Dan Olinger

"If the Bible is true, then none of our fears are legitimate, none of our frustrations are permanent, and none of our opposition is significant."

Dan Olinger

 

Retired Bible Professor,

Bob Jones University

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When the Impossible Becomes Likely: The Resurrection of Christ, Part 5

February 18, 2019 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

We’ve looked at the eyewitness evidence for the resurrection of Christ, noting that the eyewitnesses pass all 3 standard tests for legal witnesses. Now we turn to the second main type of evidence, the forensic.

Forensic evidence is tangible, something you can touch. Is there any evidence like that for the resurrection? I’d suggest that the Scripture offers two, one you’ve probably already thought of, and another one that perhaps you haven’t.

The one you’ve thought of, because everybody mentions it, is the tomb itself.

[Sidebar: today there are two sites alleged to be the tomb of Jesus. We’ll never be entirely sure which of them is the correct one—or even whether either of them is. For what it’s worth, I’m inclined to think that the “Garden Tomb” is not likely to be it, mostly because nobody identified that site as the Real One for centuries, and it’s unlikely that the early church would have completely forgotten it immediately. More here if you’re interested.]

The key characteristic of the tomb is simple and obvious.

It’s empty.

And even more important, it was empty at the time; nobody can say that a century or two later, some Christians came along and removed the skeleton when nobody was looking.

How do we know that?

Well, a number of Jesus’ close followers arrived on Sunday and confirmed that the body was not there: first Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Salome, and Mary the mother of James, early Sunday morning (Mt 28.1; Mk 16.1; Lk 24.10; Jn 20.1); then Peter and John (Lk 24.12; Jn 20.2ff), as soon as the women told them what they had seen. And to raise the ante, the Roman guards reported to the Jewish leadership that the body was gone (Mt 28.11).

It was empty,

There have been a couple of attempts to account for this. One we’ve already mentioned. It was the very first cover story (Mt 28.11-15)—that the disciples stole the body. We’ve noted that the disciples’ credibility argues against the theory. But the story was incredible on its face, since the tomb would typically have been guarded by 16 soldiers in 4 squads of four (cf Ac 12.4), who worked in shifts. How likely was it that all 16 soldiers would have fallen asleep simultaneously? Four of them on watch? When the penalty for doing so was death? And even if they had, how likely was it that the disciples could have rolled the stone away and retrieved the body without waking anybody up?

I’m supposed to believe that? And I’m the fideist?

There’s another attempt to explain the problem, indirectly. The “wrong tomb” theory says that when the women first came to the tomb Sunday morning, they came to the wrong tomb, one not yet used. In their grief, they misinterpreted what the tomb attendant told them. In the following paragraph from Matthew 28, the struck-through text indicates what was not actually said:

5 The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; for I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified. 6 He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said. Come, see the place where He was lying. 7 Go quickly and tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead; and behold, He is going ahead of you into Galilee, there you will see Him; behold, I have told you.”

Hmm. How shall I say this? If a conservative had posited this, he would immediately be accused of sexism. Women are so emotional, you know. And not good at directions. And they never listen when men talk to them.

Nope. I don’t buy that one, either. None of it. The women had earlier observed where the body was buried (Mt 27.61; Mk 15.47), and they had every reason to remember it well. They had no reason to fail to hear more than half of what the “attendant” told them—and the fact the he had “an appearance like lightning” (Mt 28.3; cf Lk 24.4) should have been a clue that something was up. And then the emptiness of the tomb was confirmed by men, who, as we all know, are more reliable witnesses. (Sarcasm alert.)

Another evidence against the story is that the religious leaders at Pentecost, less than two months later, produced no body when Peter announced the resurrection publicly. They certainly would have if a body had been available. But I’ve said that already.

The tomb was empty. On Sunday morning. Inexplicably.

Next time, we’ll look at the other key piece of forensic evidence. You’re gonna like this one.

Part 6

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Filed Under: Theology Tagged With: apologetics, Christology, resurrection, systematic theology

When the Impossible Becomes Likely: The Resurrection of Christ, Part 4

February 14, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

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One more requirement of those peskily unreliable witnesses:

  • Eyewitnesses must be credible.

By that we mean that they must back up their story with evidence of believability. Attorneys will go to great lengths to discredit opposing witnesses by looking for inconsistencies in their stories or by pointing out actions by the witnesses that put the lie to what they’re claiming. It can be as simple as a financial motive (the grieving widow recently took out a million-dollar life insurance policy on her late husband) or behaviors that contradict official testimony (the “disabled” witness gets out of his wheelchair and walks when he thinks no one is watching). Television shows about private eyes have given us thousands of plot lines that illustrate this concept.

