Category Archives: Theology
Daniel Florien Denies His Morals Come From the Bible (Surprised?)
Daniel Florien of Unreasonable Faith denies a charge I leveled at him: that his morals come from the Bible, same as mine. Where do his morals come from?
I get my morals from myself and my society. I treat others like I want to be treated, because that’s how I want others to treat me. I don’t steal because I don’t want to be stolen from. I don’t murder because I don’t particularly want to be murdered. And so on. (emphasis added)
In his book He is There and He is not Silent, Francis Schaeffer spends a chapter on this sort of mentality. The Greek philosophers tried to discover where morals come from, and one of their hypotheses was the polis, or city. For the Greek philosopher, the polis represented more than the physical city; it represented the entire social structure as well. The philosophers eventually rejected that notion, but it seems that modern thinkers are much more enlightened than the ancient Greeks, because the idea of morals stemming from the polis is back among atheists.
Rather than morality ruling society, society rules morality. It reduces morality to a majority vote. But morality is not, nor ever will be, a majority vote. The Greeks knew that, which is why they rejected the idea that the polis is the source of morality. Why don’t modern atheists see the same thing?
So is the self the source of morals? The Bible seems to support the notion that morality is the heart of people (Jer 31:33). The problem that we encounter when we make self the source of morals can be summed up by taking Florien’s expercise a step further.
He doesn’t steal or murder because he doesn’t want someone to steal from him or murder him. Fair enough. But what if he doesn’t mind it when his girlfriend cheats on him? Is it then acceptable for him to cheat on his girlfriend because it’s okay with him if she does the same? Well, I doubt that Mr. Florien’s girlfriend would agree (if he has one).
We can agree that the self may contain some morals. But it isn’t a perfect source for morality, as I’ve demonstrated above. There has to be some other source, some factor that guides our morality, a source that is perfect. We instinctively know that this source exists, somewhere. It isn’t the self, because the self is not perfect. It isn’t the polis, because that would reduce morality to a majority vote of various imperfect selves.
So what is that elusive source of morality that we all know exists? It must exist outside of self and outside of the polis, since it guides the actions of both rather than the other way around. I submit that that source is God, and that Mr. Florien (along with his atheist friends kind enough to visit my humble blog) draws his morality from God whether he knows it or not.
Only One Less God?
One frequently hears atheists make the claim that everyone is an atheist when it comes to deities like Thor or Zeus. The modern atheist, the claim is made, only believes in one less deity than the theist. But is that really the case?
James White makes a case for how this assertion trivializes the fundamental difference in the worldviews of the theist and the atheist.
Final Thoughts on Sins of Scripture
It is time to post some final thoughts on The Sins of Scripture by John Shelby Spong. The former bishop of Newark continues with the sin of certainty: that Christianity is the only way to God. He contends that this was never the intention of the early church, that this was a political move by Constantine in the development of later creeds.
If one is to accept that the Bible is the Word of God, which Spong does not, then one is left only with one conclusion: that Jesus is the only path to God. This is summed up beautifully by John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.” Spong, however, is free to come to a different conclusion since he does not accept the Bible as God’s Word. And he comes to a vastly different conclusion.
Deconversion Story
Johhny Bradford, a guest poster over at Unreasonable Faith, has posted his essay on why he no longer believes. It’s filled with all of the usual things for which I thought Christian apologetics have provided adequate answers, but I suppose not since I repeatedly see these same tired old arguments popping up in deconversion story after deconversion story. Let’s analyze this one and see if we can clear matters up.
The first one is typical: how could a loving God send people into a state of eternal torment for simply not believing in him? Well, the problem with that notion is Bradford’s theology of man. He believes that people are basically good, that we begin life with an “A” and gradually decline in points until we have an “F.”
But that isn’t what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that we are dead in sin. Keeping with the grading scale metaphor, we are born with an F. But it goes deeper than that: we can’t earn an A, no matter what! Hell isn’t what God wants for us, hell is what we deserve. A fair and just God would send any human being that comes before his judgment to hell.
