Islamic challenge the third

How can Yeshua bear the sins of another...a verse in the Quran says no one can bear the sins of another!

First you need to expose the duplicity of this claim.

It partly quotes the Quran but misses an important point: it applies only to the 'burdened soul'. Yeshua was sinless: Surah 19:19.

Compare this to Mohammad, of whom the Quran writes: "...ask for forgiveness for your sins" at Surah 40:55, 47:19 

Surah Fatir (35:18): States that no burdened soul can carry the load of another, even if a close relative asks for help.

 

On the face of it, Yeshua as an 'unburdened' one can carry the sins of another.

 

But the claim also misunderstands the work of the cross, and what is the atoning element: the element that 'covers' sin.

 

It also ignores two patterns given by the prophets:

 

Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac (Genesis 22:9-13), the child of promise. In this case God provided the sacrifice in a lamb. This foreshadowed the sacrificial lamb in the law given to Moses.

 

Much later, David; Yahweh's chosen king, after great sin saw the child born of that sin: an innocent child, die: as punishment (2 Samuel 12). This foreshadowed the great son of David: Yeshua, the sinless one, dying as a result of the sin of others. The child, on what we can derive from the NT, would likely have been taken to paradise.

 

Just as in the Levitical law, the life is in the blood and that life spilt takes those who believe into the presence of God. The sin is 'covered' by Yeshua's unburdenedness. Or in NT terms, his sinlessness.

 

Thus the crucifixion did two things: by it Messiah suffered the death that is the wages of sin: other people's and the groaning creation A&E brought down, and in his resurrection he showed his triumph over death announcing the way to life everlasting for those who would join him. 

 

But it  needs to be borne in mind that one needs to be 'in Christ' to enjoy his grace: to be 'born from above' in repentance of sin and faith in Yeshua. It is entry into a family, no mere assent to a proposition to gain a trip to some celestial party where Yahweh is absent...which is what the Quran seems to hold out for its version of 'paradise' as some sort of cosmic bordello. 

Who are you and who am I?

Christians, even today, often attempt to present the gospel on the basis of 'you are a sinner' or 'God own you but you are disobedient to him' and similar lines, perhaps stimulated by a misreading of Galatians 3:24, where the law as the guardian in anticipation of Christ is misread/translated as the teacher/tutor/guardian to 'lead us to' Christ.

No. With Christ, the law as any route to salvation, even contra-positively, plays no role. 

So talking to our contemporaries:

Lets not start with the word 'sin' and 'sinner' because these are either meaningless terms to our contemporaries, or conjures up an obdurate legalism that has nothing to do with the proclamation of the gospel.

Still, we do need to drive a point, but, in language that makes sense to our peers.

So, let's expand 'sin' in terms of the biblical words: the Bible Project has a helpful piece on this.

Missing the mark! Much more descriptive.

I like the phrase "failure to be who we really are". Something that might make sense to people outside the
Christian community. A phrase more likely to open a conversation than close it down.

Your interlocutor might then ask: so who are we really? How could you/we know?
Whence 'failure' and how do you define or understand it? 

A few conversational gambits might be up your sleeve.

In response to someone's horror at some horror: social, natural, criminal, etc

"Sadly part of the horror show of a dislocated humanity"  

Far better than the conversation stopper of 'that's sin for you'

The follow on concept snippets that might be ready for use could be:

'Sin' is the word Christians use for our dislocation from who we really are and the resulting loss of value coherence. 

Reprieve has to come from outside humanity, and even outside this world, because we can only keep doing what we keep doing! And it has in the self-existent creator joining us in Jesus of Nazareth/Yeshua the Nazarene.

If they dismiss this as being 'religious' you might point out that a religious belief is a belief about what is independently real. So everyone lives in terms of a 'religious' belief, articulated, examined, or not. (Clouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality) 

What other 'disrupting' but positive comments might you make to open the way to a 'gospel' conversation (even if a mere snippet)?

In many cases this opening might be appropriate (or not inappropriate):

In a world conceived in (purely) materialist terms there is neither diagnosis nor treatment for the  human (dilemma/condition) -- only must wide-eyed despair at humanities history of failure, terror and cruelty in spite of its inexplicable (nobility/dignity/potential); yet in that conception the only real onclusion is the futility of death.

Back to the 'failure to be who we really are'

"Which is?" the interlocutor might ask.

People in harmony with their creator.

This idea jars against a materialistic conception of both who we are and life having any real purpose.

That itself is a symptom of the disconnect that we live in: denial that personhood is the most basic structure of reality.

And we are made to be connected to that basic structure, which, of course, is personal and relational. 

This can then go many ways...

 

Creator...personal, but not merely personal, 'love' expressed within the personal triple being...Genesis
creation description...we made for community with the creator (Gen 3:8a) then severed from creator by rejection of the way he is ...love ...repaired by him entering our humanity to rebuild the connection by renewal of us.

The idea of reality being basically delineated in terms of life in person strikes the materialist, particularly
the modern Western one, as strange if not alien.

Time for reorientation, and the implication is that our personalness is derivative of and compatible
with what absolutely is; it is not derivative of incompatible random material events by which no value is real. 

 A book: Beyond Identity by Dick Keyes of the L'Abri Fellowship. 

Another Islamic challenge

The previous challenge dealt with the divinity of our Lord.

