Here is a young woman who had faith: “She came behind Him (Jesus), and touched the hem of His garment.”

She came behind Him – so fearful was she. What if she had been rebuffed? Perhaps she was afraid to look Jesus in the eye. He could see right through her; and was there any hope of obtaining help?

“The hem of His garment.” She hardly dared to touch Him. In fact, she did not touch Him, but only His garment – and only the hem of it.

This, however, was sufficient. The woman received help. Jesus said to her: “Daughter, be of good comfort; your FAITH has made you whole.”

That is what Jesus is like. He honors even the timid, faltering faith. Even for an imperfect faith there is a perfect salvation.

And now He turns to you. He does not want you to live your life in a timid FAITH. Cast yourself into His loving arms with joyful gratitude.

Faith is not a mystical subjective thing inside of you, it is trusting in what God promises you.

Sincerely, Kjell Lee, New Jersey

As regards to positive cases for specifically Christianity, what do you make of the historical arguments, such as presented by Craig, Habermas, Licona, etc.? That the NT is written in the style of an historical biography, not as mythology. That all naturalistic explanations to account for the various phenomena (empty tomb, postmortem appearances to the disciples, disciples’ willingness to face death) all face insuperable problems (ex. if the disciples hallucinated Jesus, then as Jews they would have saw him ascend to God’s right hand, they would not have seen him as a physical presence that ate broiled fish, etc.)?

Well, I still find them pretty good. It certainly seems the gospel accounts are supposed to be historical. I haven’t really researched myself in depth these claims, my only contact coming from “The Case for Christ” Video. Now, I do worry a bit that the more I examine these things, the less sure they might become. For instance, you mention the disciples willingness to face death. How do we know they were marytred? It doesn’t say this in the Bible. Well, it comes from outside sources, but many have suggested these sources come quite late and are sometimes highly suspicious. And even on the same comment thread I am reading about this, Craig Bloomberg joins, the very guy who makes the marytedom assertion in “The Case for Christ”, and he himself admits that he no longer uses this argument because those sources are so suspicious!

This would probably be the general flavor of concern I would have for these arguments. Not that I couldn’t find a naturalistic explanation, but that these events probably didn’t take place at all. Indeed, we have to admit that even the gospel accounts often take a bit of creativity to make them align.

It didn’t help that I had the misfortune of picking up and flipping through “The Case for the Creator”, and watch it repeat the same old anti-evolutionist nonsense without any real sign the authors understand what the evidence for common descent is. This is something I do know a lot about. So it is not a good first step to give me credibility for Strobel as a researcher. (In his defense, I doubt he did any research. He seemed to actually research the Case for Christ as an atheist; though I’m sure it wasn’t actually in the manner as it is outlined today. But since that has been successful, his piers set out other titles which he obviously collaborates on but I doubt he drives with the real research intensity of the past……or so I hope, for if he is really trying he needs to start with a biology 101 textbook.)

That other religions such as Islam contain errors (such as Mohammed thinking **Mary** was part of the trinity). So that once you accept the existence of a god by cosmological, teleological and moral arguments, the Christian God is the only viable option.

I’m afraid you lost me on this one. Why wouldn’t those arguments be valid for a deist God? And sure, you and I agree Mary is not part of the Trinity, but that is not an outcome of cosmological arguments. It would be just as valid for the Jew to claim “Christians think Jesus is part of the Trinity”, ie, that any person is God, or that there is a trinity in the first place, claim that as an error, and therefor only the Jewish God is viable.

I think my problem with both of these types of reasoning, historical questions about the resurrection and cosmological arguments is that they are oh so subtle. I am claiming there is an active, all powerful, benevolent God working in the world this very day, but to prove it I have to put together a circumstantial case of 2000 year old evidence or gravitational constants we didn’t even measure for most of earth’s history. If God is obviously working int he world today then I should put together a case of God working in the world today. If God makes claim about the effectiveness of prayer then in 2008 prayer should be effective.

yes, that argument is perhaps best reserved for defense against the hidenness argument, not to establish a positive case. As regards to positive cases for specifically Christianity, what do you make of the historical arguments, such as presented by Craig, Habermas, Licona, etc.? That the NT is written in the style of an historical biography, not as mythology. That all naturalistic explanations to account for the various phenomena (empty tomb, postmortem appearances to the disciples, disciples’ willingness to face death) all face insuperable problems (ex. if the disciples hallucinated Jesus, then as Jews they would have saw him ascend to God’s right hand, they would not have seen him as a physical presence that ate broiled fish, etc.)?
That other religions such as Islam contain errors (such as Mohammed thinking **Mary** was part of the trinity). So that once you accept the existence of a god by cosmological, teleological and moral arguments, the Christian God is the only viable option.

Faith? God wants faith right here and it’s allot to ask for considering we have been damned and perverted into lucifer’s reflection in hell.

Just a reminder. When your doctor prescribes regimented doses of medication, one should follow the doctor’s instructions. Especially when one has been prescribed psychotropic drugs to counter hallucinations and schizophrenia. Thank you.

Heh. I wouldn’t sell them short – there are a lot up-and-coming reformed Baptists as well – James White, Al Mohler, and John Piper.

Ah yes, my old heroes. And lets not forgot Spurgeon.

Thanking for providing links to the podcasts.

Since we are free creatures, it would not follow that if there were a flaming cross in the sky (or if every atom had the words ‘made by YHVH’ engraved on it) that people who knew about him would love him (as you yourself said, ’simply hearing the gospel message is not sufficient for salvation’).

