Shooting down J. Warner Wallace's "quick shots": God SENDS people to hell

This is my reply to a "quick shot" argument from J. Warner Wallace entitled

Cold Case Christianity: Quick Shot: 

“A loving God would not send people to hell”

Posted: 24 Jun 2019 01:05 AM PDT 

In this article, we’re offering “Quick Shot” responses to the objection, Quick Shot: “A loving God would not send people to hell.” Response #1:
“What do you mean by ‘loving?’

We mean the only kind of love you can rationally expect an unbeliever to recognize:  human love...which, if it exists, would never say that it "delights" in inflicting sadistic tortures on people, as God expressed "delight" to do in Deuteronomy 28:63.

A loving God must also be just, or His love is little more than an empty expression.

But in the bible, God's love is also manifested by unexplained apathy toward "justice" for sin, for example, while David's sin of adultery and murder required death under the Law (God's expression of justice) God also apparently was able to conveniently bypass that requirement of justice and merely 'take away' those sins in conveniently unspecified manner, in the sense of refusing to impose the just penalty on David.  God instead tortured a baby to death over a period of several days, not because of David's sin, but because the Lord's enemies were given occasion by that sin to laugh:

 11 "Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.
 12 'Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.'"
 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died. (2 Sam. 12:11-18 NAU)

Let's see...God finds it this easy to exempt deserving sinners of the "just" penalty God required under law?  Apparently, god's own sense of justice magically becomes malleable whenever such justice might hurt his favorite political candidate.

If everyone was offered the same experience in the afterlife, how loving (or fair) would it be for Mother Teresa and Hitler to receive the same reward?

how "fair" is it that the guilty pedophile makes it into heaven just as easily as you do?  How "fair" is it to threaten women with rape, as God does in Isaiah 13:15-17?  How "fair" is it that sinless Jesus should pay a penalty he didn't deserve?  How "fair" is it that we inherit Adam's sin even though God could just as easily have prevented future generations from inheriting that sin? 

Most of us can think of someone who should be punished: serial killers, child molesters, rapists. I bet you can also think of someone worthy of punishment, right? How loving would God be to reward these criminals rather than punish them?

Very...God's love apparently sometimes causes him to use his magic fairy dust to change the attitude of pagan idolaters so that they do whatever he wants them to do (Ezra 1:1).

How fair would that be to their victims?

If you can employ "God's ways are mysterious" to get out of a theological jam, will you extend to skeptics the same courtesy?  Or is there some bible verse that says only conservative Protestants are allowed to hide behind that dodge?

Can a loving God be completely unjust and still considered loving?

Yes, God tortured David's infant son for 7 days before killing it.  See above, yet you still think God was "loving" regardless. God can also be "delighted" (Deut. 28:63) to inflict horrific torments on children, including causing parents to eat their own children during prolonged divinely-imposed famine (v. 56 ff).

How loving would God be to reward criminals rather than punish them?

How often does God "allow" criminals to escape justice?  Will you trifle that this is any different than 'rewarding' the criminal for the crime?  What else does such apathy do but embolden the criminal to engage in future criminal conduct.

If a parent "allowed" their older teen son to proceed unhindered in his known plans to shoot up the school, would they be exhibiting the same degree of respect for their son's freewill than God had for Hitler's freewill during WW2?  Is that loving?  Or did you suddenly discover how useful it can be to cry out "God's mysterious ways/God is holy and righteous no matter what" whenever expediency dictates?  Sure is funny that when "heretical" Christians use that excuse to escape their own theological difficulties, you don't find it very convincing.  Apparently, I missed that bible verse that says this excuse is exclusively owned by Protestants.

How fair would that be to their victims?

How "fair" was God in torturing David's baby to death?  How "fair" was God to threaten women with rape (Isaiah 13:15-17)?  How "fair" was God to the fetus whenforcing women to endure abortion-by-sword (Hosea 13:16)?  How "fair" is God when using force described as "put a hook in your jaws and turn you around" (Ezekiel 38:4 ff) to force certain nations to commit the sin of attacking Israel? 

If you wanna blow a mental gasket, ask yourself how god could possibly think it "sinful" for a person to act in the way that he intended (Ezekiel 38-39, forcing them to attack Israel, something he plans to "punish" those nations for doing)?  God is also telling unrepentent sinners to continue committing sin in Revelation 22:11.  Will god then bitch at these sinners when they fulfill this divine desire?

Gee, only in Christianity can God be displeased with you after do everything God wanted you to do the way he wanted you to do it!

Can a loving God be completely unjust and still considered loving?

Yes.  Since it was "just" to demand the death penalty for murder and adultery, it was thus "unjust" to allow David, obviously guilty of both sins, to be exempt from said penalty. 

No, you cannot argue that David was repentant and this somehow justified lifting the harsh OT restriction. The law of Moses neither expresses nor implies that one's repentance can secure them immunity from the consequences the law imposes on their capitol crimes.  Otherwise, when adults commit adultery 70 times per day and then seek forgiveness from the ruling priests and elders for each of those 70 times, the priests would be obligated to forgive them and exempt them from the legal penalty of death.  Such a possibility is neither expressed nor implied in the OT, and is implicitly denied in the NT statement that mercy was not even available for those who transgressed the law (Hebrews 10:28).

Response #2:
“What do you mean by ‘send’?

See the word "depart" in Matthew 7:23 and 25:41:

 23 "And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.' (Matt. 7:23 NAU)

 41 "Then He will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; (Matt. 25:41 NAU)

In 7:21 "depart" in the Greek is ἀποχωρέω, a verb that is imperative present active 2nd person plural from ἀποχωρέω.

In 25:41, πορεύομαι is a verb, the imperative present middle 2nd person plural from πορεύομαι.  It means to "go".

As you know, an "imperative" is a command to do something.

Finally, that your stupid meandering "god doesn't send people to hell" is nothing but apostate liberalism is clear from how the NT presents the judgment of God as his sending people into eternal torment:

 15 And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. (Rev. 20:15 NAU)

Now what?  Maybe you'll trifle that "we throw ourselves into the lake of fire by rejecting the gospel?"

Then read the context, the 'throwing' occurs in the context of God's final judgment on the wicked as the world appears before him in his heavenly court (v. 12), and it is therefore showing an outside force imposing itself on unwilling sinners no less than one observes when unrepentant criminals are convicted in courts of law.

By the way, "thrown" is the Greek verb βάλλω,  it is indicative aorist passive 3rd person singular from βάλλω.  No, that "passive" doesn't mean "self-throwing" is clear from the way most English bibles translate it:

KJV  Revelation 20:15 And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
NAS  Revelation 20:15 And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
NAU  Revelation 20:15 And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
NET  Revelation 20:15 If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, that person was thrown into the lake of fire.
NIV  Revelation 20:15 Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.
NKJ  Revelation 20:15 And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.
NRS  Revelation 20:15 and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.
RSV  Revelation 20:15 and if any one's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
YLT  Revelation 20:15 and if any one was not found written in the scroll of the life, he was cast to the lake of the fire.

Conservative evangelical Christian scholars agree that the heavenly justice here is reminiscent of the earthly justice of kings:

The final judgment is depicted in vv 11–15 in the traditional eschatological imagery derived from the role of kings as dispensers of justice.

Aune, D. E. (2002). Vol. 52C: Word Biblical Commentary :
Revelation 17-22. Word Biblical Commentary (Page 1104). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

Then there are other NT passages that make it clear that the guilty criminals are not accepting their punishment, they are trying to avoid it out of fear of pain and misery, even if fruitlessly:

 15 Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains;
 16 and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb;
 17 for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?" (Rev. 6:15-17 NAU)

Wallace fruitlessly continues:

Our eternal destination is predicated by our choice, not His.

You apparently are more interested in collecting Facebook friends in modern democratic America, than you are in reading your bible.

God wants us to join Him in heaven,

5-Point Calvinism, a legitimate form of Christianity that accepts the Trinity, Jesus' full deity, his physical resurrection,  salvation by grace, justification by faith, and bible inerrancy, teaches that God does NOT love everybody, and intended from all eternity to damn certain sinners, by refusing to change their heart, to make sure they'd never "choose" god.

So your answer is merely begging for the reader to automatically construe Calvinism as false, when in fact Calvinism and Arminianism have split the church since the 17th century, and before that, Augustine and Pelagius disagreed similarly.   If Calvinism were "obviously" unbiblical, we wouldn't expect it to have divided the church anymore than we expect the question of Jesus' gender to divide the church.

but He won’t force people into his presence who don’t want to be there.

