Here is my continued review of FBC Watchdog as promised. I pick up right where I left off the other day.
FBC Watchdog then made this ridiculous and outrageous statement in a personal exchange in the comments section of his blog, Ed says "You can hate God's Word and love Jesus? Impossible!" No one has said they hate God's word. They just said they don't have to believe it ALL to place their faith in Christ Jesus. The atheist and fundamentalist seem to agree on this view. Their position is that no one should trust Christ or believe in God unless they believe in the sun standing still and talking donkeys, which NONE of us do. Fundies might want to rethink their position.
FBC Watchdog then made this ridiculous and outrageous statement in a personal exchange in the comments section of his blog, Ed says "You can hate God's Word and love Jesus? Impossible!" No one has said they hate God's word. They just said they don't have to believe it ALL to place their faith in Christ Jesus. The atheist and fundamentalist seem to agree on this view. Their position is that no one should trust Christ or believe in God unless they believe in the sun standing still and talking donkeys, which NONE of us do. Fundies might want to rethink their position.
Here is the claim in
as clear a language as one can state it: “You do not have to believe all of God’s
word in order to love Jesus!” Now, why should we love Jesus? Why should we even
believe that Jesus is a literal historical figure? Why should we believe God
has a word and that some of it should be believed while some of it can or even
should not be believed? I intend to show that FBC Watchdog not only destroys a
particular brand of Christianity by his arguments, I will show he destroys even
those parts of Christianity he wants to keep. FBC Watchdogs arguments are not
only irrational at their very foundation; they are patently unbiblical, and
therefore false.
FBC, as we shall all
him, wants to pick from the Bible those accounts and teachings and doctrines
that he likes and reject those that he does not like. This should come as no
surprise to anyone. Men have been doing this to Scripture since Scripture began
to exist. Even in the garden, the whole point was that Adam and Eve wanted to
take that part of the covenant they liked and reject that part that they did
not like. Now, FBC is pretending to use reason and science as his principle for
rejecting the story of Balaam and his donkey. Scripture records this
astonishing event in Numbers 22, And the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey,
and she said to Balaam, “What have I done to you, that you have struck me these
three times?” FBC unequivocally rejects this event as true history, inferring
that it is rubbish. The inference seems to be that such a story is foolish top
to bottom. Donkeys do not speak. We have never observed a talking donkey.
Everything we know from science tells us that a donkey cannot speak. FBC
completely ignores the phrase, wayyiptaḥ yhw ʾet-pî hāʾātôn, “and the
Lord opened the mouth of the donkey.” On the one hand, FBC believes that God
created the donkey to be what it is, but somehow, God is helpless to make the
donkey speak. Perhaps FBC should contemplate why it is that humans can speak.
There is another story that I believe FBC probably believes.
That story is located in Matthew’s gospel. And Joseph awoke from his sleep and
did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took Mary as his wife, but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a
Son; and he called His name Jesus. Here we have the story of ‘the Jesus’ FBC
claims to love and of his human conception. Mary apparently conceived Jesus,
not from copulation with a human man, but as a result of the divine action of
the Holy Spirit. That’s right. A virgin became pregnant by the supernatural
work of God. Now, I am going to suggest that if God can bring Mary to conceive
Christ without sexual intercourse, it is no great thing for Him to make a
donkey talk. Just like the Balaam story, where there is an angel and
supernatural phenomenon taking place, the Christ story begins in precisely the
same kind of circumstances. One has to ask, why does FBC cherish the latter and
make fun of the former.
A --> B
A
/ B
If miracles are possible, then God can make a donkey speak.
Miracles are possible
Therefore, God can make a donkey speak.
From this argument, we have no rational ground to reject the
possibility that a donkey could have spoken. We can also believe in the virgin
birth and even the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Let’s use the same Modus Ponens structure and change our
referents.
If miracles are not possible, no donkey could speak in the
history of donkeys.
Miracles are not possible
Therefore, no donkey has ever spoken.
From this argument, we can agree with FBC that the Balaam
story is rubbish. But if we are going to be logically consistent, that is, if
we are going to reject Balaam’s story on principle of accepting the above argument,
then we must also reject the virgin birth and the miracle of a physical
resurrection of Christ as well. Now, Paul tells us that if Christ has not risen
from the dead, all our gospel preaching is in vain. Paul writes, kenon ara [kai] to kērygma hēmōn, kenē kai
hē pistis hymōn;. And if our preaching is in vain, then our faith, the
Christian faith is in vain. You see, Mr. and Mrs. Enlightened emergent ones, if
we remove the talking donkey or a talking snake, we destroy Christianity.
He had
also already made this remark, Can I believe that I'm a sinner and
trust Jesus for my salvation without also believing in talking donkeys and
stoning disobedient children? You tell me. Read my previous posts. Why can't I
believe that I'm a sinner in need of a savior without also believing that the
sun stood still? Why can't a Muslim believe parts of the Quran without
believing he must kill the infidel. Because fanatical "holy men of
Gawd" manipulate him into believing all or none. But I've already written
a few posts on this. Go back and read them. I believe the gospel. Not in
talking donkeys. The atheist says then I must also reject God and Christ. The
fundy agrees with the atheist on that point. And the church continues to decline
in numbers and depth.