So how do the eyewitnesses to the resurrection stack up against this criterion? Well, since we don’t know who the 500 disciples were that saw Jesus at once (1Co 15.6), we can’t evaluate them. But we do know quite a bit about the 11 disciples. We know that at Jesus’ arrest, “all the disciples left him and fled” (Mt 26.56). We know that at Jesus’ first post-resurrection appearance to them, they were huddled in a locked room “for fear of the Jews” (Jn 20.19). And yet less than 2 months later, Peter stood before a skeptical crowd in Jerusalem (Ac 2.12-13) and said, “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified!” (Ac 2.36 ESV). And shortly later, he stood in the Temple complex (Ac 3.11) and cried, “You denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you,and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses!” (Ac 3.14-15). And the next day (Ac 4.3), after a night in the slammer, Peter looked the rulers of Israel in the face and said, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard!” (Ac 4.19-20).

Does this fellow sound like he thinks he’s making stuff up?

Early church tradition tells us that 10 of the 11 went to their deaths for the story they were telling—for any of them, a simple retraction would have saved their lives and in most cases stopped a gruesomely painful execution. The one exception is John, who died a natural death—after a stint at slave labor in the Patmos salt mines in his 90s.

How reliable is the early church tradition? Well, it’s not Scripture and thus not inerrant and authoritative, and some of the traditions are not well attested. But we do have excellent evidence for Peter, Thomas, and Andrew (and of course biblical evidence for James in Acts 12), and the other stories are credible as to the major facts, especially in light of the extensive persecution under Rome in the late 1st century. “They were not liars. They truly believed Jesus rose from the grave and they were willing to give their lives for it” (Sean McDowell).

This evidence completely undercuts the earliest “explanation” for the resurrection—that the disciples stole the body of Jesus while the Roman guard slept (Mt 28.11-15). Any investigator will tell you than when you’re interrogating a gang, you split them up, interview them separately, and then figure out who’s the weakest link. Then you come down on him like Nebuchadnezzar on Jerusalem. You tell him his friends are saying that he did it—that they’re going to be released, and you, my poor friend, are going to prison for life. And the weak link will snap, and he’ll tell you everything you want to know, so that he doesn’t have to pay the price for everybody.

Nobody did that. Nobody broke.

They all stuck with the story through the bitter end, paying the price, painfully, with their lives.

Now that’s credibility. These people did not steal the body.

So what do we have?

We have multiple eyewitnesses, whose claims are consistent with one another, who are describing events that they simply couldn’t have imagined in good faith, and who demonstrated their credibility by dying for the story.

That’s really good evidence.

Next time, we’ll turn to the forensic evidence.

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Filed Under: Theology Tagged With: apologetics, Christology, resurrection, systematic theology

When the Impossible Becomes Likely: The Resurrection of Christ, Part 3

February 11, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1 Part 2

We’re looking at the eyewitness evidence for the resurrection of Christ—a claim that we recognize to be extraordinary. Last time we noted that in court, witnesses are required to be competent—that is, they have to have seen something. In this post we’ll look at the next requirement:

  • Eyewitnesses must be consistent.

Not only must an eyewitness not contradict himself, but ideally there should be multiple eyewitnesses, and they must agree with one another on the key facts.

The reasons for this are obvious. Sometimes people lie, and sometimes people are mistaken about what they think they saw. Any investigator knows that if you separate the witnesses and grill them on the details, the liars can usually be exposed. There’s a great example of this in the apocryphal book Susanna, one of the so-called “Additions to Daniel.” Susanna is a pious Jewish woman accused by two lecherous priests of being caught in flagrante
delecto
with a man in her husband’s garden. The priests say the two were engaged in sexual relations under a tree. As she is about to be executed, Daniel speaks up on her behalf, directing that the accusers be separated and asked a simple question—under what tree in the garden did they see the two? The accusers identify different trees, and Susanna is vindicated.

Fun with the Apocrypha.

The Scripture recognizes this problem and addresses it. The Mosaic Law required 2 or 3 witnesses to any capital charge (Num 35.30; Dt. 17.6). When giving instruction on church discipline, Jesus commanded that an accuser take with him 2 or 3 witnesses, “so that every word may be established” (Mt 18.16, quoting Dt 19.15). Paul issued the same requirement for charges against a church leader (1Ti 5.19).

The other problem with eyewitnesses is that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. People really think they saw things that they didn’t.

So for a claim like resurrection, we’re going to need a lot of eyes on the target.

What do we have?

