Podcast appearances and mentions of Jesus Seminar

Episode Summary:John Dominic Crossan is the world's most prominent Jesus scholar. He joins me today on Holy Heretics to discuss what we can, and what we cannot, know about the life of this first century Jewish peasant. Unlike traditional theological portrayals of Jesus, which center primarily on his death and resurrection, Crossan's scholarship focuses on the historicity of Jesus. Who was he? What evidence do we have to support his existence? Instead of asking why Jesus died, Crossan has spent decades unearthing the reasons Jesus lived.For Crossan, Jesus was a radical social revolutionary who confronted Roman oppression and attempted to live into an alternative version of reality. His portrayal challenges conventional Christian perspectives that see Jesus primarily as a divine figure who came to die for our sins.In books like The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (1991), Crossan presents Jesus as a figure who opposed both Roman imperial rule and the hierarchical structures of Jewish society. He describes Jesus' movement as one of radical inclusivity and nonviolent resistance. Crossan's work has been controversial, particularly among conservative Christians, because he downplays the supernatural aspects of Jesus' life, including the literal resurrection. Instead, he sees the resurrection as a symbolic event representing the triumph of Jesus' teachings.I'm delighted to share our conversation with you! If you are interested in learning more about the historical Jesus, this episode is a fantastic introduction. By challenging conventional wisdom and introducing his rigorous historical methods, Dom Crossan invites listeners to meet Jesus again for the first time.BIO:John Dominic Crossan is an Irish-born American theologian and former Roman Catholic priest best known for his association with the Jesus Seminar. Upon graduating from high school in Letterkenny, Ireland, in 1950, Crossan moved to Chicago, where he joined the Servites, a Roman Catholic monastic order. Ordained a priest in 1957, he returned to Ireland to study at St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, and received a doctorate in theology in 1959. He then studied at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome for two years before returning to his Servite community to teach.In 1965 he began study at the École Biblique et Archaéologie Française de Jérusalem (French Institute of Bible and Archaeology, Jerusalem). Two years later he returned to Chicago to join the faculty of the Chicago Catholic Theological Union. In 1969 he resigned from the Servite priesthood, citing a longing for academic freedom and his intention to marry. He soon joined the faculty of religious studies at Chicago's DePaul University, where he taught until his retirement in 1995.Crossan continues to write and lecture today. His most insightful books include The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus' Final Days in Jerusalem, The First Paul, God and Empire, andJesus: A Revolutionary Biography.Please follow us on social media (use the buttons below) and help us get the word out! (Also, please don't hesitate to use any of these channels or email to contact us with any questions, concerns, or feedback.)If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and a review, or share on your socials

The Jesus Seminar, made up of very liberal people, often attacked evangelical beliefs about Christianity. This book refutes their challenges. Today I explore the third chapter of the book, which discusses what we can learn about the words of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament.

In this episode of The Tent Making Christianity QCQ Podcast, the team answers the question "What is the Jesus Seminar?".  

Most progressive church goers have been exposed to academic criticism of the New Testament, especially as concerns the nature of the historical Jesus. After all, the Jesus Seminar has been around for 40 years, giving us those wonderful books by Marcus Borg, John Shelby Spong, Karen Armstrong, and Jon Dominic Crossan. Still, I have marveled at how church members can leave a brilliant lecture about the historical Jesus and in minutes, default to a kind of 4th century creedal set of beliefs about Jesus. This message attempts to challenge us to critically interrogate the image of Jesus we carry around in our heads.

Are you and ignorant Christian that knows about the Bible but not what the Bible means today? Lois Tverberg, popular Christian author of the “Rabbi Jesus” book series, shares the story of why she left her career as a college biology professor to write about the Jewish context of Jesus full time. It begins with her struggle to answer a critical question for many Christians. Did the historical Jesus actually claim to be the Messiah and Son of God, or was this just made up by later Gentile followers? During the 1980s, the "Jesus Seminar" filled the headlines with this theory. Her college religion professors were saying the same thing. Ten years later, Lois discovered a group of Jewish and Christian scholars who showed that just the opposite was true. Jesus' words were filled with bold claims to be the Messiah and Son of God, but he expressed this through allusions to the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). New Testament scholars who were ignorant of this well-known Jewish teaching style completely missed the implications of his words. For more information you can reach her at: https://ourrabbijesus.com/ We appreciate your support. You can do that below: www.agoodword4today.com Cash App: $Agoodwordforeveryday --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/agoodword4today/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/agoodword4today/support

Lois Tverberg, popular Christian author of the “Rabbi Jesus” book series, shares the story of why she left her career as a college biology professor to write about the Jewish context of Jesus full time. It begins with her struggle to answer a critical question for many Christians. Did the historical Jesus actually claim to be the Messiah and Son of God, or was this just made up by later Gentile followers? During the 1980s, the "Jesus Seminar" filled the headlines with this theory. Her college religion professors were saying the same thing. Ten years later, Lois discovered a group of Jewish and Christian scholars who showed that just the opposite was true. Jesus' words were filled with bold claims to be the Messiah and Son of God, but he expressed this through allusions to the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). New Testament scholars who were ignorant of this well-known Jewish teaching style completely missed the implications of his words. For more information you can reach her at: https://ourrabbijesus.com/ We appreciate your support: www.agoodword4today.com Cash App: $Agoodwordforeveryday --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/agoodword4today/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/agoodword4today/support

Are you ready for some theological fun? Watch one of the greatest living Biblical scholars tell 450 day-drinking progressive Christians how cool the Biblical Paul was. This is a live podcast with John Dominic Crossan from Theology Beer Camp. It was a ton of fun and will give you a taste of what goes down at camp. If you want to hang with us this year in Denver, head over here and get your info. If you want some more time with Dom Crossan, then join our upcoming class on the Historical Jesus.  John Dominic Crossan is an Irish-American biblical scholar with two-year post-doctoral diplomas in exegesis from Rome's Pontifical Biblical Institute and in archeology from Jerusalem's École Biblique. He has been a mendicant friar and a catholic priest, a Co-Chair of the Jesus Seminar, and a President of the Society of Biblical Literature. His focus, whether scholarly or popular, in books, videos, or lectures, is on the historical Jesus as the norm and criterion for the entire Christian Bible. His reconstructed Jesus incarnates nonviolent resistance to the Romanization of his Jewish homeland and future hope of a transformed world and transfigured earth. Crossan's method is to situate biblical texts within the reconstructed matrix of their own genre and purpose, their own time and place, and to hear them accurately for then before accepting or rejecting them for now. Dom's lecture from Theology Beer Camp, The Vision & Execution of Jesus The video version of our conversation JOIN the HISTORICAL JESUS class with Dom Crossan Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Previous Podcast Episodes with Dom & Tripp Christian Resurrection & Human Evolution The Cross & the Crisis of Civilization The Coming Kingdom & the Risen Christ The Parables of Jesus & the Parable of God How to think about Jesus like a Historian the Last Week of Jesus' Life Jesus, Paul, & Bible Questions Saving the Biblical Christmas Stories the most important discovery for understanding Jesus The Bible, Violence, & Our Future Resurrecting Easter on the First Christmas  From Jesus' Parables to Parables of God  Render Unto Caesar on God & Empire   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We do not need to choose between intellectual honesty and faith. True faith can only exist in harmony with intellectual honesty. While many Church leaders discourage members of the Church from deconstruction, I have to say that God transformed me and even delivered me through my deconstruction and reconstruction. Deconstruction is inevitable. Deliverance itself involves a process of deconstructing one's life and belief systems. One of the central elements of a robust faith is intellectual honesty. In today's podcast, you will hear from a well-known intellectual whose work has rocked the Christian world over the past few decades and, I believe, will continue to shape the Christian Church for generations to come for the better. I'm talking about the intellectual giant and someone future generations will refer to as a "father of the faith," N.T. Wright.❤️ SHOW YOUR SUPPORT - LINKS BELOW...➡️ DONATE ➡️  Join our team!https://www.givesendgo.com/karlgesslerfamilybandhttps://www.patreon.com/karlgesslerSocial Media➡️Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100089357625739➡️Telegram - https://t.me/FaithoftheFathers➡️Truth Social - https://truthsocial.com/@UCLOvq6O4aIXLrkKxwXkq3uA ➡️Gab - https://gab.com/KarlGesslerSupport the show

Which is more influential, the culture or the Church? Man, it's not even close! How do we know? One crisp way: examine what church leaders are doing. Take Pope Francis, for example. Conservative life-long Roman Catholics are beside themselves with how Francis is either working around or apart from Church tradition. The reality is we are living in an era that mirrors the 16th century Reformation for its significance. I also suggest an approach for when you're in a debate. Finally I examine the a priori assumptions and methodology of the Jesus Seminar. Just who was Jesus as he was?

This episode's content in order: a Sawtooth mountain campfire conversation; a from-the-future newscast; recognizing patterns; prayer to wake and shake; how to play it when you're outmatched in a conversation; carefully defining the meaning of faith; faith as Holy Spirit-ual attunement; the Jesus Seminar on Gospel manuscripts; and, the bulk of textual evidence behind the New Testament. Please, come think and laugh with me!

John 4:1-30

The Rev. Jay Mills, retired Episcopal priest out of North Carolina, joins Andrew and James today to discuss a recent article he wrote titled "There and Back Again: Historical-Critical Skepticism and Renewed Faith" that was published in the Living Church. In the article, Jay shared about his growing up in the Episcopal Church, coming of age in the late 1960's and leaving the the church, his return to faith, his time in the early 1970's Jesus Movement, his years as a theology student and seminarian where encountered the historical-critical method of teaching the Bible, how due to this he became skeptical of the historicity of events as described in the Bible (especially the Old Testament), and his eventual return to the belief of the Bible as authoritative and reliable. Show notes: The episode on the Jesus Seminar from Sarah Wilson Hinlicky and Paul Hinlicky's podcast that Andrew referred to can be accessed here. The episode artwork is of 1970's Jesus Movement signage.

Continuing our quest for the quest for the historical Jesus, in this episode we take a look at the Jesus Seminar, and in particular representative scholar Marcus Borg. Dad as usual is the very picture of responsible scholarship. I manage to be not quite as snarky as in the last episode, but given the choice between Borg's milquetoast mystic and Schweitzer's apocalyptic nut, I'm with the latter. Fortunately, it is not a choice we need to make, which should be your takeaway from these two episodes! Notes: 1. Wright and Borg, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions 2. Weiss, Jesus' Proclamation of the Kingdom of God 3. Related episodes: Quest for the Historical Jesus, Resurrection What do you think five years of top-quality theology podcasting is worth? Register your vote by joining our highly select band of Patrons. Get some cool swag and support your favorite podcast in remaining stridently independent and advertising-free!

An interview with Dr. B. Brandon Scott Dr. Brandon Scott explains the complicated history of resurrection. It was not an Easter celebration during biblical times, but the hope of God's restoration of things was handed down from Daniel and the Maccabees.  Sacrifice was widespread in the ancient world, not because of sins, but as an act intended to realign the world with God. Writing of Jesus's death come from a conviction that his death was not defeat but that God made him alive. Bernard Brandon Scott is the Darbeth Distinguished Professor of New Testament Emeritus, Phillips Theological Seminary, Tulsa. He is a charter member of the Jesus Seminar and co-chaired Westar's Christianity 1 Seminar. Scott is the author and editor of many books, including The Real Paul: Recovering His Radical Challenge, The Trouble with Resurrection, Hear then the Parable, and Re-imagine the World: An Introduction to the Parables.

