, and such that will occur. What would you expect to be discovered?

Matthew 5 And Miracles Among Non-Christians

A common objection to Christianity is that miracles are reported among non-Christians, not just among Christians, or that miracles are reported to a particular degree or in a particular way among non-Christians. I've interacted with that argument many times, like here. A passage in the Bible that I don't recall having seen cited in this context before is Matthew 5:44-45. The call to pray for our enemies seems to imply that miracles can happen among non-Christians. It's doubtful that such an unqualified call to pray for our enemies would be intended to be limited to activities like praying for their salvation or would be so limited in practice. It's to be expected that such an unqualified principle would sometimes involve prayers for healing and other relevant types of supernatural activity. The examples of God's kindness to unbelievers mentioned in verse 45 are broad, which seems to underscore how broadly we can pray for them. The similar sentiment found in Acts 14:17 is likewise broad. So, the Matthew 5 passage can be added to others (like the ones discussed in my post linked above) showing that the occurrence of miracles among non-Christians is not only consistent with Christianity, but even affirmed by it and in its most foundational sources.

What should we make of UFOs?

The subject has been in the news lately. It deserves far more attention than it gets, in the news and elsewhere. That's partly the media's fault. It's more the fault of the average person, though, who's much less interested in such subjects than he should be. In a post shortly before his death, Steve Hays outlined some explanatory options for UFOs from a Christian perspective. I'll briefly summarize the view I currently hold, though UFOs aren't one of my main areas of study. Since the view I hold is unpopular and doesn't get much attention, I think it's worth bringing up and expanding upon as one of the explanatory options that should be considered. Steve mentions it in his post, but doesn't say much about it.

The Price You Pay To Start Baptismal Regeneration At The Great Commission

Advocates of baptismal regeneration sometimes claim that it didn't go into effect until the time of the Great Commission, thereby avoiding arguments against the doctrine from the thief on the cross and other earlier individuals justified apart from baptism. There are some problems with that position, however:

More Early Contexts In Which An Assumption Of Mary Isn't Mentioned

During the earliest centuries of church history, many subjects that are relevant to an assumption of Mary are discussed without any mention of her being assumed. There are discussions about people who were resurrected and people who were bodily taken up to heaven, for example. Enoch, Elijah, Jesus, Paul, and other figures are mentioned when the relevant topics come up, and there are even occasional references to lesser figures we don't normally think about in these contexts, like Habakkuk and the two witnesses in Revelation 11. See here, here, here, and here, among other posts in our archives, for more about the background to this post.

Here are a few other relevant sources, which I don't think I've posted here before:

Cyprian (Treatises, 7, On The Mortality, 23), citing Enoch and the righteous in Wisdom 4:11

Didymus the Blind (in Robert Hill, trans., Commentary On Genesis [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Of America Press, 2016], 5, pp. 138-40), citing Enoch and Elijah

Ambrose (On The Death Of Satyrus, 2:94), citing Enoch and Elijah

John Chrysostom (Commentary On The Acts Of The Apostles, 2), citing Elijah and Jesus

The Gospel Of Nicodemus, 2:9, citing Enoch and Elijah as the two witnesses of Revelation 11

Against The Invocation Of Saints

That's the title of a book I hadn't heard about before I listened to The Other Paul's video with the author, Seth Kasten, earlier today. You can order the book here. I ordered it earlier today and expect to read it soon. It looks like there's some overlap between Seth's material on the topic and mine, but also some material we each cover that the other one didn't. It's a neglected subject and one that heavily favors Protestantism over Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The video linked above is worth watching, since the topic is so important, so neglected, and seldom addressed in that much depth.

