Challenging the New Atheists

Transcription

1 Challenging the New Atheists The new wave of bitterly anti-god, anti-christian atheists offer arguments against God. Patrick Zukeran provides several good answers. The New Atheist Agenda Nearly thirty years ago John Lennon sang the song, Imagine. The words went like this: Imagine there s no heaven It s easy if you try No hell below us Above us only sky Imagine all the people Living for today Imagine there s no countries It isn t hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people Living life in peace Imagine there s no heaven... You may say that I m a dreamer But I m not the only one I hope someday you ll join us And the world will be as one In other words, the source of much evil in the world is religion: belief in God, life after death, and a universal moral code. Would the world be a better place if faith in God was eliminated? Many atheists now think so. Richard Dawkins states, Imagine with John Lennon, a world with no religion.

2 Imagine, no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as Christ killers, no Northern Ireland troubles, no honour killings, no shiny-suited bouffanthaired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money ( God wants you to give till it hurts ). Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues, no public beheadings of blasphemers, no flogging of female skin for the crime of showing one inch of it. {1} The goal of the new atheists is to rid the world of belief in God or religion and replace it with reason and science. The new atheists believe that religions that embrace a belief in God, particularly Christianity, are not just irrational but dangerous and therefore must be extinguished. The new atheists are not presenting new arguments but instead they are promoting their ideas very aggressively with strong, confrontational, and condemning language. They have gained a following amongst the young academic crowd, and they have been quite influential in public education. Some of the notable names who have written popular work include Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Dan Barker, and Christopher Hitchens. In this work we will cover four popular arguments presented by the new atheists. The first is that belief in God is irrational. The second argument is that Christianity in particular is dangerous. Third, science has clearly proven God does not exist. Fourth, religion is the result of a natural man-made evolutionary process motivated by man s need for a divine father figure and the need to find meaning in the universe. In this series, we will examine these arguments and see whether belief in God is irrational or if there are good reasons for belief in a creator.

3 Belief in God is Irrational The new atheists allege that faith in God is the result of irrational thinking and that a rational person would not believe in God. Sam Harris writes, We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common we call them religious ; otherwise they are likely to be called mad, psychotic, or delusional. {2} Richard Dawkins, in his book The God Delusion, says that belief in God is the result of delusional thinking. He asserts that belief in God is a delusion built on empty assertions and not evidence. He states, Faith is blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence. {3} His conclusion is that there is no evidence to support the existence of God; in fact, all the evidence goes against God. The assertion that belief in God is irrational is not a new argument but a very old one. It is true that many who believe in God are not able to present reasons why they believe. However, Christianity is not founded on blind faith but faith built upon evidence, and there are good reasons that make belief in God a reasonable conclusion. One significant individual who has come to believe in the existence of God is Antony Flew. Flew was this generation s greatest atheist philosopher. However, Flew, through philosophical reasoning, came to believe in God. Flew states that he wrestled with three key, major scientific questions. First, how did the laws of nature come to be? Second, how did life come from non-life? Third, how did the universe come into existence?{4} The naturalists answers, which are heavily dependent on Darwin s theory, were unsatisfactory. Flew discovered that the classical theistic arguments provided the best answers in light of the evidence. The cosmological argument, or argument from first cause, and the teleological argument, or argument from design, provided a

4 much more reasonable answer.{5} For centuries, Christian apologists have presented these and several other reasoned arguments for the existence of God and many have come to a belief in God as Flew did. Antony Flew s conversion from atheism to theism deals a devastating blow to the arguments of the new atheists. Not only was he a titan among atheist philosophers, but he is another example that demonstrates belief in God is not irrational. Reasoning individuals who are willing to study the evidence and follow it wherever it leads may find a strong case for a creator. Is Science at War with God? The new atheists allege that science and faith are at war. Therefore real scientists must be atheists, for science clearly proves God does not exist. How do these atheists explain the display of design in the universe? Leading atheist spokesman Richard Dawkins believes Darwin s theory answers the design argument. However, recent discoveries reveal the shortcomings of Darwin s theory. Darwin s theory fails to explain the cause of the universe. It also fails to present evidence that that life came from nonlife. There is also the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record, and there is no mechanism for macroevolutionary change. Mutations and natural selection have failed to conclusively show they can produce macroevolutionary change. In short, the new atheists have a lot of faith that Darwin s theory will answer these challenges. Science and the Christian faith are not enemies. In fact, the more scientists study nature and the universe, they continue to discover complexity and design which make it highly improbable such complex systems could have come about by chance or natural forces. For this reason, the number of scientists who are acknowledging an intelligent creator

5 continues to grow. This is a fact the new atheists neglect to acknowledge. Francis Collins, the leader of the Human Genome project and author of The Language of God, tells how the order and precision in the DNA code led him from atheism to belief in God. Collins writes, Many will be puzzled by these sentiments, assuming that a rigorous scientist could not also be a believer in a transcendent God. This book aims at dispelling that notion, by arguing that belief in God can be an entirely rational choice, and that the principles of faith are in fact complimentary with the principles of science. {6} Physicist Stephen Hawking states that his study of the universe reveals that The overwhelming impression is one of order. The more we discover about the universe, the more we find that it is governed by rational laws.... You still have to ask the question why does the universe bother to exist? If you like, you can define God to be the answer to the question. {7} Francis Collins and Stephen Hawking are just two examples of numerous award-winning scientists who acknowledge the scientific evidence points to a creator. The more we learn in the various fields of science such as biology, microbiology, astronomy, physics, etc., the evidence continues to point to design. The complexity of life and the order displayed in the universe make it more reasonable to conclude a God created it, and the greater leap of faith would be to conclude it all occurred by chance and natural forces. Belief in God Is Dangerous The new atheist movement asserts that religion is dangerous, for it is the source of much of the conflict in the world today. Many assert that religions, especially Christianity, teach intolerance and discrimination. To build their case,

6 however, the new atheists unfortunately attack misrepresentations of religions, especially Christianity. For example, in The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins states, The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. {8} What Dawkins displays is his superficial understanding of the Bible. Certainly no Christian believes in a God as described by Dawkins. Another error is the misuse of labels. New atheists apply the term fundamentalist to Evangelical Christians as well as fundamentalist Muslims, creating the illusion the two are equivalent in their teachings. When Dawkins points to the example of the Islamic riots against the Danish cartoons, he equates this incident not with Islam but with religion, all religions.{9} However a careful study reveals that there is a huge difference between Jesus teachings and Muhammad s teachings. This huge difference is also revealed in the lives they lived.{10} A careful reading of the New Testament quickly reveals that violence goes against the nature of Christ s teachings who taught His disciples to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them (Mt. 5:38-48). Application of the true teachings of Christ would lead to a peaceful society. New atheists allege that religions promote division by the creation of in-groups and out-groups. Indeed, there are religions that discriminate, including some Christian groups, but in Christianity that is a perversion of the teachings of Christ. Jesus sacrifice and gift of salvation is offered to all (Jn. 3:16). Throughout His life Jesus reached out to those despised by the culture, and His disciples die many in foreign fields preaching salvation to all. Even in the Old Testament,

7 the mission of Israel was to be a blessing to all the world (Gen. 12). Application of true biblical teachings would lead to non-discrimination. A significant point that the new atheists do not mention is the destructive consequences of atheist philosophies. Nietzsche predicted that the death of God would lead to a moral relativism which would result in blood in the streets.{11} Communism has lead to the death of millions in the twentieth century. Millions were put to death under the regimes of Marx, Pol Pot, and Mao Tse Tung. Some religions are responsible for conflict, including Christians who have misused biblical teachings. However, atheism has shown to be dangerous as well. Religion Is the Result of an Evolutionary Process New atheists assert that religion was created out of a need for a father figure, or for comfort in a cruel world, or out of fear of the unknown. They rely on the work of James Frazer and his book the Golden Bough, written in the nineteenth century. Frazer taught that religion developed through a natural evolutionary process which began first with animism, a belief in spirits in nature. The worship of nature spirits eventually lead to polytheism. Eventually, amongst all the gods, one was viewed as the most dominant. Eventually this dominant god alone was worshipped and monotheism developed. This was known as the evolutionary theory of religion. New atheists believe eventually man s need for God will end and atheism will be the end of this evolutionary development. Unfortunately, the new atheists once again are not presenting a new theory but reiterating an old theory which has been shown to be flawed. One of the flaws of this theory is that it was influenced by Darwin s theory of evolution and lacked serious empirical

8 evidence and study.{12} One of the most significant and wellresearched works was produced by anthropologist Dr. Wilhelm Schmidt in his four-thousand-page treatise, The Origin and Growth of Religion. His research of hundreds of cultures revealed that monotheism is the oldest of religions. The development of religion was discovered to have gone in the opposite direction of the evolutionary theory. All cultures began with a belief in a heavenly father, and this monotheistic faith eventually degenerates to polytheism and then animism. This theory is called original monotheism. {13} The evidence displayed by Schmidt, and later by anthropologist Don Richardson, is consistent with the progression of religion as revealed in Romans 1. Serious research and evidence appears to favor the biblical model. The new atheists present few new arguments. What are new are not the arguments but the method and strategy of this group. How should we meet the challenge of the new atheists? 1 Peter 3:15 challenges us to always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope you have. But do this with gentleness and respect. We are called to love those who question or even attack the Christian faith. Christians must answer their challenges with humility and grace. As we present a well-reasoned case and the evidence, the Holy Spirit will use our apologetic defense and our unshaken but loving attitude to speak to their mind and heart. Psalm 14:21 states, The fool says in his heart there is no God. Might it be the new atheists who are irrational? Notes 1. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Mariner Books, 2006), Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: Norton, 2004), 72, quoted in Dawkins, The God Delusion, 113.