This is related.

A not uncommon question from Muslims, and often thrown down as a weighty gauntlet is "how can God die?"

This common question both presumes that our Lord and our Father in heaven are the same identity; and so our Lord's death on the cross can appear problematic to a Muslim, confusing the member of a set with the set itself.

The Bible shows that God is three individual beings in one 'set' which is the collective state of being of all three together.

Somewhat similarly all individual humans being in one 'set' which we call humanity. This simple illustration appears to have escaped Muslims. Except that the set of God-identities consists in a unified will, unified eternity and aseity with commutative love and communion with each other and unified but separated power of action. This represents a meta-identity which humans in a working marriage have but a faint echo of.

To deal with the typical question we have to ensure a common understanding of Yeshua as the incarnate God who created.

Ask what the Muslim understands about the ontology of Yeshua (who he is and what his being constitutes), and the nature of death as the wages of sin.

Yeshua does not exhaust the constitution of God: God is three identities in one continuity of identity (see the post on Trinity - TBA). Yeshua is also the 'Son' who has adopted an humanity to be one of us. This enables his full communion with us. See Philippians 2:5-11. He has relinquished aspects of his divinity for the purpose of his mission as Messiah, fulfilling prophesy and achieving victory over sin to take them up again while remaining 'in a 'spiritual body' as the Lord of the New Creation: his inheritance as Messiah.

A rough example of this is a mouse (the word 'mouse' in Hebrew is very like the word for greatest in Arabic). If you wanted to make a relationship with a mouse to show it a better way of being a mouse, the best way would you to be, not a miniature human, because that would maintain the barrier of human over mouse. You would need to be a mouse. You would need to put aside your non-mouse attributes, or at least suppress them, and adopt mouse attributes: then you could talk 'mouse-to-mouse' with them.

So the Messiah being God incarnate.

Then we need to clarify death.

Ask how the Islam deals with death. In the very end, everyone goes to paradise but by various routes. So death is not the end, it is the way to a new beginning, even for those who remain in the grave for a long time.

So, with Christians: death is a 'destination' not annihilation.

Yeshua was in the grave, but for a short time. He died: his 'soul' left this life and his (human) body ceased to metabolize. He was dead. But on the day of his death he told one of the thieves also on the cross that 'today you will be in paradise with me', Luke 23:43.

In his resurrection body he was changed into the 'spiritual body'. All who have been "born from above" that is "in Christ", will also be so transformed at the return of Messiah. They will all then share in his kingdom and be adopted by the Father..world (now) without end.

Islam holds no similar re-uniting of mankind with God who is love, and everlasting joy of fellowship with him. 

 

 

An Islamic challenge

There are a few questions or challenges of Christian faith that are popular with Muslims.

One that many Christians stumble over, alas (and as a great indictment of church discipling) is the question, prompted by Zakir Naik, I believe:

Show me in the Bible where Jesus says "I am god, worship me", in those words.

Of course there is nowhere in the NT that answers this silly question. Silly because it seeks to impose the questioner's demand on God when the demand suffers a number of failings; it commits the informal fallacy of 'precise language'. It applies a post-enlightenment conceptualization on an ancient Jew and so is anachronistic as well as anatopic. The demand would be simply laughable to a rabbi or pharisee. It implicitly disregards the Biblical data that points to God in trinity; It ignores God's name, Yahweh, seeking Yeshua to identify as some generic 'god'. Perhaps like the Islamic 'allah' (Ive seen discussion that claims this is a generic word for 'god' not a name, but if a name its provenance seems to be pagan).

Finally, it presumes an Islamic conception of God (allah), as alluded to above, in complete denial of the Bible picture of Yahweh. 

So here's how a conversation might go, with various answers:

Note, always start with a clarifying question:

1 - "What do you mean by 'god'?"

You might expand this by illustration: do you mean 'allah', or some pagan 'god', or do you mean 'Yahweh' or do you mean some other uncreated entity? 

They might default to 'Allah' but here the reply is:

"Allah' is not a god, it is a concoction of Muhammad and is a limited god dependent on the creatures to be god." 

[Allah's three important eternal names are "compassionate, merciful and loving" But all require eternal objects of those characteristics to be actualized. Allah's only external object is a creature: man, so he is dependent upon a creature to be eternally god.]

OR

The 'Christian god', might be defined.

"For a start no Jew would use the word "God" they would use the word Adonai. But Yeshua would never claim to be Adonai, because that would localize the almighty and be completely nonsensical in Jewish terms. Now that might work for Allah, because he's already localized in material reality: the material eternal Quran must have a physical location as must the material Allah with real body parts. Mohammad's horse to the stars story also seems to be predicated on a material location.

This demand also makes the mistake of what we call the 'bad author'. A bad author can only tell the reader who a character is, just makes a claim without being able to demonstrate the characters character in its actions. A good author demonstrates who the character is by action and interactions with other characters. Doesn't even need to explain it.

Now, Yahweh is a good author in Messiah, so he shows us who he is to demonstrate his credentials for his claims.

Take Luke 22 from v 66: He calls himself the Son of Man: this refers to the divine figure in Daniel 7. Daniel is one of the prophets that you say Muslims honour. So honour him now by accepting his word! Here is the anointing of the Son in his incarnation, showing that he is God.