Thank God that he is also merciful. Because it isn’t his will that any should perish, but that all reach repentance, he has sent his only Son Jesus to pay the penatly for us and die in our place. All a person has to do is have faith that God has already accomplished his (or her) salvation, and that’s it.
The Old Testament sacrificial system pointed the way to the New Testament’s single sacrifice for all of our sins. The book of Hebrews makes that quite clear. So this sacrifice was necessary in order to appease the justice of God, which demands that he take action against sin rather than ignore it.
People go to hell on their own merit. I read once on a T-shirt that free will never brought anyone to heaven, but it sent a lot of people to hell. I forget now who said that (I want to say it was Spurgeon), but there is much wisdom in that saying. Whether you believe in Christ or not, you still sin and God must punish sin. Any sin, no matter how minor, makes you hell-bound. It has nothing to do with believing in or not believing in God. Only by placing your faith and trust in the finished work on Calvary can you avoid hell.
Which leads us to Bradford’s next point. Christians behave the same way as their non-Christian counterparts. The fancy terminology here is hypocrisy. Here, I agree with him. According to the intro to dcTalk’s song “What if I Stumble,” the speaker says that “The single greatest cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowlege Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle.”
Christians aren’t suddenly made perfect by belief in Christ. Salvation is a once-in-a-lifetime event, but sanctification is an ongoing process that is often neglected. I blame the church in this case. There is a servere lack of discipleship in the church today. The main congregations are measured by baptisms, not retention. In reality, both should be a factor in determining the health of the congregation. In this, Bradford should take some of the blame as he is termed a “recovering Christian pastor.” So, as shephard of a flock, what did he do to help out with that problem? We wonder.
The atrocities of the Bible are discussed at great length here. The justification for what can only be described as mass genocide lies in the same theology of man previously discussed–man doesn’t start life with an A, he starts it with an F. Since the penalty for sin is death, those deaths were deserved. No one can stand innocent before God.
Of course, if I believed that hell was unjust, that hypocrisy was part of the case against the church, and that the atrocities of the Bible were unwarranted, then I would discard this faith, too. But I don’t believe in any of that stuff. Nor do I believe the typical atheist mischaracterization of those things, as Bradford clearly demonstrates that he does.
In all, I stand amazed that ministers of the Word can be duped by the secular opinion of the Bible and its contents. After all, we are taught that the world sees the Bible through a darkened lens, that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness doesn’t understand it. Yet, these same criticisms keep popping up over and over again, even though they are answered by apologists like myself.
Former Believers Had Severely Underdeveloped Theologies
Daniel Florien, curator of Unreasonable Faith, proves once again that former believers never actually took the time to understand theology. By quoting Robert Price, another ex-believer who also lacks a full understanding of good theology, Florien unsuccessfully tries to make the point that religious belief (specifically Christianity) stunts people’s moral, intellectual, and personal growth.
In the morality department, Florien once again cites fear of hell as the only reason that Christians are moral. No good for goodness sake; only goodness because of a reward in heaven.
I have a newsflash: Christians have nothing to fear from hell. The Christian’s faith in Jesus removes all need to fear going to hell. All of the good done by a Christian should never be because of fear of punishment. Instead, it should flow naturally from a heartfelt desire to please God. This is what saving faith is really about.
Christianity stunts a person’s intellectual growth, according to Robert Price, because wrong beliefs about theology will send you to hell. The safest path here is to not question anything. But this just isn’t right. I’ve said it time and time again that we go to hell because of our sins, not because of mismatched theology. It doesn’t take believing in something, it takes faith in Christ for eternal life.
I should point out that right doctrine and theology pleases and glorfies God, as C. Michael Patton argues here. That goes along with loving God with all of your mind. But it isn’t the main point–the main point is still faith in Christ.
Finally, Christianity stunts personal growth by teaching others a party line of morality instead of teaching them to think for themselves. In this post, I’ve argued that mankind is born into sin. We deserve the penalty for sin even when we’re fresh from the womb. Our entire nature is sinful. So, according to these guys, I’m supposed to adopt my own set of morals and beliefs based on what exactly? My sinful flesh? That’s a great idea.