9 3. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford University Press, 2006), Antony Flew, There is a God (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2007), Ibid., 89. For more on this, see Gene Herr, Case for a Creator, 6. Dr. Francis Collins, The Language of God (Free Press, 2006), Gregory Benford, Leaping the Abyss: Stephen Hawking on Black Holes, Unified Field Theory and Marilyn Monroe, Reason 4.02 (April 2002): 29 quoted in Flew, There is a God, Dawkins, The God Delusion, Ibid., See Patrick Zukeran, The Lives of Muhammad and Jesus, at Amy Orr-Ewing, Is Believing in God Irrational? (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), Alister McGrath and Joanna McGrath, The Dawkins Delusion (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), See Patrick Zukeran, The Origin of Man s Religions, Probe Ministries

10 Secularization and the Church in Europe Christian beliefs and church attendance are playing a much smaller role in Europeans lives in general than in the past. Rick Wade gives a snapshot of the place and nature of Christianity in Europe. At the end of a talk about the state of the evangelical mind in America, the subject turned to Europe, and a man said with great confidence, The churches in Europe are all empty! I ve heard that said before. It makes for a good missions sermon; however, it doesn t quite do justice to the situation. Not all the churches in Europe are empty! The situation isn t like in Dallas, Texas, where churches dot the landscape, but there are thriving churches across the continent. That said, however, there is more than just a grain of truth in the claim. Church attendance in Europe is down. Traditional Christian beliefs are less widely held. It s important to know what the situation is in Europe for a few reasons. First, we have a tendency to write Europe off in a way we don t other parts of the world. The church is struggling there, but it isn t a lost cause by any means! Maybe we can even learn from the thinking and life s experience of believers across the Atlantic. Second, learning about the church around the world is good because it broadens our understanding of the interaction of Christianity and society. This should be of interest to us here in America. Let s look at a few numbers in the area of church attendance.

11 To provide a contrast with the situation today, the best estimate for church attendance in Britain in the midnineteenth century was between forty and sixty percent of the adult population.{1} By contrast, in 2007, ten percent attended church at least weekly. About a quarter of those (about two million people) self-identify as evangelicals.{2} Although there has been large growth in so-called new churches, that growth hasn t offset the loss across other denominations, especially the Church of England. What about some other countries? In 2004, Gallup reported that weekly attendance at religious services is below 10% in France and Germany, while in Belgium, the Netherlands, [and] Luxembourg... between 10% and 15% of citizens are regular churchgoers.... Only in Roman Catholic Ireland do a majority of residents (54%) still go to church weekly. {3} As we ll see later, reduced numbers in church doesn t mean all religious belief even Christian is lost. The Golden Age of Faith There is a story of the prominence and demise of religion in Europe that has become standard fare for understanding the history of Christianity in the modern world. The story goes that Europe was once a Christian civilization; that everyone was a Christian, and that the state churches ensured that society as a whole was Christian. This was the so-called golden age of faith. With the shift in thinking in the Enlightenment which put man at the center of knowledge, and which saw the rise of science, it became clear to some that religion was really just a form of superstition that gave premodern people an explanation of the world in which they lived and gave them hope.{4} This story has come under a lot of fire in recent decades.{5} Although the churches had political and social power, there

12 was no uniform religious belief across Europe. In fact, it s been shown that there was a significant amount of paganism and folk magic mixed in with Christian beliefs.{6} Many priests had the barest notions of Christian theology; a lot of them couldn t even read.{7} Sociologist Philip Gorski says that it s more accurate to call it an Age of Magic or an Age of Ritual than an Age of Belief.{8} On the other side of this debate are scholars such as Steve Bruce who say that, no matter the content or nature of religious belief in the Middle Ages, people were still religious even if not uniformly Christian; they believed in the supernatural and their religious beliefs colored their entire lives. The English peasants may have often disappointed the guardians of Christian orthodoxy, Bruce writes, but they were indubitably religious. {9} So what changed? Was there a loss of Christianity or a loss of religion in general, or just some kind of shift? Historian Timothy Larson believes that what has been lost is Christendom.{10} The term Christendom is typically used to refer to the West when it was dominated by Christianity. The change wasn t really from religion to irreligion but from the dominance of Christianity to its demise as a dominant force. Religion has come back with significant force in recent decades even in such deeply secular countries as France, primarily because of the influx of Muslims.{11} Although the state Christian churches are faltering, some founded by immigrants are doing well, such as those founded by Afro- Caribbean immigrants in England. It seems that critics sounded the death knell on religion too soon. European Distinctives Although Christian belief is on the demise in general in Europe, the institutional church the state church

13 specifically still has a valuable place in society. In Europe s past, the church was a major part of people s lives. Everyone was baptized, married, and buried in the church. That tradition is still such a part of the social psyche that people fully expect that the church will be there for them even if they don t attend. Sociologist Grace Davie describes the church in this respect as a public utility. A public utility, she writes, is available to the population as a whole at the point of need and is funded through the tax system. {12} Fewer people are being married in churches now, and far fewer are being baptized. However, there s still a sense of need for the church at the time of death along with the expectation that it will be there for them. Another term that characterizes religion in Europe is vicarious religion. Vicarious religion is religion performed by an active minority but on behalf of a much larger number, who... understand [and] approve of what the minority is doing. Church leaders are expected to believe certain things, perform religious rituals, and embody a high moral code. English bishops, Davie writes, are rebuked... if they doubt in public; it is, after all, their job to believe. She reports an incident where a bishop was thought to have spoken derogatorily about the resurrection of Jesus. He was widely pilloried for that, she writes. Soon after his consecration as bishop, his church was struck by lightning. That was seen by some as a rebuke by God!{13} Another indicator of the importance of the church in European life is the fact that, in some countries, people still pay church tax, even countries that are very secular. Germany is one example. People can opt out, but a surprisingly high number don t, including some who are not religiously affiliated. Reasons include the possibility of needing the church sometime later in life, having a place to provide moral guidance for children, and the church s role in positively influencing the moral fabric of society in general.{14}

14 From Doctrine to Spirituality I described above two concepts that characterize religious life in parts of Europe: public utility and vicarious religion. There s a third phrase sociologists use which points to the shift in emphasis from what one gets through the institutional church to personal spiritual experience. The phrase is believing without belonging. Sociologist Peter Berger believes that, as America is less religious than it seems, Europe is less secular than it seems. A lot goes on under the radar, he writes.{15} A phrase often heard there is heard more and more frequently in the States: I m not religious, but I m spiritual. This could mean the person is into New Age thinking, or is interested in more conventional religion but doesn t feel at home in a church or in organized religion, or just prefers to choose what to believe him- or herself. A term some use to characterize this way of thinking is patchwork religion. One frequently finds a greater acceptance of religion in Europe when religion in general is the subject and not particular, creedal religions. Davie notes that [generally speaking] if you ask European populations... do you believe in God, and you re not terribly specific about the God in question, you ll get about 70 percent saying yes, depending where you are. If you say, do you believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, you ll get a much lower number. In other words, if you turn your question into a creedal statement, the percentages go down. A cerebral kind of belief doesn t hold much appeal to the young. The essence of religious experience isn t so much what you learn as it is simply taking part. It s the fact that you re lifted out of yourself that counts. {16} The loss of authority in the state church hasn t resulted in the triumph of secular rationalism among young people, which

15 is rather surprising. They experiment with religious beliefs. The rise occurred right across Europe, Davie notes, but is most marked in those parts of Europe where the institutional churches are at their weakest. This isn t seen, however, where the church is still strong and seen as a disciplinary force and is therefore rejected by young people. {17} Some Closing Thoughts Allow me to make some observations about the subject of secularization and the church in Europe. Here are a few things to keep in mind as we face a Western culture that is increasingly hostile to the Gospel. First, we routinely hear the charge from people that religious people are living in the past, that they need to catch up to modern times. Such people simply assume as obviously true the longheld theory that secularization necessarily follows from modernization. This theory is sharply disputed today. Europe s history isn t the history of the rest of the world. Modernization appears in different forms around the world, including some that have room for religious belief and practice. America is a prime example. It isn t the backward exception to the rule, as haughty critics would have us believe. Some say it s Europe that is the exception with its strong secularity.{18} In fact, I think a case can be made that the modern propensity to separate our spiritual side from our material one is artificial; it violates our nature. But that s a subject for another time. What we can be sure of is that the condescending attitude of people who want Christians to catch up to modern times is without basis. There is no necessary connection between modernity and secularity.{19} A second thing to keep in mind is that the church doesn t require a Christian society around it in order to grow. Christianity didn t have its beginnings in a Christian society, but it grew nonetheless. The wide-spread social

16 acceptance of Christian beliefs and morality is not the power of God unto salvation. It is the word of the cross. Third, religion per se will not disappear because we are made in God s image and He has put eternity in our hearts (Eccl. 3:11). Christianity in particular will not die either, for the One who rose from the dead said even the gates of hell won t prevail against it (a much more serious adversary than the new atheists!). What should we do? The same things Christian have always been called to do: continue in sound, biblical teaching, and learn and practice consistent Christian living. It is the way we live that, for many people, makes our beliefs plausible in the first place. And proclaim the gospel. Despite any constraints society may put on us, the Word of God is not bound. Notes 1. Steve Bruce, God is Dead: Secularization in the West (Wiley-Blackwell, 2002), Tearfund, Churchgoing in the UK, available on the Web at port.pdf. 3. Robert Manchin, Religion in Europe: Trust Not Filling the Pews, Sept. 21, 2004, spx. 4. Kevin M. Schulz, Secularization: A Bibliographic Essay, The Hedgehog Review, vol. 8, nos.1-2 (Spring/Summer 2006), 171. Online at bliography.pdf. 5. Sociologist Rodney Stark is one of the most prominent doubters of secularization theory. See his Secularization, R.I.P. rest in peace, Sociology of Religion, Fall, 1999, available online at findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0sor/is_3_60/ai_ /.

