These are all questions that a modern-day Christian who believes in both the validity of the Bible and the trustworthiness of science must wrestle with. An indeed many have. There are whole websites, such as Answers in Genesis which are dedicated to this very question.

There are 2 main viewpoints in Christianity concerning the age of the universe:

1. The universe is and everything in it is about 10,000 years old
2. The universe is the scientifically accepted age, about 14 billion years old

There are some variations and details on each position, but when you boil down each argument, the essentials come to these two positions.

For Christians who believe in the former position, position #1, why the 10,000 year number?

Young Universe Creationism

The line of thinking was formalized by a biblical scholar name Ussher, who created the Ussher chronology. His line of reasoning was that since the Bible presents a chronology of from Adam, the first man, all the way to Jesus Christ, we should be able to estimate how long each generation lived (using biblical data and estimates i would assume), and make a fairly accurate guess as to how much time passed between the birth of Jesus Christ and the creation of the world.

When you add all those numbers up, and add 2000 years (it’s been about 2000 years since the birth of Christ), you can an earth that’s around 6000 years old. Different theologians, arguing on different chronologies came up with different numbers. Even the man himself, Sir Isaac Newton, tried to calculate the number using biblical chronologies.

Factoring in these differences, it is safe to say that scholars who to calculate the age of the univese using biblical chronology will come up with a number that is at least less than 10,000 years old.

Current Cosmology Theory

So how what does current cosmological theory say about the age of the universe?

The “age” of the universe according to scientists would be the amount of time between present day and the Big Bang. The current estimate for the age of the universe is about 14 billion years. There are a number of ways that comsologists can arrive at that answer. One is based off of a cosmological model based off of a property called Hubble’s constant. The second method is looking at the oldest stars astronomers can find; after all, the universe must be at least as old as matter that is in it.

Briefly, let’s talk about what Hubble’s constant is: Hubble’s constant is essentially the expansion rate of the entire universe.

Hubble was the scientist credited with making the discovery that the whole universe is in a state of expansion. In general, everywhere we look in the sky, stellar objects are moving away from us, and moving away from each other.

It can be imagined this way: picture for a moment, a loaf of raisin bread. The raisins represent galaxies. When you stick that bread in the oven, and the yeast begins to rise, that loaf of bread begins to expand. It doesn’t just grow in one direction – the whole loaf expands in width, height and depth. Pick any raisin in that expanding loaf; from it’s point of view, all the raisins in the loaf seem to be moving away from it. In a very similar fashion, when we look into the sky, most objects are moving away from us.

The age of the universe can be calculated by measuring Hubble’s constant today, and extrapolating it backwards in time. When scientists do this and extrapolate backwards to the point where the universe wasn’t expanding (that is, the Big Bang), they number that comes out of the equation is about 14 billions years.

Why so old?

Tens of thousands of years is a number hard for the human mind to grasp. But millions? Billions? Where do scientists get such a large number?

The answer boils down to two main points really: the universe is massive, and things take a really long time.

Let’s expound on that for a minute.

• The Milky Way, the galaxy that we live in, is estimated to be about 100,000 ligh- years across. What that means is, it takes light 100,000 years to travel from one side of the galaxy to the other.
• Andromeda, the nearest spiral galaxy to our own, is 2.5 million light-years away from us. That means light emitted from the Andromeda galaxy would take 2.5 million years just to reach our eyes.
• The sun is 4 to 5 billion years old. Scientists determine the age of the sun by looking at the oldest meteorites we can find (which would have formed in the early solar system, which would have been when the sun was born) and dating them with radiometric dating.This is close agreement with current models of stellar evolution.
• As large as our Milky Way is, a galaxy is not the largest structure in the universe. Our galaxy is gravitationally bound to a handful of other nearby galaxies. This group is so brilliantly named, The Local Group. The farthest galaxy from us in our Local Group is 7.9 million light-years away.
• There are sedimentary rock formations on Mars that are over 4 kilometers thick. Such layers would require tens to hundreds of millions of years of running water to form. In addition there must have been millions of years for all the water to have disappeared, since Mars is now extremely dry. (thanks to godandscience.org for the link)
• In the constellation Ursa Major (aka, the Big Dipper) there is a prominent spiral galaxy named M81. It has near perfect spiral arms, and an active galaactic nucleas (harboring a supermassive black hole). It is 12 million light years away. OK, enough with the piddly millions of years, let’s get big.
• “3C 272″ was the name of the first quasar ever discovered. A quasar is a small and distant but very powerful and energetic galaxy that has an active galactic nucleus. A galactic nucleas powered by a central supermassive black hole. 3C 272 is the brighest quasar in the sky. It is 2 billion light years away. A typical quasar is 4.5 billion light years away.
• The age of the Milky Way is calculated to be about 13.7 billion years old. It is almost as old as the universe itself.

What does this mean?

What’s the significance of all of these large amounts of time and distance?

The significance is that the universe is vast, covering colossal distances and it will take light (which is the fastest thing in the universe) a very long time to traverse that distance. Even baring our dating techniques, just the amount of time it would take for light to travel these amazing distances gives us time estimates in the millions and billions of years. Let me state that again – the amount of time it takes for light to reach us from these distant objects can be in the billions of years.

Given such astounding data, how to do young universe creationists respond?

The Freeze Frame

Perhaps the most common argument among young-universers is the “In Transit” model. It’s what I like to call the “Freeze Frame”. Image it this way.

Say you were to take a snapshot of your living room. A 3D freeze frame, like if you were in the Matrix and suddenly the motion froze, and you were able to rotate and look about in all directions and see things frozen in time. Now expand that freeze frame to the entire universe – planets, stars, and galaxies are all frozen, BAM!, right as you see them.

The Freeze Frame theory basically says that God, conceived of the entire universe as a shot in the freeze frame. There was nothing and then He spoke everything into being and essentially said, “Go!”, unfreezing the freeze frame.

What does this outlook on creation give you? What is its advantage?

It’s advantage is that it can give you a young universe. God could have only created everything about 10,000 years ago. He would have just created the initial beginning, the “freeze frame”, in such a way that everything looked like it was very old, but actually wasn’t. The light that seemed to be emitted from distant stars would have been created “in-transit”. In the initial “freeze frame” God created included not just the object themselves (starts, planets, galaxies, etc), but all the light, gravity,and  particles that exist between them.

A young-universe creationist, when looking into the sky is claiming that we are not seeing actual star light from distant objects, but an image that God created in transit.

Problems with the Freeze Frame

Perhaps one of the biggest problems with the freeze frame is this: how do we know that anything we see in the sky really existed? How do we know if these stars are really there? We’re seeing an image, light created in transit by God, of events that never actually happened.

Christian apologist Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason explains it like this:

If all we’re seeing is an image that God created in transit, then the only way we’re going to see the actual thing that exists is if we wait around another billion years for the light of the actual star to reach us. Who of us believes the Lord will tarry that long? Not a billion years. Which means we’ll never see it, will we? We’ll never see what God actually created, not the thing itself.

Doesn’t that throw into question the existence of anything in outer space at all? Because, in fact, since we’ll never see the thing itself– and what we see is not the thing, but an image God created in transit– well then, why would God ever need to create the thing in the first place? The image would be fully adequate for God’s purpose. The only thing God would have to create is the light image, because we’d never see the thing itself anyway. But doesn’t the Scripture seem to indicate that what we see are the very things that God created?

Another Christian aplogist site, godandscience.org, explains it similarly:

The alternative young earth explanation is that God created the light in transit. However, we know that quasars existed only during the beginning of the universe, since none are seen closer to us than billions of light years. If God created light in transit, He would have created the light in transit from a quasar that does not now exist. Likewise, we have observed supernova explosions in galaxies millions of light years away. If God created light in transit from these objects, He would have made the light from an object that does not now exist, since it appeared to have blown up millions of years before the universe was actually created. How can the universe declare the glory and righteousness of God if it declares a lie?

As we can see, taking this stance presents us with a very strange dilemma. The real heavenly bodies that do exist will never be seen. That is, the light from the original objects will take billions of years to reach us. While the stellar objects that we think we see now don’t actually exist.

Biblical Problems and Truth

Scripure clearly refers to objects in the sky as real objects and not just images.

“Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”
Genesis 15:5

God tells Abraham to count the stars – not their light images.

It is I who made the earth and created mankind upon it. My own hands stretched out the heavens; I marshaled their starry hosts.
Isaiah 45:12

God marshaled the starry hosts – not their light images.

Taking the “Freeze Frame” view undermines all observational sciences. How do we know what is real and what isn’t? What do we think exists but really doesn’t? What else is an illusion created by God?

