For all the apologetics and reasonability Christians strive for, it seems that message is being heard less and less. Easily debunkable arguments are increasingly circulating among even America’s intellectual elite (I can’t speak for universities elsewhere, but I imagine the situation is similar if not worse) as irrefutable fact and signs of self-sophistication. The use of these arguments as fact (i.e., “this is so” as opposed to “but what about…”) is a sign both of intellectual laziness, and if unable to move past these arguments, deeper emotional objections not rooted in any sort of pure reason (though more sophisticated arguments do not necessarily preclude such a barrier).

I’m not the first to rebut these arguments and hopefully I will not be the last, but for the sake of establishing these arguments as clear smokescreens lacking any real substance, here are several.

1. The Bible contains lots of contradictions.
O RLY? Most people who say this can’t point to one. There are lists, however, of multitudes of apparent contradictions, most of which are easily rebuttable (see point 2), but occasionally a stumper will come along among the lists. Yet, with just as much effort as was taken to find such a list, one can find it documented and rebutted (listing each alleged contradiction would be beyond the scope of this article). If an entire faith were so easy to disprove as to point to two contradicting verses, then who would believe it? From whence would we get our theologians who apply an intellect as great as any found in other fields to the study of the Bible? A faith does not survive and multiply as greatly as the Christian faith by hanging on a thread of hope that no one will notice and point out two contradicting verses.

2. You can make the Bible say anything you want.
With enough rearranging and omission, I can make The Count of Monte Cristo say anything I want it to. Does that take away from its literary merit? The fact that one can take portions of the Bible out of context to seemingly justify anything removes nothing from the spiritual merit of the whole. Just as the end of Monte Cristo makes no sense without the preceding plot and events, so does a single piece of scripture stripped of its context have no meaning outside of the rest.

3. The English bible contains numerous mistranslations / Biblical translators had an agenda.
There are 96 different translations and derivatives of the entire Bible in modern English, falling under almost two dozen separate and independent translations, the vast majority of which were taken directly from the original manuscripts (as opposed to the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament). It seems hardly likely that each of these groups throughout the centuries that English has existed in a form intelligible to us would have the same agendas, even less so that the teams of experts having devoted their lives to the study of Biblical languages working on single translations would have these same agendas. We have translations ranging from strictly literal (NASB, ESV) to complete paraphrases (NLT, The Message), and everything in between (NIV). With these completely different philosophies of translation all producing essentially the same text - translational controversies are extremely rare - there is no place for an agenda to be hidden.

4. The Canon was decided arbitrarily under Constantian influence to suppress other Christian sects.
This is perhaps the argument with the most semblance of reason to it. Espoused by popular authors like Dan Brown and Bart Ehrman, it paints the picture of early Christianity as a war among diverse sects with Orthodoxy eventually winning out. However this is a vastly distorted picture. Christianity like any other religion has always had heretics and purveyors of misdoctrine, but regarding these (and especially the Gnostic sects, as these authors are prone to do) as alternate Christianities has no basis in reality. The canon as we see it now was already established well before the Council of Nicea, being referenced by many early Church fathers. The council simply codified what was already in practice in order to curb heretical sects with new gospels (the Gnostic gospels, for example, are known to have been written centuries after Christ’s death). It was not at all a political move, rather, a self-preservation move.

There is no reason for anyone to believe these sorts of fallacies, and even less that anyone should become convinced of them and fall away from the faith. Unfortunately there remain enough people who refuse even to advance the sophistication of their arguments that these simplistic and fallacious objections become held by a vast number of people, simply because they are bite-sized, dismissive, and do not require further thought. I have no solution to propose to this problem; only that the Church and the members thereof should go to great lengths to avoid creating these deeper emotional barriers that masquerade in these cases as reasonable objections. Then again, people have been calling the Church to greater sensitivity since its inception and we are here no less.

The concept of time travel has tantalized mankind for as long as there has been literature, and has become especially prominent in recent decades with the rise of Science Fiction as a genre. How can a past still vivid in memory or an inevitable future be completely inaccessible to us except for the instant in which it passes, and what would happen if it was not? Various branches of physics have been trying to answer this since Einstein postulated that one could slow the passage of time by accelerating one’s self. Yet like so many other esoteric branches of science, ignoring the technicalities of achieving time travel in the first place (widely regarded to be impossible anyways), the topic lies firmly in the realm of philosophy and religion to qualify any theories.

The feasibility and nature of time travel lie in three questions:

• Is there free will?
• What does this imply about the nature of the universe?
• If that nature does not preclude time travel, what are the consequences of it?

