Comments on the Manhattan Declaration

The Manhattan Declaration is new to me and it is just hot of the presses but has been in the works for some time.

This a stake in the ground for decency, ethics, morality and shall I say holiness.  I say that though I don’t think the American culture know what that is including much of the church in America.  We are a land of hedonism and immorality and the church has been sucked into the strategy.
The Declaration focuses on big issues in our culture:  abortion–murder of babies,  same sex “marriage”, and the founding principles of religious liberty.  Ironically,  it is the view of a mass of Christian thinkers in the USA that we are loosing liberty and freedom of the practice of religion.

Okay, so what is there to say here about the Declaration?  First I like the interview with Dr. Ronald Sider.  Dr. Ronald Sider, a Canadian-born professor of theology at a Pennsylvania seminary and founder of Evangelicals for Social Action.  He gave an interview to Thrasher of a New York blog.

RS: The heart of what you are saying revolves around religious issues. Why should religious ideas form the basis of civil marriage — not marriage in your church or anyone else’s, but civil marriage?

Sider: This is precisely not a religious argument. It’s an argument about what a society needs, to preserve itself, to preserve what is wholesome from generation to generation. The core of that argument is historic, from every civilization.

RS: But in our country, we find that in our Constitution, not in other civilizations. There is a pretty clear argument that denying gays the right to marry is a denial of the equal protection clause of the constitution. In fact, Ted, Olsen, no raging liberal, is getting ready to make that argument federal court.

Sider: You can say what you just said, but you’re not listening to me. My argument was not a religious argument. It is about what marriage means. It’s true, a lot of contemporaries have redefined marriage. Marriage now means an emotional, romantic relationship between people. If that is what marriage is, then it should ought to be available to gays or lesbians. But if marriage is what every culture has always said it was, then it makes no sense to offer it to everyone, and Olsen’s argument doesn’t hold.

 

 

Dr Sider goes on to say about those of a gay persuasion:  ”The constitutional protection of minorities is enormously important. Religious freedom is important, but they are all important. I want gay Americans to be protected by the law. I want an end to gay bashing. I want them to have jobs, and have housing.”  I agree with him on this statement, but I am do not agree with the bending of the definition of marriage that we see in the media and by people with the agenda to change the definition.

Here is a statement by Dr. Mohler on why he signed the Declaration.

Albert Mohler on the Declaration

A link to the Dr. Sider interview.  Link

Liar, Lunatic, or Lord

Contrast Dr. Ehrman’s take on Jesus with that of C. S. Lewis who said you can’t just say that Jesus is an ordinary man.  He is one of three a liar, a lunatic or he is Lord of life.

We have found that Dr. Ehrman conveniently covers up the truth by not bringing to light all of the relevant data.   He is covering the data with a bias.

Dr. Ehrman entitles the 5^th chapter of Jesus Interrupted, Liar, Lunatic, or Lord?  Finding the Historical Jesus.  It appears that this title is a sneer toward what he perceives his evangelical roots to be.  The liar, lunatic or lord concept was popularized by a famous Englishman, C. S. Lewis in a statement about the person of Jesus and what is recorded of Him in the Greek New Testament.

Ehrman, however, simply notes this trilemma and adds “legend” which is his main thesis for the data widely accepted by most Christians as the best sources for Jesus’ teachings and the events of His life.  To bring you up to speed on what C. S. Lewis stated I have included the quote here.  Realize that at this point in Lewis’ life, he assumes much of the recorded data in the New Testament to be true.  He was not raised with that view.  In fact, it appears that he was an atheist who came very hesitantly into taking a more reverent view of Jesus.

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

To understand that these are our choices; you must put this trilemma in the context of the data of the New Testament.  Some today will not give the documentation of Jesus a fair shake and are not open to the possibility that Jesus even existed as a historical person.  Dr. Ehrman does believe that Jesus existed but looses focus on the closest and, what are I believe, the most accurate sources for Jesus, the Gospels.  He makes an assumption that other sources should be given equal weight.  These sources only muddy the water.  Dr. Ehrman and other modern scholars of any persuasion cannot retrieve in the 21^st century the context in which the 4 or the many gospels were written and the reaction of the “500” witnesses (I Corinthians 15) or other 1^st century Christians to those gospels.  The data is simply not available now.  Therefore,  the best approach is to accept the canon of New Testament scriptures realizing that the “experts” with relevant data developed that canon.  Modern “experts” do not have the resources that 1^st and 2^nd century “experts” had available to them.

