Josiah Concept Ministries

I worked so hard to get the final podcast product set to go that I neglected to find a way to distribute it.  The final size is to big for Yahoo-GeoCities and WordPress won’t allow MP3 uploads without a paid upgrade.

So, for right now, if anyone would like to listen to the first podcast, please drop me an e-mail and I will send it to you.  The final size is 19 Mb, so you’ll need to make sure that your mail reader will support something that large.

Thank you for your patience.  I will find a distribution method for the podcast very soon!

I was at the library today, and as I so often do when I’m there, I checked out a book: The Portable Atheist, which is an anthology of “essential” atheistic writings collected and edited by the inimitable Christopher Hitchens.

I’m not going to read it in order, and I’m not going to read the entire thing, but I am going to read an essay or two each day and post some thoughts.

The first essay I read was “Can an Atheist be a Fundametalist” by A.C. Grayling. Grayling has a notable hatred of religion in this piece, which failed to argue its premise. Rather than actually argue if the term “fundamentalist” is appropriate to call an atheist, the piece instead focused upon the “evils of religion,”and all of the usual canards that go with it. It closed by saying that “naturalist” is a better term than “atheist.”

Well, so far, I’m not impressed. I do, however, see why this book is aimed at the unbeliever. This essay was preaching to the choir, not trying to reason with someone who might be curious about entering the fold of atheism. We shall see if any of the other pieces in the book are actual arguments or if it is just a collection of hit-pieces against religion.

My critics may look at this as symbolic, but I need to strike this story while the iron is hot.  I am preempting my very first podcast, which was supposed to be on the Bible and women, in favor of a Christian response to the Tom Cruise video that has been sweeping the Internet like a great storm.  The Bible on women episode will air February 15.

The current episode is on schedule to air February 1.  If anyone would like to make a listener contribution on either the Tom Cruise video or on the Bible on women, please e-mail an mp3 file to tucholskic@gmail.com.  Listener contributions are always welcome!

**WARNING: Irony ahead!**

Using the same standards that skeptics apply to the Bible, I have concluded that Canadian singer Bryan Adams is a cannibal. There is no other plausible answer to the dilemma skeptics’ standards.

This shocking truth dawned on me today when I was at work, and I heard the song “Have You Ever Loved a Woman.” Here is a snippet from the foul, disgusting lyrics:

To really love a woman,
Let her hold you,
Till you know how she needs to be touched.
You’ve got to breathe her, really taste her,
Till you can feel her in your blood.
And when you see your unborn children in her eyes …
You know you really love a woman.

Notice the boldfaced portions–ignore the rest of the context. The only way to truly understand something is to isolate it from its context and read it hyper-literally with no regard to accepted literary devices. Doing that, there is only one way to understand “tast[ing] her” and “feeling her in blood”–Mr. Adams must be referring to eating her.

Since this line appears in a romantic love song, one can only conclude that Mr. Adams finds this practice loving and romantic. Therefore, the only way that a man can show love to a woman–in Mr. Adams’s sick and twisted world–is to eat her.

Some people will argue that Mr. Adams is speaking metaphorically.  But I see no reason to conclude that.  And even if he is, he is still hinting at cannibalism, which is disgusting any way you slice it.

Some may further object that I’ve used circular reasoning.  First, I ignore context, then I place the snippet into its broad context.  But that doesn’t matter much, either.  This is the same way that skeptics read the Bible, so it must be correct.  Just look at the disgusting John 6–this verse also talks about the same wretched practice of cannibalism.

It is only fair.  If you apply one standard to the Bible, you should be able to apply it to everything.  So the conclusion is absolutely inescapable: Bryan Adams is a cannibal.  We must organize a boycott of his music immediately until he renounces this horrid practice.

I should note before continuing with this series that I agree with Dave Armstrong that a visible church is spoken of in Scripture. I disagree with some of the evidence that he has offered–for example, applying Matthew 5:14-16 to the church rather than to the obedience of people. Overall, though, Dave and I are in agreement that the church should be a visible entity, not some quiet and mysterious “inner connection” between believers.

However, Dave is long way from proving that the Roman Catholic Church is supposed to be that visible church. Dave is even further from proving that the Pope is to be the head of this body, and he has failed to show that the Catholic Church is even organized biblically. In fairness to Dave, he isn’t trying to prove that with this post–he’s only trying to argue for a visible church. That the visible church is the Catholic Church is a presupposition of his argument. In the second part of his post, Dave looks at Protestant objections and answers them from his book, The One Minute Apologist. Let’s look at the objections and Dave’s answers.

