Author Archives: spencer

JEDP Documentary Hypothesis refuted

(Diagram of Documentary Hypothesis, courtesy Wikipedia)

By Spencer D Gear

RefCath[1], who said he is Catholic and Reformed, responded to one of my posts on the topic of “the Documentary Hypothesis” (DH) on Christian Forums. He wrote:

the DH is an hypothesis attempting to explain the development of the biblical text taking into account specific textual phenomena. For example, in Genesis 6-9 there does seem to be two stories having been combined. However, the traditional DH has been challenged and indeed very few biblical scholars adhere to it. Whybray offers a substantial critique of the DH however his solution is radical, like John Van Seters. Personally I’d go with Christoph Levin or David Carr. Farewell to the Yahwist?: The Composition of the Pentateuch in Recent European Interpretation is an excellent read.

This is my response (I’m OzSpen):

This JEDP overview and brief refutation makes some valid points against the JEDP Hypothesis, “The J.E.D.P. Theory: An Explanation and Refutation” by Brian Davis of Xenos Fellowship.[2] JEDP is designed by those who want to deny the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch and I will not support such a view.

I have a higher view of Jesus Christ than the JEDP folks seem to have, in my support of Mosaic authorship. Mr Miller wrote on the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch:

Livingstone summarizes the external evidence in PCE: 218-219:

“The term ‘the book of Moses,’ found in II Chronicles 25:4; 35:12; Ezra 3:2; 6:18; and Nehemiah 8:1; 13:1, surely included the Book of Genesis and also testifies to a belief in Israelite circles in the fifth century B.C. that all five of the books were the work of Moses. Ben Sira (Ecclus. 24:23), Philo, Josephus, and the authors of the Gospels held that Moses was intimately related to the Pentateuch. Philo and Josephus even explicitly said that Moses wrote Deuteronomy 34:5-12. Other writers of the New Testament tie the Pentateuch to Moses. The Jewish Talmud asserts that whoever denied Mosaic authorship would be excluded from Paradise.”

To this may be added the explicit statements of Jesus:

Then Jesus said to him, “See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” (Matt 8.4)
For Moses said, `Honor your father and your mother,’ and, `Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’ (Mark 7.10)
“It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. (Mark 10.5)
Now about the dead rising — have you not read in the book of Moses, in the account of the bush, how God said to him, `I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? (Mark 12.26)
“He said to him, `If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'” (Luke 16.31)
He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” (Luke 24.44)
Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 5 that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. (John 3.14-15)
If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. 47 But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?” (John 5.46f)
Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?” (John 7.19)
Jesus said to them, “I did one miracle, and you are all astonished. 22 Yet, because Moses gave you circumcision (though actually it did not come from Moses, but from the patriarchs), you circumcise a child on the Sabbath. 23 Now if a child can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing the whole man on the Sabbath? 24 Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment.” (John 7.21ff)

Thus, the external evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of Mosaic authorship of the core substance (and most of the form) of the Pentateuch.

We have seen that the internal evidence for the antiquity of the Pentateuchal materials is exceedingly abundant, and that the external witness to Mosaic authority is virtually unanimous and very early. The main residual challenges to Mosaic authorship are in supposed historical inaccuracies (e.g. domestication of the camel), which I cannot go into now, but will later. The vast array of KNOWN historical points of validation, however, should engender a sense of humility in us, before judging this surprisingly accurate text as being in error!

Mr Miller was responding to an objector in ‘Was the Pentateuch “adulterated” by later additions?“’

Notes:

[1] #48, available at: http://www.christianforums.com/t7619203-5/ (Accessed 1 January 2012).

[2] When I updated this current writing on 29 February 2020, this article still available online. However, to access it one needs a free log-in.

A Martin Luther quote is not from Luther

(Martin Luther, Wikimedia)

By Spencer D Gear

This quote has been widely attributed to have come from Martin Luther:

“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except that point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however, boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point”.

I picked it up while reading John MacArthur’s article, ‘Truth in the Crosshairs‘ (Accessed 22 December 2011). MacArthur introduces the quote with, ‘Let me start with a quote from Martin Luther’. I found this quote attributed to Luther at these sites that I Googled:

Pastor Steve Weaver (Accessed 22 December 2011);
Engineer Ambassador (Accessed 22 December 2011);
Reformissionary (Accessed 22 December 2011);
Jake Horner comment (Accessed 22 December 2011);
A comment on Surpf’s Side (Accessed 22 December 2011).

I went searching for the exact location in Luther’s writings of this quote. Nowhere on the Internet could I find this quote with a footnote reference to Luther’s works, so pursued in a wider circle and came across this article by Dr. Carl Wieland of Creation Ministries International, 4 February 2010, ‘Where the battle rages – a case of misattribution‘ (Accessed 22 December 2011).

Dr. Wieland’s research indicates that this is a quote from a fictional character and ‘it comes from a 19^th Century novel by Elizabeth Rundle Charles, called The Chronicles of the Schoenberg Cotta Family (Thomas Nelson, 1864)’.

The view that this quote is not from Luther also is in Bob Caldwell’s article in a Lutheran journal, ‘”If I profess:” A Spurious, if Consistent Luther Quote”, Concordia Journal 35(4):356–359, 2009 (Accessed 22 December 2011).

I find that it is always wise to require a primary source reference for any quote. Perhaps it is my academic study that has encouraged me to always reference material. It was this desire for a primary source that caused me to search and find that a popular quote that is attributed to Martin Luther is not from Luther at all.

Richard Harvey, Dr. Lee, a flask and supernatural prayer

(image courtesy Open Clip Art Library)

By Spencer D Gear

Is prayer a necessary discipline of the Christian life? Does God answer prayer? Richard H. Harvey tells a true story of what happened in his life when at Allegheny College, Meadville, Pennsylvania, USA. This is how the story goes:

The Flask Story[1]

“… if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them by my Father, who is in heaven” (Matthew 18:19).

The college experience I am about to tell now has left the most lasting impression upon me of any. I have told it over the world for more than forty years. Suddenly it began to appear in print in many magazines, in different languages and under various titles, sometimes under my name, sometimes not.

Probably the most popular class at the college was the first-year chemistry class. It was definitely the largest. Most every student took the class sometime during his four years regardless of his major. But since it was a first-year subject, most took it their freshman year.

Dr. Lee[2] was the most noted and honoured professor in the college. He had had many honors bestowed on him from numerous scientific societies around the world. His influence carried more weight than that of any of the other teachers. He insisted that he believed in God as the creator of an original mass that was thrown into space and that God had set a group of laws to govern it. He also believed that God no longer paid any special attention to the earth as far as man was concerned. He believed it was useless for man to try to get God’s attention, much less His intervention.[3]

Among many involved themes in his lectures, Dr. Lee chose the subject of prayer—a series of three lectures given annually the week before the Thanksgiving recess. The second lecture emphasized the thought that there was no such thing as a miracle. After that class when some of the students were gathered around him I asked, “Dr. Lee, I have proof of a miracle. I know a man named Jerry Sproul whose vocal cords were destroyed by gas in World War I. He was declared incurable by three army hospitals and thus given an irrevocable pension. He is well known by all the officials of the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania City Hall and reporters of that city. After he was prayed for, he received new vocal cords. His medical records are obtainable and I will be glad to obtain them for you.”

Dr. Lee’s answer was, “I don’t believe in any such thing. If there is such an unusual circumstance as you describe, it must have some scientific explanation.” And he turned aside.

Dr. Lee’s third lecture was on the subject of the impossibility of an objective answer to prayer. He said he would prove his contention. At the end of his lecture he announced that he would step down from his platform onto the concrete floor. Then he would challenge, “Is there anybody here who still believes in prayer?” And he would say, “Before you answer, let me tell you what I am going to do and what I am going to ask you to do. I will turn around, take a glass flask and hold it at arm’s length.” Then he would continue, “If you believe that God answers prayer, I want you to stand and pray that when I drop this flask, it won’t break. I want you to know that your prayers and the prayers of your parents and Sunday School teachers, and even the prayers of your own pastor cannot prevent this flask from breaking. If you wish to have them here, we will put this off until you return after the Thanksgiving recess.”

No one had ever accepted Dr. Lee’s challenge.

But one year a certain freshman learned about Dr. Lee’s dare. And decided prayerfully that he would accept the challenge. He believed that God had given him the promise, “… if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them by my Father, who is in heaven.” Then the young man sought out another Christian to stand with him in prayer for courage and faith and they believed together that God would keep the flask from breaking.

The day came. At the end of the final lecture on prayer, the annual challenge was put forth as it had been for twelve years. As soon as Dr. Lee asked, “Is there anyone here who believes God answers prayer?” the young man stepped into the aisle and raised his hand and said, “Dr. Lee, I do.”

“Well, this is most interesting. But young man, you had better let me explain what I am going to do and then we’ll see if you still desire to pray. I wouldn’t want you to be embarrassed before this class.”

The professor then took the glass flask and held it out in front of him over the cement floor. “Now I ask you to pray—if you still want to do it—that this flask won’t break. After you pray, I’ll drop it and I can assure you that it will hit the cement floor and break into hundreds of pieces, and that no prayer can prevent it. Do you still want to pray?”

“Yes, Dr. Lee, I do.”

“Well,” said the professor, “this is most interesting.” And turning to the class he said sarcastically, “Now we will be most reverent while this young man prays.” Then he turned to the young man, “Now you may pray.”

The freshman just lifted his countenance toward heaven and prayed, “God, I know that you hear me. Please honor the name of your son, Jesus Christ, and honor me, your servant. Don’t let the flask break. Amen.”

Dr. Lee stretched his arm out as far as he could, opened his hand and let the flask fall. It fell in an arc, hit the toe of Dr. Lee’s shoe, rolled over and did not break. There was no movement of air and there were no open windows. The class whistled, clapped and shouted. And Dr. Lee ceased his annual lectures against prayer.

Just a few years ago at a Bible conference in Ontario, Canada, I related this story briefly. After the service, a woman said to me, “Dr. Harvey, I too was a freshman in Dr. Lee’s class and heard him make that challenge. What you say is all true.”

What have been some of the responses to this story on the Internet?

When this type of story makes it to the Internet, there are some positive and some cynical responses. This is but a sample of the sceptical, blasphemous nature of antagonism to the supernatural of this true event as told by Richard Harvey:

1. “I’m thinking there has to be a gullibility gene. Maybe it helps the species propagate”.[4]

2. This story made it under the headline, “There is no such thing as miracles. Do you agree”.[5]

3. It is incorporated under the heading, “If you don’t believe in god, watch this”.[6]

4. A comment about Harvey’s story of Dr Lee: “What a pile of steaming shit!?”[7]

5. It was placed under the heading, “Atheism in Academia” in Conservapedia.[8]

God’s view is radically different: And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive if you have faith (Matt. 21:22 ESV)

This does require a committed, supernatural faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. The God revealed in Scripture is supernatural by nature and not naturalistic as with deism.

