The need for moral clarity

Hi Pam,

Another comment on your November 13 post,

PAM: "On Mosaic Law (no longer in effect), you quote:
“And so He condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be FULLY MET in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit."

You miss the point of what is being said here. Jesus fully met the righteous requirements of the Law on our behalf that the righteous requirements of God would be met in us as Christians, because we are in Christ.

"For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness [completeness] in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority." (Colossians 2:9)

PAM: "Do I read this correctly – no believer is a sinner? Nothing he does is wrong? Wow."

Hebrews 10:14, "because by one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy."

In the temporal realm, we still do things that are wrong - sin - but in the eternal realm we have been made right before God through what Jesus has done on our behalf. So our payment and penalty for sin has already been taken care of in Christ. And we are alive to God through Jesus Christ for He is eternal life and we are united with Him, our identity is in Him.

"God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:21)

"'He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in His mouth.'...He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by His wounds you have been healed." (1 Peter 2:22,24)

In this sense we have died to sins because our death, our punishment, our penalty were met in Christ when He died on the cross/tree.

As Paul said in Galatians 2:19-21, "For through the law I died to the la so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the Law, Christ died for nothing."

As the law has ever taught me is that I cannot uphold it by my own merits. It, as the Bible says, was a school teacher to bring me to Christ. It showed me that I was guilty before God and would have to met His justice, or trust in the one who had met it on my behalf.

"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit." Romans 8:1-4)

(See Hebrews 7:24-28 for a continuation of this thought, if you are interested.)

Welcome back, Walter, hope you had a good holiday.

There is much to answer here - I'll try to get started tomorrow...(actually, that's later today).

Hi Walter (November 14, 2009 3:48 PM),

WALTER: "peter, i'd like hear your (not a website's) theory on post flood human migrations."

Well, since Noah was capable of building a boat that could survive extreme conditions, I'm sure those who followed would have been able to as well. There may have been land bridges that no longer exist in which animals and humans could have been separated from other animals and humans, such as between Asia and North America. Continental drift could also explain the different and isolated diversity on earth in places like Australia.

WALTER: "you place the flood at ~2400 b.c."

I never gave a date.

WALTER: "- after which there were 8 humans in the world - right?

Yes.

WALTER: "according to biblical theory, peleg was born ~100 years after the flood and the "dispersal" of humans happened during peleg's 240 (!) year life span - btwn 2300 and 2060."

I'm not sure on the exact dates that you would fix Peleg at. In Mathew's gospel there are 42 generation that could speaking of legal lineage, in which case not all the generations would have been mentioned, just the ones that dealt with the legal aspect of Jesus' genealogy. So there is debate on whether we can be exact or not on determining every generation. Sometimes the Bible does use generalities.

WALTER: "how do you square this with the evidence we have for civilizations going back long before that, continuing right through the flood and on down through history to today. consider chinese, indian, egyptian, akkadian and sumerian civilizations. i see only two possibilities for you to evaluate:
1)some remains are pre-flood and some are post flood. noah's descendents migrated back and developed the same culture (language, architecture, clothing etc...) as existed there before the flood.
2)archaeologists' dates are all off, and all of the remains are post flood.

I agree that archaeologists dates may very well be off, but some trace of human civilization before the Flood would certainly be buried or left after the flood subsided.

WALTER: "2)the whole scenerio of the tribulations/second coming/judgement is illustrated with parables and figurative language. read closely, i'm sure you know this at heart, and you'll see how he talks "plainly" about "the coming of the son of man" (mt24:29-31), then he tells them the parable of the fig tree. he goes back to "plain" talk about how no one nows exactly when (in their lifetimes) all this will happen, and illustrates with a few more parables. then i 25:31, he goes back to "plain talk" about how when he comes back he'll divide us into groups (like a shepherd does sheep and goats - there's the figurative part) for heaven and hell.
i quoted mt: "Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away." (mt24:34,35)
and you said,"

I agree with that last paragraph.

WALTER: "Until all "these things" - what things, in relation to what? The things that happen before the end of the age or things that happen before the end of the world?"
well, ALL of the things jesus talked about - including his second coming (i don't care whether there is a cloud or not, but jesus plainly promised he'd be back). you only break it up into little pieces because IT DIDN'T HAPPEN. jesus said ALL THESE THINGS. "ALL". come on...you're a literalist... did he use "all" figuratively...?"

All the things in relation to the judgment of the Jews? All the things in relation to the kingdom? Since it is a time of Jacob's trouble that would be my conclusion - Israel. Since He talks about the end of the age not "cosmos" world, I would say that it talks about the time of judgment on Israel for rejecting her Messiah - the bringing down of the Jewish worship system and standing before God based on their good works and ability to provide a suitable atonement for their sins - something they could never do anyway.

When someone uses the word "all" such as Jesus does many times throughout the gospels, does He mean all without distinction, such as people of every kind, of every nation, male and female, rich and poor, or does he mean without exception, which means every single person who ever lived, bar none?

Does He mean all these things in relation to the Jews or in relation to all people? What do you think He is talking about in the context of Matthew ch. 23 and 24?

I believe they have already been fulfilled. Like I said, I'm still studying eschatology and favor this interpretation but as yet the matter has not been settle by God in my mind as He has done with other matters of faith. But I certainly find any other way of looking at this destructs, whereas this way does not, but there are many difficulties still to work through.

