Alpha Ωmega Chicago Campus Ministry

Bible Reading Tips by Douglas Jacoby – Part 2

Alpha Ωmega Chicago Campus Ministry — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 20:33:47 +0000

Bible Reading Tip 31: Hebrews
This anonymous letter was written to Christians from a Jewish background. They were apparently tempted to return to Judaism, or a highly Judaized version of Christianity. The writer warns them that if they give up on Christ, there will be no salvation. At least a dozen times in the “brief” letter (13:22), they are reminded that their salvation is in jeopardy. They mustn’t turn back, or everything will have been for naught. The letter was written in the ’60s AD. It refers to the priestly sacrificial system, which seems to have still been operational. Everything changed in 70 AD when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple. Since the writer says, “What is obsolete and aging will soon disappear” (8:13), most scholars believe the letter dates to shortly before 70 AD. A “safe” date for its composition might be 68 AD. Reading tips:

• Keep in mind that the epistle establishes its theme, the superiority of Christ, by a series of contrasts between old covenant features and new covenant features. For example, priesthood and covenant are just two of the things starkly contrasted in Hebrews. See how many others you can find as you read through all 13 chapters.
• If there are any O.T. characters in chapter 11, the so-called “Hall of Fame of Faith,” be sure to look them up. Let no reference or allusion slip by!
• Search for the four “impossible” things the writer discusses. Why do they appear in the letter?
• If you lack the O.T. background necessary for understanding this epistle, set a goal: Finish the O.T. this year; get a copy of Neil Lightfoot’s Jesus Christ Today; or acquire a copy of John Oakes’ From Shadows to Reality (available at www.ipibooks.com)
• I would also suggest you listen to the ten 30-minute lessons that comprise my audio series on Hebrews. Click here.

Bible Reading Tip 32: Reading James
James was written by the brother of the Lord. He was executed by stoning in 62 AD in the vicinity of the Temple, but not before he had made a huge impression on the local population for his piety and concern for the poor. His practical letter was written to Jewish Christians, and abounds in references to various features of Jewish Christianity. For example, in 2:2 the word translated “meeting” by the NIV is actually the Greek word synagogue (sunagogé). Also, James describes the church as “the twelve tribes scattered among the nations,” a clear reference to the exiles of the Jews and their dispersion (diaspora) among the Gentiles. James is reckoned as the first of the “general (or catholic) epistles.” They are general because there is no one target congregation in mind. Reading tips:

• As with all New Testament letters, it is best to read the letter in one sitting. This will enable you to see connections. After that, go back and digest it more slowly.
• Don’t kill yourself trying to find the theme or “plot” of the letter. If there is a “theme,” it would be “practical Christianity.” Yes, that is quite vague as far as a unifying theme goes, but the specific commands and instructions James shares certainly are not!
• A lot of the phrases and ideas in James are also in the Sermon on the Mount. Go back to Matthew 5-7 and compare. Another book that seems to be in the background is Sirach. Although this book (also called Ecclesiasticus) is not properly part of the scriptures, many of its ideas are echoed in James.
• For a deeper study, there are six chapters in my James, Peter, John, Jude. (This book is a chapter-by-chapter look at the general epistles (James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, and Jude).

Bible Reading Tip 33: Reading the letters of Peter
1-2 Peter are written by the famous apostle, although like most ancient writers, he employed the services of a scribe. The scribe who write 1 Peter is Silvanus (1 Peter 5:11), also called Silas. Who assisted Peter with his second letter, we do not know. 1 Peter is thought my many to have been written in the wake of the persecution under Nero that began in 64 AD. Peter writes from “Babylon” (5:13), a code name in the New Testament for the city of Rome. The other letter was written (obviously) before Peter’s execution (2 Peter1:14). Since Nero had Peter crucified, according to ancient sources, the letter must have been completed before 68, which was the year of Nero’s suicide. We can safely date it to 64-65 AD. Here are some reading tips:

• The unifying theme of 1 Peter is suffering.
• This letter is especially appropriate for new believers. (See 1:3, 23; 2:2-3.)
• As you read 1 Peter, ask yourself, “In what areas of the Christian life does suffering affect us?” (Joy, relationships, perseverance, etc.)
• 1 Peter 4:16 is one of only three N.T. passages to use the word “Christian.” The other two are in Acts. (Do you know where?) “Christian” was beginning to be a common word in the second half of the first century.
• The unifying theme of 2 Peter is knowledge. Not academic knowledge, but the knowledge of God that comes through spiritual growth (1:3-11, 3:18). The false teachers offer a different sort of “knowledge” (chapter 2), which Peter rejects.
• Who are these false teachers? Notice that they reject authority and embrace licentious living. You will notice that these twin traits characterize false teachers in many O.T. and N.T. books.
• This letter has much in common with Jude. Compare the two. Some scholars say Jude is a condensation of 2 Peter; others that 2 Peter is an expansion of Jude. Which do you think more likely, and why?

Bible Reading Tip 34: Reading the letters of John
The letters of John constitute the 4th, 5th, and 6th of the “catholic epistles,” and seem to be written by the same John who authored the Gospel of John and Revelation. They were written later in John’s life (2:1, 2:12-14, etc). Most scholars believe John lived until the end of the first century, though that would not mean he didn’t write his letters earlier. If John wrote in the 60s or 70s, he would still be in old man at the time of authorship. The enemies of the faith his first two letters are written to combat are docetic Gnostics. Gnostics advocated a secret “knowledge” (gnosis in Greek). Their emphasis was not on holiness so much as on esoteric wisdom. Docetists claimed that Jesus had no physical body. He only “seemed” to. (Dokein is the Greek verb meaning “to seem.”) The person upsetting the church in 3 John may or may not have belonged to these heretical groups. Its seems possible but unlikely. Reading tips:

• Remember that John is combating Gnostic error. To them, being “in the light” means enlightenment (knowledge). To John and true Christians, it means living in righteous relationship with God and others. The Gnostics minimized the moral component of true divine knowledge. The fact that the Gnostics were relatively unconcerned with sin explains John’s many stark statements, which are intended to show the incompatibility of sin with following Christ.
• Those who follow the Gnostics are antichrists (1 John 2:18, 2 John 7).
• The Gnostics were the New Age Movement of the first and second centuries. Do you know anything about this movement, or have any friends who are New Agers? The movement was extremely popular, and many enemies of the church, especially in the second century, were Gnostics.
• 2 John is 1 John in miniature. The themes are the same.
• In 3 John, the “good guy” is Demetrius; the “bad guy” is Diotrephes. Diotrephes (3 John 9) had an ego problem. His philosophy of ministry was “My way or the highway!”
• For more on all the general letters (the epistles of James, Peter, John, and Jude) are discussed more fully in Life to the Full. There you will find eight chapters on the letters of John.

Bible Reading Tip 35: Advice on reading Jude
Traditionally, Jude (Judah or Judas) was one of Jesus Christ’s four brothers. According to Matthew 13:55, the others were James (Jacob), Joses (Joseph), and Simon (or Simeon). Keep in mind that he, like his three other full brothers, had been skeptical of Jesus at first (Mark 3:21, 31-35; John 7:5). Their incredulity may be foreshadowed in the Joseph cycle of Genesis, where his brothers are stunned, in complete shock and denial, on realizing who their sibling was and what power he commanded (Genesis 45:1). We know little about Jude’s life. This short letter ranks as 7th of the seven “Catholic Epistles.” It was written to urge Christian to stand firm and not give in to the deviant doctrines and lifestyles of false Christian teachers. Reading tips:

• Though the letter is short, it is not light. Read slowly, savor every illustration and make sure you “get” every Old Testament reference and allusion.
• You will notice that Jude—alone among the N.T. writers—quotes from a Pseudepigraphal (“false authorship”) letter, 1 Enoch. Although it was not widely considered scripture, 1 Enoch speaks of the “Son of Man” and the end of the world. It is appropriate that Jude cited this influential book.
• After you read Jude, skim 2 Peter and try to find the similarities and points of contact.

Bible Reading Tip 36: Reading the Gospels
The four gospels were written in the first century AD, anywhere from the 40s to the 90s, depending on which scholars’ works you read. Their authors themselves are called “evangelists,” since they wrote about the evangel (a rare English word meaning good news, or gospel). Here are some things to keep in mind:

• The gospels, just like the letters, were composed primarily for Christians. They were written for insiders, not outsiders. This being the case, it is appropriate to read between the lines: What were the specific needs in the communities for which Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were produced?
• Do not “homogenize” the four gospels. While it is not necessarily wrong to harmonize, the reason we have four documents—as opposed to one—is surely that the Holy Spirit wants to emphasize different things. It is in the differences among the accounts that we will find a lot of theology, as well as the richness and texture of the gospels. This richness is eliminated when we homogenize, but it becomes available to enhance and energize our study when we appreciate the differences.
• Speaking more generally, Matthew is the gospel for the Jews. It is concerned with the Messianic connections between the Old Testament and the new covenant.
• Mark is written for those in the Roman Empire who had less biblical background. It is a gospel of action.
• Luke was dedicated to Theophilus (perhaps the patron or underwriter of the gospel), and is written for those most comfortable in the Greek culture. Luke has the finest Greek, and the greatest literary quality, of the four gospels.
• John has the most universal focus. It is also the most “spiritual” and theological of the gospels. (Consider its prologue.) We read the constant refrain of misunderstanding: Jesus is speaking on the spiritual level, but his listeners misunderstand him, taking him literally.
• One last tip: When you are reading the N.T., it can help to alternate gospels with letters, especially when you are reading Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which are quite similar (“synoptic”)—despite their unique perspectives. For example, a good reading order for the N.T. might be Matthew—Hebrews—James—Jude—Mark—1-2 Peter—Ephesians—Philippians—Luke—Acts—1-2 Thessalonians—Romans—1-2 p—Galatians—John—1-3 John—Revelation—Colossians—Philemon—1-2 Timothy—Titus.

For more on how to read the gospels, see The Faith Unfurled: New Testament Survey. If you have been a Christian for a few years and really want to challenge your thinking, be sure to read Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (3rd edition).

Bible Reading Tip 37: Reading Acts
Acts is the “church history” book of the New Testament, but that isn’t quite right. After all, it covers only one generation, and even then focuses primarily on the ministries of Peter and (especially) Paul. Here are some reading tips:

• Remember that Acts is Volume II of Luke. The themes are similar, and there is a strong continuity in the story line between the volumes.
• Notice Luke’s eagerness to depict the Christians as law-abiding persons, as good “citizens.” Rome is the capital of the Empire, and the Empire virtually constitutes the (known) world.
• Notice the attention Luke’s pays to medical details. He was, after all, a physician (Colossians 4:14).
• Notice also Luke’s focus on women; the needy; and above all, the Holy Spirit.
• As suggested earlier, try to coordinate events in Acts with the corresponding letters among the N.T. epistles (especially 1 Corinthians, Galatians-2 Thessalonians and Philemon).
• Study the sermons of Acts and list the themes/topics they have in common. For example, you will find repetitive stress on the Resurrection and the need for repentance.
• While we should not necessarily be aiming to recapture first century culture, we should certainly strive to imbibe the spirit of courage and faith of the early church.

For more help in getting the big picture on the Book of Acts, see The Faith Unfurled: New Testament Survey.

Bible Reading Tip 38: Reading Revelation
As suggested by chapter 17 of Revelation—also called the “Apocalypse,” or Unveiling—the book was written to fortify Christians who would suffer under the persecution of “the Beast.” This individual would be like Nero (one of the first seven “kings,” or emperors, of Rome), who persecuted Christians in the capital city. Nero died in 68 BC; “Nero Redivivus” (Nero alive again) was Domitian, the “eighth king,” who reigned 81-96 AD. In other words, Jesus revealed this special message to John to help Christians who would suffer at the end of the century in the first imperial (Empire-wide) persecution of followers of Christ.

Revelation is unique in the New Testament. After all, no other document is a book of prophecy written in apocalyptic language. The best preparation for reading Revelation is to read the Old Testament, since the 404 verses of Revelation contain hundreds of Old Testament allusions. Not to discourage the newcomer to the Bible from reading the final book!—but to gain any real depth of appreciation for this book a solid grounding in the O.T. is indispensable. Here are some suggestions:

• Since Revelation is very short, it is best to read the entire book at one sitting. Try to get the “big picture.” Don’t worry about the specific meaning of each verse on this first reading. Revelation utilizes pictorial language. Just as we step back from a large oil painting to take in a broad view, so we must approach Revelation. Standing too close, in fact—zeroing in on individual brush strokes—is likely to yield trivial observations or theologically errant conclusions.
• Look for recurrent themes and symbols.
• Be sure to focus on chapter 12, which contains the message of the entire Apocalypse in miniature.
• Once again, the O.T. is the real key to making sense of Revelation—especially the apocalyptic portions of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Zechariah.

For further study, see my audio set on Revelation and the End of the World.

Having given numerous tips on reading the book so the New Testament, in the coming weeks we will shift our focus to strategies for maximizing our Old Testament Bible study.

Bible Reading Tip 39: Reading the Law
The term “the Law” has several different biblical meanings. One is the Torah, the Mosaic Law itself, that legislation given by the Lord to Moses atop Mt. Sinai. Another, more general, meaning is the Old Testament (the collection of 39 books) itself. A third meaning is the first five books of the Bible, the so-called Books of Moses or Pentateuch (from the Greek for “five rolls.” This refers to the books from Genesis to Deuteronomy. A fourth sense of course is law as opposed to grace, for example the distinction made in Lutheran theology. The sense in which I will refer to the law in this short article is: the old covenant legal material that we find from Exodus 20 to Deuteronomy 31. That’s because the “rules” for reading and interpreting the laws are different to those for reading other literary genres (the narratives, poetry, wisdom writings, etc). Here are some things to keep in mind:

• The O.T. laws are the word of God, for us just as they were for the Jews of old. To repeat, all of the books of the law are the word of God. We should study them, reflect on them, and do our very best to understand them.
• And yet the O.T. laws are not our laws. Christians aren’t necessarily obligated to keep them. They were required keeping for the Israelites, but not for us.
• The exception: those laws repeated in the New Testament. Those we must follow. For example, most of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5), the Greatest Commandment (Deuteronomy 6), and the command to love our neighbor (Leviticus 19).
• Jesus predicted that the temple order would be dismantled and voided (Matthew 24), as did the epistle to the Hebrews chapter 8. In other words, those laws pertaining to sacrifices and cultic rituals were only meant to be temporary. This was even prophesied in the O.T. itself (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
• The law’s focus is the heart, not outward behavior. Leviticus 19:17-18—to cite just one passage—makes this crystal clear.
• No one was saved in the O.T. by law-keeping. The Old covenant, like the New, was a covenant of grace!

For more help with interpreting the O.T. Law, including common themes and background history, please see Foundations for Faith: Old Testament Survey.

Bible Reading Tip 40: Reading the Prophets
The O.T. prophets called the people of God back to the law of God. They did not generate new doctrines or give new commands. Everything points back to the Torah! Keep this in mind as you read through the Major Prophets (Isaiah-Ezekiel) and the Minor Prophets (Hosea-Malachi). All of these men prophesied in the 700s-400s BC, during a brief three-century window when the people of God were slipping spiritually. Keys for following their messages:

• Read Deuteronomy 28 or Leviticus 26, where the rewards for following, and the penalties for violating, the covenant were laid out. Much of the language of the prophets refers to the Mosaic (related to Moses and the law of Moses) promises.
• The prophets’ writings tend to be arranged topically, not chronologically. Material dealing with similar themes tends to be grouped together. Occasionally there are chronological indicators, as when we read “In the nth year of king ___ the word of the Lord came to me…” But in the case of many of the prophetic oracles, there is uncertainty about when they were originally received.
• Be impressed by the courage and radical willingness of the prophets to follow God at all costs. As the Jewish scholar Heschel stirringly wrote, “The prophet’s word is a scream in the night. While the world is at ease and asleep, the prophet feels the blast from heaven.”
• Finally, remember that there were other prophets, some of whom left us something in writing (e.g. Elijah’s letter), but none left us an entire book of prophecy. That is why the 15 canonical prophets are in a class of their own. The prophetic movement, a reaction against ungodly leadership among priests and kings, arose, back in the 10th century BC.

Bible Reading Tip 41: Reading the Psalms
The Psalms are in some ways the prayer book and hymnbook of the people of God, in both testaments. Honest, colorful, and laden with authentic emotion, they offer models of genuine prayer and theological reflection to integral to the spiritual health of the man or woman set on following the Lord. A few suggestions:

• Remember that originally the Psalms were sung, not just read. Further, they were sung to stringed musical accompaniment. (That is the meaning of the term “psalm.”)
• Study the quotations from Psalms in the N.T. Ask, “Which Psalms seem to have meant the most to the early church? Why might that have been?”
• Since all of the Psalms are poetry, make sure you are not reading them as prose. Be sensitive to figures of speech, hyperbolic language, etc. Moreover, since Psalms reflect the feelings and petitions of persons crying out to God, do not try to find new doctrine in them.

