On The Chosen Generation Show
I will be on the Chosen Generation show with Pastor Gregory Young, Thursday March 26, from 10:00 -10:30 to discuss how the Social Justice movement continues to be negative force in society. The show will be streamed live here. If you miss the show, it will be posted here.
Consider Christianity Week – Unity
Just an announcement that tonight, as part of Consider Christianity Week I will be discussing Christian Unity with Joel Watts. Joel and I do not agree on a lot, but we both seek unity so it should be an interesting discussion. It starts at 7:00 PM Central Time and you can post questions for us.
The Face of Tyranny
Supporters of redefining marriage to include same-sex couples like to portray it as the latest battleground in a long tradition of fighting bigotry and intolerance, a fight where victories are celebrated as triumphs of the rule of law. But while supporters like to keep the focus on what they call “marriage equality” in reality something far darker and more sinister is going on.
As I have written in the past, court rulings that redefine marriage are the antithesis of the rule of law. These rulings are not upholding the rule of law, they are destroying it for the sake of an idea of equality. But the ideal itself is false. Often supporters counter with claims that this is the new civil rights movement where allowing same-sex marriage is the equivalent of allowing interracial marriage. This is false.
Previous court rulings on race were grounded both in the Constitution and reality. They were grounded in the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution. They were based in reality because the distinctions based on skin color are false distinctions, no more valid that distinctions based on hair color or eye color.
The same cannot be said for Same-Sex marriage. There is no grounding in the Constitution for over turning long established marriage laws. Instead it comes, not from reasoned analysis of the Constitution, but from judges demanding that their personal views become the law of the land, however they may dress it up to sound legitimate.
Nor is it based in reality, for unlike distinctions based on skin color, distinctions based on sex are very real. While the ideal that men and women are basically the same was a fad back in the 1960s and 1970s, science has completely and thoroughly refuted that notion, as if any refutation was even necessary. Today the ideal that men and women are basically the same is overtly held only by some elites who insulate themselves from inconvenient things like facts.
Yet while refuted, like the walking dead, the theory that men and women are basically the same remains a strong force for many on the left. It is also one of the key underpinnings for Same-Sex marriage, as the basic claim is the categories of men and women are arbitrary and can be interchanged. Thus statements such as “the best environment for raising children is a home with a loving mother and a loving father” is seen as irrational. Mothers contribute nothing special to the raising of a child and the two fathers will work just as well.
As soon as you conclude that it is reasonable to see men and women as different, the rationale for the court cases overturning traditional marriage falls apart. In short they are themselves a lie.
Another major argument used by supporters is some form of ‘What difference does it make?’ How would allowing two men or two women to marry affect your marriage, or affect you? This argument is at best naïve, and more likely disingenuous. Marriage is by definition a social construct that involves more than the two people getting married. If it was just a commitment between two people, same-sex couples have been able to do that for a long time. As a core unit of society, to redefine marriage is to redefine society. Its effects will be reflected in everything from TV shows to the text books used in school.
As traditional marriage laws have been overturned and same sex marriage imposed by judges, normally contrary to the expressed will of the people, one thing that has become clear is that this is not a movement for tolerance as many people have unfortunately found out. So far those on the front line in this battle have been those involved in weddings in one fashion or another, photographers, bakers, florists etc..
Some who did not wish to participate in the celebration of something they disagree with have found themselves facing a hostile government saying you will celebrate same-sex marriage or else. In the most recent case a 70 year old grandmother is facing the loss not only of her business, but of her home, because she refused to renounce her religious beliefs, which see marriage as sanctioned by God.
But these are not the only victims. The CEO of Mozilla was forced to resign because it was discovered that several years earlier he had donated $1000 to the California ballot proposition that upheld the traditional view of marriage. Last month a highly distinguished fire chief for the City of Atlanta was fired because of comments he wrote in a book several years earlier.
This is not tolerance, this is the face of tyranny. You will think what we want you to think or else. No disagreement will be tolerated. As for now the fate of Liberty, the founding principle of the Republic, remains in the balance.
Google Hangout
Tonight at 7 CT, in the first 1/2 hour I will be interviewing author David Cartwright about his new book Wounded by Truth, Healed by Love. In the second 1/2 hour I will be discussing the reliability of the Gospel of John, with Henry Neufeld. Be sure to Join us, at The Paradoxical Teachings of Jesus
Newsweek and the Bible : The Text
Newsweek’s initial issue of 2015 is a devastating attack, not on the Bible as they might have hoped, but on Newsweek’s own credibility. Kurt Eichenwald’s cover story The Bible: So Misunderstood It’s a Sin, is completely one-sided, at best extremely misleading, in some places just flat out wrong, and in others just plain silly. So much so, that one would expect it to have been written by some hate-filled radical atheist, and not a reporter from a supposedly respectable news organization. In short, it is so bad that I am sure even some of the more serious critics of Bible will find it an embarrassment.