A look at history should satisfy anyone that humans cannot be trusted to do the right thing. Ever. Not without a moral compass or some sort of guide. To the Christian, the Bible is that moral compass. Thinking for oneself when it comes to morals is just dangerous. This is moral relativism and the idea is a major philosophical failure.
How does atheism, on the other hand, promote moral, intellectual, and personal growth? Atheism has no moral compass, so it must rely on either moral relativism or some other philosophical system of morality. Usually, atheism assumes a Judeo-Christian system of absolute morality while trying hard to distance itself from God. So it looks like the Bible may be the atheist source of morality after all, they just don’t want to admit it. See this essay.
Friendly Atheist once posed the question If a miracle occured, would you believe in God? to its atheist readership. For humor, it added a webcomic where one character, a theist, asked another character, an atheist, what would it take to make him believe. The atheist said that if God printed a personal message to him in the stars, that would work. The next night, that happened and the atheist still found a reason not to believe. The comments section of that post was filled with agreement–the atheists almost universally declared that there is nothing that would make them believe–not even witnessing a bona fide miracle.
My point is this: who is more close-minded? Religion doesn’t close minds, atheism does.
Mass Genocide in the Bible
This is one of the ten most viewed posts of all time. To read all ten, download this free e-book.
Although it is rarely taught in Sunday School, there can be no doubt that mass genocide occurs with alarming regularity in the Old Testament. Just crack open a copy of Michael Earl’s self-published wonder Bible Stories Your Parents Never Taught You and read a few chapters. Over and over again, Israel kills not just the soldiers of the territory they invade, but the women and children, too.
All of this takes place at the behest of God himself, who is the one that orders the killings to take place. God very often indicates that he wants no survivors left.
This, according to our most scathing critics, leaves a huge moral dilemma: how can we continue to call the Bible the “Good Book” if it contains more violence than the average video game? Was the bloodshed and violence necessary?
Can You Sue God?
Ernie Chambers attempted to sue God in 2007. The Nebraska Court of Appeals has recently thrown it out on the grounds that courts don’t decide “abstract, hypothetical, or ficticious” issues.
Can a person sue God? I would say that the answer lies in Scripture:
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. (Rom 13:1, emphasis added)
What that means is that, no matter what anyone may say, our courts exist because God instituted them, and they have only the authority that he has given them. All authority derives first from God.
That means that God isn’t subject to the rule of any court, since they derive their authority from him in the first place. How quickly we sinful humans forget our place before the Lord. And what hubris to say that this is an “abstract, hypothetical, or ficticious” issue! This is an issue of authority, and who is subject to whom.
He Made Me a Believer Again!
C. Michael Patton is a writer I can’t recommend enough. His excellent Parchment and Pen blog had an especially great offering today. I started by disagreeing with the premise, but by the end, he had me believing his thesis wholeheartedly.
I think that good works are often neglected in the course of our salvation. I believe that good works are not only important, but a necessary part of salvation. I believe this next to writers like J.P. Holding, who attempt to view the Bible through the lens of first century Judaism. Holding writes that believers are saved not just through faith, not just through works, but through the Semitic totality concept of both faith and works cooperating with one another. This is the camp I sit in.
Please understand one very important thing: I am not saying that good works are the way that one is saved. I’m saying that good works are related in a very special way to the salvation of the worker. Good works flow from one’s salvation naturally. Holding says:
Applied to the role of works following faith, this means that there can be no decision without corresponding action, for the total person will inevitably reflect a choice that is made. Thought and action are so linked under the Semitic Totality paradigm that Clark warns us [An Approach to the Theology of the Sacraments, 10]:
The Hebraic view of man as an animated body and its refusal to make any clear-cut division into soul and body militates against the making of so radical a distinction between material and spiritual, ceremonial and ethical effects.
