The PleaseConvinceMe website contains a thought-provoking treatment of this question. You can see the article here. The article reminds us of the fact that the amount of time a crime takes to commit bears very little relationship to the length of punishment it merits. After all, a person’s life can be snuffed out in the wink of an eye, an act which rightly merits a sentence of death or life in prison without the possibility of parole. But, on further reflection, perhaps the case is even stronger; perhaps it is too generous to view the crime as simply the operative act, and not view it from the perspective of the injured party.

Consider for a moment two men each firing a single shot at his intended victim. The first uses a high powered handgun; the second, a plastic air pistol. Each involves a similar action and takes no more than a few seconds. But the one act, in that instant, stops a vibrant, beating heart, while the other only momentarily stings. We punish these similar acts differently because the harm of murder has nothing to do with the time it took to commit, but everything to do with the harm inflicted. The murder victim remains dead, after all, despite the fact that a moment earlier, he had every right to live until the point of his natural death, which may have been decades away. The sting of the pellet, on the other hand, causes no lasting harm and is soon forgotten. In a sense, every day of living, of planning, of enjoying the company of loved ones, that was ripped from the deceased amounts to a re-infliction of the harm. Moreover, the agony that is inflicted upon the victim’s family and friends will also last for decades. So, while from the killer’s perspective, the criminal conduct for which he suffers punishment may seem quite limited, it is anything but limited when viewed from the victim’s or the victim’s family’s perspective.

How does this apply to God, and to the question of eternal punishment? God of course cannot be victimized. But each of our sins, each of our criminal offenses if you will, is against Him. Since God is not limited by time, perceiving every moment in an endless eternal present, then each of our offenses against Him is therefore eternally present to Him. By that measure, eternal separation from Him – eternal punishment – starts to make a bit more sense.

Thank God, then, that the eternal Son stands in the gap for us, with the power, and the love and the eternal will to receive the punishment we so rightly deserve.

 Posted by Al Serrato

At the end of the first school year I could tell something was amiss. Most of my key seniors seemed disconnected and disinterested. I got through that first summer and the first semester of the next school year, striving continually to capture the imagination and attention of my student congregation. At Christmas break that year I had an epiphany. One of my key seniors from the prior year returned from Sonoma State where she had been attending her first year as a College freshman and announced to her parents that she was no longer a Christian. I got the call from her mother. I met with this student and she told me about her new life as an atheist. While I was frustrated and didn’t seem to be able to persuade her otherwise, I also wondered if she was the exception or the rule. I did some research on my other graduating seniors from the prior year. All but one had left Christianity, and they were only in their first semester as freshmen!

I knew I was a large part of the problem. I spent several weeks learning the truth about the flight of young people from Christianity and then committed myself to be a part of the solution. I overhauled my youth ministry and became a Christian Case Maker. I’m still upset that I didn’t do it earlier. I came to faith through a careful and exhaustive examination of the evidence (as I’ve described in my book) yet I abandoned that approach once I had the chance to work with students. I falsely assumed they would be more interested in an experience than an education. I got caught up in fun rather than facts. Of course, I realized now this was a false dichotomy. I began to shape my ministry around the evidence and found ways to present this evidence to the age group I was leading. I stopped teaching and started training.

When young people are asked why they walked away from Christianity, their responses typically fall into two large categories. Most express some form of intellectual or rational doubt, but others reveal a more self-indulgent motive. For many young Christians, the allure of our hedonistic culture is too much to withstand. College becomes the place where they decide to explore their selfish passions and desires. As a youth pastor, I certainly talked a lot about the moral temptations that face all of us as Christians trying to live Godly lives in an ungodly culture. But I told my students, as their leader, I felt a distinct responsibility to equip them with the evidence first, so they could make their own decisions related to their passions and desires. When parents asked me why I spent so much time training young people in “apologetics” I typically offered the same response:

“If your students leave the faith because they want to pursue their selfish desires related to sex, drugs or drinking, that’s on them. I was an atheist until the age of thirty-five; I know what it’s like to chase after all that stuff. I get it. But if your students walk away from Christianity because they don’t believe it is factually true, that’s on me. It’s my responsibility to prepare them with the truth in a way they can understand and then defend for themselves.”

As youth pastors, we need to recognize that we aren’t responsible for some of the poor choices our students will make if they decide to chase after their own lusts and passions. But we are responsible for teaching them the complete and robust truth about the Christian worldview, including the evidences and arguments they will need to defend what they believe. That’s our responsibility and that’s why it’s so important for youth pastors to be competent Christian Case Makers.

By J. Warner Wallace, Cold-Case Detective, Christian Case Maker at Stand to Reason, and author of Cold-Case Christianity

Subscribe to J. Warner’s Daily Email

I wrote some reflections on that sermon in a recent post, and tried to make the case that Hell is not a “lake of fire” as depicted in art but is instead the state of torment that flows naturally from separation from God. In other words, Hell isn’t some arena of sadism in which a cruel and unloving God derives pleasure by inventing increasingly bizarre and horrifying ways to torture someone. No, despite its severity, it is actually the minimum that God can do.

This may seem a strange comment to many. After all, they reason, didn’t Jesus himself use fiery language to describe Hell, comparing it to the perpetual fires in the garbage dump outside Jerusalem, in the place called Gehenna.  And, more to the point, isn’t God all powerful? If so, why would he not be able to minimize – no, eliminate – our suffering, if he so chose? Why would he not simply be able to annihilate us completely, or forgive and reward us without regard to our state of rebellion against him? It would seem that God is not really as good, or in the alternative as “omnipotent,” as Christians claim he is.

The response to this set of challenges requires us to consider what we can know about God’s “nature” and to tease out the assumption that underlies the challenge.  By asserting that God “causes” or “inflicts” eternal suffering, the question compels the answer that yes, this would be torture.  The real issue, though, is whether God does those things to the souls in Hell, or whether those lost souls experience an everlasting torment that is a consequence – and not a separate goal – of the fact that they are in Hell.

In the Civil War, doctors treated most bullet wounds to an arm or leg by amputating the limb, no doubt an excruciating experience in the days before anesthetics.  But these actions were done not to torture the patient but to accomplish some good purpose – namely, to save him.  The patient no doubt felt tormented, but this was a natural consequence of the necessary action that was taken; it would not be fair to say the doctor had engaged in torture.  On the other hand, if one side had taken perfectly healthy prisoners of war and amputated a limb to inflict pain, either to coerce cooperation or as a method of terror, this would indeed be torture. Similarly, if a modern surgeon decided to amputate without anesthetics, it would be fair to characterize such actions as torture.

Christians believe that God is all good and that whatever he creates must also be good.  Hell is a place of separation He has created for those deserving of such separation.  Hell must be good and must serve a good purpose, one that others in heaven will “see” is the right place for those who turn away from God, who cannot stay in His presence.  But if Hell is a place in which God actively inflicts agony simply to terrorize or for some other evil purpose, then Hell cannot be a good place, and God cannot be good.  Alternatively, if God could accomplish His legitimate purpose of separating wrongdoers from Him without inflicting the level of torment that exists in Hell, then, once again, it would be evil to inflict such agony.

How, then, does orthodox Christianity makes sense of this place called Hell?

I submit that the answer lies in understanding that the torment spoken of is the natural consequence of the legitimate end God accomplishes with Hell, and not a separate purpose to inflict agony.  What is that end?   Separation from Him. And what is He?  Perfection.  Absolute, unlimited, infinite perfection, the kind that we as human beings cannot even begin to fathom.  Remember for a moment your first love? Or the way you felt when you beheld your first child? Or reuniting with your spouse after a period apart? Or the feeling of joy that comes from some cherished activity. Conversely, recall to mind the first time you were homesick, or the first time you experienced the death of a loved one?  Now magnify these feelings – not by a hundred, a thousand, or even a billion, but by infinity, and by eternity.  Start to get the picture?  If the “goodness” of these people and activities can cause us happiness, how much more will the “perfection” of God fill us with infinite joy? Would it not be like the giddiness of first love, but an infatuation that sees clearly, loves truly, and endures forever, with no possibility of pain or loss.  By contrast, imagine being forced away from these loved ones, either by, say, a prison sentence or some other outside act. Try to picture the emptiness, the loss, the angst that such loss engenders.  Magnify this to the infinite degree and you’re beginning to appreciate what knowing but not directly experiencing God will be like.

The closest example we might have of this distinction is the modern prison system.  In dealing with the worst offenders, prison is meant to separate them from society and also to punish.  Both purposes are legitimate.  But the punishment we speak of is the incarceration, the very same act that accomplishes the separation. We do not first separate inmates from society and then inflict additional punishment; there are no medieval tortures that await them, no mistreatment that is deliberated inflicted to further the pain these inmates feel. In a very real sense, the punishment is the product of the incarceration, not an additional purpose.

But why must it be this way, the skeptic will insist? Because, quite simply, it is the nature of things. God saw value in creating free will beings, even though he knew that some would choose to use that free will to oppose him. We recognize the value of free will. That’s why in so many situations we punish acts that violate the consent of a person. Our system of justice is based on notions of personal autonomy, choice and free will.

By giving people what they freely choose – reconciliation with him or separation forever – does God not satisfy both Earthly and eternal justice?

Posted by Al Serrato

It’s pretty obvious that young people are leaving the church, especially during the college years. It’s also true, however, that some will eventually return to church as older adults. When you examine why young people leave and compare it to why they return you’ll start to understand the reason the church is struggling to maintain its classic, orthodox teachings.

When surveyed about the reasons they stepped away from Christianity, most young Christians say they no longer believe it is factually true. In their book, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton asked an open-ended question of young people who said they were no longer Christians: “Why did you fall away from the faith in which you were raised?” Smith and Denton did not provide a series of multiple choice answers; they simply allowed the respondents to answer freely. The majority said they left faith behind because of intellectual skepticism or doubt:

“It didn’t make any sense anymore.”

“Some stuff is too far-fetched for me to believe.”