The fundamental question to all of this is the first, for in it is vested a greater question: is there a soul - a supernatural? From a purely evolutionary and atheistic standpoint, free will cannot exist, for a human being is no more than the complex interaction of his molecules, ultimately completely predictable could we account for all the molecular motion in his body. Though the brain is so complex as to give the illusion of self-awareness and choice, it is still just an illusion and we are no more than the sum of our parts.

If, however, free will does exist, then it would imply that we are greater than the sum of our parts, self-awareness being the hallmark of having risen above being a bundle of molecules interacting in complex fashion - having a soul, so to speak, something that is separate from yet manifest in the matter comprising the body.

So what does this mean for time travel? The first case - one of pure determinism - means that any human endeavor, no matter how complex or grandiose, is nothing more than the inevitable emergence of high-level order from the force with which the universe began long ago. Time travel then would then not be something creatable by mankind, for we cannot affect the universe in any proactive way. If this is the case, then any paradox caused by time travel chanced upon by wormhole or other natural methods would necessarily be inconsequential, meaning that one cannot change the past because will have already been changed (unless you’re Denzel Washington, in which case your salary has sufficient mass to distort space-time to your bidding). And in the case that time travel is the intersection of parallel universes at different points, then any change in the past will not affect the future in which one travelled there, your presence in the other inevitable anyway. Changes made in a deterministic universe cannot be recursive.

If however, we do have free will and our will is formed outside the physical realm, then we do have the capability of affecting the universe in a substantiative way. Assuming time travel is possible, only in the case of the existence of souls could one build a “time machine”, so to speak, and cause the universe to behave in ways it otherwise would not. It is only in this case that a recursive paradox could exist: Since alternate universes are inherently deterministic being probabilistic, their presence precludes the existence of the supernatural, at least dwelling in us, so our universe is all we have to deal with. Time travel of any sort then, assuming the existence of the soul, is necessarily impossible, if we are to assume cause-and-effect are inherent to the nature of time-space (rather than artificially introduced by a deity, as one would draw a flip book - in which case we are still determined beings, only by a different determinant).

One’s views on time travel and physics is then dependent on one’s fundamental philosophic and religious assumptions. As in universal origins, the question for each of us is which set of assumptions we will start from: Will our views on the nature of the universe affect our belief or lack thereof in the soul, or will we draw our views on the nature of the universe from our belief in the soul?

-Inspired by a late night conversation with the ineffable devil’s advocate Joseph Sileo.

The teaching of the Rapture as happening prior to the Tribulation at the end of time is now a remarkably well-accepted doctrine among mainline Evangelicals for having arisen only in the last two centuries, largely stemming from the ecstatic visions of a 15-year-old Scotch-Irish girl in 1830 and the writings of Hal Lindsey, a self-proclaimed visionary who claims to have God-given insight regarding modern reinterpretations of eschatological scripture.

Hal Lindsey himself is widely regarded among Evangelicals as a crackpot, yet the doctrines made mainstream by his work pervade modern churches nonetheless. It is not hard to imagine a scenario in which a large part of the nominal church, disillusioned by the lack of a rapture upon entering the tribulation, falls away as described in II Thessalonians 2:3:

Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction.
II Thessalonians 2:3 (NASB)

“Apostasy” in the KJV and several other translations here appears as “Falling Away”, exactly the sort of thing that a disillusionment would lead to. But wait! The rapture proponents have a scenario as well, in which a period of hardship comes immediately preceding the tribulation, and the church, not expecting a rapture, believes in the Antichrist who arises after this pseudo-tribulation as the second coming of Christ they have been expecting.The danger then is not necessarily in one belief or the other, but rather in which one is false. In none of the passages normally quoted to support the rapture is a distinction evident from the Second Coming and Glorious Appearing of Christ, which clearly occurs after the Tribulation so as to usher in the Millennial Reign. The separation of Christ’s return into two stages seems silly considering there is nothing in the Bible to support two separate events besides the implicit reading of Dispensationalists that the “church age” ends with the beginning of the Tribulation and so we will not suffer through it. But even in this belief, Israel was not taken out of the world when its age ended and the Church age began, but rather suffered much throughout the church age. Why is the Church then exempt from the sufferings of Israel? The idea of a “secret rapture”, or people disappearing with no explanation is even more ridiculous - based on the assumption that people would be smart enough to resist the strong delusion of II Thessalonians 2:11 if they knew it was a work of God Himself, and brought into the mainstream by the Left Behind series.