When looking deeper, perhaps the biggest problem with this stance is that is undermines our trust in the truth of the Bible. If the Bible undeniably states that we see stars in the sky (see Deut. 4:19, Neh. 4:21, Job 22:12, and Psalm 8:3), but in actuality we don’t, then the Bible does not give us an accurate description of reality. That is, truth. In other words, the Bible has deceived us – what the Bible describes is not what is actually there.

Conclusion

We can see how holding the view of a young universe is untenable. We can see that clearly the universe appears to be very old, and we can measure that in a number of ways. The only way to have universe that is young, is to explain away that apparent age as a Godly sleight-of-hand.

We would then have a universe where not much outside our solar system (where light has had time to reach us within 10,000 years or so) is known to actually exist. Yet when we do so, we run into biblical descriptions of stars and the outside universe that indicate the existence of those actual objects and events – not just the light images in transit we would be receiving from God.

Resources

1. Starlight and the Age of the Universe, http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5639
2. Scientific Evidence for the Age of the Universe, http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/ageofuniverse.html
3. Age of the Universe, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe

This is a hot topic in our modern culture. Especially with the rise of the theory of Evolution and the proponents of “Intelligent Design”. Time Magazine epitomized the debate in its issue where the headline was “God vs. Science”.

Though I am by no means a scientist, a respected religious orator, or a philosopher, I am a critical thinker. Here’s my attempt to throw in my two cents into the debate.

Answer: Both yes and no.

The question “Does science make belief in God obsolete” itself assumes a number of things that we needn’t necessarily accept as true. In fact, I argue that these presumptions are in fact false, and we cannot come to a satisfactory conclusion unless we address these assumptions in our argument. The assumptions are:

1. Science and God are mutually exclusive. That is belief in science, is a non-belief in God
2. Belief in God is a subjective opinion rather than a statement about objective reality. That is, belief in God is more similar to “I think ice cream is good” rather than to “Matter is composed of atoms”.

Let us look first and assumption number 2. It is a notion that is very popular in today’s modern culture, yet it seems few have stopped to reason out the logical conclusions from holding such a belief. The belief can be summarized in the statement that “what you believe is true for you”. Or the equivalent “each person’s beliefs are personal and if they work out for them, then it is true for them.” In an era of multiculturalism and tolerance, religious diversity and religious tolerance are a value that our society holds high.  Who am I to infringe on the beliefs of others? The view that every belief is equivalent and equally true is the same as assumption #2. In order for every person’s belief to be true – and by true I mean it accurately describes reality – then each person’s beliefs must in fact NOT describe reality, but instead describe their own internal opinions and wishful thinkings.

For example, let us bring a Christian into the room. Let us say that this person believes in an omnipotent all-powerful God named Jesus. Fine, that is good for him. Now let us have a Muslim walk into the room. The Christian believes that Jesus is his God, whereas the Muslim believes Jesus is not God. OK…contradictory beliefs but let’s keep going. Say, seeing the small gathering a Buddhist walks into the room. She believes in reincarnation, where as the Christian and the Muslim do not. Not to worry, we have 3 contradictions, but that needn’t stop us. Realizing there’s a party going on a New Ager walks into the room. The a New-Ager believes that we each contain the divine, and all things are god. The other 3 people in the room respectfully disagree. Last, but not least, the Atheist saunters into the room.  According to his beliefs they is no god at all! We start to see the silliness holding this view. In order for the beliefs of each of these 5 people to all be correct – and by correct I mean they accurately describe reality – God would have to be Jesus, not be Jesus, allow reincarnation, not allow reincarnation, instill each person with divine god-ness, and also not do so, and then pop completely out of existence, and into existence…at the same moment!

Obviously this is untenable – indeed it is illogical. The only each person’s set of personal beliefs could be true would be to conclude that there really is no God at all. Instead, each person holds to their own personal set of beliefs and values. And though that set of beliefs and values might help that believer to be a better person, their set of beliefs aren’t true in any real objective sense. If that person were to die, their beliefs and values would die with them, and the universe would be the same after that person lived as it was before.

In this view, religion is merely wishful thinking. A crutch that a person uses to help them get through life. If this is the case – and many people believe this to be the case – then most definitely, science has rendered religion obsolete! Humans have been depending on religion through the eons merely as a coping mechanism. However, in modern times we have new, much better and objective mojo. Science. Who needs wishful thinking and nice sounding truisms when you can depend on the time-tempered, hard, and un-emotional laws of science?
The answer is we don’t!

Consider the other alternative however. This view of religion we have put forward is the “i think ice cream is good” version of belief. It is subjective, it is opinion, and it can vary from person to person but doesn’t necessarily describe the substance of reality in any objective sense. The alternative is that there is a God who is objective, who exists outside the confines of the human mind and exists and has attributes independent of whatever someone might think of it. If something is true of this God it is true no matter what.
If this sort of God exists, then nothing can make it obsolete. Neither science or any other thing because this God exists of its own accord – not because of human invention. Asking the question “Does science make belief in God obsolete” is akin to asking the question “Does advancements in human physiology make belief in the brain obsolete?” The question is nonsense – the brain as an organ either exists or it doesn’t, irrespective of whatever new knowledge of organs we have come by.

Another important note is that if this sort of God exists, then not all of the 5 people in the room can be right. Perhaps none or some of them can be right, but not all of them.

Now that we have come to a sensible definition of what we “belief in God” could mean, does belief in God mean that you can’t trust in science? And if you believe in science does that mean that you can’t believe in God?
I think that separating God and science is creating a false dichotomy. The two are not mutually exclusive. Science in today’s modern world has been elevated to the point of being and end-all of everything. If something is not a scientific statement, then it doesn’t hold as much worth as one that is. However, we immediately see that this cannot be the case. I think William D. Philips, who is a Nobel Laureate in physics, is a fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute of the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, said it best:

“…a scientist can believe in God because such belief is not a scientific matter. Scientific statements must be “falsifiable.” That is, there must be some outcome that at least in principle could show that the statement is false. I might say, “Einstein’s theory of relativity correctly describes the behavior of visible objects in our solar system.” So far, extremely careful measurements have failed to prove that statement false, but they could (and some people have invested careers in trying to see if they will). By contrast, religious statements are not necessarily falsifiable. I might say, “God loves us and wants us to love one another.” I cannot think of anything that could prove that statement false. Some might argue that if I were more explicit about what I mean by God and the other concepts in my statement, it would become falsifiable. But such an argument misses the point. It is an attempt to turn a religious statement into a scientific one. There is no requirement that every statement be a scientific statement. Nor are non-scientific statements worthless or irrational simply because they are not scientific. “She sings beautifully.” “He is a good man.” “I love you.” These are all non-scientific statements that can be of great value. Science is not the only useful way of looking at life.”

Though belief in God and religion has been called “the opiate of the masses”, it would be foolish to consider Dr. Philips as uninformed. He is a very smart man. Probably smarter than most of us. Yet he has absolutely no problem trusting in the rigors of science and the power of God at the same time. Why? Because they occupy separate realms. Both are equally true. God is not merely regulated to the non-scientific realm of course (and by non-scientific I mean the physical workd), and God could and I believe does intervene in measurable ways in the physical world. However, the point is, science is science, and God is God, and as they are in different realms, science can no more make God obsolete than any physical thing or idea can.

One of the biggest protests I have heard against religion is that it is a system of non-knowledge.

That if you believe in God, then you use God to explain things that you can’t understand. I do not think this is the case at all! Perhaps for the weak-minded that might be the case, but any critical thinker will seek out the solution no matter where it leads. Indeed the one who believes in God has a more holistic view of reality. Where as science cannot give answers to all questions (do we have a soul? why is there evil? where do we go when we die?), religion can answer these questions. As opposed to being a knowledge limiter, I view believing in God as a knowledge expander.

But before we discuss the so-called missing books of the Bible, first let us clarify some definitions and concepts of the Bible itself. Our discussion will deal only with the Old Testament books because the books of the Apocrypha were written after the last books of the Old Testament and before the time of Christ. They would be considered then an extension of the Old Testament; so the OT will be our main focus.

The first thing I should point out is that the Lost Books of the Bible are not lost at all. In fact, they’ve been around for roughly 2000 years. We still have the texts and the manuscripts to study. The books just haven’t been included as scripture among some churches. Protestants in general don’t include these books as their ‘official’ scriptures. When ideas, concepts, or scripture are part of a church’s doctrine, that doctrine is referred to as its canon. So when we talk about the Apocrypha’s canonicity, we are talking about whether these books are scripture, i.e. the inspired Word of God.

So now that we know that these books are not lost to us, let’s start out with describing these books. The Apocrypha is a collection of ancient Hebrew manuscripts, which were written between the time of the Old Testament books and the books of the New Testament (200BC to 100AD respectively). They are sometimes referred to as the Dueterocanonical books. The word Apocrypha is a Greek word comes from the Greek word apokryphos, which means ‘hidden’.