For more information, please see my 4-part audio series, Reading, Singing, and Praying the Psalms.

Bible Reading Tip 42: Reading the Poetry of the Old Testament
How does one read the poetry of the Old Testament, especially when originally it was written in Hebrew?

• Much of the Old Testament is poetry: the Psalms, Proverbs, most of the prophetic literature, and many other segments of the Hebrew Bible — a total of around 40%. We had better become comfortable reading poetry, or else we will cut ourselves off from a large part of God’s revelation to man!
• While English poetry often rhymes, Hebrew poetry hardly ever does! “Thought rhyme” is a better explanation for what is happening in the poetic sections of the O.T. Simply put, the initial line is amplified somehow in the following line.
• Be sure to read the Bible in several versions, not just one, since it is difficult for one version to capture the color, texture, and nuance of the original Semitic poetry.
• Read poetry, even outside the Bible! This has the potential to increase our literary sensitivity. Better yet, try expressing yourself in poetry. Maybe write a song or poem to the Lord.

Bible Reading Tip 43: Reading the Wisdom Literature
The “Wisdom Literature” includes principally the books of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, but also Song of Solomon, several Psalms (1, 19, etc), a number of other assorted passages in both testaments. How can we get the most from our study of biblical books falling into this literary genre?

• Realize that the rules for reading Wisdom are not the same as the rules for reading narrative, or poetry, or letters. Try to become sensitive to this genre.
• Did you know that most ancient cultures had an extensive wisdom literature? (For example, the Egyptians and Babylonians.) The O.T. writers were choosing to communicate in a medium well known in the ancient world.
• The Wisdom Literature often contains observations about life. While these observations may capture general truths, they seldom present absolute rules. For example, if a proverb said that a greedy man will end up poor and in rags, this does not mean there are no exceptions! (Some greedy men actually end up being quite rich, right?)

For more on this topic, please hear my 7-part audio series, The Wisdom Literature, which covers the books of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon.

Bible Reading Tip 44: Reading the Narrative portions of the Old Testament
Much of the Old Testament is narrative. The story is not just the story of Israel, but also the bigger story (or “metanarrative,” to use the current popular philosophical term) about how God works in the world. The keys to following these narratives:

• Do not read too much into the text, or attempt to “spiritualize” it. Most of the narratives are rather straightforward. Allegorical interpretation is fairly foreign to the Old Testament—and the New.
• Look for common themes and words. The narratives give every evidence of being carefully edited documents. They are literary masterpieces. Genesis, for example, is highly complex and textured. Recurring motifs mean something theologically. The writer—and hence the Holy Spirit—is trying to show us something!
• Where possible, coordinate the narratives with other parts of the O.T. that illuminate them or allow you to better understand them. For example, read the Psalms along with the narratives of the life of David in 1-2 Samuel. Read the prophets along with the relevant historical sections of 1-2 Kings or 2 Chronicles. You may want to read about the life of Solomon (1 Kings, 2 Chronicles) along with the Wisdom Literature associated with him (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon).
• Resist the temptation to moralize. Unless the “moral” of the story is given (as when the lesson of Nathan’s parable is explained in 2 Samuel 12), let the text stand on its own. Of course, the portions of the law (Exodus-Deuteronomy) that relate to any actions described may be called upon as witnesses to the morality or immorality of any actions described. But more often than not, narrative writers record what they record for a reason to paint a picture. For example, when Jephthah sacrifices his daughter (Judges 11), we are not presented with the horrible account so that we may imitate Jephthah (!). The writer is showing how bad things were in Israel. Even the leaders—those who should have been, relatively speaking, the righteous among the covenant people—made terrible errors of judgment. In the same way, the final five chapters of Judges (17-21) are showing how lost Israel had become without her God. The way is being paved for the monarch (1 Samuel). There is little to emulate in these chapters.
• Needless to say, the same principles apply for reading the narrative sections of the New Testament, which are found almost wholly in the four gospels and Acts.

Bible Reading Tip 45: Study Fee & Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth
For those in Christ five years or more and who are diligent students of the N.T., “must” reading is Fee & Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, 3rd edition. Fee is the New Testament scholar, Stuart the Old Testament one. It is fair to say that, unless you have grasped and internalized the principles these scholars lay out, you do not really understand the Bible. This is not to say you do not understand the main point, only that you may be probably missing everything else. Have you read this invaluable book yet?

Bible Reading Tip 46: Pray through the Bible
Many books of the Bible lend themselves to being prayed, whether silently or aloud. Not only the book of Psalms, but most of the books in Scripture can be meditatively perused with a view to praying about the thoughts contained therein. Here’s how you do it:

• Read a short section of scripture.
• Respond in prayer to what you have read. Acknowledge the greatness or wisdom of God, your own sinfulness or need for wisdom, and the magnificence of the themes set forth in the text.
• If some other thought comes into your mind, do not ignore it. The scriptures will inspire you to think—and pray—about a number of things somehow connected with the ideas you have absorbed from the text.
• You might begin praying through an epistle. Paul’s letters, for example, are all jam-packed with material you can easily “pray through.” Why not try praying slowly through the four chapters of Colossians?

Try this idea out! Though the concept may be new to you, you will soon see how easy this is to do. Moreover, you will have a structure to your prayers, as you follow the structure inherent in the scriptures themselves.

Bible Reading Tip 47: Don’t Rush!
Are you a fast reader? Sometimes that is good, helping you through the portions of scripture where rapid reading may be just as good—or better—than slow reading. (For example, the first nine chapters so of 1 Chronicles.) But other times reading too quickly will cause you not to engage the text. In general, the best advice is not to rush. Find a time where you are not harried and distracted by other concerns, when you can devote sufficient time to study to get something from your reading.

To put it another way, “speed up and slow down,” depending on the portion of scripture you are reading (its genre, especially), and how familiar you are with it. Just like driving on the road, there are times when there is no reason not to go fast, and others when trying to go fast may prove not only unproductive, but even hazardous.

Bible Reading Tip 48: Read The Law and the Prophets
In the story of the Transfiguration (Matthew 17, Mark 9, Luke 9, 2 Peter 1), there are six men on the mountain. Apart from Peter, James, and John, we meet Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. Moses naturally represents the Law. Elijah represents the Prophets. ‘The Law and the Prophets” comprise the Old Testament. After the cloud disappears, Moses and Elijah are nowhere to be found. Jesus is alone. Then God says, “Listen to him” (Matthew 17:5). What is the point?

While we should continue to read the Law and the Prophets (see Romans 15:4, 1 Corinthians 10:11, 2 Timothy 3:16-17), the one on whom we ought to focus is Jesus Christ. By so doing, we will come to grasp the true message of the Old Testament, since in so many ways it points to the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember the old adage, “The Old Testament is the New Testament concealed; the New Testament, the Old Testament revealed.”

Is your Bible study—New Testament as well as Old—Christ-centered?

Bible Reading Tip 49: Ask a friend for suggestions Are you stuck in a rut? Do you feel you have run out of ideas? While ideally this should never happen, it happens to all of us eventually. If your Bible study is dry, why not ask a friend for suggestions? Be careful, of course, whom you ask (Luke 6:39). Yet in your local congregation surely there are a number of veteran Bible readers who will have many ideas, and be happy to share them with you.

Bible Reading Tip 50: Plan an all-night Bible reading “marathon”
Sometimes men and women of faith have been known to stay up all night praying to God. Have you ever “pulled an all-nighter” just reading the scriptures? Reading for five, seven, or more hours continuously may not be realistic; schedule a short break every hour to keep your mind fresh. You might aim to complete one of the longer books of the Bible during your reading (Isaiah or Psalms), or perhaps the letters of Paul.

Bible Reading Tip 51: Memorize scripture
In Colossians 3:16 we read, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” One way to facilitate this is to memorize scripture. There are two pathways to scripture memory. One is rote memory. Just as actors learn their lines, you can sit down and force yourself, by intensive study, repetition, and self-testing, to learn the scriptures. There is much to be said for this method. The second pathway is to read every book of the Bible so frequently that the verses become more and more familiar. It is not necessary to memorize a city map in order to learn your way around (pathway 1). That is because as you make your way through the town over and over, you soon learn your way; and you develop a sense of direction that allows creative alternatives when they are needed. This (pathway 2) is more natural, and is the way I have memorized most of the scripture I know.

Two pathways. Choose the one that works for you, or the combination of approaches best suited to your preferred mode of learning.

Bible Reading Tip 52: Set goals in the area of your reading for the New Year
Do not enter the New Year haphazardly. Set a goal. One of the simplest is to read the entire Bible. While you will not necessarily read straight through from Genesis to Revelation, it is important to finish the books you have started, keeping track as you go so that you don’t forget which territory you have already covered. Perhaps you have read the entire Bible once or twice this year; in that case, you might deliberately slow down next year, reading shorter portions of the Bible more intensively. Another idea would be to read, every month, a book (outside the Bible) that relates to a biblical book or section (Genesis, the four gospels, the Minor Prophets, Hebrews, etc). Outside reading can illuminate scripture and bring to mind many themes and details you would otherwise fail to notice. Whatever your approach, do not read at random. Our God is a God of order.

Bible Reading Tips by Douglas Jacoby – Part 1

Alpha Ωmega Chicago Campus Ministry — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 20:33:01 +0000

Bible Reading Tip 1: Get a version of the Bible you can understand and enjoy.
These days there are numerous readable (and reasonably accurate) translations available to the reader of English. Let me especially recommend the Holman Christian Standard Bible, the New English Translation, and the English Standard Version. Or maybe you would like to use the even more readable (though somewhat less accurate) New Living Translation, Contemporary English Version, or the favorite New International Version. But these are just a few of the better versions; English has dozens more!

If you have finished the Bible completely, maybe it is time to move on to a new version. Why not make such a shift at the start of the year? (And once you have chosen your Bible, do remember to write your name in it!)

Bible Reading Tip 2: Read paragraph by paragraph, not verse by verse.
The paragraph has been defined (Webster) as “a subdivision of a written composition that consists of one or more sentences, deals with one point or gives the words of one speaker…” We tend to read atomistically—moving verse by verse, focusing on minute portions of a text rather than studying it as a whole. But each verse is part of a flow of thought, a developing argument, a logical sequence, a greater whole. Ask yourself, What is the point of this paragraph? Read paragraphs, not verses.

Bible Reading Tip 3: Read each book all the way through
When you read, do not feel compelled to read every book of the Bible in order (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus…), though if you begin reading a book (Genesis, Philippians, Amos…), do read that book all the way through. Get into the habit of finishing what you started! This will also make it easier to remember what is in each book, and to appreciate the larger point of that part of the multivolume library which is our Bible.

Bible Reading Tip 4: Finish reading the entire Bible
It builds confidence—not to mention credibility—if you have actually read the entire Bible. If this is your first time through, keep track of where you have been. (Choose a system that works for you.) Did you know that if you read 3-4 chapters a day, you will have read the entire Bible by the end of the year? I know many Christians who have read the whole Bible 10, 20, 30 or more times through, simply by reading a few chapters a day and remaining consistent—year in, year out.

Well, have you finished the whole Bible? (If not, what’s your plan?)

Bible Reading Tip 5: Put questions to the text.
To understand God’s word, we need to ask such questions as Who is speaking?, To whom is the person speaking? What is the occasion for the message? and How might this relate to us? Every passage has a “context”—a setting in which a truth of God’s word is somehow revealed, clarified, illustrated, or applied. Beware the isolated verse taken out of context, especially if it is being pressed into service to prove a dubious point. Remember, as someone said, “A proof text out of context is a pretext.”

Bible Reading Tip 6: Visit Useful Websites
This tip from Andrew Kaste (Atlanta):

“I thought readers might find a couple of websites useful for deepening their Bible study. The first is www.crosswalk.com which, among many other features, has an online Bible with definitions of most of the meaningful words in the text. In the Bible Study Tools section, select the Online Study Bible. Enter the Scripture in the box and select NAS (or KJV, if you prefer) with Strong’s Numbers in the drop-down menu. It’ll pull up the scripture and you can click on many of the words to get a lot of useful information about that particular word.

“The second is www.greekbible.com . It has the entire New Testament in Greek along with the definitions of each word. I have found these sites particularly useful in my Bible study, and thought others might as well.”

Bible Reading Tip 7: Be sure to read before/after the passage you are studying.
For example, 1 Corinthians 1:10 urges to be of one mind, to be completely united in thought. Taken by itself, the passage might seem to encourage us to hold the same opinions, with no allowance for variation. And yet that is not the meaning of the text. The disunity referred to is clarified in the rest of the chapter: following personalities rather than following God. That (correct) interpretation allows for considerably broader possibilities than the narrow view that all Christians must agree on opinion matters!

One more example from 1 Corinthians 11:1. Paul urges his readers to imitate him. Is this an undefined order to imitate him in every way? No, for to begin with, the isolated verse itself qualifies the imitation: “as I follow Christ.” Paul did not ask us to imitate him in his marital state, to change our name to “Paul,” or to spend more time in prison! Nor did he ask us to imitate his weaknesses. In context—the discussion of voluntarily surrendering Christian liberties for the sake of Christian love—he reminds us that Christ gave up certain freedoms, as should Paul and his readers. Again, a grave error of misinterpretation (one formerly quite common, in fact) has been avoided by simply reading around the passage to determine the context.

Bible Reading Tip 8: Study your text in more than one translation
No translation is perfect, only the original Greek and Hebrew manuscripts! Since no one version is perfect, idiosyncrasies of translation can be detected and guarded against by opening up more than one Bible at a time. This is especially vital if you are someone who prepares lessons for teaching or preaching.

For example, the NIV of Philemon 6 is virtually alone among the 100 or so English translations in rendering “fellowship” as sharing one’s faith in language suggestive of evangelism, something alien to the context, which refers actually to the fellowship between Philemon and Onesimus, among other things. The NIV reads “I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.” How many lessons have been (mis-)preached from this text? The more literal NAS reads, “and I pray that the fellowship of your faith may become effective through the knowledge of every good thing which is in you for Christ’s sake.” What a difference!

Especially if you are an older Christian, isn’t it time you read from more versions than just one? Avoid getting into a rut. “Interpretive ruts” can be avoided by reading more than one translation. Furthermore, it is refreshing to hear old ideas in new wording—and may actually lead to a new understanding, even a more accurate understanding, of what God is trying to say to us.

Bible Reading Tip 9: Read Systematically
Haphazard reading of God’s word will not do! Everyone needs a system. The fact is, everyone has a system. Whatever your approach is, that’s your system! We need to ask ourselves: Is my system good? Is it good for me—considering the kind of person I am? Is it working? Reading systematically means reading every book of the Bible in its entirety, as well as reading the Bible in its entirety. That is the only way to understand the overall message, and the only way to comprehend the individual themes, plots, and principles found in each of the 66 biblical books. I ask you again: Do you have a Bible reading plan?

I supposed I knew my Bible,
Reading piecemeal, hit or miss,
Now a bit of John or Matthew,
Now a snatch of Genesis,
Certain chapters of Isaiah,
Certain Psalms (the twenty-third)
Twelfth of Romans, First of Proverbs–
Yes, I thought I knew the Word!
But I found that thorough reading
Was a different thing to do,
And the way was unfamiliar
When I read the Bible through.
You who like to play at Bible,
Dip and dabble, here and there.
Just before you kneel aweary,
And yawn through a hurried prayer;
You who treat the Crown of Writings
As you treat no other book–
Just a paragraph disjointed,
Just a crude impatient look–
Try a worthier procedure
Try a broad and steady view;
You will kneel in very rapture
When you read the Bible through!
—Amos R. Wells

Bible Reading Tip 10: Make sure your reading environment is suitable
Drowsiness and distractions are the enemy. Do you study in a room with frequent interruptions? Are you frequently drifting off (to sleep or to extraneous tangents)? Some of us (though not many) can study successfully in any environment. And there is nothing inherently wrong with studying out of doors. For most of us, however, the choice of setting will be crucial. Is the temperature too high, or is the room stuffy? Find a quiet room, lower the temperature if necessary. Increase the ventilation. As with driving a car, it is vital to stay alert.

Bible Reading Tip 11: Keep one foot in each testament
I have always found it helpful to read both testaments. If we were to give “equal time” to every book or chapter of the Bible, we would be spending three quarters of our time in the O.T. That is fine if you study, say, three O.T. chapters and one N.T. chapter a day. But unless we carefully balance our study, we can lose sight of Christ. He is, after all, the ultimate goal to which every book of the Bible—in both testaments—points. My advice is to do some reading in the O.T. on a daily basis, but also some in the N.T. And remember the old adage, “The Old Testament is the New Testament concealed; the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed.”

Bible Reading Tip 12: Read the book of the Bible through quickly, then slowly
Let’s say you are studying Paul’s letter to the Colossians. It is important to get the big picture before getting bogged down in particular passages. My suggestion is to read through Colossians (or Ezra, or Hebrews) quite rapidly at one sitting. Try to take in: the flow of the book, the major themes, recurrent ideas or phrases, the “feel” of the scriptures, and so forth. If you were reading Colossians (four chapters), you could do a rapid reading, or even a skimming through, in one to three minutes. Then go back and read more slowly. As you notice how each passage relates to the whole (including your own favorite, or more familiar, passages), you will come to appreciate the book in a new light. We tend to read atomistically—breaking the whole into small bits. The story line is easily lost. It is healthier, and less likely to lead to misinterpretation, if we read more holistically. Does this make sense?

