Does The Baptism With The Holy Spirit Take Place After Conversion?

There exists a theological misconception among some charismatic groups that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is a distinct and separate event from conversion. According to this view, it is possible for a Christian to be justified by faith and yet not have received the Holy Spirit. This teaching suggests that believers should seek a second blessing from God after their initial experience of justification. However, this doctrine does not align with biblical teachings. No distinction is made between Christians who have received the Holy Spirit and those who have not.

The New Testament consistently portrays all Christians as having received the Holy Spirit upon conversion. As stated in 1 Corinthians 12:13, "For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all were made to drink of one Spirit." This means that every person who accepts Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior is indwelt by the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:9; Ephesians 1:13-14). Our bodies are described as temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:16-19), indicating that the presence of the Holy Spirit is integral to the Christian identity. The example of Cornelius in Acts 10:43-48 illustrates this point vividly: Cornelius and his household received salvation and the Holy Spirit simultaneously, demonstrating that the baptism of the Spirit occurs at the moment of conversion.

Some instances in the Book of Acts describe the Holy Spirit descending upon individuals who were already followers of God, but these events are historical anomalies linked to the unique transitional period of salvation history. During this time, Jesus Christ had ascended to heaven and had been glorified by the Father. The redemptive mission was being extended to the Gentiles. These episodes should not be interpreted as establishing a doctrinal norm for all Christians. Rather, they reflect the specific and extraordinary circumstances of that time.

Moreover, the events of Pentecost, as recorded in Acts 2, fulfilled the prophecy of Joel 2:28-32, where God promised to pour out His Spirit on all people. This outpouring was a unique act by which the fullness of the Holy Spirit was made manifest in a particular way during that significant moment in salvation history. It was not meant to set a precedent for a separate, subsequent experience of Spirit baptism for future believers.

Confessions Of A Former Charismatic

I believe God can do the miraculous. He can grant someone the ability to speak a foreign language. He can heal the sick without the intervention of medicine. But I don’t believe God guarantees that He will always do this. Instead, the Word indicates we can expect persecution, tribulation, distress, and famine (Romans 8:35). Indeed, God ordains sickness and trials in order to glorify Himself (Genesis 50:20; John 9:3). And there are harsh words in the New Testament regarding those who seek signs and wonders (Luke 11:29; John 2:23-25; John 4:48).

One of our problems is that we have become so used to God’s grace in our lives, we fail to recognize the miracles He is working in our midst every day. The fact that our propensity for sin is restrained, the fact that hard-hearted sinners become lovers of God and servants of Christ, the fact that the penalty for my sin has been paid by Another—these are all miracles, no less remarkable than the raising of Lazarus from the dead. And what was the raising of Lazarus other than a sign pointing to that greater wonder: the resurrection of dead souls to new life in Christ?

My study into the gifts of the Spirit have lead me to the conclusion that the sign gifts displayed and described in the New Testament were given at that time for a specific purpose. Nothing in the Scriptures convinces me that those gifts were intended to be permanent. They served the purpose of establishing the church and validating the message of the Apostles. We have that message in Scripture, and we have the confirmation of that message in the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, testifying to us of the truth of the gospel. First Corinthians 12-14 is not a manual on how to use spiritual gifts, but was written to correct the abuse of those gifts within the church at Corinth. While those gifts are no longer functioning within the church, the truths Paul preaches regarding the supremacy of love and the necessity for order within the church are certainly applicable to us today."

https://www.aomin.org/aoblog/2014/02/04/confessions-of-a-former-charismatic-part-2-why-im-no-longer-a-charismatic/

Ehrman's Equivocation And The Inerrancy Of The Original Text

                                                       By Peter J. Williams

The idea of an inerrant or even an infallible original text of Scripture has been a matter of wide controversy. In part such controversy has merely reflected fundamental divisions over the nature of Scripture, its historical reliability, and the extent and essence of its authority. However, it is the contention here that the controversy has partly been complicated by the multivalence of key terms being used by advocates of inerrancy. This means that, while advocates of inerrancy are carefully presenting nuanced arguments that are exegetically well grounded and logically compelling, there are stumbling blocks to their message other than the sheer offensiveness of a doctrine of inerrancy. Advocates of inerrancy need to adopt clearer terminology to ensure that the doctrine is correctly understood at the popular level. In addition, this essay argues that the burden of proof should be on those who distrust the basic integrity of the New Testament text. The work of Bart D. Ehrman is used to illustrate the problems that can arise through terminological confusion and when the burden of proof is wrongly shifted onto those who maintain the basic integrity of the New Testament text.

Bart Ehrman and the Inerrancy of the Originals

The story of Bart Ehrman has become well known through his autobiographical Introduction to his best-selling book Misquoting Jesus.1 After a conversion experience in his teens, Ehrman studied at two well-known institutions committed to biblical inerrancy: Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College. Through his studies, especially subsequently at Princeton Theological Seminary, Ehrman abandoned belief in biblical inerrancy and developed a prominent and successful career as a textual critic. As a leading textual critic and ex-inerrantist he has critiqued the idea of biblical inspiration on many occasions, not least on the ground that it is meaningless to attribute the property of having being inspired to a document (the original) that is now lost.2

From observing the reception of Ehrman's writing and speaking it is clear that in mounting this critique he is touching what for many people is a raw nerve. His message can be summarized as follows: many Christians hold to the absolute authority of the original text of the Bible, but this is lost and they are therefore left with no absolute authority. Or to put it more succinctly: Christians follow something they do not have. This message is clearly attractive to many skeptical of Christianity, and worrying to many adherents of the faith. It appears that not only does Ehrman think that he has correctly represented Christian belief, but also that many Christians believe he has done so too.

I will maintain that in several ways Ehrman's case gains force through the logical fallacy of equivocation, namely the confusing of two separate meanings of the same terms. The key problem seems to be that central terms used in discussing a doctrine of Scripture - terms such as "Bible," "text," and "original" - can have both physical and non-physical meanings.3 The focus of Ehrman's critique can often shift indiscriminately between valid but doctrinally irrelevant assertions that we do not have certain physical documents and doctrinally relevant but historically questionable assertions that we do not have the wording of the New Testament, which is of course non-physical. We consider key terms that may facilitate this confusion.

In addition, Ehrman's case gains force by unwarranted shifting of the burden of proof onto those who wish to maintain the integrity of an ancient text and by focusing on small areas of uncertainty while ignoring large and increasing areas of certainty.4

Equivocations Examined

The Term "Bible"

"Bible" is a multivalent term and a relative newcomer among theological terminology, arguably existing for only about half of church history, and in one of its senses for just over a third. There have been considerable shifts over time in the terms Christians have used for their sacred writings. In English only a few centuries ago "holy writ" and "holy Scripture," or "the Scriptures,"5 were more common. However, the English term "Bible" (variously spelled) has also been used for the best part of a millennium and since at least the fourteenth century has carried two different meanings: the one referring to the collection of books that constitute holy Scripture, the other referring to a physical copy of these books. It is in this latter sense that the secondary plural developed, so that one may talk of a collection of Bibles. The Oxford English Dictionary (s.v.) thus gives the first definition as "The Scriptures of the Old and New Testament" and the second as "A copy of the Scriptures." The term is, of course, derived ultimately from Greek mediated via the Latin plural biblia, which changed into a singular in various Western European languages, facilitated by the fact that Latin biblia could be reanalyzed as a feminine singular and there was no corresponding singular *biblium to prevent this.6 It was only after it had been a singular for some time that a secondary plural developed.