Objection #1: “The notion that the ‘one true Church’ is a visible institution is a false tradition of men.”

Dave, or rather the One Minute Apologist, answers:

It is true that Catholics believe in an “invisible” Church in some sense: namely the mystical Body of Christ. We hold that all Christians who have been baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are part of the Church, however imperfectly. But from this it doesn’t follow that there cannot also be a visible, institutional body of believers whose members can be said to properly belong to Christ’s True Church. When Jesus and Scripture speak of the Church, it is usually in terms that suggest a tangible, specific, active presence in the world and in the community of believers:

Matthew 5:14-16: I’ve already answered that in my previous post.  This is talking about believers’ actions, not the church.

Matthew 18:15-17 and 1 Timothy 3:15: I agree with Dave; these verses speak of a church that is active and visible in the world.

Some Christians seem to think that the Apostle Paul was a kind of “lone ranger,” not part of any Church but single-handedly (or with the help of a few friends) preaching and spreading the gospel. The Bible, on the other hand, recounts how Paul was subject to the direction and sanction of the institutional Church. He, too (even though he was an apostle, who wrote much of the New Testament), was under authority:

Now, who’s authority would we suppose that the apostle was under?  My guess is that he was under God’s authority, not the church’s authority.  Let’s see if Dave’s proof texts bear this hypothesis out:

Acts 13:1-4 and Acts 14:26-28: Definitely the Holy Spirit was sending Paul out in these texts.  This goes in the “Sorry, Dave, You Lose” column.

Acts 15:2-3,22-23,30: In this text, I don’t see that Paul and Barnabas are under the church’s authority; it seems as if they are cooperating with the church and its elders to select missionaries to help them.  We’ll put this in the middle column.

Galatians 1:18-19: No authority is taken or given in this verse.  We’ll put this one in the “Sorry, Dave, You Lose” column.

Galatians 2:9: Peter and James give Paul an equal hand and recognize him as an apostle.  Okay, I’ll put this into the “You Got One Right, Dave!” column.

Two strikes, a neutral, and one win for Dave in his proof texts.  But the story doesn’t end there.  What about the verses that Dave never considers, such as Galatians 2:11, where Paul opposes Peter–the very person who gave Paul the authority of apostle–because Peter “stood condemned?”  What about 1 Corinthians 14:37, where Paul says that the things he is writing are commands from the Lord–not from the church?

Paul certainly wasn’t in a vacuum apart from the other apostles, but he certainly wasn’t under the authority of the church the way that Dave supposes that he was.  Nor do I think any believer should be under the authority the church–otherwise, how could Paul claim we are all competent ministers of a new covenant (2 Cor 3:6a)?

Objection #2: “The words of Jesus Himself suggest that the Church is first and foremost invisible, not bound by denominational structures.”

More from the One Minute Apologist:

No, because Scripture also describes the unsaved reprobate as “sheep” (Ps. 74:1), refers to “sheep” that have “gone astray” (Ps. 119:176), and applies the description to the nation of Israel (Ezek. 34:2-3,13,23,30), and indeed, all men (Isa. 53:6). The overall biblical theme concerning “sheep” is in the sense that all men, and particularly Israel, are His children. But this doesn’t require an invisible Church or forbid a visible, institutional Church, because the latter is clearly indicated in the Bible.

I’ve already answered this one. This argument is an insult to the literary device of metaphor and assumes that the same metaphor can’t be used to convey different meanings in different context. Notice that each of Dave’s other examples come from different books of the Old Testament. All this shows is that sheep are useful as a metaphor for various groups of people.

To conclude, I agree that the church should be a visible entity within society, and it should be much more visible than it currently is.  But I think that we need to train people in church history and theology much better than we do, and that will alleviate a lot of the disillusioned people leaving the church for the comfortable delusion of atheism–or worse.  Dave’s article is woefully unconvincing that the Catholic Church is the only visible church, but I don’t think that he was really arguing that point, believing it to be a foregone conclusion.  In the end, Dave is supposing controversy where none exists, and it seems that the ultimate purpose of his post was to squelch a nonexistent controversy.  I think that most Protestants will agree with my conclusions in this article.

