Podcasts about Richard Bauckham

Matt, hey, my friends, welcome to the off the wire podcast. My name is Matt Wireman, and with over 25 years of coaching experience, I bring to you a an integrated approach to coaching where we look at mind, body and soul. So this being my little corner of the universe, welcome we cover everything from spiritual formation or the interior life all the way to goal setting and how to make your life better with life hacks, and I cover everything in between. So whatever it fits my fancy, I'm going to share with you, and I'm so thankful for your time, and I hope this episode helps you. All right. Well, hey, welcome, welcome to another episode of Off The Wire. This is Matt, still I haven't changed, but I do have with me, my friend. Really proud to call him a friend. And from seminary days, Dr Josh chatro, who is the Billy Graham chair for evangelism and cultural engagement at Beeson. That's a mouthful. Josh, well done. And then he is also, they just launched a concentration in apologetics at Beeson, which is really exciting. They got a conference coming up this summer. Is that also an apologetics Josh,its own preaching and apologetics? Okay? Awesome.And, and largely, you're also, you're also part of the Tim Keller Center for Cultural apologetics, and then also a, they call them fellows at the Center for Pastor theologians as well. That's right, yeah. And you in, you have been at Beeson for a couple years, because prior to that, you were at a you were heading up. And what was it largely an apologetics group, or was it, was it more broad than that in Raleigh?Yeah, it was. It was much more expansive than that. Evangelism and apologetics is part of what we were doing, but it was the Center for Public Christianity, okay? It was also very much in the work and faith movement. And I was also resident theologian at Holy Trinity Anglican in Raleigh. We were there for five years,excellent and and you don't know this because you don't keep tabs on who bought your book, but I've got every one of your books brother, so every every book you put out, and I'm like, I love this guy, and I'm gonna support him and buy his book. So it started all the way back, if you remember, with truth matters, yeah. And I use that book for one of the classes that I built here where I teach. And then then I want to go through the Litany here and embarrass you a little bit. And then it goes to apologetics, at the Cross Cultural Engagement, telling a better story, surprised by doubt. And then one that you just released called the Augustine way, retrieving a vision for the church's apologetic witness. So do you write much on apologetics? Is that kind of your thing?Yeah, I've written a few books on that.So why? Like, what is it about apologetics that has really captured your heart, in your mind and like, as opposed to just teaching theology, yeah, it's a certain it's a certain stream. If folks are first of all, folks are curious, like, What in the world is apologetics? Are you apologizing to folks? Like, are you saying I'm sorry?Well, I do have to do that. I'm sorry a lot. That's a good practice. That's not quite what apologetics is. Okay. Okay, so we, one of the things I would say is, and when I meet, when I meet up with old friends like you, sometimes they say, What have you been doing? Because we didn't see this coming. And when we were in seminary together, it wasn't as if I was, you know, reading a lot of apologetic works. And so one of the things is,and you weren't picking fights on campus too much. You were always a really kind person. And most, most time, people think of like apologists as, like, real feisty. And you're not a feisty friend. I'm not. I actually, unless you start talking about, like, soccer and stuff like that, right? Yeah,yeah, I'm not. Yeah, I don't. I don't love, I don't love, actually, arguments I'd much rather have, which is an odd thing, and so I need to tell how did I get into this thing? I'd much rather have conversations and dialog and kind of a back and forth that keeps open communication and and because, I actually think this ties into apologetics, most people don't make decisions or don't come to they don't come to any kind of belief simply because they were backed into an intellectual corner. And but now maybe I'll come back to that in a second. But I got into this because I was doing my PhD work while I was pastoring. And when you do yourpH was that in in Raleigh, because you did your PhD work at Southeastern, right?That's right, that's right. But I was actually, we were in southern, uh. In Virginia for the first half, we were in a small town called Surrey. It was, if you know anything about Tim Keller, it was he served in Hopewell, Virginia for seven or nine years before he went to Westminster and then to New York. And we were about 45 minutes from that small town. So if you've read Colin Hansen's book, he kind of gives you some background on what is this, these little communities, and it does, does kind of match up the little community I was serving for two years before moving to another little community in South Georgia to finish while I was writing. And so I pastored in both locations. So these aren't particularly urban areas, and yet, people in my church, especially the young people, were asking questions about textual criticism, reliability of the Bible.Those are any topics forfolks like, yeah, something happened called the Internet, yes. All of a sudden now, things that you would, you would get to, maybe in your, you know, thm, your your master's level courses, or even doctoral level courses. Now 1819, year old, 20 year olds or 50 year olds had questions about them because they were reading about some of this stuff on the internet. And because I was working on a PhD, I was actually working on a PhD in biblical theology and their New Testament scholar, people would come to me as if I'm supposed to know everything, or you know. And of course, of course, when you're studying a PhD, you're you're in a pretty narrow kind of world and very narrow kind of lane. And of course, I didn't know a lot of things, but I was, I kind of threw myself into, how do I help people with these common questions. So it wasn't as if, it wasn't as if I was saying, oh, I want to study apologetics. I kind of accidentally got there, just because of really practical things going on in my church context. And and then as I was reading and I started writing in response to Bart Ehrman, who is a is a agnostic Bible scholar. Wrote four or five New York Times bestsellers, uh, critical of the New Testament, critical of the Bible, critical of conservative Christianity. I started writing those first two books. I wrote with some senior scholars. I wrote in response. And then people said, so your apologist? And I said, Well, I guess I am. And so that, yeah, so I'm coming at this I'm coming at this area, not because I just love arguments, but really to help the church really with really practical questions. And then as I began to teach it, I realized, oh, I have some different assumptions coming at this as a pastor, also as a theologian, and trained in biblical theology. So I came with a, maybe a different set of lenses. It's not the only set of lens. It's not the it's not the only compare of lenses that that one might take in this discipline, but that's some of my vocational background and some of my kind of journey that brought me into apologetics, and in some ways, has given me a little bit different perspective than some of the dominant approaches or dominant kind of leaders in the area.That's great. Well, let's go. Let's get after it. Then I'm gonna just throw you some doozies and see how we can rapid fire just prove all of the things that that are in doubt. So here we go. Okay, you ready? How do we know that God exists?Yeah, so that word no can have different connotations. So maybe it would be better to ask the question, why do we believe God exists? Oh,don't you do that? You're you can't, you can't just change my question. I was kidding. Well, I think, I think you bring up a great point, is that one of the key tasks in apologetics is defining of terms and understanding like, Okay, you asked that question. But I think there's a question behind the question that actually is an assumption that we have to tease out and make explicit, right? Because, I mean, that's, that's part of you. So I think sometimes people get into this back and forth with folks, and you're like, Well, you have assumptions in your question. So go ahead, you, you, you go ahead and change my question. So how do we knowthe issue is, is there is that when we say something like, you know, we people begin to imagine that the way Christianity works is that we need to prove Christianity in the way we might prove as Augustine said this in confessions, four plus six equals 10. And Augustine, early church father, and he's writing, and he's writing about his own journey. He said I really had to get to the point where I realized this is not how this works. Yeah, we're not talking about, we do not one plus one, our way to God.Yeah. And when is Augustine writing about When? When? So people are, yeah, 397,at. This point. So he's writing right at the, you know, right right before the fifth century, okay? And, and, of course, Augustine famously said, we have to believe to understand, for most believers, God is intuitive, or what? Blaise Pascal, the 17th century Christian philosopher He called this the logic of the heart. Or I can just cite a more contemporary figure, Alvin planeta, calls this basic belief that. He says that belief in God is a basic belief, and and for So, for for many believers, they would say something like this. And I think there's validity in this so is that God just makes sense, even if, even if they haven't really worked out arguments that they they say, Well, yeah, this God makes sense to me. Now I can kind of begin to explore that. I will in just a second, but I just want to say there's, for most of your listeners, it's something like, I heard the gospel and this and the stories of Jesus, and I knew they were true, right? And as kind of insiders here, we would say that's the Spirit's work. The Holy Spirit is working, and God speaks through creation and his word, and people believe. And so that's that's why we believe now, of course, once we say that people have these kinds of intuitions, or as theologians would put it, this sense of God kind of built into them, I would want to say, as an apologist, or even as a pastor, just a minister, you don't have to be apologist to say this is that we can appeal to those intuitions and make arguments in many different types of ways. Well,hold on one second. Isn't that a little too simplistic, though? Because, I mean, you have the Greeks who believed in all the different gods, and the Romans who adopted those gods and changed their names and like, how do we assimilate that? You know, where, you know Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins famously say, Well, I don't, I don't believe in Zeus. So does that make me an atheist? It would have made me an atheist back in, you know, you know Roman and Latin and Greek times. So, so there's an intuition, but, but how do we delineate that? Well, that's not the right object of that intuition.Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we have this intuition, you know, we could say Romans, Romans, one is pointing us to, this is what I would argue, this sense of God, and yet we're, we're fallen, according to the Christian story. And so even though we have this sense of God, we suppress that, and we worship false gods, or we worship the created, rather than the Creator. So the Christian story as a as a Christian, helps make sense of both the kind of why? Well, although we have this sense this, there's this common sense of God, it goes in many different directions and and I would argue that even if you deny kind of transcendence altogether, you're still going to have you're going to still make something kind of a god. You're going to you're going to want to worship something. And I think that's that's part of the point of Romans, one, you end up going to worship the created rather than the Creator. So does that get out what you're asking Matt or Yeah,I think so. I think sometimes the arguments that are real popular, even now is like, well, I just don't, I just don't, I just don't believe that God exists, just like I don't believe that Zeus exists, like, what's, what's the big deal? Why? Why are you so adamant that I believe in that God exists? Like to because I don't, I don't know that God exists because I don't see him. So how would you respond to somebody who says, Well, this Intuit intuition that that you say we all have, and that Romans one says we have, I just don't buy it, you know, because, I mean, I'm, I wouldn't believe that Zeus exists, because there's no empirical evidence to show me otherwise. So how would you respond to somebody that's equivocating or saying that, you know, Yahweh of the Old Testament, the God of the, you know, the God of the Bible is, this is just a tribal deity, just like Zeus is. So, how should we? Iwould, I would say so. So I think we can make kind of arguments for some kind of for transcendence. So there's ways to make arguments against naturalism. That's that's what's being promoted. And there's various different kinds of, you know. So sometimes these kinds of arguments that are in the Christian tradition are used to say, hey, we're going to prove God's existence using these arguments. I think I'm not. Are typically comfortable with the language of prove and how it's used in our context today, again, we get into the math, kind of two plus two equals four. Kind of thinking, yep. But I think a lot of those arguments are appealing to both intuitions and they they work much more effectively as anti naturalistic arguments. Not so much saying, Okay, we know a particular God through, say, the moral argument, okay, that we're but, but it's arguing against simply a naturalistic, materialistic. You know, even Evans, who's a longtime professor at Baylor, makes this argument that those, those types of arguments are really good against pushing back against naturalism. So plan again, has a famous argument that says, if naturalism and evolutionary theory are both true because of how evolution theory works, it's not about right thinking, but right action that you perform certain things to survive. Then, if both of those are true, you have no reason to trust your kind of cognitive faculties.Can you tease that one out a little bit? I kind of lost on that one. He said,What planet is arguing? Is he saying? Look, if, if all of our kind of cognitive faculties are just a product of evolution, okay? And by the way, not only does it's not just a plan. Ago makes this argument, it's actually kind of interesting figures who were like Nietzsche and others made this argument that basically, if, if evolution and naturalism is true that all we are is energy and manner and this product of evolutionary process, then we would have no reason to actually trust kind of our rationality, and that's what rationality is actually mapping onto reality. All of our our brains and our minds are really just producing certain conclusions to help us survive. So it would undercut the very foundations of that position. Now again, yeah, being able to observe, yeah, yeah. So, so with that, again, I think that's an example of an argument that doesn't so much. You know, say this is the Christian God. This supports the belief in Christian God. But what it does is it from within their own thinking. It challenges that. It undercuts their own way of thinking, which is what you're assuming and what you're kind of pushing back on, is a kind of naturalistic world. And I think we can step within that try to understand it and then challenge it on its own terms. And I think that's the real strength of planning this argument. What he's doing now, go ahead.Well, that's it, yeah, in his, in his, like, the the Opus is, uh, warranted. Christian belief is that what you're referencing the the big burgundy book.I can't remember where he makes this argument? Yeah, I can'tremember exactly. But like, if all your cognitive faculties are working, somebody who believes that God exists does not mean that they does not negate all of the other cognitive faculties that they're like if they're in their rational mind, that they have warrants for their belief. But, but that's what I what I think, where I'm tracking with you, and I love this is that even like, it still holds true, right? Like there's not one silver bullet argument to say now we know, like, that's what you were challenging even in the question is, how do you know that you know that you know that God exists? Well, you have to layer these arguments. And so this is one layer of that argument that even the Greeks and the Romans had a sense of transcendence that they were after, and they identified them as gods. But there's this other worldliness that they're trying to attribute to the natural world that they observe, that they can't have answers for, and that we can't observe every occurrence of reality, that there has to be something outside of our box, so to speak, out of our naturalistic tendencies. And so even that can be helpful to say, well, that kind of proves my point that even the Greeks and the Romans and other tribal deities, they're after something outside of our own experience that we can experience in this box. Yeah, that'sright. And there's a, I mean again, this, this argument, isn't intellectually coercive, and I don't think any of these are intellectually coercive. What I mean by that is you can find ways out. And so the approach I would take is actually called an abductive approach, which says, Okay, let's put everything on the table, and what best makes sense, what best makes sense, or what you know, what story best explains all of this? And so that way, there's a lot of different angles you can take depending on who you're talking to, yep, and and so what one of the, one of the ways to look at this and contemporary anthropology? Psycho psychologists have done work on this, to say, the kind of standard, what we might call natural position in all of human history, is that there's there's transcendence. That's, it's just the assumption that there's transcendence. Even today, studies have been shown even people who grow kids, who grew up in a secular society will kind of have these intuitions, like, there is some kind of God, there is some kind of creator, designer. And the argument is that you actually have to have a certain kinds of culture, a particular culture that kind of habituate certain thinking, what, what CS Lewis would call, a certain kind of worldly spell to to so that those intuitions are saying, Oh no, there's not a god. You know, there's not transcendence. And so the kind of common position in all of human history across various different cultures is there is some kind of transcendence. It takes a very particular, what I would say, parochial, kind of culture to say, oh, there's probably no there. There's not. There's, of course, there's not. In fact, Charles Taylor, this is the story he wants to tell of how did we get here, at least in some secular quarters of the West, where it was just assumed, of course, there's, of course, there's a God to 500 years of to now, and at least some quarters of the West, certain, certain elite orsecular? Yeah? Yeah, people. And even then, that's a minority, right? This is not a wholesale thing, yeah.It seems to be. There's something, well, even Jonathan height, uh, he's an atheist, says, has acknowledged that there seems to be something in humans. That's something like what Pascal called a God shaped hole in our heart, and so there's this kind of, there's this deep intuition. And what I'm wanting to do is, I'm wanting in my arguments to kind of say, okay, given this as a Christian, that I believe we have this sense of God and this intuition of God, these intuitions, I want to appeal to those intuitions. And so there's a moral order to the universe that people just sense that there is a right and wrong. There's certain things that are right and certain things are wrong, even if a culture says it is, it is, it is fine to kill this group of people, that there's something above culture, that even there's something above someone's personal preference, that is their moral order to the universe. Now, given that deep seated intuition, what you might call a first principle, what makes best sense of that, or a deep desire, that that, that nothing in the universe seems to satisfy that we have. This is CS Lewis's famous argument. We have these desires, these natural desires for we get thirsty and there's there's water, we get hungry and there's food, and yet there's this basically universal or worldwide phenomenon where people desire something more, that they try to look for satisfaction in this world and they can't find it. Now, what best explains that? And notice what I'm doing there, I'm asking that the question, what best explains it? Doesn't mean there's, there's not multiple explanations for this, but we're saying, What's the best explanation, or profound sense that something doesn't come from nothing, that intelligence doesn't come from non intelligence, that being doesn't come from non being. Yeah, a deep sense that there's meaning and significance in life, that our experience with beauty is not just a leftover from an earlier primitive stage of of evolution. And so we have these deep experiences and intuitions and ideas about the world, and what I'm saying is particularly the Christian story. So I'm not, I'm not at the end, arguing for just transcendence or or kind of a generic theism, but I'm saying particularly the Christian story, best, best answers. Now, I'm not saying that other stories can't incorporate and say something and offer explanations, but it's a, it's a really a matter of, you know, you might say out narrating or or telling the Gospel story that maps on to the ways we're already intuiting about the world, or experiencing or observing the world.Yeah, so, so going along with that, so we don't have, like, a clear cut case, so to speak. We have layers of argument, and we appeal to what people kind of, in their heart of hearts, know, they don't have to like, they have to be taught otherwise. Almost like, if you talk to a child, they can't, they kind of intuit that, oh, there's something outside, like, Who created us? Like, who's our mom? You know, like, going back into the infinite regress. It's like, okay, some something came from nothing. How does that even how is that even possible? So there has to be something outside of our. Experience that caused that to happen. So, so say you, you go there, and then you help people. Say, help people understand. Like, I can't prove God's existence, but I can argue that there are ways of explaining the world that are better than other ways. So then, how do you avoid the charge that, well, you basically are a really proud person that you think your religion is better than other religions. How, how could you dare say that when you can't even prove that you're you know? So how? How would you respond to somebody who would say, like, how do you believe? Why do you believe that Christianity is a one true religion? Yeah, um,well, I would say a couple of things. One is that, in some sense, everyone is staking out some kind of claim. So even if you say you can't say that one religion is true or one one religion is the one true religion, that is a truth claim that you're staking out. And I think it's fine that this for someone to say that they just need to realize. I mean, I think they're wrong, but I think they're they're making a truth claim. I'm making a truth claim. Christians are making truth so we're, we all think we're right, and that's fine. That's fine, but, but then we but then once you realize that, then you're not saying, Well, you think you're right, but I just, I'm not sure, or it's arrogant to say you're right. I think, of course, with some some things, we have more levels of confidence than other things. And I think that's the other thing we can say with Christian with as Christians, it's saying, Hey, I believe, I believe in the resurrection. I believe in the core doctrines of Christianity. It doesn't mean that everything I might believe about everything is right. It doesn't even mean all my arguments are are even 100% always the best arguments, or I could be wrong about a particular argument and and I'm also not saying that you're wrong about everything you're saying. Okay, so, but what we are saying is that, hey, I I believe Jesus is who he said he was, and you're saying he's not okay. Let's have a conversation. But it's not, rather, it's not a matter of somebody being air. You know, you can hold those positions in an arrogant way. But simply saying, I believe this isn't in itself arrogance, at least, I think how arrogance is classically defined, yeah. And what is this saying? I believe this, and I believe, I believe what Jesus said about himself. And I can't go around and start kind of toying with with, if I believe he's Lord, then it's really not up to me to say, okay, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna, kind of take some of what he said, but not all of what he said. If you actually believe he rose from the dead and he is Lord and He is God, then then you take him at his word.What is it, as you think about cultural engagement, cultural apologetics that you've written on like, what is it in our cultural moment right now where people you say that thing, like Jesus said, You know, he, he, he said, I'm God, you know, not those explicit words, right? That's some of the argument. Like, no, but you look at the narrative he did, and that's why he was going to be stoned for blasphemy. That's why all these things. But that's, that's another conversation for another day. But, and then you talk to someone, you're like, Well, I don't believe he was God. I don't believe His claims were. Like, why then do you do we oftentimes find ourselves at a standstill, and people just throw up their hands like, well, that's your truth, and my truth is, I just don't, like, just don't push it on me. Like, why do we find ourselves in this? And it's not new. I mean, this is something that goes back to, you know, hundreds of years ago, where people are making arguments and they're like, Well, I just don't know. So I'm gonna be a transcendentalist, or I'm gonna be a deist, or I'm gonna whatever. So how do we kind of push back on that a little bit to say, No, it's not what we're talking about. Is not just a matter of preference, and it's not just a matter of, hey, my truth for me and your truth for you. But we're actually making it a claim that is true for all people. Like, how do we kind of encourage people to push into that tendency that people have to just throw up their hands and say, whatever? Pass the piece, you know? Well,okay, so I think let me answer that in two ways. One's philosophically, and then two are practically. One philosophically. I do think it's, you know, CS Lewis was on to this, as he often was way ahead of the curve on certain things, but on an abolition of man. When he talked, he's talking about the fact value distinction and how we've separated. You know, you have your facts, and then everything you know, where, classically, you would kind of recognize that courage, you know, is a virtue, and that's, it's a, it's a, it's also a fact that we should pursue courage and rather than just my preference of kind of and so there's actually. Be this, but now we have, well, that's a value, kind of courage, and say you should do something, but it's, it's, that's your value and and so we have this distinction between facts, which is, follow the science, and then values over here. And as that has opened up. You have both a kind of, on one hand, a very, very much, a people saying in a very kind of hard, rationalistic way, you know, science has said, which, that would be another podcast to kind of dive into that more science is good and, yeah, and, but science doesn't say anything. So I'm a fan of science, but it doesn't say anything. We interpret certain things, but, but so you can kind of have a hard rationalism, but you also combine with a kind of relativism, or at least a soft relativism that says, Well, this is my truth, because values become subjective. So that's the philosophical take. But the kind of practical thing, I would say, is they need people. One of the reasons people do that is because, it's because they've seen kind of these to reference what you're talking about earlier this hey, this person's coming in wanting to talk about my worldview, and it just becomes this fierce, awkward encounter, and I don't want anything to do with that type of thing, like I don't, I don't want to go down the dark corners of of the Internet to have these, to have these intellectual just like Charles Taylor says, a lot of the kind of arguments are, I have three reasons why your position is untenable. He says something like untenable, wrong and totally immoral. Now, let's have a conversation. It just and so it's kind of like, no thanks. I don't think I want to have that conversation. You do you. And so there's, there is a part that, culturally, something is going on which needs to be confronted. And Lewis was doing that work, and a lot of philosophers have followed him in that but there's also a side of of maybe where our own worst enemies here, and the way that we try to engage people, and where we start with people, and we think, Okay, let's start in this kind of, you know, apologetic wrestling match with people. And a lot of times, people are just looking to cope. People are just looking to survive. They have mental health issues going on, and they don't want another one to pop up because of the apologist. And so they're just looking to try to skirt that conversation and get to feeding their kids or dealing with their angry neighbor. And so we've got to kind of take stock on kind of where people are at, and then how to engage them with where they're at. Now I'm going to apologize. I think all of those arguments are helpful in a certain context, but a lot of times, we've been our own worst enemy, and how we try to try to engage so what I what I encourage students and ministers to do is is start talking about people's stories, and you know how life is going and where what's hard, and asking really good questions, and kind of having a holy curiosity and and often, I was in an encounter with a guy who came up to me after a kind of a university missions thing, and he was an atheist, and he wanted to talk about the moral argument. And I was happy to do that for a few minutes, but then I just asked him. I said, what you know, what do you love to do? Tell me about yourself, and where do you really find joy in life? And he looked at me, and he started to tear up, and he said, You know, I'm really lonely right now, you know, go figure this moment in our world, the kind of fragmented world we live in. And he said, what's really meaningful to me is my is my pet, because he provides solace. And there's this moment where, of course, I mean, here's an atheist wanting to show up at a Christian event, right? And because Christians were nice to him, and he's deeply lonely, and we got to have a pretty meaningful conversation about, you know, the benefits of following Christ in the community, communion with not only God, but with others, yeah, but if I would have just left it at, let's go to the more we would have never got there. But it took me kind of asking the question, which is, in essence, what I was trying to ask is what, I didn't put it like this, but what are you seeking? What are you really after here? And where are you really getting joy in life, and what's going on? And I if we can learn to go there, I think we'll have much more productive conversations. And then just kind of, I heard chatro talk about the, you know, ontological argument. Now let me throw that out there at somebody. I think that's why apologists and apologetics have sometimes been given a bad name. But if you. Actually look at the tradition, the the larger tradition. There's so many resources, and there's so many people, apologists, doing lots of different things, that I think gives us kind of way to actually engage people where they're at.Yeah, yeah. No, that's great. Well, I It reminds me, I believe it was Schaefer who talked about the the greatest