The importance of this is that proponents of biblical inerrancy believe in the inerrancy of the Bible in only one of the two senses of the word "Bible," namely when it refers to the collection of books or Scriptures, not to a physical document containing those books.

Consider the following hypothetical exchange:

Enquirer: Do you believe the Bible is without error?

Inerrantist: Yes.

Enquirer (holds up a particular Bible translation): Is this the Bible?

Inerrantist: Yes.

Enquirer: So you believe that there are no errors in this Bible . . .

Inerrantist: Well, actually there may be errors because it is only a translation of the Bible.

This highlights the awkwardness with which at the popular level it may seem necessary to qualify an initial statement of the inerrancy of Scripture. The exchange has, however, only been possible because of a level of multivalence in the word "Bible." If the exchange were adapted with the word "Scriptures" substituted for "Bible" it is likely that less awkwardness would be felt because the term more obviously puts the focus of discussion on the books as writings rather than on any particular copy or translation, and the enquirer would have had to ask "Is this a copy of the Scriptures?" It would be obvious therefore that one could not dismiss the inerrancy of the Scriptures simply by reference to a physical copy of them. Some people may be put off by the term "inerrancy" through what they perceive as backtracking: the proponent of inerrancy initially makes a bold statement - "the Bible is inerrant" - and then proceeds to list numerous qualifications. This procedure may be necessary, but we should at least consider whether there are alternatives.

There seems to have been a shift over time toward use of the term "Bible," particularly in popular parlance, and this results in a mismatch between the terms used in doctrinal definition and those used in common Christian parlance. As an example of technical discourse we may take the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.7 This statement uses the term "Scripture" fifty-seven times and the term "Scriptures" fourteen times (four times each qualified as "holy"). By contrast it uses the term "Bible" a mere sixteen times, "biblical" seven times, and "biblically" once. However, in the culture at large the proportions are rather different, and when large corpora of English are searched we see that the term "Bible" clearly now predominates over "Scripture" or "Scriptures":8

Occurrences in large corpora
American English British English
sg. pl. sg. pl.
Bible 11009 572 1941 106
Scripture 2399 1005 390 290

To illustrate the growth of the term "Bible" through time we may note that articles of faith dealing with Scripture in historic Reformed confessions entirely lack the word "Bible."9 However, more recent evangelical statements of faith show a tendency to include this word. An example of this shift can be seen in the widely used doctrinal basis of the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF; formerly Inter-Varsity Fellowship) in the UK. The article on Scripture had originally read:

The divine inspiration and infallibility of Holy Scripture as originally given, and its supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct.10

But when the article was revised for the sake of modernization it was replaced with the following:

The Bible, as originally given, is the inspired and infallible Word of God. It is the supreme authority in all matters of belief and behaviour.11

"Scripture" was replaced by "Bible," which is obviously intended in the sense of the OED's first meaning - the "Scriptures of the Old and New Testament." The change of wording therefore involves no shift in primary referent, but it does at least facilitate a shift of focus, since the new term introduced, namely "Bible," is multivalent and allows a focus on the physical object rather than on the words of the books themselves.

Although this shift does not by itself cause Ehrman's arguments to work, it does allow them to gain rhetorical force. After all, his contention appears to be that Christians adhere to a holy book they do not have, and the proof that they do not have it is the lack of a physical copy of the book. If Christians more widely spoke of the "inerrancy of the Scriptures" or the "inerrancy of Scripture" I imagine that Ehrman might find the target at least a little harder to hit.

The Term "Original"

A further term that provides ammunition for Ehrman is the word "original."12 Of course, in the time of John Owen or Matthew Henry, "original" could mean simply "origin," especially in the phrase "divine original," but it is no longer used in this way. However, when the word "original" is used in an unqualified way adjectivally we must ask what noun is implied. Are we to understand it as original language (or tongue), original text, or original manuscript? Whatever noun we supply it is clear that earlier writers wrote about the original as something they possessed. For instance, commenting on 1 Corinthians 16:11 Matthew Henry says

Conduct him forth in peace, that he may come to me, for I look for him with the brethren (v. 11); or I with the brethren look for him (the original will bear either), ἐκδέχομαι γὰρ αὐτὸν μετὰ τῶν ἀδελφῶν.13

Clearly Henry knew that he did not have the original manuscript (autograph), so we can eliminate that as a possible meaning for what he said. It seems that for him, as for many earlier writers, "original" was defined by contrast with what was translated. "Original" was not an absolute term; it could be made absolute by speaking of the first original.14

By contrast with Henry who saw the original as something he possessed, we have Ehrman who takes it to be something lost. In writing of his own struggle with inerrancy he says:

I kept reverting to my basic question: how does it help us to say that the Bible is the inerrant word of God if in fact we don't have the words that God inerrantly inspired, but only the words copied by the scribes - sometimes correctly but sometimes (many times!) incorrectly? What good is it to say that the autographs (i.e., the originals) were inspired? We don't have the originals! We have only error-ridden copies, and the vast majority of these are centuries removed from the originals and different from them, evidently, in thousands of ways.15

This is a fairly confused section. Ehrman claims that we do not have the words God inspired, but he has not demonstrated that to be the case. If John the Evangelist or his amanuensis wrote the letter sequence εναρχηηνολογος (John 1:1) then we have the words he wrote, whether we have the words in our minds or in a modern printed edition. One thing that Ehrman never seems to do is to attempt to show that we do not have (either in our minds or in manuscripts) all of the words that the authors wrote. In fact, the situation for the New Testament text is that there are no words that are known or even widely believed by textual critics to be missing from the New Testament text.16

Though Ehrman does show what is widely known, namely that there are variants in the manuscripts, this does not amount to a demonstration that we do not have the words God inspired. To do this he would have at least to demonstrate that some words that were alleged to be inspired have been lost, and at most to demonstrate that all words that were alleged to be inspired have been lost.

Then when he glosses the word "autographs" with the explanation "originals" it is clear that he is using the word "original" in a different sense from Henry. Clearly he means a physical entity - an actual manuscript. The problem here is that it is to misrepresent Christian belief to suggest that a physical manuscript was somehow inspired by God. Rather it was the words on the manuscript that, according to Christian belief, were inspired. Most importantly, when the sequence of words found on the autograph is copied onto another manuscript it does not become less inspired through being copied or written out a second time (Exod. 34:1; Jer. 36:28) and Scripture even allows for Scripture to be lost for a time (2 Kgs. 22:8). In other words, Ehrman has simply mistaken what a Christian doctrine implies.17

A further difference between Henry and Ehrman is probably one of the burden of proof. Given that Ehrman does not distinguish clearly between the first manuscript and the wording on the first manuscript, we have to reconstruct his view. However, he frequently states that we have only "copies of the copies of the copies of the originals."18 This implies a contrast between "original" and "copy," which probably would not make sense of what Henry says. Moreover, it seems that whereas Henry assumes that the words transmitted to him are those of the autograph unless shown otherwise, Ehrman takes the view that the words of a copy cannot be supposed to be those of the autograph under any circumstance. We will return to this below.

