Israel-MiddleEast

DTTO

SHOWING YOU THE WORLD IN SCRIPTURE

MORE NEWS & INFO
FRONT PAGE
EUROPEAN UNION
ISRAEL -MIDDLE EAST
U.N.-GLOBALIZATION
WARS AND RUMORS
NATURAL DISASTERS
SCIENCE & TECH.
GLOBAL SECURITY
PERSECUTION
WICKEDNESS
FALSE TEACHERS
UNITED RELIGION
THE DECEPTION OF ISLAM
ARTICLES
ENDTIMES
STATEMENT OF FAITH
RESOURCES
VIDEOS
DTTO PROPHECY CHAT
PRAYER REQUESTS
Link22

This page was last updated: August 27, 2009

•Apology #1 – Peter and Paul in Jerusalem and Athens

Two different worldviews and two methods of sharing the gospel

•Apology #2 – Reliability of the Old Testament Canon

Defending the scriptures themselves, Part 1

•Apology #3 – Reliability of the New Testament Canon

Defending the scriptures themselves, Part 2

•Apology #4 – Creation Controversy

Using the world’s view on Creation to point to Christ

•Apology #5 – If God’s so Good, Why is there so much Evil?

The difficult question of evil and God’s sovereignty

•Apology #6 - The Deconstructing of Dawkins

Who’s more of a delusion: God or Dawkins?

•Apology #7 – The Divine Self-Proving Element of the Bible

The Power of Predictive Prophecy in Scripture

•Apology #8 – The Case of “Medicine & Law v God”

Ponderings on the role of Christian ethics in our disciplines

•Apology #9 – Signs & Wonders in Evangelism

The Holy Spirit’s Role in Evangelism Today

•Apology #10 – Divine Election and Evangelism

Motivation for or Distraction from the Great Commission?

•Apology #11 – Why One Way?

Gospel Exclusivity in a Pluralist Post-Modern Culture

DAILY APOLOGIES:

FOR BEGINNERS

A collection of introductory essays exploring popular issues of Christian Evangelical Apologetics

Written by David J. Nixon

(Dedicated to Kirsty J. McDonald)

www.revelationtoday.blogspot.com/

Apology #1 – Peter and Paul in Jerusalem and Athens

Two different worldviews and two methods of sharing the gospel

The issue of worldviews is crucial to understand when we come to speak to people about the gospel. We have to both recognise that we have one worldview and sometimes need to convince the other person that they too have one. A worldview determines how we look at the world around us and is based upon our own moral intuitions, ethical views, cultural upbringing and belief systems. While an atheist scientist like Richard Dawkins may claim that science is entirely objective and free from such things as worldview, he himself is plagued by the worldview of naturalism. He believes that all there is to the world is the product of blind naturally driven forces which have never had any supernatural input. He admits this when he says that he will never believe in God and finds the idea preposterous! His worldview rejects any possibility of God! However, as Christians we have a worldview that is very much requiring God to be at the centre, for we look up to Him as Creator God and Father God. We let Him tell us how we should see and use His creation, for He rightly knows how it should work!

When you have people of different worldviews you cannot just speak to them in the same way. While God’s Word is forever unchanging, we need to adapt our approach to sharing it depending on who we are speaking to. I think we see a clear demonstration of this when we contrast the approach of Peter on Pentecost to the Jews in Jerusalem (Acts 2), and Paul in Athens to the Greek culture (Acts 17).

Peter is speaking to a crowd who have been brought up in the scriptures all their lives, have visited the Temple with their families and friends, been to all the Feasts, who know the Bible stories better than either of us today. This is the people who have been waiting a very long time for the coming Messiah. He immediately goes to the scriptures and begins quoting the prophet Joel when he’s talking about the end of the age and how God would manifest Himself in those days. He then goes on to preach about Jesus fulfilling these things and tells them straight out that Jesus died and rose again as was prophesied by King David. His whole message is about showing the Jews that Jesus has fulfilled the scriptures about the Messiah and has done something that absolutely verifies His claims: He rose again according to the scriptures, which surprisingly doesn’t ever happen! He then puts out the call: “repent and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (v38). Peter is in a culture where the Bible is known and respected. People know the story of the Bible and the basic concepts of what sin is, who God is and are expecting a particular character to come along. Peter’s job is just connecting the dots almost and then calling them to respond. This is not our culture today – maybe it was in our parents’ days and certainly in our grandparents’ days, but not us today!

However, we see a very different picture when Paul comes to speak to the Greeks in Athens. He’s called before the Areopagus council to tell them about his new teaching about the resurrection of the dead, but rather than take this opportunity to tell them all about how Jesus died for their sins and rose again from the dead, proving He was the Son of God according to the scriptures, he does something else. Paul has to introduce the people to the concept of the ex nihilo Creator God. The Athenians had a pantheon of different gods (indeed it’s said it was easier to find an idol than a person in the city at this time) which were eternally existent with the eternal universe – to the extent that just to be sure they were sorted put up an altar to the unknown god, just in case they had forgotten one! Paul starts with creation (v.26) and God’s attributes of being beyond comprehension and confinement (v.24). He makes clear God’s providential plan for everyone’s lives and His desire to have relationship with them (v.27) as well as the fact that He is intimately involved in holding us together so we exist at all (v.28). Only then does He tell them that God commands that all men everywhere repent or be judged at the last resurrection (v.31). What is most surprising here is that this summary (for I think that Paul probably preached a lot more than this) does not talk about Jesus at all nor about sin. Paul is trying to give the people an idea of who God is and what His overall work throughout history has been, indeed how that work then relates to these very people through God’s creating them, His plan for them, His sustaining them, His desiring relationship with them, and His ultimate command that they repent or be condemned to a lost eternity after the resurrection.

I guess that you could argue that Paul didn’t do a very good job in preaching this message as it’s missing so much, but I would argue rather that Paul is trying to engage with a culture that very much resembles ours. We are in a post-Christian age where people are Biblically-illiterate and plagued by gross misunderstandings about Jesus and God’s Word. As pluralists we are encouraged to accept that any idol can lead to God and fulfilment, even atheism and just hedonistic pursuit of our own pleasures. When we engage with our culture we need to start of by talking about which God we’re talking about: the real Creator God (which we can discuss science of origins to point towards Him) who formed each of us in all the complexity we are in (the scientific implications of intelligent design) and His desire to have relationship with us. We can talk about Christ then in terms of the one spoken of in advance in the scriptures, and who testified of Himself and ultimately proved His claims by the resurrection. If people can accept the historical implications of the reliability of the resurrection then they must take seriously all that Jesus said: “repent and believe in me to be saved”.

There are many tools and variations along this road and there can never be any formula for evangelism. If God doesn’t live in temples made by human hands, nor can He live in formulas worked out in human heads. Yet I think that if we can walk away with the general principle that we have to approach sharing the gospel by first building up the foundations of God from Creation upwards then we will be far more effective in telling people in our culture about Christ. Peter’s talk about Jesus as Messiah would have meant nothing had the people not understood all the foundational background because it would have nothing to stand on. It is no different today for us!

“To God be the glory, great things He has done.

So loved He the world that He gave us His Son.

Who yielded His life an atonement for sin,

And opened the life gates that all may go in.

Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord,

Let the Earth hear His voice.

Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord,

Let the people rejoice.