apologetic, at least his time, and I think it stands true even now, is welcoming people and being hospitable towards people, welcoming the questions, not looking at folks as adversaries, but fellow pilgrims. And then you welcome them into that space, into that community. And then they're they see that, quite frankly, the faith works. The Christian ethic actually works, albeit imperfect, by imperfect people in imperfect ways. But you know, as we go through pain and suffering, as we go through, you know, elation and disappointment, like there's still a lot that that we can demonstrate to the world through our testimony that it works. You know, so to speak. So I'd love to hear you kind of help walk us through how the Christian story tells a better story about pain and suffering, because that's that's a fact of every person listening is that there's some modicum of pain and suffering in their life at any moment. And then you look at the grand scale of the world and all these things, but just even we can go down to the individual level of the why is there pain and suffering in my life and in the world and, you know, in general. But I like, like for you to just kind of riff on that for a little bit for us, to helpus, yeah. And in some ways, this question, and the apologetic question is a kind of real, a snapshot into the into what we're talking about with, how do we respond to that? Not just as Okay, an intellectual question, yeah, yeah, but it's also a profoundly experiential question. And there's youmean, you mean, and how, in the moment when you're saying, in the moment when somebody asks you the question, not getting defensive, but being being willing to listen to the question, Is that what you mean by that? And yeah,well, what I mean is, that's certainly true. Matt, what I was really thinking, though, is how this is not just something kind of an abstract, intellectual question. Oh, okay, but it's a profound experiential and there's different angles that we might take into it. But I mean, as a kind of snapshot or a test case in our apologetic is, I think there's ways to answer that question that are sterile, that are overly academic, and I and that also, I would say, rushes in to give an answer. And I would want to argue that Christianity doesn't give an answer to evil and suffering, but it gives a response. And let me make, let me explain that, yeah, is, is an answer. Tries in the way I'm using it, at least tries to say, I'm going to solve this kind of intellectual problem, and the problem of evil and suffering in the world, of why a good God who's all powerful would allow the kind of evil and suffering we see in the world is, is one that we might say, Okay, now there's the problem. Now let me give the solution. And this is often done, and we've you maybe have been in this if you're listening into a certain context where a kind of famous apologist says, Here is the answer, or famous Christian celebrity says, Here is the answer to evil, and this solves all the problems, until you start thinking about it a little bit more, or you go home, or three or four years, and you grow out of that answer and and so I think we need to be real careful here when we say we have the answer, because if you keep pushing that question back in time, or you start asking questions like, well, that that bullet that hit Hitler in World War One and didn't kill him? What if the God of the Bible, who seems to control the wind and everything, would have just blown it over and killed Hitler. It seems like maybe it could have been a better possible world if Hitler, you know, didn't lead the Holocaust. Okay, so, so again, I think, I think pretty quickly you begin to say, Okay, well, maybe some of these theodicies Don't actually solve everything, although I would say that some of the theodicies that are given things like free will, theodicy or or the kind of theodicies that say God uses suffering to to grow us and develop us. And I think there's truth in all of that, and there's but what it does. What none of them do is completely solve the problem. And so I think that there's value in those theodicies in some extent.Hey, did you know that you were created to enjoy abundance? I'm not talking about getting the latest pair of Air Jordans or a jet plane or whatever that this world says that you have to have in order to be happy. Instead, I'm talking about an abundant life where you are rich in relationships, you're rich in your finances, but you are rich in life in general, that you are operating in the calling that God has for you, that He created you for amazing things. Did you know that? And so many times we get caught up in paying our mortgage and running hither and yon, that we forget that in this world of distractions that God has created you for glorious and amazing things and abundant life. If you would like to get a free workbook, I put one together for you, and it's called the my new rich life workbook. If you go to my new rich life.com my new rich life.com. I would be glad to send you that workbook with no strings attached, just my gift to you to help you. But here'sthe thing, here's what I want to go back to with a question. Is that the Odyssey as we know it, or this? And what I'm using theodicy for is this, this responsibility that that we feel like we have to justify the ways of God, is a particularly modern phenomenon. I think this is where history comes and helps us. Charles Taylor talks about this in that the kind of way we see theodicy and understand theodicy was really developed in the middle of the 1700s with figures like Leibniz, and then you have particularly the Lisbon earthquakes in the middle of the 18th century. And that was this kind of 911 for that context. And in this 911 moment, you have philosophers being saying, Okay, how do we justify the ways of God? And are trying to do it in a very kind of this philosophical way to solve the problem. But from for most of human history and history of the West, of course, evil and suffering was a problem, but it wasn't a problem so much to be solved, but it was a problem to to cope with and and and live in light of, in other words, what you don't have in the Bible is Job saying, Okay, well, maybe God doesn't exist. Or the psalmist saying, maybe God doesn't exist because I'm experiencing this. No, they're ticked off about it. They're not happy about it. They're struggling to cope with it. It is, it is a problem, but it's not, then therefore a problem. That says, well, then God doesn't exist. Yeah. And it didn't become a widespread kind of objection against God's very existence, until certain things have happened in the kind of modern psyche, the kind of modern way of imagining the world. And here is what's happened. This is what Charles Taylor says. Is that Taylor says what happened is kind of slowly through through different stages in history, but but in some sorry to be gloved here, but it's, it's a very kind of, you know, long argument. But to get to the point is, he says our view of God became small, and our view of humans became really big. And so God just came became kind of a bigger view of version of ourselves. And then we said, oh, if there is a reason for suffering and evil, we should be able to know it, because God's just a bigger kind of version of us, and he has given us rational capacities. And therefore if we can't solve this, then there must not be a god. That's kind of where the logic goes. And of course, if you step into the biblical world, or what I would say a more profoundly Christian way of looking at it is God. God isn't silent, and God has spoken, has given us ways to cope and live with suffering and ways to understand it. But what he what he doesn't give us, is that we're going to he actually promises that, that we're not going to fully understand His ways that, that we're going to have to trust Him, even though we can't fully understand why he does what he does in history all the time. And so this leads into what, what's actually called. There's, this is a, this is a weird name if you're not in this field, but it's called skeptical theism. I'm a skeptical theist. And what skeptical theists Are you is that we're not skeptical about God, but we're skeptical about being able to neatly answer or solve the problem of evil. But we actually don't think that's as big of a deal, because, simply because. I don't understand why God, God's simply because I don't understand God's reasons. Doesn't mean he doesn't have reasons. Yeah, yeah. Andso just beyond your the your finite, uh, temporo spatial understanding of things, right? Like you don't understand how this horrible situation plays out in a grander narrative,right? So it's Stephen wickstra. He had this famous argument. I'll riff off of it a little bit. I mean, just metaphor. He says, if you have a if you have a tent, and we go camping together, Matt and and I open the tent and say, there's a giant dog in there. And you look in there, there's no dog, you would say, Yeah, you're either crazy or a liar. But if I open the tent and say there's tiny bugs in there, and they're called no see ums, you wouldn't, you wouldn't know. You wouldn't be in a position to know. You wouldn't be in an epistemological position to know whether there's a bug in there or not. So you would simply have to decide whether you're going to trust me or not. And then, you know, the claim of the non Christian might be, well, yeah, why would I trust the God given the kind of crap that I see in the world? And I would say, well, a couple reasons. One is most profoundly because God has entered into this world. He has not sat on the sidelines. So even though we don't fully understand it, he has in the person of Jesus Christ, he has suffered with us and for us. So this is a God who says, I haven't given you all the answers, but I have given you myself. And that's I think both has some rational merit to it, and profoundly some intellectual merit to that. I'd also say that the Christian story actually gets at some deep intuitions, kind of underneath this challenge or this problem. It was CS Lewis, who was an atheist in World War One, and and he was very angry at God because of the evil and violence and his his mom dying at an early age, and was an atheist. But then he realized that in his anger against God, that he was assuming a certain standard, a certain kind of moral standard, about how the world should be, that there is evil in the world and that it shouldn't be so, and this deep intuition that it shouldn't be so that certain things aren't right. Actually, you don't have if you do away with God's existence, you just you have your preferences. But in a world of just energy and matter, why would the world not be absurd? Why would you expect things not to be like this. Why would you demand them not to be like this?So a deeply embedded sense of morality that can't be explained by naturalism is what you're getting, yeah?That that we have a certain problem here, or certain challenge with not fully being able to answer the question, yeah, but they have, I would say, a deeper challenge, that they don't have even the kind of categories to make sense of the question. So that's those are some of the directions I would go, and it's first stepping inside and kind of challenging against some of the assumptions. But then I'm as you, as you can tell, then I'm going to say how the Christian story does make sense of these deep intuitions, our moral intuitions, that are underneath the problem, or the challenge of evil and suffering. And then also going to Jesus in the Gospel. And the Gospel story,one of the questions I had on our on the list of questions was, how do we know the Bible is true? But I want to delve into more of this understanding of doubt and how that plays, because you've written a lot on this. But I'd like, could you just direct us to some resources, or some folks, if folks are interested in, how do we know the Bible is true? I'm thinking real popular apologist right now is Wesley. Huff is a great place to go. But are there other like, hey, how do I know that the Bible is true? Because you keep appealing to Christianity, which is in for is the foundation of that is the Bible. So could you give us a few resources so people could chase those down.Peter Williams has written a couple little good books on the Gospels. AndPeter Williams Williams, he's in Cambridge, right, orTyndale house, over there and over the pond. And he's written a book on the Gospels. And I can't think of the name, but if you put it on the internet, it'll show up. And the genius of Jesus as well. Okay, little books, and I think both of those are helpful as far as the Gospels go. Richard, Richard balcom is really good on this, Jesus and the eyewitnesses. As well as a little book that most people haven't heard of. It's a, it's an introduction to the Gospels in that off in an Oxford series, which is, you know, kind of a brief introduction to the Gospels. And he, especially at the very beginning, he gives us John Dixon, who's at Wheaton now, has written a lot of good books on on on this. And it's got this series called skeptics guide to and it does both Old Testament and New Testament kind of stuff. So that little series is, is really helpful. So those are some places I would start. And in my books, I typically have, you know, chapters on this, but I haven't, haven't written, you know, just one book, just on this. The early books, truth matters and truth in a culture of doubt, were, were engaging Bart airman. But really, Bart airman not to pick on on Airmen, but just because he was such a representative of a lot of the the views that that we were hearing, he ended up being a good kind of interlocutor. In those I would just say, I know you didn't. You just asked for books. And let me just say one thing about this is I, I think if you are trying to engage, I think if you take the approach of, let me prove the Bible, let me take everything and just, yeah, I don't think that's the best way. I think you often have to give people some you know, whether it's, you know, the beginning of Luke's Gospel, where he's saying, This is how I went about this. And I actually did my homework to kind of say, this is at least the claim of the gospel writers say, and then, but the real way that you you come to see and know, is you have to step into it and read it. And I think one of the apologetic practices I would want to encourage, or just evangelistic practices, is is offering to read the gospels with people and and working through it. And then certain things come up as you read them, apologetically that you'll, you'll want to chase down and use some of those resources for but I think often it's, it's saying, hey, the claims are, at least that, you know, these guys have done their homework and and some of the work Richard welcome is doing is saying, you know, the Gospel traditions were, were were pinned within the lifetime of eyewitnesses and this. And so that's some of the work that that balcom has helpfully done that kind of help us get off the ground in some of these conversations.Would that be your go to gospel Luke or, like, if you're walking with players, or a go to like,some people say more because of the shortness or John, I I'm happy with them. Allfour should be in the canon. Yeah, no, that's great. And I think a couple other books I'm thinking of Paul Wagner's from text from text to translation, particularly deals with Old Testament translation issues, but then text critical pieces, but then also FF. Bruce's canon of Scripture is a real, solid place to go, if people are interested in those big pieces, but those, I mean, yeah, Richard Bauckham work was really helpful for me when I was like, How do I even know, you know the starting place is a good starting place. So, yeah, thank you for that. Sowhat the challenge is, people have got to make up their mind on Jesus. Yeah. I mean, I think that's where I want to kind of triage conversations and say, Hey, I know the Bible is a big book and there's a lot going on. First things you gotta make a call on. So that's where I'm going to focus on, the Gospels. That'sgreat. No, that's great. Well, you know, a lot of times you, and you've mentioned this earlier, that sometimes in our attempts to give reasons for our faith, we can come to simplistic answers like, Okay, this is, here you go. Here's the manuscript evidence, for example. Or, hey, here's the evidence for the resurrection. Oh, here. You know, this is pain and suffering, Romans, 828, you know, having these quick answers. And I think it stems from a desire to want to have a foundation for what we stand on. But a lot of times, and I think what we're seeing in our culture, and this is not anything new, this topic of deconstruction is not really a new topic is, you know, it's what's been called in the past, apostasy, or just not believing anymore. But now it's gotten a more, you know, kind of sharper edges to it. And and I would love for you to you know how you would respond to someone who is deconstructing from their faith because it didn't allow for doubt or because they were raised in perhaps a really strict Christian home. So how would you respond to somebody who says, I don't I don't like the. Had answers anymore, and I don't, you know, it's just too simplistic, and it doesn't, it's not satisfying. So how would you, because I encounter a lot of folks that are in that vein, the ones who are deconstructing, it's, it's not, you know, there's definitely intellectual arguments, but there's something else in back of that too, I think. So I'd love to hear you just kind of, how would you respond to someone who is deconstructing or has deconstructed in their faith?Yeah, yeah. And of course not. In that situation, my first response it's going to be, tell me more. Let's, let's talk more. I want to hear, I want to hear your story. I want to hear your deconversion story, or where you're at and and to have some real curiosity. Rather than here, let me tell you what your problem is. And let me tellyou, yeah, you just don't want to believe because you got some secret sin or something. Yeah? Oh, goodnessno. I mean, it's right faith, unbelief and doubt is complex, and there's lots of forms of doubt. And we use that word I mean, it has quite the semantic range, and we use in lots of different ways. And of course, the Bible, by no means, is celebrating doubt. The Bible, it's, you know, that we is saying we should have faith. It calls us to faith, not to doubt, but doubt seems to be a couple things to say. We talk about, we talk about ourselves as Christians, as new creations in Christ, but we also recognize that we still sin, we still we still have sinful habits. We're still sinful, and in the same way we we we believe, but we can struggle with doubt, and that's a reality. And it seems to me that that doesn't mean, though, that then we celebrate doubt, as if doubts this great thing, no, but at the same time, we need to be realistic and honest that we do. And there's certain things culturally that have happened, because we now live in a pluralistic world where people seem very sane and rational and and lovely, and they believe radically different things than we do. And just that proximity, Peter Berger, the late sociologist, did a lot of work on this area. This is just it. It creates these kinds of this kind of contestability, because, well, we could imagine even possibly not believing, or kids not believing, in a way that, again, 500 years ago, you know you Luther was wrestling with whether the Roman Catholic Church had everything right, but he wasn't wrestling and doubting the whole the whole thing, yeah, God. So that creates certain pressures that I think we need to be honest about, and but, but with, and part of that honesty, I think, in that kind of conversation to say, Hey, you're not alone and you're not just simply crazy because you're you're raising some of these things because, I mean, that's in many ways, understandable. Yeah, okay, yeah. I'm not saying it's good, I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying it's understandable. And I hear what you're saying, and I'm, let's talk about it now. The the kind of metaphor that that I use is to think about Christianity as a house. Of course, that's not my metaphor. I'm I'm borrowing from CS Lewis, who talked about Christianity as a house and in Mere Christianity, Lewis said he wanted to get people through non Christians into the hallway, and so he wanted to get them into the door so that they would and then they could pick up a particular tradition, they could enter a room. But his approach in Mere Christianity was to represent kind of the whole house. And what I think is happening in many cases is that people, now, I'm riffing off of his metaphor, people in the church. People have raised in the church, so they've grew up their whole life in the house, but it's actually in the what I would call the attic. And the attic as as I talk about it is, is in the house. It's, it's a Christian community, but it was, it was many times they're built out of a kind of reactionary posture against culture, without a deep connection to the rest of the house. It's kind of like, Hey, we're scared, and understandably so, the kind of decadent morality, certain shifts happening in the west with Can you giveus a couple examples of what you're thinking like? What would a person living in the attic like? What would their tradition kind of. Look like,yeah. So a couple of things. One in response to, in some cases, in response to the kind of intellectual movements, the kind of sex, secular and, you know, thinking they would say, you know, intellectualism is bad, that would be one response from the attic, like, don't worry about, you know, thinking. Just believe your problem is you're just thinking too much. So that would be one response, a kind of anti intellectualism. The other response is what I would call a kind of, depending on what kind of mood I'm in, I would call it a kind of quasi intellectual that, and that sounds harsh that I say what kind of mood I'm in, but a kind of quasi intellectual response, which is like, Oh, you want arguments. You want evidence. We'll give you two plus two equals equals God, and we'll kind of match, you know, fire with fire, and we can prove God's existence. And oftentimes, those kinds of apologetic reactions, I would call them, sometimes they're kind of quasi intellectual, because I don't think that's how the kind of bit we come to the big decisions. I don't think it's rational enough about a rationality about kind of what type of humans we are, and how we come to the big decisions and the big truths and and so I think that's one response, and that's why you have a kind of industry of apologetics sometimes. And the way they do it, I'm not saying in some ways it can be helpful, but in other ways, it can cause problems down down the road, and we've seen that at least, like, for instance, with the evil and suffering kind of conversation we were having before. If people say, actually, those arguments actually don't make, don't fully do what they were. We you claim too much for your arguments. Let's just say, like that. Okay, so that's one kind of, so there's a there's a kinds of, well, Christianity, in that side can kind of become this kind of intellectual, sterile work where you're just kind of trying to prove God, rather than this, than this way of life, where does worship come in? Where does devotion come in? What is And so very quickly it becomes, you know, this intellectual game, rather than communion with the living God. And so the emphasis understandably goes a certain way, but I would say understandably wrong goes a certain way, and that argument should be part of this deeper life of faith that we live and so we again, I'm wanting to say the motives aren't necessarily, aren't wrong, but where we get off because we're too reactionary, can go off. Let me give you one other ones. And I would say, like the purity culture would be another kind of side of this where we see a morally decadent culture of sexuality, and we want to respond to that we we don't want our kids to grow up believing those lies. Yeah, as as a friend of mine says, you know that the sexual revolution was actually and is actually bad for women, and we need to say that. We need to say that to people in the church, absolutely. But in response to that, then we create what, what has been called a purity culture, which, which has, has kind of poured a lot of guilt and have made have over promised again, if you just do this, you'll have a wonderful life and a wonderful marriage if you just do this, and then if you mess up, oh, you've, you've committed this unpardonable sin, almost. And so there's a lot of pressure being put on, particularly young women and then, and then over promising and so all of this,can people see that the House of Cards is coming down because they're like, Yeah, my marriage is horrible.It creates this pressure, right where you have to. You have to think a certain way. You have to behave this very kind of way. It's reaction to want to protect them. So again, I'm saying, Yes, I understand the reactions, yeah, and, but, but, and this is, I think, a key part of this, because it's not connected well to the rest of the house. It often reacts, rather than reflected deeply on the tradition and helps fit your way, the centrality of the Gospel, the centrality of what's always been, Christian teaching and coming back to the main things, rather than kind of reacting to culture because we're nervous, and doing it in such a way that, you know, well, people will begin to say, That's what Christianity is about. Christianity is really about, you know, your politics, because that's all my pastor is talking about, interesting, you know, and this is all they're talking about. So that becomes the center,even though the ethic is is, is, becomes the. Center, as opposed to the the philosophy and theology guiding the ethic, is that, would that be another way to put it, like how you live, become, becomes preeminent to, you know, wrestling with doubt and and trying to bring God into the space of your doubt and that kind of stuff is, that, is that?Yeah, I mean, so that, I think one of the things that the the early creeds help us to do is it helps us to keep the main thing. The main thing, it helps us to keep, rather than saying, well, because culture is talking about this, we're going to, you know, kind of in our churches, this becomes the main thing, is reacting or responding, maybe, whether it's with the culture and certain movements or against the culture, yeah. But if you're anchored to the kind of the ancient wisdom of the past you're you do have, you are at times, of course, going to respond to what's going on culturally, yeah, but it's always grounded to the center, and what's always been the center, yeah? And I think so when you're in a community like this, like this, the pressure of, I've gotta think rightly. I've gotta check every box here, yes, and oh, and I've, I've been told that there is proofs, and I just need to think harder. I just, you know, even believe more, even Yeah, if I just, if I just think harder, then I'll eliminate my doubt, but my doubts not being eliminated. So either I'm stupid or maybe there's a problem with the evidence, because it's not eliminating all my doubt, but this creates this kind of melting pot of anxiety for a lot of people as their own Reddit threads and their Oh, and then this, trying to figure all this out, and they're Googling all these answers, and then the slow drip, oh, well, to be honest, sometimes the massive outpouring of church scandal is poured into this, yeah. And it just creates a lot of anxiety amongst young people, and eventually they say, I'm just going to jump out of the attic, you know, because it looks pretty freeing and it looks like a pretty good way of life out there. And what, what I say to people is two things. Number one, rather than simply jumping out, first look what you're about to jump into, because you have to live somewhere, and outside the attic, you're not just jumping into kind of neutrality, you're jumping into cultural spaces and assumptions and belief. And so let's, let's just be just as critical as, yeah, the attic or house as you are will be mean, be just as critical with those spaces as you have been with the attic. So you need to explore those. But also, I'm wanting to give them a framework to understand that actually a lot of the ways that you've kind of grown up is actually been in this attic. Why don't you come downstairs, and if you're going to leave the house, explore the main floor first.And what would be the main floor? What would you say? The main floor?Yeah. I would say themain orthodox historic Christianity, like, yeah. Orthodox historic Christianity, Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, just kind of go into the Yeah. And whatI would say is, for instance, the apostle creed gives us kind of what I would call load bearing walls in the house. So it gives us the places where you don't mess like load bearing walls. You don't you don't knock those down if you're going to do a remodel, and, and, and. So you would recognize the difference between load bearing walls, walls that are central versus actual different rooms in the house, and how? Well, these aren't load bearing walls, but they're, they're, they're, they're how certain people in Christian communities, churches at particular times, have articulated it and and some of these, you could deny certain things, but you could, but those are more denominational battle lines, rather than the kind of load bearing things that you if you pull out the resurrection of Jesus, if you pull out the the deity of Christ and the full humanity of Christ, If you pull out the Trinity. So let's go back to the core. And if you're going to reject, if you're going to leave, leave on the basis of those core things, not okay. I've had these bad experiences in the church now, yeah, what I think this to kind of wrap this up on this is what often happens, or what can happen if someone says, Well, yeah, I've done that, and I still don't, I don't believe Okay, yep, that's going to happen. Yep. But one of the things I suggest, in at least some cases, is that the addict has screwed people up more than they realize, and that the way that they approach. Approach the foundation and the the main floor, it's still in attic categories, as in, to go back to our first question, well, I can't prove this, yeah. And I was always told that I should be able to prove it. Well, that's not how this works, yeah. And so they they reject Christianity on certain enlightenment terms, but they don't reject Christianity as Christianity really is. So people are going to interact with Christianity, I would say sometimes your people are investigating, say the resurrection, and reflecting more on on these central claims, but they're still doing it as if, if it doesn't reach kind of 100% certainty that I can't believe. And that's just not how this works.Yeah, that's, that's food for thought, because there, there's so many people that I interact with that I try to encourage. Like, yeah, your experience was really bad, like I'm affirming that, and that was messed up. That's not That's not Christianity, that is a branch on this massive tree trunk that stinks and that needs to be lamented and grieved and also called out as wrong. So I'm using another metaphor of a tree instead. But I love the because the house metaphor is something that you use in the telling a better story. Isn't that surprised bydoubt? Surprised by doubt? Yes, that's that's what we use, and we march through things, and we use that as, really our guiding metaphor through all the chapters. And that's what I would encourage if you're if you have somebody who's struggling with this, or you're struggling with this yourself, that's That's why a friend of mine, Jack Carson, that's why we wrote the book together, because obviously this is a we had a lot of friends and acquaintances and people who were coming to us and we weren't fully satisfied with all of the kind of works, yeah, that were responding and so this, this was our attempt to try to helppeople. Well, the book right after that was, is telling a better story. And one of the things I've really appreciated in your emphasis over the last few years has been, I would call a more humane apology, apologetic in that, you know, not giving into, okay, we're gonna give you want evidence. We're gonna give you evidence, as opposed to like, okay, let's just talk about being a huma