When we refer to the Apocrypha in this discussion, we are referring to our definition. It’s important to note that this definition isn’t universally accepted. When Catholic theologians speak of it they are referring to something completely different. Which would make sense, because the Apocrypha is included in their canon, or in their Bible.

There are other ancient texts and manuscripts that exist that have been under consideration for being scripture. These books are called the Pseudepigraphia. They are not accepted as scripture by either the Protestant Church or the Catholic Church. However, because the word Apocrypha is generally associated with rejected books that don’t make it into the Bible, Catholics refer to the Pseudepigraphia as the Apocrypha. So if you were to ask a Protestant and a Catholic what the Apocrypha was, you would get two different answers. We will not deal with the Pseudepigraphia because it is universally rejected as scripture. So when we refer to the Apocrypha, we do in fact refer to the books written between the Old Testament and the New, which is the Protestant definition.

So now we have a definition of what the Apocrypha is. We still need to explain some basic definitions before we get started so we know what we are talking about. First off, the Christian Old Testament contains 39 books and is the same as the Hebrew or Jewish Old Testament. The original Bible, written in Hebrew, is referred to as the Masoretic texts. The Hebrew Old Testament is referred to as the Tanach (or Tanakh). The Hebrew Old Testament contains 24 books. Why the discrepancy? The difference is due to the doubling up of books such as 1^st and 2^nd Samuel, Ezra and Nehemiah, and the 12 Minor Prophets being rendered as one long book. The content of the Christian and Hebrew Old Testaments are the same; they only differ in the number of books.

Now that we have some basic definitions, let’s focus on the main question. The controversy is centered on whether the books of the Apocrypha are the inspired Word of God or not. That is the big question: Is the Apocrypha scripture? We will delve into this question for the rest of this discussion.

The argument for the canonicity (or being able to be Scripture) of the Apocrypha is centered on two arguments. One, if the Apocrypha fulfills what is required of texts to be Scripture, and two, arguments focused on historical facts. The first argument focuses on whether books of the Apocrypha have what it takes to be the inspired Word of God. If something written is the Inspired Word of God it should be able to pass certain types of tests. The second argument says that if the Apocrypha was considered scripture at the time of Christ then it must be considered scripture now. The second argument outweighs any conclusions we might find about the first. Because no matter what we say about the Apocrypha, if is was considered scripture, then nothing we say or do will change that. But we will still look at the first argument because we would expect it to agree with what we concluded about the second argument. Let’s dive into the first one.

If something written was condoned as scripture, we would expect certain things about it. One thing we would expect would be that scriptures written after a text would reference it. If an Jesus, an apostle or a prophet were to refer to a text as a source of doctrine, we’d probably take a good look as to considering that text as scripture. Let’s apply this lens of logic to the Apocrypha. We find that in no place – not one – were Jesus or the Apostles ever found quoting from it. And there are 15 of them. Jesus and the Apostles quote hundreds of times from all parts of the Old Testament. Jesus and the New Testament writers never quoted from the Apocrypha as Scripture – even though they were aware of these writings and alluded to them at times (e.g., Heb.11:35 may allude to 2 Maccabees 7, 12, though this may be a reference to the canonical book of Kings; see I Kings 17:22). But just to re-emphasize, there are hundreds of quotations in the New Testament citing the Old Testament canon. The authority with which they are cited shows that the New

Testament writers believed them to be part of the “Law and Prophets” – which in the time of the day meant whole Old Testament. And it was believed to be the inspired and infallible Word of God (Matt. 5:17-18; cf. John 10:35). Jesus quoted from throughout the Old Testament, referred to as the “Law and Prophets,” and which were “all the Scriptures” (Luke 24:27).

Something to notice would be that the Old Testament is referred to in two divisions – the Law and the Prophets. Some believe this division was based on whether the author was a prophet by office or by gift. Others believe the separation was for topical use at Jewish festivals, or that books were arranged chronologically in descending order of size. Whatever the reason, it is clear that the original (cf. 7:12) and continual way to refer to the entire Old Testament up to the time of Christ was the twofold division of the “The Law and The Prophets.” They were also referred to as the “apostles and prophets” (Eph. 3:5) in the New Testament. The Law referred to something called the Pentateuch, which are the 1^st five books of the Bible. The rest are referred to as “The Prophets”. In other words, the Bible was either written by prophets, or had prophetic word.

In determining the canonicity of the Apocrypha, we need to see if either it has prophetic writings or if prophets wrote it. But, how do we determine if who is a prophet and who isn’t?

There were a number of ways for people of the Bible to confirm whether someone was a prophet of God. Some were confirmed supernaturally (Exodus 3-1; Acts 2:22; 2Cor. 12:12; Heb. 2:3-1). Sometimes this came as immediate confirmation of their authority. Other times confirmation came by the accuracy of their prophecy. Indeed, false prophets were weeded out
if their predictions did not come true (Deut. 18:20-22). Alleged revelations that contradicted previously revealed truths were rejected also (Deut. 13:1-3).

Another way to determine if someone was a prophet was to see if his contemporaries added his books to a growing canon or if they quote him in subsequent writings. Moses’ writings are cited throughout the Old Testament, beginning with his immediate successor, Joshua. It is seen throughout the Bible that later prophets cite earlier ones. In the New Testament, Paul cites Luke; Peter recognizes Paul’s Epistles, and Jude cites 2 Peter. The Revelation is filled with images and ideas from previous Scripture, especially Daniel (see, for example, Revelation 13).

We can see that the entire Jewish/Protestant Old Testament was considered prophetic. However, this cannot be said for the books of the Apocrypha.

There is strong evidence that the apocryphal books are not prophetic, and since this is a test for canonicity, this fact alone eliminates them from being considered scripture. No of the books of the Apocrypha claim to be written by a prophet. Indeed, Maccabees disclaims being prophetic (1 Macc. 9:27). Nor is there supernatural confirmation of any of the writers of the apocryphal books, as there is for prophets who wrote canonical books. There is no predictive prophecy in the Apocrypha, as there is in some canonical books (e.g., Isaiah 53; Daniel 9; Micah 5:2). There is no new Messianic truth in the Apocrypha. Even the Jewish community, whose books these were, acknowledged that the prophetic gifts had ceased in Israel before the Apocrypha was written. Apocryphal books were never listed in the Jewish Bible with the Prophets or in any other section. Not once is an apocryphal book cited authoritatively by a prophetic book that was written after it. Taken together all of this provides overwhelming evidence that the Apocrypha was not prophetic and, therefore, should not be part of the canon of Scripture.

That sums up the first argument. We see that the Apocrypha can’t pass the tests required to authentic Scripture. But now we go to the historical argument. Was the Apocrypha considered to be the Word of God when Christ was alive? Did Jesus and the Apostles also mean the Apocrypha when they referred to the Word of God?

Well, since this is a historical argument, we must look into the history of the origin of the Bible. And since we are talking about the Apocrypha, we must look into its history. The history of the Apocrypha can be traced through the origin of the Catholic Bible (since it is included in it). So let us examine it.

We will have to start at the very beginning – at the time of Christ. As the centuries after the resurrection unfolded, the dominant language spoken in the Roman Empire began to change. Greek, the international language of the time was no longer dominant. Because of this, in 382AD, Pope Damascus commissioned Jerome (c. 347-420) to translate the Bible into Latin, a task that took him twenty years to complete. This Bible came to be known as the versio vulgata (common translation) or Vulgata editio (the current text of Holy Scripture) and became the standard for the entire Western Church. In English, we call this Bible the Latin Vulgate. 

(Historical Note: the Vulgate we know today was not done entirely by Jerome. He only finished translating the Old Testament before he died. The Vulgate based on a compilation of sources, including Jerome.)

The first translations of the Bible into English came from the Vulgate instead of the original Hebrew and Greek texts. The reason for this is because the Catholic Church considered the Vulgate equal or superior to the original texts themselves. Which is another entire discussion – but let us stay on point.

Jerome based his Latin translations of the Bible on Greek texts of an early Christian named Origen 185-284AD). Though Origen could speak Greek, he was also a scholar of the Hebrew language. The Greek texts that Jerome had read were Origen’s revision of an even earlier Greek document called the Septuagint. Origen, wanting make sure the Greek Septuagint accurately reflected the original Hebrew texts, retranslated them. These were Origen’s revisions. He called his revisions the Hexapla because it contained 6 translations of the Old Testament divided into columns, which included his own revision of Septuagint. 

