16May 2022 by Post

How We Got Our Bible: Manuscript Tradition

4. Is the NT True?, Apologetics, Bible, Inerrancy, New Testament, Ryan Leasure, Textual Criticism, Theology and Christian Apologetics
By Ryan Leasure  This article is part 6 in a nine-part series on how we got our Bible. Part 1 dealt with inspiration and inerrancy. Part 2  looked at Old Testament development. Part 3 investigate the Old Testament canon and the Apocrypha. Part 4 considered attributes of the New Testament Canon. And Part 5 inquired into the early church’s reception of the New Testament Canon. This post will consider the manuscript tradition and preservation of the New Testament text. No Original Autographs Sadly, none of the original autographs remain. Most likely, they wore out after constant usage and copying. Now, all that we possess are copies of copies of copies—a lot of them actually. Yet these copies differ in lots of different places. But do these differences render our Bible unreliable? Bart Ehrman…
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11May 2022 by Post

Moloch: Bruised but not Defeated

abortion, Apologetics, Bible, Culture, Culture CrossExamined, Free Thinking Ministries, Josh Klein, Legislating Morality, Culture & Politics, Moloch, Old Testament, Theology and Christian Apologetics
By Josh Klein For decades our country has been mired by a decision that enshrined the sacrifice of human babies to the god of Moloch (also known as Molech). You might know this practice by its current moniker, abortion, but the practice is essentially the same. Sacrificing our children on the altar of prosperity is a tail as old as human civilization. Instead of molten hands the altar is often a Planned Parenthood operating table. We have chosen, as a nation, to ignore the obvious humanity of the infant in utero and have embraced the lie that sex is a right but having children as a result is anathema.  That is, unless you want the baby. In 1973, possibly the worst decision in the history of the Supreme Court was…
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15Apr 2022 by Post

Why Good Friday is the Best News Ever

Bible, Crucifixion, Culture CrossExamined, Frank Turek, Jesus Christ, New Testament, Resurrection, Theology and Christian Apologetics
By Frank Turek Despite intense personal and political division, we all agree on one thing: something is terribly wrong with this world.  Pain, suffering, injustice, and death affect us all at some point because we live in a broken world.  And we live in a broken world because we are all personally broken. Who hasn’t committed any moral wrongs? (If you claim you haven’t, you just committed a moral wrong—lying!)  The truth is we are all fallen.  While we hate the evil done by others, we rarely notice the evil we do. We may call our political opponents hypocrites, but we don’t even live up to our own standards much less God’s.  None of us are perfect.  We are all guilty of something. It’s only when we admit our guilt…
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11Apr 2022 by Post

D.O.U.B.T.S.: An Evidential Filter For Miracle Claims

4. Is the NT True?, Bible, Erik Manning, IsJesusAlive, Jesus Christ, miracles, New Testament, reliability, Theology and Christian Apologetics
By Erik Manning When it comes to miracles, Christians are often accused of special pleading. We’re quick to accept Christian miracle claims, but we suddenly turn into Richard Dawkins when it comes to miracle claims made by other religions. Why should skeptics start investigating the resurrection of Jesus when we don’t give other miracles the time of day? The truth is that there are dozens of different religions and thousands of miraculous claims out there. So how can the Christian hope to use miracles as an argument for their faith? But the fact that there are miracle claims in other religions doesn’t require us to dismiss all miracle claims out of hand. Nor is it necessary for us to be haplessly credulous about all historical miracle claims. There’s a middle way.…
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21Mar 2022 by Post

How We Got Our Bible: New Testament Canonical Reception

4. Is the NT True?, Apologetics, Bible, Canon, Christianity, Church Fathers, Jesus Christ, New Testament, reliability, Ryan Leasure, Theology and Christian Apologetics
By Ryan Leasure   This article is part 5 in a nine-part series on how we got our Bible. Part 1 considered inspiration and inerrancy. Part 2 looked at the unfolding of the Old Testament. Part 3 examined the Old Testament canon and the Apocrypha. Part 4 considered the canonical attributes for New Testament books. This article will unpack how the early church received the New Testament canon. Marcion (AD 85-160) Before diving into the the corporate reception of the canon, it’s first necessary to say a brief word about Marcion. According to church historian Henry Chadwick, Marcion was “the most radical and to the church the most formidable of heretics.”[1] What was Marcion’s heresy? He promoted Gnosticism—the belief that the god who created the world was evil, and thus the OT was evil. This belief led Marcion to reject the…
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28Jan 2022 by Post

For Darwin, Timing Was Everything

Bible, Charles Darwin, Charles Darwin and the Ghost of Epicurus (series), Christianity, Christianity Not Mysterious, Culture & Ethics, Das Wesen des Christentums, David Hume, deism, demythologization, Enlightenment, Essays and Reviews, Evolution, faith, George Eliot, John Stuart Mill, John Toland, Ludwig Feuerbach, On Liberty, On the Origin of Species, Owen Chadwick, philosophy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Samuel Wilberforce, secularization, The Essence of Christianity, Thucydides
Charles Darwin, as we saw yesterday, pulled off an intellectual coup against the major thinkers of the Western tradition. How did he do it? Source
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14Jan 2022 by Post

Fox News Article Shows Why Evolutionary Solutions to Adam and Eve Fail to Satisfy

Ann Gauger, Bible, BIO-Complexity, BioLogos, Christianity, Discovery Institute, Faith & Science, Fazale Rana, Fox News, Francis Collins, Genealogical Adam and Eve model, Genesis, Homo heidelbergensis, Human Origins, In Quest of the Historical Adam, Jesus Christ, Jonathan McLatchie, Joshua Swamidass, methodological naturalism, myth, Nathan Lents, Ola Hössjer, Paul Nelson, reasons to believe, Salvo Magazine, scripture, TalkAboutDoubts.com, Terrell Clemmons, The Genealogical Adam and Eve, theistic evolution, theology, william lane craig
Is William Lane Craig’s book good news for Christians? I’m not so sure, and here’s one reason why. Source
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18Oct 2021 by Post

The Tragedy of Francis Collins’s Model for Science-Faith Integration 

abortion, Bible, Casey Luskin, China, Christianity, Christianity Today, Culture & Ethics, Darwin Day in America, Darwinian evolution, Downs syndrome, Ed Stetzer, ENCODE, Evangelical Christians, Francis Collins, gain-of-function research, George W. Bush, Intelligent Design, Jonathan Witt, Junk DNA, Karl Giberson, Kenneth Miller, Mark Galli, Medicine, Michael Behe, Michael Carome, National Institutes of Health, Obama Administration, pastores, premature babies, professors, pundists, Science (journal), The Language of God, The New England Journal of Medicine, University of Alabama-Birmingham, vaccination
The depiction of Francis Collins as someone who has developed a good model for integrating faith and science is in many respects a tragic myth. Source
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16Oct 2021 by Post

Critics Respond to Stephen Meyer’s New Book (Without Mentioning Him by Name)

Alan Guth, Alexander Vilenkin, Arvind Borde, BGV, Bible, Big Bang, Christianity, CMBR, cosmic fine-tuning, cosmic microwave background radiation, cosmology, critics, Ethan Siegel, Evolution, Harry Potter, inflationary theory, Intelligent Design, Judaism, Physics, Earth & Space, Return of the God Hypothesis, Singularity, Stephen Meyer, universe, Voldemort
The critics, including Ethan Siegel, appear to see Meyer much like Voldemort in the Harry Potter series. Source
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