Eichenwald opens his allegedly objective article with what can only be described as a hate-filled invective against evangelical Christians, one that is at best a caricature. He then laughably attempts to follow that with a claim that “Newsweek’s exploration here of the Bible’s history and meaning is not intended to advance a particular theology or debate the existence of God.” Only someone completely ignorant of the issues involved, or someone who shares Eichenwald’s agenda, would consider his article a balanced piece.
While the article claims to be “based in large part on the works of scores of theologians and scholars, some of which dates back centuries” Eichenwald has carefully selected those scholars who agreed with the points he wanted to make, and seems completely unware that there are scholars who would disagree. To give an analogy, it would be as if a political reporter claimed to give an objective review of a particular policy by citing “scores of sources” but all the sources were from the extreme wing of one party.
A one-sided presentation of scholarship would be bad enough, however many of his arguments would not even be accepted by the scholars he cites. His first major argument is that the Bible we have today is “a bad translation—a translation of translations of translations of hand-copied copies of copies of copies of copies, and on and on, hundreds of times.”
This is so factually in error that as an argument it is just plain silly, and could only appeal to those who have no knowledge of the history of the Bible, much less fields such as Textual Criticism or Bible Translation. While I go into more detail in my book, Evidence for the Bible, the simple fact is that modern translations are not based on early translations, but on the best texts in the original language, and these texts are the work of many scholars and based on a vast array of evidence, primarily the earliest manuscripts and fragments of manuscripts – the earliest of these going back to within a couple of decades of the originals.
If Eichenwald presents a distorted view of the transmission of the manuscripts, he is correct about how the earliest were written, “scriptio continua—meaning no spaces between words and no punctuation.” But he describes this as if it were somehow significant, yet does not give a single example from the Bible where this is an actual issue. This is because to do so would only show that this was not really a big problem. In the vast majority of the places where this occurs the context is clear enough to know which meaning is intended. In the small number of places where it is actually an issue the difference in meaning, while important to understanding that particular passage, has no effect on the overall teaching of the Bible.
Eichenwald instead moves quickly on to the issue of the differences between the manuscripts, but a careful reading of his arguments actually undercuts rather than supports his claim that we cannot know the Bible. He says that,
“But in the past 100 years or so, tens of thousands of manuscripts of the New Testament have been discovered, dating back centuries. And what biblical scholars now know is that later versions of the books differ significantly from earlier ones—in fact, even copies from the same time periods differ from each other. ‘There are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament,’ says Dr. Bart D. Ehrman, a groundbreaking biblical scholar and professor at the University of North Carolina who has written many books on the New Testament.”
This would at first blush seem pretty strong evidence for Eichenwald. His claim that there are “tens of thousands of manuscripts of the New Testament” is true, IF one also includes all the early translations that were made, as there are only somewhat more that 5800 early Greek manuscripts of the NT. As for his claim that “biblical scholars now know … that later versions of the books differ significantly from earlier ones,” that hinges on the meaning of significant. Significant to what? They are certainly not significant to the teaching of the Bible as a whole.
About the closest Eichenwald ever comes to supporting this claim is in his description of the ending of Mark. First it is important to note that this is not some new revelation. Not only are these addressed in commentaries, all the major modern translation deal with the textual variations, and give the alternate readings in footnotes, so that readers are aware of them.
Then he claims that, “These verses say that those who believe in Jesus will speak in tongues and have extraordinary powers, such as the ability to cast out demons, heal the sick and handle snakes.” Ok, I give him the point about snakes, though, it should be remembered that handling snakes has hardly been a mainstream position in the history of Christianity. In fact, the vast majority of those thought, and think, the longer ending is part of the Gospel, also have rejected the belief that handling snakes is something Christians should do.
As for speaking in tongues, casting out demons, and healing the sick, the longer ending of Mark is hardly the only places these are mentioned. And this is the key point, except for possibly handling snakes which few Christians believe in in any event, not a single doctrine depends on a verse where there is a doubt about what was the original wording of the text.
The real problem with Eichenwald’s argument can be seen in his statement concerning Luke 3:16 that, “Today, most modern English Bibles have returned to the correct, yet confusing, ‘John answered.’” How does he know that ‘John answered’ is correct? It is because the whole field of Textual Criticism which is devoted to sorting through and comparing, not only the texts in the original language, but also the early translations into other languages, and all the quotes by early Christians citing passages, to determine what was the original text.
What Eichenwald sees as a weakness, is in reality a strength. Yes, scholars have found that the early mss do differ in places, but in the process they have shown that the text we have today is very reliable. In fact, as I argue in more detail in my book, Evidence for the Bible, the text we have today is for all practical purposes the same as was written by the Apostles and Prophets.
There are numerous other errors and problem with Echenwald’s presentation about the text of the Bible. His discussion of Translation and Canon are no better, but this is already a longer than normal post. Hopefully from this it will be clear that Echenwald’s Newsweek article says much more about him, and about Newsweek, than it does about the Bible. The Bible can be trusted; they can’t.
