Fear and Trembling

At the request of a Muslim I have been having online exchanges with, I wrote the following bit about the trinity. I have reprinted it here, along with links, quotes and augmentations. You had requested an explanation of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Pardon my delayed response due to my father-in-law’s illness. To begin, God is one being. Christians do not worship three Gods, but one (Deuteronomy 6:45; Isaiah 45:5-6 and 21-22; Isaiah 44:6-8). We do not worship more than one God as Surah 5:73 states. That would be “tritheism,” which we condemn. Baptists like myself do not see Jesus, Mary, and God as the trinity as is suggested by Surah 5:116-117. This elevates a human, Mary, into the God-head, and we would see that as “adoptionism,” which we condemn. We would also condemn as adoptionism any thinking that says Jesus ever became God. Jesus was not created. He did not become God at some time. He has eternally existed. God exists as three persons and as one being. This is logical...

Time after time an opponent of Christianity accuses us of circular reasoning . The statement we are accused of making goes like this: The Bible claims to be God’s Word so it is God’s Word. That is “begging the question,” where the conclusion is true only if the premise is true. However, the actual argument put forth by Christians is linear and logical. In bullet point form, it goes like this: · The Bible is good history ( The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell). · We can trust what the Bible says about Jesus because it is based on eyewitness testimony (Luke 1:1-4, 2 Peter 1:16). These eyewitnesses were willing to die for their faith. · Jesus claimed to be God. He said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Thomas said, “My Lord and my God,” and Jesus did not correct him (John 20:26-31). · Jesus worked miracles and proved Himself to be God (John 14: 9-11). · Jesus affirmed the truth of God’s Word. He said, “Man shall not l...

Please say a prayer for my Father-in-law. He is in a hospital in Japan, where he has been pasturing a church for the last few years. He has Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia and has about a 5% chance of leaving the hospital. He has two daughters, three sons, a wife, and five grandchildren. Please pray for him and for his family. “But our God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases.” – Psalm 115

As promised in the last post, I will discuss Richard Dawkins’ treatment of the argument from Scripture from his book The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006, p. 92-97): The historical evidence that Jesus claimed any sort of divine status is minimal … there is no good historical evidence that he ever thought he was divine. (p. 92) A wealth of textual evidence is used to validate the New Testament as an historical record. This historical record was written by eve-witnesses who had firsthand knowledge of the events they recorded or close companions of those eyewitnesses. This testimony can not be shrugged off with a sentence or two. Gary Habermas , who holds a Ph. D. in the History and Philosophy of Religion, puts it succi nctly, “We have in the New Testament essentially what the authors originally penned, and the texts have been confirmed time and again by various means.” Dawkins goes on, “Moreover, Luke screws up his dating by tactlessly mentioning events that histor...

Next in Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion , we find a discussion of the teleological argument, or argument from design. Stated the way Dawkins does, the argument goes from evidence of design in the universe and in living things to the existence of an ultimate designer. On page 139-140, he says: It is clear that here on Earth we are dealing with a generalized process for optimizing biological species, a process that works all over the planet, on all continents and islands, and at all times … This is a recurrent, predictable, multiple phenomenon, not a piece of statistical luck recognized with hindsight. And, thanks to Darwin, we know it is brought about: by natural selection. In Dawkins’ world, life appears and evolves into increasingly more complex organisms by a “process.” I am not a biologist. I am not a chemist, or a physicist. I am, however, an industrial engineer. Another name for industrial engineering is “process engineering.” I have spent a considerable portion of my life in the ...

Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006) evokes strong feelings. Most of the arguments presented are not cogent, and the next post or two will address some of them. Not everything will be addressed. Some of the statements he makes about probabilistic arguments seem intelligent. Some do not justify a response. The case presented will outline a strong confirmation of the basic tenants of Christianity. Dawkins quickly dismisses all of the classical arguments for God’s existence without reason. His issue is the infinite regress. This argument, called the cosmological argument because it is an argument from the existence of the cosmos, is more fully stated in the post Logic and God 3 . There are other forms of this argument ( what Norman Geisler calls the horizontal form for example ), but those are better stated elsewhere. In brief, the argument proceeds backwards through the series of causes that arrive at us. We cannot expect that an infinite reg...