Star Wars nerds have an argument about Han Solo, and whether he fired his gun first in the bar scene of “A New Hope.” There are t-shirts that say, “Han shot first.” I am here to tell you of a similar argument, one that has far greater importance and consequence for anyone that believes Jesus is God incarnate, also known as the Creator of the Universe. This one matters immensely because your spiritual life may depend on how you answer it, and the truth about this matters much in the founding of Christ's Church. This question is about which Gospel was written first, and I am here to tell you: Matthew shot first. Matthew wrote the first Gospel. He wrote it in Hebrew first before it was translated into Greek. He wrote it before the year 70 A.D. And it was Matthew the Apostle that wrote it, not some random Matthew from Accounting. Why does any of this matter? Because for two centuries, people have been spending incredible amounts of ink to disprove this Tradition, because it undermines the Church. According to Sacred Tradition, from Papias and Irenaeus, to Ignatius of Antioch, all the way to St. Jerome and St. Augustine, Matthew was known to be the first Gospel. This is documented in various writings from the Church fathers. The whole tradition of the Church said so for nearly two millennia. For a terrific read on this, check out Brant Pitre's book The Case for Jesus which cuts through two hundred years of fog spewed from anti-Catholic scholarship and atheists. For anyone who attended college in the 1990s, brace yourself and be seated when reading this book. Much of what I learned in my freshman year of college turned out to be false, it's just unfortunate that I can't get a refund from Viterbo University for it. (Note: there's a video series on formed.org of Pitre's The Case for Jesus). Matthew happens to be the Gospel with the most pro-Catholic references. But that is not the reason I believe it is important to believe that Matthew shot first. Not at all. Rather, it is the overwhelming evidence of history and testimony of the early church that indicates that Matthew, the apostle, wrote a Hebrew or Aramaic gospel first, and no one batted an eye about this claim until 19th century scholars decided that Matthew a.) didn't write it all, and b.) wrote it much later, and c.) maybe didn't even exist. All of Christianity, for 1800 years, knew that the gospel of Matthew was written first, hence the ordering that we all learn as children: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Until the 19th century, in Germany's “culture war” (Kulturkampf) against the Catholic Church, Matthew shot first. Then, magically, by textual criticism, in mostly Lutheran academic circles, suddenly Mark became the first Gospel. You have to marvel at this sudden change, when you consider how much Catholics and other faithful talk about Jesus, and things related to Jesus, and anything that could possibly even relate to Jesus. People talk about Jesus and the Gospels like breathing air. But we are to assume that for 1800 years, no one had really thought about which Gospel was written first? And, stranger still, only when the Protestant era and Enlightenment humanism arrived did the topic finally come up? I find it difficult to imagine that the early Church members, from bishops downward to the lowliest lay person, didn't constantly discuss these things. Moreover, you have copies of Matthew scattered about the known world with “According to Matthew” written at the very top of the scrolls, indicating very clearly that the authorship was not in question. But suddenly in modern times, the question erupts: “Did Matthew really write Matthew?”There is literally no copy of Matthew that does not have his name written at the top. Zero. The only question of authorship comes from those who do not want it to be written by an apostle and an eyewitness of Jesus' life. Further, there is not a single argument in the writings of the early Church that dispute that Matthew was written first. When scripture first started being read in liturgy, the Church would still have been almost entirely oral tradition. In other words, spreading the word of Jesus was not done by handing someone a Gideon's Bible or leaving a pamphlet on the bathroom sink at the airport. No, the word, was all passed on by the spoken word, and through relationships. Anyone still remember relationships? This is hard to remember for us now, but relationships and human contact was a pre-Internet phenomenon when people got together and talked about things that really mattered to them instead of watching cat videos, sports, and porn by themselves. In the early church, there was no printing press, and most people were illiterate. So if you wanted to learn about Christ, you had to talk about Christ with others, listen, repeat, retell, and revisit. No podcasts were available, no wordy blogs like this one. Yet clearly the copyists and the Church fathers knew that Matthew existed, wrote the first Gospel, and wrote it first. This is what is called Tradition in the Catholic Church. It is beyond my ceiling of credibility to imagine that no one during the Apostolic era stopped to ask, or thought to discuss, or bent anyone's ear about which evangelist wrote first, or who wrote it. We are to believe that we had to wait some 1800 years for English and German Protestant scholars to come up with these questions. Now, I can watch just about any fantasy or science fiction movie and let my ceiling be raised to accommodate the director's or author's imagination, but I cannot imagine that no one said, “Hey guys, which Gospel was written first?” In addition, the one Apostle who most certainly knew how to write was the tax collector, Matthew, who worked in Jerusalem and would have obviously needed to know multiple languages to merely do his job. Yet, we plant this stamp of doubt upon it and ask, “Did Matthew really write Matthew?” as if no one ever asked that question. But there is good reason for enemies of the Church to argue that Mark shot first. There are extremely compelling reasons to take up this banner and fight against “Matthew shot first.”The motive to remove eyewitness accounts of Jesus' life is strong on the atheist side of the fence, because it increases doubt and alleviates their conscience for not believing. If you push Matthew out to 90 A.D., then a sixty year gap from Crucifixion to writing the Gospel makes it more of a legend than a biography. On the flip side, for Protestants, moving Matthew to a much later date elevates the argument against Peter as the first Pope. Matthew is full of references to Peter as the founder of Christ's Church, as well as the Sacraments of confession and marriage being defined exactly as the Church still teaches them in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In both cases, the Church is attacked. This is nothing new, and every heresy and battle the Catholic Church ever faced comes from the same places, going as far back as Marcion, Pelagius, Arius, Celsus, and every other would-be Pope-slayer. But here's one of the funny things about all of those historical heresies: not one of them, not a single one, ever challenged the idea that Matthew shot first. This only came up relatively recently, starting in countries with kings and politicians that hated the Church, who were either Protestant or unbelievers. But most interesting is that in both writing the author as Matthew and declaring the order with Matthew first, the early church had no motive or reason to lie about any of this, because neither the specter of atheism nor the idea of future Protestantism in the 16th century would have occurred to them. It's difficult, if not impossible, to imagine how every scribe in the world wrote “The Gospel according to Matthew” on top of the scroll, when as this thing was spread out it was like feathers flying out of a pillow from a rooftop. Yet, we are to believe that every scribe who caught a feather was somehow in on a conspiracy to mask the authorship of some random writer by tricking everyone into believing that the apostle Matthew wrote it. Perhaps more amazing is the minor, miniscule errors in copying that the scribes made as this document flew around the world. To follow this a bit more, we are to believe that those first Christians who were willing to preach in the streets and be martyred for proclaiming the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, had some kind of massive, Orwellian, bureaucratic memory-hole operation in place to bury any copy that could have unwound the conspiracy. This is beyond comprehension, because it assumes that rather than just trying to spread the word of Jesus, the apostles were master manipulators, like Machiavelli, or Iago from Othello, and somehow these fishermen cooked up a story so profound and so life-changing, that not only were they willing to tell it to everyone, but they were willing to be boiled, clubbed, beaten, stabbed, flayed, and crucified for it. The “synoptic problem” was not a problem until it was a problem for unbelievers and Protestants, especially kings who wanted to have their own form of religion and morality, like every mythological cult that ever got started. The problem with allowing kings and power into your religion is that in that very moment, that instant, you've lost your religion. This is, essentially, what paganism is. It's the hammering of God's law and natural law to fit the goals of the king or the State. And re-writing history to remove Matthew is one of those methods of “winning” that modern kings and governments and academics have attempted to use. But the motive of the Apostles motives was evangelism, as they were on fire with the Holy Spirit, literally, from Pentecost onward. Things were moving at a pace far too fast for creeping conspiracies, and the Word of God was spreading even without them, because as soon as they told someone, that person told the next, and the next, and the next. It's worth pointing out that the Apostles and early Church Fathers didn't have TV or YouTube, so they had immense amounts of time to ponder these things, and they knew the scriptures, not to mention Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, far better than anyone alive today. They lived far closer to the oral tradition and the texts themselves, and St. Jerome even wrote that he saw and read from the Hebrew version of Matthew in Alexandria. What scholars do with lines like that is find an error in the writing, unrelated to the claim, and then cast out the author as “unreliable.” Or they look to the motives and say, “This Church father was a propagandist for the Catholic Church.” This is classic hitman work, but if that is the case, then this cancel culture should be applied equally to modern scholarship, where if any error is ever made, the Ph.D. should be rescinded. As for who I would rather trust, I would take saints Jerome, Augustine, Papias, Irenaeus, Polycarp, Ignatius of Antioch, and Matthew himself over the 19th century anti-Catholics and 20th century atheists. After all, a lot of the Church Fathers and the Apostles died for their proclamations, and none of them, not one, cracked and cried out in the fires or at their beheadings, “You're right, I lied. We all lied! In the seven weeks between the Crucifixion and Pentecost, we came up with a grand conspiracy, and we would say that Matthew wrote in Hebrew first, and that he wrote it after the Temple was destroyed so that we could make it look prophetic, and actually Matthew didn't write it all, it was Matthew from Accounting - he wrote it! We hired a ghost writer, just please, please don't kill me!”No, they go to their deaths. They go boldly, without apostatizing or recanting. They die saying things much different than what I just imagined. "Eighty-six years have I have served him," Polycarp said on his way to the fire, "and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my king and my savior?"Ignatius of Antioch, dragging his chains, spoke defiantly to the Roman emperor Trajan. He said, “You are in error, emperor, when you call the demons of your nation gods. For there is but one God who made heaven, earth, the sea and all that are in them. And one Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God.” Church tradition even holds that Ignatius was the actual kid that Jesus held in the Gospel stories. (Mt 18:1-5) In other words, guys like Ignatius of Antioch were alive when Christ was alive. He met Jesus. So here's the dilemma, the choice: am I to believe a 19th or 20th century scholar who spent all of his time in a library reviewing fragments of paper and letting his imagination soar, or am I to believe the testimony of Matthew, Ignatius, Papias, Irenaeus, Jerome, Eusebius, Augustine, and all the others, who lived and died in the era when the Church was forming and when many were being slaughtered by kings and governors in professing that Jesus is the son of God? I choose the latter. Sorry, C.H. Weisse. Sorry, Bart Ehrman. It requires more faith to believe anything that Ehrman claims than it does to believe in the Resurrection of Christ. Here's the thing: these scholars have sacrificed nothing and only sown doubt, and led millions to the death of their faith. It is not difficult to destroy faith. It is difficult to be in the counter-culture and live a life of faith. Ehrman and the others may be searching for truth, but they are doing so in the darkness, willfully choosing to reject God, which is what God allows us to do. Each of us has the choice to turn toward or away from God, and the effort of scholars to spurn God requires that they reject hard historical written evidence in order to produce and uphold their faith in nothing. But then of course they must do this - when all you have is this world, and no spiritual life, it's imperative that you recruit others to your worldview, because we all need our cheerleaders, and standing alone in the abyss without God is a lonely place to be. We get to choose our own hell, but some of us like Ehrman want others to choose it as well. St. Thomas, the doubting apostle, was told, “Blessed are those who have not seen and believe.” (Jn. 20:29) This is, of course, the great test, the final test, the one we get to answer on our deathbed. It's the one that Ehrman and Dawkins have already answered, but could still change their mind. It's the kind of final exam you really don't need to study for, but you do need to prepare for it, because how you decide will crystallize your eternal state. Perhaps the most difficult thing for me to believe is that we have several different writings from Church Fathers which mention that Matthew first wrote a document in Hebrew, but because we cannot find that document today, we assume it doesn't exist. Here's a news flash for modern people: paper crumbles. Time decays paper. If you don't believe me, go find your grandmother's photo album and inspect it. There's this odd sense that if we don't dig up the original draft that it didn't exist, when we know full well that paper falls apart, and copyists had to copy and yes, even translate the texts. There is a reason scribes were called scribes, and that was to copy texts so they didn't disintegrate. Yet many deny a Hebrew writing by Matthew exists because we haven't found it. But this leads us to the best part, the most fantastic and ludicrous thing of all about 19th century German scholarship and 20th century atheist scholarship, which has even bled over into Catholic teaching at universities like the one I attended. You cannot make up the next part, except that they did make it up… Of all things that confound me, replacing this Hebrew version of Matthew, we have scholars who have invented a fictional document called “Q” for which there is no evidence, no scrap, not a letter of, but which is assumed to exist. So we have writings that mention Matthew's earlier writing in Hebrew, which is discarded for a hypothetical document that is not mentioned anywhere, has never existed, and will never exist, that takes its place. We even have St. Jerome saying that he saw a Hebrew version of Matthew in Alexandria. We have testimony of eyes on the Hebrew version of Matthew. However, this fairy Q document has nothing, but is treated as if it were the first Gospel. So the next time someone tells you that Matthew was written after 80 A.D., you should assume that they are referring to the Greek translation of Matthew, because there is clearly a Hebrew version of Matthew, of some kind, of some format, written long before that. Because if the scholars can “prove” that a Greek translation of Matthew was written after the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem, and that someone other than Matthew translated it, that's not a terribly big deal. The point of massive significance is that Matthew wrote first, that Matthew wrote a Gospel, and he wrote it first in Hebrew. He was the only apostle that certainly had to be literate because of his occupation as a tax collector, and even if he dictated it to a scribe, that's no different than any other author speaking to a secretary that types a memo. It should come as no surprise that copies and translations had to be made, and my New Testament college professor acted as if the Gospels had to a.) either fall from the sky, b.) or had to have the finger of God directing the hand motion on the paper, or c.) if neither of the above happened, then it was just a game of telephone that only academics and the Jesus Seminar unbelievers could decipher. To this day, I am stunned, really beyond stunned, that a Catholic University was teaching and guiding students to read the output of the Jesus Seminar from the 1990s. The same attack on Matthew has been done to the point of insanity on the books of Moses, with the same batch of motives, which is to reduce the sacred texts to “nation-building” lies, or worse, to deny the existence of Moses altogether. When things come up like this you have to look at the motives of the scholars. To quote the Dude in The Big Lebowski, who quotes Vladimir Lenin, before his stoner mind drifts off: “You look to the person who will benefit…and ah…”Walter Sobchak: The Dude: It's all a fake, man. It's like Lenin said: you look for the person who will benefit, and, uh, uh, you know... Donny: I am the walrus.Who benefits from this scholarship that removes Matthew as author, as the first author, and pushes his writing back to 90 A.D.? It's quite simple. Protestants and atheists benefit, and they benefit in different ways. The Church's authority is undermined, which is what Protestants wanted, but funny thing about that, in their zeal for undermining Catholic authority, they undermined scripture altogether, because as soon as they finished their sprint around the track, atheists took the baton and ran so that today people don't even believe that Jesus existed. Now, I can go on for days about this railroading of Matthew, and I probably will, because one of the greatest attacks on the Church, sustained now for two hundred years, is this effort to force Matthew down from it's chronological position as the first Gospel. The goal is multi-faceted. The attack has various prongs, but first of all, his writing clearly elevates the Catholic Church, and most of the scholars on this topic truly hated the Catholic Church. They still do. Second, removing Matthew as an eyewitness account of Christ makes the miracles seem fishy. Hence, you get unbelievers like Ehrman calling it all a “telephone game” rather than eyewitness accounts of God in the flesh. What's funny is that there is a telephone game happening, but it's among academics starting in the 1500s right up until today in 2023. Third, pushing Matthew's writing to beyond the year 70 A.D. after the temple was destroyed in Jerusalem, makes the prophecy of Christ about the temple destruction seem more like a statement from Captain Obvious than the Son of God. Moving the goal posts on the chronology of the Gospel writers has a clear motive, which is to remove the eyewitness nature of the accounts and play up the “telephone game” nonsense. There's just one major problem with this, Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching in Rome and laying the foundation of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon his breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3:1:1)Peter and Paul were martyred before 70 A.D. So was this a vast conspiracy by Irenaeus and Papias and the various other writers to befuddle us all until we were blessed with Protestant German scholars and atheist academics? I think the QAnon people have a more plausible conspiracy theory than this one. So who are we to believe? Some random professor today? Or Irenaeus, who was taught by Polycarp, who knew the Apostle John, who stood at the Cross during the Crucifixion? Which of these two people are more likely to have known when and by whom the Gospels were written? Here's the pedigree of Irenaeus, who today's random professor has written off as unreliable:Polycarp was a bishop of the early church, a disciple of the apostle John, a contemporary of Ignatius, and the teacher of Irenaeus. According to Irenaeus, Polycarp “was instructed by the apostles, and was brought into contact with many who had seen Christ.” He lived from the latter half of the first century to the mid-second century. Polycarp was martyred by the Romans, and his death was influential, even among the pagans. (from gotquestions.org) I choose Irenaeus. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.whydidpetersink.com