And take Mark 14:62: even better, Yeshua claims to be Son of Man (a divine being who receives service due to God), sitting at the Right Hand of Power (Psalm 110:1). This shows the Son, anointed in his incarnation to bring the Kingdom of God to we who turn to him in repentance!

Another example is in Mark 2:5-10 where Yeshua does 'God things': he forgives sins, he knows what men are thinking in their minds, and in reversing the effect of the fall in Genesis 3:8 heals the man by a word. 

He doesn't need to answer Naik's peurile question. Naik needs to bow before him in humble repentance.

Perhaps we need to study these passages together! 

You might also view these videos:

Living Waters answering the challenge. 

Nabeel Qureshi Jesus saying who he is in Mark's gospel and

Anul on the challenge. 

 

Phil Connors on Life

"What would you do if you were struck in one place and every day was exactly the same and nothing that you did mattered?"

This is the world of the atheist, the pagan and the one of an exilic religion, at it's core. The only rebuttal can be by the mere superficial transient trivialities of life.

It lines up precisely with Nagel's gloomy and apposite work.

The quote from the 1993 picture-play "Groundhog Day" 

How long is an age long, and why?

Part of the age issue is theological, which I don't think has attracted much attention.

Some thoughts:

Ancient (pagan -- or 'mimetic' and idealistic -- or exilic, such as Hinduism -- using Westphal's taxonomy) views of the age of the cosmos were of long ages ( far longer than modern), eternal existence or unquantified into myth. They all tended to dehistoricize the origin stories or myths (often accompanied by ludicrous and irrational causality and calling upon fantastical creatures -- perhaps related to pre-flood denizens?). That is, outside the flow of time we are in and thus unreachable by and uncontactable by us.

It is the 'uncontactable' that is important: they all thus tend to or actually de-personalize the creation event(s) and place the creating force at inaccessible remove from our life-world and historical flow. The 'gods' are incommunicado,  remote, and uninterested in the creature, except as fodder or slaves, it would seem

All of this serves to strand humanity in an impersonal cosmos with the only possible 'integration point' being, at best, fickle exploitative forces indifferent to man's good and often inimical to it. At worst enabling man's depravity, cruelty and assertion of determinative moral opinions 

Modern materialist 'long ages' touted as accommodating Evolutionary processes, but in fact far too short for NDE to produce the current biota, are in this league. As against the Genesis account (which extends across Genesis 1-3, IMO)  which places man for fellowship with God in the same time-space and historical flow that the stage of fellowship was created.

In this account God is communicatively with us and ontologically and actually present and active directly and personally in our time-space world, which he spoke (speaking the first gesture of fellowship) into existence. The creation is thus both historicized and personalized. It echos the love with which the Creator worked.

Furthermore, it grounds in what is truly real our epistemology, our ontology and our axiology, all in the God who is and who speaks, finally in his Messiah where the '2nd person of the godhead' takes on human form as the inheritor of the creation. The grounding is in our time-space shown in God's action in the days that we exist in without denigrating but rather exulting in them .They define the domain of his creatures who would reflect his image in his creation for them, in a resonant responsive relational congress.

So, modern 'long ages' push God's creative acts out of our sphere of action and history to de-couple the creation from our 'life-world' and intruding an existential barrier of an incomprehensible past unreflective of the warmth and care of the creation events. They make any interaction with God of dubious historical weight. This possibly invites back the Platonism which has dogged theology for too long and makes God personally differently from his revelation of self in Genesis 1-3. It detaches Messiah from the continuity of care (love) demonstrated in that account and fantasizes the New Creation, when the NT has it the palpable consummation of the Kingdom of Christ.

 

More cogitating on my previous note:

Long age views of creation displace God as he identifies himself in G 1-3 as the sole author of creation. They replace him with the creation itself in some way, To the extent that in TE he is merged into and becomes indistinguishable from the creation. However, long-age creationists similarly displace him more subtly because the bulwark against displacement is removed.

The work in days delineate God's self proclaimed relationship with the creation, and convey his identity as the one distinct from creation while able to, preserving that distinction, be its sole author.

This diminished identity then diminishes what it is to be in God's image and in communion with God...imperiling the communion we look forward to in the New Creation, which may now also be destabilized as the creation no longer bears the exclusive mark of God's love.

Other views challenge his sole authorship by deferring to views that were old when Epicureanism was current and use that story, which served to eliminate God as creator. These invented views then supplant the Biblical account, taking us somewhere else. At once God's identity and our relationship with both the creator and the creation as the creation is  changed. The priority that God reserves for himself in G 1-3.is now shared with or given to the creation.

The locus of 'creation' moves from the propositional and relation-building word of God, to the mute creation itself.

Christ's lordship is, as a result, diminished as the creation has  'done its own thing' absorbing God's work and anonymizing it, at best. In these terms the question as to what God did in the long age views remains unanswered or reduced to speculation adrift from revelation.

The various long age views fail to stand up to Nagel's forlorn description of life as a (meaningless) episode between two oblivions...despite that no sane person really lives this way.

Provisional thoughts, but may be of interest.

 

Engaging with Islam

Islam is a vigorous and ambitions religion about which most Western Christians know next to nothing.

A useful set of training seminars is available from Samuel Green at Engaging with Islam.