Bible Reading Tip 13: Use highlighters, pens, and other tools
Although new students of the Bible may feel it is “irreverent,” in time most readers become comfortable writing in their Bibles. I remember the first time I wrote in a Bible. I was only willing to use a pencil, and only with a ruler to perfectly underline the passage I wanted to remember. In time, I “graduated” to a red fine point felt pen. Soon I was carefully drawing boxes around favorite texts, and within a couple of weeks I was even using highlighters! (Be careful, though, that they do not bleed through to the next page, especially if you are reading an ultra slim version of the Bible.) People often ask me what my various colors of highlighting mean. The system is quite complex: the color of the highlighted passage indicates the color of the highlighter I had in my hand that day! All kidding aside, color-coding your texts may work for you, as it does for many.

A final thought: as students in high schools and universities, we generally do not hesitate to mark a passage in a textbook if this will help us better prepare for the exam, or locate the selection when we are working on our research paper. Shouldn’t we take our own Bible study at least as seriously? Your Bible will probably not last you your entire life. Not if you read it every day. You will “move on” to new versions. You will give some Bibles away, and “archive others” after years of faithful service. I would encourage you not to hold back from doing anything that will help you plumb the depths of this incredible book—from any system that will boost your recall, memory, and ability to apply practically what you have been studying!

Bible Reading Tip 14: After reading through the whole Bible…
This is a great way to fortify your knowledge and ensure that insights you have gleaned during the previous Bible reading are not lost. With both Bibles open—your new Bible as well as the previous version—go page by page from Genesis to Revelation and review all your notes and comments.

If you come across things that you have already learned or committed to memory or used to the point that there is no need to transfer them into your new Bible, let them go. But if you think you might lose the insight, go ahead and copy the note, or highlight the same passage, or do whatever you need to do to ensure nothing is lost.

Each time you complete the whole Bible you will find out that you are transferring less and less of the “old” and more and more of the “new.” You will be growing in your knowledge of the Word. And as you do, the Lord will make himself known to you (1 Samuel 3:7).

Bible Reading Tip 15: If you are prone to distraction, why not try reading the Bible aloud?Are you someone whose mind wanders off as soon as you sit down and try to concentrate on your Bible study? There are many things you can do to enhance your attentiveness. One idea is simply to read aloud—as most people in ancient times did (for example, the Ethiopian in Acts 8:30). Other ideas:

• Have a glass of cold water to hand. Drink from it, staying hydrated and alert.
• Turn off the ringers on all telephones. Don’t worry—if it is important they’ll probably leave a message!
• Do some physical exercise before beginning your study—some push-ups, or running in place, or jumping jacks. Get the heart pumping and the blood flowing!
• Shake off the spirit of lethargy. Ask the Lord to give you an attentive mind!

Bible Reading Tip 16: If you’re entering your period of Bible study burdened or distracted, pray first! Sometimes we enter our time of study completely burdened, don’t we? We forget that the Lord wants us to cast our burdens on him (Matthew 11:28-30, 1 Peter 5:7). He delights in comforting us, his sons and daughters. He wants us to be anxious about nothing (Philippians 4:6). If you are anxious when you begin your personal devotional time, do not be surprised if your thoughts jump to your area of anxiety. Why not pray about this first, before you begin to study? Take a deep breath, pray, clear your mind, and prepare to open yourself to the wonders of God’s word!

Bible Reading Tip 17: Read the Bible in another languageIf you are comfortable reading more than one language, why not read through the scriptures in another language? If you read just one language, today’s tip isn’t for you, but for an increasing number of readers of this website, this is a great idea. Reading the scriptures in a different language tends to slow you down and focus your attention on some things you have never thought about before. A few suggestions:

• Don’t read the Bible in another language if you are not comfortable in that language. You are likely to miss the point of the passages you are reading!
• Similarly, don’t read the Bible in another language just to brush up your language skills! You can do that at any time.
• Make sure the other translation is a good one. The Bibles in many languages tend to one of two poles. They may be technically accurate, but they are old, stilted, wooden, and difficult to read. Or they are very easy to read, contemporary in grammar, vocabulary, and syntax, but weak in fidelity to the original Greek and Hebrew. For example, if you are reading Spanish, the Reina Valera is an example of the first pole, Dios Habla Hoy of the second. La Nueva Version Internacional is reasonably accurate and strikes a nice balance.

One final suggestion: If you are sharing the Bible with a newcomer to Christianity whose English is very weak, make sure he or she is studying the Bible at home in his or her native tongue. People come to faith faster when the words they hear make sense!

Bible Reading Tip 18: Grasp the temporal framework of the N.T.
Today’s tip is a point of perspective. When you read the New Testament, you will notice three perspectives vis-à-vis Christianity.

First division: the Gospels
The gospels point forward. They describe the last days of Old Testament Judaism, during which time the Kingdom of God is beginning to break in. And yet, technically speaking, there are no Christians yet (John 7:39, Romans 8:9), since the church has not yet begun. Any references to Christian conversion are future. These include Matthew 28:19, Mark 16:16, and John 3:5.

Third division: the Letters
The letters and Revelation point backward. That is, they look back on and assume Christian conversion. References to becoming followers of Christ all have a time referent in the past. These documents were not written to tell believers how to become saved. If anything, they were written to instruct them how to stay saved. A few such verses would include Galatians 3:26-27, Ephesians 4:20-21, and Colossians 2:11-15. Similarly, when we come to Revelation, the letters to the seven churches (Revelation 2-3) as well as the other twenty chapters of the book are addressed to the converted, not outsiders.

Second division: Acts of the Apostles
It is only in Acts that we see conversion in the present tense. This is the only part of the N.T. in which you can actually see men and women having their sins forgiven. Acts 2:37-41 is the first such passage, and there follow many more.

To put the temporal framework of the N.T. into a sort of linear perspective, consider the following line, and try to keep it in mind as you study the Scriptures.

Gospels-Look Forward –– Acts –– Letters-Look Backwards

Bible Reading Tip 19: Realize that the letters were written to converted insiders During the next few months we will give specific advice on how to read the epistles. The word “epistle” < epistula (Latin), epistolé (Greek) = letter. It is often used in English for a longer letter. (“I finally finished reading the epistle she sent me.”) But in fact, originally an epistle was simply a letter. Perhaps the Latinized form of the word sounded more “spiritual.” At any rate, we now have two words in the English language for letter.

The insight—the “tip”—to understand is that the addressees already understood the gospel, even though the gospels hadn’t yet been written. Reminiscences and records of the words and deeds of Jesus were undoubtedly current and frequently referred to.

As with all conversations, we must exercise caution when hearing only one side. And a letter does indeed represent a conversation. (And not necessarily the start or the end of it; the epistle may embody only a small part of the “middle” of the exchange.)

Finally, do remember that the letters were originally read aloud and publicly—far more than they were read silently or privately.

Bible Reading Tip 20: Try to be sensitive to context and culture Although many persons claim that the Bible is self-interpreting, this is a great oversimplification. There are in fact many parts of the Bible that you have to wrestle with before there is any hope of accurately understanding them and making practical applications. Today’s tip concerns context and culture. Please take a look at 2 Timothy 4:2 and 13. (Note: I am indebted to Gordon Fee for this particular illustration.)

2 Timothy 4:2: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.

2 Timothy 4:13: When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments.

Both are commands, or imperatives. One popular tip to Bible study is to direct the reader to see if there is a promise to be believed or a command to be obeyed. Well, here we have two commands. (Both are in the imperative in the original Greek.) Is it possible to be a bona fide Bible believing Christian without obeying both?

The problem is not with the first command, which is a directive from the apostle Paul to his understudy Timothy. In fact, one often hears this passage read when an evangelist is appointed. (Now, to be truthful, there is no instruction in the N.T. on how to appoint an evangelist—but we won’t go into that right now!) All Bible believing Christians accept that all of us—not just evangelists like Timothy—are to proclaim the good news. But what about the second passage?

How many of us have secured the outer garment that Paul left with Carpus at Troas (Troy)? Have you even seen it, let alone touched it? (I certainly haven’t!) And what about the scrolls and the parchments? How are we to “obey” this command?

To begin with, we must respect context. The directions were not given to us, but to Timothy. Not only that, we do not normally wear cloaks anymore. Nor is it clear what the scrolls and parchments refer to. Biblical literature? Devotional reading? Secular literature? Musical lyrics? Who can say—dogmatically—what Paul was referring to? He knew, and Timothy must have known, or found out in the course of honoring Paul’s wishes, but it is not for you or me to know. We must be content with that reality.

By now it should be clear that while many parts of the Bible are more or less straightforward, others are not. It will not do to blithely assert, “You don’t need to study the background, context, or culture; the Bible does not require interpretation.” For it most certainly does!

Bible Reading Tip 21: Where possible, correlate the letters with Acts.
Many of the letters in the New Testament (the 21 from Romans to Jude) were penned during the time frame of the one generation of church history Luke records in the Acts of the Apostles. This book covers the period 30-60 AD. Not all the letters were written in this time frame (for example, Hebrews, 1 Timothy, and 2 Peter, to name three), but quite a few were.

To illustrate, Paul visited Corinth around 50 AD (Acts 18) and a couple of years later moved on to Ephesus (Acts 19). It was fromEphesus that he wrote 1 Corinthians (1 Corinthians 16:7). (Not that this was his first letter to the Corinthians [1 Corinthians 5:9]; he wrote at least four, based on the biblical evidence.) Similarly, Romans was written some time later, and this letter mentioned many men and women Paul had come into contact with throughout his journeys as recorded in Acts. The letters of Paul correlate with Acts.

Sometimes indirect evidence from Acts sheds light on an epistle. For example, Galatians deals with the Judaizing doctrine that one must be circumcised and made into a Jew before he can become a Christian. Given the acuteness of the crisis (Galatians 1:6), the fact that the churches in Galatia had been established during the First Missionary Journey (Acts 14, about 48 AD), and the lack of any reference to the decision of the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15—which would have been very handy as Paul strove to reason with Galatians who had come under the spell of the circumcision party—it is highly likely that Galatians was written shortly before the Jerusalem Council. Thus we can assign provisional dates to the Council of 49 AD and to Galatians of 48 AD. For more on this, see the excellent volume by Ben Witherington III, The Paul Quest, particularly the “Appendix: Timely Remarks on the Life of Paul.”

Other authors:
• While James was likely written in the 40s, and the author was the same James who presided over the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15, it is more difficult to “correlate” his letter with the history of Acts. He appears to be writing to Jewish Christians, but there just isn’t enough information for us to draw many solid conclusions.
• Peter’s two letters were likely both written after the end of Acts (approximately 60 AD).
• John’s letters are thought by most scholars to have been written in the 90s. There is another school of thought, however, which places them as early as the 60s.
• The Hebrew writer—whoever he is!—wrote his missive shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem (as intimated in chapter 8). I believe it was written in the late 60s, quite a few years after Acts 28.
• Jude, written by Jesus’ brother of the same name, has been dated to the 60s, and by some scholars even later. Once again, this is too late for the time frame of Acts.
• As we can see, Paul’s letters are the ones most easily understood against the backdrop of Acts (and vice versa). This fact should not be surprising, since Luke’s interest in Peter and Paul (more than in any of the other apostles) led him to write a book (Acts) covering some 25 years of Paul’s life.

In short, this week’s Bible tip pertains to the time period 30-60 AD. The letters of Paul can be “cross-checked” against the record of Luke, who was Paul’s frequent traveling companion in Acts. We are fortunate to be able to make comparisons in many cases and even connect the dots in some cases to flesh out the rather skeletal “history” the N.T. provides us. Not that that is the New Testament’s fault; it never intended to provide a full history, only to relay the pieces of the picture the Holy Spirit determined we needed for our spiritual benefit.

Bible Reading Tip 22: Reading Paul’s Letter to the Galatians Galatians is Paul’s first surviving letter, dating to 48 AD. Only six chapters long, it is full of emotion and passion. Things to keep in mind:

• Galatia lay in modern day Turkey. Most conservative scholars believe this letter was sent to a group of congregations in South Galatia.
• These were churches Paul had established during the First Missionary Journey (Acts 13-14), in the late ’40s.
• Paul’s conviction and anger come from the very serious threat to the gospel. People’s salvation is at stake!
• The Judaizers are teaching that unless one is circumcised first, he cannot become a Christian.
• Galatians was probably written shortly before the Jerusalem Council of 49 AD, since there is no reference to the Council’s counsel, which would have been apropos, given the issues at hand.
• When Paul speaks about “the law” or “works,” he is not referring to the necessity of obeying God’s law, but to the futile attempt to be justified by keeping the Law of Moses.

Bible Reading Tip 23: Reading Paul’s Letters to the Thessalonians
After three Sabbath days’ work in Thessalonica, Paul penned two letters to strengthen believers. The year the letters were written was 50 AD. Things to keep in mind:

• Paul established the church at Thessalonica during the 2nd missionary journey (Acts 16-18). What we call Greece at that time consisted of Macedonia (in the north) and Achaia (in the south). Thessalonica was a principal city of Macedonia, and the example of the Thessalonians “rang out” (chapter 1) throughout both regions. Acts 17 is when the church itself was established.
• It is certainly possible that Paul had been there only 15 days, providing that spanned three Saturdays, but it’s also possible he spent a longer time in the city before beginning to preach publicly. This is something to be considered, given the depth of emotional connection Paul seems to have established with the believers in this city. Would he have formed such a tight bond in only a few weeks?
• Those who have died as Christians—who have not remained alive until the return of the Lord—will still be saved, as Paul insists (chapter 4). It seems some members had concluded that all was lost for those who died before the second coming!
• Paul also reminds them that they are to live productive lives right up until the very end. He also tells them not to fall for attempts to predict the time of the return of the Lord. Would that modern-day “prophets” heeded Paul’s instruction!
• 2 Thessalonians, written just a few months after 1 Thessalonians, deals with confusion caused (in part) by the first letter. Apparently some members, enthused by Paul’s words and hopeful that the Lord might return at any moment, were dropping out of responsible civic life.
• Paul tells them in this second letter that the end will not come right away, though we must be prepared for it to come at any time.
• 2 Thessalonians 3:17 also demonstrates Paul’s custom of writing the concluding words of his epistles personally, taking over from his amanuensis (secretary/scribe).

Bible Reading Tip 24: Reading Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians It was on the Third Missionary Journey (Acts 18-20) that Paul had established the church at Corinth (Acts 18), in about 51 AD. Corinth was a port town, and a crossroads for commerce going east-west (by sea) as well as for traffic moving north-south (by land). Take a look at a good Bible map and notice the strategic position of the city. Try to keep in mind:

• Corinth was an extremely worldly city, with all the vices of the world collecting and multiplying there. Temple prostitution, for example, was common, and this fact explains Paul’s references in 1 Corinthians 6.
• Corinth also boasted a number of charismatic temples. Various Greek, Egyptian, Syrian, and Roman sects abounded. The favorite “gifts” among the pagans: prophecy, “tongues,” and healing! While the Corinthians had genuine miraculous gifts of the Spirit, they were tempted to misuse them—to fall into old patterns of self-glorification instead of putting others first.
• In 1 Corinthians, Paul responds to a concerning oral report (from “Chloe’s people) and a letter from the Corinthians. There is thus a double agenda: to respond to the concerning news he has heard (divisions, immorality, etc) and to answer the specific questions the Corinthians had written down. He deals with the oral reports in the first six chapters (disunity, immorality, lawsuits…). Then, starting in chapter 7 (“Now concerning…”) he replies to their questions (singleness and celibacy, pagan feasts, women, communion, spiritual gifts, the resurrection, the collection for the poor saints…).
• 1 Corinthians is (at least) Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, since he refers to his earlier letter in 5:9.
• 2 Corinthians refers to another letter (7:8), one in which Paul said some very pointed and sobering things. The context of the letter—a direct challenge to Paul’s authority—does not harmonize well with 1 Corinthians. This means that 2 Corinthians is really (at the very least) the fourth Corinthian letter.
• In 2 Corinthians, Paul responds to challenges to this authority, and makes a key point about leadership and suffering. The true mark of leadership, Paul insists, is suffering. (This theme had earlier been elaborated in chapter 6 of Galatians.)

