Monthly Archives: July 2018

Can you be neutral on any topic?

Do unbiased people exist?

Image result for clipart No Bias public domain

(courtesy dreamtime.com)

By Spencer D Gear PhD

Can you read any document and be neutral about the topic? Do all of us have biases, or can we lay aside those biases to be able to read a document, including the newspaper, or view a video or TV programme objectively?

I was blogging with JayB on Online Opinion when he raised this topic:

I read the first few pages [of my PhD dissertation] & so far it seems to be a rebuttal of Crossant. Whoever he is. That’s all. Nothing new or any ground breaking revelations so far.

I will read the whole thing, make some notes & draft a reply as I see it from a neutral point. It maybe some time, but I will report back.

Should I agree with Crossant, Spencer, or disagree depends on if they are taking the Testaments as being absolute truths or can have mistakes in them.

Posted by Jayb, Tuesday, 10 July 2018 4:54:31 PM[1]

The dissertation can be found at: Crossan and the resurrection of Jesus : rethinking presuppositions, methods and models ?(University of Pretoria, South Africa 2015)

How should I respond?[2]

1. No neutral person or writer exists

This blogger considers he can examine my 480pp dissertation without bias:

ā€œI will read the whole thing, make some notes & draft a reply as I see it from a neutral pointā€.[3]

There is no such person as one who can respond “from a neutral point [of view]”. How do I know you, I, and anyone else have biases that cannot be neutral?

He has lots of things he cannot neutral about. Whenever you give us your opinion in Online Opinion, you demonstrate your bias and that you are unable to see things “from a neutral point”.
You have a bias (cannot remain neutral) about which brand of coffee you prefer, what is REAL football, and your favourite sports’ team. Your economic, religious and political philosophies are not neutral – you have biases. When it comes to God and his action in the universe, you have no “neutral” point of view. Neither do I.

We all have a world and life view about God, everything in the world, humanity and ourselves. Not one of us is exempt.

1.1 Eric Metaxas: ā€œEverything I do is affected by my faith.ā€

Eric Metaxas February 2012.jpgMetaxas in 2012 (courtesy Wikipedia)

Eric Metaxas is a #1 New York Times bestseller author, speaker, host of radio programme the Eric Metaxas Show, and a vocal defender of Christianity in the public sphere. He was interviewed for the Bible Society newspaper Eternity.

He confirmed how his bias affects all that he does and there is no such thing as neutrality in his life. He cannot be neutral. Neither can anyone else! He explained:

Everything I do, I hope, is affected by my faith. But thatā€™s really a joy, because I think thatā€™s the whole point, that belief in the God of the Bible gives your life meaning.

Itā€™s not just a private thing, or this little thing that I put in a corner, but it affects everything. So it affects how I see the world, I hope it affects how I treat other people, how I see myself. And certainly in terms of what I do ā€“ writing, broadcasting, speeches ā€“ it all really comes directly out of my faith.

[My faith] is all consuming, but I really think thatā€™s the nature of Christian faith. God wants us to give him every part of our lives, so that it affects everything about us, all the decisions we make. And itā€™s a freeing thing as opposed to a constricting thingā€¦.

If you donā€™t know who you are, that the God who created the universe created you and loves you, it will really be impossible to ever be satisfied, because you were created by someone who created you to want to be satisfied by him and by his will for your life, which as I say is a freeing thing (Holgate 2016).

2. Dumping presuppositions on us without owning up

Back to JayB and his post.

These are his presuppositions about issues. It’s not wrong to have presuppositions, but they need to be tested to discover evidence to support or reject them. Presuppositions relate to what we assume to be true. I have them. So does he. We cannot be neutral about anything from trivial things such as which breed of dog we enjoy the most to who created the grand design in the universe.

Atheists, Christians, Buddhists, agnostics, Muslims and sceptics cannot be “neutral” on anything.

Let’s check a couple of his presuppositions in his short post that demonstrate he cannot be “neutral” when examining my dissertation:

ā€œI read the first few pages & so far it seems to be a rebuttal of Crossant. Whoever he is. That’s all. Nothing new or any ground breaking revelations so farā€.[4]

2.1 Reading a few pages to assess 480 pages

In a few pages out of 480 pages, he claimed he read nothing new or ground breaking. That’s because he had a bias (can’t be neutral) about a Christian assessment.

His “neutrality” extends to the point of not knowing who John Dominic Crossan is and his bias is such that he doesnā€™t bother to spell Crossanā€™s name correctly. He is NOT “Crossant”. In 6 lines of the post, he spelt Crossanā€™s name incorrectly twice.

Therefore, he didn’t read the early pages of the dissertation with care. Iā€™m left to guess what ā€œneutralā€ perspective he will give to the rest of the thesis, if this is an example. His post demonstrated he could not be neutral.

3. The Bible: No absolute truths and can have mistakes inĀ  it

He wrote:

Should I agree with Crossant, Spencer, or disagree depends on if they are taking the Testaments as being absolute truths or can have mistakes in them.[5]

This demonstrates a WHOPPING lack of neutrality. I have to take the OT and NT according to his presupposition that these 2 testaments CANNOT teach “absolute truths or can have mistakes in them”.

There he established his own presuppositional absolute that both OT and NT must NOT teach absolute truths and they “can have mistakes in them”. He is not “neutral” about the nature of Scripture. He came to this discussion with a bias against God’s absolutes in Scripture.

Colson with President George W. Bush after receiving the Presidential Citizens Medal, December 20, 2008 (courtesy Wikipedia)

The late Chuck Colson (d. 2012), special counsel to President Richard Nixon and imprisoned because of the Watergate scandal, had a mid-life crisis encounter with Jesus Christ and became an evangelical Christian. It was after that he started Prison Ministries International.

In one of his BreakPoint radio programmes (Colson 2003), he explained the impact of cultural voices on our children ā€“ ā€œThere is no ultimate truth, no moral code by which to live our livesā€.

Added to this is the message that God is ā€œtotally irrelevantā€, if he exists. We make our lives for ourselves and we are accountable to nobody.

This message is bombarding our kids from all angles.

The most dangerous thing kids can do is to handle this by “compartmentalizing” the sacred and the secular in their minds. This is a split-level faith. God lives on the top floor; I live in the basement with no connecting staircase. Instead, we have to help them understand that the Christian faith is relevant to everything in their lives. Jesus knocks on the door of our life and wants to occupy all of our life.

And so one of the most important things we can teach our kids is how to see all of life, not just their home life or the time they spend at church, from a Christian point of view. No matter how hard we try to guard them, they’ll hear conflicting messages. We must help them put intellectual muscle behind their faith.

In the Old Testament, God provided the Israelites with a model for passing down His truths to their children. In Deuteronomy 6, He tells themā€”and, I believe, usā€”to “impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”

In other words, no matter what the culture tells us, it’s our responsibility in the routine of life to teach our kids that truth exists, that we can know it, that we can live it, and that, in the final analysis, it’s all about God. In my next commentary, I’ll talk about practical ways to do this.