This story that Richard Harvey relates has grown wings and flourished on the www. Let’s check out one of the sites that checks out possible hoaxes, “TruthOrFiction“, to find the truth vs fiction of whether this is a hoax. Here it is:

Appendix A

The Atheist Professor At USC Who Encountered God Through a Piece of Chalk-Fiction![9]

Summary of Rumor
A notorious atheist professor at the University of Southern California [USC] is known for challenging students about their faith. He dramatically drops a piece of chalk to the floor saying that if God existed, he could prevent the chalk from breaking. This happens year after year until a particular Christian student becomes a part of the class. This time, when the professor drops the chalk, it bounces off his clothing and ends up harmlessly on the floor. The stunned professor runs from the room in shame and the student preaches the Gospel to the remaining class members.

The Truth
This has been one of the most commonly circulated inspirational stories on the Internet and one of the most commonly asked-about at TruthOrFiction.com.We’ve never found any evidence that an incident of this nature has taken place involving a piece of chalk, but there is a first-hand source of a similar, older story, which the chalk tale may be based upon.
First, the University of Southern California has officially denied that this ever happened there. Dr. Dallas Willard, a philosophy professor at USC, has told TruthOrFiction.com that he’s never heard of it happening in his more than 30 years at the school.

There is a related story, however, told by author Richard H. Harvey in his book 70 YEARS OF MIRACLES. It’s a first-hand account of his experience in a Chemistry class at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania in the 1920’s. Harvey says the professor, a Dr. Lee, was a deist who annually lectured against prayer. In one of the class sessions, Dr. Lee said he was going to drop a glass flask on the floor and asked if anyone would like to pray first that the flask would not break, therefore demonstrating the reality of prayer. Richard Harvey volunteered and prayed. The professor dropped the flask and it rolled off his shoe to the floor without damage. The class cheered and the professor stopped his annual lectures against prayer. TruthOrFiction.com has confirmed with Allegheny college that Richard Harvey was a student there and that Dr. Lee was a professor. Richard Harvey’s son, Rev. John Harvey, a minister in Toccoa, Georgia, says this all happened before he was born, but confirms that the story was told by his father.

Updated 18 February 2001

Notes:

[1] “The Flask Story” is a copy of the entire chapter by Richard H. Harvey 1977. 70 Years of Miracles. Beaverlodge, Alberta, Canada: Horizon House Publishers, chapter 11, pp. 63-66. Horizon House Publishers is no longer in existence, so I could not obtain permission to publish.

[2] His obituary, “Dr Richard Lee, Local Man’s Son, Passes in North”, was in the Independent, St. Petersburg, Florida, Friday, January 31, 1936, and stated that his full name was Richard Edwin Lee, late head of the department of chemistry, Allegheny College. He was aged 59 at his death. Available at: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=950&dat=19360131&id=tONPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=W1UDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3543,5184628 (Accessed 20 December 2011). A Richard Edwin Lee scholarship is offered at Allegheny College to a deserving student who is majoring in chemistry. See: http://www.schoolsoup.com/scholarship-directory/college/allegheny-college/Richard-Edwin-Lee-Scholarship-195663/ (Accessed 20 December 2011).

[3] I note that this is a deist view of God. What is deism? Matt Slick of CARM in, “What is deism?”, has defined deism as “the teaching that God exists, that he created the universe and everything in it, but that he stopped being involved in the universe and in people’s lives after he made the universe. Another way of looking at it is to say that God created the universe with everything in it and is letting everything go its natural course without any further intervention on his part. Deism teaches that there are no more miracles, and that the Bible is not inspired of God”. Available at: http://carm.org/questions-deism (Accessed 20 December 2011).

[4] “Is there a gullibility gene that gets activated by religion?” available at: http://biblioblography.blogspot.com/2009/08/is-there-gullibility-gene-that-gets.html (Accessed 20 December 2011).

[5] See: http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091007133249AAlDsVW (Accessed 20 December 2011).

[6] Available at: http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=GJ0MsMp9S18 (Accessed 20 December 2011).

[7] YouTube, available at: http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=m989v49WNsw (Accessed 20 December 2011).

[8] The article was titled, “Conservapedia:Atheism/torfute”, available at: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Conservapedia:Atheism/torefute (Accessed 20 December 2011).

[9] “The Atheist and the chalk”, TruthOrFiction, available at: http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/c/chalk.htm (Accessed 20 December 2011).

Christ’s resurrection: Latter-day wishful thinking

Worm and Lace

(image courtesy ChristArt)

By Spencer D Gear

“Pastor, I don’t know what to believe about Christ anymore. I’ve just read a leading magazine and I now believe that you and my Christian parents have not been telling the truth about what happened to Jesus at the cross.” These words from a disillusioned 23-year-old in your church might knock the spiritual wind out of your theological sails. They did for me when a bright young Christian openly confessed this.

He had been reading Time magazine which stated that what happened to Jesus, as told in the Bible, is wishful thinking. He gave sceptical details that could have come from a science fiction movie.[1]

What did he learn from Time?

Jesus – a peasant nobody – was never buried, never taken by his friends to a rich man’s sepulcher. Rather, says Crossan, the tales of entombment and resurrection were latter-day wishful thinking. Instead, Jesus’ corpse went the way of all abandoned criminals’ bodies: it was probably barely covered with dirt, vulnerable to the wild dogs that roamed the wasteland of the execution grounds.[2]

What will you do pastor, Christian leader, or parent with this kind of news through the mass media? John D. Crossan goes even further. In speaking of the resurrection of Christ, he wrote that “in I Corinthians 15 Paul begins by enumerating all the apparitions of the risen Jesus.”[3] While now retired, Crossan, a fellow of the radical Jesus Seminar, taught biblical studies for 26 years at the Roman Catholic DePaul University in Chicago.[4]

What’s an apparition? It’s a phantom, a ghost. Jesus’ resurrected body was not real flesh but he claims that “the resurrection is a matter of Christian faith.”[5] Jesus “was buried, if buried at all, by his enemies, and the necessarily shallow grave would have been easy prey for scavenging animals.”[6]

For him, the resurrection of Christ is really a spiritual resurrection among believers – whatever that means!

If that person were listening to ABC radio’s, “Sunday night with John Cleary,” he would have heard an interview with a leading church figure who stated:

I live on the other side of Albert Einstein, and I know what relativity means in all of life, and so I can no longer claim that I possess objective and revealed truth and it’s infallible, or it’s inherent, those become claims out of the past that are no longer relevant for 21st century people.[7]

The interview was with John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopalian [i.e. Anglican] Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, whose diocese lost 40% of its parishioners while he was its bishop.[8]

Spong believes that

God is very real. I believe that I live my life every day inside the reality of this God. I call this God by different words. I describe God as the source of life and the source of love and the ground of being. I engage God when I live fully and love wastefully and have the courage to be who I am. That’s the God I see in Jesus of Nazareth.[9]

Yet Borg & Crossan are so provocative as to state “that probably more people have left the church because of biblical literalism than for any other reasons.”[10] The contrary is true with Spong. His liberal views seem to be associated with people leaving his diocese in droves.

With the freely available blogs on the www, Christian people are likely to encounter more doubting religious statements like those.

What evidence will you give to those who are questioning?

When it comes to Christmas or Easter times and the mass media want a controversial or alternate view of the birth, death, or resurrection of Christ, to whom will they turn? Billy Graham, John MacArthur, Peter Jensen, Bill Newman, or your pastor? Hardly!

If they want to rattle the cages of Bible-believing Christians, they turn to scholars or prominent religious people with a very different outlook. People like John Dominic Crossan, a co-founder of the unorthodox Jesus Seminar, will be in their sights. Marcus Borg & Crossan co-authored a book last year that gives a daily account of Jesus’ final week in Jerusalem.[11]

Without Easter, they admit, we could not know about Jesus. “Easter is utterly central. But what was it?”[12] It is true that God raised Jesus, but does that mean that a miracle happened? Not at all!

When you read Luke 24:13-53 (the road to Emmaus event), you discover that this is one “case that Easter stories are parabolic narratives”[13] and

it is difficult to imagine that this story is speaking about events that could have been videotaped. . . This story is the metaphoric condensation of several years of early Christian thought into one parabolic afternoon. Whether the story happened or not, Emmaus always happens Emmaus happens again and again—this is its truth as parabolic narrative.[14]

According to these expert scholars, Jesus’ appearing, after his resurrection, to two people on the road to Emmaus was not an actual event. It was metaphor of Christian thought! We could be tempted to respond, “What nonsense!” and leave it there. Where does that leave questioning young believers and older Christians who are shattered by such comments?

Compulsory ministry of apologetics

Following the death of the apostles, early leaders of the churches were people who were converted from paganism and needed to defend the faith (apologists) and correct false doctrine (polemicists). They included Justin Martyr (born ca. 100), Irenaeus (b. 120) , Tertullian (b. 160) and Clement of Alexandria (b. after 150).

Why was it necessary for the early church to defend the Christian faith and correct false teachings? The New Testament exhorted us that this would be the case. When the apostle Paul was in Athens, he “reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace ever day with those who happened to be there” (Acts 17:17). Why did he need to do this? The Epicurean and Stoic philosophers who engaged with him, accused him of being a “babbler” and “a preacher of foreign divinities” (v. 18). Why? “Because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection” (v. 18). Then he debated the philosophers on the Areopagus (Acts 17:22ff).

Why was this necessary? First Peter taught that all Christians should be “always prepared to make a defense (Gk. apologia) to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you” (I Pt. 3:15 ESV).[15]

Paul warned that “the time is coming when people will not endure sound [or healthy] teaching” and “will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (1 Tim 4:3-4).

I am convinced that Christians will be shaken by the heresy of people like Crossan, Borg, and the doubters who are reported in our mass media, if the church does not prepare them as apologists who “make a defence” of their faith. Since the ministry gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher are “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12), church leaders have an obligation to equip believers as apologists in our hostile world.

Our topic is one of the challenges of the first and twenty-first centuries: How do we respond to people like Crossan, Borg and others who deny the bodily resurrection of Christ and want to write it off as a “metaphoric condensation of several years of early Christian thought”?[16]

I thank God for the ministry gift of Christ to the church in Richard Bauckham, who challenges the historical Jesus’ critics of the twenty-first century who are “attempting to reconstruct the historical figure of Jesus in a way that is allegedly purely historical, free of the concerns of faith and dogma”[17] and not according to the Jesus as recorded in the New Testament. Bauckham considers that this enterprise “has been highly problematic for Christian faith and theology.”[18]

What is happening here?

For some historians’ judgements today, such as Crossan, Borg, the late Robert Funk, and other Jesus’ seminar fellows, there is “a Jesus reconstructed by the historian, a Jesus attained by the attempt to go back behind the Gospels and, in effect, to provide an alternative to the Gospels’ construction of Jesus.”[19]

Crossan claims that the “Cross Gospel attempts to write, from prophetic allusions, a first ‘historical narrative about the passion of Jesus. Hide the prophecy, tell the narrative, and invent the history.’”[20] Do you understand the magnitude of what he is saying? The Cross Gospel is the Gospel material that applies to the cross of Christ and he describes it as hiding prophecy and inventing history.