The issue is not church father, Eusebius (3^rd century) vs. Water Bauer, an 18^th century theologian (Chapter 5).  What really matters is recorded in the Greek New Testament, and we don’t need the early church fathers to understand the historical Jesus.  We have the best documentation in the New Testament from the mouths of eyewitnesses.  These are the best sources because they are earliest and closest to the actual historical Jesus and the events of His life.

A Mass of Variant Views, Part 2

Now Back  Dr. Ehrman and Jesus Interrupted, on page 178 Dr.Ehrman says that he can’t even deal with an “event” such as a resurrection from the dead because he is a historian only.   So, though he counters some of what he reads in the Gospels about the resurrection, he is admitting, from a historical perspective (which is his domain now), that a historian such as he cannot deal with something like a resurrection from the dead.

But people like you and me can examine the Gospels along with the letter to the Corinthians and come away with our own judgments about the evidence presented there.   Those 500 people who saw Jesus after he died, was buried and subsequently raised from the dead, were Jews—Jews steeped in Jewish history and tradition.  Yet these Jews forsook their culture and history to follow this Jesus.  And not only did they reject their heritage in favor of the statements of Jesus, much of the world of that day became followers of this same Jesus.

This Galilean and his Galilean disciples, unlearned though they were, literally turned the then know world upside down and paid the ultimate price.  They all died martyrs’ deaths.

Just because Jesus’ story was told throughout the civilized world of the time and that he greatly impacted that world, is justification for looking into the claims of this lowly Galilean who claimed to be a great God and fulfiller of 300 Jewish prophesies.

Do you want to look into his claims?  John 10 (Gospel of John, chapter 10) is a great place to start looking.

Pretty soon everyone is going to have one of these

http://tinyurl.com/na8bgo

I don’t right now but no doubt will have one in the near future, especially if it is jail broken.

Did you hear this about our President?

The Scripps News Service carried this as the US President attended the G-20 summit in London.  Please Mr. Obama, you are supposed to be the President of all of us.  And, we are trying to trim the budget for 2010.  I think the British media found some fat that could be trimmed greatly.

Enjoy and react!

The heads of government in London for the G-20 summit are discussing serious and weighty issues, which in time will be duly reported on, but right now the British press is entranced by the sheer size of President Obama’s traveling entourage. And no wonder.

Obama arrived with 500 staff in tow, including 200 Secret Service agents, a team of six doctors, the White House chef and kitchen staff with the president’s own food and water.

And, according to the Evening Standard, he also came with “35 vehicles in all, four speech writers and 12 teleprompters.” For sure, our president is not going to be at a loss for words.

The press duly reported on Air Force One and all its bells and whistles but also on the presence of the presidential helicopter, Marine One, and a fleet of identical decoys to ferry him from Stansted airport to central London.

Among all those vehicles is the presidential limousine, which one local paper mistakenly called Cadillac One, but is universally referred to as the Beast. The limo, reinforced with ceramic and titanium armor, carries tear gas cannon, night vision devices, its own oxygen and is resistant to chemical and radiation attack. It is, marveled one reporter, a sort of mobile panic room. The Guardian called it “the ultimate in heavily armored transport.”

The president is entitled to all the security, communications and support he feels necessary to do his job but surely, when we’re trying to project a more restrained, humble image to the world, the president’s huge retinue could be scaled back to something less than the triumphal march from “Aida.”

Vacation: I had one

It was wonderful.   We love visiting Hilton Head Island because there is so much to see and do there.  This visit did not disappoint.

So here are some shots from the visit.  You can tell, we go there mostly for the nature.

And if you are really interested and want to see more nature, try this.

This is a rare look at some baby Anhingas in a nest on a fallen tree over a lagoon.

Did Evangelicals Curb the Housing Bubble?

I am reading an interesting bit of research summarized in a blog section of the New York Times.  The research conducted in part by Christopher Crowe postulates that because of Evangelicals’ theological bent about end times we do not spend as must on houses as non-evangelicals. (I assume that could be true.)

Next the summary points out that Evangelicals would tend to give to unbelievers more generously during tough times such as the current financial crisis.  (Okay, I could believe that. In fact,  I could be proud of that.)

Lastly, the researchers apparently go off the deep end and attempts to link a Rapture Index, yes, there really is one, to changes in home prices in Evangelical areas.

The summary blog never defined Evangelical areas or told where they are.  I just can’t conceive such an area but that may be because I am not really familiar with US demographics.

Mr. Crowe did find a 90 % correlation between the Rapture Index and changes in home prices in areas where Evnagelicals are concentrated.

If you ask me this is hocus pocus and of course the New York Times blogger ducked by including this comment, “It’s important to note that the results here show correlation and don’t establish causation.”  Okay, and there could be and likely are confounding factors to these correlations which the researchers did not study.