Skeptics, like those of the Jesus Seminar, say Jesus only spoke 18 percent of what the Bible claims He did. They question His miracles and His divinity. In this message, we address the validity of Jesus' authority. Will we read the Scriptures with our minds already made up about who He is or will we discover what it really says? This month's special offer is available for a donation of any amount. Get yours at offerrtw.com or call us at 1-800-215-5001.

Christological Heresies Chris Hefner Docetism: Jesus only appeared to be a man Ebionism: denied the Incarnation: only a man in whom God worked mightily Arianism: God is unique; Jesus cannot be God; this heresy brought about the council of Nicea in 325 Appollinarianism: the Word became united with only a human body; restricted view of human nature Nestorianism: Jesus Christ is made up of two distinct persons Eutychianism: Jesus possessed only one nature; the human and divine existed before Incarnation but not after Answer: Chalcedonian Creed Christ is “two natures, one person” Schleiermacher: Jesus is a human with “god-consciousness” Martin Kähler: dichotomy between the historical Jesus of Nazareth and the Christ of Scripture Albert Schweitzer: Jesus was fueled by eschatalogical expectations and died unsuccessfully Rudolph Bultmann: dichotomy between the historical Jesus of Nazareth and the “kerygmatic” Christ of faith Walter Rauschenbusch: Jesus was a revolutionary leader of a social movement John Hick: “that the historical Jesus of Nazareth was also God is as devoid of meaning as to say that this circle drawn with a pencil on paper is also a square.” Jesus Seminar: “Eighty-two percent of the words ascribed to Jesus in the gospels were not actually spoken by him, according to the Jesus Seminar.” Takeaways: Christology is the preeminent doctrine because Christ is the preeminent figure of the Bible. Christology is vital because knowing Christ truthfully (doctrinally) makes it possible to know Christ personally (relationally). Reach out to us via email at: info@wilkesborobaptist.org