Other sources are Dr Jay Smith at Pfander Centre. and Dr David Wood at Christian Apologetics and Apologetics Roadshow.

Samuel Green's seminars are able to be used by groups to have parish-based training without the need to engage an external facilitator or trainer; although either could be helpful. 

How does God Work?

One of the theological puzzles we have is how does God work? How does he achieve his will with (currently) 8 billion people doing their own thing?

The two classical answers post Augustine and even more so post the Reformation are "Calvinism" (re-badged Augustinianism) and "Arminianism", which amounts to a reconfigured Calvinism.

So-called "Provisionism" so-branded by its opponents, is the classic Baptist approach to both soteriology and divine sovereignty in terms of creatures in his image ( which God must take seriously as he called it very good), I don't think takes much time, explicitly, over this issue.

In short terms, Calvinism holds that God 'meticulously pre-determines' all things whatsoever, down to the organization of sub-atomic particles (not that he knew about them, but it follows), This extends to who will be 'saved' and who will be 'damned'. Not a good look, in my view, based as it is on pagan philosophy mixed with a misreading of Romans 8-11 and a God who is as limited as is man.

Arminians have a similar end state but by a different route: God knows what will happen as from his timeless existence can see it into the future and chooses those who he knows will turn to him in Ephesians 1:13 style. These he reflexively chooses to save, the others not so.

This makes too many assumptions about time, God's state of being and what human volition truly is or is not.

I think there is a simpler approach.

Firstly, God and time.

Whatever we might think theoretically about time and timelessness, the creation account shows God present and active in the days of our lives (to quite a TV show), or to be more existential, the days in which we have our life-world, in which we live. So God is here, with us, in time, in our history and in fellowship.

How this works out.

Calvinists and Arminians and other determinists seem to have a small God, projected in terms of the nature of limited human decision matrices. But God is far bigger than that.

First off, God created all being we experience. We are in the restricted domain of his creating. A domain he is exhaustively knowledgeable of. Nothing that happens in that domain can catch him out. He will always have an answer to achieve his ends despite anything man can do or imagine.

So, he has no need to 'determine' anything. Given his knowledge of the existential structures and the nature of man he has created, nothing can out-wit him. He neither needs to determine (eviscerating our true freedom as in his image), or see into a yet to exist future.

Even with the vast number of consequential choice options on earth (say 5 to the power of 8 billion at each choice node) and along consequential choice pathways, the options remain a tiny number for God to comprehend and manage. As a participant in history, which he shows he is, he is well able to use focused interventions (those quiet prompts we might feel, for example or circumstantial events) to bring special circumstances to action, in reflection of Romans 8:28.

No matter what puny man with his tiny intellect and dull imagination: just above the level of a gnat's from God's perspective, can do, nothing can derail God's objective which he has for the ultimate good of those in Christ and adopted into his family.

 Soli Deo Gloria!

Pastor or Preacher or both together?

 Mr YouTube landed this podcast on my screen recently, about preaching and pastors.

 Some good points made, but others needed some pondering,

 Obviously he's on about "preaching", "pastors" and touches "teachers", inter alia.

 First thing I noticed was a tendentious mistranslation of kerux (κῆρυξ). Sochor (the presenter) claimed it was "a herald of divine truth; work of proclaiming the word of God", Now it  might have that meaning in Christian usage, but that is NOT the translation, Thayer, for instance, has: "a herald or messenger vested with public authority, who conveyed the official messages of kings, magistrates, princes, military commanders, or who gave a public summons or demand"
 
Simply a proclaimer...of the gospel to non-believers. I guess so many non-believers attended congregations as "cultural Christians" the gospel had to be preached therein.

Paul showed us how this works in Acts 17 talking to the pagans.

I wonder how many congregations have an active community outreach? You know, a booth in the main street, a drop-in coffee and book shop, a stall at community markets, evening courses in the local college on Bible, church history, "True Spirituality", "Inner Peace" the "twisted tale of Christian thought". Titles to be attractive in the marketplace of ideas.

Even a well-structured "in-drag" program of introductory courses could work.

However, Paul tells us what happens in a gathering of the saints in 1 Corinthians 14:26b-33: teaching, revelation, a tongue (foreign language needing interpretation), prophesy.

What we have habituated to call "preaching" is probably more like "prophesy" for exhortation. But note: lots of contributors! No 'main man' and all in love (ch 13) for edification.

Then we go on to "pastor".

This role is derived from the Roman Catholic priest and not from the NT elder, although happily some congregations do have elders. Unfortunately, too often they are seen more as a board of directors than the gentle spiritual guides of 1 Peter 5:5 and Titus 1:5. Note Titus talks also of female elders,

This has rather tendentiously (again) been rendered as "older women" but the word is the feminine  of 'elder'. The qualification of only one wife obviously is to ban polygamists. There were no polyandrous women so no need to mention.

Now, on to the meat of it.

Being derived from the priest, the modern "pastor" is not seen in the NT at all. It's a fabrication of men and has been the greatest dis-empowerer of the church over centuries. It's main function is to train the congregation that its members have nothing to say and to "outsource" its learning and giving an account, proclamation, etc. to that one man, while inhibiting the growth of people to true Christian maturity and for many to be teachers (Hebrews 5:12).

