One Christian Thought

Bibles can come in many different sizes. My personal one has an area of about 6 inches height, 4 inches wide, and 1.5 inches tall. Every letter is about one-sixth the size of my fingernail. There is about 138,000 words in the New Testament (if I remember that correctly), with the Old being about three times as long.  Many Christians believe in the fundamental truth of Scripture as being inerrant. To communicate His messages to us, of course He gave a completely infallible book. Many Christian leaders have asked, "If only parts of the Bible are the truth from God, how do you know which parts?" But is it really plausible to say that entire big book, containing 66 individual books in all collected over millennia, agrees on everything?  I have only taken one philosophy class, which is concluding soon. My professor mentioned Lara Buchak's definition of faith: belief in something not negated by the evidence but not necessitated either. When you give up looking for evidence desp...

Is the book ever wrong anywhere? Sir William Ramsay says that chapters 1-5 are prone to error because Luke was getting all his information from others, who are suspect as being liable to report embellished tales of the actual history in Jerusalem right after the ascension(1). This is in contrast with 13-28, where the historian got access to either events he saw himself or heard from Paul, his close traveling companion. It is demonstrable that when handling the fifth book of the New Testament, the conclusion that it cannot all be the historically true word of God is not proven whatsoever. He gives two examples, which I find easy to respond to.  One is the claim that the different accounts of Judas's death in Matthew 27:5-6 and Acts 1:18-19 shows that Luke's material contradicts that from the only record in the Gospels and was clearly formed later, by definition making it a legend. But Matthew never said Judas did not fall, and Luke never said he did not hang himself. Visit the t...

Sooooo... basically I found more of a historical ground to place my theory that Matthew's account is different than others, along with some new observations, even as critical charges. Here I'm further defending  " Bible Difficulties -- 4 Different Accounts of Empty Tomb Appearances ." I suggest you read it before considering the content of this post, because I deal with many other potential errors in the Gospel narratives of the empty tomb. Last month I finished reading Truth in a Culture of Doubt: Engaging Skeptical Challenges to the Bible  by apologists Andreas J. Kostenberger, Darrell L. Bock, and Josh D. Chatraw. Ehrman was the source of criticism they were trying to answer throughout the book. They deal with a case of chronological differences: "Luke likely mentions the tearing of the veil prior to the crucifixion [Luke 23:44-45] in order to put it beside other cosmic signs he gives. In other words, Luke is providing a list of cosmic signs without claiming a...

Twelve Disciples after the Crucifixion? (And "three days") Lapide presents a reason to distrust the New Testament as the word of God, from 1 Corinthians 15:5: "'The twelve' as a closed group of the first witnesses include also Judas -- this both agrees with the consciousness of Jesus to be sent to all of Israel and contradicts the supposed suicide of Judas (Matt. 27:5)." (page 98-99) I had never thought of that until I read it just then. It makes sense: the tale of Judas is a legend, and so Paul didn't know about it. However, Lapide's own book helped me come up with a reasonable response. "'On the third day' has nothing to do with the date or with the counting of time but contains for ears which are educated biblically a clear reference to God's mercy and grace which is revealed after two days of affliction and death by way of redemption." (page 92) (Some people charge the Bible is wrong to say Jesus was in the tomb ...

The Difficulty A piece of evidence for Jesus's tomb being empty on Easter Sunday often cited is how all the accounts differ from each other drastically, when one goes past the the primary details. Leading Christian apologist William Lane Craig explained to Lee Strobel that satisfies the historical-critical determination of an actual event. The thing is, though, Christians usually go past just believing in the Resurrection and believe that the Bible is the word of God, and therefore inerrant. God cannot contradict Himself, so therefore the Bible cannot contradict itself. I realize that, once one goes beyond considering the historical evidence of Christianity, they will probably have realized that the four Gospel accounts significantly differ. And, skeptics can use that as an argument. Prominent Christian apologist J.P. Moreland said, "It is difficult to harmonize the empty tomb and appearance narratives in the Gospels, though such a harmonization can be done." (1) He ...

Feminism. What is Feminism exactly? I'm pretty sure it is the belief that women should receive equal rights with those of a man. There may be other things associated with it, like pro-abortion ("a women should be able to control her own body," people claim), but I'm only going to focus here on what the Bible has to say about the equality of a women to that of a man. As I said in my last post, I don't know much about politics, at all. Apparently there is a Left and a Right (liberal or conservative), Donald Trump is the president (at least for a little while longer), and Feminism is a political movement somewhere somehow. Or something. Look, the most educated political opinion I have ever had is that Donald Trump should marry Hillary Clinton because they have similar hair colors, are similar ages, and argued a lot. Now you ask, why don't I bother? All joking aside (both of them are already married and so that would be adultery), it is because I believe as ...