“I think scientifically and there is no real proof.”

“Too many questions that can’t be answered.”

Young people are walking away, in large part, because they don’t think Christianity is true. The vast majority will never return to the faith. According to a 2007 Lifeway Research Study, only 35% of church dropouts will eventually return to church (by the age of 30). My question is simply this: Why do these few returnees come back at all? Not much has been done by researchers to answer this question, but the same Lifeway study provided the following data:

 51% of returnees said they were influenced by the encouragement of either family or friends

34% simply felt a desire to return

28% felt that God was calling them to return to the church

24% had children and felt it was time for them to start attending

20% got married and wanted to attend with their spouse

See the problem here? Most people leave Christianity because they no longer believe it is true; most come back because something about church “works” for them. It doesn’t have to be true, but it’s a great place to get married, find community, and raise your family. Like my dad (a lifelong atheist) has always believed: The Church is a useful delusion.

When people leave Christianity because they no longer believe it is true, then return only because there are useful aspects of the Church community, don’t be surprised to find the resulting group struggling to come to agreement on the historic teachings of the Church. Many will return, but not necessarily because they believe the Bible teaches the truth. Instead, these returnees have been profoundly impacted by their young adult experiences away from Christianity (mostly in their college years). Yes many of them will return to our family, but they come back with a new view of the world. It’s not an entirely Christian view. It’s been compromised.

This is why I think it’s so important for us to make young Christians the focus of our efforts as Christian Case Makers (“apologists”). It’s not just about reversing the trend related to the departure of young Christians. It’s about securing a future Church that has been inoculated from compromise.

By J. Warner Wallace, Cold-Case Detective, Christian Case Maker at Stand to Reason, and author of Cold-Case Christianity

(If this post has been helpful, please subscribe to J. Warner’s daily email!)

Her mother heard about my appearance in the church bulletin several weeks earlier and tried to get her daughter to come home from the campus to hear the talk. The girl wasn’t interested. After the church service, the mom quickly asked her pastor for a DVD copy of the talk and eagerly bought a copy of my book. She planned on sending both of these materials to her daughter. As she stood in front of me to have her copy signed, I could sense her desperation. Like any good parent, she wanted to find a way to bring her daughter back. I asked her to wait for the crowd to die down so we could talk a bit about her situation; I needed to tell her the truth about parents and the role of “apologetics” material.

It’s tempting to assign our responsibility as parents to others, especially when it comes to issues that require some expertise we don’t already possess. When my daughter was struggling with geometry, my first inclination was to hire a tutor, even though my architecture degree forced me through several layers of calculus and I was proficient at geometry at one time myself. Instead of hiring someone, my son and I worked through each question with my daughter. I took the time to relearn the material so I could teach it to her. It was a pain, but it was worth it. I love my daughter and I know my daughter’s learning style, her concerns and her personality. I can tell when she’s “getting it” and when she’s just pretending to get it. For this reason, I knew I was the best person to help her, and although it required some work on my part, it was the right decision.

Spiritual instruction is really no different. It’s tempting to assign this form of instruction to a youth pastor or ministry. Spiritual questions are often difficult to answer and questions related to secular philosophy, historical veracity and arguments for the existence of God can seem insurmountable. When the challenges arise, it’s easy to look to someone else for an answer. At times like these, most of us find ourselves saying, “Let me get you a book,” or “I’ll try to find someone you can talk to.” But, that’s not what our kids need from us when they first begin questioning. They came to us with their questions and they need us to provide them with the answers. We’re the ones who love our kids enough to understand their shape and the nature of their personalities. We ought to know how best to respond to their questions as well. When your son or daughter begins questioning his or her faith, you’re the person who needs to become the best Christian Case Maker they know. This is especially true if your kids have questions when they are very young.

So I told this mom at my table that I didn’t think my book was the best resource for her daughter. I doubted her daughter would even open the book if she were to give it to her. Instead, I told this mom that I thought she was the best resource for her girl. Rather than assign her daughter’s questions to me as a stranger, I encouraged her to read my book and master its contents. This young lady might someday be willing to read my book or another like it, but her first questions were directed to her mom, not to me as an author. She expressed her first concerns to her mother and it’s at that first point of contact that we, as Christians, can be most effective. As parents, we are the folks who will have the most repeated contact with our children; we are the ones who can have the most impact (good or bad). This is the simple truth for all of us who are raising kids in the church. We have to become the best Christian Case Makers our kids know so we can respond quickly to their concerns and questions. As parents, we are still the first line of Christian defense.

J. Warner Wallace is a Cold-Case Detective, a Christian Case Maker at Stand to Reason, and the author of Cold-Case Christianity

Most people today – and in that I include nominal believers – would laugh at such a sermon. Convinced in their own righteousness, their own “goodness,” they feel no hesitation living life as they choose and expecting God to give them their “gold star” when they stand before the Pearly Gates asking for admission. Even non-believers, if they confront the possibility that their insistence that there is no God proves mistaken, feel pretty confident that a “loving” God will not reject them. “Be a nice person” is their guiding principle, and that’s really not that hard to do, they conclude.

One skeptic made the case against Hell this way: punishment can serve only one of three purposes: prevention of further crimes, as the offender is locked away; deterrence of future crimes when he is released, and fairness to the victim of the crime. The first two, he argued, no longer apply once a person dies, since they can no longer commit sin and won’t ever be “getting out.” That leaves the final purpose – justice or vengeance.

“If Hell were a temporary, purgatory-like punishment, that would make perfect sense, but if it’s eternal, then no crime can possibly equal that. I imagine that Hitler will have worked off all of those deaths after the first few trillion years, but then he’s still stuck there forever. So what victim is left to compensate? God? If he’s really an omnipotent being, then it is impossible for a lesser being to harm him. If he’s keeping people in Hell because of a slight to his image, then I would call him petty and evil.”

This view has considerable appeal to those with a Western sense of justice. Certainly, as it relates to Earthly matters, this approach to crime and justice makes sense. The idea, after all, is to try eventually to rehabilitate people, to allow them to see and repent of the evil of their ways and eventually rejoin society once their debt to it has been paid. But even here, of course, there are those who are so committed to the evil that they do that they can never be released. Serial killers or rapists would fall into that category. Whatever may have led them to their crimes, whatever developmental or emotional issue that changed them as they grew, the only rational way to respond to them is to keep them separated from anyone that they could harm. This separation – this punishment – goes on for as long as they live. The choices they made while younger have mandated this outcome.

But at a deeper level, the skeptic’s third contention –relating to the eternal nature of Hell – actually misses the point. He views God’s position as that of human victim in need of protection, which obviously does not apply to an omnipotent being. The only other possibility, to the skeptic, is to view God as a petty tyrant, glorying in the pain he can cause to someone who has given him in a trifling offense. The problem in the analysis is that it proceeds from a mistaken premise – that God’s judgment is akin to a criminal sentence on Earth and must therefore satisfy the requirements of earthly justice. Our “offenses” are against God and, though he cannot be harmed, he is not putting us “in jail to protect himself. He is, instead, separating himself from us in the same way we separate ourselves from someone who has done us wrong. We clearly have that right, whether or not we think the person will re-offend against us in the future. There is nothing that requires us to give such a person a second chance at fellowship, to invite them into our homes, or to treat them the way we would a close friend.

Unfortunately for us, the issue we are encountering relates to the nature of time. Earthly justice recognizes that our days are numbered, and that with the passing of time, we grow old and debilitated, eventually to a point that we can no longer harm others. Death stands at the end of every person’s life. But God is not bound by time; he is an eternal being and he has created us to be eternal as well. For reasons of his own, he has decided that he will not annihilate us. We will go on living, eternally conscious and aware of ourselves and our surroundings. Life without end. It’s what we all long for, in truth. It’s why we fight so hard against aging and against the final curtain. We want live in health and happiness, of course, perhaps health, wealth and happiness, but if we had those things, we would without doubt want them to last forever, to enjoy life to its fullest forever.

But is this not also the bad news? Since God is not limited by time, perceiving every moment in an endless present, then each of our offenses against him is eternally present to him. We remain locked in our rebellion, aware of God’s presence but unable to reunite with him. By that measure, eternal separation from him – what we experience as eternal punishment – starts to make a bit more sense.

Fortunately for us, he also possesses the kind of mercy that we can only begin to imagine. He has given us free will and the opportunity to spend eternity with him. He has promised to do all the work of making us fit for that type of interaction. Despite our rebellion, and our “crimes” against him, he wishes to reunify with us, but not at the cost of breaking our free will, or of violating his own just character. We need only assent to his gift, to allow him to undo what sin has introduced into our relationship.

But for many, the rebellion goes on forever. 

Posted by Al Serrato

It’s Robust
Students want to be respected, and this respect begins with challenging content. Young people are capable of far more than the Church typically thinks to offer. If you’re still throwing candy, serving pizza or playing games with your students, you’ve probably set the bar too low. I always teach students at one level above their presumed capacity. If I’m teaching junior-highers, I think of them as high-schoolers. If I’m teaching high-schoolers, I treat them like they are already in college. Students know when you’re trying to “dumb down” the material. Respect their capacity and raise the bar.

It’s Interactive
The challenge for those of us who want to tackle difficult subject matter is to shape this content in a compelling way. If you’re used to speaking for 45 minutes while an audience watches quietly, you need to rethink your approach. When I was young, I watched movies and television shows passively; my kids, however, engage online video content interactively. I design my presentations with opportunities for the audience to respond and interact. When I was a youth pastor, I even designed the presentations with a “fork in the road”, a location in the message where the students got to choose the direction the talk would take. Years later, when I planted a house church, I learned to facilitate discussions rather than deliver messages. This is still my favorite way to teach.

It’s Relevant
Young people are distracted by a ton of media and content competing for their attention. Why should they take the time to listen to you? Why is your information important in the first place? I begin every talk by illustrating the important challenge facing my audience. I take the time to show them what’s broken before I help them find a way to fix it.  What are the claims of the world and how do they threaten us? What are the challenges offered by your atheist friends and how can we respond? Messages become relevant when your audience is reminded of the battle that faces them.