VJack, the writer of Atheist Revolution, has struck again with another anti-religion post. Most notable is this paragraph:

Belief in a god (or gods) is similar in the lack of evidence, but different in that it is far more likely to have negative consequences. Maybe you have heard your religious relatives condemn others for not adhering to the same religious beliefs. Maybe you have seen them behave in a manner inconsistent with the religious values they profess. Or maybe you’ve just grown tired of the endless religious violence, the pedophile priests, the holier-than-thou routine, or the utter hypocrisy of it all. In other words, religion is unlike Santa because it divides people and contributes to great suffering.

How many atheist missionaries are there active the world today? How many atheists band together, raise all of the funds necessary for self-sufficiency, and then strike out into a hostile foreign country to help suffering people? Before you think that religion contributes to suffering, ask yourself how many religious people dedicate their lives to helping others.

But he is right in one respect–there are religious people who behave inconsistently with the values that they profess and who condemn others solely on the basis of the faith that they hold. There is religious violence, pedophile priests, and many religious people profess a holier-than-thou routine.

But, at the risk of adopting a holier-than-thou routine, I’m going to ask my central question one last time: How many atheist missionaries are active in the world today? And the follow-up: What are atheists doing to alleviate some of the suffering in this world, aside from trying to blame religion for all of it?

Dave Armstrong has a rather fascinating article on whether or not the church should be a visible or invisible entity. I thought I’d take a look at it as an exercise in putting Bible verses in proper context.

Most Protestants (especially evangelicals) see unity and oneness subsisting primarily or solely in the inner, invisible, spiritual unity of those who are in fact in Christ by virtue of being justified, or born again, or regenerated (with or without baptism, depending on denomination). For them, the church consists of the Spirit-filled, predestined elect, who will persevere and are saved, now and in eternity.

But Catholics see it differently, according to Dave Armstrong:

The Catholic Church has always proclaimed this unifying characteristic also, under the broad and rich concept of the Mystical Church (under which it acknowledges Protestantism), yet it doesn’t pit the Mystical Church against the institutional, or visible Church, as most evangelicals do. For Catholics, then, the issue of oneness is substantially related to organizational and practical aspects of ecclesiology. Catholics believe that the Church is both organism and organization, not merely the former. The Mystical and visible “churches” are like two circles which largely intersect, but which are not synonymous. They exist together - somewhat paradoxically and with tension - until the “end of the age.”

First of all, let’s look at this from a biblical perspective. The church has clearly been organized in the Bible with the offices of elder (Titus 1:5-6), bishop (1 Tim 3:1-7; Titus 1:7-9), and deacon (1 Tim 3:8-13). Nowhere does the Bible say that we are governed by a specific bishop of a specific city.

Dave continues:

At this point in the discussion Catholics appeal to the hierarchical, or episcopal (that is, under the jurisdiction of bishops) nature of Church government. Furthermore, Catholics maintain that this form is divinely-instituted and biblical, therefore not optional or of secondary theological importance.

Dave is already off base in claiming that the Catholic Church is “divinely instituted” and “biblical”. It isn’t organized as prescribed in Scripture. It has no elders, only a single monarch–the Pope.

Now Dave appeals to Matthew 5:14-16 as evidence that this church is to be visible. Let’s look at those verses really quickly, in their proper context. Jesus is talking to a group of people gathered for His famous Sermon on the Mount. He’s not talking to the church, He’s not talking to the apostles themselves. So these verses are not talking about the church.

The Sermon itself was all about the Law, and how the Law is impossible to follow. So a better fit for these verses is that they are talking about obedience to God. Why hide it? As St. Francis of Assisi said, “Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.” Let people see what it means to be a Christian first, says Christ in these verses.

Looks like Dave took those verses out of context to make his point.

Protestants often cite Jesus’ analogy of sheep and shepherd (John 10:1-16; cf. 2 Timothy 2:19, 1 John 2:19), who know each other (10:14), as evidence that the Church consists of the elect only. Yet the analogy breaks down when we find that Scripture also applies the term sheep to the unsaved reprobate (Psalm 74:1), the straying (Psalm 119:176), Israel as a nation (Ezekiel 34:2-3,13,23,30), and, indeed, all men (Isaiah 53:6).

When I say that I’m stuck “between a rock and a hard place,” I’m using a metaphor to convey something that would otherwise be difficult to put into words. This is the same thing that Christ is doing. The Bible also fairly consistently uses the Rock as God. Since Dave’s examples all came from different books of the Bible, that must mean that metaphors are universal everywhere and always, right? That means that when I say I’m stuck between “a rock and a hard place,” that I’m talking about God, right?

