Were There Seven or Six Recorded Sayings of Jesus on the Cross?

http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=5402

As a follow up see this article:

http://triablogue.blogspot.ca/2012/04/must-we-always-forgive.html

Why Don't More Ancient Sources Mention The Events Of Matthew 27:52-53?

Matthew 27:52-53 was brought up again in a recent thread. You can read what I wrote about the passage there or see my fuller treatment of the subject here. Since critics of Christianity frequently cite the passage, Christians ought to be prepared to address it.

Secret thoughts of an unlikely convert

Rosaria Butterfield has given a lot of helpful answers to tough questions here.

In a similar vein, her interview with Marvin Olasky is well worth watching.

I appreciate the fact that she doesn't sugar-coat her thoughts and struggles in her conversion to Christianity, nor in her life since she has become a Christian. She counted the cost, and obeyed.

Likewise I appreciate the fact that the Christians in her life didn't sugar-coat Christianity to her. They gave it to her straight (no pun intended). They leveled with her. Speaking the truth in love. Anything less would've robbed her of true comfort and peace in Christ.

This is real Christianity. Christianity in the nitty gritty. Christianity dealing with people where they are.

The next step

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/unitarian-universalists-would-prefer-their-polyamory-activists-keep-quiet/2013/03/22/f3d14eaa-9333-11e2-8ea1-956c94b6b5b9_story.html

Universal justification

http://www.wlsessays.net/files/BeckerUniversal.rtf

I'm a Sith Lord!

 

Fr Alvin Kimel says:

I remember when I first came across J. I. Packer’s introduction to Owen’s *The Death of Death in the Death of Christ* in which he approvingly affirmed Owen’s understanding of limited atonement. He inferred from this that the preacher may not declare to his congregation “Christ died for you.” He is only permitted to declare, “Christ died for sinners.” At that moment I realized I could never be a Calvinist.

IMHO, the important question is, what kind of preaching does a doctrine authorize and sanction? If a doctrine does not allow me to say, “God loves you and wills your salvation,” then it must be heterodox. It cannot be gospel.

I honestly do not understand the rise of the new Calvinism within evangelicalism. It simply does not preach as gospel. There always remains the dark side of God, the spectre of double predestination. 5-point Calvinism is profoundly skewed. I do not know how it can be reconciled to orthodox Christianity.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/03/whats-wrong-with-calvinism/comment-page-1/#comment-40106 

No hiding anymore. Fr. Kimel has blown my cover. I’m a Sith Lord. I worship the dark side of God.

I flunked out of Jedi Knight Academy. I tried to be good. Really I did. But the devil has all the best tunes (as the old saying goes).

Coming from an Anglican turned Roman Catholic turned Eastern Orthodox, I’d be worried if my compass spun around as much as Kimel’s. Hold up a magnet and here he comes!

In Kimel’s theology, the entrance to Tophet has a sign overhead saying:

God loves you

And wills your salvation

Welcome to Hell!

Honestly, what difference does it make to the damned if you say “God loves you” or “God hates you”?

“I love you, but I can’t save you.” Who cares–for all the good it does?

As far as preaching the Gospel is concerned, I think it stimulates self-examination if sinners don’t presume that God loves them. If they don’t take that for granted. Taking God’s love for granted is a way of taking God for granted.

A better motivation for conversion is for sinners to find out if God loves them. To discover whether or not God loves them by their very response to the offer of the Gospel.

You can base a good evangelistic message on “Come and see” or “Come and taste.”

45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see” (Jn 1:45-46).

29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him (Jn 4:29-30).

17 The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price (Rev 22:17).

Job search

In case you’re wondering why I’ve gone silent, it’s because last week I was laid off from my job. A large portion of [my former] company’s business is with the federal government and government contractors, and revenue was off significantly this quarter (Jan-Mar). There is no projected end to “the sequester”, and so they are adjusting their workforce accordingly.

I’ve shifted my efforts to a job search. It doesn’t feel like it, but it’s been a productive couple of weeks.