Bible Reading Tip 25: Reading Paul’s Letter to the Romans
Paul had never personally visited Rome at the time of his writing of the epistle. Rome, at about 1 million in population, was the capital and largest city of the Empire. Keep in mind:

• Paul is writing Romans from Corinth—on his third visit there (2 Corinthians 13:1). We know this because Phoebe is going to Romefrom Cenchrea, the seaport of Corinth (Romans 16:1, Acts 18:18). The letter may be dated to the mid-’50s.
• The strategic purpose of Romans: to preserve unity among Jews and Gentiles. Though there was apparently (as of yet) no boiling issue of unity, Paul realizes the strategic significance of Rome, and writes the letter to steel the congregation against potential seeds of division.
• Even though Paul has never been to Rome, he knows many people there, as the list of greetings in chapter 16 makes clear. The early churches were interconnected through relationships, and personal visits and letters were how they remained connected. These were also the principal means used by the apostles to keep up with the churches.
• Paul does not claim to have any particular authority over the Romans. He is not the “pope,” or the human “leader” of the Christian movement. Paul appeals to the Romans mainly on the basis of their mutual brotherhood in Christ.
• Paul is hoping to transit in Rome en route to Spain (chapter 15), with the financial assistance of the Roman Christians.
• Rome is the city where Paul would be arrested and imprisoned (around 58-60 AD)—thereafter released. (Acts 28:30-31 indicates that the maximum two-year period of incarceration ran its course, and unlike the situation in Acts 24:27, Paul was not kept in prison [against the law].)
• Thence he would launch into a fourth missionary journey (see the Pastoral Epistles)—only to be re-arrested and tried in the latter years of Nero. Nero crucified Peter in 64 AD, and Paul (as a Roman citizen) was beheaded no later than 68 (the year Nero took his own life).

Bible Reading Tip 26: Reading Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians Ephesus was a leading city in Asia Minor (Turkey), and probably the fourth largest city in the Empire (after Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch). Keep in mind:

• Ephesians is one of the “prison epistles” (see 6:20). Other prison epistles are Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. Paul was incarcerated when he penned this letter, quite likely in Rome. The year is approximately 60 AD.
• Among the churches in Asia, some preachers were pressuring Gentile Christians to conform to Judaism. There was also considerable anxiety about fate (the astrological powers). On top of these pressures, the allure of sin and darkness was tempting some of the Ephesian members. Paul reminds his readers that Christ is supreme in power, and has vanquished not only the “dividing wall of hostility” in the O.T. law, but also the powers of evil in the heavenly places. His power is sufficient to conquer anything besetting us!
• Christ is supreme in every way, and in him we have every spiritual blessing.
• The original letter was not addressed to the Ephesians. In May 2005 I was able to view the earliest surviving copy of Ephesians, no later than 200 AD. It does not contain the words “in Ephesus” in 1:1. This has led many scholars to suppose that this was actually a circular letter, and would have made the rounds to a number of cities—not unlike the horseshoe-shaped mail-delivery to the seven churches of Asia in Revelation 2-3.
• Finally, notice that Paul has accepted that the Lord might not be returning very soon (3:21). Throughout all generations, Jesus Christ was to be glorified. The church was not a temporary institution—a sort of jury-rigged shelter thrown together when Jesus’ return did not take place immediately! It is how and where the Lord most magnificently expresses his glory and will and love for all humanity.

Bible Reading Tip 27: Reading Paul’s Letter to the Philippians Philippi was a Roman colony in Macedonia, which roughly corresponds to northern Greece. It did not have a synagogue; that is why when Paul established the church there (Acts 16) he began at the river—a common place of prayer for Jews and God-fearers. The Emperor Cult was strong in Philippi, and after the church was founded, suppression challenged believers’ joy. Keep in mind:

• Paul is writing from prison himself, and models Christian joy in an excellent and admirable way! (See 1:12-14.)
• The letter is written to the church at Philippi, along with the overseers and servants (traditionally translated “bishops and deacons,” which really only transliterates the original Greek words: episkopos and diakonos). Interestingly, no mention is made of evangelists, whose work is primarily among those outside the congregation, while elders and servants minister primarily inside. I imagine that, while the letter is directed to the entire church, Paul especially hopes that his words will be heeded by those in position of influence.
• Some brothers were apparently preaching from false motives (Philippians 1), taking advantage of Paul’s incarceration to further their own spheres of influence. In addition, as in Galatians and Colossians, Judaizers—those who insist that one must become a Jew before he becomes a Christian—were troubling Paul (chapter 3). And still, he is joyful!
• Timothy is the model Christian in Paul’s book (2:19-24), illustrating the very example of Christ, who “emptied himself” (2:5-11). (Theologians called this kenosis—the Greek word for emptying.)
• Though joy is certainly a major theme of Philippians, even more emphasis is laid up on Christ.
• Paul ends his letter with a real punch, reminding us that “those [saints] who belong to Caesar’s household” [Roman government workers, not necessarily blood relatives of Nero] send their greetings!

Bible Reading Tip 28: Reading Paul’s Letter to the Colossians Colosse is in western Turkey (ancient Asia Minor), and quite near to the other ancient cities of Laodicea and Hierapolis (4:13). Paul is probably writing around 60 AD (sometime before his release date from the Roman prison where he spent two years—Acts 28:30). As you read, keep in mind:

• Colossians in many passages is parallel to Ephesians, and both letters are full of teaching about the cosmic place of the church in God’s scheme of things. Try to read them in tandem, noting every parallel.
• Paul did not establish this congregation—Epaphras did (1:7). And yet this does not dampen his enthusiasm and concern for the Colossians and Laodiceans (1:28-2:21).
• In this epistle, Paul is attempting to help the Colossians deal with false teaching. Christ is the answer to the significant questions of life, not Gnostic speculations (2:4, 8), a return to Judaism (2:16-17), or external rule-keeping (2:20-23)!
• As with the other prison epistles (Ephesians, Philippians, and Philemon), Paul is in prison as he writes (4:18). And yet he has recently had fellowship with many brothers: Timothy (co-author of Colossians); Tychicus (4:7), who is presumably the letter-bearer; Onesimus (4:8), who is certainly the runaway slave of Philemon (see comments next week); Aristarchus (4:10); Mark (4:10), the cousin of Barnabas—see Acts 15:39; Jesus called Justus (4:11); Epaphras (4:12); Luke (4:14); Demas (4:14)—but see 2 Timothy 4:10. It is possible that not all of these men visited Paul in Rome; to some extent, Paul may be merely relaying greetings. Still, he was hardly in solitary confinement.
• Finally, the short letter of Philemon may have been delivered along with Colossians to the church (4:16), especially assuming that Philemon is “Laodiceans.” (Compare the two letters.)

Bible Reading Tip 29: Reading Paul’s Letter to the Philemon

First of all, please review the comments on Colossians (last week), since this short letter is bound up with Colossians and the situation surrounding its writing. This is the shortest of Paul’s surviving personal letters. Keep in mind that:

• Paul is writing from prison.
• Philemon is a Christian slave-owner. (Yes, let that sink in.) And Onesimus was his runaway slave, who became a Christian through Paul’s influence.
• Note that under O.T. law, no runaway was to be returned (Deuteronomy 23:15-16). But then this situation was not governed by O.T. law, was it?
• Paul is writing not only to Philemon, but to others too, including the entire church that met in his house—who are also let in on the situation and conversation.
• His adroit handling of this sensitive situation is a model for Christians:

• In how to approach with a social issue (obliquely).
• In how to persuade without manipulating,
• The little letter of Philemon is likely the letter that accompanied Colossians (see Colossians 4:16).
• Ask the question, Why did the Holy Spirit put Philemon in the Bible? What am I supposed to learn?

Bible Reading Tip 30: Reading Paul’s Letter to Timothy and Titus
Paul writes his “Pastoral Epistles”—so named because of the pastoral advice he gives to Timothy and Titus in order that they may engage in effective pastoral ministry in Ephesus and on Crete—some time after his release from Roman imprisonment. Most scholars place 1 Timothy first in the sequence, then Titus, and 2 Timothy as the last of his surviving letters, penned no later than 68 AD (the year of Nero’s suicide). Do keep in mind:

• 1-2 Timothy and Titus are not only private letters, but are actually written to communities. (We know they are public because you [plural] appears at the end of each of these letters.)
• Timothy is a representative of the apostle Paul. Be careful how you extrapolate his function and role to church leadership today.
• Ask questions like: “What did the elders do in the first century? Although they led the local churches, were they open to outside influence? What exactly was the evangelist’s role? How may we have been affected by our own traditions about these roles?”
• In each of these letters, false teachers are troubling the churches. One of the greatest buffers against their pernicious influence is eldership. One the greatest problems in the churches, opening the doors to false teachers, is unspiritual leadership.

For further study on the Pastorals, please see my audio set. 1-2 Timothy & Titus.

1st Century Messianic Movements by Glenn Giles

Alpha Ωmega Chicago Campus Ministry — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 20:16:58 +0000

The purpose of this paper is to determine bona fide messianic movements of the first century. Many have written articles using the term “messianic” or “messianic movement,” but few seem to define the terms. Other terms such as “messianic pretenders” and “messianic consciousness” are also used without definition. In order to avoid the ambiguity that comes with using undefined terms, I will attempt to define the terms “messiah” and “messianic movement” using criteria drawn mainly from Jewish writings of the period 200BC to 100AD. This will allow us to determine messianic expectations that were prevalent among Jewish people at the time under discussion. I will then use the common expectations as criteria for determining bona fide “messianic movements” of the first century.

It is the thesis of this paper that there are seven figures that led Jewish movements which can be considered “messianic” between the years of 4 BC and 100 AD. These movements were led by
(1) Judas, son of Ezekias
(2) Simon, a slave of King Herod
(3) Anthronges, a shepherd
(4) Jesus of Nazareth
(5) Menahem, a descendent of Judas of Galilee
(6) John of Gischala
(7) Simon bar Giona

Messianic Movements of the 1st Century. PDF

Coming to Peace with Science by Darrel Falk

Alpha Ωmega Chicago Campus Ministry — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 19:57:05 +0000

To the Ends of the Earth!

Alpha Ωmega Chicago Campus Ministry — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:35:55 +0000

“For the LORD Most High is awesome, the great King over all the earth….For God is the King of all the earth; sing to him a psalm of praise. God reigns over the nations; God is seated on his holy throne ” – Psalms 47:2, 7-8

With over 200,000 college students currently in Chicago the task at hand is great. For this city to be a beacon of light and hope for the future generation men and women of conviction need to stand up. 2000 years ago, a group of disciples took the call that was put before them seriously that changed the course of history forever. Today that call is the same. It’s going to take men and women who take a stand for God that would change the course of this great city. It’s going to take men and women who are disciples to stand up to be that change our next generation is looking for. The question is will it be you?

The Kingdom of God and the Day of the Lord

Alpha Ωmega Chicago Campus Ministry — Wed, 11 May 2011 16:45:37 +0000

The following is a series of classes taught by Dr. John Oaks and Robert Carrillo. The topics that are covered in the recordings are

What is the kingdom of God?

The Kingdom of God and the Church

The Kingdom of God in the Old Testament. The Day of the Lord

Jesus and the Kingdom of God: Parables of the Kingdom.

The Kingdom of God and the world.

Prophecies of the Kingdom.

What Makes us Human? – John N. Clayton

Alpha Ωmega Chicago Campus Ministry — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 20:43:30 +0000

We live in an age of incredible technological growth. I can remember when my school system brought me the first small computer that I had ever seen. It was a Commodore and the only language that it knew was BASIC. I learned the language and wrote my own programs for my students because there was no commercial software
available. My students were absolutely entranced with this machine that would drill them on factual material that they were supposed to be learning. Writing the programs took hundreds of hours. It took over 15 minutes for the computer to load the programs even though they were very simple, and you could only put one ten question drill in the computer at a time because the memory of the computer was only 10,000 bits. You used a cassette to load each program in. I remember hearing about an “Apple” computer that was going to be so much better, but I doubted I would ever see one in my teaching career.

One day I had my students working on a project on the computers and I noticed one of the young ladies with her back to the computer in what teachers call the “pout position.” She was obviously not a happy camper and was giving me all kinds of body language that indicated she did not like what was going on. “What’s the problem Sandy” I asked. “I hate this” she replied. “What is there to hate?” I asked, “You get a chance to learn without having to listen to me!!” “That’s exactly the point,” she replied “No matter how smart this dumb machine is, it
still isn’t human!!” In the years since that incident I have found large numbers of students with the same reaction. In our age of technological advancement and incredible machines, it is important to keep in mind what makes us human.

INTELLIGENCE

It is not intelligence that sets man apart. The things that man does that really make him different are not related to his IQ. Retarded people do everything that brilliant people do. Having a son that has a high level of retardation
and is living with a group of seven people who share his disabilities, I am in constant contact with people who do not score well on IQ tests. These people are still a joy to be with. The laugh, they cry, they create art, they sing and enjoy music, they appreciate beauty, they feel guilt, they have sympathy, they have a need to feel self worth, they worship God and constantly express a spiritual dimension, and they bring great things into the lives of others in a constantly changing and varied way.

In the animal world, we find animals that have very high intelligence. Whales, porpoises, and some apes have been shown to have high reasoning ability and are able to solve problems. Some researchers have placed the IQs of whales and gorillas in the 90s–which is within the range of normal humans. Anyone who has worked with animals extensively knows that they have very high capabilities and do some amazing things. Animals function primarily through a highly developed application of instinctive drives. These instincts function remarkably as long as the animal is in an environmental situation that matches the design of the instinctive
drive. The more scientists study animal behavior, the more they realize just how sophisticated and intricate these instinctive drives are. One of our ecological problems is that when man changes the environment in which the animal has been functioning, the animal has a hard time adjusting to the new environment and is frequently
threatened with extinction. There are countless examples of this problem–salmon swimming up dammed or polluted rivers, lemmings running off cliffs where land bridges used to be, birds unsuccessfully laying eggs in places where trees used to be, whales beaching in places where man has altered the shoreline or the magnetic
pattern of the earth, etc.

ENVIRONMENT

One response to this discussion would be to say that humans acquire their humanness through socialization and the conditions under which they grow up. The argument is that we learn to be humans by having all the things it takes to be a human forced on us by our parents and other adults and peers through our childhood. There is no question that we learn a lot but most of those things are not what makes us unique as humans. They are mechanical things or methods that really do not have much to do with our humanness.

There have been numerous studies conducted with animals that are raised in human environments, beginning with Dr. Kellog’s studies of a chimpanzee raised with his son in a controlled environment in which both babies were given the same love, attention, stimulation, and learning opportunities. All of these studies have shown that animals raised in human conditions do not become human. The animal may learn to do some things that humans do–such as make desired responses to stimuli by entering the appropriate data into a computer; but those things that set man apart–like creativity, the ability to be taught to think, language (not communication), worship and the conceptualization of God, guilt, sympathy and compassion–do not appear in any degree. There have been numerous stories of feral children who were supposedly raised by animals, but sensationalism and lack of serious study make the claims of those who promote these cases difficult to use.

THE BRAIN

Another proposal that has been made is that man is unique because of his brain. The argument here is that man is an animal that has evolved more completely than other life forms, and all of our unique characteristics are a function of that biological evolution. There are numerous problems with this viewpoint. First of all it needs to be pointed out that man’s brain is not that unique. Animals like whales have brains that are considerably larger than ours. Some scientists studying the human brain have attempted to make arguments for evolution based upon the fact that other animals share brain characteristics with man. From a strictly mechanical viewpoint, the human brain has too many characteristics in common with other animals for it to be viewed as radically different and unique.

Those attempting to make arguments from an evolutionary standpoint are faced with another dilemma–the characteristics that make humans unique are not survival issues. Man’s ability to create art or to worship God are not factors that natural selection can work on to guarantee survival or predict extinction. In fact, if anything, these characteristics are likely to cause the death of an individual and prevent the proliferation of his or her genes. Sociobiology finds no solace in the evidence that is available from the human brain.

MAN IN GOD’S IMAGE

There is a uniqueness to man that is not rooted in his intelligence, his brain, his training, or his environment. This uniqueness is seen in all of us–the genius and the severely retarded. No culture, race, educational level, IQ, or age dictates these characteristics. The one thing that does offer an explanation is the spiritual dimension of man. The Bible tells us that man was created in the image of God. The image that is conveyed cannot be a physical image or we would all look alike physically, which we clearly do not. The image that is being discussed is man’s spiritual image. Man possesses a spiritual dimension the Bible calls the soul. Jesus said in Matthew 10:28

“Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both the body and soul in hell.”

The Bible also refers to spirit in a wide range of applications including some reference to animals. It is clear from the Bible, that man possesses three entities.

1 Thessalonians states it well when the writer says: “…I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

To understand the three parts of man–body, soul and spirit–let us make a comparison to an automobile. I have a car which has a body. The body is physical and is made from the elements found in the crust of the earth. The body of my car will eventually return to the material from which it came. The car also has spirit. The thing that makes the car actually move is the fuel that is put into the gas tank. The fuel is the energy which makes the car able to function. These two components together will not make the car run in a satisfactory manner. With just these two working the car has no direction and is likely to cause destruction. There has to be a component which decides what the car will be used for, whether it will be driven responsibly, and how the other parts of the car are cared for.

The analogy breaks down of course, but it is not far off from our own make up. In the biblical language there are times when spirit and soul are used in ways that are not obvious mainly because of translation problems. The basics are still there and are very clear. We have a body which is dust and will return to dust. We also breath which is the basis of the energy that drives the biological machine. These two components we share with the animal world around us, and we are no different than a dog or a cat in these areas. Our soul is the spiritual
component that decides how our bodies and how our energies will be used.