Crossan’s presupposition is that “Jesus, as magician and miracle worker, was a very problematic and controversial phenomenon not only for his enemies but even for his friends.”[21] What about those whom Jesus resurrected such as Lazarus? “A story about a miraculous or physical raising from death could be used or created as a symbol for baptismal or spiritual raising from death,” according to Crossan.[22]

What are these liberal theological scholars doing with the biblical witness and evidence? Bauckham rightly believes that whenever historians consider that biblical texts are “hiding the real Jesus from us,” they at best give us a version of the historical Jesus “filtered through the spectacles of early Christian faith.”[23] At worst, they are developing “a Jesus constructed by the needs and interests of various groups in the early church.”[24] Also, I consider that they are inventing a Jesus who suits their own beliefs. They do not want the biblical texts to speak for themselves and be believed on face value. Crossan regards Christ’s empty tomb stories, not as an event that happened in past history, but as “parables of resurrection, not the Resurrection itself.”[25]

Surely it is reasonable to conclude that when people saw the risen Christ that this evidence should be enough to verify that this actually happened. That’s not how it is for those who attack Christ’s resurrection.

Crossan, for example, rejects the claim that the appearances of Jesus after his resurrection were visions because “they have no marks that you would expect—no blinding lights, no heavenly voice, nobody knocked to the ground.”[26] The stories in John 20 of the race by the two disciples to the empty tomb (Peter and the Beloved Disciple) in addition to that of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (Matt. 28:8-10) “tell us absolutely nothing of historical value about the origins of Christian faith. But they tell us a great deal about the origins of Christian authority. . . They are dramatizations about where power and authority rest in the early Church.”[27]

This kind of conclusion causes me to question the integrity of the one who wrote it. What can we say to those who want to create a Jesus out of their own presuppositions and contrary to the Gospel content?

One of the keys to understanding the Gospels as being authentic and reliable is similar to, but not identical with, our standard for the law courts of Australia. The importance of eyewitnesses can not be over-stated in the courts and in the evidence for the credibility of the truthfulness of the Gospels.

Eyewitness testimony is best

How do we obtain reliable evidence of something that happened in the past such as the German Holocaust of World War 2, the Twin Towers catastrophe of 11th September 2001, the Fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, or the life and times of Jesus Christ and the early church? Samuel Byrskog’s assessment hits the mark:

The major Greek and Roman historians who comment on their own and/or others’ practice of inquiry and sources adhered to Heraclitus’ old dictum. Eyes were surer witnesses than ears. The ancient historians exercised autopsy [eyewitnesses] directly and/or indirectly, by being present themselves and/or by seeking out and interrogating other eyewitnesses; they related to the past visually.[28]

Instead of leaving history to be constructed according to the creative imagination of the scholar, it is better to go to the texts themselves (in this case the New Testament) to “see to what extent they provide a portrayal which identifies certain persons as capable of being eyewitnesses and informants in line of the emerging gospel tradition.”[29]

The Gospels & eyewitness evidence

Let’s check out the evidence. When we search the Gospels for eyewitness testimony to the events and interpretation of Jesus’ life, what do we find?

1. Women as witnesses of the Christ

One of the surprising pieces of eyewitness testimony for an empty tomb of Jesus is the women as witnesses. Rabbi Judah used to praise God daily that he was not created a woman.[30] In a Jewish culture which regarded the witness of a woman as insignificant, it is important to observe that some of the foremost witnesses of the resurrected Christ are women.

All four Gospels include women as witnesses but the males are given more prominence. In Luke, the women who had followed Jesus were there at the burial with spices (23:55-56) and on resurrection morning, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and other women reported the empty tomb to the apostles (24:10-12).

At Mark 15:40, particularly, he has women as eyewitnesses in focus at Christ’s crucifixion: “There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome.” It is important to note that this “looking” by the women is more than a gaze at a distance. The verb, “looking on” is not some passing glimpse but means “to look at, observe, perceive.” Their purpose as eyewitnesses is accentuated by their being mentioned by name.

2. Luke’s Gospel & eyewitnesses

On the human level, Luke explains how he compiled his Gospel under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit,

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught (Luke 1:1-4).[31]

While these verses have come in for a lot of scholarly discussion, the concept being communicated about evidence from “eyewitnesses” is not like that in the law courts of the land. Instead, the autoptai (eyewitnesses)

are simply firsthand observers of the events. (Loveday Alexander offers the translations: “those with personal/firsthand experience: those who know the facts at first hand.”) But the concept expressed in the words, “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses” is clearly the same as in Acts 1:21-22 and John 15:27.[32]

Luke 24:33-34 confirms the importance of eyewitnesses after Christ’s resurrection: “And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, ‘The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!’ I Cor. 15:5 confirms that Christ “appeared to Cephas [Peter], then to the twelve.”

Peter, the apostle, was a reliable eyewitness of Christ’s resurrection and of other evidence (see Acts 1:22; 2:32; 3:15). He was a firsthand observer of the events. The Gospel reliability is confirmed by eyewitness accounts of participants in these unique events of the first century.

Since Luke was not one of the 12 apostles, it is important that one of the sources for his Gospel is that of those who had first hand knowledge of the events in Jesus’ life – the eyewitnesses.

However, let’s not overlook the fact that eyewitness testimony is only as good as the integrity of the eyewitness.

3. John’s Gospel & eyewitnesses

John’s Gospel provides special evidence for the importance of eyewitnesses through John the Baptist:

And John [the Baptist] bore witness: “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God” (John 1:32-34).

The first followers of Jesus, including the apostle John himself, were important eyewitnesses of Jesus’ ministry (see: John 15:27; 19:35; 21:24).

In one of the most detailed recent commentaries on the Gospel of John, Andreas Köstenberger has emphasized the importance of eyewitnesses in the Gospel records:

This role of eyewitness is both vital and humble. It is vital because eyewitnesses are required to establish the truthfulness of certain facts. Yet it is humble because the eyewitness is not the center of attention. Rather, eyewitnesses must testify truthfully to what they have seen and heart—no more and no less. The Baptist fulfilled this task with distinction. The last time he is mentioned in this Gospel, it is said of him that “all that John said about this man [Jesus] is true” ([John] 10:41).[33]

4. Papias & the importance of eyewitnesses

Reading the writings of Papias may not be one of your favourite bedtime stories, but in the writings of this early Christian leader is evidence for the importance of eyewitnesses testimony.

Papias was a bishop of Hierapolis in the Roman province of Asia, close to Laodicea and Colossae, in what is Turkey today. He wrote an important work in the early second century AD, Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord, in five books. While a full copy of the works has not survived, fragments of it are preserved in one of the writings of the very earliest church historians, Eusebius of Caesarea’s, Ecclesiastical History. Notice carefully what Papias wrote:

But I shall not hesitate also to put down for you [singular] along with my interpretations whatsoever things I have at any time learned carefully from the elders and carefully remembered, guaranteeing their truth. For I did not, like the multitude, take pleasure in those that speak much, but in those that teach the truth; not in those that relate strange commandments, but in those that deliver the commandments given by the Lord to faith, and springing from the truth itself.

If, then, any one came, who had been a follower [or, goes closely with, attends][34] of the elders, I questioned him in regard to the words of the elders—[that is] what [according to the elders] Andrew or what Peter said, or what was said by Philip, or by Thomas, or by James, or by John, or by Matthew, or by any other of the disciples of the Lord, and what things Aristion and the presbyter John, the disciples of the Lord, say. For I did not think that what was to be gotten from the books would profit me as much as what came from the living and abiding voice.[35]

In order to understand what Papias is driving at, we need to note the four categories of people he mentions:

(1) those who “had been in attendance on the elders,” i.e. people who had been present at their teaching; (2) the elders themselves; (3) the Lord’s disciples, consisting of Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, John, Matthew, and others; (4) Aristion and John the Elder, who are also called “the Lord’s disciples.”[36]

Based on Papias’ two verbs used in categories (3) and (4), aorist tense (“said”) present tense (“say”), we know that those in category (3) were dead, while Aristion and John the Elder were still teaching. This means that “Papias could learn from their disciples what they were (still) saying. These two had been personal disciples of Jesus but at the time of which Papias speaks were prominent Christian teachers in the province of Asia.”[37] The Apostle John had died but, John the Elder, was alive and teaching in the churches of Asia.

I enthusiastically recommend a read of Richard Bauckham’s, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, to refute those who are suggesting that the Gospels include “creative fiction.”

Why this emphasis on eyewitness testimony?

Perhaps you are questioning why I am placing such emphasis on the record of eyewitness testimonies in the New Testament and particularly in the Gospels.

My point is simple. Some of today’s doubters about the integrity of the Gospels are claiming that the Gospels included creations by the Gospel writers. Crossan admits, “Sometimes people are shocked at the notion that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John might have elaborated upon actual events or even created stories and sayings about Jesus from scratch” by using “creative freedom.”[38]

However, the evidence from Scripture is that the Gospels contain eyewitness accounts of the death, empty tomb, and appearances of the resurrected Jesus.

The doubters are raising considerable questions that may unsettle those who are new in the faith or those whose faith is weak. There is an obligation on Christian leaders to equip God’s people to deal with the attacks on Jesus and the Gospels.

When it is stated by prominent scholars that “eighty-two percent of the words ascribed to Jesus in the gospels were not actually spoken by him, according to the Jesus Seminar,”[39] what are Christian leaders who are concerned about God’s people to do? If only 18% of Jesus’ words in the Gospels are authentic according to these researchers, how can church leaders respond?

At the time of the writing of the Gospels, eyewitness testimony was available that could have been checked with the original apostles, such as Peter and John, and with other eyewitnesses. Generally, people are less willing to question the authenticity of writing or oral tradition if there are witnesses available to verify what has been stated.

There is also an urgent call today for Christian leaders to be engaged in equipping Christians for the ministry of apologetics (see I Peter 3:15; Acts 17:22ff).

Which one will you choose?

(1) “Hide the prophecy, tell the narrative, and invent the history,” OR,

(2) “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.”

Notes:

[1] This information is based on a conversation that I had with a person who claimed to be an evangelical Christian believer.

[2] Ostling, R. N. 1994, ‘Jesus Christ: Plain and simple’, Time, 10 January, Available from: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,979938-3,00.html [cited 7 July 2007]

[3] Crossan J. D. 1998, The Birth of Christianity, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, p. xxviii.

[4] See Crossan’s autobiography, John D. Crossan 2000, A Long Way from Tipperary, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, p. 95.

[5] Crossan J. D. 1995, Who Killed Jesus? HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, p. 189.

[6] Crossan J. D. 1994, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, p. 160.

[7] Bishop Shelby Spong, “Sunday Nights with John Cleary,” 17 June 2001, available from: http://www.abc.net.au/sundaynights/stories/s815368.htm [cited 7 July 2007].

[8] D. Marty Lasley 1999, “Rescuing Christianity from Bishop Kevorkian”, Anglican Voice, 2 June, available from: http://listserv.virtueonline.org/pipermail/virtueonline_listserv.virtueonline.org/1999-June/000415.html [cited 31 July 2011].

[9] Spong in “Sunday Nights with John Cleary,” 17 June 2001, available from: http://www.abc.net.au/sundaynights/stories/s815368.htm [cited 7 July 2007].

[10] Marcus J. Borg & John Dominic Crossan 2006, The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus’s Final Week in Jerusalem, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, p. 218 n16.

[11] Borg & Crossan 2006 (details above).

[12] Ibid., p. 190.

[13] Ibid., p. 200.

[14] Ibid., p. 201.

[15] ESV – The English Standard Version of the Bible. Unless otherwise indicated, all biblical quotations are from the ESV.

[16] See note 14.

[17] Richard Bauckham 2006, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K., p. 2.