3.1 Defend the integrity of Scripture.

Open Bible 2

(image courtesy ChristArt)

 

I donā€™t have the space to do that here, but some pointers for defending the reliability of the Bible are:

clip_image002Can you trust the Bible? Part 1 (Spencer D Gear)

clip_image002[1]Can you trust the Bible? Part 2 (Spencer D Gear)

clip_image002[2]Can you trust the Bible? Part 3 (Spencer D Gear)

clip_image002[3]Can you trust the Bible? Part 4 (Spencer D Gear)

I recommend you check the material in Norman L Geisler & Frank Turek’s book, I Donā€™t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Crossway Books 2004). In the Index, check out ā€˜New Testamentā€™ where Geisler & Turek provide a list of reasons why we can trust the reliability of the NT:

clip_image004 Accepted as legal evidence,

clip_image004[1] Accuracy of reconstruction,

clip_image004[2] As 27 individual documents,

clip_image004[3] As having more manuscripts,

clip_image004[4] As having more supported manuscripts,

clip_image004[5] As historical novel,

clip_image004[6] As inerrant,

clip_image004[7] As meeting tests of historicity,

clip_image004[8] As received from Holy Spirit,

clip_image004[9] Figures, historically confirmed,

clip_image004[10] Historical reliability,

clip_image004[11] Reconstruction of the original,

clip_image004[12] Sources of,

clip_image004[13] Storyline of (Geisler & Turek 2004:439).

4. Dishonesty about neutrality

Scale, Weigh, Judge, Books, Equial, Balance, Justice

(courtesy pixabay)

I found JayBā€™s reply to be dishonest because:

1.Ā Ā Ā  Up front, he refused to acknowledge his presuppositional biases and that he cannot be neutral on any topic – including assessment of my dissertation.

2.Ā Ā Ā  Then, he has the audacity to judge my 480pp dissertation after reading only a few pages. He concludes, “Nothing new or any ground breaking revelations so far”.

If I made a judgment on an extensive writing by him after reading only a few pages, the academic community would have every reason to send me off to training in logic and assessment of any document. His “neutrality” is shattered on the rocks of his bias against my writing ā€“ after reading only a few pages.

3.Ā Ā Ā  He created a new absolute: “depends on if they are taking the Testaments as being absolute truths or can have mistakes in them”.

So the NT must not contain absolute truths and it must be admitted that the NT has mistakes in it. Thatā€™s his own created absolute to challenge what he considers are wrong absolutes. It is contradictory that an anti-God enthusiast wants to rid the Christian NT of absolutes while creating his own absolute.

See also: Bible bigotry from an arrogant skepticĀ (Spencer D Gear).

5.Ā  Works consulted

Colson, C 2003. At Cross Purposes: Christian Parents and the Postmodern Culture. Breakpoint, 19 August. Available at: http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/breakpoint-commentaries-archive/entry/13/12263 (Accessed 25 January 2014).

Geisler, N L & Turek, F 2004. I Donā€™t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books.

Holgate, T 2016. ā€œEverything I do is affected by my faith,ā€ says #1 NY Times bestselling author Eric Metaxas. Bible Society Eternity (online), 14 April. Available at: http://www.biblesociety.org.au/news/everything-i-do-is-affected-by-my-faith-says-1-ny-times-bestselling-author-eric-metaxas (Accessed 11 May 2016).

6.Ā  Endnotes


[1] Online Opinion 2018. What is your view for one to worship humans? (online). Available at: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=8313&page=28 (Accessed 23 July 2018).

[2] My first response was in ibid., posted by OzSpen, Monday, 23 July 2018 8:44:49 AM

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., Jayb, Tuesday, 10 July 2018 4:54:31 PM.

[5] Ibid., posted by OzSpen, Monday, 23 July 2018 8:50:24 AM.

 

 

Copyright Ā© 2018 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 24 July 2018.

Assisted suicide saves lives??

Related image

(image courtesy FIC Blog)

By Spencer Gear PhD

Over the years Iā€™ve read some interesting, provocative, and even strange reasons, for supporting euthanasia and assisted suicide. This one took the cake:

1. Decriminalising assisted suicide will only save lives

The full statement was:

Decriminalising assisted suicide will only save lives: old but healthy people will no longer decide to fly to Switzerland or jump off a cliff while they can, because they could be assured by someone who loves them that if in future they are in great pain or disability then they could be “helped to die” within Australia.[1]

This is one of the weirdest statements from this person. How should I respond?

That’s strange logic – killing someone through assisted suicide will save lives!

1.1 Who has the right to give and take life?

According to Acts 17:24-25 (NIRV), “He is the God who made the world. He also made everything in it. He is the Lord of heaven and earthā€¦. He himself gives life and breath to all people”.[2]

That’s clear enough. The Lord God gives life and breath to all people. He does not use euthanasia to “save lives”. Human beings use assisted suicide.

First Timothy 6:13 states, “God gives life to everything”. Therefore, whose right is it to end life? It does not belong to the Dr to euthanise people. Let them die a ‘natural’ death and allow the sovereign God to deal with the time of death.

I’ve just sat with a wife at hospital beside her dying aged husband. The Drs thought he would die on Tuesday but God’s timing was Thursday morning. Nobody else has the right to end life. It is God’s right to give life to everyone and it is his right to determine the time of death.

I’m saddened that this person justified assisted suicide which is against the rights of the Lord God Almighty.

One of God’s rights is found in His omniscience (His attribute) – He’s knows everything about all human beings and the universe. The Lord God’s “eyes saw my body even before it was formed. You planned how many days I would live. You wrote down the number of them in your book before I had lived through even one of them” (Psalm 139:16).

Therefore, it is God’s right to give and to take life [3]

2. Why do people advocate euthanasia and assisted suicide?

Verywellhealth lists these as reasons to support the right-to-die with dignity movement:

clip_image002 A patient’s death brings him or her the end of pain and suffering.

clip_image002[1] Patients have an opportunity to die with dignity, without fear that they will lose their physical or mental capacities.

clip_image002[2] The overall healthcare financial burden on the family is reduced.

clip_image002[3] Patients can arrange for final goodbyes with loved ones.

clip_image002[4] If planned for in advance, organs can be harvested and donated.

clip_image002[5] With physician assistance, patients have a better chance of experiencing a painless and less traumatic death (death with dignity).

clip_image002[6] Patients can end pain and suffering when there is no hope for relief.

clip_image002[7] Some say assisted death with dignity is against the Hippocratic Oath, however, the statement ā€œfirst do no harmā€ can also apply to helping a patient find the ultimate relief from pain through death.

clip_image002[8] Medical advances have enabled life beyond what nature might have allowed, but that is not always in the best interest of the suffering patient with no hope of recovery.

clip_image002[9] A living will, considered a guiding document for a patient’s healthcare wishes, can provide clear evidence of a patient’s decisions regarding end-of-life care (Torrey 2018).

All of the above points provide support for human autonomy at the time of death.

This is not the expression of a godly, Christian worldview but a secular, agnostic perspective. God is not mentioned in this list. There is not even a nod to the teaching by Elkanah’s wife, Hannah, in the OT: ‘The Lord is a God who knows everything. He judges everything people do…. The Lord causes people to die. He also gives people life. He brings people down to the grave. He also brings people up from death (1 Sam 2: 3b, 6).