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” What exactly do these words mean? Some argue that John is hinting at concepts related to Greek philosophy, but is this really the case? What are the Jewish Targums and how do these ancient texts helps us to better understand the meaning of John's prologue? On this episode, Shane talks with John Ronning, author of The Jewish Targums and John's Logos Theology.Click here for detailed notes related to this episode (including quotes from Philo of Alexandria, and the Aramaic Targums.SHOW NOTESBooksThe Jewish Targums & John's Logos Theology, John RonningTargum Isaiah, Jonathan ben UzielThe Messiah of the Targums, Michael B. ShepherdThe Jewish Gospels, Daniel BoyarinThe Angel of the Lord, Foreman & Van DornJourneys with Jesus, Dennis JohnsonThe Son of Man in Early Jewish Literature, Richard BauckhamA Handbook on the Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith, Craig EvansA Handbook on the Jewish Roots of the Gospels, Craig EvansThe Jewish Annotated New Testament, Daniel Boyarin & othersThe Works of Philo, Philo of AlexandriaArticlesThe “I Am” Sayings in John, John RonningThe Targum of Isaiah and the Johannine Literature, John RonningWhen Yahweh Became Flesh And Dwelt Among Us, John RonningHigh & Lifted Up: The Son of Man in John's Gospel, John RonningFinding Christ in All of Scripture, Shane RosenthalThe Bethlehem Prophecy: An Exploration of Micah 5:2, Shane RosenthalAuthenticating the Fourth Gospel, Shane RosenthalThe Identity of the Beloved Disciple, Shane RosenthalA New Argument for John's Identity, Shane RosenthalNotes for Episode #75, Shane RosenthalAudioJewish Views of the Messiah, Humble Skeptic #38 with Daniel BoyarinThe Angel of Yahweh, Humble Skeptic #70 with Foreman & Van DornWere Jews Expecting a Divine Messiah?, WHI #1243 with Craig EvansWere Jews Expecting a Suffering Messiah? Humble Skeptic #47Jacob's Ladder, Humble Skeptic #63 with Richard Bauckham and othersBabylon, Humble Skeptic Episode #66 Decoding the Prophecies of Daniel, Humble Skeptic #68 The Messiah's Redemptive Mission, Humble Skeptic #72Signs of the Messiah, Humble Skeptic # 74 with Andreas KöstenbergerWhich John Wrote John? Humble Skeptic #50SPECIAL OFFER — If you upgrade to a PAID subscription or make a GIFT of any size, we'll send you a pre-release PDF download of Shane's forthcoming book, Luke's Key Witness. When you subscribe, you'll get instant access to the book here (it's currently behind a paywall). If you choose the donation option, you'll receive the PDF via email. Thanks for your support! Get full access to The Humble Skeptic at www.humbleskeptic.com/subscribe

