Evangelical Realism

(Book: I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST, by Geisler and Turek, chapter 14.)

I have to admit that it’s getting harder and harder to write interesting blog posts about Geisler and Turek’s book when they keep making the same blissfully oblivious and ironic arguments, week after week, all boiling down to them believing whatever certain men say, just because they say it, no matter how inconsistent it may be with reality and with itself.

Jesus is promising his apostles that the Holy Spirit would lead them to author what we now know as the New Testament…

But did the apostles really get the message from the Holy Spirit as Jesus promised? They certainly claim as much.

Yep. How do we know the apostles were really inspired to write Scripture? Because they told us so themselves. Men said it, we believe it, and that settles it. Sigh.

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(Book: I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST, by Geisler and Turek, chapter 14.)

So far, Geisler and Turek have spent chapter 14 trying to prove that Jesus thought the Old Testament was infallible and inerrant (even though it doesn’t quite match the facts of history and even though Christians themselves have largely abandoned the moral standards set by Moses and friends). But what about the New Testament? Can G&T show, from the Bible, that Jesus believed the authority of the New Testament was equal to that of the old?

Jesus taught that the Old Testament is inerrant, but what could he say about the New Testament? After all, it was not written until after the end of Christ’s earthly life.

While Jesus confirmed the Old Testament, he promised the New Testament. He said the New Testament would come through his apostles because the Holy Spirit would remind them what Jesus had said and would lead them into “all truth.”

Gotta love the way they tiptoe around the fact that “the end of Christ’s earthly life” pretty much ended his personal teaching and authority. It’s almost like he was, you know, dead or something. Pretty strange behavior for someone who allegedly loved us so much that he was willing to die for us so that we could be together forever (or until the end of 40 days, whichever came first).

But what about Jesus “promising” the New Testament? Does the Bible really say what Geisler and Turek say it says? And why would God send a Holy Spirit instead of a loving Savior, to be our leader and teacher?

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(Book: I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST, by Geisler and Turek, chapter 14.)

Today we look at a section entitled “Other Evidence Supporting the Old Testament.” I expect you won’t be too surprised to find out that it’s a very short section. In fact, you could sum up the whole thing by the last two sentences in the section:

Our friend Andy Stanley put it well: “My high school science teacher once told me that much of Genesis is false. But since my high school science teacher did not prove he was God by rising from the dead, I’m going to believe Jesus instead.” Wise move.

Just let me double check here… nope, didn’t pick up a different book by accident. This is the argument Geisler and Turek are making in the book they call I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST. Genesis can’t even pass a high school science test? No problem. Just ignore the scientific evidence and believe whatever Jesus told you was “truth.” Or at least, whatever people say that Jesus said. That’ll show those old atheists who the faith-based believers really are.

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(Book: I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST, by Geisler and Turek, chapter 14.)

I have mentioned before that books on apologetics are written to persuade believers, and not skeptics, that their beliefs are really true. As we get deeper and deeper into Chapter 14, it becomes painfully obvious that Geisler and Turek are writing under the assumption that no skeptic in his right mind would have stuck with them this far, and that it is therefore safe to trot out some old and moldy chestnuts that would be downright embarrassing to have displayed in public. Right mind or not, though, we’ve stuck with them this far, and we’ll see it through to the bitter end!

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(Book: I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST, by Geisler and Turek, chapter 14.)

We’re in chapter 14, out of 15 chapters, in a book entitled I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be and ATHEIST, by Drs. Norm Geisler and Frank Turek. For the last few chapters, Geisler and Turek have been citing “the Scriptures” as reliable, historical, and primary sources of information about what God has allegedly been doing in the real world, and now, in the next to last chapter of the book, they’re finally getting around to defining what “the Scriptures” are. Hey, if you bought the first 13 chapters…

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(Book: I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST, by Geisler and Turek, chapter 14.)