Hi Walter, continuing,

What will be the SIGN of His coming and the end of the AGE? He speaks in language that suggests He is speaking to the very disciples with words such as "you" and "you will hear" or "when you see" or "see I have told you ahead of time" or "therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come", throughout the whole passage, along with words such as "this generation will certainly not pass away" or "you know the time is near." It all suggests judgment and rewards when the Son of Man comes.

Notice how many times it speaks of the Sons coming, and soon, but in a variety of ways that suggest figurative language such as "For as lightening that comes from the east is visible even in the west so will be the coming of the Son of Man" or "At that time the SIGN of the Son of Man will appear in the sky...They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory" [the words used by Daniel in Daniel 7 that speak judgment and glory] or "So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect Him."

The symbolic language of Revelation 1:20 gives an interpretation concerning "seven stars" in Jesus' right hand represent seven angels who bring judgment on the seven churches. So figurative language is used in future historical narratives to convey the end of the age and the setting up of the eternal, unseen, eternal kingdom of God on earth.

Has it all been fulfilled? Has His kingdom come? I say yes. Has He judged the nation of Israel for their idol worship and adultery? Yes. Has He judged all the nations of the earth in a final judgment? No.

When you combine the three gospel accounts you get a better picture of what Jesus is saying. Matthew 24 uses the term "end of the age" whereas Luke 21 says in regards to the question the disciples asked in regard to the destruction of the temple "when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?" The same explanation is given in Mark.

Walter (November 9, 2009 8:24 PM),

WALTER: "peter,
please read mt24&25, mk13, & lk21. just read the text. don't check 3 websites about what it means. just read it like a story, an eyewitness account."

2 reasons why "stars falling", coming a cloud etc... were not meant figuratively.
1) remember, they thought it was possible for stars to fall to earth. today, it sounds like it HAS to be "figurative" because we all know that any star we can see is much bigger than the earth and the whole idea of stars falling to earth is preposterous. BUT biblical authors didn't know this. they thought stars were little ornaments hung from the firmament dome. remember earlier, they spoke of the "maji" following a star...to bethlehem - as if the magic star detached from the dome and helpfully hovered over bethlehem. anyway, my point is that stars falling and people coming on clouds didn't seem as crazy as it does today."

Regardless of what others think, the Bible interprets itself, or if you like, God gives us the correct interpretation if we rightly handle His word. The question is, are we rightly handling it? What is the first mention of "coming in the clouds" and is it literal or figurative. What about other passages that mention "coming in the clouds?" What is the message that these passages are conveying?

Daniel 7:13-14 speaks of a vision that Daniel is having in which he uses figurative language such as "like a son of man, coming in the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into His presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed."

In conjunction with this verse we have other verses that convey a similar theme, such as Matthew 24:30; Revelation 1:7-20; Acts 1:4-11. They all seem to speak of power, dominion and judgment when taken in context.

Daniel 7 speaks of power, dominion and judgment when the Son of Man comes in the clouds of heaven, as does the whole message of the visions and dreams of Daniel, a transfer of power between four earthly kingdoms and the setting up of an eternal kingdom that will never be destroyed.

Likewise, in Matthew 24 we have judgment on the Jews and on the covenant they failed to keep by the destruction of their system of worship and sacrifice (because it was only a shadow of what was to come and was soon to take place with the obsoleteness of the Old Covenant. The exchange was for the eternal covenant that God would make with all peoples of the earth, and that covenant was only through His Son, the very Person the Jews had persecuted and were about to put to death, with the help of the Roman's). With the destruction of the temple a new era of worship would be ushered in (John 4:24).

WALTER: "it's not fair - any kindergartener will tell you that. it's not good (according to atheist morals anyway) to visit the inequities of the father upon the child."

Why is it not fair? If a father decides to teach his child, by example, something that is wrong in God's view, is the child not reaping exactly what the father has sown?

Exodus 20:5-6, "You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of THOSE WHO HATE ME, but SHOWING LOVE TO A THOUSAND GENERATIONS OF THOSE WHO LOVE ME AND KEEP MY COMMANDS." (See Isaiah 55:7)

So basically, if a father shows his son
to do what is wrong, and the son follows in the father's footsteps, in hating God, the son reaps his just reward - punishment. But if the son hears the Lord and turns, God shows him compassion and mercy.

WALTER: "while we're on the subject of logical consistency, god contradicts himself on this elsewhere: in some places he says the visits the inequities on sons and in other places he says he doesn't. i suppose it really doesn't matter what he says, because he DOES still visits us with the consequences of adam's sin, right?"

Please give me the verses. Context is important. One of them is the verse I cited above - Exodus 20:5, but what is/are the other(s)?

There is no condemnation only for those who are in Christ. Are there degrees of punishment? I believe so, although God would be perfectly just in separating you from His presence regardless of the degree of sinfulness, for all sin is against the holy and pure nature that is God's. Sin is a defiance, a rebellion in saying to your Maker, "I know best. I'll determine for myself what is acceptable and what is not." How could someone like that ever live in the presence of God? They would always be trying to usurp His authority and make their subjective standard the one that counts.