[18] Ibid., p. 2.

[19] Ibid., p. 3.

[20] J. D. Crossan 1991, The Historical Jesus, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, p. 372.

[21] Ibid., p. 311.

[22] Ibid., p. 330.

[23] Bauckham 2006, p. 2.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Crossan 2000, A Long Way from Tipperary, p.166.

[26] J. D. Crossan with R. G. Watts 1996, Who Is Jesus? HarperPaperbacks, New York, NY, p. 162.

[27] Ibid., p. 163.

[28] Samuel Byrskog 2002, Story as History—History as Story, Brill Academic Publishers Inc., Boston / Leiden, p. 64, emphasis in original.

[29] Ibid., p. 67.

[30] Ibid., p. 74.

[31] Emphasis added.

[32] Bauckham, p. 117.

[33] Andreas J. Köstenberger 2004, John, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, Michigan, p. 33.

[34] Suggested by Bauckham, p. 15, n17.

[35] Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, vol. 3, ch. 39, vs. 3-4, available from New Advent at: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250103.htm [cited 15 July 2007].

[36] Bauckham, p. 16.

[37] Ibid., p. 17.

[38] Crossan with Watts 1996, Who Is Jesus?, pp. 7-8.

[39] Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar 1993, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus, Macmillan Publishing Company (a Polebridge Press Book), New York, p. 5.

Mary as the mother of God: Is it orthodox theology?

Blessed Virgin Mary

(Blessed virgin Mary, courtesy dreamstime.com)

By Spencer D Gear

Roman Catholics readily accept the designation of Mary as the mother of God. See:

“Mary: the mother of God” (Catholic Answers);
“The Blessed Virgin Mary” (Catholic Encyclopedia).

I got into a discussion on this topic on Christian Fellowship Forum at Christmas time 2011. I as ozspen wrote:

“As for Mary being the mother of God, I consider that is as erroneous as saying that Christmas celebrates the birth of God. Mary was the human mother of Jesus’ humanity. She was not the mother of divinity. She was the mother who enabled Jesus to become the God-man and NOT the mother of God”.[1]

This is Jim’s response on Christian Fellowship Forum:

Of course it is a Biblical doctrine. Jesus is God. (Or, no one can be saved.)
The appellation, “Mother of God” was specifically chosen by the Church to refute the Nestorian heresy that the man Jesus was the Christ but not eternal God. Nestorius taught that God dwelt in Jesus as in a temple, that is, as a totally separate being who indwelt the man Jesus of Nazareth. That notion rendered Jesus “the God bearer” but not the “eternal Word.”

Nestorius taught that the Virgin Mary was, therefore, properly called, Christotokos; the “Christ Bearer.”

The 3rd Ecumenical Council, held in Ephesus in 431, confirmed the dual nature of Christ, that He is wholly man and wholly God, having two natures; human and divine, indivisible yet without confusion or commingling.

The Virgin Mary is, therefore, not the barer of the Christ (Christotokos) but the bearer of the incarnate Word of God. (Theotokos) She is the God-bearer.

The name, “Mother of God,” refers to the fact that Jesus nothing less than the one eternal God. It in no way suggests that the Virgin Mary bore the Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or that the name arises from some Babylonian mythology, as some folks would have us believe.[2]

My response to Jim was:

God cannot have a birth, so the language that a human being, Mary, is the mother of God is paradoxical, an oxymoron. God cannot be born. Jesus, the human being, was conceived in Mary’s womb, but that does not make Mary the mother of God. It makes her the mother of the human personhood, humanity, of Jesus.[3]

Jim’s comeback was:

Jesus was never “the human being.” From the moment of His conception He was “the Word made flesh.” (John 1:14). He was never a human being in whom God dwelt. He was always the “God-man.”
It was just as necessary that Jesus be a human being as it was that He be the eternal God.
You cannot separate “the Man Jesus Christ” out from “the Word became flesh.” That was the error of Nestorius.[4]

Here is my response:

Jesus became a human being. “The Word (Jesus) became flesh” (John 1:14). Jesus was most certainly a human being. That’s what “flesh” is when referring to a child born of a woman.

Your view is that we cannot separate the man Jesus from the Word became flesh. I agree. But it was Mary who gave birth to Jesus’ humanity. She did not give birth to God.

And I appreciate that this hypostatic union is difficult to describe in simple language, but I’m wanting to be careful that I do not convey the idea that God had a beginning. Christmas does not celebrate “the birth of God”. It celebrates the birth of the human Jesus, thus making him the God-man. I am NOT advocating the Nestorian error.[5]

Jim’s reply was:

The term, “Mother of God” does not convey the idea that God had a beginning to anyone who understands that Jesus is God. The Virgin Mary is she who bore “God incarnate.”
It is a logical impossibility for the Virgin Mary to have born the creator of all things eons after He had created all things. God cannot come into existence eons after He created all things.
The only logical conclusion is exactly what the scriptures teach; that the child born of her is God incarnate.
In your care to avoid a logical impossibility, you appear to embrace the teaching of Nestorius even though you do not.
The words “Mother of God” have never, and do not now, suggest that God did not exist before the birth of Jesus.[6]

In 21st century language, a mother is one who gives birth to a human child. So today if we speak of Mary being the mother of God, it conveys a very wrong view of who Jesus Christ is as the God-man.

The biblical view is that Mary was the mother of the humanity of Jesus, come in the flesh, and at his conception-birth, he became the God-man.

We must never forget the prophetic emphasis of Isaiah 9:6, “For to us a CHILD is BORN, and to us a SON is GIVEN”. God the Son is given; Jesus the child is born.

For 21st century people, you will not get me to accept that Mary is the mother of God. It conveys a very wrong understanding to modern people. I understand its historical development, but we need to move to a contemporary statement of the biblical doctrine of the God-man Jesus.[7]

My summary

God, the Son, was God from eternity. Therefore, Christmas cannot be “the birth of God”. That is paradoxical language – an oxymoron. At Christmas, the human Jesus was conceived and born to Mary. She gave birth to the humanity of Jesus and thus the Son, Jesus, the Word, became the God-man.

It is an unbiblical syllogism to say that Mary is the mother of God because God, the Son, is divine and Jesus is the God-man.

See,

“Did God become man after he was born or was he God in Mary’s womb?“
See the interchange between a Roman Catholic apologist and a gospel preacher in, “The evolving doctrine of Mary: A response, counter-response, and challenge“.
This article, “The errors of Romanism” demonstrates that it is an “unbiblical syllogism” to state that Mary is “the mother of God”. This is part of the reason for the unbiblical syllogism:

If A is B and if B is C then A is C: If Mary is the mother of Jesus, and Jesus is God, does it follow that Mary is the mother of God? What kind of logic is this? Seriously thinking about it, if this syllogism is theologically sound, doesn’t it also follow that since Mary is the Mother of God, Mary is also God? Or, since God is Triune, doesn’t it follow that Mary is also the mother of the Holy Spirit, or, Mary, the mother of the Father? Of course they’re not saying that but do you see how inconsistent their position is on this matter? Even though Mary to them is not the source of Jesus’ Divinity, they’re still bent on calling her the Mother of God. Why call Mary God’s mother in the first place? How did it come about? And what are the theological consequences of this unbiblical expression?[8]

Notes:

[1] Christian Fellowship Forum, Contentious Brethren, “The Birth of God”, #5. Available at: http://community.compuserve.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?tsn=2&nav=messages&webtag=ws-fellowship&tid=120946 (Accessed 27 December 2011).

[2] Ibid., #7.

[3] Ibid., #13.

[4] Ibid., #14.

[5] Ibid., #15.

[6] Ibid., #17.

[7] I wrote this in ibid., #19.

[8] I provided this example to Jim at ibid., #18.

Is N T Wright an evangelical?[1]

(N T Wright 2007, courtesy Wikipedia)

By Spencer D Gear

What is N. T. Wright’s position regarding evangelical Christianity? Rowan Williams, (hardly known for any evangelical persuasion) on the back cover of N. T. Wright’s magnificent exposition, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress Press 2003) states:

No one could read this without learning something fresh about almost every verse of the Synoptics, and being provoked into new wrestling with the text … an Evangelical energy that will make it a book for prayerful meditations as well as intellectual stimulus (emphasis added).

You (ebia) may not like what Tom (N T) Wright calls his own theological perspective. He unashamedly calls himself an Anglican evangelical, but you don’t want to be identified as an evangelical, but you want to be associated with Tom Wright’s theological perspective. This is what Tom Wright says about his own view of his theological position:

I believe that to call myself an evangelical Anglican, and/or

an Anglican evangelical, is not to precipitate an identity problem, let alone a crisis, but rather to place myself at that point on the ecclesiological map where I am free to learn how to be a Bible person, a Gospel person, a Church person (emphasis added).[2]

This article associates N T Wright with the “open evangelical” movement.

Ridley Hall at Cambridge University, where Wright has taught, gives this explanation of the meaning of ‘open evangelical’:

We are unashamedly evangelical in our commitment to the authority of Scripture, the need for personal faith, the uniqueness of Christ and the free gift of eternal life for humankind only through his death on the cross. We recognize the truth of orthodox Christian belief as expressed in the early Creeds of the Church. We are open in a number of ways:

Open to the world around us. If we are to communicate the Gospel effectively we must be engaged in a process of “double listening” to the Bible and to the world, hearing the questions and the insights of others around us, and working to hear the message of the scriptures in the light of this.

Open to God’s work in other Christian traditions. Evangelicals do not have a monopoly on the truth, and through partnership and dialogue we seek to be open to learn from what God has done and is doing in other parts of His Church. This refers to other Christians in our own Western setting, but must also increasingly include the voices of our fellow believers in the Two-Thirds World.

Open to playing our full part within the Church of England. Following the lead set by the National Evangelical Anglican Congresses at Keele in 1967 and Nottingham in 1977, Open Evangelicals are committed to involvement in the structures of the Church of England and to making a significant constructive contribution to the direction of the Church’s life. And finally.

Open to God saying new things through the Bible and His Spirit. Being under the authority of scripture means we may need to be ready to change our mind as we understand more fully.

So, in identifying with the theology of Tom Wright, are you distancing yourself from identifying yourself as an Anglican evangelical when you say that you are not an evangelical. If so, you are not associating with the theology of Tom Wright as he defines his own theology.

Ebia did admit:

I don’t choose to use the label about myself [evangelical or liberal theology]. I’m not a big fan of labels.
I’m not a member of the green party either.[3]
I have been an active member, including Warden and lay-preacher, in an evangelical parish for the last few years. I’ve also been teaching Catholic RE. I’m comfortable in both contexts.[4]

Notes:

[1] This was my response (I’m OzSpen) to ebia, Christian Forums, Christian Scriptures, “Documentary Hypothesis” #36, available at: http://www.christianforums.com/t7619203-4/ (Accessed 30 December 2011). Ebia did not want to identify herself as an evangelical (Anglican) or a theological liberal.

[2] Tom Wright 1980. “Justification: The Biblical Basis and its Relevance for contemporary Evangelicalism”, available at: http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Justification_Biblical_Basis.pdf (Accessed 30 December 2011).

[3] However her icon on Christian Forums indicates that she identifies with the Australian Greens Party.

[4] Christian Forums #41, available at: http://www.christianforums.com/t7619203-5/ (Accessed 30 December 2011).