But your God is "wrathful" in doling out his justice, and his forcing people to endure his fearful judgments is also clear from the bible:

 10 he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. (Rev. 14:10 NAU) 

In a context describing divine "wrath" and "anger" that brims at "full strength", it is perfectly reasonable to credit the "tormented with fire" to a torment that god is inflicting on sinners unwilling to endure it by choice.

 26 For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
 27 but a terrifying expectation of judgment and THE FURY OF A FIRE WHICH WILL CONSUME THE ADVERSARIES.
 28 Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
 29 How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?
 30 For we know Him who said, "VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY." And again, "THE LORD WILL JUDGE HIS PEOPLE."
 31 It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Heb. 10:26-31 NAU)

 What a shame!  A Christian apologist, in all of his allegedly sincere "walking with Christ" and prayerful bible study, is more ignorant of the bible than an atheist!

Some people hate God;

I also hate the Big Bad Wolf and other fictional villains.  What are you gonna do, notify adult protective services that my delusions make me a danger to myself and others? 

others ignore Him entirely.

If God is going to deprive them of his direct communications they can experience with their empirical senses, God has no right to complain if sinners take their cue from him and likewise deprive him of their direct communications he can experience empirically. 

Draw close to sinners, and we will draw close to you.

They don’t choose to seek Him,

5-Point Calvinism says this is because God refuses to change their heart, which logically must come first before they can will to seek him, so blaming sinners for not seeking god is about as sensible as blaming dogs for barking.  So unless you are prepared to show Calvinism is "unbiblical", skeptics will have a valid excuse:  we refuse to seek God because only God can change our hearts, and he obviously doesn't wish to change our hearts.  If you can stop the fan's annoying rattling by fixing it, but you just sit there letting it rattle on and bother you, you have nobody to blame but yourself. 

You will say human beings are not analogous to inanimate objects, but Paul pushes his person/pot analogy to an absurd extreme in Romans 9:20-23.

and they don’t want to spend eternity with Him.

If you found out somebody tortured your baby to death over a period of several days (2nd Samuel 12:15-18), would you want to spend eternity with such a sadistic lunatic?  Me neither.  Glad we established at least some common ground!

God honors those kinds of choices.

But under Calvinism, we don't have the power to make good choices, so God's refusal to spread his Ezra 1:1 magic fairy dust on some unrepentant sinners is still the ultimate reason those particular sinners refuse to repent...and therefore you are being biblically dishonest by pretending that the sinner's accountability ends with noting that they refuse to repent.  They suffer from a freewill defect they are not capable of fixing, so they aren't going to repent in the first place unless God makes the first move.  God's unwillingness to change their heart is no less the cause of their resistance than is their own sinful state.

Who is at fault when your older teen, with your knowledge, gets drunk?  Them, because they had a choice? Or you, because you could have prevented it?

You will trifle that God makes that first move with prevenient grace which is enough to overcome the defective freewill, but which can still be resisted, but Ezekiel 38-39 proves God's ability and intent to force sinners to sin (i.e., put a hook in thy jaws and turn you around), so it follows logically that if God seriously wants you to do something, he will employ this level of force, he will not merely issue commands and arguments, then wring his hands in hopeful expectation that you'll deviate from the sinful course of action he infallibly foreknows you won't deviate from.

When you have infallible foreknowledge of how a person will respond to your command, you do not "expect" them to respond in any different way.  So if God in the bible acts as if he "expects" sinners to obey his commands, its probably beacuse he doesn't have infallible foreknowledge....or the ancient barbarians writing about him did so in an inconsistent fashion.

People who neither seek nor want God in their lives won’t be forced to spend eternity with Him.

And how fucked up would America become if our justice system took the same attitude, and said "convicted criminals who neither seek nor want jail in their lives won't be forced to spend time in it."

We also won't be forced to spend eternity with those who torture babies to death.  This is a good thing, so I'm not seeing your point.

How much more loving could God be?

If he stopped threatening to "stir up" men to rape women (Isaiah 13:15-17), that might be a start.   If he stopped torturing babies to death, that might show progress?  Or did I forget that you automatically equate the inerrancy of the bible with the inerrancy of your acceptance of classical theism?

Don’t you want Him to honor the choices of those who deny Him?

No and yes.  No, because we don't want earthly judges to honor the choices of those criminals who refuse to acknowledge the judge's authority.

Yes, because we also want him to honor the choices of some of those who accept him, such as little Christian kids who end up being raped, because God just stands there at the foot of the bed, watching and refusing to protect them.

People who neither seek nor want God in their lives won’t be forced to spend eternity with Him.

Criminals who neither seek nor want jail in their lives won't be forced to spend time therein.

Wallace, were you high on crack when you wrote this piece?

How much more loving could God be?

How loving is it to avoid forcing criminals into the jails they neither seek nor want to spend time in? Where did you get your idea of loving?  A toddler?

If our merely not being forced to spend eternity with god were all there was to say, that would be loving.  But the bible doesn't merely say God will honor the wishes of the unrepentant., it also says he will inflict torment on them against their will (i.e.,. "let the rocks and trees hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne", supra).  Under your idea of "love", God would not judge these people as long as they continued hiding, because they neither seek nor want that god in their lives.

(!?)

And don't forget that the case of apostle Paul (Acts 9, 22, 26) proves that if God really wants to, he not only knows about, but approves of, a forceful method of evidence-presentation convincing enough to convert even those who are in the middle of acting out their murderous hatred toward the Christian god.

What else was God doing when manifesting himself to Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus, except violating Paul's freewill?

Would it take too much energy for God to give a less convincing display to skeptics who are less inclined to murder Christians?

Maybe you think causing your opponent temporary physical blindness (the way God inflicted in Paul) constitutes "respect" for their freewill?

Response #3:
“What do you mean by ‘hell’?

That's your problem, as Christians disagree about the nature of hell, and whether it is a place of eternal conscious suffering or something less.  Skeptics are under no obligation to give two shits about biblical issues that Christian scholars disagree with each other about.  When God's like-minded ones get their act together on the nature of "hell", let me know.

Most of us hold a notion of hell that is shaped more by tradition and culture than by the scriptures. For example, the Bible never describes hell as a place where people experience torture.

Then apparently you never read Luke 16:

 22 "Now the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham's bosom; and the rich man also died and was buried.
 23 "In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom.
 24 "And he cried out and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame.'
 25 "But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted here, and you are in agony.
 26 'And besides all this, between us and you there is a great chasm fixed, so that those who wish to come over from here to you will not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us.'
 27 "And he said, 'Then I beg you, father, that you send him to my father's house--
 28 for I have five brothers-- in order that he may warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.'
 29 "But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.'
 30 "But he said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!'
 31 "But he said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.'" (Lk. 16:22-31 NAU)

Notice that last verse:  most Christian apologists don't believe it.  They think that proving the resurrection to skeptics is far more likely to convince them Christianity is true, than would a mere bible study on Moses and the Prophets.

Wallace continues:

Instead, it’s described as a place where people will be tormented. You can be tormented, for example, by simply making a bad choice (like choosing to deny God’s offer of heaven).

Sorry, but your word-game is abortive:  The issue is not whether torment can result from your own realization that you made a bad choice.  The issue is what does the bible say the nature of hell-torment is?  In Luke 16, a passage that has convinced millions of Christians over 2,000 years that hell is a place of eternal literal conscious torment, the torment is inflicted by "flame", and as shown earlier, Revelation adds to that flame angels as the instruments through which the torment comes.

The Bible describes levels and degrees of punishment. Some will be punished severely, some will only experience the torment and regret of being separated from God and believing family members for eternity. Have your notions of hell be shaped by popular fiction rather than the scriptures?”

No.

Our “Quick Shot” series was written specifically for the Cold-Case Christianity App (you can download it on Apple and Android platforms – be sure to register once you download the App). When confronted with an objection in casual conversation, App users can quickly find an answer without having to scroll beyond the first screen in the category.

One wonders how the Holy Spirit obtained the success he did before the advent of the internet.   You seem to think that Christians who are without your gimmicks are thus deprived of significant apologetics sources.  One would think, from Acts, that the Holy Spirit is quite as dead as your ceaseless employment of psychological tricks implies.  If you seriously believed the Holy Spirit doesn't need your gimmicks to do his job of convicting the world of sin, common sense says you'd probably pay more attention to bible study and less attention to interesting marketing ideas that your publicist tells you will likely increase sales of your highly unnecessary book.

Use the App “Quick Shots” along with the “Rapid Responses” and Case Making “Cheat Sheets” to become a better Christian Case Maker.