The Christian way of death is summarised by John Piper:

Jesus put it this way: ā€œAre not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the groundā€ ā€” meaning, die ā€” ā€œapart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of much more value than the sparrowsā€ (Matthew 10:29ā€“31). Now, what is the point? The point is, if the time for the death of a tiny bird in a remote forest is of a concern to God and determined by God, how much more will our days be numbered and determined by God with great care and wisdom. In fact, the psalmist says to God, ā€œYour eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of themā€ (Psalm 139:16). Which means, [that] the days that God has allotted for [you and me] are already written in a book. They are decided. There arenā€™t any extra ones outside the book that slip up on God (Piper 2017).

3. There are good reasons to reject euthanasia and assisted suicide

There are sound reasons to discard voluntary, active euthanasia or assisted suicide legislation through the repeal of the Australian Territories’ legislation.

In my understanding, the case for euthanasia is based on the following:

clip_image004 Intentionally killing or assisting in the killing of innocent human beings.
clip_image004[1] Repudiation of the doctor-patient relationship that is meant to promote life.
clip_image004[2] It flies in the face of the medical advances made in the treatment of pain and is at odds with compassionate methods of care.
clip_image004[3] It does not fully consider the historical examples that show euthanasia cannot be legislatively controlled (e.g. Holland, Belgium).
clip_image004[4] It rests on presuppositions that do not respect human life.
clip_image004[5] It plays God. Only God has the right to give and take life.
clip_image004[6] Human beings are not animals, but unique beings made in the image of God.
clip_image004[7] Ethically, it rests on self-defeating assertions, i.e. it can introduce dishonesty and deception into the doctor-patient relationship. Is the doctor one who kills or one who facilitates life?
clip_image004[8] It is not in the patient’s or society’s best interests.
clip_image004[9] It eliminates the sufferer rather than treating the suffering.

clip_image004 Effective palliative care is available in the home and the hospital.

clip_image004 Opinion polls are an unreliable indicator of support for euthanasia.

For an exposition of these points, see my submission on the 2008 Bill, number 386,

4. Conclusion

This discussion has moved from support for assisted suicide, ā€˜Decriminalising assisted suicide will only save livesā€™, to giving human beings the autonomous right to decide how they will die.

Reasons were given why secular, pro-death people support euthanasia and assisted suicide through promoting autonomy of the individual. By contrast, those who reject euthanasia and assisted suicide see the dangers of this legislation (based on historical precedent) and refuse to play God.

5. Works consulted

Leyonhjelm, D 2018. Assisted suicide deal. Online Opinion (online), 9 July. Available at: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=19835 (Accessed 12 July 2018).

Piper, J 2017. Does God Know the Exact Day I Will Die? Desiring God (online), episode 1007, 24 February. Available at: https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/does-god-know-the-exact-day-i-will-die (Accessed 12 July 2018).

Torrey, T 2018. Arguments in Favor of Right-to-Die Legislation. Verywellhealth (online), 4 March. Available at: https://www.verywellhealth.com/arguments-in-favor-of-death-with-dignity-2614852 (Accessed 12 July 2018).

6. Notes


[1] Leyonhjelm 2018. Comment by Yuyutsu, Thursday, 12 July 2018 1:19:48 AM.

[2] Unless otherwise stated, all Bible verses are from the New International Readersā€™ Version (NIRV).

[3] Leyonhjelm 2018. Comment by OzSpen (by me), Thursday, 12 July 2018 12:34:08 PM.

 

Copyright Ā© 2018 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 12 July 2018.

Black ornamental divider

Was Jesus’ Resurrection a Bodily Resurrection?

Garden Tomb

Todd Bolen, ā€œGarden Tombā€œ

By Spencer D Gear

The apostle Paul was awaiting execution in a Roman prison when he wrote his second and final letter to Timothy in about AD 64-68 (intro in ESV).Ā Ā  What do you think would be the last words from one of the greatest church leaders of all time ā€“ just before he was killed as a martyr for the faith?Ā  Listen carefully to 2 Tim. 4:1-4:

I solemnly urge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who will someday judge the living and the dead when he comes to set up his Kingdom: 2 Preach the word of God. Be prepared, whether the time is favorable or not. Patiently correct, rebuke, and encourage your people with good teaching.

3 For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will reject the truth and chase after myths (NLT).

A.Ā Ā Ā  What happened in the years immediately after the death of the apostles?

Was Paulā€™s warning to Timothy fulfilled?Ā Ā  Was sound doctrine compromised?Ā  Were there listeners with ā€œitching earsā€ who ā€œturn[ed] their ears away from the truth and turn[ed] aside to mythsā€?Ā  Yes, there were and here we will describe some of the teachings.

We need to understand that these church leaders were defending the faith against one of the most destructive heresies concerning Christ that developed towards the end of the first century.Ā  A similar kind of heresy is with us today.Ā  Back in the first and second centuries, this false teaching was called Docetism (a form of Gnosticism).

Docetism is based on the Greek verb, dokew, which means, ā€œI seem.ā€Ā  This heresy taught that:

arrow 2 NE clip art Jesus only seemed to be human; he was not really human;
arrow 2 NE clip art His human body was a ghost;
arrow 2 NE clip art Christā€™s suffering and death were only appearances of suffering & death;
arrow 2 NE clip artThey denied his humanity, so there was no bodily resurrection of Christ.Ā  But they affirmed Christā€™s deity.
arrow 2 NE clip artWe see possibly an early stage ofĀ  Docetism being addressed in I John 4:2, when John wrote, ā€œEvery spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.ā€Ā  In 2 John 7, we read, ā€œMany deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.ā€

This is why early church theologians and writers after the death of the apostles had to preach against this heresy.Ā  Iā€™ll mention a few examples of this correction, particularly as it applies to the resurrection of Christ.

1. Ignatius of Antioch (ca. 35-107) [2]

He taught: ā€œFor I know and believe that [Jesus] was in the flesh even after the resurrection. And when He came to Peter and those who were with him, He said to them, ā€˜Take, handle me and see that I am not a spirit without bodyā€™ā€ (written about the year AD 110) [Ignatius n.d., 6.3].

2.Ā Ā Ā  Justin Martyr (ca. 100-165)

Justin wrote:

ā€œWhy did He rise in the flesh in which He suffered, unless to show the resurrection of the flesh? And wishing to confirm this, when His disciples did not know whether to believe He had truly risen in the body, and were looking upon Him and doubting, He said to them, ā€˜Ye have not yet faith, see that it is I;ā€™ and He let them handle Him, and showed them the prints of the nails in His hands. And when they were by every kind of proof persuaded that it was Himself, and in the body, they asked Him to eat with them, that they might thus still more accurately ascertain that He had in verity risen bodilyā€ (Martyr, J., n.d., ch. 9).

This letter was written about AD 110. Why did he have to teach that Jesus rose from the dead in a body of flesh? Because there was false doctrine around in the early second century. He went straight to the Bible to get the proof. We have to do the same with new challenges to Christā€™s bodily resurrection.