Geisler and Turek, as you recall, have been spending the first part of their next to last chapter using Jesus to validate the Bible’s authority, which they had previously used to validate Jesus’ authority. Sadly, though, their choice of examples so far has done more to discredit Jesus than to validate Bible (as understood by conservative Christians). And their final attempt fares no better:

7. Has Ultimate Supremacy—Since Jesus taught that the Old Testament is divinely authoritative, imperishable, infallible, inerrant, historically reliable and scientifically accurate, you would expect him to assert that it has ultimate supremacy over any teaching of man. This is exactly what Jesus said. He corrected the Pharisees and the teachers of the law by claiming that they should be obeying the Old Testament Scriptures instead of their own man-made traditions.

Right. And these same Old Testament Scriptures, remember, are the “inspired” writings that upheld selling your daughter as a sex object, keeping a man’s wife and kids as slaves to induce him to “voluntarily” become permanently enslaved to the owner, committing genocide against an entire people including the children, babies and livestock, death by stoning for anyone caught gathering firewood on Saturday, and of course ritual mutilation of the genitals of babies. This is what Jesus gave “ultimate supremacy” to. Not the New Testament, which men had not written yet. This.

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(Book: I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST, by Geisler and Turek, chapter 14.)

There’s a famous quote from the movie The Princess Bride in which Inigo Montoya tells Fezzig Vizzini, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” See if you can see why today’s installment from I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST reminds me of that quote:

When asked if divorce was acceptable, Jesus cited a scientific fact out of Genesis. … (Matt. 19:4-6). In other words, the nature of marriage is bound up in the scientific fact that Adam and Eve were created for a purpose.

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(Book: I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST, by Geisler and Turek, chapter 14.)

Christian apologists Dr. Norm Geisler and Dr. Frank Turek are putting the finishing touches on their argument that it takes more faith not to believe the Gospel than to be an evangelical, Trinitarian Christian. Let’s see what objective, verifiable and irrefutable evidence they have to share with us today.

In addition to declaring that the Old Testament is divinely authoritative, imperishable, infallible, and inerrant, Jesus affirmed two of the most historically disputed stories in the Old Testament: Noah (Matt. 24:37-28) and Jonah (Matt. 12:40). Jesus spoke of those stories as being historically true.

Sometimes these posts almost write themselves, don’t they?

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(Book: I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST, by Geisler and Turek, chapter 14.)

Geisler and Turek continue their attempts to prove that it takes more faith to be an atheist, and this week their argument centers on the claim that the Bible is without error. We know this because the Bible says that Jesus says that the Bible is without error. Wellll, that is, he doesn’t come right out and actually say it. It’s more like he sorta implies it.

When the Sadducees tried to trap Jesus with a question, Jesus said to them, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God” (Matt. 22:29). The implication, of course, is that the Scriptures are inerrant. It wouldn’t make any sense for Jesus to say, “You are in error because you don’t know the Scriptures, which also err!”

That pretty much wraps up their argument for Biblical inerrancy, at least as far as this book is concerned. But since they raise the topic, let’s think about it a bit more.

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(Book: I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST, by Geisler and Turek, chapter 14.)

We continue with Geisler and Turek’s attempt to validate the authority and reliability of the Bible through the testimony of Jesus, whose own authority and reliability is derived from that of the Scriptures. As we saw last time, these attempts actually raise some serious problems for the claim that Jesus is God Incarnate, and the next two points on G&T’s list only dig the hole deeper. According to the good doctors, Jesus taught that the Old Testament is the Word of God (despite being written by men) because it:

2. Is Imperishable—In the Sermon on the Mount, a passage loved by conservatives and liberals alike, Jesus claimed that not even the smallest little mark in the Scriptures—the equivalent of a dot on an “i” or a cross on a “t”—will ever perish: “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets,” he declared. “I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law until all is fulfilled” (Matt. 5:17, NKJV). Jesus could not express the imperishability of the Scriptures more forcefully.

3. Is Infallible—In John 10, Jesus was about to be stoned for blasphemy. To get himself out of this jam, Jesus cited the Old Testament and declared, “The Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35, NKJV). In other words, when his life was on the line, Jesus referred to an infallible authority that cannot be broken—the Scripture. Furthermore, he later affirmed the truth of the Scriptures when he prayed for the disciples, “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17).

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