How the Bible Was Formed E1 — If you've ever compared a Protestant Bible to a Catholic Bible, you may notice some additional books in the Catholic Bible, such as Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, etc. These books, called the Deuterocanon by Catholics and the Apocrypha by Protestants, are Jewish Literature from the period after the Babylonian exile but before the time of Jesus. The Jewish people were back in the land, being ruled by Syria and other empires descended from Alexander the Great. As they read the Hebrew Bible, they created many new literary works, reflecting on stories in Scripture and what was happening in their own day. So how do we understand the status and value of these books when compared to the Hebrew Bible and New Testament? In this episode, Jon and Tim explore the background, history, and content of this Second-Temple Jewish literature.CHAPTERSMultiple Bibles on the Shelf (00:00-21:10)History of the Protestant Apocrypha (21:10-34:35)How Jesus and the Apostles Engaged With These Books (34:35-43:05)Why We're Talking About the Deuterocanon/Apocrypha (43:05-57:36)OFFICIAL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTView this episode's official transcript.REFERENCED RESOURCESThe Old Testament Pseudepigrapha by James H. CharlesworthOld Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, edited by Richard Bauckham, James Davila, Alex PanayotovYou can view annotations for this episode—plus our entire library of videos, podcasts, articles, and classes—in the BibleProject app, available for Android and iOS.Check out Tim's extensive collection of recommended books here.SHOW MUSIC“Pure Joy ft. John Lee” by Lofi Sunday“Chillbop ft. Me & The Boys” by Lofi Sunday“Answered Prayers ft. PAINT WITH SOUND” by Lofi SundayBibleProject theme song by TENTSSHOW CREDITSProduction of today's episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer, and Cooper Peltz, managing producer. Tyler Bailey is our supervising engineer, who edited today's episode and also provided the sound design and mix. JB Witty does our show notes, and Hannah Woo provides the annotations for our app. Our host and creative director is Jon Collins, and our lead scholar is Tim Mackie. Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Revelation 14 breaks in like a cosmic alarm, interrupting the chaos of empire with heaven's final word. In this message, Pastor Darren Rouanzoin unpacks how God's mercy confronts idolatry, political deception, and religious compromise with truth and justice.We'll explore:• What the mark of the beast really means and how it's shaping people today• Why Revelation 14 isn't about fear, but about urgent mercy• What the three angels reveal about allegiance, worship, and judgment• The two end-time harvests and how your daily life is forming your eternal futureWith wisdom from Michael Gorman, Eugene Peterson, Richard Bauckham, Darrell Johnson, and G.K. Beale, this teaching invites us to ask:Are you becoming like the Lamb or like the beast?

The evidence for the historical validity of the Gospels is overwhelming. In this episode, we provide some of it and discuss the Gospel's origins. Plus, we encourage Christians to believe in the validity of the four gospel accounts and look in-depth at the Resurrection Narrative featured in all four gospels. 

Jesus' words and deeds are best interpreted in the light of the Old Testament Scripture. Thus, the fact that Jesus said at the temple, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink” (Jn 7:37), makes much more sense when read alongside Exodus 17, in which Yahweh provided life-giving water to the thirsty Israelites. On this program, Shane takes a deep dive into John 7-9 with the help of New Testament scholar Andreas Köstenberger. After discussing the rich Old Testament background that helps to illuminate John's meaning, the two also discuss whether the story of the woman caught in adultery is an authentic part of the Fourth Gospel or a later addition.SPECIAL OFFER — If you upgrade to a PAID subscription or make a GIFT of any size, we'll send you a downloadable PDF copy of Luke's Key Witness (shown below). When you subscribe, you'll get instant access to the book here (it's currently behind a paywall). If you choose the donation option, you'll receive the PDF via email. Click the image below for a preview. Thanks for your support!SHOW NOTESBooksSigns of the Messiah, Andreas J. KöstenbergerEncountering John, Andreas J. KöstenbergerA Theology of John's Gospel & Letters, Andreas J. KöstenbergerThe Jesus of the Gospels, Andreas J. KöstenbergerTruth Matters, Köstenberger, Bock & ChatrawCommentary on the NT Use of the OT, Carson, Beale & KöstenbergerEchoes of Exodus: Tracing the Theme of Redemption, Roberts & WilsonThe Angel of the Lord, Matt Foreman & Doug Van DornThe Lamb of God: Seeing Jesus in Exodus, Nancy GuthrieJesus in the Old Testament, Iain DuguidJourneys with Jesus, Dennis JohnsonThe Surprising Genius of Jesus, Peter J. WilliamsThe Jewish Gospels, Daniel BoyarinLuke's Key Witness, Shane RosenthalArticlesThe Date of John's Gospel: Are We Witnessing a Paradigm Shift? Shane RosenthalFinding Christ in All of Scripture, Shane RosenthalNew Life in the New Year: The Story of Exodus, Shane RosenthalAuthenticating the Fourth Gospel, Shane RosenthalScribes of the New Covenant, Shane RosenthalOn Faith & History, Shane RosenthalWater Into Wine? Shane RosenthalWhat's the Point of Jesus' Parable of the Rich Man & Lazarus? Shane RosenthalA New Way of Reading Scripture, Shane RosenthalThe Identity of the Beloved Disciple, Shane RosenthalA New Argument for John's Identity, Shane RosenthalAudioThe Messiah's Redemptive Mission, Humble Skeptic #72The Angel of Yahweh, Humble Skeptic #70 with Foreman & Van DornThe Sinai Inscriptions, Humble Skeptic #71 with Michael S. Bar-RonDid The Exodus Ever Happen? Humble Skeptic #69 with David RohlJacob's Ladder, Humble Skeptic #63 with Richard Bauckham and othersBabylon, Humble Skeptic Episode #66 Decoding the Prophecies of Daniel, Humble Skeptic #68 Jewish Views of the Messiah, HS #38 with Daniel BoyarinStories of Jesus: Can We Trust Them? HS #61 with Peter J. WilliamsWhich John Wrote John? Humble Skeptic #50VideoLuke's Key Witness, Shane Rosenthal on The Alisa Childers Podcast Get full access to The Humble Skeptic at www.humbleskeptic.com/subscribe

Bible StudyDon't just take our word for it . . . take His! We would encourage you to spend time examining the following Scriptures that shaped this sermon: .Sermon OutlineThe life Jesus givesThe community Jesus wantsThe way to a Jesus kind of communitySermon QuestionsWhat are the differences between bios, psychē, and zoē?What does the term "lifestyle savior" suggest to you? Can you spot any in your own life?What would it look like to take just one step deeper into life together with other apprentices of Jesus here at St Andrew's?Resources ConsultedDavid Ford, The Gospel of John (Baker Academic, 2021)Richard Bauckham, "The Lord's Day," in DA Carson (ed.), From Sabbath to Lord's Day (Wipf & Stock, 1999), pp.221ffRaymond Brown, The Gospel according to John (Doubleday, 1966)C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Mere ChristianityQuestions?Do you have a question about today's sermon? Email Sam Fornecker ().

Today, we look at the eyewitness testimony spoken about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We examine the Biblical History through the eyes of Richard Bauckham, a well respected historian and Biblical scholar. Were the accounts in the gospels more like historical accounts or legend?  

On this episode Shane discusses a number of scenes from the book of Exodus and shows how they point to Christ and his ultimate redemptive mission. Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, the bread of life, the living water, the light of the world, and the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.SHOW NOTESArticlesFinding Christ in All of Scripture, Shane RosenthalNew Life in the New Year: The Story of Exodus, Shane RosenthalPassover, The Last Supper & The Day of Crucifixion, Shane RosenthalWhere Was Jesus Crucified?, Shane RosenthalConsidering Alternatives to the Resurrection, Shane RosenthalBart Ehrman on Jesus & The Claim of Resurrection, Shane RosenthalDid Palm Trees Grow in Jerusalem at the Time of Jesus? Shane RosenthalSimon of Cyrene: An Intriguing Archaeological Discovery, Shane RosenthalThe Date of John's Gospel: Are We Witnessing a Paradigm Shift? Shane RosenthalJoanna: Luke's Key Witness? Shane RosenthalBookesEchoes of Exodus: Tracing the Theme of Redemption, Roberts & WilsonThe Angel of the Lord, Matt Foreman & Doug Van DornChrist in All of Scripture (5 Book Series), Foreman & Van DornThe Lamb of God: Seeing Jesus in Exodus, Nancy GuthrieJesus in the Old Testament, Iain DuguidJourneys with Jesus, Dennis JohnsonThe Surprising Genius of Jesus, Peter J. WilliamsThe Jewish Gospels, Daniel BoyarinThe Jewish Targums & John's Logos Theology, John RonningA Handbook on the Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith, Craig EvansA Handbook on the Jewish Roots of the Gospels, Craig EvansProof of the Gospel, Eusebius of CaesareaAudioThe Angel of Yahweh, Humble Skeptic. #70 with Foreman & Van DornThe Sinai Inscriptions, Humble Skeptic #71 with Michael S. Bar-RonDid The Exodus Ever Happen? Humble Skeptic #69 with David RohlJacob's Ladder, Humble Skeptic #63 with Richard Bauckham and othersBabylon, Humble Skeptic Episode #66 Decoding the Prophecies of Daniel, Humble Skeptic #68 How to Read & Apply the Old Testament, WHI #1568 with Iain DuguidWere Jews Expecting a Suffering Messiah? Shane RosenthalJewish Views of the Messiah, with Daniel BoyariinStories of Jesus: Can We Trust Them? with Peter J. WilliamsThe Jesus of History & The Gospel CreedLocating Golgotha, with David RohlVideoThe Tools & Rules of History, with Gary Habermas, David McIlroy & Shane RosenthalOn November 8th, 2024, trial attorney Mark Lanier moderated this panel discussion at the Lanier Theological Library in Houston Texas. The forum was inspired by the release of two exhaustive volumes on the historicity of Jesus' Resurrection by Dr. Habermas: On The Resurrection Vol. 1: Evidences, and On The Resurrection Vol. 2: Refutations.Who Is Jesus? Bridging Diverse Voices, St. Louis, MO, April 24th.Shane Rosenthal and Michael McClymond will be defending the historic Christian view of Jesus at this Christian / Muslim conversation which will take place at St. Louis Community College Meramec (located at 11333 Big Bend Rd, in Kirkwood, MO). The purpose is to highlight some of the differences between Christian and Muslim perspectives related to Jesus' identity and mission and to take questions from students. This event is brought to you by St. Louis Community College in partnership with ReThink315. Click here for more info.Share with Friends & FamilyIf you're a fan of the show, please share with others and consider posting a link to this episode via your social media feed. Just copy the URL of this page, paste it into your feed, and write a few words. Also, consider writing a positive review of this podcast via the Apple Podcast app, or your preferred podcast portal. The more reviews we get, the more exposure we get! Thanks for your help!Make a One-Time Gift or Upgrade to a Paid SubscriptionConsider supporting The Humble Skeptic podcast by making a one-time gift or upgrading to a paid subscription via Substack ($5.95 per month, $59 per year). Tax-deductible giving options are also available. Click here for more information. Get full access to The Humble Skeptic at www.humbleskeptic.com/subscribe

Episode Overview:Welcome back to Ryan and Brian's Bible Bistro, where hosts Ryan and Brian dive into the Bible, theology, and all things pertaining to the Christian faith. Recorded during Holy Week, this episode explores the story of Malchus, the servant of the high priest, and discusses encouraging trends in Christian faith globally. From historical insights to modern revivals, Ryan and Brian cover it all with their signature wit and wisdom.Timestamps & Topics:[00:00 - 03:30] Introduction and BanterRyan and Brian kick off with playful banter about Brian's “conversion” to the word “pertaining.”Setting the scene: It's Holy Week, recorded the day after Palm Sunday, with Easter approaching.[03:30 - 06:00] Holy Week ContextBrian shares his busy schedule as a pastor, preparing for a unique Maundy Thursday service and Easter celebrations.The episode will cover two main topics: a biblical reflection for Holy Week and a discussion on current trends in Christianity.[06:00 - 28:00] The Story of MalchusFocus on Malchus, the servant of the high priest, whose ear is cut off during Jesus' arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane.Examination of the account across all four Gospels:Mark 14:47: An unnamed person cuts off the servant's ear; Jesus rebukes the action (Mark 14:48).Matthew 26:50-51: Similar account, with Jesus saying, “All who draw the sword will die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52).Luke 22:49-51: Adds that Jesus heals the servant's ear, still unnamed.John 18:10-11: Names the servant as Malchus and the disciple as Simon Peter; Jesus commands Peter to put away his sword.Discussion on why details differ:Traditional view: Later Gospels add details for verisimilitude.N.T. Wright's perspective: Gospel writers interacted, emphasizing different aspects.Scholarly insights from Richard Bauckham's book (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses):Anonymity in earlier Gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke) may have protected early Christians, like Malchus, from persecution.Naming in John could indicate safety or recognition of Malchus as a believer.Theories suggest Malchus became a Christian after Jesus healed him, supported by early church traditions.Criteria for authenticity:Multiple attestation (all four Gospels include the story).Criterion of embarrassment (Peter's rebuke reflects poorly on him, suggesting authenticity).Connection to Holy Week: Jesus' call to avoid violence and embrace a “cruciform life” of sacrifice.[28:00 - 50:00] Resurgence of Christian FaithThree encouraging studies highlight a revival in Christianity:UK Bible Society Report (The Quiet Revival):Interview with Dr. Rhiannon McAleer, Director of Research.Church attendance in England and Wales has grown, especially among Gen Z.Stats: Young men's attendance up from 4% to 21% (2018–present), young women from 3% to 12%.Quote from Dr. Rob Barward-Simmons: Church offers meaning amidst mental health struggles, loneliness, and loss of purpose.Barna Group Study (US):66% of U.S. adults report a personal commitment to Jesus, up 12% since 2021.Gen Z men show a 15% increase in commitment (2019–2025).David Kinnaman's Faith for Exiles: “This is the clearest trend we've seen in more than a decade pointing to spiritual renewal.”Ryan Burge notes a plateau and slight decline in “nones” (religiously unaffiliated).Voice of the Martyrs Report...

What does 1 Corinthians tell us about Christ? After a brief survey of the main ideas about Christ in the epistle, we’ll turn our attention to understanding 1 Corinthians 8.6. This verse has been a lightning rod for speculating about Christ’s relationship to God. Scholars like N. T. Wright and Richard Bauckham have asserted that Paul identified Christ with God, whatever that means. Their idea is that Paul reworked the shema, the core creed of Judaism, in order to bring Christ into the “divine identity.” In this episode, I’ll critique that view and offer in its place a contextual reading that interprets 1 Corinthians 8.6 as addressing our Christian relationship to God through Christ. Rather than going to each of the gods for this or that, we go to the Father for everything and we receive everything from him through Christ. Scriptures Covered: 1 Corinthians 3:22-23; 8:4-6; 11:3; 15:23-28   Listen on Spotify   Listen on Apple Podcasts —— Links —— See all the episodes in this class: 1 Corinthians in Context Check out Sean’s other classes here Get the transcript of this episode Support Restitutio by donating here Join our Restitutio Facebook Group and follow Sean Finnegan on Twitter @RestitutioSF Leave a voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments and we may play them out on the air Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library. Who is Sean Finnegan?  Read his bio here Get Finnegan’s book, Kingdom Journey to learn about God’s kingdom coming on earth as well as the story of how Christianity lost this pearl of great price.