It’s Personal
Authenticity is important to young people. They can sniff out insincerity in a heartbeat. If you want to have a deep impact on students, you better be willing to share your life with them as deeply as you can within the time constraints of your opportunity. Transparency is key. When I work with a youth group, I want them to know something about me and I want to learn as much as I can about them. I’ve been asked to teach them, but I really want to mentor them. In the end, I want my students to know my heart for them.

It’s Visual
Virtually every form of communication has been impacted by the visual nature of the Internet. Young people are far more likely to engage video content than any other form of information. When I began teaching students in 1998, PowerPoint was in its infancy.  I relied on nine years of art school (I have a BA in Design and an MA in Architecture) to create presentations that were image and video centered rather than text or language centered. I became the weekly narrator of a visual drama. This approach continues to shape the way I make a case. When I eventually wrote my first book, I inserted line drawings inspired by illustrations I had been using for years with student groups.

Now take another look at these five principles. Do you think this same approach could be used with older folks? Of course it could. In fact, I never change my presentations to accommodate a particular age group. This weekend I am teaching adults at the SmartFaith Conference in Phoenix. I have a presentation prepared, but it’s the exact same presentation I’ll be using with high-schoolers at the Hume Lake High School Summer Camp in July. The difficult content I’m offering is challenging enough for older adults, but interactive, relevant, personal and visual enough to engage students. Students are really my target audience, but the approach I take will also work with older adults. That’s not always the case in reverse. That’s why I’ve been arguing recently that young people ought to be the group Christian Case Makers are trying to reach. If we focus on students and take the robust approach I am suggesting, older folks like me will be happy to come along for the ride.

J. Warner Wallace is a Cold-Case Detective, a Christian Case Maker at Stand to Reason, and the author of Cold-Case Christianity

One skeptic, acknowledging the possibility that an impersonal creative “force” might exist, framed it this way:

“You are a Christian, and the God of the Christians is most definitely a unicorn.  That is of course, a unicorn in the sense of piecing together things you already know about: men and authority and magic.  Just as a unicorn is a kind of Superhorse, a god is a kind of Superman. Of course, none of this proves God- or unicorns- don’t exist.  I’m keeping my eyes open- time permitting- for both.”

This skeptic does not speak for all unbelievers, of course. But the presuppositions underlying his conclusions are fairly typical– indeed, I would say increasingly typical – of the “modern” worldview. Largely unexamined, these presuppositions lead such people into basic mistakes about the nature of reality, and about the kind of thinking that is necessary to getting a better understanding of this temporal universe, and our place in it.

Notice how the analogy works for this critic of Christianity. We all know intuitively that unicorns do not exist. If we examine why, we would probably base our conclusion on the belief that if such a creature did exist, someone, somewhere, would have located and photographed one. If we dig deeper, we would realize that a unicorn is, by definition, a “mythical creature resembling a horse, with a single horn in the center of its forehead: often symbolic of chastity or purity.” We reach the conception of “unicorn” in our minds by merging things we know about – horses and horns and ideas of purity – and manufacturing in our imaginations a creature that possesses these attributes.

The argument the skeptic is making goes something like this:

1. We know that a unicorn is simply a “super” horse, a fictitious assembly of real things combined to make something imaginary;
2. God, like unicorns, possesses  “super” powers;
3. Consequently, God too is a construction of the imagination.

Teased out in this fashion, the flaw in the logic becomes more evident. The underlying assumption is that superpowers do not actually exist. They are always imaginary, meant to satisfy some need of the human mind. Since the Christian view attributes supernatural powers to God, it must be the case that Christians are simply using their imagination to build “something” that they feel they need: a savior to rescue them or a “father in the sky” to someday reward them.

But the existence, or not, of “super” powers is the thing under consideration. Assuming at the outset that no being possesses such powers simply because human beings do not is an example of circular reasoning. This approach will never add to one’s fund of knowledge because the inquiry concludes where it begins, with the assumption that no such being could exist.

Put another way, the skeptic is saying that anything that is imagined to possess extraordinary or “supernatural” qualities must be solely a product of the imagination. Imagination, on the one hand, and reality, on the other, are, under this view, at odds. Unless the thing imagined can itself be examined, the skeptic will choose to write it off as a product of wishful thinking.

Seen in this light, the mistake in reasoning is apparent. When the first inventors imagined flying through the skies in powered machines, no such craft yet existed. Many technical obstacles stood in their way. Today, of course, we are not at all surprised to see tons of steel, wire and plastic do something that to primitive minds would have seemed miraculous – “float” gently into the skies carrying countless people and possessions safely and gracefully from point to point. Similarly, when early scientists concluded that atoms possessed the potential for practically unlimited power, no nuclear reactors had yet been built. Many more examples can be “imagined” in support of this simple notion: the imagination, despite its name, is not limited to only conjuring up creatures or things that are not real. The imagination – and more generally the mind – can lead us to conclusions that are indeed real.

So, what then is the difference between conclusions about unicorns and conclusions about God? For that, we must spend a moment considering what each conception involves. As the dictionary makes clear, unicorns begin and end in the realm of myth. And myth, of course, is make-believe: a “legendary story without a determinable basis of fact or natural explanation; any invented story, idea or concept.” Any analogy to unicorns is necessarily an analogy to something that is not real.

But what is God? When we say that God has “super” powers such as omnipotence, omniscience and eternality, are we simply communicating myth? Put differently, is God a construct of our imagination, an assembly of features into some greater, mythical whole? Or is he, by contrast, the “conclusion” that reason and reflection lead us to? The “conclusion” – in the sense of the set of features necessary to make sense of reality, to explain why there is something rather than nothing.

St. Anselm of Cantebury gets at this distinction in his Ontological Argument for the existence of God. Anselm realizes that when we use reason to consider what the conception of God entails, we are led to an understanding that such a being must be maximally great; he is that being a greater than which cannot possibly be conceived. If a person can conceive of a being that has any attributes greater than “god” then they are not yet holding in their mind the correct conception of God. Anselm goes on to conclude that God’s “necessary existence” is an inseparable aspect of what the conception of God entails.

Applying a similar approach here, the problem with the skeptic’s view is that a unicorn is simply a set of features that might exist in a horse; horses, foreheads and horns all exist and concepts like chastity and purity are real. Anyone considering the conception of “unicorn” understands that they are thinking about something symbolic. God, by contrast, is not a construction of already existing parts or concepts. The God of the Bible is not like the Greek or Roman gods. He does not have a specific function, such as making the rains come or enhancing fertility. He does not have weaknesses or rivalries. He is not a collection of human attributes projected onto a mythical or magical being, to explain why for instance the seasons change or the rains come.

No, as Anselm understood, God is the label we apply to the kind of being sufficient to make sense of the creation of a universe from nothing, the fine-tuning of the universe making it suitable for human life, the source of the intelligence, morality and personality we see manifested in our fellow human beings. These things cry out for an explanation, and a creator of infinite power and intelligence who stands outside of and apart from his creation is the beginning of that explanation.  Although our limited human minds can never fully comprehend, we can at least begin to approach an appreciation of what God entails, and hopefully a desire to learn more.

Christianity has answers there as well. Reason and general revelation give us some insight into God, his existence and his nature, but only through his own self-revelation can we begin to know him better, to begin to enter relationship with him. But we cannot take the necessary next step while we continue to insist that he is not there.

Posted by Al Serrato

Young People Are the Most Culturally Engaged
If you’re reading this and you’re a parent over 35, I bet I can ask you a number of questions related to the culture that will challenge you. What’s the most popular video on YouTube? What’s the most popular set of lyrics on the iTunes Top 20? What’s the most popular series on HULU or Netflix? More importantly, what are the messages that these media sources are conveying to the culture? While adults are often too consumed by their responsibilities and the steady rhythm of their lives to pay attention to the daily twists and turns of the culture, young people are listening. They get it, even when we don’t. To make matters worse, they’re using technology to consume this steady cultural smorgasbord. I bet you’re not texting, Snapchatting, or Instagramming at the rate your kids are. While older folks are just getting comfortable with Facebook, young people are already moving on to the next greatest technological phenomena. The culture targets young people like no other group, and young Christians are technologically savvy enough to devour what is being offered.

Young People Are the Most Challenged
As a result, young Christians are more likely to be challenged when it comes to their worldview, particularly when the Christian worldview under attack asks them to deny themselves, resist the hedonistic influences of the world, and take the higher, more difficult road. The university experience only exacerbates this challenge. Adults typically start careers and align themselves with like-minded social groups. After a few years, we find ourselves in a place where our worldview is largely unchallenged. Young Christians, on the other hand, enter into a university environment where they are far more likely to be surrounded my differing worldviews and challenged aggressively. While parents are home in the safety of the communities they’ve created for themselves, young people are struggling in communities created by people who largely reject our values. We’re safe while our kids are at risk.

Young People Are the Most Likely to Leave
The statistics demonstrate the consequence of this challenge. Young people are leaving the Church. Regardless of survey or source organization, the statistics are troubling. 60-80% of college freshman who claim to be Christian will walk away from Christianity by the time they are college seniors. No other age group within the Church is more likely to leave. People my age aren’t leaving; young people are leaving. And when surveyed, most young ex-Christians report the primary reason they rejected Christianity was simply because they no longer believed it to be true. They had intellectual doubt that could not be resolved by the Christians in their lives. They found better answers elsewhere.

In light of this situation, I often wonder why we, as Christian case makers (apologists) haven’t made young people our primary audience. In fact, if you look at all the “apologetics” ministries operating in the country, few are designed to target young people as their primary audience. At best, each organization offers some limited, selected materials, “dumbed down” for young people. Really? We can do better. In fact, we need to do better. We need to RETHINK the audience we are trying to reach and recalibrate our efforts. We need to stop making the case for older folks (with an occasional modification for young people), and start making the case for young people (with an occasional modification for older folks). All of us need to become Christian case makers and young people ought to be our jury.