Happily never after

Ann Druyan has written the following about Carl Sagan:

When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me - it still sometimes happens - and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don't ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous - not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance....That pure chance could be so generous and so kind....That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time....That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful....The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don't think I'll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.

Also:

Now Carl's fever raged. I kept kissing him and rubbing my face against his burning, unshaven cheek. The heat of his skin was oddly reassuring. I wanted to do it enough so that his vibrant, physical self would become an indelibly etched sensory memory....I sit surrounded by cartons of mail from people all over the planet who mourn Carl's loss. Many of them credit him with their awakenings. Some of them say that Carl's example has inspired them to work for science and reason against the forces of superstition and fundamentalism. These thoughts comfort me and lift me up out of my heartache. They allow me to feel, without resorting to the supernatural, that Carl lives.

Given Druyan's worldview, love itself is a sort of illusion foisted upon us to achieve the continuation of our species. Shouldn't she refuse to take "refuge" in such an "illusion"? Shouldn't she face the truth head-on, flinty-eyed and stone-faced?

Given Druyan's worldview, not to mention Sagan himself saying stuff like we are nothing more than a collection of atoms, how is Druyan's panegyric for Sagan substantively different than a little child mourning the loss of a sandcastle as the tides wash it away?

What's telling is how Druyan's words expose her longing for that which is lasting and everlasting. She lives knowing all things must end, yet she yearns for more.

Some may think there's an achingly beautiful, enchanting quality to Druyan's words. But to me her words are at best like moss decorating dead wood. Or worse like sirens calling to Odysseus. Where's the allure when the truth steals away life and love? Fairy tales tell of princesses kissing frogs that turn into Prince Charming to wed and live happily ever after. That's enchanting. But how would it be enchanting to learn we're all just frogs, and there's no Prince Charming?

God's Wisdom In Choosing The Resurrection Witnesses

A common objection to the resurrection is that the risen Jesus didn't appear to more and better witnesses. Why didn't he appear to Pilate, Tiberius, or the Roman senate, for example?

I've addressed that objection in previous posts. I won't repeat all that I said. What I want to do here is focus on several of the issues involved.

Luther's posterity

Last week, Jordan Cooper linked to an old post of mine:

http://justandsinner.blogspot.com/2013/03/why-interacting-with-reformed.html

Referring to this:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-death-of-lutheranism.html

This, in turn, prompted some of his loyal readers to try leaving comments on my old thread.

Cooper’s title (“Why Interacting with Reformed Christians Can Sometimes be Frustrating”) is ironic considering the fact that he himself never interacts with the argument.

J. Dean said...

    Hmm.. I pointed out that he put together a caricature of Lutheranism, and my post didn't stand...

That’s because, on current settings, if you try to comment on a post that’s been up for more than five days, your comment is automatically redirected to the moderation box. It’s a way for us to track new comments on old posts. Posts that have disappeared into the archive.

Jordan Cooper said...

    Well, that's not surprising. Someone who talks like this doesn't want serious, thoughtful interaction.

    No the confessional Calvinists I know are for the most part much more respectful and thoughtful than this Steve fellow. But unfortunately, it is the people like this that are apt to contact you when you critique Calvinism.

Let’s see how “serious, thoughtful, and respectful” Cooper’s Lutheran buddies are:

 Daniel Casey said...

    now my brain hurts

  

Is that what Cooper meant by serious, thoughtful, and respectful?

Anonymous said...

    Yeah, that was pretty bad. He sadly mischaracterizes the Lutheran (and classical Anglican) view of the sacraments and thus ignores their place within the life of faith.

Doubting Thomas

Is that what Cooper meant by serious, thoughtful, and respectful?

  

Lutheran said...

    Wow. You can't argue with that level of ignorance.

   

Is that what Cooper meant by serious, thoughtful, and respectful?

J. Dean said...

    I have to confess that that was a pretty sad and pathetic straw man argument.

