http://lafayettecc.org/news/gatherings/080-born-this-way/

Now, I promised you that I would write some articles here regarding some of the most controversial passages in the Bible regarding gender, and as a matter of fact, I have addressed a good number of them in my four sermons on the topic, but in the process, I have not had the time to write up the articles I wanted to write.

I’m thinking I should probably take my notes from those messages and post some of their content here, but I can’t promise anything right now.

However, there’s one thing I wanted to post before the series is completely out of my head. It’s an analogy on gender from the world of music.

• God wants male and female humans to live in harmony, not unison.
• God is calling men to set the melody and women to create the harmony.
• God is the bass notes with which the rest of the notes must agree.

Check out my video on the topic. Here’s the youtube clip. Skip to 8 minutes, and you’ll see me try to illustrate this with a piano!

The biggest problem for me was that for most of the week, I was wrestling with how to tackle the message. You see, there are a lot of controversial passages in the Bible when it comes to gender issues, and I always want to teach the Bible in a compelling, motivational way, and I am always cautious to teach in such a way that the contentious emotions can be defused. So I struggled with the message.

I actually had two different angles I could have gone with the message. One angle was to tackle the emotions by sharing personal stories in light of Genesis 1-3 and illustrating the beauty of our gender differences. The other angle was to survey the major passages in the Bible to get a comprehensive overview of its teaching.

The first option would have been shorter and easier, the second option felt more necessary. After talking with my wife, I agreed to go the second route. However, that meant I picked the more elaborate route. As it so happened, I completely ran out of time on Sunday and decided that I would post a few articles here to address what I couldn’t cover on Sunday.

I will separate them all into different posts based on the Bible passages, so stay tuned!

• to have 1-4 without 5 is pointless mercy
• to have 5 without 1-4 is Islamic legalism
• to have them all together is the beautiful harmony of grace

This past Sunday, I ended our service by taking some live questions from the congregation, but I wasn’t able to address all the questions live. Therefore I’m tackling some of them through this blog.

Does this mean that you cannot be a Christian unless you go to church?

The simple answer is that you can be a Christian without going to church if you define “Christian” to mean “I have been saved.” (Salvation does not depend on going to church or anything else you do. It is a gift from God. See Ephesians 2:8-10). You can also be a Christian without going to church if you define “church” as “an event where I show up, sit, soak, and leave 60 minutes later.”

However, if you define Christian to mean “follower of Jesus” and if you understand “church” to mean “the universal family of God, specifically expressed in local fellowships” then you can’t be a Christian and intentionally avoid the church. Reading the rest of Ephesians will make it clear that God did not save us to be isolated individuals destined for heaven. To the contrary, Jesus died for us to cleanse us of sin and thereby bring us into God’s family! Reading 1 John will remind you that you can’t love God and hate his family.

Even more strongly, John speaks of people who were once part of his church and then decided to leave the church:

They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us. — 1 John 2:19

To state it strongly, every true follower of Jesus will pursue frequent fellowship with other believers that involves locality, leadership, mutual submission, expression of gifts, discipleship, evangelism, ministry, and worship. Any fellowship expressing all of that is rightly called a church.

This past Sunday, I ended our service by taking some live questions from the congregation, but I wasn’t able to address all the questions live. Therefore I’m tackling some of them through this blog.

If the church is the community of believers who are to be continually gathering and working to build the kingdom, why do we meet on Sunday mornings the way we do? How does this fit and/or conflict with the picture of the church in Acts?

One of the claims I made on Sunday was that modern day people who say things like “I don’t want to go to church, I want to be the church” as an excuse to not be a regular part of a local church are fooling themselves. Of course, I agree that no one should merely “go to church” because in the Bible, “church” isn’t something you go to. “Church” in the New Testament refers to the people not an event or a location. Therefore, no individual can “be the church” because “the church” by definition (based on the word Jesus used: ekklesia) is an association of people. If anyone is “being” the church, they are being the church with other people.

Anyway, in discussing that point, I reminded everyone that if they don’t want to go to church on Sunday, they don’t have to. They could do what the first century Christians did and meet every day in public places and in people’s homes. I was speaking a bit facetiously because I knew that the expression of Christianity found in the book of Acts would be rather difficult to reproduce in the hustle and bustle of modern American society.

Nevertheless, this question (quoted above) is profoundly applicable to us today. Basically, the point is that if first century Christianity was so “organic” and ingrained in every part of life, why do we reduce modern Christianity to Sunday worship?

I have to answer this question by dealing with it in two different ways.

Christianity is not Sunday Worship

I could harp on this one all day long, but I’ll simply say that I totally AGREE with the sentiment of the question. Christianity is so much more than Sunday Worship. Christianity is so much more than creating a service with music and professional teachers and kids programs and brochures and greeters and refreshments, etc., etc. Christianity is so much more than attending those services.

Christianity has always been about people reconciled to God, reconciled to others, meeting together for corporate worship, for mutual growth, for pooling resources to do good, and for proclaiming the good news of Jesus.

That can happen on Sunday morning, Tuesday night, Wednesday afternoon, or even daily at lunch. The chosen interval of time between gatherings is irrelevant, but the gatherings are still necessary. In fact, the gatherings are commanded in Scriptures like Hebrews 10.

Therefore, we should never reduce Christianity to church attendance, even though cultural questions like “Do you go to church?” almost presuppose that very reduction. It would be much more threatening, but more accurate, to ask, “Are you living like Jesus?” or “Does your life reflect the gospel?”

Sunday Worship and/or “Church Attendance” is Purposeful

Even though Christianity cannot be reduced to church attendance, there are very good reasons why they are so closely linked. In fact, I can think of four reasons why Church Service Attendance should be considered essential to the Christian life.

1. Church Services are a historical union of Sabbath Observance and Resurrection Celebration

Remember that the earliest Christians were Jews. Jesus was a Jew. As Jews, it was standard practice for them to go to the synagogue (Jewish religious gathering) each Sabbath. God had commanded that the Jewish people preserve the holiness of the seventh day of the week, and they did so by gathering together to worship God with songs/prayers and with teaching from the Torah (the Hebrew Bible). Those who lived in Jerusalem would have likely spent their Sabbath in the courts of the temple and would have seen sacrifices or even offered sacrifices.