As I’ve noted before, multiple people saw Jesus alive after his time in the tomb, and many of those people are the ones closest to him—Mary Magdalene, the 11 disciples remaining after the death of Judas Iscariot, even Jesus’ brother James. Paul makes the claim that Jesus was seen by more than 500 followers at once (1Co 15.6)—and though we have no other record of that event in Scripture or elsewhere, Paul notes that as he’s writing, about 20 years after the event, most of those eyewitnesses are still available to give testimony, though some have since died. Don’t you think that if the claim were false, the Jewish leaders would have found a way to demonstrate that? After all, they all knew the story of Susanna.

The presence of multiple eyewitnesses renders unlikely another modern attempt to explain away the resurrection: the hallucination theory—that people close to Jesus, who loved him deeply and had a desperate psychological need to deny his ignominious end, simply fell victim to their own fancies and imagined that they had seen him—and believed it, many to the extent that they would be martyrs for their misguided belief.

Why does this not make any sense? Two reasons. There are just too many simultaneous witnesses, and the nature of the appearances and the accompanying interaction with Jesus rules out any psychological explanation. Sure, sometimes people think they see the face of the Virgin Mary in a tortilla, and sometimes large groups of people think they see a brief and insubstantial phenomenon. But 11 disciples at once? In an extended conversation with the man they’d lived with for 3 years? Who is eating with them as he talks?

Sorry, but I just don’t have that kind of faith.

Next time, one more requirement of witnesses—which these witnesses unanimously meet.

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Filed Under: Theology Tagged With: apologetics, Christology, resurrection, systematic theology

When the Impossible Becomes Likely: The Resurrection of Christ, Part 2

February 7, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1

In my last post I observed that because the claim that Christ rose from the dead is extraordinary, it calls for an extraordinary level of evidence. I noted that the Bible contains both eyewitness and forensic evidence. In this post we begin to work with the eyewitness evidence.

People don’t always tell the truth. Sometimes they lie, and sometimes they’re just mistaken. (Just think of all your Facebook friends who regularly post things you know to be flatly untrue—and they really believe the nonsense. And think of how many of them are professing Christians.) Because the legal system knows of this problem, it has instituted requirements for witnesses, to weed out the crooks and the well-intentioned bozos:

  • Witnesses must be competent.

That is, they must have actually seen something. “My brother told me that he saw … “ will get a witness thrown out on the basis of a sustained objection to hearsay. We have no time for people just passing along stories they’ve heard. What have you seen?

The biblical record includes witnesses like that—people who saw and heard the resurrected Christ. Eyewitnesses like Mary, who initially thought that Jesus was the gardener but realized during the ensuing conversation that he was the one she had known so well (Jn 20.11-18). And his eleven disciples, who had lived with him for three years and knew him intimately, and who actually sat and ate with him at least twice after the resurrection (Lk 24.33-43; Jn 21.1-14), and likely a lot more than that (Ac 1.1-3). And James (1Co 15.7), his next-younger brother (Mt 13.55), who had not believed in him during his earthly ministry (Jn 7.5).

These are competent eyewitnesses. They’ve seen, and they know what they’ve seen.

Are there other explanations for what they’ve seen? Anything other than a resurrection?

Well, it couldn’t be a case of mistaken identity; these witness knew Jesus well and interacted with him extensively during the 40 days after the resurrection.

And despite lots of frantic theories, there’s no evidence that Jesus had a twin brother—especially since his birth is described in great detail (Mt 1-2; Lk 1-2) without any mention of a twin. Now you’re just getting desperate.

Further, these eyewitnesses rule out the most obvious counter-explanation—that the resurrection is just a myth, a natural consequence of stories accreting unlikely details over time, like the fish that gets bigger every time the fisherman describes him.

How do these witnesses rule out the myth theory?

Well, they stood together, made the claim, and identified themselves publically as eyewitnesses less than 2 months after the event (Ac 2.32), in the very city where it allegedly happened, and no one—including a lot of influential and empowered people who wanted desperately to put the kibosh on the whole thing (Ac 4.6-7, 15-18)—was able to refute their story. That’s not how myths develop; they don’t spring up immediately, when opposing eyewitnesses would be available to serve as first-century mythbusters. The silence is deafening.

Now, if you’re thinking objectively, you’ve probably thought of a weakness with what I’ve done here.

How do we know about these eyewitnesses? From the Bible. And how do we know the account is true? How do we really know there were any witnesses at all?

Good question. I’m glad you’re thinking in an engaged way. (Teachers love it when students do that.)

That’s a big-boy question, and it requires a big-boy answer, not one you can present in a blog post or two. In short, I find the Scripture to be reliable on the basis of a great number of evidences and in the absence of any credible exclusionary evidence. I’ve laid out my thinking in that regard in a previous series of posts, but even those posts barely scratch the surface. I can recommend all kinds of books—big, thick, sometimes but not always dry and dusty books. Let me know if you want a list.