Daryl Erkel  has a good essay on this: "The Urgent Need For Reformation in Pastoral Ministry" at www.semonindex.net website.

The sameness of all religions?

A not uncommon remark today is that all religions are basically the same.

Frank Turek speaks to this claim. 

For Christians the first impulse might be to say "no they are not".

Better, IMO (and Greg Koukl's in his books "Tactics" and "Street Smarts") is to find out more.

Here's a paradigmatic pattern that might help.

Let's start with your first clarifying question:

> Really, sounds interesting, can you tell me more?

OR

> What do you mean by [that/'religion' and 'same'?]

This might bring some summary remarks about being kind and loving, or similar superficial existential affect. But what you are after is their basis for their claim. Their "why" they think that.

You might be able to respond: 

>Your view seems to be focused on a basic Christian structure, but that's not surprising because Christianity has influenced the Western worldview with varying success for many centuries. How would that apply to other transcendental world views?

The discussion could go in many ways from here.

A couple of points to keep in mind:

What 'religion' is.

The best general definition of religion is given by Clouser in his "The Myth of Religious Neutrality" page 18 in the edition I use. It is:

"the non-dependent reality on which all else depends"

In other words: the world-view that structures one's view/concept/understanding of man and his relation to the world/reality/what basically is, etc.

So you might ask the person to stand back from the word "religion" and suggest that it is:

1 - the basic conception one has of the nature of man/mankind/humanity, that either differentiates from the rest of the biota or merges into it, and

2 - the basic conception of 'reality' and man's/mankind's/humanities' relation to it.

and in so doing how it accounts for Schaeffer's "dilemma": that man (or the alternative locutions) is noble yet cruel. One could alternatively say: Magnificent, yet flawed. Loves yet hates! Is generous yet selfish.

It is in these basic conceptions that Westphal's tripartite taxonomy works: 

1. Exilic Religion

Core View: Takes life in the material world to be an exile from the soul's true home.

Salvation: The process of returning to that spiritual home.

Key Focus: The divide between the transcendent/spiritual and the physical world, often viewing the latter as fallen or a place of alienation.

 

2. Mimetic Religion

Core View: Views life as normatively controlled by a right, harmonious relationship with nature.

Salvation: Achieved by rehearsing or participating in the origins and depths of nature, often guided by myth and ritual.

Key Focus: Cosmic order, cyclical time, and living in accordance with the rhythms of the natural universe.

 

3. Covenantal Religion

Core View: Adds a historical dimension to the cosmological focus of mimetic religion.

Salvation: Finds ultimate meaning in historical interactions between the divine and humanity, giving specific historical context to human guilt, death, and redemption.

Key Focus: Time as linear, historical responsibility, and moral obligations to a personal, active deity.

(AI summary)

 

Now we can have a conversation about 'religion' and its connection with the world as it is. 

 

[BTW, I don't agree with all Greg's theology, but his apologetics approach is second to none, IMO.] 

 

 

 

 

Whence materialism?

Materialism (and Physicalism) collapse quite quickly into impersonalism.

A universe that "created itself", oxymoronic tangles aside, results in the denial of humanity as of real persons and reduces the person to a configuration of matter (atoms and photons, presumably). Not a person at all.

Yet, in this it fails to explain our transcendental conceptions and our immateriality in teleological self-consciousness that conceives of a real future. That is, a future we can reasonably contemplate and invest in by acting now. Axiological drives and indeed all metaphysics become epistemologically barren without an immaterial grounding.

But no one lives as this is so! 

Words to use and points of departure.

In the formal addresses given in congregational gatherings (what we irrelevantly call 'sermons' in church 'services') the speaker can take the opportunity to give tips on personal evangelism and apologetics.

Here are three recent examples I've heard, with excellent springing-points for steering the conversation.

1 - This morning in our assembly the speaker, discussing Luke 16:19, etc. (the rich man and Lazarus) and 1 Timothy 6:17 commented, inter alia, "the Christian vision is not anti-joy or anti-material. It is anti-idolatry".

2 -  A dinner talk recently attended had the speaker sketch the rich man of the above parable (a type of fable) as one "living his best life" or "he doing him" to adopt a modern trope. But it can only end in dissolution, in death, and achieve nothing! And how does one know it is their 'best life'. It is simply unremarkable to seek self! The talk was entitled "The paradox of being true to yourself".

3 - I wrote about this one a while ago. The talk was on Luke 13:1-5. The often missed point here..no, in my hearing the perpetually missed point, is that Yeshua explains the so-called "problem of evil/suffering".

This is only a problem for non-believers, which is rarely explored with any rhetorical power: the disjunct between desire and experience show there is a problem, a big problem brought by our alienation from our Creator. It shows us the consequential state of the cosmos and who we are, prompting the only resolution of repentance (and commitment to our Creator in Yeshua -- who is the Creator incarnate).

Each of these can be used to steer a conversation and used as a springboard for some conversational evangelism: connecting the gospel with the fruitless conceptions of the world most cultures engender. 

Three types of religion

When we start to consider 'world-views' we can be met immediately with the falsehood that "all religions are the same"

 

Clouser in "The Myth of Religious Neutrality" goes a way to identifying how this is an inadequate analysis, even at the most superficial level, but Westphal is even more helpful. 

Westphal presents an interesting taxonomy of religions in his book "God, Guilt  and Death" that shows that they very much are not, on their own terms, the same as each other.