No, of course not. It means what it means, just as those metaphors from other books in wholly different contexts mean what they mean. This argument is an insult to the literary device of metaphor.

Other passages which presuppose a visible, identifiable, “concrete” Church include Matthew 18:15-17, in which believers are exhorted by our Lord to take errant and obstinate brothers to the church, which will then determine the appropriate verdict. It would be contrary to the tenor of the New Testament if this were a reference to a local church alone - even apart from the utterly impractical consequences of such a scenario (where the sinner would simply attend another denomination and move on with his life, as is tragically all too often the case today).

Here, Dave and I are actually in agreement.  It is a sad state of affairs when someone just goes to another church because he doesn’t like what his current church has to say about his sin.  But the Bible still isn’t supporting his case here, since the writers didn’t foresee the ability to hop from one McChurch to the next just because a person didn’t like what the current church said about some issue.  In those days, there was one church per town, and that was how they evidently thought it would stay.

But even then they had competing theologies; most of the New Testament is about correcting errors taught by heretics.  Back then they had people who read the Scriptures daily and knew theology much better than the average person today.  The average person today thinks that you have to be a good person to get to heaven and that Jesus is only one path of many!

No, people today aren’t schooled in the basics of theology.  That is the problem, not some imagined church authority, or lack thereof.

And St. Paul, in 1 Timothy 3:15, describes the “church of the living God” as “the pillar and bulwark of the truth.” This statement is similarly almost nonsensical in the context of competing and often contradictory denominations. Where would a sincere, uninformed, unsophisticated religious seeker go to find this certain truth? Only within the sphere of a serious attempt at actual visible oneness of doctrine can this verse attain any pragmatic possibility.

And elsewhere, Paul seemed to encourage differences in doctrine (Rom 14:1-12), but concludes “. . . whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Rom 14:23b)–which merely reinforces the fact that it is faith that is the cornerstone here, not the church or denomination that one belongs to.

I will answer the material from the One Minute Apologist tomorrow.

If it wasn’t for the fact that Scientology flies directly in the face of everything I believe as a Christian, I might endorse Tom’s overall message.  He’s touching on a lot of the issues that I’ve been covering–atheist misconceptions about how Christians think that the world works.  Look at Ephesians 2:8-10:

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (emphasis added)

We are saved, and truly in Christ, only by God’s grace.  That grace is a free gift, and not based on works.  If it were based on works, then grace is no longer free.  Instead, we are saved by His grace through our faith in Christ (see Rom 10:9) plus nothing.

What about the works that I’ve highlighted?  Simple: look at 1 John 5:1-3:

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.

We obey out of love, not out of necessity.  Obeying out of necessity is a curse to us–”Cursed be anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them” (Deut 27:26).  Studying all 613 (or so) laws of the Old Testament, I think that we can agree that it is impossible to do all of them.  We’re going to mess up somewhere.  And guess what happens if you mess up only once:

For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. (Jms 2:10-11)

But the point is we need to obey God.  The idea is to do this out of love, not out of some perceived need to become saved.  The Bible is quite clear that it is impossible to follow all of these 613 laws and live (see Jn 6 with the idea that bread = law).

Cruise has done a great job underscoring the necessity to help our fellow man for his Scientologist followers.  Perhaps Christians should heed his words also: let’s do more to help our fellow man.  Let’s do that, however, out of love and not out of the insane notion that it will get us in God’s good graces.  We who are Christians are already in His good graces by His gift to us; our works cannot add anything to that salvation.  But they can make the world a better place and that is the real point of doing them.  We’re going to be here for a long time, and our children are going to live here after us.  Let’s turn a better world over to them than what we started with.

Steve Ray has an interesting post about being born of water and the Spirit (Jn 3:5).  He lists nine places in the Bible where water and the Spirit represent new birth, and then concludes:

Too bad many Evangelicals and Fundamentalists refuse to see it but the Bible is pretty clear about new birth through the sacrament of baptism. Jesus is not ambiguous in this matter and he is alluding quite clearly to new beginnings in the Old Testament. The Early Church is also very clear and so is the teaching of the Catholic Church today.