O come to the Father, through Jesus the Son

And we’ll give Him the glory

Great things He has done”

Apology #2 – Reliability of the Old Testament Canon

Defending the scriptures themselves, Part 1

The Old Testament is a fantastic collection of writings over a period of almost 1200 years which chronicle several thousand years of human history from Creation through until immediately before Alexander the Great’s conquest of Israel in the 4th century BC, and indeed on into the distant future with incredible predictions about God’s ultimate plan for the world. When dealing with such ancient documents, especially ones which purport to contain important information about a God who claims our absolute allegiance and lives, it is important that we have a confidence in their reliability! We do not want to blindly put our faith in a fairy tale, although Richard Dawkins would claim we do anyway whatever I say here today!

There’s a fair bit of debate about how much of Genesis was written originally by Moses and how much was passed down to him, for example it is suggested by some (including Dr Morris) that a lot of the ancient history and genealogies were passed down through the form of tablets which Moses then collated into the first book of the Pentateuch. Regardless, some things had to be revealed divinely e.g. creation, because there was only God around to be able to observe how the universe came into being, since He was the ex nihilo author of the universe!

We know that Moses cannot have authored all of the Pentateuch either since at the end of Deuteronomy his death is written about, so it is widely presumed that Joshua took over the writing of scripture at this time. From that point onwards the scriptures were written down by God’s prophets. Much of the history of Israel was written down by the prophet Samuel and a succession of other holders of the prophetic office. The wisdom and poetry portions of scripture were written down by David and his son Solomon, although in Psalms there were contributions that must have been passed down from Moses’ day. The important theme though is that God had certain chosen people write down the scriptures! We then move through the last portion of the OT where the prophets are writing down their warnings of God’s judgement against a rebellious and religiously-prostituted Israel.

It is around the time of Esther, which corresponds with the time of the prophet Malachi writing the last book of the OT that suddenly things change. Suddenly no more prophets are appearing and giving the people God’s message to them. They are back in the land under the rule of the Medo-Persian Empire and have been allowed to rebuild the Temple under Zerubbabel and Ezra and then Nehemiah has reconstructed the walls around Jerusalem. Yet God appears to have withdrawn from His people! These silent years last up until the priest Zechariah goes into the Temple where an angel of the Lord appears to tell him of the imminent conception of John the Baptist, and later the appearance of the same angel to Mary to announce the birth of the Messiah through her.

The Jewish people continue to write down their history, particularly during the time of their rebellion against the Greeks who invade and defile the Temple under the leadership of Antiochus Epiphanies IV, but crucially they recognise in their own historians that these writings are not on par with the earlier scriptures because they have not come through God’s prophets. The search for a prophet goes on but none can be found anywhere and so there is a greater reliance upon the religious authorities in the Sanhedrin Council (made up primarily of the Pharisees and Sadducees). These writings are referred to as the Apocryphal and while they have some historical significance, they do contradict other scriptures and introduce potentially heretical teachings. The Jewish people never recognised these books as being equal with the scriptures or God breathed as they did not come through God’s representative, the line of prophets. Indeed crucially while Jesus quotes and makes reference to much of the OT, He never once makes even a passing reference to the Apocryphal! The reason for the Roman Church accepting the Apocryphal into the canon was made late in 1645 at the Council of Trent, which was a counter-reformation gathering seeking to justify the Catholic church’s doctrine against the Lutheran attacks. The Apocryphal was the best they could find to justify some of their beliefs, so they made it officially part of their Bible canon as a matter of convenience!

Those documents that the Jews did consider as scriptures, which now make up our OT, were maintained scrupulously. As they copied the manuscripts if the smallest character in the Hebrew language, a jot, was out of place or they had just put in a space somewhere accidentally (easy to do when your language does not have vowels!) then it had to be burned. They would not allow any errors, no matter how small, to creep into the original texts. This mammoth preservation effort can make us very confident that the scriptures were not meddled with and changed. We have an overwhelming number of original and copied manuscripts from the OT – more from it than can be found for any other ancient writing by several thousand fold! There had previously been implications that Christians had meddled with the OT text to make it fit with their teachings on Christ’s deity, however, the 1950’s discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls validated that the text that we have today was the same as the one in use around the time of Esther and Malachi when God’s revelation ceased. Indeed important sections which relate to Christ have been found (including the great passage which points directly to the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross in Isaiah 53), which show that He was not invented retrospectively as some Messianic figure and He did in fact fulfil predictive prophecies.

Speaking of prophecies, the OT has a very high proportion of prophecies. It begins with the prophecy that God would send the Messiah to save mankind, there are predictions of the Egyptian bondage, of the unfaithfulness of Israel and God’s judgement of her for it but His promise at the same time that He would always bring them back into the land. The specific prophecies regarding historical events are unprecedented also. While after Malachi God falls silent, still His prophecies to Daniel, Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Isaiah are being fulfilled. In Daniel alone the military and political history of the entire region is predicted in incredible detail, all the way up until the birth of Christ – which itself is predicted by timing, place and events. While some try to disprove these things by suggesting that the book of Daniel was made up long after these events to just appear to be predictive prophecy, those who have studied the texts have found that the language used only properly works if Daniel was writing at the time he alleges and other factors allow us to be confident in the incredible predictive power of the OT. If God truly had revealed Himself in a book and can see the whole of history, then we would expect Him to be able to predict the future for us, and indeed He does over and over and over again throughout the OT. More than anything else this is compelling evidence to me for the reliability of scripture. What is more, the Jewish rabbis in the past have banned any one trying to calculate the time of the coming of the Messiah through using the historical data alongside the 70 weeks prophecy given to the prophet Daniel – why? Because you wind up exactly with the birth and death of Christ, arguably to the very week of the crucifixion. The Jewish authorities did not like the implications of this, understandably so pronounced a curse over anyone who attempted to do the calculation!

This is just a short and shallow overview of what is a very complex and encouraging discipline! I hope that it helps you to understand more about the OT and gives you basis for defending your confidence in it. Next time we turn to look at the New Testament and things said about it!

“Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son,

Endless is the victory, thou o’er death has won.

Angels in bright raiment rolled the stone away,

Left the empty grave cloth where thy body lay.”

Apology #3 – Reliability of the New Testament Canon

Defending the scriptures themselves, Part 2

The term “canon” arises from the deliberations of early church into what should be recognised as authentic scripture. In the Old Testament the primary standard (“canon”) for writings was that they were recognised as divinely inspired by the Jews and that they came through the prophetic office. In the New Testament the determination was based on working out the apostolic authorship of the writings. Why was such importance placed on the writings of the apostles? Well we need to look at the Lord Jesus’ words as He speaks to the apostles before the crucifixion: “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26). So it is to the apostles that Jesus entrusts the continuing revelation of scripture and the recording of the gospels by the enabling power of the Holy Spirit. Who are the apostles? It’s an important question and not nearly as straightforward as you might think whenever we start to consider whether there is still an office of Apostle in the Church today, but that’s for another discussion! Simply the apostles are those who saw Christ for their own eyes and received His commissioning.