And don't worry if you are just a stupid teen Christian with nearly zero biblical knowledge.  There's nothing requiring a foundation of spiritual maturity or watching out for spiritual wickedness in high places. No, arguing about Jesus no more puts demons on your trial than would arguing about the sanitation procedures that must be followed by Denny's dishwashers.

Don't worry about whether you are even "ready" to do apologetics and battle demons at this level.  JUST BUY WALLACE'S BOOK.  If you find out later you've jumped into a spiritual wrestling ring you were never prepared to enter, Wallace will be happy to send you a google search list of christian counselors and Pentecostal churches in your area.  Have a nice day.  And don't forget to make a donation to our "important" work.  Nothing fails quite like prayer, and nothing succeeds quite like money.  Have a nice day.  Sincerely, J. Warner Wallace.

My Challenge to Brian Chilton on the problem of Evil

This is my reply to an article by Brian Chilton entitled

Did God Create Evil?

God and Evil

By: Brian G. Chilton | July 3, 2018 

After Bible study one evening, a good friend of mine and I discussed the problem of evil. He asked an excellent question, “Did God create evil?” I said, “No, I don’t think he did.” However, my friend objected because he said, “God created everything, so he must have created evil.” This conversation was quite good, and we found common ground by the end of our discussion. This article relates to some of the issues that we discussed.

I would have asked you whether you'd be willing to stop calling all instances of rape "evil" if you found out one instance was caused by God.  That's a more direct challenge that doesn't do much to enhance friendship.

One of the first issues we needed to clarify was the nature of evil. What do we mean when we say something is evil? My friend was using the term to define any type of disaster or bad thing. I was using to term to define immoral behaviors, such as torturing babies.

Then apparently you'd agree that God was evil, since God tortured David's infant son for 7 days with a terrible sickness before finally killing it...for something the baby obviously didn't do, and there is no contextual expression or implication that this torture/death was for atonement:

 10 'Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.'
 11 "Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.
 12 'Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.'"
 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died.  (2 Sam. 12:10-18 NAU)

The arbitrary nature of God is clear from the fact that God did this to the baby after assuring David that his sins at issue (adultery and murder) were "taken away" meaning God would not require capital punishment.

To say nothing of how the passage reeks with political corruption, wherein the prophet of God can so easily fend off the divinely mandated death-penalty for his favorite politician.

Chilton continues:

How do we answer this question? Did God create evil? In this article, I would like to look at four common tricky areas that need to be dissected in order to answer the question.
 Ontology and Epistemology of God and Evil. The terms ontology and epistemology are philosophical terms but are important to this area of conversation. One cannot neglect philosophy because bad philosophy often leads to bad theology. First, let me define the terms and how they play a role in this discussion.
 Ontology is the study of the nature of being. It deals with how we know something exists. For instance, does a pizza exist? How do we know a pizza exists? These are ontological questions that deal with the nature of pizza’s existence. And oh, how tragic life would be without the existence of pizza!

LOL.

Epistemology deals with the theory of knowledge.[1] This area deals with how we know something to be true. What is the nature of such and such? To use our illustration of pizza, ontology would ask, “Does pizza exist?,” whereas epistemology would ask, “Is pizza good?; Can we know that pizza is tasty?” So, a created thing would deal with the area of ontology, whereas the nature of the thing would deal more in the area of epistemology more or less.
 When we talk about God creating all things, we must understand that God created everything that exists including the potentials to do certain things.

And if that is a reliable portrayal of god, it is most reasonable to deduce that God has been creating creatures throughout all of eternity, resulting in a logical contradiction;  the created order existing just as long as God has.

However, if we grant the existence of human freedom, then God is not responsible for the actions that people take.

That's a pretty big IF. Arminians and Calvinists have been at each other's theological throats since the 16th century, and before that it was Augustine and Pelagius.  But I would think God forcing people to sin in Ezekiel 38-39 would not be convincingly amenable to Arminian interpretation.  The commentators are understandably reluctant to explain how God's choice of metaphor "put a hook in your jaws (38:4) was a good illustration of his respect for human freewill.

Yes, God provides the means and conditions that can lead to a person’s actions and God knows the free actions that a person will take, but the person is responsible for his or her own actions.[2]

You won't be reconciling your Molinism with the sadistic puppetry God exercises in Ezekiel 38-39 anytime soon.

Therefore, God created all things and created the conditions where a person could do good or evil. But, God did not create evil, because evil is not a thing to be created. It is not like a virus or slab of concrete. Evil is an attribute. It is a personal rejection of the good, the good which is an attribute of God.

Once again, that the bible teaches that God forces people to sin is clear from Ezekiel 38-39.

The Moral Character of God. God is thoroughly identified in the Scriptures as being the ultimate good.

But this wouldn't constitute any intellectual obligation upon the atheist, even if such appeal to authority sounds convincing to other Christians.

John tells us that God is love (1 Jn. 4:8).

Actually, you cannot demonstrate the identity of John's human author with enough clarity as to render skeptics of the issue unreasonable.  Thus the gospel is John is sufficiently anonymous that skeptics can be reasonable to reject it just like they don't pay attention to another anonymous 1st century works like Hebrews.  Furthermore, the last verse of John indicates the author was a "we" and therefore they are conveying what the "disciple" taught, which means John wasn't written by john, but at best written by his followers, which means the gospel constitutes hearsay, another justification for atheists to resist any attempt to quote it as an "authority" on God.

Scripture also indicates that God is absolutely holy, which means that he is set apart and absolutely pure (1 Sam. 2:2; 6:20; Ps. 99:9; 1 Cor. 3:17; Rev. 4:8).

If you take that stuff seriously, then because God sometimes causes men to rape women, you can no longer make the broad-brushing claim that all rape is evil.  You'd have to carefully qualify that rape is only evil if God is not causing it:

15 Anyone who is found will be thrust through, And anyone who is captured will fall by the sword.
 16 Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces Before their eyes; Their houses will be plundered And their wives ravished.
 17 Behold, I am going to stir up the Medes against them, Who will not value silver or take pleasure in gold. (Isa. 13:15-17 NAU)

 I'm not really worried about other internet apologists who dismiss this argument by merely carping that Isaiah here is merely engaging in "trash talk".  My view that this was a serious threat from a serious god has the backing of Christians who are legitimately credentialed bible scholars:

17–18 As the macabre scene resulting from the cosmic quake passes, the finger points to historical movement. Yahweh calls attention to stirrings among the feared Medes for which he claims responsibility.

Watts, J. D. W. (2002). Vol. 24: Word Biblical Commentary :

Isaiah 1-33. Word Biblical Commentary (Page 198). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

Since atheists need only show their interpretation of a bible verse to be "reasonable" to start disproving the insulting rhetoric in Psalm 14:1 and Romans 1:20, it is significant that evangelical Christian scholars, that is, the type highly unlikely to credit God with causing rape, would nevertheless admit this was the case.  Thus my accusation that Isaiah 13 teaches that God causes rape, is "reasonable" and I need prove nothing more to avoid the "foolish" label.

Chilton continues:

Since God is the absolute good and absolutely pure, it is false to claim that God does evil.

Ok, so you are preaching to Christians only, you are NOT attempting to persuade skeptics.  Thanks for clarifying.

James says that “No one undergoing a trial should say, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ since God is not tempted by evil, and he himself does not tempt anyone. But each person is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own evil desire. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is fully grown, it gives birth to death” (Jms. 1:13-15). James answers the question for us in great detail about God’s relationship to evil. God cannot do evil because God is the absolute good.[3]

James' idealistic theology is refuted from Ezekiel 38-39, where God is obviously forcing pagan people (i.e., "hook in your jaws" [38:4]) to attack Israel.  This moral objection to god cannot be removed by simply carping that this battle is yet future.  God's threat to force people to sin, remains evil at present, just like Hitler's threat in 1942 to exterminate Jews was evil, even if at the time of threat, he hadn't quite carried it out yet.

So, how do we know what is evil and what is good?

Easy, you just go along with whatever the bible says.  If God says rape is evil, it's evil.  If the bible says God causes rape, then those particular instances of divinely caused rape are NOT evil.

If you are driving down a highway, you will see a sign that posts the speed limit. In town, the speed limit will most likely be 35 miles per hour. How do you know that you’re breaking the speed limit driving 55 miles per hour in that zone unless there is a speed limit posted stating that one should only go 35 miles per hour?

Good point:  You cannot prove that an adult man having sex with his 8 year old wife is "sin" because there's nothing in the bible or the "Law" either condemning or prohibiting such age-discrepant marriages. When you drive in a car and there's no signpost telling you what the speed limit is...