For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will. Unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved, but for the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short.
Matthew 24:21-22

This verse in no unclear language states that there will be elect during the Tribulation. The Elect are defined in Ephesians 1:4 as those that God has “chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him”. One is therefore still elect before his moment of salvation: though it would seem to us that a just-saved person’s eternal destination has changed before our eyes, at no point had that person been Hellbound, God having known that the moment of salvation was in the future, and not being willing that any should perish (II Peter 3:9) would not let that soul escape into Hell. Why then would God only remove some of the elect during the Rapture? The parable of the workers in the vineyard in Matthew 20:1-16 tells us that in terms of wages (the things that happen to us at the End), believers that are hired into the Kingdom of God at a late hour receive the same reward as those who are hired early in their life. Why then would God discriminate in this manner against the late-hour workers and the early-hour workers?

The Rapture is, I believe, a teaching that has sneaked into our mainstream churches in broad daylight without the scrutiny that ought to be given new teachings like this. Certainly there are many who refute the rapture even still, but it has entered the public consciousness through the Left Behind series and through the Church’s acceptance of the theology implicit therein to the point that even unbelievers see rapture theology as a well-established tenet of the Christian faith. The fact that it is far from a settled debate needs to re-enter the public consciousness for the sake of the Church, and for the sake of the people we reach.

Abortion is unique among the “social” political issues in that a strong argument can be made against it without appealing to any particular religion. But the traditional tactics of the Christian Right in fighting Abortion - often ignoring this advantage and long reeking of the liberation theology that Pope Benedict recently condemned - suddenly seem questionable when cast in the light of the long-term effect on the Church.

Psalm 139:13-14 is a great rallying cry among believers for unborn rights, but picketing the Supreme Court with Exodus 20:13 signs is counterproductive. Christians cannot bank on a majority in America forever, and when the balance tips, any legislation passed on the basis of religious appeal will be just as easily turned back. If we are to make a lasting impact on abortion, poverty, discrimination, or any other social justice movement through legislation, we must recognize that the Church’s job is to meet the needy on an individual level, not to influence government on their behalf. Thus if Christian individuals feel led to make a difference in this manner, we must encounter the world on its own territory.

But the Church may not stand idle in an abortion-friendly legal environment. While individuals within and outside of the Church acting on their own behalf work the government, the Church itself needs to meet women facing abortion on an individual level. Pregnancy support centers exist all across America, and I believe it is every congregation’s and every Christian’s moral responsibility to support them. The battle of the Church is after all not for the culture or the legal environment, but for the individual souls of the people at this crossroads.

For all the talk by and about the “Christian Right” as a political force in modern America, one should be inevitably drawn to question their very premise: Should Christians intentionally affect worldly governments, and what would be the ultimate goal of their action?

This article is the conclusion in specific terms of Saving The Church, which in a nutshell warned against the Church operating on the terms of the world and sinking to its level. But there is another danger to political involvement, and that is making culture operate on our terms. Thinking of political action in the light of long-term goals brings to light a mindset that sounds almost ridiculous when verbally stated, yet drives so much legislation: A land governed by Biblical principles will be more conducive to Great Commission activity. The “Protect the kids” line of reasoning is a much more popular and vocalized subset of it.

Yet even the idea of protecting the children proves counterproductive to Great Commission work. Protecting secular children from homosexuality in the culture, to use a hot-button example, or even instilling within them that it is for whatever reason wrong, does them no good without the Gospel. In fact, such a saturation of Christianity in the media and government may produce the exact opposite effect: an inoculation against the Gospel. If the idea (not necessarily the content) of Christ is drilled into the mass culture, as we see even now in incredibly large numbers, people close themselves off to hearing anything new - or, perhaps even more dangerous, falsely consider themselves Christians.

Protecting our own Christian children from cultural debauchery by legislation then is often simply an excuse for lazy parenting. Yet even if a child is diligently sheltered from worldly influences, whether by the government or by parents, that child must have some idea before leaving home of what’s out there and how to fight it in order to be an effective agent of change. Complete shelter is counterproductive for the very reason that when the influence is inevitably encountered, the child has no idea how to react or counter it.

Christians are defined by being different from the established cultural order. Our ultimate goal is to take people out of the culture - which is more a mindset than a group of people - not conform the culture to ourselves. Just as we cannot succumb to culture in our efforts, as was the warning in the prequel article, we cannot drag culture kicking and screaming to us. Though the culture itself ends up in dramatically different places in each of these situations, the end result is the same: the Church is no different from its surrounding culture. Jesus “did not come to call the righteous, but sinners”. If the culture becomes pure in our eyes, then what is there to convert from?

The Christian Right’s sociopolitical strategy is akin to treating the symptoms of a disease rather than the disease itself. Treating the symptoms gives the illusion of wellness, even if the patient consciously believes what the doctor says is true. Yet beneath the surface, the disease is still as deadly as ever. If they do succeed politically, the inoculation of America will be total and irreversible.