There are numerous passages where Paul and some of the other apostolic others, such as John, put a lot of weight into what they are saying and indeed draw a distinction between them and false teachers by the fact that the false teachers had departed from what they (the apostles) had said. Indeed at the end of Paul’s life as he is imprisoned and imminently facing death at Nero’s hands he writes to his son in Christ Timothy to just exhort him one last time: “By the Holy Spirit who dwells with us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you” (2 Timothy 1:14). Paul knew there was a risk of error entering into the church and so the best way to guard against that was to encourage us to stick to what we were originally given through him and the other apostolic writers! No matter what fancy interpretations and presentations came along, the key was to keep on coming back to testing against scripture. Even the spiritual gifts which were revelatory in nature (for example words of knowledge, prophecy, or even interpreted tongues) were subject to testing by the scriptures (1 Thessalonians 5:20-21). I am really moved as I read Paul writing to Timothy and his words of warning because we can look back with the benefit of hindsight to see how far the church has strayed from this teaching throughout its history. Here is Paul facing his death and all he wants is for Christ’s message to be preserved and the church to remain faithful to the truth – what a man of God and what an inspiration he is to me as I seek to teach in the church.

Now of course not all the books of the New Testament were written by apostles. Mark was written by a close follower of the apostle Peter who collated together all his teachings to give the earliest account of the gospel message that we have – produced likely within 20-30 years of the resurrection. This fact of early authorship is very significant because it means that there was not enough time for myth and exaggeration to creep into the story. Indeed those who were eyewitnesses of the events would have still been alive at the time and so able to criticise the text if it contained any fabrications of details. Luke was written by the close friend and physician of the apostle Paul and very accurately records the teaching, eyewitness accounts and historical facts around both the gospel and Paul’s missionary journeys. Indeed Luke is writing to a friend to just confirm for him that what he has heard is true about Jesus, and encourages his friend to look into what other people are also saying for further confirmation. Luke is one of the best early historians and he keeps being proved right as more archaeological discoveries are made today.

James was most likely the half brother of our Lord Jesus – half brother because Jesus had no earthly father – and while he was not a believer in Jesus earlier on in the gospels, he was recognised as one of the prominent leaders of the Jerusalem church at the time so his book was kept. It is alleged that Luther did not believe it should be in the canon at all – this is because it could be read to emphasise works over salvation through faith and grace alone. However, James is trying to emphasise that becoming a Christian results in a changed life and that should be reflected in our living, so echoes Jesus’ words about us needing to produce good fruit, and Paul in Ephesians 2 when he talks about us being saved to do good works that Christ has already prepared in advance for us to walk in. Only the Lord knows who wrote the book of Hebrews (my personal take is that it was not Paul as it does not read anything like Paul!) and I do not know who Jude was (so won’t try to sound clever). But as you see the apostolic credentials of any writing were crucial to be embraced in the canon.

There are often questions about so called “missing” books of the NT and I would like to address this idea. Dan Brown, author of “The Da Vinci Code”, subscribes to the belief that the Council of Nicea in 325AD conspired to bring invent the Messianic deity of Christ and that the church deliberately edited the Bible by leaving out books from the NT. Now we’ve already seen that the OT prophetic writings concerning Christ are an incredible testimony regarding His deity. But what we must also recognise is that Nicea was called to resolve major doctrinal debate in the Church on some complex issues. The outcome was the Nicean Creed, which you can hear Third Day sing through and that is where the concept of the Trinity was formally embraced as official church doctrine to counter a lot of dangerous heresies going around at the time. The Church already believed in the Trinity, but this was a formalising of the belief against the threat of unbiblical teaching and error!

Likewise later when the NT canon was officially recognised at a later church Council the 27 books of the NT were already recognised by the early church and we have writings as far back as the start of 100AD which list our books as being the definitive accepted writings. What is more, the writings of the early church fathers in the first 200 years of the church up until these Councils have been preserved in many cases and so we are able to reconstruct almost all the NT from just their quoting from the scriptures (which they did at length!) – the only verses not included are ones in obscure personal passages in 2 and 3 John and do not relate to teaching or doctrine in any important way! Where do the missing books come from them? Well writings such as a Gospel of Thomas and Gospel of Judas were known to the early church, despite fairly recent rediscoveries of the original texts, and were rejected due to being very clearly Gnostic inventions of that cult and there was no apostolic authorship involved given their writing long after the death of the final apostle John (the only apostle not to be martyred). We therefore have incredible confidence that the books of the NT we use today are the same books that the early church recognised and need not worry about having missing pieces of the Bible floating around somewhere!

“And can it be that I should gain

An interest in the saviour’s blood?

Died He for me, who caused His pain,

For me, who Him to death pursued.

Amazing love, how can it be,

That thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

Long my imprisoned spirit lay,

Fast bound in sin and nature’s night.

Thine eye diffused a quickening ray,

I woke, my dungeon flamed with light.

My chains fell off, my heart was free,

I rose went forth and followed thee.

No condemnation now I dread,

Jesus and all in Him is right.

Alive in Him, my living head,

And clothed in righteousness divine.

Bold I approach the eternal throne,

And claim the Crown through Christ, my all.”

Apology #4 – Creation Controversy

Using the world’s view on Creation to point to Christ

When I read Genesis 1 I am left with no doubt about how it is meant to read plainly as a 6 day narrative. Likewise when I read Revelation 20 I am left with no doubt regarding how to plainly read the period of Christ’s reign on Earth before the creation of the New Heaven and New Earth as being 1000 years. I maintain consistency in my Bible reading and interpretation by applying a hermeneutical principle, sometimes called “The Golden Rule”. This means that you read a passage giving the plain normal meaning to it unless it becomes ridiculous to do so. I like to demonstrate what this means by referring to Revelation 13 where a large beast rises up out of the sea. Now during the last days such a literal beast will not rise out of the sea – this is a prophetic vision - but the beast does have a meaning which we can discover more about as we understand it in the context of the whole of scripture prophecies. Such consistency though at both the beginning and end of scripture causes controversy. Today I think we can lose a considerable amount of credibility in evangelism if we get too involved in the 6 day creation debate. It is more tactically sound to avoid this particular niche issue by pointing to the bigger picture of Creation, for we are all at least Creationists as Christians (just some of us are more fundamentalist in our interpretation of the scriptures regarding the timing issue).

Modern scientific theories are useful tools in discussions with non-believers and scientists regarding the Gospel message. While fundamentally atheistic in design, the Big Bang theory is really a gift to us Christian evangelists. In the past it was possible for people to believe in the universe being made up of infinite and eternal matter (it needed no beginning – although just think how interesting a contradiction it is to say that the universe needed no beginning as was eternal; yet we cannot say that God needs no beginning as was eternal!), but now cosmologists say that it is finite and had a definite beginning point – the singularity we call the “Big Bang”. The scriptures say that the universe had a definite beginning point and that light was created at that instant. Today physicists say that matter and time are connected, in that once matter was created so too time began, therefore our whole conception of linear time began at this definite beginning point.

The necessary question must be asked: what caused this great explosion? Someone during Freshers Week said to me that it was a collision between a proton and an anti-proton in the singularity…but that only pushes the question back one level: where did the proton and anti-proton come from? Essentially they must either concede they cannot explain it as that is not observable science and instead is in the realm of philosophy; or they can say that it just did happen and must have happened for us to be here at all – not the most fulfilling answer and indeed that out of nothing something at all existed to have a collision requires an incredible amount of faith! You see today without realising it many scientists have their worldviews shaped by naturalism (the belief that all that exists has arisen by natural processes and is material, so there is no room for some higher being to have been involved) and so totally discount any thought of God having been involved in creation. They have for themselves a faith, although they will rarely ever admit that is what they have! They believe that everything is attributable to natural forces; we as Christians believe everything is attributable to God as Creator. We both agree that there was a definite beginning where out of nothing (ex nihilo) there came matter and time, but we disagree as to what was the cause and whether there was any direction. There is no science v religion dichotomy! There is only two conflicting worldviews trying to interpret the evidence their way: naturalism v theism!