J. Warner Wallace is a Cold-Case Detective, a Christian Case Maker at Stand to Reason, and the author of Cold-Case Christianity

“Case Makers” Are Focused on Jurors
Trials typically involve juries (although some are decided by judges). Good case makers understand the nature of their audience. They are good translators; taking complicated information from expert witnesses and making it accessible to members of the jury. It’s not enough for case makers to understand the facts of the case; they’ve got to be focused on the needs of the jury. If you neglect your jury, you’ll most certainly lose your case. For this reason, case making is as much about relationship as it is about information.

“Case Makers” Are Familiar With Evidence, Logic and Rhetoric
Case makers must understand the nature of evidence and how to powerfully communicate the interconnected quality of this evidence to the jury. Case makers also need to comprehend the principles of logic in order to make a reasonable case and highlight the irrational alternative explanations offered by the opposition. Case makers need to develop good thinking skills and become familiar with the case before them.

“Case Makers” Are Fearless in Asking for a Decision
In the end, it all comes down to a decision. Case makers have to do more than present the case; they have to present the case in a manner that causes the jury to make a decision. Case makers must learn to shape a presentation of the evidence that is compelling. We are trying to encourage a decision. Any effort to make a case that fails to ask for a decision is an incomplete work.

It’s been my experience that most of us who want to be “Christian Case Makers” are more concerned about the second aspect of our mission than anything else. We spend time reading through the evidence and mastering the arguments, but fail to see that it ultimately comes down to the jury and their desire to make a decision. As a Christian communicator, I am more and more convinced of the importance of asking for that decision. Maybe it’s because I came to faith later in life and still have an unbelieving father in his 70’s. I’m not sure. But I have a sense of urgency now that compels me to work as an evangelist who understands the role of “apologetics” rather than as a “apologist” more concerned with the evidence than the decision. It’s one thing to understand the case; it’s another to understand your need for a Savior. I want to communicate both aspects of the Christian message. I know my work as case maker is incomplete if my presentation isn’t focused on the jury, directed to the Gospel, and designed for a response. I need to do more than present the case; I need to ask for a decision.

J. Warner Wallace is a Cold-Case Detective, a Christian Case Maker at Stand to Reason, and the author of Cold-Case Christianity

It’s also important to remember that not every ancient text makes a claim about “divinity”; there are many texts from antiquity that are ancient, but not “holy”. If a text claims to be both ancient and holy, it needs to pass the first test related to antiquity before it can hope to qualify in the second category as holy. After all, a book cannot be holy or divine if it is lying about ancient history.

The test of antiquity was incredibly important to me as a skeptic examining the claims of scripture for the first time. As I became interested in Christianity, my Mormon family encouraged me to examine Mormonism as well. I read the entire Book of Mormon before I completed the Old and New Testament. I wanted to determine the “antiquity” of the Gospels and the Book of Mormon before I could examine the question of “divinity”. I needed to know if the New Testament gospels were written early enough to have been written by eyewitnesses who were actually present to observe what was recorded in these accounts. Similarly, I needed to know if the Book of Mormon was an accurate account of the history of the American continent from 600BC to 400AD (as it claims). My first investigation was centered on the foundational question: Are these ancient holy books truly ancient?

What kinds of questions can an investigator ask when trying to answer this important question related to antiquity? I considered the following:

Are historical events cited in (or omitted from) the text in a manner that is reliably and accurately ancient?

Are the references to language, proper names and titles reliably and accurately ancient?

Are the references to culture, government or civilizations reliably and accurately ancient?

Are the references to geography, native animals and plants reliably and accurately ancient?

Are the other corroborative documents that are reliably and accurately ancient?

Are there additional, successive historical references that are reliably and accurately ancient?

I asked these questions of the gospel accounts and the Book of Mormon and came away with two very different sets of answers. There are many good reasons to accept the early dating of the gospels and their reliability as eyewitness accounts. In each of the above listed criteria, the gospels pass the test. I’ve written an entire chapter in my book examining the evidence for early dating and the historical reliability of the gospel eyewitness accounts. After examining the accounts using the tools that are employed by historians and detectives, I concluded that the gospels are reliable. Unfortunately, the Book of Mormon doesn’t withstand evidential scrutiny nearly as well. Written in the first half of the 19^th century, it fails to record anything about the ancient past that can be verified in any of the ways I’ve described. In fact, in each of the categories of inquiry I’ve offered to answer the issue of antiquity, the book of Mormon fails miserably.

I recently asked a Mormon Scholar to tell me how she knew the book of Mormon was a true, reliable account of the ancient past. She told me that she had asked God about it and she believed that God had given her a “spiritual confirmation”. It struck me that this method for determining antiquity was misguided. While prayer might be one way to determine if and ancient holy book is holy, there are other, better established investigative approaches that ought to be employed to determine if an ancient holy book is ancient. We shouldn’t attempt to answer questions about divinity before we answer questions about antiquity. If a text is lying to us about events in the ancient past, it cannot be from God. For this reason, the first question we ought to ask any text that claims to be an ancient, holy book is simply this: Is the text truly a work from the ancient past?

J. Warner Wallace is a Cold-Case Detective, a Christian Case Maker at Stand to Reason, and the author of Cold-Case Christianity

I have never been able to find a way to reconcile the ability to see the future with free will. For a simple example: you are presented with two doors, one on the left and one on the right. God knows that you will choose the door on the left. Given this, is it possible for you to choose the door on the right? If not, how can you say you have free will? If you say that God simply knew you would choose the left door, I would argue that that really isn’t free will in any meaningful sense. God supposedly knows everything that will happen before you are ever born, so if all your choices are set beforehand, how can they possibly matter? Furthermore, if God knows you will “choose” Hell before he creates you, why does he simply not create you? Personally, I would much prefer nonexistence to eternal torment. Is God deliberately creating people knowing they will end up in Hell? Then I would call him evil. Is he compelled to create people regardless of what he sees in their future? Then he doesn’t have free will, which would certainly be an interesting interpretation, but one I doubt many people share. Is there some other explanation? If so, I can’t think of it.

There is a lot to untangle here. And while certainty is not possible, some reflections on the nature of God may help to make sense of this apparent puzzle. The first step is to realize that God is simply not “bound” by time. While there may be temporal aspects to his nature – that is, he is able for instance to count, which implies a sequence of time – he is not trapped in the “present.” He neither has to recall the past nor speculate about the future – he has access to all earthly times in his “present.” Scientists tell us that the universe is a space-time continuum. It makes sense to us that we could, with enough power, see the entire physical universe; it would simply be a matter of having the ability to travel to all possible locations. Similarly, God can “see” all points in time, since he is “outside” of this flow of events, in the same way that he is “outside” of the universe he created. Time and space are simply different aspects of this physical universe.

I am able to consider these types of questions, because I have access to my mind and my thoughts. This access conveys to me a sense of the freedom of my will. For example, nothing is compelling me to write at this moment. Every day, I make numerous decisions for which I know I could do otherwise. It is true that these choices may be influenced in some fashion. Each of us may have compulsions or desires that motivate some behavior, but in the end, we act volitionally. Indeed, our entire justice system is predicated upon this understanding. Other than the criminally insane, we recognize that those who choose to commit certain crimes, regardless of their motivation, are worthy of punishment.

So, to answer the skeptic’s question: God allows us to choose the door on the left, or the door on the right, and then he “watches” our choice. He watches not in a temporal sense, wondering about the future and then experiencing contentment or disappointment; there is no learning for God. He “watches” in the sense of awareness of the choices made, and the disposition of the “heart” that accompanied those choices.  It is not unlike reading history – I am already aware of the choices that were made, just as some future historian may read an account of our times and become aware of our choices. But none of this awareness or knowledge alters the freedom I experience in my “present” to make that choice.

The question then becomes, as the skeptic asked, why did God nonetheless create us? I don’t think this question can ever be answered, other than by stating a tautology. God created us because he thought creating us was better in some sense than not creating us. Understanding why a particular choice is “better” than a competing choice requires an understanding of what the standard is by which these things are being measured. My suspicion is that God viewed the ability for some to freely enter relationship with him as a good sufficient to overcome the negatives of torment for those who use their free will to reject him.

While the skeptic may prefer “non existence” to hell, this choice is not up to him. The choice as to ultimate dispositions lies with the one who created. What is implicated, I concede, is the question of fairness. Creating sentient beings with the sole purpose of inflicting torment upon them is cruel.  This, in essence, is what the skeptic is contending. But this conclusion fails to consider that the opportunity for salvation is open to all. Christ came to save all men, not just some. But that salvation is not forced upon us. Indeed, having made the decision to create men and give them free will, allowing no one to rebel – to choose separation from God – would prove that he had not given us free will after all.

And this leads to the final consideration: what then is the nature of the punishment that God has in store for those who rebel? Is it some form of eternal torture, with God relishing the pain he is inflicting? If so, then the skeptic is right in labeling this as evil. But there is an alternative, one that once again requires a consideration of the nature of time. God is an eternal being. He has no end. And if he indeed created us to be eternal as well, then what happens to our souls when we depart this life goes on without end as well. Christianity teaches that God is the source of all goodness, all light, all that is positive. Let’s say God intends the least response possible as a consequence to those who maintain their rebellion against him. What would that be? Would it not simply be separation from him? The same kind thing we do, by way of locking our doors or obtaining a restraining order, against someone with whom we wish to have no contact?

And what does such separation look like? To spend eternity knowing that the source of all life and all goodness is there, but now – and forever more – unattainable? Consider the implications of that for a moment, and you will begin to get a glimpse of what eternal torment derives from.

God was not evil in creating us for union with him. He gave us free will and will hold us accountable for our choices. We may not like the alternatives, but the solution to our “problem” – assenting to God’s providence and placing our trust in Jesus – is available to all of us.

