Think Institute Podcast Appearance
In case you didn’t get to see it live, here is the YouTube recording of my discussion with Joel Settecase of the Think Institute Podcast. He’s a great guy, and it was an absolute blast. Plus he loves the book!
The Only Plausible Explanation for the Resurrection is an Actual Resurrection!
Since I’m working my way through I Corinthians 15, and since tomorrow is Palm Sunday, and Easter next, I want to share my thoughts on the event that, completely in every way, changed everything. The following is from verses 12-22
Paul has established the essence of the gospel in a short creed he received not long after his conversion, that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and raised on the third day, all according to the Scriptures. The gospel is rooted not only in historical events, but in those events predicted in the history of Israel found in the Jewish Scriptures. The apostles of course got this from Jesus who told them after his resurrection that the whole Old Testament is about him, and from Acts through Revelation they consistently teach and preach him as the fulfillment of Israel’s history. They did not make this up, as skeptics and critics insist they did. Indeed, without the gospel the Old Testament and Israel’s history doesn’t make any sense at all! And without the Old Testament and Israel’s history the gospel doesn’t make any sense at all either! (more…)
Joshua Harris and the Power of Plausibility Structures
Since I keep seeing articles and blog posts about the apostasy of Joshua Harris, I keep thinking of lessons we can learn from his postmodern rejection of the Christian faith. I outlined three in my last post, and add another in this one. It’s a concept that is all but invisible in Christian conversations, and even in apologetics: plausibility structures. Before you go off somewhere else in Internetland because it sounds like an esoteric concept for brainiacs, or something, stick with me. It could not be more important for Christians trying to navigate their faith commitments in a hostile, secular 21st century Western culture.
Why God Doesn’t Seem Real to So Many People
If God is real, and he most certainly is, why does he not seem real to so many people? The answer is simple: The heights of Western culture are dominated by secularists who think God is a curiosity from a benighted past out of which science and the rational Enlightenment have rescued us. They dominate education, entertainment, and media of all kinds, those instruments of influence in the culture that have a significant effect on how we view and interpret reality. For them, God seems no more real than Santa Clause. A sociological term that captures this phenomenon is plausibility structure, or those influences in the culture that make certain things seem real (plausible) to us, or not. Unless someone has a strong competing plausibility structure, like their home and church, God likely will not have much relevance to their lives. Most people like it that way, but they are not why I write this post.
How “The Hiddeness of God” and The Bible’s Verisimilitude
Critics of Christianity, and often Christians themselves, wonder why at times it seems that God is hidden from us. God never makes himself so obvious it is impossible for us to doubt. Why doesn’t he, they always and we sometimes ask, make himself more obvious? That’s a fair question, and not only one we modern people enveloped in a secular culture ask. As an answer, I’ve discovered reading the Bible from cover to cover, and also writing my way through my reading, that God rarely makes himself so obvious that it can’t be explained in some other way. There are few times in redemptive history that Yahweh, Israel’s God, makes himself so obvious that it would seem impossible for the people to question his existence, but that never determines their trust in and obedience to him.
I love that the Bible is this way because it’s not terribly different than our own lived experience, as it has been all throughout the history of the Church for his people. If what we read in the Bible was completely different than our partially hidden encounter with God, then I would have a tough time believing it was true. As it is, the Bible reads real. The examples are endless, but something that stands out to me is the passage of time; God is never in a hurry. Doesn’t it seem that way in our lives? His timeline and ours rarely intersect. In the Bible that’s magnified a zillion times.
Eusebius’ “Church History”: Where Exactly is our Home?
I’ve always been a big history guy, but had never read Eusebius: The Church History until recently. As with almost everything in my life now, I had apologetic motivations for reading it. Skeptics are always distorting the history of early church, and I wanted to see what someone who lived so close to the beginnings of our faith had to say about it. I’ve always known that followers of Jesus endured horrible persecution for almost 300 years after his ascension, but reading an historian (263-339) who witnessed it first hand, and who reported on other first-hand accounts, was sobering. What stood out to me was something we in the 21st century secular West have a hard time accepting: this life is not all there is. Of course we Christians claim to disbelieve this, but we live much of our lives as if this life was indeed all their is. I’m as guilty of it as anyone else because in our thoroughly secular culture it’s very easy to do.
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