Mr AI summarizes it below

"AI Overview

              

In his book God, Guilt, and Death, philosopher Merold Westphal categorizes religious sensibilities into three main classes to explain human responses to finitude: exilic, mimetic, and covenantal religion. These are structural classes of religious thought rather than rigid historical traditions.

1. Exilic Religion

Core View: Takes life in the material world to be an exile from the soul's true home.

Salvation: The process of returning to that spiritual home.

Key Focus: The divide between the transcendent/spiritual and the physical world, often viewing the latter as fallen or a place of alienation.

2. Mimetic Religion

Core View: Views life as normatively controlled by a right, harmonious relationship with nature.

Salvation: Achieved by rehearsing or participating in the origins and depths of nature, often guided by myth and ritual.

Key Focus: Cosmic order, cyclical time, and living in accordance with the rhythms of the natural universe.

3. Covenantal Religion

Core View: Adds a historical dimension to the cosmological focus of mimetic religion.

Salvation: Finds ultimate meaning in historical interactions between the divine and humanity, giving specific historical context to human guilt, death, and redemption.

Key Focus: Time as linear, historical responsibility, and moral obligations to a personal, active deity.

While Westphal uses these three categories to describe the phenomenology of religion, he also famously explored the Phenomenology of religion broadly, and examined how modern critiques of religion can function as a tool for Religious Belief.

If you are exploring Westphal's work, I [Mr AI] can:

Detail how these categories apply to specific traditions (e.g., how Christianity blends these elements).

Summarize his concepts of faith and reason.

Provide an overview of his views on the hermeneutics of suspicion (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud).

Let me know which of these you'd like to focus on! "

[end of AI]

 

Some people are faced with contention about the 'rightness' of seeking to persuade others to change religion.

Two thoughts on this:

Firstly it raises an interesting question of moral epistemology and the possible source of 'rights' along with the basis for any ethical or moral judgement, because those who would reprimand for proselytizing are themselves seeking to impose their 'religious' belief on us!

Secondly, we typically have initial evangelistic conversations that 1. seek to understand the other's belief system, and 2. seek  to explain ours. No push to 'convert at all"

Greg Koukl has two excellent books on this: "Tactics" and "Street Smarts".

 

On covenantal religions.

 

The three main ones are often said to be Judaism, Christianity and Islam. There are others of course but very small. Perhaps Zoroastrianism, for example.

Islam is interesting in this category as its conception of Allah ("the god") has mimetic characteristics.

 

Allah seems to be contained in the cosmos, has physical characteristics and seems to be physically localized. His "word" seems also to be both "Isa" (the Islamic misnamed distortion of Yeshua) and the 'eternal Quran', which itself is eternally physical on tablets in 'heaven'. This latter is strange given its occasionalist references, historical errors, physical mistakes and inclusion of late Christian pseudepigrapha .

 

How this plays out

In the idea of man and the idea of of mans relation to the world are different across the three types.

Mimetic religions have man as an integral part of the world and not substantially differentiated from it.

It is finally monastic.

Materialism/physicalism reflect this in that man is an assembly of basic particles and everything about man is founded in his material substance. Man has no more status, finally, than a rock!

Exilic religions depict man as separated from the basic IS: an impersonal undifferentiatedness. There is no innate significance to man or, it seems, the basic "IS". Man's 'object' (the worth of which fails to be established by the nature of the basic being espoused) is to be unified or undifferentiated with the basic "IS". Upon this the individual dissolves into the IS.

Against these conceptions covenental religions set man in contrast to both the material cosmos and the separate self-existent Creator: Yahweh in both Judaism and Christianity. Fundamental to man is relationships, which are real and substantial.

Man is distinguished from both other types in a combination of his substance and his dependence. While similar materially to the cosmos is differentiated by virtue of spiritual self-consciousness that is only resolved in relationship with Yahweh through his Spirit sent by the incarnate Messiah. The Genesis creation account in chapters 1-3 illuminates this.

  

 

Why only 1 way?

At my youth group (attendee only) back last century (I love saying that), one of the other attendees asked why Jesus was the only way. She had become quite upset at the exclusivity as she perceived it that this claim seemed to entail.

All I can recall of the answer was a repetition of the relevant scriptural passage, with no further discussion, and much frustration and bemusement all around.

In later years the obvious answer has come to mind and one that reaches back into the scriptural framing of reality: Jesus, is the creator! That's why he is the only way!

 

He is the "reference point" for all that exists and the integration point for we who are alienated from our creator, which alienation only he is able to overcome by giving us new life.

Nothing and no one from within the creation can resolve its final dilemma of estrangement (Romans 8:19ff), only one from without the creation.

Who do we follow?

In a Christian gathering we often declare our allegiance, our vision and our commitment in some formal manner to commence our time together (some people call this a "service"; perhaps because we serve each other as per 1 Cor 14, although gathering/assembly/meeting are perhaps better words).

We might do this in the words of the Apostles Creed, a passage of scripture, or prayer.

My favourite scripture passage is (from the Morning Prayer format):

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us: but if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 St. John 1.8-9. 

Of late some Christian gatherings start with intoning an 'acknowledgement of country'. Sometimes this is given an attempt of a buffer, packaging it with some Christian niceties. But this is false as we would not do the package if we weren't really doing the AoC.