Posted by Al Serrato

“The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity.”

—Antony Flew— 

INTRODUCTION

The truth of Christianity stands or falls on the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. As Paul himself said, “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.”[1] Here the Apostle provides an objective criterion by which to judge the legitimacy of the Christian worldview. Show that Christ has not been raised from the dead and you will have successfully proven Christianity false. Conversely, if Jesus did rise from the dead then His life and teachings are vindicated. The Christian faith, as it turns out, is falsifiable. It is the only religion which bases its faith on an empirically verifiable event.[2]

Christ Himself testified that His resurrection is the sign given to the world as evidence for His extraordinary claims: “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”[3] Furthermore, the resurrection was the central message proclaimed by the early church as most clearly demonstrated in the book of Acts.[4] Therefore, it is entirely appropriate that an objective examination of Christianity focus on the most pivotal historical event of the faith: the Resurrection.

THE MINIMAL FACTS APPROACH

The approach I will take in this paper is commonly referred to as the “minimal facts approach.” This method “considers only those data that are so strongly attested historically that they are granted by nearly every scholar who studies the subject, even the rather skeptical ones.”[5] It should be noted this approach does not assume the inerrancy or divine inspiration of any New Testament document. Rather it merely holds these writings to be historical documents penned during the first century AD.[6]

Though as many as 12 minimal facts surrounding the death and resurrection of Christ may be examined,[7] the brevity of this paper limits our examination to four: the death of Jesus by crucifixion, the empty tomb,[8] the post-resurrection appearances, and the origin of the Christian faith. I contend that the best explanation for these minimal facts is that Jesus was raised bodily from the grave.

Finally, if these facts “can be established and no plausible natural explanation can account for them as well as the resurrection hypothesis, then one is justified in inferring Jesus’ resurrection as the most plausible explanation of the data.”[9]

A MATTER OF HISTORY

Before looking at the facts surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ it is important to identify a set of objective criteria by which the validity of historical events may be judged. In other words, what criteria may be used to establish the occurrence of an event with reasonable historical certainty? New Testament scholars Gary Habermas and Michael Licona list the following five criteria noting that “a historian who is able to apply one or more of the following principles to a text can conclude with much greater confidence whether a certain event occurred.”[10]

1. Historical claims are strong when supported by multiple, independent sources.
2. Historical claims which are also attested to by enemies are more likely to be authentic since enemies are unsympathetic, and often hostile, witnesses.
3. Historical claims which include embarrassing admissions reflect honest reporting rather than creative storytelling.
4. Historical claims are strong when supported by eyewitness testimony.
5. Historical claims which are supported by early testimony are more reliable and less likely to be the result of legendary development.[11]

Therefore, when inquiring into a historical event “the historian combs through the data, considers all the possibilities, and seeks to determine which scenario best explains the data.”[12]

Some skeptics argue that the resurrection of Jesus cannot be investigated historically. But this is mistaken. The facts surrounding the resurrection are of a historical nature and available for anyone to examine. Consequently, “the meaning of the resurrection is a theological matter, but the fact of the resurrection is a historical matter.”[13] Thus either the bodily resurrection of Jesus actually occurred in history or it did not. Either the resurrection is the best explanation for the known historical data or it is not. Regardless, what we cannot do is simply dismiss it as “supernatural” or “miraculous” in an attempt to remove it from the pool of live options a priori. Moreover, we need to be careful not to confuse “the evidence for the resurrection with the best explanation of the evidence. The resurrection of Jesus is a miraculous explanation of the evidence. But the evidence itself is not miraculous. None of these four facts is any way supernatural or inaccessible to the historian.”[14] So although the resurrection may be classified as a “miraculous event,” it is a historical event nonetheless and should be investigated as such. John Warwick Montgomery provides helpful insight:

The only way we can know whether an event can occur is to see whether in fact it has occurred. The problem of “miracles,” then, must be solved in the realm of historical investigation, not in the realm of philosophical speculation. And note that a historian, in facing an alleged “miracle,” is really facing nothing new. All historical events are unique, and the test of their factual character can be only the accepted documentary approach that we have followed here. No historian has the right to a closed system of natural causation….”[15]

Therefore, whether or not Jesus rose from the dead is really quite straightforward: “If Jesus was dead at point A, and alive again at point B, then resurrection has occurred: res ipsa loquitur.”[16]

FACT #1—THE DEATH OF JESUS BY CRUCIFIXION

Perhaps no other fact surrounding the life of the historical Jesus is better attested to than His death by crucifixion. Not only is the crucifixion account included in every gospel narrative[17] but it is also confirmed by several non-Christian sources. These include the Jewish historian Josephus, the Roman historian Tacitus, the Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata, as well as the Jewish Talmud.[18] Josephus tells us that “Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us…condemned him to the cross…”[19] From a perspective of historiography, Jesus’ crucifixion meets the historical criteria of multiple, independent and early eyewitness sources including enemy attestation. John Dominic Crossan, non-Christian critical scholar and co-founder of the Jesus Seminar, states, “That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be.”[20]

Objection #1: Jesus Didn’t Really Die (The Swoon Theory)

Some skeptics argue that Jesus may have been crucified but He did not actually die. Instead, He lost consciousness (swooned) and merely appeared to be dead only to later be revived in the cool, damp tomb in which He was laid. After reviving He made His way out of the tomb and presented Himself to His disciples as the “resurrected” Messiah. Thus the Christian religion begins. This theory is problematic for several reasons.

First, the Swoon Theory does not take seriously what we know about the horrendous scourging and torture associated with crucifixion. As an expert team from the Journal of the American Medical Association concludes, “Accordingly, interpretations based on the assumption that Jesus did not die on the cross appear to be at odds with modern medical knowledge.”[21]

Second, Jesus faking His own resurrection goes against everything we know about His ethical ministry.

Third, a half-dead, half-resurrected “messiah” could hardly serve as the foundation for the disciples’ belief in the resurrection. German theologian David Friederick Strauss explains:

It is impossible that a being who had stolen half-dead out of the sepulcher, who crept about weak and ill, wanting medical treatment, who required bandaging, strengthening and indulgence, and who still at last yielded to his sufferings, could have given to the disciples the impression that he was a Conqueror of death and the grave, the Prince of Life, an impression which lay at the bottom of their future ministry. Such a resuscitation could only have weakened the impression which He had made upon them in life and in death, at the most could only have given it an elegiac voice, but could by no possibility have changed their sorrow into enthusiasm, have elevated their reverence into worship.[22]

Fourth, this theory is anachronistic in postulating that the disciples, upon seeing Jesus in his half-comatose state, would be led to conclude that He had been raised from the dead within history, in opposition to the Jewish belief in one final resurrection at the end of time. On the contrary, seeing Him again would lead them to conclude He didn’t die![23]

Fifth, Roman soldiers were professional executioners and everything we know about the torture and crucifixion of Jesus confirms His death, making this theory physically impossible.

Sixth, no early evidence or testimony exists claiming Jesus was merely wounded.

Finally, this theory cannot account for the conversion of skeptics like Paul who also testified to having seen the risen Lord and willing suffered and died for his belief in the resurrection.

FACT #2—THE EMPTY TOMB

Something happened to the body of Jesus. Of this we can be sure. Not only was Jesus publicly executed in Jerusalem but “His post-mortem appearances and empty tomb were first publicly proclaimed there.”[24] This would have been impossible with a decaying corpse still in the tomb. “It would have been wholly un-Jewish,” notes William Lane Craig, “not to say foolish, to believe that a man was raised from the dead when his body was still in the grave.”[25] The Jewish authorities had plenty of motivation to produce a body and silence these men who “turned the world upside down,”[26] effectively ending the Christian religion for good. But no one could. The only early opposing theory recorded by the enemies of Christianity is that the disciples stole the body.[27] Ironically, this presupposes the empty tomb.

In addition, all four gospel narratives attest to the burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea and place women as the primary witnesses to the empty tomb.[28] Both of these are highly unlikely to be Christian inventions.

First, with regard to Joseph of Arimathea, Biblical scholar James G. D. Dunn explains that he

is a very plausible historical character: he is attested in all four Gospels… and in the Gospel of Peter…; when the tendency of the tradition was to shift blame to the Jewish council, the creation ex nihilo of a sympathizer from among their number would be surprising; and ‘Arimathea, ‘a town very difficult to identify and reminiscent of no scriptural symbolism, makes a thesis of invention even more implausible.’[29]

Atheist Jeffery Lowder agrees that “the burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea has a high final probability.”[30]

Second, just as unlikely to be invented is the report of women followers discovering the empty tomb, especially when considering the low social status of women in both Jewish and Roman cultures and their inability to testify as legal witnesses.[31] If the empty tomb account were a fabricated story intended to persuade skeptics it would have been better served by including male disciples as the primary witnesses. In other words, both the burial and empty tomb accounts demonstrate a ring of authenticity which lends credibility to the gospel narratives.

As with the crucifixion, the account of the empty tomb meets the historical criteria of multiple, independent and early eyewitness sources,[32] including implicit enemy attestation as well as the principle of embarrassment. In addition, the reports of the burial and empty tomb are simple and lack theological or legendary development.

Finally, there is no competing burial story in existence. Historian and skeptic Michael Grant concedes that “the historian… cannot justifiably deny the empty tomb” since applied historical criteria shows “the evidence is firm and plausible enough to necessitate the conclusion that the tomb was indeed found empty.”[33]

Objection #2: The Disciples Stole the Body (The Fraud or Conspiracy Theory)

As mentioned above, the earliest recorded polemic against the empty tomb is the charge by Jewish authorities that the disciples stole the body. This is commonly referred to as the Fraud or Conspiracy Theory. This scenario posits that Jesus’ followers stole the body away unbeknownst to anyone and lied about the resurrection appearances, pulling off what has thus far been the greatest hoax in human history. There are several problems with this view.