The Term "Text"

Aside from its recently acquired meaning of "text message," the word "text" is used in popular parlance both of a physical entity, an artifact with writing on it, and of the non-physical entity of writing abstracted from its physical context. In strict technical parlance it normally means the non-physical entity alone.19

Ehrman uses Galatians as a prime example of the problem of the idea of an original text. He says:

Even at the point of the original penning of the letter, we have numerous difficulties to consider, which may well make us sympathetic with those who want to give up on the notion of knowing what the "original" text was. Galatia was not a single town with a single church; it was a region in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) in which Paul had established churches. When he writes to the Galatians, is he writing to one of the churches or to all of them? Presumably, since he doesn't single out any particular town, he means for the letter to go to all of them. Does that mean that he made multiple copies of the same letter, or that he wanted the letter to circulate to all the churches of the region? We don't know.20

Ehrman's example may not be well chosen, since Paul's call to recognize his extra-large handwriting (Gal. 6:11) most likely points to a single physical document being taken round the churches. But Ehrman's point is this: for some works it is likely that there was more than one "original text" and that in any case we cannot now have the original text or know what it was. Since Ehrman connects any conception of inerrancy with the idea of an original text (as he understands it) the non-existence of the original text makes inerrancy untenable.

From a rather different angle A. T. B. McGowan complains about the emphasis on the autographa, which we do not possess, in Warfield's doctrine of Scripture. He says,

The second argument against inerrancy concerns the emphasis placed on the autographa by those in the Warfield tradition. If textual inerrancy is so vital to the doctrine of Scripture, why did God not preserve the autographa or precise copies of the same? Indeed, if inerrancy only applies to the autographa (which we do not possess), then surely it is a somewhat pointless affirmation? Everyone accepts that there are errors in the extant manuscripts and translations. What is the point of insisting that there once existed (very briefly) perfect versions of these texts, if we no longer possess them? Those who emphasize the inerrancy of the autographa are thus faced with a difficult question: "What was the point of God acting supernaturally to provide an inerrant text providentially if it ceased to be inerrant as soon as the first or second copy was made?"21

Though Ehrman and McGowan have very different perspectives on the scriptures they have in common a perception that supporters of inerrancy attribute inerrancy to something we do not have, namely the original text or autograph. Since Ehrman never engages with formal statements of evangelical doctrine, we may surmise that he is responding to evangelical doctrine as he perceived it during his youthful days as an evangelical. In the case of McGowan he is specifically responding to "those in the Warfield tradition." In this latter case it might at least be worth raising an initial query as to whether the question of the autographs is really so prominent within the Warfield tradition. At least in the case of Warfield himself the core ideas to which he returns are revelation and inspiration, not the original text, and it would be quite wrong to say that he holds, in McGowan's words, that "inerrancy only applies to the autographa."

When Warfield did come to define a text in his Textual Criticism of the New Testament it is clear that he held to the immaterial definition of text. In fact he chose to open his book, remarkable for its lack of explicit theology, with a definition of "text" that runs for more or less four pages. The book begins:

The word "text" properly denotes a literary work, conceived of as a mere thing, as a texture woven of words instead of threads. It designates neither, on the one side, the book which contains the text, nor, on the other side, the sense which the text conveys. It is not the matter of the discourse, nor the manner of it, whether logical, rhetorical, or grammatical. It is simply the web of words itself. It is with this understanding that the text of any work is concisely defined as the ipsissima verba of that work.22

After explaining the origins of the word "text" Warfield goes on to say:

There is an important distinction, however, which we should grasp at the outset, between the text of a document and the text of a work.23

The text of a document is the words on that document; the text of a work is "what ought to be the ipsissima verba of all the documents or copies that profess to represent it, - it is the original, or, better still, the intended ipsissima verba of the author. It may not lie in the document before us, or in any document. All existing documents, taken collectively, may fail to contain it. It may never have lain, perfect and pure, in any document. But if an element of ideality thus attaches to it, it is none the less a very real thing and a very legitimate object of search.24

Shortly later he says:

Such are the limitations of human powers in reproducing writings, that apparently no lengthy writing can be duplicated without error. Nay, such are the limitations of human powers of attention, that probably few manuscripts of any extent are written exactly correctly at first hand. The author himself fails to put correctly on paper the words that lie in his mind.25

What is striking here is that Warfield shows full awareness of all of the arguments that over a century later Ehrman would use as objections to inerrancy. However, it is important not to mistake what Warfield believes. In the penultimate quotation he uses the word "original" and then states his preference for the synonymous phrase "the intended ipsissima verba of the author." Warfield makes it clear that this phrase was "better still" than "original." Thus it would hardly go against the flow of Warfield's thought to dispense with the word "original" entirely. Moreover, since Warfield states so clearly that these intended ipsissima verba of a work may never have existed in a physical copy, this opens the question as to whether a follower of Warfield would need to believe that the intended words of divine Scripture ever needed to have existed in their perfect and exact form in an actual document at the time of the human author in order for the necessary conditions of the making of Scripture to have been fulfilled.

If so, then McGowan's suggestion that followers of Warfield put emphasis on the autographa is not relevant for Warfield himself. An autograph is a physical entity. The text of an autograph is not only immaterial, but is also the text of a document. By Warfield's definition, the text of a document should not necessarily be equated with the text of a work of literature.

Here Warfield, though not mentioning the doctrine of Scripture, or even the text of the New Testament, shows full awareness of the view that to speak thus of the text of an author may seem idealistic. Yet his emphasis on the text as an immaterial entity that need not have a physical manifestation is hardly just an example of Platonism in theology (not that having echoes of Plato necessarily means that a view is wrong!). There are a number of biblical texts suggesting the primacy of the immaterial word over its physical copy. The Ten Words (Ten Commandments) were given orally first, and then in written form. When the only physical copy of the Ten Words was destroyed by Moses (Exod. 32:19), this did not make the words cease to exist or become uninspired; they were simply given again (Exod. 34:27-28). When Joshua spoke (to others or himself) the text of the book of the law, then the book was said to be in his mouth (Josh. 1:8). The book was wherever it was spoken, even though a physical copy might be absent. Similarly God's words to Jeremiah were clearly inspired before being written down (Jer. 36:18), and could not be destroyed even if one eliminated all physical copies of them (Jer. 36:28). In a rather different way John 1:1 and 1:14 stress the existence of word prior to physical form. In other words, Ehrman's insistence that inspiration is not a meaningful belief unless one can produce to him a perfect physical copy of a text not only fails to recognize that Christian doctrines are not focused on physical copies, but also makes a rather arbitrary insistence on the necessity of a physical copy of God's words in Ehrman's own vicinity.