Thus, what we would consider separate actions of conversion, confession, and obedience in the form of works would be considered by the Hebrews to be an act in totality. “Both the act and the meaning of the act mattered — the two formed for the first Christians an indivisible unity.” [Flemington, New Testament Doctrine of Baptism, 111]
Put another way: You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. If you are a committed Christian, your life and attitudes are going to show that. If you aren’t, then your life and attitudes will show that. The work of the Spirit will manifest in the true believer.
But Patton forgoes all the discussion about works and instead says that right knowledge and right doctrine are pleasing to God in and of themselves. It seems to Patton, God wants first to be understood.
And that makes sense. We’ll never fully understand God, but we can endeavor to know him personally through Jesus Christ. And in the end, that is what will truly matter. As the prophet Jeremiah said:
Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD. (Jer 9:23-24)
Although I agree with Patton in principle, in practice we would do well to heed one of his commenters:
An article like this one may be entirely correct, but it provides “theological cover” for those who are looking for yet another reason to spend nearly all of their institutional resources (money and time) on “faith” and almost none on “love”. (Yes, those should not be separable, but they often are.)
The fact is, it ought not to be possible to believe correctly about (let’s say) prayer, and not actually pray. But it is very much possible. It’s possible to devote enormous resources to learning the theory and theology of prayer, and not actually do it much.
Heed the Lord’s brother James: Faith without works is dead (Jms 2:17, 26). While Patton’s post is correct, and knowing God is the ultimate goal of faith, faith without works creates some serious problems. To the first century Jew, as noted above, faith and works were a total and unified concept. However, today they are clearly not. As the commenter points out, it is possible to develop a strong belief in something without actually practicing it. This is the error that James’s epistle was addressing in part in the first place.
So don’t just say that you love Jesus. Get out there and demonstrate that love. Don’t just study the Word; apply what you know to your life. If you need help, follow the Discipleship 101 link on the left side of the page and start to work through that Bible study.
Sins of Scripture V: Child Abuse
Even though the next section of his book is about child abuse, there is very little argument in the next section of The Sins of Scripture that actually has to do with child abuse. Instead, Spong focuses on what he calls the ultimate act of divine child abuse: the Atonement. Of the Atonement, Bishop John Shelby Spong says the following:
Let me state this boldly and succinctly: Jesus did not die for your sins or my sins. That proclamation is theological nonsense. It only breeds more violence as we seek to justify the negativity that religious people dump on others because we can no longer carry its load. We must rid ourselves of it. One can hardly refrain from exhorting parents not to spare the rod lest they spoil their child if the portrait of God at the heart of the Christian story is that of an angry parent who punishes the divined Son because he can take it and we cannot. (173)
In this, Spong stands apart from every great thinker of Christian past, as well as from Scripture itself. There is much evidence from Scripture that the Atonement is how God intended us to interpret Christ’s death. But Spong uses those very same reasons to deny the vicarious Atonement. The Jewish feast of the Atonement prefigured Christ’s death; Spong simply asserts that this feast is where the imagery of Christ’s death is drawn from. Not that the feast prefigured the sacrifice on Calvary, rather the followers of Christ found meaning in his death by the feast of the Atonement.
No divine inspiration played a part in this, says Spong. This was grieved followers searching for a meaning in a tragedy. This would also be a veiled denial of the Resurrection, since the death of Christ was only temporary according to both the Bible and Christian tradition.
The assertion that the feast of the Atonement doesn’t prefigure Christ’s death directly contradicts the main thesis of the letter to the Hebrews. Since, however, Spong denies that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, it is no surprise that he completely re-thinks entire portions of Christian theology, no matter how essential to salvation that portion may be. And one’s Christology is central to Christianity, as the Bible teaches:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. (Jn 3:16-18)
The Sins of Scripture
It wasn’t long ago that I tossed aside my copy of Why Christianity Must Change or Die after reading only to chapter three, never to pick it up again. Author and former Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong remains a person of interest to me, if only to answer the question, “Why does he still call himself Christian?” Spong denies all of the essential truths of the Christian faith, yet calls himself a passionate believer.