Next time, we’ll look at the second qualification for an eyewitness. And maybe a third, depending on how verbose I get.

Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6

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Filed Under: Theology Tagged With: apologetics, Christology, resurrection, systematic theology

When the Impossible Becomes Likely: The Resurrection of Christ, Part 1

February 4, 2019 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Squarely at the center of Christianity is the resurrection of Christ (1Co 15.3-4). As a rule, Christians have gotten so used to the idea that they no longer realize how crazy that sounds.

So try a little thought experiment.

Suppose you hear that someone you know has died. And then, a few days or weeks later, you see him walking around.

What do you think?

Well, there are several possibilities that will come to mind.

  • If you see him just briefly at a distance, you’ll say to yourself, “Boy, that guy sure looked like Joe!” And you might see if you can get a second look at him. But then you’ll move on, marveling that different people can look so similar.
  • If you see him more thoroughly—say he walks up to you and says, “Hello, old friend!”—you’ll conclude that the report you got was mistaken. The guy who told me he died must have been joking, or honestly misinformed. Or maybe I dreamed it. Or whatever. At any rate, he didn’t die; he’s still alive.
  • There’s a third, less likely, possibility. Once an acquaintance of mine died. Something that a lot of his friends didn’t know was that he happened to be an identical twin. Since I did know that, I didn’t have the reaction many of his friends did on seeing his brother at the funeral.

But I’ll tell you what you won’t think. You won’t think your friend rose from the dead, because that just doesn’t happen, and you know that perfectly well. There has to be another explanation.

Resurrections just don’t happen. Resurrection is impossible.

So then. About this alleged resurrection of Christ. Christians need to fully apprehend what an extraordinary—even preposterous—claim it is. We can’t expect people to just accept the allegation, and in fact we shouldn’t accept the allegation either without extraordinary evidences. Plural.

Resurrections just don’t happen.

After a lifetime of studying the claim and ruminating over the evidence, I’ve come to a conclusion:

The least likely possibility—the impossible one—is in fact the most likely possibility.

Now, that claim is just as preposterous as the first one, isn’t it?

What I’d like to do over the next several posts is examine the evidence and see whether there’s any basis at all for my conclusion.

I should note that in 1998 Lee Strobel edited an anthology called The Case for Christ, containing chapters by our generation’s leading apologists on Jesus’ claims to Messiahship, including the resurrection. I came to confident belief in the resurrection before Strobel’s book arrived on the scene and was delighted to see that his thinking on the evidence paralleled mine. What follows here is a concise summary of my thinking; if you want something quite a bit deeper and a lot more thorough, read Strobel’s excellent book.

We should begin with some observations about the nature of evidence. When detectives investigate a crime today, they generally gather two kinds of evidence: eyewitness testimony, and forensic evidence, such as materials left at the scene: shell casings, blood, fingerprints, and so forth.

The biblical record contains both types of evidence. The subsequent question is two-fold:

  • Is the evidence reliable?
  • Is the evidence exclusionary? That is, does it rule out other explanations?

These are important questions, and given the preposterous of the claim—he rose from the dead!—we ought to evaluate the evidence carefully and answer the questions with reasonable objectivity. That’s what I hope to do in the next few posts.

Something to think about for next time:

Eyewitness evidence is notoriously unreliable. Especially when it sees dead men walking around. Nobody in his right mind believes that Elvis bought a sandwich at a diner in Tulsa in 2006. So does the biblical evidence reach the level of authority needed to support a preposterous claim?

See you next time.

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Filed Under: Theology Tagged With: apologetics, Christology, resurrection, systematic theology

On Cold-Call Evangelism and Cultural Appreciation

January 31, 2019 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

While I’m at it, let me give another example of how we decide whether to fight over behavioral questions.

One of the things I’ve learned on frequent short-term mission trips around the world is how different cultures are, and how important it is to know and respect those differences if you’re going to minister effectively.

Cultures are different, and that’s something to celebrate. My favorite example of that is eating a meal at someone’s house. Here in the US, we were all trained as children that when someone has you over for a meal, you eat everything on your plate. Why? Because turning away food means you don’t like it, and it’s rude to say that to the person who has prepared that food for you.

In China, though, you must not eat everything on your plate. Why? Because eating it all says that your host didn’t give you enough—and that’s rude too. You should leave a little bit, and if he offers more, say, “I am very satisfied, thank you.”

Isn’t that cool? Two different cultures have attached opposite meanings to the very same action, and both meanings make perfect sense. Cultures, consisting of humans made in the image of God, are reflecting God in their creativity—even when they don’t recognize him as God. Yes, that’s cool.