The focus on the immaterial nature of God's words also accords with modern studies of orality in the ancient world including the Old Testament. Ancient reading was generally out loud,26 and our tendency to see the written in opposition to the oral is not therefore appropriate. Oral communication may exist without writing, but written communication did not generally exist without oral communication. So while writing is important to spread and transmit God's words, there is no sense in which God's words become more inspired by virtue of being written down.

All this means that Warfield with his stress on the significance of the intended wording of the author is a very long way from stressing the significance of a physical lost document as he has sometimes been understood to have emphasized.

Resultant Ambiguity

We have seen so far that three of the key terms used in discussion of the inerrancy of Scripture, namely "Bible," "original," and "text," suffer from multivalence, and that there is a danger in each case that friend or foe of inerrancy alike may understand inerrancy to apply to one of these terms in a meaning that is not appropriate. One of the results of this discussion is that we can see that any emphasis that attributes inerrancy to a document (physical entity), rather than to the text of a document, is misguided. However, even the text on a document needs to be distinguished from the text of a work. It is to the text of the work, not of the document, that inerrancy applies. Therefore it is wrong to see inerrancy as having an emphasis on a physical entity that we no longer have.

The Burden of Proof: Do We Have the Wording or Not?

Having established that it is the wording, not the physical autographa, that matters, we need to consider whether or not we can have confidence that we have the wording of Scripture. This is partly a question of epistemology and of the burden of proof. Between the time of Matthew Henry and Bart Ehrman there clearly has been a significant shift from emphasizing what we have to what we do not have. For Ehrman it appears that one does not have the authorial wording until a proof is produced that one does have it. One also wonders whether there could ever be a proof that would demonstrate to Ehrman's satisfaction that we had the authorial wording. On the other hand, Henry seems to hold to the position that what is brought to him by the testimony of manuscript witnesses is the authoritative wording. To dissuade Henry of this position we may imagine it would be necessary to adduce actual manuscript testimony.

Although the position of believing that what you have received is the intended wording of the author may appear more credulous than not believing it to be so, we may at least notice one difference between these approaches. Those who actively refuse to believe the wording to be that of the author and prefer to remain agnostic, are in an epistemically invulnerable position. This may seem to be its strength, but it is also a weakness since it means that no amount of textual evidence could ever move one from agnosticism to active belief. Their approach thus allows little room for falsification.

A further disadvantage with the skeptical position is that it has no (or little) forfeit if it is wrong. In most areas of life, such as investments or medicine, there are consequences both to right and wrong beliefs. However, in the discipline of history as now conceived skepticism is not penalized, but actively encouraged. Thus whereas there is a potential benefit or loss for an investor involved with adopting both the belief that the market will go up and the belief that it will go down,27 for the historian there is a quite disproportionate loss of reputation for affirming something to be true when some doubt remains and no loss of reputation for disbelieving something when there is some limited evidence for its truth.

In addition we may note that Ehrman is unreasonably demanding proof concerning a negative if he asks others to demonstrate that the text has not changed, and in this case the negative is not possible to prove. When we work from the manuscript evidence we actually have, we observe the point made by both Warfield and Ehrman (among many others) that when a document of any significant length is made by copying, it is likely that errors are introduced. However, when we take the history of transmission we also see that the rate of introduction of errors, even in the earliest centuries, is not such that it creates a situation in which any part of the wording of the work is more likely to have been changed through transmission than preserved. Whether we work from late-fifteenth-century manuscripts of the New Testament and measure the rate of change from earlier documents, or consider the range of difference among the very earliest papyri and versions, we see that change in the wording through transmission is generally rarer than stasis.

In general, then, the presumption that we have the authorial wording until evidence arises to the contrary seems a more reasonable position than to refuse to believe that we have the authorial wording until an impossibly high level of proof be obtained that we do. The rational status of belief in the correctness of the text is that of a disprovable presumption.

However, one can put the case for textual reliability much more strongly than this. Here we simply outline a number of different lines of argumentation that can be used to establish a high degree of confidence in our knowledge of the authorial wording of the New Testament.

It is possible to use many forms of a fortiori argumentation based on high levels of scholarly confidence of the wording of other ancient or classical works. In an overwhelming number of cases witnesses for the books of the New Testament outstrip other ancient works in number, geographical diversity, and age. The New Testament text also shows up in a great variety of material forms: papyrus, parchment, paper, stone, pottery; codex and scroll; majuscule and minuscule; continuous text, lectionary, and extract.

The New Testament writings are also almost invariably attested in a greater variety of languages than other ancient writings. For instance, John's Gospel existed in eight different dialectal versions of Coptic,28 and in two pre-Jerome Latin versions,29 the Vulgate, and in the Old Syriac and Peshitta versions, to mention early versions in just three languages. In the case of other ancient writings any one of these versions would, on its own, be taken to give scholars a reasonable level of confidence as to the content of a work.

In addition to manuscripts and translations (versions) we have extensive quotation of the New Testament by church fathers.

Any one of the three main categories of witness (Greek manuscript, versions, church fathers) on its own would be sufficient to be able to have detailed discussions of matters such as the grammatical style of the authors. Taken together these provide a mass of data allowing us to reach rational conclusions about how texts were transmitted. When we consider how we know texts were transmitted based on actual evidence, and extrapolate the same processes back into the short period before our earliest witnesses, we do not reach radical uncertainty about the wording of the books of the New Testament.

We are able to make a number of genealogical observations about the interrelationship of witnesses and thereby trace the occurrence of errors in manuscripts and discount them from the editions that we make.

The existence of manuscripts such as P52 and P90, containing parts of John 18 dating from the second century and coming from Egypt, suggests that large numbers of copies of parts of the New Testament were made in a short time. It would be logistically almost impossible for anyone to enter systematic changes into the text of any book once a significant multiplicity of copies was spread over a wide area.

For those who express confidence in their ability to reconstruct sources of the Old or New Testaments (e.g., Q as a Gospel source), an a fortiori case can be made for confidence in our knowledge of the text of the New Testament.

The history of the study of the wording of the New Testament gives us a high degree of confidence in that wording. The printed wording of the first Greek New Testament of Erasmus, based on seven manuscripts from the twelfth century or later, and on no more than four in any one instance, is relatively speaking reasonably close to the wording of modern critical editions. This means that the text that would be produced if we disposed of nearly five centuries of discovery would still be relatively similar to the modern text. In broad terms, if one were to dispose of our earliest 5,000 or so witnesses and then to make a critical text based on what remains, the difference between the text thus produced and critical editions such as the Nestle-Aland 28th edition would probably be less than the difference between the Textus Receptus of Erasmus and the Nestle-Aland edition.