The law must exist before you can know if you’re breaking the law.

So because God felt no need to condemn or prohibit sex within adult-child marriages, you cannot know whether such activity constitutes breaking God's law.

Moral standards must exist before one can know that he or she is doing evil. Objective moral standards come from God.

There is no such thing as an objective moral standard.  If you reply "thou shalt not torture babies to death solely for entertainment", I would respond:  "what objective standard or moral yardstick are you using to show that this act is immoral?"  You cannot ask me what I think, my conscience is no more the basis for objective morality than is the conscience of a serial killer.

Again, evil is not something to be created. Evil stems from a rejection of God’s moral goodness.

Old-earth creationists reluctantly admit that carnivores existed on earth before sin did, which would thus force you to to say that when a lion tears out a zebra's guts, this is not evil.  Then you'll have to explain why most people are horrified to watch such carnage for the first time...is this the holy spirit manifesting his morality in their hearts? Or do those people merely hold an incorrect view of morality?   If the latter, then you agree that we can manifest compassion without this implying God's existence.

Ra’ah, Disaster, and Evil. Let’s face it. Biblical interpretation is tough especially when it comes to the original languages.

Justifying the atheist, if they so choose, to reject bible discussions because it is absurd to think the creator of the universe wants modern people to have a more difficult time discerning his will than he wanted for Moses, Abraham, the apostles, etc.

Some individuals have spent their entire lives seeking to master the biblical languages but are still left with questions.

Tragic, given that the NT tells Christians so much about what to do, nobody would have time to bother with extra-curricular non-essentials that the bible never expresses or implies any demand for, like learning dead languages.

If that is the case, should those of us with less training in the biblical languages not have much more humility when it comes to such terms? I think so.
 Often, Hebrew words can take several different meanings depending on context. I remember when taking Greek that Dr. Chad Thornhill would often emphasize context, context, context when interpreting a confusing term. In Hebrew, one such example is the confusion that occurs with the term ra’ah. Ra’ah describes a disaster but it can also be used to describe something evil. Ingrid Faro explains with the following:
 “For example, the Hebrew root “evil” (ra’; ra’ah; r’ ’) occurs 46 times in Genesis and is rightly translated into English using at least 20 different words, and nuanced in the Septuagint by using eight Greek forms (11 lexemes). Yet English-speaking people often incorrectly assume an underlying meaning of “sinister, moral wrong” and interject that into each use of the Hebrew word.”[4]
 In Amos 5:3, it is noted that “If this is a judgment announcement against the rich, then the Hebrew phrase עֵת רָעָה (’et ra’ah) must be translated, “[a] disastrous time.” See G. V. Smith, Amos, 170.”[5] Thus, the term ra’ah can indicate a disaster that has befallen a group of people and does not necessarily mean “evil” as some older translations have indicated.
 But, doesn’t disaster indicate something evil? If God brings disaster, does that not indicate that God does something evil? No, not at all! God is holy.

And there you go...your presuppositions are driving your exegesis, which we otherwise call "eisogesis".  You are not going to call god unholy regardless of what you might discover about the bible in the future.

If a people are unrepentant and are unwilling to stop doing evil, then God is completely justified in bringing judgment.

You think God was justified to torture David's infant son for 7 days.  I'd say you believe in God's justified judgment for reasons other than moral argument.  You believe it simply because "the bible tells me so".

The disaster is not evil if it is due justice.

Then the rapes God threatened against the women of Babylon in Isaiah 13 wouldn't be evil if they were due justice.

Like a parent disciplining a child or a judge executing judgment against a convicted criminal, disasters are sometimes the judgment of God poured out upon an unrepentant people.

What we'd like to know is why you don't think it evil for God to torture babies.  is it merely because the bible says God is holy and good?  How could you possibly expect this to sound convincing to the skeptics you are trying to prepare your Christian audience to answer?

I think it was good that the Allies stormed into Germany to overtake the evil Adolf Hitler.

Morality is relative and therefore doesn't permit dogmatism on whether some act is good or evil.  You simply say what you feel, and flock to the particular group that agrees with you.

Likewise, it is actually good for God to bring judgment as it coincides with his holy nature.

Then you are forced to calls God's threat of rape in Isaiah 13 "good", and therefore admit that had those rapes actually took place, those rapes would have been "good" too.

Evil Allowed to Permit the Ultimate Good. So, the final question that must be tackled is this: If God is good, then why would he allow evil to exist in the first place? Why would he create a condition where evil could exist? The answer to this is quite simple. God’s allowance of evil is to allow a greater good.

Then because rape often causes the victim to be more aware of her surroundings, or causes her to volunteer at a rape crises clinic, this justifies ignoring the short term pain and calling the rape good solely beacuse of the long-term good. 

Sure, your bible expressly forbids you from saying "let us do evil that good may come", but blindly quoting the bible cannot get rid of a well-developed argument.  If you are willing to call an act "good" because it is likely to produce long-term good even if it also produces short-term pain, then because rape can have long-term good, you cannot cite to the short-term pain as if that's all there is to say in the moral analysis.

With all of your lecturing about how God looks to the long-term good when causing people to suffer, you are not at liberty to pretend that rape's moral classification requires nothing more than citation to its causing immediate temporal harm or pain.  You aren't done deciding whether rape is good or bad until you have also factored in all that long-term and divinely intended "good" you keep talking about.

So...is rape evil because of it's short term infliction of pain?  Or is it good because it produces the long term result of motivating the victim to be more protective of herself in the future?

What is that greater good? Love.

Then you are forced to defend God's torturing of David's baby for 7 days, as a "loving" act.  Good luck.

For love to truly exist, it must be free.

No, when you have your dangerous brother involuntarily civilly committed  as he resists arrests, this too is "loving".

And unless you think we might possibly sin after we get to heaven, the fact that we'll authentically love god in heaven without ability to sin, proves that God could have infused Adam and Eve with the same holy will,  and we wouldn't be in the mess your god pretends to bitch about today. 

And God's alleged taking aborted babies to heaven proves that human beings don't "need" to live on this sinful earth for any amount of time in order to make possible our future sinless perfection.  How do you think God causes aborted babies, who go to heaven, to refrain from sin the rest of eternity?

It must be freely given, freely received, and reciprocal between both parties.

No, the parent can authentically love the teen son as they have him arrested for theft, and while he manifests hatred toward them as he goes off to jail, no reciprocity needed.

God could have created us as robots or automatons. But, that would not provide true love.

But it would have achieved a sinless world, and some would argue that refraining from sin is better than preserving the Arminian view of love.

The ultimate love was given in Jesus, who experienced the horrors of torture and experienced the just punishment that we deserve.

No, he was a common criminal whose own family tried to stop his public outbursts, and all this stuff about his dying for sin is gratuitous theological afterthought.  And Calvinists could sing circles around a Molinist like you, on the absurdities you create by pretending that atonement didn't actually occur until the individual sinner's moment of faith.

He did so that we would have life eternally. The penalty of our eternal punishment was paid on the cross at Calvary. God lovingly confers his grace to all who would willingly receive.

dismissed, you are clearly reserving this part solely for church.  I don't go to church.

His grace is freely offered and is freely received. This kind of love would not be possible if God had not allowed the conditions that would allow evil to exist.

But it could be argued that preventing people from sinning is more holy than infusing people with an Arminian-type of "freewill".

A greater good has come.

Then why don't you praise god every time a child is raped to death?  If God didn't interfere to save the child, then just standing around and allowing that rape to proceed must be "godly".

One day, those who have trusted Christ for their salvation will no longer need to worry about evil because evil will be vanquished.

Then according to your prior statements, that would also vanquish true love, since love cannot exist without the genuine possibility of doing evil.  But if we can authentically love God in heaven without ability to sin, God could have given the same ability to Adam and Eve.  So God's choice to do things in a way that fills the earth with evil, proves him every bit a moral failure as Hitler who chose to fix the Jew-problem in the unnecessarily brutish way that he did.

The redeemed of Christ will be transformed. We will experience the bliss and glory of the heaven that awaits us. To God be the glory!
 So, did God create evil? It depends on what you mean. God created the conditions for evil to exist but did so to allow a greater good which is the free love that is experienced between the Lover (God), the beloved (us), and the spirit of love between the two. Evil is not a thing to be created. Rather, it is a condition that exists when a person or group of people reject God’s goodness and his holy moral nature.

Tell that to the Christian woman 5 minutes after she has been raped.  Apparently, your theological arguments stop making sense when people experience actual evil in real-time.

