Atheism, Philosophy, Religion

Can Science Answer the Most Important Questions of Life?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Have you ever noticed that the most important questions in life cannot be conclusively answered by the scientific method of empirical observation and experimentation?

We can use science to study the weather, to create wireless communication, to study the respiratory systems of whales, to better see the stars, to learn about soil erosion, to build skyscrapers, and to fly aircraft.

All of these subjects yield themselves to scientific investigation such that mankind can eventually come to know these areas in extraordinary detail and precision.  We just continue collecting data, analyzing data, and testing hypotheses – over and over again until we finally understand.

These subjects are all wonderful, in and of themselves, but they aren’t what’s truly important.  What about God, love, friendship, morality, heaven and hell, human consciousness, the meaning of life, the origin of the universe?  These are the questions that strike us in the middle of the night when a loved one is in the ICU at the hospital, or when we witness the birth of a child, or when we suffer financial ruin, or when we contemplate marrying the person we love, or when we just have some peace and quiet and can immerse ourselves in deep thought.

None of these questions ultimately lend themselves to the scientific method, but they are the most important questions.

My family loves the silly movie Nacho Libre.  In the movie, one of the characters is asked if he believes in God, and he answers, “I don’t believe in God.  I believe in science.”

It is fitting that the movie is a comedy because this response is truly comical.  The person who believes in only science is fundamentally punting on all the major questions of life.  They are saying, in effect, “We are going to limit ourselves to the lesser things of life, the things we can know with a high degree of scientific certainty.”

It’s comical, but it’s also sad.  What impoverished existence – cutting off oneself from the only things that ultimately matter.

Bible Interpretation, Difficult Bible Passages

How Do We Interpret the Old Testament Narratives?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Some Christians and many skeptics of Christianity take a simple approach to reading the Bible.  They treat the entire Bible and all of its contents as a moral command textbook.  In other words, every single sentence is to be read with an eye toward what moral behavior the author is sanctioning or condemning, regardless of the literary genre.  Certainly some parts of the Bible are directly teaching us moral standards, but not all.

As an example, I recently discussed the issue of polygamy with a skeptic.  The skeptic’s viewpoint was basically this: the Old Testament narratives describe polygamous relationships  frequently and they never seem to expressly condemn it, so, therefore, the Bible teaches that polygamy is acceptable.

The skeptic seemed to be saying that if a certain behavior is found in the Old Testament narratives, and that behavior is not specifically condemned in those same narratives, then the narratives are teaching that this behavior is morally acceptable.

Is that how we should understand the narratives in the OT?  No, not according to Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart in their popular book How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth.  Following are ten principles for interpreting OT narratives that Fee and Stuart recommend:

  1. An OT narrative usually does not directly teach a doctrine.
  2. An OT narrative usually illustrates a doctrine or doctrines taught propositionally elsewhere.
  3. OT narratives record what happened – not necessarily what should have happened or what ought to happen every time.  Therefore, not every narrative has an individual identifiable moral application.
  4. What people do in narratives is not necessarily a good example for us.  Frequently, it is just the opposite.
  5. Most of the characters in OT narratives are far from perfect – as are their actions as well.
  6. We are not always told at the end of an OT narrative whether what happened was good or bad.  We are expected to be able to judge this on the basis of what God has taught us directly and categorically elsewhere in Scripture.
  7. All OT narratives are selective and incomplete.  Not all the relevant details are always given (cf. John 21:25).  What does appear in the narrative is everything that the inspired author thought important for us to know.
  8. OT narratives are not written to answer all of our theological questions.  They have particular, specific, limited purposes and deal with certain issues, leaving others to be dealt with elsewhere in other ways.
  9. OT narratives may teach either explicitly (by clearly stating something) or implicitly (by clearly implying something without actually stating it).
  10. In the final analysis, God is the hero of all biblical narratives.

With regard to polygamy, the Bible clearly illustrates and explains the ideal for marriage in Genesis 2, and the author of subsequent OT narratives (in Genesis, Exodus, and so on) would expect his readers to know what Genesis 2 taught.  God did not create two women for Adam, or three or four, but one.  “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24).

Books of the Bible

Who Wrote The Book Of Hebrews?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

To be honest, we just don’t know.  Let’s take a brief look at the evidence we have.