The text of the New Testament does not depend on any single witness. We could ignore a favorite witness such as Codex Sinaiticus from the fourth century. How much would this change our text? The answer can be found by considering the edition that Tregelles made of Matthew and Mark, which differs relatively little from the Nestle-Aland edition. In fact, the editions of Tregelles, Tischendorf, and Eberhard Nestle were made without knowledge of the papyri that are now important for the text of the New Testament. Nevertheless, their editions do not differ greatly from those in the later twentieth century (Nestle-Aland 26th edition), which are made using knowledge of such papyri. Thus we can say that even the discovery of quite important witnesses makes only a small impact on the shape of the New Testament text in contemporary editions.

If one had grounds for rational confidence in the text in the sixteenth century, when the gap between the earliest available manuscripts and the time of composition of the New Testament was over one millennium, a fortiori one may have confidence now that the gap is a mere 250 years at most for any part of the New Testament and usually much less.

The history of textual criticism also gives us confidence because the discovery of significantly earlier evidence has not added new large points of uncertainty in the New Testament text. This being the case, the assumption that yet further evidence would not reveal new uncertainties about the New Testament is justified. Doubts about Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53–8:11 have been known in parts of the church since patristic times. The same applies to many smaller disputed passages. The vast increase in number and age of manuscripts over the last four centuries has not added more passages of uncertainty.30 This leads naturally to the prediction that, based on the evidence we have already collected, we do not anticipate that new discoveries are likely to throw up previously unknown uncertainties about passages of significant length.

Ehrman's own text-critical and exegetical work often depends on his being able to establish one form of the text as prior to the others. In fact the text that Ehrman affirms differs relatively little from that found in modern editions of the Greek New Testament.

Although Ehrman's soundbite the "Orthodox Corruption of Scripture" has been widely received, he has in fact demonstrated how little deliberate corruption went on. The number of examples of deliberate corruption that he alleges is rather limited, and we must remember that Ehrman brings these examples together from all manuscripts. Without even allowing for the fact that many of his examples may in fact be wrong,31 it is amazing to find so few cases even of possible deliberate corruption when searching across so many manuscripts. Thus Ehrman's own research shows how overwhelmingly scribes did not seek deliberately to change the text.

When we are dealing with our uncertainties as to the identity of the original text, we are dealing with known unknowns.

The Possibility of Translation

It is often suggested that the need for translation is a significant objection to any doctrine of the inspiration of the original wording. As Ehrman says,

If he [God] wanted his people to have his words, surely he would have given them to them (and possibly even given them the words in a language they could understand, rather than Greek and Hebrew).32

Behind this seems to be the suggestion that something significant is lost in translation, but even Christians may wonder what is the use of believing in an inerrant autographic wording if most believers are not able to read that wording. Are advocates of inerrancy putting undue emphasis on a purely theoretical entity that has no bearing on most believers?

The strange thing behind Ehrman's suggestion above is that Christians believe that God has given people words in languages they can understand because God has allowed his word to be translated. God's word (singular) does not cease to be his word in translation, though one cannot speak of his words (plural) in translation in the same way. As for the suggestion that God might give words in multiple modern languages so that people would understand them, this would run foul of Ehrman's objection that a doctrine of inspiration is meaningless unless there's a single fixed wording. Thus Ehrman's objections do not appear to be internally consistent.

In response to this contemporary Angst about the possibility of translating the scriptures we may say the following:

Since at least the third century b.c.e., there has been belief in the value of translating Old Testament scripture. New Testament authors quote in Greek Old Testament scriptures originally written in Hebrew as having direct application to their Greek-speaking hearers (e.g., 1 Cor. 9:9-10).

Many translations such as the kaige revision of parts of the Old Testament, Aquila, the Targumim, the Harclean Syriac have involved both the conviction of the value of translation and simultaneously a strong affirmation of the value of the wording of the original language. Thus affirming translation does not involve denying the authority of the original.

There seems to be no comparable contemporary Angst about the value of translating other texts, as if books and films lose their purpose or effect in translation.

Uncertainty in one area of translation does not spill over into all areas of translation. We regularly appreciate films or literature or follow instructions even though, for whatever reason, we have missed part of the information given. We recognize that the significance of what we have missed is limited.
When we are dealing with unresolved questions of translation we are dealing with known unknowns.

Proposals

The sorts of criticisms that Ehrman has made of inspiration are significant and require response. However, the fact that the critique has resulted in part from misunderstanding should also goad inerrantists to check that their own formulations have been as clear as they can be. The contention here is that they have not, and that we need to engage in debate as to what terms might serve well at both the popular and the scholarly level in the future. These are my initial proposals:

Where possible we should seek to make the older terms "Scripture" and "Scriptures" more current rather than the term "Bible" when speaking of the doctrines of inspiration and revelation since Scripture and Scriptures have a narrower focus and avoid physical associations.

We should avoid the term "text." This can be replaced by "wording" since, again, "wording" avoids the physical focus. It is easier for someone to deny that we have the original text (which might mean original document) than it is for them to deny that we have the original wording.

However, even the word "original" has its ambiguities, having earlier been used in opposition to a translation. In some instances it may be possible to replace this by the word "authorial," so that we might speak of "authorial wording" rather than "original text."

We should not speak of text of the autographa, but of wording on the autographa, or use other similar formulations that distinguish clearly between the message and the physical carrier of the message.

The purpose of all of these proposals is not merely to use precise language for doctrinal formulation among theologians, but also to introduce a shift of emphasis in common Christian parlance away from formulae that suggest or emphasize that we believe in the inerrancy of something nonexistent. The Word of God does not die or age when it is copied, nor is it less powerful when it is spoken without reference to a physical copy. It is not made less certain by our uncertainty as to its identity, nor is there a compelling reason why our own uncertainty as to the identity of one part of it should make us uncertain as to the identity of another part.

Notes

1 Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), 1-15; UK edition: Whose Word Is It? The Story Behind Who Changed the New Testament and Why (London: Continuum, 2006). Ehrman also puts a personal testimony of his deconversion at the beginning of his other popular titles: God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 1-15; Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know about Them) (New York: HarperOne, 2009), ix-xi, 15-18; and Forged: Writing in the Name of God - Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are (New York: HarperOne, 2011), 1-5. There is at least as much tension between these different narratives as there is between the different synoptic portrayals of Jesus.

2 Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 211.

3 The seeds of some of these thoughts are expressed in an online review of Misquoting Jesus located at http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2005/12/review-of-bart-ehrman-misquoting-jesus_31.htm and in various postings on http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com.

4 Evidently during Ehrman's evangelical days he believed that "objective proofs" for the faith must exist, and he seems to have understood the term "proof" in a hard sense (Ehrman, Forged, 4). Thus Ehrman has probably ascribed an unwarranted burden of proof to Christianity since before his deconversion. There is no evidence in Ehrman's writings that while being an adherent he ever properly understood either (a) evangelical doctrines of Scripture, or (b) classic evangelical epistemologies.

5 Capitalization, though there have been some significant shifts in usage over the centuries, is ignored here.

6 Max Pfister, Lessico Etimologico Italiano (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 1984-), 5:1467-68, knows of just one occurrence of the singular biblium.