My challenge to Brian Chilton's argument from the early New Testament "creeds"

Brian Chilton did a podcast on the "early NT creeds".  Since the sources of those creeds are obviously relevant to the question of how early they are, I issued the following challenge to him:




If that's too blurry, here's a paste of the text:

barry • 4 minutes agoHold on, this is waiting to be approved by BellatorChristi.So, let's grant that the apostles began preaching the resurrection of Jesus every bit as early as Acts 2 says they did. Now we've pushed the resurrection-creed back to 33. a.d., even further back than Habermas would dare date the 1st Corinthians 15:3-4 "creed". 

Are you willing to discuss the possible NT sources behind such "creed"?

•

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See here.

We'll have to see what Chilton thinks is more important:  uninterrupted preaching to the choir, or defending his specific presuppositions from skeptical attack.  Since he posts what he does for the purpose of "apologetics", I'm hoping its the latter.

If you simply teach apologetics without input from an actual skeptic, you create the risk that your Christian audience will go into the world, armed with your teachings, and get slaughtered by actual skeptics whose actual arguments go beyond what you were teaching in class.  Showing how you survived a challenge from an actual skeptic is far more likely to equip your readers to deploy apologetics in the real world successfully.

UPDATE:

A few minutes later, this was how Chilton justified refusal to take up my challenge:
------------------------------


barry • 2 hours ago
So, let's grant that the apostles began preaching the resurrection of Jesus every bit as early as Acts 2 says they did. Now we've pushed the resurrection-creed back to 33. a.d., even further back than Habermas would dare date the 1st Corinthians 15:3-4 "creed".

Are you willing to discuss the possible NT sources behind such "creed"?

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Brian Chilton Mod  barry • an hour ago
Barry, I've already discussed the sources behind such creeds. There's no reason to go back into this issue. I encourage you to listen to the podcast and to also reference other resources at https://bellatorchristi.com concerning the multiple eyewitness testimonies concerning the risen Jesus.

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barry  Brian Chilton • 3 minutes ago
Hold on, this is waiting to be approved by BellatorChristi.
I'll take that as a "no, I am not willing to discuss the possible NT sources behind such creed". Fair enough. While I'll be challenging your arguments at my own blog, it's clear that you have no intention of debating a skeptic at your own blog. Have a nice life. Should you ever desire to see arguments you haven't addressed before, you know how to contact me. barryjoneswhat@gmail.com
•Edit•Share ›

• • --------------------------------------------------------

Perhaps I should pat myself on the back.  This Brian Chilton is a legitimate Christian bible scholar, and yet he clearly doesn't think he could convincingly refute arguments that I'd make to him on each of his individual points.

Craig Keener: failing again to take the resurrection challenge

This is my reply to an article by Craig Keener entitled:

Real Raisings from the Dead or Fake News?

Falsified resurrection stories should not cause us to discount credible miracle accounts.

CRAIG KEENER| MAY 17, 2019

I offer here a challenge to Dr. Keener:  please quit playing in the little leagues with your numerous anecdotal stories of miracles, pick the ONE modern-day miracle claim you believe to be the most impervious to refutation or falsification, and explain why you think the only reasonable interpretation of it is to say it was a genuine miracle..and let's get started.

This is just an echo of a challenge I both posted here and emailed directly to Dr. Keener nearly two years ago, see here.  A challenge he still hasn't offered any reply to.

Around 1960, in the Republic of Congo, a two-year-old girl named Thérèse was bitten by a snake. She cried out for help, but by the time her mother, Antoinette, reached her, Thérèse was unresponsive and seemed to have stopped breathing. No medical help was available to them in their village, so Antoinette strapped little Thérèse to her back and ran to a neighboring village.
 According to the US National Library of Medicine, brain cells start dying less than five minutes after their oxygen supply is removed, an event called hypoxia. After six minutes, lack of oxygen can cause severe brain damage or death. Antoinette estimates that, given the distance and the terrain, it probably took about three hours to reach the next village. By the time they arrived, her daughter was likely either dead or had sustained significant brain damage.
 Antoinette immediately sought out a family friend, Coco Ngoma Moyise, who was an evangelist in the neighboring village. They prayed over the lifeless girl and immediately she started breathing again. By the next day, she was fine—no long-term harm and no brain damage. Today, Thérèse has a master’s degree and is a pastor in Congo.
 When I heard this story, as a Westerner I was naturally tempted toward skepticism, but it was hard to deny. Thérèse is my sister-in-law and Antoinette was my mother-in-law.
 Thérèse (right), with her mother, Antoinette (middle), and the author’s wife, Medine (left).
Image: Courtesy of Craig Keener
Thérèse (right), with her mother, Antoinette (middle), and the author’s wife, Medine (left).

I'm not seeing how you could possibly think this anecdotal evidence somehow renders miracle-skeptics unreasonable.  But I guess you were never writing this piece for skeptics anyway, correct?

And let's not forget that Christianity is full of "cessationists" (i.e., Christians who think the age of miracles ceased long ago...who therefore have their own biblical reasons to be suspicious of modern-day Christian miracle claims.  See Keener debating such a person here.

How much would a Christian cessationist push a skeptic to investigate modern-day miracles?

If even Christian scholars cannot agree whether the bible allows God to do miracles today, lets just say skeptics are more than reasonable if they choose to walk away from a confusing problem created and sustained by Christians.  We cannot be intellectually compelled to go investigating miracle claims until we first determine that the bible allows God to do miracles 2000 years after the 1st century.  Because if it doesn't allow it, then the modern-day miracle might actually be done by demon...and we wouldn't wanna play with fire or anything, would we?

And then there's the stupidity of thinking skeptics have an intellectual obligation to give two shits whether cessationism is biblical or not.  Yeah, maybe we are also unreasonable if we refuse to study the differences between Trinitarians, Unitarians and Oneness Pentecostals.  Yeah right.  Then maybe under Romans 1:20 we are required to care enough about bible inerrancy at least minimally enough to google Geisler and Licona for several weeks so we can figure out which of them has a more "biblical" position on inerrancy, and then for thoroughness, take the next two years to study all the loquacious input Lydia McGrew has to offer about that particular issue.   You are high crack.

By contrast, in February, a video of South African preacher Alph Lukau drew widespread attention for what appeared to be someone raised from the dead in his church. Lukau claims he simply prayed for the unconscious man in the coffin, but regardless of who is responsible, the situation was clearly designed to deceive. The coffin was purchased from one funeral parlor by customers allegedly posing as workers from another funeral parlor, and the hearse was borrowed from yet a third. Critically, none of the funeral parlors ever saw the body of the supposed deceased.
 The video of this apparent resurrection was quickly unmasked, and Lukau was condemned by numerous African church leaders. Nevertheless, questions and concerns remain.

Us skeptics have colleges to attend, jobs to work and kids to raise.  We are not unreasonable to say that because there are so many false miracle claims in the world, its better to toss the baby out with the bathwater, since the only alternative is to investigate (and thus fill up our lives with) a bunch of false bullshit.  Since we are limited, there MUST come a time when we decide for ourselves that we have done enough research to justify drawing conclusions about the ultimate issue, just like you don't know everything there is to know about pleasing a woman in bed, but you did some study and arbitrarily decided the point at which you thought you knew enough to justify ending your studies. 

I am no more open to miracle claims than I am open to archaeological claims asserting that artifacts unique to the Book of Mormon have been found.  So much fraud attends both investigations that I've decided other things in life are more important than pretending to be what I'm not...an objective robot eternally willing to change my mind about anything whenever anybody comes up with some new claim.  If you reached the firm conclusion that Mormonism is bullshit, at some point before knowing everything there is to know about the subject, you obviously agree with my closed-mindedness.

But my lack of openness doesn't mean I cannot be convinced otherwise.  how many Christians took a firm doctrinal stance and considered the matter closed, then changed their minds later anyway?  I won't be open to miracle claims until somebody comes up with something more convincing than unsubstantiated allegations about how doctors in third-world countries were baffled at some sort of healing.

And as I argued years ago, because Christians say the stakes are extremely high, we are thus perfectly reasonable to demand that their evidence meet the highest standards of authentication normally imposed on evidence by courts of law.  If God has no trouble parting the Red Sea, he should have no trouble producing evidence that would meet court-tests of authentication and admissibility.

I’m married to an African, have spent time teaching in Africa, and count many African Christians as relatives and friends. I’ve learned much from them and their approach to miracles challenges me in good ways. African Christianity has a tradition of prophetic leaders, and there is great respect among Africans across the continent for a “man of God.”

And if they aren't specifically 'Christian' in outlook, your bible would require you view such prophets as false.