17 6. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, England: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), 41; quoted in Philip S. Gorski, Historicizing the Secularization Debate: Church, State, and Society in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ca to 1700, American Sociological Review, Vol. 65, No. 1 (Feb. 2000), Stark, Secularization, R.I.P. 8. Gorski, Historicizing the Secularization Debate : Steve Bruce, God is Dead: Secularization in the West (Wiley-Blackwell, 2002), Timothy Larsen, Dechristendomization As an Alternative to Secularization: Theology, History, and Sociology in Conversation, Pro Ecclesia, Vol. XV, No See Jean-Paul Williame, The Cultural Turn in the Sociology of Religion in France, Sociology of Religion 65, no. 4 (Winter 2004): Grace Davie, Is Europe an Exceptional Case? The Hedgehog Review 8, nos.1-2 (Spring/Summer 2006): 27. Online at vie.pdf. 13. Grace Davie, Is Europe an Exceptional Case? : See Peter Berger, Grace Davie, and Effie Fokas, Religious America, Secular Europe? A Theme and Variations (Ashgate Publishing, 2008), Charles T. Mathewes, An Interview with Peter Berger, The Hedgehog Review, vol. 8, nos.1-2 (Spring/Summer 2006):155. Online at rger.pdf 16. Believing Without Belonging: Just How Secular Is Europe? A discussion with Grace Davie at the Pew Forum s biannual Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life, December pewforum.org/events/?eventid= Ibid. 18. Berger, Davie, and Fokas, Religious America, Secular Europe?. 19. Sociologist Christian Smith edited a volume titled The

18 Secular Revolution: Power, Interests, and Conflict in the Secularization of American Public Life (UC Press, 2003) in which the case was argued that secularization became so powerful here because of a concerted effort by people who wanted it, not because of some natural, teleological progression Probe Ministries Your Work Matters to God Sue Bohlin helps us look at work from a biblical perspective. If we apply a Christian worldview to our concept of work, it takes on greater significance within the kingdom of God. This article is also available in Spanish. Many Christians hold a decidedly unbiblical view of work. Some view it as a curse, or at least as part of the curse of living in a fallen world. Others make a false distinction between what they perceive as the sacred serving God and the secular everything else. And others make it into an idol, expecting it to provide them with their identity and purpose in life as well as being a source of joy and fulfillment that only God can provide.

19 In their excellent book Your Work Matters to God,{1} Doug Sherman and William Hendricks expose the wrong ways of thinking about work, and explain how God invests work with intrinsic value and honor. Rick Warren echoes this idea in his blockbuster The Purpose Driven Life when he writes, Work becomes worship when you dedicate it to God and perform it with an awareness of his presence. {2} First, let s explore some faulty views of work: the secular view, some inappropriate hierarchies that affect how we view work, and work as merely a platform for doing evangelism. Those who hold a secular view of work believe that life is divided into two disconnected parts. God is in one spiritual dimension and work is in the other real dimension, and the two have nothing to do with each other. God stays in His corner of the universe while I go to work and live my life, and these different realms never interact. One problem with this secular view is that it sets us up for disappointment. If you leave God out of the picture, you ll have to get your sense of importance, fulfillment and reward from someplace else: work. Work is the answer to the question, Who am I, and why am I important? That is a very shaky foundation because what happens if you lose your job? You re suddenly a nobody, and you are not important because you are

20 not employed. The secular view of work tends to make an idol of career. Career becomes the number one priority in your life. Your relationship with God takes a back seat, family takes a back seat, even your relationship with other people takes a back seat to work. Everything gets filtered through the question, What impact will this have on my career? The secular view of work leaves God out of the system. This is particularly unacceptable for Christians, because God calls us to make Him the center of our life.{3} He wants us to have a biblical worldview that weaves Him into every aspect of our lives, including work. He wants to be invited into our work; He wants to be Lord of our work.{4} Inappropriate Hierarchies: Soul/Body, Temporal/Eternal In this article, we re examining some faulty views of work. One comes from believing that the soul matters more than the body. We can wrongly believe that God only cares about our soul, and our bodies don t really matter. The body is not important, we can think: it is only temporal, and it will fade and die. But if that view were true, then why did God make a physical universe? Why did He put Adam and Eve in the garden to cultivate and keep it? He didn t charge them with, Go and make disciples of all nations which aren t in existence yet, but they will be as soon as you guys go off and start making babies. No, He said, Here s the garden, now cultivate it. He gave them a job to do that had nothing to do with evangelism or church work. There is something important about our bodies, and God is honored by work that honors and cares for the body which, after all, is His good creation. Another wrong way of thinking is to value the eternal over the temporal so much that we believe only eternal things matter. Some people believe that if you work for things that won t

21 last into eternity jobs like roofing and party planning and advertising you re wasting your time. This wrong thinking needs to be countered by the truth that God created two sides to reality, the temporal and the eternal. The natural universe God made is very real, just as real as the supernatural universe. Asking which one is real and important is like asking which is real, our nine months in our mother s womb or life after birth? They are both real; they are both necessary. We have to go through one to get to the other. Those things we do and make on earth DO have value, given the category they were made for: time. It s okay for things to have simply temporal value, since God chose for us to live in time before we live in eternity. Our work counts in both time and eternity because God is looking for faithfulness now, and the only way to demonstrate faithfulness is within this physical world. Spiritual needs are important, of course, but first physical needs need to be met. Try sharing the gospel with someone who hasn t eaten in three days! Some needs are temporal, and those needs must be met. So God equips people with abilities to meet the needs of His creation. In meeting the legitimate physical, temporal needs of people, our work serves people, and people have eternal value because God loves us and made us in His image. The Sacred/Spiritual Dichotomy; Work as a Platform for Evangelism Another faulty view of work comes from believing that spiritual, sacred things are far more important than physical, secular things. REAL work, people can think, is serving God in full-time Christian service, and then there s everything else running a very poor second. This can induce us to think either too highly of ourselves or too lowly of ourselves. We can think, Real work is serving God, and then there s what others do (which sets us up for condescension), or Real work is serving God, and then there s what I have to do (which sets

22 us up for false guilt and a sense of missing it ). It s an improper way to view life as divided between the sacred and the secular. ALL of life relates to God and is sacred, whether we re making a business presentation or changing soiled diapers or leading someone to faith in Christ. It s unwise to think there are sacred things we do and there are secular things we do. It all depends on what s going on in our hearts. You can engage in what looks like holy activity like prayer and Bible study with a dark, self-centered, unforgiving spirit. Remember the Pharisees? And on the other hand, you can work at a job in a very secular atmosphere where the conversation is littered with profanity, the work is slipshod, the politics are wearisome, and yet like Daniel or Joseph in the Old Testament you can keep your own conversation pure and your behavior above reproach. You can bring honor and glory to God in a very worldly environment. God does not want us to do holy things, He wants us to be holy people. A final faulty view of work sees it only as a platform for doing evangelism. If every interaction doesn t lead to an opportunity to share the gospel, one is a failure. Evangelism should be a priority, true, but not our only priority. Life is broader than evangelism. In Ephesians 1, Paul says three times that God made us, not for evangelism, but to live to the praise of His glory.{5} Instead of concentrating only on evangelism, we need to concentrate on living a life that honors God and loves people. That is far more winsome than all the evangelistic strategies in the world. Besides, if work is only a platform for evangelism, it devalues the work itself, and this view of work is too narrow and unfulfilling. Next we ll examine at how God wants us to look at work. You might be quite surprised!