What makes us human is this spiritual make up. It enables us to create art and music. If gives us the capacity and desire to worship and to love in a self sacrificing way. It provides us with the ability to feel guilt, sympathy, compassion, and to be able to put others first. It is this spiritual component that enables us to relate to God and to be able to be influenced by God. Looking to this higher power that works through our spiritual make up gives us the ability to overcome drugs, destructive sexual behaviors, alcohol, pride, greed, selfishness, and all the other things that bring misery to life. We do not believe in our spiritual makeup because it is a religious tradition that has been forced upon us; we believe it because every shred of available evidence points to it and because the things that happen in life demonstrate that animal solutions do not work on problems that are spiritual in nature.

Apologetics and the Christian World View By Dr. John Oaks

Alpha Ωmega Chicago Campus Ministry — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 21:17:21 +0000

A number of years ago I wrote and published a book which I thought at the time covered all of the important basic topics relating to Christian Evidence for those trying to build up the faith of young Christians and non-believers. The book is titled, Reasons for Belief: A Handbook of Christian Evidence. It brings together evidence in support of Christian belief from the claims of Jesus, miracles, the resurrection, messianic and other prophecies, archaeology, history and the Bible, support for the documentary reliability of the Bible, science and the Bible, and it discusses supposed inconsistencies in the Bible. In the past three years I have come to the conclusion that there is one major topic which is essential in any basic but comprehensive Christian evidences discussion which is not included in my book. This is the subject of world view.

What is a world view and why is a discussion of world view essential to even the most basic attempts to create and sustain Christian belief? Quite simply, one’s world view is the perspective one uses to process and interpret information received about the world. James W. Sire[1] put it this way, “A world view is a set of presuppositions (ie. assumptions) which we hold about the basic makeup of our world.” We live in a world in which the Christian world view is not only not the norm, to the vast majority-even to many who attend church regularly-it seems about as strange as belief in lepruchans or the tooth fairy. Our intellectual institutions are dominated by postmodern philosophy and scientific materialism. Many believe that all religions are more or less the same. The very existence of truth is denied, both in the halls of our universities and in popular media. It will be very difficult to plant the seed of rational evidence in such unfertile ground. We must explore and explain the major world views and demonstrate carefully why that proposed by the Bible is superior, because it is logically most consistent with the world as it really is, because it answers most successfully the fundamental questions all human beings ask, and because in comports best with what the human conscience knows is good and right.

In this essay I will be analyzing the most influential world views in modern culture; contrasting these to the Christian world view, explaining why we feel that the Bible offers a view of the world which is superior, both in its consistency with the world as it is and in the way it solves the fundamental human questions. For those who want to dig a little deeper into the topic, let me suggest a good primer on the subject. It is The Universe Next Door, by James W. Sire (several copies available as I write at Amazon for less than 1$!). For those who want to dig really deep, there is the tome produced by J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. A note of caution, this book is not easy reading and it is not cheap to buy!

In the first part of this essay, I will be describing briefly the Christian world view. It is tempting to assume that a Christian, almost by definition, understands the Christian world view, and of course there is a grain of truth in this. However, it is my own experience that many believers in Jesus Christ have an insufficient understanding of how Jesus Christ viewed the world in which humans exist. For this reason, this introduction will be used both to more carefully define the world view to which Christians ought to hold, and as a point of comparison when we discuss the world view of postmodernism, naturalism, new ageism and the major world religions.

First, let us ask what a “good” world view ought to look like? Is a “good” world view, by definition, one that we like-that we find ourselves naturally agreeing with? Is it one which creates good physical or emotional health? Is it the one which creates the greatest amount of human happiness? Perhaps it is the one which results in the creation of the greatest amount of economic growth and movement away from poverty and political upheaval. In fact, according to one world view, that of naturalism, there is no such thing as a “good” world view, as all such value judgments are meaningless. There is a sense in which this question of what constitutes a good world view is a personal decision for all of us. Each of us reading this article must, in the end, decide what constitutes a good and legitimate world view. Let us put this out there as a starting thesis. It is not possible to have no world view at all (please forgive the double negative). We will have one by default if we do not choose to think about it. Given that our world view in large measure defines who we are and determines how we live our lives, surely it is worth the time and intellectual effort to examine, evaluate and perhaps even change our world view toward one which more accurately reflects reality and makes us a better citizen of the universe in which we live and move and have our being.

A “Good” World View

What makes for a good world view? It has already been said that this has to be a personal decision, but let me propose a few qualities for us to consider when looking at the major world views.

The first quality which one might want to consider that makes a world view “good” is that it is true. To hold to an idea which is false is surely not to be preferred to holding to an idea which is true. There is no virtue and there is very rarely an advantage in being wrong. What makes something true? This is a question for philosophy, but let us try to keep this relatively simple. Something is “true” if it is consistent with reality. This is sometimes called the Correspondence Theory of Truth. If a belief is in clear contradiction with well-established facts about the world, then it is not true. This may seem a truism, but we will see that the Postmodern does not accept the Correspondence Theory of Truth. If one holds to the belief that gravity does not operate to attract masses toward one another, that view will be disproved by letting go of a heavy object. If one holds to the idea that refusal to communicate leads to peace, that too will be shown by reality not to be true. The sticking point, of course, comes with defining how one decides what is reality and what is true. One perspective, that of the empiricist, is that truth is determined solely by what we can observe with our senses and what we can measure with our instruments. Another perspective, that of rationalists such as DesCartes, is that which is true is that which my mind and clear reasoning tells me is true. What is true must be logical. The one who said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident” was speaking as a rationalist. Most of us who do not occupy the rarified regions of philosophy can be more practical in our definition. We can combine the two ideas. Those things we hold to be true must be consistent with what we can observe-with our own “history” and hopefully that of others, and they must be rational-logically consistent. It must not be supported by circular or patently poor reasoning or require us to believe what we know not to be true.

The second quality which makes for a “good” world view is that it successfully answers the important questions humans ask. What these important questions are and how one is to define success in answering them is, of course, subjective to some extent. However, there are a number of questions for which people everywhere seek the answers. Below is the list of such questions from The Universe Next Door, slightly reworded:

1. What is prime reality? (or What is the ultimate cause? or What is the nature of God?)

2. What is the nature of external reality-the world around us?

3. What is a human being?

4. What happens to a person at death?

5. Why is it possible for us to know anything at all?

6. How do we know what is right and wrong?

7. What is the meaning of human history?

To these let me add:

8. What is my purpose?

9. What is the nature of my relationship, with the “prime reality?”

The third quality which makes for a “good” world view is that those who ascribe to it are better human beings for having taken this as their world view. Again, of course, “better” is going to be subjective, but there are a few measures to which nearly all people can agree. If one’s world view results on balance in an increased likelihood of genocide, racial or any other kind of hatred, poverty, anarchy, physical and emotional suffering or war, then such a world view is easily identified an deficient. We will be subjecting the important world views to scrutiny based on these three definitions of what make for a good world view. Is it true? Does it successfully answer the important questions? and Does it make those who hold to it “better” people?

The Christian World View

Clearly, a lot of things can be included under the heading of the Christian world view. My intent here is to keep it very simple and not necessarily provide a lot of scriptural support at this point. We will add to these ideas as we go along, as well as giving them flesh. In order to provide a useful basis as we proceed to analyze, compare and contrast the biblical with other world views, the points will be outlined and numbered.

1. The physical world is:

a. real

b. created and

c. essentially good.

These points are established before we get out of the first chapter in the Bible. The reader should be aware that these presuppositions are definitely NOT held to by many of the influential world views. Many believe that the physical world is an illusion. Many believe that the universe(s) have existed forever. Even more hold to the belief as part of their view of the world that physical reality is corrupted and evil. To summarize, consider Genesis 1:31 (NIV) “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning-the sixth day.”

2. There exists a parallel unseen spiritual reality which is not limited to or defined by the physical reality.

A scripture which supports both this presupposition and the first is Hebrews 11:3 (HCSB), “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen has been made from things that are not visible.” This verse also can be used to support our third point of the Christian world view.

3. The creator of both the physical and spiritual realm is the God who is revealed and who reveals himself in the Bible.

4. Although the physical world is good, evil does exist. Such evil is the result of freedom of will given to created beings and their subsequent decision to use that freedom to “sin” (defined as transgressing the will of God).

5. Human beings have both a physical and a spiritual nature, but the spiritual nature is more essential as it is eternal.

6. There is a definite right and wrong for human behavior which is determined by God.

It is interesting to note that all of these are stated or implied in the first three chapters of Genesis. It is apparent that God wanted to establish right up front how he wants his people to view the world.

My intention here is to analyze how “good” (good being defined above) the Christian world view is principally by comparing and contrasting it with other world views. In other words, the idea that the created physical world is good will be supported when I contrast it with the Hindu idea that the physical world is an illusion or the Greek idea that it is essentially evil, or the naturalist view that it is not created. In the last section of the essay, I will come back to the Christian world view, explaining why I believe it is that Jesus Christ provided us with what is far and away the “best” view of the world which has even been presented to mankind. It is my hope that in the process some of my readers will have had their view of the world changed-that it will more perfectly reflect the perspective of Jesus of Nazareth.

Scientific Materialism/Naturalism

We have already looked at why people ought to think carefully about their view of the world, and at the importance of forming and holding to a consistent world view. We have considered a reasonable set of criteria for what might make for a “good” view of the world. In addition, we have given a bare bones description of the Christian world view. The first alternative world view we will contrast with that of Christianity is Naturalism; also known as Scientific Materialism. This is probably the simplest to understand of all the world views we will cover in this series. Let us consider several statements defining Naturalism:

The only reliable or valid instrument to deciding the truth or even the value of any proposition is the scientific method.

The only reality is that which is observable by physical means. There is no spiritual reality, no moral truth, no God, no life after death, no soul, no spirit, no consciousness, except perhaps as an epiphenomenon.

Consider that of Richard Lewontin:

“We exist as material beings in a material world, all of whose phenomena are the consequences of material relations among material entities. In a word, the public needs to accept materialism, which means that they must put God in the trash can of history where such myths belong.”

The following are not definitions of Scientific Materialism, but represent obvious implications of this philosophy.

A statement of Naturalism from Richard Dawkins; world-famous atheist and evolutionist:

In the universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt and other people are going to get lucky: and you won’t find any rhyme or reason to it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.

From Thomas Huxley, known as “Darwin’s bulldog”:

We are as much the product of blind forces as is the falling of a stone to earth, or the ebb and flow of the tides. We have just happened, and man was made flesh by a long series of singularly beneficial accidents.

Consider for a moment the implications of this rather depressing world view. If it is true then my personal concept of “I” is a delusion. My perception of consciousness is simply the accidental result of neurons firing and chemicals moving around in my brain (ie consciousness is an epiphenomenon). When I say to my wife or my children “I love you,” what this means in reality is that when I think about them my neural pathways light up in a particular way and certain neurotransmitters change their level of activity. Love is not a thing in itself (and of course the biblical statement that God is love is sheer nonsense). If the naturalist is correct then there is no purpose to life whatsoever, except perhaps the evolutionary “purpose” to procreate and create as many copies of my particular genetic material as possible. If the naturalist is right than my personal belief that murder, lying and stealing are wrong has no basis whatever in absolute truth, but is simply one person’s particular opinion-one dictated not by truth but, if anything, by a genetic predisposition toward thinking that way, created by a kind of cultural natural selection.

My personal experience tells me that virtually no one can accept this world view with all its implications. Despite this fact, in many intellectual circles it is the publically accepted world view and those who do not hold to it are laughed at. Educated people who believe that there is a spiritual reality which supersedes the physical reality are treated derisively as holding to an immature, outmoded and silly idea about the world. In fact, materialists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens publicly declare religionists to be the enemy of human progress and directly or indirectly the cause of all evil in the world (this despite the fact that they do not believe that evil exists).

What is the genesis of this world view? To discover the source of Naturalism, one must turn the clock back to the Scientific Revolution. The fact is that the creators of the Scientific Revolution-Roger Bacon, Copernicus, Galileo and others-were all believers in the Christian world view. In fact, their belief in science followed directly from the Christian world view. Belief in the God of the Bible led Bacon and others to conclude that there must be a single, unchanging set of laws governing the physical universe. These theologians also concluded from their biblical world view that a personal God of love must have made the physical universe to be intelligible to human reason and analyzable by mathematical analysis. All of these “Christian” assumptions turned out to be true (as far as we can tell) and thus science was invented.

However, in the process of discovering how nature worked, scientists such as Isaac Newton discovered that the universe works according to what seem to be entirely mechanical laws; laws which are so regular and predictable that it seemed God could be removed from the equation. In fact, French mathematician and physicist Pierre-Simone La Place, when asked by Napolean, “Where is God?” in his theory of mechanics replied, “I have no need of that hypothesis.” Scottish philosopher David Hume questioned whether we can know anything absolutely and especially whether belief in God had any empirical validity. The rise of deism in the late eighteenth century led to scientific materialism/naturalism by the nineteenth century. Although Darwin himself was not a strict materialist, his work certainly provided fodder for scientism. Only in the twentieth century did we begin to see aggressive scientific materialists such as Bertrand Russel and Carl Sagan beginning to publicly attack all other world views as infantile and foolish.

A Response to Scientific Materialism

Any claim that Scientific Materialism is a superior world view to that of Christianity ought to be analyzed according to specific criteria. Let me begin by quoting a comment on materialism as a world view. (I apologize that I can no longer find the source of this quote.) “The theorist who maintains that science is the be-all and the end-all-that what is not in science textbooks is not worth knowing-is an ideologist with a peculiar and distorted doctrine of his own. For him, science is no longer a sector of the cognitive enterprise, but an all-inclusive world view. This is the doctrine not of science but of scientism. To take this stance is not to celebrate science but to distort it.” I have already proposed a set of criteria for a “good” world view we can use for consideration. A superior world view will be one which:

1. Is true (in other words consistent with reality on various levels)

2. Answers the questions and solves the problems human beings really care about.

and

3. Causes the person who holds to this world view to be a “better” person.

I reject Naturalism because it is patently false, it does not answer any of the problems and questions human beings as a whole care about and it does not tend to help its believers to be better people than they would have been if holding to alternative world views.

Naturalism is self-defeating. It is based on circular reasoning and for many reasons it produces assumptions which are simply not in agreement with common human experience. Therefore it is not “true” (criterion #1 above). The scientific world-view presupposes that the universe is ordered and essentially unchanging. It assumes that the laws which govern the universe are inviolable and that the universe is observable and understandable to human beings; that the human mind has a one-to-one correspondence with the way reality is. The naturalist then proceeds to apply these assumptions to rule out all other world views. The spiritual or supernatural are, by definition, not real. This is circular reasoning. None of the assumptions made as the foundation of science can be proved by experiment or by observation. In this sense, at its most foundational level, science itself is not scientific. It is not that the discoveries of science are wrong. Not at all. Clearly science has given us access to reliable knowledge about how the physical world works. If limited to its proper sphere, science works. It is the belief that science is the only valid view of the world and the only legitimate means to acquire knowledge about reality which is based on circular reasoning. At a recent forum held in the UK a famous chemist/naturalist was asked how he knows that ALL phenomena can be explained by physical laws. After being re-asked a number of times and attempting to get around the question, in the end, this naturalist was forced to confess; to quote “I simply believe it is true.” In other words, the reason the scientific materialist knows that “We exist as material beings in a material world, all of whose phenomena are the consequences of material relations among material entities.” is because he or she assumes the conclusion before the investigation. This is a very slim basis on which to build a world view.

There are a number of reasons I simply have to reject naturalism as patently false. I will supply a brief list here without taking the time to provide my evidence for such reasons. I will leave to reader to decide the truth of these claims-each of which, if true, make naturalism patently and demonstrably false.

1. Morality is real. Some activities are inherently wrong.

2. The existence of good and evil is not just an epiphenomenon. Evil is real.

3. Justice is not just a concept. Some behaviors are just and some are not just.

4. A human life is inherently more valuable than that of a cockroach.

5. God exists.

6. The universe was created.

7. Life was created.

8. Beauty is real and not discoverable by any scientific means.

9. The Bible is inspired by God.

10. Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead.

This list can be made much longer. In the final analysis the concepts of right and wrong are not just a human invention. I have found that even those who claim that there is no right or wrong-no evil or good-are not consistent with their own belief. It is ironic to me that I have witnessed atheists expressing moral outrage over the things done by “religionists.” The naturalist may protest it is not true, but I say that “I” exist. I am not just a sack of chemicals moving around, with nerve synapses firing off according to patterns guided by my genetic makeup; determined by my environment. I am a person with a reality apart from my chemicals. I have a brain. I am not merely a brain. Naturalism is just plain not true.

