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Is Masturbation a Sin? A Disagreement with Steve Hays
Steve Hays of Triablogue defends masturbation as a good thing here. Matthew Bellisario responds to that here. I weigh in, siding (for once) with Bellisario here. Hays responds to all three of us in one fell swoop here. I’ll let Dave Armstrong and Matthew Bellisario deal with his retorts to them on their own. I’ll consider Hay’s response to me.
[A] guy named Cory also raised some objections. Unfortunately, he doesn’t offer any arguments to respond to. Just assertions.
So, Hays isn’t going to respond to me at all. Darn.
I already dealt with the “lust” objection, both practically and exegetically. Of course, I could always be wrong, but no counterargument is forthcoming from his end.
Oh, whoops! He is responding to me. I’d better start paying attention. Let’s see. He’s already dealt with the lust objection. Unless I’m missing something, he did not deal with the issue at length. This is what he said:
Traditionally, the church has frowned upon masturbation. One reason is the relation between masturbation and lust. This cannot be denied. On the other hand, lust is also aggravated by the absence of a sexual outlet. That is, indeed, in the nature of sexual tension, of a tension between sexual desire and sexual release. Unrelieved sexual tension only builds.
Interesting. So masturbation is fine as an outlet for sexual tensions because otherwise the tensions would simply build and build. This is interesting because the atheist tends to justify things like pre-marital sex, pornography, and other things I would hope that Hays categorizes as sinful by appealing to the same sort of logic. It relies on the false assumption that you can’t deny yourself sexual pleasure. Read the rest of this entry
The Emptiness of God as a Philosophical Concept
It is a sad day when any Christian renounces his former faith and rejects the gospel. It is even more sad when the Christian in question is someone who was an active evangelist and a close friend. I had a feeling that I knew what he meant when he posted “[name withheld] is free of the cult and not afraid.” But I checked the litany of comments below the status to confirm what I feared: the “cult” he meant was Christianity.
He now believes that God is love, but nothing more than that. Of course, this belief is informed by Scripture, which he also rejects. Leaving that contradiction aside, we find that what my friend has done is to reduce God to a mere philosophical concept.
He appears to understand that God is necessary for existence. He would probably agree with me that God is the First Cause, or the Uncaused Cause, that touched off the chain of events that eventually became our universe. Other than that, my friend seems to have no way to inform his understanding of God other than to label him “love.” This is reducing God to a speculative philosophical concept.
The Christian, however, believes in a deity that is more than just a philosophical concept. The Christian has real object for his faith, that is, the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus suffered all of the same things that we suffered, emerging victorius, so that we can have real comfort with someone who has been there before. Jesus is God’s way of getting closer to us: by becoming flesh and blood and suffering though life as one of us.
A philosophical concept, however, is a cold and impersonal force that has never experienced life the way that we can. This isn’t a real person that we can retreat to when times are rough. So, when times get rough, while the Christian sees Jesus as the anchor and the rock to weather the storm, my friend won’t have such a rock. He’ll only have himself.
Once he has to weather a storm relying only on himself, it is easy to conclude that a philosophical concept did nothing for him. So why not shed the philosophical concept altogether?
Reducing God to a mere philosophical concept is only a few steps away from atheism.
Theology FAIL!
Commercialization of Easter and Christmas sicken me. But this made me laugh out loud.
5 Unpopular Questions About God’s Love
Mark of Proud Atheists has a post entitled “5 Unpopular Questions About God’s Love,” which presents 5 questions that are designed to make theists squirm. Of course, they are misunderstanding things as per usual. Let me try to clear things up a bit.
Why did God create evil? There are so many types of “evil.” I will assume that Mark is talking about moral evil. The verses that are cited (Is 45:7 and Jer 25:29) do not support the idea that God creates moral evil. This is an example of selective use of Bible translations, something that even Christians are guilty of doing (e.g. Rick Warren in The Purpose Driven Life). The word that the KJV renders “evil” in these verses actually means “disaster” or “calamity.” I can certainly agree that God creates calamities or disasters, but not moral evil. These verses do not have moral evil in mind.
