Cold Case Christianity: Did the Disciples Hallucinate the Resurrection Appearances of Jesus?

This is my reply to a video by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Did the Disciples Hallucinate the Resurrection Appearances of Jesus? (Video)

Posted: 19 Sep 2017 01:47 AM PDT

 First, the notion that the resurrected Jesus appeared only by vision to the disciples is at least perfectly consistent with the fact that God in the bible routinely uses visions to communicate with humans:

 Gen. 15:1  After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying, "Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; Your reward shall be very great."

 Num. 12:6  He said, "Hear now My words: If there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, shall make Myself known to him in a vision. I shall speak with him in a dream.

 Num. 24:4  The oracle of him who hears the words of God, Who sees the vision of the Almighty, Falling down, yet having his eyes uncovered,

 Num. 24:16  The oracle of him who hears the words of God, And knows the knowledge of the Most High, Who sees the vision of the Almighty, Falling down, yet having his eyes uncovered.

 1 Sam. 3:15  So Samuel lay down until morning. Then he opened the doors of the house of the LORD. But Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli.

 2 Sam. 7:17  In accordance with all these words and all this vision, so Nathan spoke to David.

 1 Chr. 17:15  According to all these words and according to all this vision, so Nathan spoke to David.

 2 Chr. 26:5  He continued to seek God in the days of Zechariah, who had understanding through the vision of God; and as long as he sought the LORD, God prospered him.

 2 Chr. 32:32  Now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah and his deeds of devotion, behold, they are written in the vision of Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, in the Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel.

 Job 20:8  "He flies away like a dream, and they cannot find him; Even like a vision of the night he is chased away.

 Job 33:15  "In a dream, a vision of the night, When sound sleep falls on men, While they slumber in their beds,

 Ps. 89:19  Once You spoke in vision to Your godly ones, And said, "I have given help to one who is mighty; I have exalted one chosen from the people.

 Prov. 29:18  Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained, But happy is he who keeps the law.

 Isa. 1:1  The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz concerning Judah and Jerusalem, which he saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

 Isa. 21:2  A harsh vision has been shown to me; The treacherous one still deals treacherously, and the destroyer still destroys. Go up, Elam, lay siege, Media; I have made an end of all the groaning she has caused.

 Isa. 22:1  The oracle concerning the valley of vision. What is the matter with you now, that you have all gone up to the housetops?

 Isa. 22:5  For the Lord GOD of hosts has a day of panic, subjugation and confusion In the valley of vision, A breaking down of walls And a crying to the mountain.

 Isa. 29:7  And the multitude of all the nations who wage war against Ariel, Even all who wage war against her and her stronghold, and who distress her, Will be like a dream, a vision of the night.

 Isa. 29:11  The entire vision will be to you like the words of a sealed book, which when they give it to the one who is literate, saying, "Please read this," he will say, "I cannot, for it is sealed."

 Jer. 14:14  Then the LORD said to me, "The prophets are prophesying falsehood in My name. I have neither sent them nor commanded them nor spoken to them; they are prophesying to you a false vision, divination, futility and the deception of their own minds.

 Jer. 23:16  Thus says the LORD of hosts, "Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you. They are leading you into futility; They speak a vision of their own imagination, Not from the mouth of the LORD.

 Lam. 2:9  Her gates have sunk into the ground, He has destroyed and broken her bars. Her king and her princes are among the nations; The law is no more. Also, her prophets find No vision from the LORD.

 Ezek. 7:13  'Indeed, the seller will not regain what he sold as long as they both live; for the vision regarding all their multitude will not be averted, nor will any of them maintain his life by his iniquity.

 Ezek. 7:26  'Disaster will come upon disaster and rumor will be added to rumor; then they will seek a vision from a prophet, but the law will be lost from the priest and counsel from the elders.

 Ezek. 11:24  And the Spirit lifted me up and brought me in a vision by the Spirit of God to the exiles in Chaldea. So the vision that I had seen left me.

 Ezek. 12:22  "Son of man, what is this proverb you people have concerning the land of Israel, saying, 'The days are long and every vision fails '?

 Ezek. 12:23  "Therefore say to them, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "I will make this proverb cease so that they will no longer use it as a proverb in Israel." But tell them, "The days draw near as well as the fulfillment of every vision.

 Ezek. 12:24  "For there will no longer be any false vision or flattering divination within the house of Israel.

 Ezek. 12:27  "Son of man, behold, the house of Israel is saying, 'The vision that he sees is for many years from now, and he prophesies of times far off.'

 Ezek. 13:7  "Did you not see a false vision and speak a lying divination when you said, 'The LORD declares,' but it is not I who have spoken?"'"

 Ezek. 43:3  And it was like the appearance of the vision which I saw, like the vision which I saw when He came to destroy the city. And the visions were like the vision which I saw by the river Chebar; and I fell on my face.

 Dan. 2:19  Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a night vision. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven;

 Dan. 7:2  Daniel said, "I was looking in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea.

 Dan. 8:1  In the third year of the reign of Belshazzar the king a vision appeared to me, Daniel, subsequent to the one which appeared to me previously.

 Dan. 8:2  I looked in the vision, and while I was looking I was in the citadel of Susa, which is in the province of Elam; and I looked in the vision and I myself was beside the Ulai Canal.

 Dan. 8:13  Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said to that particular one who was speaking, "How long will the vision about the regular sacrifice apply, while the transgression causes horror, so as to allow both the holy place and the host to be trampled?"

 Dan. 8:15  When I, Daniel, had seen the vision, I sought to understand it; and behold, standing before me was one who looked like a man.

 Dan. 8:16  And I heard the voice of a man between the banks of Ulai, and he called out and said, "Gabriel, give this man an understanding of the vision."

 Dan. 8:17  So he came near to where I was standing, and when he came I was frightened and fell on my face; but he said to me, "Son of man, understand that the vision pertains to the time of the end."

 Dan. 8:26  "The vision of the evenings and mornings Which has been told is true; But keep the vision secret, For it pertains to many days in the future."

 Dan. 8:27  Then I, Daniel, was exhausted and sick for days. Then I got up again and carried on the king's business; but I was astounded at the vision, and there was none to explain it.

 Dan. 9:21  while I was still speaking in prayer, then the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision previously, came to me in my extreme weariness about the time of the evening offering.

 Dan. 9:23  "At the beginning of your supplications the command was issued, and I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed; so give heed to the message and gain understanding of the vision.

 Dan. 9:24  "Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place.

 Dan. 10:1  In the third year of Cyrus king of Persia a message was revealed to Daniel, who was named Belteshazzar; and the message was true and one of great conflict, but he understood the message and had an understanding of the vision.

 Dan. 10:7  Now I, Daniel, alone saw the vision, while the men who were with me did not see the vision; nevertheless, a great dread fell on them, and they ran away to hide themselves.

 Dan. 10:8  So I was left alone and saw this great vision; yet no strength was left in me, for my natural color turned to a deathly pallor, and I retained no strength.

 Dan. 10:14  "Now I have come to give you an understanding of what will happen to your people in the latter days, for the vision pertains to the days yet future."

 Dan. 10:16  And behold, one who resembled a human being was touching my lips; then I opened my mouth and spoke and said to him who was standing before me, "O my lord, as a result of the vision anguish has come upon me, and I have retained no strength.

 Dan. 11:14  "Now in those times many will rise up against the king of the South; the violent ones among your people will also lift themselves up in order to fulfill the vision, but they will fall down.

 Obad. 1:1  The vision of Obadiah. Thus says the Lord GOD concerning Edom-- We have heard a report from the LORD, And an envoy has been sent among the nations saying, "Arise and let us go against her for battle "--

 Mic. 3:6  Therefore it will be night for you-- without vision, And darkness for you-- without divination. The sun will go down on the prophets, And the day will become dark over them.

 Nah. 1:1  The oracle of Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite.

 Hab. 2:2  Then the LORD answered me and said, "Record the vision And inscribe it on tablets, That the one who reads it may run.

 Hab. 2:3  "For the vision is yet for the appointed time; It hastens toward the goal and it will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it; For it will certainly come, it will not delay.

 Zech. 13:4  "Also it will come about in that day that the prophets will each be ashamed of his vision when he prophesies, and they will not put on a hairy robe in order to deceive;

 Matt. 17:9  As they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, saying, "Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man has risen from the dead."

 Lk. 1:22  But when he came out, he was unable to speak to them; and they realized that he had seen a vision in the temple; and he kept making signs to them, and remained mute.

