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

Chair, Division of Biblical Studies & Theology,

Bob Jones University

home / about / archive 

Subscribe via Email

Does God Repent, or Doesn’t He? Part 3: The Point

October 28, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: The Question | Part 2: Toward an Answer

If God’s omniscience and immutability rule out a change of mind, then why does the Scripture relate incidents in which he “repents”? I’ve suggested that the biblical authors are using literary devices to demonstrate important points about God—theological points. If you’ll run down the list of those incidents, you should be able to state the point that the author is making in each case—

  • Genesis 6.6: In the face of God’s grace and mercy in placing mankind into a world where everything he really needs is free, and in freely forgiving his sin, the pervasive evil and rebellion of mankind against God and against other human images of God is so grievous that the all-powerful and all-knowing Creator regrets that he ever made humans. Human evil is astonishingly wicked, and that wickedness is astonishingly hurtful to the Creator.
  • Exodus 32.14: After God has chosen a specific family to be his own, and has promised them a land in which they can live in perpetuity, and has heard their cries for deliverance from an evil taskmaster, and has brought them safely and miraculously out of bondage and rendered the taskmaster incapable of pursuing them by destroying the mightiest military force on the planet, and after they have sworn to do all that he has asked of them, they have violated their oath and turned on the very source of all the good that they have. This is the Genesis event exponentiated; human evil is astonishingly wicked, and that wickedness is astonishingly hurtful to the Creator—indeed, to their Father. But the core lesson is that in the face of all of this, intercession works. God hears the prayers of his people. He loves them as intensely as their sin grieves him.
  • Judges 2.18: God is deeply moved by the suffering of his people—so moved that he intervenes repeatedly to stop the pain, knowing that they will repeatedly defy him as soon as the pain stops. God loves his people deeply and faithfully, in ways that they do not love him.
  • 1Samuel 15.11, 35: When the people wanted a king—for all the wrong reasons (1S 8.19-22)—even though God had promised that in his time they would have one (Gn 49.10), God gave them the king they wanted. Yet the king persistently resisted the will of God and the words of his prophet. After a long pattern of disobedience and, frankly, insanity, Saul essentially refuses to lead the people who have asked for his leadership, and God rejects him—as, in fact, he always had. When God’s people insist on their will instead of his, it not only damages them, but it hurts their loving Provider.
  • 2Samuel 24.16: Even when judgment is deserved, a loving God is pained by it, and he will not let it continue beyond hope.
  • Isaiah 38.5: I think of this one as similar to Abraham’s “sacrifice” of Isaac in Genesis 22. God is not planning for Hezekiah to die: his heir has not yet been born (2Chr 33.1), and God has promised the continuance of the line. Here God is stretching Hezekiah’s faith, giving him—and us—an opportunity for a more intimate look at the love God has for him.
  • Jonah 3.10: God unfailingly responds to repentance, no matter the intensity and depth of the sin involved—and in this case, despite the fact that he has no covenantal relationship with the ones repenting.
  • Amos 7.3, 6: See under 2Samuel 24.16. God’s love and empathy for his people is the counterbalance to his justice and the judgment that it requires.

So what do all these verses about God’s repenting teach us?

Two things.

First, he’s wise, and his plans always come to pass. He never loses. We can trust in the ultimate success of his plans. He’s great.

And second, he loves us and listens to us, and he is moved to action on our behalf. Our prayers matter; go ahead and ask. He’s good.

Great. And good.

There is none like him.

Photo by madeleine ragsdale on Unsplash

Filed Under: Bible, Theology Tagged With: apologetics, repentance

Does God Repent, or Doesn’t He? Part 2: Toward an Answer

October 24, 2019 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1: The Question

What do we make of the fact that the Bible says both that God repents and that he doesn’t?

I think the key to what’s going on here comes from the passage about God’s rejection of King Saul. I don’t know whether you noticed this in the previous post, but this event appears in both the list of statements that God doesn’t repent and the list of examples of his repenting.

In other words, the passage says both that God doesn’t repent and that he does.

Now, this should catch our attention. The writer of Samuel directly contradicts himself in the same brief account; 1Sa 15.11 says that God has repented (and verses 23 and 26 repeat the idea with a different verb), while verse 29 says that he doesn’t repent.

Either the writer of Samuel is a moron—or has a moronic editor—or he did this intentionally, meaning he’s up to something, literarily. Which is it?

Well, we can tell from the rest of the book that he’s not a moron. He writes well. (Yes, I’m omitting for the moment the obvious factor of inspiration.)