First, this theory does not explain well the simplicity of the resurrection narratives nor why the disciples would invent women as the primary witnesses to the empty tomb.[34] This is hardly the way one gets a conspiracy theory off the ground.

Second, this also doesn’t explain why the disciples would perpetuate a story that they stole they body (Matt. 28:11-15) if in fact they stole the body! Propagating an explanation which incriminates oneself is again at odds with a conspiracy theory.

Third, as will be discussed below, this theory does not account for the fact that the disciples of Jesus had genuine experiences in which they believed they saw the risen Christ. So convinced were these men that their lives were transformed into committed followers willing to suffer and die for their belief. Liars make poor martyrs.

Fourth, this theory runs opposite to everything we know about the disciples. As J. N. D. Anderson states, “This would run totally contrary to all we know of them: their ethical teaching, the quality of their lives, their steadfastness in suffering and persecution. Nor would it begin to explain their dramatic transformation from dejected and dispirited escapists into witnesses whom no opposition could muzzle.”[35]

Fifth, this theory is completely anachronistic. There was no expectation by first century Jews of a suffering-servant Messiah who would be shamefully executed by Gentiles as a criminal only to rise again bodily before the final resurrection at the end of time: “As Wright nicely puts it, if your favorite Messiah got himself crucified, then you either went home or else you got yourself a new Messiah. But the idea of stealing Jesus’ corpse and saying that God had raised him from the dead is hardly one that would have entered the minds of the disciples.”[36]  

Finally, this theory cannot account for the conversion of skeptics like Paul who also testified to having seen the risen Lord and willing suffered and died for his belief in the resurrection.

FACT #3—THE POST-RESURRECTION APPEARANCES

In 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 Paul recounts what biblical scholars recognize as an early Christian creed dating to within a few years of the crucifixion. Notice the creedal nature and repetitive structure of this passage when broken down in the following form:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, in which also you stand,

that Christ died for our sins

according to the Scriptures,

and

that He was buried,

and

that He was raised on the third day

                        according to the Scriptures,

and

that He appeared to Cephas,

then to the twelve.

After

that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time,

most of whom remain until now,

but some have fallen asleep;

then He appeared to James,

then to all the apostles;

and last of all, as to one untimely born,

He appeared to me also.[37] 

Included in this creed are three of our minimal facts: the death of Jesus, the empty tomb, and the post-resurrection appearances. Furthermore, our fourth minimal fact (the origin of Christianity) is easily explained given the first thee facts. Paul not only mentions the multiple post-resurrection appearances but includes himself as having seen the risen Lord. Several indicators in the text confirm this to be an early Christian creed.

First, as shown above, the passage uses stylized wording and parallel structure common to creedal formulas.

Second, the words “delivered” and “received” are technical terms indicating a rabbinic heritage is in view.

Third, the phrases “He was raised,” “third day,” and “the twelve” are unusual Pauline terms making this unlikely to have originated with Paul himself.

Fourth, the Aramaic term “Cephas” is used for Peter indicating an extremely early origin.[38] New Testament scholar and skeptic Gerd Lüdemann assigns this passage a very early date stating, “the elements in the tradition are to be dated to the first two years after the crucifixion of Jesus…not later than three years…the formation of the appearance traditions mentioned in 1 Cor. 15:3-8 falls into the time between 30 and 33 C.E.”[39]

The early date of this creed rules out the possibility of myth or legendary development as a plausible explanation and demonstrates that the disciples began proclaiming Jesus’ death, resurrection, and post-resurrection appearances very early. Christian philosopher and theologian J. P. Moreland elaborates:

There was simply not enough time for a great deal of myth and legend to accrue and distort the historical facts in any significant way. In this regard, A. N. Sherwin-White, a scholar of ancient Roman and Greek history at Oxford, has studied the rate at which legend accumulated in the ancient world, using the writings of Herodotus as a test case. He argues that even a span of two generations is not sufficient for legend to wipe out a solid core of historical facts. The picture of Jesus in the New Testament was established well within that length of time.[40]

Again Lüdemann acknowledges, “It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’ death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.”[41] There is no dispute among scholars that the disciples experienced something.

But there’s more. The disciples not only proclaimed that Jesus was raised but they sincerely believed the resurrection occurred as demonstrated by their transformed lives. Eleven early sources testify to the willingness of the apostles to suffer and die for their belief in the resurrection.[42] For example, we know extra-Biblically that Jesus’ brother James was stoned to death by the Sanhedrin and that the apostle Paul was beheaded in Rome under Nero.[43] Many people will die for what they believe to be true but no one willingly suffers and dies for what they know to be false. Again, liars make poor martyrs. This important point should not be confused by an appeal to modern-day martyrs who willingly die for their religious beliefs. Making this comparison is a false analogy: “Modern martyrs act solely out of their trust in beliefs that others have taught them. The apostles died for holding to their own testimony that they had personally seen the risen Jesus. Contemporary martyrs die for what they believe to be true. The disciples of Jesus died for what they knew to be either true or false.”[44]

As with the crucifixion and empty tomb, the post-resurrection appearances meet the historical criteria of multiple, independent and early eyewitness sources, as well as the testimony of a former enemy of Christianity: Saul of Tarsus. Nine early and independent sources testify to the disciples’ proclamation that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to them.[45] To list just one example of this, the appearance “to the twelve” mentioned by Paul above is also attested to in Luke 24:36-42 and John 20:19-20. “The evidence,” says William Lane Craig, “makes it certain that on separate occasions different individuals and groups had experiences of seeing Jesus alive from the dead. This conclusion is virtually indisputable—and therefore undisputed.”[46]

Objection #3: The Disciples Experienced Hallucinations (The Hallucination Theory)

The most popular theory offered by skeptics to explain away the post-resurrection appearances is that the disciples experienced hallucinations. This is the position taken by Gerd Lüdemann (quoted above) among others. However, appealing to hallucinations as an explanation simply won’t work for the following reasons.

First, the testimony of Paul along with the Gospel writers is that the appearances of Jesus were physical, bodily appearances.[47] In fact, this is the unanimous consent of the Gospel narratives. This is an important point because if “none of the appearances was originally a physical, bodily appearance, then it is very strange that we have a completely unanimous testimony in the Gospels that all of them were physical, with no trace of the supposed original, non-physical appearances.”[48]

Second, hallucinations are private experiences (as opposed to group experiences). A group of people “may be in the frame of mind to hallucinate, but each experiences hallucinations on an individual basis. Nor will they experience the same hallucination. Hallucinations are like dreams in this way.”[49] Therefore, hallucinations cannot explain the group appearances attested to in 1 Cor. 15, the Gospel narratives, and the book of Acts.[50]

Third, ironically, the Hallucination Theory cannot explain the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection! Just like in today’s modern world, “for someone in the ancient world, visions of the deceased are not evidence that the person is alive, but evidence that he is dead!”[51] This is a crucial argument to grasp:

Hallucinations, as projections of the mind, can contain nothing new. Therefore, given the current Jewish beliefs about life after death, the disciples, were they to project hallucinations of Jesus, would have seen Jesus in heaven or in Abraham’s bosom, where the souls of the righteous dead were believed to abide until the resurrection. And such visions would not have caused belief in Jesus’ resurrection.[52]

In other words, a hallucination of the resurrected Jesus presupposes the proper frame of mind which the disciples simply did not possess.

Finally, hallucinations cannot explain such facts as the empty tomb, the conversions of skeptics like Paul, nor the multiple and varied resurrection appearances which defy a purely psychological, naturalistic explanation.[53] “To be perfectly candid,” concludes Craig, “the only grounds for denying the physical, corporeal nature of the postmortem appearances of Jesus is philosophical, not historical.”[54]

FACT #4—THE ORIGIN OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

No scholar denies the fact that the Christian religion exploded out of first century Israel. Within one generation of the death of Christ this movement known as “the Way” had spread to Europe, Africa, and Asia. Christianity is an effect that needs an adequate cause and explanation. Where exactly did the Christian faith come from and what best explains its origin?

The most obvious answer to this question is that the disciples truly saw the resurrected Christ. Only an event of this magnitude could turn scared, scattered, and skeptical disciples, with no prior concept and expectation of a crucified and risen Messiah, into courageous proclaimers of the gospel willing to suffer and die for their belief that Jesus rose bodily from the grave. This is what Peter boldly declared: “This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses… Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified.”[55] The origin of the Christian faith is best explained by the disciples’ sincere belief that God raised Jesus from the dead.

Anyone who denies the resurrection itself as the explanation for the origin of Christianity must posit some other explanation. Only three possibilities seem to exist. If the resurrection did not occur, then Christianity was either the result of Christian, Jewish, or pagan influences.[56] Obviously the disciples could not succumb to Christian influences since Christianity was not yet in existence. But just as unlikely is the idea that the disciples’ belief in the resurrection originated from Jewish influences. The Jewish conception of the resurrection was one final, general resurrection of all mankind (or all the righteous) occurring after the end of the world. Nowhere in Jewish thought do we find the idea of a single individual resurrecting within history never to die again.[57]

Objection #4: Christianity Borrowed From Pagan Religions (The Copycat Theory)

Perhaps then Christianity finds its origin in paganism. Popular internet movies such as Zeitgeist have made ubiquitous the belief that there really is nothing unique about the Christian Savior. Jesus is simply a conglomeration of past dying and rising “messiahs” repackaged for a first-century audience whose zealousness eventually grew into the Christian religion we know today. Despite the pervasiveness of this belief it suffers from numerous problems.

