Monthly Archives: January 2012

Polemics

Four reasons why positing the resurrection best explains the historical data

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From Ratio Christi at Ohio State University.

Introduction:

When it comes to the Christian faith, there is no doctrine more important than the resurrection of Jesus. Biblical faith is not simply centered in ethical and religious teachings. Instead, it is founded on the person and work of Jesus. From a soteriological perspective, if Jesus was not raised from the dead, we as His followers are still dead in our sins (1Cor.15:7).

He lists four pieces of “historical bedrock”. These are the facts that even really skeptical atheists like Bart Ehrman and James Crossley will give you in a debate.

  1. The post-mortem appearances
  2. Paul’s use of the Greek word “soma”, which means body
  3. Identification of Jesus as divine by the earliest Christian community
  4. The rapid growth of early Christianity even after its founder was dead

This is a very very minimal set. He did not even use the burial, much less the empty tomb, which is a harder sell.

Here’s a closer look at Reason #2 of 4:

2.The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus Explains Paul’s Use of the Word “Soma”

Whenever the New Testament mentions the word body, in the context of referring to an individual human being, the Greek word (soma, always refers to a literal, physical body). This is significant because Paul uses the word soma to describe the resurrection body of Jesus (1 Cor.15:42-44).Greek specialist Robert Gundry says “the consistent and exclusive use of soma for the physical body in anthropological contexts resists dematerialization of the resurrection, whether by idealism or by existentialism.” (1) Furthermore, N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God shows that the Greek word for resurrection which is “anastasis” was used by ancient Jews, pagans, and Christians as bodily in nature, with this being the case until much later(A.D. 200).

The only explanation that can be given to the emphatic insistence on the early proclamation of the bodily resurrection of Jesus, rather than translation or even a spiritual body is the fact that the apostles did in fact actually witness a material resurrection.

And one Bible passage from his Reason #3: 1 Corinthians 8:4-6.

4So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one.

5For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”),

6yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

1 Corinthians is unanimously viewed by historians across the ideological spectrum – from evangelical to atheist – as a genuine epistle written by Paul, around 55 AD. I think this passage argues strongly that the earliest Christians thought of Jesus as other than an ordinary man. And the Ratio Christi post has many more passages to support Reason #3 as well.

Read the whole thing. If you want to see a great debate on the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus, you should watch William Lane Craig debate James Crossley.

News

Norwegian authorities seize Indian couple’s children for feeding them by hand

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From the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

An Indian couple have had their children taken away by Norwegian social workers because they were feeding them with their hands and sleeping in the same bed as them.

Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya lost custody of their three-year-old son and one-year-old daughter eight months ago after authorities branded their behaviour inappropriate.

[…]Norwegian Child Protection Services removed the youngsters from their home in May, 2011, leaving their parents horrified with the outcome of the report.

Father Anurup told Indian television channel NDTV: ‘They told me ‘why are you sleeping with the children in the same bed?’.

‘(I told them) this is also a purely cultural issue. We never leave the children in another room and say goodnight to them.’

Anurup added: ‘Feeding a child with the hand is normal in Indian tradition and when the mother is feeding with a spoon there could be phases when she was overfeeding the child.

‘They said it was force feeding. These are basically cultural differences.’

[…]The parents have been told that they can only see their children twice a year, for an hour during each visit until the kids turn 18 when they will no longer be bound by the current restrictions under current Norwegian law.

Norway’s Child Protective Service has come under much scrutiny in the past for excessive behaviour in their handling of child cruelty.

Lawyer Svein Kjetil Lode Svendsen said: ‘There has been a report in UN in 2005 which criticized Norway for taking too many children in public care.

‘The amount was 12,500 children and Norway is a small country.’

With the Bhattacharyas’ visas set to expire in March, they have revealed that they will be forced to stay against their will until the return of their infants.

Norway is a welfare state with a big intrusive government and small citizens. But Norway isn’t the only European country that likes to seize children from their families.

This article about homeschooling in Sweden was just posted this week.

Excerpt:

A leader of Sweden’s Liberal Party last week called for a change in the country’s social services law so that the government can take children away from home-schooling families more easily by allowing social workers to do so.

The call for the change comes amidst already stringent penalties in Sweden for home schooling. The Home School Legal Defense Association and Alliance Defense Fund have applied to the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of one family whose child was abducted by the government in 2009 and have filed a brief in a Swedish appellate court on behalf of another family fined an amount equivalent to $26,000 U.S..