The original Septuagint (from the Latin word septuaginta meaning 70) that Origen had revised was a Greek version of the Old Testament thought to have been created during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus (or Ptolemy II ca. 285-246 BCE) in Alexandria, Egypt for the Jews spread across Africa, Asia and Europe. Most of Jews living outside of Palestine were Greek-speaking as a result of Alexander the Great\’s campaign to Hellenize his empire.

We do not have the original Septuagint. We only have a copy of a copy – Origen’s revision of it. We find though, that the Greek in Origen’s revised Septuagint reflects an Alexandrian (Alexandria, Egypt) origin. So the writers were probably Alexandrian instead of Palestinian. The origin of the original Septuagint remains a mystery and cannot be stated for certain. However, the most accepted origin of original Septuagint arises from an ancient writer named Aristeas.

Scholars believe Aristeas was a Hellenistic Jew who lived around mid-second century BC. He claimed that Ptolemy Philadelpus who ruled Egypt had sent a delegation to Jerusalem for six men of each tribe (there are 12 tribes, so hence 72 men) to make a Greek translation of the Bible for the Library at Alexandria. According to this story, each man was put into a separate room and each set about translating the Pentateuch (the first 5 books of the Bible). They finished the translation in 72 days and when done, each man’s translation was identical; word for word. This story was considered evidence by some early Christian scholars and the Catholic Church that the Septuagint was divinely inspired.

(Historical Note: The reason the Septuagint is named as it is – meaning 70 – is assumed to be the number 72 rounded off.)

However, we notice that these dates point to a time before Christ. This means that the Septuagint was written before Christ came and was around at the time of Christ. Some early Christians used it as scripture because it was the most convenient because it was written in Greek. Was the Septuagint around at the time of Christ? If it was, was it considered to be Scripture? This is what the entire argument centers on because the Septuagint, translated from the Masoretic texts, included the books of the Apocrypha.

We find though, that almost all historical evidence seems to show that the Septuagint was written after the time of Christ. If it was written after the time of Christ, then Christ and the Apostles could never have referred to it as Scripture. And the same goes for the Apocrypha, since it is part of the Septuagint. 

The whole argument that says that the Septuagint existed at the time of Christ rests on this one story by Aristeas. No other evidence points to a pre-Christ time period for the Septuagint. All evidence to the contrary of this notion refers to this sole story told in a document called the Letter of Aristeas.

In the Letter of Aristeas, Aristeas claims to have been a Greek court official during the time of Philadelphus\’ reign. He claims to have been sent by Demetrius to request the best scholars of Israel to bring a copy of the Hebrew Scriptures to Alexandria to start the Septuagint translation project. He even goes as far as to give the names of the Septuagint scholars, yet many of the names he gives are from the Maccabean era, some 75 years too late. Many of them are Greek names, defini
tely not the names of Hebrew scholars. The supposed librarian Demetrius of Phalerum (ca.345-283) served in the court of Ptolemy Soter. Demetrius was never the librarian under Philadelphus. The letter quotes the king telling Demetrius and the translators, when they arrived, how wonderful it was that they came on the anniversary of his "naval victory over Antigonus" (Aristeas 7:14). But the only such recorded Egyptian naval victory occurred many years after Demetrius death. The writer must be lying about his identity. There is other evidence that this letter is from a different time period – and thus proved a fake.

If this letter is a fake, then the Septuagint has no other foundation by which to claim it existed in a pre-Christ era. We must then fall back to all our other evidence – which indicates a post-Christ time period. This means that Christ and the Apostles never referred to the Septuagint, and hence the Apocrypha, as Scripture. The biblical books in the Septuagint are by no means false and should not be discarded. It is only the extra books – the Apocrypha – we must discard. We cannot argue that because Jesus and the Apostles quote the Septuagint, then the Apocrypha must be true – because He couldn’t have quoted it.

Some history books might tell you however that the Jews at the time of Christ had lost most of their language. Scholars have believed that the Jews were hardly able to speak Hebrew anymore, let alone read it, so they resorted to the international language of the time; Greek. This is another argument posed for the Septuagint being the texts Jesus and the Apostles referred to. Because they might have been speaking Greek at the time, it would only make sense that they use a Greek Bible – the Septuagint. 

However, refutation of this argument can be found in the words of Christ himself. Jesus says that neither “one jot nor one tittle” would pass away from the law “until all things be accomplished” (Matthew 5:17-18). The jot was the smallest Hebrew letter, and the tittle was a tiny projection on certain Hebrew characters. If the Septuagint were considered to be the accepted Word of God at the time, then what Jesus said would not make any sense since the Septuagint was written in Greek.

Also Jesus refers to the order of the books of the Hebrew Scriptures. In Matthew 23:35 Jesus says, “And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah…” In this verse, Jesus references the first and last righteous servant of God recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures. The Tanach (Hebrew Old Testament) is ordered differently than the Christian Old Testament. The Christian OT starts with Genesis and ends with Malachi. However, the Tanach is in chronological order and starts with Genesis and ends with 2^nd Chronicles. Abel is killed in Genesis and Zechariah is killed in 2^nd Chronicles. Jesus is thus referring to all righteous blood shed since the beginning of humanity. This would not make sense if Jesus were quoting from the Septuagint - because it is ordered differently than the Tanach is.

Thus, the Septuagint was not around during the time or Christ. Even if it was, the words of Christ show that it was not referred to as Scripture. Thus, the Apocrypha, which was part of the Septuagint, cannot be argued with this argument to be Scripture either.

The books of the Apocrypha have no basis by which to claim canonicity. They do not pass the test of authentic scripture, and we cannot use history to argue for their validity. Not only is this the case, but in some instances, the Apocrypha comes into complete contradiction to the rest of the Bible. Just to point out one simple discrepancy in the Apocryphal book of Tobit:

In Tobit 12:9 one reads, “For alms doth deliver from death, and shall purge away all sin . . .” This is obviously a result of the influence of the Jewish sect the Pharisees.  It also would later show up in Catholicism.  There is NO WAY that one can buy remission of sins.  Remission of sins comes only when one is covered by the blood of Christ.  In the Old Testament this was afforded by offering animal sacrifices, not by buying ones way out of sin.  

The Apocrypha is a good source for historical information and insight into the times before Christ lived and the Jewish culture of the time. They are reliable documents for the most part and can be called upon as a reference to as texts from their time. However they cannot be regarded as Scripture, as the infallible Word of God. The original 39 books, and none else, are the perfect, incorruptible, holy Word, sent from God to man.

[It would be important to note that from here on out, when we talk about “God” we will be referring to the Judeo-Christian God. This article deals specifically with how concept of omnipotence applies to the Judeo-Christian God and the seeming in-consistencies that arise from that.]

Many theologians have tried to categorize to the attributes of God to help us better understand the nature of those attributes. Though no characterization will be perfect (or completely compartmentalized, since each of God’s attributes must be taken in context and balance with the other attributes), perhaps one of the most helpful is the idea that God has both “communicable” attributes and “incommunicable” attributes. Incommunicable attributes are the attributes of God that we are humans share the least. Examples of this would be God’s eternity. God has existed from time eternal – we do not. God also is present in all places, whereas we are confined to one point in space. These are the attributes that we can relate to the least because little of those attributes are reflect in humans. The communicable attributes are the attributes that we as humans can most relate to. We share the most of these attributes with God. Some examples might be God’s love. We also can give love (though not perfectly as God can). God has infinite wisdom. We also have wisdom (though finite). God has perfect grace. We also have grace (though thoroughly imperfect). God’s power is one of these communicable attributes. God has infinite power to carry out His will. Humans share a part of this attribute in that we also have limited power to carry out our will.

Since we as humans can relate to, and have a better grasp of power, it is easier for us to draw logical conclusions from. Power itself is an very easy thing to grasp. Indeed it can be said that it is part of our very nature to seek power. The mind reels however when it starts to consider the concept of infinite power or omnipotence. The idea of literal power of all things seems unfathomable to our finite minds. So much so in fact that we have tried to create logical arguments that show that the very idea of omnipotence is contradictory. We will look over these arguments for the rest of this article.

Two major arguments present themselves when talking about God’s omnipotence. The first is this: “Let us say that God is omnipotent. Then God can do anything and has all power. One thing that God does is exist. Can God, since He is all powerful, cause Himself to NOT exist? If He were to cause Himself to not exist, He would not be God anymore, because God always exists. If He were not able to cause himself to cease to exist, then He is not all-powerful, because He would be unable to accomplish something. Either way, God is not omnipotent.”

The second argument is this: “Let us say that God is omnipotent. Then God can do anything and has all power. One thing God can do is create. Can God, since He is all powerful, create a rock so big that He cannot lift it? If He could, he would not be all powerful, since He could not lift the rock. However, if He could not, he would not be all powerful either, since He supposedly could do all things, but was unable to create such a rock. Either way, God would not be omnipotent.”