Hi Walter (November 9, 2009 8:49 PM),

WALTER: "about the "logicalness" of original sin:
you said,
"Because one sin from one individual bought others and a knowledge of evil that was passed onto each additional generation."

WALTER: "like i said - not logical. knowledge of anything can't be passed on in fruit. are you sure this isn't figurative?"

The fruit was real. It REPRESENTED two choices open to Adam, to take the fruit and disobey God's wise council, or to listen and believe that God knew best. Man chose to make the decision that opened up the whole can of worms. He chose to go by his own judgment, hence he chose to know the difference between good and evil. Evil involved believing something that was not true, that was contrary to God, that man could determine good apart from God.

WALTER: "what's wrong with the "knowledge of good and evil"? a thoughtful person might say you really can't have one without the other."

Who determines it? Without an objective standard it is subject (pardon the pun) to change. If everyone determines for themselves then we have anarchy. If groups determine it then we have one group pitted against another - the source of so much of the world's conflict. If one person or a handful determine it for the rest of us we have dictatorship or tyranny. But the point here is that personal taste does not determine "good." Just because you like abortion as a woman's right does not make abortion good. It is just an opinion, nothing else in a relative world. Your values are firmly planted in mid-air. In other words, they have no ultimate foundation. Anyone's will do - by force.

PH: “Yet this happens so often in the world today in records of events that the author was not there to see, but in which he/she employed eyewitnesses or secondary witnesses who heard from eyewitnesses what took place. Do you discount those too? No, it is only the Bible, not the works of Plato or Aristotle or the historical accounts of Julia Caesar, because you have a certain bent, a bent against the Bible.
There are people today who try to discredit the Holocaust. Does that discount it because you personally were not there to witness it? You take other peoples accounts on what happened as true unless highly unlikely to do so. You go by second hand evidence because you were not there.”

PAM: "Oh, Peter, you can’t be serious. None of these things depend solely on one anonymous book."

You keep saying anonymous. The Bible claims it is the revelation of God and Jesus Christ is foreshadowed throughout the OT. Jews have penned their names to numerous letters and OT accounts. That does not make it anonymous.

PAM: "There is archaeological evidence of cities and of battles fought, historical records, coins with likenesses, corroborating accounts from contemporaries and from enemies."

And there are sixty-six different books authored by over forty different authors that attest to the Bible as a unified revelation of God to man. These different accounts were written over a span of hundreds/thousands of years. Yet you discount this as "solely [as] one anonymous book."

Do you think, maybe, you are biased?

PAM: "In the case of the Holocaust, there are yet-living eyewitnesses, photographs, standing concentration camps, ovens, requisition records for Zyklon-B, mass graves…"

True, but there are some nut jobs (you know the one I'm thinking of) who deny the holocaust. He looks at the evidence the same way that you look at the Bible, as a conspiracy to push something that is not true. For him, there is nothing that you could do to convince him, because he is not willing to look at the evidence in the light of how it really is. And as for the Bible, we have God's Word that it is as it claims to be. Do you have any evidence that claims it is universal, objective, absolute?

PAM: "Most biblical historians put their writings as later than 70 CE, too. Mentioning the fall of the temple is seen as an “after-the-fact” prediction meant to bolster the other predictions of Jesus, to impress the Gentiles."

Whether a few, some or most put the writings later than 70AD does not change the fact that not one of these author's mentions an event that Jesus predicted would happen in the course of most of those living and that is the destruction of the temple and city. If all this had happened then surely there would have been some mention of it somewhere.

And tradition outside the Bible has many of these author's dying before the fall of Jerusalem. It is pretty far fetched for you to say these statements, you looking at the evidence 20 centuries removed and ignoring the base of evidence on what was recorded during the first couple of centuries of the Christian era.

PAM: "And what about all the Jews who supposedly witnessed all of the miracles of Jesus? Why did they remain silent? The whole thing was pretty much forgotten until Paul pulled its fat out of the fire."

The point is they didn't. Those who opposed the gospel created hardships for these Jewish Christians. And these Jewish Christians changed the known world of their day by the gospel message. F.F. Bruce records this in his book, 'The Spreading Flame." The original spreaders of the Word were Jews. Paul, Peter, Mark, Jude, John, Luke, Matthew, were all Jews. Many of the early Jewish Christians died proclaiming the risen Messiah. On the day of Pentecost many Jews from all over the world were gathered in Jerusalem ("Jews from every nation") and 3000 came to faith on that occasion alone and took the message back to their respective cultures.

As F.F. Bruce says in the aforementioned book,
"The earliest witnesses of Christ's resurrection were the men and women who had known and loved Him. They had believed in Him, but their faith had received a great shock when they saw Him led unresistingly to the cross and fastened to it. Now their faith was revived in a new and greater strength by the assurance that He had conquered death. Their evidence may be gathered from the four gospels and from the witnesses of the resurrection given by Paul at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 15, though many interesting sidelights appear elsewhere in the New Testament, especially in the reports of early Christian speeches preserved in the Acts of the Apostles." P.61

Here is the clincher. Had the Jewish or Roman authorities wanted to squash for all time the Christian message, and the resurrection accounts, all that was needed was to produce the body of Jesus. This was never done. Instead it was claimed that the disciples had stolen the body. And do you think that these men and a witness of over 500 in some cases would willingly go to excruciating deaths proclaiming something they knew for certain was not true?