We have a similar phenomenon over in Proverbs 26.4-5, where Solomon the Wise says that we should not answer a fool according to his folly, and then immediately says that we should.

Is Solomon a moron too? The wisest man who ever lived? Or did someone later entrusted with compiling the wise man’s proverbs not measure up to the job?

Or is something else going on?

I think the situation in Proverbs is clear. Solomon is toying with the idea, rolling the nuances around in his mind, after the manner of wisdom literature. Sometimes you answer a fool; sometimes you don’t. Now, says the wise man, let’s think about which is when.

With that example in mind, I think what’s happening in Samuel is reasonably clear. Saul is so evil that God regrets ever making him king. Out he goes. Reconsider? No. Why? God doesn’t change his mind.

This is a literary device, I would suggest, in a couple of ways. First, it’s irony—God’s changing his mind about Saul’s office, and he won’t reconsider, because he doesn’t change his mind (!). But there’s something much bigger going on here. As in the Proverbs example, in all these passages God is forcing us to keep a couple of competing ideas in our heads at the same time.

Competing Idea #1: God is transcendent, omniscient, and perfect. There is no Plan B, because unlike us he doesn’t need one. He knows the present (Gen 20.6); he knows the future (Is 44.28); he even knows contingencies, or “what would happen if …” (1S 23.10-14).

This makes him sound distant. But that’s not all there is to him.

Competing Idea #2: God is personal; he has a mind, and a will, and emotions. He is moved by our pleas; he is near and loving and caring (Ps 103.13). He is moved to action by our cries for help.

Both of these things are true of the same person. Is this a contradiction?

No, it’s not. It’s a round character.

God is infinite, and our minds are finite. He’s not going to fit into a box the size of our skulls.

Is this a theological problem? Does the atheist have a point?

I don’t think so. Here’s why.

If the atheist is right—if “God” is just a character we have invented—then we would have invented one we could understand and explain. We certainly wouldn’t have invented one who occasionally embarrasses us in front of our friends.

But if there is a God, then by definition he’s infinite. And since we’re not, we would expect that on occasion he would roam beyond the horizon of our understanding. What’s happening here is precisely what we would expect if God is real.

Next time: So what’s the point?—what we learn from all those times he repented.

Part 3: The Point

Photo by madeleine ragsdale on Unsplash

Filed Under: Bible, Theology Tagged With: apologetics, repentance

Does God Repent, or Doesn’t He? Part 1: The Question

October 21, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

In my previous post I meditated a bit on the prophets’ repeated description of God as “one who relents concerning calamity” (Jonah 4.2). And as I noted at the time, that assertion introduces what appears to be a significant theological problem.

The Scripture says repeatedly that God does not repent:

  • The hired prophet Balaam, forced by the Spirit of God to speak the truth, refuses to curse Israel and blesses them instead—and he gives the reason: God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should repent; has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not make it good? (Num 23.19). If God has said he would bless Israel, then he will, and nothing Balaam can say will change that.
  • When Samuel tells Saul that God has removed him from the throne of Israel, he locks the door with these words: The Glory of Israel will not lie or change his mind; for he is not a man that he should change his mind (1S 15.29).
  • Through Ezekiel’s vision of a boiling pot, God promises to make Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of Jerusalem successful—and he adds, I the Lord have spoken; it is coming, and I will act. I will not relent, and I will not pity, and I will not be sorry (Ezk 24.14).
  • In his last words to Israel before the Great Silence between the Testaments, God promises, I will draw near to you for judgment; … for I the Lord do not change (Mal 3.5-6).

Note that these passages come from both the Law and the Prophets (Former and Latter) in the Hebrew canon. The idea is pervasive. And it continues into the New Testament as well:

  • Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow (Jam 1.17).

It’s pretty clear that this is part of God’s character; it’s who he is. Oh, perhaps an interpreter could argue that in the Ezekiel passage God is describing just the current situation and not a general tendency, but the other passages make it clear that this is a character trait. God doesn’t change his mind; he doesn’t repent.

But.

In several passages in Jeremiah, he says that he does repent.

  • If that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it (Jer 18.8).
  • Perhaps they will listen and everyone will turn from his evil way, that I may repent of the calamity which I am planning to do to them because of the evil of their deeds (Jer 26.3).
  • Now therefore amend your ways and your deeds and obey the voice of the Lord your God; and the Lord will change His mind about the misfortune which He has pronounced against you (Jer 26.13).
  • If you will indeed stay in this land, then I will build you up and not tear you down, and I will plant you and not uproot you; for I will relent concerning the calamity that I have inflicted on you (Jer 42.10).