Why did God cause bears to maul 42 children for poking fun at a man’s baldness? Read the text. Verse 24 says “forty two of them,” which means that there were more than 42. If a mob of over 42 youths were coming at me shouting epitaphs, I’m going to wildly assume that they don’t have my best interests at heart. This was likely the equivalent of a modern street gang, and they were certainly old enough to recognize a prophet of God for what he was–and that means old enough to know better.
Why would Jesus command his followers to hate their families? He doesn’t. This is an example of hyperbole. What Jesus means is that you should love him so much, that everything else looks like hatred in comparison. Look at the same verse rendered in The Message: “Anyone who comes to me but refuses to let go of father, mother, spouse, children, brothers, sisters—yes, even one’s own self!—can’t be my disciple.”
Why would Jesus bribe his followers to abandon their families? This is a nitpicky question coming from a skeptic who doesn’t believe in eternal life, which is essentially what Jesus is promising his followers in this verse. What he’s really doing here is preparing his followers to lose family over following him, which is a potential cost of discipleship. Look at Muslims who convert–they risk death at the hands of their own family for converting to Christianity. Those people who lose the most stand to gain quite a lot in the hereafter. It isn’t a case of bribery at all. It’s a reward for living a tougher life than others.
Why would a loving God command Moses and others to slaughter children and eviscerate pregnant women? Are skeptics still on this one? I thought I had answered this before. The assumption here is that these are innocent people, but the Bible teaches us the opposite. There are no innocent people. We have all sinned (Rom 3:23; 5:12), and all deserve death (Rom 6:23). Therefore, God, the just and fair judge, is not doing anything wrong by commanding the deaths of these people–they are not innocent!
Rey has the Spirit of an Antichrist
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. (1 Jn 4:1-3, emphasis added)
In this post, Rey has been arguing with me over the Virgin Birth. Naturally, Rey takes the position that the Virgin Birth never happened, while I take the orthodox position that it did happen.
There is something very subtle that I want everyone to see. Aside from the fact that Rey has to quote established heretics to make his position stick, that is. First, Jesus took on our sinful flesh according to Hebrews 2:14 (yet he remained without sin, Heb 4:15). Logically, he had to receive this flesh from somewhere. So, second, Jesus was born. He did partake of the same things, as the letter to the Hebrews makes plain. The gospels of Matthew and Luke say he was born of a virgin because Romans 5:12 says that it is man that spreads the taint of sin to the child. Third, and most important, note the snippet above from 1 John.
Rey, by saying that Jesus just one day appeared on the scene, is effectively denying that Jesus came in the flesh. According to 1 John 4:1-3, that puts him square in the antichrist camp. Rey has the spirit of an antichrist.
Now, I leave it to Rey to convince us why we should still listen to him, given this information.
Statement of Faith III: The Lord Jesus Christ
His Preexistence and Deity (Jn 1:13)
“Before the world was created, the Word already existed; he was with God, and he was the same as God.” So begins John’s gospel (1:1, TEV). There was never a time that the Word did not exist; so he is coterminous with the Father and eternally loved by the Father.
John 1:1 is such a simple verse but with profound implications. Jesus is the same as God–it is so difficult to conceive of the easily described yet profoundly misunderstood mystery of the Trinity. Jesus is one in essence with God, yet a separate and distinct person. What does that really mean?
For our purposes here, it can mean only one thing: that Jesus is deity. There is only one deity, and that is God (Deut 6:4). Yet Jesus shares this divine essence, even though he is a distinct person from the Father and the Holy Spirit, who also share the divine essence.
Incarnation by Virgin Birth (Jn 1:14; Mt 1:18-23)
What separates the Word from the other members of the Trinity is the fact that he took on sinful flesh to become like us. Original sin, the sin of Adam, passes to the offspring by way of the father. Jesus had no earthly father; he was born of a virgin who had not yet known the touch of a man. Therefore, he was not tainted by original sin.
Sinless Life (Heb 4:15)
Though Jesus had sinful flesh, he remained in all ways free of the stain of sin. In fact, it is argued by many that it was impossible for him to sin because it would violate his divine nature. Either way, he accomplished a feat that none had done before, nor have any done since: he lived a sinless life. He, who would become the Ultimate Passover Lamb, was without blemish.
Substitutionary Death (2 Cor 5:21)
Of course, this is one of the cornerstones of Christianity. The next section discusses another cornerstone, that of the Resurrection. While Jesus conquered death through the Resurrection, it was important that he suffered death to begin with. Why? To appease God’s wrath for all time.