Is that what Cooper meant by serious, thoughtful, and respectful?

  

mattlush said...

    Absolute ignorance.

   

Is that what Cooper meant by serious, thoughtful, and respectful?

Let’s turn to the comments that some of them tried to leave on my old post:

Daniel Baker:

"For folks like you, bread and wine become a substitute Jesus." No substitute; we believe It is Jesus.

But, of course, if the bread and wine are not Jesus, then the communion elements become a substitute Jesus in Lutheran piety.

Martin Jack:

"It's a spiritual delusion to ground salvation or the assurance of salvation in diligent attention to externals." Umm, Jesus dying on a cross is an "external", unless Jesus died for your sins in your heart.

Is Jesus doing something on our behalf and in our place equivalent to us doing something? Is Jesus dying for us equivalent to us performing rituals? Why is Jack oblivious to that rudimentary distinction?

Cole Johnson:

Then what exactly must a person _DO_ for salvation? This argument sounds a little like the pot calling a kettle Pharisaical.

What a sad question for a Christian to ask. What must a person do for salvation? What about repenting of your sins and trusting in the person and work of Christ?

J. Dean:

Funny... I've heard ritualism ascribed to Calvinism as well... By the way, what's wrong with ritual? I'm a little lost as to why it's such a bad thing to have a set repetition of events. And I have news for you: EVERY church (yes, even CoWo churches) have ritual, whether or not they realize it.

Why can’t Dean tell the difference between rituals and ritualism? Trusting in rituals for your salvation is hardly equivalent to having rituals.

 As for universal objective justification, I profess not to be an expert on the topic, but what you're describing is universalism, and I have yet to hear any confessional Lutheran I know of subscribe to universalism. The two are not one and the same.

Here’s what I originally said:

If that wasn’t bad enough, “universal objective justification” has become mainstream dogma in contemporary Lutheranism. Instead of justification by faith alone as the doctrine on which the church stands for falls, we now have justification minus faith. Believers and unbelievers alike are justified. Muslims are justified. Atheists are justified. The damned are justified.

Did I describe universalism? No.

Rather, I pointed out that if, according universal objective justification, both believers and unbelievers are justified, then Lutherans have repudiated justification by faith alone. If even unbelievers are justified, then faith can’t even be a necessary, much less sufficient, condition of justification.

It’s not a complicated argument. Why does Dean find that so hard to grasp?

Justification by faith makes justification contingent on faith. Indeed, faith alone. Well, if everyone is justified, including unbelievers, then sola fide goes right out the window.

Perhaps you should actually engage in discussion with real and vibrant Lutherans rather than just construct a straw man to blow over with superficial counters.

Well, I’ve engaged in discussion with Paul McCain, Edward Reiss, and Josh Strodtbeck–among others. I doubt they’d appreciate Dean’s demotion. Are they dead, unreal Lutherans?

Dirk Jensen:

What about John 20:23 "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” So what is your proof text for that being Pharisaical?

How did Jensen leap from a promise made to the Apostles to a Lutheran pastor? Where’s the connecting argument? Does Jensen think that everything Jesus said to the disciples applies to Lutheran pastors?

What about this statement:

Behold, when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him into the house that he enters (Lk 22:10).

How often do Lutheran pastors do that?

What about this statement:

Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them,’ and he will send them at once (Mt 21:2-3).

How often to Lutheran pastors do that?

 Jesus said it, just as He also said "This IS my body...This IS my blood." Well I guess from your post further down that you don't like proof text. What then are you saying, you don't believe God's Word?

Jesus also said “I am the vine.” Is Jesus a grapevine?

You attack beliefs that you obviously do not clearly understand, then you call it Pharisaical?

Ah, yes, because the Lutherans at Cooper’s blog are such theological sophisticates.

Elmo High

-i-

Fred was a wunderkind at St. Elmo High. Top of his class in all the math and sciences courses. Not to mention a walking Almanac of obscure facts and figures. Even by his junior year, he had full scholarships to Caltech and MIT sitting on the kitchen table, in fat, unopened envelops.