Something else to notice is that cultures develop their convictions for very surprising and sometimes trivial reasons. Let me give you an example.

Back in the early 20th century, houses had porches. The main reason was that in the summertime, when it got hot, it would often be warmer inside the house in the evening than it was outside. Families would sit on the porch in the cool of the day, enjoying the breeze and escaping the stuffy heat inside.

As a consequence of that, people sitting on the porch saw their neighbors and the people walking by, and since they were just sitting around, it was common for the others to step up onto the porch and engage in conversation.

Then something big happened.

Air conditioning.

Now there was no need to sit out on the porch in the summertime; it was more comfortable indoors. And furthermore, with TV to watch (it had been around since 1939, but it became ubiquitous in American homes in the 60s), there was no time to talk to the neighbors and the passersby, or so we thought.

And so we quit dropping by one another’s homes.

Seriously. When some stranger knocks on your door, what’s driving your thinking? Getting rid of said person as quickly and efficiently as possible.

And as a result of that, what we used to call “door-to-door visitation” is largely ineffective today. I know of churches that still engage in it aggressively, but I know of none that can claim any significant amount of response—I’m thinking particularly of evangelized church members—for all their efforts.

So most American evangelicals don’t spend time with cold-call evangelism. The preferred approach today—for those who evangelize, and shame on those who don’t—is “relational” evangelism, forming relationships with neighbors or co-workers or retail workers with the goal of living and speaking grace and gospel in a way that woos them to Christ.

Are these Christians weak on evangelism? Not if they’re really doing what they say they are. But what about Acts 20.20? Doesn’t that verse say we’re supposed to go door to door? No, it doesn’t. It might say that Paul did, but he was living in a culture different from ours, and those differences matter.

Now, let me moderate that just a bit.

The porch illustration I’ve given here is specific to American culture—and modern, suburban American culture at that. The US has always been a mix of cultures; even in pre-colonial days the Oneida were different from the Cherokee, who were different from the Apache, who were different from the Tlingit. In the Colonies, Massachusetts was very different from Georgia. We even had a civil war as a result of sectionalism and the cultural divide that sectionalism represented. And today, all four corners of the country—I’ve lived in all of them—differ from the middle.

Today door-to-door visitation works in some places in America, and in even more places around the world.

Know your culture. Appreciate its strengths. Address its weaknesses. Represent Christ in it with wisdom and grace—and strategic smarts.

And again, don’t sweat the small stuff.

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Filed Under: Culture, Theology Tagged With: culture, evangelism

On Coffee

January 28, 2019 by Dan Olinger 7 Comments

In my just-finished series on When We Fight and When We Don’t, I spent a lot more time on the doctrinal side than the behavioral side. I thought I’d share an experience I had a few years back that got my thinking developing on how we approach behavioral issues.

About 25 or so years ago, I noticed something odd. Every weekend, I would get a headache. Fine all week long, but every Saturday morning, like clockwork, headache. Sunday too. Then Monday I was fine again.

I tested a lot of variables to try to find out the cause. Sleeping in? Nope. Breakfast? Nope. Location-based allergies? Nope.

I guess you can figure out from the title of this post what the cause was. Every day at work I drank coffee. The departmental coffee pot was literally right next to my office, and I made good use of it. Weekend mornings, though, I didn’t make coffee at home.

Well, what am I gonna do about these headaches? I did what any sensible person would do.

I bought a coffee pot, and I made sure I had a cup on Saturday and Sunday mornings so I wouldn’t get a headache.

After I’d done that for a while, I got to thinking.

The headache was a caffeine withdrawal symptom. I was chemically addicted to caffeine.

But it’s not as bad as cocaine—and certainly not as bad as opioids—so it’s OK, right?

I skipped merrily along down that path for a bit longer, and my conscience really began to bother me.

I was a drug addict. Gotta have my hit. Every day. Or I won’t be able to function at my best.

And I thought of Paul’s words to the Corinthians: “All things are lawful unto me, … but I will not be brought under the power of any[thing]” (1Co 6.12).

My schedule and activities were being dictated by a physical addiction.

My conscience continued to bother me. And Paul also says that it’s a sin to violate the restrictions of your conscience (1Co 8.7)—even if the thing isn’t sinful in itself.

A Christian who realizes he’s sinning is supposed to stop.

So I did. Cold turkey. Three days of blinding headaches.

I got clean.

As follow-up, I would try a cup of coffee every few months just to see if the headaches returned. They did, so after a series of lengthening test periods I quit testing and just stayed clean.