First, pagan mythology is the wrong interpretive context considering that “Jesus and his disciples were first-century Palestinian Jews, and it is against that background that they must be understood.”[58]

Second, the Jews were familiar with seasonal deities (Ezek. 37:1-14) and found them detestable, making it extremely improbable that they would borrow mythology from them. This is why no trace of pagan cults celebrating dying and rising gods can be found in first-century Palestine.[59]

Third, the earliest account of a dying and rising god that somewhat parallels Jesus’ resurrection appears at least 100 years later. The historical evidence for these myths is non-existent and the accounts are easily explained by naturalistic theories.[60]

Fourth, the Copycat Theory begs the question. It assumes the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection are false (the very thing it is intending to prove) and then attempts to explain how these accounts originated by appealing to supposed parallels within pagan mythology. But first it must be shown that the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection are false! In other words, even if it could be shown that parallels exist, it does not follow that the resurrection of Jesus is not a historical event. The evidence for Jesus’ resurrection must be judged on its own merit because “the claims of resurrections in other religions do not explain the evidence that exists for Jesus’ resurrection.”[61]

Finally, to put to rest this outdated and unsubstantiated theory, the late Dr. Ronald Nash summarizes seven important points that completely undermine the idea that Christianity derived its doctrine from the pagan mystery religions:

1.      Arguments offered to “prove” a Christian dependence on the mysteries illustrate the logical fallacy of false cause… Coincidence does not prove causal connection. Nor does similarity prove dependence.

2.      Many alleged similarities between Christianity and the mysteries are either greatly exaggerated or fabricated. Scholars often describe pagan rituals in language they borrow from Christianity…

3.      The chronology is all wrong. Almost all of our sources of information about the pagan religions alleged to have influenced early Christianity are dated very late. We frequently find writers quoting from documents written 300 years later than Paul in efforts to produce ideas that allegedly influenced Paul. We must reject the assumption that just because a cult had a certain belief or practice in the third or fourth century after Christ, it therefore had the same belief or practice in the first century.

4.      Paul would never have consciously borrowed from the pagan religions…

5.      Early Christianity was an exclusivistic faith…

6.      Unlike the mysteries, the religion of Paul was grounded on events that actually happened in history…

7.      What few parallels may still remain reflect a Christian influence on the pagan systems…[62]

Nash offers this final word regarding the copycat theory: “Liberal efforts to undermine the uniqueness of the Christian revelation via claims of a pagan religious influence collapse quickly once a full account of the information is available. It is clear that the liberal arguments exhibit astoundingly bad scholarship. Indeed, this conclusion may be too generous.”[63] Therefore, it is safe to conclude that “the birth and rapid rise of the Christian Church…remain an unsolved enigma for any historian who refuses to take seriously the only explanation offered by the Church itself.”[64]

CONCLUSION

If Jesus was dead at point A, and alive at point B, we have a resurrection. The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is the best explanation for the known historical data: His death by crucifixion, the empty tomb, the post-resurrection appearances, and the origin of the Christian faith. Furthermore, Jesus’ resurrection fits the context of his life, vindicating His teachings and radical claim to be the unique, divine Son of God. Paul says that Christ “was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead.”[65] Naturalistic explanations (swoon theory, legendary development, fraud, hallucinations) fail to account for all the relevant data and in some cases (copycat theories) are outright false and ahistorical. Conversely, the Resurrection Hypothesis accounts for all of the known facts, has greater explanatory scope and power, is more plausible, and less ad hoc.[66] Only if one is guided by a prior commitment to philosophical naturalism will the conclusion “God raised Jesus from the dead” seem unjustified.

I immediately thought about the all too familiar expression many of us quote as scripture: We are called to be “in” the world but not “of” the world. This notion is consistent with the teaching of the New Testament, even if it isn’t a direct quote:

John 15:19
If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.

John 17:14-16
I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

It seems that Jesus understood the tension we would experience as Christians living in a hostile ideological environment. The authors of the New Testament also encouraged us to continue our relationships with the world around us, but to be careful to live in a way that pleases God, not the culture:

1 John 2:15
Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

1 Corinthians 5:9-10
I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people; I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world.

Romans 12:2
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

James 1:27
Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

So what does it really mean to be “in” the world, but not “of” the world? How do we decide which shows we ought to watch, which environments we ought to avoid or which activities are “out of bounds”? It may be helpful to examine these questions from the perspective of location and information:

“In” the World: It’s Our Point of Location
Paul was right when he said that we would have to leave the world altogether if we wanted to truly separate ourselves from immoral, “worldly” people. That’s not what God is asking us to do. The fact that you might be in a location where your Christian worldview is being challenged is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, God may have placed you there so you can have a positive impact on those who don’t yet know Jesus, or at least learn more about the culture so you can influence it later. So, while my wife and I were located in front of our laptop watching the sitcom, this was not the issue that concerned me.

“Of” the World: It’s Our Source of Information
My concern was simply that the repeated exposure to the worldview expressed in the show was having an impact on my worldview as a Christian. It was starting to change the way I think. That isn’t always the case for me, but there are definitely times when I’ve caught myself repeating some objectionable phrase (or embracing some ungodly concept) simply because I heard (or saw) it repeatedly in some movie, cable show or series of conversations at work. It’s one thing to be located in these environments; it’s another thing to draw from them as a source for information and behavior.

I’m less concerned with my point of location than I am with my source of information. I often place myself in locations where non-Christian cultural worldviews are strong. My career forces me into situations that are challenging and I am still curious and adventurous enough to choose locations that are unfriendly to Christianity. I step away only when I recognize the environment is starting to change the way I think. I back off when I realize my point of location has become my source of information.

J. Warner Wallace is a Cold-Case Detective, a Christian Case Maker at Stand to Reason, and the author of Cold-Case Christianity

Matthew 8:28
When He came to the other side into the country of the Gadarenes, two men who were demon-possessed met Him as they were coming out of the tombs.

Mark 5:1-3
They came to the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gerasenes. When He got out of the boat, immediately a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit met Him, and he had his dwelling among the tombs.

Are the original accounts contradictory? One account has Jesus performing the miracle in Gadarenes, the other in Gerasenes. One account has Jesus healing two demon possessed men, the other only one. There appear to be two separate contradictions in the accounts, along with a number of other details that are unique to each Gospel narrative. Some of the unique features of each account can be easily attributed to the distinct nature of the eyewitnesses. In fact, many of the variations within the accounts are well within the range of differences I would expect from two eyewitnesses who are describing the same event (I’ve written about this on one chapter of my book). But there is still the issue of location and number of demoniacs that seem more difficult to reconcile. Passages such as these provide us with an opportunity to ask two important questions related to eyewitness accounts from the past.

Ask: “Why Does the Account Contain An Alteration?”
Cold-case investigations typically result in a number of reports recording aspects of the same event. These reports are often written over a period of years by different officers. In one of my cases, the original homicide occurred near a Robinson’s department store in our local mall. The initial reports all referred to the store correctly, but a supplemental report written several years after the murder identified the business as a Macy’s department store. While this may have seemed confusing and contradictory, I immediately understood the reason for the apparent contradiction. The Robinson’s store was replaced by Macy’s several years after the murder, and the second generation investigator inadvertently inserted the name of the business that existed in his day, rather than the name of the business that existed at the time of the murder. Luckily, I had many older reports that correctly listed the business, and the jury had no problem recognizing the reason for the variation.

In a similar way, the accounts of the demoniac(s) contain two different descriptions of the location: the country of the Gadarenes and the country of the Gerasenes. Most ancient manuscripts of the Gospel of Matthew contain the reference to “the country of the Gadarenes” and this location makes sense if Gadara was the capital city of the region in the time of Jesus’ ministry (making anyone who lives in the area a “Gadarene”). But why would a later scribe insert the “country of the Gerasenes” into the text? One reasonable explanation may simply be that a later scribe identified the same area near the shore of Gennesaret by referencing the name of a city (Gerasa) that had become more popularly identified with the region in his day (like replacing the Robinson’s with a Macy’s). While the best textual evidence supports the country of the Gadarenes, there is a reasonable explanation for later alterations.

Ask: “Why Does the Account Contain An Accentuation?”
The second aspect of apparent contradiction is the number of demoniacs mentioned by Mark and Matthew. While the variation here may seem irreconcilable, it is a common feature of my cold-case investigations. When I conduct witness interviews, I begin by allowing each witness to recall the event in his or her own words without any guidance from me as an interviewer. These initial unregulated statements invariably raise questions. A witness can be so singularly focused on one aspect of the crime that he or she will use hundreds of words to describe the detail while completely omitting other important features of the crime. When I, as the investigator, ask important “follow-up” questions, witnesses typically adjust their descriptive imbalances.

Mark appears to offer a similar imbalance in his description of the one demoniac he accentuates. While Mark’s versions of Gospel events are typically briefer than the other Gospel authors, this account is actually longer than Matthew’s. Like some of my murder witnesses, Mark is singularly focused on one aspect of the scene. While Matthew describes the two demoniacs more generally, Mark is focused on the one “no one was able to bind” or “subdue”. This particular demoniac was apparently the most verbal, providing details of his own possession, and he was later seen “sitting down, clothed and in his right mind.” Like the unregulated initial statements of some of my homicide witnesses, Mark is so singularly focused on one of the demoniacs that he used hundreds of words to describe the man while completely omitting other important features of the scene. If I had been the first century detective working this case, I would most certainly have asked “follow-up” questions to help Mark address the imbalance in his description of events, including additional information related to the second demoniac he chose to omit.

As a Christian, I recognize the difference between the original “autographs” of scripture and the transmitted “texts” we have today. The original writings were inspired by God and inerrant, and even though the copies we have today might contain a variation (like the difference between Gadarenes and Gerasenes), we have the ability, as good detectives, to accurately determine what the original eyewitnesses truthfully described.

J. Warner Wallace is a Cold-Case Detective, a Christian Case Maker at Stand to Reason, and the author of Cold-Case Christianity

All of us engage in some form of worship, even if we reject the religious connotations of the word. The Merriam-Webster dictionary describes worship as an “extravagant respect or admiration for or devotion to an object of esteem.” All of us worship something, and we seem to agree on how objects of worship should be selected. As John Frame suggests, most of us worship the object or being that redeems us, that justifies our existence. In other words, we worship the object or being that saves us, attributes meaning to our lives, or defines our identity. Sometimes the object of our worship is a job, a hobby, or a person. It’s easy to allow activities or people to become the source of our justification. I’ve certainly allowed myself to find meaning, identity and purpose in my work. There were times when my profession defined me; I justified my existence through the work I did as an investigator. It turns out that whatever you think validates your existence, this is your God. This is the thing (or being) you’ve chosen to worship. Whatever you think “saves” you, gives your life meaning, or foundationally shapes your identity, this is your God.