The naturalists love the theory of evolution because Darwin was able to make atheism intellectually fulfilling because suddenly here was a theory that allowed blind natural forces to drive the development of all the species into the complex organisms we see today. For a Christian to argue that God could have used evolution requires them to try to marry two irreconcilable things: a theory designed to dethrone God as creator, and God’s claim in scripture to be Creator. There is the major problem that evolution requires there to be unimaginable suffering and death and failure before the Fall in Genesis 3 – at which time God presided over things saying they were somehow “good”. Such a suggestion requires us to contradict scripture, which just cannot be tolerated. If we truly believe the Bible to be the Creator’s Word then He was the one around to tell us how He did it! We do not need an old earth if we do not need to make evolution work.

There is so little evidence for macro-evolution (which Darwin abstracted as a theory based upon the micro-evolution we do see through natural selection in nature), especially in the fossil record, that it must be explained away that it happened so slowly over such a long period of time that there is no record left of it. However, today if we accept the cosmological theory for the development of our solar system (something I do not think we can do based on the order of creation in Genesis 1 as the Earth was there on Day 1 while the sun and moon and stars came a few days later, but yet there was already light) then between the time of the earth cooling down and the first complex life appearing we have such a short period of time that there must have been rapid assembly of the first amino-acids and proteins which then beyond our wildest statistical imaginations forced the first cell and then evolved into complex and intelligent creatures (with DNA full of complex coded information greater in quantity than all the information contained in the 30 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica which somehow came from dead matter – the rule of biogenesis that life can only come from life anybody, and that information and code requires intelligent also?).

There should be lots of fossil evidence in this short period and because it is a short period the traditional argument that it happened so slowly over time that it’s impossible for science to observe means that the scientists are again putting their faith in something they cannot see or test! They again are no better than us, and indeed the Christian faith has more credible evidence supporting its claims through the Bible to have the inside information from the Creator God; while atheism is reliant on incredible leaps of the imagination to accept that life at all ever started despite the astronomical chances against it! The length that some atheists like Richard Dawkins must go to in order to try and argue against these facts demonstrates both their desperation, but also their incredible capacity for faith – if only they would bow their knees to Christ!

This is without considering questions such as where the human consciousness came from and how evolution falls apart when we consider things such as the irreducible complexity issue, which Darwin even admitted would cause his theory to collapse.

Science is incredible and your course allows you to see the beauty of God’s complex handiwork in creating the human body. Paul writes in Romans 1 that God has revealed His incredible glory and power through His creation and I think that is so true. I do not agree with all that science theorises about how things came about, but I do appreciate that the evidence they are working with does point towards there being a Creator God who operated outside of time, because He created time at the same instant He created matter. Christianity is not irrational, and if that Creator wanted to speak to us then we believe He did so in the Bible and through His Son Jesus Christ, and the evidence for just those two alone is overwhelming for me to place my faith confidently in the Lord Jesus. While I do not accept old earth theories, I believe that by skipping past that issue and concentrating on the key that “in the beginning God created…” that we can maintain legitimacy in evangelistic and apologetic discussions, and once they have accepted God as Creator and Christ as their Saviour, then we can sort them out regarding being consistent in their Bible interpretation! Amen?

“On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,

The emblem of suffering and shame;

And I love that old cross where the dearest and best

For a world of lost sinners was slain.

So I will cherish the old rugged Cross,

Where my trophies at last I lay down,

I will cling to the old rugged Cross,

And exchange it some day for a crown.”

Apology #5 – If God’s so Good, Why is there so much Evil?

The difficult question of evil and God’s sovereignty

You don’t have to know me for long before you realise that I have a high view of God’s sovereignty, as do my favourite pastors and theologians Don Carson, John Piper and Wayne Grudem, as well as many others such as Whitefield, Spurgeon and Moody of the past. That still leaves a very difficult question over how an all powerful and good God can preside over and stand behind so much evil in the world. The classic argument goes that either God is not all powerful (a very scary thing to say as that means that there are places in the universe God is not in control and anything could happen!) or that God is not good at all. Both of these conclusions contradict the character of the God of the Bible, Yahweh. Rather I would subscribe to what is best called the “Compatibilist” argument, which means that we have to in trusting faith accept that the Bible says two things:

That God is all loving and all powerful and has a sovereign overruling plan for His creation, and at the same time

Allows evil in the world and stands behind it by ultimately not intervening to stop it as it works out the purposes which He has allowed it to in His divine sovereign plan.

There are very good chapters in “How Long, O Lord” and “A Call to Spiritual Reformation” which explore the theological implications of this as well as an excellent chapter in Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology volume when looking at the Doctrine of God’s Providence. Spurgeon suggests that while these seem to be two very separate lines, that they do not run parallel and that they converge and meet in eternity where we will understand just how God was working.

It is the height of human arrogance for us to turn around to our creator and try to presume that we can know and understand His ways, something which Paul says very clear in the latter portion of Romans 9. Likewise God speaks to Job in the Old Testament and says the same thing to him. He never explains why He has allowed all the evil to happen in Job’s life but just makes clear that He is sovereign, that He is in control and that Job need not worry while he is in His hands! Job is satisfied to just trust in God’s sovereignty despite all the evil sufferings he has endured throughout that difficult book! Likewise we have to just trust in God’s sovereignty and have faith that it will all make sense in eternity. We have the amazing promise in Romans 8 that God works together all things together for the good of us who love Him, and ultimately that good is our conformation to and glorification with His beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Nonetheless this is an issue we do get asked and we do need to be able to engage with people on it, although we should never be arrogant to claim to have an answer we do not have – we instead have a trusting faith in a good God who we know to be good because He has demonstrated His incredible love for us in sending us His Son to be punished in our place (Romans 5:8; John 3:16; 1 John 3:16 and so many other places!). We can never claim that God has not done His best to save people!

God did not create evil, however, He did know that it would come about for the scriptures are clear that before the foundation of the world it was determined in the Trinity that Christ would die for the sins of yet uncreated mankind (1 Peter 1:20; Revelation 13:8). Now I have to admit that it seems that critics of this have a slight point when they say that it seems dubious to draw a distinction between: doing X which is wrong, and instead doing W which then you know will lead to X. However, (and I know to a non-believer this seems like a non-answer, but then again I’m not trying to provide answers but instead to give us a framework for understanding this issue) we have to believe God’s Word that He has made up the best possible plan and that for some reason it is better for us His people to go through the endurance of evil in this life before reaching eternity. We do not know the specific reasons but I think we get a glimpse of it when Paul writes in Romans 5 and in other places about how suffering produces endurance, proven character and so many other good things which ultimately give us a hope which is precious and enduring. This is why it’s a difficult question, because God has not told us why He has allowed this to happen but we do continue to trust our good, loving Father and His judgement that it was somehow better for us to go through this world!