7 The problem with the name of this statement and of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy is not one of content, but of branding. If "Bible" has two meanings then "biblical" is capable of relating to both of these meanings and as said earlier it is only in one of these two meanings that "Bible" may properly be said to be inerrant. A related issue is the definite article: "the Bible" is more generally used synonymously with "the Scriptures" whereas "a Bible" almost always designates a copy of the scriptures, which may contain some errors. Of course, we may defend the use of the term "biblical" by claiming that it generally relates to the Bible as a work, not to a Bible as a document.

8 Based on searches on 7 May 2010 of the British National Corpus, www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk, containing about 100 million words, and the Corpus of Contemporary American English, www.americancorpus.org, containing over 400 million words. I discuss the term "Bible" further in "The Bible, the Septuagint, and the Apocrypha: A Consideration of Their Singularity," in Studies on the Text and Versions of the Hebrew Bible, ed. G. A. Khan and Diana Lipton (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

9 Joel R. Beeke and Sinclair B. Ferguson, eds., Reformed Confessions Harmonized: With an Annotated Bibliography of Reformed Doctrinal Works (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999), 10-19.

10 http://www.ciccu.org.uk/docbasis.php, accessed 15 June 2010. The Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union preserves the earlier form and calls it the doctrinal basis of the UCCF, without showing awareness that UCCF has officially adopted revised wording.

11 http://www.uccf.org.uk/about-us/doctrinal-basis.htm, accessed 15 June 2010.

12 The field of textual criticism has been widely influenced by Eldon J. Epp's article "The Multivalence of the Term ‘Original Text' in New Testament Textual Criticism," HTR 92 (1999): 245-81, so that the term "original text" is now generally avoided. Many of Epp's objections to the term, based on the works of Helmut Koester, Bart D. Ehrman, and William L. Petersen, are unconvincing if one is not already convinced of the models of early Christianity proposed by those scholars. For instance, part of the evidence cited from Koester (Epp, "Multivalence," 256) is that his comparisons of the Secret Gospel of Mark and canonical Mark help him to discern an earlier form of Mark behind canonical Mark. But if the Secret Gospel of Mark is in some way inauthentic then this is hardly a firm foundation on which to question the notion that there was an original text. My objection to the term "original text" is not the conviction that there was no original text, but that the expression itself is unclear.

13 Matthew Henry, An Exposition of the New Testament, vol. 8 (London: William MacKenzie, n.d.), 156. Cf. also the statement in the KJV preface: "The translation of the Seuentie dissenteth from the Originall in many places."

14 For instance, Matthew Poole, Annotations on the Holy Bible (1685; repr. as Commentary on the Holy Bible [Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1962]), commenting on Genesis 6:15 and arguing that all the creatures would have been able to fit on Noah's ark, says "That the differing kinds of beasts and birds, which unlearned men fancy to be innumerable, are observed by the learned, who have particularly searched into them, and written of them, to be little above three hundred, whereof the far greatest part are but small; and many of these which now are thought to differ in kind, in their first original were but of one sort, though now they be so greatly altered in their shape and qualities, which might easily arise from the diversity of their climate and food, and other circumstances, and from the promiscuous conjunctions of those lawless creatures" (emphasis added).

15 Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 7.

16 The situation for the New Testament is somewhat different than for the Old, where it is widely held that wording is missing from a text such as 1 Samuel 13:1. For those who want to argue that some wording has been lost from the New Testament, the suggestion that an earlier ending of Mark's Gospel was once located after 16:8 surely provides a showcase. However, even in this case many scholars are convinced that the Gospel ended at 16:8 and there are no patristic sources that are clearly quoting lost wording. So while one cannot prove that nothing has been lost, equally one cannot prove that something has been.

17 In addition to the problems noted here the word "original" has seemed to some less appropriate for the Old Testament, where it has not appeared adequately to allow for even minor editorial activity after composition (see Michael A. Grisanti, "Inspiration, Inerrancy, and the OT Canon: The Place of Textual Updating in an Inerrant View of Scripture," JETS 44 [2001]: 577-98). The problem can in part be reduced by remembering that original earlier was used in opposition to a translation and by recognizing that both final and original can refer to the same stage of a text.

18 Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 10.

19 Dictionaries, e.g. OED, Collins Dictionary of the English Language (2nd edition) appear understandably reluctant to admit this physical meaning. However, one can find numerous examples on the Internet where text is used to denote a physical object, e.g., "he held a text in his hand" (Catherine McGregor, "Bring It to Life: Youth Performing Socio-Politically in a Northern Urban Environment" [Ph.D. dissertation, Simon Fraser University, 2007], 358 [http://ir.lib.sfu.ca/bitstream/1892/4202/1/etd2800.pdf, accessed 18 June 2010]), or "the text weighed over ten pounds" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Christian_Andersen; accessed 18 June 2010).

20 Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 58.

21 A. T. B. McGowan, The Divine Spiration of Scripture: Challenging Evangelical Perspectives (Nottingham: Apollos, 2007), 109.

22 B. B. Warfield, Textual Criticism of the New Testament (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1889), 1.

23 Warfield, Textual Criticism, 2.

24 Warfield, Textual Criticism, 3-4. Similarly, John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Word of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2010), 243, says "what is at issue is not primarily the autographic document, but the autographic text. The text is a linguistic object that can be found in any number of physical media."

25 Warfield, Textual Criticism, 7.

26 For classical references see Annette Weissenrieder and Robert B. Coote, The Interface of Orality and Writing: Speaking, Seeing, Writing in the Shaping of New Genres, WUNT 260 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), x.

27 I am aware that for hedge fund managers the forfeits do not depend on the rises or falls in the market, but the point still holds that there are consequences, including forfeits, for unwise choices.

28 C. H. Askeland, John's Gospel: The Coptic Translations of Its Greek Text (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012).

29 Philip Burton, The Old Latin Gospels: A Study of Their Texts and Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 74.

30 Gesa Schenke, "Das Erscheinen Jesu vor den Jüngern und der Ungläubige Thomas: Johannes 20,19-31," in Coptica - Gnostica - Manichaica: Mélanges offerts à Wolf-Peter Funk, ed. Louis Painchaud and Paul-Hubert Poirier (Louvain: Peeters, 2006), esp. 902, argues that a Coptic manuscript (Ms Copt e150p from the Bodleian Library in Oxford) might possibly be a witness to a Greek text of John's Gospel without John chapter 21. However, an unpublished critical analysis of the manuscript has suggested that this is most unlikely: Christian Askeland, "Was There a Coptic Translation of John's Gospel without Chapter 21?," paper presented at the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting, Christianity in Egypt: Scripture, Tradition, and Reception section (21 November 2009).

31 For instance, I argue that his claim that orgistheis was deliberately corrupted into splanchnistheis in Mark 1:41 is unwarranted in "An Examination of Ehrman's Case for orgistheis in Mark 1:41," NovT 54 (2012): 1-12.