 Lk. 24:23  and did not find His body, they came, saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who said that He was alive.

 Acts 9:10  Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias; and the Lord said to him in a vision, "Ananias." And he said, "Here I am, Lord."

 Acts 9:12  and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him, so that he might regain his sight."

 Acts 10:3  About the ninth hour of the day he clearly saw in a vision an angel of God who had just come in and said to him, "Cornelius!"

 Acts 10:17  Now while Peter was greatly perplexed in mind as to what the vision which he had seen might be, behold, the men who had been sent by Cornelius, having asked directions for Simon's house, appeared at the gate;

 Acts 10:19  While Peter was reflecting on the vision, the Spirit said to him, "Behold, three men are looking for you.

 Acts 11:5  "I was in the city of Joppa praying; and in a trance I saw a vision, an object coming down like a great sheet lowered by four corners from the sky; and it came right down to me,

 Acts 12:9  And he went out and continued to follow, and he did not know that what was being done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision.

 Acts 16:9  A vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing and appealing to him, and saying, "Come over to Macedonia and help us."

 Acts 16:10  When he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

 Acts 18:9  And the Lord said to Paul in the night by a vision, "Do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and do not be silent;

 Acts 26:19  "So, King Agrippa, I did not prove disobedient to the heavenly vision,

 Rev. 9:17  And this is how I saw in the vision the horses and those who sat on them: the riders had breastplates the color of fire and of hyacinth and of brimstone; and the heads of the horses are like the heads of lions; and out of their mouths proceed fire and smoke and brimstone.

 Second, Wallace neglects to mention that visions of Jesus are alleged in the NT.  Paul's experience on the road to Damascus is called "vision" (Greek: optasia) in Acts 26:19, the same Greek word Paul uses to describe an absurd "caught up to the third heaven" state that left him guessing, even 14 years after the fact, whether it occurred in his body or out of his body, 2nd Corinthians 12:1-4.

  13 at midday, O King, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining all around me and those who were journeying with me.
 14 "And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew dialect, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.'
 15 "And I said, 'Who are You, Lord?' And the Lord said, 'I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.
 16 'But get up and stand on your feet; for this purpose I have appeared to you, to appoint you a minister and a witness not only to the things which you have seen, but also to the things in which I will appear to you;
 17 rescuing you from the Jewish people and from the Gentiles, to whom I am sending you,
 18 to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.'
 19 "So, King Agrippa, I did not prove disobedient to the heavenly vision,
 20 but kept declaring both to those of Damascus first, and also at Jerusalem and then throughout all the region of Judea, and even to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds appropriate to repentance. (Acts 26:13-20 NAU)

 NAU  2 Corinthians 12:1 Boasting is necessary, though it is not profitable; but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord.
 2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago-- whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows-- such a man was caught up to the third heaven.
 3 And I know how such a man-- whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, God knows--
 4 was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak.
 5 On behalf of such a man I will boast; but on my own behalf I will not boast, except in regard to my weaknesses.   (2 Cor. 12:1-5 NAU)

 Since optasia is rare in the NT, it is safe to say that if Paul uses it in two different contexts, then unless there is good evidence otherwise, he probably intends the word to carry the same meaning.  Indeed, why is Paul characterizing his Damascus road experience as a vision anyway, if the Jesus that appeared to him, did so in the typical way that could be sensed by normal physical seeing?

Apparently, Paul believed his experience of Christ on the road to Damascus was just as puzzling in nature to him as was his absurd trip to heaven from 2nd Cor. 12, that he still cannot determine the exact nature of.   There's no other reason for him to choose to use the same rare Greek word to characterize both experiences.

Third, Revelation doesn't specifically say John got that stuff by way of "vision" (except perhaps 9:17, supra), but the words it uses to describe how god communicated, leave no other option except that he got this stuff by "vision":

 9 I, John, your brother and fellow partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and perseverance which are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
 10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet,
 11 saying, "Write in a book what you see, and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea." (Rev. 1:9-11 NAU)

2 Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne was standing in heaven, and One sitting on the throne. (Rev. 4:2 NAU)

 3 And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness; and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns. (Rev. 17:3 NAU)

10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, (Rev. 21:10 NAU)

Will any fool argue that these were physical realities external to John and he was merely enabled to see real things that unspiritual eyes normally can't see?  No, John's source for his infamous Revelation was nothing more than "vision", hence, in Revelation 1, the resurrected Jesus appears by vision.

I do not say this vision proves the resurrection of Jesus was never more than vision.  I am simply beating down the fundamentalists who get too cocky and pretend that experiencing a resurrected Jesus solely by vision is an absurd thing.  Only if God's typical way of communicating throughout the bible is absurd, and only if Paul's experience of the risen Christ is absurd, and only if John's experience of the risen Christ in Revelation is absurd, can you say that the vision-hypothesis is absurd.

Fourth, Matthew 28:17 curiously says that among the 11 apostles who saw the risen Christ, "some doubted":

 16 But the eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated.
 17 When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some were doubtful.
 18 And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. (Matt. 28:16-18 NAU)

The Greek word for "doubtful" is distazo, and the only other time this is used in the NT is, again in Matthew, when Jesus is reproaching Peter for not having sufficient faith:

 28 Peter said to Him, "Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water."
 29 And He said, "Come!" And Peter got out of the boat, and walked on the water and came toward Jesus.
 30 But seeing the wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!"
 31 Immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and took hold of him, and said to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" (Matt. 14:28-31 NAU)

That Peter's "doubt" was a negative thing and not mere exuberant hesitation in the sight of a dramatic divine being, is seen from the fact that Jesus himself characterizes Peter has having had "little" faith and then re-characterizing this as "doubt".

Therefore, it is a strong likelihood that Matthew's unique choice to characterize some of the resurrection witnesses as "doubting" in 28:17, with a Greek word nobody else uses except Matthew again in 14:31 to indicate insufficient faith, is Matthew's way of telling the reader that some of the 11 apostles, upon seeing the risen Christ, did not have sufficient faith that they were really seeing a risen Christ.

Yes, other parts of the NT indicate all 11 apostles are convinced Jesus rose from the dead, but we have no idea how it is that some of the doubters in Matthew 28:17 overcame their doubts (and those who cite to doubting Thomas in John 20 open the door to the possibility that his expressions of skepticism here were taking place after the scene in Matthew 28:17, i.e., Thomas had seen the risen Christ earlier in Matthew 28:17, but still did not believe, raising the additional question of how the apostles could fail to believe their own eyes, suggesting what they are alleged to have "seen", they were not "seeing" with their physical eyes).  

Then we have to contend with the fact that even evangelical inerrantists agree not everything John presents as history, was actual history (such as Mike Licona), so apologists cannot easily get rid of the possibility that if doubting Thomas existed, the story of Jesus appearing to him is nothing but pious fiction...so that we also have reasonable justification to say any stories about doubting apostles changing their mind do nothing to fix the problem of doubting apostles in Matthew 28:17.

And I don't believe in biblical inerrancy, so I see no problem in saying some of those doubting apostles continued to doubt and the other NT writers who declare otherwise are just lying.  John unbelievably admits that after Jesus started teaching cannibalism, some of his disciples stopping following him (John 6:66), and since it is unlikely that eyewitnesses of a real Jesus doing genuinely supernatural miracles that could not admit of any naturalistic explanation, could this easily fall away, one reasonable explanation is that they easily fell away because Jesus hadn't shown them any genuinely supernatural miracles, and he didn't because he couldn't.  They were like followers of Benny Hinn who eventually discover it's a bunch of hoopla with little to zero substance.

All scholars agree James the brother of Jesus didn't become a believer until after Jesus died (John 7:5), and this opens to the door to the possibility that there were reasons other than experiencing a risen Christ, that one overcomes their initial doubt and chooses to start going along with the other apostles.  James could have felt that this group will create followers and tithers, and so he could secure his own financial stability by taking advantage of his biological relation to Jesus and joining the group with an eye toward becoming a leader.

Fifth, I agree with Christian scholars Daniel Wallace and Craig Blomberg that Mark intended to end his gospel at the place we now designate 16:8, which means the gospel most which scholars say is the earliest, is the one lacking any stories about Jesus appearing to anybody, a significant problem since if Jesus really did appear to the disciples after dying, Peter would likely have agreed with the other gospel writers that such a thing was a powerful supporting proof that he rose from the dead, so that Mark, Peter's companion, would likely have felt any resurrection-appearance preaching by Peter was important to include in his written version of Peter's preaching.