Nowadays I find that I’m OK with a cup of decaf (which has a little caffeine, but not much) maybe 3 days a week without headaches. And I really love good coffee, so I’m happy about that. The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it (1Co 10.26), and we ought to enjoy whatever he’s placed here for us, the best we can.

Now. What do I do about my Christian friends who drink full-bore, drug-fueled coffee? Shall I become a prophet, crying in the wilderness against the evils of the demon bean?

Nope. Though I will say that it troubles me when my Christian friends declaim on social media about how they can’t live or function without their morning coffee. If they’re telling the truth—if they’re really physically addicted to caffeine—then I’d suggest that they think about whether maybe they ought to do something about that. Whether maybe they ought to be free—and might rejoice in their newfound freedom.

But short of addiction? Nope. The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. If they’re drinking coffee and enjoying it, and especially if they’re thanking our good and gracious God for the joy it brings them, then I rejoice with those who rejoice.

For my first several years on the Bible faculty at BJU I shared an office with a long-time friend who’s a coffee aficionado. He roasts his own beans, as close to the time of consumption as possible; he grinds just a cup’s worth of beans at a time; he waxes eloquent on the specifics of crema. Every afternoon about 3, he’d say, “Well, time for a cup of coffee!” And the grinder would surge, and the office would fill with the most delightful aroma of fresh-roasted coffee beans. I couldn’t drink what he made, in good conscience, but I enjoyed the daily routine, and the aroma, and his pleasure in the simple experience of a good cup of coffee.

He’s not sinning. There’s nothing there to fight about, even though we’re behaving differently, for significant theological reasons.

What about you? Have a cup for me, my friends.

Just don’t get addicted.

And don’t sweat the small stuff.

In this outrage-addicted culture, here’s something we can disagree about, for substantial reasons, without being outraged.

How about that?

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Application 1 Application 2

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Filed Under: Culture, Ethics, Personal Tagged With: conscience, culture, doubtful things

Sometimes We Fight, Part 6

January 24, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

In my last post we worked through the Apostle Peter’s sermon at Pentecost (Acts 2), looking for doctrinal content. Here’s what we came up with, in systematic theological terms:

Bibliology

  • The Hebrew scriptures are God’s Word (Ac 2.17) and therefore reliable (Ac 2.16).

Theology Proper

  • God directs history (Ac 2.23).
  • God does miracles; history includes some number of supernatural events (Ac 2.22).

Christology

  • Jesus did miracles (Ac 2.22).
  • Jesus died by crucifixion and rose again (Ac 2.23-24, 32).
  • Jesus continues his divine work from heaven (Ac 2.33-34).
  • Jesus is God (Ac 2.36).
  • Jesus is Christ, the fulfillment of the Hebrew messianic prophecies (Ac 2.36).

Pneumatology

  • There is a Holy Spirit (Ac 2.17).

Anthropology

  • People are sinful (Ac 2.40).

Soteriology

  • Salvation is available to all peoples (Ac 2.18, 21, 39).
  • Salvation is available freely (Ac 2.21) through repentance (Ac 2.38).

Eschatology

  • There is a coming “Day of Yahweh” (Ac 2.20).

When we put all this into our chart, we end up with something like this. (I’ve truncated our data slightly for simplicity’s sake.)

Where do we go from here? Well, we repeat this same process on the other apostolic sermons in Acts, filling in the other columns on our chart. A quick result might look something like this, though a more careful study—which you’ll do, right?—would yield more doctrines in the first column.

And then you see where the overlaps are—which doctrines are most emphasized in this database of sermons. For illustration purposes I’ve simply counted the number of sermons in which each doctrine appears and then sorted the list on that column, with the most common doctrines at the top. You can see that “quick and dirty” result here.

What are the biggest ideas?

  • The deity of Christ
  • Forgiveness of sins
  • The death and resurrection of Christ / witnesses
  • The reliability of Scripture
  • Repentance

It’s no surprise that our list includes “the gospel” as defined by Paul in 1Co 15.3-4.

Now, we’re not done yet. As I noted in a previous post in this series, we need to evaluate the other datasets that my friend Tom Wheeler identified in his dissertation, and then we need to compare all the lists we end up with to see if there are patterns there—which there are—as justification for producing a “meta-list,” which should serve as a pretty good indicator of What We’re Going to Fight About.

And then we need to decide where to draw the line. How far down the list do we decide this is a doctrine that isn’t “emphasized”? How far down the list do we go before we decide that we’re not going to fight about that one? I’d suggest that that’s a literary-analysis question: where do you draw the line at emphasis?