Point number two of the argument for why naturalism is not a “good” world view: It does not answer any of the questions or solve any of the problems human beings really care about. Science is good at answering questions such as When? How much? Where? How long? It can answer provisional questions of why, such as why does it rain or why do stars form, but it cannot answer any of the fundamental/ontological/teleological why questions; even about the natural world. For example, science is not helpful at all for answering such basic questions as “Why is gravity as strong as it is,” or “Why does the electromagnetic force exist,?” or “Why does the universe exist?” If science cannot answer these questions, it certainly cannot even hint at an answer to a single one of the questions people really care about (as listed above) such as: “Why am I here?” “What is my purpose?” “Does God exist?” “What happens to me when I die?” “How should I act?” “How should I treat other people?” “Why is it possible for humans to understand how the universe works?” “Why is there evil in the world?” Bottom line, scientific materialism does not even give wrong answers, it gives no answer at all to these questions (There is one exception. Science provides an answer to the question What happens when I die? The “scientific” answer is that life simply ends and entropy takes over.) It says that these are nonsense questions. My experience tells me that ignoring important questions and pretending that difficult problems do not exist is a bad way of dealing with such questions and problems. I do not mean to imply that Naturalists do not ask these questions or that they do not on an individual basis try to help solve some of the important human problems. It is just that their world view is not at all helpful for these things.

The third criterion from my personal list of qualities which make for a “good” world view is that holding to this view of the world must cause a person to be “better” than he or she would otherwise have been if not holding to this world view or if holding to alternative world views. Admittedly, this criterion is fairly subjective, but there are a number of measurements of goodness to which virtually all humans would subscribe. I believe that Naturalism is not a good world view if judged by this criterion. Let me state before entering this area that I have a number of friends who are naturalists. This is only “natural” because I am a scientist by profession. Some of my scientific materialist acquaintances are rather arrogant and hold to ethical and moral ideas with which I cannot agree. However, others have strong ethics and are some of the nicest people I know. No world view has a corner on the goodness market, including the one I hold to.

With this qualification in mind (and please do not forget it!), let us consider the motivation for doing “good” under the Naturalist world view. In theory, the Naturalist believes that there is no purpose to life and no inherently correct morality. Even ethics is extremely difficult or impossible to derive from this world view. Like I already said, some materialists do good deeds. If so, it is probably not because they are motivated out of their world view. Something else must be operating here. As my good friend Robert Kurka has said the materialists “hijacks” his or her morality and ethics from the Christian world view.

At the risk of offending some, I will make a bold statement here. I believe that scientific materialism is potentially a dangerous world view. According to this view, human beings have no definable value, except as a source of genetic material for subsequent generations. Of course, the vast majority of atheists are not violent people and value human life, but there is no moral imperative against murder or rape or robbery or any other of activities that the Christian and other world views hold to be morally wrong. Where does one find the moral compass? Any category of sexual behavior is acceptable as long as no one is hurt. Lying may be advantageous to survival and therefore “good.”

A lot of evil has been done in the name of religion. Anyone who denies this is not looking at history or is altogether denying the existence of evil. The difference with the Christian world view compared to that of Naturalism, however, is that a Christian who is prejudiced or who lies or who wages war on another for reasons of greed or power is violating his or her world view and is subject to being shown to be doing wrong. There is accountability and justice under the Christian world view. To the Christian there is an imperative to help our fellow mankind. Jesus commanded that those who follow him must “Do to others what you would want them to do to you.” Such altruism flies is the face of Naturalism as a philosophy. In the Christian world view, as exemplified by its creator Jesus Christ and as taught by its scriptures, there is a strong imperative to love others, to be honest, to serve others, to shun violence, greed, arrogance and so forth. Many Naturalists follow a strong and admirable personal ethic, but what is the imperative toward these “good” behaviors under the Scientific Materialist world view? If there is one, I have not yet seen one, although some materialists have made the attempt.

Having admitted that much evil has been done by believers, let us consider the small but significant number of societies which have publicly avowed an atheist or an anti-God world view. Examples of this sort which come to mind are France immediately after the French Revolution, Communist Russia, Communist China, Cambodia under Pol Pot and North Korea.[2] Inspection of this list of regimes speaks for itself. In each of these societies individual souls were treated as if they had little value, with tragic results. The empirical fact that a societal commitment to belief in no God has such a poor record in producing human good is not proof that it will never do so. However, the track record is something we should not ignore.

What about justice and human rights? In the United States, many subscribe to the idea that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men were created equal.” Does this idea come from scientific inquiry? Based on their DNA, some are more fit than others. The Christian ought to believe that all humans are infinitely valuable as they are created in the image of God. I am happy to report that almost none of the Naturalists I have met are racially prejudiced. Hopefully the scientifically-inspired Eugenics movement in the early twentieth century will remain an anomaly, but what is the inherent source of human dignity and value if, as Huxley said, “man was made flesh by a long series of singularly beneficial accidents.”?

To summarize, the committed Naturalist believes that the only truth in the universe is that which can be discovered by the scientific method, through experiment and rational analysis of the information derived from empirical evidence. This world view fails miserably at the three criteria proposed in this paper for deciding what world view is best. Its support is circular and its conclusions are patently false. It cannot answer the most important questions or solve the fundamental problems that human beings care about. It does not, in and of itself, tend to cause those who hold to it to be “good.” I believe that the Christian world view is vastly superior to Materialism on all these counts and, for that matter, on any other reasonable measure I have seen of what makes for a good world view.

New Age and Eastern Religion/Philosophy

We have already considered the definition of world view and why the consideration of world view is important for the believer, and for the non-believer for that matter. We also considered the world view of Naturalism or Scientific Materialism, the implications for humanity and whether it is a “good” world view. In this section we will look at the view of the world which is held more or less in common by peoples in the East (generally cultures in Asia) and their close cousin, the New Age Movement.

It may seem presumptuous to describe in fairly simple terms the world view of nearly half the world’s people. If we include the population of India and China alone, this accounts for about 2.4 billion of the roughly 6.5 billion people in the world. Obviously, we will be painting the world view held to by the world’s Hindus, Buddhists, Sikkhs, Jainas, Taoists and Confuscianists with a broad brush. To include the modern-day New Age movement in this group is to make the brush stroke even broader. Yet, the world view held by the followers of these religious ideas is so radically different from that of the Christian, that even such a broad description will tell us a lot about how people from the East think about the world.

The Eastern world view is essentially pantheistic. This is a gross simplification and the nuances will be discussed below. Nevertheless, this description will be very helpful. The pantheist sees God as being coextensive with the universe. Pan means all and pantheists believe that God is all and everywhere. This is not a personal god at all. If the pantheist is right, then we human beings are part of God. We cannot have a relationship with God because we are God. The goal of the pantheist is to be swallowed up into the ineffable, all-pervading god-essence of the universe. The pantheist believes that the physical world around us is an illusion. The word used for this concept in both Hinduism and Buddhism is maya. The physical reality is a shell to contain the cosmic oneness. Buddhists, Jaina, Sikks and Hindus have a rather complicated cosmology. They believe that reality exists on many levels or planes, and we are on one of the lower of these planes. This is the common Eastern cosmology. Our goal is to get to a higher level of reality where the spiritual is more real and the physical reality is less pervasive. Ultimately, the goal is to lose self and to be swallowed up into the all-pervading goodness.

If the Eastern idea is right, then our goal is not to know and have a personal relationship with God outside of us, but to discover the God-nature inside of us. The search for God is essentially a search within ourselves. It is literally a selfish journey. We find Brahman, the ineffable expression of God, and a state of bliss known to the Hindu as nirvana by finding atman (soul) within ourselves. I have been using the Hindu way of describing things as this is the most common of the Eastern religions, and because it is the essence of New Age religion.

The Buddhist idea has much in common with Hinduism, but of course much is different as well. The Buddha gave his followers a philosophy; the eight fold path for right living. The four “noble truths” of Buddha are 1. Suffering is not getting what one wants. 2. The cause of suffering is desire which leads to rebirth. 3. The way to end suffering is to end desire, and 4. The way to the end of desire and of suffering is the eight-fold path. Buddha taught dispassion rather than compassion.

Gautama refused to address the God question with his believers because he felt this was not particularly relevant. One gets the sense that the Buddha was not an atheist and that his concept of God was pantheistic. His religion included the concepts of maya and reincarnation.

The Jain and Sikh religions can be thought of as flavors of Hinduism. In fact, Sikhs tended to consider themselves a sect of Hinduism until fairly recent persecution and British tendency to define things from a Western perspective defined them as a separate religion. Both religions retain the multiple level cosmology, but reject the highly structured priestly caste system. Jainism is thoroughly pantheistic. Sikhism and Jaina include the belief that physical reality is an illusion (maya), reincarnation and a karmic thinking about “sin.”

As for Taoism, this Chinese-born Eastern religion, founded by Lao Tzu, retains a strong pantheistic view of the world. Enlightenment is gained by contemplating self and nature. Like Buddhism, we come into contact with our cosmic nature through non-involvement in the world. Dispassion rather than compassion is the key to enlightenment.

So, what is New Age religion? Is it palm reading? Channeling? Seances? Meditation? Reincarnation? Occultism? Gurus? Paganism? Gnosticism? Mother Goddess worship? Yes, all the above, but in its essence, it is Western pantheism. The common thread in the rather eclectic beliefs of New Agers is that you are God, I am God, we all are God! It is monism. God is everything and we are God. To quote a well-known New Age author, “Once we begin to see that we are all God, then I think the whole purpose of life is to re-own the God-likeness within us.”

Let us analyze this world view. Is it a “good” world view? Let us apply our three-criteria. Is the Eastern/New Age world view true? It will be very hard to give a fully satisfactory answer to this question in a short essay. Put it this way, the cosmology of the Eastern religions, with its endless repeating cycle of creations and destructions, and with its multiple levels of reality is not true. Material evidence for the big bang seems to preclude this cosmology. The second law of thermodynamics does not allow for a cyclical repeat of cosmic history. The eastern mind believes that this universe is not real. Some have tried to tie the twentieth century discovery of quantum mechanics, with its probabilistic view of physical reality and its discovery of the uncertainty principle as evidence that the Buddhist cosmology is valid. The problem is that science definitely assumes that the universe is real. In fact, the scientific materialist believes that the physical universe is the ONLY reality. Unlike the situation between science and Christian theology, there is an inherent and unresolvable conflict between science and Eastern cosmology. The physical world is very real. We will not help solve the problems in this world by pretending that it is not real (and that the problems themselves are therefore not real).

It is debatable whether science can help settle the question of whether “God” is pantheistic and impersonal or theistic and personal. Nevertheless, we can ask what is the evidence supporting the central claims of Christianity and those of various Eastern religions. Christian belief has the advantage of scripture with fulfilled prophecy, verifiable historical accuracy and much more. The scripture of Eastern religions is entirely lacking in such logical/rational evidential support. In fact, one cannot even find apologists for these religions as a rule. Rational “evidence” seems to be nearly immaterial to these beliefs.

Does Eastern religion answer the important human questions? The answer is yes and no. It certainly does better here than scientific materialism. Eastern religion provides possible answers (whether right or wrong) to questions such as “What is ultimate reality?” “How did I get here and where am I going?” With other questions it is less successful. What is the nature of external reality-the world around us? The eastern believer says that it is not real. This is not helpful. What is the solution to the problem of evil? How do I become righteous? Eastern religion provides unhelpful answers. Suffering is not real, sin does not exist (unless one allows for the idea of karma which has as much or more to do with the actions from supposed past lives as with our own life).

Are the practitioners of Eastern religion or philosophy better people for holding to these beliefs? If we compare to atheism or agnosticism, the answer surely is yes. With their idea of karma and ideal of becoming one with the pantheistic universal soul, surely the devoted Buddhist or Hindu is more likely to be peaceful, patient and possessed of a sense of responsibility for the consequences of his or her actions than the average non-believer. However, there are some weaknesses here. Like the New Age philosophy tells its believers, sin, if it exists at all, is the lack of personal understanding that you are God. Hindu thought does include a measure of personal responsibility for sinful acts, but it also includes the possibility of “atoning” for sin in this life in some still future life. It also carries the responsibility for unknown past lives into the current incarnation. Surely this weakens the sense of personal responsibility for our own actions in this life, at least for the average believer.

The Eastern world view has one looking inward, not outward. It inspires dispassion rather than compassion and disinvolvement in the world rather than involvement. I am not saying that Sikhs are completely unloving. Obviously there are many loving and giving Taoists. However, these religions teach that suffering is not real. I have traveled to India as well as Buddhist countries such as Cambodia and Thailand. It is not an accident that a majority of the organized benevolent programs in Hindu and Buddhist countries is done by Christian groups. This is not just an accident and it cannot be fully explained by the wealth in Western countries. The pattern of “Christian” benevolence is repeated in the small Christian communities in these countries. The native Christian groups do more than their share of meeting the needs and creating social justice in these countries. Julian “the Apostate,” the pagan grandson of Constantine noted of the Christian in the Roman Empire, “Atheism (i.e. Christian faith) has been specially advanced through the loving service rendered to strangers, and through their care for the burial of the dead. It is a scandal that there is not a single Jew who is a beggar, and that the godless Galileans care not only for their own poor but for ours as well; while those who belong to us look in vain for the help that we should render them.” This criticism of Julian’s own pagan religion and compliment of the Christians of his day apply quite well to the situation in countries where Eastern religion predominates. Why? Because these are bad people? No. To a great extent it is because of their world view.

On a personal note, when I came to a belief in God while in college, I was initially strongly attracted to Eastern religion. I became involved in a Western-style eastern mysticism, read Hindu scripture, became a vegetarian and tried to find God in this way. In the end, I was attracted to Christianity because of the love I saw in devoted Christian lives and because of the evidence which so strongly supported Jesus being the one and only Son of God.

To summarize, the essence of the Eastern world view, and that of its many Western incarnations such as New Age believers is pantheism. It is a belief that the universe is filled with an impersonal god-force, a spark of which is in us. The physical world is an illusion, sin is not real, and the human problem is to escape from the passions which trap us in these physical bodies. The reader will have to decide whether this world view is attractive, but from my perspective, this is a defective world view. It is defective, first of all, because it is not true. The evidential support for this view is not strong. In addition, I am not attracted to this world view because its essence is selfish. I am attracted to a view of the world which calls its adherents to seek social justice and to show compassion for those less fortunate than them.

The Christian World View

Thus far we have looked at Naturalism, Eastern religion/philosophy and its cousin, the New Age philosophy/religion. Having defined these world views, I attempted to evaluate them with respect to the proposed criteria for a “good” world view. Obviously, this treatment is not comprehensive. We have not evaluated the world view of the Postmodernist (which is, in essence, that no world view is “true”), Nihilist (which is somewhat closely related to that of the naturalist), or the Existentialist, the Stoic, dualist, neo-Platonist or of the Muslim. All of these, with the exception of the postmodern world view and Islam, can be seen as more or less closely related to the ones we have considered. Time and space are not sufficient for us to cover all of these in detail.

I will now return to Christianity. We will consider in much more careful detail what the Christian world view really is. We will also analyze this world view with respect to the three criteria I have been using throughout. Many Christian believers may think that the Christian world view is fairly obvious and for the seasoned follower of Jesus relatively little need be said about it. By way of response, let me say that one point of this series of essays is that it is essential for those of us who seek to influence our neighbors to have a solid and deep understanding of both our own and of competing world views. I will make the claim that many Christians do NOT have a sufficiently deep understanding of the world view which they ought to have if they accept, by faith, the biblical view of the world. I make this statement because as I have traveled around the world to visit more than one hundred churches in dozens of countries, when I ask some rather basic questions about things such as predestination, natural and special revelation, salvation, the cause of suffering and so forth, the answers show a rather disturbing lack of understanding of who the God of the Bible is.

Of course, some will ask “Which biblical world view?” In other words, some claim that there is more than one world view found in the Bible-that one has to choose which of these competing views one will take to be the actual biblical/Christian world view. This is another question which deserves careful and systematic response. Let me say for the sake of this essay that I personally completely reject this view. Although I will not take the time to support the claim at this point, it is my conviction from careful study of the biblical scriptures over thirty years that there is a single, consistent, non-contradictory world view and picture of who God is. The God of Genesis is the God of Isaiah is the God of John and of James and Paul.

So, what is the Christian world view? I will attempt to describe it by a series of propositions, each of which will be expanded somewhat, using biblical passages by way of support.

1. The physical world is: a. real b. created out of nothing (ex nihilo) and c. essentially good.

Genesis chapters 1-3 is in my opinion the most brilliant little piece of philosophy I have ever read. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1). As the Hebrew writer put it, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” If this statement is true, then animism, polytheism, pantheism, dualism, naturalism, nihilism, and postmodernism are all proved untrue. Just as significant to the Christian world view is this: not only did God create the physical universe, but this creation was essentially good. The way God puts it in Genesis 1:31, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” Eastern philosophy has the physical world to be an ephemeral illusion. Greek philosophy agrees, adding that the physical world is decaying and essentially evil. Naturalism agrees that it is real, but denies that there is a supernatural reality which created it. It certainly is not “good,” as such a description in meaningless in a random accidental universe. When God says his creation was good in its entirety, this does not deny the existence of evil. The question of evil will be addressed below.