First, we will summarize the evidence external to the actual words of Hebrews.  According to D. Edmond Hiebert, there were three early church traditions about authorship.

The tradition from Alexandria, Egypt held that the apostle Paul was either directly or indirectly involved with the writing of the epistle.  Both Clement of Alexandria and Origen associated Paul with Hebrews, although they both allowed that someone else (possibly Luke) may have written the epistle or translated the epistle for Paul.  Even though Paul was involved, he may not have directly written the book himself.

The tradition in North Africa, as evidenced by Tertullian, was that Barnabas was the author.  But this tradition gave way to the Alexandrian tradition of Pauline authorship during the fourth century.

In Italy and Western Europe, the Pauline tradition was rejected early on.  In fact, western church fathers did not know who wrote Hebrews, but they did not believe Paul wrote it.  This view of anonymous authorship survived until the fourth century when Jerome and Augustine adopted the Pauline tradition from Alexandria.

Once the western church accepted Pauline authorship in the fourth century, the issue was closed until the sixteenth century, when scholars again began to question the source of Hebrews, largely based on the language and style of the Greek used in the epistle.

Advocates of Pauline authorship point to close affinities in thought within Hebrews to other Pauline writings.  Opponents point to differences in theology between the writer of Hebrews and Paul.  For example, Hebrews dwells on Christ’s high priestly function, whereas Paul tends to dwell on Jesus’ death, resurrection, and living presence in the church.

Opponents also argue that all the Old Testament quotations in Hebrews are from the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament), whereas Paul quotes from both the Septuagint and the Hebrew Scriptures in his other letters.  More telling, opponents claim that the Greek language style used in Hebrews is dramatically different from Paul’s other writings, thus making it highly unlikely that he could be the author.

Hiebert’s conclusion, in An Introduction to the New Testament, is that The Book of Hebrews was not written by Paul, but by someone within his circle of influence.  Who that person is, we may never know.  Roman Catholics officially hold to Pauline authorship, as do some Protestants.  But many Protestants do not, because of the internal evidence mentioned above.

Does this mean we should question the value of Hebrews if it did not come from the hand of Paul?  No, the church accepted the spiritual power and authority of this epistle long ago, even while debates swirled around authorship.  God was clearly involved in the production of this literary masterpiece, regardless of who wrote it.

Difficult Bible Passages, Faith and Works

What is James Teaching About Faith and Works?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

If you’ve ever read James 2:14-26, then you’ve probably been confused.  Why?  Because James seems to be contradicting Paul’s clear teaching that eternal salvation is by faith alone, and not works.

Recently, through my seminary studies, I was introduced to a new way of interpreting this passage that has really opened my eyes.

The first thing to look at is James 2:26: “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.”  Notice that in this analogy, the body is equated with faith and the spirit is equated with deeds (works).  Since the spirit of a person is what animates his body, then James is saying that works are what animates faith!  This is just the opposite of the way many of us think about faith and works, but that is definitely what James is saying in verse 26, which is the conclusion of the passage.

But what does James mean by dead faith?  In verse 20, James says that “faith without deeds is useless.”  So now we know that dead faith is not faith that has disappeared or ceased to exist, but it has become useless.  It is not functioning in the way it was intended to function.

OK, but how was faith intended to function?  Here is where most everyone gets tripped up.  We read verse 14, which says, “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him?”  Ah hah!  We are talking about salvation from hell, about eternal life with God, right?  After all, any time the New Testament talks about being saved, it always means eternal life.  Wrong!!

The New Testament authors use the word save to mean several different things, and the only way we can determine which meaning is correct is by context.  According to Zane Hodges,

The Greek verb used in James 2:14 (sozo) has a wide range of possible meanings which run the gamut from physical healing and rescue from danger, to spiritual deliverances of various kinds, to preservation from final judgment and hell.  It is the interpreter’s duty to examine each text where this verb occurs to ascertain its exact sense.

When we look at James 1:21; 2:15-16; and 5:19-20, it certainly appears that the context dictates that James is speaking of being saved from physical death, and not being saved from hell.  Again, Hodges comments, “It has nothing to do with eternal destiny at all, but deals instead with the life-preserving benefits that obedience brings to the Christian and which cannot be experienced by mere hearing or by faith alone.”