According to Ex. 13:21, as the people of Israel made their way out of Egypt, we're told that Yahweh went before the people of Israel in a pillar of cloud and fire. What's odd, however, is that the next chapter tells us it was the “angel of God” who went before the host of Israel in the pillar (Ex 4:19). So, how do we explain the difference between these two passages? Did an angel lead the people out of Egypt, or was it Yahweh himself? On this episode, Shane discusses these questions and more with Matt Foreman and Doug Van Dorn, authors of The Angel of the Lord: A Biblical, Historical, and Theological Study.For a gift of any amount to help support the work of The Humble Skeptic podcast, we'll send you a 12-page PDF resource titled “Finding Christ in All of Scripture.” Click here for a preview.SHOW NOTESRelated BooksThe Angel of the Lord, Doug Van Dorn & Matt ForemanJesus in the Old Testament, Iain DuguidJourneys with Jesus, Dennis JohnsonEchoes of Exodus: Tracing the Theme of Redemption, Roberts & WilsonJoseph: A Story of Love, Hate, Slavery, Power & Forgiveness, John LennoxThe Surprising Genius of Jesus, Peter J. WilliamsThe Jewish Gospels, Daniel BoyarinThe Jewish Targums & John's Logos Theology, John RonningA Handbook on the Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith, Craig EvansA Handbook on the Jewish Roots of the Gospels, Craig EvansProof of the Gospel, Eusebius of CaesareaRelated ArticlesFinding Christ in All of Scripture, Shane RosenthalNew Life in the New Year: The Story of Exodus, Shane RosenthalIsaiah's Prophecy of the Messiah's Birth, Shane RosenthalPassover & The Last Supper, Shane RosenthalWhere Was Jesus Crucified?, Shane RosenthalWater Into Wine? Shane RosenthalWhy Should We Believe The Bible? (PDF), Shane RosenthalWhat's the Most Important Thing in the Bible?, Shane RosenthalA New Way of Reading Scripture, Shane RosenthalAudioJewish Views of the Messiah, Humble Skeptic #38 with Daniel BoyarinJacob's Ladder, Humble Skeptic #63 with Richard Bauckham and othersBabylon, Humble Skeptic Episode #66 Decoding the Prophecies of Daniel, Humble Skeptic #68 Were Jews Expecting a Divine Messiah?, WHI #1243 with Craig EvansHow to Read & Apply the Old Testament, WHI #1568 with Iain DuguidWhat Did The Earliest Christians Believe? HS #25 with Dennis JohnsonThe Big Picture, Humble Skeptic #26 with J. Daniel HaysStories of Jesus: Can They Be Trusted? HS #61 with Peter J. WilliamsThe Gospel Creed, Humble Skeptic Episode #9UPCOMING EVENTSThe Messianic Hope, Memphis, TN, April 11-13Shane Rosenthal will be giving a series of talks related to Christ's fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy at this weekend conference in Rosemark, TN. Click here for more information.Who Is Jesus?: Bridging Diverse Voices, St. Louis, MO, April 24th.Shane Rosenthal and Michael McClymond will be defending the historic Christian view of Jesus at this Christian / Muslim conversation which will take place at St. Louis Community College Meramec (located at 11333 Big Bend Rd, in Kirkwood, MO). The purpose is to highlight some of the differences between Christian and Muslim perspectives related to Jesus' identity and mission and to take questions from students. This event is brought to you by St. Louis Community College in partnership with ReThink315. Click here for more info.Share with Friends & FamilyIf you're a fan of the show, please tell others about the show, and consider posting a link to this episode via your social media feed. Just copy the URL of this page, paste it into your feed, and write a few words. Also, consider writing a positive review of this podcast via the Apple Podcast app, or your preferred podcast portal. The more reviews we get, the more exposure we get! Thanks for your help!Make a One-Time Gift or Upgrade to a Paid SubscriptionConsider supporting The Humble Skeptic podcast by making a one-time gift or upgrading to a paid subscription via Substack ($5.95 per month, $59 per year). Tax-deductible giving options are also available. Get full access to The Humble Skeptic at www.humbleskeptic.com/subscribe

Sorry Aunt Mildred and Uncle Bob– nobody wants to use your names for their children anymore! But what does that have to do with the credibility of the New Testament writers? In this fun and fascinating episode of 'I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist', Frank explores why the names we see recorded in ancient history matter and unpacks how these names serve as powerful evidence that the New Testament writers were actual eyewitnesses to the events they described in the Gospels and the Book of Acts. Join Frank as he tackles key questions like:How have name trends changed in the U.S. over the last 100 years, and how does this relate to the reliability of the Scriptures?What is an undesigned coincidence, and what examples of undesigned coincidences do we find in the New Testament?How do scholars know when Paul wrote his letters?Who are the 34 people mentioned in the New Testament that have also been verified by secular sources?What archeological evidence and non-Christian writings corroborate with what we see written in the Gospels?What's the Spider-Man Fallacy? And should the New Testament be categorized as historical fiction?If you or anyone you know has ever struggled to believe that the New Testament is historically credible, this episode might change your mind!Resources mentioned during the episode:Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham - https://a.co/d/9v3GXegCold Case Christianity (Updated & Expanded Edition) by J. Warner Wallace - https://a.co/d/5wQR5p2NRBTV SERIES: Digging Up the Bible - https://crossexamined.org/tv-programs

Richard Bauckham est un expert britannique du Nouveau Testament, de confession anglicane. Son livre Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, publié en 2006, défend l'idée que les évangiles sont basés sur des témoins directs des événements. Il s'oppose ainsi aux nombreux experts qui parlent de traditions anonymes, transmises aux évangélistes par des communautés où les récits avaient pris forme et évolué.Cet ouvrage a été largement cité dans le milieu académique, parce qu'il bouscule des idées bien établies dans la réflexion académique. Ben Witherington III, par exemple, voit dans cet ouvrage un changement de paradigme dans l'étude des évangiles.Dans ce balado, nous vous en présentons quelques points clés :Les personnages secondaires sont rarement nommés. Cependant, quand un évangéliste prend la peine de nommer tel aveugle ou tel disciple, c'est parce que cette personne est une des sources, voire LA source, pour le récit raconté. (Ex. Bartimée, l'aveugle de Jéricho, ou Simon de Cyrène, celui qui porta la croix de Jésus.)Marc utilise un procédé littéraire pour souligner que son témoin principal est Pierre, le leader des Douze. Ce procédé s'appelle un inclusio. Et cette donnée corrobore le témoignage de Papias (un contemporain des apôtres), qui rapporte que Marc était le scribe de Pierre. Si on a effectivement le témoignage d'un tel apôtre, on se retrouve aux premières loges de la vie de Jésus!Les prénoms utilisés dans les évangiles et dans les Actes correspondent rigoureusement aux prénoms palestiniens de l'époque. Si des Juifs de l'Égypte ou de Rome avaient voulu inventer des récits pour mettre leur Messie en valeur, il leur aurait été très difficile de bien nommer les personnages palestiniens, car la popularité des prénoms variait grandement d'une région à l'autre.L'insistance d'évangélistes (notamment Luc et Jean) sur le fait de rapporter les faits "depuis le commencement", puisqu'il s'agissait d'une bonne façon de faire de l'histoire à cette époque. Les évangélistes avaient donc le souci de faire un compte-rendu historique.

Wherever we find references to Babylon in the Bible, we're frequently reminded of man's failed attempt to ascend to the heavens. This is due in part to the fact that “Babel” and “Babylon” happen to be the same word in Hebrew. On this edition, Shane walks through a variety of Old Testament passages that relate to this theme and contrasts them with prophecies about Israel's coming Messiah.SHOW NOTESRecommended BooksBabylonian Life & History, E.A. Wallis Budge—FREEGod Dwells Among Us, G.K. Beale & Mitchell KimThe Temple & The Tabernacle, J. Daniel HaysPierced for Our Transgressions, Andrew Sach & OthersThe Gospel According to Isaiah 53, Bock & GlaserBrave By Faith, Alistair BeggEchoes of Exodus, Roberts & WilsonHim We Proclaim, Dennis JohnsonRecommended ArticlesNebuchadnezzar & Archaeology, Shane Rosenthal (coming soon)Identifying Babylon The Great, Shane Rosenthal (coming soon)The Tower of Babel, Shane RosenthalNew Life in the New Year, Shane RosenthalJustin Martyr on the Importance of Fulfilled Prophecy, Shane RosenthalIsaiah's Prophecy of the Messiah's Birth, Shane RosenthalFinding Christ in All of Scripture, Shane RosenthalWhy Should We Believe the Bible?, Shane RosenthalRecommended AudioJacob's Ladder, with Richard Bauckham, Michael Horton & othersThe Intersection of Church & State, with David Van DrunenThe Big Picture, with J. Daniel HaysHow to Read & Interpret the Bible, with Mike BrownWorship in Spirit & Truth, with G.K. BealeJewish Views of the Messiah, with Daniel BoyarinWere Jews Expecting a Suffering Messiah? Life in a Post-Christian World, with Alistair BeggWe Need Your Help!Consider supporting The Humble Skeptic podcast by making a one-time gift or upgrading to a paid subscription via Substack ($5.95 per month, $59 per year). Use the button below for more information about giving options. Get full access to The Humble Skeptic at www.humbleskeptic.com/subscribe

This video is a respond to Gavin Ortlund (  @TruthUnites  ) regarding his recent video about the Trinity being Apostolic and therefore not an accretion. I mention Paul Vanderklay (  @PaulVanderKlay  ), Dr. Jordan B Cooper (  @DrJordanBCooper  ), Remnant Radio (  @TheRemnantRadio  ), Justin Martyr, Athanasius of Alexandria, Tertullian of Carthage, Origen of Alexandria, John Vervaeke (  @johnvervaeke  ), Jonathan Pageau (  @JonathanPageau  ), Jordan Peterson (  @JordanBPeterson  ), Constantine the Great, Jacob Faturechi (  @faturechi  ), Rabbi Tovia Singer (  @ToviaSinger1  ), Trent Horn (  @TheCounselofTrent  ), Plato, Aristotle, Bethel McGrew, Tripp Parker, Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale, Austin Suggs (  @GospelSimplicity  ), Larry Hurtado, Richard Bauckham, Francis Watson, Beau Branson, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Dale Tuggy, James White, Arius of Alexandria, RPC Hanson, Alexander of Alexandria, Hilary of Poitiers, Augustine of Hippo, John Calvin, Eusebius of Caesarea, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, James Dunn, and many more. Gavin's original video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYIBb5SDybg&t=2706s Gavin and PVK - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMgeekKddfY&t=159s Sam on Trent Horn - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaoH4sjp58c&t=25s Sam, Bethel, Tripp on Megan Basham - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K85U9l_bfSw&t=1980s Gavin on Gospel Simplicity - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1xpxyzq92g&t=3488s Jesus and the Divine Name - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLJ3GGI8Ie8 Development of Christology - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQt_QO4ASAQ&t=3641s Tertullian's Christology - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB4fja4GQsU&t=930s Did the Early Christians Worship Jesus - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsKU9YRS8KI&t=2473s Theological Triage - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWkYm3hSPEw&t=1750s

In this podcast interview, Dr. Thomas Schreiner joins David Schrock and Stephen Wellum to introduce us to the book of Hebrews and its major themes. Timestamps 00:49 – Intro 02:28 – Why a Month on Hebrews? 04:25 – How Dr. Schreiner's Commentary Came to Be 06:34 – How Hebrews Shaped or Clarified Things for Dr. Schreiner 08:29 – Who's the Audience, What's the Aim, and Who's the Author? 12:04 – Tension found Between Practice of Paul and the Claims of Hebrews? 16:14 – Temptations for Judaizing Christians in a Roman World 17:52 – How Does Hebrews Inform Dr. Wellum's Christology? 20:41 – Reading the Old Testament Eschatologically, Typologically, and Spatially 22:14 – Prophet, Priest, King and… Son? 27:39 – Jesus as a Melchizedekian Priest 33:36 – The Warning Passages in Hebrews 38:23 – “Christians” Who Apostatize and Lose Salvation? 43:56 – Understanding the Sabbath 46:47 – Joshua Giving Rest and Reading Redemptive Historically 50:43 – How Does Understanding Hebrews' View of Rest Impact our Worship on the Lord's Day? 58:56 – Helpful Resources On Hebrews 1:02:39 - Outro Resources to Click “An Introduction to the Book of Hebrews” – Thomas R. Schreiner “Typology of Types: Typology in Dialogue” – Benajmin J. Ribbens Theme of the Month: Getting Into the Book of Hebrews Give to Support the Work Books to Read Hebrews: Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary – Thomas R. Schreiner The Race Set Before Us: A Biblical Theology of Perseverance – Thomas R. Schreiner & Ardel Caneday “Goodbye and Hello: The Sabbath Command for New Covenant Believers” by Thomas R. Schreiner in Progressive Covenantalism – eds. Brent Parker & Stephen J. Wellum A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (ECBC) - Philip Hughes The Epistle to the Hebrews (NICNT) – Gareth Lee Cockerill Hebrews (NIVAC) – George H. Guthrie Hebrews 1-8, Vol. 47A (WBC) – William Lane Hebrews 9-13, Vol. 47B (WBC) – William Lane Hebrews: A Call to Commitment – William Lane The Epistle to the Hebrews (ECBC) – F.F. Bruce The Letter to the Hebrews (PNTC) - Sigurd Grindheim Bound For the Promised Land (NSBT) – Oren Martin Cosmology and Eschatology in Hebrews: The Settings of the Sacrifice (Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series) – Kenneth L. Schenck Allegory Transformed: The Appropriation of Philonic Hermeneutics in the Letters to the Hebrews – Stefan N. Svendsen Joshua Typology in the New Testament – Richard Ounsworth Hermeneutical Foundations of Hebrews: A Study in the Validity of the Epistle's Interpretation of Some Core Citations from the Psalms – Dale F. Leschert Deuteronomy and Exhortation in Hebrews: A Study in Narrative Re-presentation – David M. Allen “The Eschatology of Hebrews: As Understood Within a Cultic Setting,” by Gert J. Steyn in Eschatology of the New Testament and Some Related Documents – Jan G. Van Der Watt The Epistle to the Hebrews and Christian Theology – eds. Richard Bauckham, Daniel R. Driver, et al. Cosmology and New Testament Theology – eds. Jonathan T. Pennington & Sean M. McDonough A Cloud of Witnesses: The Theology of Hebrews in its Ancient Contexts –  eds. Richard Bauckham, Daniel Driver, Trevor Hart, & Nathan MacDonald

In this episode I talk with Dr. Chris Bruno about a brand-new book he co-wrote called The Divine Christology of the Apostle Paul, which is out now on IVP Academic. This book argues that Paul did believe that Jesus was divine and that this high Christology develops in the earliest years of the church. Bruno reviews the work of four influential scholars, Richard Bauckham, Larry Hurtado, Chris Tilling, and N.T. Wright, who have each developed models for understanding Paul's divine Christology. We then explore the most important Christological texts in Paul, including 1 Corinthians 8:6, Philippians 2:5-11, and Colossians 1:15-20, and Bruno explains how each of them demonstrate that Paul believed that Jesus was God.  Media Referenced:The Divine Christology of the Apostle Paul: https://a.co/d/5vGW9tABook Information: https://www.ivpress.com/the-divine-christology-of-the-apostle-paulDr. Chris Bruno BIO: https://www.ivpress.com/chris-brunoOahu Theological Seminary: https://oahuseminary.org/  The Protestant Libertarian Podcast is a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and a part of the Christians For Liberty Network. The Libertarian Christian Institute can be found at www.libertarianchristians.com. Questions, comments, suggestions? Please reach out to me at theprotestantlibertarian@gmail.com.  You can also follow the podcast on Twitter: @prolibertypod. For more about the show, you can go to theprotestantlibertarianpodcast.com. If you like the show and want to support it, you can! Go to libertarianchristians.com, where you can donate to LCI and buy The Protestant Libertarian Podcast Merch! Also, please consider giving me a star rating and leaving me a review, it really helps expand the shows profile! Thanks!

On this episode, Shane walks through some of the internal and external evidence related to his investigation of The Identity of the Beloved Disciple. This builds on some of the ideas introduced on the last episode with Richard Bauckham, but this discussion of the authorship of the Fourth Gospel takes a significantly deeper dive. As you'll see, the result of this exploration has surprising implications for the authenticity and historical reliability of all four Gospels—and, of course, John in particular.SHOW NOTESRecommended BooksThe Witness of St. John to Christ, Stanley Leathes (FREE)The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple, Richard BauckhamJesus & The Eyewitnesses, Richard BauckhamThe Identity of John the Evangelist, Dean FurlongThe New Testament in Its World, N.T. Wright & Michael BirdThe Gospel of St. John: A Newly Discovered Commentary, J.B. LightfootJohn The Son of Zebedee, The Life of a Legend, Alan CulpepperThe Johannine Question, Martin HengelRecommended ArticlesThe Identity of the Beloved Disciple, Shane RosenthalAuthenticating The Fourth Gospel, Shane RosenthalWater Into Wine?, Shane RosenthalOutside The Gospels, What Can We Know About Jesus?, S. RosenthalCan We Trust Luke's History of the Early Jesus Movement?, S. RosenthalSimon of Cyrene: An Intriguing Archaeological Discovery, S. RosenthalScribes of the New Covenant, Shane RosenthalThe Parable of Lazarus, Shane RosenthalWhy Should We Believe The Bible?, Shane RosenthalOther Related ResourcesQuestioning The Fourth Gospel, Humble Skeptic Ep. #49The Gospels As Eyewitness Testimony, Humble Skeptic Ep. #48The Jesus of History, Humble Skeptic Ep. #12Fake or Authentic?, Humble Skeptic Ep. #10Authenticating the Book of Acts, Humble Skeptic Ep. #24Faith Founded on Facts (1), Humble Skeptic Ep. #15Faith Founded on Facts (2), Humble Skeptic Ep. #16This above episode makes a case for an earlier dating of John's GospelUpcoming Events• Shane will be discussing the question, “Is Faith Blind & Irrational?” at Third Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama on Sunday, April 28th at 11 am. For directions, visit the church website: thirdpca.org.• Shane will be speaking at the ReThink315 College Camp which will take place on the campus of St. Louis University, July 16-19, 2024.• On Wed. Sept. 18th, Shane will discuss the question, “Is Faith Blind & Irrational?” at an event in Cedar City, Utah (more details coming soon).• For more information, or to invite Shane Rosenthal to speak at your next event, send an email to: INFO at HUMBLESKEPTIC dot COM. Write a Positive ReviewIf you're a fan of the show, consider writing a brief review to let others know what you like about it (preferably via the Apple Podcast app since their reviews can be seen in other podcast portals). The more positive reviews we get, the more exposure we get!We Need Your Help!Consider supporting The Humble Skeptic podcast by making a one-time gift or upgrading to a paid subscription via Substack ($5.95 per month, $59 per year). Use the button below for more information about giving options. Get full access to The Humble Skeptic at www.humbleskeptic.com/subscribe