Tolerance, homosexuality and not inheriting the Kingdom of God

God love you

(image courtesy ChristArt)

By Spencer D Gear

It is standard fare to hear of theological liberals who accept and even promote the homosexual lifestyle. But getting acceptance from a supposed Bible-believing pastor is quite another thing. Former homosexual, Joe Dallas, wrote in 1995 in “Answering Pro-Gay Theology”, “The debate over homosexuality and the Bible – specifically, whether or not the Bible condemns homosexual acts in all cases – will do no less than rip the body of Christ apart in the next decade. It will force believers to declare, in black and white terms, where they stand on issues of sexuality and Biblical interpretation” (p. 172).[1] Joe hit the mark – big time!

A theologically liberal Anglican clergyman

We saw this in Brisbane with a liberal Anglican clergyman, Peter Catt, supporting the Queensland Bill for the legalising of homosexual civil unions. See the article, “Anglican Church’s Peter Catt backs gay civil unions at Queensland parliamentary hearing” (Courier-Mail, 11 November 2011). What were some of his arguments?

The same-sex unions’ Bill does not denigrate the legitimacy of marriage;
It extended “liberties” to both same-sex and opposite-sex couples;
“I really don’t see that this impinges on marriage at all”;
This will mean that children in same-sex unions are in a relationship with good values;
Bad marriages did more to undermine the institution of marriage.
He said, “To some extent … [I’m] putting my neck on a chopping block”;

Rev. Dr. Peter Catt is the Anglican Dean of Brisbane. This link provides a reflection on what liberal Anglicanism means: “We strive for open-minded conversation, seek to practice inclusion, and reflect on how we might see our beliefs put into action”. Open-minded, inclusive practice means that homosexuals are included in the name of inclusion, tolerance and open-mindedness. Do you notice what he missed out in what was reported?

The Courier-Mail did not provide one statement from Rev. Dr. Catt on what the Bible says about homosexuality. There was not a word about the content of anything in I Corinthians 6:9-11,

⁹Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, ¹⁰nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. ¹¹And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God (ESV).

Liberal, inclusive, open-mindedness means that the full story of God’s view of homosexuality (and all other sin) as portrayed in the Bible is censored. Also, theological liberalism has a low view of the Scriptures as the authoritative Word of God, so it’s not surprising that that this liberal view downplays the importance of a biblical view of sexuality, including homosexuality. Now, I expect that from a liberal Anglican, but I did not expect something similar from a charismatic preacher.

What about the ‘tolerance’ view from a leading charismatic minister?

Rob Buckingham is the senior pastor at the large charismatic Bayside Church, Cheltenham, Victoria. The Sunday Herald Sun, 17 November 2011, reported on his approach to homosexuals in, “Preaching tolerance bayside”. You can hear this message by Rob Buckingham at Youtube online, ‘Real Christianity is accepting‘. It was preached in 2009. What is your view on this approach?

What some other churches are concluding

a. Australia: There is an assumption among some that the Bible and religious tradition do not teach that homosexual relationships are contrary to God’s plan. A brochure, representative of the Uniting Church in Australia, stated that ‘Homosexuality is a good part of God’s diverse creation’.[2] Adelaide’s new Anglican Bishop, Dr Tim Harris, supports homosexual clergy but they must follow church guidelines and not engage in homosexual sex.[3]

b. The USA: The United Church of Christ’s General Synod (USA), in 2005, affirmed a resolution that there should be “equal marriage rights for all people regardless of gender”, but that denomination does not require pastors to perform homosexual marriage.[4] The United Church of Canada urged its federal government in Ottawa to recognise same-sex relationships.[5] The Presbyterian Church USA in 2011 ratified support for homosexual clergy, stating that

“persons in a same-gender relationship can be considered for ordination,” General Assembly Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons told the Presbyterian News Service. “The gist of our ordination standards is that officers submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and ordaining bodies (presbyteries for ministers and sessions for elders and deacons) have the responsibility to examine each candidate individually to ensure that all candidates do so with no blanket judgments”.

c. Canada: The United Church of Canada has developed a resource that “offers four workshops to help a congregation or a group within the congregation to explore civil recognition of same-sex relationships from a faith and justice perspective. It also offers a process for congregational decision making on same-sex marriage”.

d. Europe: The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany has affirmed that

Gay and lesbian Lutheran ministers in the conservative German state of Bavaria may live with their partners in parish parsonages, but only if they enter into a state-sanctioned civil union. Although the move may seem bold for what is generally considered one of Germany’s most traditional states, Bishop Johannes Friedrich of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria said it was no great departure from existing policies. He noted that the church had already welcomed openly gay ministers and same-sex unions. “We had only left out that a couple could live in a civil union in the parsonage,” he said. To abide by the ruling, gay or lesbian ministers must receive a church blessing for their union and enter into a civil union officially recognized by government officials.[6]

(image courtesy openclipart)

Of the Church of Scotland, the Herald Scotland reported:

THE Church of Scotland is being starved of donations due to the growing schism in the Kirk over moves to allow gay ministers. The Church has been riven with internal divisions since its decision to set up a special commission on same-sex relationship in the ministry in 2009. An internal report by Glasgow Presbytery described how in one church – St George’s Tron in Glasgow – the “general disquiet and sadness about the Church of Scotland’s decision to set up a special commission on this matter had been a contributory factor in several members directing their sacrificial giving and tithing towards the congregation’s evangelical ministry and outreach, rather than the central funds of the Church of Scotland…. “Someone,” he says, “said to me recently, ‘I’m in the wrong church.’ I know a lot of people are feeling like that”.[7]

e. Africa:

The largest Protestant church in Africa grabbed the world’s attention when it publically denounced homosexuality and said people who support gay rights were not welcome in the church—and neither was their money. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT) posted a notice on its Web site entitled: Church rejects homosexuality. “Those in same sex marriages, and those who support the legitimacy of such marriage, shall not be invited to work in the ELCT,” a press release states. “We further reject their influence in any form, as well as their money and their support.” In addition the fastest-growing church in Africa with 5.3 million members said it “supports all those around the world who oppose churches that have taken the decision to legalize same-sex marriage.” This loud warning was seen as a prelude to split from its main financial partner, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), which now supports gay rights.[8] In Uganda in 2010, African Anglican bishops forcefully opposed homosexuality in the church: The question of homosexuality reared its head for the umpteenth time this week at the all African Anglican Church conference that is taking place in Entebbe. Despite pressure from the western world, African bishops have renewed their condemnation of the practice of homosexuality in the church. The widely criticised practice in Africa has been viewed as a threat to the unity of the church. Homosexuality and ordination of women prelates are two of the underpinning practices that have put the Anglican Church at cross-roads over how its pastoral commitments should be exercised. Archbishop Nicholas Okoh of the province of Nigeria says the church has always had differences of opinion over certain issues. Breeding disunity “Homosexuality is not a new phenomenon in the society but the only trouble is that the issues dividing us (church) now are very difficult to handle. They are threatening the unity of the church because they disobey the authority of the scriptures,” says Bishop Okoh. He says homosexuality is a result of some people engaged in making their culture to be superior to the biblical teachings. “It is two sided; while some people want to be obedient to their culture to determine the content of the church, others say no and it must be the guidance of the bible,” he added. The primates describe homosexuality as an imposed interpretation and alien culture that has hindered the growth of an authentic church which could respond to its people. “We are saying homosexuality is not compatible with the word of God. We are saying that this culture of other people is against the traditional belief of marriage held by the Anglican Communion,” says the Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, Henry Luke Orombi. Bishop Orombi says that the Anglican Church will never accept homosexuality because the scriptures too do not allow people of same sex to join in marriage.[9]

f. South America: Time magazine reported in 2010 that

the legislators of the South American nation passed a law on Thursday, July 15 [2010], that made Argentina the 10th country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage. By a vote of 33 to 27, they gave homosexual couples the same inheritance and adoption rights as heterosexual ones. Against the intense and sustained opposition of the church, President Cristina Fernández staked her political reputation on passing the law, deepening her often bitter feud with the country’s Catholic hierarchy. “I am very satisfied. It has been a positive vote,” said the President in Shanghai, where she is on an official tour of China. “This is a positive step that defends the right of a minority.” Her Cabinet chief Aníbal Fernández was slightly more effusive, posting on Twitter, “Same-sex marriage is law in Argentina. Don’t worry, be happy”.[10]

g. However, these views contradict the biblical Scriptures which state that God’s plan for love and sexuality does not include homosexual relationships, either in the Old Testament or the New Testament. See Genesis 19:1-29; Leviticus 18:22; 20:13; Romans 1:24-32; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, and 1 Timothy 1:8-11. The Bible is clear that from the beginning of time, expressions of sexual intimacy were designed for a man and a woman in marriage and there were severe consequences for the practice of homosexuality. h. Heterosexual sin and homosexual sin are so serious that people who continue to practise these sins ‘will not inherit the kingdom of God’ (1 Corinthians 6:9). i. Jesus Christ defined marriage: ‘“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate’ (Matthew 19:4-6). j. A nation that dares to promote the violation of God Almighty’s laws, is calling for judgment (see Romans 1:18-32; Ephesians 5:6; Colossians 3:5-6). k. ‘Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord’ (Psalm 33:12). The New Testament teaches that homosexuals need to be changed by the living Christ and “such were some of you”. Yes, God changes homosexuals. Read the story of a lesbian whom God radically changed: “One woman’s journey out of lesbianism: An interview with Jeanette Howard”.

Notes:

[1] This is from a chapter in the book, Michael Mazzalongo (ed) 1995. Gay Rights or Wrongs: A Christian’s Guide to Homosexual Issues and Ministry. Joplin, MO: College Press Publishing Company.

[2] Uniting Network, NSW/ACT, ‘Gay and Lesbian Couples: Prayers and blessings’, available at: http://www.unitingnetworkaustralia.org.au/resources/UN%20NSW%20Gay%20and%20Lesbian%20Couples.pdf (Accessed 12 March 2012).

[3] David Jean, The Advertiser, ‘New Anglican bishop welcomes homosexual ministry’, November 19, 2011, available at: http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/gay-clergy-practice-what-we-preach/story-e6frea83-1226199415441 (Accessed 12 March 2012).

[4] See the BBC News report, 5 July 2005, US Church backs same-sex marriage, available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4651803.stm (Accessed 12 March 2012).

[5] See the United Church of Canada, available at: http://www.bible.ca/cr-united-Can.htm (Accessed 12 March 2012).

[6] Neils Sorrells 2011. German church allows gay pastors to live with partners. The Huffington Post, 25 May. Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/17/german-church-allows-gay-_n_784518.html (Accessed 15 March 2012).

[7] Herald Scotland 2011. The gay divide, 28 May. Available at: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/the-gay-divide.13864698 (Accessed 15 March 2012).

[8] Wayne M. Anderson n.d. African church waivers on homosexuality. Gnesio [Lutheran], available at: http://gnesiolutheran.com/african-church-waivers-on-homosexuality/ (Accessed 15 March 2012).

[9] Ephraim Kasozi 2012. Uganda: African bishops unite to denounce homosexuality. The Monitor (All Africa). 29 August. Available at: http://allafrica.com/stories/201008290002.html (Accessed 15 March 2012).