Mark Two: A Biblical Understanding of God by William Klock Last week we looked at the subject of expositional preaching as the first mark of a healthy church.  It's the central component of a word-centred ministry.  And, at least in theory, if we get biblical preaching right, everything else should follow naturally—although it will take some time.  But that doesn't mean we're done.  It's not just how we should approach and preach God's word, but we need to spend some time looking at what the content of biblical preaching is.  So today I want to begin with a look at how biblical preaching should be giving us a biblical understanding of God.  That's the second mark of a healthy church: a biblical understanding of God. Now that might seem like a no-brainer.  We're Christians, so of course we're going to be committed to a biblical understanding of God.  But if you start looking at what's going on around us, it doesn't take long to see that it ain't necessarily so.  The song of that title written by the Gershwin brothers for Porgy and Bess, highlights the problem.  If you're not familiar with it, it's a litany sung by a drug dealer, casting doubt on the stories of the Bible.  He ends, “They tell all your children/The Devil he's a villain/It ain't necessarily so”.  That drug dealer thought that maybe it's God who's the villain.  He's always spoiling everyone's fun, after all—or at least that's how it seems to a lot of people.  Maybe the devil's actually the good guy.  Some people think that way, although it's usually more subtle.  More often than not what it seems we've done is to swap their roles.  Ask someone on the street—or one of your non-Christians friends—who God is and they'll describe a non-judgemental man in the sky who just wants you to be happy.  Ironically, this has more to do with the lies the devil routinely tells than it does the God we meet in the Bible. It used to be “liberal” Protestants who rewrote the God of scripture.  Like the Jesus Seminar folks who wrote that all the warm and fuzzy stuff in the gospel is what Jesus really said, but all the stuff about sin and judgement—that was added later by men who had forgotten who Jesus really was.  But it's not just liberals.  Many parts of Evangelicalism, particularly amongst younger people, have come to be dominated by a belief system that's come to be called “Moralistic therapeutic deism”.  In short, it's the belief that God wants people to be good—although the bar is pretty low; that God wants us to be happy and to feel good about ourselves; that he's distant, but available when you've got a problem; and that if you're good, you'll go to heaven when you die.  Brothers and Sisters, this is not the God of the narrow way that leads to life; this is the devil of the wide gate that leads to destruction. This is what you get when you stop preaching the word and, instead, preach pop-psychology, current events, and feel-good fluff.  It's what you get when you preach human-centred sermons instead of God-centred sermons.  We've shifted the culture of the church.  John 3:16 used to be the best known and most oft quote verse of the Bible: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”.  These days that pride of place goes to Matthew 7:1, “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” quoted loudly by folks who have no idea about its context or what Jesus meant when he said it.  They just don't want anyone telling them what to do and have embraced a false god who indulges their every desire.  Our culture, like the pagan cultures of old, and not a few within the Church, have recreated God in our image.  The antidote is the faithful preaching of God's word. And the culture will not be happy with it.  Post-modern culture hates meta-narratives.  Meta-narratives are those big stories that give meaning to life, the universe, and everything.  And today such things are said to be oppressive.  And being “oppressive” is the absolute worst thing anything can be in post-modern culture, where everything is about the individual and the individual being whatever he or she or they or them or ze or zir wants to be.  But if we believe the Bible is God's word to us, then we can't escape the Bible's meta-narrative, its grand story running from Genesis to Revelation with Jesus at its centre, the story that does, in fact, give meaning to life, the universe, and everything.  And so it makes sense, then, that the God who has given this great narrative that runs from beginning to end describes himself as the Alpha and Omega.  Get the story right and you actually get to know the God behind it all from beginning to end. So we can't cover every aspect of a biblical understanding of God in a single sermon, but we can hit some high points—and especially the points that are often so challenged by our culture today.  So what does the biblical story tell us about the God behind it? Well, let's start at the beginning.  The story starts with Creation.  “In the beginning, God created…” is how Genesis begins.  St. John opens his gospel with those familiar words reminding us that it wasn't just “God” in some generic sense that was there in the beginning, but the Triune God: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  Right at the beginning, the first thing the story teaches us about this Triune God is that he is a creator.  He is the great initiator.  There was nothing and it pleased him to make something of it.  And not just something, but a world.  And not just a world, but as Genesis 1 shows us, a word that is good because it is suitable for human life.  And God finishes his great creative act by creating human beings—and he does so for a purpose.  He created us to be his image bearers—to act as his regents, his stewards, his priests in this world he created. But notice that God's creative acts don't end there.  As I said last week, his word gives life and so he continues to speak.  Humanity rebelled and sinned.  We gave up the vocation for which we were created and had to be removed from the garden-temple.  And things went from bad to worse.  It took only a single generation before the first murder happened and only a few generations later we have men boasting of slaughtering their enemies.  The Lord causes a flood to wipe sinful men from the earth and he speaks, calling forth Noah so that he can spare him, start over with him.  But again, human rebellion goes from bad to worse and so the Lord speaks again into the darkness and calls forth Abraham and from Abraham he makes a people for himself.  And as we read the story of that people, it's full of ups and downs, of faithfulness and rebellion—mostly rebellion.  But the Lord repeatedly speaks his word and sustains the life of that people and at its lowest points he promises new life in the future.  And then we meet Jesus, the word incarnate, who fulfils those promises himself and creates a new Israel.  The god of the great biblical narrative is a creator. That God is the creator also tells us that we can't pick and choose the parts we like from this great story.  The first major heresy in church history was that of Marcion, who cut the Old Testament out of the Bible so as to dump all the things about God he didn't like.  And this problem crops up repeatedly.  A couple years ago, popular pastor Andy Stanley preached that the Church must “unhitch” itself from the Old Testament.  Again, people want the warm-fuzzies, they want the welcoming message of forgiveness, but not the judgement or the wrath or the call to repentance.  But the grand biblical narrative shows us that it's all connected.  The story doesn't make any sense if you hack it up.  Forgiveness loses meaning when there's nothing to be forgiven.  It's all connected and biblical preaching reminds us of this truth. But, too, there's more to God's creating than just speaking and creating.  In the story of his people we begin to see something we first saw a glimpse of with Noah.  For the Lord to create is also for the Lord to call and to choose or to elect.  He chose Abraham out of all the people on earth.  And, again, he chose Isaac over Ishmael and Jacob over Esau.  When it came time for a King, he would choose young David over his older brothers.  And Jesus chose twelve out of all his followers from which to build God's new people.  And we look at that and we think, “Wait, that's not fair!”  Brothers and Sisters, that's when we need to go back to the story and remember that the Lord didn't have to create anything at all.  He created in the first place to manifest his glory and to show his love.  And when we rebelled against him he didn't have to begin this great act of new creation that would eventually cost his own Son.  But he did.  Because he is good.  Because he loves.  Because he is wise.  The big story reminds us repeatedly that he is all these things, and that reminds us that when things don't make sense or when they seem unfair to us—with our limited perspective and knowledge—we can trust him.  This also reminds us—against the popular view of things today—that God does not exist to serve us, but we to serve him—and knowing his goodness assures us that this, too, is good. Second point: The great narrative of the Bible reminds us again and again that God is holy.  Most people like to ignore this, because for something to be holy means that there really are things called “right” and “wrong”.  It means that if God is holy, then he also has expectations for us.  Post-modern culture is built around that idea that we're each the centre of our own universe.  We make our own truth and we each define our own happiness.  You can do whatever you want and be whatever you want.  If you want to do drugs or have promiscuous sex, that's your truth and your happiness.  If you're a man, but you want to be a woman—or a cat—woe to anyone who says you can't or that there are objective standards.  And this is why our culture has created a false god that just wants us to be happy and is never judgemental. But there at the beginning of the story we're reminded that Adam and Eve were forced to leave the Lord's presence because they rebelled against him, they sinned.  And then we see throughout the story this theme of holiness.  Humans do what they want and everything goes from bad to worse.  We like to say that it's okay to do what you want as long as you don't hurt other people, and that may be our only political option in a pluralistic, modern society, but the big story shows us that this doesn't work in the end.  And so when the Lord created a people for himself, he not only delivered them from a life of slavery, he also gave them a law—a way of life that not only included all the dos and don'ts, but a system of offerings and sacrifices, means of atonement for their sins, so that they could live in his presence and he in theirs.  The tabernacle in the midst of Israel was a reminder of the holiness of God and the need of sinners for redemption.  There it was, the Lord's dwelling place in the centre of the camp.  The Lord lived in the midst of his people.  It was a powerful reminder of how things are supposed to be—as they were when Adam and Eve lived in the Lord's presence in the garden-temple.  But it was also a powerful reminder that even in Israel, things were not as they should be.  The Lord dwelled in their midst, but he dwelled in a place they could not go.  The holy of holies, glorious and beautiful and filled with the cloud of his glory resting on the ark of the covenant, was off limits.  The relationship between God and human beings was still broken—and the brokenness was not on his part, but theirs.  Again, we see his love and his grace and his mercy.  Through the law and the sacrifices he gave the people a means of drawing near, of truly being his people, while at the same time reminding them of the seriousness of their problem, of the sinfulness of sin, and that something greater was needed to finally restore full fellowship with him.  The tabernacle (and later the temple) was an abattoir where continual animal sacrifices were offered to atone for sin.  Those weren't the only offerings.  The people came to offer their thanks to the Lord as well.  But the blood sacrifices overshadowed everything else—a reminder that the problem of this broken fellowship is on our end, not God's; that it is not his holiness that is the problem, but our sin.  They were a reminder for Israel of the mercy of the Lord—that he desires to be reconciled with sinners—but also that sinners must come to him on his terms and not our own, and that there is a great gulf between holiness and sinfulness.  And so the story of Israel and her covenant with the Lord prepared the people of God for Jesus.  Every Sunday you and I come to his Table and are reminded that the son of God gave his life as a once-for-all and perfect sacrifice for sin, his blood given in place of ours, to bring atonement, to restore us to the presence of the Lord—because of his great love for us.  And again, that reminder is there that we come to God on his terms and not our own, because he is holy and apart from him we are not. And here the God of Scripture clashes with the false god we so often create for ourselves.  We're like petulant children who get angry when our parents lay down rules.  “You don't love me if you won't let me do whatever I want,” we shout at them.  But they know better.  Our parents know things that we don't, and so they give us rules when we are children, not because they're mean, but because they love us.  As adults with hindsight we see our foolishness.  We knew other kids whose parents let them do whatever they wanted and we'd foolishly think that those kids' parents loved them more.  Now we're adults and know better.  Brothers and Sisters, we do the same thing with God.  He created us out of love in the beginning, he delivered Israel from her Egyptian bondage out of love, he lived in her midst out of love even when she was so often unfaithful.  He taught her how to be holy.  He gave her instructions for sacrifices as a means of atonement.  And like petulant and ungrateful teenagers Israel went after other gods instead.  But the petulant and rebellious teenager is a modern phenomenon, not the one used by the Lord when he spoke to his people.  When he spoke to them of their relationship with him, she was his beautiful and beloved bride who turned to adultery and unfaithfulness.  That's a much darker and troubling image then the rebellious teen.  But as we read Israel's story, we see that the Lord never abandons his bride.  The prophecy of Hosea may be one of the most profound witnesses of the Lord's love for his people, despite their unfaithfulness.  Hosea wrote: “In that day, declares the Lord, you will call me ‘My Husband,' and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.'  For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more.  And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety.  And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy.  I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord.”  (Hosea 2:16-20) The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, as Jeremiah wrote, and his mercies never end (Lamentation 3:22).  And we see this as the great story eventually leads us to Jesus, who, as St. Paul writes: …though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  (Philippians 2:6-8) And St. John reminds us so poignantly: In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins…We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:9-10) The great story reveals the faithlessness of human beings to the one who has loved us from the very beginning.  No matter how great our rebellion, our idolatry, our sin, our unfaithfulness to him, he has loved us from the beginning and he will love us to the end and has given his own life to restore us to his presence and fill our hearts with love for him.  Again, we love because he first loved us.  The God of the Bible is a God of love. Now, there are lots of things we can say of the God of who reveals himself in the Bible.  He is patient, for example.  Or he's sovereign.  The list is long and all of these things are interrelated.  He is patient, because he is loving.  The fact that he is a creating, calling, and electing God means that he is also a sovereign God.  We have confidence in prayer, because we know that he is sovereign and has the power to answer.  And we have confidence in his answers, because we know he is wise and good and loving and so on.  But I want to close on a different point and that is that the God of the Bible is a faithful God.  More than anything else, this is the aspect of God we need to grasp as we struggle to trust him. The great story reminds us of God's faithfulness from beginning to end.  We see his faithfulness in that he didn't give up, wipe everything out, and start over when we rebelled.  Instead, he has lovingly, patiently, graciously, and mercifully stuck with us.  If it weren't for his faithfulness he wouldn't have called Abraham, he wouldn't have rescued Israel from Egypt, he wouldn't have given his law or a king, he wouldn't have disciplined his people, he wouldn't have spoken through the prophets.  He wouldn't have made promises—or might have, but he wouldn't have kept them.  If he were not faithful, he'd be like the gods of the pagans—fickle, unreliable, unknowable.  And, of course, we see the faithfulness of God fully revealed in Jesus.  In Jesus he shows his faithfulness to us, even when we are unfaithful.  In Jesus he fulfils his promises.  As St. Paul wrote to Timothy: If we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself.  (2 Timothy 2:13) It's who he is.  God cannot be anything other than faithful and we know it because of the Scriptures.  In the Bible we have the record of his character—of his goodness and wisdom and righteousness and holiness and everything else that comes together and culminates in his faithfulness.  One of the things I like best about the Psalms is their repeated acclamation of the faithfulness of the Lord to his people, to his covenant, to his promises.  They sing out his mighty deeds for Israel and remind the people not only that they have every reason to trust in him, but that they would be fools not to.  And if that was the case for Israel in the Old Testament, how much more is it the case for us, his new Israel.  We have known Jesus and the Spirit as the fulfilment of all that he promised.  We have been plunged into this life in our baptism and we come, week after week, to his Table.  We bear in our baptism his mark—the gift of his own indwelling Spirit—and here at the Table we participate again and again in those events—the death and resurrection of Jesus—through which God has delivered us from our bondage to sin and death and made us his own.  Brothers and Sisters, this is the God whom healthy churches proclaim, this is the God whose mighty and saving deeds we sing, this is the God whom we make known to the world.  This the God in whom our future hopes rest.  As St. John wrote: Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.  (1 John 3:2) As I say so often, in Jesus and the Spirit—at the cross and in the upper room at Pentecost—our God did the hard part.  His word tells us and our baptism and the Lord's Supper serve as perpetual reminders of his faithfulness.  He is the Alpha and Omega, the one whose faithfulness knows no bounds and is as long as eternity itself.  It is in him we trust and it is him we preach. Let's pray: Holy, loving, sovereign, patient, faithful Father, we give you thanks for revealing yourself to us in your word—for who you are, for what you have done, for showing us that you are worthy of our love and worthy of our trust.  By your word and through your Spirit you give us the gift of faith.  We ask that as we continue in your word and as we share in your sacraments, as our knowledge and experience of you grows, that our faith will deepen.  Purge our hearts of fickleness we pray, that we might set aside every idol and every false idea we might have of you.  Give us your great grace, that we might ever more each day trust in you and love you more as we steep ourselves in your word and each Sunday as we come to your Table to be reminded of the great love you have shown to us in the death and resurrection of Jesus and the gift of your Spirit.  Amen.