3.Ā Ā Ā  Tertullian (ca. 160-225)

Tertullian wrote a book titled, ā€œOn the Resurrection of the Flesh,ā€ in which he asked and responded:

How then did Christ rise again? In the flesh, or not? No doubt, since you are told that He ā€˜died according to the Scriptures,ā€™ and ā€˜that He was buried according to the Scriptures,ā€™ no otherwise than in the flesh, you will also allow that it was in the flesh that He was raised from the dead.

For the very same body which fell in death, and which lay in the sepulchre, did also rise again (Tertullian n.d., ch. 48).

4.Ā Ā Ā  Irenaeus (ca. 130-200)

Saint Irenaeus.jpg

This image courtesy of Wikipedia)

This church father wrote a book titled, Against Heresies, in which he stated:

ā€œIn the same manner, therefore, as Christ did rise in the substance of flesh, and pointed out to His disciples the mark of the nails and the opening in His side (now these are the tokens of that flesh which rose from the dead)ā€ (Irenaeus n.d., 5.7.1).

5.Ā  Origen (ca. 185-254)

In Contra Celsus, Origen refuted Celsusā€™s charge that the resurrection appearances of Jesus were those of a ghost.Ā  He asked:

ā€œHow is it possible that a phantom which, as he describes it, flew past to deceive the beholders, could produce such effects after it had passed away, and could so turn the hearts of men as to lead them to regulate their actions according to the will of Godā€ (Origen n.d., 7.35).

Docetism was one of the major destructive heresies of the church in the first-to-third centuries and these defenders and teachers of the faith had to teach against the false doctrine of a spiritual or phantom resurrection of Christ.Ā  Paul warned that ā€œdestructive heresiesā€ would come and that people would have ā€œitching earsā€ to receive and promote such false teaching.

B. What do we have today?

I hope you donā€™t get angry with me for mentioning names of people who teach false doctrine.Ā  I am following the example of the apostle Paul who, in Galatians 2:11ff, condemned the apostle Peter ā€” and named him.Ā  Peter had been eating with the Gentiles, but when certain Jews came from James, Peter drew back and separated from the Gentiles.Ā  Paul named Peter as a hypocrite and we have had it in writing for 2000 years.Ā Ā 

Paul said in 2 Tim. 4:14, ā€œAlexander the metalworker did me a great deal of harm. The Lord will repay him for what he has done.ā€Ā  We have had this also on record for 2,000 years.

When people are preaching false doctrine in the church or anywhere, when people are harming the church and Godā€™s people, we need to name them, correct them, and proclaim the accurate biblical message.

In regard to the bodily resurrection of Christ, what false teaching do we have today?

1.Ā Ā Ā  New Zealand Presbyterian minister, Sir Lloyd Geering

Lloyd Geering, 2011.jpg(Sir Lloyd Geering, image courtesy Wikipedia)

He defended what ā€œGregor Smith had said in [a book called] Secular Christianity ā€¦ that the Christian is free to say that the bones of Jesus lie somewhere in Palestine, and until the Christian feels free to say that, he hasnā€™t understood what the Resurrection is aboutā€ (in Kohn 2001).

Geering continues, ā€œThe Resurrection was not a resuscitation, it was not a return to this life of a physical body. It was in fact something quite different. It was in fact the rise of Easter faith in the disciples, more or less as Bultmann had been explaining for some timeā€ (in Kohn 2001).

In other words, the resurrection of Jesus was not a risen body in the flesh, but it was a spiritual experience for Christā€™s disciples.

You possibly wonā€™t read Lloyd Geering and some of these other false teachers today, but do you know the people who do read them?Ā  Those in the mass media who want to create doubt or a controversial perspective, readily seek comments from these doubters.Ā  When it comes to Easter and Christmas times, they wonā€™t call on you and me, but these false teachings and their heretical teachers will hit the headlines.

2.Ā Ā Ā  Edward Schillebeeckx

A Dutch Roman Catholic, he wrote, ā€œJesusā€™ resurrection is not a return to life as in the story of Lazarusā€¦ it is certainly not a miracle of intervention in natural laws to raise a corpse to heavenly lifeā€ (from Schillebeeckx, God Among Us, p. 134, cited in Mann 1993).

3.Ā Ā Ā  The German Protestant Lutheran, Rudolph Bultmann

Bultmann wrote that ā€œthe resurrection itself is not an event of past historyā€ (from Kerygma and Myth, p.39, cited in Mann 1993).

4.Ā Ā Ā  Protestant theologian Karl Barth

ā€œChristians do not believe in the empty tomb but in the living Christ. Is the empty tomb just a legend? What matter? It cannot but demand assent, even as legend.ā€ (from Church Dogmatics III, 2, p.454).

5.Ā Ā  Former Episcopalian bishop of Newark, NJ, John Shelby Spong:

ā€œThe probable fate of the crucified Jesus was to be thrown with other victims into a common, unmarked grave. The general consensus of New Testament scholars is that whatever the Easter experience was, it dawned first in the minds of the disciples who had fled to Galilee for safety, driving us to the conclusion that the burial story in the gospels is both legendary and was developed directly from the words of II Isaiahā€ (Spong 2004).

6. John Dominic Crossan, a Roman Catholic, of the Jesus Seminar

Crossan speaks of ā€œthe apparitions of the risen Jesus.ā€Ā  Whatā€™s an apparition?Ā  A phantom, a ghost.Ā  Jesusā€™ resurrected body was not real flesh.Ā Ā  He says that ā€œthe resurrection is a matter of Christian faithā€ (1995, p. 189).Ā  So, for him, the resurrection of Christ is really a spiritual resurrection among believers ā€“ whatever that means.

So, what happened to the body of Jesus?Ā  Crossan wrote: ā€œJesusā€™ burial by his friends was totally fictional and unhistorical.Ā  He was buried, if buried at all, by his enemies, and the necessarily shallow grave would have been easy prey for scavenging animalsā€ (Crossan 1994, p. 160).

Letā€™s come closer to my home in Queensland ā€“ in my hometown of Bundaberg, Qld., Australia.

7.Ā Ā Ā  Rev. David Kidd, Bundaberg Uniting Church

At Easter time 1999, David Kidd wrote an article in The Bugle, a local freebie newspaper that was titled, ā€œThe Resurrection of Jesusā€ (Kidd 1999, p. 19). I lived in Bundaberg at the time.Ā  In it, he stated: ā€œThe resurrection of Jesus.[3] Itā€™s impossible.Ā  Even our brain dies after a few minutes of death.Ā  Itā€™s just not possible.ā€™ā€[4]

C. What does the Bible state?

It is very easy to show from the Scriptures that Christ rose from the dead in a physical body. Letā€™s look at the evidence (based on Geisler 1999, pp. 667-668).

1. People touched him with their hands.

Jesusā€™ challenge to Thomas in John 20:27 was: ā€œPut your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.ā€Ā  How did Thomas respond, ā€œMy Lord and My Godā€ (20:28).

Jesus said to Mary as she grasped him, ā€œDo not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father.ā€Ā  Matthew 28:9 tells us that the women ā€œclasped his feet and worshiped him.ā€

When Jesus appeared to his disciples, what did Jesus say?Ā  Luke 24:39, ā€œLook at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a [spirit ] {5} does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.ā€

Do we need any further evidence that Jesus had real human flesh after his resurrection?