God’s nature demands that justice be meted out for sin. There are two possible alternatives: either the person who sinned suffers the consequences of his own sin, or a substitute takes the punishment for that person. The entire sacrificial system prefigured this penal substitution that was meted out on the Cross.
Jesus, who had no sin, became sin for us so that we can become righteous before God. He suffers the full penalty so that we don’t have to.
Bodily Resurrection (Lk 24:36-43)
The Resurrection is the cornerstone of Christianity. The apostle Paul wrote that without the Resurrection, we are above all to be most pitied (1 Cor 15:19). We are still in our sins (1 Cor 15:17).
Most of all, the Resurrection is a bodily Resurrection. What is common to the Resurrection appearances is that Jesus appeared bodily to the witnesses. They were able to touch him and he ate with them. He was not a Spirit; he appeared bodily.
Ascension Into Heaven and Present Ministry (Heb 4:14-16)
Jesus is the Great High Priest of our faith; he has lived on earth and was tempted in every way that we were yet remained without sin. He goes alone before the Father on our behalf (1 Tim 2:5). With such a high priest for us, we need no other.
Coming Again (Acts 1:11)
Jesus will return one day to set up a kingdom that will last forever. He will return bodily and visibly, and all creation will bow their knees to their Creator (Phil 2:10).
A (Reluctant) Response to Rey
Normally, I just ignore Rey, but this time he brought up an interesting point. In a comment on my previous post, he said:
If we are really born at enmity to God and He is causing this to happen as his punishment of Adam’s sin, then He is as much at enmity with us by His nature as we are at enmity with Him by our nature. We both are then equally guilty, and shall not the equally guilty just mutually forgive one another if they are rational?
I agree that our natures are equally at enmity, but it doesn’t follow that we are both equally guilty. To be sure, there is a breach between the nature of God and the nature of man. We need to ask ourselves: who caused the breach?
There is a cause, and Scripture clearly reveals it. Therefore, it follows that someone caused it. Causes, and their resultant effects, follow in a logical chain. An agent caused the Fall, and we turn to the pages of Scripture to find out who caused the rift.
Go back to the text in Genesis 3. Read it carefully. As far as I can tell, humanity bears full responsibility for causing the breach between God and man, and therefore putting enmity between the nature of man and the nature of God. God, in all his wisdom, tried to prevent that and protect us by forbidding us to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It was by disobeying him that the rift was created, for up to that moment everything in nature had obeyed God’s commands. The first act of disobedience was man’s fault, not God’s. Man transgressed God, not the other way around.
God is not equally guilty with us, I’m afraid. The text won’t allow that conclusion. But it would be evil for God not to offer forgiveness, a way out of this bind.
God does offer forgiveness, Rey. All those who call on his name will be saved (Joel 2:32). Not just some, but all who call on his name. Isn’t that a glorious promise? Repent of your sins, embrace the totality of Scripture, and call on the name of Jesus (Rom 10:9), for there is no other name by which you can be saved (Acts 4:12).
Inanna: Prototype of Easter?
Several atheist websites carried the story today: an interview with Dr. Tony Nugent of Seattle University conducted by Valerie Tarico of Huffington Post reveals that Easter has its origins in ancient Sumeria. In a myth constructed circa 2100 b.c., the goddess Inanna dies and rises after three days. Although on the surface, the myth sounds similar to the story of Christ, there are a number of significant differences that you will fail to hear about if you just take the word of Ms. Tarico.
First, this epic takes place thousands of years before human beings, and has nothing to do with human beings. The myth is to explain the cyclical seasons, and as is common in many myths of this type, the goddess dies and rises in a cyclical fashion. The myth takes place wholly in the realm of the gods, and has no proof of its historicity as such.
The story of Jesus, on the other hand, takes place within human history and is verifiable historically.
Second, Inanna is raised if she can find someone to take her place. In this case, she chose her husband who failed to moun her. Her sister-in-law pleaded to take his place, and so it was settled that Inanna’s husband would take half the year in the underworld and his sister the other half. This myth explains not a victory over death, as Jesus’ story does, instead it depicts the cyclical seasons.