I’ve started to read another Spong book, The Sins of Scripture, figuring (incorrectly) that I would agree with Spong on a few points. I’m curious to see how he presents the Bible, because the inside flap promises a new way to read Scripture. It is this curiosity that will keep me reading to the end, even though I already have the desire to throw the book into the fire where it belongs.
In chapter two, a chapter that would make any atheist proud of Spong, the former bishop dissects a claim that cannot continue to stand: the claim that the Bible is the inspired word of God. He says:
My religious critics say to me that there can be no Christianity apart from the authority of the scriptures. They hear my attack on this way of viewing the Bible as an attack on Christianity itself. I want to say in response that the claim that the scriptures are either divinely inspired or are the ‘Word of God’ in any literal sense has been so destructive that I no longer want to be part of that kind of Christianity! I do not understand how anyone can saddle God with the assumptions that are made by the biblical authors, warped as they are both by their lack of knowledge and by the tribal and sexist prejudices of that ancient time. Do we honor God when we assume that the primitive consciousness found on the pages of scripture, even when it is attributed to God, is somehow righteous? (18)
He goes on to ask a few questions between pages 18 and 19 that I thought I’d address, as they are seriously misguided. I wonder how someone like Spong can study the Bible so much and yet learn so little about it, or the claims of the religion that he claims to hold dear.
The questions, along with my answers:
- Do we really want to worship a God who plays favorites, who chooses one people to be God’s people to the neglect of all others?
- When we portray the God of the Bible as hating everyone that the chosen people hate, is God well served?
It is true that God preserves for himself a people out of each generation, and he lovingly predestines those people to conform to Christ’s image (Eph 1:4-5, 11; Rom 8:29-30). It is further true that God chose the Israelites first, and that he hated others.
But this fundamentally misunderstands the Biblical definition of “hated.” In the sense the word was used, it described only people that God did not have a covenental relationship with. It revealed nothing of his disposition toward such people.
The rest of the Bible is pretty clear that God loves all people; cf. Jn 3:16; Acts 10; Gal 3:28, 5:6.
- Will our modern consciousness allow us to view with favor a God who could manipulate the weather in order to send the great flood that drowned all human lives save for Noah’s family because human life had become so evil God needed to destroy it? Can we imagine human parents relating to their wayward offspring in this manner?
This question betrays Spong’s concept of sin. Spong obviously doesn’t view sin with the same seriousness that God views sin. Sin isn’t just a sickness. Sin means death for the human race. The Bible teaches that the wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23).
The verses preceding the Flood story paint mankind as corrupt and vile. “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen 6:5). In light of this, I don’t see how any serious student of Scripture can see the Flood as anything short of a deserved punishment that man brought upon himself.
- Can we really worship the God found in the Bible who sent the angel of death across the land of Egypt to murder the firstborn males in every Egyptian household in order to facilitate the release of the chosen people?
- Can the Bible still be of God when it portrays Joshua as stopping the sun in the sky for the sole purpose of allowing him the time to slaughter more of his enemies, the Amorites (Josh 10:12-15)?
- Can the Bible be the “Word of God” when it has Samuel order King Saul in the name of God to “Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass” (1 Sam 15:3)?
The God that Spong is describing has no absolute right to judge his people as guilty of sin, and therefore no absolute right to pass judgment on his people.
- Is it the “Word of God” when the Psalmist writes about the Babylonians who have conquered Judah: “Happy shall he be who requites you with what you have done to us! Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rocks” (Ps 137:8-9)?
All I have to say to this question is: Just because it is in the Bible, doesn’t automatically mean that it is condoned by God. The Psalms express the full range of human emotions, from happiness to despair, from joy to sadness. But that’s just what they describe-human emotion. This isn’t divine righteousness like the passages described above; this is a very human emotion. Anyone should be able to see the distinction.
In all, I think Spong paints God as a lightweight. One who doesn’t sit in judgment over sin, but instead tolerates and accepts it as human behavior. This isn’t the God that I worship.
Back Rome Again 