It is not made clear when God made the angels, likely it was when He created the heavens and the earth in the beginning; neither is it made clear when Satan fell, but obviously it happened some time before Genesis 3 (which we can presume wasn’t long after the creation of Adam and Eve on the sixth day, because it didn’t take them long to work out what God meant about becoming one flesh but yet Eve only conceived after the Fall!). What the scripture does say is that Satan in his pride set his eyes against God’s throne and desired to ascend to rule creation, despite being created as one of the highest and most beautiful of the angels (Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 - some go so far as to argue that the passages mean that Satan was in charge of music in Heaven, which they then take to mean that Satan hates God’s people singing His praises today because that used to be his job – this goes way beyond the scriptures though as an interesting aside!). Revelation 13 now describes him as the accuser of the Saints, who stands reciting our sins before God’s throne while Christ is our great High Priest interceding on our behalf. God the Father looks upon the lamb who was slain (earlier in Revelation Jesus is described as this, which means that in His glorified body He still bears the nail pierced palms and spear ruptured side) in our place as our Passover lamb and is pleased to declare us not guilty of all Satan’s wicked accusations. Satan’s time of accusing will come to an end and then he will be forced down to the earth for a short time when he will do his worst acts of all time during the time spoken of by Jesus in Matthew 24 as the worst tribulation ever seen that would cause the destruction of everything if God did not intervene to cut short Satan’s time! Again God will allow this and hold off returning until His people Israel accept Jesus as Messiah and those remaining in the world during this time either side with Satan or trust in Jesus for salvation. We can only trust that greater good will come through this plan!

Satan tempted mankind to disbelieve God and led Eve to eat of the forbidden Tree; Adam seeing his wife eat of the tree (and the passage seems to suggest that Adam was with her the whole time and silent while the Satan tempted her – a condemnation for men not taking responsibility!) and not having been deceived chose to wilfully disobey God knowing full well that the sentence was death for disobeying this command! The curse then came upon the world through our wilful rebellion against God and we handed over the kingdom entrusted to us by God to Satan. Notice how in the Wilderness temptations Jesus doesn’t deny that Satan does have authority to give Him all the kingdoms of the world to save Him having to go to the Cross – indeed John describes Satan as the “Prince of this World”. The Satanic kingdom received a fatal blow at Calvary (like on June 6th 1944 the allies successfully broke the German lines to establish a beachhead in Normandy, but the war still did not end for another 10 months) and we now await for our King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Revelation 19) to return to destroy the world kingdoms (Daniel 2) and establish His throne in Jerusalem on Mount Zion. We believe around 4000 years went between the Fall and Christ, and then another 2000 years between Calvary and where we are today in the final days still awaiting the Second Coming – God seems to be taking His time and all the while allowing evil to take place. Those who questioned Peter’s teaching on the Lord’s imminent return received a crushing response that God was not slow to action but rather was being patient with the world, hoping that man would repent and believe in Christ (2 Peter 3)– indeed if He had not tarried we would not have been saved and many other people who have converted such as Jack would have been judged a long time ago without having received Christ. Instead God has been patient towards mankind and desired that we would just reach out for His outstretched hand for He is not far from any of us, as Paul reminded us in Acts 17 in Athens. For better or for worse, we have benefited from His patience towards us!

God has continued to pour out gifts of common grace upon all mankind, for He causes the rain to fall on the good and wicked, He has blessed everyone with the gift of relationships and of the possibility of having a loving family. It is human sin that has corrupted these good things that God gives everyone. We are selfish so destroy relationships, we use the material gifts He gives us to either horde more things or put them to stupid uses of getting drunk or enjoying lustful pleasures, etc. Quite simply mankind has refused to acknowledge the clear testimony of God’s power in Creation, has gone against the conscience He has given each and everyone of us as His law written on our hearts (Romans 1-2), and so He has given us over to our sinful desires which give birth to sin and ultimately death (James 1:15). We have made a mess of this world and didn’t need any help, and we only make it worse by refusing to accept God and submit our lives to Him!

In closing let’s just look at this in one other way. Isn’t it funny that people seem to be annoyed about injustice, about evil and about suffering? If we accept naturalism then there has always been selfish competing for life and death and suffering are a proud achievement of ours having been the fittest to survive the nightmare of evolutionary “history”. What’s all the fuss about evil then? Evil only means something when we have an objective standard to measure things against and see that they fall short of what is good. Otherwise evil just is a part of life and isn’t all that remarkable. However, we instinctively know that things are not the way they should be and that people do act in wicked evil ways which deserve punishment. Yet still people are not willing to admit that this necessarily requires there to be an objective good God who made the world and said it was very good, but who gave us the free will within His sovereign plan to make a mess of it all through our sins, but instead of abandoning us humbled Himself becoming a man and becoming our glorious propitiatory substitute bearing all our punishment on the Cross! He promises that no eye has seen or mind ever conceived of the glorious things awaiting us in Heaven (1 Cor 2:9), and we can only trust Him that He does know best and this way of allowing evil to happen in the world and us to go through it is somehow better for us than if the whole of creation had never experienced the consequences of the Fall!

I do not have answers, but I know that one day we will. Now we see only in part but then we shall see Him face to face (1 Cor 13:12) and until then like Job we will have to be content to say: I trust you, your will be done for your glory!

Jesus, I am resting, resting,

In the joy of what Thou art;

I am finding out the greatness

Of Thy loving heart.

Thou hast bid me gaze upon Thee,

And Thy beauty fills my soul,

For by Thy transforming power,

Thou hast made me whole.

Jesus, I am resting, resting,

In the joy of what Thou art;

I am finding out the greatness

Of Thy loving heart.

O, how great Thy loving kindness,

Vaster, broader than the sea!

O, how marvelous Thy goodness,

Lavished all on me!

Yes, I rest in Thee, Belovèd,

Know what wealth of grace is Thine,

Know Thy certainty of promise,

And have made it mine.

Simply trusting Thee, Lord Jesus,

I behold Thee as Thou art,

And Thy love, so pure, so changeless,

Satisfies my heart;

Satisfies its deepest longings,

Meets, supplies its every need,

Compasseth me round with blessings:

Thine is love indeed!

Ever lift Thy face upon me

As I work and wait for Thee;

Resting ’neath Thy smile, Lord Jesus,

Earth’s dark shadows flee.

Brightness of my Father’s glory,

Sunshine of my Father’s face,

Keep me ever trusting, resting,

Fill me with Thy grace.

Apology #6 - The Deconstructing of Dawkins

Who’s more of a delusion: God or Dawkins?

Richard Dawkins greatly annoys me. Having watched his 3 television series documentaries online courtesy of Youtube and read some of his work, including “The God Delusion”, I am left rather speechless. Many atheists are embarrassed by his atheistic fundamentalism that had more in common with someone in a lunatic asylum than a serious discussion of the most important question facing humanity. He is a master of deception, although I do wonder to what extent it is deliberate, as sadly I think he has become so self-deceived that he no longer realises what he is doing.

As a law student if you start using the word “evidence”, I prick up my ears. So whenever Dawkins spends all his time going on about how: “I believe in evidence” I have to ask the question of: “So what?”. I also believe in evidence, but yet he is a devout naturalist and I am a devout theist. Clearly the issue is not about evidence at all as otherwise we would be in total agreement. I am being facetious here, because really my criticism must begin by pointing out that evidence is something we use as a chain of reasoning to reach a conclusion. If you will forgive the legal analogy: we know X committed the crime because Y saw him do it, their evidence is corroborated by CCTV footage and we have found not just his finger prints at the scene but also the stolen goods in his recent possession. The lawyers both believe in the evidence – it’s tangible and undeniable – however they differ over where the evidence leads. Obviously though one is right and one is lying! When you have enough evidence you can’t just sit on the fence and say: well we’ve all this evidence but don’t want to reach the necessary conclusion – that is just sheer lunacy. Rather we must follow the evidence wherever it leads, and Dawkins refuses to do this by saying he will never believe in God because he finds the idea preposterous.