If that scholarly position is true, then one reason it is only the later gospels that specify resurrection appearances is because they were either later embellishments, or were based on something less concrete such as "visions".

Wallace at time-code  0:45 speaks about Saul's experience on the road to Damascus and tries to make it historically trustworthy by pointing out that at this time, Saul was very angry with the church and was persecuting Christians, and therefore, exceptionally unlikely to have a vision of Jesus.  But Wallace is, again, doing nothing but drawing upon his audience's pre-existing trust that Acts is telling the truth.  At 1:00 he says "then why is he seeing this?", as if the report in Acts is truthful beyond reasonable doubt. Wallace clearly has no intention in this video of engaging real skeptics, but only of impressing his Christian audience with his eye popping discovery that if you start out believing everything in the bible is historically reliable, it is a piece of cake to refute skeptical explanations of the biblical data.

I say the author of Acts is simply lying, or merely passing along false traditions.  His desire to spin the historical truth to favor Paul can be seen from Acts 15, where the apostles curiously never appeal to the ultimate authority of something Jesus said, to refute the Judaizers.  If Jesus never required Gentile men to be circumcised to be saved, this silence of Jesus would more authoritatively refute the Judaizers.  But no, the apostles here curiously use nothing more to refute the Judaizers except their own ministry successes and their questionable and Paul-like understanding of select OT texts to prove their theological points.  Sorry, but Luke is a dishonest author who prioritizes his agenda above fair and balanced reporting.  And any dishonest author knows that lies are more convincing the more you can cloak them in truth.  That's why Luke gets all the names of people and places correct.  He is aware that you'll say "accurate in what can be checked, equals accurate in what cannot be checked!"

 Well gee, if I said "I can levitate my body without any physical objects, and Sacramento is the capital of California" would you trust as true the part that can't be checked, because I was accurate in the part that can be checked?  Of course not.

Wallace at time-code  1:30 ff argues that we cannot know each other's dreams, so that if we ever do know the content of somebody else's dream without the dreamer's previous help, surely God did it.  Again, all Wallace is doing is blindly presuming that the book of Acts is historically trustworthy when it reports miracles.

Wallace at time-code  1:45 ff com mitts the same blunder, blindly presuming that the stories of the disciples seeing Jesus on the road to Emmaus and Mary seeing Jesus were historically reliable, then asking "how is this happening".  How many things in the book of Mormon could be argued as historically true, if one starts out presuming the book of Mormon is historically reliable?  Wallace is to apologetics what Sesame Street is to rocket science.

Wallace at time-code  2:30 artificially builds momentum and pretends that as we keep going through the bible, the number of witnesses ends up being as high as "11 !" and more, and then pretending that surely these people cannot be experiencing group hallucination.  But Wallace's error is in assuming that this biblical data is historically reliable.  It isn't, so it hardly needs to be 'explained', except as legendary embellishment.

And Wallace in doing this forgets, or intentionally avoids, the fact established above, that Mark is the earliest gospel, and was intentionally ended at 16:8, and therefore, the reason only the later gospels have resurrection appearance stories is because said stories are simply legends.  We need to "explain" the resurrection appearances about as much as we need to "explain" how the three bears can talk to each other in the story of Goldilocks.

Wallace at time-code  2:50 absurdly talks about the ascension of Jesus (Acts 1) and bets that if you the skeptic needed to see a miracle to believe, you'd surely become a believer after watching Jesus rise ascend into the sky (!?).   Is Wallace attempting to do apologetics (i.e., refute skeptical theories of the resurrection), or is he preaching to the choir?  If Wallace is sure we'd believe upon seeing Jesus ascend.well, is Wallace speaking by the Holy Spirit here, yes or no?  If he is (as is likely under Christian assumptions given he is trying to prove the resurrection of Jesus and edify the faith of existing believers) then the Holy Spirit also knows we'd become believers by seeing such miracles, and since he was willing for first-century people to begin faith by seeing that miracle, nobody can argue that maybe God doesn't want modern skeptics to be quite as wowed with such miracles today, leaving God with zero excuse for refusing to do for us today, all that he did for those of the 1st century to demolish skepticism.

Wallace at time-code  4:05 ff says going back to the empty tomb is the way to show that all these alleged appearances of Jesus are false, because "the tomb was empty".  But a) Acts 1 says the disciples intentionally waited for 40 days before publicly proclaiming that Jesus rose from the dead, which would have the beneficial effect of causing Jesus' body to undergo so much decay that Christians could plausibly deny it was Jesus if the corpse was produced to refute their resurrection claims, b) the number 40 is obviously round and has religious significance, and therefore opens the possibility that their delay in preaching could have been as long as 60 or 70 days in actual history, c) the whole idea that Jesus, executed as a common insurrectionist criminal, should be allowed by the Romans to be buried in a rich man's tomb is not consistent with the Roman policy of requiring the corpse to stay on the cross several days as deterrent to others, d) Jesus and his disciples likely made clear before he died that he would rise from the dead, so the Jews who knew of his teachings and successfully sued for his death, would have strongly objected to any request to the Romans that his friends remove his body from the chain of custody, and e) there basis for the resurrection in the earliest published gospel was not eyewitnesses seeing a risen Christ, but women hearing from either a man or an angel at the tomb that Jesus rose, Mark 16:6, and f) Wallace and others ceaselessly assume that the original Christian resurrection preaching really was something that the Jews gave two shits about, when in fact it is unlikely to be the case, we don't know a) how early the post-resurrection preaching really was or b) exactly what was claimed, so as to tell whether they were making falsifiable claims, or esoteric claims which by nature can never be fully refuted, and therefore, the Jews would no more get Jesus' corpse to shut them up, than we would pay to have the Loch Ness dragged to the satisfaction of whatever idiot made known his gullible belief that this monster lives there.

To sum up, 

----Wallace in this video was not interested in refuting the skeptical theory of the risen Jesus being a mere vision or hallucination, because Wallace blindly presumes with his Christian audience that everything the NT says about Jesus and the resurrection testimonies is historically true.

----Some NT evidence gives rise to a possibility which apologists refuse to allow, that the "seeing" of a resurrected Christ was some type of special event that allowed room for doubt (Matthew 28:17).

----Visions are the typical way God in the bible communicates truths to human beings, so a vision-based resurrection claim is biblical even if not preferred by modern day apologists.

----Paul's experience of Christ on the road to Damascus gives every appearance of being wholly fabricated, or is a story about him having some type of blinding seizure, that has been embellished with fictional Jesus elements.

Now YOU need to answer this question:  did Wallace say anything in this video that should cause informed bible skeptics to start quaking in their boots?  I'm guessing "no".

J. Warner Wallace, more interested in marketing gimmicks than truth

I recently did a search for videos about J. Warner Wallace, and found that most of them as hosted by Christian Youtubers, have comments disabled, such as

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P0DnySDwVU, hosted by "one minute apologist"

the same is true for the following video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aVWrZfcPAc 
post by "Cold-Case Christianity with J. Warner Wallace"

Wallace routinely bans atheists from his websites if they offer significantly strong rebuttals.  I did not violate any rules of conduct when I countered Wallace at his Facebook page months ago, nevertheless, he quietly banned me.  He was dishonest in this because he knew if he tried to talk with me privately, he would have been reminded that I hadn't violated any of his rules of conduct, leaving him no defensible reason to ban or explain.  Apparently he banned me quietly because he knew he couldn't morally justify it if he tried to explain himself.

This is no surprise, anybody who googles J. Warner Wallace will find out immediately that he thinks God's hands were tied behind his back for 2,000 years until Wallace created his "Forensic Faith" gimmicks.

Christians who think Wallace is some great defender of Christianity need to keep in mind that Wallace is far less open to interacting in real-time with informed skeptics/atheists who know how to counter his arguments.  Wallace is not here to debate.  He is here to do what Josh McDowell did....help Christians feel better about what they already trust, and avoid debates with atheist scholars like the plague.

You tend to make less money with your books if people have seen you demolished in a debate.  So by avoiding debate, Wallace helps increase sales of his gimmicks.

Why can't Wallace simply preach the truth, that those who truly believe in Christ and walk in the light and pray sincerely, will be guided by the Holy Spirit into the truth?