However, when Jesus was raised from the dead, the earliest Christians began to celebrate on a new day of the week as well. Jesus rose from the dead on Sunday, the first day of the week, and that began a tradition among Christians of celebrating every Sunday. They continued to honor the Sabbath in principle by setting aside one day out of seven, but many chose Sunday to be that day in honor of the Resurrection.

Therefore, Sunday worship is a way of unifying the Old and New Testaments. It is one day out of seven, following the principle of the Sabbath, and it is on the first day to commemorate the greatest miracle of all time.

But that’s not all that history teaches us.

2. Sunday Worship gained prominence as faith became re-integrated.

One thing that is essential to remember about the book of Acts is that the earliest Christians did much of what they did with the belief that Jesus was coming back VERY SOON. I mean, they thought he’d be back in a few days or even in a week or so. That’s the major reason the church in Jerusalem grew so big so fast. There were all these people who visited Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost, heard the gospel, and chose to not return to normal life. So what do you do when a church of 120 is suddenly infused with 3000 newcomers, many of whom are not locals? There was great hospitality, there was a strong “house to house” culture. People sold property to buy food for all these newcomers.

No one needed to go back home to work, no one needed to keep property, no one needed to worry about going broke because Jesus was coming back possibly this very day! The long term result of this behavior is that the church in Jerusalem eventually did go broke and Paul twice had to run a fundraising campaign to meet the needs of that church.

You see, the first church was an “apocalyptic” community that expected the end of the world to be at any moment. They didn’t work. They met every day, all the time.

However, after years and years, Jesus still hadn’t come back, and the needs of everyday living came back to the forefront of people’s minds. The church, then re-integrated their faith into normal life. They went to work, they worked six days out of the week, they worshiped on Sunday.

Therefore, Sunday worship serves the purpose of giving people a way of keeping faith a part of everyday normal life.

3. Church Services allow certain gifts to be expressed that can’t otherwise.

In the Old Testament, God commanded that there be only one Temple. Before that, there was only one Tabernacle. Having only one place where worship happened meant that the very best of the best craftsmanship could be displayed there. Gold could be abundant in that place. Ornamentation could be more elaborate. Since God gives greater talents in rarer amounts, some talents can only be expressed in large gatherings. Some teaching gifts, music gifts, and leadership gifts are better expressed in larger gatherings. Of course, some gifts are better expressed in small gatherings, but that doesn’t diminish the need for the large gatherings too.

4. Finally, Church Services provide a modern day expression of the “temple courts”

We are told in the early chapters of Acts that the first Christians met from house to house and also in the temple courts. That’s significant because the temple courts served a key role in their society:

• The temple courts were places where Gentiles were also welcome to honor and worship God.
• The temple courts were public places with clear religious significance so that all were welcome, but their presence indicated they were open to spiritual truth.
• The temple courts were large enough to handle large gatherings and to allow the proclamation of the message of Jesus to reach believers and unbelievers alike.

Simply put, the temple courts were the place where Jews, Gentiles, believers and unbelievers together could hear the message of Jesus, worship God, and experience the presence of God.

Home-based groups can’t do all that.

So, back to the question…

After all that, let’s return to the original question.

Question: Considering the behavior of the earliest Christians, why do we do Sunday Worship services at all?

Answer: (1) The earliest Christians began by living an unrealistic communal life based on end-of-the-world beliefs, but as they began to realize the importance of living faithfully in the midst of their everyday world, they established the practice of uniting Sabbath principles with Resurrection celebration. Our Sunday Worship follows that historical tradition for the same historical reasons. (2) Sunday Worship allows people to experience certain spiritual gifts in ways that can’t be experienced through casual “organic” gatherings in smaller settings. (3) Sunday Worship offers the modern church the ability to have a predictable presence in the midst of the culture, welcoming believer and unbeliever alike to hear the message of Jesus and experience the presence of God.

At the end of our service last Sunday, I took some live questions from the congregation. An interesting pattern revealed itself. Here are all the questions that came in:

• How do you mix all knowing, all powerful, and free will? Do we mess up his plan? Or does he choose not to know what we are doing so as not to compromise our free will?
• Can you expand the reality of God’s power & righteousness as it applies to being in or “outside” of God’s will?
• If the Bible doesn’t discuss a particular issue, is the answer always “It’s God’s Will”?
• If God knows the future, why did He create us if He knew we would fall?

Each question came from a different person, but nearly every question addressed the issue of how God’s will relates to human free will.

The relationship between God’s will and human free will is nearly as complicated as understanding how God is by nature one and three at the same time. However, it’s far less essential to our understanding of God than is the notion of the Trinity, so there has never been consensus among Christians regarding how the two relate. There are many different ways Christian scholars have understood the relationship.

• Some scholars downplay the idea of human free will. Many passages in the Bible support this. Galatians 5:17, Romans 6 & 7, John 8:34. The logic is that Adam and Eve are the only people who have ever had “freedom” and that only in the Garden of Eden before they ate the Forbidden Fruit. Ever since that moment, human beings have been captured in sin, enslaved to their selfish passions and desires (Titus 3:3). Then, when God breaks into a person’s heart, reveals the truth of Salvation to them, and woos them to respond to him, he grants them the gift of his Spirit to both empower their conversion and to gradually sanctify them through the rest of their lives. Then, their new life is in slavery of sorts to the Spirit who lives in them.
• Some scholars downplay the idea that God always gets what he wants. They say that God has a vague idea of what he wants, but that he has chosen to be ignorant about certain things. The claim is that God is “open.” He could know the future. He could determine the future. However, he chooses not to. He chooses to leave some things open to chance and human freedom. Under this way of thinking, they conclude that God is often surprised by what humans do, and that he enjoys the surprises. There is scant biblical support for this notion, but it plays well with those passages of the Bible where God appears to “change his mind” such as when Abraham pleads for Sodom, when the angel prevents Abraham from killing his son Isaac, or when Moses pleads for the nation of Israel.
• Some scholars attempt to pick the middle road and have chosen to divide God’s will into two, understanding the two different types of will separately from each other. The one kind of will, they call his decretive will, meaning the will of God by which he decrees what must happen. It was God’s decretive will that the universe would be created, that the Son would give his life, that wickedness will be destroyed in the Lake of Fire, etc. The second kind of will is called his permissive will, and specifically refers to the realm in which God has stated his preferences but has created room for the agency of others. He “permits” some things to happen for his own reasons.