No, the early church experienced harsh and life threatening opposition.

Pam (November 13, 2009 6:48 PM),

PH: “What you do, as a person looking in on the information 20 centuries removed, is to discredit whatever it says because you do not like the idea of the Bible being right in what it says. You discount that someone could write historically on events that they were not eyewitness to see from eyewitnesses or secondhand witness passed down to the historian.”

PAM: "Nope. If someone could demonstrate that the bible was true, we would accept it."

That is just the point, you wouldn't. Your nature is that of a skeptic and you are always looking for information that bolsters your world view.

PAM: "We see no evidence that it’s any better than the other religions long since discarded. It has all the same elements of magical mystery mess."

No, we see an amazing compilation of manuscripts that out rivals any other literature or documents of antiquity, that because of the diversity in where the manuscripts were found do not show collusion, but do show careful preservation and spreading of the original message.

The comparison of the manuscript evidence is vast which means we can accurately determine what was originally written.

PAM: "Nor can you show that there were any eyewitnesses who contributed to it anywhere along the way. As I said before, the gospels are anonymously written. The names were arbitrarily assigned much later."

Sure we can, and within a small period of time after the fact too. You discount the letters and gospels themselves as being accounts of those who witnessed Jesus Christ and His resurrection. And you discount those who lived in the first century who came to faith and were in contact with the disciples, the witness of the early church, so to speak - Clements of Rome, Irenaeus, Polycarp ( a disciple of John's), Ignatius of Antioch, etc.

"Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ."
"James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ."
"Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James,"
"Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ..."

wow! excellent! i see you guys have been busy. i'll read and comment soon.

(pam, i saw your comment somewhere about peole using psalm whatever to pray for obama's demise: you said something like, "the good news is prayer doesn't work..." ha! entirely rational angle. cracked me up...)

PAM: "Second, you make my point for me - Peter had to seek help in order to write briefly."

Rubbish Pam, for if Peter was not well educated, and Mark was relaying the information as spoken by Peter then the vocabulary found in this gospel would be very limited, as noted in the first website I supplied on the previous post,

"Pritchard [Pritch.Lit, 37-44] offers correspondence with our determination criteria. He points out that a literary analysis of Mark indicating that someone very like Peter (as we conventionally recognize him) was behind it: Mark's Gospel has a limited vocabulary (1330 words) and was written in "man on the street" Koine Greek; the rhetorical devices used are few in number and are the sort that would be used by someone who was uneducated; and, it bears an uncomplicated sentence structure: "Its sentences are made like the speech of the less educated men, upon whom the niceties of logically subordinated ideas are largely wasted." (Nice words about Peter, eh?)"

November 13, 2009 7:01 PM continued,

PH: “So, as recorded by the early church fathers, Mark as a companion of Peter could have written down what Peter dictated to him. There is no reason to believe that Peter could not have later learned to write the Greek language as he says in 1 Peter 5:12 , "With the help of Silas, whom I regard as a true brother, I have WRITTEN to you briefly”

PAM: "First, no one knows who “Mark” was – no, not even the “early church fathers,” who knew neither Peter, nor Mark – or whatever his real name was."

Says who???

http://www.tektonics.org/ntdocdef/markdef.html#mk51

WEBSITE: "Direct testimony that Mark authored the Gospel that bears his name. Between 110 and 130 AD, the following statement was recorded by Papias, whose words are passed on to us by the church historian Eusebius:

Mark indeed, since he was the interpreter of Peter, wrote accurately, but not in order, the things either said or done by the Lord as much as he remembered. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed Him, but afterwards, as I have said, [heard and followed] Peter, who fitted his discourses to the needs [of his hearers] but not as if making a narrative of the Lord's sayings'; consequently, Mark, writing down some things just as he remembered, erred in nothing; for he was careful of one thing - not to omit anything of the things he heard or to falsify anything in them."

http://www.bethinking.org/resource.php?ID=233

WEBSITE: "Earlier, Clement of Rome cited Matthew, John, and 1 Corinthians, and 95 to 97. Ignatius referred to six Pauline epistles in about 110, and between 110 and 150 Polycarp quoted from all four gospels, Acts, and most of Paul's epistles. Shepherd of Hermas (115-140) cited Matthew, Mark, Acts, 1 Corinthians, and other books. Didache (120-150) referred to Matthew, Luke, 1 Corinthians, and other books. Papias, companion of Polycarp, who was a disciple of the apostle John, quoted John. This argues powerfully that the gospels were in existence before the end of the first century, while some eyewitnesses (including John) were still alive."

PAM: "On Mosaic Law (no longer in effect), you quote:
“And so He condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be FULLY MET in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit."

What makes you think that the requirements of God's law have been fully met in you? Have you ever stolen? Have you ever lied? Have you ever coveted/wanted something that belonged to someone else? It's a tough standard. How well do you measure up?

PAM: "Do I read this correctly – no believer is a sinner? Nothing he does is wrong? Wow."