Unfortunately, being a precocious scientific genius didn’t garner him the attention he truly craved. He was still invisible to girls–especially the really pretty ones.

Sitting in the cafeteria, he’d often glance up from his iPad to steal furtive glances at Buck and Tiffany. Buck was QB1 on the football team. The star quarterback. He’d already led his team to several state championships in junior high and high school.

Buck had awesome abs and teeth an orthodontist would kill for. At 6’ 4”, he towered over Fred like a Redwood to a dwarf pine.

Fred envied Buck’s enormous self-confidence. Resented Buck’s magnetic effect on all the girls. Roiled with jealousy every time he saw Buck wrap his manly biceps around Tiffany.

If Buck was a god, Tiffany was a goddess. A walking pin-up. Her hair was like spun gold. Her lips were like…oh, well…you get the picture.

Tiffany drove Buck to school every day in her Mercedes two-seater convertible. The one Dad gave her on 16^th birthday.

Most of the time, Buck barely knew that Fred inhabited the same spacetime continuum. For one thing, it’s not as if Fred and Buck stood at eye-level. Fred would have to use a stepladder to pull that off. So Buck literally never met Fred face-to-face. That would be like making eye contact with a Chihuahua. It takes a conscious effort. And it’s not as if they normally took the same classes.

However, in their senior year, mandatory P.E. finally brought the two together. Watching Fred try to punt reduced Buck to gales of uncontrollable laughter. His square, dimpled chin quivered with mirth. Not just Buck. Tiffany too. She could barely catch her breath between fits of squealing laughter.

But that turned out to be a tactical mistake on Buck’s part. One slight too many.

You see, Fred had been secretly working on a body-swap machine in his basement. He hadn’t gotten beyond animal experiments. Transferring the consciousness of a cat to the body of a gerbil, and vice versa. That experiment was successful–at least from the gerbil’s perspective. There was evidence that the cat took a less sanguine view of the role reversal.

Thus far Fred hadn’t tried his hand at human experimentation. That would be unethical. But his recent humiliation put the kabash on his scientific scruples.

-ii-

You can imagine Buck’s confusion when he woke up in Fred’s bedroom. And that was nothing compared to the double take when he caught sight of his new self in the bathroom mirror.

For his part, Fred reveled in his sheer, newfound dudeness. The quintessence of dudeness. A novel and heady experience.

He enjoyed taking Tiffany out on a date the first two times. But by the third date there was no denying the fact that Tiffany wasn’t a sparkling conversationalist. To Fred’s consternation, Tina couldn’t even deconstruct the relationship between Charles Swann and Odette de Crécy in Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. And her grasp of the Riemann zeta function was even more disappointing. Clearly Buck saw something else in Tiffany.

After the third date, Fred dumped her for Charlotte. Charlotte was a rather plain, but vivacious churchgoing girl with a passion for Victorian novels and ornithology. Her command of Diophantine Equations was admittedly shaky, but her company was so delightful that Fred found he could look past that entirely.

Initially, Fred was worried that he might not be any good at football, but it turned out that football was like riding a bicycle. Muscle memory. After years of practice, Buck’s body instinctively knew just what to do.

Meanwhile, Buck was floundering in the math and science. His grades plummeted. And Fred’s mom couldn’t fathom the overnight change in her son’s personality. It’s as if he was a whole nother person. Little did she suspect.

But that wasn’t the most surprising turn of events. Buck’s love life nosedived. You see, Buck wasn’t the supremely self-assured individual that Fred always imagined him to be. Inside the body of a jock was a shy, tongue-tied, stuttering, insecure adolescent. He was just as bashful and awkward as Fred had been. But as long as Buck had Buck’s body, it didn’t show. He never had to ask girls out on a date. He just waited for them to ask. Take a number and stand in line. He was used to having girls throw themselves at him. Stage catfights for the privilege. He could take his pick. All he had to do was play the strong silent type and let them do the rest.