[10] Uki Goñi / Buenos Aires 2010. Defying church, Argentina legalizes same-sex marriage. Time, July 15. Available at: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2004036,00.html (Accessed 15 March 2012).

Alcohol and the Christian[1]

By Spencer D Gear

Where do Australians rank in the world of alcohol consumption? This article from the Australian Times [UK] (‘World’s 20 drunkest countries: Where does Australia rank in alcohol consumption?’ 18 May 2014) stated:

Aussies are renowned the world over as prolific beer drinkers (and we make a bloody good drop of wine too). It’s in our culture and runs through our veins, so the stereotype goes. But exactly how does Australia rank against the rest of the world when it comes to alcohol consumption?

Well, a 2014 WHO (World Health Organisation) report looks at alcohol consumed globally by drinkers aged 15 and older (the stats were taken from the years 2010-2011).

So, how did we go? Aussie drinkers consumed 14.5 litres of pure alcohol per capita, per year. This is more than twice the global average of 6.55 litres. But guess what; Australia only ranks 19th out of all countries when looking at alcohol consumed per capita:

Mashable’s map of the WHO report highlighted the “drunkest countries in the world”. Eastern European countries are world beaters, but Australia wasn’t too far behind, as this WHO map shows:

Source: WHO

The map shows how Australia compares to countries outside the Western Pacific Region. So while Aussie drinkers might consume less than most in Eastern Europe, they’re drinking more than Brits (13.8 litres of pure alcohol per drinker) and Kiwis (13.7). We’ll drink to that!

Stats say Aussies favour beer over most drinks, with wine as a close second:

Source: WHO

With men consuming more than double that of women in Aus, we’ve definitely got the boys to thank for this one. Pass us another cold one, would ya mate? [1]

“Alcohol abuse has now become the major drug problem in Australia, with alcohol-related road deaths, hospital admissions and drownings bearing witness to the enormity of the problem. Family breakdowns, domestic violence, homicides and money worries go hand-in-hand with excessive drinking, as do depression, sexual impotence, permanent brain damage and poor dietary habits.” [2]

“Drug misuse [is] estimated to cost Australia more than $14 billion a year in road trauma, health care, lost productivity, and law enforcement.” [3]

Yet, it appears that God wants us to enjoy food and alcohol. Ecclesiastes 9:7 says, “Go then, eat your bread in happiness, and drink your wine with a cheerful heart; for God has already approved your works.” [4]

How do we put these two ideas together? The devastation of alcohol on the Australian community on the one hand, and a God who seems to approve of alcohol use? Is God a big ogre, saying, “Go ahead, enjoy your alcohol, and too bad about what happens in your life and nation?” That doesn’t compute with the compassionate, merciful God of the Bible!

Is the Lord saying it’s perfectly okay for Christians to enjoy their booze — beer, wine and spirits?

My focus will be on wine-drinking. I want to take a serious look at the Bible’s view of alcohol use and what our response should be.

A. WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT WINE DRINKING?

1. It’s a sin to get drunk.

In the Old Testament,[5] the stubborn and rebellious son who received the death penalty for his sin, was also a glutton and a drunkard.

While the O.T. was the covenant of law and Christians are under grace, the New Testament agrees with the Old. I Corinthians 5:11 tells Christians “not to associate” with “a drunkard.”

I Corinthians 6:10: No “drunkards” will inherit the kingdom of God;

Ephesians 5:18, “Do not get drunk with wine.”

Galatians 5:19-21 lists “drunkenness” as one of the “deeds of the flesh.”

The Bible is very clear that drunkenness is a sin that will prevent you from entering heaven.

2. Strong drink is deceptive and sinful.

The Bible has a lot to say about strong drink.

O.T. priests were not to have ‘wine or strong drink’ (Deut. 10:8-9).
Prov. 20:1, “Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler.”
Prov. 31:4-5, Kings are not to drink wine; rulers are not “to desire strong drink.” Why? “Lest they drink and forget what is decreed, and pervert the rights of all the afflicted” (v. 5).
Isa. 5:11, “Woe to those who rise early in the morning that they may pursue strong drink.”
Micah 2:11 says it was the false prophet who said, “I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer.”[6] He’s called a “liar and a deceiver.”

The Hebrew word for “strong drink” is used 23 times in the OT. It refers to “an intoxicating drink made from barley, pomegranates, dates, apples or honey.”

The most common word for “wine” is used 141 times in the OT. “New wine” is used 38 times and refers to “freshly pressed juice of the grape, that is, grape juice that has not yet fully fermented,”[7] e.g. Gen. 27:28; Joel 2:24; Mic. 6:5.

The use of strong drink will deceive you and is sinful.

3. Drinking in excess is wrong.

(public domain)

Amos 6:1, 6: “Woe to you who are complacent in Zion… You drink wine by the bowlful.”[8] Cups were apparently not large enough, so they were drinking from bowls.
Hab. 2:15 states that over-drinking leads to sexual sin.

The Scriptures assert that drinking in excess has these results:

slowing of the thinking processes (Prov. 31:4-5; Isa. 28:7; Hos. 4:11);
a stupor (Jer. 25:27; 51:39);
sickness (Isa. 19:14; 28:7-8; Jer. 48:26);
staggering (loss of balance and loss of mental control) (Job 12:25; Isa.28:7- 8; 29:9);
arrogance (Hab. 2:5);
forgetfulness (Prov. 31:6-7);
confusion & delirious dreams (Prov. 23:31, 33);
sleepiness (Gen. 9:20-24; 19:33);
lack of feeling (Prov. 23:31, 35);
bloodshot eyes (Prov. 23:29-30);
poverty (Prov. 23:20-21).

Biblically, drinking in excess is clearly wrong.

4. Church elders and deacons are to be moderate in their use of wine.

An elder is to be “not given to drunkenness” (I Tim. 3:3, NIV);
A deacon is to be “not indulging in much wine” (I Tim. 3:8, NIV).

God is not saying that church leaders should not drink wine, but that church leaders were to drink wine in moderation.

5. Wine was a medicine in New Testament times.

Paul told Timothy to “use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses” (I Tim. 5:23, NIV). In the ancient world, wine was used to aid the digestive tract, and as a laxative.[9]
Prov. 31:6: “Give strong drink to him who is perishing, and wine to him whose life is bitter.” This is indicating that “strong drink was used as a sedative or pain-killer for the dying, and that wine was also used to calm the nerves.”[10]
I Sam. 16:2 says that wine would “refresh those who become exhausted in the desert” (2 Sam. 16:2, NIV).
What did the Good Samaritan pour on the wounds of the man who had been beaten by thieves (Luke 10:34)? Oil and wine. It was to help heal wounds.

Biblically, wine had at least four uses as a medicine: a laxative, pain-killer, stimulant to refresh, and to help heal wounds.

That is what the Bible says about wine and strong drink.

However, a number of myths about alcohol have crept into the Bible-believing church.

B. WHAT THE BIBLE DOES NOT SAY ABOUT ALCOHOL

1. The Bible does not teach that the wine at the Lord’s supper was unfermented, i.e. non-alcoholic.

I know some fine Christians who insist that alcoholic wine must not be used at the Lord’s Supper. It must be grape juice or some other unfermented drink, they say. People did not know of Sanitarium and Berri grape juice in those days.

I Corinthians 11:21 (one of the chapters dealing with the Lord’s supper) says that some Corinthians were getting drunk at the Lord’s Table. From grape juice? Hardly.

In fact, because of the drunkenness and gluttony around the Lord’s Table, some Corinthians became sick and died (I Cor. 11:30). Judgment fell on the people of God because of their sins around the Lord’s Supper.

It was definitely alcoholic wine used at the Corinthian Lord’s supper.

Perhaps you might observe: That’s not surprising. There were lots of strange things happening in the church at Corinth. They were clearly out of order in many ways. But not once in Paul’s correction of what was happening at Corinth did he say that they must change from alcoholic to non-alcoholic beverage at the Lord’s Supper.

2. The Bible does not teach that the new wine was non-alcoholic.

Some have taught that the old wine was fermented, but the new wine, especially of the NT, was non-fermented. Two passages refute that idea:

Hosea 4:11, “Wine and new wine take away the understanding.”
Acts 2:13. On the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit descended and the people were filled with the Holy Spirit, the crowd said, “They are full of sweet wine [or new wine].”

So, new wine in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, was just as alcoholic/fermented as the old wine.

3. I am not convinced that it is correct to say that the wine Jesus made at Cana of Galilee was non-alcoholic.

Take a look at John 2, especially verses 9-10. It is called “wine” and “good wine.” It was so good that the people at the wedding feast, who expected the cheaper wine to be brought on at the last, found it was as good as what was used at the beginning.

The word for “wine” (oinos) at Cana, is the same word that appears in Mark 2:22 and Eph. 5:18, “Be not drunk with wine.” It’s clearly alcoholic wine.

4. It is not biblical to say that the NT teaches that first century Christians did not use wine at any time.

David Wilkerson, the founder of Teen Challenge and the author of The Cross & the Switchblade, was so concerned about the amount of alcohol drinking among the Christian community, particularly in the U.S.A., that he wrote a strong little book against such drinking that he called, Sipping Saints.

I must be true to the Scriptures. No verse in the Bible states that Christians in biblical times abstained from all wine at all times. The biblical commands are against use of “strong drink” and against drunkenness.

5. Total abstinence from alcoholic beverages was not a condition of membership in the NT church.

Some churches today have a ‘pledge’ in their membership commitment that prohibits the drinking of alcohol. For example, the Salvation Army has this statement regarding church membership. If one wants to become a senior soldier (i.e. church member), he or she pledges to ‘abstain from alcoholic drink, tobacco, the non-medical use of addictive drugs, gambling, pornography, the occult, and all else that could enslave the body or spirit’ (Abstinence from alcohol, Salvation Army New Zealand, Fiji & Tonga). This is the Assemblies of God USA’s statement on ‘abstinence’.

I do not believe it is biblical to conclude that not drinking alcohol should be a condition of church membership.

Nor is it a condition of being a godly believer. That’s a myth perpetuated by some evangelical churches.

Some of you may be wondering where I am heading. Am I advocating that all Christians, including our youth, should be able to drink alcohol freely, as long as they don’t get drunk?

You are jumping to unwarranted conclusions. I have had to be honest with the biblical data.

An important question is:

C. IS WINE IN AUSTRALIA TODAY THE SAME AS NEW TESTAMENT WINE (OINOS)?

Many Christians today assume that the N.T. wine is identical with wine today. That’s an error. Today’s wine, beer and spirits are, by biblical definition, “strong drink.” And use of that is forbidden by the Bible. Wine in the Bible was essentially purified water.[11]

Homer was a Greek poet who lived in the 8th century before Christ. He said that in his day, wine was 20 parts water and one part wine. [12]

A writer after the time of the N.T., Pliny (lived in the 2nd century after Christ), spoke of wine being eight parts water and one part wine.

Aristophanes said wine was three parts water and two parts wine. Other Greek writers said it was three to one.

The average was about three or four parts of water to one part of wine.

In the ancient world, sometimes it was one part water and one part wine — that was considered strong wine. “Anyone who drank wine unmixed [with water] was looked on as a Scythian, a barbarian. That means the Greeks would say today, `You [Australians] are barbarians — drinking straight wine.'”