32 Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 11.

Does Romans 2:6-7 Teach That We Are Justified By Faith And Works? (Part 2 Of 2)

• Discussion:

          -Karlo Broussard of Catholic Answers wrote a second article for the purpose of interacting to a further extent with a few claims made by Ron Rhodes on Romans 2:6-7 as it relates to Sola Fide (i.e. "faith alone"). His comments are cited in bold and followed with critiques:

          "It’s only after we’re in grace that good works play a role in our salvation...The immediate context of Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 2:10 deals with initial salvation. Consider, for example, what Paul says in verses four and five...The immediate context of Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 2:10 deals with initial salvation. Consider, for example, what Paul says in verses four and five...Paul here is speaking of that initial transition from death to life in Christ. And it’s this initial stage of salvation where Paul thinks good works play no role."

          Whenever Paul speaks of our faith in his epistles to the Romans and Galatians, he is making reference to our justification (Romans 4:4-5; Galatians 2:16; 3:11; 22). Ephesians 2 definitely matches this context. These texts affirm justification before God to not be meritorious. In Ephesians 2:10, the phrase "for good works" means that good works constitute the purpose of being created in Jesus Christ. This is a sanctification verse. The irony of Broussard claiming that good works "play no role" in the "initial stage of salvation" is that it is accomplished through baptism, which is a work.

          "But Paul doesn’t say anything about works attesting to saving faith [in Romans 2:6-8]. He explicitly states that the good works performed in patience and the seeking for the gifts of glory, honor, and immortality are the reason for God granting eternal life. In other words, the good works are real causes that bring about a real effect: the granting of eternal life."

          God will certainly give eternal life to those who display good deeds. When God judges us, He examines all of the details concerning our personal status with Him. However, those works are not meritorious. Justification in Scripture is described as an unmerited gift of grace, not something that we can earn even in part (Romans 3:24; 5:15; 17; 6:23). The gospel is received on the basis of faith, which results in one's justification before God (John 20:31; Romans 1:16; Ephesians 1:13; 2 Timothy 3:15).

          "This principle is made even clearer in verse eight, wherein Paul contrasts the aforementioned good works with bad works: “[F]or those who are factious and do not obey the truth, but obey wickedness, there will be wrath and fury.” Disobedience and wickedness are not merely manifestations of a degenerate heart, but are causes that bring about the effect of wrath and fury."

          It is true that our sin brings about the wrath of God. It is also true that our works provide a general description of our state of heart. However, the author being critiqued has not successfully shown how justification is a process. Our good works do not play a role in us attaining or maintaining a right standing before God.

Does Romans 2:6-7 Teach That We Are Justified By Faith And Works? (Part 1 Of 2)

• Discussion:

           -Karlo Broussard of Catholic Answers wrote an article interacting with a few claims made by Ron Rhodes on Romans 2:6-7. He claimed that passages such as Romans 3:28 do not so much condemn the idea of meritorious works in salvation, but specifically works of the Mosaic Law. Before responding to Broussard's claims, it is necessary to provide some background information as to what kind of interpretation of Paul's words that he employs.

           Broussard utilizes a liberal interpretation of Pauline texts which stands contrary to the traditional understanding of the words of Paul, which is that he rejects works as being necessary for our justification before God. This "new" perspective on the meaning of works and works of the law was not known by most people until former canon theologian of Westminster Abbey now turned Anglican Bishop of Durham N.T. Wright published a book on the subject titled What St. Paul Really Said.

           This school of thought maintains that the Apostle Paul never argued against depending on the moral aspects of the Mosaic Law for getting right with God, but rather that he only stood in opposition to observing the dietary and ceremonial parts of the Law. In other words, it is argued by proponents of the new perspective that Paul argued against circumcision, heeding to food laws, and the observance of Jewish Sabbaths. Thus, the phrase "works of the law" in Paul's epistles has been reduced to Jewish ethnic badges or the ceremonial law.

          It has been claimed that conservative Protestant churches have derived their soteriology on anachronistic interpretations of Scripture made by the Protestant Reformers. Proponents of this theology claim that we need to view Paul's use of the phrase "works of the Law" through a different lens of interpretation in order to reach the conclusion that he was only arguing against boundary-markers. These people claim that the Judaism of Paul's day was not legalistic. The focus of Paul is shifted from soteriological to ecclesiastical.

          "Romans 2:6-7 refers to good works that belong to the moral sphere. The “works” that Paul speaks of in Romans 3:28 and Romans 4:5 refer to works that belonged to the Law of Moses, the keeping of which was necessary for Jews (circumcision, kosher laws, ritual washings, precepts governing the offering of sacrifices, etc.)."

           A colossal problem with the above argument is Romans 3:19-20. The Law is treated as something that the entire world is subjugated to. Man is silenced before God as he stands condemned for his sins  Thus, the Apostle Paul gives the Law and "works of the Law" a universal application.

            In 1 Timothy 1:8-10, Paul uses the term "Law" in a sense broader than boundary markers. In discussing their application, Paul pinpoints moral precepts as the "Law." That destroys the distinction that some try to make between "works" and "works of the Law."

            In Galatians 5:1-3, circumcision was not part of the "moral sphere" of the Law, yet Paul said that those who seek after that ritual must obey it perfectly. That point blows the distinction made between "works" and "works of the Law" out of the water.

           "The two verses immediately following Romans 3:28 bear this out. Right after juxtaposing the standards of faith and “works of law,” Paul writes in verse twenty-nine, “Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one.” This is the premise that leads Paul to the conclusion in the next verse that God will “justify the circumcised on the ground of their faith and the uncircumcised through their faith.” If Paul is juxtaposing faith and circumcision here in verse thirty, then we can conclude that circumcision is the kind of thing he has in mind when he juxtaposes faith with “works of law” in verse twenty-eight."

           Paul places faith and circumcision side by side for contrasting effect. It would be wrong to interpret "works of the Law" as referring exclusively to the ceremonial law. Both Jews and Gentiles (i.e. "circumcision" and "uncircumcision") are justified by the same means: faith apart from works of merit. That is the Apostle Paul's argument in Romans.

            In the Bible, we never see the completion of any specific charitable deeds as being prescribed as necessary criteria for the forgiveness of sins by God. There is not even the slightest hint of Paul narrowing specifically in on the ceremonial Law throughout his writings. There is no such thing as a distinction between good works that save verses good works that do not save. We are not saved by any good works.

A Note On The Glory Of Jesus Christ

"When Jesus Christ came from eternity to our temporal world, He missed one thing, the glory that He had with the Father, the honor that He had with the Father. It was impossible for man, even redeemed man, to give Him the same recognition, the same honor, the same renown that He enjoyed with the Father in His preincarnate state. That in no sense meant that He left behind any part, or the whole, of His deity, or any or all of His divine attributes, but simply that by coming down here on earth He did not have the same recognition among men, among His creatures, even His redeemed ones, as He had with the co-eternal and co-equal Father. To recognize all that lies within another person, you must possess as much or more."

