Tag Archives: Apologetics

Videos

Do all religions lead to God? A lecture by Mike Licona

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Mike Licona is one of my favorite Christian apologists. I’ve met him, and he is very very down to Earth and direct.

Here’s a lecture where he defends the view that having accurate views about Jesus is very important in order to be rightly related to God: (45 minutes)

Summary:

  • even in the ancient world, Christians were persecuted for their exclusivity
  • some people feel that exclusivity is unfair, but feelings don’t determine truth
  • there are three views of salvation: universalism, inclusivism, and exclusivism
  • does the Bible teach universalism?
  • Paul writes that sincerity is not enough to be saved (see verse below)
  • Paul writes that an accurate view of God is required to be saved
  • Paul writes that those who reject Christ will not be saved
  • John also writes that those who reject Jesus will not be saved
  • Jesus says that you have to have true beliefs about him to be saved
  • Jesus says that the way to salvation is narrow and few find it
  • there is broad agreement across the New Testament for exclusivism
  • the earliest Christians held to exclusive salvation
  • the probability, historically, that Jesus made exclusive claims, is high
  • what about those who have never heard the gospel?
  • what about babies and the mentally handicapped?
  • what about those who are sincere but don’t believe?
  • what about the obligation to be tolerant?

If there is one good verse to take away from this lecture, it’s Romans 10:1-4:

1 Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.

2 For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge.

3 Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.

4 Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.

Sincerity doesn’t count. What counts is knowledge.

Another thing I really, really liked the part at 33 minutes where he tells the story about the desert and discussion group he participates in with his wife and some non-Christian couples. If there is one reason for me to get married, it’s that my wife and I could discuss interest things with people we have over,  and that would be fun.

Commentary

How historians assess the historicity of New Testament passages

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Here is an article by Gary Habermas on the resurrection. (H/T The Poached Egg)

Summary:

The usual attempts to defend the historical reliability of the New Testament are often fairly general in nature. These arguments are typically based on the quantity, quality, and early date of the available New Testament manuscripts; the traditional authorship of the books; extrabiblical confirmation; and a few archaeological discoveries. This evidence for the trustworthiness of the New Testament is often contrasted with ancient classical Greek and Roman writings, which do not exhibit the same wealth of data.

Lesser known among conservative scholars, however, are several, more recent and specific approaches that critical scholars apply to the Gospel texts. One of these approaches involves applying certain critical criteria of authenticity to particular texts, namely, to events and sayings that are reported in the four gospels. These contemporary techniques have mined many gems that indicate the historical richness of the Gospel accounts, while illuminating many aspects of Jesus’ life.

This is a nice essay that will help you to answer question #5 in my list of courting interview questions, in case you are not able to yet!

News

Can the progress of science discover evidence of God’s existence?

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This is a must-read article over at Evolution News. I’m just going to quote the beginning, but you really need to read it!

Excerpt:

“A point of creation would be a place where science broke down. One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God.” Guess who said that?

The speaker was none other than the world’s most eminent cosmologist, Stephen Hawking. Was he attacking proponents of intelligent design? No; he was lamenting his latest birthday presents.

For Hawking’s 70th birthday celebration, Lisa Grossman wrote in New Scientist, cosmologists got together to discuss the “State of the Universe.” Hawking prepared a recorded statement for the occasion that included the comment quoted above. Good thing he didn’t have to attend. His friends gave him “the worst presents ever,” Grossman noted. Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University presented evidence that “the universe is not eternal, resurrecting the thorny question of how to kick-start the cosmos without the hand of a supernatural creator.”

The article explains why none of the proposals for an eternal universe are workable: eternal inflation, a cyclic universe, and the “cosmic egg” hypothesis. In each case, the mathematics and the laws of physics can’t eliminate the need for a starting point. This forces the community of naturalistic astronomers to face what they have been trying to avoid: a beginning.

The article is headlined, “Why physicists can’t avoid a creation event.” Astronomers wanted to “dodge this problem” Grossman explains, but they couldn’t. What problem, exactly? An editorial in the same issue of New Scientist is forthright: it’s titled, “The Genesis Problem.” Grossman writes that the three alternative models provided hope for a universe without a starting point, but “that hope has been gradually fading and may now be dead.”

The point to ponder is how this relates to the intelligent design controversy. Opponents of ID routinely argue that a designer for the universe would necessarily be a supernatural God. That makes ID religious by definition, they say. Well, who is talking about the supernatural now? Guess what: Stephen Hawking does not work for Discovery Institute. Nor does Lisa Grossman, Alexander Vilenkin or the organizers of Hawking’s birthday bash.

Please read the rest. The part I excerpted was not the best part. The last half of the article is very very snarky!

Oh, if only more Christians knew the blessings and opportunities of living in a time when the progress of science has basically made atheism into the intellectual equivalent of flat-Earthism. This is our time, and we need to be out there studying what science reveals about the universe we live in and then using it!