Because...if he said such a thing, it would be clear that one can be all the "equipped" Christian defender God wants them to be without purchasing any apologetics books, materials, or dvds.  The bible alone will be quite sufficient to the task.

Wallace is not here to help Christians be more accurate.

He's here to make money assuring them they need his materials so that "God" can help them be more accurate.  For this reason, Wallace is the Cal Worthington of Christian apologetics.  Minus the dog "spot", of course.

Cold Case Christianity: reply to Wallace's "reasons" to convert to Christianity

Here's my reply to what J. Warner Wallace says in his youtube interview by Lee Strobel:


Wallace at 1:20 asserts that he was skeptical of other Christians during his atheism-days because they couldn't give a reason for their faith.  Unfortunately, the Holy Spirit is not limited to persuading based on empirical facts believed equally by preacher and gainsayers alike.  Peter allegedly got thousands of Christ-hating Jews to repent with a single presumptuous sermon that appealed to no other facts known to such Jews, except that they had murdered Jesus. Acts 2.

Wallace at 1:50 ff says he stayed away from Christianity because in his experience, Christians were either those who couldn't give a reason for their faith, or were criminals whom he was in the process of arresting.  But this is rather stupid...he cannot have been too great of a detective, since Christian books on apologetics have been available for at least the last 100 years. 

Wallace at 3:30 says if you cannot get somebody to say say they saw the criminal do the crime, you don't have a direct-evidence case, you have an indirect evidence case.  While that is true, it is devastating to Wallace who thinks apostle Paul was an "eye"witness of the risen Jesus, yet nowhere in the most explicit accounts of Paul encountering Christ in the NT (Acts 9, 22, 26) is it either expressed or implied that Paul physically saw Jesus.  Paul, Matthew and John are the only sources in the NT with any possibility of coming down to us today in first-hand form.  If we exclude Paul, now we only have TWO possible eyewitness testimonies to the resurrection of Jesus.  We don't know jack shit about Matthew beyond the fact that he was a tax-collector.  If the traditions of the later fathers are correct, Matthew wrote a gospel to leave behind for Jews, which tells us Matthew was a gullible idiot.  How could he possibly figure his simple-minded story of Jesus' virgin birth would suffice to wow the Jews and get them to seriously consider that Jesus really was the messiah?  How hard would it be for such Jews to simply say Mary was lying to cover up adultery or rape, or that the feats Jesus did were not genuinely supernatural?  John's gospel is even worse, coming from somebody whom the Murtatorian Fragment says first wanted the gospel content to simply be the visions the apostles would have after starving for three days.  Methinks you don't have any more accounts of Jesus' resurrection that come down to us today in first-hand form, which means you are forced to make the entire case on hearsay, and I'm sorry, but no right-thinking person will uproot their lifestyle, mode of thinking, and give up friends to make new friends, all because of what 2,000 year old hearsay has to offer.

Wallace at 5:15, uses as an example one of his prior cases where a man was prosecuted in a purely circumstantial case of murder, the jury found him guilty after 4 hours of deliberation, and he later confessed after going to prison.  Unfortunately, Wallace doesn't mention the obvious fact that the more circumstantial the case is, the more likely the the State will fail their burden of demonstrating guilt beyond a reasonable doubt).  But if the NT's only three possible eyewitness accounts of Jesus rising from the dead, don't come down to us in first hand form, or have other equally serious problems, then the WHOLE case for his rising from the dead is circumstantial, and interpreting such weak evidence after 2,000 years of Christians disagreeing on every aspect of it, is an absurdity that has no analogy to modern-day courts, where cold-cases that are eventually tried in courts usually aren't older than about 30 years.

Wallace at 5:50 says the real question is whether your unanswered questions are deal-killers or not.  My answer is "yes", but more specifically, I've gotten enough answers to my questions from the NT data that my skepticism would be justified even if my unanswered questions were answered.


Wallace at 6:35 admits that as an atheist he thought, on the basis of criminal law, that the standard for historical truth was "beyond a possible doubt". 

Wallace was a rather ill-informed atheist. This might help explain why he found the opposite of atheism to be more reasonable.

Cold Case Christianity: Wouldn’t a Loving God Make Sure Everyone Gets to Heaven? Ask a Calvinist

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Wouldn’t a Loving God Make Sure Everyone Gets to Heaven?

Posted: 15 Sep 2017 01:25 AM PDT

289The concept of Hell is daunting for many Christians.

And since Christians are spiritually alive, you cannot blame their hatred of hell on their being spiritually dead, so their view just might reflect a truth of the Holy Spirit that is being mangled by improper bible interpretation or by NT authors who were not inspired by God.   

It’s not pleasant to think our unbelieving loved ones might spend eternity separated from God, regretting their decision forever.

It's even more unpleasant when you remember that the age of accountability is around 7.  That is, under conservative Christian theology, if a 7 year old unbelieving girl goes to church by invitation, learns the true gospel, but doesn't "accept Jesus", and then dies in a car accident on the way home, God roasts this little girl in hell forever.  One Christian singer has responded to the literal hell-fire issue.

Wallace continues:

Several religious traditions seek to avoid the problem by offering a second chance to those who reject God’s gift of forgiveness. They envision a place where rebellious souls can, in the next life, reconsider their choice or earn their way toward heaven; the Catholic tradition offers “Purgatory” and Mormonism describes a “Spirit Prison”. Both seek to offer solutions to commonly asked questions: Wouldn’t a Loving God love all of His creation? Wouldn’t He make sure everyone goes to Heaven (regardless of what they might believe in this life)? A loving God would never limit Heaven to a select few and allow billions of people to suffer in Hell, would He?

Those questions arise from the obvious fact that is taught in the bible: God does not require perfection in a sinner's good works before these can be acceptable to God (Matthew 25:40, in a context where some of the sinners didn't know their good deeds helped Jesus, so many of them likely weren't even Christians either), nor does he require perfection to fully expiate sin (Leviticus 16:30, the cleansing from sin promised here on the basis of animal blood atonement is a full expiation, yet the sacrifice was a mere animal, hence an imperfect attempt to appease the deity works, in the bible, hence, "perfection" is not required of human beings)

Let’s consider, however, the nature of Heaven and the truth about humans. Heaven is the realm of God, and those who ultimately enter into Heaven will be united with God forever.

So apparently, Satan is united with God forever, because he appears in Heaven (Job 1) and his demons sit around God's throne, waiting for God to authorize them to go to earth and force people to sin:

 19 Micaiah said, "Therefore, hear the word of the LORD. I saw the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right and on His left.
 20 "The LORD said, 'Who will entice Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?' And one said this while another said that.
 21 "Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD and said, 'I will entice him.'
 22 "The LORD said to him, 'How?' And he said, 'I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' Then He said, 'You are to entice him and also prevail. Go and do so.'
 23 "Now therefore, behold, the LORD has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; and the LORD has proclaimed disaster against you."
 (1 Ki. 22:19-23 NAU)

And apparently they are in heaven "forever" because if they are there now, and if heaven is an eternal "now", then they can no more leave heaven than god can.

Wallace continues:

While that sounds fantastic for some of us, it sounds ridiculous, boring or offensive to many who reject the existence of God (and resist God’s guidelines and obligations).

It also sounds boring to conservative Evangelicals like J. Warner Wallace, who, like most of his kind, would get sick of "going to church" if he did the whole Sunday-service thing every single day.  Staying away from church is what helps give the once-per-week church-going experience a greater feeling of significance.  Nothing different than the drunk who refuses to touch alcohol except for Friday and Saturday nights.  The longer the wait, the sweeter the reward.  The whole idea that you'll just be standing at God's throne, looking at him and ceaselessly praising God for his goodness after you get to heaven, is the result of a warped mentality.

If everyone will eventually end up in Heaven, it is inevitable and compulsory. This type of eternal destination seems contrary to the nature of God and the nature of human “free will”:

And so what you do now is fail to mention that your views about God's sovereignty and human freewill contradict those Christians you call 5-Point Calvinists, who believe people end up in hell because God intended from all eternity that they never have a genuine chance to go to heaven.

A Compulsory Heaven Would Eradicate “Free Will”

People who deny the existence of God relish the fact they have the freedom and ability to do so. Some of these same people, however, argue a loving God would make certain everyone goes to Heaven after they die.

That's because any other definition of "loving" requires us to believe "love" is compatible with a God who "delights" to cause rape and parental cannibalism (Deuteronomy 28:30, 53, 63).  Some things are beyond discussion, whether you make money discussing them or not.