Initially this might seem like quite the quandary. How do the Judaic and Christian theologians answer such a question? How do they answer this apparent contradiction? In one fell swoop, the question seems to land the killing blow the logical consistency of the notion of an all-powerful God. Though I myself am no theologian, I can offer you the response that is fleshed out in the Christian Bible and espoused by other much smarter people than myself.

To begin, we must go to the source text and see what exactly the Bible says about God’s power. Here are some of the best examples of verses that give us a well-rounded view of what the Bible itself has to say about God’s omnipotence:

• “I am the LORD, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?” (Jeremiah 32:27)
• “Ah, Sovereign LORD, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.” (Jeremiah 32:17)
• “For the LORD Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart him? His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?” (Isaiah 14:27)
• Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26)
• “For nothing is impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37)
• “Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him.” (Psalm 115:3)

These are but a smattering of the many verses that state outright, or show implicitly the power of God. One is quick to notice however, that in none of these verses (or any verses of the Bible) is God described by our English word “omnipotent”. The astute reader might have noticed that in describing the God’s omnipotence as a communicable attribute I took care to detail God’s omnipotence as “infinite power to carry out His will”. Elsewhere I merely used our general understanding of the term. The reason is because nowhere in the Bible is God described as being “omnipotent”. However, in these verses, and many, many, others, God power is characterized as being “able to do all His holy will.”

In fact, upon further inspection, our typical Western thoughts on omnipotence are directly opposed by Scripture. It is not accurate to say that God can do anything. Is there anything that God cannot do? If we think for second, we can indeed come up with a list of things that God cannot do. God cannot lie. Titus 1:2 talks about truth and godliness, which is “a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time”. Hebrews 6:18 states that “it is impossible for God to lie”. God cannot be tempted by evil. In James 1:13 states that “God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone”. Since nothing can limit God or as we saw in the quoted verses, stop God from accomplishing what He so pleases, these “restrictions” must be self-imposed by God on Himself.

We start to see that the Biblical definition of God’s “omnipotence” is that God is able to complete His will or anything that is consistent with His character. God is not able to act against His character. That is, though He has infinite power, His actions and how He can use that power are qualified by all of His other attributes. It is a common misunderstanding to associate our Western ideas of omnipotence with Biblical concept of omnipotence.

Thus, in simply looking at details of God’s power in the Biblical text, we find that there is no logical contradiction at all. According to the Bible, God is not able to act against His character; thus He cannot lie, steal, cheat, cease to exist, or in any other way act inconsistent with His character – which should come as a relief to us all.

            Before we start, let’s define exactly what is the problem that we have with evil. Our problem is that evil exists and this contradicts Christianity’s notions of an all powerful God. You will hear the argument something like this: there are three characteristics of the Christian God. He is all-knowing (Omniscient), He is all-powerful (Omnipotent), and is all-good (Morally Perfect). Though straightforward, the problem lies in the meshing of these three characteristics. A philosopher might tell you that all of these characteristics can’t be true at the same time. The complicated words for that is the phrase ‘mutually exclusive’. All three of those characteristics cannot all be true at the same time – two of them could be true, or one of them true, but not all of them.

            Why is that? Well, if God is all-knowing, he would know how to stop evil from coming into this world. Since evil indeed exists, He must either not be all-knowing or He must not be powerful enough to stop it (not Omnipotent). Already our notion of evil and the Christian God contradict. Well, that seemed too simple. What if we go ahead and assume that God was all powerful? Well, in that case He would prevent evil from existing. But since it does, He must either not be all-powerful or He must not be all-good (Morally Perfect) and want evil to exist. But let’s just assume that God is Morally Perfect. If He is Morally Perfect, He would want to stop evil from existing. Since evil most assuredly exists, He either must not be all-good or He must not know how to stop it. And we are back where we started from. Do you see the problem? If all three of the properties are true, then there is a contradiction. When there are contradictions, something is wrong or doesn’t make sense. The main thrust of many college philosophy professors is that since there is a contradiction, the concept of God is wrong and doesn’t make sense.

            It seems like a nice and tidy argument doesn’t it? It seems almost too good to be true, right? Indeed it is. Let us figure out why. The first step though is to confirm our foundation – our premises for discussion. Any living, breathing human in their right mind will agree that evil exists in this universe. As with anything, some will deny this. However, it meshes with common sense and observations of our everyday world to know that evil exists. Merely ask a Holocaust survivor. Ask someone who was in a Japanese Internment camp. Ask someone who lived during the crusades. During slavery. During the many sad times in human history. We all generally know what evil is when we see it.

Having determined that evil does exist in the first place, what we shall see in the following arguments is that upon deeper examination, the existence of evil does not contradict either God’s knowledge, His omnipotence, or His goodness. In fact we find it does the exact opposite. But before I get ahead of myself, let’s start at the beginning.

What exactly is evil and what is the cause of evil? To answer this question we must first realize where we are arguing from. The ‘Problem of Evil’ is a question that probes the internal consistency of the belief of Christianity about God. It is a question that says, “Well, Christianity says this, this and this. However, those things are contradictory and do not make sense. Therefore Christianity – and the Christian God – must not be correct.” In response to this question we will show that the beliefs of Christianity do make sense with themselves and are internally consistent. So in determining what evil is and what it is caused by, we are required to follow the Christian interpretation. Let us then go to the Word of God – the Bible. I John 3:4 says that “Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.” Psalm 18:30 says that “As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the Lord is flawless.” (NIV) Additionally, Psalm 19:7 explains that “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making the wise simple.” What is it that all these verses saying? To summarize, it says that sin, or evil (1 John is making a statement saying that sin and evil are the same thing), is disobeying God’s law. What do the verses say about God’s law? It says that God’s word is perfect or perfection. Sin or evil then is the act of missing the mark, missing the target, or not reaching that perfection which is God’s law. Sin is the act of missing perfection. We also see in Mark 10:18 that the only one who is good is God, and James 1:17 says that every ‘good and perfect gift is from above’. This means that everything that is good is God. Therefore everything that is not good (or evil) is not God. Evil is the exact opposite of what God is.

We have answered our first question of what evil is. That leaves us with the question of what is the cause of evil. Is it God? Is it something else? Did God create evil? Well let us ponder that. Our first conclusion is that God could not have created evil. Why is that? It is because evil is not something that can be created. In fact, it is not a ‘thing’ at all. What do I mean? I’d make the analogy like this: evil has similar properties to darkness. There is no such ‘thing’ as darkness. Darkness is merely the absence of light. A shadow is the same thing: it is your body blocking light that is traveling towards it. You can’t pick up a shadow and put it into a box. You can’t pick up darkness and put it in your backpack. In this sense it is not a thing – it is the absence of another thing. Referring back to sin then, we see that in the same way sin, or evil, is an absence of good. It is missing the target, missing bulls-eye, missing perfect. Sin, or evil, is the act of choosing something other than God. Evil then, isn’t something that can be created. It is a choice. It is an act of the will.

Back in the beginning – according to Christianity – God did indeed make us perfect. Since God is all that is perfection, He gave us the ability to choose Him, to choose perfection. But he also gave us the ability, the potential to not choose Him (i.e. choose evil). In other words God gave us the gift of free will.  

Evil then was not brought into this world by God – God is good so God can’t create evil. However, He gave us the ability to choose Him or not. We all know the story of Adam and Eve – they sinned and fell short of the glory of God. They committed evil – they chose something that was not God. And we as humans have been doing this ever since. We as humans, in making the decision of not choosing Him, chose evil and brought it into existence – we are the source of the evil, not God. (As a side note, a more accurate statement would be that we chose evil and took
out of existence the good that was already in us). The cause of evil is us.

We have now answered both our questions. In answering those questions however, we have stumbled upon an even deeper truth. In our act of choice, we can choose either perfection (God) or something less than perfection (Evil). Inherent to our free will – built in to our act of choice – is the choice of evil! The choice of evil has to exist – otherwise we do not have free will! We see then that the existence of evil has nothing to do with God not being powerful enough, good enough, or knowing enough to stop evil from happening. It does not contradict any of those qualities. The choice of evil is forced to logically follow in the concept of free will. Instead of contradicting God’s eternal qualities it does the opposite. God being the good God that He is, gave us the human race the gift of free will. He gave us the choice to choose Him or not – He did not force us to believe in Him.