Perhaps you've noticed, in his earthly life, Jesus did not live to be one hundred years old. He didn't even live to be fifty years old. He lived to the age of thirty-three, or thereabouts. Thirty-three is a nice, medium, mature age, and he chose to die. At the age of thirty, be began this journey toward the cross. Now, I am about to go off the orthodox trail here, but I feel like there is a signal to us, a message calling from the silence of his years between being found in the temple at age twelve and his public baptism around the age of thirty. The fact that Jesus began his ministry at thirty is curious, because he talks often about spiritual rebirth. He talks about returning to the faith of a child. After the infancy narratives of Jesus are completed, the only glimpse we see of Jesus is when he is in the temple in Jerusalem among the elders. This is one of my favorite parts of all the Gospels:“After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers.” (Luke 2:46)Jesus was twelve years old at the time, so to read this in 21st century American terms, he would have been a middle-schooler. As many parents know, and many of us may remember, middle school is roughly when the “age of reason” begins, not to mention puberty. A litany of questions and doubts enters the mind of a middle-schooler. Around age twelve, the tooth fairy and Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are all deceased. The myths begin to be seen as scandalous lies used as a carrot-on-a-stick to lure kids into good behavior. And do you know what else can easily become a suspected fraud when a child attends the funeral of Peter Cottontail? Yes, the answer is God. The “age of reason” is when we enter into a greater understanding of the world around us and begin to grow toward adulthood, which means that is when we start ‘asking questions.' For the Church, the age of reason is when we are said to be morally responsible for our actions, since we can no longer play the ignorance card regarding knowing what is right and wrong. Interestingly, the Age of Reason is also the name of a book attacking Christian doctrine and the idea of miracles, written by one of America's founding fathers, Thomas Paine, who argued for Deism, not atheism. What Thomas Paine questioned in his book is many of the same topics any middle-schooler with a curious mind will come across, as the mind, body, and soul go searching together for meaning in this world. Paine didn't come up with anything new, he just articulated the doubts about miracles and his discomfort with difficult sayings in the Bible, and he wrote the book in his fifties, meaning he could organize his doubts much better than a twelve year old. Paine spent a life of rebellion, gaining fame in America for his pamphlets titled “Common Sense” which called for revolution, and then he went revolution shopping in France and thought it might be nice if they, too, overthrew the government and all Church involvement in society. From his own words, he said that churches and religions “…appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.” Furthermore, he hated the Bible, calling it demonic: “Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.” This is a perfect definition of the two-fold set of doubts that those coming into the age of reason and adulthood will be tempted by and want to investigate. First, the imposition of authority irritates, especially when the rules seem arbitrary. As teenagers grow and learn, they see adults that do not live up to the rules set forth, as hypocrites abound in all spheres, whether in work, church, or family life. The idea that authority is invented solely for purposes of control becomes an easy leap to make. If the models for authority are bad, or you have been repeatedly told are bad, then the association of authority as an evil oppressor can be enticing because it turns the doubter into a victim and a freedom fighter. In the years of doubt and questioning, the urge rises in all of us a stepson feels to scream at his stepfather, “You're not my dad!” when it comes to any institution or any person that holds authority over us that constrains our behavior and thought. The second onslaught of doubt comes from, yes, that same Old Testament that Marcion and millions of others throughout history have disliked. Every child reads the happy stories of the Old Testament. Children's Bibles go from creation (wow!), to Adam and Eve and the cute serpent (they're naked, lol!), to Noah's saving ark (happy animals!) to David killing Goliath (the underdog wins!). And that's about it. That's the summary of the forty-six books of the Old Testament. I think both parents and children are ready to move right on over to the New Testament, to the non-judgemental, loving God, manifested in the person of Jesus. The child has faith in these primary stories about Adam and Noah and David. Children believe them. This is the “faith of a child” that Jesus talks about returning to, where there is wonder and willingness to believe. Parents and children can have amazing discussions and talk through life lessons solely from these top-ten greatest hits, through these highlights of the Old Testament. Kids learn these stories because they aren't yet ready to tackle confusing lines like, “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk.” (Ex 23:19) A child that hears a line like this may have some concern about what is for dinner, but will not likely care or even pretend to understand, even if you explained it. That this line has more to do with protecting Israelite identity so that they avoid becoming like neighboring tribes, in this particular case the Canaanites, who boiled a goat in its mother's milk as part of a magic fertility rite, would not even enter their developing brains. Actually, it's not that the child will be unable to understand it. No, the problem is that we adults don't understand it. We can't make sense of it ourselves, so we dumb it down and shove it to the back of the bookshelf. Few adults can interpret or explain the backstory of the goat. It raises questions. Let me just consider a few of those questions that I can think of off the top of my head. Why would anyone boil a goat in the first place? Who boils a goat at all? This is America. Beef won long ago, we don't eat goat, so let's go back further: why a goat? And who boils meat? I mean, boiling hot dogs and bratwurst makes sense, but no one would boil a steak unless they were mentally ill, and they certainly wouldn't admit it. Have they considered a grill or a smoker? The taste would be much better. Where is this strange culinary event taking place? Is this in France? Why would you boil milk? What's with the goat being “young”? Seems kind of cruel. I could see PETA being all over this. Was the goat alive before it was thrown into the pot? Is the goat boiled with hair? Are the hooves still on, or do those get lopped off? If so, what happens to the hooves? If it's alive, does the goat bleat while boiling? I imagine it would make a really sad sound. At least you can't hear a lobster bleat as it dies in boiling water. Then there's the context of where this line appears in the book of Exodus. The chapter is talking about harvest parties and bringing in “first fruits” from the fields and pastures to honor God, so that's all fine and dandy. Makes sense: bring in offering to honor God, got it. But then it jumps right into a line about boiling goats! This line feels like some addendum or amendment to address a one-time event, like a version of the curse of the goat on the Chicago Cubs, where a man showed up with a pet goat showed up and said, “Them Cubs, they ain't gonna win no more,” which caused them to suck for decades, but in this case the man showed up, boiled a goat, and said, “That Israel, they ain't gonna be Chosen no more.” How would the average parent talk about this boiling goat verse with a child? Parents just want children to go to bed, not partake in Biblical interpretation by nightlight. The load of laundry, the permission slip for the school field trip, the dental bill, the property tax, the summer vacation plan, tomorrow's meetings, the need for personal hygiene - all of these questions and issues outrank the problem that a boiled goat represented to the Israelites and the sacred writer of Exodus. We just can't go into the details, so we stick to the easy things, the big things. There is a reason why the “main” stories are simple ones and it has to do with the same reason that fairy tales and fables are short and sweet with lots of imagery. It's so we can remember them, while the details and the layers of these stories go far deeper, into places that a parent and child cannot easily venture into, but over the course of a lifetime, we encounter versions of these stories and takes in our very real world and experiences. But I'll get to that later, because first we have to deal with the boiling of this baby goat. These confusing lines are actually important, however, because every line has a purpose in the Bible. So for the record, now that I've expanded on this long enough that the goat could have finished boiling, what is the purpose of this line about boiling goats? The reason Israel does not boil goats in it's mothers milk is actually quite simple. The fertility rite of the Canaanites goes against their worship of the one God. So this line, bizarre as it is, directly supports the Ten Commandments that Moses received just a few chapters earlier in the text. This interjection about the goat is about the first commandment: you shall have no gods before me. This prohibition of boiling is literally called out because these are the types of rules that keep God's chosen people set apart from the pagans. Israel worships the one God, not the Canaanite or Egyptian or Persian gods. So not only do they outlaw boiling goats, but this line can be read as outlawing any pagan ritual or magic or sorcery. But no child or middle-schooler will likely dig into the underlying meaning of strange verses like this. Most adults will never even consider looking (unless they enjoy it like I do), because it takes too long, the information is hard to find, and there is a game on TV or fingernails to polish. There's not enough time! Isn't there a fountain of youth we could drink from? We lack the time and energy, so we abandon the strangeness of this cultural quirkiness. After all the goat was boiled some three to five thousand years ago, if not long before that. We feel that this goat has no relevance to us today. The Children's Bibles present a kind of God that Disney could have come up with. In fact, the cartoon Bibles of today are likely the result of desperate Christians attempting to hold back the flood of Disney's secular religion, as it aggressively evangelizes the world and steamrolls actual cultures and traditions, much like the Roman empire and Spanish conquistadores did, but without the sword. In fact, were Exodus being written now, I suspect it would have lines like, “Don't worship your smartphone” or “Discard all Disney movies,” because the point is not about the specific ritual with the goat, it's about any ritual (magic or otherwise) that tears apart the fabric of the Israelite community. Anything that diverts focus from the one true God is prohibited, therefore using magic to try to conjure up fertility is not allowed. So that's the first set of questions the budding doubter has to deal with, but the main hangup about the Old Testament is the violence, and by hangup I mean, we just disconnect the call. Click. Bye! After we have passed through the dumbed-down gauntlet of tickly feathers in our modern Children's Bible, we are in for a shock if we go searching in the actual Bible. If we ever go to the actual text (and most of us won't, especially Catholics) we'll find the snake in the garden of Eden, but he won't be cute. The animal rescue story of Noah's no-kill shelter ark becomes something much darker. And the peaceful and loving Jesus who passes from this world to the next requires massive pain and suffering to fulfill the new covenant. The reaction for the light reader is to retreat or ignore the Old Testament because of the bloodshed and violence. This might be a wise move to preserve your faith, because many non-believers dive into the horrors and read deeply, only to determine that they cannot resolve a loving God with violence and suffering. The top objection to God is the existence of suffering in this world, since this seems converse to any argument against a loving God. Not diving into the pit and studying the Old Testament is sometimes a shield for people who put their complete trust in God. They know the truth, they have fully turned to God, and nothing you can say or tell or show them will disrupt that trust in God. This may seem like an ostrich, with its head-in-the-sand, but there is a reason for people who have been reborn to do this. Why would someone appear to choose ignorance? Because they have received the gift of faith and will automatically tune out any reading of the Bible that does not enrich that faith. They will reject any reading that does not celebrate the “encounter with God” that the word represents to them. Many atheists have more Biblical knowledge than believers because they dig in and look closely, they have more education, and they are truth seekers. Truth seekers read deeply and believe that the only way to read is objectively. Formerly, in my days of disbelief, I was fully on the side of calling out these ostriches. How could anyone not inspect the Bible and see the problems within it? Even when I wanted to give a reading the benefit of the doubt, it was felt too glaringly ignorant and foolish to believe, and after a few of those experiences I stopped reading the actual book at all and looked for authors like Thomas Paine, or writings from the Jesus Seminar, or John Dominic Crossan - authors who would confirm my suspicions. I recently spoke with someone whose faith was waning, and he told me he wanted to go find books that would cut through the apologetics and defenses. He wanted to find historical analysis and books that delved into the likelihood of the Gospel realities. He wanted a kind of “Bible as literature” approach and scientific approach to the Bible. I told him that his faith will go into hibernation or die if that's the approach he takes, because he's already decided. What he wanted was total confirmation for his faith, like Thomas the Apostle, and the entire prospect of having and keeping faith rests on the idea that you will never have that certainty. This is the great contradiction of faith and what makes people so crazy. Once you accept and adopt the mysteries of faith, or the grace of God gives you the gift of faith, then the leap is taken and people will defend and guard that faith with their lives, literally. This is why the faithful seem so dense and dumb to non-believers. Now, having come back, I completely understand why the ostriches act obtuse in defense of their faith. Not everyone has time or ability to do deep readings, but they know the faith is real, that the book is the truth, and even if they can't understand everything they have total trust and will not allow anyone, especially someone that aims to destroy their faith, to even allow the words of doubt to enter their ears. Most of the re-born believers have already been down the road of doubt, so they know where it ends, and no argument or persuasion will trick them into falling again. Yes, they will fall into sin again, but they will not doubt God again. This seemed crazy to me. I never understood it, until after I returned to believing and started reading a book that I could feel undermining my belief. I stopped reading that book, immediately, only finishing it later once I felt able to return. I actually recall feeling something urging me to stop reading the book. Then I knew I had crossed the leap into land of the ostriches. Since that experience, I recognize when the need to stop or to pray is near, when it must be done. I didn't realize it at the time, but this one of the signals that the saints refer to when they talk about Spiritual Combat. Yes, it sounds crazy, but perhaps you know about this combat already, as you may have tried to quit doing something that you would like to remove from your life, only to find that you cannot, so you justify it as a cost of life, that every one must have a vice or two. After all, no one is perfect, right? The truth is that the devil never bothers you while you are carrying out his will, but he will aggravate you terribly once you attempt to stop. For me, this has a real life illustration in tobacco usage and addiction, as I could not stop with my own willpower. In fact, tobacco was way ahead on inventing the self-driving car than Tesla or General Motors. What do I mean by that? Well, whenever I had decided to quit using tobacco, I would have built-up my resolve to quit and would even be telling myself in the car that I would not drive to a gas station to buy any tobacco. But to my utter surprise, soon I would be standing in line paying for tobacco products of one form or another. My car seemed to drive itself to the store. These almost felt like out-of-body experiences except I was clearly turning the wheel and signaling to turn into the gas station or grocery store. No matter how firmly I resolved to quit, I could not. No matter how fully dedicated to stopping this practice I proclaimed myself to be, the addiction took over. In the end, the only way I managed to stop using tobacco was the same method I learned and applied to stop drinking, which was prayer. Asking daily for strength and direction from a Higher Power is how it started, and it works, and still works. My car no longer drives itself. This power to change through prayer made no sense. Nothing made sense, after all of the extended efforts and books and nicotine gum and pills and therapies - none of that worked. The one thing I never thought would work not only worked for one type of vice, but works for all types of vice. If this experience happens and you begin to believe in that Higher Power as having real, inexplicable power, you may make the leap from generic Higher Power to believing in God and soon the entire Apostles' Creed. And then you're in trouble. You know you can never go back, nor do you want to go back, nor will anything, come hell or high water, separate you again from the loving God who came looking for you, reached out, and scooped you up. This is why believers may not read as deeply as educated doubters. They never want to lose the gift of faith again. No Old Testament story can dissuade them. Take Samson, the maniac from the book of Judges. Even if Samson slaughtered 1,000 Philistines with a donkey's jawbone and acted like a total jerk before and afterward - even that will not deter the faithful, because they may not know exactly why it's important, but they know that story is important. Once you start asking for the Holy Spirit to help you read the book, and you read the book seeking faith, thinking “Lord I believe, help my unbelief.” I have to repeat this often, but faith is a gift. Those that don't have faith literally cannot read it as an “encounter with God.” This is not to irritate or mock either side of this question, it's just a fact that the gift of faith changes your entire approach to how you read the word of God. If you are coming in to find doubt, you will find more reasons to doubt. If you are reading to boost faith, you will boost your faith. It's like the saying, “Whether you think you can or you can't, you're right.”Various anti-Christian websites have done the work of extracting the most cruel scenes of the Old Testament so that we don't have to do any scrounging around. These lists are posted online for even the most casual doubter, from middle-schooler to full-blown Thomas Paine, so that he or she can confirm their suspicions, that yes - the Old Testament violence is in there. If you are looking for the angry God who tortured Job, or the Judges who slayed the enemies of Israel, it's all there, and if you want to decide that God was an invention propped up to keep us in line, then you can pat yourself on the back for locating the cherries you want to pick to support that theory. This is the lazy person's kind of Biblical reading. What we fail to realize is that the stories may tell of a violent event to make a point. I often think that is the whole point of many of them. They show us the errors of humanity, within and without the circle of the Chosen people. St. Augustine, who seemed to have been sent from the future to help us all learn to read, said, “Narrata, non laudata.” This means, “It is narrated, not praised.” An account of an event in the Bible is not automatically a celebration of the event. This is a key point that the armchair doubter misses completely. The presence of a story does not make it good or holy solely by its membership in the pages of the Bible. God's judgement is not always explicitly stated, so we must read for the religious truth of the book, the scene, or the sentence. This is difficult, but worth the effort for those that take the time, if you can find time. The book of Judges is so littered with violence and morally confusing events that any reader who was looking for direct practical life guidance would probably end up in jail. Many of the characters, such as Samson in Judges, is not so much a model to imitate as a way of life to be avoided. When Samson uses a donkey's jawbone to slaughter the Philistines and then brags about it, he goes even further and demands that God give him a drink. That is not advice on how to behave. Samson's gift of strength, however, does become his curse. There is religious truth hiding amid the jawbone story if you read the rest of the story of Samson, because he is purified by his vice. His strength becomes his weakness, and this is exactly how sin works. But the average reader isn't going to find that if the only part of the story plucked out is the slaughter and war. Samson dies due to his violence and arrogance. Reading with the eyes of faith and knowledge of what sin does to a human being will tease out the religious truth. Moreover, a Christian reader should always be looking for how everything relates to the coming redemption of Jesus. The account of Samson in no way suggests his behavior is admirable. In fact, when we read the Bible in the light of Christ, we can see that all of this jawbone slinging behavior of Samson is exactly the opposite of how Jesus lives his life. So the message is practically a flashing red light telling us, “Don't be like Samson! He's a violent, arrogant brute who lacks humility.” St. Augustine has also said that any reading of the Bible that pushes us away from faith, hope, and charity is almost certainly incorrect, since that is what Christ came to tell us while he simultaneously came to fulfill the prophecies and uphold the law of the Old Testament. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.whydidpetersink.com