Liberal Party politician Lotta Edholm called for the change to the country’s social services law in a Jan. 10 column in Aftonbladet, a prominent Swedish newspaper. Edholm then wrote on her blog: “Today I write with Ann-Katrin Aslund on Aftonbladet’s debate page that the social services law should be amended so that social services are able to intervene when children are kept away from school by their parents—often for religious or ideological reasons.”

This kind of thing happens all the time in Europe. It happens in Germany. It happens in France. It happens in the UK. This is what secular leftists believe – that children are the property of the state, citizens of the world, and they should not be overly influenced by their parents. It’s the government’s job to decide what children will believe, not the parents. The parents are just there to work to pay the taxes for the public day cares, public schools and social workers.

News

In Canada, a revolt against global warming socialism creates an economic boom

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Before we look at Canada, let’s first look at how Barack Obama has decided to appease his green socialism supporters by rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline.

Excerpt:

The Obama administration rejected the long-delayed TransCanada oil sands crude project, a decision welcomed by environmental groups but blasted by the domestic energy industry.

After delaying the project past the November 2012 election, President Barack Obama was compelled by Congress to decide by Feb. 21 on whether to approve the pipeline that would sharply boost the flow of oil from Canada’s oil sands.

[…]Republicans, in turn, blasted Obama for breaking his promise to create jobs by scuttling the $7 billion pipeline.

House Speaker John Boehner, R.-Ohio, said Republicans will keep fighting for the Keystone pipeline because it is “good for the U.S. economy because it would create thousands of jobs.”

“All options are on the table” for fighting for the sands pipeline between the western province of Alberta and Houston, Boehner told reporters. “This is not the end of the fight.”

Republicans in the Senate have said they could legislate an approval of the pipeline that could get around any rejection by President Obama.

Just to be clear, this pipeline would be paid for with billions of dollars from a Canadian company based in Calgary, Alberta – the Houston of the North. They would pay for the pipeline, they would create the jobs here, and it would cost us nothing to take their money. This would not only cut gas prices for consumers, but it would help us to stop sending money abroad to countries that don’t like us very much.

How are the Canadians responding to Obama’s stupidity? They are already talking about building the pipeline to the west coast and selling their oil to China.

Canadian conservatives have no time for global warming nonsense.

Excerpt:

It is a cliché in journalism to declare metaphorical wars at the drop of a news release. In this case, it looks like war is exactly what Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver launched Monday in an unprecedented open letter warning that Canada will not allow “environmental and other radical groups” to “hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda.”

[…]Mr. Oliver took straight aim at a troubling trend in Canadian environmentalism — the foreign funding of Canadian green activist groups with the express purpose of shutting down Canadian resource development…  “These groups,” said Mr. Oliver, “seek to exploit any loophole they can find, stacking public hearings with bodies to ensure that delays kill good projects. They use funding from foreign special interests to undermine Canada’s national economic interest. They attract jet-setting celebrities with some of the largest personal carbon footprints in the world to lecture Canadians not to develop our natural resources.”

And they pulled out of the Kyoto Accord.

Excerpt:

Canada will formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, the Minister of the Environment has said.

Peter Kent said the protocol “does not represent a way forward for Canada” and the country would face crippling fines for failing to meet its targets.

[…]The protocol, initially adopted in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, is aimed at fighting global warming.

[…]He said meeting Canada’s obligations under Kyoto would cost $13.6bn (10.3bn euros; £8.7bn): “That’s $1,600 from every Canadian family – that’s the Kyoto cost to Canadians, that was the legacy of an incompetent Liberal government”.

They want jobs. They don’t have money to burn on a dozen Solyndras. They don’t pass job-killing regulations on energy companies.

Since 2006, the Canadians have been electing and re-electing Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper. The man has a BA and MA in economics, and he comes from the same fold as Reagan and Thatcher on fiscal conservativism and foreign policy. He has no patience for leftist community organizers like Obama. The Conservatives were re-elected again in 2011, this time with a majority government. Their House of Commons is majority conservative. Their Senate is majority conservative. And Harper has been packing the Supreme Court with fresh conservatives, every time there’s a vacancy. Canada’s economy is booming. And Canadians know how to keep it booming – they are cutting corporate taxes to 15% – less than half of our 35% corporate tax rate. We could be taking their money for the Keystone XL pipeline right now, but we’re not, because we elected an anti-business ideologue instead of an economist.

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