2. Jesusā€™ resurrection body had real flesh and bones.

The verse that we have just looked at gives some of the most powerful evidence of his bodily resurrection: ā€œTouch me and see; a [spirit] does not have flesh and bones, as you see I haveā€ (Lk. 24:39) and to prove that he really did have a real body of flesh and bones, what did he do?Ā  According to Luke 24:41-42, Jesus ā€œasked them, ā€˜Do you have anything here to eat?ā€™Ā  They gave him a piece of broiled fish.ā€Ā  Folks, spirits or spiritual bodies do not eat fish.

Third piece of evidence in support of the bodily resurrection of Christ:

3. Jesus ate real tucker (Aussie for ā€œfoodā€).

As weā€™ve just seen, they gave him ā€œbroiled fishā€ to eat.Ā  He ate real food on at least 3 occasions, eating both bread and fish, (Luke 24:30, 41-43; John 21:12-13).Ā  Acts 10:41 states that Jesus met with witnesses ā€œwho ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.ā€

That sounds clear to me.Ā  Jesus ate food after his resurrection.Ā  People in real bodies eat real food.

A fourth proof that Jesus was raised in his physical body:

4. Take a look at the wounds in his body.

This is proof beyond reasonable doubt. He still had the wounds in his body from when he was killed. John 20:27, ā€œThen he said to Thomas, ā€˜Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.ā€™ā€

When Jesus ascended, after his resurrection, the Bible records, ā€œThis same Jesus [ie this divine-human Jesus], who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heavenā€ (Acts 1:11).

Thereā€™s a fifth confirmation of his bodily resurrection:

5. Jesus could be seen and heard.

Yes, Jesusā€™ body could be touched and handled.Ā  But there is more!Ā 

Matthew 28:17 says that ā€œwhen they saw [horaw] him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.ā€ On the road to Emmaus, of the disciples who were eating together, Luke 24:31 states, ā€œThen their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.ā€Ā  The Greek term ā€œto recognizeā€ [epiginoskw] means ā€œto know, to understand, or to recognizeā€Ā  These are the normal Greek words ā€œfor ā€˜seeingā€™ (horaw, theorew) and ā€˜recognizingā€™ (epiginoskw) physical objectsā€ (Geisler 1999, pp 667-668).

Because Jesus could be seen and heard as one sees and recognises physical objects, we have further proof that Jesus rose bodily.

6. The Greek word, soma, always means physical body.

When used of an individual human being, the word body (soma) always means a physical body in the New Testament.Ā  There are no exceptions to this usage in the New Testament.Ā  Paul uses soma of the resurrection body of Christ [and of the resurrected bodies of people ā€“ yet to come] (I Cor. 15:42-44), thus indicating his belief that it was a physical bodyā€ (Geisler 1999, p. 668).

In that magnificent passage in I Cor. 15 about the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of people in the last days, why is Paul insisting that the soma must be a physical body?Ā  It is because the physical body is central in Paulā€™s teaching on salvation (Gundry in Geisler 1999, p. 668).Ā  Weā€™ll get to that in a moment.

Thereā€™s a 7th piece of evidence in support of bodily resurrection:

7. Jesusā€™ body came out from among the dead

Thereā€™s a prepositional phrase that is used in the NT to describe resurrection ā€œfrom (ek) the deadā€ (cf. Mark 9:9; Luke 24:46; John 2:22; Acts 3:15; Rom. 4:24; I Cor. 15:12).Ā  That sounds like a ho-hum kind of phrase in English, ā€œfrom the dead.ā€ Not so in the Greek.

This Greek preposition, ek, means Jesus was resurrected ā€˜out from amongā€™ the dead bodies, that is, from the grave where corpses are buried (Acts 13:29-30).Ā  These same words are used to describe Lazarusā€™s being raised ā€˜from the deadā€™ (John 12:1).Ā  In this case there is no doubt that he came out of the grave in the same body in which he was buried.Ā  Thus, resurrection was of a physical corpse out of a tomb or graveyard (Geisler 1999, p. 668).Ā 

This confirms the physical nature of the resurrection body.

8. He appeared to over 500 people at the one time.

Paul to the Corinthians wrote that Christ

appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me [Paul] also, as to one abnormally born (I Cor. 15:5-8).

You could not believe the discussion and controversy one little verb has caused among Bible teachers and scholars.Ā  Christ ā€œappearedā€ to whom?Ā  Here, Paul says, Peter, the twelve disciples, over 500 other Christians, James, all the apostles, and to Paul ā€œas to one abnormally born.ā€

The main controversy has been over whether this was some supernatural revelation called an ā€œappearanceā€ or was it actually ā€œseeingā€ his physical being?Ā  These are the objective facts: Christ became flesh, he died in the flesh, he was raised in the flesh and he appeared to these hundreds of people in the flesh.

The resurrection ofĀ  Jesus from the dead was not a form of ā€œspiritualā€ existence.Ā  Just as he was truly dead and buried, so he was truly raised from the dead bodily and seen by a large number of witnesses on a variety of occasions (Fee 1987, p. 728).

N T Wrightā€™s extensive research on the resurrection of Jesus concluded:

Let us be quite clear at this point: we shall see that when the early Christians said ā€˜resurrectionā€™ they meant it in the sense it bore both in paganism (which denied it) and in Judaism (an influential part of which affirmed it). ā€™Resurrectionā€™ did not mean that someone possessed ā€˜a heavenly and exalted statusā€™; when predicated of Jesus, it did not mean his ā€˜perceived presenceā€™ in the ongoing church. Nor, if we are thinking historically, could it have meant ā€˜the passage of the human Jesus into the power of Godā€™. It meant bodily resurrection; and that is what the early Christians affirmed. There is nothing in the early Christian view of the promised future which corresponds to the pagan views we have studied; nothing at all which corresponds to the denials of the Sadducees; virtually no hint of the ā€˜disembodied blissā€™ view of some Jewish sources; no Sheol, no ā€˜isles of the blessedā€™, no ā€˜shining like starsā€™, but a constant affirmation of newly embodied life. As Christopher Evans put it a generation ago, ā€˜there emerged in Christianity a precise, confident and articulate faith in which resurrection has moved from the circumference to the centre (Wright 2003:209; Evans 1970:20)

Therefore, it should not be surprising for this account to be recorded at the beginning of the Book of Acts: ā€œAfter his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of Godā€ (Acts 1:3).

D. We need to look briefly at a few objections to bodily resurrection

One of the objections sometimes raised is that Christā€™s body after the resurrection had some unusual supernatural features and that this means it was not a real physical body.Ā  One objection is that

1. Christ would just appear and disappear

Take a verse like Luke 24:34, ā€œIt is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.ā€Ā  Then go to Acts 9:17, ā€œThen Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, ā€˜Brother Saul, the Lordā€”Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming hereā€”has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.ā€™ā€

In these two examples the word ā€œappearedā€ is used.Ā  One of Jesus and the other of Jesus appearing to Paul, many years after Christā€™s ascension.Ā  Both of these are in the passive voice (Greek) , so it means that Christ ā€œlet himself be seen. . .Ā  Jesus took the initiative to make himself visible at his resurrection appearancesā€ (Geisler 1999, p. 659).Ā  ā€œAppearedā€ means that ā€œhe could be seen by human eyes, the appearances were not just visionsā€ (Rienecker in Geisler 1999, p. 659).