Dawkins attack on religion and Christianity in particular relies upon making a caricature of what it means to have faith, which is then easy to knock down. So when Dawkins says that he hates people of faith, who blindly believe something despite all the evidence, then I’ll be one of the first ones up on my feet shouting amen! It is a gross misrepresentation to say that people who have faith do so without reason or evidence. How does he explain the conversion of CS Lewis who described himself as an unwilling convert, as he was simply overwhelmed by the case in the evidence supporting the existence of the Judeo-Christian God, Yahweh? I have to accept that faith does require us to take a step of unknowing – the Hebrews 11 passage makes clear that the Biblical definition of faith is “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” because we cannot see that which we have faith in. We do not now see the risen Lord Jesus, we do not see Heaven and eternity. However, we do not blindly take this step; rather we are led to it by the evidence which allows us to place our hope in something with assurance! The evidence is so overwhelming that while there is always the potential for some doubt, it is not enough to convince us otherwise of our faith.

Dawkins is greatly inspired by the 20th century atheist Bertrand Russell whose essays are interesting to read (such as “Why I am not a Christian” and “Why there is no God”) and Russell once said in response to a question about what he would say if he met God after death that he’d reply “Not enough evidence God! Not enough evidence!”. Dawkins absolutely loves this and tries in a short part of the book to take apart the Bible to make it out to be full of contradiction and the belief in God to be implausible. He managed to get me for 5 minutes on one point because he began to try and argue that the claim about Jesus’ birth coinciding with a census was proven to be historically wrong entirely. However, what he did was only talk about 1 of 2 historically recorded censuses that happened around the time of Jesus’ birth. He talked about the one that happened a long time afterwards, but neglected to mention the earlier one which matches the Biblical account. He attempts to bring out other contradictions which do not stand on their feet very long.

His greatest argument against God which he places all his emphasis on is just laughable. It was laughable whenever Russell first coined the phrase and it is still laughable today. Having gone through Sunday School I respect this question – from a child – “Who made God?” It is a very important question and shows how linear and rational children are because they understand that in our linear timeframe everything must have a cause, and that cause an independent cause of its own – ad infinitum. Russell calls this the “First Cause” argument and says it disproves God, however, again whenever you caricature something you make it very easy to defeat. Dawkins refuses to engage with theology and thinks it’s ok to try to destroy Christianity based on a Sunday school understanding of things, which is nothing but disrespectful. If I tried to argue with Dawkins based on a children’s picture book about science he would never take me seriously, but yet he expects me to take him seriously with what he has to say? Simply we answer the First Cause argument by the simple answer that God had no beginning because He created the entire concept of time, which physics tells us today began at the definite beginning of the universe whenever matter came into being – for time and matter are inseparable. In the past people had no problem in believing in an eternal universe that needed no beginning, so it is unreasonable to insist upon an eternal being having a beginning either. We know the universe had a beginning and had to have a cause as the singularity that cosmologists theorise created the universe had to have something to cause it. It’s a philosophical moot point but it makes total rational sense to say that there had to be a creative intelligence (given the highly ordered anthropic [designed for man] fine tuned universe and complexity of its order) that was eternally exist – eternally because it created time when it created matter ex nihilo. It totally blows our minds how it happened but yeah something coming from nothing is staggering, but it’s all the more staggering to suggest that it just happened because it did just happen all by itself and then happened to be fine tuned for life. It’s like saying that there was an explosion on the Meadows and suddenly it had perfectly assembled a house for a disabled person to live in, which happened to be their dream house and exactly what they needed to suit their special needs. It’s not going to happen without some creative intelligence orchestrating everything at the most intimate level! The ordered nature of creation itself is evidence screaming out the glory of God, as Paul writes in Romans 1! What more do you need? A guy to rise again from the dead and tell us that yes there really is eternal life…oh that happened too didn’t it…!

Having attempted to destroy Christianity very unsuccessfully Dawkins has to set up the centrepiece of his naturalistic worldview: the theory of evolution. He claims that we have overwhelming evidence that substantiates this theory, when we don’t and he knows we don’t. There is much that does not fit with the theory and he will not admit that, and we are severely lacking in the transitionary fossils necessary to substantiate the theory – a problem Darwin had and which has not got any better since his day! He twists the anthropic principle to say that evolution must have happened - no matter how unlikely and astounding it is for random blind natural forces to have somehow assembled the order of the universe, and complexity of life we observe in ourselves and around us – because otherwise we wouldn’t be here thinking about it. Now talk about circular reasoning and refusing to consider the other possibility that there may have been a creative intelligence (he betrays his naturalistic rejection of any deity so much here)! He is forced to dismiss the uniqueness of our ordered universe by saying something astounding and proposing we take seriously a quantum physics theory that we are but one of an infinite number of parallel universes in a “multi-verse”. So while we are in a minority of universes fine-tuned for life we should not find it special that we are, because we are here alive to think about the possibility. This is astounding because this is faith! Dawkins, despite all his protestations, has a deep faith! An entirely irrational and non-evidential faith, which means that ultimately he is one of the very people that he hates for being a blind follower of something contrary to all the evidence. This is a man who has turned his back from God and will not budge and will put all his intellect to use to close his eyes, plug up his ears and sing: “I’m not listening, I’m not listening, you’re not there!”

How sad!

All we can do is pray for him and that his cold, hard heart might be broken and his delusion would end. He has refused to acknowledge God and instead has turned to worship the creation itself just as Paul again wrote in Romans 1. He’s going to lead a lot of people into a lost eternity along with himself otherwise, but what a conversion story it would be if he would only place his extraordinary power of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, who rose again from the dead and whom we can be confident about when we go about telling people about Him for the evidence does support Him all the way.

“He is Lord, He is Lord,

He is risen from dead, and He is Lord.

Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess,

That Jesus Christ is Lord”

Apology #7 – The Divine Self-Proving Element of the Bible

The Power of Predictive Prophecy in Scripture

We have previously looked at how scrupulously the scriptures have been maintained and preserved from error entering into the original texts. This is a spectacular feat in itself, however, at the end of the day we may still be left with just a very well preserved ancient book of wisdom and lifestyle advice! Of course that is not in fact what the Bible is and one of the crucial elements of it is the fact that the Bible has a very high proportion of predictive prophecies which are fulfilled throughout history. The study of Bible prophecy has been one of the most encouraging disciplines and grounds of apologetic training that I have undertaken over the last 5 years. I scarcely can believe what I have discovered going through both the Old and New Testaments, and if I had not been a Christian before starting this study I would have to be one now, or be out of my mind!