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. – Romans 1:18-20, ESV Richard Dawkin’s book The God Delusion is an interesting set of polemics. If it were possible to win an argument based on insults and innuendo, this book would have ended all positive discussion of belief in God. Future posts will contain some of the more interesting quotes. Once again someone states that there is no positive argument which proves God’s existence. To answer with one line of thinking out of several, God is eternal. He has no beginning and no end. This is foundational for a very reasonable argument for His existence...

Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life. - Jesus (John 6:47, NKJV) Recent conversations with a Muslim have reminded me that many in the world do not have a firm knowledge that they will go to heaven when they die. Some have a vague trust in their idea of a God who may honor their faith and may not. Some have only the hope that, when God judges the world, He will find their good works outweigh their bad. Some have not yet reached the point in their thinking that they can acknowledge a God who judges or a heaven (A future post will lay out some of the reasons for believing in both.). We can know that we are on the way to heaven if we have faith in Christ. This faith is a confident assurance that what Jesus says about how to live life is true. This assurance brings us to a knowledge that we have not, even for one moment, lived free from sin; that is, we have done things that Christ tells us not to do or failed to do things that Christ tells us to do. This ...

I was asked to sing a solo at our church last night. I choose to sing a hymn that written by a man named William Cowper. Cowper was born in 1731. He was a contemporary of John Wesley, George Whitefield, William Wilberforce, and others. He struggled with depression for most of his life. After a major depression at age 21, he attempted suicide several times. At age 28, he had another breakdown caused mainly by the threat of a public examination before Parliament. They were to see if he could be appointed to a government position. He was committed to an insane asylum after more failed suicide attempts. He became a Christian during his stay in the asylum when he picked up a Bible placed there and read Romans 3:25, where Christ’s sacrifice for us is highlighted. Cowper later wrote, “I saw the sufficiency of the atonement [Christ] had made, my pardon sealed in His blood, and all the fullness and completeness of His justification. In a moment I believed, and received the gospel…” Over the nex...

Many contemporary believers do not feel the need to have a rational basis for their Christian faith. For example, Robert Webber’s comment in Ancient-Future Faith (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1999, p. 185): …Christianity is not provable outside itself through the scientific method. One must come to the Christian faith believing that it is true and embrace it as such without any dependence on data outside the faith. Christianity requires trust, a believing embrace, a willingness to step inside its story apart from any dependence on historical, scientific, or rational persuasion. So, according to Webber, Christianity requires a blind leap of faith for entrance. I always think of the Indiana Jones movie where he must jump across a chasm not knowing whether there is anything to catch him as he falls. When he jumps, he falls onto a bridge that was hidden from view by exquisite camouflage. Is that kind of leap the requirement, or are there reasons to believe what we believe? Let’s l...

Robert Webber’s comments in Listening to the Beliefs of the Emergent Church lead me to take a book by him off my shelf which had been there for a few years: Ancient-Future Faith (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1999). I looked back through my underlinings and dog-ears to find some quotes. Several came to mind. One is on page 177: The debate of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries paved the way for the Reformers who chose the doctrine of sola scriptura. The Reformers pulled Scripture away from the church, separated it from tradition, set it over against popes and councils, and made it stand on its own. I question whether the Reformers pulled the Bible away from church tradition. It is more likely that they returned to the original interpretations of Scriptural authority held by the Early Church Fathers. Keith Mathison in his excellent book The Shape of Sola Scriptura (Moscow, Indiana: Canon Press, 2001) shows that the interpretation of the early church on Scriptural auth...