The NT speaks of sudden appearances by Jesus, like to the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus.Ā  It is stated: ā€œThen their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sightā€ (Luke 24:31).Ā  This could have been a miraculous act of power, a sign that he was both human and divine.Ā  We must get this one correct, as Norman Geisler puts it:

The text nowhere states that Jesus became nonphysical when the disciples could no longer see him.Ā  Just because he was out of their sight does not mean he was out of his physical body.Ā  God has the power to miraculously transport persons in their pre-resurrection physical bodies from one place to another (1999, p. 659).

Remember when Philip the evangelist was with the Ethiopian eunuch, ā€œthe Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicingā€ (Acts 8:39).Ā Ā Ā  Here was Philip, a real human being, whisked away by the Spirit of God.

So for both Jesus and Philip, the text does not say that either one became non-physical beings.

A second objection:

2.Ā Ā Ā  Jesus didnā€™t die but swooned in the grave

H. J. Schonfield made this popular in his book, The Passover Plot (1965).Ā  But this view is as old as Celsus in the 2nd century.Ā  The view was that Mary Magdalene nursed Jesus back to health.Ā  ā€œForty days later his wounds got the better of him, and he died and was buried secretlyā€ (Green 1990, p. 186).

This is fairy story stuff.Ā  There is not one bit of evidence to support it and it doesnā€™t understand ā€œthe brutal Roman method of executionā€ (Green 1990, p. 186).Ā  I found Mel Gibsonā€™s movie, ā€œThe Passion of the Christ,ā€ terribly brutal but it did give a realistic picture of how final Roman execution really was.

3.Ā Ā Ā  The disciples stole the body

If the Jews and Romans wanted to silence the facts about the bodily resurrection of Jesus, all they would have had to do was to produce the body of Jesus.Ā  They didnā€™t.

Get this.Ā  It does not make sense to claim that the disciples stole the body of Jesus, went forth proclaiming the death and resurrection of Jesus, and then

They were willing to be imprisoned for this faith, torn limb from limb, thrown to the lions, or turned into human torches in the Emperor Neroā€™s gardens for this conviction that Jesus was alive.Ā  Would they have endured all that for a claim they knew was [a fake] (Green 1990, p. 190)

Why did some of the Bible teachers after the death of the apostles teach Docetism,Ā  that Jesus did not have a physical body and could not have risen with a physical body?Ā  They could be the same reasons for such teaching today:

arrow simple red right clip artĀ  They donā€™t believe the authoritative Bible is the infallible Word of God.Ā  OR

arrow simple red right clip artThey donā€™t believe in the supernatural.Ā  They are naturalists who believe that ā€œthe ā€˜naturalā€™ universe, the universe of matter and energy, is all that there really is.Ā  This rules out God, so naturalism is atheisticā€ (MacDonald 1984, p. 750).Ā  This is like David Kidd, formerly of the Bundaberg Uniting Church, who said that the resurrection of Christ is ā€œimpossible.Ā  Even our brain dies after a few minutes of death.Ā  Itā€™s just not possibleā€ (Kidd 1999, p. 19).Ā  Thatā€™s naturalism.

Naturalism is the belief that everything in nature originates from natural causes. There cannot be any supernatural or spiritual explanations. They are either excluded for relegated to some discounted position.
arrow simple red right clip artEven though deniers of Christā€™s bodily resurrection may be in the church, according to Rom. 1:18, they still ā€œsuppress the truth in unrighteousness.ā€Ā  They are rebels against God and donā€™t want to understand the resurrection of Jesus as God told us.Ā  They are engaged in ungodly activities and canā€™t see the light of the Gospel.Ā  In reality, they are atheistic concerning the supernatural God of the Bible.

arrow simple red right clip artPaul warned that these false teachers would attract people ā€œto suit their own passionsā€ (2 Tim. 4:4 ESV).Ā 

arrow simple red right clip artSatan, the enemy of our souls, loves to dress up false doctrine to make it look like the real thing.

E. Why is the bodily resurrection of Jesus important?

We must understand how serious it is to deny the resurrection. Paul told the Corinthians: ā€œIf there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faithā€ (I Cor. 15:13-14).

The updated World Christian Encyclopedia ā€¦ by Oxford University Press, says that by midcentury there will be 3 billion Christians, constituting 34.3% of the worldā€™s population, up from the current 33%.

Christians now number 2 billion and are divided into 33,820 denominations and churches, in 238 countries, and use 7,100 languages, the encyclopedia says (Zenit 2001).

If there is no bodily resurrection, we might as well announce it to the world and tell all Christians they are living a lie and ought to go practise some other religion.

British evangelist, Michael Green, summarises the main issues about the bodily resurrection of Christ:

The supreme miracle of Christianity is the resurrection. . . [In the New Testament] assurance of the resurrection shines out from every page.Ā  It is the crux of Christianity, the heart of the matter.Ā  If it is true, then there is a future for mankind; and death and suffering have to be viewed in a totally new light.Ā  If it is not true, Christianity collapses into mythology.Ā  In that case we are, as Saul of Tarsus conceded, of all men most to be pitied (Green 1990, p. 184).

The bodily resurrection is absolutely essential for these reasons:

1. Belief in the resurrection of Christ is necessary for salvation

Rom. 10:9 states: ā€œIf you confess with your mouth, ā€˜Jesus is Lord,ā€™ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.ā€Ā  Salvation means that you are saved from Godā€™s wrath because of the resurrection of Christ.Ā  You are saved from hell.

Your new birth (regeneration) is guaranteed by the resurrection.Ā  First Peter 1:3 states that ā€œIn his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.ā€

The spiritual power within every Christian happens because of the resurrection.Ā  Paul assured the Ephesians of Christā€™s ā€œincomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realmsā€ (Eph. 1:19-20).Ā  You canā€™t have spiritual power in your life without the resurrected Christ.

In one passage, Paul links your justification through faith to the resurrection ā€“ he associates directly your being declared righteous, your being not guilty before God, with Christā€™s resurrection.Ā  Rom. 4:25 states that Jesus ā€œwas delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.ā€

Your salvation, your being born again, your justification, your having spiritual power in the Christian life depends on your faith in the raising of Jesus from the dead.Ā  Not any old resurrection will do.Ā  Jesusā€™ body after the resurrection was not a spirit or phantom.Ā  It was a real, physical body.Ā  IfĀ  you donā€™t believe in the resurrection of Christ, on the basis of this verse, you canā€™t be saved.

Secondly:

2. Christā€™s resurrection proves that Jesus is God

From very early in his ministry, Jesusā€™ predicted his resurrection.Ā  The Jews asked him for a sign.Ā  According to John 2:19-21, ā€œJesus answered them, ā€˜Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three daysā€™ . . . But the temple he had spoken of was his body.ā€Ā  Did you get that?Ā  Jesus predicted that he, being God, would have his body destroyed and three days later, He would raise this body.