Perhaps you are correct, perhaps there would not be a single additional convert if we did see a supernatural flaming cross. But at least it would distinguish our claims of the supernatural from this statement:

There is an invisible, undetectable, hovering dragon in your garage. He is usually nice, but is angry with you because he abhors heterosexual sex. Send your wife and the fruit of the licentious relationship away or he will consume you.

Pretend with me for a moment I was convinced he was there, I might still spurn him and take my wife and children away and flee, indeed that is exactly what I would do. As it is though, I’ll go to bed resting just fine since there is absolutely no evidence that such a being even exists in my garage. At this point someone could approach me with “The case for the creator” and show me some gravitational constants and I might even assent that given my limited knowledge of particle physics that it makes a strong case for a supernatural force. But I STILL sleep easy because I would have no reason to believe said force was the deity as just described to me, hanging out in my garage and defining my marital relationship as immoral.

Here is a benefit to having a supernatural flaming cross in the sky. It would not be as we seem to have it now, namely a world which is indistinguishable from one where God is NOT active in the world, just as I live in a world that is indistinguishable from one where there is not an invisible dragon in my garage, though I have no true philosophical standing to rule out that possibility (or the consequences).

C.S. Lewis said in ‘Miracles’ that miracles were reserved for only a few crucial times in history – so we really shouldn’t expect to see any in our lifetimes, and the sunsets, gravitational constants, and the amazing complexity of nature (listed in the final few chapters of Job) should be enough (Rom 1:19-20).

I have heard this statement about miracles before and it has some merit I suppose. If your saying, “miracles are scarce in the Bible, so they should be scarce today as God’s MO” that is reasonable. What that doesn’t answer was presupposing an all powerful all present God, why is that God’s MO in the first place, namely why are they scarce in the Bible (and also today). Let me flesh out some of my current struggles with miracles.

1) Miracles WERE used in the Bible to demonstrate God’s presence. Elijah and the prophets of Baal is a specific instance. It is declared outright that Jesus did such and such so people would believe in Him. That doesn’t signify that they shouldn’t be scarce, but it does validate the desire to see supernatural acts to evidence a supernatural God, the Bible asserts that directly. And yet we are left with just written accounts, and as an apologetic to present to non-believers these written accounts are indistinguishable from a world where these accounts were just made up by men and written down, indeed…

2) There is some evidence to suggest that a good many of the miraculous as outlined in the OT didn’t happen. Creation, at least as described (I still take evolution as God’s means of “creation”). Noah’s flood. Tower of Babel. A heavy does of source criticisms, alongside pretty overwhelming archaeological evidence, suggests the exodus did not take place as described (or at all?). I let you explore those areas if you wish, I’m sure we have plenty of apologetics to show why all this modern scholarship is bunk. I’m just warning that if you approach the actual sources and go in with an open mind, there is a lot of merit to these fields of study and if they are so grossly off then we have A LOT of explaining to do, much more then I have ever seen on apologetic websites or podcasts.

And you know what, it doesn’t seem all that unreasonable to begin questioning whether these events took place, given that we witness exactly zero of them and have not for thousands of years. It seems a bit more natural to assume they are just made up, presumably indistinguishable from the myriad of other stories written in the past by superstitious people that didn’t understand the world. Don’t believe me, well then sit down a bit with the Ramayana and decide if those stories are the works of men or elephant gods. You’ll probably conclude something similar to me, and probably approach the null hypothesis being that the whole thing is preposterous, yet we don’t approach our own religious text with the same skepticism, indeed many apologetic sites are grounded on the simple oft repeated assertion that you should always be given the Bible the benefit of the doubt.

I don’t know how to use the html codes so I will post your comments with quotes.

For blockquotes, you can use the following tag: <blockquote>quoted text<blockquote>

Heh. I wouldn’t sell them short – there are a lot up-and-coming reformed Baptists as well – James White, Al Mohler, and John Piper.

When it comes to the hiddenness problem, I’ll admit Calvinists, though the position is valid, don’t deal with this in depth apologetically, only by invoking human depravity and God’s sovereignty in election.

But there are others (such as William Lane Craig) who have done a lot of apologetics on this, such as
this podcast on pluralism and this debate with Austin Dacey, whose main arguments were based on the hiddenness problem.
Basically the problem with the hiddenness argument is that the conclusions do not follow necessarily from the premises. Since we are free creatures, it would not follow that if there were a flaming cross in the sky (or if every atom had the words ‘made by YHVH’ engraved on it) that people who knew about him would love him (as you yourself said, ‘simply hearing the gospel message is not sufficient for salvation’). It would not even logically follow that *more* people would have faith. Craig argues that if there were more evidence, more people might come to resent God’s intrusive presence and actually cause *less* people to be saved. But his point is that we cannot speculate.

So even on the weaker Arminian view of depravity, it cannot be concluded that there would necessarily be more saved people than there are now if there were constant empirical evidence of God’s existence. A world in which everyone freely accepted Christ may not even be possible, or all such possible worlds may only contain extremely small numbers of people.

C.S. Lewis said in ‘Miracles’ that miracles were reserved for only a few crucial times in history – so we really shouldn’t expect to see any in our lifetimes, and the sunsets, gravitational constants, and the amazing complexity of nature (listed in the final few chapters of Job) should be enough (Rom 1:19-20).

Okey dokey, then. # 23 was really weird!

“Weird” is in the eye of the beholder. I’m sure ACGFNB’s post (#23) made total sense to them just as your post (#24) made total sense to you. There are many who would view your post as weird in the same way you viewed the other as weird. Weird how that works, isn’t it?

Paul

p.s. I had to intervene and post something diplomatic as quickly as possible before LeoPardus posted something like “pot, meet kettle”…..