What Needs To Be Addressed In Gospel Authorship Disputes

Discussions will often focus inordinately on one Christian, like Papias or Irenaeus, or a small group of Christian sources. Some of the evidence that most needs to be addressed won't even come up. For example, what about the practical issue of how the gospels and similar documents were distinguished from one another in contexts like their use in church services, their being stored in libraries, and in the process of looking up information in them? In modern contexts, we use means such as titles on the covers of books and titles on book spines to distinguish one book from another. How were distinctions made during the earliest years when the gospels circulated (not just the second century and later)? We know that distinguishing among the relevant documents by means of author names was widely practiced from the second century onward, and continuity makes more sense than discontinuity. Since those who think the documents were distinguished differently in the first century or who want us to be agnostic on the subject bear the burden of proof (given the discontinuity they're giving credence to), what proof do they have to offer? Another significant issue that often gets neglected is what non-Christians (heretics, Jews, and pagans) said about authorship issues, not just Christian sources. People often suggest that somebody like Papias or Irenaeus had a Christian bias that makes him unreliable. How, then, do they explain the gospel authorship attributions of non-Christians? There's also the fact that people so often underestimate the Christian sources, such as their earliness, number, variety, and credibility. Both Christian and non-Christian sources frequently questioned traditional authorship attributions (e.g., Christian doubts about Revelation, non-Christian doubts about Daniel) and left documents anonymous or attributed to a group rather than an individual (e.g., The Martyrdom Of Polycarp). They were capable of doing the same for the gospels if the evidence warranted it. For a collection of resources on issues like these, see here. And here's one about Matthew in particular.

Since Papias comes up so often in these discussions (but see the posts just linked for examples of sources other than Papias before the time of Irenaeus), do a Ctrl F search for "Papias" here for responses to common objections related to him. I wrote a review at Amazon of a book about Papias, a review you can read here, and it addresses some relevant issues as well. Keep in mind that even if Papias' comments that are typically cited about the writings of Mark and Matthew are about documents other than our canonical gospels (an unlikely scenario), his comments would still provide evidence for the traditional gospel authorship attributions. It would be a lesser and more indirect form of evidence, but, on balance, it would still be evidence for the traditional attributions. His comments would still provide evidence that Mark and Matthew were literate, that they had interest in writing about gospel-related issues in particular, etc. If Papias was referring to something Matthew wrote that was roughly analogous to the hypothetical Q document, for example, instead of our canonical Matthew, that would still increase the plausibility of Matthew's having written the canonical gospel attributed to him. It's not as though ancient authors were only capable of writing one document. Since so many of Eusebius' citations of Papias are about lesser-known traditions he commented on (about Judas' death, about premillennialism, etc.), it would be plausible that Eusebius also cited some of Papias' comments of that nature related to Mark and Matthew. Or the Mark comments are about our canonical Mark, whereas the Matthew comments are about a previous writing of Matthew that Papias discussed in the process of addressing the canonical gospel attributed to him. Whatever the scenario, none of the typical skeptical objections to Papias' comments amount to much with regard to Papias, and they're even less significant with regard to the evidence for the gospels' authorship more broadly.

Athenagoras' Belief In Praying Only To God

It seems that Athenagoras, a second-century Christian, held a view of the creator/creation distinction that involved praying only to God. When addressing the gods of paganism in his A Plea For The Christians, he sometimes brings up the creator/creation distinction, such as when he refers to "distinguishing and separating the uncreated and the created" at the beginning of section 15. That distinction comes up in section 13 as well, where he responds to the objection that Christians don't offer sacrifices to the gods. He explains that instead of offering sacrifices to the gods of paganism, Christians offer other types of sacrifices to the one true God. Prayer is one of those sacrifices:

When, holding God to be this Framer of all things, who preserves them in being and superintends them all by knowledge and administrative skill, we "lift up holy hands" to Him, what need has He further of a hecatomb [sacrifice]?

"For they, when mortals have transgress’d or fail’d
To do aright, by sacrifice and pray’r,
Libations and burnt-offerings, may be soothed."