You do not understand the Christian faith. Positionally and in the eternal realm Christ has reconciled the Christian to God by dying in his/her stead, taking upon Himself the entire payment for the Christian's wrongful actions towards God. He has also gone a step above that in meeting in Himself all the righteous requirements of the Law of God for the Christian. If Christ has already died the death that we deserve for our sins, if He has already met all God's righteous requirements for us, then God is not going to require us to die again, to make that payment and meet those requirements ourselves. In that case Christ's sacrifice would have been in vain. If we could meet God's standards on our own there would be no need for a Savior. No, when Christ died, we died, therefore by faith we have been raised in Christ and justified before God by Him in the eternal/heavenly realms. Although we on occasion sin in this temporal realm, for which one of those sins did Christ not die for??? That is why the apostles could say, "To the saints in Ephesus" or "And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the SAINTS in accordance with God's will."

Do you think that God's Spirit would dwell in an unclean temple? Christ's sacrifice has made us perfect before God (Hebrews 10:14, 18 with verse 1-12). Yet He resides with the believer, we are in union with Him, and although we do not have a physical temple standing in which He now dwells as was the case in Old Testament times, He now lives in our bodies (1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:19; 2 Corinthians 6:16) through faith in the Son of God.

PAM: "Then there are your questions from yet another link. I found this one interesting:
“#What kind of an attitude does truth-seeking require? Does the fact that people want to disprove evidence for God actually reveal an attitude of non-truth-seeking?”

PAM: "Let’s turn it around, shall we? What kind of an attitude does truth-seeking require? Does the fact that people want to disprove evidence for evolution actually reveal an attitude of non-truth-seeking?"

The question for your world view is where does truth come from? How do you know that the evidence you so assuredly stand on will not be found wanting in ten/twenty years from now?

How does a relative, subjective, limited human being know with certainty what he/she believes is true? To which shifting standard/person are you going to base truth on? Is your truth objective and non-changing? Has Einstein ever been wrong? Is it possible that some of his theories are wrong even now, while we believe them to be true? After all, you're just going on the best answers that are now available.

How do biological bags of atoms, one reacting one way, another differently arrive at truth? It is not a world view that has a realistic explanation for the why and how of truth.

PAM: "I think it applies much better in this iteration. We read/have read your books and sites."

What books are those that you have read?

PAM: "I’m willing to bet you’ve never read a single book on evolution."

Not true, I have read two of Darwin's books, "On Natural Selection" and "On the Origin of Species."

What creationists books have you read?

Hi Pam ( November 13, 2009 7:01 PM),

PAM: "You then give me links to three quotes – here is the first, by Freeman:
"The pick and the spade are to be humble instruments of illustrating and authenticating the Word of God. Already, through their agency, important discoveries have been made. Ancient tablets covered with strange characters have been brought to light; by patient labor and wonderful ingenuity these characters have been deciphered, and made to tell the secrets which for ages they had kept concealed. The tombs of Egypt, the palaces of Assyria, and the royal records of Moab, have been compelled to speak, and now, in different languages, they bear testimony for God and his truth."

"According to archaeological evidence there is ‘no longer any solid basis for dating any book of the New Testament after about A.D. 80.’" End of Quotes.

PAM: "All three are just words. They offer not one tiny bit of evidence, nor do they even give a clue as to what sort of evidence they’re talking about. This is very weak, Peter."

Well, the last quote you cite is from William F. Albright and he presents the kind of evidence you would be looking for. Have you read him? Have you read any F.F. Bruce? Have you read any Gary Habermas? Have you read any A.T. Robinson? Have you read any Nelson Glueck? Have you read Craig L. Bloomberg? How about Sir William Ramsay? Have you ever read some of the early church fathers? I have some of these very books in my library in which I have read the evidence, along with online authors who present some of the gleanings from these authors.

http://www.bethinking.org/resource.php?ID=233

If you want a quick, but thoughtful outline of some of the evidence, read the outlines starting here (and continue to hit the "Next" button for three pages,

http://www.ccel.org/contrib/exec_outlines/ca/ca_04.htm

There is lots of evidence Pam, whether that be the from the internal writings - the Bible itself, or from external, extra-biblical sources. Scholars who have spent their lives researching and investigating these things attest to them.

PAM: "You just can’t get away from the anthropomorphic, can you? It didn’t “create,” it happened."

And again, if my brain just happens to react one way and yours another as I go through suburbia with a semi-automatic, there is no good or bad about it. It is just the way my electro-chemical happen to be reacting to the stimuli around me.

PAM: "We think that the universe we know came from the BB, but no one knows what preceded it."

Then how can you rule out God or a Creator? The whole point is that you don't know and yet you are ready to push a world view that don't have the foggiest idea. Your "a long, long time ago" is no better an explanation than "once upon a time."

PAM: "Maybe there have been many such."

And maybe there haven't. Maybe Someone with a lot more intelligence than you or I purposed the universe.

PAM: "Energy can neither be created nor destroyed (FIRST law of thermodynamics – the one creationists DON’T like to talk about)."

Neither can an eternal omniscient Being that evolutionists don't like to talk about.

Why is there energy? What caused energy to make the universe - if energy is your god - the necessary thing in order for there to be anything else, to give life, self existence, beings with volition and a searching for meaning and significance? If energy is your "First Cause" and sufficient to power/generate all the seemingly infinite/limitless magnitude and variety we are witnessing, then why did it have the ability to direct things to a seemingly meaningful purpose - the will for self preservation of its creatures?