But this kind of “universalism” actually denies human “free will” altogether. If Heaven is the only destination awaiting us (based on the assumption all who die eventually end up there), it is truly compulsory.

So?  God has no problems forcing people to sin in Ezekiel 38:4 - 39:29.  See 38:4, yes, "hook in your jaws" is mere metaphor, but the metaphor clearly cannot be reconciled with your belief that God doesn't force people to sin.  Why is god characterizing his power over human freewill here as "hook in your jaws", if that kind of mental picture implies more use of force than what is actually the case?  If the Gog and Magog armies were of their own freewill set to attack Israel, then it is completely inaccurate to say God used a "hook in their jaws" to cause them to so attack.

In this view of the afterlife, we have no choice about where we end up; everyone is united with God, like it or not.

So?  We send criminals to jail whether they like it or not, despite it being against their freewill.  Apparently, violating a person's freewill can be a good thing.

A compulsory Heaven rejects the importance of human liberty, the very thing those who deny God cherish the most.

Correct, your spiritually alive 5-Point Calvinist brothers and sisters in Christ also reject any importance of human liberty.

By offering (but not forcing) Heaven to those who freely choose to love the One who reigns there, God is actually honoring and respecting our “free will” universally.

True, but there are plenty of bible verses which contradict any idea that god respects human freewill.  Ezekiel 38:4.  Daniel 4:33, God causes a king to become animal-like and eat grass like an ox.  If he can mess up a human mind by force, he can also make it spiritually alive by force.

He is, in fact, treating us with the utmost respect and dignity; something we would expect if He is all-loving in the first place.

Which is nothing but worthless talk given that you have to qualify what you just said to make room for the fact that God allows little kids to be raped all the time.  What fool would say God is treating those kids with the "utmost respect and dignity" by stepping out of the way and allowing them to be raped when he has the most power in creation to protect them from all such?  Inerrantist Christians, that's who.

A Compulsory Heaven Would Embrace the “Unsuited”

In addition to this, a Heaven including anyone and everyone is counter intuitive and un-reasonable. Just think about it for a minute. Most of us would agree: A Holy place of eternal reward is simply not suited for people with a certain kind of character or certain kinds of desires. All of us can think of someone from history who (by our estimate) is unqualified for eternal reward. We may not all agree on who should or shouldn’t be included in such a place, but most of us would hesitate when considering people like Hitler (or perhaps lifelong unrepentant pedophiles with murderous desires) for eternal reward in Heaven. If there is a Heaven, it is surely unsuited for certain kinds of people, and even the most skeptical among us can find someone he or she would place in this category. A compulsory Heaven, including the most vile and dangerous people from history, is not likely what skeptics have in mind when they argue for an all-inclusive final destination.

Then read Daniel 4:33, God is able to change the mental constitution of even sinners who are actively against him.  Nothing prevents God from re-constituting the mentality of atheists after he brings them to heaven so they will find eternal joy in standing around god's throne, ceaselessly signing his praises.

A loving God would make Heaven possible for all of us while respecting the free will desires of some of us.

A loving parent would not respect the freewill choice of a child to ignore the warnings and just sit in the middle of a street while a driven by a drunk barrels toward them.   A loving parent would realistically and rationally conclude that sometimes forcing the loved one against their will is the most loving thing one can do.  Or if you wish to trifle, the parent who has ability and opportunity to take a gun away from a teen daughter intent on killing herself, could only be loving to forcefully wrench the gun out of her grip...not simply stand there and, like God, remind the girl that she is responsible for own choices.

A loving God would reward those of us who have decided to choose Him while dealing justly with those of us who have decided to choose against Him.

And your 5-Point Calvinist brothers and sisters in Christ, who are no less spiritually alive than you, explain that those who reject the gospel are obeying God's secret will that they so reject...which throws your "dealing justly" crap into a tail-spin:  What's just about condemning a sinner for doing what God wanted her to do?  If God secretly willed that a man rob a store, why does God thereafter condemn the man?  Do we find this rationalization completely disagreeable because we are sinners who don't know the whole truth, or because God's real truths are in our hearts causing us to naturally recoil from such rationalizations?

If the latter, what does that say about those genuinely born again spiritually alive Christian brothers and sisters in Christ?  How could they possibly have degraded their Christian thinking so low that it races past even the thinking of your average unbeliever?  Can they be part of the body of Christ while doing more harm with their theology than the average unbeliever does?

For this reason, Heaven simply cannot be the destination of every human who has ever lived. Heaven is not compulsory, but is instead the destiny of those who love the God who reigns there and have accepted His invitation.

If even murderers of Christians such as Saul (Acts 9) can convert on the basis of an experience on the road to Damascus that YOU say left Saul's/Paul's freewill intact, then God could be giving similarly dramatic experiences to unbelievers who are less angry at the gospel than Saul was, with even better odds that they would convert.

Unfortunately, your God has a lot of ways to convince the sinner to convert, ways that would not violate their freewill, and yet he doesn't do shit.  God has no business complaining about how the world rejects his "offers" (Matthew 23:37) if he knows of ways to more pesuasively convince them consistent with their freewill, but refuses to employ these measures.

Now just tell yourself "God's ways are mysterious" and "this excuse will suffice to get me out of any theological jam, even though I don't accept it when employed by heretics to get them out of a theological jam."  

You know, the same type of mental logjam that helps terrorists feel better about flying planes into buildings.

Cold Case Christianity: Why Would God Send Good People to Hell? He doesn't.

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled 

Why Would God Send Good People to Hell?

Posted: 13 Sep 2017 01:22 AM PDT

256I’ve been blogging recenty on the existence and nature of Hell and, unsurprisingly, I’ve received tremendous response from Christians and non-Christians alike (much of it hostile). The topic polarizes believers and unbelievers. Many Christians struggle to correlate God’s mercy with a place of permanent justice, while others prefer to believe God would annihilate rebellious souls rather than assign them to Hell eternally. Non-believers often point to the apparent unfairness of God related to those who either reject Jesus or haven’t heard of Him. After all, there are millions of good people in the world who are not Christians. Is it fair for God to penalize people who are otherwise good? A good God would not send good people to Hell, would He?

That depends on your definition of "good".  If you can tell yourself with any seriousness that the God of Deuteronomy 28:63 who "delights" to cause rape (v. 30) and parental cannibalism (v. 53) is "good", then your morality is so far out of whack that it is more than likely that you are either psychologically beyond any rational discussion, or, you make too much money peddling your wares to give a fuck about the minds you are messing up with each sale.

Here’s the good news: God will not send good people to Hell; of this we can be sure.

But God's "delighting" to cause rape and parental cannibalism for those who disobey him, seems to invoke more the barbaric mindset of the ancient people that wrote this garbage, and not the actual views of an infinite creator whom you think hates rape and cannibalism just as much as you do.

But, here’s the bad news: “good” people are far rarer than most skeptics (and many Christians) are willing to admit. The Christian worldview describes the true nature of humans and the incredible sovereignty of God, and once these truths are understood, no one will expect their own “goodness” to merit Heaven:

Yeah, you aren't a real Christian until you confess that the baby born to David and Bathsheba "deserved" to be tormented with a terrible fatal illness for 7 days before finally dying:

 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. 12:15-18 NAU)

Wallace continues:

People (By Their Very Nature) Are Not “Good”

We don’t have to teach our infants to be selfish, impatient, rude and self-serving; infants must be taught just the opposite.

Which implies they aren't made in the image of God, since they only reason they are moral when they grow up is because they are taught to suppress these primal urges, not because any law of God is in their heart.  Well gee, animals can be taught to suppress their primal urges too, yet you cannot allow animals to be made in the image of God.  Your problem.

We don’t come into the world equipped automatically with sacrificial “goodness”. We must be taught how to love, how to think beyond our own needs and desires, how to share and how to appreciate others. The daily news headlines are filled with examples of young men and women who were not taught how to love and respect the law. When young people are not nurtured and trained in this way, they default back to their innate nature.

And so this innate nature wasn't created in the image of God, unless you say God wants criminals to do what they do, as your brothers and sister in Christ called "Calvinists" say.

And if we are honest with ourselves, each of us must admit we often have difficulty controlling our anger, our lust, or our pride.