Two more prophetic passages, Joel 2.13 and Jonah 4.2, repeat the idea as part of the series of descriptions of God’s character that we’ve just finished examining here.             

And on several occasions God is specifically said to have repented:

  • When he sent the flood to destroy the life he had created on earth (Gn 6.6)
  • When Moses talked him out of destroying Israel in the wilderness (Ex 32.14)
  • Multiple times during the period of the judges (Jdg 2.18)
  • When King Saul refused to obey him (1S 15.11, 35)
  • When the Angel of YHWH was massacring the people of Jerusalem after David’s census (2S 24.16; 1Chr 21.15)
  • When King Hezekiah pled for more years of life (Is 38.5; Jer 26.19)
  • When Nineveh repented (Jonah 3.10)
  • In two of Amos’s visions (Am 7.3, 6)

Critics cite these passages as examples of a contradiction in the Bible.

So are they? Does the Scripture contradict itself here?

We’ll do some careful reading and analysis next time. Don’t make any life-changing decisions before then.

Part 2: Toward an Answer | Part 3: The Point

Photo by madeleine ragsdale on Unsplash

Filed Under: Bible, Theology Tagged With: apologetics, repentance

When the Impossible Becomes Likely: The Resurrection of Christ, Part 6

February 21, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5P

We’ve looked at the first piece of forensic evidence; what’s the second?

It’s mentioned in only two of the four Gospel accounts (Lk 24.12; Jn 20.5-7). It’s the grave clothes, the “linen wrappings” (Gk othonia). Jesus’ grave clothes were still in the tomb, even though the body was gone.

I’d like to make two observations about this simple fact, one pretty obvious, and the other, frankly, a little more speculative.

First the obvious one.

There’s no conceivable natural explanation that would account for this.

  • “The disciples stole the body!” Why would someone engaging in a felonious act—with Roman soldiers sleeping right there—take the time to unwrap the linen strips with which Jesus’ body had been partially bound? Why take the time? And wouldn’t the body be easier to carry if it were still wrapped? Have you ever tried to carry a naked corpse? (Me neither.)
  • “Jesus wasn’t really dead; he revived from his coma and walked away.” This is called the “swoon theory.” I’m trying to speak reverently here, but how likely is it that he would leave naked? Isn’t fear of going outside naked one of the most primal human instincts? (We’ve all had that dream, right?) Why leave behind the only things available with which to cover himself? And how did he roll the stone away? And get past those pesky Roman soldiers?

Now let me speculate a little bit. The biblical account says that when Peter and John saw the grave clothes, they immediately believed. (Well, precisely, John believed, and Peter went away marveling.) It appears that they looked at the grave clothes, and they immediately knew what had happened; they immediately ruled out any natural explanation. John is writing his account about 60 years later, and he still remembers it like it was yesterday.

What would account for that?

Well, if there had been a resurrection, what would the grave clothes look like?

We know that Jesus’ resurrected body was able to pass through solid walls (Lk 24.36; Jn 20.19), even though his body was physical (Mt 28.9; Lk 24.39; Jn 20.17, 27) and could even eat (Lk 24.41-43; Jn 21.13, 15). So it seems possible that his body, at the moment of resurrection, could have passed through the linen strips as well.

And if that had happened, what would those strips have looked like?

We know what first-century Jewish burial practices were. They didn’t mummify, but they wrapped the body in cloth strips that looked like what we see on mummies. We know that this wrapping process had been begun on Jesus’ body (Mt 27.59; Mk 15.46; Lk 23.53; Jn 19.39-40) but had been interrupted by sunset, the beginning of the Sabbath (Lk 23.54-56; Jn 19.42). So we don’t know how much wrapping had been done, or on what body parts. They would start with the arms and legs.

And when he resurrected? If his body simply passed through the strips?

Those strips would have remained in their position but collapsed onto the underlying stone slab. The shape of a body, to one degree of completeness or another, defined by carefully aligned and undisturbed linen strips.

This was no natural event. Peter and John knew that immediately. And so they believed.

They believed so thoroughly that a few weeks later, Peter the denier looked the Sanhedrin in the face and said, “You do what you want; I’m going to do what I need to do and defy your restrictive order.”

_____

So what do we have?

We have evidence that rules out any natural explanation we can think of.

We have the kind of evidence that drags us, even if we’re kicking and screaming, to the conclusion that we’re going to need to keep the impossible explanation on the list.