2. There exists a parallel unseen spiritual reality which is not limited to or defined by the physical reality. Human beings have a spiritual aspect to their nature.

The fact that God, one who is “invisible,” created the universe establishes that there is a non-physical reality which is at least in some sense greater than the physical. The physical universe is real, but it is not all there is. Jesus confirmed this idea. “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:24) Acknowledging that there is a spiritual reality is not the same as dualism. Dualism has the world being governed by more or less evenly matched forces of good and evil. It is also not naturalistic monism, which denies the existence of spiritual reality entirely. We have a soul and a spirit. That we are created “in the image of God” (Genesis 1:27) is a spiritual rather than a physical claim. It is not a statement of our equality with God, but rather a description of our spiritual nature. I have a body, but I am not a body. “I” exist, and “I” am not defined by the chemicals which compose my body. Consciousness is not a mere epiphenomenon as naturalism requires. Our God-likeness has to do with our spiritual nature, our possession of a soul, our inherent understanding of good and evil, our ability to create and to love.

3. The creator of both the physical and spiritual realm is the God who is revealed and who reveals himself in the Bible.

Not only did God create the physical universe (Genesis 1), he also created the spiritual-the heavenly realms. In Colossians 1:15-16 Paul says of Jesus, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers of rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. God has made himself known to his people “from what has been made.” (Romans 1:20), but he has also revealed himself and his will in the Hebrew and Greek scripture. Most particularly, he has revealed himself through his Son, Jesus Christ; the image of God. “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.” (Hebrews 1:1-2). No one has ever seen God, but God the only Son who is at the Father’s side, has made him know.” (John 1:18) God has revealed himself to us through creation, through the Old and New Testaments and through the person Jesus Christ.

4. Human beings have both a physical and a spiritual nature, but the spiritual nature is more essential as it is eternal.

Our physical nature is obviously more apparent to us than our spiritual nature, but this fact is deceptive when compared to our ultimate reality. Like Jesus said, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell.” (Luke 12:4-5) As Paul put it, “We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18)

5. God cannot be easily defined but he can be characterized by certain qualities. God is love, God is just, God is holy, God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.

What God is he is fully and infinitely. God is not merely loving: he is love. Love defines and determines all his actions toward us. From a human perspective, this seems to conflict with his justice and his holiness. God is not merely just: he is justice. He is incapable of an unjust act, even if we feel his love and his justice are in apparent conflict. God is holy, in him there is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5). These are facts about God. How does this affect our world view? In every way. Every act in our life and in the lives of our neighgors is subject to the justice of God. This has a profound effect of how we view our own lives and how we should respond to injustice. “Do not take revenge,… ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.” If God really is love, then this has an unfathomable effect on how we understand the events which surround our lives. All of them are either caused or permitted by an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God who acts toward all out of love.

6. Although all God’s creation, including the physical world is good, evil does exist. Such evil is the result of freedom of will given to created beings and their subsequent decision to use that freedom to “sin” (defined as transgressing the will of God).

This brings us back to Genesis. The story of Adam and Eve is the story of us. God gave us everything for our pleasure and enjoyment. Why? Because he loves us and because he wants us to love him. But what did we all do? We rebelled and chose to do things which are unholy. As Augustine put it, evil is not a thing in and of itself. If it were, that would be dualism. Rather evil is good which has been corrupted by free moral agents. Something which was created for good purposes is turned for evil. Nothing God created is evil, but some of what God created is capable of doing evil. God gave us a choice. He asks us to “choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19), but many of us choose rebellion. The physical laws which are discoverable by science are not the only “natural laws.” There are moral laws as well, and they are as inescapable as the law of gravity. Rebellion against God’s holiness produces suffering in this world (Exodus 20:5-6), both on those who sin and on those around them. This is the answer to the “problem” of pain, suffering and evil.

7. Because of God’s justice and his holiness, those who choose to rebel against him will ultimately be judged and separated from God for eternity.

Not only does our choice to rebel and to sin bring on temporary physical and emotional suffering in this life, it also brings judgment in the world to come. “For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat.” (Romans 14:10) “‘The Lord will judge his people.’” It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Hebrews 10:30-31). God cannot be mocked. He is patient and kind, and he wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4), but “the wages of sin is death.” Again, as with all the qualities of God, this fact is unavoidable. God does not change or compromise his holiness. It has been said that God does not send people to hell, but he accepts their choice to rebel and be eternally separated from him.

8. The solution to evil and its eternal consequences is provided by God through the atoning substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

This is the essence of the gospel. As was prophesied, “the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6) “By his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5). “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8). God’s holiness and justice were not superseded or violated in this substitutionary death. “He did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies the man who has faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:26). Biblically, this is a theological fact. How does this affect one’s world view? If this is true, then everything is different. Suffering makes sense. The existence of evil makes sense. Our innate and universal sense of justice makes sense as well. Yet, we can live as free men and women, not using our freedom as an excuse to do evil, but using this gift of freedom to love and serve others (paraphrasing Galatians 5:13-15) without living in constant fear of judgment when we fall short, as we inevitably will do.

Is This a “Good” World View?

In describing the Christian world view, some might choose to emphasize certain points more and others less than I have, but this seems to reasonably well summarize how the Bible describes the world. Having done this, we will now proceed to do the somewhat subjective job of asking whether, by the criteria described above, this is a “good” world view.

Is it True?

First, is it “true?” By this I mean: Is this world view consistent with what we know? I am not asking whether we can provide a mathematically precise, scientific, logical “proof” of the truth of the biblical world view. This is obviously not possible.

Is the physical world real? I will challenge the post-modernist or the practitioner of Eastern religion on this question. I say it is real. A wise Christian philosopher once challenged his Hindu friend to prove his own confidence that physical reality is not real by allowing him to strike him with a club. The guru politely declined the opportunity to show confidence in his own philosophy. Science has shown that this “illusion” is surprisingly, uncannily consistent and predictable. Fantasies and illusions are rarely so predictable. Our naturalist friends may be out on a limb when they say there is no evil and no justice, but surely they have it right in this. The physical world is real.

Is the physical creation good, as claimed by the Bible? Given the existence of disease and natural disasters it certainly is reasonable to question the claim that physical creation is “very good” as God says in Genesis. My response is that creation is very, very good. Physicists tell us that the universe we live in is absolutely, spectacularly fine-tuned so that advanced life forms can exist. If any of more than two dozen parameters which define how the universe functions were changed by even a small fraction, we would not be here. To avoid the obvious implications, naturalists have speculatively proposed there are an infinite number of universes, and we are lucky to live in the right one. Lucky indeed! Suffering brought on by earthquakes may be troubling, but without plate tectonics (and their associated earthquakes) the earth would be sterile and we would have virtually no atmosphere. Bacteria cause disease, but without this marvelous creation we would have no nitrogen in the soil and no oxygen in the air. God’s creation is spectacularly wise and good. To those who do not agree, I challenge them to conceive of a better set of working physical laws and then to bring their conception into existence.

Is the physical reality the only one, or is the Biblical world view correct when it describes a co-existent spiritual reality? This is harder to prove. Yet there are a number of things which are true which point in this direction. We are self-aware. We are “conscious.” We are able to understand the universe. Humans have a seemingly universal sense of what is right and moral. The universe itself exists and was created. All of these and many more point toward a non-physical creator and a non-physical nature for human beings. Naturalists may choose to dismiss the reality of beauty, of love, of natural human rights, of conscience (not to be confused with consciousness), of good and evil and many other things, but very few people can really accept that these things are not real. Their existence implies there is a spiritual reality. Perhaps it is true that the majority does not determine truth, but very few believe they are a body (rather than they have a body) and the vast majority of all who have ever lived agree that there is a spiritual reality. The biblical view that there is a spiritual reality which supersedes the physical agrees with what we know.

Is it true that evil exists? And if so, what is the cause of this evil? Whether or not North Korea, Iran and Iraq were, in fact, an axis of evil as George Bush claimed is debatable, but the existence of evil is hard to deny. Sexual abuse of children, murder, genocide, warfare for selfish ends, corruption, greed-all of us recognize that evil is very real indeed. Ignoring this fact is a poor way to make it go away. Even arrogant atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, while denying the existence of evil wax poetical in complaining about the evil done in the name of religion. The Bible claims that God did not create evil. Like it says in James chapter one, those who sin should not claim that God is tempting them because God does not tempt us to do evil. Evil is the result of those who choose to rebel against God’s laws. Until someone can legitimately show to me that anything God has done is evil, I will stand by the claim that creation is good and that evil in this world results from the corruption of what is good by morally free agents.

The reality of God’s judgment on evil and his grace and mercy for those who repent is proved by the history of Israel. The support of this claim would require much reference to history, quoting from biblical prophecy and description of historical foreshadows in the Old Testament. I have published a book on this subject for those interested in pursuing it further (From Shadow to Reality http://www.ipibooks.com/). God told his people in Deuteronomy 28 that if they did not obey the Lord and carefully follow his commands, he would drive them to a nation unknown to them-that they would suffer at the hands of their enemies, and would be scattered among the nations. They did and He did. God judged his people at the hands of Assyria and Babylon. He also told them that if they were to repent, even if driven to the farthest part of the world, he would bring them back and bless them in the land he gave them. They did and He did as he had promised. He provided Cyrus to set his people free and send them back to build Jerusalem. The story of Israel is the story of rebellion and judgment, followed by repentance and salvation. Rebellion produced slavery, but when God’s people cried out for mercy, God always sent a savior to save them-whether the savior was Joseph, Moses David or Cyrus. Jonah’s rebellion brought on the sentence of death, while his repentance led to salvation. God prophesied that salvation will come through one who will be pierced (Isaiah 53:5) and through one who will be crucified (Psalms 22:16). He even predicted that a savior would come to Jerusalem to atone for wickedness in about AD 30 (Daniel 9:24-25 and see my book Daniel, Prophet to the Nations). That God will judge his creation for wickedness and that he will provide salvation through the death of Jesus Christ is difficult to prove mathematically, but the history of Israel and fulfilled prophecy makes the reality of this claim a reasonable conclusion.

Is the Christian world view true? What I can say with confidence is that it agrees with what we know to a degree which is demonstrably much greater than any competing world view.

Does it Answer the Questions People Care About?

Second, does the Christian world view answer the questions people really care about? How did I get here? (God created us) Where am I going? (to eternal honor or shame) What is my purpose in life? (to know God and be known by him) What is my value? (Jesus gave his life for us) What is my relationship with the ultimate reality? What is the right thing to do? Why is there evil and suffering in the world? Why is it that we exist? Why is it that we can understand the universe? All of the great questions of life are answered in the Christian scripture. The Biblical world view addresses the problem of sin (Romans 7:24-25). Not only does it tell us why there is suffering, it also tells us what to do about it (Matthew 9:35-36). The Biblical world view even makes sense of death. “Where, O death is your victory? Where, O death is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:54-56) The objective truth of all these biblical answers is something which can be debated. Some might call all this wishful thinking. What cannot be denied is that the Christian world view provides reasonable and satisfactory answers to every one of the important questions common to man. No other world view, be it human philosophy, Eastern religion or any other comes close.

Does Acceptance of This World View Make Us Better People?

Previously I addressed the question of whether alternative world views make one a better person. Each world view has at least some things which commend it. However, in every case, we were left with serious questions. Naturalism denies the existence of absolute moral truth. Like postmodernism it leaves us without a standard for how we should treat one another. Eastern and Greek philosophy deny the goodness of the physical creation and teach dispassion rather than compassion. Muslim theology, with its emphasis on fate and predestination removes human responsibility for our fellow humans to some extent. Let me state my conclusion on this question right at the start. I can say with great confidence that both in theory and in practice, the Christian (and the Jewish) world view is superior to all others in its effect both on humanity as a whole and on individual people.

In the Christian world view every single human being has an unlimited value. The Son of God died to redeem us individually. All people are of equal value and importance in the eyes of their Creator, even if we are given different roles and gifts. “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:26-28) Looking from our Western perspective in the 21st century, it is difficult to grasp how radical a statement this was in the 1st century. If one investigates history, one will discover that it was Christian ethics which led to the idea of individual human dignity and human rights. Where did the idea that “all men were created equal” come from? Of course the Bible was way ahead of the framers of the US constitution on this one, as full and equal rights were not given to slaves until 1863, and to women until well into the twentieth century. Slavery had been an ever present institution from the dawn of human history. It was men and women, acting out the Christian world view, who turned this upside down. William Wilberforce was not alone in pushing the abolition of slavery because of his Christian convictions. Jesus Christ was a revolutionary in the way he treated women, the poor, the diseased, the deformed and those not of his nationality.

Of course, Christians are not the only good people in the world, but it is worth asking where humanists, atheists and others got their ideas of what is “good.” Is it possible that they hijacked it from Christian ideas? History certainly hints at this conclusion. Jesus said that the entire Law is summed up in the command to love God and to love one another as oneself. This idea of the centrality of our need to love and be loved comes from the Christian world view. Why? The reason we were created is because of love and for love. According to the Christian world view, we are valuable beyond comparison. Jesus implied that a single soul is more valuable than the entire world (Luke 9:25). This world view gives the individual person unimaginable dignity, and calls its believers to pour their life out in love to others. It is the best of all the competing pictures offered by religion and human philosophy in the positive effect it has on those who accept it.

The Christian world view tells us that suffering is not inherently evil. In fact, suffering is good for many reasons. It makes us stronger, it helps us to understand and experience joy. When we suffer because of our own sin, it trains us to change, it helps us to know Jesus, and when we respond to suffering in a godly way, it allows us to glorify God. So suffering is not evil, but the Christian world view nevertheless impels believers to respond to suffering with compassion. Why? Because of love, of course. James tells us that “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” (James 1:27). “Does it make you a king to have more and more cedar? Did not your father have food and drink? He did what was right and just, so all went well with him. He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me? Declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 22:15-16)

Jesus was perhaps the most compassionate man who ever lived. “Jesus wept.” (John 35) Why? Because Lazarus had died? No, as he was about to raise him from death. He wept because Mary and Martha wept. “When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them.” (Matthew 9:36). Like I already said, Christians are not the only loving people in the world, but when they are selfish, greedy or arrogant they are violating the direct command and example of the founder of their movement. I have visited Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim countries. In most of these countries, the Christian groups, even though a small minority, do most of the benevolent work in these societies. Why? They act this way because of the Christian world view and the personal example of Jesus of Nazareth. Besides, those who accept the Christian world view believe that they will be held accountable for putting its tenets into practice. Accountability can be powerful motivation. Other religions either tell us that suffering is an illusion or that it is God’s will. Does accepting the Christian world view cause one to be better for it? The answer is that if it does not have that effect, then we can be sure the Christian world view was in fact not accepted by the person. I do not want to disrespect any world religion or philosophy and I know that many who accept these as their world view are sincere and want to do right. Besides, there is at least something to be commended in all these philosophies, but the example of Jesus, the teaching of Christianity, the world view of the Christian and the facts of history lead me inexorably to the conclusion that of all the well-known world views, the Christian one is by far the best at making its believer a better person by almost any accepted measure. Why? Because the basic ethic of this world view combines great personal dignity with love, unselfishness, and unstinting service for others.

Have Christian believers ever violated the ethic implied in their world view? That is an easy question. Yes. Has evil been done in the name of Christianity? Yes, but such acts are certainly not inspired by the life or teaching of Jesus. Those who divide, hate, steal and abuse the poor and needy are by that very action rejecting the Christian world view.

The Christian world view is superior to all others on many grounds. First, more than any other, it is consistent with human reality. Second, it provides rational, reasonable and helpful answers to the important human questions, and third, those who take this world view not only as a philosophy but as a way of life are made to be the best possible human beings that they can be. Let us accept, embrace and teach the Christian world view with the authority of its creator and greatest example, Jesus Christ.

Science and Religion are not enemies By Dr. John Oaks

Alpha Ωmega Chicago Campus Ministry — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 21:11:39 +0000

Many words have been written and much rhetoric produced, coming from scientific materialists and “New Atheists” such as Richard Dawkins declaring that the human religious pursuit is the natural enemy of human progress and, more particularly, of the free search by scientists for knowledge about the physical world. Famously, Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldridge have called for peace between warring scientists and religionists by declaring that science and religion are non-overlapping magisteria. According to Gould and others, there is no overlap in subject matter or in the kinds of questions to be asked and answered by the purveyors of religion and science; therefore the two can simply ignore one another. It is not hard to read between the lines of Eldridge’s words to detect that he assumes that, with time, the human need for religion, reflecting a pre-modern superstition, will soon conveniently disappear.

The question at hand here is this: What is the relationship between science and religion as they are regularly practiced in modern life? Is their language and means of acquiring knowledge incommensurate? Are there any important questions which both religion and science seek to answer, and if so, might their means of addressing these questions be complementary rather than in a natural and unending state of conflict? Does the arrival of the age of science herald the inevitable decline and fall of religion? What kinds of questions is science good at answering and what are the limits of science? The same should be asked of religion. One conclusion will be that, although science and religion are broadly incommensurate, there are areas of inquiry where they overlap. The other will be that it is a mistake to assume that the two are natural enemies. Scientific inquiry is not the natural enemy of religious pursuit. Neither is religion, if pursued in its appropriate context, the natural enemy of the scientific search for knowledge about the universe.