Tom’s dissertation has done a good job of that already. But you can do that work yourself, you know. You don’t have to be a scholar like Tom; with the Word and the illuminating work of the indwelling Holy Spirit, you have all the tools you need to do this study for yourself. Maybe you’ll notice something he didn’t. And even if you don’t, you’ll benefit immensely from the study, and you’ll approach doctrinal controversies in this polarized and freaked-out world with a calmness and a confidence that will communicate grace, mercy, and peace to all those around you.

That’s worth the effort, right?

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Application 1 Application 2

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Filed Under: Bible, Theology Tagged With: Acts, biblical theology, false teaching, gospel, literary analysis, New Testament, separation, systematic theology

Sometimes We Fight, Part 5

January 21, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

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Last time I explained my thinking on why we should evaluate the doctrines taught in the apostles’ preaching as recorded in the book of Acts, as a step toward identifying the essential doctrines of the Christian faith—the things we ought to fight about. And I pause to remind my reader (all 1 of you) that we’re also determining, by their absence from this list, the doctrines that are not worth fighting about.

If you’ve done your homework from the last post—you don’t expect to really learn anything worthwhile by just reading blog posts, do you?—you downloaded my little chart as a working template and read through at least some of the sermons in Acts to list what doctrines they asserted.

How about if I go through the first one, and we can see how your list compares to mine?

The first sermon is Peter’s famous discourse at Pentecost in Acts 2, where he refutes the observers’ initial observations and explains what’s really going on with the sound and the fire and the inexplicable speech.

Let’s scan the text to see what we find.

  • Ac 2.16—What you’re seeing is a fulfillment of a prophetic scripture from long ago. Peter’s initial statement implies—strongly—that we should expect ancient scriptural prophecies to be fulfilled. And this in turn implies the truthfulness of scripture, even in its predictions. Lest I be accused of bringing my bias to the research, I’ve avoided using the explosive term inerrancy, but I would observe that “truthfulness” means the same thing.
  • Ac 2.17—In citing his source, Peter includes its claim that Joel’s words are what “God says” (NASB), and he says nothing that would soften the blunt statement. Joel’s words are the words of God, accurately recorded.
  • Ac 2.17—God has a Spirit that can be “poured forth.” Maybe not enough here to support a distinct person of the Spirit, but wording that is certainly consistent with that concept.
  • Ac 2.18—God’s empowering work extends to “bondslaves, both men and women.” His work is not limited by our social constructs.
  • Ac 2.20—There is a coming “Day of Yahweh.” We can’t tell this from just Acts 2, but the prophets gave us a lot of information about this coming day, and again, Peter seems to take it at face value.
  • Ac 2.21—Salvation comes to those who “call on the name of Yahweh.” This verse alone doesn’t tell us whether “salvation” here is physical rescue from catastrophe or spiritual salvation in the theological sense, but further study can settle this question pretty conclusively in favor of the latter.
  • Ac 2.22—Jesus did miracles. This has implications about both Jesus and the fact of the supernatural, of miracles.
  • Ac 2.23—God’s doing what happens, even when it seems disastrous—as the recent execution of Jesus certainly had seemed to Peter and the other disciples.
  • Ac 2.23—Jesus died as a direct result of the crucifixion. Yes, he was really dead.
  • Ac 2.24—Jesus rose from the dead. Really.
  • Ac 2.25—Here’s another fulfilled prophecy. We should expect that.
  • Ac 2.27—The resurrection was specifically predicted.
  • Ac 2.30—Like Joel, David was accurately reporting words directly from God himself.
  • Ac 2.31—David was speaking not of himself (Ac 2.29), but of Christ.
  • Ac 2.32—The resurrection again, this time with witnesses.
  • Ac 2.33—The living Jesus is the agent behind what is happening at Pentecost—namely, the coming of the Spirit.
  • Ac 2.34—Jesus is alive and active in heaven, the presence of God.
  • Ac 2.36—Jesus is “Lord.” It’s true that the Greek word here (kurios) can mean simply “sir,” similar to Elizabethan English (“Good day, my lord”). But since it often cannot have that meaning (e.g. Jn 20.28), and since the Jews used it to translate the name Yahweh in their Greek scriptures, this statement is much more likely claiming deity for Jesus.
  • Ac 2.36—Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one—by implication prophet, priest, and king—the fulfillment of the entire Hebrew scriptures.
  • Ac 2.38—Forgiveness of sins comes from repentance and baptism and brings “the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Note that the presence of sin as part of the human condition is assumed. [Sidebar: here I’m simply listing what Peter is saying; this is what theologians call “biblical theology.” No, I don’t believe that baptism is necessary for the forgiveness of sins; that conviction comes from a comparison of this passage with others, which we call “systematic theology”—and which is not my purpose here.]
  • Ac 2.39—Again, God’s plan includes both Jews (“you and your children”) and Gentiles (“all who are far off”); God’s plan overwhelms our cultural and social barriers.
  • Ac 2.40—“This generation” is “perverse.”