Jesus continued to predict his resurrection: ā€œFor as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earthā€ (Matt. 12:40).Ā  See also Mark 8:31; 14:59; Matt. 27:63.

The third reason Christā€™s bodily resurrection is core Christianity is:

3. Life after death is guaranteed!

Remember what Jesus taught his disciples in John 14:19, ā€œBefore long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.ā€ If you truly have saving faith in Christ, his resurrection makes life after death a certainty.

Fourthly:

4. Christā€™s bodily resurrection guarantees that believers will receive perfect resurrection bodies as well.

After you die and Christ comes again, the New Testament connects Christā€™s resurrection with our final bodily resurrection.Ā  I Cor. 6:14, ā€œBy his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also.ā€

In the most extensive discussion on the connection between Christā€™s resurrection and our resurrection, Paul states that Christ is ā€œthe firstfruits of those who have fallen asleepā€ (I Cor. 15:20).Ā  What are ā€œfirstfruitsā€?Ā  Itā€™s an agricultural metaphor indicating the first taste of the ripening crop, showing that the full harvest is coming.Ā  This shows what believersā€™ resurrection bodies, the full harvest, will be like.

Do you see how critically important it is to have a biblical understanding of the nature of Christā€™s resurrection ā€“ his bodily resurrection.

In spite of so many in the liberal church establishment denying the bodily resurrection of Christ or dismissing it totally, there are those who stand firm on the bodily resurrection.

F. Those supporting the bodily resurrection

Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and former Anglican Bishop of Durham, Dr. N. T. Wright, wrote:

I simply cannot explain why Christianity began without it [i.e. without the resurrection of Christ]ā€¦. If Jesus had died and stayed dead, [his disciples] would either have given up the movement or they would have found another messiah.Ā  Something extraordinary happened which convinced them that Jesus was the Messiah (Jennings 2000, p. 51).

N. T. Wright has since written these 817 pages to support the bodily resurrection and refute those throughout church history, including current scholars who deny the literal resurrection of Jesus.Ā  Wright concludes: ā€œThe proposal that Jesus was bodily raised from the dead possesses unrivalled power to explain the historical data at the heart of early Christianityā€ (Wright 2003, p. 718).

G. Whatā€™s the remedy for this church and every church today when the bodily resurrection of Christ is denied?

It is the same for us as Paulā€™s last words to Timothy: ā€œPreach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourageā€”with great patience and careful instructionā€ (2 Tim. 4:2). I have great concern that the churches in Australia today are becoming suckers to rampant false teaching.Ā  Why?

arrow 1 right clip artWe donā€™t take seriously Paulā€™s command to ā€œpreach the Word.ā€Ā  Preaching about the Word, preaching my own ideas, is NOT preaching the Word.Ā  I do not know how to preach the Word other than to systematically preach through the Bible, or to focus on certain biblical topics as I am doing today.
arrow 1 right clip artĀ  When should we do this?Ā  When itā€™s appropriate and when it seems inappropriate.Ā  Paulā€™s words were: ā€œBe prepared in season and out of season.ā€

arrow 1 right clip artĀ  This preaching of the Word must include correction, rebuking and encouragement.Ā  My task today has been to correct false doctrine, based on the Scriptures.Ā  I donā€™t believe we take seriously the command: ā€œPreach the Word.ā€
arrow 1 right clip artĀ  It is not too late to make a change.Ā  False doctrine will increase and the need for correction, rebuking and encouragement will be urgently needed.Ā  Paul says that we must do this ā€œwith great patience and careful instruction.ā€Ā  But Iā€™m not sure that we care about false teaching.

arrow 1 right clip artĀ  Will this church take seriously this command from Paul, so that we will not become a victim of false teachings?Ā  All of us must be vigilant.Ā  We cannot know what is false without knowing the truth of the Word.Ā  We must preach the Word.

H.Ā  Appendix:

1.Ā Ā Ā  Theologian and apologist, Norman Geisler, wrote: ā€œThose who try to get around the resurrection walk against the gale-force winds of the full evidence.Ā  The facts are that Jesus of Nazareth really died . . . and actually came back from the dead in the same physical bodyā€ (1999, p. 656).

2.Ā Ā Ā  Wayne Grudem wrote, concerning Jesusā€™ resurrection body, that ā€œthe texts . . . show that Jesus clearly had a physical body with ā€˜flesh and bonesā€™ (Luke 24:39), which could eat and drink, break bread, prepare breakfast and be touched. . .Ā  These texts are not capable of an alternative explanation that denies Jesusā€™ physical body. . . Jesus was clearly teachingĀ  them that his resurrection body was a physical bodyā€ (1994, p. 612).

See my other articles on the resurrection of Jesus Christ:

arrow-bold-rightJunk you hear at Easter about Jesusā€™ resurrection

arrow-bold-rightĀ Jesusā€™ resurrection appearances only to believers

arrow-bold-rightĀ Easter and the end of death

arrow-bold-rightĀ Can we prove and defend Jesusā€™ resurrection?

arrow-bold-rightĀ Can Jesus Christā€™s resurrection be investigated as history?

arrow-bold-rightĀ What is the connection between Christā€™s atonement and his resurrection?

arrow-bold-rightĀ Christā€™s resurrection: Latter-day wishful thinking

arrow-bold-rightĀ The Resurrection of Jesus Christ: The Comeback to Beat Them All

arrow-bold-rightĀ Was Jesusā€™ Resurrection a Bodily Resurrection?

I.Ā  Notes

1a. The original read, ā€œMen,ā€ but the ESV translates as ā€œpeople.ā€2
2.Ā  Earle E. Cairns considers that his ā€œseven letters must have been written about 110ā€ (1981, p. 74).
3. ā€œThe Resurrection of Jesusā€ was the title of the article and the first sentence began with, ā€œItā€™s impossible.Ā  Even our brain dies . . . ,ā€ so I am left to conclude that the articleā€™s title was the introduction to the first sentence.
4. The original article had closing inverted commas here, but there were no introductory inverted commas.
5. The NIV reads, ā€œghost,ā€ but the ESV translates as ā€œspirit.ā€Ā  The Greek is pneuma = spirit.

J.Ā  References:

Cairns, E. E. 1981, Christianity through the Centuries, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Crossan, J. D. 1994, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco.

Crossan, J. D. 1995, Who Killed Jesus? HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco.

Evans, C F 1970. Resurrection and the New Testament. SCM Press, London.

Fee, G. D. 1987, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (gen. ed. F. F. Bruce, The New International Commentary on the New Testament), William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Geisler, N. L. 1999, ā€˜Resurrection, Evidence forā€™, in Norman L. Geisler 1999, Baker Encyclopedia ofĀ  Christian Apologetics, Baker Books, Grand Rapid, Michigan.

Green, M. 1990, Evangelism through the local Church, Hodder & Stoughton, London.

Grudem, W. 1994, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, England.

Ignatius n.d., ā€˜The Epistle to the Smyrnaeansā€™, Early Church Writings, available from:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/srawley/smyrnaeans.html [Accessed 19 July 2005].

Irenaeus n.d., ā€˜Against Heresiesā€™, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, available from:
http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-01/anf01-63.htm#P8967_2580595 [Accessed 19 July 2005].