‘But wait a second!’ some say. Why even make a human being that is capable of choosing evil since God is good? Why not just make them incapable of choosing evil and give them the choice of everything else? Well, the key idea is to realize what it means to have free will. If God were to intervene whenever we went to do something wrong or evil, we would quickly see that life wouldn’t really be life as we know it any more. Think about it – what if every time we went to hit our neighbor with a big stick, the stick turned into jello. Or every time a murderer went to go stab somebody, the knife turned into paper. What if every time you were about to see something you might covet, God stopped the light bouncing off of it from hitting your eyes. What if every time you starting to form a sinful thought, God stopped it from forming in your brain tissue? Of course, it is immediately seen that we wouldn’t have free will at all any more. You wouldn’t be able to make any choice but to follow God because that’s all you would be able to do! I’d make the following analogy to make it a little clearer. What if you had a husband or a wife who in reality was a robot. If you programmed your wife or husband to love you, would you really feel true love from that robot? No, of course not. The robot has not made the choice to love you. It loves you only because you made it love you. If you truly loved your robot husband or wife (this is a somewhat weird analogy), you would give them the choice to either love you or not to love you. It is the same way with us and God.  The only way to have true freedom is to have the choice between good and evil. The only way for someone to truly love God would be to choose Him of his or her own free will.

We have now essentially provided all the evidence we need to come to the conclusion that the ‘Problem of Evil’ is not a problem at all. It is exceedingly clear that the choice of evil is a necessary byproduct of true free will. We need not actually choose evil – but it is a choice that is present. The God of the Christians retains His qualities; omnipotence, omniscience, and being morally perfect. Because God is logical (God makes sense) having evil be a necessary possible choice by no means infringes upon His being powerful enough or knowing enough or being good enough. God conforms with His own nature and His nature is to be logical. The choice of evil – and the possibility of it being brought into existence – is a logical necessity of free will. There are no contradictions.

As an interesting side note, more often than not the ‘Problem of Evil’ is brought up by people seeking to prove not only to themselves but to others that God does not exist. Often this argument is brought up by atheists to debunk Christianity. Having seen that the ‘Problem of Evil’ does not debunk Christianity, I would put it out there to you that instead of causing a problem with Christianity it causes a problem for atheism! This is because atheism has an inadequate answer to the ‘Problem of Evil’. Why is that? Think about it – we all agree that evil does exist in this world. However, if you look at evil from a God-less perspective it requires that you have some other sort of perfect good by which to compare evil with. How can you know what true evil is without knowing what a faultless good is? It’s the same as asking how you would know what darkness was if you had never seen the light. Yet if you are an atheist, everything in this universe was created by something other than God. I would assume that most would say everything came about by the process of evolution. In this case, everything in existence came about by random chance. Things such as perfection and goodness, things such as wrong and evil have no definition. They are merely a curious byproduct of our human mind.  The question of why evil exists is irrelevant and in fact illogical to an atheist. But as stated before, we all generally know what evil is and that it indeed exists! Atheism has no answer to our question of why evil exists. Christianity however not only explains the problem of evil in the world, but it also gives it meaning. Atheism takes away its meaning and doesn’t answer the question at all.

Now that we have understood what evil is and why it exists, there remains the problem of how we respond to it. Though that is a topic for another day, I’m sure Christianity has something to say about that.

The main question we are pondering is this – is the Bible that we have today, the words that God spoke over two thousand years ago? Were God’s words transferred accurately to a fallen imperfect man? Is the Bible that we have today an accurate representation of those original words? Have they been corrupted beyond recognition since they were written? These are all foundational questions. Christianity must respond to them. And indeed it does. We can separate these questions into two basic questions. The first is, ‘Is the Bible we have today an accurate copy of what was originally written?’ This deals with the corruption of the Bible over time. The second questions is, ‘Was man able to make an accurate representation of God’s Word when he first wrote it even though he was a fallen, imperfect being?’ This deals with the issue of whether or not man, not being an omnipotent, awesome, and perfect being would be able to record and understand accurately what God would say to him. We will only consider the second question here, because the former has already been answered.

This is definitely an important question. How could an imperfect man even come to understand what an omnipotent God would tell him? (Note: whenever I say the term “fallen man”, I mean that man is not perfect and has “fallen” and sinned according to the Bible). Man is not perfect, so could imperfections have crept into the Bible?

Before we even consider this question, we must logically answer another first. It is this – is the Bible perfect? Perfect as in there is absolutely no contradictions, no blemishes, and everything that is says – everything – can be held as God-given, undeniable truth. Many people I know would say no to this question. Every single word of the Bible cannot be true one might say. Does that mean the original writers lied? Did the original writers write what God told them? I’m sure they tried to, but the real question is did they succeed? Because man is fallen – and not perfect – it is possible that man, in trying to understand the infinite nature of God, wrote down their interpretations of what God was showing them. These interpretations, being from fallen man, cannot be perfect. They are just our very best human attempt at understanding an omnipotent God. Because of this, logically, we cannot take everything in the Bible literally. For it is our human interpretation of the divine.

This makes sense right? Sure it does. There is a problem with this argument however. It has nothing to do with our logic, but everything to do with our paradigm – with an incorrect mindset. We must view it in the following mindset: If God is truly an omnipotent God and is able to put His will into being, then what He wanted to be written down as scripture is what was would have been written down as scripture. This is not to say that He violated people’s free will and made them write what He wanted them to. It means in other words, that God chose the right people at the right times and showed them the right things. When He spoke to them He knew beforehand how they would respond to the things He would say. Being an omnipotent being, He chose the correct people to speak to because He knew that these people would write down exactly what he wanted them to write down. God’s word means what it says because that is what God wanted it to say. In John 10:35 Jesus states that the scripture cannot be broken. In that chapter, Jesus is talking to Jews and about why he is able to say certain things according to the scripture (in other words they logically follow). Jesus makes his statements by grounding his argument in what the scripture says, and after doing so states that the “scripture cannot be broken.” In a logical interpretation in context, we see that he is saying that the scripture is perfect. It means what it says, and it is always correct. Always.

Why do I list Jesus as an authority for answering these questions? Think about it – when Jesus came the entire Old Testament had already been written. These texts were held sacred and are what we and they considered to be the Word of God. Their modern day Bible. God, coming to earth in human form in the person of Jesus, explicitly states that scripture (the words that were taken down by the prophets since the beginning) is perfect. God has told us that the Bible is perfect. There is no empirical way to test to whether or not man wrote is what God said. However, if God says that it is, it seems to me to be proof above and beyond what we were looking for.

Since the Bible is perfect, it cannot be subject to our own interpretation. Since it is perfect, it says what it says and not what we want it to say. Christians sometimes fall into the trap of assuming that the Bible is merely our interpretation of God’s divine nature. But if that were true, then we have the authority to call into question any part of the Bible that our imaginations can think of. If the Bible is corrupted, then we can find any passage we like and say that the writers might not have gotten it right and make it say whatever we want it to say. In essence, we would be able to call into question the meaning of anything in the Bible and we lose the very foundation we stand on. Everything in the Bible would be able to be doubted for its authenticity, and we cannot say for certain that events in the Bible actually happened; people’s actions in the Bible, God’s words to us, or that Jesus died for our sins. If you take one pillar out, the whole house collapses. A Christian cannot hold this opinion without losing the foundation for drawing any logical conclusion from the Bible. 

[As a side note, we notice that human interpretation does apply to certain types of prophecy. Prophecy given to man by God as a vision must of course be written down through human words and understanding. Though the author no doubt wrote down exactly what God wanted him to write down, we understand that such visions cannot always be taken literally. Such is the case with the book of Revelations. Some parts I think we can take literally and other parts are analogies and other parts are symbols and others are our best interpretations of future things. This gets into the area of scriptural interpretation. It is a huge topic – a topic for theologians to ponder. How do we, not being theologians, know the difference? It is up to us, being led by the spirit, to determine if visionary prophecies and other sections are literal or analogical. This does not mean of course that we can interpret these passages however we want – interpreting the more difficult portions of scripture requires that we compare it with other relevant parts of the Bible and make sure it is internally consistent, making sure it makes sense in the context of the passage, making sure it does not contradict things in history or things we know to be truth, etc. We won’t go into all that here though, =).]

For clarification, I point out that this doesn’t mean that Bible doesn’t make any analogies or allegories, or that if it does to disregard them and take it literally. Thi
s only means that the Word of God spoken through man wasn’t ‘interpreted’ by man first then written down by man according to his own understanding. The Word of God was spoken through man perfectly – because God is a perfect God. What was written is what God originally said and wanted to say – not what a man thought God was saying. Jesus himself logically shows this in the scripture mentioned above.    

So in conclusion, we see that the Word of God is perfect and God-breathed. We cannot doubt it because of human interpretation. Many who do do so because they don’t agree with something that the Bible may say. But we see that either we believe that the whole thing is perfect, or we cannot surely believe anything that the Bible says. It becomes merely a good book instead of God’s Word. Many people believe this already, but Christians must not if they are to argue with any definitiveness or logical base.  