Guest Info/Bio: Guest Bio: This week I welcome back John Dominic Crossan! Dr. Crossan is one of the preeminent New Testament scholars and historian of early Christianity. He is known for his contemporary historical Jesus research and he has written both popular and academic books on an array of topics. Dr. Crossan received his Doctor of Divinity at St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, the Irish national seminary and completed two additional years of study in biblical languages at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. He completed two additional years of study in archeology at the Ecole Biblique in Jordanian East Jerusalem. He served as co-chair of the Jesus Seminar and also served as president of the Chicago Society of Biblical Research from 1978-1979, and as president of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2012. (Selected) Published Works: The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant; Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography; Who Killed Jesus? Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus; In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom; God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now; The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon; The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus became fiction about Jesus; How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian: Struggling with Divine Violence from Genesis Through Revelation; and Resurrecting Easter: How the West Lost and the East Kept the Original Easter Vision. Guest Website/Social Media: www.johndominiccrossan.com Facebook: @johndominiccrossan Theme Music by: Forrest Clay “This Water I am Treading & You Must Go” found on the brand new EP, Recover.You can find Forrest Clay's music on iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, or anywhere good music is found!This episode of the Deconstructionists Podcast was edited, mixed, and produced by John Williamson Stay on top of all of the latest at www.thedeconstructionists.com Go there to check out our blog, snag a t-shirt, or follow us on social mediaJoin our Patreon family here: www.patreon.com/deconstructionists Website by Ryan BattlesAll photos by Jared HevronLogos designed by Joseph Ernst & Stephen PfluigT-shirt designs by Joseph Ernst, Chad Flannigan, Colin Rigsby, and Jason Turner. Starting your own podcast? Try Riverside! https://riverside.fm/?utm_campaign=campaign_1&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=rewardful&via=john-williamsonSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-deconstructionists/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In this episode we chat with John Dominic Crossan. John Dominic Crossan is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, DePaul University, Chicago. He has written twenty books on the historical Jesus in the last thirty years, four of which have become national religious bestsellers: The Historical Jesus (1991), Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994), Who Killed Jesus (1995), and The Birth of Christianity (1998). His latest book Render Unto Caesar was released in March of this year. He is a former co-chair of the Jesus Seminar, and a former chair of the Historical Jesus Section of the Society of Biblical Literature, an international scholarly association for biblical study based in the United States. You can follow John Dominic Crossan on Facebook You can purchase all of John Dominic Crossan's books at Amazon.com You can connect with us on    Facebook     Instagram      Twitter Want to help us with our future episodes of This Is Not Church Podcast? Join us on Patreon where you will get access to exclusive patron content such as early access to episode, videos of upcoming episodes, and live Q&A sessions. Also check out our website for upcoming interviews and blog posts Each episode of This Is Not Church Podcast is expertly engineered by our producer The Podcast Doctor Eric Howell. If you're thinking of starting a podcast you need to connect with Eric!

Faith For Living with Dr. Michael Milton April 26, 2022 –

In this episode we chat with the authors of the book - After Jesus Before Christianity. Dr. Erin K. Vearncombe is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, appointed to the Office of the Dean. She received her Ph.D. in a collaborative program at the University of Toronto between the Department for the Study of Religion and the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies. A specialist in writing instruction, Erin worked for five years as a faculty member of the Princeton Writing Program at Princeton University, and is currently designing a program for the Faculty of Arts and Science at the University of Toronto that will ease the transition to university-level writing for incoming undergraduate students. Her research specialty is the social origins and histories of Jesus movements in the first centuries of the common era, with a particular focus on practices of dress. Bernard Brandon Scott is the author and editor of many books, including The Real Paul: Recovering His Radical Challenge and The Trouble with Resurrection. A charter member of the Jesus Seminar, he is chair of Westar's Christianity Seminar. He served as chair of the Bible in Ancient and Modern Media Section of the Society of Biblical Literature, as well as a member of several SBL Seminars including the Parable Seminar and Historical Jesus Seminar. He holds an A.B. from St. Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology, an M.A. from Miami University, and a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. Hal Taussig recently retired as Professor of New Testament at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He lectures around the country and world.  The editor of the award-winning A New New Testament (2013), United Methodist minister, and author of fourteen books, his mediography includes The New York Times, Time Magazine, The Daily Show, People Magazine, Newsweek Magazine, National Public Radio, the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC, the Bob Edwards Show on Sirius Radio, The History Channel, and the Washington Post. Check out the Westar Institute, home of the Jesus Seminar at this website You can purchase the book After Jesus Before Christianity at Amazon.com You can connect with us on    Facebook     Instagram      Twitter Want to help us with our future episodes of This Is Not Church Podcast? Join us on Patreon where you will get access to exclusive patron content such as early access to episode, videos of upcoming episodes, and live Q&A sessions. Also check out our website for upcoming interviews and blog posts Each episode of This Is Not Church Podcast is expertly engineered by our producer The Podcast Doctor Eric Howell. If you're thinking of starting a podcast you need to connect with Eric!

Moundsville Baptist Church

Moundsville Baptist Church

Moundsville Baptist Church

Moundsville Baptist Church

Moundsville Baptist Church

Moundsville Baptist Church

Moundsville Baptist Church

Jesus Seminar founding member, Marcus Borg, first described the message of Jesus as being “radical compassion.” Peer and fellow seminar member, Karen Armstrong, took that concept to an interfaith (or no faith) form of spirituality, saying, The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect. The opposite of spirituality is not atheism. It is, in our partisan, narcissistic, and cannibalistic capitalist society, more akin to sociopathy. The good news is that we get to choose which path we want to follow.

Shmuel Rosner chats with Hal Taussig and Brandon Scott about their latest book: "After Jesus Before Christianity: A Historical Exploration of the First Two Centuries of Jesus Movements"   Hal Taussig is Visiting Professor of New Testament at Union Theological Seminary in New York and co-pastor at Chestnut Hill United Methodist Church and the author and co-author of numerous works, including 'Jesus Before God', 'Re-imagining Life Together in America' and 'Jesus and Wisdom's Feast'.   Bernard Brandon Scott is the author and editor of many books, including The Real Paul: Recovering His Radical Challenge and The Trouble with Resurrection. A charter member of the Jesus Seminar, he is chair of Westar's newly established Christianity Seminar. He served as chair of the Bible in Ancient and Modern Media Section of the Society of Biblical Literature, as well as a member of several SBL Seminars including the Parable Seminar and Historical Jesus Seminar.     Follow Shmuel Rosner on Twitter.