The first option upholds the teaching of the Bible, but is personally unsettling to people who feel a sense of freedom. It is also unsettling to think that God is 100% responsible for both the salvation of the redeemed and the damnation of the lost.

The second option upholds the feelings of the human heart, but fails to adequately address the firm teaching of the Bible.

The third option feels better on the surface, but if God willfully permits certain things to take place, knowing they are going to take place, isn’t that the same as willing that they take place?

A final option is that described by R. C. Sproul in his book “Essential Truths of the Christian Faith” and posted online here. Summarizing:

• God’s will may be understood in three categories. His decretive will refers to God’s eternal intentions. His intentions cannot be thwarted and his plans cannot fail. What he wants to come to pass will come to pass. However, this aspect of God’s will is hidden from all but himself. Both his methods and his ends are a mystery to us. Secondly, God has a preceptive will describing the precepts he communicates to his people. Thirdly, God has a will of disposition which refers to his personal desires for his people and his creation. By combining the precepts of God and his revealed will of disposition, we can gain a glimpse into his overall decretive will and our place within it, but we will never fully know that secret will of God.

practically speaking…

With all of that out of the way, let me simplify matters by saying that God has revealed to us his “big picture” will. He has told us that he wants people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. He has told us that he wants all people to follow his Son, love each other, and steward the resources of this planet. He has told us that we are to serve the world and bring the message of Jesus to more and more people.

However, God has not revealed to us his “present details” of how he intends to accomplish his “big picture.” We are concerned about the details, but he does not give them to us. In fact, it’s in the darkness of not knowing those details where we are forced to exercise our freedom in positive ways. By understanding the Father’s precepts and disposition, we can make free choices to walk in his “Will” even if we don’t see the big picture.

Likewise, we can reject his precepts and his disposition, but that doesn’t mean we have somehow broken his ultimate plan or that God has to come up with a contingency solution in the case that we don’t cooperate. In fact, Jesus’ crucifixion was not a contingency plan after Adam and Eve failed. It was always the plan. Revelation 13:8 tells us that Jesus was “slain from the creation of the world” meaning that even before creation, he was “the Lamb that was slain.” His death was determined before the world was created.

Finally, take any human being living in sin. God’s precepts clearly define how that person should live now. God’s disposition clearly shows that God wants that person to repent and return to Him immediately. However, God’s decree might, for reasons unknown to us, include the salvation of that man 30 years from now. God’s decree might include the salvation of that man as he breathes his last. Or, again for reasons unknown to us, God’s decree might include the eternal destruction of that man in Hell.

If R. C. Sproul is right, and if what I’ve just said is right, then it is perfectly in conformity with what Paul taught in Romans 9:21-23:

Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory—Romans 9:21-23

Other translations soften the language:

When a potter makes jars out of clay, doesn’t he have a right to use the same lump of clay to make one jar for decoration and another to throw garbage into? God has every right to exercise his judgment and his power, but he also has the right to be very patient with those who are the objects of his judgment and are fit only for destruction. He also has the right to pour out the riches of his glory upon those he prepared to be the objects of his mercy—Romans 9:21-23 NLT

Nevertheless, it seems that Paul is teaching the God has the right to create “objects of his wrath” “prepared for destruction.”

back to the questions…

So if we return to the questions above:

How do you mix all knowing, all powerful, and free will? Do we mess up his plan? Or does he choose not to know what we are doing so as not to compromise our free will?

Scholars disagree on how to mix all-knowing, all-powerful, and free will. My personal conviction is that human beings often do things that are outside of God’s desires for us, but that since he anticipated what we would do, his plan already accounts for those behaviors. Therefore, we never mess up his plan even if we are responsible for violating his commands.

As a result, we are often outside of God’s preceptive will or outside his will of disposition, but we are never fully outside his decretive will.

If the Bible doesn’t discuss a particular issue, is the answer always “It’s God’s Will”?

This question might go in two directions, and I wasn’t sure on Sunday the intent of the questioner, so I’ll answer both pieces.

On the one hand, the question is asking, if the Bible is silent on an issue, does that mean it’s okay to do that behavior? Some have used this argument to support homosexual marriage. Since the Bible never talks about the kind of homosexuality we have in our society today (meaning loving, monogamous, homosexuality), then we should allow it. I’m not going to address that particular issue in this paragraph, but I will say that if the Bible is silent on an issue, there are probably other principles in the Bible that touch on the issue. Don’t claim something is okay too quickly.

On the other hand, this question could be asking, if the Bible doesn’t tell us why some things happen, can we just say “Well, God wanted it that way, I guess?” For example, since the Bible doesn’t tell us why natural disasters happen, can we just say that God wanted the earthquake in Haiti to happen? The simple answer is to just say, “Yes!” That is, if something happens, we can conclude that God specifically decided to allow it to happen. Therefore, it’s in his decretive will even if it is something that he would have a negative disposition toward. We know that God takes no delight in the suffering of people, but he may at times “will” that suffering happen as for example when he willed that the Son would suffer a literally excruciating death.

All these answers are not fair!

This text came into my phone while I was answering the final question on Sunday, and it’s worth addressing now.

Yes, as a matter of fact, God isn’t fair. “Fairness” is a human concept that is derived from our flawed understanding of “love” and “equality.” We think that fairness is a virtue, but what we really mean is that we think everyone should have the same opportunities. However, we don’t really believe that every human being should have exactly the same skills, same land, same personality type, same health, same climate, same income, etc. Fairness as a concept only works within a small society. You can express fairness within a Kindergarten classroom populated by kids who have roughly equivalent abilities. However, you can’t express fairness on the level of a professional sports club or in public office. We fool ourselves into saying that running for office should be a “fair” process, but to make sure it’s fair, we’d have to give every single student in our society the same opportunities leading up to their 35th year when they are equally eligible to run for President.

Could God create a society that is completely fair? Theoretically, yes. But he didn’t.

What he did was create a society where love can be expressed. The strong look after the weak. It’s not fair that some are strong and some are weak, but it leaves room for the expression of love.