23 How God Wants Us to See Work So far, we have discussed faulty views of work, but how does God want us to see it? Here s a startling thought: we actually work for God Himself! Consider Ephesians 6:5-8, which Paul writes to slaves but which we can apply to employees: Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free. It s helpful to envision that behind every employer stands the Lord Jesus. He sees everything we do, and He appreciates it and will reward us, regardless of the type of work we do. I learned this lesson one day when I was cleaning the grungy bathtub of a family that wouldn t notice and would never acknowledge or thank me even if they did. I was getting madder by the minute, throwing myself a pity party, when the Lord broke into my thoughts. He quietly said, I see you. And I appreciate what you re doing. Whoa! In an instant, that totally changed everything. Suddenly, I was able to do a menial job and later on, more important ones as a labor of love and worship for Jesus. I know He sees and appreciates what I do. It forever changed my view of work. God also wants us to see that work is His gift to us. It is not a result of the Fall. God gave Adam and Eve the job of cultivating the garden and exercising dominion over the world before sin entered the world. We were created to work, and for work. Work is God s good gift to us! Listen to what Solomon wrote: After looking at the way things are on this earth, here s

24 what I ve decided is the best way to live: Take care of yourself, have a good time, and make the most of whatever job you have for as long as God gives you life. And that s about it. That s the human lot. Yes, we should make the most of what God gives, both the bounty and the capacity to enjoy it, accepting what s given and delighting in the work. It s God s gift!{6} Being happy in our work doesn t depend on the work, it depends on our attitude. To make the most of our job and be happy in our work is a gift God wants to give us! Why Work is Good In this article we re talking about how to think about work correctly. One question needs to be asked, though: Is all work equally valid? Well, no. All legitimate work is an extension of God s work of maintaining and providing for His creation. Legitimate work is work that contributes to what God wants done in the world and doesn t contribute to what He doesn t want done. So non-legitimate work would include jobs that are illegal, such as prostitution, drug dealing, and professional thieves. Then there are jobs that are legal, but still questionable in terms of ethics and morality, such as working in abortion clinics, pornography, and the gambling industry. These jobs are legal, but you have to ask, how are they cooperating with God to benefit His creation? Work is God s gift to us. It is His provision in a number of ways. In Your Work Matters to God, the authors suggest five major reasons why work is valuable: 1. Through work we serve people. Most work is part of a huge network of interconnected jobs, industries, goods and services that work together to meet people s physical needs. Other jobs meet people s aesthetic and spiritual needs as well. 2. Through work we meet our own needs. Work allows us to

25 exercise the gifts and abilities God gives each person, whether paid or unpaid. God expects adults to provide for themselves and not mooch off others. Scripture says, If one will not work, neither let him eat! {7} 3. Through work we meet our family s needs. God expects the heads of households to provide for their families. He says, If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. {8} 4. Through work we earn money to give to others. In both the Old and New Testaments, God tells us to be generous in meeting the needs of the poor and those who minister to us spiritually. {9} 5. Through work we love God. One of God s love languages is obedience. When we work, we are obeying His two great commandments to love Him and love our neighbor as we love ourselves.{10} We love God by obeying Him from the heart. We love our neighbor as we serve other people through our work. We bring glory to God by working industriously, demonstrating what He is like, and serving others by cooperating with God to meet their needs. In serving others, we serve God. And that s why our work matters to God. Notes 1. Doug Sherman and William Hendricks, Your Work Matters to God. Colorado Springs: NavPress, Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, p Philippians 1:21 4. Romans 12:1, 2 5. Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14

26 6. Ecclesiastes 5:18-19, The Message Thess. 3: Tim. 5:8 9. Leviticus 19:10 Nor shall you glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the needy and for the stranger. I am the LORD your God. Ephesians 4:28 Let him who steals, steal no longer but rather let him labor performing with his own hands what is good in order that he may have something to share with him who has need. Gal 6:6 The one who is taught the word is to share all good things with the one who teaches him. 10. Matthew 22: Probe Ministries. The Reliability of Kings and Chronicles Dr. Michael Gleghorn shows how the apparent contradictions of two Old Testament historical books can be explained. Over the past year and a half my wife has been working on what might be called a visual Bible. By training and profession my wife, Hannah, is a graphic designer. She tends to understand things best when she can visualize them in some way. Hence, when she began team-teaching a women s Bible

27 study that covers the entire Bible in just two years, she felt the need to create visuals of what she was studying in order to help her grasp some of the key points in a single glance. Thus, week-by-week, as she readied herself for class, she also prepared a wide array of graphically-designed visuals of the written contents of Scripture. Everything was going fairly well until she came to the Old Testament books of Kings and Chronicles. Since these books give us a great deal of information about the kings of Israel and Judah, including the order in which they reigned, the lengths of their reigns, and so on, she decided to create some charts that would present all of this information visually. She had no idea that she was about to enter one of the most baffling and perplexing issues of biblical chronology! To put it bluntly, the chronology of Kings and Chronicles initially appears to be a hopelessly muddled, and even downright contradictory, mess! Examining this material as an intelligent layperson, Hannah could make no sense of it at all. It also meant that she could not represent the material in a visually coherent way. Feeling increasingly frustrated, she asked if I knew of any books that dealt with these problems. Although this is an area

28 I know little about, I remembered a book which (I had heard) handled these issues quite well. That book, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, by Edwin Thiele, offered her some much-needed help in making sense of the apparently confused and contradictory information in the books of Kings and Chronicles.{2} Although this book did not solve all the difficulties she was facing, it did bring a great deal of order to the apparent chaos of this section of Scripture. In the remainder of this article we ll first consider the problems posed by the mysterious numbers of the Hebrew kings. Afterward, we ll briefly look at how all these problems have been solved by contemporary scholars, so that what was previously thought of as a hopeless muddle is instead a testimony to the accuracy of the historical parts of the Old Testament. Some Difficulties with Old Testament Chronology In the original preface to The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, Edwin Thiele began his discussion with these words: For more than two thousand years Hebrew chronology has been a serious problem for Old Testament scholars. Every effort to weave the chronological data of the kings of Israel and Judah into some sort of harmonious scheme seemed doomed to failure. The numbers for the one kingdom could not, it seemed, be made to agree with the numbers of the other.{3} Indeed, the difficulties with Old Testament chronology at this point were so great that many scholars simply assumed that the biblical records were unreliable. But why? What was it about these numbers that made so many scholars think they were in error?

29 Since we ll later be discussing the two different kingdoms of Israel and Judah, let s begin by considering two imaginary kingdoms, both of which celebrate a new king coming to the throne on March 1 of the same year. In other words, both kings begin their reigns on exactly the same day. Now one would probably think that, as the ensuing years go by, court historians from both kingdoms would agree about how many years each of these kings have ruled their kingdoms. But in fact, this is not necessarily true. Suppose that one of these kingdoms counts the first year of their new king s reign from his first day on the throne. If he began his reign on March 1 of the year 2000, then this is considered the first year of his reign.{4} On January 1, 2001, he thus begins the second year of his reign. But suppose that in the other kingdom, the year 2000 is regarded as the last year of the prior king s reign. In this kingdom, then, even though a new king began to reign in the year 2000, the official first year of his reign is counted from the beginning of the new year, January 1, 2001.{5} Hence, although both kings began to rule on precisely the same day, the years of their reigns are counted differently. The first king begins his second year of rule on January 1, 2001, while the second king only begins his first official year at that time. This is just one of many issues that complicate the dating of the kings of Israel and Judah as they re recorded for us in the Bible. Once these issues are taken into account, however, a completely harmonious chronology of these kings becomes possible. Let s now consider a biblical example. A Biblical Case Study We ve been looking at some of the chronological puzzles in the biblical books of Kings and Chronicles. With apologies for the unavoidable names and numbers which follow, let s consider an example.

30 After the ten tribes split from Judah and Benjamin to form the northern kingdom of Israel, their first ruler was Jeroboam. Jeroboam was followed by his son Nadab. With Nadab we have a series of synchronisms with the long reign of Asa of the southern kingdom, Judah. The first synchronism is that Nadab began to reign in year 2 of Asa.{6} The Bible then says that Nadab reigned two years and died in year 3 of Asa.{7} But it is only one year from Asa s second year to his third year, so how could Nadab begin in year 2 of Asa, reign two years, and die in Asa s 3rd year? Next, Baasha, who killed Nadab, is said to reign 24 years starting in year 3 of Asa;{8} this should surely put his end, 24 years later, in Asa s year 27. But the Bible says that Baasha died in year 26 of Asa, not year 27.{9} Baasha s son, Elah, reigned two years, and his death was not in year 28 of Asa (that is, 26 plus 2), but in year 27.{10} At this point we have a decision to make. We could decide that all of this shows that the Bible is not to be trusted in its numerical and historical statements. This is the path taken by critics who say that these parts of the Bible were invented many years later than the happenings they describe. Or, we could give the authors of these texts the benefit of the doubt and consider that these texts show a consistent pattern. The pattern is that the northern kingdom was counting the years of reign for their kings in the fashion mentioned previously, where a king could count the year in which he came to the throne as his first year of reign, so that even if he only reigned exactly one year, he would be given credit for the calendar year in which he became king and also for the calendar year in which he died. This is a method that was used by other Near Eastern kingdoms. With this second approach, success has been achieved in reconstructing the history and exact chronology of the Hebrew kingdom period. We will now consider other factors necessary in understanding these socalled mysterious numbers of the Bible.

