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
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
Traditional theism has held that God is “immutable,” meaning that God cannot change. If God changes for the worse, then God would become imperfect. On the other hand, if God changes for the better, then that would mean that God was previously imperfect. Both of these possibilities would contradict the fact that God is the … Read more
The Bible and the Age of the Earth All Christians believe that God is the Creator of the world. In this sense, all Christians are creationists. But in the modern period, the term “creationism” has come to refer to a rejection of the scientific theory of evolution in favor of a belief that God directly … Read more
Jesus and the “God of the Old Testament” Marcion was a second-century heretic who believed that the god of the Old Testament and the god revealed to us in Jesus Christ were two entirely different gods. The god of the Old Testament was the creator god, a god of justice. The god revealed to us … Read more
Immaculate Conception? All orthodox Christians believe in the Immaculate Conception of Jesus, that Jesus was sinless from the moment of His conception. But the Catholic Church also teaches as dogma the Immaculate Conception and sinlessness of Mary, His mother. Is this a biblical idea? Protestants frequently point to the teaching of Scripture that “all have … Read more