We begin our survey of redemptive history with the promised Messiah who would be sent into the world to rescue us from the consequences of our sinful Fall, we then move on to see the development of a great nation through the line of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (later named Israel). God warned Jacob that his children would be taken into slavery in a foreign land but that He would bring them out into the promised land of Israel when the wickedness of the inhabitants of the land was complete. After a few hundred years in Goshen, and great subjugation by the Egyptians, God raises up Moses to lead the Israelites into Canaan. He gives them laws to observe as His nation and warns that if they do not keep their side of the covenant then He will dispossess them of the land, but also promises that He will always return them to the land once they repent. After a few hundred years of the nation of Israel (initially unified but later divided into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah) being disobedient God fulfils decades of warning through the prophets by leading the Assyrians to destroy Israel and later the kingdom of Babylon to capture Judah. During the captivity God promises that He will rescue Judah after 70 years in Babylon, and He sets out the why He will do it and indeed sets out the whole history for Israel until the Messiah and then until the consummation of God’s kingdom on Earth. After the return to the land after the fulfilment of the prophecies God continues to speak for a time and then falls silent. All the while the prophecies given previously are being fulfilled in precise detail in the nations all around and then the great initial prophecy is fulfilled: the Messiah comes. Jesus fulfils all the prophecies concerning his birthplace, the timing of it and circumstances. He then goes on to fulfil the biography of His life that was written down 100’s of years in advance of His birth, and crucially testifies that He is going to die for the sins of the world but 3 days later rise again from the dead. He does get crucified and does rise again from the dead. During His life He also tells us more about the end of the age and coming of the kingdom – events which are today being set up for fulfilment with incredible accuracy.

This is a very brief run through of Biblical prophetic history and the point is to show that prophecy is tied into the whole story of the Bible and has without fail been fulfilled time and time again with tremendous accuracy! We need only look at the first few verses of Isaiah 45 where he predicts the entire military strategy of the named King Cyrus of Medo-Persia who God tells him will defeat the Babylonian Empire to free Israel after 70 years of captivity prophesied by Jeremiah – Isaiah does this more than 100 years prior to even Cyrus’s birth. Daniel prophesies also regarding the identity of Babylon’s successor and regarding God’s imminent judgement on the kingdom. Not only this but Daniel predicts with incredible detail the entire region’s military and political history for the next 400 years, including receiving the 70 weeks prophecy which history has validated as predicting key events in the reconstruction of Israel and ultimately the crucifixion of Christ, almost to the very day of Passover! While I like to talk a lot about Daniel, that would be to leave out the incredible prophecies given through Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah and the minor prophets all of which have been stunningly fulfilled – save a few which concern the events in the last days before Christ’s return.

The Bible has set itself a very high standard when it comes to prophecy. If any one speaks a prophecy and it isn’t 100% fulfilled then they are to be ignored and even if they were partially right, or right another time they’re to be totally ignored for God doesn’t just get it partially right, or even just right nearly every time: He’s right all the time! God is making clear that He means business in His Word and that He’s speaking in it by being right all the time – something no fallible human could ever replicate! Most conservative estimates put the Bible as constituting at least 30% prophecy, which means that so much of the doctrinal statement that the Bible is the inspired and infallible Word of God turns on the issue of predictive prophecy. This is what marks the Bible out from all other “holy” books and what makes Christianity unique because God has demonstrated His reality in His book by telling us what is going to happen in the future, and every time He’s been right – all the way from the big global events to the small little details concerning the life of His Son!

We live today in an age when Ezekiel’s and Jesus’ prophecies are very significant because they both described the rebirth of the nation of Israel in the final days after a long period of dispersion across the face of the world. This event was fulfilled back in 1948! As the remainder of the Bible’s prophecies unfold on the world stage and across newspaper headlines, we have an unprecedented opportunity to be able to point to a newspaper and then to God’s Word to say: connect the dots! People today do not believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and I believe that the power of the evidence of predictive prophecy must at the very least cause a sceptic to think long and hard about its implications. How can thousands of prophecies written in advance all come to pass accurately, and not just random prophecies that could be retrospectively interpreted to fit any event (as is the case with Nostradamus) but clear prophecies which involve, people, places, specific events, and specific timescales. We cannot predict with accuracy the weather over the next few weeks, let alone hundreds of years in the future; yet we have consistently and unfailing evidence in the Bible of predictions regarding the future of the world being written down hundreds of years in advance of their fulfilment. Some people have calculated that the probability of Jesus being able to fulfil just half of all the Messianic prophecies written more than 400 years before His birth is a figure greater than all the atoms theorised to be in the universe – that’s just half but yet Jesus fulfilled them all, from the big predictions of His virgin birth, life’s ministry and sacrificial death, to the minute details that He wouldn’t have a bone broken on the Cross. That is impossible but yet we have the eye witness testimony of those who witnessed these events, and we see the incredible impact this truth had on the surrounding culture in causing the sudden birth and growth of the Christian church which has lasted now 2000 years and is continuing to grow as the gospel truth goes out into the world.

Bible prophecy is one complicated subject and there are plenty of headaches along the way, but it is God’s divine signature which makes the Bible stand out from the crowd of all other books written on this planet in its history. When we study it and compare it with history we see that the evidence strongly leads us to conclude that no man could ever have even come close to writing this book, let alone 40 different people over a period of 1500 years but yet there is no contradiction and no failed prophecy. There is a reason why the Bible is the world’s best seller and no matter what the devil has done to silence it God’s Word keeps on triumphing and will continue to until the Lord comes again and fulfils all that remains to happen. Once I run out of Daily Apologies that’s the next thing I’m giving you to read through…run away while you still have a chance!

“What can wash away my sin?

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

What can make me whole again?

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

O precious is the flow,

That makes me white as snow.

No other fount I know,

Nothing but the blood of Jesus!”

Apology #8 – The Case of “Medicine & Law v God”

Ponderings on the role of Christian ethics in our disciplines

I used to think being a Christian lawyer was a hard enough calling, but now studying Medical Law I’m learning that being a Christian doctor isn’t any easier – in fact is arguably a lot tougher as your decisions affect a person’s actual living existence! I have really struggled to find a Christian position on how to approach the questions of abortion and the withdrawal of life-saving treatments – let me qualify this statement: I know what the scriptural position is, but how I can defend that credibly is what I have been struggling with. We are being told that ethics should be seen as “tools” which allow us to justify our positions and actions, and that the question of morality (what is right or wrong) has only an incidental impact on these issues. I very much have to disagree! As Christians we see there being an absolute moral standard: God is good. Since God is the Creator He knows what is best for us and how we can have an abundant life which He came to give us (John 10:10). Therefore, Christian ethics is very much discerning the objective good that God has set and written on our hearts and then going to the world to stand up and defend these good things.

Let’s take the issue of abortion for a start: God makes clear that He knows us even in our mother’s womb (Jeremiah 1:5) and that He has knitted us together in the womb as a wonderful creation (Psalm 139:13). Legally the foetus is not a person because you only become a person when you are successfully born alive. This doctrine of “legal personality” leads to the incredible inconsistency that a downs-syndrome child can be aborted any time before birth (even after the normal 20 weeks abortion term limit), but once born cannot be allowed to die (in one legal case the child had an intestinal blockage that would kill him without treatment and the parents refused consent as thought better to be dead than live with downs, but the courts were willing to override the parent’s will on the basis of the child’s best interests). Now do not get me wrong, I agree that the parents were sick and wrong to even think of letting their child die, but even more I find it annoying that the law allows such an incredible inconsistent treatment of what very much is a living human being based upon whether it is in the womb or outside! If the child had been terminated a week before birth the law wouldn’t have cared, but suddenly does just because it’s no longer in utero.