31 Co-regencies and Rival Reigns We ve seen a pattern in the chronological numbers that the Bible gives for the first years of the divided kingdom. We saw that, in these early years at least, the northern kingdom was counting the year that a king died twice; once for him, and once for his successor, so that one year must be subtracted from a reign length when counting elapsed time. By carefully considering the facts as given in the Bible itself, we can determine when the two kingdoms were using this method of counting, and when they were using the other method in which a king s first year was not counted until he reigned a full calendar year. The Bible also gives us sufficient information to determine when there was a co-regency. The word co-regency is not a Biblical word, but the principle is there. A co-regency begins when the reigning king appoints one of his sons as his successor. This was always a smart thing to do. We have an example in our own time. When Kim Jong Il, the dictator of North Korea, became ill he appointed his son, Kim Jong Un, as his successor so there wouldn t be any trouble when he died. In the Bible, after two of David s sons, Absalom and then Adonijah, tried to usurp the kingdom from their father, the prophet Nathan told David to make it known who was to be his successor. David then had Nathan perform a public anointing of Solomon.{11} Another example of a co-regency is when Uzziah was struck with leprosy and had to live in a separate house, so that his son Jotham became the real ruler of the land.{12} Other co-regencies are not quite so obvious, but the books of Kings and Chronicles always give us enough information so that we can determine when the years of a king s reign are being measured from the start of a sole reign or from the start of a co-regency. For the northern kingdom, Israel, there are also two cases of a rival reign, similar to the rival reigns of Egyptian pharaohs that Egyptologists take into account when

32 reconstructing the chronology of Egypt. As an example, Omri, the father of Ahab, is said to have reigned for twelve years,{13} but this only makes sense if the twelve years includes the five years in which he had a rival, Tibni, reigning in a different capital.{14} Co-regencies and rival reigns are the second major key to understanding the chronology of the Hebrew kingdom period. The Accuracy of Kings and Chronicles In previous sections we considered two factors to take into account when interpreting the rich chronological data of Kings and Chronicles. The first is that there were two ways of counting the first year of a king s reign; whether it was to be counted twice, once for him and once for the king who died in that year, or just once so that the king s first year was his first full year of reign. The second factor was that occasionally a king s reign was measured from the start of a co-regency or rival reign rather than from the start of his sole reign. Both principles were applied, although not consistently, by some earlier interpreters.{15} A third principle, discovered by Edwin Thiele, however, was not used by these interpreters. This principle showed that the southern kingdom, Judah, started counting the years of a king s reign in the fall month of Tishri, while the northern kingdom, Israel, started six months earlier in the spring month of Nisan. Many earlier interpreters thought that both kingdoms started their year in Nisan, but this produced several small errors that they were unable to reconcile. Unknown to Thiele, all three of these principles had been previously found back in the 1920s by a Belgian scholar.{16} But Thiele worked out things in a more satisfactory way, and so his Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings should be the starting place for understanding the chronology of the kingdom period. Regrettably, however, Thiele did not recognize that a problem he had with the texts of 2 Kings 18 is explained by a co-

33 regency between Ahaz and Hezekiah.{17} His chronology also needed slight adjustments for the reign of Solomon and for the end of the kingdom period.{18} In our own studies we have followed the corrections to Thiele published in several articles by Rodger Young.{19} Young responds to the specious claim that the harmony now evident in the chronology of the kingdom period might be the result of a clever manipulation of the data by those who follow the principles outlined by Thiele. Young answers, The complexities of 124 exact synchronisms, reign lengths, and dates in 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Jeremiah and Ezekiel negate that possibility unless the data were historically authentic. {20} With the proper understanding of the methods used by the ancient authors, the chronological data of Kings and Chronicles offer a remarkable testimony to the strict accuracy of the Bible s 400-year history of the two Hebrew kingdoms. Notes 1. This article was written by Michael Gleghorn and Rodger Young. Gleghorn s initial inspiration for writing this program resulted from conversations with his wife, who struggled with the mysterious numbers in Kings and Chronicles for quite some time before encountering the help provided in the book by Edwin Thiele and, more particularly, the articles of Rodger Young. Mr. Young received a B.A. degree from Reed College, B.A. and M.A. degrees in mathematics from Oxford University, and has done graduate work in theology and biblical languages at the Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City. He retired from IBM in 2003 and began writing about OT chronology.he and his wife attend the West Overland Bible Church in the St. Louis area. 2. Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, New rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1994). 3. Ibid., Thiele describes this as nonaccession-year dating or antedating. See Thiele, Mysterious Numbers, 231.

34 5. Thiele terms this accession-year dating or postdating. See Ibid Kings 15: Kings 15:25, Kings 15:27, Kings 16: Kings 16:8, Kings 1; 1 Chronicles 23: Kings 15: Kings 16: Kings 16: For example, James Ussher. 16. Valerius Coucke, Chronologie des rois de Juda et d Israël, Revue Bénedictine 37 (1925): ; idem, Chronologie biblique in Supplément au Dictionnaire de la Bible, ed. Louis Pirot, vol. 1 (Paris: Librairie Letouzey et Ané, 1928), cols According to Rodger Young, Several authors put forth this rather obvious solution, among whom were Kenneth Kitchen and T. C. Mitchell, Siegfried Horn, Harold Stigers, R. K. Harrison, Leslie McFall, and Eugene Merrill. Of course, we could also add Rodger Young s name to this list as well. For details see Young, When Was Samaria Captured? The Need for Precision in Biblical Chronologies, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 47, no. 4 (2004): For a one-year correction to Thiele s dates for Solomon through Athaliah, see Rodger C. Young, When Did Solomon Die? Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 46, no. 4 (2003): By showing that the dates of Solomon through Athaliah must be moved one year earlier than in Thiele s chronology, Young has resolved a problem that Thiele addressed by revisions in the third and final edition of Mysterious Numbers, but Thiele s revisions merely moved his problem with the reign of Jehoshaphat to the reign of Athaliah. Among those accepting Young s solution of the problem are Leslie McFall, The Chronology of Saul and David, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 53, no. 4 (2010): 533 (chart), and Andrew

35 E. Steinmann, From Abraham to Paul: A Biblical Chronology (St. Louis: Concordia, 2011), , 138. Young has also written extensively on why 587 BC, not Thiele s 586 BC, is the correct date for the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians. See When Did Jerusalem Fall? Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 47, no. 1 (2004): 21-38; Ezekiel 40:1 as a Corrective for Seven Wrong Ideas in Biblical Interpretation, Andrews University Seminary Studies 44, no. 2 (2006): For those who are interested in pursuing these matters further, please see Rodger Young s Papers on Chronology here: Rodger C. Young, Inductive and Deductive Methods as Applied to OT Chronology, The Master s Seminary Journal 18, no. 2 (2007): Probe Ministries Worldviews Through History Compared to a Christian View Kerby provides a summary of how mankind has viewed the world from the Romans until today. This summary provides us a perspective against which to compare and contrast a Christian, biblical worldview based on New Testament principles. Roman Worldview On the Probe Web site we often talk about worldviews. I want to explain how the worldviews we talk about developed through history. We will be using as our foundation an excellent book written by Professor Glenn Sunshine whom I have met and also had the privilege of interviewing. His book is Why You Think

36 the Way You Do: The Story of Western Worldviews from Rome to Home.{1} Glenn Sunshine is a member of the church that Jonathan Edwards attended when he was at Yale. Professor Sunshine gave a lecture about Jonathan Edward s worldview at a conference they held, and Chuck Colson invited him to teach with the Centurions program. He gave a talk about How We Got Here and then later turned it into Why You Think the Way You Do. Since we will be talking about worldview, it would be good to begin with Glenn Sunshine s definition. A worldview is the framework you use to interpret the world and your place in it. {2} You do not need to be a philosopher to have a worldview. All of us have a worldview. Although Glenn Sunshine begins with the worldview of the Roman world, he quickly takes us back to neo-platonism. It was the religion and philosophy based upon Plato s ideas. Neo- Platonism was the belief that the fundamental ground of reality is non-physical. Instead it is found in the world of ideas (and is known as idealism). These ideas cast shadows that cast other shadows until they arrive at the physical world. According to this worldview, the whole universe exists as a hierarchy. The spiritual is superior to the physical. This provides a scale of values for the world, but also provides a scale for humanity. In other words, those who are superior should rule over those who are inferior because they have demonstrated their ability to rule or conquer. This view of hierarchy led to the idea of the father having superiority over all members of the family. It led to the idea that men are superior to women. It led to the idea that the emperor should rule and be worshipped. And it led to the idea that slaves are inferior to free people and nothing more than

37 living tools. {3} This explains not only the success of Rome but also its ugly underside. Essentially there are two pictures of Rome: the glittering empire and the rotten core. {4} In Rome, human life did not have much value. While it is true that Romans abandoned human sacrifice, they engaged in other practices equally abhorrent. They picked up the Etruscan practice of having people fight to the death in games in honor of the dead. {5} Slavery provided the economic foundation for the empire. Abortion and infanticide were regularly practiced. Roman families would usually keep as many healthy sons as they had and only one daughter; the rest were simply discarded. {6} And Roman law required that a father kill any visibly deformed child. Transformation of the Pagan World How did Christianity transform the pagan world? In AD 303, the Roman emperor Diocletian began a severe persecution of Christians. But because Christians were faithful and even willing to go to their deaths for their beliefs, their credibility increased. Eventually they were accepted and allowed to exercise their faith. Constantine even legalized the Christian faith by AD 313. Once that took place, Christian ideas were allowed to percolate through society. One of the most important ideas was that human beings are created in the image of God. This idea has a profound impact. First, it meant that people are fundamentally equal to each other. No longer were there grounds for saying that some people are superior to others. In fact, Christians were the first people in history to oppose slavery systematically. {7}

38 Christians (who believed that all are created in the image of God) treated the sick differently. They believed that even those who were deathly ill still deserved care. Dionysius of Alexandria reported that Christians (often at great risk to their own lives) visited the sick fearlessly and ministered to them continually. {8} They would rescue babies abandoned in an act of infanticide. They would oppose abortion. In economics, we can also see the influence of Christianity. The idea that God created the universe and then rested showed that God worked. That would mean that human beings (made in the image of God) are expected to work as well. God gave Adam and Eve intellectual work (in naming the animals) and physical work (in tending the Garden). Contrast this with the Roman world where physical work was seen as something that only slaves would do. Christians saw labor as something that was intrinsically valuable. Labor is good; drudgery is bad. Drudgery is a result of the Fall (Genesis 3). So Christians were the first to develop technology to remove drudgery from work. Other civilizations had technology, but the West uniquely applied such things as water power to make work more valuable and worthwhile by eliminating the drudgery and repetitive nature of certain tasks. Property rights were also well-developed during this period. The medieval world under the influence of Christianity has a much stronger emphasis on property rights than other cultures had. {9} These ideas come from a biblical worldview and began to be developed during the Middle Ages. This led to a complete transformation of western society and set it on a trajectory to our modern world.