In fact, we’re going to need to move it to the top of the list.

It’s impossible. But it’s the only thing that makes any sense.

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
      creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
      who was conceived by the Holy Spirit
      and born of the virgin Mary.
      He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
      was crucified, died, and was buried.

      The third day he rose again from the dead.

Yes, he did.

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash

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

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

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash

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

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

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.

Part 5Part 6

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash

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.

Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash

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

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash

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.

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

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash

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

Fables Again, Differently

September 20, 2018 by Dan Olinger 4 Comments

A week ago I posted about possible lessons from Aesop for weather forecasters. This time I’d like to broach the subject again in a very different context.

In my university’s chapel program today, my colleague Eric Newton briefly referred (about 16:30 minutes in) to my experience of having my faith rescued through the study of OT genealogies. Since others may find the story helpful, I share it here.

In seminary I had to study a lot of theology, including aberrant theologies. Those included the first major theological innovation of the 20th century, neo-orthodoxy, tied to the thinking of Karl Barth. Barth’s system and writings are complex, but the feature that got my attention was his “two-story” hermeneutic. There are two kinds of history, he said. There’s the stuff that really happened, which he called by the German term Historie. That’s the first story of the house, where we live. But there’s an upstairs too, with another kind of history, Geschichte. That’s the stuff that we believe. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t; that doesn’t matter. What matters is that our belief helps us make sense of a confusing world and, more importantly, it energizes an existential experience with God, which is the whole point of being. There’s no staircase in the house; we can reach the second story only by an existential leap of faith.

Neo-orthodox thinkers make this kind of thinking clearer to the average guy by calling the Scripture’s early history “fable.” They don’t intend the term to be an insult; in their minds, it’s a great compliment. Fables are delightful and artful literary works, and they play an important role in our education and broader culture. For example, Aesop told a story about a boy who cried “Wolf!” It teaches us that we shouldn’t lie. That’s important.

Now. In what country did this boy live? In what century?

Ah, my friend, by asking these questions, you’re indicating that you completely miss the point. It doesn’t matter where or when he lived—in fact, it doesn’t matter if he lived at all. The point is the lesson, and historicity is irrelevant. Just learn from the story. Recognize the literary technique, and don’t be such a knuckle-dragging literalist.

Well. That concept hit me pretty hard. What if Barth’s right? What if we’re completely missing the author’s intent? (Authorial intent is a really big deal in biblical interpretation, right?) What if none of it’s true? And then, what’s the point of Jesus being the Second Adam to solve the problem of human sin (Rom 5), if there was no First Adam to originate the sin in the first place?

Maybe it’s all just stories.

At that point in my thinking I made a really foolish mistake. Being too proud to ask any of my teachers—or fellow students—for help, I determined to push through this on my own. That was foolish for a couple of reasons—first, because human beings aren’t designed to suffer alone, and second, because, as I later realized, I was surrounded by people who could have given me the answer without my having to spend weeks in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

But, foolishly, I spent some time as a doctoral student at BJU wondering whether there’s even a God, and whether there’s light at the end of this dark valley.

Well, there is light. God is gracious; he knows and loves and cares for his children, and as he always has, he overlooked my foolishness and treated me with grace instead of giving me what I deserved.

I was seeking the answer to the question of authorial intent: did the narrators of early biblical history intend for me to read their accounts as fable, or as Historie? Is there evidence in their literature that would answer that question?

Yes, there is. One day it hit me like a brick. It’s the genealogies.

You see, when you tell the story of the boy who cried “Wolf!” you don’t tell how he grew up and had a son, and then a grandson, and then a great-grandson, and how his 200-greats grandson is the mayor of Cleveland. It’s fable; you leave it in the world of fiction.

That’s not what the authors did. They tied those very early people to the people of their generation. And later authors recognized that and extended the genealogical record through 4000 (or so) years of history to the central figure of history, Jesus Christ himself.

Barth was creative, but he failed to analyze the literature carefully. He missed clear evidence of the obvious answer to the most basic question—what did the author intend to say?

Postscript

Paul tells Timothy that all Scripture is profitable (2Tim 3.16). All of it. Even the boring parts. Even the parts you tell new believers to skip.

Don’t do that. It’s all profitable. It’s there for a purpose. Recognize, embrace, and live in the light of that purpose. My 200-greats grandfather, Adam, would tell you the same thing.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Filed Under: Bible Tagged With: apologetics, Bible, fable, faithfulness, fellowship, literary analysis, personal, pride, systematic theology

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • Next Page »