Both the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics deal with energy; one with its conservation (Hebrews 1:3, 4:3), the other with its decay, that all ordered systems, left to themselves degrade to disorder (entropy - Romans 8:21-22), not the other way around as per evolution in which everything is increasing in order and complexity.

PH: “From the traditional cosmological argument (BB) we have the universe springing from Chance, for without a Being to create, organize, plan, and purpose, things just happen chaotically, which makes the whole concept of probability meaningless. If there is nothing besides matter then how does matter show intent, how does it organize, how does matter convey information, how does it purpose laws into being?”

PAM: "Things don’t happen chaotically – they follow the laws of physics. These “laws” don’t require a law-giver – they’re just the way things relate to one another on an atomic (or sub-atomic) scale."

Without intent or some purpose behind them, how do they just happen to produce order and purpose? From a chance beginning, in a random universe why/how does anything organize itself into laws?

PAM: "Energy – which is eternal – produces matter. It organizes – without intent – according to those laws. Matter didn’t create the laws, it’s the other way around. It’s about atoms exchanging electrons, etc. under certain conditions."

You are not telling me anything. How can something without intent organize? How does information just happen? You say the laws created matter. How can a non-intelligent anything organize itself in a universal way? Why would atoms colliding together want to bond in any particular manner? Your answer is they just did.

PH: “Chance governs nothing. It has no intelligence. How/why from empirical beginnings do we get non-physical, reason and logic?”

PAM: "Reason and logic are products of the human (and to some degree, the non-human brain. These properties didn’t arrive by chance – far from it."

That is right, they did not. Only Mind can reason and fathom logic. That is what I have been saying all along.

There are only two ways that I can see to explain origins and life; one originating from an intelligent Being, and the other by chance, and if by chance then with no purpose. Yet in everything we see we see purpose and order. How does chance create order? Why would something happen the same way repeatedly if there was nothing originally to govern it and give it purpose?

PAM: "They were naturally “selected” because brains that had them caused their possessors to succeed in the game of life.
If you want to know how the brain works (chemically and electrically) to produce them, I can point you to some books. Let me know…"

"Selected" by nature??? If all we are is a bunch of atoms firing in a chemical fashion then how can there ever be such a thing as a moral value? My brain fires one way and your another. There is no good or bad about that.

PH: “The other philosophical question is how does something create itself? It would have to first exist before it could create, and yet the universe had a beginning according to the most highly praised and popular theory today, the BB.”

Hi Pam (November 13, 2009 7:33 PM),

PH: “The other thing to bear in mind is that the Holy Spirit did cause the apostles to speak in other tongues during the Day of Pentecost in order to confirm the ministry of these men being from God as He did on other occasions with miraculous signs.”

PAM: "Oh, yeah – one of my favorite things – speaking in “tongues.” Too funny, Peter. I’ve seen video of this. People fall down in something like a grand mal seizure and gurgle out unintelligible gibberish. Is this supposed to impress someone? Am I to think that they’re anything other than scary fanatics?"

I have a hard time with this kind of display too, but the example I cited was speaking in other human languages.

PAM: "Now if someone suddenly started speaking in an actual language that he could be proven never to have learned…well, that might make me wonder… (at least enough to look for a scientific reason)"

That was what was described in the Book of Acts,

"All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each heard them speaking in his own language. Utterly amazed, they asked: "Are not all these men who speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? Partians, Meddes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judes and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs - we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues! (Acts 2:4-11)

Hi Pam,

The Pascal Wager webpage you cited also suggests that Mark was not the author of the Gospel of Mark. The web address I gave on the previous post also counters this argument.

WEBPAGE: "Another mistake occurred in the episode on the healing of the demoniac. This incident occurred in the region of the Gerasenes, or Gerasa. Mark 5:1 makes Jesus cross the Sea of Galilee to reach Gerasa, implying that Gerasa was a city close to the lake:

Mark 5:1,
"They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes."

Question: How does region imply city?

WEBPAGE: "Again such a basic mistake in Palestinian geography could not have been committed by a well travelled native such as John Mark. [8]" End of Quote.

Reply from http://www.tektonics.org/ntdocdef/markdef.html#mk51

"Geographical errors in Mark. Kümmel [Kumm.Int, 97] accuses Mark of "numerous" geographical errors, but names only three: Mark 5:1 (the Gerasene swine), 7:31 (having to do with Tyre/Sidon and the Decapolis), and 10:1 (re the region of Judea). He indicates that a lack of knowledge of the geography of Palestine is against Markan authorship. In reply we may note:

The "errors" are a product of the imagination. Let's look at Kümmel's three ("numerous"?) citations, along with a couple of others.

Mark 5:1 They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes.

How this qualifies as an "error" is beyond me. It is hardly a definitive statement, referring only to a "region" - as might be expected if the party landed in a countrified area, and if this is from a sermon of Peter to a Roman audience that really did not care where some out-in-the-boondocks locale was precisely located.