We’re assuming that the seven Catholic sacraments are Biblical.  While the link provides an excellent argument against these seven sacraments, I should note that I believe very strongly in baptism, and I believe that it was commanded by our Lord Jesus that we should receive it.  I don’t believe that it is necessary for salvation–for that is by grace through faith.  Baptism is a clear command–it is one of the ways that we demonstrate our love for Him (Jn 14:15; 1 Jn 5:3), not a way He confers grace on us.

I agree with Steve Ray’s premise but cannot support his conclusion.  It would be interesting to track down the context of the Augustine quote to see if Ray is using it correctly.

Now don’t get me wrong–I’m not trying to downgrade the importance of baptism.  I just don’t agree that it is any more necessary than any other work for salvation.  Salvation is by grace through faith (Eph 2:8-10).  The works we walk in are prepared by God for us to do; they are not the linchpin that saves us.  This includes baptism.  Walking in God’s commands shows our love for Him to the world–a witness without words.  Those who are in Him should be willing to do whatever He commands, and this includes being baptized.

This is the final installment (for now) of my examination of the comments of an atheist named Jake on my other site:

Also, the Talmudic references to Christ are dated possibly to between 70 and 200 A.D., but more than likely from between 200-500 A.D. These are hardly contemporary. Moreover, there are several possible references to Christ, not “one” as you claim. In addition, the facts stated in the Talmud dispute the Biblical account. Christ being hanged and not crucified is one example.

That’s easy to refute. First, writing was tedious and not undertaken lightly back in the first century. Therefore, committing something to paper usually took years. Normally, oral tradition was done first. This explains the disparity in the dates. For the time, this was contemporary.

Second, the “facts” in the Talmud would dispute the Biblical account; that was the point to writing them. We would expect nothing less. Your example is flawed, however, since “crucifixion” and “hanging” were the exact same thing in Roman Empire terms. Look at Galatians 3:12-14–Paul uses that same terminology to describe Christ’s death.

Finally, just for the record: I hate to say it, but Lee Strobel’s books are regarded as a joke as far as apologetics go. He does nothing to examine legitimate evidence for any of his books’ subjects. Far better apologetics can be found elsewhere.

I’ll grant you that. Strobel attempts to make the heady subject of apologetics accessible to a general audience, and he waters it down quite a bit. However, the folks that he interviews are experts in their respective fields and have done much to further the study of apologetics. Strobel presents a good primer to the study of apologetics and by reading the books of his interview subjects and the recommended reading at the end of each of his chapters, one can get a much better understanding of the issues he raises.

That was the end of Jake’s first comment. He left two more.

Jake continues:

I realized that I misspoke: which books comprise the Apocrypha is not universal across Christianity, and therefore. it was incorrect of me to imply that the Apocrypha were rejected by all of Christianity. The Catholic church (as well as a number of other groups, most typically the Orthodox sects) still includes several gospels in their New Testament that are not found in the Protestant Bible (the same goes for some OT books). I meant to say that these are rejected by Protestants, which greatly diminishes their reliability as sources. At the very least, it seems inappropriate for a Protestant author to cite them as evidence for martyrdom of the apostles when the remainder of the information in these gospels is rejected.

First of all, the apocrypha that the Catholics accept and Protestants reject is seven books of the Old Testament.  The four-fold gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are universal across Christianity.  Only the Jesus Seminar treated the Gospel of Thomas as canonical.  Rejecting something as apocryphal only reduces its value for determining Christian doctrine.  It still deserves consideration as a historical document, provided it is near enough to the time to produce useful eyewitness information.

Further, the twenty-seven traditional New Testament books are also universal across Christianity.  There are no books of the first century or second century that receive consideration from any denomination for inclusion in the canon.

Finally, I was citing church tradition, not specific documents, for the martyrdom of the apostles.  I referred to this article for further information on the deaths of the apostles.

Jake’s final comment:

The books commonly referred to as the apocrypha are Old Testament books rejected by Protestantism but accepted by Catholics and various Orthodox groups. Various other sources, like the Gnostic gospels or the Acts of Phillip, are generally universally rejected and remain apocryphal to all faiths. Nevertheless, some traditions about the deaths of the apostles come from such rejected works.

Consequently (and what I really meant to say), I think it inappropriate for a Protestant author to cite works that are rejected by some or all Christian faiths, as the veracity of such works is questionable at best.

Again, I cite church tradition, not specific sources.  There are plenty of orthodox works from the same time period where this information may have come from, works that are not considered apocryphal by any means.  Letters from early church fathers, historians, or apologists would not be considered apocryphal and therefore would be useful for my purpose.