Spiros Zodhiates, Was Christ God?, p. 92

The Anthropic Principle And Intelligent Design

The "anthropic principle"-from the Greek word anthropos, meaning "man"-recognizes that conditions on earth are ideal, apparently by design, for the existence of human (and other) life.

An objective examination of the universe indicates that it is finely tuned-adjusted precisely-for the existence of complex life. Following is a sample of key factors:

• Earth is just the right distance from the sun for life to survive. If Earth were too close to the sun, everything would burn up. If it were too far from the sun, everything would freeze.
• There is just enough oxygen on Earth-comprising 21 percent of the atmosphere-for life to exist. If there were too much oxygen (25 percent or more), things would catch on fire too easily; all oxidizing processes would proceed too rapidly. If there were not enough oxygen (say, 15 percent), living beings would suffocate.
• The level of water vapor in the atmosphere is just right for life on Earth. Too much water vapor in the atmosphere would cause a runaway green-house effect. The planet would become too hot for human life. Too little water vapor in the atmosphere would yield an insufficient greenhouse effect, and the planet would get too cold.
• Volcanoes are necessary for the spreading of soil nutrients. Too many volcanoes, however, would cause critical energy from the sun to be blocked by clouds of volcanic ash.
• The Earth has one moon, which is just the right size. If Earth had more than one moon, or if our one moon were much larger, there would be tidal instability on earth. In fact, a much larger moon might cause tidal waves to engulf the land.
• Jupiter, a giant planet with a phenomenally strong gravitational pull, attracts asteroids and comets that Earth does not because of its small and commensurately weaker gravitational pull.

The reality is that there are numerous highly improbable factors that have to be precisely in place in a balanced fashion for survival of life on Earth. Without any one of these factors, life would not be possible. Life, however, exists on Earth precisely because these conditions are just right for life.

The above excerpt was taken from a pamphlet titled Intelligent Design: What You Need To Know (Quick Reference Guide), by Ron Rhodes

Notes On The Corrupt Ministry Of Todd Bentley

In 2008, Canadian-born evangelist Todd Bentley became a household name in charismatic circles when he aired nightly revival services from Lakeland, Florida, for several months. Bentley was known for shouting, "Bam!" as he smacked people on the head—or kicked them—during prayer for healing. He claimed that an angel had been sent by God to bring a great revival to America that would start in his meetings.

But as quickly as Bentley could say, "Bam!" the so-called Lakeland Revival imploded. The meetings, broadcast by GOD-TV, were shut down after news that Bentley had been carrying on an extramarital affair with a woman who had served as his family's nanny. He later divorced his wife, Shonnah; married the second woman, Jessa; and moved to North Carolina to be quickly restored to ministry by author Rick Joyner.

Immediately after the first fiasco, Joyner provided spiritual oversight for Bentley and eventually became convinced the fallen preacher was ready to go back on the road. Bill Johnson, pastor of Bethel Church in Redding, California, released a 2011 statement saying that he felt Bentley was ready to be back in the pulpit.

Fast-forward to 2019, and another Bentley scandal has erupted. Stephen Powell, who leads Lion of Light Ministries released a public statement saying he has evidence that Bentley has been engaging in inappropriate sexual behavior with both men and women over the past few years. Powell, an estranged protégé of Bentley's, says he took his accusations to Rick Joyner and that Joyner didn't do anything to protect the people hurt by Bentley.

"I believe Todd has proven over more than two decades of ministry, moral failures and abuse of others that he cannot be trusted with the care of God's people," said Powell in an Aug. 22 post on Facebook. "I believe Todd is not fit for public ministry. On top of his sexual sins, he has proven to be a compulsive liar, he lacks financial integrity when handling God's money and he is a substance abuser that has drawn many others into these sins with him over the years."

Bentley posted a rambling response to his former associate on Aug. 23. While admitting that he does "have a past," he called Powell's charges gossip and hearsay. "The majority of these accusations are absolutely not true. Not all, but the majority," Bentley said. "However, there are some that are true, some that even are partial truths. Much are exaggerated and are based on personal speculation."

Joyner also posted a video response, saying he completed Bentley's restoration process in 2012 and no longer provides spiritual covering for him. Joyner also accused Powell of "witchcraft" for coming forward with the embarrassing charges.

This ugly scandal, which feels like deja vu all over again, has triggered numerous questions from ministry leaders and people in the pews about how to deal with preachers who fail morally. How long is a restoration process? How long should a fallen leader step out of ministry? Should there be a "three strikes and you're out" rule? Is a leader ever permanently disqualified?

Personally, I blame the system for this current mess. We charismatics are more enamored with "the anointing" than character. We run after healings and miracles, even if they are questionably manufactured. We chase gold dust, feathers, goosebumps and smackdowns instead of holiness, biblical revelation and true repentance. We are addicted to hype.

More than a decade ago some people put Todd Bentley on a pedestal because he claimed to have exotic supernatural powers—and many didn't care that he abandoned one wife for another. Now we are paying for that folly. It remains to be seen whether we will clean up our act this time.

https://www.charismanews.com/opinion/77795-should-we-restore-todd-bentley-again

The Meaning Of Jesus Christ Being In The Bosom Of The Father In John 1:18

"...Jesus Christ in His full deity has always been in the bosom of the Father. What does that expression mean? The Greek word for "bosom" is kolpos, which usually refers to something physical. It is the upper part of the body in the general area of which the heart is located. The heart is always considered as the seat of our affections. We also saw that God is Spirit and must not be conceived as a physical personality. Yet it is sometimes necessary for us physical beings to use physical expressions to understand spiritual realities. Therefore, in this instance, the bosom is used as an expression of love and constant intimate communion of the Son with the Father. It does not mean that God is like us, with a body and a bosom. We are told, for instance, that when the poor man of Luke 16 died he was brought to "Abraham's bosom." That means to the place where Abraham was, into close communion and fellowship with Abraham. Thus here we are given an idea of the Son with the Father. And this follows perfectly, since through the term monogenees we have full deity ascribed to Jesus Christ, the same nature as the Father. Because of this, He knows the deepest secrets of the Father, and the love between Them is unbroken and unique."

Spiros Zodhiates, Was Christ God?, p. 27

On The Invisibility Of God To The Human Eye

"Although John in his Gospel tells us that "No man hath seen God at any time," we have to understand that this refers to the fullness of His glory. Our little cup could not contain Him, which is why we can only "know in part" (1 Cor. 13). This principle also explains the various theophanies or appearances of God to man. One that is mentioned in the Old Testament is the encounter which God had with Moses. In Exodus 33:11 we read, "And the Lord spoke unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend." Here we are told that God made Himself, not necessarily visible to the physical eye of Moses, but audible to his physical ear. This is further brought out in Numbers 12:8, "With him I will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the Lord shall be behold." Here the voice of God is heard, but only a "similitude" of God is seen, not God in the fullness of His nature. Therefore there is no contradiction at all between what John declares and the experience of Moses."

Spiros Zodhiates, Was Christ God?, p. 10