What he did was create human beings who have equal worth though very different circumstances so that he could get great glory in some lives and even greater glory in the lives of others. Was it fair that Jesus healed a strange centurion’s servant at a distance but let his friend Lazarus linger and die without even visiting him? No. That wasn’t fair at all. However, in the story of Lazarus, Jesus gets great glory by raising him from the dead after four days in a tomb and many people put their faith in him.

last thoughts on human tragedy

Finally, I said something on Sunday that I’m sure rubbed some people the wrong way, but it’s something I’m convinced of. God has commanded humans to treasure human life. We are created in the image of God and we should treat our neighbors with that same kind of dignity. However, human life persists beyond physical death, and even though physical death was not part of God’s original design for humans it is nonetheless part of his decreed will. He is the one who banished Adam and Eve from the Garden making it impossible for them to return to eat from the Tree of Life. He is the one who decreed that they and their descendants would die.

And he is the one who sent his Son to die.

In other words, God isn’t afraid of death. In fact, the preservation of human physical life is not God’s highest priority even if it needs to be an incredibly high priority for us. Therefore, from God’s perspective, the loss of one hundred thousand earthly lives is not a greater tragedy than the loss of ten. The great tragedy is for even one to enter eternity without repenting of sin and receiving the forgiveness of God.

For humans, however, the death of 100,000 lives is terribly tragic because that represents 100,000 people we will never be able to share the gospel with. Their eternal condition is in God’s hands, but then again, it always was.

I would love to hear your comments on this.

On Sunday, we addressed the third statement from the Lafayette Community Church Statement of Faith, but before we can look at it, we need to consider the relationship between human language and the reality of God.

The Limits of Our Language

What thoughts come to mind when you think of God? What images come to you? Is he some old man sitting on a throne? Do you imagine him in the ways of Greek mythology, like Zeus holding a lightning bolt and standing on a mountain? Do you imagine him as a highly exalted human being?

The problem is that none of those images are valid. None of those images work. None of those images are allowed. They are all idols. In the burning bush, God used no mental images to describe himself. The fire was a portal for his voice, but his self description was simply “I AM.” In the march from Egypt to Israel, God confirmed his presence before the people as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. In the days of wandering, God confirmed his presence by the golden box called the Ark filled with the ten commandments. And near the top of the list at number two was the command against having any idols, any objects of worship that were visible and tangible.

Our mental images are just as idolatrous because they put representations of God in our mind that are not actually God as he is. The most important thing to know about God is that he cannot be contained, he cannot be imagined, he cannot be imaged by humans. Our concepts are too small, our brains are too childish, our language is too limited, our knowledge is too elementary.

Even as we talk about God, we must keep in mind that God is bigger than the words we use. When we say God is love, we mean that he has revealed himself to us with the word “love,” but that his love is more loving than our love.

By way of disclaimer, then, I just want to say that God is the standard for the attributes we describe. It is not the other way around. We can’t use our words, define our words, put our own concepts into our words, and then apply those labels to God. We can’t say, “Well, to me, love means… and therefore, since God is love, he should act like…” You can’t come to know God by learning more about the attribute. You can’t study fathers to learn about your Heavenly Father. You can’t study lovers to learn of God’s love. You can’t study morals to learn about God’s goodness

Instead, we need to let God and his reality fill out the definition for the words we use. If God is love, we must let God’s character and actions define for us what love really is.

Now, we can turn to the statement.

The Father

LCC’s Statement of Faith reads thus:

God the Father is an infinite personal spirit, perfect in holiness, wisdom, power, and love. He concerns Himself mercifully in the affairs of each person, He hears and answers prayer, and He saves from sin and death all who come to Him through Jesus Christ (Deuteronomy 32:4-6, Psalm 139, Matthew 6:6-8, John 3:16-17, John 4:24, Romans 6:23, 1 Corinthians 8:6).

Implications

What I find to be most fascinating about all of this is that the statement starts with a God who is an infinite personal spirit, perfect in holiness, and it ends with a God who pays attention to the prayers of individual people.

In talking about this with our congregation, I walked through the statement point by point, showing supporting verses and providing brief explanation where helpful. Then, at the end I addressed some live questions from the congregation. Those questions were fascinating because they all seemed to revolve around the one big issue of God’s will versus human freedom.

Answering those questions adequately requires us to fully grasp the meaning of the first sentence of our statement above. Here are a couple bullet points to flesh out the statement:

• As the only infinite personal spirit, God is boundless with regard to time and space, without physical properties, but able to mentally relate to other intelligent beings.
• Perfect holiness means that God is completely distinct—other than—everything in Creation. He is above and beyond his creatures. His essence, attributes, and behaviors cannot be fully comprehended by any created being.
• Perfect wisdom means that God always fully understands all possible courses of action. He perfectly understands the past. He can perfectly predict the future. Therefore, he can perfectly select the best course of action in any circumstance.
• Perfect power means that God is always able to accomplish what he intends to do. It doesn’t mean that he is able to create logically impossible realities like a circle with four right angles. It does mean that he always gets what he wants. His power extends so great that he is even able to create a world where the independent actions of free beings bring about the end result he desires.
• Perfect love means that God is first of all in a perfect love relationship with the other members of the Trinity. His very nature allows for and demands a loving mutuality of deference, equality, respect, and affirmation. Love is intrinsic to the nature of God. Therefore, because the Trinity is at work cooperatively to bring about God’s desired plans, the Father deeply loves his plans and the execution of those plans by the Son. Finally, the Father loves the individuals of the world because they are his prime agents working out his plan on planet Earth.

In the posts to follow, we will be addressing questions regarding the will of God, but to conclude this post, I want to affirm the most personally compelling reality of the nature of God.

God, the one who is unbounded by time and space, who knows the best thing to do at all times, who is fully capable to bring about his will regardless of circumstances, made you to be who you are at this moment in history. God, who always knows what’s best and always gets his way, made you.

Take pride that God has chosen you to be part of his plan. Take warning that God expects you to play by his rules. Take comfort that God has done everything possible to empower you to do just that.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. — John 3:16-17

On Sunday, I was asked about the apocrypha, but I later found out that the answer I gave was partially wrong.

What I said was that back in the days before Jesus, there were a number of books that were circulated among Jewish people. However, back then, no one considered them to be on the same level as Scripture. In fact, after the prophet Malachi wrote his prophecy it was widely understood that there were no more prophets, and that was 400 years before Jesus. Nevertheless, history still happened during those 400 years and Jewish teachers still speculated on spiritual realities. That’s where the extra books came from. Nevertheless, as I said, the Jews of the time did not consider them to be authoritative or on the same level as the other Scriptures.