39 Christianity and Politics Glenn Sunshine points out that in the West, the dynamic between church and state is unique. Christianity was originally a persecuted minority religion. Even when Christianity was declared a legal religion, the church did not depend upon the state. So the question of the relationship between church and state has been an open question. During the Middle Ages, two men helped shape political thinking. The first was Augustine, who described two realms: the City of God and the City of Man. He argued that human government is the result of sin. He believed that it is based upon selfishness. Government itself is corruption. In the absence of government, anarchy reigns. So government is a necessary evil. The City of God is different in that it is not based upon force or coercion. It is based upon love, charity, and repentance. That doesn t mean that the City of Man and the City of God cannot work together. But overall, Augustine had a more pessimistic view of government. Aristotle had a different view of government. As people in the Middle Ages began to rediscover Aristotle, they began to develop a different view of government. They saw government as a necessary institution that God has placed in the world. It had positive and legitimate functions. Aristotle believed that government had a more positive role in society. But the Christian theologians had to also deal with the problem of original sin. They wanted to find a way to prevent original sin from corrupting the government. The tension between these two views is what drives the discussion of western political theory. Sunshine notes that another check on civil government involved the idea of rights. {10} We normally associate the

40 idea of rights, especially inalienable rights, with eighteenth century political theorists. However, John Locke s idea that we have inalienable right to life, liberty, and property is already found in the writings of medieval theologians. The basis for this is a belief that all are created in the image of God. Therefore, all of us have a number of natural rights that the state cannot remove. Natural law was the idea that God wove moral laws into the fabric of the universe. There also was the belief that there should be limitations on the jurisdiction of civil government and church government. One example is the Magna Carta, that stated that the English church was to be free and its liberties unimpaired by the crown. The Renaissance and Enlightenment What about the transformation into the modern world? In the early modern period, starting with the Renaissance in the fifteenth century to the seventeenth century, there are a whole series of events that shook the worldview consensus that developed in the Middle Ages. Previously there were certain beliefs about truth: (1) that truth was absolute, (2) that truth is knowable to the human mind, and (3) that truth is necessary for society (a society could not be based upon a lie). The best good guide for truth would be the great civilizations of the past that lasted for so long and thus must have been based upon truth. The idea was to go to the past to find truth. During the Renaissance scholars were very successful in collecting manuscripts and finding ancient sources. Unfortunately, they found so many sources that they discovered there was not a coherent perspective. The ancient writers disagreed with each other. In a sense, the Renaissance was a victim of its own success. There was too much information. The more ancient

41 sources they found, the less likely they would find agreement in the perspectives. Once it became obvious that this grand synthesis was not possible, the entire purpose of intellectual activity was thrown into question. Then there were the wars of the Reformation in which various factions fought over who was the true follower of the prince of peace. The devastation of the religious wars left many people wondering if there really was religious certainty. No longer was the question is Christianity true but rather which Christianity is true? Now you had a multiplicity of options that left people confused. This also generated questions about the role of religion in society. Then you also had the discovery of the New World and whole people groups that had never heard the gospel. Some began to ask questions like: Is it fair of God to send them all to hell because they had never heard of Christianity? Or, in light of biblical history, where did they come from? How do these people fit with the story of Noah? These discoveries called into question biblical morality and biblical history. Also, people started using a new way of looking at knowledge. They began to use the scientific method to evaluate everything. This begins a significant shift in how we understand the world. There is a movement away from certainty toward probability. There is also a movement away from studying ancient authors toward scientific experimentation. In the modern world, therefore, truth is not found in the past but in the present and future. With this is also questioning of biblical authority. The Modern World and Christianity Let me conclude by talking about our modern world and how Christians should respond. Sunshine concludes his book with chapters on Modernity and Its Discontents and The Decay of

42 Modernity. Essentially the modern world has left humans with a loss of truth, certainty, and meaning in life. Materialism provides a ready answer to the question of the meaning and purpose of life: there is none. {11} From a Darwinian perspective, our only purpose is to pass our genes on to the next generation. This rejection of spirituality and meaning has ushered in various other worldviews as alternatives. These would be such worldviews as postmodernism, neo-paganism, and the New Age Movement. Sunshine argues that in many ways we have been catapulted back to Rome. Like Rome we value toleration as the supreme virtue. Rome believed that toleration was important because it kept the empire together. If you go beyond the lines of toleration, you are persecuted. This is similar to the mindset today. The highest value in a postmodern world is toleration. Toleration so defined means that we will embrace any and all lifestyles people may choose. The Romans lived in an oversexed society.{12} So do we. Rome practiced abortion. So does our society. Rome was antinatal and made a deliberate attempt to prevent pregnancy. They focused on sexual enjoyment and did not want to bother with kids. In our modern world, birthrates in most of the western democracies are plummeting. Western civilization is a product of ancient Roman civilization plus Christianity. Sunshine argues that once you removed Christianity, modern society reverted back to Roman society and a recovery of the ancient pagan worldview. So how should Christians live in this world? Of course, we should live out a biblical worldview. Every generation is called to live faithfully to the gospel, and our generation is no exception. This is especially important today since we are facing a

43 society that is not willing to accept biblical ideas. In many ways, we face a challenge similar to the early church, though not as daunting. From history we can see that the early church did live faithfully and transformed the Roman world. Christians produced a totally new civilization: western culture. By living faithfully before the watching world, we will increase our credibility and earn the respect from those who are around us by living in accordance with biblical principles. Notes 1. Glenn Sunshine, Why You Think the Way You Do: The Story of Western Worldviews from Rome to Home (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009). 2. Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Probe Ministries Christ and the Human

44 Condition Dr. Michael Gleghorn looks at how God has acted in Christ to address those things which ail us most: sin, suffering, death, and our broken relationship with God. Early in the book of Job, Eliphaz the Temanite declares that man is born for trouble, as sparks fly upward (5:7). Whether it s the trouble that befalls us as we re simply minding our own business or the trouble we bring upon others (or even ourselves), difficulties, sin, and suffering seem to plague us wherever we turn. Just think for a moment about some of the natural evils which afflict the human race. This class of evils includes both natural disasters like hurricanes, tsunamis, tornadoes, and earthquakes, and diseases like cancer, leukemia, Alzheimer s and ALS. While natural evils are bad enough, they are only part of the problem. In addition to these, we must also consider all the moral evils which human beings commit against God, one another, and themselves. This second class of evils includes things like hatred, blasphemy, murder, rape, child abuse, terrorism, and suicide. Taken together, the scope and magnitude of human sin and suffering in the world are truly mind-boggling. What does God have to say about issues such as these? Even better, what (if anything) has He done about them? The Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga has written: As the Christian sees things, God does not stand idly by, cooly observing the suffering of His creatures. He enters into and shares our suffering. He endures the anguish of seeing his son, the second person of the Trinity, consigned to the bitterly cruel and shameful death of the cross. Some

45 theologians claim that God cannot suffer. I believe they are wrong. God s capacity for suffering, I believe, is proportional to his greatness; it exceeds our capacity for suffering in the same measure as his capacity for knowledge exceeds ours. Christ was prepared to endure the agonies of hell itself; and God, the Lord of the universe, was prepared to endure the suffering consequent upon his son s humiliation and death. He was prepared to accept this suffering in order to overcome sin, and death, and the evils that afflict our world, and to confer on us a life more glorious than we can imagine.{1} According to Plantinga, then, God has acted, and acted decisively through His Son, to address those things which ail us most sin, suffering, death, and our broken relationship with God. In what follows, we will briefly examine each of these ailments. More importantly, however, we will also see how God has acted in Christ to heal our bleak condition, thereby giving us encouragement, strength and hope, both now and forevermore. Moral Evil When Adam and Eve first sinned in the garden (Gen. 3:6), they could hardly have imagined all the tragic consequences that would follow this single act of disobedience. Through this act, sin and death entered the world and the human condition was radically altered (Rom. 5:12-19). Human nature had become defiled with sin and this sinful nature was bequeathed to all mankind. The human race was now morally corrupt, alienated from God and one another, subject to physical death, and under the wrath of God. The entire creation, originally pronounced very good by God (Gen. 1:31), was negatively affected by this first act of rebellion. Like the ripples that radiate outward when a stone is thrown into a calm body of water, the consequences of that first sin have rippled through history,