Jennings P. 2000, ā€˜Peter Jennings Reportingā€™, ABC television (USA), aired on Monday, June 26 2000. This quote is from Christian Research Institute 2000, ā€œPoint-by-point Response to ā€˜Peter Jennings Reporting: The Search for Jesus,ā€™ available from: http://www.equip.org/free/DJ036.pdf [Accessed 31 May 2005].

Kidd, D. 1999, Bundaberg Uniting Church, ā€œThe Resurrection of Jesus,ā€ The Bugle (Bundaberg), March 19, 1999, p. 19.

Kohn, R. 2001, The Spirit of Things (radio program), ā€˜Tomorrowā€™s God, with Lloyd Geeringā€™,Ā  Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), 4 March 2001, available from: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/spirit/stories/s253975.htm [Accessed 19 July 2005].

Mann, J. 1993, ā€˜Justificationā€™, available from: http://www.fountain.btinternet.co.uk/theology/justific.html [Accessed 19 July 2005].

MacDonald, M. H. 1984, ā€˜Naturalismā€™, in W. A. Elwell (ed.), Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, pp. 750-751.

Martyr, J. n.d., ā€˜Fragments of the Lost Work of Justin on the Resurrectionā€™, Early Church Writings, available from:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/justinmartyr-resurrection.html [Accessed 19 July 2005].

Origen n.d., ā€˜Contra Celsusā€™, Early Christian Writings, available from: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/origen167.html [19 July 2005].

Schonfield, H. J. 1965, The Passover Plot, Bantam Books, New York.

Spong, J. S. 2004, Review, ā€˜The Passion of the Christā€™ ā€” Mel Gibsonā€™s Film and Biblical Scholarship ā€“ Part 4, available from Arianna Online Forum at: http://www.ariannaonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1025 [Accessed19 July 2005].

Tertullian n.d., ā€˜On the Resurrection of the Fleshā€™, Early Church Writings, available from: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/tertullian16.html [Accessed 19 July 2005].

Wright, N. T. 2003, The Resurrection of the Son of God, Fortress Press, Minneapolis.

Zenit 2001. World Christianity on the rise in 21st century (online. Available at: https://zenit.org/articles/christianity-on-the-rise-in-21st-century/ Accessed 29 March 2016.)

 

Copyright Ā© 2007 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date:11 July 2018

Red decorative crown icon Red decorative crown icon

One Nation accuses Nationals of stealing its policy

Newonenationlogo1.jpg National Party of Australia

The National Party of Australia Logo.png

(Courtesy Wikipedia and Wikipedia)

By Spencer D Gear PhD

Shouldnā€™t one political party celebrate when another political party supports its policy?

Thatā€™s not what happened when One Nation objected to a policy of the National Party. On the One Nation website in July 2018, , it stated:

1. National Party Steals Another One Nation Policy ā€“ Coal Fired Power Stations

6 July, 2018/in National, Pauline Hanson /

Again the National Party have (sic) tried stealing another One Nation policy.

During the last sitting of Parliament, I put to the Government that North Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria all need a new coal fired power station built to drive electricity prices down.

I was told NO quite soon after that discussion took place.

I wasnā€™t shy about my plans either ā€“ I made sure people in Canberra knew I wanted them. Clearly thatā€™s where the National Party picked up the idea and ran with it today in the Australian.

Perhaps the National Party can come and have a meeting with me and Iā€™ll share a some additional policies they can help me drive.

2Ā  Comments published

There were 11 comments published after at the conclusion of this article / news release. All of them were in favour of what Pauline wrote above.

3. Comment censored

Then I sent this reply on Sunday night, 8 July 2018 at 11:57pm, it provided evidence to contradict what Pauline Hansonā€™s One Nation wrote above. I stated:

Pauline,

You are talking sense and I support your policy of new publicly owned coal-fired power stations. Congratulations on supporting this move.

However, some of your facts were false.

You state that you made it known in Canberra you supported new coal-fired power stations. Then you added: ‘Clearly thatā€™s where the National Party picked up the idea and ran with it today in the Australian’.

This is false! Do you know who promoted coal-fired power stations in Qld? Who built the existing publicly owned coal-fired power stations here?

 

Image result for photo Joh Bjelke-Petersen public domain(Photo Joh Bjelke-Petersen, courtesy Flickr)

You are copying what the National Party premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, did and Bob Katter supported it. It was Katter who was engaged in arranging for coal to be delivered from Blackwater to the Gladstone power station. My understanding is that half of the power from coal was generated during the Bjelke-Petersen era.

Who is going to the Longman by-election with policies in support of coal-fired, publicly owned power stations?Ā  The Australian Country Party, The Labour-DLP, and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.

The Nationals didn’t steal the coal-fired power station idea from One Nation. Could One Nation have adapted it from the Nationals of the time when Joh was Premier of Qld, 1968 to 1987.

I check the One Nation website again at 6:57pm, Tuesday, 10 July 2018 and my comment had appeared HERE. Could this publication have been assisted by …

3.1 A nudge

Since my comment had not been published by 9.04pm on Monday, 9 July 2018, I sent this gentle prod of inquiry, ā€˜I added to the discussion last night (Sunday) but now (24 hours later) it has not been published. Why has my post been censored?ā€™

Could it be that Paulineā€™s One Nation does not like being corrected?

4. The truth: The Nationals had the example of previous Nationals to follow

As indicated in my comment above, the Nationals were given the example by the Joh Bjelke-Petersen government in Qld to support coal-fired power stations.

Pauline seems to have sparked discussion in Canberra and the Nationals have supported this policy, which they did in their statement to The Australian newspaper.

Pauline should be giving thanks that the Nationals are supportive of this coal-fired power station policy. But no, Pauline seems to want to gain the credit for the policy. It was a policy that was implemented by the Nationals in Qld.

4.1 The Nationals support coal-fired power stations

Related image(image courtesy Carbon Tracker Initiative)

 

ABC News, Brisbane Qld reported:

TonyĀ  Abbott has attached himself to the National Party’s push for government-owned and funded coal-fired power stations.

The Nationals are not convinced the National Energy Guarantee (NEG) will reduce power prices as much as they would like, and they have a proposal for the Prime Minister, which includes building new power stations and funding existing traditional ones (Barbour 2018).

As of 10 July 2018, 11.19am, The National Party did not have this power station policy on its website. See policies under ā€˜Our Planā€™.

5. Conclusion

Pauline Hansonā€™s One Nation claim that ā€˜again the National Party have (sic) tried stealing another One Nation policyā€™ is false.

When I made a comment about One Nationā€™s factual errors in the news release above, it was not published on the website until 2 days after I posted it.

ABC News reported that there is a push by the Nationals for government owned and funded coal-fired power stations.

6. Works consulted

Barbour, L 2018. Why some Nationals want Tony Abbott to stay in the dark on the National Energy Guarantee. ABC News (online), Brisbane, Qld., 5 July. Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-05/tony-abbott-tries-to-form-alliance-with-nationals-on-neg/9940136?section=analysis (Accessed 10 July 2018).

 

 

Copyright Ā© 2018 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 10 July 2018.