But now that Buck found himself trapped inside the body of a gawky, ninety-pound weakling, he was Fred without Fred’s compensatory virtues. A total loser.

After savoring the succulent fruits of revenge, Fred had mercy on Buck. No, he didn’t give him his body back. Are you kidding?

But after Fred won the Heisman Trophy, and later became the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, Fred hired Buck to be his gardener.

Can the Bible be proven wrong?

Some professing Christians reject a dogmatic commitment to the inerrancy or inspiration of Scripture. In some cases they actually reject the inerrancy and/or inspiration of Scripture, while in other cases they regard the inerrancy/inspiration of Scripture as a dispensable doctrine. I have in mind people like Michael Patton, F. F. Bruce, and Craig A. Evans.

Their justification for this position is that if your Christian faith is founded on the inerrancy or plenary-verbal inspiration of Scripture, then it only takes a single mistake to destroy your faith. There’s no give in your belief-system.

From their viewpoint, that’s a very brittle, precarious faith. One hairline crack in the granite façade and a moment later the entire edifice crumbles in a heap of dust.

And they’d say, in defense of their position, that this isn’t just a hypothetical danger. They can point out that in real life, you have devout Christians who lose their faith when they become disillusioned with the inerrancy of Scripture. One mistake, however trivial, and their whole faith came crashing down.

Therefore, it’s more prudent to have some expendable beliefs. Have something to throw over the back of the sled to distract the wolves. That includes inerrancy, inspiration, the historicity of Gen 1-11, perhaps the historicity of the Exodus, vaticina ex eventu (e.g. Dan 11; Isa 40ff.).

It’s sufficient for Christian faith to treat the Bible like any other generally reliable historical witness. That’s a safer position.

Notice that this isn’t a question of apologetic method or evangelistic strategy. This isn’t a question of how to witness to unbelievers. Rather, this is about how we should frame the Christian faith for ourselves.

Now, I’ll grant you that this concern points to a genuine danger, although I’d draw some distinctions. There are professing believers who commit apostasy because they had a very crude understanding of what inerrancy entails. Likewise, there are professing Christians who commit apostasy because they because they invested their lifesavings (as it were) in a particular interpretation of Scripture. And I do think Christians need to take precautions against simplistic defeaters like that. They need to distinguish between infallible Scriptures and their fallible interpretations. They need to develop a more sophisticated model of inerrancy. They need to appreciate the limitations of archeology.

However, the position I’m examining goes well beyond that. And it’s time to examine the operating assumption that undergirds that position. It assumes, in theory or practice, that we might discover some evidence which falsifies a Biblical claim. The question then is, how should we brace ourselves for that eventuality before it happens, assuming it ever happens, so that our faith won’t be reduced to rubble?

But what about that presupposition? Should we grant that presupposition?

Let’s begin with a question:

Can the Bible be proven false?

Some professing Christians take that possibility for granted. Given that Scripture can be proven false, we need to loosen or decouple the connection between the Bible and the Christian faith so that if the former takes a hit, the latter doesn’t suffer collateral damage.

But should we answer the question in the affirmative? Let’s explicate the question by rephrasing the question:

If the Bible is the word of God, can the Bible be proven false?

Which amounts to asking:

Can God be wrong?

Another variant:

Can God be shown to be wrong?

Now, if you’re an open theist, you could answer that reformulated question in the affirmative. Ditto: if you’re a pagan. But if you’re a classic Christian theist, then an omniscient God can’t be wrong.

To prove God wrong, you’d have to have some standard of comparison that’s superior to God. But if there is no higher standard, or even comparable standard, then there’s no benchmark against which to measure God, and conclude that God comes up short.

By the same token, if Scripture is the word of God, then how could Scripture be proven wrong? By what standard? Is there something more certain, more trustworthy than the Bible, which we can use to gauge the Bible?

Now at this point, some people might be getting nervous about where my argument is going. To preemptively immunize the Bible from possible disproof is special pleading. Fanatical or fideistic. The last-ditch refuge of desperate Christians on the run.