They said, “Mix it half and half and you get madness: unmixed — bodily collapse.” Here is a pagan saying: “Half and half is madness, and unmixed wine brings death.”

There are several instances in the O.T. where a distinction is made between wine and strong drink (Lev. 10:8-9; Deut. 14:26; 29:6; Judges 13:4).

The Jewish Talmud (writings at the time of the early church) states that the `wine’ of the Passover meal was three parts water and one part wine (cf. 2 Maccabees 15:39).

“In ancient times not many beverages were safe to drink… Water could be made safe in one of several ways. It could be boiled, but this was tedious and costly. Or it could be filtered, but this was not a safe method. Or some wine could be put in the water to kill the germs — one part wine with three or four parts water.”

Wine, beer and spirits in Australia today have a much higher alcoholic content than wine in the N.T. One researcher calculated that “in New Testament times one would need to drink twenty-two glasses of wine in order to consume the large amount of alcohol in two martinis today.”

He put it this way: “In other words, it is possible to become intoxicated from wine mixed with three parts water, but one’s drinking would probably affect the bladder long before the mind.”[13]

What am I saying?

Fermented, alcoholic wine was drunk in Bible times, and the Bible approved of this kind of wine-drinking, as long as one did not become drunk. Drunkenness is clearly sin.

HOWEVER, beer, wine and spirits in Australia today (wine coolers have the same alcoholic content as beer) are what the Bible calls strong drink and is forbidden for believers to use. “Even the ancient pagans did not drink what some Christians drink today.”

(public domain)

D. HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHETHER TO DRINK ALCOHOL OR NOT?

I suggest asking and answering these four questions:

1. What are the facts about alcohol?

“The average Australian family consumes an estimated 936 cans of beer, 61 bottles of wine and 20 bottles of spirits each year, according to the Australian Drug Foundation…
“In 1990, there were an estimated 6600 deaths due to alcohol, representing a quarter of all drug-caused deaths and 5 per cent of all deaths.”[14]
[15] Money: How much does drinking cost you? Just three drinks a day every day will cost you more than $1000 a year. Twenty drinks over a weekend will cost you about the same. Some people spend as much as half their income on alcohol. For them drinking is more important than other activities.
Work: Drinking could cost you your job. If you are even slightly intoxicated at work, or have a hangover, you can’t work properly. Sometimes you can’t work at all and have to take time off. Around 1 in 15 people in the work force have an alcohol problem. These problems cost Australian industry about one billion dollars (Australian currency) a year.
Motor skills: Alcohol affects your co-ordination. It affects your ability to drive any kind of vehicle or operate many kinds of machinery. Alcohol is a common cause of accidents in industry, on the roads and in the home. Alcohol is also a common cause of drowning in Australia.
The law: Alcohol can get you into trouble with the law. Drinking and driving are against the law and offences carry heavy penalties. Alcohol is also a factor in more than half the serious crimes in Australia and in about three-quarters of violent crimes committed.
Personality: Most drugs affect your mood. Alcohol is a mood changing drug, but it is not a stimulant as many think. Alcohol acts as a depressant and slows you down. It can also make you uninhibited and aggressive and you are still responsible for what you do when you have been drinking.
Sex: Alcohol can make you feel less inhibited about sex and more sexually active. But it can often reduce your ability to perform sexually.

It can also make you more aggressive. Alcohol is a major factor in sexual offences like rape, incest and child abuse.

Relationships: Alcohol causes many personal and family problems. It is a factor in many unhappy relationships, causing arguments, violence and poverty.

At least 1.5 million Australians are affected by drinking problems in their families. Two in every five divorces and separations are caused by alcohol problems.

“Relationships often break down in a cloud of violence and abuse. The bottle can replace all thought of your partner, friends, job, family… It can all add up to a pretty ugly and depressing picture.” [16]

Appearance: Alcohol has no real value as a food, but it contains a lot of kilojoules. Drinking can quickly make you put on weight. Heavy drinkers are often fat, and this increases other health risks, like heart disease. Alcohol also affects the condition of your skin.

Health: “Heavy drinking is one sure way of damaging your health. Liver, brain, and pancreas damage; heart and blood disorders; ulcers; and loss of memory are conditions common to many heavy drinkers.”[17] Regular alcohol use can kill brain cells (and you know what that means?) It can attack your liver in a severe way, for some leading to cirrhosis of the liver.

Recently my wife phoned a friend to cancel out on a job the woman was doing for us. The wife was not home, so the message was given to her husband who answered the phone. After my wife got off the phone, she said to me: “He didn’t sound coherent; or was he drunk?”

Sure enough, that woman turned up at our place at the regular time to do the job. My wife said, “But I phoned your husband earlier in the week and left a message for you not to come.” His wife’s reply was: “He never said a word to me about your message. In fact, I said I was coming to your place as I was leaving and he didn’t mention your message. But then, he had his birthday on the day you phoned and he was probably drunk.”

“How you feel tomorrow depends on how you handled the night before.”[18]

So, if you believe it is okay for a Christian to drink alcohol, you must consider these facts.

2. Will my alcohol drinking lead me to sin?

The Bible is very clear — drunkenness is sin and will keep you out of the Kingdom of God. I Cor. 6:12 gives a very clear principle: “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable.”

Even if alcohol drinking is permissible, is it profitable for the Christian? It’s profitable for the publican, but is it profitable for you in your life as a believer?

I Cor. 6:12 adds: “All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything.” If you drink alcohol, you need to ask, “Am I the master of it, or is it the master of me?”

3. Will my drinking alcohol lead anybody else to sin?

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” The Christian answer is a resounding, “Yes.” Phil. 2:4, “Do not merely look out for your own personal interests but also for the interests of others.” If you drink alcohol, are you considering “the interests of others” (spouse, children, boss, fellow employees, friends, mates who play sport with you, etc.) or is it for your own indulgence and pleasure?

If you are a genuine Christian concerned about your impact on and witness in this city, you must take seriously Romans 14:21: “It is good not to eat meat or to drink wine, or to do anything by which your brother stumbles.”

I have raised three teenagers. I would not dare give my children the example of seeing alcohol in my refrigerator. In this alcohol-soaked country, what a pathetic model I would be to say to my kids: alcohol is destroying families across the nation; accidents, homicides, and abuse are epidemic in Australia, associated with alcohol — but it’s okay for Christians to drink. I believe that is hypocritical.

I must ask: Will my drinking cause anybody else to sin? Even if it is not a problem to me, is it possible that I would cause somebody else to stumble? I’m not talking about mature Christians being offended by your stance, but causing another brother or sister to stumble in his/her Christian growth.

4. Can alcohol drinking be done to the glory of God?

I Cor. 10:31, “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” If you as a Christian cannot be praising God and glorifying Him while you are drinking alcohol, then it is not good for you.

E. WHY I DO NOT DRINK ALCOHOL

This has been my choice and does not make me a better Christian than another. I had one shandy as a 10-year-old kid at a Christmas party where we used to live. I drank a glass of champaign when I was about 24 years old and attended the opening of a bridal boutique when I was program manager at a radio station.

Glass and keys

I am a teetotaller because:

1. I am convinced . . .

There is a strong biblical argument for Aussie alcohol being the equivalent of “strong drink” in the Bible. As a committed Christian, God says I should not have ‘strong drink’ and I must be obedient. My life will always be the loser if I disobey the Lord’s commands. I am committed to pleasing Him, no matter how nice a glass of wine may be or feel. Christ is my Master.

2. As a counsellor for 34 years . . .

I have counselled enough people and families whose lives have been wrecked by grog, to cure me from any alcohol use for the rest of my life. Heroin, marijuana, LSD, amphetamines are dangerous drugs. But the number one drug problem in Australia is alcohol abuse.

I counsel young people to keep away from that dangerous mind-altering drug marijuana. But young people have every right to say to adults: “You hypocrites! You approve of your drug, alcohol, and look at what it does to families and the nation! And you disapprove of our drug, marijuana.”

It’s very difficult to convince young people to quit marijuana use when adults are into booze. However, it’s a myth to say that marijuana is no more harmful than cigarettes or alcohol.

3. We in Australia have plenty of wholesome non-alcoholic beverages available.

4. Australia is an alcohol-soaked culture.

“Heroin is not the biggest drug problem among young people. Nor is marijuana [although it is a dangerous mind-altering drug.] The use of ICE has tragic consequences.

However, “the highest contributor to death and serious injury among Australia’s youth is alcohol, according to a NSW Health Department document: “In the 15-34 age group [in NSW], of 1409 drug-related deaths [in one year], 915 were alcohol-related.”[19]

This NSW document said, “It is imperative that control elements for reduction or prevention of harm be developed.” In the A.C.T., a 1991 schools’ survey of alcohol and drug use

“Showed that 40 per cent of boys in Years 7 to 11 and 30 per cent of girls reported binge drinking in the four weeks before the survey. Binge drinking is having five or more drinks in a row. . . Studies showed that most youth tended to do their drinking at home or at a friend’s place with no supervision This indicated that action was needed at a community level to encourage more responsibility among parents.[20]

“A study of 5000 Victorian students found half of year 11 students drink regularly, 46 per cent have travelled in a car with a driver, often a parent, affected by alcohol, and 24 per cent had been sexually harassed by a drunk person.”[21]http://www.normgeisler.com/

The New South Wales Government was calling for “control elements for reduction or prevention of harm” from alcohol use. The ACT Government is calling for “action . . . at the community level to encourage more responsibility among parents.” How then can we, who love Jesus, be contributing to the problem rather than preventing it?

I refuse to be a model of a destructive, alcohol-drinking lifestyle for my children, the youth I counsel, and the Christian community of which I am part.

5. Total abstinence is the safer policy.

Would you fly in an aeroplane if you knew there was a 1 in 15 chance that the plane would crash? The chances of a plane crashing are much lower than that. But the chances of having an alcohol problem in the work force are 1 in 15.

Australia is an alcohol-saturated society.

Will you as Christians join me in a vow never to use alcohol (or any illegal drug)? Will you voluntarily abstain from all alcohol consumption?

This abstinence does not make you more spiritual. Nor does the Bible say Christians must abstain from all alcohol. This is our voluntary protest against the abuse of alcohol in Australian society.

One of the main reasons people drink alcohol is to provide relaxation and enjoyment. Is God a cosmic killjoy who wants to zap you of peace and enjoyment? Absolutely not!

He wants you to experience genuine peace and real joy — the peace of God and the joy of Christ. As Eph. 5:18 puts it, “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit” (NIV).

GOD WANTS YOU TO HAVE PEACE WITHOUT GOING TO PIECES.

The Daily Telegraph (Sydney Australia) reported this incident (Accessed 6 February 2016):

Andrew Johns allegedly passes out at Toowoomba airport

RADIO broadcaster Ray Hadley [2GB, 4BC & network stations] has lashed out at rugby league immortal Andrew Johns for lewd comments allegedly made by the former footy star to a mother at a Queensland airport.

Describing the comments as “abhorrent”, the 4BC announcer chastised Johns on air for his actions.

The Channel 9 commentator is said to have approached the mother of three at a Toowoomba airport, asking her for a kiss before inquiring whether she had given birth via caesarean.