When the Hebrews Scriptures were translated into Greek, the translators decided to also translate some of the other documents into Greek as well. Eventually, the collected Greek translations came to be called the Septuagint after the supposed 70 scholars employed to do the work of translation.

By the time of Jesus, the majority of the Septuagint had been translated, and both Jesus and the Apostles used the Septuagint version as the version they quoted from. Nevertheless, no New Testament writer quotes from or refers to any of the books in the “apocrypha.” (see this article) Further, when the Rabbis finally and fully agreed on which books were the authoritative Hebrew Scriptures, they included only the books we now have in our Old Testament. Therefore, the reason these other books are not in Protestant Bibles today is that the Jews of Jesus day, though they used the Septuagint translation for their knowledge of Scripture, seemed to know a distinction between the books that later became the “Hebrew Scriptures” and those that later became the “Apocrypha.”

That’s basically what I said on Sunday, but I also made a claim that I have since learned was incorrect. I said that the Catholics followed the tradition of the Septuagint and included three sections in their Bibles with the Apocrypha in between the Old and New Testaments. However, that was wrong. Having been raised Catholic, my wife Jen has a Catholic Bible and showed me after the service that in their Bible, the “apocryphal” books are interspersed throughout the Old Testament. Furthermore, she told me that Catholics are actually quite offended by the term “apocrypha.”

So I was wrong about the Catholic Bibles. After a little more research tonight, I found that it was Martin Luther who first put the Apocrypha into a separate section between the Old and New Testaments. Therefore, I’ll just say that the best way of understanding the difference between Catholic Bibles and Protestant Bibles is that Protestants follow the tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures for the Old Testament while the Catholics follow the tradition of the Septuagint.

I personally follow the tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures endorsed by Jesus and the Apostles.

For additional information, these Wikipedia articles are quite interesting:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_Jewish_Bible_canon
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_apocrypha
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterocanonical_books

How do we know that all of the original manuscripts have already been found?

I didn’t get to answer this one on Sunday, but the answer is simple. None of the original manuscripts have been found. Sadly, the oldest shred of any manuscript we have is a fragment from the gospel of John that dates to about 100-120 AD. It’s theoretically possible that John himself wrote that fragment since he died around 90 AD, but it’s highly unlikely. What we have are so many thousands of copies, versions, translations, and commentaries that we can reconstruct the originals with a high degree of certainty.

However, this question actually hides a different issue. It really touches on the question of whether we have all the books that should be in the Bible. Were other books written that were “lost”? In truth, there are a number of lost books. The apostle Paul claims to have written about four letters to the church in Corinth, but we only have two. There is a letter to the church in Laodicea, but we don’t have any letters addressed to them from Paul. Matthew and Luke appear to share a common literary source that scholars call Q, but we don’t have any copies of that document.

So if we know there are other documents, how can we be sure the Bible we have today is “complete”? If we found one of these lost letters to the Corinthians, would we add it into the Bible?

The short answer to all those questions is that none of the books lost to history were important enough for people to save them. No one back then considered them Scripture or else they would have been treated like the other documents considered to be Scripture. Therefore, if the Apostles didn’t think Q was worth keeping once they had Matthew and Luke, neither should we. If the Apostles didn’t think 3 Corinthians was worth keeping, neither should we.

We should have great confidence that what we have in our Bibles today is exactly what the first century church under Apostolic authority deemed to be everything Scriptural.

Is one translation of the Bible more accurate? Why the need for so many English translations?

I addressed this one on Sunday, and the basic answer is that because inerrancy depends on understanding the original intent of the original manuscripts, we employ as much scholarship and study as it takes to get back to both. Some scholarship helps us reconstruct the original manuscripts with greater accuracy. Some scholarship helps us translate the original intent with greater accuracy. Every year, archaeology helps us understand the ancient world better and uncovers new manuscript evidence. Every year, the English language grows and develops. Further, since the English speaking world currently dominates scholarship and finance, English is the first language to see the fruits of the new scholarship. It doesn’t hurt that English speaking people are quite willing to spend vast sums of money on new Bibles, and there are many agendas motivating people to produce new versions of the Bible.

The bottom line answer to this question is that more recent versions of the Bible are based on better manuscripts and therefore have the potential to be more accurate. However, one must be aware of the agenda of the translating group. Read the preface of each version and find out why that group made that translation.

On Sunday, I recommended the newest version of the NIV, the ESV, the second edition of the NASB, and the NLT as great Bibles committed to conveying the original intent of the original manuscripts.

Can we generalize New Testament verses on the authority of Scripture (eg. 2 Tim 3:15-17) to the NT since in the original context they were referring only to the Old Testament?

I didn’t get to answer this one on Sunday, but it’s a good question and deserves a little time. Basically, the question raises the issue that the New Testament authors use the word Scripture to refer to their Scripture which would have been the Jewish Scriptures or the Old Testament. Therefore, one could argue, the New Testament passages on Scriptural authority apply only to the Old Testament. As a result, how do we get our idea that the New Testament is also authoritative?

This is a very rational line of thought, but it misses on one small point. When the New Testament writers used the word “Scripture” they were not talking only about the Old Testament. In fact, there’s a fascinating passage in 2 Peter 3:15-16:

Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. — 2 Peter 3:15-16

What’s fascinating in this passage is that Peter considered Paul’s writings to be Scripture. The word “other” near the end of v. 16 demonstrates that. Another fascinating thing about this passage is that Paul was still alive when it was written. So follow the logic: Peter knows about Paul’s writings. Peter calls them Scripture. Paul most likely is aware of Peter’s writings. He surely would have been told what Peter thought about his letters. Paul doesn’t deny it, ever. The most likely conclusion is that Paul and Peter both knew that what was being written in their day was to be considered Scripture.

Therefore, the answer is “Yes.” New Testament passages on Scripture refer also to the other New Testament writings.

Even though our world is filled with arguments about tolerance, the Bible is completely intolerant about a few key doctrines. We would say the Bible is dogmatic about them, and though we never berate or belittle those who disagree with us, we can certainly hold that over certain issues, there are clearly defined lines between right and wrong.

This series is all about exploring those lines.

If you want to know more about my personal beliefs on these matters, you might want to check out the Tough Questions section of my blog or My Beliefs.

Throughout this series, I will be using my personal blog to post the gist of my Sunday messages and to also address the questions that were raised on Sunday that I didn’t have time to answer.

To view all the posts in this category including sermon summaries and the questions, click the DOGMA tag here or at the top of this post.

Introduction

When I was younger, my friends and I got interested in the study of apologetics specifically as it relates to defending the Christian faith from the claims of competing religious systems. In particular, we were fascinated by the study of Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

I remember learning rather early that Mormon belief systems contained this aphorism:

“As man now is, God once was; as God is now man may be.” — Lorenzo Snow

(For some recent research on Mormon beliefs regarding this couplet, read this article.)

The gist of the Mormon claim is that the God who created the earth and claims authority over all humanity was once a man himself on a far distant planet and that if earthbound humans are pious enough they may likewise attain Godhood just as He did.

Having been raised in a Baptist home, my initial shock at that statement was soon quelled by the realization that not all Mormons actually believed it. In fact, I regularly met Mormons who disagreed at least in part with that claim. My initial shock at the apparent heresy was supplanted by the new shock that “average” Mormons didn’t know this was a central belief of their own faith.

I was young then, but eventually, I grew up, matured, and realized that the Mormons are not unique in what can be called “practical ignorance.” As a matter of fact, I have met Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Baptists, Presbyterians, and others who don’t actually know the core teachings of their faith.

I regularly ask people what Jesus said the Greatest Commandment was, and I regularly get blank stares until the other person eventually says, “Love other people?” (That’s almost right, but not quite.) I regularly meet Christians who see the Bible as a good guidebook for life but don’t really believe everything in it.

The bottom line is that Christians who don’t know core Christian doctrine are just as foolish as Mormons who don’t know Lorenzo Snow’s couplet or Jehovah’s Witnesses who don’t know about the many, many failed prophecies of their leaders.

As I said in church on Sunday:

You can’t call yourself a Christian unless you are committed to at least learning the core doctrines of Christianity.

So where do we start? Well, since Christian doctrine comes ultimately from church tradition or biblical teaching, let’s pick the Bible and start with that.

The Bible

LCC’s Statement of Faith reads:

The Bible is the Word of God, fully inspired and without error in the original manuscripts, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and it has supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct. (Romans 15:4, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, 2 Peter 1:19-21).

Getting in the Pool

Now, for the logically astute among you, you might recognize that this statement is a logically circular claim. Our church believes that the Bible is the Word of God, and we are basing that claim on the teaching of the Bible. Why do we believe the Bible is the Word of God? Because the Bible tells us so. Why do we trust what it tells us? Because it’s the Word of God! It’s like a swimming pool where some kids have walked in circles long enough to create a whirlpool-like current. The longer you walk in the circle, the stronger the current becomes.

I admit, believing in the authority of the Bible is based largely on a circular argument, and I don’t expect anyone to believe in the Bible because of what the Bible says for itself. However, there are some very good reasons for “getting into the pool” of this circular argument. Here are a few reasons from outside the Bible to believe the Bible:

1. The text of the Bible has been reliably transmitted through the ages. Unlike a game of telephone played by Junior highers whispering obscure phrases to each other, the parts of the Bible that were transmitted orally were done in the context of a community of people all hearing the same things over and over again, believing those things were important enough to get perfectly right. Then, whenever the written text was copied, those same people who held the same values came up with creative ways to determine the complete accuracy of the copies. Finally, modern archaeology has consistently revealed that there is no ancient document whose textual history is as consistent as that of the Old and New Testaments. Simply put, the text of the Bible is today nearly identical to what it was when it was originally put to paper, papyrus, or parchment.

2. The teaching of the Bible has been consistently verified. To date, there has not been one testable claim in the Bible that has been verified to be historically false while many historical claims in the Bible have been verified by modern archaeology. What’s amazing about this is that some of the historical claims were actually written down before the events they described actually happened. In other words, the Bible makes historically verifiable prophetic claims that ended up happening just as they had been prophesied. Finally, one more thing on this point, Jesus and his Apostles taught and confirmed that they believed the entire Bible, including what they taught and what they wrote to be a unified whole. In other words, if we can trust the Bible on its testable claims, we should find it at least practically reliable regarding its untestable claims.

3. The third reason to “enter the pool” is really an entire argument.

   • The Bible is a historically reliable account of the life and teaching of Jesus.
   • Jesus rose from the dead, validating his teaching (1 Corinthians 15:3-8).
   • Jesus taught that the Old Testament was God’s flawless, eternal Word (Matthew 5:18).
   • Jesus authorized his Apostles to teach in his name (Matthew 28:18-20).
   • The New Testament authors claim Apostolic authority (2 Peter 3:15-16).

   Basically, Jesus believed the Old Testament was God’s Word. The New Testament is written with the authority of Jesus, and Jesus rose from the dead.

I believe these three reasons, though somewhat circumstantial, are enough to enter the pool and start to walk around the circle.

Explaining the Doctrine

The Bible is the Word of God

This phrase teaches that the words on the page are actually God’s voice speaking to us. It is just as if your loved one wrote you a letter or sent you an email. The words on your screen are actually the voice of your loved one. The words of this post are actually my voice to you. The words in your Bible are actually God’s voice to you. The key truth here is expressed in 2 Timothy 3:16-17:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. — 2 Timothy 3:16-17

The point is that Scripture is the breath of God. If you want to hear God speak, put your eyes to the words.

… fully inspired … of the Holy Spirit

The statement mentions inspiration twice. Specifically, it’s important to know that when we talk about inspiration, we are not speaking of the kind of inspiration an artist feels when seeing a sunset or a tree or a bowl of fruit. We are talking about the root meaning of the word: To breathe into. Inspiration means that God through his Spirit, breathed the very words into the mind of the author so that what came through the pen is exactly what God wanted.

Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. — 2 Peter 1:20-21

… without error in the original manuscripts

There are really two issues here. One is the issue of inerrancy and the second is the issue of what limits should be placed on the doctrine of inerrancy. Simply put, if God is all-knowing, good, and faultless like the Bible claims, then He can’t lie, make a mistake or deceive. Therefore, if the words of the Bible are the words of God, they must be without error.

As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the LORD is flawless… — 2 Samuel 22:31a

However, since human language is flawed, there’s no way to fully express some of the realities of the spiritual world. For example, the Bible frequently uses idioms and metaphors and anthropomorphic terms to describe spiritual realities:

[God said to Moses,] “…Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen….” — Exodus 33:23

Moses quoted God as saying “my hand… my back… my face” even though the Bible regularly affirms that God is a Spirit with no body. This would seem to be an error unless we remember that Moses met God in a burning bush and never would have thought that God had a real physical body. Therefore, when Moses wrote “my hand” he didn’t really intend to communicate that God has hands. What’s important is to know the original intent of the original author in the original manuscripts, and so we put limitations on the doctrine of inerrancy.

The Bible is without error even though a modern English translation might have some textual errors, spelling errors, grammar errors, or something else because the claim for the Bible’s inerrancy extends only to what the original author intended to say when the original author originally wrote it down.

… supreme authority

This is the last piece I will discuss here, and it is the most controversial. Going back to the passage in 2 Timothy, we really should have quoted from v. 15 also. Here is the passage with v. 15:

… from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. — 2 Timothy 3:15-17

Paul tells Timothy two things: (1) Scripture is the source of salvation wisdom and (2) Scripture is the source of everything necessary to equip someone for good works. In other words, whether its about salvation or about daily living, the Bible is all that anyone needs.

Not every tradition accepts this, however. The Catholics believe that the Bible is simply one of two sources of God’s revelation to humanity. For them, the tradition of the church, including the ex cathedra declarations of the Pope are also God’s Word and are therefore to be treated with the same measure of authority. Mormons believe there are extra documents that must be also added to the Bible to give people what they really need for salvation and for having a right relationship with God. Some conservative Protestant groups will say that behavioral traditions are just as important as the Bible (what songs are allowed, what foods can be eaten, etc), while some liberal Protestant groups will say that the Bible is merely a portal to the Word of God which must be subjectively experienced by individuals in their unique cultural context.

In none of those traditions is the Bible considered to have supreme authority as it stands. It must either be augmented (by other documents, church tradition) or re-interpreted in order to have that authority.

Nevertheless, the Bible claims for itself total sufficiency, plus, there’s one last thing to consider.

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. — Hebrews 1:1-3

The claim of this verse is that Jesus is God’s final revelation to humanity. Therefore, since the OT points toward him, we keep it. Additionally, since the NT is written by those who carried his direct authority, we keep it. However, when the last Apostle died (by most accounts, John), the book was closed.

Therefore, we must recognize that the Bible is fully sufficient to communicate to humanity everything he wants to communicate, and it was completed when the last Apostle wrote his last word. As the Word of God, the Bible, and only the Bible, above every other document, above every other authority, has supreme authority over our lives and we will be held accountable to its teaching.

http://grooveshark.com/playlist/2011+07+31+Evening/57665407

1. To reduce redundancy.
2. To increase clarity.
3. To strengthen speech.

To illustrate #1, for example, the most commonly misused preposition that I’ve heard is “at.” It shows up in the sentence, “Let me tell you where I am at.” The preposition in this case is adding a layer of redundancy that isn’t necessary. Simply removing it, we are left with, “Let me tell you where I am.” This second version is stronger, because the emphasis is on the verb. People inherently know this, I think, because the usual formulation of the sentence actually goes like this: “Let me tell you where I’m at.” People will use the contracted form of “I am” but feel like something is missing, and so they will add the lingering “at” to finish the sentence.

To illustrate #2, I’ll use the short sentence, “He wants to go in.” In the 4th edition of the Prentice-Hall Reference Handbook (on Grammar and Usage), the author of the grammar text (who am I to argue with her) may be correct in saying the sentence can’t be rearranged, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good sentence. In most cases, “in” begs the question, “In what?” Therefore, the sentence would have greater clarity as “He wants to go into the house,” or even “He wants to go inside.” In the first case, “into” is a proper preposition and the better one to use with the verb “go,” and in the second case, “inside” is serving as an adverb. Either sentence gives greater clarity to the one cited in the text.

Thirdly, let’s consider the phrasing. “What kind of legacy will you leave behind?” Now, “behind” according to the dictionary, is a perfectly valid adverb and therefore is fine to stand on it’s own in that sentence. Additionally, some consider “leave behind” to be a “phrasal verb” and perfectly valid to stand without an object. However, the sentence could be strengthened by dropping the word “behind” altogether. “What kind of legacy will you leave?” Since the word “legacy” and the word “leave” both already imply “behind,” the sentence is stronger without the extra word.

Therefore, I submit to the statements of grammarians who are paid to study and shape the English language, and though I am an old fogey when it comes to grammatical precision and still believe that “they” is not an appropriate singular generic pronoun, I know I am in the minority. Nevertheless, if our speech can be improved in some way by following a grammatical rule, then let us be sticklers.

Onward and upward my friends! Let us hold each other to the highest standards.

The two researchers are Dan Gilbert and Barry Schwartz. Linked here are the videos where they explain the results of their research:

• Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice
• Dan Gilbert, Why are We Happy?

Recently, I have been teaching a series of messages on what it means to have “it” as a believer. I mean, when you consider that Christians have a direct line of access to the God of the Universe, doesn’t it make sense that we should be expressing evidence of something special about us? Shouldn’t Christians be the most amazing, interesting, weird, and cool people on the planet?

In light of this, Pastor Reggie gave me a book this morning by Craig Groeschel entitled “It.” In the book, he talks about what he believes the “it” factor is for a church and an individual:

• Passion for God’s presence
• Deep craving to reach the lost
• Sincere integrity
• Spirit-filled faith
• Down-to-earth humility
• Brokenness

I agree with his points entirely except to recognize one extra nuance. An individual with all these things also needs to be in deeply encouraging relationships. Check out my messages over at Lafayette Community Church and let me know what you think.

This question was posed to me on facebook recently, so I thought I’d share my answer here as well:

Thanks Jeff. Where would you place, say the apostle Paul on the political spectrum (or could you?):

That’s an interesting question. However, I don’t think it is answerable. Our modern day understanding of Politics is irrelevant in a society that predates Adam Smith, the Magna Carta, the US Constitution and the like. There was no such thing as conservative or liberal. There was no such thing as democracy like we know. Perhaps the ancient Greeks in Athens knew something of democracy like we do, but in Paul’s day, Rome was the be all and end all of all things governmental.

Paul certainly would not have known anything along the lines of “economics” either.

However, Paul clearly taught a few things of relevance to the modern day debate:

• Everyone must submit to governing authority.
• Everyone must have a heart for the poor.

• Everyone must eliminate greed.

• Within the church, the truly poor are to be distinguished from the lazy.

• Within the church, the families should take care of their own before burdening the church.

If (and this is a big if) we can extrapolate from Paul’s teaching on the church to an understanding of society as a whole, then we can conclude that Paul advocates for personal responsibility and for a hierarchy of support structures. That is, the state should take care of their own who are not served by the church, the church should take care of their own who are not served by their families, the families should take care of their own who are not able to work. No one should take care of those who are unwilling to work.

Paul would be conservative with regard to the biblically relevant parts of our constitution, he would speak up for personal responsibility and for civil, moral and social justice. But he would likely let people languish if they were simply being lazy.

Therefore, I don’t think there is a place on that map for Paul.

In the process, I have been learning things about the Theory of Evolution that have really interested me. I’ll get to a couple of those things in a moment, but first, let me tell you my perspective on the whole evolution and creation issue.

My Baseline Perspective on Biblical Creation

Two things inform my understanding of the teaching of the Bible regarding the Creation event.

1. Genesis never claims to give us the mechanism of God’s creative process, but there is insight in the grammatical structure of God’s creative commands. They are mostly structured in the passive voice. God commands that something should be done, but doesn’t directly declare the mechanism by which they should be done except in a few cases. In one case, God says, “Let the land produce vegetation” (Ge 1:11). In one case, he says, “Let the land produce living creatures” (Ge 1:24). Finally, in the climax of the scene, God says, “Let us make man” (Ge 1:26). Therefore, it is biblically supported that God gives the power to produce life to the earth itself, but he himself presides over the creation of the first human beings.
2. The days of creation may be literal days or metaphorical days or something in between. For example, they could be put into a framework where the author of the creation story is writing a first-hand account of what he saw during 6 consecutive days of visionary revelation. It’s possible that Moses, on Mount Sinai was given as it were a timelapse video vision of the history of the earth from the perspective of an observer hovering just above the surface of the earth. Nevertheless, the mathematical calculations of the age of the earth and the age of the universe are based on our understanding of the timeline of current-day natural processes (i.e. Carbon 14 decay). It is entirely plausible to me that the creator of the universe could have made everything as it is in six days and on the seventh day “rested” by slowing down the natural processes of the universe to the speed at which we observe them today. Was the universe actually created 13.7 billion years ago? Possibly. I accept that number as a mathematical reality expressing the consistency of scientific discovery even though I also accept that God could have started his creative work 6000 years ago. I am not threatened by the math indicating the earth is 5 billion years old.

So, about evolution

With these two things in mind, I have generally been able to reconcile my belief 100% with the theories of modern evolutionary science. I am not threatened by the claims of Darwinists that natural selection is capable of producing all the biodiversity that we see, and I am not scared by the theory that natural selection is capable of producing the appearance of design and even rudimentary social morality.

However, I have always maintained that human beings were a categorically different thing than all other animals. The account of Genesis 1, the account of Genesis 2, and Jesus’ later confirmation of the historicity of Adam and Eve have led me to believe that humans were specially created by God to be a completely new thing on the planet.

How do I deal with all the “hominid” claims in science like Neanderthal, Homo Erectus, and others? Well, I have always maintained that those animals were highly skilled primates, but categorically different from Adam and Eve and the species we call Homo Sapiens. Humans were formed from the dust of the ground.

Recently, though, I have learned some things that have challenged my thinking regarding the potential link between homo sapiens and other hominid species. Here are a couple of the things I have learned:

• The laryngeal nerve in humans is exactly like that in other mammals and is an example of a confusing design element. The nerve goes from the spine to the larynx (voice box) by traveling all the way down to the heart, looping through the aorta and back up to the larynx. It seems to be an incredibly inefficient design, but a look at the evolutionary “tree of life” gives a clear demonstration of animals where that pathway makes sense (in fish for example). Therefore, humans maintain a characteristic of other animals that in our case (and in the case of all mammals) doesn’t make sense.
• During the development of a human baby in the womb, there is a yolk sack present in the first few weeks of gestation. That sack is empty in human development, but it is exactly the same in many respects as the yolk sack in a reptile’s egg. Finally, humans have the same yolk-producing genes in our DNA as reptiles and birds do, but in our case, they are non-functional.
• Also during fetal development, at roughly the six month mark, human babies develop a thick coat of hair, that later falls off before birth. (I wonder if that’s why Esau was born so hairy?) This development of hair exactly mirrors the development of hair in primates like chimpanzees.

These three things indicate that God did not design Adam and Eve from scratch but that he reused a huge amount of the DNA of existing animals.

That in and of itself is not totally disturbing to me, but it shows me how there is a clear sequential set of developmental steps that connect us to other species on earth.

Reconciling Evolution with Adam and Eve

So how can I reconcile the evidence of human evolution with the teaching that Adam and Eve were both specially created and also the first human beings?

Here’s my thinking on that:

• God created Adam by taking the best DNA available (hominid DNA) and shaping a being from the material of earth. He may have had a biological parent (and therefore a bellybutton); although, I tend to believe he did not.
• God breathed into Adam the breath of life (Ge 2:7). If he were the biological child of a hominid, this was the transformative moment that changed him from “hominid” to “human.” If he were a completely new biological entity, this was the moment that started his life as a human.
• Anthropology indicates that the first humans began in Africa, but the Bible prefers Mesopotamia as the origin of humanity. It is a conflict unless we recognize that (1) we don’t know where Eden actually was, and (2) Genesis 2:8 tells us that God placed Adam in the garden after he was formed. God did not make Adam in the Garden of Eden.
• After the fall, Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden and would likely have encountered other hominids. This could explain where Cain got his wife, and this could also explain why God chose to have such similar DNA between humans and other hominids. Finally, it could also explain the strange account in Genesis 6 when “the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them.”

Therefore, I find it still plausible that God could have made Adam and Eve from completely new biological material choosing to reuse a huge percentage of existing DNA code, but I am also open to the possibility that Adam at least was the biological child of a soulless hominid but became a “living soul” when God breathed on him the “breath of life.”

What do you think?