To that objection I’d say several things:

i) Seems to me that Christians who take the opposite position are open to the charge of special pleading. When they make preemptive concessions to shield their faith from disproof, why isn’t that special pleading? Why isn’t that last-ditch prepositioning to save face?

ii) If it’s legitimate to consider the possibility that Scripture could be proven wrong, why is it illegitimate to consider the possibility that Scripture could not be proven wrong?

iii) Moreover, my question is not an ad hoc question. The Bible claims to be the word of God. Well, if that’s true, then can the Bible be proven wrong? Seems to be that my question follows logically from an unavoidable premise. Even if you treat the Bible’s claim to be inspired as a hypothetical proposition, you still need to consider the implications of that hypothetical. A critic has to make allowance for whether his objections have any purchase if the hypothetical is true. Even if he lacks a dogmatic commitment to the inspiration of Scripture, he must still take that seriously as a hypothetical option. What if it’s true? Then what? What would follow, given that alternative?

iv) Suppose you say the Bible could be proven wrong by sense knowledge. But in that event, why do you privilege sense knowledge as your criterion? If sense knowledge is your standard of proof, how do you prove sense knowledge? Do you have some independent standard, over and above sense knowledge, to validate your empirical standard? If not, then why isn’t your appeal to sense knowledge special pleading?

And keep in mind that we do think sense knowledge is fallible, even if we regard sense knowledge is generally reliable. Moreover, what preconditions must be met for sense knowledge to be reliable? Does that require theistic preconditions?

Perhaps, though, someone would object that the question is misleading. The real question is whether the Bible is the word of God. If so, then, by definition, the Bible can’t be proven wrong. It could only be falsified if it was false. If not, then the Bible can be proven wrong. To stipulate that the Bible can’t be proven wrong because the Bible is the word of God begs the question.

i) But by converse logic, isn’t the opposing side begging the question? If they think the Bible could be proven wrong, which is why we need a fallback position, then aren’t they prejudging the status of the Bible? If they treat that as a live possibility, then they are striking a preliminary stance in reference to the Bible.

ii) They also seem to be assuming that if the Bible is true, it would always appear to be true. But is that a reasonable assumption? Surely there are truths which have the appearance of falsehood because we lack a larger context. Because we don’t have all the facts. Isn’t that a commonplace of human experience? Aren’t there often situations in life where two things both seem to be true–even though we can’t tell which is which (assuming one is wrong), or tell how to harmonize them (assuming both are right)?

This goes back to the issue of what they are judging the Bible by. What’s their frame of reference? This is a persistent difficulty in epistemology. Cf. Roderick Chisholm, “The Problem of the Criterion”; William Alston, The Reliability of Sense Knowledge; William Alston, Beyond “Justification”: Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation.

Someone might also object that the alternative I’m proposing opens a Pandora’s box. Couldn’t Muhammad, Swedenborg, or Joseph Smith use the same defense?

i) First of all, there’s a difference between verification and falsification. To say the Bible can’t be proven wrong doesn’t mean it can’t be proven right. These are asymmetrical propositions.

Take prophecy. An explicitly short-term prophecy might be quite susceptible to falsification. Likewise, a long-term prophecy might be clearly verifiable–after the fact. Once it happens, you can see how everything falls into place.

However, a long-term prophecy might not be easily falsifiable. If you don’t know how long it’s supposed to take for the prophecy to be fulfilled, how can you know ahead of time if it’s true or false?

ii) If the Bible is true, then whatever contradicts the Bible is false. You wouldn’t have to directly disprove Muhammad or Swedenborg or Joseph Smith.

iii) Keep in mind, too, that both Muhammad and Joseph Smith did condition their claims on external standards. So we’re not imposing an external standard on their claims.

For instance, Muhammad set a trap for himself, then stepped into his own trap, when he made the Bible the standard of comparison.