To deliberately take the life of an innocent is murder. There are two words used in scripture: killing and murder. The Ten Commandment one should be properly read “do not murder”. In law we recognise this distinction by saying to murder you must have the actus reus (guilty action) and mens rea (evil intent); while for killing (manslaughter in England; culpable homicide in Scotland) you only need the actus reus but you have no intention to kill – this distinction was key as if you intentionally murdered in the past you got hung, but if you unintentionally killed someone you got a less severe punishment. There are provisions in the Mosaic covenant civil law division for those who unintentionally kill (cities of refuge where you could be protected against the family “avenger of blood” who could kill you for killing their relative), so this is reflected in our division of the law today. Applying this to abortion, when a person deliberately intends to take the life of a foetus and commits or sanctions the act leading to the termination of the foetus then they have both the actus reus and mens rea for an offence, the difference is that the act must be against a legal person and the foetus is not such a person (at least as far as law is concerned!) Given the Biblical testimony from God that He knew us in the womb, that implies there is some degree of consciousness and sentience in the womb, which would further imply a soul! Thus to terminate the development of the body containing a soul is to destroy a human being created in God’s image.

Now we have some fun raging debates in class about this issue and the feminists are very big on the idea that the woman’s right to bodily integrity and self-determination are paramount. They describe the foetus as being a foreign invader of their bodies and demand the right to decide what to do with it – it is a parasite rather than a living being in their minds. If it is going to inconvenience them, then they want the right to terminate it! What are we as Christians to do whenever the law since 1967 has embraced this right for women to choose, even over the wishes of the child’s father?

My instant gut reaction is abolish abortion as it’s wrong, but really that is only going to revert to the situation in the past of back street abortion clinics, abortion boats off the coast in international waters, people travelling abroad for abortion holidays, etc. It doesn’t deal with the problem! The problem is not the enabling law of the Abortion Act 1967, it is with the fallen-ness of humanity!

Think about it like this. Where in the Bible do we first hear about “self-determination”? It’s very strongly implied in Genesis 3 that Satan got the idea into Eve’s head that she could become like God if she disobeyed His command – if she self-determined how she wanted to live her life, rather than bow the knee to the wishes of the Creator. Adam himself was not deceived but chose again to self-determinately choose his relationship with Eve over relationship with God! Since then humanity has self-determined for itself how it wants to live; and today our culture is obsessed with doing whatever it wants, whenever it wants, and is very hostile towards Christianity and the concept of there being a God, because if there’s a God and He’s Creator He can rain on our parade and tell us how we’re meant to be living! The whole concept of a God who will judge us is utterly repugnant to them, because their belief in a right to self-determination in this life is an expression of their sinful disobedient will which we have inherited from our fore-parents in Eden. That is why Paul writes that as Christians we are no longer to be slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness (Romans 6:11-14). Yes we have been set free from captivity leading to Hell, but we are willing bond-slaves who present ourselves into the service of another: the Lord Jesus. That is why he writes that it is no longer he that lives but Christ who lives in him, and the life he lives in the flesh is for Christ because he has crucified and put to death his old self with Christ (Galatians 2:20). He warns that we have been bought with a price and that we are not our own, therefore we are to honour God in our bodies (1 Cor 6:20), for indeed are we not a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 3:16)? Before we can come to Christ, we must surrender our sinful rebellious will and submit to following Christ and show that we love Him by keeping His commandments (John 14:15).

Let’s just look at this in another way before applying all this to medical and legal ethics. If you recall the Mosaic Law is defended by Paul as being a good thing in and of itself (1 Timothy 1:8; Romans 7:10) because it is the good ordered way of life set down by the Creator God. However, Paul says in Galatians 3:21-22 that the law could not give life (which is why Jesus had to come) because rather it shut up everyone under sin as we could never keep it because James says that if we keep all but one of the parts of the law then we’re guilty of it all (James 2:10) which reiterates what Paul says in Galatians 3:10. We are totally unable to outwardly please God and keep His laws while we are slaves to sin, and so that means we are condemned to death. But whenever Jesus came and satisfied all the requirements of the law, and became a curse for us by dying as an innocent on the tree (Cross) (Galatians 3:13) then He bore the punishment for our guilt so that He could then give us life. He frees us from the bondage of sin and justifies us declaring us not guilty in God’s sight because of the imputation of His righteousness! He gives us the Holy Spirit who enables us to live in new life which wasn’t possible under the old law (Romans 7:6), but this new life is only possible if we come before the throne of grace and lay down all our proud self-determination in this life, so that we are crucified with Christ and let Him sit on the throne of our life (as the “2 Ways to Live” tract represents amazingly!).

What has this to do with legal and medical ethics? Well I want to suggest that yes anti-abortion campaigning (to continue our example) is inherently a good thing because it is promoting the sanctity of life from conception! However, in one respect I think it can also be seen as being the parallel of the inherently good Mosaic law. Without a changed heart on the inside, the real problem that meant we couldn’t follow God’s commandments was left undealt with! Even if we abolished abortion and had every woman keep their child till birth we still wouldn’t have made the difference where it counts. Likewise I do not like the idea of allowing people to decide that they will not receive treatment or will refuse further treatment which is life prolonging because basically they are asking someone to kill them. However, this is an even more complicated ethical issue because if a Christian did not want to receive life prolonging treatment then it would likely be on the Biblical basis that it is better to be at home with the Lord than remain here a little longer (2 Corinthians 5:8)

Maybe I’m turning into a bit of a paternalist – and this is why I’ve struggled with applying Christian ethics to these situations because I too easily tend towards wanting to impose our God given morality and ethics on people rather than let them choose themselves what they want. It is very arbitrary and inconsistent for me to be willing to let a Christian choose not to prolong their life, but yet not afford the same right to a non-believer – I criticise myself for this. My heart is in the right place, arguably, for I know at least that the Christian is going home to eternity with the Lord while the non-believer still needs to hear the gospel. However, what gives me the right to make such a determination? I am not God and cannot play at being God. I have come to realise based on my Biblical consideration of the issue of self-determination that even if I kept that person alive by not withdrawing treatment, or by stopping that girl having an abortion, that really I’m doing nothing that is dealing with the problem of their sin which is separating them from God. Maybe I’m doing something inherently good and that upholds God’s heart in these situations, but really when it comes down to the legal conflicts I read about each week between what the doctor in their paternalistic medical judgement thinks best, and what the person ultimately decides they want then while yes the law does uphold the decision of the mentally competent person that leaves the Christian in a difficult situation. If the Christian doctor cannot persuade their patient not to end their life in this way (in hope that they might still hear the Gospel and give their lives to Christ) or not to have the abortion, then I think we need to step back and be Biblical: mankind’s problem has from the beginning been our stubborn self-determination. God has allowed us to destroy this world through our sinful self-determination at variance with His good law and will. If a person refuses to listen to the good objective reasons that can be put forward to treatment or keeping a child, then they are ultimately in God’s hands. If that person still insists on being allowed to die then maybe the best thing to do is to tell them the Gospel message! The Christian doctor in that situation legally must comply with the patient’s wishes, but has the conscientious objection to hand over to another doctor who will actually do the wrong act if they would feel guilty in their conscience. Maybe this is washing our hands of a bad situation, but you cannot do otherwise legally and ultimately God respects sinful man’s rebellious choice of rejecting Him by condemning them to eternal separation in Hell – as CS Lewis says (paraphrased), if we don’t want to know Him here, we won’t want to know Him up there either! If we step away having done our best, then it is the person who made the decision who is morally responsible for their decision!

These are my developing thoughts on these very, very difficult issues and they are prone to change and develop as I learn more, study more and pray more. I am very open for discussion, especially if I have this very wrong!

“Days are filled with sorrow and care,

Hearts are lonely and drear;