I’ve been listening to Mark Driscoll’s 13-part Doctrine Series.^[1] In the first session Mark discusses the doctrine of the trinity. He begins by quoting Augustine, whose contention was “If you deny the trinity you lose your soul. If you try to explain it you lose your mind”. I know what he means.

Of particular interest was Driscoll’s response to the challenge that it took such a long time for the doctrine of the Trinity to develop, with the formal doctrines we use today not appearing until the 4th and 5th centuries. The inference being that the church merely decided upon (or, invented) the Trinity long after the events recorded in the New Testament.

To quote Driscoll loosely:^[1]

Some say that it seems like it took a long time for the doctrine of the trinity to develop. Well, when the whole church is suffering persecution, people are being fed to lions, they’re being run through with swords, they’re being burned alive, they’re being crucified one after another, the Pastors are being beheaded, people are running for their lives … it’s really hard to crank out a lot of Systematic Theology under those cultural conditions. You’re trying to live and teach your people, but you’re burying a lot of them also, the whole church is suffering. So it would be surprising to find a robust development of any doctrine from the first three centuries of Christianity. But once persecution died down they started clarifying some of their doctrinal beliefs, including at the Council of Nicaea in 325AD where the belief of one God, three persons was clearly articulated. And that has held ever since. The doctrine of the trinity was also laid down again at the Council of Constantinople in 381AD. Then Augustine of Hippo, spent 19 years (from 400AD to 419AD) studying the doctrine of the trinity. The result was his book ‘The Treatise on the Trinity’, which has held up for more than 1500 years. The result today being that all Christians believe in the trinity [I think Driscoll means, by definition]. Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Protestants, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Anglicans… all believe in the trinity. We all agree that there is one God, three persons, Father Son and Spirit.

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I continue to be surprised and dismayed at the inclination toward the superstitious in the body of Christ. At this remark, I can hear the pagans chortling, “Dude, you believe in God. Superstition is your stock and trade.”  Meanwhile, many of you who value clear thinking and understand its necessity in the formation of a cogent apologetic for the Christian world view, will share my concern for superstition in the body of Christ.

Some of the stories that follow are from my own experiences. Others are hearsay, but instructive nonetheless.

Story No. 1

A friend of mine had been lent a book that was authored by Derek Prince. The book, sitting on their desk, was titled, “Lucifer Exposed: The Devil’s Plan to Destroy Your Life”. They kept the book, but had stuck down a piece of paper over the word Lucifer. Curiously, the word Devil in the title was not covered, and I can only imagine that both of those words appeared numerous times throughout the book.

Story No. 2

Greg Koukl tells a story of a XMAS4U licence plate that he saw one year after praying to God for a good Christmas because the previous Christmas had been so miserable. Greg then recalls that he still had a miserable Christmas that year. So what was he to make of the licence plate? Yet, so committed to the idea that God is going to communicate through licence plates, one gentleman to whom Greg told this story responded, “Well maybe you had a great Christmas and you didn’t know it”.

Story No. 3

Then of course you have the story about the Russian scientists in Siberia drilling into hell. When this popular email rumour came up in conversation during one of my Christian fellowship groups a few years ago, one member of the group was convinced that it was good evidence for the existence of hell.

I could go on (unfortunately), but my final example requires a little more attention.

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We all need our thinking to be renewed and reversed before we can come to accept the majesty and power and saving grace of the Gospel of Christ and before we realize the folly and meaninglessness of the atheistic worldview.

H/Tip: Active Christian Media

This is my own transcription of a conversation between Greg Koukl and a caller (Pat) to his radio show back in March, 2007. And seeing as it’s  that time of year again, I thought perhaps revisiting this conversation would be instructive for some who have to deal with this increasingly popular and insidious philosophy in their own communities.

Pat wanted to address the philosophy behind Diversity Week – and the way in which the school system was advocating participation by students – by confronting and opening dialogue with the organiser, whom Pat suspected was a lesbian. He begins:

Pat: In Massachusetts we have the regional high school systems. And Diversity Week is coming up. Basically this is the advancement of the homosexual agenda.