46 bringing evil, pain, and suffering in their wake. As the Christian philosopher William Lane Craig has noted, The terrible human evils in the world are testimony to man s depravity in his state of spiritual alienation from God. {2} Indeed, we are so hopelessly entangled in this web of sin and disobedience that we cannot possibly extricate ourselves. This, according to the Bible, is the sorry plight in which all men naturally find themselves. Fortunately for us, however, God has acted to free us from our enslavement to sin, to disentangle us from the web that holds us captive, and to reconcile us to Himself. He did this by sending His Son to so thoroughly identify with us in our painful predicament that He actually became one of us. By identifying Himself with sinners who were under the wrath of God, He was able to take our sins upon Himself and endure God s wrath in our place, so that we might be reconciled to God by placing our trust in Him. The apostle Paul put it this way: God made Christ who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21). In the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, we re told that anyone hanged on a tree because of their sins is accursed of God (21:23). In the New Testament, Paul picks up on this idea and says that through His substitutionary death on the cross, Christ became a curse for us (Gal. 3:13). We should not lose sight of the significance of these words. By identifying Himself with the guilty human race, and becoming a curse for us, He has opened the way for us to be freed from our sins and reconciled to God as we are identified with Him through faith. This is just one of the ways in which Christ has met the desperate needs of the human condition. Natural Evil Another reason why we suffer arises from what philosophers and

47 theologians call natural evil. Natural evil refers to all the causes of human pain and suffering which are not brought about by morally-responsible agents. This would include the pain and suffering arising from natural disasters like earthquakes, famines, and storms, as well as diseases like cancer and ALS. Now the question I want to pose is this: Is there a sense in which Christ is also a solution to the problem of natural evil? And if so, then how should we understand this? When we examine the life and ministry of Jesus as it s recorded in the Gospels, we can hardly help but be struck by the number of miracles He performs. He walks on water, calms raging storms, feeds thousands of people with a few loaves and fish, cleanses lepers, heals the sick, restores sight to the blind, and even raises the dead! Although some might demur at all these accounts of miracles, Craig has noted that the miracle stories are so widely represented in all strata of the Gospel traditions that it would be fatuous to regard them as not rooted in the life of Jesus. {3} So what is the significance of Jesus miracles? According to New Testament scholar Ben Witherington, Jesus miracles show him to be God s special agent of blessing, healing, liberation, and salvation, as well as the one who brings about the conditions associated with the final... dominion of God. {4} Since the kingdom of God is portrayed in Scripture as a reign of peace, prosperity, health, well-being and blessing, Jesus miracles of healing, as well as his demonstrations of power over nature, indicate that He is indeed capable of ushering in such a wonderful kingdom.{5} And if Jesus has the power to bring in an era of health and wellbeing, both for our physical bodies and for the physical universe, and if he in fact will do so, then he clearly provides a solution to the problem of natural evil. Ultimately, in the new heaven and new earth, which God will give to those who love Him, we are promised that there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old

48 order of things has passed away (Rev. 21:4). Physical Death The apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, described death as an enemy (1 Cor. 15:26). People fear death for any number of reasons. Some fear that the process of dying will be painful. Others dread the thought of leaving behind the ones they love. Some may fear that death is simply the end, that whatever joys and pleasures this life holds, death takes them away forever. But others may fear that there is an afterlife and worry that things may not go well for them there. For many people, however, death is feared as the great unknown.{6} Friends and relatives die and we never see or hear from them again. For these people, death is like the ultimate black-hole, from which nothing and no one can ever escape. But according to the Bible, Christ did escape the snares of death, and in doing so He dealt our mortal enemy a mortal blow of his own. I said that Paul describes death as an enemy, but this is simply to inform us of the fact that our enemy has been conquered by Christ. The last enemy that will be abolished, he writes, is death (1 Cor. 15:26). But how has Christ conquered this enemy? And how does His victory help us? Christ conquered death through his resurrection from the dead and all who put their trust in Him can share in his victory. Pastor Erwin Lutzer has written: Thus the resurrection of Jesus is the cornerstone of the Christian faith. Standing at the empty tomb, we are assured of the triumph of Jesus on the Cross; we are also assured that He has conquered our most fearsome enemy. Yes, death can still terrify us, but the more we know about Jesus, the more its power fades.{7} Consider the life and death of the great Reformation

49 theologian Martin Luther. As a young Augustinian monk, Luther struggled with a very sensitive conscience and a terrible fear of death. But once he understood the gospel and placed his trust in Christ, his fear gradually began to fade. By the time he died, his fear was gone. It s reported that on his deathbed, he recited some promises from the Bible, commended his spirit to God, and quietly breathed his last.{8} Believing that Christ had conquered death and given him eternal life, he was able to die at peace and without any fear. And this is the hope of all who trust in Christ! The Weight of Glory Christian theologians sometimes describe the knowledge of God as an incommensurable good. {9} By this they mean that knowing God in an intimate, personal way is quite literally the greatest good that any created being can experience. It is an incommensurable or immeasurable good a good so great that it surpasses our ability even to comprehend. The apostle Paul once prayed that the Ephesians might know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge (Eph. 3:19). He understood that intimate relationship with God... is incommensurately good-for created persons. {10} Of course, this doesn t mean that one who is intimately related to God will never experience any of the trials and difficulties of life. In fact, it s possible that such a person will actually experience more trials and difficulties than would have been the case had they not been intimately related to God! Knowing the love of Christ doesn t make one immune to suffering. It does, however, provide indescribable comfort while going through it (see 2 Cor. 1:3-5). The apostle Paul understood this quite well. In his second letter to the Corinthians, he described himself as a servant of God who had suffered afflictions, hardships, beatings, imprisonments, labors, sleeplessness, and hunger (2 Cor.

50 6:4-5). In spite of this, however, he did not lose heart. He famously wrote that momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison (2 Cor. 4:17). But how could Paul describe his sufferings as just a momentary, light affliction? Because, says Craig, he had an eternal perspective. He understood that the length of this life, being finite, is literally infinitesimal in comparison with the eternal life we shall spend with God. {11} The greatest hunger of the human heart is to know and experience the love and acceptance of God and to enjoy Him forever. In his magnificent sermon The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis wrote, In the end that Face which is the delight or... terror of the universe must be turned upon each of us either with one expression or... the other, either conferring glory inexpressible or inflicting shame that can never be... disguised. {12} Incredibly, just as Christ has dealt with the problems of sin, suffering, and death, He has also acted decisively to reconcile us to God. Through faith in him, anyone who wants can eventually experience an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison (2 Cor. 4:17). Notes 2. Craig, Hard Questions, Real Answers, William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3rd ed. (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2008), Ben Witherington, The Christology of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), Some biblical passages that pertain to Christ s coming kingdom are Isaiah 11:1-9, Matthew 19:28, and Acts 3: I was reminded of many of these examples while watching the round table discussion on suffering and death in Catherine Tatge, The Question of God: Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis (U.S.A.: PBS Home Video, 2004). 7. Erwin W. Lutzer, The Vanishing Power of Death (Chicago:

51 Moody Publishers, 2004), Mike Fearon, Martin Luther (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1986), See, for example, Craig, Hard Questions, Real Answers, Marilyn McCord Adams, Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), Craig, Hard Questions, Real Answers, C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, ed. Walter Hooper (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1980), Probe Ministries Did Adam Really Exist? Paul and Adam In 2011, Christianity Today reported on the growing acceptance of theistic evolution in the evangelical community and one possible implication of it. If humans did evolve along with other species, was there a real historical first couple? Did Adam and Eve really exist? In this article I ll address a couple of theological problems this claim raises and a question of interpretation. I ll look at the views of evangelical Old Testament scholar Peter Enns who denies a historical Adam; not, however, to single him out as a target, but rather because he raises the important issues in his writings. Enns denies a historical Adam for two main reasons. One is that, as far as he is concerned, the matter of evolution is

52 settled. There was no first human couple.{1} The other is his belief that Genesis 1 describes the origins of the world in the mythological framework of the ancient Near East, and thus isn t historical, and that Genesis 2 describes the origins of Israel, not human origins.{2} So Genesis doesn t intend to teach a historical Adam and Eve, and evolutionary science has proved that they couldn t have existed. Let s begin with the question of how sin entered the world if there were no Adam. In Romans chapter 5, the apostle Paul says sin, condemnation, and death came through the act of a man, Adam. This is contrasted with the act of another man, Jesus, which brought grace and righteousness. However, if there were no historical Adam, where did sin come from? Enns says the Bible doesn t tell us.{3} The Old Testament gives no indication, he says, that Adam s disobedience is the cause of universal sin, death, and condemnation, as Paul seems to argue. {4} Paul was a man of his time who drew from a common understanding of human beginnings to explain the universality of sin. Enns acknowledges universal sin and the need for a Savior.{5} He just doesn t know how this situation came about. The fact that Adam didn t exist, Enns believes, does nothing to take away from Paul s main point, namely, that salvation comes only through Christ for all people, both Jews and Gentiles. Is this true? Paul and Adam: A Response There are a few problems with this interpretation. First, there is a logical problem. Theologian Richard Gaffin points out that, in Rom. 5:12, 17, and 18, a connection is made between the one man through whom sin came and the all to whom it was spread. If sin really didn t come in through the

