Thoughts on ethics, society, politics, religion, philosophy, theology, and everything in between
Skeptics have often argued that the resurrection narratives of the four Gospels are hopelessly contradictory, and that this sheds doubt on the reality of Jesus’s resurrection. Now, it is certainly true that we have four very different resurrection narratives in the Gospels (this provides good evidence that these are independent eyewitness accounts, rather than a … Read more
In the book of Ephesians, Paul quotes Psalm 68:18 as saying, “When He ascended on high, He took captives, and gave gifts to His people” (Eph 4:8). However, the original Hebrew of Psalm 68:18 reads, “You ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train and receiving gifts among men.” This seems to … Read more
The Bible is a large and complex book. It is a collection of sixty six different books written by dozens of different authors over the course of centuries. Yet Christians believe that, as the word of God, the Bible is ultimately one coherent whole, the foundational guide for the Church’s faith and practice. Antichristian skeptics, … Read more
Israelite History and Idolatry The plausibility of the prophetic history recorded in the Old Testament, in which Israel repeatedly turned to worship foreign gods in spite of the many miracles God performed for them, has often been called into question by skeptics. Let’s begin with the golden calf incident recorded in Exodus 32. God has … Read more
There are many references in the Bible to ancient pagan superstitious practices such as divination, witchcraft, and necromancy. In the book of Deuteronomy, God commands the Israelites, “Let no one be found among you. . . who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or … Read more
In my previous two apologetics posts, I defended the biblical accounts of creation and primeval human history found in the early chapters of Genesis from criticisms that they are unscientific. These are not the only parts of the Bible that have been criticized as unscientific. There are numerous other aspects of biblical teaching that skeptics … Read more
Human Origins According to scientific theories widely accepted today, the human species evolved from pre-human ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago, through a process of evolution involving much pain and death. This contradicts what many Christians believe to be the teaching of the book of Genesis: that God directly created an original human pair … Read more
The Coherence of the Biblical Creation Account(s) It is sometimes argued that the Bible contains different creation accounts which contradict one another. The Psalms and the prophets sometimes speak of God establishing order by defeating a mythological chaos monster, Rahab or Leviathan (Job 26:7-13; Ps 74:12-17, 89:10-13; Isa 51:9-10); this resembles creation stories of other … Read more
In a previous apologetics series on this blog, I have defended the coherence of the Christian concept of God from a variety of criticisms and attacks. However, even if antichristian skeptics acknowledge that the Christian concept of God is coherent, they will often claim that the God of classical Christian theism is not actually the … Read more
One of the most common arguments made against Christianity is the argument from Christian immorality: the frequent failure of Christians to live according to their own moral teachings makes it hard to believe that Christianity is true. Throughout history, and down to the present day, many Christians have lived in ways that are seriously incompatible … Read more