Tag Archives: Apologetics

Polemics

How do you respond to the conquests and wars in the Old Testament?

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Joe Coder has an article about it on his web site.

Here’s his overview:

In the Old Testament are the military campaigns of Israel inconsistent with being led by a just and loving God, and inconsistent with his own commands?  Here, I would like to make the case for consistency and justness.

1. The nations of Canaan were evil, harming others, and needed to be stopped.  They had carried out incest with children/grandchildren and performed child sacrifice by fire. (Lev 18:6-30, Deut 12:31, Deut 18:9-10, Psalm 106:35, 37-38)  They launched unprovoked attacks on Israel (Ex 17:8-9, Num 21:1, Num 21:2-23, 33) and even guerrilla attacks against Israel’s “stragglers in the rear of the march when you were exhausted and tired.” (Deut 25:18)

2. Warfare language was likely rhetorical.  There are five reasons to support the rhetorical nature of languge such as “completely destroy” (Hebrew תחרימו, literally “ban”) in Deut 20:17.  It likely meant a destruction of armed soldiers, buildings, and religious icons.

  1.  Semitic language professor and NIV, NAB, and ESV bible translator Richard Hess argues that Hebrew “ban” is “stereotypical for describing all the inhabitants of a town or region, without predisposing the reader to assume anything further about their ages or even their genders” and “need not require that there really were children, senior citizens, or women there who were put to death” even when followed by the terms “men and women” (Joshua 8:25) or “young and old” (Joshua 8:25).
  2. In Israel’s destruction of enemies we see phrases like “left no survivor” and “utterly destroyed all who breathed” (Joshua 10:40, Judges 1:8).  But in Joshua 21:12-13 the author has no problem telling us these people were still there afterward: “if you ever turn away and make alliances with these nations that remain near you… God will no longer drive out these nations”.  In 1 Sam 15:3-4 Israel was to “strike down the Amalekites. Destroy everything that they have. Don’t spare them. Put them to death–man, woman, child, infant, ox, sheep, camel, and donkey alike.”  In 15:8 Saul “executed all Agag’s people” and Agag himself was killed in 15:33.  But later in  1 Sam 27:8 we’re told they’re still there and ” had been living in that land for a long time”.  Hundreds of years later in Esther 3:1 we’re even told Haman was an Agagite, a descendant of the Amalekite king Agag.
  3. Most verses on the subject speak of “driving out” and “disposessing” the land rather than language suggestive of genocide.  E.g. Num 33:51-53, in “the land of Canaan, you must drive out all the inhabitants of the land before you. Destroy all their carved images, all their molten images,  and demolish their high places.  You must dispossess the inhabitants of the land and live in it, for I have given you the land to possess it.”  It’s the same story in Lev 18:25, Num 23:31-32, Deut 6:19, 9:4, 18:12, Joshua 3:10, and 23:9.
  4. Jer 4:20 suggests inhabitants fled before armies arrived:  “At the sound of the horseman and bowman every city flees; They go into the thickets and climb among the rocks”
  5. Deut 7:22 specifically says that Israel was forbidden to “destroy them all at once” and instead they would be expelled “little by little”.

So either all of these verses contradict one another, or the conquest language was rhetorical.

3. Many of the “cities” were probably military outposts.  For example with Jericho and Ai, Richard Hess argues there are no references to noncombatants (apart from Rahab), no archaeological evidence of non-millitary use, the term melek (Hebrew מלכי)  for “king” of the cities often meant mean a military leader in Canaan (e.g. in Joshua 2:2), they were located at defensive positions, and Jericho and Ai weren’t described as a large city as Gibeon and Hazor explicitly were.

4. A just God requires wrath.  It’s not possible to have a God who is just but not wrathful–otherwise wrongdoers continue unabated. Paranormal investigator James Randi wrote in Skeptic Magazine, “I accuse the Christian god of murder by allowing the Holocaust to take place” yet Dawkins and Hitchens condemn God for judgment against the Canaanites.  Which is it? Ultimately the the problem is we view death as the ultimate judgment, when in the theological context of the bible it’s only a graduation to what’s next with accountability for what we’ve done with what we were given.

The four points are developed with links for support. If you get this a question a lot, it’s a good resource to bookmark.

Mentoring

A friend of mine is learning apologetics, here’s what she is using to learn

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The woman I am mentoring the most energetically in apologetics sent me this list of resources below. I was so impressed by how disciplined she is that I wanted to post it.

This is what she does every day:

  • William Lane Craig’s Defenders podcasts (1 or 2 a day)
  • Bible in a year (a few chapters as per the schedule)
  • Read/listen through 6 chapters of the Bible, 20 times
  • Is God Just a Human Invention? by Morrow and McDowell (a few chapters per day)
  • True U DVDs (all 3 volumes) by Focus on the Family (one episode per day)
  • Knowing God by J. I. Packer (one chapter per day)
  • Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer (one chapter per day)
  • Signature in the Cell by Stephen C. Meyer (one chapter per day)

In addition to that, she is on chapter 3 of Scott Klusendorf’s “The Case for Life”. We are also working our way through “Money, Greed and God” by Jay W. Richards, we are on chapter 4 there.