What is Science and What Are Its Limits?

First, of course, we need to know what we are talking about. What is science? Putting aside for a moment the claim of philosophers that there is no real philosophically defendable scientific method, what is science and what can we learn from the scientific approach to acquiring knowledge? Put simply, science is a means to discover the underlying laws which govern the natural world using empirically-generated data as well as theories and models to explain that data. Science does not answer the ultimate question “Why?” Rather science provides us with explanations of physical phenomena which are not self-contradictory and which are consistent with the physical evidence. Science provides us with physical explanations of physical phenomena.

Science, by its very nature, is limited in the kinds of knowledge it can give us. It is very good at answering certain questions and very bad at answering others. Its answers are always tentative and never the final answer. For this reason, science does not answer the deeper questions about truth. It is completely unable to answer the metaphysical question: Why? On the other hand, science is really quite effective in answering questions such as, Where? When? How many? By what means? Arguably, it is the by far the most effective means yet devised by human beings to answer such questions. Postmodernists may question whether absolute truth exists, but science certainly does seem to give extremely reliable knowledge about the workings of the physical world.

Having said this, science is quite limited and perhaps even useless to answer questions such as, “What is the value of human life?” “Is that the right thing to do?” “Am I here for a reason?” Without exception, human beings find themselves asking questions about beauty, social justice and purpose. Like a local news commentator here in San Diego says when government officials ignore the needs of regular people, “It ain’t right!” Science does not help us here. In assessing the relative importance and need for science in human societies, it is worth noting that these are the kinds of questions people really care about. Human beings are not as concerned with where, when and how many, but are very concerned with questions of justice and truth. When I discuss the limits of science with my students, I point out that, in the final analysis, science is not very good at answering any of the questions most of us really care about. This is not to deny the importance and usefulness of science. Through science we have cured diseases, understood the marvelous working of nature on a microscopic and cosmological level, been able to predict our future and devise means to avoid the negative consequences of human behavior. However, it is clear that science is not the only means to ask and answer questions, and its ability to answer the questions humans care most deeply about is limited. In order to meet the needs of real people and to maximize the human good, other sources of knowledge and experience, such as art, philosophy and perhaps religion are essential.

What is Religion, and What Are Its Limits?

It is clearly difficult to define religion and even more difficult to assess its limitations. However, we must make the attempt in order to assess if religion and science are natural opponents. Scientists generally agree, at least broadly, on a “method” to acquire knowledge of the world. Clearly, humans do not agree on the “right” religion. Yet, we can establish in very broad outline the sphere of knowledge and the means of establishing that knowledge in the human activity we label as religion. Generally religion asks questions such as the place of human beings in the world—not just the physical world, but in the larger world, which includes purpose and meta realities which may or may not exist outside/above physical things. Those who practice religion ask questions of what is right and wrong. They ask not what is, but what ought to be. What is my purpose? Is there a higher, supernatural reality? If so, what is the human relationship to that reality? Whereas science seeks tentative explanation and rejects authority, religion, at least in this sense, is the opposite. Generally, religious “truth” and knowledge are based on authority, such as that of a guru or a canonical scripture. In science, nothing is true, per se, but in most religious contexts, truth is well-defined. Scientific knowledge changes and grows. Religious experience may change and grow, but religious claims do not.

We may be stepping into controversial territory here, but generally, religion is not particularly effective in answering questions about measurable things. Questions such as when, where, how many and so forth are either not answered, or the track record for religions answering such questions has not held up all that well. We ignore history on this to our peril. It seems not unreasonable to conclude that generally religion can concede to science the role of informing us the cause of a particular disease, the history of the universe, the age of rock formations and the probable result of combining certain chemicals.

Boundaries

Humans are social beings, but we are individuals as well. Generally, in a social sphere, we will concede space to the other, but in our own personal sphere, we will defend our own territory vigorously. I will share space with my neighbor at the coffee shop, but will not concede space to him or her in my own bed. The general conclusion from the discussion above is that the “homes” of science and religion are separate. These are more or less incommensurate bodies of knowledge. As long as religion does not enter the bedroom of science and science does not enter the bedroom of religion we can have peace. It should not surprise us that when religion invades the natural territory of science, it evokes a reaction and vice versa. If science tries to declare that alcoholism is neither right nor wrong, religion will not concede this point. If religion tries to declare that “sin” is the cause of disease, science will not remain silent. Nor should it.

If scientific materialists try to tell us that, based on experiment in neuroscience, the human soul and human consciousness are not real, or at best epiphenomena, then it seems fair for those with religious faith to cry foul. Since when could science answer questions about ultimate reality? This is a boundary issue. Scientists would be best to take off their scientist hat before speaking on such a topic they know little if anything about. Unfortunately, some scientists do not respect this boundary.

On the other hand, if a person with faith in a particular religious authority declares that their scripture denies that the earth moves or claims that the universe has existed in an infinite cycle—a wheel of time, then the scientist has reason to cry foul as well. If a religious claim tells us that galaxies do not exist, the scientist seems within his or her right to respond that this religious claim is almost certainly not true. Again, this is a boundary issue. At the very least, the person with religious faith ought to hesitate to impose a qualitative belief on quantitative science.

Perhaps humility might go a long way here. The scientist ought to hesitate to declare that the physical world is all there is—that there is no God, no supernatural reality—and the person of faith ought to pause before declaring a particular scientific conclusion to be false doctrine. Is it not possible that their own interpretation of their authority is what is at fault? Or, as Augustine proposed, such an anomaly may be evidence, not that science is wrong, but that their religious authority might be mistaken. The story of Galileo’s conflict with the Roman Curia is informative here. On the one hand, for the materialist to declare, by fiat, that there is no supernatural intervention in the world is to commit a boundary error. On the other hand, for a person of faith to apply such a faith to declare that there are no truly random forces in nature seems to be a boundary error as well.

When Do Science and Religion Overlap, and How Should This Be Handled?

It would be nice if life was simple. One can only wish that Gould and Eldridge are completely right that science and religion are non-overlapping. However, reality is complex and the fact is that there is indeed overlap between the territory of science and of religion. Is human consciousness real or a mere epiphenomenon? Is there a real demarcation between humans and other animals? If so, what is that demarcation? Was the physical universe created? If so, how and why? Was life created and can fully random forces explain the creation of life? Given the apparent “phase transition” of complexity between living and non-living things, might there be a corresponding transition to a higher level of reality? Is religious experience just chemicals moving around in our brain, or might such chemical activity be an indicator of something real happening on another level of reality? Is love just the release of certain neurotransmitters and the firing of certain neurons, or might “love” be something real? Do I exist? Do I have a body, or am I a body? Neither science nor religion has exclusive ownership of any of these questions. It is in these areas that each can inform the other and that, for the wise person, such interchange will indeed happen.

To simply declare that religion has nothing to offer to these questions or that such questions are sheer nonsense is not acceptable to the great majority of people. To do so is to undermine the dignity of human beings and to lessen the value and quality of life. On what authority can anyone declare such questions nonsense? To say that justice is a meaningless word and that religious experience is mere superstition is to declare the result of an experiment which has not even been performed.

On the other hand, for persons with religious faith to simply ignore the implications of genetic research into the causes of alcoholism or the discoveries of neuroscience is short sighted. Perhaps one can even argue that the moral imperative of most religions includes the search for truth, wherever it leads. One can argue that to simply reject on religious presuppositional grounds the implications of scientific discoveries is to lessen the value and quality of life as well. If it is foolish simply declare religious experience foolishness, it is also foolish to simply ignore the vast and growing evidence for common descent of life on the earth.

Conclusion: Science and Religion Ought To Be Friends

The conclusion to this point is that on a great number of questions, science and religion are incommensurate. Careful attention to boundaries can, for the most part, allow the two to coexist without doing battle. Humility and caution can allow people to delve into the areas where the two overlap without major friction. Science and religion can co-exist in peace. However, the conclusion of this essay is not just that the two can exist in peace. The claim is that they are natural friends. Is this going too far? Let me explain.

Let us consider the question of alcoholism. If we only listen to the “science,” perhaps we will notice the genetic predisposition of some to alcoholism, but fail to give hope to the alcoholic. It is not inconceivable that if we do not allow science and religion to work together, we may leave the alcoholic in a very bad place. The science alone might even give the person an excuse to not change. Perhaps the “ought” of religion can make the difference for a person to overcome the addiction. On the other hand, if we only consider the “religion” of alcoholism, declaring it a sin, but ignoring the science, we may miss a chance to use a chemical treatment to help the person overcome alcoholism. We might also fail to show compassion, not understanding that for some it really is harder than for others.

Does understanding the brain chemistry of prayer make it any less benefit to the believer who prays? Perhaps knowing that her brain was “designed” to allow her to experience both a spiritual and a physical effect from prayer might increase the faith of a believer. Many believing scientists have found special revelation from religion and general revelation from science to complement one another. Galileo had a good grasp of the boundary issues and the complementary nature of science and religion. In his letter to the Duchess Cristina (1614), speaking of his Christian religion and science he said; “I think that in discussions of physical problems we ought to begin, not from the authority of scriptural passages, but from sense-experiences and necessary demonstrations; for the Holy Bible and phenomena of nature proceed alike from the divine Word, the former as the dictate of the Holy Spirit and the latter as the observant executor of God’s commands.” If we allow science and religion to work together, especially in that limited number of questions on which they naturally overlap, much good can result. We can contemplate not just the truth that God (or the gods, or Brahman or…) created all, but can marvel and how it was done. If we allow for the possibility of a design or a plan, then a vast array of incoherent but amazing discoveries can become coherent. They will make more sense. If we respect boundaries, how is science hindered by religion? The answer, historically, is that religion will inform science. That certainly was the case with Roger Bacon, Copernicus, Galileo and all the early scientists. The answer is that if we respect boundaries science will inform religion. If we can assume that our scripture or religious authority is a source of real truth, then science might even help us to understand how to interpret revealed truth. As one believer has said, all truth is God’s truth.

In summary, science and religion are natural friends. If those who practice science and religion will respect reasonable boundaries, allow humility and reason to prevail in the places where the two overlap, and if they will be informed by science and religion when both are relevant to important questions, then science and religion can be kissing cousins once again.

Eternal Design or Infinite Accident? by John N. Clayton

Alpha Ωmega Chicago Campus Ministry — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 05:31:08 +0000

The existence of God is a subject that has occupied schools of philosophy and theology for thousands of years. Most of the time, these debates have revolved around all kinds of assumptions and definitions. Philosophers will spend a lifetime arguing about the meaning of a word and never really get there. One is reminded of the college student who was asked how his philosophy class was going. He replied that they had not done much because when the teacher tried to call roll, the kids kept arguing about whether they existed or not.

Most of us who live and work in the real world do not concern ourselves with such activities. We realize that such discussions may have value and interest in the academic world, but the stress and pressure of day-to-day life forces us to deal with a very pragmatic way of making decisions. If I ask you to prove to me that you have $2.00, you would show it to me. Even in more abstract things we use common sense and practical reasoning. If I ask you whether a certain person is honest or not, you do not flood the air with dissertations on the relative nature of honesty; you would give me evidence one way or the other. The techniques of much of the philosophical arguments that go on would eliminate most of engineering and technology if they were applied in those fields.

The purpose of this brief study is to offer a logical, practical, pragmatic proof of the existence of God from a purely scientific perspective. To do this, we are assuming that we exist, that there is reality, and that the matter of which we are made is real. If you do not believe that you exist, you have bigger problems than this study will entail and you will have to look elsewhere.

THE BEGINNING

If we do exist, there are only two possible explanations as to how our existence came to be. Either we had a beginning or we did not have a beginning. The Bible says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1 :1). The atheist has always maintained that there was no beginning. The idea is that matter has always existed in the form of either matter or energy; and all that has happened is that matter has been changed from form to form, but it has always
been. The Humanist Manifesto says, “Matter is self-existing and not created,” and that is a concise statement of the atheist’s belief.

The way we decide whether the atheist is correct or not is to see what science has discovered about this question. The picture below on the left represents our part of the cosmos. Each of the disk shaped objects is a galaxy like our Milky Way. All of these galaxies are moving relative to each other. Their movement has a very distinct pattern which causes the distance between the galaxies to get greater with every passing day. If we had three galaxies located at positions A, B. and C in the second diagram below, and if they are located as shown, tomorrow they will be further apart. The triangle they form will be bigger. The day after
tomorrow the triangle will be bigger yet. We live in an expanding universe that gets bigger and bigger and bigger with every passing day.

Now let us suppose that we made time run backwards! If we are located at a certain distance today, then yesterday we were closer together. The day before that, we were still closer. Ultimately, where must all the galaxies have been? At a point! At the beginning! At what scientists call a singularity!

A second proof is seen in the energy sources that fuel the cosmos. The picture to the right is a picture of the sun. Like all stars, the sun generates its energy by a nuclear process known as thermonuclear fusion. Every second that passes, the sun compresses 564 million tons of hydrogen into 560 million tons of helium with 4 million tons of matter released as energy. In spite of that tremendous consumption of fuel, the sun has only used up 2% of the hydrogen it had the day it came into existence. This incredible furnace is not a process confined to the sun. Every star in the sky generates its energy in the same way. Throughout
the cosmos there are 25 quintillion stars, each converting hydrogen into helium, thereby reducing the total amount of hydrogen in the cosmos. Just think about it! If everywhere in the cosmos hydrogen is being consumed and if the process has been going on forever, how much hydrogen should be left?

Suppose I attempt to drive my automobile without putting any more gas (fuel) into it. As I drive and drive, what is eventually going to happen? I am going to run out of gas.? If the cosmos has been here forever, we would have run out of hydrogen long ago! The fact is, however, that the sun still has 98% of its original hydrogen. The fact is that hydrogen is the most abundant material in the universe! Everywhere we look in space we can see the hydrogen 21 cm line in the spectrum_a piece of light only given off by hydrogen. This could not be unless we had a beginning!

A third scientific proof that the atheist is wrong is seen in the second law of thermodynamics. In any closed system, things tend to become disordered. If an automobile is driven for years and years without repair, for example, it will become so disordered that it would not run any more. Getting old is simple conformity to the second law of thermodynamics. In space, things also get old. Astronomers refer to the aging process as heat death. If the cosmos is “everything that ever was or is or ever will be,” as Dr. Carl Sagan was so fond of saying, nothing could be added to it to improve its order or repair it. Even a universe that expands and collapses and expands again forever would die because it would lose light and heat each time it expanded and rebounded.

The atheist’s assertion that matter/energy is eternal is scientifically wrong. The biblical assertion that there was a beginning is scientifically correct.

THE CAUSE

If we know the creation has a beginning, we are faced with another logical question: Was the creation caused or was it not caused? The Bible states, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Not only does the Bible maintain that
there was a cause – a creation – but it also tells us what the cause was. It was God. The atheist tells us that “matter is self-existing and not created.” If matter had a beginning and yet was uncaused, one must logically maintain that something would have had to come into existence out of nothing. From empty space with no force, no matter, no energy, and no intelligence, matter would
have to become existent. Even if this could happen by some strange new process unknown to science today, there is a logical problem.

In order for matter to come out of nothing, all of our scientific laws dealing with the conservation of matter/energy would have to be wrong, invalidating all of chemistry. All of our laws of conservation of angular momentum would have to be wrong, invalidating all of physics. All of our laws of conservation of electric charge would have to be wrong, invalidating all of electronics and demanding that your TV set not work!! Your television set may not work, but that is not the reason! In order to believe matter is uncaused, one has to discard known laws and principles of science. No reasonable person is going to do this simply to maintain a personal atheistic position.

The atheist’s assertion that matter is eternal is wrong. The atheist’s assertion that the universe is uncaused and selfexisting is also incorrect The Bible’s assertion that there was a beginning which was caused is supported strongly by the available scientific evidence.

THE DESIGN

If we know that the creation had a beginning and we know that the beginning was caused, there is one last question for us to answer–what was the cause? The Bible tells us that God was the cause. We are further told that the God who did the causing did so with planning and reason and logic. Romans 1:20 tells us that we can know God is “through the things he has made.” The atheist, on the other hand, will try to convince us that we are the product of chance. Julian
Huxley once said: “We are as much a product of blind forces as is the falling of a stone to earth or the? ebb and flow of the tides. We have just happened, and man was made flesh by a long series? of singularly beneficial accidents.

The subject of design has been one that has been explored in many different ways. For most of us, simply looking at our newborn child is enough to rule out chance. Modern-day scientists like Paul Davies and Frederick Hoyle and others are raising elaborate objections to the use of chance in explaining natural phenomena. A principle of modern science has emerged in the 1980s called “the anthropic principle.” The basic thrust of the anthropic principle is that chance is simply not a valid mechanism to explain the atom or life. If chance is not valid, we are constrained to reject Huxley’s claim and to realize that we are the product
of an intelligent God.