Notice that he's approaching the discussion under the theme of God's being "Framer of all things", the creator/creation distinction I referred to earlier. So, he seems to be discussing what should be offered to God alone, not any created being. His reference to "lifting up holy hands" is about prayer, as 1 Timothy 2:8 illustrates. (Athenagoras also draws material from 1 Timothy 2 elsewhere, in the closing section of the document, which increases the likelihood that he's drawing from it here.) And the quote of the Iliad that follows also combines the themes of sacrifice and prayer, adding further evidence that Athenagoras had prayer in mind. Prayer is compared to offering a sacrifice that should be given to God alone. Though he's responding to paganism, the reasoning implies that we also shouldn't pray to angels or saints. The creator/creation distinction he keeps making can't be limited to pagan gods. And, like other early Christian sources, Athenagoras refers to praying to God without ever advocating praying to saints or angels. He keeps criticizing the practice of praying to pagan gods (e.g., "as to a god who can hear" in section 26), but only offers prayer to God as an alternative. Even when he writes about how the pagans pursue gods who used to be ordinary humans who lived on earth, he never offers praying to saints, who were better humans who lived on earth, as an alternative. He never makes a distinction between some higher form of prayer that can only be offered to God and a lower type that can be given to other beings. Reading that kind of distinction into the text is a less likely interpretation and places the burden of proof on the shoulders of the person advocating that view, a burden he won't be able to carry. An unqualified reference to prayer is most naturally taken as a reference to prayer in general, not just some subcategory of prayer. The best explanation of the evidence as a whole is that Athenagoras believed that we should pray only to God.

Correcting Wikipedia's Article On The Enfield Poltergeist

I recently ran a Google search for "Enfield Poltergeist", and the Wikipedia article on the case came up as the first result. It's gotten millions of views. Wikipedia is popular in a lot of contexts, and that's often a bad thing. On paranormal topics, Wikipedia is inordinately influenced by skeptics. The Enfield article has changed over time as it's been edited, and it will change in the future, but I want to respond to it as I saw it when I recently came across it again. As far as I recall, it was pretty bad on the occasions when I saw it in previous years as well. The skeptics who have been editing the article have had almost two decades to work on it. Let's take a look at the quality of their efforts.

Why should we believe the Bible?

1. A very nice 2-part series on why we should believe the Bible from Shane Rosenthal. It's especially nice to see underutilized arguments featured front and center in Rosenthal's series (e.g. argument from prophecy). Glad to see Rosenthal still doing good work for the kingdom post-White Horse Inn.

• Part the first
• Part the second

2. Similarly see Rosenthal's excellent post "Can We Trust Luke's History of the Early Jesus Movement?". (Someday I'd like to pick up Colin Hemer's The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History, but as far as I'm aware it's only available used or secondhand and all the copies I've seen are quite expensive.)

3. Speaking of Rosenthal, I appreciate Rosenthal's interviews with Lydia McGrew about her own fine works in this area over on The Humble Skeptic podcast. Lydia's most recent book Testimonies to the Truth: Why You Can Trust the Gospels looks like it'd be quite stimulating as well as edifying to read. It seems aimed at being a port of entry for the reliability of the Gospels (and afterwards, I assume, one can embark on her other three longer works for further voyages). I wonder how it will compare to a standard bearer on the reliability of the Gospels like Craig Blomberg's Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey (3rd edition). I'm sure it'd be ideal to read and study both.

Jesus' Happiness

"Jesus himself — and all that God is for us in him — is our great reward, nothing less. 'I am the bread of life....If anyone thirsts, let him come to me' (John 6:35; 7:37). Salvation is not mainly the forgiveness of sins, but mainly the fellowship of Jesus (1 Corinthians 1:9). Forgiveness gets everything out of the way so this can happen. If this fellowship is not all-satisfying, there is no great salvation. If Christ is gloomy, or even calmly stoical, eternity will be a long, long sigh. But the glory and grace of Jesus is that he is, and always will be, indestructibly happy. I say it is his glory, because gloom is not glorious. And I say it is his grace, because the best thing he has to give us is his joy. 'These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full' (John 15:11; see also 17:13)….In Hebrews 1:8-9 God speaks to the Son, not to the angels, with these astonishing words: 'Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. . . .You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.' Jesus Christ is the happiest being in the universe. His gladness is greater than all the angelic gladness of heaven. He mirrors perfectly the infinite, holy, indomitable mirth of his Father." (John Piper, Seeing And Savoring Jesus Christ [Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2004], 35-36)

Did Irenaeus condemn prayer to angels?