She has books, podcasts, and DVD lectures in there. I also got her some debates on DVD to see what the other side can say. I got her the Lennox-Dawkins debate from the Oxford Museum of Natural History and the Craig-Hitchens debate at Biola University.

When we started out, I was trying to go over the chapters with her to get her started, but now she is busy learning these things on her own. I didn’t even know about most of this stuff that is on her list.

So here are some points I want to make about this.

  1. I think it’s good for Christians to study hard subjects and get good jobs so they have money to spend on books, lectures and DVDs. Not only can you loan out books and show DVDs to groups, but you when you get the resources for yourself, you can learn from them and share what you learn with anyone who is interested. They’ll be more interested in hearing it from you than reading a whole book anyway.
  2. I also think it’s good for Christians to be like this woman. She is interested in apologetics because she had a co-worker who asked her a lot of questions. She decided to answer his questions rather than to attack him personally for his unbelief, or punt to faith not needing reasons or evidence. So she started to look for answers on her own, and then I came along to guide her search, provide materials and practice with her.
  3. She is shy and not used to speaking up or disagreeing with others. So we are spending time discussing these materials and also debating issues. When we discuss a chapter, I highlight the three parts that are the most useful and relevant for debates, and try to show her the structure of the argument. She learns better when we discuss the material and when we practice debating it. I ask her – what would you say if I said this to you? And she answers. Role-play is good for learning apologetics.

So those are my three points.

I would just urge you all to be on the lookout for people who are smart and want to learn more about how to give an answer to anyone who asks them for a reason for their hope. If you are looking for a mentor, then pray that God will send you a mentor. If you want to be a mentor, pray that God will send you someone to mentor.

Polemics

A simple explanation of middle knowledge by Dr. Craig Blomberg

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This article is from Denver Seminary, where Dr. Blomberg and Dr. Groothuis both teach.

Excerpt:

Middle knowledge is a proposed solution to predestination vs. free will, to divine sovereignty and human responsibility, going all the way back to the medieval Jesuit priest Molina (so sometimes it’s also called Molinism).

Classic Calvinists, properly concerned to safeguard divine sovereignty, have typically rejected any theological system that bases God’s predestining activity on the basis merely of his foreknowledge of how humans will respond to the gospel, because they’re convinced that makes human free choice the ultimate determiner. Romans 8:29, of course, doesbase predestination on God’s foreknowledge, but the Calvinist typically argues that the Greek prōginoskō (“foreknow”) there begins already to shade over into the idea of election because in the Old Testament the Hebrew yādā‘ (“know”) often appears roughly synonymous with “choose.” That would explain why Paul doesn’t say just that those whom God foreknew he also predestined, which could be seen as tautologous, but “predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.”

Classic Arminians and Wesleyans, properly concerned to safeguard human freedom and accountability, have typically rejected any theological system that bases God’s predestining activity on the basis merely of his gratuitous election, because they’re convinced that makes human free choice ultimately a chimera. They often point out that prōginoskō is not the same verb as just ginoskō (which the LXX uses to translate yādā‘ and that in Greek it most commonly means simple knowledge in advance. Thus predestination is based on God’s foreknowledge.

Middle knowledge argues for both! If open theism in recent years has diminished divine omniscience more than orthodoxy has classically permitted, middle knowledge magnifies or expands God’s omniscience beyond what most people have thought about. But it makes good sense: middle knowledge claims that God’s perfect, infinite knowledge must be able to know not only what sentient creatures will freely choose in all situations in their lives but what everyone would do in every possible situation that they could confront. Even more magnificently, divine and unlimited knowledge must be able to discern what all possibly created beings would do in all possible situations (or, as philosophers like to say, all possible worlds).

So far so good, I hope. Now here’s the rub. Because there will only ever have been a finite number of humans created before God brings this world as we know it to an end, that means there remain countless uncreated beings that he could have chosen to create but didn’t. So God’s very choice to create you and me and not various other people he could have is an act of his sovereign election utterly prior to our existence. Calvinists should be happy. But it is based on knowing what we will and would do in all actual and all possible situations. Arminians should be happy. Thus, William Lane Craig in The Only Wise God defends this view from a libertarian Arminian perspective; Alvin Plantinga in a chapel talk at Denver Seminary years ago did the same from a libertarian Calvinist perspective, and Terrance Tiessen in Providence and Prayer does so from a compatibilist Calvinist perspective.

Middle Knowledge shows what is going on under the hood of classical Calvinism, which affirms both the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. Middle knowledge explains how God can achieve both goals simultaneously.

The apostle Paul has this to say in Acts 17:22-31:

22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects.
23 “For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘ N D ‘ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.
24 “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands;
25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things;
26 and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation,
27 that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us;
28 for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’
29 “Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man.
30 “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent,
31 because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”

In this research paper, Craig explains in detail what middle knowledge is, and how it works to resolve problems, like “what about those who have never heard of Jesus?” and “how can we reconcile divine sovereignty and human freedom and responsibility?” Highly recommended tool for your tool chest.