Yes, the way Samuel did when he used a sword to hack King Agag to pieces:

  33 But Samuel said, "As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women." And Samuel hewed Agag to pieces before the LORD at Gilgal. (1 Sam. 15:33 NAU)

Wallace continues:

We are inherently fallen creatures, trying our best to constrain our fallen nature. The Bible simply recognizes the innately fallen nature of humans (as described in Romans 3:10-18).

It also recognizes that these humans can obey the law to the point of pleasing God:

 5 In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zacharias, of the division of Abijah; and he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.
 6 They were both righteous in the sight of God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and requirements of the Lord. (Lk. 1:5-6 NAU)

Feel free to twist yourself into a theological pretzel trying to explain how imperfect sinners can be righteous in the sight of God due to their obedience to his commands (Luke 1:6), while also insisting that we cannot be righteous in god's sight by obeying his commands (Romans 3:20).

Wallace continues:

Heaven (By Its Very Nature) Is “Perfect”

Can't be too perfect:  it is a place where God enables demons, who are otherwise sitting around God's throne (!?) to go down to earth and cause people to tell lies:

19 Micaiah said, "Therefore, hear the word of the LORD. I saw the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right and on His left.
 20 "The LORD said, 'Who will entice Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?' And one said this while another said that.
 21 "Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD and said, 'I will entice him.'
 22 "The LORD said to him, 'How?' And he said, 'I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' Then He said, 'You are to entice him and also prevail. Go and do so.'
 23 "Now therefore, behold, the LORD has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; and the LORD has proclaimed disaster against you."    (1 Ki. 22:19-23 NAU)

Wallac continues:

If there is a God, He is responsible for creating everything in the Universe.

No, that's your out-of-control monotheism.  Many scholars see in Deut. 32 a distinction between a being called Elohim and a being called Jehovah.

  8 "When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, When He separated the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the peoples According to the number of the sons of Israel.
 9 "For the LORD'S portion is His people; Jacob is the allotment of His inheritance. (Deut. 32:8-9 NAU)

 See The Great Angel: A Study of Israel's Second God. Some Christian commentaries admit the text was corrupted intentionally because it gave the appeareance of supporting henotheism, at least:

...I emend the text here following the reading בני אלהים, “sons of God,” found in 4QDeut^j and LXX ἀγγέλων [or ὑιῶν] θεοῦ, “angels [or sons] of God,” to read “according to the number of the sons of God.” The Tg. adds “seventy” after “the number,” connecting the text with the seventy nations of the Table of Nations in Gen 10 and the song of Jacob in Gen 46:27 (cf. 10:22). It is easy to understand the change that was made in MT to remove a text that seems to suggest the existence of other gods.

Christensen, D. L. (2002). Vol. 6B: Word Biblical Commentary : Deuteronomy 21:10-34:12. Word Biblical Commentary (Page 796). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

 Wallace continues:

This means that God created matter from non-matter

Creation from nothing or creation ex nihilo involves logical contradiction, and is on the level of talking about animals just appearing in your living room out of thin air.  From nothing, nothing derives.  The only logical way God could get something from nothing is if God added something to the nothingness first. God can no more cause zero to produce 4 acorns, than he can cause 5+5 to equal 83.

and life from non-life. If this is true, God has incredible, infinite, and unspeakable power.

So apparently you are more interested in your generalizing dogmas than you are in actual scripture, since many bible texts are logically incompatible with God having infinite power:

 19 Now the LORD was with Judah, and they took possession of the hill country; but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had iron chariots. (Jdg. 1:19 NAU)

 Inerrantist Christian scholars cannot explain why a chariot being made or iron could possibly thwart God's purposes for Judah, and they resort to speculation, a thing inerrantists forbid skeptics from doing:

In our text (v. 18a) the narrator explicitly attributes Judah’s successes in the hill country not to equivalent military power but to the presence of Yahweh. Then why could they not take the lowland? Why is Yahweh’s presence canceled by superior military technology? The narrator does not say, but presumably the Judahites experienced a failure of nerve at this point, or they were satisfied with their past achievements.

Block, D. I. (2001, c1999). Vol. 6: Judges, Ruth (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 100). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

 Wallace continues:

With muscle like that, God surely has the power to eliminate imperfection.

except in the case of Judges 1:19.  He also grieves his own choice to create mankind in Genesis 6:6-7.  Slow down and don't be so damn quick to view God as magic genie in the sky who is just omni-this and omni-that.

This is why, as Christians, we believe that God is perfect; He has the ability to eliminate imperfection.

Perfection logically cannot create imperfection. God cannot create that which he doesn't already possess.  So if he created mankind, it was not logically possible for man to have "freedom" to disobey god...except in the Calvinist sense of our sins disobeying the revealed will of God but yet still conforming to and obeying God's secret will, in which case the disobedience toward God is only in appearance, not reality.

The Christian God is not a “good God” after all. He is a “perfect God”. His standard is not “goodness”, it is “perfection”.

It doesn't matter how many bible verses you can cite to justify that, the standard for salvation Jesus taught in Matthew 25 is decidedly lower:

31 "But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne.
 32 "All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats;
 33 and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left.
 34 "Then the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
 35 'For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in;
 36 naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.'
 37 "Then the righteous will answer Him, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink?
 38 'And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You?
 39 'When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?'
 40 "The King will answer and say to them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.'
 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;
 42 for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink;
 43 I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.'
 44 "Then they themselves also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?'
 45 "Then He will answer them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.'
 46 "These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
 (Matt. 25:31-46 NAU)

 Not only is there no mention of "faith" here, but many of those whom Jesus says go to heaven because of their charitable works, likely weren't even Christians at all, since Jesus describes them as not realizing during their earthly life that they were helping Jesus when they helped the homeless and fed the hungry (v. 37).  Jesus would hardly base salvation on a sinner's doing of good works, as he does here, if "perfection" were the true standard.

And in context, Matthew 25:14 gives the parable of the talents as an example of what God's judgment is like; and while in that parable the person who did nothing with the master's talents is disciplined, the sinner who tried to do something good with their talents were rewarded despite the philosophical trifle that their being sinners means they probably did the good only via selfish motive.

The real question that each of us has to ask ourselves is not “Are we good?”, but “Are we perfect?”

A question that can be disregarded now that we've replaced your fabulous ultimately Utopian god with a god that is slightly more scriptural.

Can any of us answer in the affirmative here?

We don't need to answer your question, a question posed in scripture is far more conducive:

 8 He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God? (Mic. 6:8 NAU)

 God rewards Solomon with great riches solely because Solomon prudently answered one of God's questions:

 7 In that night God appeared to Solomon and said to him, "Ask what I shall give you."
 8 Solomon said to God, "You have dealt with my father David with great lovingkindness, and have made me king in his place.
 9 "Now, O LORD God, Your promise to my father David is fulfilled, for You have made me king over a people as numerous as the dust of the earth.
 10 "Give me now wisdom and knowledge, that I may go out and come in before this people, for who can rule this great people of Yours?"
 11 God said to Solomon, "Because you had this in mind, and did not ask for riches, wealth or honor, or the life of those who hate you, nor have you even asked for long life, but you have asked for yourself wisdom and knowledge that you may rule My people over whom I have made you king,
 12 wisdom and knowledge have been granted to you. And I will give you riches and wealth and honor, such as none of the kings who were before you has possessed nor those who will come after you." (2 Chr. 1:7-12 NAU)

 Some would argue that God was stupid for giving such wealth to a sinner whom God knew or should have known would foolishly squander it with idolatry-promoting events and works, as Solomon did.

Others would argue that if God is rewarding Solomon's imperfect answer, then God's standard for sinners probably isn't perfection.

Even if we reject the teaching of the Bible, but accept the possibility that there may be an all-powerful God, we must acknowledge that His standard will be perfection and that we will ultimately fall short of this standard.

You are high on crack, there is nothing about god outside the bible, that would argue this God's standard for human beings is some type perfection unattainable by purely naturalistic efforts.   On the contrary, the argument from natural theology would counsel that the God who made us, knows perfectly well our limits, and whatever standard he might have imposed, is likely a standard most responsible mature adults are capable of meeting.  You think Moses was inspired by God to write the Pentaeuch, and if so, then when he says obeying all of God's commands isn't too difficult, he is contradicting your evangelical presupposition that nobody can obey all of God's laws without being perfect:

 10 if you obey the LORD your God to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this book of the law, if you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and soul.
 11 "For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach. (Deut. 30:10-11 NAU)

 You get the same idea in the NT, namely, that sinners not only can, but often DO become righteous in the sight of God because of how much they obey his commands:

 5 In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zacharias, of the division of Abijah; and he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.
 6 They were both righteous in the sight of God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and requirements of the Lord. (Lk. 1:5-6 NAU)

Wallace continues:

God doesn’t send good people to Hell.