Likewise, Smith snared himself in a trap of his own devising when he said he translated an Egyptian text. He also said an Egyptologist (Charles Anthon) vouched for his translation. Well, we have the Egyptian text. So we can compare that to the Book of Abraham. We also have a letter from the Egyptologist in which he denies vouching for the “translation.”

iv) There’s also the question of whether God has given us any reason to expect prophets to arise, centuries after the Bible was finished, and add their own revelations to the corpus of Scripture, as a supplementary canon–which effectively usurps the Biblical canon.

One can’t very well invoke passages like Num 11:29, Acts 2:17-18, and 1 Cor 14:5, for those don’t single out a select few prophets who pop up centuries apart. Even if we interpret those passages charismatically, to predict continuing revelation, they’d apply to Christians generally. (Of course, if most Christians don’t have that experience, then that’s a reason to question or qualify the charismatic interpretation.)

Rosemary's Baby

The Birthers challenged Obama’s eligibility to be president. Was he a natural-born US citizen?

Turns out the Birthers may have been half right. They were just asking the wrong question. The real question is not where he was born, but to whom he was born. There is new evidence that his birth certificate is, indeed, a forgery:

http://todayentertainment.today.com/_news/2013/03/18/17357066-bibles-satan-casting-raises-eyebrows-ire-with-comparison-to-president-obama?lite

Either we need to run a paternity test or someone needs to interview his mom.  Paging Mia Farrow.

Listen Closely to this Profiler

http://www.wnd.com/2013/03/picture-of-martial-law-alarms-forensic-profiler/?cat_orig=us

Draw nigh to God

The following is from Adolph Saphir:

Remember that man's life does not consist in what he has, but in what he is. Serve Jesus and the church. Oh, let not the best years of your life be years in which you have little communion with God, and in which you do little for Christ! 'Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.' Let not your biography be summed up: 'He turned to God in his youth, he then became lukewarm, being engrossed in the cares and the business and the social demands of the world, and a short time before his death he saw his mistake, and felt that one thing was needful. For years his spiritual life was barely sustained by the prayers of friends and the weekly services of the sanctuary. He might have been a pillar in the church, but he was only a weight.' This be far from you. Oh, serve the Lord with gladness, be strong, quit yourselves like men, and abound in the work of the Lord. ‘Draw nigh to God.'

HT: Malcolm Maclean.

Why Don't The Gospels Mention The Resurrection Appearance To James?

James was an apostle (Galatians 1:19) and one of the central figures of early Christianity (Galatians 2:9), as reflected by his prominence in Acts. Jesus' appearance to James after the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:7) seems to be the best explanation for his conversion from his prior skepticism (Matthew 13:57, Mark 3:21-35, 6:4, Luke 8:19-21, John 7:5). So, why would none of the gospels mention Jesus' appearance to James, even though James was so prominent in early church history and Jesus' appearance to him had so much evidential value?

Science in the everyday

A series of two interviews with Morton Meyers on his books Happy Accidents and Prize Fight here and here.

Unusual Agreement Among The Gospel Resurrection Narratives

There are many differences among the resurrection narratives in the gospels. Critics of the resurrection often bring up those differences, and we've discussed them here many times. But there are a lot of similarities among the accounts as well. Some of the similarities are what you'd expect to see. You'd expect resurrection accounts to involve an empty tomb, for example. Or if two or more of the gospels agree by including Peter in the events they narrate, for instance, that's not surprising. Given Peter's prominence among Jesus' disciples, you'd expect him to be involved. However, there are other agreements among the gospels that you wouldn't expect. Those unexpected agreements are unusual to different degrees, and they have different levels of evidential value. But some are highly significant, and their individual and cumulative weight have to be taken into account in any attempt to address the historicity of the resurrection. What I want to do in this post is discuss some examples that aren't often mentioned.

Marshall v. Carrier

http://christthetao.blogspot.com/2013/03/marshall-vs-carrier-my-opening-statement.html

Sola Scriptura and Immigration Reform

http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/03/21/sola-scriptura-and-immigration-reform/