One of the things they’re doing [to promote participation in Diversity Week] is the day of silence. By participating in the day of silence you’re saying that you are protesting the brutality against gays, lesbians and trans-gender people. And if you participate in this, at the end of the day… you get to go to an ice-cream social in the cafeteria. If you didn’t participate, you don’t [get to go and have ice-cream in the cafeteria]. What this tells me is they’ve decided that to take the position of being silent in the form of protest is the morally superior position.

Greg: I would ask this question. Why are you buying the students votes?

Pat: Why are you buying the students votes? It’s not a vote.

Greg: Well it is kind of. They’re participating aren’t they? They’re making a statement with, what?

Pat: Ice-cream?

Greg: No. They’re making a statement with their silence. The purchase price for the silence is ice-cream. Why do you have to bribe kids to participate? Why are you rewarding them [for] agreeing with your parochial point of view?

 

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Have you ever seen the movie Weekend at Bernie’s, where the corpse of the recently murdered Bernie Lomax is paraded around town by two of his employees who are desperate to convince everyone that he’s alive?

Similarly, despite being presented as the best (the only) explanation for just about anything – from homology to morality; from origins to oration; from lifeless mindless chemicals to living thinking reasoning beings – some have likened evolution to a corpse being paraded around as if alive. For example, there is an apparent pattern of reporting in the secularised mainstream media (MSM) that builds up this facade by trumpeting the latest evolutionary interpretation, while remaining silent as it falls from grace (e.g. see the development on Tiktaalik below). Each new story then, has a cumulative affect, giving the impression that Neo-Darwinian evolution is being constantly validated.

In quite dissimilar fashion, every December, the Access Research Network^[1] publish a relatively unique list that summarises their top ten science news stories that have impacted the development of evolutionary and/or intelligent design perspectives on science. Or to be more specific, it highlights the many ways in which an intelligent design perspective is continuing to have increasingly more explanatory power in the investigation of “natural” systems, while underscoring the epic failure of the evolutionary paradigm to do likewise.

Honourable mentions on the list (those that didn’t make the top ten) include:

(1) The death of the “Primordial Soup” theory for the origin of life. (2) Recent genetic research indicating that chimps are more distant from humans than popularly argued by evolutionary proponents. (3) Evidence suggesting that Neanderthals were in fact fully human, having interbred with them. (4) Automatic turnstiles in cell membranes that expel up to 1500 molecules of toxins from the cell per minute.

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Abdu Murray is a Muslim who converted from Islam to Christianity. In an interview (Oct 17, 2010) with Greg Koukl on his radio show at Stand to Reason, Abdu shares a conundrum he had which triggered his journey from Islam and, eventually, into Christianity. 

Abdu was reading the Qur’an when he came across Surah 5:47 “Let the people of the gospel judge according to what God has revealed in it. And whoever judges not by what God has sent down, those are the transgressors.” Having been raised to believe that the Qur’an is God’s dictation in Arabic – which means that every word, verb tense, and grammar is perfect, and that the Bible had been corrupted before the Qur’an came and that the Qur’an had come to correct those corruptions - Abdu realises this is saying, in 7th-Century Saudi Arabia, the gospel existed for people to go and look at, and to judge it as the word of God; as a source of divine truth.

His conundrum was this: Why would God refer them to a corrupted version of the gospel? If the Bible was once God’s Word and it then became corrupted, two things follow. Either God couldn’t keep it from being corrupted or He wouldn’t keep it from being corrupted. If He couldn’t, then He is inept and not omnipotent but rather impotent. If He wouldn’t, then the very revelation in the Qur’an, that affirms the Bible, may not be revelation and why would we trust anything He has to say. 

Therefore, Abdu concluded that the Bible had not been corrupted at the time of the writing of the Qur’an in the 7^th century. From there it was a simple task to find out if the Bible of the 7^th century is the same as the Bible we have today. It was. And the evidence pointed to it being the same for centuries before as well. 

At this point Abdu was forced to believe, based on his faith in the Qur’an and his faith in evidence, that the Bible is the uncorrupted Word.

This conundrum is explored further in Alan Shlemon’s “Ambassadors’ guide to Islam” booklet (available from Stand to Reason www.str.org). In this booklet Alan identifies a logical argument with regard to the Qur’an and Islamic teachings and is highly recommended by Abdu Murray.

