Post Author: Bill Pratt
As 2010 comes to a close, we’re going to re-post the most popular blog posts of the year. Some of you who have joined our blog throughout the year may have missed these posts, so for the next couple of weeks, look out for these “greatest hits” as we count down from number 10 to number 1.
Post Author: Darrell
I recently spent some time on a Christian Facebook page that ministers to Mormons. It is mostly made up of ex-Mormon Christians who feel very strongly about their faith and want to reach out to Mormons. They write articles explaining the differences between Traditional Christianity and Mormonism and the problems with Mormon Theology and History in general.
A few days ago I had a cordial conversation with a Mormon gentleman regarding the Nicene Creed. We were discussing the development of the creed, what its terms mean, and what the ante-Nicene Fathers believed in regards to the nature of God. For those who are not familiar with Mormonism, the Nicene Creed is a particular point of contention for them as its teachings are in stark contrast to Mormonism.
While we were in the midst of the conversation an administrator on the website stepped in and deleted nearly our entire conversation. When I asked why she did this, she proceeded to tell me that the Nicene Creed doesn’t matter and that the creeds are irrelevant to the subject of defining God, and she chastised me for being “overly intellectual.”
This has led me to do some pondering over the last few days. What do Evangelical Christians believe when it comes to the Nicene Creed? Does it matter? Are any of the creeds relevant today? Are they authoritative or are they simply their writer’s opinions?
Share your thoughts with me on this poll. Once I’ve had a chance to digest the various opinions, I’ll likely write a blog post sharing some of my thoughts.
Post Author: Bill Pratt
You would think this question would be pretty easy to answer because the gospel message is something that Christians talk about all the time. However, it is difficult to find the gospel explained in one place within the Bible. There is, however, one passage where the gospel is defined, and that is in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, specifically 1 Cor. 15:1-8. Here it is:
Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
Theologian Scot McKnight summarizes some key points from this text in the December issue of Christianity Today. First, “this is the gospel handed on to Paul (v. 3), which suggests it was the gospel the earliest apostles preached.”
“Second, the gospel saves people from their sins (v. 2-3).”
“Third, the essence of the gospel is the story of Jesus (vv. 3-8) as the completion of Israel’s story (v. 3). Both the word Christ (Messiah) and the phrase ‘according to the Scriptures’ are central to how the apostles understood the word gospel.”
So what is the gospel? According to McKnight, “Added together, it means this: The gospel is first and foremost about Jesus. Or, to put it theologically, it’s about Christology. . . . ‘To gospel’ is to tell a story about Jesus as the Messiah, as the Lord, as the Son of God, as the Savior.”
Gary Habermas often summarizes these verses in this way: the gospel is the deity, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
If you’ve overlooked these verses in the past, go back and study them. After all, we need to constantly remind ourselves of the message we are to give the world.
Post Author: Bill Pratt
Christians assert that God is the only source of morality. Wanting to reject this assertion, atheists sometimes offer a counter-argument which claims to invalidate the Christian God as the source of morality.
The challenge is often referred to as the Euthyphro Dilemma because it was first raised in Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro. The argument goes like this. Either something is good because God commands it, or else God commands something because it is good.
Christians have problems with both options. If you say something is good because God commands it, then right and wrong are arbitrary. God could command tomorrow that murder, rape, and theft are right, and that love, kindness, and generosity are wrong. That seems bizarre; it runs counter to all of our common moral intuitions. It also conflicts with traditional and orthodox concepts of the Christian God. If murder and rape can be declared good, then we have no idea what kind of God we are worshiping.
On the other hand, if God commands something because it is good, then goodness exists outside of God. The ground for morality would then be independent of God – a stand-alone entity. God would be subservient to this source of morality, and therefore not God at all. The Christian God is not subservient to anything outside himself.