The city of Gerasa was about 30 miles southeast of the traditional location of this event; that being so, to speak of being in the "region" is hardly any more erroneous than saying, after landing a boat thirty miles south of Milwaukee, that you have landed in the "region" of Milwaukee. According to The Jesus Legend [449], though, a textual-critical case can also be made for the reading "Gergasenes" which would make possible an identification with the settlement now called Khersa, which is indeed on the Sea of Galilee.

Hi Pamsm,

Supposed Geographical Mistakes in Mark

Mark 7:31,
"Then he [Jesus] return from the region of Tyre, and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee."

WEBPAGE: "There are thus two geographical errors in the above passage:

* Firstly, the author obviously did not know the relative positions of Sidon, Tyre and the Sea of Galilee.
* Secondly, he did not know that there was no direct road between Sidon and the Sea of Galilee during the time of Jesus."

Firstly, the author does not state how long it took to get to the Sea of Galilee, and secondly, living in Africa for my youth, I know that there were no roads to many of the African villages I trekked to, I just took a foot path. The same could apply for Jesus and the twelve. We are not told why He went through Sidon or how long it took. Just because there is no direct road does not mean that there is no access from Sidon to Galilee. It also says that Jesus was in the REGION of Tyre.

The thing I see this skeptic doing is pulling out all the stops he can in order to prove to the gullible that the Bible is not the Word of God.

Hi Pam and Walter,

It looks like Monday or Tuesday will be the next free day in which I will be able to respond to your critique of the Bible.

I read the Pascal's wager web page you supplied and find the comments hilariously fabricated in order to make it seem that the biblical accounts are wrong. I'll try and break down the comments on the web page, if I don't get bogged down in answering other posts in the mean time.

Hi Walter,

WALTER: "here's something i once wrote responding to c.s. lewis's famous liar, lunatic, lord false trilemma: (lewis left out "legend")"

WALTER: "Many pre-destined leaders were saved as babies from evil rulers. King Sargon of Akkad, which included the Palestine, Assyria and Babylon, ruled around 2300 B.C. He too was either a liar, a lunatic, Lord or a legend. He was born of a mortal woman impregnated by a God. His mother put Him in a basket, and floated Him down the river to protect Him from other Gods."

There again, I would be interested in seeing your sources and the earliest records of the alleged events.

http://www.rationalchristianity.net/copycat.html

As you can see, the above web addresses supply an ample refutation of similarities between the gospels and the pagan myth accounts.

WALTER: "Obviously this presages Moses’ (and Horus’) birth story, but also the Massacre of Innocents which, according to one Biblical account (Mt2:13), caused Mary and Joseph to flee to Egypt to protect the baby Jesus from King Herod (though according to another Biblical account (Lu2:39) they went right back to Nazareth)."

Augustine, for one, shows how the gospels can be harmonized, regarding the omitted details between the two gospels,

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1602205.htm

Hi Walter (November 16, 2009 8:51 PM),

WALTER: "pam, you said,
"...the genealogy of Jesus to David (in order to fulfill the prophecy), through Joseph. Never mind that he wasn't (supposedly) related to Joseph at all."

He was related through adoption (as having no biological father). Legally, Joseph fulfilled that role.

WALTER: "right, why bother with genealogy at all? but the authors did - because they thought it was important to fulfill the "son of david" prophesies."

OR, because the OT prophesies were fulfilled through Jesus and they wanted to record this fulfillment to show God's plan was being brought to fruition in Jesus the Messiah.

This is the line of thought that you, in your natural theology, never will take seriously, because to do so would mean that you would have to admit that you are wrong. That is unacceptable to the natural man, who must control and purpose his own destiny in solely natural means.

WALTER: "at the same time, any god who was anybody in those days was divinely fathered. a disinterested observer might look at all this as evidence that the whole virgin birth thing was ADDED to the story - to give jesus the proper god credentials."

Walter, you've read Lee Strobel's books. In "The Case for the Real Jesus" he argues effectively in defense of the biblical accounts as not copied from the pagan religious accounts, but visa versa. He also argues effectively against the prophecies as being written as fulfilled in order to meet the OT.

http://www.frontline-apologetics.com/JP_Holding_Response_to_Till.html

http://www.frontline-apologetics.com/religions_christianity.html

Pam (November 16, 2009 2:02 PM),

PAM: "Ah, yes, so true. And typical of this, and other patriarchal religions. Which is why both Matthew and Luke took a stab at tracing the genealogy of Jesus to David (in order to fulfill the prophecy), through Joseph. Never mind that he wasn't (supposedly) related to Joseph at all. Too demeaning to try to do it through a woman."

Yes, man was created first and although both male and female were significant to God, they were created to compliment and designed to love each other. That is the way it was done.

Jesus, as the offspring of the virgins womb was legally adopted by Joseph, for Mary was betrothed to Joseph, so therefore legally His line would be traced through Joseph. Biologically as a human, however, it would also be traced through Mary to Adam, the first man, and the reason for His necessarily becoming human in the first place.

As for other extra-biblical religious accounts, I like you, agree they are myths of the human mind. Sometimes I think they were originally taken from the biblical accounts that were passed on and spread to different cultures and then twisted and molded to fit the religiosity of men.

PAM: "C)Luke 1:36 says Elizabeth is a relative of Mary. But Elizabeth is descended from Aaron (L 1:5), which means she's of the priestly tribe of Levi, so it's highly unlikely that her relative, Mary, would trace her lineage to the tribe of Judah.
How about it, Peter?