53 one Adamand spread to the all you and mehow do we take seriously Paul s further declaration that one man s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all? Second, there is a piling on of error in Paul s claim. One of Enns foundational beliefs is that God used human understanding to convey His truths in Scripture. God spoke through the myths of the ancient world when He inspired the writing of Genesis.{6} If Enns is correct, one would expect that God was using the Genesis myth to reveal something true in Paul s claim about Adam. In other words, the Old Testament story would be opened up so a truth would be revealed. However, Paul s first point, that sin came through Adam to the race (Rom. 5:12), is in fact false, according to Enns. The following truth, about righteousness coming through Christ, is beside the point here. Paul s assertion about Adam isn t simply a historical one; it is a doctrinal one, too. The traditional teaching of the church regarding the source of sin, death, and condemnation is therefore false. Paul delivered a false teaching based upon a non-historical myth. He should have left Adam out of his discussion. It does nothing to buttress his claim about Christ. Enns says that this matter of the origin of sin is a vital issue to work through,... one of the more pressing and inevitable philosophical and theological issues before us. {7} One has to wonder, though: if Paul didn t have the answer, and he was taught by Christ directly, and if the rest of Scripture is silent about such an important matter, can we really think we can ferret out the solution ourselves? Paul s Use of the Old Testament The use of the Old Testament in the New Testament is of great significance in this matter. How does Paul get the point he made out of Genesis if it isn t true?

54 Peter Enns believes the problem is related to the way Paul interpreted and used the Old Testament. Paul lived in an era which is now called Second Temple Judaism. Writers in this era, Enns says, were not motivated to reproduce the intention of the original human author in the text under consideration.{8} Thus, we see Old Testament texts used in seemingly strange ways in the New Testament, strange if what we expect is a direct reproduction or a further development or deeper explanation of the Old Testament writer s original intent. Texts could be taken completely out of context or words could be changed to make the text say something the New Testament writer wanted to say. In this way, Enns believes, Paul used the Old Testament creatively to explain the universality of sin and of the cross work of Christ. Some scholars speak of christocentric interpretation of the Old Testament. Enns prefers the term christotelic which refers to the idea that Christ is the completion of the Old Testament or the end toward which the Old Testament story was headed. Regarding Adam, Enns writes, Paul s Adam is a vehicle by which he articulates the gospel message, but his Adam is still the product of a creative handling of the story. {9} Paul presents Adam as a historical person, and then makes the further creative claim that Adam s sin is the reason we all sin. Neither of these are true, but this does no harm to the most important part of the text where Paul claims that salvation for all people came through Christ. None of this should be problematic for us, in Enns opinion, for he believes this view of the Bible is similar to our view of the Incarnation of Christ. In Jesus there are both humanity and divinity. Likewise, the Bible is a coming together of the divine and the human. God used the methods of Paul s day to convey the gospel message.

55 Paul s Use of Old Testament: A Response How can we respond to this view of Paul s use of the Adam story? Enns believes that the NT authors [subsumed] the OT under the authority of the crucified and risen Christ. {10} However, Jesus never referred to the Old Testament in a way that showed the Old Testament incorrect as it stood. Even His but I say to you in the Sermon on the Mount appears to be more a matter of teaching the depths of the laws than a correction of the Old Testament text. He upheld the authority of the Old Testament such as when he said, Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them (Mt. 5:17). {11} Bruce Waltke is an evangelical Old Testament scholar who accepts theistic evolution but who disagrees with Enns on this matter. He wonders why Jesus rebuked the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:25-27) for not understanding the plain language of Scripture if the plain historical sense isn t sufficient.{12} He argues that Enns method of interpretation can t be supported by Scripture. Paul said the gospel he preached was in accordance with the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3-4) by which he meant the Old Testament.{13} Elsewhere he said that the Old Testament Scriptures are profitable for teaching in 2 Tim. 3:16-17.{14} New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham disagrees with the belief that Paul followed the interpretive methods of his day. The apostles weren t guilty of reading into the Old Testament ideas held independently of it. He says, They brought the Old Testament text into relationship with the history of Jesus in a process of mutual interpretation from which some of their profoundest theological insights sprang. {15}

56 In fact, it was the apostles high esteem for the Old Testament that forced them to come to grips with the Trinitarian nature of God given the claims of Jesus.{16} This doesn t mean, however, that it s always easy to understand how the apostles used the Old Testament. However, what the apostles taught was understood to be in continuity with what they had received before, not as a correction of it. The Matter of Inspiration It is inevitable that a discussion of the denial of the historical Adam will turn to the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture. Old Testament scholar Peter Enns believes that Paul s incorrect use of Adam has no bearing whatsoever on the truth of the gospel. {17} That s true, but it has a lot to do with how we understand inspiration and its bearing on Paul s writings. The apostle Paul said that all Scripture is inspired or breathed out by God (2 Tim. 3:16). Peter explains further that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone s own interpretation.... but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:20-21). Paul, who claimed in 1 Thess. 2 that his teachings were the word of God (v. 13), intended to explain how sin and condemnation came into the world in Romans 5. Elsewhere, Peter spoke of Paul s writings as Scripture (2 Pet. 3:15-16). If Paul s explanation of this vital issue, in Enns words, was wrong, was it, then, of Paul s own interpretation? Either it came from the Holy Spirit and was inspired Scripture, or it was merely Paul s interpretation and was not. Which is it? Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke writes this: A theory that entails notions that holy Scripture contains flat out contradictions, ludicrous harmonization, earlier revelations that are misleading and/or less than truthful, and doctrines

57 that are represented as based on historical fact, but in fact are based on fabricated history, in my judgment, is inconsistent with the doctrine that God inspired every word of holy Scripture. {18} It might be objected here that I am confusing inspiration with interpretation. These are different things. However, if it is understood that all of Scripture comes from God who cannot lie, then we have to let that set limits on how we interpret Scripture. Interpretations that include false doctrines cannot be correct. It seems to me that Enns has put himself into a difficult position. His conviction of the truth of human evolution isn t his only reason for denying the historical Adam, but it puts the traditional understanding of Adam and his place in Paul s theology out of bounds for him. It would be better to hold to what the church has taught for centuries rather than to the tentative conclusions of modern scientists. Notes 1. Peter Enns, The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn t Say about Human Origins (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2012), ix, xiv, Ibid., Ibid., Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament (Grand Rapid: Baker, 2005), Enns, Evolution of Adam, 91. See also See for example Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation, Enns, Evolution of Adam, Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation, Enns, The Evolution of Adam, Peter Enns, Fuller Meaning, Single Goal: A Christotelic Approach to the New Testament Use of the Old in Its First- Century Interpretive Environment, in Three Views on the New

58 Testament Use of the Old Testament, ed. Stanley N. Gundry et al. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008) 208; quoted in Don Collett, Trinitarian Hermeneutics and the Unity of Scripture, p. 10, n.26; accessed on the web site of Trinity School for Ministry, bit.ly/1ibglyt. 11. See Collett, Trinitarian Hermeneutics and the Unity of Scripture, Bruce K. Waltke, Revisiting Inspiration and Incarnation, Westminster Theological Journal 71 (2009), See Collett, Trinitarian Hermeneutics and the Unity of Scripture, 11; referencing Christopher Seitz, Creed, Scripture, and Historical Jesus : in accordance with the Scriptures,' in The Rule of Faith: Scripture, Canon, and Creed in a Critical Age, ed. Ephraim Radner & George Sumner (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1998), Christopher Seitz, Canon, Narrative, and the Old Testament s Literal Sense, Tyndale Bulletin 59.1 (2008), Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), See Collett, Trinitarian Hermeneutics, Cf. Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel, Enns, The Evolution of Adam, Waltke, Revisiting Inspiration and Incarnation, Probe Ministries Trend Indicates Over Half of Emerging Adults Will Identify

59 as Non-Christian by 2020 More Cultural Research from Steve Cable One of the dismaying trends I reported on in my book, Cultural Captives, was the significant increase in the percentage of people who indicated that their religion was atheist, agnostic, or nothing at all. I referred to this group collectively as the nones (those with no religious affiliation ). The percentage of emerging adults (i.e., 18- to 29-year-olds) who selfidentified as nones in 2008 was 25% of the population. This level is a tremendous increase from the 1990 level of 11%. Now, we have later results from both the General Social Survey (GSS) and the Pew Research Center. Both surveys show another significant increase in the percentage of nones among this young adult group. In 2014, the GSS survey showed the percentage of emerging adult nones was now up to 33% of the population, an increase of eight percentage points. The Pew survey of over 35,000 Americans (an astounding number) came up with a similar result, tallying 35% of emerging adults identifying as nones (an increase of nine percentage points over their 2007 survey). When we consider the number who do not identify as either Protestant or Catholic (i.e., adding in other religions such as Islam and Hinduism), the percentage of emerging adults who do not identify as Christians increases to 43% of the population in both surveys. If this trend continues at the same rate of growth it has been on since 1990, we will see over half of American emerging adults who do not self-identify as Christians by We will become, at least numerically, a post-christian culture if