King David said of God (Ps. 16:11): “You show me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”[22]

It is shameful for Christians to have to resort to grog to relax when the “peace of God, which surpasses all understanding” is available to them.[23]

It is an insult to the Holy Spirit when we have to seek superficial pleasure from stimulants when He can give us the permanent joy of the Holy Spirit.

I enthusiastically recommend the article by Norman Geisler, ‘To Drink or Not to Drink: A sober look at the question‘.

**GOD DESIRES THAT YOUR PLEASURES BE SPIRIT-DIRECTED, NOT SELF-CENTRED; THAT THEY BE HELPFUL, NOT HARMFUL.**

Notes:

[1] I retired in 2011 as an Australian family counsellor and counselling manager. I am indebted to the article, ‘A Christian Perspective on Wine-Drinking‘, Norman L. Geisler, Bibliotheca Sacra, January-March, 1982, pp. 6-56, that helped me clarify the differences between wine and strong drink, biblically. I have taken many of Geisler’s ideas and contextualised them for the Australian scene. For a different perspective, see: ‘A “Biblical” View of Alcohol: Another Thought’ (Preston Sprinkle, 2014).

[2] “A devil too many of us know well,” The Canberra Times, March 3, 1992, p. 21.

[3] “Legal drug abuse more costly than illegal use,” The Canberra Times, April 7, 1993, p. 19.

[4] Unless otherwise stated, all Bible quotations are from the New American Standard Bible.

[5] Deuteronomy 21:20-21.

[6] New International Version (NIV).

[7] Geisler, p. 47.

[8] NIV.

[9] Geisler, p. 48.

[10] Ibid.

[11] The following details are taken from Geisler, pp. 50-51.

[12] Odyssey 9: pp. 208-9.

[13] Robert H. Stein, in Geisler, p. 51.

[14] “Legal drug abuse more costly than illegal use,” The Canberra Times, April 7, 1994, p. 19.

[15] The following information is from the Queensland Health Pamphlet on Alcohol, reproduced in Drug Stop insert in the Fraser Coast (Maryborough, Qld.) Chronicle.

[16] “How will you feel tomorrow?” A pamphlet published by The Drug Offensive: A Federal and State initiative, p. 6. To obtain: outside Brisbane in Queensland, phone (008) 177 833.

[17] As in note [15], p. 4.

[18] Ibid.

[19] “Alcohol strategy to combat biggest threat to young people,” The Canberra Times, July 25, 1992, p. 5.

[20] “Call to limit access to alcohol,” The Canberra Times, December 4, 1992, p. 2.

[21] “Alcohol a part of teen lives,” The Canberra Times, October 1, 1993, p. 18.

[22] New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (NRSV).

[23] Phil. 4:7, NRSV.

Christian denominations and the church of the first century?

Episcopal Church (Wikipedia)

By Spencer D Gear

Does this thought ever flash through your Christian mind, “Is the church of today anything like the church of the first couple of centuries of the Christian era?” Were there clergy? What about church buildings? When did architecture and cathedrals enter Christianity? They’ve entered my mind many times and I’ve concluded that today’s churches and denominations are a country mile from New Testament Christianity.

Yes, we read about apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers (Eph. 4:11) but their purpose was to work themselves out of a job as they were designed to ‘equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ’ (Eph. 4:12 ESV). How close is that to what is happening in your church? How many of your pastors/teachers/clergy are spending their lives equipping believers for ministry? Or, how many of them are increasing their power through prominent pulpit or mass media ministries?

We should be brave enough to confront the issues. Has the church worldwide drifted from its biblical goals and purpose? How do the 100 million Christians in China compare with what is happening to churches and denominations in the West? What about the persecuted Christians of the Middle East and in countries such as North Korea? Are these churches closer to the biblical model than in my country of Australia?

One Christian Forum has been pondering this question, “What denomination today is closest to First Century Christianity?” That’s a very good question. There have been many responses.

My own contribution has been that I would choose the house church movement. Any church that exalts the clergy is not, in my view, closest to first century Christianity.

First century Christianity had this approach to what happens when the church gathers:

What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up (1 Cor. 14:26 NIV).

Every member ministry was the norm of the early church. That is not the approach of the Eastern Orthodox Church. But it is what happens in house churches.

There is evidence of churches meeting in homes prior to AD 70. See Acts 2:46-47; 5:42; 8:3; 12:12; 16:40; 20:7-8, 20; Rom 16:3-5; 1 Cor 16:19; Col 4:15; Philemon 2; 2 John 9-11.

The contemporary church is so far removed from this every-member involvement when the church gathers and, sadly, many charismatic-pentecostals are moving away from it when the church gathers on Sunday. Some still maintain this 1 Cor. 14:26 openness to the gifts in small groups.

Why do you think that the church has moved from this norm of what happened in the early church? One standard answer is that many of these gifts have ceased. My understanding of the cessation of these gifts is they will cease when the poor reflection becomes: “We shall see [Him] face to face” and then be fully known (1 Cor. 13:12). See my articles:

In John Shelby Spong’s book, A New Christianity for a New World (HarperSanFrancisco 2001), he throws out core Christian beliefs such as the atonement (an “offensive idea”, p. 10) and the bodily resurrection of Christ, yet still wants to say: “I am a Christian. I believe that God is real. I call Jesus my Lord. Yet I do not define God as a supernatural being. I believe passionately in God. This God is not identified with doctrines, creeds, and traditions” (Spong 2003:3, 64, 74).

Spong’s primary question to answer in this book is: “Can a person claim with integrity to be a Christian and at the same time dismiss, as I have done, so much of what has traditionally defined the content of the Christian faith?” (p. 7)

Jack Spong was no lightweight in the liberal Episcopalian Church in the USA, being bishop of Newark NJ. For Spong to be able to teach and preach such heresy as a bishop in the Episcopalian church is an indicator of the sickness in that denomination. But other denominations have the same problem as I have indicated with some of the Anglicans and Uniting Church in Australia. Take a look at the theological heresy that is taught in the United Church, Canada.

I’m not sure that people are aware of the theological sickness in many denominations that have departed from the faith.

Take a read of John Dominic Crossan’s theology (The Historical Jesus; Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography; Who Killed Jesus? The Birth of Christianity). He taught biblical studies in the Roman Catholic, DePaul University, Chicago, for 26 years.

One person in this thread stated, “I don’t see denominations as a problem. I see them as a solution”. My response is:

Yep, denominations like:

The Presbyterians in New Zealand that produced Lloyd Geering;
USA Episcopalians that produced John Shelby Spong;
German Lutherans that produced Rudolph Bultmann;
Roman Catholics in Ireland and the USA that produced John Dominic Crossan;
Denominational leaders and clergy that reject Christ’s virgin birth;
The Uniting Church in Australia that produces clergy like John K Williams;
The Presbyterian Church in the USA whose heretical teachers caused the orthodox J. Gresham Machen to expose the heresy in Christianity & Liberalism.

Right! We need denominations like we need a sore head!

Adoption – How Sweet the Sound!

gograph.com

By Desley Gear

17 March 2008

“Adoption” – to me, one of the sweetest words in the English language. It is a reminder of two of the best things that ever happened in my life. The first, and of greatest importance, is of course being adopted into the family of God. Because of His marvellous grace, He adopted me into His family and I have found Him to be the same wonderful Heavenly Father that millions of others have, throughout the world, from the beginning of time.

The second happened in time some years earlier. At the age of three weeks, I went home to join a family of a mother, father, and two older brothers. My parents had been called in to the hospital within a couple of days of my birth. They would have taken me home immediately, but the matron advised that they should go on their planned 2-week holiday without me, since it was quite a cold winter, and I was fairly small. They could hardly wait for that holiday to end!

My childhood was a very happy one. I think it would be fair to say that I was spoilt, though I was never allowed to get away with bad behaviour. Mum was a strict disciplinarian, but she was also a doting mother, who loved to dress me up like a little doll. To this day, I still have the two books she kept with lists of all my birthday/Christmas/Easter gifts, and of all the dresses she made for me (with a description of colour, style, trimming, etc., and the years in which she made them).

She had had several miscarriages over the years after my brothers were born; one of her pregnancies went to 6 or 7 months. But she was determined one way or another to have a girl. When the doctor said “no more”, they decided to apply for adoption. This was over fifty years ago, and not many unmarried mothers kept their babies back then, so the waiting time was usually not much more than a year. I grew up in the security of a loving home with parents and brothers who cared greatly for me.

At 18, I married my childhood sweetheart, on my parents’ 33rd wedding anniversary. No prouder Dad ever walked his little girl down the aisle! My being married didn’t stop Mum and Dad from being there whenever we needed them and showing interest in everything we did. Four years later when our first of three children was born, they became doting grandparents, as they already were to their other grandchildren.

One day our daughter asked me, “Mummy, who was your ‘real’ mother?” My reply was, “You know my ‘real’ mother; Grandma is my real mother. She’s the one who took me into her home and who loved and cared for me, and who put up with me when I didn’t deserve her love. And that’s what makes a ‘real’ mother.”

In the 1980s my husband had major heart surgery three times – once while we were living overseas. My parents’ immediate response was to travel halfway round the world and be with us while he had the operation and for a few weeks after. Their support was invaluable, since we were only in our 30s with young children and no family outside Australia.

My mother died at age 77. I wish she could have lived longer and that I could have cared for her in her old age, but that wasn’t to be. Dad lived another 14 years, and for the last 12 of those years, I had the privilege of caring for him. His last 2 years were very full-on care; he was able to do almost nothing for himself – showering, toilet, brushing teeth. But every day I thanked God that I was able to do these things for him, and in some small way to express gratitude for all that he did for me throughout my life.

With a somewhat debilitating, terminal illness myself, there were occasional days when I couldn’t get out of bed. And then my husband had two of us to care for, as well as going to work. But we managed through those difficult days.

We always talked about and looked forward to celebrating Dad’s 100th, but 2 years ago he passed away at 95. His mind was so sharp right to the end, even though the body had become weak. He was a gentle, happy man, who was admired and respected not only in his home town where he lived his whole life, but throughout the state and beyond. His formal education finished at grade 6, but that didn’t stop his creativity. Some of his early machinery inventions became the basis for later developments in an industry where the family name has become known in several countries.

In the last few years of his life he went to day respite a few times a week, to enjoy the company of other elderly folk, and to give me a break. One day, each client at the centre was asked what they considered to be their greatest achievement in life, or the best day of their life. He came home and told me that his answer was, “The day we adopted Desley.” I thought he might have said, “My wedding day” or “The day I demonstrated my first successful machine”. But no, the day he got his little girl was his best day, according to him.

Do I have any regrets about being adopted in infancy? Yes, as I look back I have two regrets – 1) that I was a cheeky, disobedient child and a rebellious, obnoxious teenager; and 2) that I didn’t have more years to show appreciation and love for my wonderful parents.

I have several friends aged between mid 30s and mid 60s who also are adopted. All of them have had good lives with their adoptive families. Two traced their birth mothers; one had a very happy experience, the other most disappointing.

Have I ever tried to find the lady who gave me up for adoption? Yes, I took the initiative to track her down and went to meet her in a nursing home, but she did not want to admit my birth. It may be helpful for my children to have some knowledge of the medical history of their blood relatives. However, I just want to say “thank you” from the bottom of my heart, for my birth mother’s unselfishness in handing little Jennifer over to the two best parents any girl ever had.