1) What does the word Bible mean? It’s an interesting fact to notice that the word ‘Bible’ is never actually mentioned in the Bible. It is a name given to it by early Christians in the 2nd century A.D. – it comes from the ancient Greek word biblos which means books. There was an ancient Syrian port named Byblos that was the cheif manufacturer or papyrus in those times. Papyrus is a reed that grows in Egypt and Syria and it was the most common writing material at the time.

2) What language was the Bible written in? The Bible was written in ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek[1] (Koine was the dialect of Greek born out of the conquests of Alexander the Great – it was the dialect of Greek spoken through the Middle Eastern world from about 330BC to 330AD. Demotic Greek, which is spoken today, is a direct descendant of Koine Greek[2]). The Old Testament was written mostly in Hebrew, with some in Aramaic (some of Daniel and Ezra). The New Testament is written almost entirely in Greek, with occasional statements in Aramaic (such as Jesus’ cry from the cross).

3) Who wrote it?

a. The Old Testament

The Old Testament is historically split into 4 categories

I. The Pentateuch – which means roughly ‘the 5 books’, is the first 5 books of the Old Testament. It contains God’s Holy Law and is referred to as the Torah in Jewish circles.

II. The Prophets – The book of Joshua, judges, the earlier prophets, the latter prophets, and the 12 minor prophets.

III. The Writings – the books of Psalms, Proverbs and Job

IV. The 5 Scrolls – Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah and 1-2 Chronicles.

This division was made by ancient Jewish scholars though we are not sure of who did it and when it was done. You’ll find the books grouped like this if you ever look at a Hebrew Bible.

The Torah, the first 5 books were written by Moses. We know King David wrote a large portion of the Psalms, and King Solomon wrote Proverbs and the Song of Solomon. The rest of the Bible was written by either the prophet whose book it was named after (i.e. Isaiah was written by Isaiah) or other unnamed prohpets[3]. The whole Old Testament was written during the time period of roughly 1400 BC to 400 BC.

b. The New Testament[4]

I. The Gospel’s were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Acts was also written by Luke.

II. The 13 Epistles were written by Paul.

III. I and II Peter were written by Peter and I,II,and III John were written by John, the “disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 20:2). Revelation was most likely written by him also.

IV. James was most likely written by James, brother of Jesus, and Jude by Jude the brother of James.

V. Hebrews was written anonymously.

Let’s take a look at the origin of the Bible and its accuracy!

Let’s look at the Old Testament first. The New Testament we have today is based on an ancient document known as the Septuagint. This is from a Greek word which means 70 (the manuscript is known in Roman as the LXX, which is Roman for 70). It was composed about 200 BC in Alexandria Egypt. This document was the Greek translation of the entire Old Testament – it was supposedly made for the huge library at Alexandria. It was probably one of the most important documents known to early christians and to modern christians alike. It was a Biblical standard for the entire church for the first 4 centuries of early christianity. It was most probably the Bible that Jesus and the Disciples knew. Needless to say, this is a very important document. Today we have fragments of the original document &ndash
; our oldest fragment dates to about 200 B.C.

This Greek version of the Old Testament is a wonderful thing to have. However, we realize that the Old Testament is originally from the Hebrew people. We’d most logically be interested in what our oldest Hebrew copy of the Old Testament was. Though the Septuagint was translated from Hebrew, we did not have those original Hebrew texts. The oldest Hebrew texts we have, in contrast from the Greek, date around the 9th century A.D. – about 1100 years after the writing of the Septuagint. These early texts are referred to as a codex, which means book. The earliest Hebrew documents are known as the Cairo Codex and the Leningrad Codex. The oldest document to contain the Old Testament in it’s entirety is the Codex Babylonicus, dated to about 1008 A.D. These collections of early Hebrew Bible manuscripts are called the Masoretic texts. This is because there was a scribal sect of ancient Jews whose took it upon themselves to keep amazingly accurate copies of the Old Testament. There were scribal traditions dating back to at least 400 B.C. that were charged with keeping an accurate transmission and preservation of the biblical texts, with the Masoretes being the most recent and well known. The Hebrew Bible of today is based on these Masoretic texts.

The Masoretic texts were invaluable, and they agreed mostly with the text of the Septuagint. However, though they were written in the original Hebrew and supposedly copied with almost perfect accuracy from the originals, the oldest copy we had was still 1100 years after the writing of the Septuagint. How did we know if it was an accurate transmission of the more ancient original texts? The most important thing we note however, is that the Septuagint is very close to the Masoretic texts we have today as far as similarity. This means that the transmission of the Bible over that roughly 1300 year period was highly reliable.

If that in itself were not amazing, you may have heard of something called the Dead Sea Scrolls. Their technical name is the Qum’ran scrolls (the name of where they were found). The Dead Sea Scrolls were a major find. They had the ability to either uphold our current views about scripture, or dash them all to pieces. Why is that? Because it is a compilation of Hebrew texts written more than a century before Christ. This is roughly only 100 years after the Septuagint! If these texts, much older than any Masoretic texts we had did not match up with the Masoretic texts, we would have to rethink all our theories about the Bible and maybe even doubt the validity of the Bible we know today.

What was the finding? We can see it in the book of Isaiah. A scroll of the whole book of Isaiah was found in Qum’ran (dating to about 125 B.C.). Our oldest copy of the book of Isaiah beforehand was in the Leningrad Codex from 916 A.D. Roughly a millenia of difference. Of the 166 words in Isaiah chapter 53, there are only 17 letters in question. 10 of those are only a matter of spelling. 4 of them are minor stylistic chages (similar to shoppe and shop). The 3 last letters form the word “light”, which is added in verse 11 and does not affect the meaning of the sentence. Furthermore, though it may not be supported by the Leningrad Codex, it is supported by the Septuagint. That means, in one chapter of 166 words, there is only one word in question over a thousand years of transmission – and the word doesn’t even change the meaning of the passage! The Dead Sea Scrolls were a dramatic confirmation of the accuracy of the transmission of what the original Bible authors wrote to the text we have today.

The Dead Sea Scrolls did not contain fragments from the entire Bible. But from the parts it did, it produced dramatic confirmation with the Masoretic texts. This means that our current Masoretic texts must be highly reliable; the scribes used the same method for copying all the books of the Bible each time, so we have no reason to doubt any of the Masoretic texts. This means, we can look at any Biblical book in the Masoretic texts and be confident of it’s accuracy. It case you seem skeptical, let me describe to you some of the amazing and almsot superstitious rules the Masoretic scribes had in perserved the Biblical texts:

1  ) A synagogue scroll must be written on the skin of a clean animal

2 ) It must be prepared by a Jew

3 ) It must be fastened together with the string of a clean animal

4 ) Every scroll must contain a certain number of columns, equal throughout the entire codex

5 ) The length of each column must not exceed 60 lines or be less than 48 lines; the breadth must consist of 30 letters.

6 ) The copier must not deviant from the original copy

7 ) No word or letter can be written from memory with the scribe not having looked at the codex in front of him

8 ) Between every consonant the space of a hair or thread must intervene

9) Between every book there must be 3 lines

12 ) Scribe must not begin to write the name of God with a pen newly dipped in ink

13 ) If a king should address the scribe while writing, he must take no notice of him

If any of these rules are broken, the scroll must immediately be buried or burned.

We can surely see that the accuracy of the Old Testament is highly reliable! When we read the words of the first half of our Bible, we can be sure it is what the original authors wrote down.

What about the New Testament? Unlike the Old Testament where you have a limited amount of copies and high quality, with the New, you have less reliable quality but an over-abundance of copies. There are more than 5,686 known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. There are over 10,000 copies of the Latin Vulgate (which is a latin translation of the original Greek
). There more than 20,000 copies of portions of the New Testament in existence today. The importance of the sheer numbers of copies can’t be overstated – the abundance of manuscript copies makes it possible to reconstruct the original within virtually complete accuracy[5].

Not only do we have the truckload of copies, but not much time passed between the writing of the manuscripts and the actual events. Let us first look at some other historical documents to compare it to. The History of Thucydides has 8 copies of it which were written 1300 years after the originals. Aristotle wrote his poetics around 343 B.C. and the earliest copy of his works are from 1100 A.D. – a 1400 year gap and we only have 5 copies. No scholar would dare doubt it’s authenticity. Caesar wrote his history of the Gallic wars between 58 and 50 B.C. and we only 9 to 10 copies of it written 1000 years afterward. The Iliad written by Homer is the only manuscript that comes close to the Bible – it has 643 copies. Compare this to the New Testament – it was written only 50 to 100 years after the events and we have over 20,000 copies of it. The comparison is almost an embarrassment. The accuracy of the New Testament speaks for itself.