John Calvin, same web page as noted in the last post says this,

"Again, it is objected, that Mary, the mother of Christ, was Elisabeth’s cousin, though Luke has formerly stated that she was of the daughters of Aaron, (Luke 1:5.) The reply is easy. The daughters of the tribe of Judah, or of any other tribe, were at liberty to marry into the tribe of the priesthood: for they were not prevented by that reason, which is expressed in the law, that no woman should “remove her inheritance” to those who were of a different tribe from her own, (Numbers 36:6-9.) Thus, the wife of Jehoiada, the high priest, is declared by the sacred historian to have belonged to the royal family, —

“Jehoshabeath, the daughter of Jehoram,
the wife of Jehoiada the priest,”
(2 Chronicles 22:11.)

"It was, therefore, nothing wonderful or uncommon, if the mother of Elisabeth were married to a priest. Should any one allege, that this does not enable us to decide, with perfect certainty, that Mary was of the same tribe with Joseph, because she was his wife, I grant that the bare narrative, as it stands, would not prove it without the aid of other circumstances."

Continuing (November 16, 2009 6:56 PM ),

PAM: "I know that there are almost limitless hoops that apologists are willing to jump through to make the bible infallible, but there's no legitimate way to make this one wash."

That is a two way street. There is also almost limitless ways in which an unbeliever/skeptic will go to in their effort to discredit the Word of God. It boils down to world views and where your basic/foundational/core presuppositional system of belief is resting on, the mind of God or the minds of men; on the necessary infallible, omniscient, objective, absolute standard, or a standard derived and deranged from subjective human wisdom and knowledge.

PAM: "A) Every name in the genealogies is male. And then you're going to stick Mary in on the end?"

It depends on the aim/purpose of the Holy Spirit and the human gospel writer in recording the information. From the first book of the Bible onwards we have the tracing of the Son's human/biological lineage to the seed of a woman (Genesis 3:15 with Galatians 4:4).

No not every name is male. In Matthews account five women are mentioned, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba and Mary, even though legally the descend is traced through the male offspring, women are included because of their significance in God's plan of salvation and redemption.

PAM: "B) The bible says that both are a genealogy of Joseph. No way around that."

Technically speaking, not a genealogy of Joseph, they are a genealogy of Jesus Christ as traced through his legal father and biological mother (Matthew 1:1 Luke 3:23); so, one through the legal line and one through the biological line.

Matthew 1:1, "A record of the genealogy of JESUS CHRIST the son of David, the son of Abraham,..."

Luke 3:23, "...HE [Jesus] was the son, SO IT WAS THOUGHT, of Joseph,..."

Notice Matthew 1:16, "...the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus..."

test

Hi Pam, Walter, Richard Mouw (I hope that Richard will be able to offer his thoughts on this discussion too),

I'll include both your comments and Walter's in regard to the two geneologies.

WALTER: "i've heard of apologists trying to explain the discrepancies in the two genealogies by saying one of them is through mary... it's kind of a difficult sell though because there are similarities in the genealogies - they just don't match exactly... "

I think tracing the lineage of Jesus through both Joseph and Mary makes sense in correctly interpreting the differences in the two accounts. Matthews account looks at the genealogy of Jesus from a Jewish and legal perspective in that Joseph was the legal father of Jesus, just not His biological father.

So Matthew in listing 42 generations from the time of Abraham to the then present, was in effect taking into account the legal lineage/genealogy, as it mattered to the Jew. Remember the Gospel of Matthew was written as its chief witness to the Jew.

Luke on the other hand traces the biological lineage (not the legal) of Jesus through Mary and all the way back to the first human, Adam. Both gospel accounts make clear that Jesus was conceived of by the Holy Spirit, not Joseph (Luke 1:35; Matthew 1:18, 20).

PAM: "They match fairly well from Abraham to David (Luke has an extra generation), but that's where the wheels come off the bus. They have him descending from different sons of David, one in 27 generations, the other in 42 (!!) generations."

I think John Calvin gives sufficient reason in his commentaries of Matthew and Luke found @ http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom31.ix.xiv.html,

"Not to be too tedious, those two genealogies agree substantially with each other, but we must attend to four points of difference. The first is; Luke ascends by a retrograde order, from the last to the first, while Matthew begins with the source of the genealogy. The second is; Matthew does not carry his narrative beyond the holy and elect race of Abraham,
“Matthieu, en sa description, ne passe point plus haut qu'Abraham, qui a este le pere du peuple sainct et esleu.” — “Matthew, in his description, does not pass higher than Abraham, who was the father of the holy and elect people.” while Luke proceeds as far as Adam. The third is; Matthew treats of his legal descent, and allows himself to make some omissions in the line of ancestors, choosing to assist the reader’s memory by arranging them under three fourteens; while Luke follows the natural descent with greater exactness. The fourth and last is; when they are speaking of the same persons, they sometimes give them different names."

Hey Peter,
Hope you find your way here to continue our conversation.

Walter's away for a week, so I'll sit on my hands and try to keep from replying until he gets back. That way you'll have plenty of time to catch up.

With any luck, we'll have plenty to answer by next weekend. Post away!