23AR28-17

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AR 28:17 - Have the Gospels been distorted?

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Rich

In this issue:

BIBLICAL RELIABILITY - a great addition for any disciple-maker's toolbox

HOMOSEXUALITY - facing both sides of the challenge: "Will we avoid the tragic errors and sins that mark the Christian past?"

ISLAM - the United Nations declares an "International Day to Combat Islamophobia"

WORLDVIEW COUNTERFEITS - "the great cosmic borderless nation" of Kailasa

Apologia Report 28:17 (1,614)
May 20, 2023

BIBLICAL RELIABILITY
In "Have the Gospels Been Distorted?" by Matthew Ruttan (The Gospel Coalition, Mar 12 '23), we have a good presentation of the basics that Christians at all levels of faith involvement consistently find valuable as tools to help in the task of discipleship.

He opens with challenges - "Weren't Jesus and the disciples uneducated? Isn't memory unreliable?" - and elaborates on "five points of clarification" followed by responses utilizing great resources including:

* - "Rainer Riesner points out that 'elementary education for boys until at least the age of twelve was widely practiced in Jesus' day…'"

* - "Craig Evans explains: 'In the Jewish setting, an illiterate rabbi who surrounds himself with disciples, and debates Scripture and legal matters with other rabbis and scribes, is hardly credible.'"

* - "Richard Bauckham concludes that much in the Gospels bears evidence of having been preserved in a way to make them easier to remember and transmit. ... Riesner argues that over eighty percent of the sayings in the Gospels are in easily-remembered form."

* - "One of the responsibilities of the biblical scribes was to copy religious texts. It was common for two scribes to watch over the shoulder of another as he copied and preserved a text. If even a single letter was incorrect, it would be pointed out.

"The apostle Paul contributed many letters to the New Testament. When Paul talks about 'handing on' or 'receiving' a tradition, he is using technical words used in both Hellenistic schools and rabbinic academies to describe a formal process of carefully passing on important teachings."

* - "Irenaeus was a church father who lived in the second century. He was a follower of Polycarp who personally knew some of the original disciples. He wrote: 'John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia.'"

* - "Craig Blomberg highlights how the conversation between Jesus and Pilate at his trial 'dovetails remarkably with Roman judicial procedure.' Or we could note that the excavation of the pool of Bethesda in the 1900's revealed it to be exactly as John had described it.'"

* - "Derek Tovey writes: 'at every point where the beloved disciple appears [meaning the apostle John] the narrative includes items of close detail which suggest 'on the spot,' eyewitness report.'"

* - "F.F. Bruce points out the logic: 'It can't have been so easy as some writers seem to think to invent words and deeds of Jesus in those early years, when so many of his disciples were about, who could remember what had and had not happened.'"

He concludes, in part: "While speaking to his disciples, Jesus said that the Holy Spirit 'will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.' Yes, the Holy Spirit taught the disciples 'all things' and helped them remember everything that Jesus has said to them. Not some things, but all things!"

In Knowing God, J.I. Packer writes: "The words of men are unstable things. But not so, the words of God." <www.bit.ly/3pvxpIu>

Ruttan also links us to a more substantial treatment that he's written in the same vein: <www.bit.ly/3MdXjbh>

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HOMOSEXUALITY
"Baptizing the Status Quo, Then and Now" by Carl R. Trueman, Biblical and Religious studies, Grove City College; Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center (First Things, Mar 30 '23) -- "With the election of Humza Yousaf as leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), it is likely that the recent flurry of writing on the significance of Kate Forbes and her faith will come to an end. Forbes, an SNP politician who was running against Yousaf, recently came under fire for her opposition to gay marriage. Of all the pieces written on this, likely the most interesting is that by an old friend of mine, Dr. Fraser MacDonald, for the London Review of Books." <www.bit.ly/41UNp4k>

MacDonald's main concerns in his article "are with the difficulty of holding strong opinions on, say, same-sex marriage, that do not comport with the law of the land or the general sentiments of the age. Yet his article reminds us that the past sins of the church on the matter of slavery do have significance for current church struggles over sexuality and gender.

"The standard argument to which MacDonald alludes is a legitimately challenging one: Just as the church was wrong to support slavery in the nineteenth century, often with claims to biblical warrant and a slew of biblical texts, the church is now wrong to oppose gay marriage and other LGBTQ causes. Again, traditional Christians maintain their position with a barrage of Bible verses. Given the past record of biblically justified injustice, the argument goes, the church must entertain the possibility - or even the significant likelihood - that she is wrong again ('on the wrong side of history' is the phrase that comes to mind). Of course, this is not strictly an argument so much as an appeal for self-examination and humility, but it has tended to operate rhetorically as a means of dismissing the church's rejection of, say, homosexuality, as clearly outdated and reactionary. ...