In Jesus’ case, he rose only once (not cyclically) and no one had to take his place. In fact, no one could take his place, for Jesus lived a sinless life. It is well-established by a look at the Bible and human history that no one else has lived a sinless life. The fact of the empty tomb is also verifiable historically. Gary Habermas, Michael Licona, and William Lane Craig all have articles and books on that subject.
Third, Inanna is killed attempting to conquer the underworld. This is a significant departure from the Jesus story. This is goddess turf war, and has nothing to do with salvation.
Jesus, on the other hand, died on the cross to save mankind from his sins. This story has everything to do with salvation and nothing to do with the cyclical nature of seasons.
Fourth, there is no betrayal by someone close to the goddess in the Inanna myth as Dr. Nugent claims. He is simply wrong about that detail. Inanna was betrayed by her sister, the ruler of the underworld, but the two were not close. Their enmity is well-documented by other Sumerian myths.
Dying and rising gods usually signify something about the seasons, not anything to do with salvation and victory over death. Jesus died to secure salvation for the elect, to end the reign of death. He doesn’t continually rise again and again so that the seasons work in a cycle. Sorry, guys, but there are far more differences than similarities in the story.
Read the Wikipedia entry for Inanna; as of April 12, 2009 the details of the details of the story line up with my presentation above and not Dr. Nugent’s presentation.
Also read the brief entry at pantheon.org; it confirms some of the details above.
Statement of Faith II: The One True God
In The Jewish Approach to God, Rabbi Neil Gillman cited that Jews believe that God is echad, which means “one.” He spent an entire chapter discussing that concept at great length, and I will touch on a few brief points in this post.
First, there is the shema. Jewish men recite the shema daily. It is Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” The word for “one” in that passage is the Hebrew word echad, which implies more than just a number. It means more than, “God is a single unit,” although it means that, too. Echad means that God is uniquely God. God is unique because he is God.
So, now my atheist readers are raising an eyebrow and saying, “Ha! You worship three Gods: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! How does that jive with ‘God is one.’ Christianity loses, atheism wins!” Well, dear atheist reader, I’m going to try to explain it to you. Wipe the drool from your lower lip and continue reading.
I have outlined in this post that there is a fundamental difference between the polytheism of Indian religions like Hinduism and the monotheism of Christianity. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each echad–uniquely God–while retaining their individual identities. Some atheists assert that we are worshiping three Gods in One. We are not: we are worshiping three Persons in one God.
Nothing about “personhood” suggests that it must be unique to an individual essence or soul. One could easily make the argument that an essence or soul could have multiple persons attached to it. That is not the case with humans, God’s image-bearers. Our essence contains only one person attached to it. Not the case with God; his essence carries three Persons attached to it: Father, Son, and Spirit.
Why, if we are God’s image-bearers, then do we only have one person attached to our souls while God has three? Would it not make sense that we should have three persons attached to our soul? Well, that is actually a very good question, and tough to answer. Scripture is silent in this regard, so we must be careful when attempting to draw inferences from it. The best, and most reasonable, explanation is that God chose to attach only one person to a human soul instead of three. That is our ontology, the way that God made us, and why he didn’t make us another way is simply a mystery.
One last point bears touching on before I close the discussion of the Trinity. As Richard Dawkins put it in The God Delusion, rivers of ink (and blood) have been wasted trying to explain the Trinity and Dawkins complains that much of it remains a mystery. So I ask, “Why the double standard?” Science accepts abiogenesis as a potential theory about the origins of life, despite failing in every way to substantiate it. The origin of life remains a mystery. Yet many hold out that one day, we will substantiate abiogenesis and solve the mystery of life. Why, I ask again, are you allowed to have mysteries of science, but I am not allowed to have mysteries of faith? I am doing the same thing as you are doing with abiogenesis, but for that you label me a “fundie” or “deluded.”
In The God Delusion, Dawkins explains that a certain agnosticism is warranted when the evidence is scant. Just like atheists can remain agnostic about the origin of life and still be called reasonable, we can call the Trinity a mystery and still be reasonable.
God, though three, is really one (echad). This is one of the great mysteries of faith, and instead of filling us with skepticism it should fill us with wonder. The wonder of echad is that God is the only God (see Is 44:6).
Back Rome Again 