Useless faith is faith which does not promote the life-saving qualities of God’s Word.  Sin brings pain, suffering, and finally physical death to those who practice it.  It is only by putting God’s Word to use through works that we gain the benefits of its life-saving capacity.  In this way, our works animate our faith.  They make our faith come alive in our earthly lives.  The Book of Proverbs is full of this theme (see  Prov. 10:27; 11:19; 12:28; 13:14; 19:16), and James is building on this Old Testament foundation.

“OK,” you say, “I can see your point, but what about James saying Abraham and Rahab were justified by works?”  The word justified does not always refer to legal righteousness in front of God.  It sometimes means that, but not always.  In this case, James is talking about the vindication of our faith during our spiritual walk on earth.  Abraham’s works perfected his faith.  Rahab was also vindicated by her works.  James is not speaking of the faith that saves from hell, but the faith that believers have after they are saved from hell.  Works animate, perfect, and mature that faith.

These verses are not talking about eternal life or salvation from hell.  They are not talking about the initial faith that saves a person from God’s eternal punishment.  They are referring to the faith of a person who is already destined for heaven.  For this person, their faith becomes useless in their earthly life if it is not animated by works.  If you don’t act out your beliefs, you get no benefit from them while you live this physical life.  This is very practical and wise advice that the readers of James needed to hear.

Our mistake is that whenever we read the words faith, works, save, and justification, we always assume the subject must be eternal life.  This assumption is not always correct.  The New Testament writers employed these words to convey several different concepts, and if we don’t carefully study the context, we will miss their point.

Historical Christ, Resurrection

Is Extraordinary Evidence Needed to Prove the Resurrection?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I sometimes hear skeptics say that they need extraordinary evidence to believe that Jesus rose from the dead.  The reason they need extraordinary evidence, they claim, is that the resurrection is an extraordinary claim.

It is true that the resurrection is an extraordinary claim, but there are many extraordinary claims made about the past that we accept based on historical testimony.  For example, how do you get more extraordinary than the conquests of Alexander the Great?  His accomplishments are virtually unparalleled in history, yet we believe they really happened.

Or take a look at the Guinness Book of World Records some time.  Most of us have no trouble accepting the things recorded in there, but none of us were there to see all of them.  We have to rely on the testimony of those who were there.

The point is that multitudes of bizarre and outlandish marvels have transpired in the past, but for some reason skeptics are quite willing to accept these marvels as real, but not the resurrection of Jesus.

The standard for proving the resurrection should be trustworthy testimony from those who saw what happened, just like any other historical event.  In fact, all we need is eyewitness testimony that Jesus was alive, that he died, and that he was alive again.  If we know from history that these three things occurred, then we know Jesus rose from the dead.

There is nothing difficult about understanding this line of thinking.  If you are a skeptic, go study the historical testimony that shows Jesus lived, that he was then killed by crucifixion, and that he was then seen again by over 500 people.  There are libraries of both scholarly and popular level books that delve into these historical evidences.  Why not go read some of them, with an open mind to the evidence?

If the historical evidence is there, as I claim it is, you have some serious thinking to do.

Atheism, Free Will, Pantheism, Philosophy, Predestination, Theology

Does God Know What I Will Freely Do? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Yesterday, I posted on the issue of free will and God’s knowledge of of human free acts in the future.  This is an area the church has grappled with for centuries.  But how do other major worldviews deal with this issue?

Most atheists think they can avoid the issue by denying that God (or divine fate) exists.  Unfortunately, once you banish an ultimate mind as the source of the universe, you are only left with impersonal physical laws operating on matter and energy.

So free will, for the atheist, is just an illusion that our highly evolved brain gives us.  Fundamentally, we are completely determined in our actions and choices by chemistry and physics, by the mechanistic movement of atomic particles .  Free will, under atheism, does not exist.  So the atheist does not really solve the problem of fate and free will.  He just rids us of both, thus denying that the problem is real.

Monistic Pantheists argue that all of earthly life is just an illusion, that we are actually part of one ultimate, impersonal being.  When we realize that we are part of this one ultimate being, the illusion of our individual lives ends as we merge with the ultimate being.

In this sense, our individual free will is also an illusion because we, ourselves, are an illusion.  The only thing that really exists is this ultimate, impersonal being.  Their solution to the problem is to affirm divine fate at the complete expense of human free will or even true human existence.