FBC Watchdog wants to accept the supernatural principle of
salvation, that a man dying 2,000 years ago could really, really, really do something
amazing in me today, while at the same time rejecting that very principle
because it seems unscientific and irrational when it comes to a talking donkey,
snake, or particular ethical code. Somehow a man hanging on a cross claiming to
be God and claiming to not only be capable of atoning for sin, but actually
atoning for the sins of millions of others is rational while believing that
this same God could make a donkey talk is in someway, irrational. Such a man
holding to these kinds of beliefs is a living, breathing, wandering contradictio.
You see, the entire idea of salvation in Christ transcends
both science and human reason. Now, if Christ is the very core of the unfolding
plan of redemption in the biblical record, and Christianity certainly affirms
this to be the case, and it is necessarily true that such redemption transcends
both human reason and science, then it follows that neither of these methods could
be used as criteria from which to judge the credibility, truthfulness, or
reliability of the biblical record. But I must be careful here not to send the
signal that I believe that science and reason are somehow hostile to
revelation. I do not believe something so absurd as that revelation is
inherently inconsistent with science and reason. What I do mean is that fallen
men, men who have not been endowed with the gift of faith, misuse science and
reason and by that misuse, they not only pervert Scripture, but they also
corrupt natural science and human reason.
Summary Facts Regarding the Basic Claims of Christianity
Before I cover a few of the most basic tenets of
Christianity I want to make this statement loud and clear: Christianity is a
supernatural religion. It is a religion that is built on truths that are transcendent.
These truths reach beyond the bounds of finite human reason and natural
science. Christianity makes claims that are at their core, paradoxical in
nature. Many of these beliefs, if shown to be false, would change Christianity
so radically that Christianity as we have come to know it would cease to exist.
In Short there would be no Christianity, at least not in any meaningfully
objective sense.
Creation
God, a being no one has ever seen created the universe and
all that is in it from nothing. Not only is this view unscientific based on the
criteria of science, it is irrational based on the criteria of autonomous human
reason. Yet, unless you believe this claim, you are not a Christian. And unless
this claim is true, Christianity is false. In other words, the principle FBC
uses to reject a talking donkey also requires that we reject this claim as
well.
The Fall
Adam and Eve were created miraculously from the dust of the
earth. They were created perfect and without sin. God spoke to them and
commanded them not to eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil. And if they ate from that tree, they would surely die. If I embrace
FBC’s principle, there is no way I can reasonably accept the story of Adam and
Eve with a straight face. I must reject the story of man’s creation and fall if
I am going to consistent. Once again, rejection of this account is to
contradict and disagree with Jesus Christ Himself, not to mention the divine
revelation, God’s word that is. To reject this account of history is to reject
Christianity. The fall of Adam and the redemption of mankind from out of that
fall become a myth, a fairy tale and the Christ event becomes absolutely
meaningless.
Miracles
To reject a talking donkey because it is supernatural and therefore
unscientific is to reject that God spoke to Moses from a burning bush. It is to
reject the snake in Eden. It is to reject the miracle of fulfilled prophecy of
a coming Messiah. It is to reject the virgin birth, all the miracle claims of
the gospel writers account of Christ. It is to reject the resurrection. It is
to reduce Christianity to legend, an interesting myth but nothing to be taken
seriously.
Trinity
Christianity teaches that the God of Scripture is the
self-contained ontological Trinity. He is three persons in one being, Father,
Son, Holy Spirit. There is a unity and a diversity in the Trinity that defies
human logic. The doctrine of the trinity is an essential doctrine of the
Christian faith. It is Christianity. Without the Triune God of Scripture,
Christianity is no more. But if I accept FBC’s principle that results in the
rejection of a talking donkey, I also have to reject the Trinity. Essentially,
I have to reject Christianity. Looks like the atheists and fundies are far more
consistent in their reasoning than FBC.
I could go on to talk about other essential doctrines of Christianity,
like the Christ Event for example and how no one could ever explain the person
of Jesus Christ within the bounds of biological science and human reason. The
existence of Jesus Christ as the God-Man defies all scientific explanation and reason
fares no better in its attempts to reconcile the apparent contradiction.
Moreover, the very idea that Christians are saved, that we needed saving,
needed redemption, needed a new birth is complete and absolute rubbish if I
apply FBC’s principle. The same principle he applies to Balaam.
In the end, it comes down to FBC’s view of Scripture. It
comes down to his view of epistemic authority. FBC rejects Scripture as his
authority for justified true belief and in its place he wants to insert science
and human reason. But in so doing, he demonstrates that if he really wants to
go down this path, he must become an all-out atheist. Right now, FBC is a
closet atheist. The principle that he has embraced does not allow for things
like Christian theism. Sooner or later, he will have to give up the ‘Jesus that
he says he loves, that he says saved him’ or he will have to believe in talking
donkeys and snakes. There is no middle ground. Those who love God hear (do) God’s
Word. You cannot refuse to place your faith in God’s Word while claiming to
place your faith in God. You cannot accept the miracle of the Messiah and
reject the miracle of a talking donkey because it is a miracle. That is the
epitome of irrationalism.