In case you don't know, an AoC is intended to 'acknowledge' Aboriginal presence on this island prior to the arrival of multi-cultural refugees from Britain in 1776 or so. Noting this is already well done and honoured in endless adoption of Aboriginal place names across Australia.

The AoC itself is a type of ceremonial paean derived from one invented in the 1970s by an Australian Aboriginal entertainer, Ernie Dingo (BTW a very good entertainer!) at the behest of, I think, of a Maori group who did historically have such a greeting.

So what does recital of these words imply when done in some association with a Christian gathering of any type, in a church publication (newsletter, website, letter) or sign?

As one of my bosses told me many years ago (she was CEO of a professional society) when a board member wanted to do something similar. The boss lady supported my rejection of the idea because "we do not split our brand". That is, we do not represent ourselves as anything but ourselves. We do not confuse our market as to who we are. We do not give allegiance to any others. No offense implied or intended, but we are who we are, not someone else.

Aside from her commercial 'nose' and loyalty to the organization, she could see the diffusion of our allegiance to our mission being implied by acquiescing to the request.

Now, what happens in a church context?

Same thing: we 'split our brand'. No longer do we meet to edify one another in the Spirit, we also meet to 'acknowledge' on political (perhaps on faux or real or misplaced compassionate grounds) a formal non-Christian, indeed pagan belief structure with practices as diachronically ungodly as the Western heritage is.

Do we acknowledge the Ancient Greeks or Romans? Caesar, even Constantine? No. What about Boadicea, Nero, or Scipio Africanus? No. These would be completely incongruent with our faith.

It also degrades implicitly the faith of Aboriginal Christians as we overturn Paul's teaching in Galatians 3:28. All of a sudden there is 'Jew and Greek'! We have injured in our words the unity of the body of Christ. We have said we meet for other than our Christian mission of making disciples. We have confused our message in our now split brand, mixed our allegiance and denied our Lord. Instead of inviting the world in, we have asked to join it!

Let's stop doing it and get some backbone when questioned. We are no longer of this world: Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Christians, we are all "in Christ". To him we give our total allegiance. Thanks be to our Lord and Saviour.

  

Conversations

In almost every congregation I've been part of, after the formal session we have coffee and buns, or similar (rarely lunch, because the NT congregational practice ain't for we moderns, it seems) and chat with each other.

Almost never have I experienced a theological or other serious topic arising in conversation.

Now when I've been in other groups: a political party, a couple of community volunteer groups, board member of a charity, even in professional contexts, the conversation is always concentrated on the activity of the group. Never idle chit-chat!

Why is this so?

Now, even at church board meetings and the like, we chat on topic!

On the up-side, maybe its because we are in some way sharing our every-day-ness with each other, like with your pals in the school playground.

Maybe its because the talk we've heard is so far from relevance to our lives there's nothing to connect with. Maybe the talk is a mere 'set-piece' like a groom's speech at the wedding breakfast (that's at the reception) and no further comment called for or even possible...

I've tried on a few occasions recently by hanging back with my own 'news' and asking what people thought of the talk, or the whole session. That usually gets platitudes (because mostly people forget the talk the instant they walk out of the auditorium).

From time to time there are real meaty conversations; but, so so rare.

Is this a mark of a deeper problem? 

Then there's the newbie.

I've been a newbie at a church gathering. I've also been on the other side.

Questions I've dealt with include:

Are you new here?

I haven't seen you here before.

Are you a Christian?

But NEVER have I heard (so this is what I say): "Hello, I don't think we've met, my name is 'Watcher' "...then a follow up, if I need it is "What brought you here?"

This starts a real conversation, not one that requires admission that you are a newbie. Plenty of people volunteer that, but the question requires no explanatory response.

Another follow up could be "What are your thoughts about the event we've just experienced/the talk they guy/girl gave/what this crowd (or we) believes...? 

 

 

The sermon spot

If we must have the rhetorical set-piece known as 'the sermon' at least let's make it useful!

For instance, the speaker comes across Colossians 1:14 - "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation." referring to Yeshua.

I heard of one speaker who did explain that "firstborn" referred to primogeniture.

 

Primogeniture is a historical system of inheritance where the firstborn legitimate child inherits the entirety of their parents' estate, titles, or royal succession, typically prioritizing the eldest son. It was designed to keep large estates and political power intact, though it has been largely abolished in modern societies in favor of equal division.

The guy did briefly mention this, and that it was a counter to Arians who claim that Yeshua is not divine.

But, how is it a counter? How does the creator-son inherit what he has created? Doesn't he 'own' it already?

 

Well, no. Satan is the prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2) -- the one who sought to tempt Y to prostrate before him to gain the world, to inherit it as it were (Matthew 4:1 ff).

 

Y as firstborn to inherit must be placed in the great arc of redemption: Creation-Christ-New Creation.

 

Creator - The creation fallen under the influence of Satan - Christ defeats the consequence of the fall at the cross - Christ brings the New Creation and now 'inherits' it for all eternity! No more satanic influence. 

The Problem of Evil Solved!

My letter to a speaker in our Sunday congregation, recently.

To Jimbo: 

I've heard that the most common asserted objection to Christian faith specifically, or Christian theism more generally, is the so-called "problem of evil".