Oddly enough, even though the theistic God seems to cause problems with the existence of human free will, without a personal God, free will cannot exist!

The Christian concept of God allows for mind to precede and transcend matter, which allows human free will to exist, in opposition to atheism (who only believe matter exists).

Christians also recognize that individual people exist apart from God, in opposition to pantheism.  The concept of human free will cannot exist without individual humans truly existing.  This the Pantheists deny.

Even though we Christians struggle with this doctrine, as do other theistic religions, at the end of the day a personal God is the best ground and source for free will.  Get rid of God, and free will quickly vanishes.

Free Will, Philosophy, Predestination, Theology

Does God Know What I Will Freely Do? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Some people get hung up on the idea that God can know, for sure, what I will freely do in the future.  Their argument goes something like this:  if whatever God knows will certainly occur (as virtually all Christians agree), then either I am not free to act or God does not know what free acts I will perform in the future.

Some Christians take one horn of the dilemma and claim that humans are not really free because human free will would spell the end of God’s infallible knowledge and sovereignty over all creation.  They severely throttle back the meaning of free will to the point that most people would not recognize it any more.  These folks understand humans to be far more similar to animals, operating on instincts, impulses, and desires – all properties that God exercises direct control over.

Others grab the second horn of the dilemma and claim that God does not really know what free creatures will do in the future.  At best, he is making educated guesses, but he cannot know, for sure, what humans will do.  The future free acts of humans are unknown, even to God, until they are actually executed.

I, and most traditional Christians, reject both of these positions.  The Bible seems to clearly teach that God does infallibly know the future, including all free acts that will be performed, and that humans possess a robust free will.  Admittedly, it is difficult to hold these two concepts without tension, but Christian theologians have always done so.

Do we know precisely how God’s infallible knowledge of future free acts coordinates with human free will?  No, I don’t think so.  We always run into the intractable problem of an infinite being interacting with finite creatures.  God knows everything we will do and we are free to do those things, but I don’t think we can ever explain exactly how it works.  There is a mystery to it, but there is no contradiction.

It isn’t just Christians that have had to deal with this issue.  Throughout history, great thinkers have struggled with the seeming paradox of fate and freedom.  If all things are decreed as part of an unchangeable fate, then how is it that we humans are free to do anything?  Rather than toss one of these notions aside, many thinkers have proposed solutions to retain both realities – that some sort of divine fate exists along with human free will.  Two viewpoints – atheism and pantheism – have found other ways around the problem.

Check back tomorrow to see if their worldviews better deal with this problem.

Essential Beliefs, General Apologetics, Polls, Salvation

Should Catholic Apologists Be Invited to Speak at an Evangelical Apologetics Conference?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In a recent post, I mentioned some of the speakers at an upcoming apologetics conference sponsored by Southern Evangelical Seminary.  One blog commenter noticed that Catholic speakers were being featured at the event and argued that they should not be.  He believes that Catholics are not Christians, and therefore cannot properly defend the Christian faith (which is the goal of apologetics).  Specifically, the commenter mentioned the fact that Catholics do not agree with evangelical views of justification by faith alone.

I disagreed with the commenter and argued that Catholics are Christian and should be able to present at the conference, but I want to know what readers of this blog think.  Should Catholics be allowed to speak at an evangelical apologetics conference?  Tell us what you think by voting in the poll below.  Also, share your comments on this issue by commenting on this blog post.

General Apologetics

2009 National Apologetics Conference

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Southern Evangelical Seminary is hosting their annual apologetics conference on Nov. 13 and 14 in Charlotte, NC.  The conference will feature speakers such as William Lane Craig, Chuck Colson, Dinesh D’Souza, Greg Koukl, Gary Habermas, Hank Hanegraaff, and Peter Kreeft (click here for the full speaker list).  These men are all incredible defenders of the Christian faith and many of them have deeply influenced my journey into Christian apologetics.

If you can possibly make this conference, please come.  You will learn so much that your mind and heart will be bursting by the end of it!  I have attended the conference several times and have always thoroughly enjoyed it.  I promise you’ll have a great time and you will be challenged to grow in your faith more than you can imagine.

A Christian Apologetics Blog