Many scholars over the centuries have questioned the historical value of John's Gospel. Since it's the latest of all the Gospels, some argue that John's narrative may tell us more about late first-century Christian beliefs, more than it communicates anything reliable about the Historical Jesus. I discuss this with Richard Bauckham, along with his thesis that the Fourth Gospel wasn't written by the Apostle John, but by a different character known in the early church as John the Elder. SHOW NOTESRecommended BooksThe Testimony of the Beloved Disciple, Richard BauckhamJesus & The Eyewitnesses, Richard BauckhamMagdala of Galilee: A Jewish City, Richard BauckhamThe Identity of John the Evangelist, Dean FurlongRecommended ArticlesAuthenticating The Fourth Gospel, Shane RosenthalWater Into Wine?, Shane RosenthalOutside The Gospels, What Can We Know About Jesus?, S. RosenthalScribes of the New Covenant, Shane RosenthalWhy Should We Believe The Bible?, Shane RosenthalJesus & The Eyewitnesses: A Review, Shane RosenthalOther Related ResourcesThe Gospels As Eyewitness Testimony, Humble Skeptic Ep. #48The Jesus of History, Humble Skeptic Ep. #12Fake or Authentic?, Humble Skeptic Ep. #10Authenticating the Book of Acts, Humble Skeptic Ep. #24Faith Founded on Facts (1), Humble Skeptic Ep. #15Faith Founded on Facts (2), Humble Skeptic Ep. #16This above episode makes a case for an earlier dating of John's GospelUpcoming Events• Greg Koukl, Shane Rosenthal & Jeremy Smith will be speaking on apologetics-related topics at The Fellowship of Wildwood in the St. Louis area on April 7, 2024. While in town, Greg Koukl will also be speaking at the Creating Confident Ambassadors conference at First Baptist Church—St. John on Saturday, April 6th in St. Louis.• Shane will be discussing the question, “Is Faith Blind & Irrational?” at Third Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama on Sunday, April 28th at 11 am. For directions, visit the church website: thirdpca.org.• Shane will be speaking at the ReThink315 College Camp which will take place on the campus of St. Louis University, July 16-19, 2024.• On Wed. Sept. 18th, Shane will discuss the question, “Is Faith Blind & Irrational?” at an event in Cedar City, Utah (more details coming soon).• For more information, or to invite Shane Rosenthal to speak at your next event, send an email to: INFO at HUMBLESKEPTIC dot COM. Write a Positive ReviewIf you're a fan of the show, consider writing a brief review to let others know what you like about it (preferably via the Apple Podcast app since their reviews can be seen in other podcast portals). The more positive reviews we get, the more exposure we get!We Need Your Help!Consider supporting The Humble Skeptic podcast by making a one-time gift or upgrading to a paid subscription via Substack ($5.95 per month, $59 per year). Use the button below for more information about giving options. Get full access to The Humble Skeptic at www.humbleskeptic.com/subscribe

Many New Testament scholars argue that the Gospels were told orally for the better part of a century before they were finally written down, and as such, they tell us more about later Christian beliefs than they do the life of Jesus. Cambridge scholar Richard Bauckham has argued that this entire approach to Jesus research has officially reached a dead end and that the Gospels are rooted in reliable eyewitness testimony. Shane discusses these claims with Dr. Bauckham.SHOW NOTESRecommended BooksJesus & The Eyewitnesses, Richard BauckhamJesus: A Very Short Introduction, Richard BauckhamThe Testimony of the Beloved Disciple, Richard BauckhamGospel Women, Richard BauckhamCan We Trust The Gospels?, Peter J. WilliamsTestimonies to the Truth, Lydia McGrewRecommended ArticlesThe Gospels as Authentic Testimony, Richard BauckhamIs Luke a Trustworthy Historian?, William RamsayOutside The Gospels, What Can We Know About Jesus?, S. RosenthalScribes of the New Covenant, Shane RosenthalCan We Trust Luke's History of the Early Jesus Movement?, S. RosenthalWater Into Wine?, Shane RosenthalOn Faith & History, Shane RosenthalWhy Should We Believe The Bible?, Shane RosenthalAuthenticating The Fourth Gospel, Shane RosenthalJesus & The Eyewitnesses: A Review, Shane RosenthalConsidering Alternatives to the Resurrection, Shane RosenthalOther Related ResourcesThe Jesus of History, Humble Skeptic Ep. #12Faith Founded on Facts, Humble Skeptic Ep. #15Fake or Authentic?, Humble Skeptic Ep. #10Authenticating the Book of Acts, Humble Skeptic Ep. #24New Evidence for the Gospels, Peter J. Williams (video)Evidence for the Resurrection, Peter J. Williams (video)Are the Gospels Reliable?, Peter J. Williams & Bart Ehrman (video)Upcoming Events• On Wed. March 27th at 6:30 pm, Shane will be discussing “Objections to the Resurrection” at Christ Presbyterian Church in St. Charles, MO.• Greg Koukl, Shane Rosenthal & Jeremy Smith will be speaking on apologetics-related topics at The Fellowship of Wildwood in the St. Louis area on April 7, 2024. While in town, Greg Koukl will also be speaking at the Creating Confident Ambassadors conference at First Baptist Church—St. John on Saturday, April 6th in St. Louis.• Shane will be discussing the question, “Is Faith Blind & Irrational?” at Third Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama on Sunday, April 28th at 11 am. For directions, visit the church website: thirdpca.org.• Shane will be speaking at the ReThink315 College Camp which will take place on the campus of St. Louis University, July 16-19, 2024.• On Wed. Sept. 18th, Shane will discuss the question, “Is Faith Blind & Irrational?” at an event in Cedar City, Utah (more details coming soon).• For more information, or to invite Shane Rosenthal to speak at your next event, send an email to: INFO at HUMBLESKEPTIC dot COM. Write a Positive ReviewIf you're a fan of the show, consider writing a brief review to let others know what you like about it (preferably via the Apple Podcast app since their reviews can be seen in other podcast portals). The more positive reviews we get, the more exposure we get!We Need Your Help!Consider supporting The Humble Skeptic podcast by making a one-time gift or upgrading to a paid subscription via Substack ($5.95 per month, $59 per year). Use the button below for more information about giving options. Get full access to The Humble Skeptic at www.humbleskeptic.com/subscribe

Pastor Garrison GreeneTEXT: John 15:1-17BIG IDEA: Jesus is the vine, therefore in him abide.OUTLINE: 1. Our Vine: Jesus the Son 2. Our Vinedresser: God the Father 3. Our Call: Abide in ChristRESOURCES: ESV Study Bible; The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel According to John by D.A. Carson; Reformed Expository Commentary: John by Richard Phillips; Who Is Jesus? Knowing Christ through His “I Am” Sayings by J.V. Fesko; Gospel of Glory: Major Themes in Johannine Theology by Richard Bauckham; Testimony of the Beloved Disciple: Narrative, History, and Theology in the Gospel of John by Richard Bauckham; The Character of Christ: The Fruit of the Spirit in the Life of Our Savior by Jonathan Landry Cruse; Rejoicing in Christ by Michael Reeves

Pastor Garrison GreeneTEXT: John 8:12BIG IDEA: Jesus is the light who leads all who follow into life.OUTLINE: 1. Where We Walk: Darkness 2. Who Jesus Is: Light 3. What To Do: FollowRESOURCES: ESV Study Bible; Reformed Expository Commentary: John by Richard Phillips; The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel According to John by D.A. Carson; Who Is Jesus? Knowing Christ through His “I Am” Sayings by J.V. Fesko; Gospel of Glory: Major Themes in Johannine Theology by Richard Bauckham

“…not because Christians in the late first century were actually innumerable, but because of John's faith in the fulfillment of all the promises of God through Christ, the church is depicted as an innumerable company drawn from all nations.” – Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation, 77.

In this video Gavin Ortlund interviews Josh Chatraw and Jack Carson about Rhett McLaughlin's comments about their book, Surprised By Doubt, and why Christianity is a better option than open spirituality. Surprised By Doubt: https://www.amazon.com/Surprised-Doubt-Disillusionment-Invite-Deeper/dp/1587435594 About Josh: https://www.samford.edu/beeson-divinity/directory/Chatraw-Josh About Jack: https://www.liberty.edu/ace/articles/faculty/jack-carson/ Richard Bauckham's introduction to the gospels: https://www.amazon.com/Gospels-All-Christians-Rethinking-Audiences-ebook/dp/B002OSXN9G/ Peter Williams' Can We Trust the Gospels?: https://www.amazon.com/Can-Trust-Gospels-Peter-Williams-ebook/dp/B07DNF73F2/   Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

Pastor Garrison GreeneTEXT: John 8:12BIG IDEA: Jesus is the light who leads all who follow into life.OUTLINE: 1. Where We Walk: Darkness 2. Who Jesus Is: Light 3. What To Do: FollowRESOURCES: ESV Study Bible; Reformed Expository Commentary: John by Richard Phillips; The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel According to John by D.A. Carson; Who Is Jesus? Knowing Christ through His “I Am” Sayings by J.V. Fesko; Gospel of Glory: Major Themes in Johannine Theology by Richard Bauckham

Pastor Garrison GreeneTEXT: John 6:35BIG IDEA: Jesus is the sustenance that supplies salvation and satisfaction.OUTLINE: 1. Jesus, the Person 2. Jesus, the Provision 3. Jesus, the PromiseRESOURCES: ESV Study Bible; ESV Expository Commentary: John by James Hamilton; Preach the Word: John's Gospel by Kent Hughes; The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel According to John by D.A. Carson; John: Through Old Testament Eyes by Karen Jobes; Reformed Expository Commentary: John by Richard Phillips; The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple: Narrative, History, and Theology in the Gospel of John by Richard Bauckham; Who Is Jesus? Knowing Christ through His “I Am” Sayings by J.V. Fesko; Meeting Jesus: The “I Am” Sayings of Christ by R.C. Sproul; Why God Makes Sense in a World That Doesn't: The Beauty of Christian Theism by Gavin Ortlund

Luke 24:13-35; 2 Tim 3:16-17 // Bill GormanWe have lots questions about the Bible. Questions like: What I do with those parts the Bible where God seems vengeful? Can we trust that our English Bibles accurately communicate what the authors originally wrote? Or have things been changed by the church? What is lost in translation? What do we do with apparent contradictions or mistakes? Isn't the Bible and oppressive book? One that supports slavery or the mistreatment of women? I want to read my Bible but I just don't get much out of it.But there's another question. One that's even more important then all of those. And yet, it's one we don't often ask: What does Jesus think about the Bible? That's what we look at in this message. Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/49193350 Prayer Requests:  https://ccefc.ccbchurch.com/goto/forms/2546/responses/new24.01.14

In this episode, we welcome Trevor Thompson to the show. He is a Senior Acquisitions Editor at Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. He has taught at the University of Chicago Divinity School (as lecturer of Koine Greek), at Abilene Christian University, and now at Calvin University. He is the co-translator of Galen's On the Avoidance of Grief and author of over seventy encyclopedia articles. He is a co-editor of two volumes: Ephesos as a Religious Center Under the Principate and Christian Body, Christian Self: Concepts of Early Christian Personhood. His publisher, Eerdmans, is responsible for Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony by Richard Bauckham and Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels by Craig Keener. In this interview, we discuss why Bauckham's book is essential to understanding the depictions of Jesus' life in the Gospels and the first-century church, how someone can be a New Testament scholar but never come to the conclusion that Jesus is the Christ, how the doctrines of infallibility and inerrancy can cause stumbling blocks for Christians and non-Christians, how oral traditions and history is to be understood differently than written traditions and history, and much more. Let's get into it…  Episode notes and links HERE. Donate to support our mission of equipping men to push back darkness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the Gospel of Luke, we encounter a King like no other. Most kings make it about themselves. They wield power, authority, and strength for their own benefit. But not Jesus.   Jesus is the King who came to serve.  He laid down all His rights and privileges in love to rescue us.  From His place of glory, He came all the way down to the fringes of this broken world to redeem the very people everyone else had given up on.   You see, Jesus knew the secret to the upside-down kingdom: that in giving ourselves away, we actually get ourselves back. Jesus is the Servant King who shows us the way to real abundant life. And He beckons us to come and follow Him!   This sermon begins a new series in the 3rd Gospel in the New Testament: the “Good News” of Jesus, recorded for us by Luke.   Luke is documenting for us the backstory of the coming of John the Baptist. The first prophet in Israel since Malachi, some 450 years ago. But now God is breaking the silence. He is once again on the move. His salvation is awakening.   And in this first chapter, Luke wants us to see three things. God's salvation is:   1) Historical   Dr. Luke is acting as a first-century investigative journalist, documenting the life of Jesus from eyewitness testimony and original source material. The Gospels are a compilation of eyewitness testimony; there's a real historical portrayal.   God's salvation is trustworthy. We can discover it!   Have you ever seriously considered the veracity of the gospel accounts of Jesus?   The stakes couldn't be higher. If Jesus really is the son of God who died and rose again, nothing could be of more importance!   2) Prophetic   What's happening in these verses, without fanfare or hype, is that God is being faithful to His covenant promises.   God's salvation is fulfillment. We can believe it!   3) Redemptive   Not only is the coming of John the Baptist of national significance for the people of God; the fulfillment of prophecy signaling the coming of the Messiah, as the Lord Himself draws near; it is also a tender moment of personal redemption. Because Jesus comes to bring redemption. Through the cross and resurrection of Jesus, all who believe in Him experience a measure of redemption now, which is pointing to the fullness of redemption that is to come when Jesus returns to make all things new.   God's salvation is transforming. We can experience it!   Takeaway: God's salvation is awakening.   God is breaking the silence. In the quiet and the stillness. Salvation is drawing near. He is coming, and His name is Jesus.   Luke 1:1–25   Resources Mentioned: The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel Can We Trust the Gospels? by Peter Williams Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham

Unbelievable shows often benefit from a second listen and some even become classics. Today we are dipping into the concluding part of a conversation between noted Bible scholar Bart Ehrman and Richard Bauckham who debate each other with Justin Brierley in the hosting seat. This show was recorded following the publication of Ehrman's 2016 book "Jesus Before the Gospels". Bart Erhman recently debated Justin Bass on The Big Conversation which you can watch here. But in this show Bart Erhman makes the case that eyewitness testimony is very fallible and that the stories about Jesus that were written down in the Gospels would have changed shape over time. Noted scholar Richard Bauckham, author of "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses", disagrees and defends the trustworthiness of eyewitness testimony and addresses the question of how Jesus' sayings and stories would have been memorised and passed along. Coming soon the latest course from Premier Unbelievable Did it happen? The Birth of Jesus will explore Bauckman's work further on the veracity of the details of Jesus's birth in the Gospel accounts. For Richard Bauckham: http://richardbauckham.co.uk For Bart Ehrman: http://www.bartdehrman.com • Subscribe to the Unbelievable? podcast: https://pod.link/267142101 • More shows, free eBook & newsletter: https://premierunbelievable.com • For live events: http://www.unbelievable.live • For online learning: https://www.premierunbelievable.com/training • Support us in the USA: http://www.premierinsight.org/unbelievableshow • Support us in the rest of the world: https://www.premierunbelievable.com/donate

From 2016: Bart Ehrman's new book "Jesus Before the Gospels" makes the case that the stories about Jesus would have changed and evolved before they were written down as the Gospels. Richard Bauckham, author of "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses", defends the view that the Gospels were written by those with access to eyewitness testimony of Jesus' first followers. They debate who wrote Mark, whether the the Gospels came from anonymous traditions and how they received their titles For Bart Ehrman: http://www.bartdehrman.com For Richard Bauckham: http://richardbauckham.co.uk • Subscribe to the Unbelievable? podcast: https://pod.link/267142101 • More shows, free eBook & newsletter: https://premierunbelievable.com • For live events: http://www.unbelievable.live • For online learning: https://www.premierunbelievable.com/training • Support us in the USA: http://www.premierinsight.org/unbelievableshow • Support us in the rest of the world: https://www.premierunbelievable.com/donate

Pastor Bart and Pastor Mary give some additional thoughts on the sermon, "How Can I Trust that the Bible is Reliable?," given at WCPC on Sunday, September 10, 2023. Watch the sermon Listen to the sermon Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham The Drama of Scripture by Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen The Mission of God by Christopher Wright The Reason for God by Timothy Keller Resilient Faith by Gerald Sittser How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart

Marty Solomon and Brent Billings are joined by special guest Kat Armstrong, a Bible teacher and ministry leader who holds a master's degree from Dallas Theological Seminary. She is the author of the Storyline Bible Studies and is the cofounder of the Polished Network.Mountains by Kat ArmstrongStoryline Bible Studies by Kat ArmstrongThe Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing by Jonathan T. PenningtonTree of Life Series — BibleProject PodcastThe Art of Reading Scripture by Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays (contains “Reading Scripture as a Coherent Story” by Richard Bauckham)Bono by University PressReading the Bible for a Change by Ray LubeckNo More Holding Back by Kat ArmstrongThe In-Between Place by Kat ArmstrongKat Armstrong on InstagramPolished NetworkKat Armstrong's website Special Guest: Kat Armstrong.