1. The Qur’an says the words of God cannot be changed or corrupted. Surah 6:34, 6:115 and 10:64
2. The Qur’an says the Bible is the Word of God. Surah 2:136 and 29:46
3. Therefore, on the Qur’an’s authority, the Bible could not have been changed or corrupted, as many Muslims claim

If you would like to learn more about Abdu Murray and his ministry – Aletheia International,  you can visit his website at  http://embracethetruth.org/

Scott Klusendorf, of the Life Training Institute, is arguably one of the world’s premier pro-life apologists, persuasively arguing for, and training others to defend, the sanctity of human life – especially the unborn.

When asked what a layperson can do to be a part of this mission, he suggests two foundational things that are “necessary, but not sufficient.”^[1] In other words, this is pro-life apologetics training 101.

1. READ. Read a lot! Get informed. The reason you need to become an aggressive reader is to build a knowledge foundation from which you can draw the raw material you need to engage people on this issue. It also builds confidence. When you know you have read the literature that is out there from many of the most important thinkers, then you’ll know that if you get asked a question, you won’t be caught totally off guard.

2. TEACH and EQUIP others to defend the inherent value of all human life. Some of you will notice that this is not dissimilar to the Christian commission, which requires us, after coming to place our trust in Christ, to become more informed about the basics of Christianity, and then to go out into the world to tell others and to train those who respond to do the same.

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William Lane Craig discusses an argument by the Jesus Seminar^[1] for the early dating of the Gospel of Thomas,^[2] (hereafter, “Thomas”) and therefore, its alleged claim as an appropriate authority on the life of Jesus to rival the accounts given in the canonical gospels (i.e. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). I have summarized Craig’s critique of their reasoning in flowchart form.

Dr. Craig continues:

And so around and around it goes. New Testament scholar Thomas Wright says, ‘It’s like Winnie the Pooh following his own tracks in the snow around a clump of trees and every time he comes around and sees more tracks he takes this as evidence that his query is even more numerous and more real then he thought before.’ It’s no wonder that the fellows of the Jesus Seminar haven’t been able to persuade very many of their colleagues on the basis of arguments like this.

Now, I am superficially aware of other reasons that are promoted to try and validate the early dating of Thomas and I am willing to consider them in greater detail. But upon reflection, I think there is an inherent problem in any reasoning that attempts to elevate the relevance of Thomas (or any account of Jesus’ life written after the first century) and similarly play down the four canonical gospels. It’s the same kind of problem that would exist if someone from the 20th century were to write an account of the life of, say, Charles Darwin. While it may be quite appropriate to place a certain amount of trust in an account of Darwin written in the 20th century, we would be quite justified in placing more confidence in those writings from the 19th century. Especially those written by Darwin himself or by those close to him, or those who were his contemporaries. Indeed, we might even use the 19th century writings as a check against the 20th century account.

Similarly then, if Thomas is an early primary source as the Jesus Seminar claim, then how much more do the four canonical gospels qualify for such an honour, which are contemporaneous accounts. And this is sometimes the problem with insisting on extra-biblical sources for the life of Jesus. As Gary Habermas has pointed out, the four canonical gospels are the only ones written around the time of Christ. I should think that counts for something in one’s assessment of the facts. “There certainly were more than four [gospels] but you have to go to the second, third and fourth centuries for most of them. It’s not our fault that there were only four gospels by 100AD and we took all four of them.”^[3]

In other words, if you are going to insist – in discussing the life of Jesus – on leaving the canonical stuff off the table, you are basically tossing out the best sources we have before the discussion even begins.^[4] You are welcome to do so of course, but you should not expect reasonable people to think that any conclusions you draw from later sources provide more certainty than can be gained from the canonical sources.

References & Notes:

1. A freely downloadable audio version of Dr. Craig’s talk can be found here
2. The Gospel of Thomas is one of many early writings discovered in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945. By “discovered” I do not mean that knowledge of it is new. For example, Eusebius, a third century historian and one of the early church fathers, knew of the work and wrote against it. Hippolytus and Origen also comment on the gospel in their third century writings.
3. http://www.garyhabermas.com/audio/habeemas_res_QandA_2006-04-08_pt1.wav
4. I think this argument holds even if you want to push Thomas into the first century alongside the canonical gospels (as some have tried to do), because of the greater detail and textual reliability provided by the four canonical gospels when compared with Thomas (or any other ancient historical work).