"[P]erhaps there is another way of construing the church and these controversial social issues that connects them not to the favored narrative of our age - one of liberation from oppression or of increasingly enlightened ethics - but to the proclivity of the church in any age: accommodation to the values of the world around her. To be a pro-slavery Christian in colonial America and in the South prior to the Civil War was to interpret the Bible in a manner that gave religious sanction to what was arguably an important part of the spirit of the age. To be a pro-LGBTQ Christian today is to do the same. ...

"Progressives may flatter themselves that they are more enlightened than their slaveholding ancestors, but perhaps they are merely repeating the same mistake: baptizing the class-based status quo of the day. ...

"It is eighty years since C. S. Lewis gave the lectures that were to become The Abolition of Man. In those lectures, he pinpointed the problems of the age as anthropological: Britain was losing its sense of what it meant to be human. If that applied in 1943, how much more so in a time when post-humanism and transhumanism are not merely serious items for intellectual discussion but seriously contemplated as key cultural trajectories for the future?

"Christians need to reflect long and hard on what it means to be human. Our slaveholding ancestors failed abysmally in that regard, just as our full-throttle progressives are failing today. Only when we stop exchanging isolated Bible verses and set those verses within the broader framework of a truly Christian anthropology - one that takes embodiment, dependence, and obligation seriously - will we avoid the tragic errors and sins that mark the Christian past." <www.bit.ly/3I2UdWc>

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ISLAM
On apparently short notice, and absent any acknowledgment of Islamic culpability, the UN recently issued a formal protest regarding the increasing animosity toward Islam in response to global increases in violence by extremist Muslim actors since as far back as September 11, 2001. In the Mar 13 '23 Inter Press Service news release "'Outright Hatred' Towards Muslims, Risen to 'Epidemic Proportions," Baher Kamal renders a rather clumsy overall account: "The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution sponsored by 60 Member-States of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which designated 15 March as the International Day to Combat Islamophobia. ...

"This approach also interprets Islamophobia as a form of racism, whereby Islamic religion, tradition and culture are seen as a 'threat' to 'Western values.'" He then expands upon the general thrust of the resolution: "Marking the first International Day to Combat Islamophobia in 2021, UN Secretary-General António Guterres pointed out that 'anti-Muslim bigotry is part of a larger trend of a resurgence in ethno-nationalism, neo-Nazism, stigma and hate speech targeting vulnerable populations including Muslims, Jews, some minority Christian communities, as well as others.' ...

"'Hate speech – including online – has become one of the most common ways of spreading divisive rhetoric on a global scale, threatening peace around the world.' ...

"With an estimated total of some 1.8 billion followers worldwide, Islam is the second most spread belief after Christianism (2.2 billion). ...

"No lessons have been learnt from horrific crimes committed against believers. Remember the Holocaust against the Jews?" <www.bit.ly/3nOhqob>

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WORLDVIEW COUNTERFEITS
Filmflam in its many ugly forms is accelerating as a dangerous consequence of the 21st century information explosion. In "How a Fake Hindu Nation Scammed Its Way Across America" (Intelligencer, Mar '23), Matt Stieb serves up a surprising example.

"On January 12, Newark mayor Ras Baraka appeared before cameras in City Hall for a signing ceremony to establish a new sister city. In front of a banner extending a 'special welcome' to the Sovereign State of Shrikailasa, he said he hoped a cultural exchange between Newark and Shrikailasa would help improve 'the lives of everybody in both places.'

"The only problem is that Shrikailasa isn't a place at all. It is neither a city nor a country but the name of the 'great cosmic borderless' nation for a group known as Kailasa. They follow the Hindu swami Nithyananda, who claims to be the living embodiment of Shiva. Over the past two decades, he has amassed thousands of followers and claims to have 'extended campuses' in 150 countries, where adherents practice meditation, yoga, and a form of Hinduism centered around their leader's miraculous powers - which include his claims that he has delayed the sunrise and can teach cattle to speak Tamil." <www.bit.ly/3LTRC25>

A happy exception: Writing in the Fall River, Massachusetts Herald News, journalist Dan Medeiros tells how "Fall River Mayor Paul Coogan was one of many city leaders who have signed souvenir proclamations honoring [Nithyananda]. However, Fall River avoided falling for the sister cities scam, city officials said." As in many cities, "Fall River's website allows people to request 'official proclamations' from the mayor" which are not genuine documents, but ‘symbolic tokens offered as a 'courtesy' to honor or celebrate milestones and other achievements. Fall River's application is a simple form that allows applicants to insert their own information."

(But it does get worse: "Fall River and Newark are far from the only cities that Nithyananda has misused to claim legitimacy. The [Shrikailasa] website features proclamations from Issaquah, Washington; Texarkana, Texas; Buena Park, California; and many others. A Twitter account for Nithyananda claims that his country has entered into "bilateral relations" with several countries, and posts photos of representatives of his government 'meeting' with officials from Burundi, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia and Lebanon.") <www.bit.ly/45d2wJa>

(This seems eerily similar in some respects to Sun Myung Moon's many photo-ops with religious and government celebrities.)

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