Most translations of the New Testament refer to Golgotha as “The Place of the Skull.” But is this correct? On this episode of The Humble Skeptic podcast, Shane Rosenthal talks with Egyptologist David Rohl about a variety of historical and textual clues that help us to better understand, not only the precise location of Golgotha, but also it's meaning and significance.SHOW NOTES• Make plans to join The Humble Skeptic Travel Tour through the land of Israel in Sept/Oct 2024. We'll apply a healthy “skepticism” to many of the popular destinations and will visit some of the more obscure yet historically reliable sites such as the top of the Mount of Olives. If you are interested in joining us, send an email to: info AT humbleskeptic DOT com.• Recommended articles by Shane Rosenthal, “Where Was Jesus Crucified?,” “How to Detect Deception,” “Authenticating The Fourth Gospel,” “Why Should We Believe The Bible?,” “On Faith & History,” and “Did Palm Trees Grow in Jerusalem?”• Recommended books by David Rohl, Exodus: Myth or History, and Legendary Kings: The Real Bible Unearthed (which is currently only available in Kindle format).• To listen to Shane's previous interviews with David Rohl, use the following links: “Questioning Conventional Wisdom Part 1” and “Part 2”, “Exodus, Myth or History?”, and “The Search for the Historical Joseph.”• To find out more about the Joanna ossuary or the chiastic structure of Luke 24:1-12, check out some of the slides from Shane's lecture: “Who is Joanna?” To read a journal article about the ossuary, click here. For further reading see: Gospel Women, by Richard Bauckham, and Who Are Joanna & Theophilus, by Richard Anderson. • To read the Journal of the American Medical Association article, “On The Physical Death of Jesus Christ” click here.• Help support the work of The Humble Skeptic podcast! To put something in the TIP JAR, click here, or consider upgrading to one of the paid subscription options via Substack by using the green button below. If you'd like your gift to be “tax-deductible,” click here for more information about that option.The Humble Skeptic is a listener-supported podcast. To support this work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Get full access to The Humble Skeptic at shanerose.substack.com/subscribe

On this episode, Shane continues weaving together various interviews he's recorded on topics related to the reasons Christians can have confidence in the portrait of Jesus presented in the New Testament Gospels. During this podcast you'll hear from Peter J. Williams, Richard Bauckham, John Dickson, and D.A. Carson, Craig Blomberg, Lydia McGrew, and Daniel Wallace.SHOW NOTES• Click here to listen to Part 1 of this discussion.• Recommended resources by Shane Rosenthal: “How to Detect Deception,” “Authenticating The Fourth Gospel,” “Why Should We Believe The Bible?”, “On Faith & History,” and “What is Faith?.” • Recommended books by Peter J. Williams: Can We Trust the Gospels?, and The Surprising Genius of Jesus.• Recommended books by Richard Bauckham: Jesus & The Eyewitnesses (Second Edition), Jesus: A Very Short Introduction, and The Testimony of The Beloved Disciple.• Recommended books by John Dickson: Is Jesus History?, and A Doubters Guide to Jesus.• Recommended books by D.A. Carson: Introducing the New Testament, The Gospel According to John (Pillar NT Commentary), Commentary on the Old Testament Use of the New Testament, and The Intolerance of Tolerance.• Recommended books by Craig Blomberg: Can We Still Believe the Bible? The Historical Reliability of the New Testament, The Historical Reliability of John's Gospel.• Recommended books by Lydia McGrew: Hidden in Plain View, The Eye of the Beholder, and Testimonies to The Truth: Why You Can Trust The Gospels.• Recommended resources by Daniel Wallace, The Reliability of the New Testament: Bart Ehrman & Daniel Wallace in Dialogue, Greek Grammar Beyond The Basics, “John 5:2 & The Date of The Fourth Gospel,” “John 5:2 (Part 2),” “John 5:2 (Part 3).”• Help support the work of The Humble Skeptic podcast! Click here to put something in the TIP JAR, or consider upgrading to one of the paid subscription options via Substack by using the green button below. If you'd like your gift to be “tax-deductible,” click here for information.The Humble Skeptic is a listener-supported podcast. To support this work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Get full access to The Humble Skeptic at shanerose.substack.com/subscribe

On this episode, Shane weaves together a number of interviews he's recorded over the years on topics related to the Christian view of “faith,” how it's grounded in the facts of the real world, and why we can be confident that it's true. So during this podcast you'll hear from scholars such as John Lennox, Peter J. Williams, Richard Bauckham, John Dickson, and D.A. Carson.SHOW NOTES• To listen to Part 2 of this program, click here.• Recommended resources by Shane Rosenthal: “What is Faith?,” “How to Detect Deception,” “Authenticating The Fourth Gospel,” “Why Should We Believe The Bible?”, and “On Faith & History.”• Recommended books by John Lennox: Can Science Explain Everything?, Gunning for God, Cosmic Chemistry, and Miracles: Is Belief in the Supernatural Irrational? Video lecture: “Has Science Buried God?” • Recommended books by Peter J. Williams: Can We Trust the Gospels?, and The Surprising Genius of Jesus. Video lectures: “New Evidence the Gospels Are Based on Eyewitness Accounts”, “Things Which Ought to Be Better Known About the Resurrection”, and “Are the Gospels Reliable? A Conversation with Bart Ehrman.”• Recommended books by Richard Bauckham: Jesus & The Eyewitnesses (Second Edition), Jesus: A Very Short Introduction, and The Testimony of The Beloved Disciple.• Recommended books by John Dickson: Is Jesus History?, and A Doubters Guide to Jesus.• Recommended books by D.A. Carson: Introducing the New Testament, The Gospel According to John (Pillar NT Commentary), Commentary on the Old Testament Use of the New Testament, and The Intolerance of Tolerance.• Help support the work of The Humble Skeptic podcast! Click here to put something in the TIP JAR, or consider upgrading to one of the paid subscription options via Substack by using the green button below. If you'd like your gift to be “tax-deductible,” click here for information. Support The Humble Skeptic by becoming a paid subscriber. Get full access to The Humble Skeptic at shanerose.substack.com/subscribe

Our focus for this episode is the collection of second-century Christian literature known as the Apostolic Fathers. In total, there are 11 authors in this collection, 9 of whom we will briefly cover today. You'll learn about the earliest Christian documents outside the New Testament, two of  which were possibly written even before the last book of the New Testament. What did Christians write about? Although the Apostolic Fathers is far from cohesive, they do give us a great window into some of the dominant threads of Christian thought in the generation after the apostles died. Listen to this episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyJwqv-Y87M&list=PLN9jFDsS3QV2lk3B0I7Pa77hfwKJm1SRI&index=4 —— Links —— More Restitutio resources on Christian history More classes here Support Restitutio by donating here Join our Restitutio Facebook Group and follow Sean Finnegan on Twitter @RestitutioSF Leave a voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments and we may play them out on the air Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library. Who is Sean Finnegan?  Read his bio here —— Notes —— The Apostolic Fathers is a collection of Christian writings primarily from the second century. The Didache Epistle of Barnabas 1 Clement Shepherd of Hermas Epistles of Ignatius Fragments of Papias 2 Clement Epistle of Polycarp Martyrdom of Polycarp Fragment of Quadratus Epistle to Diognetus Sources for APF (Apostolic Fathers) Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org) Michael Holmes' translation (available in English or English in parallel with Greek) Didache (60-150) Jewish-Christian document partly focused on righteous living and partly on church order (baptism, communion, fasting, hospitality, etc.) citations: Didache 9.1-3; 8.1; 2.1-2 Research Recommendation David Bercot's A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs Epistle of Barnabas (70-132) author referred to as Psuedo-Barnabas allegorizing method of interpreting scripture, especially the Old Testament citation: Barnabas 10.11-12; 1 Clement (80-100) letter written from Roman leader to help church of Corinth resolve a dispute citations 1 Clement 59.4 Shepherd of Hermas (100-150) freed slave writing on holiness and repentance citation: Shepherd 59.5-7 Epistles of Ignatius (108-160) bishop in Antioch arrested and brought to Rome where he faced martyrdom three recensions survive: long, middle, and short Long Recension To the Ephesians To the Magnesians To the Trallians To the Romans To the Philadelphians To the Smyrnaeans To Polycarp To Mary of Cassabola From Mary of Cassabola To Tarsians To Antiochenes To Philippians To Hero Middle Recension To the Ephesians To the Magnesians To the Trallians To the Romans To the Philadelphians To the Smyrnaeans To Polycarp Short Recension To the Ephesians To the Romans To Polycarp citations: Ephesians 7.2; Polycarp 3.2 (both from middle recension) Fragments of Papias (130) preferred oral testimony to written[1] wanted to get to the truth of the matter bishop in Hierapolis Citation: Papias 3.3-4 2 Clement (130-160) neither a letter nor was it written by Clement anonymous sermon citation: 2 Clement 9.1-6 Polycarp to the Philippians (135-160) the Philippians had requested Polycarp to discuss righteousness Martyrdom of Polycarp (155-175) narrates story of Polycarp's capture, interrogation, and public execution in Smyrna sets precedent for future martyrs Review The Apostolic Fathers is a diverse collection of Christian books from the 2nd century major focus Christian morality identity vis-à-vis Judaism variety of views about Christ authenticity (Papias) and unity (Ignatius, 1 Clement) [1] See also Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.

How can we tell whether a painting signed by Claude Monet is authentic or not? Similarly, how can we know for certain that the New Testament Gospels aren't fictional stories, but real historical accounts of the life of Jesus? On this episode, Shane Rosenthal continues his conversation of this subject with Dr. Lydia McGrew, author of Testimonies to the Truth: Why You Can Trust the Gospels.SHOW NOTES• Click here to listen to an interview Shane conducted with Cambridge scholar, Peter Williams, on the topic of his book Can We Trust The Gospels?• Click here to listen to Shane's interview with Richard Bauckham, author of Jesus & The Eyewitnesses, on the topic of the reliability of John's Gospel.• Click here to listen to Shane's conversation with New Testament scholar Daniel Wallace regarding an early date for John's Gospel.• Click here to order a copy of Lydia McGrew's new book, Testimonies to the Truth: Why You Can Trust the Gospels.• As a way of saying thanks for your gift of any size, we'll send you a 20 page PDF copy of What is Faith? by Shane Rosenthal. You can make your gift by upgrading to a paid subscription through Substack, or by using the tip jar below. If you'd like your gift to be “tax-deductible,” click here for info about this new option.The Humble Skeptic is a listener-supported podcast. To help support this work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Get full access to The Humble Skeptic at shanerose.substack.com/subscribe

00:00:00 - Intro 00:03:49 - Dr. McDonough's legacy in the Dojo! 00:07:30 - What it's like teaching at Gordon-Conwell 00:11:30 - Scholars who bridge the gap between Biblical scholarship, theological/philosophical reflection, the greatest commentary ever written, and thoughts on Richard Bauckham! 00:13:57 - Teaching in Fiji 00:22:22 - 3 Years of Ph.D work on ONE BIBLE VERSE?!? 00:30:26 - Tolkien, Myth, and Apocalyptic imagination 00:36:34 - Thoughts on LOTR, Hobbit, and Rings of Power film adaptations 00:44:15 - Breaking Bad and modern Greek tragedy 00:46:33 - Andy Goldsworthy and the art of Apocalyptic 00:56:19 - The error in seeing the created order as antithetical to God (and the profound beauty of “Spirited Away”!) 01:02:45 - Finding theological connections in non-Christian cultural contexts 01:07:36 - Revelation's legacy in the Church 01:11:02 - What is 666 all about? 01:16:04 - Who are the 144,000? 0:1:19:08 - Jesus: LION or LAMB? 01:24:21 - The Trinity in Revelation 01:27:03 - Revelation's use of the Hebrew Scriptures 01:32:57 - How do we get Christians to see the necessity of studying the Old Testament? 01:37:17 - Biblical Theology vs. Systematic Theology 01:48:28 - The Preacher's Greek Companion series 
Dr. McDonough's books:

* The Preacher's Greek Companion to Philippians - https://smile.amazon.com/Preachers-Greek-Companion-Philippians-Preparation/dp/1683073533/ * Creation and New Creation: Understanding God's Creation Project - https://smile.amazon.com/Creation-New-Understanding-Gods-Project/dp/1683070267/ * A Time for Sorrow: Recovering the Practice of Lament in the Life of the Church - https://smile.amazon.com/Time-Sorrow-Recovering-Practice-Lament/dp/1683072065/ 
Revelation, Apocalyptic, and Eschatology resources:

* Revelation: A Guided Tour of the Apocalypse (Video series and workbook) - https://www.discipledojo.org/revelation 

* Apocalypse Now?? What the Bible Teaches About the End Times (Podcast series) - www.discipledojo.org/podcast 
Other Disciple Dojo Revelation videos: What is "Apocalyptic"? - https://youtu.be/RN8-B2B0NEQ Revelation's Structure - https://youtu.be/DWt9Tx171hE Martyrs and Conquering in Revelation - https://youtu.be/EX0cS6-CY-E The Unholy Trinity - https://youtu.be/HPhKkXZ5Uyk What is the Mark of the Beast? - https://youtu.be/B-qyjEeD-rc Resources for reading Revelation - https://youtu.be/V-T7KkoVpW0 
Superhero Seminary videos on eschatology: Beastman Explains 666 - https://youtu.be/mzv_V-PO6HE Lion-O Explains the Lion and the Lamb - https://youtu.be/EDDixHU--_c Goku Explains the Rapture - https://youtu.be/WAJ8DtIV71s Thanos Explains why you WANT to be ‘left behind' - https://youtu.be/O9DF0YJb8mo Dr. Strange's intro to Revelation - https://youtu.be/XOY1F7QMjEM Aquaman Explains Biblical dragon imagery and the Sea - https://youtu.be/DLuljp4QuYY Master Chief Explains Angel Halos - https://youtu.be/aQpfblvlqnw ** Visit the Disciple Dojo online store for Bible-nerd gift ideas! https://www.zazzle.com/discipledojo ***Become a monthly Dojo Donor at - https://www.discipledojo.org/donate ------ Go deeper at www.discipledojo.org Subscribe to the Disciple Dojo podcast for more in-depth teaching and discussions: SoundCloud - https://soundcloud.com/discipledojo Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/26BDZz70HmnT5eoD9BEKQ7 iTunes - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/disciple-dojo/id1002934837 Stitcher - http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=181458&refid=stpr Amazon - https://tinyurl.com/uz8dbfet Disciple Dojo is a 501c3 Nonprofit organization. As such we rely on donor support to make this teaching available freely online. Please consider supporting this ministry if you benefit from the videos or podcast at http://www.discipledojo.org

Episode 1155 | Adriel Sanchez and Bill Maier answer caller questions. Show Notes CoreChristianity.com   Questions in this Episode   1. Is it wrong or “boastful” to be proud of the accomplishments of my child? 2. How should we respond to children preaching on social media? 3. When were the Gospels of the New Testament written and are they trustworthy? 4. How can I protect my kids from believing false teachers online? Today's Offer Inner Core Request our latest special offers here or call 1-833-THE-CORE (833-843-2673) to request them by phone. Want to partner with us in our work here at Core Christianity? Consider becoming a member of the Inner Core. Resources The Historical Reliability of the Gospels by Craig Blomberg Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony by Richard Bauckham

Dr. Michael Bird is Academic Dean and lecturer at Ridley College and an Anglican Priest. He is the author of multiple books and a well know research in early christianity and the New Testament. We talk about his new book "Jesus Among the gods". We also mention Troels Engberg-Pederson, Bart Ehrman, Andrew Perriman, Richard Bauckham, NT Wright, Larry Hurtado, Jeremiah Coogan, David Litwa, Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Philo of Alexandria, Plato, Tertullian, Ignatius of Antioch, John Calvin, Marcellus of Ancyra, Athanasius of Alexandria, Paul of Samosata, Theodotus of Byzantium, and many more. Dr. Bird's book "Jesus Among the gods": https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-among-gods-Christology-Greco-Roman/dp/1481316753 Dr. Bird's twitter: https://twitter.com/mbird12 Dr. Bird's substack: https://michaelfbird.substack.com/ Dr. Bird's youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC21I7qYVHPsOzL9ujxiRWZA

Dr. Andrew Perriman has a PhD from the London Bible College, He is involved with a missional church in Westbourne Grove, London, and he the author of multiple books. In this interview we mostly talk about his newest book "In the Form of a god: The Pre-Existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul". We mention NT Wright, James Dunn, Richard Bauckham, Gordon Fee, James McGrath, Eusebius of Caesarea, Constantine the Great, and more. Andrew's Blog: https://www.postost.net/ The Book: https://www.amazon.com/Form-God-Pre-existence-Exalted-Christology/dp/166673067X

Marty Solomon and Brent Billings are joined by special guest Brian David, who spent 37 years coaching people in software, and 25 years coaching high school sports, but now finds himself “coaching” the Text.Chiasms in John by Brian DavidBEMA 28: Images of the Desert — Ar'ar and TamariskPoet & Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes by Kenneth E. BaileyStar Wars Ring Theory by Mike KlimoJesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard BauckhamJoin the BEMA Slack

QUOTES FOR REFLECTION “Underneath human anxiety is the reversal of identity in which the finite attempts to be infinite. With our finite knowledge, we want to know everything so as not to be caught off guard by anything. With our finite abilities, we want and try to control everything so we're not controlled by anything. We fail to do both because it's impossible to be like God.” ~Jackie Hill Perry, poet, author and hip hop artist “Remember that pride is the worst viper that is in the heart, the greatest disturber of the soul's peace and sweet communion with Christ; it was the first sin that ever was, and lies lowest in the foundation of Satan's whole building, and is the most difficultly rooted out, and is the most hidden, secret and deceitful of all lusts, and often creeps in, insensibly, into the midst of religion and sometimes under the disguise of humility.” ~From Jonathan Edwards' (1703-1758) Letter to Deborah Hatheway (1741) “The Son of God was crucified: I am not ashamed—because it is shameful. The Son of God died: it is immediately credible—because it is absurd. He was buried, and rose again: it is certain—because it is impossible.” ~Tertullian (c. 155-220) North African church leader in On the Flesh of Christ “John is explicitly incomplete in aspects which… the Synoptic Gospels supply.” ~Richard Bauckham, New Testament scholar I know a place, y'all (I'll take you there) Ain't nobody cryin' (I'll take you there) Ain't nobody worried (I'll take you there) No smilin' faces (I'll take you there) Lyin' to the races I'll take you there. ~ “I'll Take You There” by The Staple Singers SERMON PASSAGE John 13:36-14:7 (ESV) John 13 21 After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit, and testified, “Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” 22 The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke. 23 One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at table at Jesus' side, 24 so Simon Peter motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. 25 So that disciple, leaning back against Jesus, said to him, “Lord, who is it?”… [A little later, Jesus said to the disciples:] 33 Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.'… 36 Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered him, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.” 37 Peter said to him, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” 38 Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times.” John 14 1 “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.” 5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” John 1 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 2 13 The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. 15 And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. 16 And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade.” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18 So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking about the temple of his body.