Yes, though advocates of the practice sometimes suggest otherwise by adding qualifiers Irenaeus didn't include. Let's look at a couple of relevant passages.

If somebody prays for you, does it follow that you can pray to him?

Obviously not. Yet, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox often act as if passages in the church fathers about how the saints pray for us are evidence that those fathers believed in praying to the saints. Or let's say that somebody lives a thousand miles from you, but is part of the same denomination you belong to. And that denomination has set aside a particular day to pray about something. Let's say it's praying for missionaries. So, that person is praying with you for missionaries, in the sense that you're both praying for them on that day. Does the fact that he's praying with you prove that you can pray to him? Would you go into your bedroom, say a prayer to this man who lives a thousand miles away, and expect him to hear the prayer? No, you wouldn't. If you prayed for him, would it make sense for somebody to conclude that you must have no objection to praying to him as well? No. In that sort of everyday experience, we make the relevant distinction between praying for an individual and praying to him, praying with somebody and praying to somebody, being prayed for by somebody and praying to that person. And Protestants aren't the only ones who make those distinctions. Catholics and Orthodox do as well. They have to. They couldn't function in everyday life without doing so. But when they get into discussions about praying to the saints (and angels), they often act as though all of these distinctions can be disregarded. Supposedly, citing a church father's reference to how the saints pray for us or with us or how we pray for them is sufficient to prove that the father believed in praying to the saints.

The Flattery Machine

We're in another presidential election season. That means we'll be getting a lot of flattery from a lot of politicians trying to get our vote. We'll hear about how we're such hard workers who deserve better leaders, how the nation's problems are so much the fault of some small minority of people rather than the average person, etc. Businesses and advertisers flatter us in an attempt to get our money, and politicians flatter us in an attempt to get our vote. And all of that is accompanied by a lot of talk about self-esteem, not letting anybody judge you, not letting anybody put you down, following your heart, etc. The fact that people are aware that they live in that sort of atmosphere of flattery and realize how misleading it is doesn't mean that it doesn't adversely affect them. You don't have to buy all of it in order to buy some of it. "Flattery is like perfume. Sniff it. Don't swallow it." A few facts to keep in mind as you take in all of the flattery of the presidential election season:

Christ Leaving For Other Lands

An early view of America:

"I am credibly informed, that multitudes of England, and especially worthy preachers, and silenced preachers of London, are gone to New England; and I know one learned holy preacher, who hath written against the Arminians, who is gone thither. Our Blessed Lord Jesus, who cannot get leave to sleep with His spouse in this land, is going to seek an inn where He will be better entertained….Christ is putting on His clothes, and making Him, like an ill-handled stranger, to go to other lands….There is a cloud gathering and a storm coming. This land shall be turned upside down; and if ever the Lord spake to me (think on it), Christ's bride will be glad of a hole to hide her head in, and the dragon may so prevail as to chase the woman and her man-child over sea." (Samuel Rutherford, Letters Of Samuel Rutherford [Carlisle, Pennsylvania: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2012], 56, 121-22)

What We Should Make Of Passages Like Luke 4:16-30

Lydia McGrew recently posted a good video about an unjustified bias against "the possibility that events have happened on multiple occasions that are broadly similar to each other" (e.g., Jesus' cleansing the temple twice). Two later videos, here and here, discuss the example of Luke 4:16-30 and how it relates to some similar material in Matthew and Mark. People often overestimate such similarities and underestimate other factors involved.

Here's a post I wrote last year that provides some extrabiblical examples. And a post I wrote about Jesus' relatives discusses the plausibility of Luke's use of James the brother of Jesus as a source for the Luke 4 passage.