But because miracles draw crowds, many leaders compete in miracle narratives.

So if my salvation is such a huge pressing issue, what should I prioritize?  Picking up the kids from school?  Or phone the school telling them to let the kids walk home so I can google Christian miracle claims originating in Africa?  According to your Christian logic, my eternal destiny is more important than temporal earthly desires, correct?  And didn't Jesus use promises of great material and spiritual riches to entice his followers to give up custody of their kids (Matthew 19:29)? 

Do you recommend that I follow Jesus' advice in Matthew 19:29, yes or no?

Or do you recommend that I pick up my kids from school, and only google African miracle claims whenever I decide I don't have anything better to do?  If that's the case, then apparently, you don't think my salvation is that important.

The internet democratizes access, so leaders who publicly demonstrate their miracle prowess can become wildly successful. Churches can control the setting and potentially any staging. The opportunity for fakery abounds and my miracle-believing, African Pentecostal friends lament the spread of fraudulent miracle-workers.

 I wonder how far a skeptic could milk the following excuse:  "Given your admission to many false miracle claims among Christians, I wouldn't wanna be misled by a demon-inspired miracle, so playing it safe would counsel that I just avoid looking at miracle-claims entirely...especially given that as an unbeliever, I'm even more prone to being deceived by demonic miracles, than Christians are."

NOW what are you gonna do? Quote that part of the bible where God promises atheists protection from demons as long as they are sincerely researching miracle-claims?

Is there a way we can distinguish between fabricated miracle reports and the genuine article?

Maybe.  But that means you'll have to devote your attention to a subject rife with falsehoods and demonic deceptions, and if you are an atheist, the apologist has to admit you run a greater risk of being deceived by demonic miracle reports, than any Christian would be. 

Misplaced cynicism
Christians use the word miracle in different ways. Because we believe that God works through his creation, we are right to thank God for recoveries from sickness or injury, dramatic or not.

Do you thank god for farts, burps, predatory birds who sadistically torture their prey, and other things because they too, ultimately originate with the miracle of god's creation?

When we offer thanksgiving for a successful surgery or an effective immune system, we don’t need to claim it happened only by miraculous means.
 Neither should we limit the term exclusively to what lacks possible natural causes. The Bible says that God parted the Red Sea using a strong east wind that blew all night (Ex. 14:21). But just because we recognize the natural components of this event, we would be wrong to conclude it was merely a fortuitous coincidence that allowed the Israelites to cross on dry ground.

Thanks for the strong sign that you aren't writing this for skeptics, but only for those who are already Christian.  If a skeptic wished to, she'd be perfectly reasonable and rational to disregard this article of yours in its entirety.  You know how to address skeptics with better arguments, but you typically choose to avoid doing so.

So how can we evaluate popular accounts of miracles?

Maybe you should have instead asked "Can skeptics be reasonable to avoid investigating miracle claims upon the basis that we Christians say many miracles are done by demons, and skeptics, not being Christians, are thus more prone to the danger of being successfully deceived by the devil?"

When we don’t know the witnesses and lack other evidence, we have to live with varying amounts of uncertainty.

Then, because you don't "know" any of the NT authors...

But examining credible examples can help us understand how to approach miracles while being neither gullible nor faithless.

Since you'd never wish to stumble a skeptic, I'll assume your miracle-investigation advice is limited to just Christians, not those who are more prone to being deceived by demonic and heretical imitations?

If some African Christians accept miracle claims too quickly, many of us in the secular West indulge the opposite cultural temptation. Our heritage of antisupernaturalism, stemming from 18th-century Deists and the naturalist philosophy of David Hume, predisposes us to dismiss all miracles.

It also predisposes us to be absolutely closed-minded to any fool who might seriously wish to prove the existence of fairies.

That way, at least, we cannot be embarrassed by claims that turn out to be fraudulent.
 Resurrection reports appear through much of church history. In the late second century, Irenaeus, for example, reproached Gnostics’ lack of miracles by noting an orthodox church in France where, he reported, raisings were frequent. Raisings were also among the documented miracles Augustine surveyed in book 22 of The City of God. John Wesley offered a firsthand account of an apparently dead man being revived through prayer, recorded on the day it occurred, December 25, 1742.

Anecdotal evidence you surely don't expect to impress atheists?

Most early 20th-century testimonies are impossible to verify today,

Makes you wonder how impossible it is to verify 1st century miracle reports.

but occasionally some evidence remains. For example, in 1907, one year after the beginning of the early Pentecostal Azusa Street Revival, the revival’s newspaper The Apostolic Faith reported the raising of one Eula Wilson, whose blindness was also healed in the process.
 I was initially skeptical, but The Apostolic Faith cited its source, The Nazarene Messenger, another newspaper that recounted the same story but left out the healing from blindness. My first instinct was to suppose that The Apostolic Faith was embellishing the initial report. While such embellishments happen, in this case The Nazarene Messenger also had a source, The Wichita Eagle. This report, from within days of the event itself, included testimony from the attending physician and included Wilson’s healing from blindness.

Any fool who attended a Benny Hinn crusade in the front row next to the stage,  could tell you, within the next two days, that they saw healings with their own eyes.  But this would not interest you in the slightest, since, like an atheist bible skeptic, you've reached the point wherein you believe your prior studies of Hinn's miracles are sufficiently complete to justify you in drawing the deduction that NONE of his miracle claims are true or worthy of serious investigatory effort.  How much attention do you pay to Hinn's thousands of miracle claims, Dr. Keener?

Or do you agree with atheist bible skeptics that where the subject is already known to be fraught with fraudulent claims, you eventually reach a point where it becomes reasonable to generalize that the present is likely nothing but a repeat of the past?  Like Benny Hinn, the general subject of modern-day miracles is full of fraudulent cases, and like you, I reached a point where I became reasonable to stop being open to the possibility of the tooth-fairy's existence, and drew the general conclusion that any future evidence is too likely to be similarly inconclusive or fraudulent to justify continued willingness to investigate.

Some recent Western raising reports have become Christian films, such as those of Annabel Beam (Miracles from Heaven) and Baptist minister Don Piper (90 Minutes in Heaven). Both stories are inspiring but neither is triumphalistic: Beam experienced incredible suffering before her remarkable healing, and Piper suffered greatly along the road to recovery. If a testimony is being used for fundraising or a particular minister’s glory, caution is the wiser instinct. But in cases like these, no obvious self-
aggrandizing motive is in view.
 Another raising film, Breakthrough, released this past Easter. Based on Joyce Smith’s book The Impossible, the film recounts the experience of Joyce’s teenage son John. Unable to revive John after the boy drowned, physician Kent Sutterer had abandoned hope when John’s desperate mother started praying. At that moment, John’s heart restarted. Doctors deemed his subsequent full recovery remarkable.
 The witness of a medical professional like Sutterer further pushes against knee-jerk skepticism about raisings. Chauncey Crandall, a cardiologist in West Palm Beach, felt led to pray for a man who had already been unresponsive for some 40 minutes. Crandall assumed the man, Jeff Markin, was beyond help.
 Although the death certificate had been signed and Markin’s extremities were already turning black, Crandall prayed aloud for Markin. Then he urged a colleague to shock Markin with defibrillator paddles one more time; after the jolt of electricity, Markin’s heart immediately began beating. Markin made a full recovery, became a believer in Christ himself, and now testifies alongside Crandall to what God did for him.
 This is an impressive story, but it has some important context. This was not the first time Crandall had prayed for a raising.

Why would the skeptic be wrong to conclude that the naturalistic defibrillator is what naturalistically caused this person's heart to begin beating?  Is that naturalistic conclusion somehow "less likely" than your miracle-conclusion, a conclusion that violates Occam's Razor by being the one hypothesis that carries the highest possible degree of complexity " (i.e, 'god')?

Previously, his own son, Chad, died from leukemia. Crandall prayed in faith for Chad’s raising. Chad did not revive. In the face of crushing disappointment, Crandall had to decide whether to distance himself from God or trust him no matter what. He chose the latter, and so he was ready when God called him to pray for Markin.

Yup, you aren't talking to skeptics.  Your miracle-investigation advice is limited solely to those who already believe and are therefore easily primed to cross the line and view anecdotal evidence as confirming their views.

And it’s not just that doctors witness raisings. Sometimes, they are the ones raised. On October 24, 2008, Sean George, head of general medicine at Kalgoorlie Hospital in Australia, suffered a fatal heart attack. He was in cardiac arrest for an hour and 25 minutes and even flatlined for 37 minutes. His wife, also a physician, arrived and prayed for him and, abruptly, his heart restarted. After recovering, he returned to his medical practice. George has the full medical documentation online.