The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, was foreseeable and preventable. Did white evangelicalism's anti-government attitude contribute to the catastrophe? Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson has yet another take on the evangelical infatuation with Trump. Do we need any more? And a recent article by theologian Kirsten Sanders says we've entered a new era of evangelicalism where online influencers are shaping the movement more than pastors or institutions. Then, Skye and Kaitlyn discuss the belief held by some American Christians that the Constitution was inspired by God. Where did this view come from? Why is it dangerous? And why is it finding new popularity today? Plus, Phil plops a headline. News Segment 0:00 - Intro 4:54 - News of the Butt headline 6:10 - Jackson water crisis 17:52 - Another article on evangelicalism and Trump? Sponsor 54:22 - Sponsor: Abide Get 25% off a premium Abide subscription by texting “holypost” to 22433 Getting Schooled by Kaitlyn Schiess 55:40 - Getting Schooled intro 57:57 - Divine inspiration of the Constitution - overview 1:15:24 - Dangers of holding this view 1:22:54 - Resources Resources from Getting Schooled: “We the Fallen People” by Robert Tracy McKenzie - https://amzn.to/3qzgkuf “The Bible in Politics” by Richard Bauckham - https://amzn.to/3U1zQgF “Every Leaf, Line, and Letter” edited by Timothy Larsen - https://amzn.to/3U9M7ja Articles mentioned: “Jackson water crisis deepens as state deploys National Guard” - https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/01/jackson-mississippi-water-crisis/ “Trump should fill Christians with rage. How come he doesn't?” by Michael Gerson (The Washington Post) - https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/01/michael-gerson-evangelical-christian-maga-democracy/ “The Evangelical Question in the History of American Religion” by Kirsten Sanders (The Hedgehog Review) - https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-use-and-abuse-of-history/articles/the-evangelical-question-in-the-history-of-american-religion Join us on Patreon for more episodes of Getting Schooled by Kaitlyn Schiess and other great bonus content! Holy Post website: https://www.holypost.com/ Holy Post Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/holypost The Holy Post is supported by our listeners. We may earn affiliate commissions through links listed here. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

Bernardo Motta é engenheiro electrotécnico, com carreira na área. E é também um católico convicto, que junta à formação científica um conhecimento profundo da filosofia da religião e dos debates entre crentes e ateus que têm marcado as últimas décadas -- nos quais, claro, assume uma posição de defesa do Cristianismo. Escreveu os livros «Do enigma de Rennes-le-Château ao Priorado de Sião» e «O Milagre do Sol segundo as testemunhas oculares». -> Apoie este projecto e faça parte da comunidade de mecenas do 45 Graus em: 45graus.parafuso.net/apoiar _______________ Índice da conversa: (02:19) Três razões para ser católico: 1) Certeza de que Deus existe (Peter Kreeft: 20 arguments for God's existence) (08:18) 2) Jesus Cristo é Deus [e o que diz a Bíblia] (Argumento de C S Lewis sobre Jesus: "Lunatic, Liar, or Lord", Plínio, Livro «Jesus and the Eyewitnesses», de Richard Bauckham, Bart Ehrman (26:22) A experiência pessoal do Divino, e o papel da estética (argumento de Platinga, Arvo Part) (41:21) O problema do Mal (47:48) Existem santos? (55:39) O que é a alma de uma pessoa que morre senil? (1:02:48) Vivemos no “fim dos tempos”?. John Rawls (1:10:44) Porque há pouco o hábito em Portugal de discutir estes temas? (Fideísmo, William James: «The Will to Believe», Abuso sexual de menores na Igreja) _______________ Nesta 2ª parte da conversa com Bernardo Motta, dedicámo-nos a tópicos, dentro do género, mais “normais” numa conversa sobre religião e o Cristianismo, como a figura de Jesus, a experiência subjectiva do Divino e o eterno «Problema do mal».  O ponto de partida foram as três razões que o convidado dá para se afirmar católico: 1) Certeza de que Deus existe [que abordámos na 1ª parte da conversa], 2) Convicção de que Jesus Cristo é Deus, 3) convicção de que a doutrina original da Igreja está mais próxima da católica do que da protestante (sendo que este 3º ponto acabámos por não desenvolver)... A 2ª razão -- a convicção de que Jesus Cristo é Deus -- é a marca essencial do cristianismo (um dogma em quase todas as denominações) em comparação com outras religiões. Daqui partimos para discutir a figura de Jesus e o que, no entender do convidado, se pode dizer da veracidade Histórica dos relatos do Novo Testamento.  Daí passámos para um tema que me suscita muita curiosidade: como é a experiência pessoal, subjectiva, do Divino? …uma experiência que, para muitas pessoas, como é o caso do convidado, tem um lado estético forte.  …E daí para o chamado «Problema do Mal» (isto é, porque é que há mal no Mundo?), um clássico destes debates há vários séculos. Confrontei também o convidado com as minhas objecções em torno da lógica da ideia de santo (mesmo à luz da fé católica) e algumas contradições que me parecem existir na ideia de alma. No final, como que para embrulhar esta muito longa conversa, perguntei ao convidado porque são tão raras em Portugal este tipo de discussões entre crentes e não crentes? Recorde-se que, ao contrário de muitos crentes, que remetem a questão de Deus para uma questão subectiva, de fé, o Bernardo está convicto de que a existência de Deus pode ser provada, filosófica e cientificamente -- e é, por isso, debatível.  Contactos Bernardo Motta: bernardosanchezmotta@icloud.com; https://www.facebook.com/bernardosanchezmotta _______________ Obrigado aos mecenas do podcast: Julie Piccini, Ana Raquel Guimarães Galaró family, José Luís Malaquias, Francisco Hermenegildo, Nuno Costa, Abílio Silva, Salvador Cunha, Bruno Heleno, António llms, Helena Monteiro, BFDC, Pedro Lima Ferreira, Miguel van Uden, João Ribeiro, Nuno e Ana, João Baltazar, Miguel Marques, Corto Lemos, Carlos Martins, Tiago Leite Tomás Costa, Rita Sá Marques, Geoffrey Marcelino, Luis, Maria Pimentel, Rui Amorim, RB, Pedro Frois Costa, Gabriel Sousa, Mário Lourenço, Filipe Bento Caires, Diogo Sampaio Viana, Tiago Taveira, Ricardo Leitão, Pedro B. Ribeiro, João Teixeira, Miguel Bastos, Isabel Moital, Arune Bhuralal, Isabel Oliveira, Ana Teresa Mota, Luís Costa, Francisco Fonseca, João Nelas, Tiago Queiroz, António Padilha, Rita Mateus, Daniel Correia, João Saro João Pereira Amorim, Sérgio Nunes, Telmo Gomes, André Morais, Antonio Loureiro, Beatriz Bagulho, Tiago Stock, Joaquim Manuel Jorge Borges, Gabriel Candal, Joaquim Ribeiro, Fábio Monteiro, João Barbosa, Tiago M Machado, Rita Sousa Pereira, Henrique Pedro, Cloé Leal de Magalhães, Francisco Moura, Rui Antunes7, Joel, Pedro L, João Diamantino, Nuno Lages, João Farinha, Henrique Vieira, André Abrantes, Hélder Moreira, José Losa, João Ferreira, Rui Vilao, Jorge Amorim, João Pereira, Goncalo Murteira Machado Monteiro, Luis Miguel da Silva Barbosa, Bruno Lamas, Carlos Silveira, Maria Francisca Couto, Alexandre Freitas, Afonso Martins, José Proença, Jose Pedroso, Telmo , Francisco Vasconcelos, Duarte , Luis Marques, Joana Margarida Alves Martins, Tiago Parente, Ana Moreira, António Queimadela, David Gil, Daniel Pais, Miguel Jacinto, Luís Santos, Bernardo Pimentel, Gonçalo de Paiva e Pona , Tiago Pedroso, Gonçalo Castro, Inês Inocêncio, Hugo Ramos, Pedro Bravo, António Mendes Silva, paulo matos, Luís Brandão, Tomás Saraiva, Ana Vitória Soares, Mestre88 , Nuno Malvar, Ana Rita Laureano, Manuel Botelho da Silva, Pedro Brito, Wedge, Bruno Amorim Inácio, Manuel Martins, Ana Sousa Amorim, Robertt, Miguel Palhas, Maria Oliveira, Cheila Bhuralal, Filipe Melo, Gil Batista Marinho, Cesar Correia, Salomé Afonso, Diogo Silva, Patrícia Esquível , Inês Patrão, Daniel Almeida, Paulo Ferreira, Macaco Quitado, Pedro Correia, Francisco Santos, Antonio Albuquerque, Renato Mendes, João Barbosa, Margarida Gonçalves, Andrea Grosso, João Pinho , João Crispim, Francisco Aguiar , João Diogo, João Diogo Silva, José Oliveira Pratas, João Moreira, Vasco Lima, Tomás Félix, Pedro Rebelo, Nuno Gonçalves, Pedro , Marta Baptista Coelho, Mariana Barosa, Francisco Arantes, João Raimundo, Mafalda Pratas, Tiago Pires, Luis Quelhas Valente, Vasco Sá Pinto, Jorge Soares, Pedro Miguel Pereira Vieira, Pedro F. Finisterra, Ricardo Santos _______________ Esta conversa foi editada por: Hugo Oliveira _______________ Bio: Bernardo Motta nasceu em Lisboa em 1976. É casado e tem três filhos. É licenciado em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores (ramo de Controlo e Robótica) pelo Instituto Superior Técnico (2000). Em 2005, escreveu o estudo histórico o "Do enigma de Rennes-le-Château ao Priorado de Sião". Entre 2005 e 2007 fez conferências por todo o País para apresentar o seu livro, na sequência da polémica levantada pelo livro de Dan Brown, “O Código Da Vinci”. A partir de 2007, os seus interesses voltaram-se para a história da Ciência e para a filosofia da Ciência. No ano de 2011-2012, preparou e leccionou o Curso "Cristianismo e Ciência" a pedido da Escola de Leigos do Instituto Diocesano da Formação Cristã do Patriarcado de Lisboa. Entre 2013 e 2015 leccionou o mesmo curso a alunos do Instituto Superior Técnico que frequentavam Mestrados em Matemática e Física. Em 2016 fez duas conferências no Instituto Superior Técnico no ciclo de conferências sobre Cristianismo e Ciência: uma sobre a Ciência na Idade Média e outra sobre o impacto da Inquisição na Ciência. Entre 2015 e 2017 escreveu o livro “O Milagre do Sol segundo as testemunhas oculares”, editado e publicado pela Lucerna, no qual recolhe depoimentos de testemunhas oculares do fenómeno ocorrido a 13 de Outubro de 1917. Esta obra defende simultaneamente a tese do milagre e uma explicação meteorológica para o que foi observado.

I spent months researching the topic of women in ministry so that I could present you with this exhaustive analysis of everything the Bible says about it. Was Mary Magdalene "an apostle to the apostles" as NT Wright claims?Was Junia an apostle, as a consensus of NT scholars believe?If so, what kind of apostle was she and does that mean that women can be elders, too? The basic view of the egalitarians (who see no role differences for men and women regarding leadership in the church) is that women were in the highest possible realm of leadership in the NT since some of them were apostles. They conclude that this means women can be in any leadership role, including pastor or elder. The basic view of the complementarians (who say that the role of elder is preserved for men) is that women were either not apostles at all or that they only were in the sense of being missionaries. Some say this means that in a period of church planting a woman can have a transitory role of authority and teaching over men but that the permanent role of elder is reserved for men. Others say that even though they were missionaries it is reasonable to think that they had different roles than male missionaries in their work. As always, we will be going deep. Here are my notes from this study. If you’re looking to check my references, here’s where you will find them:https://biblethinker.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/5-Women-apostles-2.docx CLICK HERE for Burer and Wallace's paper from 2001 on why Junia is not an apostle. Richard Bauckham's response is on pages 192-200 (Kindle edition) of Gospel Women: Studies of Named Women in the Gospels. CLICK HERE for Burer's response to critics. He gives a ton more evidence for his position that Junia was well known to the apostles but not one of them. I really hope more scholars will interact with this paper. CLICK HERE for the playlist of ALL the videos in this series (more will be added as I make them). You can also find more videos freely available on my website:www.biblethinker.org

I spent months researching the topic of women in ministry so that I could present you with this exhaustive analysis of everything the Bible says about it. Was Mary Magdalene "an apostle to the apostles" as NT Wright claims?Was Junia an apostle, as a consensus of NT scholars believe?If so, what kind of apostle was she and does that mean that women can be elders, too? The basic view of the egalitarians (who see no role differences for men and women regarding leadership in the church) is that women were in the highest possible realm of leadership in the NT since some of them were apostles. They conclude that this means women can be in any leadership role, including pastor or elder. The basic view of the complementarians (who say that the role of elder is preserved for men) is that women were either not apostles at all or that they only were in the sense of being missionaries. Some say this means that in a period of church planting a woman can have a transitory role of authority and teaching over men but that the permanent role of elder is reserved for men. Others say that even though they were missionaries it is reasonable to think that they had different roles than male missionaries in their work. As always, we will be going deep. Here are my notes from this study. If you’re looking to check my references, here’s where you will find them:https://biblethinker.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/5-Women-apostles-2.docx CLICK HERE for Burer and Wallace's paper from 2001 on why Junia is not an apostle. Richard Bauckham's response is on pages 192-200 (Kindle edition) of Gospel Women: Studies of Named Women in the Gospels. CLICK HERE for Burer's response to critics. He gives a ton more evidence for his position that Junia was well known to the apostles but not one of them. I really hope more scholars will interact with this paper. CLICK HERE for the playlist of ALL the videos in this series (more will be added as I make them). You can also find more videos freely available on my website:www.biblethinker.org

I spent months researching the topic of women in ministry so that I could present you with this exhaustive analysis of everything the Bible says about it. Was Mary Magdalene "an apostle to the apostles" as NT Wright claims?Was Junia an apostle, as a consensus of NT scholars believe?If so, what kind of apostle was she and does that mean that women can be elders, too? The basic view of the egalitarians (who see no role differences for men and women regarding leadership in the church) is that women were in the highest possible realm of leadership in the NT since some of them were apostles. They conclude that this means women can be in any leadership role, including pastor or elder. The basic view of the complementarians (who say that the role of elder is preserved for men) is that women were either not apostles at all or that they only were in the sense of being missionaries. Some say this means that in a period of church planting a woman can have a transitory role of authority and teaching over men but that the permanent role of elder is reserved for men. Others say that even though they were missionaries it is reasonable to think that they had different roles than male missionaries in their work. As always, we will be going deep. Here are my notes from this study. If you’re looking to check my references, here’s where you will find them:https://biblethinker.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/5-Women-apostles-2.docx CLICK HERE for Burer and Wallace's paper from 2001 on why Junia is not an apostle. Richard Bauckham's response is on pages 192-200 (Kindle edition) of Gospel Women: Studies of Named Women in the Gospels. CLICK HERE for Burer's response to critics. He gives a ton more evidence for his position that Junia was well known to the apostles but not one of them. I really hope more scholars will interact with this paper. CLICK HERE for the playlist of ALL the videos in this series (more will be added as I make them). You can also find more videos freely available on my website:www.biblethinker.org