When I was a non-believer, I rejected the Christian claims related to salvation. I thought, “Hey, even if there is a God, he certainly will judge me based on my personal effort. After all, I’m a good guy.” In other words, I trusted my own efforts; I was my own object of worship. Whatever saves or redeems you, this is your God. Many of my family members are Mormons. They too trust their own efforts to save them in a “works-based” theological system. They too, either willingly or unknowingly, have become their own objects of worship. Whatever saves or redeems you, this is your God. If you’re wondering what you’ve chosen to worship, it’s easy enough to find out. Take a look at your calendar and your bank account. Where do you spend your time and money? Who (or what) do you trust to give your life meaning and purpose? Who (or what) is justifying your existence?

Most of us are idolaters, me included. God alone has the power to save me, to redeem me, to justify me, to give my life purpose and meaning. Yet I often choose to find my salvation in something else. I create idols that demand my attention and worship. I crowd God out of the equation. As a fallen human, I am far more self-possessed and arrogant than I care to admit. I want to choose my objects of worship. I want to create my own meaning. I want to do my own saving. Maybe your experience is similar, if you really think about it honestly. God knows our inclinations in this regard. Perhaps this is why, when providing us with a moral code of conduct, God began with an admonition related to our objects of worship:

“You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them” (Exodus 20:3-5a)

Maybe it’s time for each of us to examine our own life to see what we truly worship. Do we trust our own performance as Christians? Do we spend our time and resources appropriately?  Have we allowed some activity or person to become our object of worship? Have we become our own object of worship? It’s time to return worship to its rightful recipient. The Being that justifies us is still our God.

J. Warner Wallace is a Cold-Case Detective, a Christian Case Maker at Stand to Reason, and the author of Cold-Case Christianity

The serenity of a Sunday morning was broken by the roar of cannon, followed by the bugler playing reveille. After a breakfast of oatmeal and coffee served hot but in metal plates and cups, some of the men attended church services near a copse of trees. That concluded, they soon found themselves marching to the call of fife and drum, parading to a nearby mansion where appropriate honors were rendered to Old Glory. The day’s “battles” would soon begin, but as I felt the familiar stir of emotion as the flag rippled in the breeze, I wondered for the hundredth time what compels a man to sacrifice so much, as did those Civil War soldiers. The preacher had hit on something at the morning service. These men were largely men of faith, a faith they held not just in God, but in their fellow soldiers, their country and the justness of their cause. They were men of patience, as well. Nothing but bullets and disease moved quickly, it seemed, especially for the soldiers of the infantry. We, by contrast, have become a culture of self-centeredness, a community of people tied more by electronic devices than by a personal touch, a group of individuals out for ourselves and our own needs and becoming increasingly self-indulgent as we achieve ever more material comfort.

Later, I heard again the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln: of the “great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.” It is for us, the living – he reminded all – “to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us … that we highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain …that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom….”

Powerful words. Enduing words. But, sadly, words that have been forgotten by so many of our fellow citizens. To far too many, faith in God, and in the rightness of our cause, is seen as something quaint, perhaps comforting, largely irrational and dangerous if held too strongly. To these unbelievers, God is a creation of man, explained away through their “true faith” in science, technology and knowledge. It is these things they worship as, all the while, they push God further and further from the public square. They disdain – and in some cases fear – fervent religious faith, equating all such belief with the radical views of those who commit acts of terror in the name of their god. But their “faith” in science, their conclusion that we are nothing more than molecules in motion, that our thoughts are the byproduct of electrons pulsing along neural pathways, cannot explain so much of what makes life truly valuable – courage in the face of danger, self-sacrifice for a cause that is larger than self, love that is committed and enduring, devotion to a Creator who wants so much more from us, and for us. Science and progress may make for more comfortable living, but if we are not careful, we may find ourselves in a sterile utopia which will, in the end, enslave us as a drug does, encouraging us to fixate  more and more on acquisition and consumption.

Thankfully, the struggles we face today are less brutal than the challenges faced by those who sacrificed so much to preserve the Union. But they are no less momentous. Our battle is not for the preservation of our Union, but for the preservation of our culture. As Christians, we are called to be “salt and light” to a world that is sorely in need of both preservative and guidance. As apologists, we have a role in the front lines of this offensive. While we can’t give people faith, through our readiness to always have an answer for those who question the reason for the hope within us, we can perhaps remove some of the obstacles to closer connection with God. And in so doing, we might begin the “great task remaining before us” of renewing a culture that is in many respects dehumanizing us. We must initiate and encourage the dialogue as to where true freedom lies, not in sexual license or freedom from restrictions, but in an appreciation of duty, a love of honor, and commitment to abandon our self focus and turn instead to the needs of our brothers – in short, in loving God with all our hearts and our neighbor as ourself.

We can also pray – that God will awaken in us the desire to regain what we are losing, and the wisdom to know how to go about this task. Remembering our history may be a start.

Posted by Al Serrato

Ephesians 2:8-9
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.

This concept of grace is missing in Mormonism (as it has been classically described by LDS prophets and Mormon scripture). In fact, many of the Mormon believers we talked with described Christians as people who consistently take advantage of “cheap grace”. One member of the LDS church told us, “Christians say a prayer, get ‘saved’ and then run out and live like hell. They don’t think it’s important to obey the commandments.” At times, in an effort to emphasis the free nature of salvation, many Christians minimize the importance of good works in the Christian life. We sometimes neglect to tell our LDS friends that a grateful life, surrendered in response to what Christ has done for us, does actually result in a life of good works. The passage in Ephesians provides us with an important equation that can help us make this distinction. If you divide this verse in the middle, you’ll find faith and salvation on one side of the verse and works on the other:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith | not by works, so that no one can boast.

This verse in Ephesians provides us with a simple equation that can help us remember a life transformed by the saving grace of God produces good works, even though good works are not what save us:

The Christian equation:
Salvation + Faith = Works

The Non-Christian equation:
Faith + Works = Salvation

The question is not whether someone performs good works, but why someone performs good works. Both Christian and non-Christian believers have a place for good works in their respective equations. Works are not missing from the Christian calculation. But for us, good works are the result of our gratitude for (and recognition of) what God has done. When we realize that our own efforts are utterly impotent, we begin to understand the gift that God has given us. When we understand what God has done for us, we can’t help but be humbled and grateful. A grateful life, ever reflective of the depth of God’s kindness, results in a surrendered response. We can’t help but want to live differently.

When I first understood the gift I had been given, the people I worked with began to notice something had changed. I was still afraid to tell them about my radical conversion, but it was quickly obvious. I was different. I wasn’t full of the same sarcasm and anger. I wasn’t as vulgar. I wasn’t as cynical. If each of my coworkers had been given a calendar, they could have estimated the day of my conversion based on the obvious change in my behavior. Good works appeared in their proper place in my life as a new Christian: On the right side of the Christian equation. They were not the means by which I was saved, but simply the evidence I had gratefully received God’s free gift of salvation.

J. Warner Wallace is a Cold-Case Detective, a Christian Case Maker at Stand to Reason, and the author of Cold-Case Christianity

Jesus is Not Jesus If You Change His Nature

In a similar way, if you were to ask my Mormon friends and family, “Do you trust Jesus as your Savior?” the first thing you’d have to determine is, “To which Jesus are you referring?” In order to answer the second question, you’ll have to once again examine the nature of the Jesus you are trying to identify. The Mormon Jesus can be described in the following way:

Jesus was first “procreated” as a spirit child of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother, then later conceived in an act of physical sexual intercourse between God the Father and Mary. He is the spirit brother of Satan, and is rather common in terms of His nature (in that he is one of many gods who share the same nature). Jesus was once sinful and flawed but earned His salvation through good works, eventually being exalted into godhood (like other obedient Mormons have been and will be). He is not a member of the triune Godhead but is instead a separate god from God the Father.

This description is quite different from the Jesus of Christianity:

Jesus is the uncreated, unique God of the universe, the Second Person of the triune Godhead. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit who supernaturally “overshadowed” Mary (she, therefore, remained a true virgin). Jesus was (and is) eternally perfect and sinless; for this reason, He’s never needed to earn His salvation.

The Mormon Jesus and the Christian Jesus Are Two Different Beings

While Mormons and Christians may refer to Jesus by name, they are clearly describing two different beings. Jesus’ identity is more than His name; it is the collection of His unique characteristics and features. In many ways, I am far more similar to the other Jim Wallace’s in my family than the Mormon Jesus is to the historic, orthodox Jesus of Christianity. When we ask our Mormon friends and family members, “Do you trust Jesus as your Savior?” they will most certainly answer in the affirmative. But the more important question is the second one we’ve been examining: “To which Jesus are you referring?” In answering this second question, it’s quickly apparent we are talking about two different beings. The earliest prophets of Mormonism (Joseph Smith and Brigham Young) understood the differences between the Mormon Jesus and the Christian Christ. Neither Smith nor Young had any interest in being identified as Christians; they rejected Christianity as a corrupt theistic system that needed restoration and saw Mormonism as the true restoration of the faith, including its redefinition of Jesus. While modern Mormons may want to identify themselves as Christians, the Jesus that Mormons trust as their savior is not the same Jesus trusted by Christians. Mormons are not Christians because the Mormon Jesus is not the Christian Christ. That’s why our team is here in Salt Lake City this week, talking about the differences between the Mormonism and Christianity and hoping to introduce Mormons to the Jesus of the Bible.

J. Warner Wallace is a Cold-Case Detective, a Christian Case Maker at Stand to Reason, and the author of Cold-Case Christianity