I've reviewed that "documentation" and therefore sent the following message to this Dr. George:




After sending, the confirmation message said:




If the text is unreadable, here's what I requested:

Dr. Craig Keener, at https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2019/june/miracles-resurrections-real-raisings-fake-news-keener-afric.html?share=0VzDX1%2byFTTRU5sk76j9HayahHrRXwc4 

says your page at https://seangeorge.com.au/my-story/medical-details/
contains the "full medical documentation" of your resurrection story, but I noticed that this "documentation" is simply your "notes" regarding specific sub-topics related to the alleged miracle, along with a few "screenshots" of select portions of the medical documents.  

 Would you please provide a true, correct and unredacted copy of ALL of the original medical files (including but not limited to those which bear the signature of the medical technician or doctor) documenting all of your assertions and "notes" on this matter, along with a statement from each doctor involved as to hohw likely they think the miracle-explanation is.  Please send all documentation to barryjoneswhat@gmail.com, or provide a link to a cloud or google drive or similar if the documentation is more than what can be emailed.  Please also provide the telephone numbers and email addresses of all doctors and medical technicians or specialists who signed the above-requested medical documents, as I would like to interview them before I accept Keener's "miracle" interpretation of this event.

 Thank you,  Barry.

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Raisings in Africa
What about raisings reported outside the West? Are there credible African resurrection stories?

If non-Christians investigate modern-day miracle claims, are they more prone than a Christian to become deceived by a demonic imitation?

Lack of medical facilities in many locations makes miracles both more necessary and harder to document. Still, people in traditional cultures are often familiar with signs of death, such as rigor mortis or lack of pulse and respiration, because they are less insulated from it than Westerners are. So while we may not be able to say how dead a person was in a clinical sense, such cases still seem significant, whatever the terminology used to describe them.

Then you cannot seriously expect the skeptic to find any such miracle-raisings, originating in such context, to be sufficiently believable to put miracle-viability back on the epistemological map.   If it isn't strong evidence, we kick it to the curb.

One friend I worked with during my first three summers in Nigeria was Leo Bawa, a missions researcher who now holds a PhD from the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies. When I was conducting research for a book on miracles, I asked Bawa if he knew of any. “Not many,” he replied, before giving me seven pages of eyewitness accounts.
 One experience in particular caught my eye: In a village where Bawa had been doing research, some non-Christian neighbors brought him their dead child, asking if he could help. He prayed for a couple of hours and then handed the child back to them alive. Reasoning it may have been a misdiagnosed death, I asked how often he prayed for dead persons. He said he had done so only one other time; he prayed for his best friend after his death, and the friend stayed dead. In this non-Christian village, however, Bawa believes God answered his prayer for the honor of Christ.

You don't provide his full name or the full account, so, dismissed.

Other miracles seem to have happened without any prayer at all. I know Timothy Olonade from my time in Nigeria, a man who had a prominent scar that I never asked about. Years after I first met him, some mutual friends, including my doctor in Nigeria, told me Olonade’s story and I followed up with him.

Please provide this Nigerian doctor's telephone number, email address and website address, if any.  I'd like to interview him about this.

In December 1985, Olonade was killed in a head-on traffic accident. After being pronounced dead in the hospital, he was sent to the morgue. Hours later, as a worker went in to move some bodies, he found Olonade moving. Dumbfounded, the doctor at the hospital expected that Olonade would at least have irreparable brain damage. But he fully recovered, something his maxillofacial surgeon described as miraculous. Now an Anglican priest, Olonade is a leader in the Nigerian missions movement.

Please provide the telephone number, email address and website address, if any, of both this "doctor at the hospital" and and this "maxillofacial surgeon".  I'd like to interview them about this, and I'll be asking for all of the medical documentation that existed in 1985, so please prepare the appropriate medical releases.

Some stories have come to me unbidden. I was in an academic meeting with Ayodeji Adewuya, who has a PhD from the University of Manchester, when I shared some global miracle accounts. A few Western professors in the meeting understandably questioned me, then Adewuya stood up and shared his own experience. His son was pronounced dead at birth in 1981. After half an hour of prayer, however, the child was restored with no brain damage. This same son now has a master’s degree from University College of London and another from Cornell.

Contact details, please.

My wife is from the Republic of Congo (the smaller of the two African countries named Congo) and I’ve interviewed her friends and family with credible accounts, frequently corroborated by multiple, independent witnesses.

Take the one miracle claim among them, which you think is the most impervious to falsification, and lets get started.  That is surely a more efficient way to achieve your alleged goals, than simply constantly spouting these anecdotal stories.

Take, for instance, the story of Albert Bissouessoue. A deacon in the Evangelical Church of Congo, Bissouessoue is my wife’s brother’s father-in-law.

So, like Benny Hinn, he's already a Christian and thus already predisposed to see miracles when and if he sees something he cannot find a naturalistic explanation for.

When he was a school inspector in Etoumbi, in the north of Congo, people knew him as a strong Christian.

So he has a "strong" predisposition to seeing miracles where he thinks naturalistic explanations fail.  Ok.

A crowd brought to his residence a girl’s body, reporting that she died some eight hours earlier.

But we don't know whether their diagnosis was correct.  People's hearts stop all the time and start again, meaning heart stoppage is not a reliable sign of actual "death".  What symptoms did they find, that they interpreted as her death?

They had taken her first to traditional practitioners, who sacrificed animals and smeared blood on her in vain attempts to revive her.

Thanks for this clue about the degree to which they were able to discern actual "truth".

After reproaching them for not coming first to the living God, Bissouessoue prayed for half an hour, and the child revived.
 As you might expect, this caused quite a stir in Etoumbi.

If the people were gullible enough to seek out witch doctors, then yes, I can only imagine how anecdotal claims of resurrection from death would spread like wildfire in such communities.

So, when another child died, people came looking for Bissouessoue. Unfortunately, he was out of town, so they drafted his wife, Julienne, to pray. When she prayed, this second child revived immediately.

Why should the reader automatically assume gullible followers of witch doctors correctly diagnosed the child as "dead"?  You also don't tell us how LONG she was "dead" which leaves plenty of room for naturalistically-caused revival.

Julienne herself was shocked, reporting that God simply gave her faith in that moment.

Another sign that the people involved were of an emotional type quick to see the divine in their own feelings during moments of extreme duress.

When I asked Albert and Julienne if they had ever prayed for anyone else who was dead, they reported that these were the only two occasions. They consider it something special that God was doing for his witness in that community.

And once again, you aren't writing to combat skeptics, you are writing to edify Christians.  But just so that the reader is clear, you aren't making a rebuttal to the skeptical view by simply telling edifying stories to those who already believe.  I'm suspicious that if you were cross-examined by somebody like me after you came prepared with all of your medical documentation, you wouldn't last long.  I assume that the miracles you report after publishing your two-volume "Miracles" work are the exact miracles you think most impervious to falsification, since any smart Christian scholar would be quick to use only their very best evidence to support their beliefs. If this is the "best" you've got, let's just say I'm not exactly "unreasonable" to find wasting my money in strip bars more productive than miracle-investigation.

And of course, there is the story from my own mother-in-law and sister-in-law, Antoinette and Thérèse. Because of how well I know them, their story, more than any other account, forced me to reconsider my Western cynicism.

There's simply no denying the truth in conclusory allegations targeted to an already-Christian audience.

The place of miracles
The antidote to false miracle claims is not to reject miracles altogether.

Then apparently you think the antidote to Benny Hinn's false miracle claims is not to reject Benny Hinn's credibility altogether.  Well then what?  Are skeptics under some intellectual obligation to continue reviewing each and every miracle claim Hinn spews out?  If so, what is your epistemological basis for saying any such obligation exists?

We must take care when we hear of (or even experience) a miraculous event that we neither accept all miracles as true nor dismiss them all as fake. The reality is much more complex.

We must also make a decision about what's more important...going to work in the morning so we can keep our families housed and fed, or doing what Jesus said, and giving up custody of our property and our children so that we can have more time to follow him around (Matthew 19:29).  I LOVE committing the sin of blindly assuming that my need to hold a job and feed my family is more important than my "salvation".

But how do we exercise the appropriate amount of caution?