I think Luke 13:1-5, which you were able to touch on in your sermon last Sunday, deals with this in "nail hit on head" fashion.

There are several Christian responses to the PoE, but most seem to be sought within the framing of the objector, which is typically in terms of some form of quasi-Aristotelian fantasy 'god as fairy god-father' figure.

This 'god' is characterized in a trio of metaphysical absolutes: omniscient, omnibenevolent , omnipotent, construed in homo-benevolent fashion (that's the fairy god-father piece). That is 'god has to do right by me on my terms'.

The abstractions that underlay this almost narcissistic view fail at the starting line because God reveals himself to us not in static absolutes, as the ancient Greek philosophers were inclined towards, but in terms of interaction ("I am who I am: Ex 3:14). Don't worry, this is not a take on 'process theology'; what I refer to is God's action in history in relation to us on the grand arc of salvation from Creation, through Christ to New Creation.

Outside this framing we are diverted to the 'god has to be nice to me' game. This is agnostic of the nature of God, man and the creation set out in the creation account (Genesis 1-3:8a), the fall, and God's resolving action to 'over-rectify' the fall (not that we know the possible path of history absent a fall).

By 'over-rectify' I mean that those in Christ are now destined not back to Adam's state, but to be adopted into Yahweh's family!! So, the problem's typical framing relies on the 'god of my invention' and not the Creator God of revelation!

God's rectification of the Fall's result comes by way of the Messiah intervening in this corrupt world--of our own making--to not scrap the world, and us, but to start again (part of the theology of the flood in contra-positive fashion). Nor will he accept who we are in our 'God-repudiating' state, ethically free individuals (part of our 'imageness-now-marred' nature), about whom the place of our congress with God has fallen with we its stewards (Romans 8:22).

Against this, God has sought to renew us within that fallen world with the fall-ness of the world itself exhibiting its state to we who share that state...as its stewards. The two are inseparable. And here we can respond to the horror show of the fall by either loving it or rejecting it in repentance, or die fixed in it (as Yeshua points out in the Luke passage). Thus we are born from above upon repentance and belief as the first phase of the great rectification his kingdom will bring. The first act of grace to us to counter the fall.

As those in God's image-marred (that is, everyone) we detect the uncongeniality of much that goes on in our world and ourselves, while unable to do much about it at cause, while, by God's grace we do have some ability to ameliorate the signs of fall, as history shows.

Nevertheless, we need Christ's 'rescue' to give us new life, the life of his kingdom, not our fallen world.

In short the fallen cosmos, full of 'not-god-ness' is constantly telling us all is not right (our 'not right' detector is still working), and while the creation bears witness to God, more so does Christ who brings the promise of his kingdom and the actuality of new life. Nevertheless while in this fallen cosmos we still suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (Hamlet), yet with hope!

This is the work, not of the 'fairy god-father god' but the God who loves, saves and restores while 'respecting' our choice in the creation made for us to know God in.

BTW, to Mr Atheist: how does rejecting God solve actual evil? It seems all you are left with is mute, uncomprehending despair with no out but the hope of oblivion. Yet for some reason you don't gallop to that end, you avoid it! Why?

 

How to teach apologetics.

This morning at the old ecclesiarium, the paid guy's talk was on Luke 13, among other things.

It was all OK as far as it went, but it didn't go far enough with a massive missed opportunity.

The passage that caught my thoughts was vss. 1-5, about the WHS disaster at Siloam where a tower collapsed killing 18 men.

The issue of the importance of repentance was picked up (oddly, as the congregation does have a Calvinistic tinge, alas) but the opportunity for a bit if apologetic training was missed. And every opportunity should  be taken to at least give people the means of fruitful discussion with others.

One of the most difficult (for most) questions non-believers put to Christians is the 'problem' of suffering in a world with a loving God. Of course most people here conceive god as a sort of fairy-godfather who should be nice to us then just get out of the way.

Yeshua puts his finger on the point: repent.

Our experience of a world where we have betrayed our imageness and turned our backs to God is a world in a spiral of death makes a point. It is not 'natural'. It is discordant with what we hope and how it should be.  So 'evil' (or for the godless 'inconvenience') is the great alarm bell that there is a cosmic fire in our world and we'd better act fast.

This is not 'condition normal' it is 'condition red -- emergency' and the only way out is to re-engage with the Creator by repentance to him (and for we post resurrection folks) belief in Christ.

Belief here means entire commitment!

God has acted and offered us the way out of this mess in the world he made for us to reflect his love in, but don't. Yet it remains our world which will be replaced by the New Creation populated by those who want out (or 'in') and are 'in Christ'.

Nothing else matters (apart from caring for the sick, the poor and the damaged, being kind and humble).

So, Yeshua is the solution of the massive and terminal 'problem' we experience. If we didn't experience it, how would we know there was a problem?

After explaining this in a kind discussion, with lots of questions. it might be apposite to ask the nonbeliever if their non-belief offers a better solution. Probably not.

 

The Messianic Arc

Why are Christians, New Testament people, so interested in Torah, indeed the whole Old Testament, the Tanakh?

Because it is the genealogy of the world!

And that of the world to come as it traces the great cosmic arc etched in history in the coming and accomplishment of Messiah and his New Creation.

 

"Behold, I make all things new". Revelation 21:5