But he does take "delight" in causing rape and parental cannibalism, Deuteronomy 28:30, 53, 63.

In order to consider ourselves “good”, we typically have to overlook much of what we think about and a lot of what we have done.

The way God does in Matthew 25:40, no discussion about whether they did their acts of charity with "perfect" motives or not, they are just allowed into heaven because they performed acts of charity:

Conversely, God doesn’t send good people to Heaven either.

The people who do good, including those who don't know Christian theology, go to heaven according to Matthew 25, supra.

“Good” is simply not “good enough” in light of Heaven’s perfection.

Under the doctrine of original sin, Abraham's trust in God cannot have been "perfect" trust or belief, as original sin would taint each and every motive we have to do anything or believe anything, yet Paul still taught that it was this act of belief by Abe upon which God justified Abe:

 9 Is this blessing then on the circumcised, or on the uncircumcised also? For we say, "FAITH WAS CREDITED TO ABRAHAM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS." (Rom. 4:9 NAU)

Jesus responds positively to an imperfect form of faith:

 23 And Jesus said to him, "'If You can?' All things are possible to him who believes."
 24 Immediately the boy's father cried out and said, "I do believe; help my unbelief."
 25 When Jesus saw that a crowd was rapidly gathering, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, "You deaf and mute spirit, I command you, come out of him and do not enter him again."
 26 After crying out and throwing him into terrible convulsions, it came out; and the boy became so much like a corpse that most of them said, "He is dead!"
 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and raised him; and he got up. (Mk. 9:23-27 NAU)

Peter's motive for asking Jesus to save him, cannot have been a motive completely free from the taint of sin and selfishness, yet Jesus still finds the request sufficient to justify granting:

 30 But seeing the wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!"
 31 Immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and took hold of him, and said to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" (Matt. 14:30-31 NAU)

If Jesus was a modern day Conservative Evangelical Inerrantist, he would have said to the father of the demon-possessed boy "you were born in sin, all of your motives to action are based in sin, you do not want me to heal this boy because of pure motive, but because you desire an easier life.  Didn't you know that my strength is made perfect in weakness (2nd Cor, 12:9)?  This messenger of Satan shall continue to afflict you, to teach you to be humble (Id)!  Go forth and praise God that you were counted worthy to suffer shame for my name! (Acts 5:41). Fuck you.

A loving God rescues creatures who are “practically” imperfect by offering us the free gift of forgiveness (Romans 6:23).

Sure is funny that you run immediately to Paul and not what Jesus had to say about salvation.  According to one gospel author, the "gospel" consists of the words and deeds of the historical Jesus (Matthew 28:20) and therefore, not the theological ravings of a rich duplicitous philosopher who wants to make his own ramblings more the center of attention than the words and deeds of Jesus.

When we accept this offer, we become “positionally” perfect (Hebrews 10:14) by clothing ourselves in the perfection of Jesus.

Something Jesus explicitly contradicted when he made a sinner's own acts the basis  upon which they enter the kingdom of heaven, in a context nowhere expressing or implying a righteousness imputed to them from Christ:

 17 "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.
 18 "For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
 19 "Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
 20 "For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 5:17-20 NAU)

Because Jesus goes on to preach the Sermon on the Mount and show how obeying the spirit of the Law is equally as important as obeying the letter, the gospel Jesus preached in the Sermon on the Mount cannot be reconciled with a gospel that says salvation is a free gift.  Sorry, but you don't enter the Kingdom of Heaven if your own moral righteousness doesn't meet the standard Jesus preached in the Sermon on the Mount.

Wallace's belief that God's standard is too high for sinful humans to meet, overlooks God's equally magical genie-ability to just get "rid" of sin by unspecified means, such as his getting rid of David's adultery with Bathsheba, and the death penalty that normally attached:

 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."
(2 Sam. 12:13 NAU)

Gee, can the God of evangelical Christians really just get rid of a sin and the consequence demanded for it in the law, so easily?  If so, Wallace needs to worry more about what the bible actually teaches, and less about making his idealism sound good to Christians who already hold most of his presuppositions.

Demolishing Triablogue: We don't lose sleep about what Paul is doing in 1st Timothy 5:18

This is my reply to an article by Jason Engwer entitled

1 Timothy 5:18 Is Important In Apologetics

Posted by Jason Engwer at 7:07 PM 

 Tuesday, August 29, 2017

For example, the passage has significant implications for the canon of scripture, the dating of the Synoptics and Acts,

That's right.  If Paul is quoting Luke, then Luke is just as late as the Pastorals.  Not a shocking horror to bible critics.

whether Paul agreed with concepts affirmed in Luke's gospel (the virgin birth, the empty tomb, etc.),

Not at all; if you expand Paul's approval of a single verse from Luke so it becomes Pauline approval of the entire gospel of Luke, then you must also expand Jude 14's approval of a single verse from 1st Enoch so it becomes Jude's approval of the entire book of 1st Enoch, since the latter is also a case of exact literary parallel.

and how widely accepted the beliefs in question were (e.g., since Paul expects his audience to accept what he's saying without further explanation).

Perhaps Timothy joined himself to a more Jesus-sayings oriented group like the original apostles.  Paul's arguments were not powerful enough to prevent his ministry-apostle Barnabas from rejecting Paul's view for an opposing viewpoint (Gal. 2:13), so skeptics are hardly required to believe that because Timothy was part of Paul's ministry, there was no disagreement between them on gospel stuff.

And much of what I just mentioned is applicable to some extent even if Pauline authorship of 1 Timothy is rejected and the document is dated later than Paul's lifetime. For example, if the passage reflects widespread acceptance of the virgin birth, then that's significant even if Paul wasn't involved.

Not really, you'd still be stuck with a Paul's incriminating screaming silence on a virgin-birth story that otherwise would have promoted Paul's high Christology no less than did the stories of Jesus' death and resurrection.  Paul just "chose" to leave those bullets laying around?  I don't think so.  He doesn't fire such guns because he doesn't think they exist, which is plausible given Paul's infamous near-total apathy toward anything the historical Jesus die or said beyond crucifixion and resurrection.

In fact, if the initial audience was much wider than one individual (Timothy), as it presumably would be under a pseudonymous authorship scenario, then the implications of the passage are more significant accordingly.

I've sometimes cited Michael Kruger's work in support of the conclusion that 1 Timothy 5:18 is citing Luke's gospel as scripture.

I don't see the problem with thinking Paul was willing to give the appearance to others that he believed the words of Jesus were important for doctrine, just like he was willing to give the appearance that he believed himself under the law, when in fact he believed precisely the opposite, 1st Corinthians 9:20-21.  Paul probably saw the value of such political rhetoric because he knew there was no holy spirit power in his preaching, hence, the need to employ psychological persuasion techniques, such as pretending to believe things his opponent's believed.   

In a book published late last year, he provides a lengthier case for that conclusion. It's on pages 680-700 of Lois K. Fuller Dow, et al., edd., The Language And Literature Of The New Testament (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2017). If you don't want to pay the large price for the book, you can get it at a library or through interlibrary loan, as I did. Kruger's chapter is well worth getting and reading. He goes into a lot of detail, but here are some highlights:

    Given that we have an exact match with a known source (Luke 10:7) - and exact matches are quite rare when tracing the words of Jesus during this time period - this raises the question of why we would prefer an unknown source to a known one.

The data can just as easily be explained as a case of Paul changing his gospel views later in life, and deciding that what the historical Jesus said and did, beyond dying and rising, was more important to the gospel than he previously thought.  And again, skeptics don't really suffer much at all by granting that Luke was the author of the gospel bearing his name and that it was published some time before the pastorals.

And there is another advantage of preferring the known source, namely that we know that (at some point) Luke actually acquired the scriptural status that 1 Tim 5:18 requires, whereas we have no evidence that any sayings source ever acquired such a scriptural status….

That's not saying much, given the late-date of the pastorals.  And I don't see any obvious problem with accepting that Luke wrote Luke and published it around 60 a.d.  Apologists gain nearly nothing by such admission.  