Would you counsel Christians to pray to God about it?  If so, why?  How the hell would they ever know what answer God was giving, or if God was even giving an answer at all?  Yet pray you must, as a bible-believing Christian.  Nothing fails quite like prayer, but your bible-based beliefs forbid you from the obvious and constrain you to see answers to prayer even when there's no empirically detectable link between the actual answer and the phenomena you subjectively think is the answer.  If God lived in the real world, he'd make known to me his desire to save me, no less directly than my neighbor notifies me that he wants to borrow a hammer.  God's "hiddenness" is a real son-of-a-bitch that you aren't fixing by merely carping about God's mysterious ways.  People are always reasonable and justified to walk away from a leader, when the leader insists he has instructions for them to follow, but instead of giving them directly, forces the followers to learn dead languages and enter the fray of endless debate by scholars on the subject, as the only means they have of discerning the meaning in his list of instructions.

While no formula allows us to verify all miracle stories, I have noticed a pattern.
 Fraudulent miracles tend to flourish where they profit their purveyors.

When Jesus ran around doing "miracles", he begged for money.  What other purpose was there for the "money-box" that Judas used to allegedly "steal from" in John 12:6?  See also John 13:29.

After Jesus died, the apostles demanded their follows give the apostles control over all money and property, and to hold anything back and lie about it was to ensure one's death, Acts 5.

Apostle Paul convinced his churches to put together a large bag of money he said would be used to help the starving Jerusalem church.  1st Corinthians 16:1-3.  The deliverers likely knew it would be shameful for the Jerusalem church to count it to make sure it agrees with how much Paul's certification said was in the bag, so they must have been tempted to grab a few handfuls, to spend on themselves as they traveled, especially in light of Paul's advice, see next sentence:

Paul, like any good politician, insists that those who rule the church well are worthy of "double" the expected wages (1st Timothy 5:17-18).  Today we call it cronyism.

This is what we see in the Lukau story from South Africa. Yes, some Christians downplay miracles too much, but others need to stop exalting them as the highest ministry or as a sign of divine approval, especially where leadership and teaching are concerned.

Another complication in the study of modern miracles, thus giving the skeptic, if they choose to employ it,  yet another reason to consider the subject too fraught with peril and misunderstanding to be considered worthy of any serious study.

When Paul lists spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:28, he actually ranks teaching higher than miracles.

And as we saw, Paul turned Christian teaching into a money-making venture, and we don't really know whether his claims to "suffering" were as fearful as he describes.  If prayer was so good and powerful, why didn't mere prayer solve the Jerusalem church's poverty problem, sort of like God said his miracles ensured that the children of Israel continued to have food and water as they lived 40 years in the desert?  George Carlin was right:  God has an on-going problem with money, and he cannot do much without it.

The Greek text of Ephesians 4:11 links pastors with teachers, and the Pastoral Epistles make teaching ability a prerequisite for ministry (1 Tim. 3:2, 2 Tim. 2:24, Titus 1:9). Miracles are nowhere a biblical requirement (or necessary endorsement) for ministry. Someone might even have a gift of miracles but not be a good teacher. One can have both kinds of gifts (Acts 19:9–12), but one does not necessarily entail the other.
 By contrast, credible dramatic signs are most frequent where the gospel is breaking fresh ground—as in the Gospels and Acts. In these situations, the miracles tend to advance the cause of faith, not the will or needs of a particular person or group.

BULLSHIT!  The miracles advance the cause of Jesus and later the apostles no less than miracles advance the cause of Benny Hinn!

Miracles are a wonderful foretaste of the coming kingdom.

The fact that you aren't a preterist thus makes the Christians who are preterists wonder how you could be such a smart good Christian and yet God apparently cannot enlighten you about the obvious.

Thus Jesus’ exorcisms revealed the kingdom’s nearness (Luke 11:20),

A kingdom that obviously failed to arrive as promised.  Ask any Christian who is a preterist, they will tell you what's obvious, that Jesus intended this "comming soon" screed to mean "soon" according to the human sense of time, not God's sense of time.  He could hardly spur them on to do good works in fear of being found lazy by the master, if he meant "you better keep busy, or the master of the house might return after a few thousand years..."

and Jesus describes his healings in language that invokes Isaiah’s description of the ultimate restoration (Luke 7:22). Nevertheless, the kingdom’s fullness remains future.

How much time do you think skeptics are intellectually obligated to spend learning about why other equally knowledgeable Christian scholars disagree with your eschatological views, before we become justified to start drawing ultimate conclusions about who is right, or whether the biblical data are fatally ambiguous and worthy of ignoring?

Even genuine gifts are limited: Paul says that we know in part, and we prophesy in part (1 Cor. 13:9).
 When God acts in our lives, we should testify about it, but when possible we should also offer verification.

You mean like when I asked you almost two years ago for you to verify whatever modern-day miracle you thought most impervious to falsification?  I'm still waiting.

If Jesus urged a leper to follow the scriptural prescription to verify his healing with a priest (Mark 1:44), it is appropriate for us to verify miracles when possible.

If Jesus urged a leper to follow the scriptural prescription to verify his healing with a priest (Mark 1:44), and if in the Great Commission Jesus insisted his apostles convey "all" of his teachings to the rest of the world (Matthew 28:20), then Paul's relaxing the rules for Gentiles was one big fat heresy.  I am quite aware of that divided portion of Christ's body called "dispensationalism", and I have no sympathy for such a desperate way to get rid of the soteriological inconsistencies in the bible.

This way open-minded people who do not know the witnesses well enough to take their word for it can still experience the awe of seeing God at work.

be sure you remind Dr. George of this, as I sent him a request for verifying medical documentation.

Additional layers of evaluation help. For example, false teachers often exploit people for money (Jer. 6:13, Micah 3:11, 2 Pet. 2:3)

Like the apostles did in demanding they take charge of their followers' money and property.  Acts 5.

and tell them whatever they want to hear (2 Tim. 4:3–4).

Like Paul who thought circumcision to be nothing, but coddled the scruples of the Jews anyway (Acts 16:3), or the Paul who thought the law was fulfilled and faded, but who, when coming to Jerusalem, pretended to believe the same way the Jews did about the continuing divine significance of the ceremonial system (Acts 21:18-24).

Jesus warned us to discern prophets by their fruits, not by their gifts (Matt. 7:15–23).

Then the mere fact that a miracle proves the supernatural and thus refutes the atheists, is all the more reason for atheists to stay away from such discussions.  The devil appears to be a really convincing deceiver, even many Christians fall into his snares, right?.  Probably best to avoid the risk entirely by entirely avoiding investigating anything that might turn out to be one of his clever imitations. 

Christian apologists who insist that atheists examine modern-day miracle claims are stupid know nothings who have no interest in protective spiritual good and all interest in soulless unedifying bickering back and forth academia. 

What is the outcome of a particular miracle? God’s gifts are good, but their main purpose is building up Christ’s body, not our reputations (note 1 Cor. 12–14). Most of Jesus’ miracles, such as healing sickness, expelling spirits, and stilling storms, demonstrated compassion as well as power.

They also tended to build up his reputation, sort of like miracles tend to make Benny Hinn appear in the eyes of his followers as having a stellar reputation.

Moreover, genuine gifts should honor Jesus (1 Cor. 12:3, 1 John 4:1–6). The Book of Acts shows that Jesus’ name should get the credit for miracles, because they attest to his gospel, not the miracle worker (Acts 3:12–13; 14:3).
 Indeed, Scripture offers many examples of those gifted by God’s Spirit who were disobeying God, such as Balaam and Samson. One of the most striking examples is Saul, who, on an errand to try to kill David, ended up falling down and prophesying. This was not because Saul was godly, but because God’s Spirit was strong in that place (1 Sam. 19:20–24).

So God sees nothing philosophically wrong with use his strength to prevent evil.  This can only result in the hypothesis that if any evil exists, it is because God does not wish to stop it.  If a little girl is raped for 15 minutes straight, this is because God didn't want to stop it.  In other words, if we were as godly as god, and saw this rape, we would just walk on by and, like god, do nothing about it.  Aren't god's omissions just as "godly" as his actions?

Not every claim to a miraculous raising today is authentic.

But because so many are false, that's quite sufficient to justify the skeptic, if they choose to deny the viability of miracles while also refusing to examine them.  You stopped being objectively open to the possibility of Mormon truth long ago, despite your not knowing everything there is to know about that religion.  You have no room to pretend that non-Christians are wrong when they imitate your logic and draw firm conclusions about the ultimate issue of miracles before they've learned everything about the issue.

Everywhere in the world, most people who die stay dead. Even those resuscitated miraculously, such as Lazarus, die again;

you don't have any biblical evidence that Lazarus ever died again, while in John 11, Jesus makes explicit that what happened to him was "resurrection" and thus something more permanent than "resuscitation"...unless you admit that between the time of Jesus and the career of Paul, "resurrection" evolved in meaning?