"18. The Bible is not a reliable guide to Christ's teachings. Mark, the oldest of the Gospels, was written at least 30 years after Christ's death, and the newest of them might have been written more than 200 years after his death. These texts have been amended, translated, and re-translated so often that it's extremely difficult to gauge the accuracy of current editions—even aside from the matter of the accuracy of texts written decades or centuries after the death of their subject. This is such a problem that the Jesus Seminar, a colloquium of over 200 Protestant Gospel scholars mostly employed at religious colleges and seminaries, undertook in 1985 a multi-year investigation into the historicity of the statements and deeds attributed to Jesus in the New Testament. They concluded that only 18% of the statements and 16% of the deeds attributed to Jesus had a high likelihood of being historically accurate. So, in a very real sense fundamentalists—who claim to believe in the literal truth of the Bible—are not followers of Jesus Christ; rather, they are followers of those who, decades or centuries later, put words in his mouth. 19. The Bible, Christianity's basic text, is riddled with contradictions. There are a number of glaring contradictions in the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, and including some within the same books. A few examples: ". . . God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man." (James:1:13) "And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham." (Genesis 22:1) ". . . for I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep anger forever." (Jeremiah 3:12) "Ye have kindled a fire in mine anger, which shall burn forever. Thus saith the Lord." (Jeremiah 17:4) "If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true." (John 5:31, J.C. speaking) "I am one that bear witness of myself . . ." (John 8:18, J.C. speaking) and last but not least: "I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." (Genesis 32:30) "No man hath seen God at any time." (John 1:18) "And I [God] will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts . . ." (Exodus 33:23) Christian apologists typically attempt to explain away such contradictions by claiming that the fault lies in the translation, and that there were no contradictions in the original text. It's difficult to see how this could be so, given how direct many biblical contradictions are; but even if these Christian apologetics held water, it would follow that every part of the Bible should be as suspect as the contradictory sections, thus reinforcing the previous point: that the Bible is not a reliable guide to Christ's words." --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/antonio-myers4/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/antonio-myers4/support

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://faithandselfdefense.com/2018/03/30/the-jesus-seminar-revealed-part-three/

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://faithandselfdefense.com/2018/03/23/the-jesus-seminar-revealed-part-two/

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://faithandselfdefense.com/2018/03/16/the-jesus-seminar-revealed-part-one/

Kenosis and the Christology Debate: what would Jesus do? How do I follow Jesus' example if He is God and I am just a human? How do we reconcile the fact that Jesus was fully God with the fact that Jesus was fully human? How can we honestly follow Jesus' example when he had infinite resources of deity at his disposal? Can we really say he was tempted just like us and was without sin? It's an issue that has been discussed in Christian circles throughout the church's history. All Christians believe that Jesus was both fully God and fully man. This doctrinal belief was formalized with the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451 and became one of the central beliefs of Christianity. It contrasts with the belief of a variety of heretical groups who hold that Jesus was the first and greatest creation of God. This view is called Arianism and is espoused today by the Jehovah's Witnesses as well as other unorthodox groups. The Christian view also contrasts strongly with that of Muslims and other groups who believe that Jesus was simply a prophet of God. It contrasts as well with various New Age views that see Jesus merely as a man who fully actualized his inner divinity. And it sharply contrasts with views of liberal scholars today (e.g., the Jesus Seminar) who try to argue that the historical Jesus—the Jesus “behind” the mythologized New Testament documents—was merely a Cynic philosopher or a religious and social revolutionary. The Bible, however, clearly teaches that Jesus was fully God as well as fully human (John 1:1; 20:28; Romans 9:5; Colossians 2:9; Titus 2:11–13). Within evangelical circles, the debate can be broken down into two broad camps: The Classical View: Many defend the more traditional view that Jesus exercised both his divine and human attributes at the same time. For example, this view maintains that Jesus could be omniscient as God and non-omniscient as human at the same time. Kenotic Christology: Others, however, hold to what is called kenotic Christology. This group maintains that God had to “empty himself” (kenosis in Greek) to become a full human being. They argue that the Second Person of the Trinity laid aside his omniscience in order to become fully human, for a person cannot be fully human and omniscient at the same time. The Big Question Most of the objections and fears I've heard expressed of this view amount to this question. Does this view mean Jesus was not divine while on earth? Colossians 2:9 – For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form. Hebrews 1:3-4 – The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs. Hebrews 2:9 – But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. Books Referenced: His Mighty Strength - Randy Frazee The Mosaic of Christian Belief - Roger E Olson Submit Q&A Questions and episode suggestions at westsidefamily.church/wp-feedback!

The problem with the Bible is in the beginning. Genesis: that masterful piece of writing, that somehow causes so much confusion. Throughout college and young adulthood, my interactions with Christians that read the Bible literally caused me to turn away. Typically the extreme views of the inerrant word bothered me, and here I'm referring to ostrich-head-in-the-sand type of claims like that of the Universe being only 6,000 years old or people co-existing with dinosaurs. Unfortunately, at that time I deemed those extreme views as default positions of religion, as I spun further away from any and all religion.I felt exactly like St. Augustine, who said some 1600 years ago: “I was being killed by the Old Testament passages when I took them literally.” (Confessions p109, p414) This ability of ancient writers, from Augustine to St. Paul to Homer, to nail the exact feeling I have often surprises me, although it shouldn't. There is a massive trove of wisdom from our ancestors, from all cultures.In college I had taken New Testament and Old Testament classes, thumbing over much of the Bible. What I found enjoyable as a child were the stories, such as the Creation, the Garden of Eden, the Tower of Babel, the fascinating stories of the lineage of Jacob and Joseph. But in college I began to read closer and find the discrepancies with modernity, such as the rainbow being a sign of a covenant with Noah as opposed to refracted light exposing the spectrum to our eyes. Another example that had me laughing was the reference to mathematical Pi in First Kings. This error of Pi = 3 instead of Pi = 3.14… blew my mind, as the infallible book had mistaken one of the most common facts that every school child knows.Then he made the molten sea; it was made with a circular rim, and measured ten cubits across, five in height, and thirty in circumference. (1 Kings 7:23)Pi equals 3? No, no, stop right there: Rainbows and Pi had known answers, they were not signs and approximations. The teacher explained away the difference, the glaring error, but I could see the wizard behind the curtain now, nobody was fooling me any longer! About the same time the movement surrounding the “Historical Jesus” became known to me and I fortified my doubt with books and materials from the “Jesus Seminar” effort, which I now find to be aptly described as"Hot-Tub Religion" -- a Christanity with all of the pleasures and none of the pains -- the theological equivalent of Diet Coke.Thus, in college and for years afterward, I read the Bible literally and drained it of magic and miracle, much like Thomas Jefferson did with his Bible using a razor to carve out all miracles.The funny thing was that I had become the literalist. Fundamentalists and atheists read the Bible literally in every book. As time has passed and I've grown older, I've noticed that extremists, religious or non-religious, from the political left or the political right - these people are almost identical mirrors of each other.Well, my teacher attempted to explain the problem of Biblical literalism to me, but I had no interest in listening by that time. Both professors that I had on religious topics, I rejected, despite their knowledge far exceeding my own on the subject. On my term papers, the teacher would mark up my smart-ass comments and suggest that the rainbow could be a symbol, or that Pi need not be precise to the decimal in order to get the basic shape of a circle.Sometimes you have to read a book three times to get the point. Actually, reading a book at different phases of the journey can provide new takeaways, as I know this from reading and re-reading Moby Dick and 1984 and The Brothers Karamazov and other masterpieces as I cruise through the five acts of my own life's play. The problem with reading the Bible literally as a fundamentalist does is that it becomes robotic and feels spoon-fed. The problem with reading the Bible literally from the modern scientific view, as if the books were peer-reviewed academic papers, is that the context of the culture and the genre becomes lost in minor details that miss the entire purpose.The change and awareness about literalism happened for me through a video, not a book. A short moment of teaching, of hearing something that I had heard many years before, shattered my cynicism in a moment.I caught a video series called “Symbolon” that spelled out the difference between “literally” and “literarily.” One syllable. A few letters. It makes all the difference in the world to me.The Catholic approach to Scripture is different from the fundamentalist view, which reads Scripture in a literalistic way. To discern the truth God put in Scripture, we must interpret the Bible literarily, remembering that God speaks to us in a human way, through the human writers of Scripture. That means that we examine the context and intent of the author for any given passage.-From Symbolon (session 3)The power of one syllable is stunning. Literally vs literarily makes a world of difference, and was a huge stepping stone to faith. In fact, as far as the power of one syllable goes, consider this: superlative and superlaxative are also only one syllable of difference, but what a difference in meaning.I guess the problem was always this: I felt gullible and stupid swallowing the “literal” pill. Honestly, I think that was always the problem, from when an adult first told me to “Just believe and not ask questions,” that response knocked me back so far that I couldn't get over it.Alongside that, I failed to remember and realize that the people from two thousand and three thousand years ago also were not stupid. They survived and withstood hardships that my generation could not fathom. Their grasp of knowledge had a depth far beyond our own in seeing the world without the knowledge that has been revealed through science over the past two hundred years. I suspect if you threw the people from today back into the era of Moses, we would have gladly remained in Egypt unless he would have promised Netflix and porn on the other side of the Red Sea. Furthermore, the average person today, who so cleverly knows how to use appliances and technology, would be utterly useless in the ancient times and have no clue how to teach and apply any modern knowledge to their world, since we are all specialized and sharpened to very specific tasks today.The difference between literally and literarily is but a single syllable, but the alteration in understanding leaps forward. I feel that this point of Catholic teaching has been buried for a long time and should be trumpeted from the Pope himself. Of course, it has been, I just wasn't listening. If I could be so turned off by the literal readers turning the Bible into a square peg for a round hole, surely many others also felt that way. I think that's why books like Moby Dick became so fascinating to me, because those were meant to be read for the deeper meaning, not the superficial “whiteness of the whale” that Ahab was so angry about. Reading Moby Dick literally would ruin the story. The book would be complete garbage if read literally instead of literarily.I love books and literature, and I do believe that the many years of literal, fundamentalist voices claiming Biblical authority led to the demise of many individual faiths like mine. I could be wrong, and I often am, but I don't think I'm alone.I mentioned Bishop Barron earlier, because he is articulating the thoughts that I failed to muster. Seeds of ideas about faith that I had, he has brought to full bloom. In the Word on Fire Bible, an introduction discusses how to approach to the Bible. I used to laugh about this question, as I recall a college professor talking about “How should we approach William Blake?” As I can't resist crudeness, I always thought this sounded like we might be going to kidnap him. I guess we should approach William Blake from behind, at night, with a dark van.Sorry, another digression. Brevity is the soul of wit, and vigorous writing is concise. I'll try to remember that.Barron discusses in “How to approach the Bible” the solution to my inability to appreciate the book with five strategies. In my post-college years I did pick up the Bible once and decide that I would just read the whole thing again, as a piece of literature rather than revelation, as I had wanted it to be literature, but felt that dogma disallowed that type of reading. Well, reading Genesis is fun, and Exodus, but once I reached the laws of Leviticus I stopped. I couldn't do it. I moved on to some science fiction and stayed there for a few years.My approach to the Bible as a single book does not work. The idea that the Bible should be taken literally is a pointless question, because every book is a different genre. The Bible is not one book, but many books, and you have to read each book wearing the proper hat. Is it poetry or history? Is it a prophet speaking or a third-person narrator? When Genesis is read literarily, it truly is a magnificent piece of literature and speaks with great meaning, the deepest thoughts, and answers the questions of the hungry heart.Too bad I didn't know this long ago, but the Catechism spells it out pretty plainly, that Catholics do not read the Bible literally.The account of the fall in Genesis uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents. (CCC 390)In addition to that, the Catechism points this out rather bluntly, I just never bothered to read it.In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words. In order to discover the sacred authors' intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking, and narrating then current. (CCC 109-110)So that's kind of embarrassing, for me anyway, when I think of my past editorials at parties and comments to tear down religion. I knew everything, but somehow didn't know this. Weird. I wonder what else I didn't know.That distinction of how to read the Bible really was the largest block on my ability to proceed. If I could understand the “First Cause” and know that God had to exist, and allow myself an honest and intellectual look at the Bible versus a rote-learning pill-swallowing reading, this could be the start of something great.The other four point of approaches to the Bible from Barron also knocked over some problematic things for me. Here's the whole list of five things that demolished a wall between me and faith:Be attentive to the genre of each book. For example, Psalms is not a history book, so don't read it like one.The Bible is a one book but it is a library, and it tells one story, the unfolding of a great drama.“Any interpretation of a biblical passage that militates against the love of God and neighbor is necessarily a bad interpretation.” St. Augustine said that love of God and neighbor is “the ultimate criterion for correct biblical reading.”Distinguish between what “is in the Bible and what the Bible teaches” for there is an “awful lot of cultural baggage from the ancient world.” Look for the overarching themes and meaning as a whole.The ultimate purpose of all books is the dying and rising of Jesus Christ and to “draw all people into communion” with Him.The third item struck home because so often the “love” appears lost in modern arguments, especially in the online world of vitriolic commentary between those with and without faith, and even between those with different flavors of faith. In many cases the faithful seem to struggle with that point as badly or even worse than those who doubt. Once again, I wonder how many people have fallen away from faith because of bad interpretations? If you read the Bible literally instead of literarily you can get off-track and forget to take the love potion. The fact that anyone could reference the Bible for pro-slavery arguments sums up the problem of “literal” readings, because there is much talk of slavery in the Bible from the culture and setting - but the entire purpose of the overarching story is to love God and your neighbor. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.whydidpetersink.com