What is the solution to this dilemma? Christians have split this apparent dilemma by offering a third option: goodness is part of God’s nature. God, according to Christians, is the good. God commands the good because he is essentially good. His nature does not change, so he cannot declare murder to be right tomorrow. On the other hand, morality does not exist outside of him, but as part of him. He is only subservient to himself, which is no subservience at all.
It turns out that no dilemma really exists once you understand the nature of God. He truly is the source for all moral values and duties.
Post Author: Bill Pratt (re-posted from last year)
New Testament scholar Ben Witherington III has written a brief article that discusses the birth narrative as conveyed in Luke 2. Witherington reminds us that the modern version of Jesus’ birth is not exactly faithful to the biblical account. “Like works of art that have been lacquered with coat after coat of varnish, the original stories are hardly visible any more.”
Some the key differences are the following:
One of the greatest differences has to do with the actual birthplace of Jesus. Here an extended quote from Witherington is warranted:
Where did they stay in Bethlehem? Luke tells us that after the birth, Mary put the baby in a “manger,” or corncrib, because there was “no room for them at the kataluma” (Luke 2:7)—a Greek term he uses elsewhere to mean “guest room” (see Luke 22:11). When Luke wants to speak about an inn, he calls it pandocheion (see Luke 10:34). Thus, Luke says nothing about the Holy couple being cast out of an inn and Mary having to bear the child in a barn. Historically, it is far more likely that Mary and Joseph had their child in the humble back portion of the ancestral home where the most valued animals were fed and, in the winter, housed, because the guest room in the family home was already occupied. In any case, Bethlehem was such a small village, on a minor road, that it is not even clear it would have had a wayside inn. Admittedly, Jesus’ beginnings were humble—but we don’t need to mythologize them into some story about a baby being cast out by the world.
There are lots of other interesting historical tidbits in the article, so make sure you read the whole thing.
Post Author: Bill Pratt
I was listening to the “This American Life” podcast today and heard something that intrigued me. The podcast recounted the story of a few NPR reporters who bought a mortgage-backed security (MBS) earlier this year. This particular MBS is a kind of bond that bundles some 2,000 mortgages together and pays the investor (the NPR reporters) interest from the proceeds of the mortgage payments made by the 2,000 mortgage holders.
Sounds like a good deal, right? The only catch is that this MBS was actually a “toxic asset.” That means that a large percentage of the 2,000 mortgage holders have stopped paying their mortgage payments, and therefore the investment is highly risky. The NPR reporters paid $1,000 for the MBS, which was originally priced at $100,000 (a 99% discount due to the risk). These are the kind of securities that helped cause the recent world financial collapse.
The NPR reporters knew this going in. Their goal was to buy one of these MBS’s, do some detective work to figure out who some of the mortgage holders were, and then find out why they weren’t paying.
After some initial investigation, they were able to locate an 81-year old man in Florida who had stopped paying his mortgage and agreed to talk about it. What happened? Well, he bought a brand new condominium in Sarasota so that he could downsize from his current home. He took out a $300,000 mortgage on this condo only to see it quickly drop in value. It dropped in value so much that his $300,000 mortgage was more than the value of the condo.
What did he do? He decided to stop paying his mortgage, thus defaulting on his loan and stiffing the bank who loaned him the money and the investors who bought the MBS which included his mortgage. The NPR reporters asked him why he stopped paying.
He answered that it was a very painful decision for him, that it went against everything he was taught growing up. But, he claimed, he had no choice. One of the NPR reporters challenged him, telling him that he did have a choice, that he could have kept paying. He didn’t have much of a response, only saying that it “didn’t make sense” to keep paying. It’s important to note that he had enough money to keep paying, but that he chose not to. The only consequence for him is a bad credit rating, but since he is 81 years old he probably won’t need to borrow money again, so this didn’t seem so bad.
What do you think of this elderly gentleman’s decision? Was he wrong to stop paying? It seems that millions of other people did the same thing in the last several years as housing prices fell, thus precipitating the financial crisis. Please vote in the poll below and then leave some comments telling us what you think.