But if you want more entertainment of this nature:  here it is.

Is Jesus God? If Killed, God would rise from the dead

I have written exhaustively about the topic so I thought I would include a link here to the How to Know God blog.

Jesus did rise from the dead as shown by the creed that the Apostle Paul records.  You can see that here.  There is no doubt that this happened.  These people aren’t liars or legend-creators.  The events were too public.  The followers of Jesus would have been shamed out of town if they tried to pull a caper like this.

Go ahead and read about the Resurrection from the Dead.

Have a wonderful day!!!

Is Jesus God? He spoke the greatest words ever spoken

Jesus said about his own words, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will by no means pass away” Luke 21:33

It was common for the crowds who heard Him to be “astonished at His teaching” Luke 4:32.  Even a Roman officer exclaimed, “No one ever spoke like this Man!” John 7:46

Statistically speaking, the Gospels are the greatest literature ever written. They are read by more people, quoted by more authors, translated into more tongues, represented in more art, set to more music, than any other book or books written by any man in any century in any land. But the words of Christ are not great on the grounds that they have such a statistical edge over any body else’s words. They are read more, quoted more, loved more, believed more, and translated more because they are the greatest words ever spoken. And where is their greatness? Their greatness lies in the pure, lucid spirituality in dealing clearly, definitively, and authoritatively with the greatest problems that throb in the human breast; namely, Who is God? Does He love me? What should I do to please Him? How does He look at my sin? How can I be forgiven? Where will I go when I die? How must I treat others? No other man’s words have the appeal of Jesus’ words because no other man can answer these fundamental human questions as Jesus answered them. They are the kind of words and the kind of answers we would expect God to give, and we who believe in Jesus’ deity have no problem as to why these words came from His mouth.
Ramm, Protestant Christian Evidences, 170-171

Napoleon:

Never did the Speaker seem to stand more utterly alone than when He uttered this majestic utterance. Never did it seem more improbable that it should be fulfilled. But as we look across the centuries we see how it has been realized. His words have passed into law, they have passed into doctrines, they have passed into proverbs, they have passed into consolations, but they have never ‘passed away.’ What human teacher ever dared to claim an eternity for his words?  G. F. Maclean, Cambridge Bible for Schools, 149

Though without formal rabbinical training, He showed no timidity or self-consciousness, no hesitation as to what He felt to be truth. Without any thought of Himself or His audience, He spoke out fearlessly on every occasion, utterly heedless of the consequences to Himself, and only concerned for truth and the delivery of His Father’s message. The power of His teaching was also deeply felt. “His word was with power” Luke 4:32. The spiritual force of His personality expressed itself in His utterances and held His hearers in its enthralling grasp. And so we are not surprised to read of the impression of uniqueness made by Him. “Never man spoke like this man” John 7:46. The simplicity and charm and yet the depth, the directness, the universality, and the truth of His teaching made a deep mark on His hearers, and elicited the conviction that they were in the presence of a Teacher such as man had never known before. And thus the large proportion of teaching in the Gospels, and the impressions evidently created by the Teacher Himself, are such that we are not at all surprised that years afterward the great Apostle of the Gentiles should recall these things and say, “Remember the words of the Lord Jesus” Acts 20:35. The same impression has been made in every age since the days of Christ and His immediate followers, and in any full consideration of His person as the substance of Christianity great attention must necessarily be paid to His teaching.  W. H. Griffith Thomas, Christianity Is Christ, 32

Please comment below or pass on through a reading service?

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Lady Jane – the Movie

I took the opportunity to see this movie last night.  What a movie it was!!   Having visited England and Scotland,  I now enjoy the rich history of the country.

This  was more than rich history.  The movie portrays some of what I perceive as weakness of the culture of the elite of England at the time.  One being, arranged marriages, in this case.  Now, but this arranged marriage of two misfit for one another, shows God’s interventions into the evil intents and missteps of man.

Jane is married off to the son of a plotting, conniving, and powerful John Dudley.  Guilford, the son, is a low life and living in the gutter most of he adult life.  Yet,  that marriage to Jane eventually totally changes him.  Actually, though not portrayed in the movie, I believe God Himself intervened in his life and Guilford became a follower of Jesus in the process.   Soon into the movie the two give themselves to one another in a marital commitment and their holy causes.   I say holy because I believe their goals and visions were of God.  What a picture of the way God would have marriages to be.

Jane is a Reformer and spends most of her early teen days studying and praying.  She is a real saint.

The outcome is not good but because of all that came from their lives, the movie has a real redeeming quality.  It is definitely worth the watch.   I know it came out about 14 years ago but it is still around and DVD play like they are new.

The movie trailer.