Details, credits, errata: This week we’re delighted to have the great comics writer Mark Russell on the pod to discuss another 1980’s classic action movie, Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 sci-fi satire Robocop, much of which has come to pass in the years since its release. Mark calls it the best of the superhero movies; we are inclined to agree. It adapts and sends up all kinds of cool and weird comics without smoothing out any of their rough edges, and, of course, manages to be very much its own thing. Verhoeven is the creator of the controversial “Jesus Seminar,” a really unusual enterprise that is worth examining. Mark writes movingly about Christianity in a number of his terrific comics and has a new book coming up called Not All Robots with superstar artist Mike Deodato; we’re adding it to our pull list. His comics with artist Richard Pace about Jesus’s return to earth as a superhero sidekick, Second Coming, are wonderful; Vol. 1 is in print and Vol. 2 is currently being serialized and will be out in November. Mark is also writing one of Marvel’s terrific Life Story miniseries, this one for the Fantastic Four.Our image on the website this week is taken from the sales page for Knightscope, a technology company that sells mall cop robots like the 300-lb K5, pictured here, which recently ran over a toddler in a mall in California and tragically drowned in Washington, D.C. If you see one, kick it.Our theme song is Louis Armstrong and His Hot 5’s Muskrat Ramble, made freely available by the Boston Public Library and audio engineering shop George Blood, LP through the Internet Archive. Robocop is copyright 1987 MGM. Brief audio excerpts are used herein for purposes of review. All other material is copyright 2021 Sam Thielman and Alissa Wilkinson.This is a free episode! We’d love it if you subscribed! This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at yammpod.substack.com/subscribe

The Bible is a strange book, and yet people still read it gain insight from it, and worship the person for whom it was written about. On the flip side, it's also used as a weapon, from believers to atheists to push narratives that ostensibly go against the very foundations of the teachings found within its pages. To help us make some sense of this centuries-old document Josh and Will talk with world-renowned New Testament historian and scholar Luke Timothy Johnson. They talk about the rise of Christian Nationalism, what the Bible says about LGBTQ+, and how Christians should respond to the existence of aliens! Guest Bio:Dr. Luke Timothy Johnson is Candler School of Theology's Robert W. Woodruff Professor Emeritus, Emory's most distinguished endowed chair. A noted scholar and an award-winning teacher, Johnson taught at Yale Divinity School and Indiana University prior to arriving at Candler in 1992. His research concerns the literary, moral and religious dimensions of the New Testament, including the Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts of early Christianity (particularly moral discourse), Luke-Acts, the Pastoral Letters, and the Letter of James.A prolific author, Johnson has penned 31 books, more than 70 scholarly articles, 100 popular articles and nearly 200 book reviews. His 1986 book, The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation, now in its third edition, is widely used as a textbook in seminaries and departments of religion throughout the world. A decade later, Johnson made national headlines with The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels(HarperOne, 1996), the first book to systematically challenge the Jesus Seminar's controversial claims, among them that Jesus said only 18 percent of what the Gospels attribute to him.Homosexuality & The Church: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/homosexuality-church-0Support the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/faithpolitics)

03.04.21 - Victory Night Day 3 & Jesus Seminar - Apostle ATB Williams

03.04.21 - Victory Night Day 3 & Jesus Seminar - Apostle ATB Williams

02.02.21 - Victory Night Day 2 - Apostle ATB Williams

02.02.21 - Victory Night Day 2 - Apostle ATB Williams

Dr. Gary Habermas has dedicated his life to the study and defense of the Resurrection because it is without a doubt the seminal event in history and the foundation of Christianity—simply put, without the Resurrection Christian belief crumbles. (Note: This conversation took place in March 2018 as Hank was in the midst of his battle with cancer—Thanks be to God, Hank is now cancer free). Topics discussed include: How studying the Resurrection led Dr. Habermas into apologetics (3:15); empirical evidence for Christianity compared to other religions (8:30); perspectives on the supernatural in academic circles (11:00); the Resurrection, Jesus Seminar, and the Pre-Pauline Creed (14:45); evidence of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ (18:45); Islamic denial of the crucifixion of Christ (21:15); evidence of an empty tomb after the Resurrection of Christ (27:25); witnesses to the Resurrection and the martyrdom that ensued (30:35); the faith and martyrdom of early church fathers such as Polycarp and Irenaeus (36:10); the sorrow Habermas felt losing his wife to cancer and the hope he felt knowing that she was in heaven (40:30); the peace that the Resurrection of Christ provides Hank in the midst of his battle with cancer (47:00); the argument from joy by C. S. Lewis (54:30); a miracle in Hank's life and the role of miracles in Christianity (59:00); rewards in heaven (1:04:15); world religions, the reliability of Scripture and the radical uniqueness of Jesus (1:06:30); do all religions lead to God? (1:10:10); is Christianity is rooted in history and evidence? (1:14:20); why should we believe in miracles? (1:22:30); Christianity corresponds to reality (1:25:00); why aren't more Christians sharing their faith? (1:28:15); why Hank considers his first year fighting cancer as the best year of his life (1:36:45); how cancer has brought the Hanegraaff family closer together and closer to Christ (1:42:50); how suffering through cancer has made Hank more empathetic (1:47:15); Gary Habermas describes watching his wife die of cancer (1:53:00); why the best year of Hank's life is the year he was diagnosed with cancer (1:58:50); Habermas on a magnum opus on the Resurrection (2:00:30). For further resources on the resurrection, see our April 2021 Monthly Resources by clicking here https://www.equip.org/product/cri-resource-cri2104wa/ and additional resources at our Defending the Resurrection resource page, which includes Gary Habermas's book The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus with Michael Licona by clicking here. https://www.equip.org/defending-the-resurrection/Listen to Hank's podcast and follow Hank off the grid where he is joined by some of the brightest minds discussing topics you care about. Get equipped to be a cultural change agent.Archived episodes are on our Website and available at the additional channels listed below.You can help spread the word about Hank Unplugged by giving us a rating and review from the other channels we are listed on.

In this episode, we discuss the Jesus Seminar, a group of New Testament scholars who tried to discover what Jesus actually said. We talk about their methods and criteria, how the media covered them, and why it made evangelicals really angry. We also play our own quiz game where Damien tries to identify the words of Jesus vs the words of Tom Hanks. As always we are not experts, we just google this stuff. Hosted by Trevor Poelman and Damien Doepping For more info and our references check out https://beliefitornot.wordpress.com/ Also follow us on twitter @beliefitornot, instagram @beliefitornotpodcast, or facebook https://www.facebook.com/beliefitornot/ Or email beliefitornotpodcast@gmail.com Support Belief It Or Not Brought to you By: The Sonar Network

On this Easter Sunday (and owing to the ongoing busyness here in the "depths of the Lancashire countryside") I've decided to reshare one of my favourite interviews from the TMR archive—a conversation with Dr. Gary Habermas on Jesus' Resurrection, recorded way back in 2014. As I wrote at the time... "We are joined by one of the world's leading experts in Resurrection Studies, Dr. Gary Habermas, Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Theology at Liberty University, for an in-depth discussion on the historical case for the Resurrection of Jesus from the Dead. How might we persuade people of the truth of Jesus' Resurrection? Must we appeal only to the divine authority of Scripture and hope that people will agree? Not according to Dr. Habermas, who explains how his "minimal facts approach" (which relies only on historical data agreed by the vast majority of professional scholars in the field) bypasses such appeals to authority, and has the power to persuade - through logic and historical reasoning alone - that Jesus did in fact rise from the Dead." For show notes please visit https://themindrenewed.com

The Resurrection is the quintessence of Christianity, and Dr. Gary Habermas has dedicated his life to the study and defense of the reality of the Resurrection. After all, “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” Human history — and your future — is forever changed by what happened on the third day, so listen in as Hank and Dr. Habermas discuss the seminal event in human history. (This conversation was so good and went so long that we had to break it up into two episodes. This is part one.) Topics discussed include: how studying the Resurrection led Dr. Habermas into apologetics (3:40); with the Resurrection of Jesus we have everything, without the Resurrection of Jesus, we have nothing (7:25); comparing Christianity to other world religions (8:40); perspectives on the supernatural in academic circles (11:35); the Resurrection, Jesus Seminar, and the Pre-Pauline Creed (15:15); the overwhelming factual evidence for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ (19:20); Islamic denial of the crucifixion of Christ (21:45); addressing the evidence for an empty tomb after the resurrection of Christ (27:50); witnesses to the resurrected Christ and the martyrdom that ensued (30:35); the faith and martyrdom of early church fathers such as Polycarp and Irenaeus (36:40); the power of the gospel to change the culture unlike any other religion (39:30); the sorrow Habermas felt when he lost his wife to cancer and the hope he felt knowing that she was in heaven (41:55); the peace that the resurrection of Christ provides Hank in the midst of his battle with cancer (47:30); the hope we can find in the Bible (51:00); and materialism, mystery, and the argument from joy by C. S. Lewis (55:15).

John Dominic Crossan is back on the podcast.  Crossan is a legendary New Testament scholar, Jesus Seminar provocateur, and popular lecturer all across the progressive church. We will discuss the last 30 years of historical Jesus research, its role in the academy, the growing audience in the public square, changes in the church and his two most recent books The Power of Parable & The Greatest Prayer. We recently re-published Crossan's first visit to the podcast over 5 plus years ago on the new Barrel Aged podcast stream.  Go check out his discussion of God and Empire which remains my favorite book of his. Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

 Homebrewed Christianity is thrilled to share the first piece of audio from the Emergent Village theological conversation with philosopher and theologian Philip Clayton. Even more than that we are pumped to announce our first Homebrewed Christianity Theo-nerd Book Party March 15th! BUT FIRST... you can't imagine how thought provoking this podcast is. Philip Clayton gives his first public talk about his newest book The Predicament of Belief which he recently published with friend and President of George Washington University Steven Knapp. As conference coordinators Bo and I challenged Phil to press Process Theology to address those three theological concepts that make most liberals run - the Resurrection, the Trinity, and Eschatology - and he agreed! Not only is the presentation engaging and provocative but the challenge to speak credibly about our faith is a challenge Philip and Steven see impacting the church.Here's how they put it in the book... When church leaders can no longer presuppose a securely shared fabric of beliefs, they rely increasingly on extrinsic motivations: professional musicians, high-tech services, attractive social programs, and the like. The trouble is that reflective persons recognize that such initiatives are no longer tied to compelling and persuasive beliefs about what is ultimately the case. When those beliefs become merely metaphorical or poetic--or worse, when one finds oneself using language one no longer believes but vaguely feels that one ought to believe--one begins to wonder about the raison d'etre of the entire institution and its practices. Is it surprising that many have the sense that (in John Cobb's words) "what we do and say does not seem to be terribly important." (HT: Scot) Since this was a live event the beginning of the podcast may be hard to follow as Phil is commenting on a collection of rather humorous pictures of Jesus but at minute 14 to the end it is straight out theologizing. In this podcast you will hear Philip address... * Divine Action, the Jesus Seminar, Peter Rollins and the Resurrection * Christological uniqueness, particularity, kenosis, and adoptionism * Religious Language, the reality of God, and spectrum of certainity * Self-giving love and feminism * Religious Pluralism Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices