Response to Chalmers Post

This is part of an ongoing discussion with my good friend Alex who has some views which vary from mine, we have always gotten along very well, and I apprecieate his friendship.  For the rest of the conversation please see:

http://www.achalms.blogspot.ca/2012/03/response-to-response-of-original-post.html?zx=5392f7fc3f566eff

You are right in that it does seem confusing when you look at John 8:7, combined with Matthew 5:18.  Before I provide my explanation, I want you to know that I am not one of these Christians who feels He has to have all the answers.  The truth of the matter is that I admit that I do not by any means have all the answers.  I don’t believe I ever will until I get to Heaven.   There are things that I struggle to understand.  There are things that I wonder why God chose not to make them more clear; but with that said, I understand that God is God, He chose to do things His way, and I will trust Him regardless of what questions I have because He has proved Himself faithful over and over in my life.  I think one of the most dangerous things to do is to decide that I will not believe something unless I can 100% completely understand it.  Now this does not mean that I should not ask the questions, and that I should believe just anything, all I am saying is that I have to understand that there are certain things that God has chosen for me not to understand, and I’m going to be okay with that because He is God and I know from His track record in my life He has my best interests at heart.

In regards to John 8:7, Jesus definitely was upholding the law of stoning as the penalty of adultery.  He said, “He that is without sin cast the first stone”.  He was not saying not to stone her.  The penalty from the Old Testament laws was that she was to be stoned and He acknowledged this by what He said.  I believe the lesson Jesus was teaching here was that we must not be so quick to judge, because while the penalties for different sins may be different, sin is still sin, and we are all guilty of it.  Now one might say that He was not upholding the law because He let her go unpunished.  He did that because He was God, and God has the power, and the right, to condemn or to show grace.  And His grace is one of the greatest gift He gives to those who choose to believe in Him.  In this case He displayed mercy and grace to the adulteress telling her to, “Go and sin no more”.  This too is a great message to all those who choose to follow Christ.  While He died to pay the penalty of our sins, He still tells us to repent from our mistakes and to go and stop sinning.

Now in regards to Matthew 5:18; Jesus does say that the law will remain; however, this does not mean that it is therefore okay to nowadays go out and stone someone who commits adultery.   We have to recognize that the contexts are very different between now and then.  With this said, the fact that we carry out punishments for breaking the law differently today, does not mean that the law has changed.  The law still states that adultery is wrong, and therefore the law has not changed, and therefore what Jesus said in Matthew 5:18 is accurate and in no way a contradiction.

Now I know that you said that you don’t buy into the “context” argument.  You say that Jesus teachings should still apply to us today if He was truly the Son of God.  They do!  Please try and find for me one teaching of Jesus that does not apply to us today.  If there is one, I would love to examine it, because I can’t think of any.   You say that His teachings should still apply today so that we do not fall into “iron-age morality”.  His moral teachings do still apply today.  As mentioned above, the societal punishments may now be carried out differently, but the moral principles are all the same.  And I agree with you, if Jesus was the Son of God, His teachings should still apply today, and I hope this helps reveal that they in fact do, further proving that He is in fact the Son of God.

You talk about how the Bible is exactly how we expect it to be because of the fact that it was passed down from generation to generation.  I mean, how else would it have been recorded?  I understand when people make the argument that it seems like the accounts may be unreliable, and therefore this “proves” that it is false.  But remember, we are talking over 2000 years ago.  It’s not like there were data banks to record information and keep it “safe and sound” until computers and other technological advances came along so that we could preserve them that much better.  And even if there were such data banks, the Jews and/or Romans would have simply destroyed all of the texts.  They killed Jesus because of what He preached, so they definitely would have destroyed any literature which proved that he was God, and that they were idiots for killing Him. 

You are also forgetting the fact that even though there are translations, incredible initiatives were taken to ensure that copies of these text were accurate and not deviating from the original writings in any way.  Research shows that it is crazy how much effort was put into this.  As well, it is my understanding (although I have not researched this personally I must admit) that we have a very significant amount of documentation of the Biblical text which has been recovered and restored.  While yes there have been many translations, we can always go back to the originals if we think things have gotten misconstrued.  I would prefer to have people go and examine the Bible in this way instead of just saying that we can speculate that it has been “tampered with”.    

And you mentioned about the fact that you are surprised that only one gospel contains accounts of the dead being resurrected.  While you make a good point that you would think that an individual would include that in their writing, but the fact that they didn’t cannot be held as proof that the Bible is unreliable.  What about the proof that shows that it is reliable.  What about the fact that there are different authors for each of the gospels, yet their writings are incredibly similar.  This is another counter argument to you saying that the “Bible is exactly what we would expect it to be”.  If that was true, then we would expect the various accounts to be incredibly varied.  It is the “broken telephone” principle.   If the Bible was a document created purely by humans, with no Divine inspiration, then we would expect to see the broken telephone principle all-throughout the texts.  Even today if you were to have two people write about an experience that they shared together – one where they were both in the same place at the same time and witnessed the exact same things.  If you had them write about their experiences, you would see that their perceptions of situations lead to varied accounts of the events.  We don’t see this in the Bible.  People try and find things of the sort and call them contradictions, but the fact is that the gospel accounts are overwhelmingly similar and that is because those accounts were inspired by God.   This is further proof that the Bible truly is the Word of God, and that because of these facts, God must exist, and if He exists and inspired the Bible, then what it says is true and needs to be taken very seriously. 

I’m a bit confused by your last point.  What do you mean by “knowing what we know” divinity is not a valid option?  You provided an option of what you think could have happened, but what exactly is it that we know which makes it so that we can’t accept Jesus’ divinity?