How did you do? How did I do? Are there unfounded or biased assumptions in my list? How about yours?

Next time we’ll give some thought to what we’ve found so far and where we go from here.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Application 1 Application 2

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Filed Under: Bible, Theology Tagged With: Acts, biblical theology, false teaching, New Testament

Sometimes We Fight, Part 4

January 17, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

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So when believers disagree about doctrine—about their interpretations of what the Scripture says—how do we decide whether these disagreements are worth making an issue about?

A friend of mine, Tom Wheeler, wrote his PhD
dissertation on that very question at the same time I was writing mine. For folks who are near Greenville, it’s available in the BJU library; for folks who aren’t, there’s interlibrary loan. :-) Tom looks at a number of ways we can discern which doctrines are most important, and better yet, he does so without killing you with boring dissertationish prose. It’s a valuable piece of work.

I won’t give away all his ideas, but here are a few—

  • We can look at what the apostles emphasized in
    their sermons in the New Testament.
  • We can look at the context of NT references to
    “the faith” or “doctrine” (e.g. 1Ti 6.3).
  • We can look at NT confessions of faith (e.g. Mt
    16.13-16).

There are other places we can look as well. And then we can compare all the doctrines indicated by those different methods and see where the substantial overlaps are.

I’d like to look more closely at the first suggestion: NT apostolic preaching. This idea isn’t original to Tom; earlier in the 20th century, C. H. Dodd nearly made a whole career out of the study of the NT “kerygma,” or preaching—though I would disagree with a whole bunch of his conclusions. And the concept was studied long before Dodd as well.

Why would the apostolic preaching help us answer the question? Several reasons—

  • Directed by the Spirit himself, the apostles
    were ordained by Jesus himself to relay inerrantly the facts and significance
    of his earthly ministry (Jn 14.25-26; Jn 15.26-27; 16.12-15). They’re going to
    relate the most important stuff, and they’re going to get it right.
  • While several apostles—Matthew, John, Peter,
    Paul—wrote portions of the New Testament, not everything they wrote was of
    primary doctrinal importance, as Paul
    himself said
    .
  • But there is a record of several sermons, almost
    all of them preached to unbelievers with the purpose of defining this new
    “religion.” If the sermon is definitional, it’s going to highlight the uniquely
    identifying ideas.
  • All the apostolic sermons are contained in the
    book of Acts.
    • Peter preaches several—
      • The foundational explanation of Christianity at
        Pentecost (Acts 2.14-36)
      • The popular explanation of the healing of the
        lame man in the temple (Acts 3.12-26)
      • The official explanation before the Sanhedrin
        (Acts 4.8-12)
      • The Sanhedrin defense of the apostles’ continued
        preaching (Acts 5.29-32)
      • The introduction of Christianity to Cornelius,
        the first Gentile inquirer (Acts 10.34-43)
    • As does Paul—
      • His first “synagogue homily” in Pisidian Antioch
        (Acts 13.16-41). This is likely very similar to all his later synagogue
        preaching, which is not recorded for us.
      • His sermon to a pagan audience at Mars Hill in
        Athens, which is rhetorically very different from his synagogue sermon but
        evidences similar doctrinal content (Acts 17.22-31).
      • His “farewell address” to the Ephesian elders
        (Acts 20.17-35). This is unique in that the audience consists of believers.
      • His defense of his ministry to the angry Jewish
        mob in Jerusalem (Acts 22.1-21)
      • His defense before Felix, the Judean governor
        (Acts 24.10-21)
      • His report to Festus, the new governor, and
        Agrippa, the figurehead king, after his appeal to Caesar (Acts 26.1-29).

The last two are different in that they are mostly personal reports of his conversion experience, but they do have doctrinal content as well.

There are other sermons in Acts, most notably Stephen’s defense before his execution (ch 7), but since Stephen is not an apostle, we’ll set him aside.

Now. What we can do is list the doctrinal content of each of these sermons and then compare the lists to see whether there’s a pattern. Do the apostles emphasize the same doctrines throughout their recorded preaching? If they do, then we can argue that these are the defining doctrines, without which Christianity is not Christianity at all—and that they are thus worth fighting for.

So here’s your homework. I’ve made a chart for you. Download it and fill it out by reading each of the sermons noted above. Next time we’ll talk about what we’ve found.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Application 1 Application 2

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Filed Under: Bible, Theology Tagged With: Acts, biblical theology, false teaching, New Testament

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