    If it is too early for Luke to be regarded as Scripture, why is it not also too early for a written sayings source [a hypothetical alternative to Luke] to be regarded as Scripture? After all, one might think that Luke's purported apostolic connections (Luke 1:1-4) might allow his Gospel to be regarded as Scripture even more quickly than an anonymous sayings source….

Let's not get carried away:  Luke was a liar because though he declared eyewitnesses to be his source, most scholars correctly believe he depended to a large extend on Mark's version of Peter's preaching.  It's not eyewitness testimony if it only comes to you through a non-eyewitness.  Unless Luke thought second-hand information could be correctly classified as "eyewitness" reporting.  Luke's harmful bias as an author for a cause comes out clearly in Acts 15, 99% of which is all about how the apostles dealt with the Judaizers, and only 1% of which tells the reader the Judaizer side, and then, not the arguments, but only a summary statement of their position.  I won't be waking up in cold atheist nightmare sweats any time soon over the pastorals quoting Luke's gospel.

    He [John Meier, a New Testament scholar who's not a conservative and rejects Pauline authorship of 1 Timothy] states, "The only interpretation that avoids contorted intellectual acrobatics or special pleading is the plain, obvious one. [1 Timothy] is citing Luke's Gospel alongside Deuteronomy as normative Scripture for the ordering of the church's ministry." (689-91)

Then Jude 14's quote of a single verse in 1st Enoch to make a theologically important point must be expanded to constitute Jude's belief that the entire book fo 1st Enoch was inspired.

 Here's a Protestant Evangelical inerrantist scholar who denies that 1 Tim. 5:18 is quoting the gospel of Luke:

The second reference resembles the words of Christ in Luke 10:7.132 It is not likely that Paul was quoting the Gospel of Luke, a document whose date of writing is uncertain. Paul may have been referring to a collection of Jesus’ sayings, some of which appear in Luke’s Gospel. It is notable that Paul called both statements Scripture, and it becomes clear that such a collection of Jesus’ sayings “was placed on an equality with the Old Testament.”

Lea, T. D., & Griffin, H. P. (2001, c1992).

Vol. 34: 1, 2 Timothy, Titus (electronic ed.).

The New American Commentary (Page 156).

Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Other conservative inerrantists are open to the possibility that "scripture" here extends only to the Deuteronomy quote, not the quote from Luke:

18. the scripture—(De 25:4; quoted before in 1Co 9:9).

the ox that treadeth out—Greek, An ox while treading.

The labourer is worthy of his reward—or “hire”; quoted from Lu 10:7, whereas Mt 10:10 has “his meat,” or “food.” If Paul extends the phrase, “Scripture saith,” to this second clause, as well as to the first, he will be hereby recognizing the Gospel of Luke, his own helper (whence appears the undesigned appositeness of the quotation), as inspired Scripture. This I think the correct view. The Gospel according to Luke was probably in circulation then about eight or nine years. However, it is possible “Scripture saith” applies only to the passage quoted from De 25:4; and then his quotation will be that of a common proverb, quoted also by the Lord, which commends itself to the approval of all, and is approved by the Lord and His apostle.

Jamieson, R., Fausset, A. R., Fausset, A. R., Brown, D., & Brown, D. (1997).

A commentary, critical and explanatory, on the Old and New Testaments.

On spine: Critical and explanatory commentary. (1 Ti 5:18).

Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

 


 Catholics are pretty confident that Paul is not quoting Luke as scripture here:

(George A. Denzer) "The second quotation is found in Lk 10:7 as a saying of Christ. The author is scarcely referring to canonical Lk as recognized Scripture; he probably knows the quotation from an oral tradition or from one of the written accounts that preceded canonical Lk (cf. Lk 1:1-4). The introductory phrase “Scripture says” applies properly only to the first quotation."

Brown, R. E., Fitzmyer, J. A., & Murphy, R. E. (1968]; 

Published in electronic form by Logos Research Systems, 1996).  

The Jerome Biblical commentary (electronic ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

5:18. To support his point—that elders should be paid, and certain ones paid double—Paul quoted two Scripture passages: (1) Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain (Deut. 25:4; cf. also 1 Cor. 9:9). (2) The worker deserves his wages probably refers to passages such as Leviticus 19:13 and Deuteronomy 24:15, or perhaps to the teaching of the Lord Jesus Himself (cf. Matt. 10:10; Luke 10:7). Though Paul reserved the right not to receive support from a congregation (cf. 1 Cor. 9:15-23; 1 Thes. 2:9), he clearly believed and repeatedly taught that a congregation did not have the right not to offer it (cf. Gal. 6:6; 1 Cor. 9:14).

Walvoord, J. F., Zuck, R. B., & Dallas Theological Seminary. (1983-c1985).

The Bible knowledge commentary :

An exposition of the scriptures. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.

If both Catholic and Protestant scholars, who by their Christian persuasion have more to gain by saying Paul quoted Luke as scripture, nevertheless deny or are open to denying that Paul was quoting Luke or classifying that gospel as "scripture", then skeptics have rational warrant to toss the matter aside and insist that apologists are irrational to expect spiritually dead atheists to figure out which theory held by spiritually alive people is correct.  Skeptics lose very little by agreeing Luke wrote Luke, Luke knew Paul and that Paul quoted Luke's gospel and viewed it as scripture.  Paul's duplicity explains just find his sometimes caring nothing for Jesus' saying when they were most appropriate to this subject, and quoting Jesus even when he didn't need to.

Demolishing Triablogue: Answering Steve Hays' alleged "atheist dilemma"

This is my reply to a post by Steve Hays entitled

An atheist dilemma

Posted bysteveat12:19 PM

Militant atheists are duplicitous on what makes life worth living.

Then count me out: what makes life worth living for me is whatever I decide I want to do.

On the one hand they say you don't need God to have a meaningful life. What makes life meaningful is what's meaningful to you. What you personally value.

On the other hand, they attack Christianity for giving believers false hope.

Because obtaining a reason for living from a source that provides only false hope is fraught with peril and likely to subject that person to find life miserable and depressing.  But I admit that some people can live with contradictions and absurdities to a greater degree than I can.

Christians waste the only life they have by banking on the deferred reward of a nonexistent afterlife. They fail to make the most of the only life they will ever have in the here and now through time-consuming religious devotions and prayers and anxieties over sin and sexual inhibitions, because they're staking their ultimate fulfillment on a future payback that will never happen. There is no hereafter, so it's now or never.

Notice, though, that their objection is diametrically opposed to how many atheists justify the significance of their own existence. Many atheists say subjective meaning is sufficient to make life worthwhile. But then, why can't Christians have meaningful lives as Christians, even if (from a secular standpoint) Christianity is false?

As long as you don't become a fanatic like Gene Bridges, Steve Hays, Jason Engwer, James Patrick Holding or other fundamentalists, I see no problem in choosing to find meaning in life through Americanized Christianity.  Given that atheism is true, religious views should be allowed where they don't cause depression.

Sure, it's subjective meaning. It doesn't correspond to objective reality (from a secular standpoint). Yet the same atheists insist that your sense of purpose in life needn't correspond to objective value. Rather, value is what is valuable to each individual.

Granted, if an atheist wants to completely exterminate Christianity from earth, he or she probably hasn't thought about how religion is the opiate of the masses, or how the good of a religion can outweigh its bad.

So why do militant atheists make their mission in life talking Christians out of their faith, or dissuading people from ever considering Christianity in the first place?

Such atheists are likely militant that way because they fear a general Christian faith opens to door to the type of scumbag fanaticism known as fundamentalism.  Mormonism is good for America as long as it isn't taken too seriously, which thankfully most Mormons don't.

Is it because they think Christianity is based on wishful thinking? But what if wishful thinking is what makes you feel that you and your loved ones are important in the grand scheme of things?

What if wishful thinking leads to fanaticism?

An atheist can't object on grounds that that's a sentimental projection, for he that's how he defends his own position.

So the atheist has a dilemma on his hands. If subjective meaning is good enough for atheists, why isn't that good enough for deluded Christians?

Once again, because atheism is true, it makes more sense to ask whether Christianity motivates people to do good things and whether there are versions of it that do more good than bad.  I have no problems with Americanized Christianity; if a person is too immature to come up with their own motive for doing something good with their life without linking it back to Christianity, more power to them.

Christianity is not the problem.  The fundamentalist forms of it, which insult the intelligence of others and create a greater danger of sucking a person into depression and misery, are the problem.