The Bible is more accurate than any historical document that currently exists. We have no reason whatsoever to doubt that the Bible we have inhereted today is not the text that was first written by any given individual who was moved to write under God’s divine inspiration. It is amazing and it speaks volumes about God’s power and character.

What right does anyone have to say that another religion is wrong or incorrect? What I think God is, is a highly personal thing and is different for everyone and depends on one’s views.

This is a view that has echoed countless times from countless mouths. It is the mantra of today’s society. I heard it summed up once in my college newspaper. A young man said something to this effect – “The most reprehensible thing that a person can do – short of violence upon another – is to force his religious views on someone else.” You’ve probably heard it many other ways. Perhaps “I believe in my God and you believe in your God. Who are we to force our views on one another?”, or “There are many ways to God. I have simply chosen the route which is best for me”.

Comments such as these all run in the same vein. The gist of these kinds of statements is this; “we do not know for certain what or who God is. The concept of God is a personal thing, a topic relevant to every human being. Each has his or her own belief about God. How dare you act in such arrogance and intolerance, forcing your beliefs – which are solely that, your beliefs – on someone else, who may have different beliefs, and is entitled to those beliefs as a basic human right?”

Let us look at this question. Let us say that this question is directed towards Christianity (which it often is). What is Christianity’s answer?

Before we begin we must define the concept of God. When dealing with the Christian God, we must make sure we are using the correct concepts, because they are often confused in our society. Let us make a quick and simple definition – God is a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, completely good, and has existed for all time. From now on I will refer to God with a capital God from now on in this manner.

Let us now say that whoever brought up this argument is correct. Say that indeed we have no right to force our beliefs upon another. Say that each individual has his or her own convictions about God, and that it is morally wrong to force your convictions on another. What then does this say about the character of God?

This is a good question. Let’s make an analogy to reveal some further truth. According to the argument, if you believe that the God of the universe is housed solely in a Granny Smith apple, that is sitting on your kitchen table, then that is fine. Alternatively, if I believe that the God of the universe sits enthroned solely upon my back porch lawn chair, then that is fine. No big deal, right? However, we see on further inspection, that only one of us can be right. God cannot exist SOLELY in your Granny Smith apple AND SOLELY exist on my back porch. The two are mutually exclusive. You cannot be at your Grandma’s house in Atlanta and at the London airport at the same time. You are either in one place or the other. If I were to say you were in London at this moment, I would be either right or wrong. Because the Christian God is omnipresent, and the previous analogy may be confusing, so let me give you another one.

Say that my Bible says that ‘God is this, this and this’. It also says that God must be ‘this, this and this’ otherwise GOD IS NOT GOD. Say that your “Book of Holy Sayings” says that God is ‘that, that and that’. Let’s say that your Book also says that God must be ‘that, that and that’ in order to be God, otherwise GOD IS NOT GOD. Now, if my ‘this’ and your ‘that’ are not the same thing, then it is impossible for both of us to be correct. If God is your ‘that’, then according to my beliefs your God IS NOT GOD, because my beliefs state that God MUST BE ‘this’. If my God is ‘this’, then according to your beliefs my God IS NOT GOD because your God must be ‘that’. In other words, if our beliefs are opposite or contradictory, then we cannot both be correct.

Here’s another example. Say my Bible says that God is green. Let’s say that it also says that anything that is not green cannot possibly be God. Let us also suppose that it also says that my entire Bible is true. I am a ‘green christian’. Now, let’s say your Koran (or some other Holy Book) says that God is red. What if it also says that anything that is not red cannot possibly be God. Along with that, suppose it says that the entire Koran is perfect and true. You are a ‘red muslim’. Now, can both of our religions be true? No. Why is that? Because they contradict each other. My religion says that it is true, that God is green, and anything that is not green can’t be God. Your religion says that it is true, that God is red and that anything that isn’t red can’t be God. One of us has to be wrong – if God is green, then you’re religion is wrong because it says that God can only be red. If God is red, then I am wrong, because my religion says that God can only be green. They both cannot be true.

I think you get the picture by now. “But what if God is both red and green then Mr. Smarty-pants?!,” you ask. Well, in that case, we are both wrong! My religion says that God can only be green – not green and red. Your religion says that God can only be red – not green and red. This is the way religions in the world are; they claim fundamentally different and opposing things about God and reality and they all claim to be truth. Yet all cannot be true, as we have just demonstrated. Thus, some must be wrong.

We see with these examples that we are only left with two options to absolve contradictions between the religions. Either one of us is right, and the other is wrong, or God has lied to one of us. The first option of course needs no further discussing; someone is right and someone is wrong. But perhaps God is green and red after all and we just got mixed up in our religion. How do we answer to that? First let us shed the red and green analogy for a while. What if there is more than one way to God after all and Christians have just kind of gotten mixed up a little in their religion?

To answer that question, let’’s figure out what ‘mixed up a little’ could mean. Consider Christianity’s track record. From a Christian perspective, Judaism and Christianity are (according to a Christian view, since Christianity is merely a continuation of Judaism) one and the same. This makes it the oldest religion known to man that is still practiced today. Their beliefs and customs have been preserved to an astonishing degree. In fact, we can be 99.9% sure that what the original writers of the Bible wrote, we have in accurate form today. To see evidence of that click here. From the very beginning – and Christianity claims to have been here from the very beginning, literally – Christianity has claimed to be the only way to God. We have accurate copies of the original texts that say so. Genesis 1:1 says that “In the beginning, God…”, and it goes on to describe creation. The Bible claims th
at this God, is the only God, and that there is only one way to get to Him. Notice that Christians aren’t saying “We have determined that there is only one way to God…because we know everything.” Not at all. Christian’s are claiming that GOD told them that there was only one way to get to Him and it was through belief in Him; belief in Jesus Christ. Christians hold no claim of being morally superior or more intellectually developed than anyone else. They are merely proclaiming what they believe God has showed them. The point of all this, is that Christian’s believe that God is the only way not because they are arrogant, but because they believe this is what God has been telling us from the very beginning. We also would notice that if Christianity had indeed gotten ‘mixed up’ somewhere along the line, then there would be some sort of internal inconsistencies. In other words, there would have to be stuff in the Bible which didn’t make sense with other things that were written in the Bible. But there no such contradictions. The common man has heard that there are many contradictions in the Bible; I challenge that man to name one. Christianity has been almost supernaturally diligent in keeping with its original beliefs – indeed they have not changed since they were first laid. It seems almost silly to say that Christianity has gotten ‘mixed up’ along the way. Though there were on going revelations to man along the centuries, they stayed consistent with each other and complemented each other to eventually form a large, complete, comprehensible book. There has not been any mixing up going on.

What is our point though by showing this? It is merely to show that Christianity is either wrong, or it is right. It is not partially right, or maybe right, and a little bit right. Christianity is either all or nothing. Despite what I have just described, some people will still be amazed that Christians can think that way. I submit to you this – most religions around the world think similarly! Mormonism, Islam, and Judaism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Catholics – they all believe there is only one way you can get to God. It is not a new or novel concept. A ‘multiple-road’ road to God concept is a minority among the religions in the world. Many Americans would rather this not be – then they would not be bound by feeling they have to live a certain way – especially if they don’t like that particular way.

The concept I think many Americans either are unable or don’t want to grasp is the fact that there is a right and a wrong – that a religion might be incorrect! Both Christianity and Islam (I have no particular beef against Islam, it is just a large world religion with which I can compare Christianity) cannot both be correct – they claim fundamentally different beliefs. These are beliefs that contradict each other so they cannot be harmonized. Since they are opposite of each other, only one can be correct. Similarly, different religions, on the surface may seem to say the same thing or have the same morals. However, at the root, they claim fundamentally different things and cannot be harmonized. Such things are evident when you read the Bible and Jesus says that He is the only way to heaven and to God. Not Muhammad, not Krishna, not through reincarnation, and not through living righteously. HE is the only way – belief in Jesus. With a statement like that, it is either true or not true. He either is the ONLY way or He IS NOT.

I believe that you get the point. But let us look, quickly, and the opposing argument. Let us suspend our logic for a moment and say, just for minute, that Jesus isn’t the only way to God. Let’s say that there are multiple ways – that however you may experience God, then that is right for you. Sounds good, right? This is the belief of many people. Well, let’s ponder that for a second. The only way for everyone’s personal view of God to be true – for each person’s conviction to have merit – is to have a God that is in fact no God at all.

Whoa! “Why?” you ask. Well first, let us look at the moral consequences.

If the God of the universe is made manifest in all religions across the world, and shows himself however each human wishes him to be shown, then this God is a liar. In many religions like the ones I just mentioned, they believe that a particular way is the ONLY way to get to God. If this is true and it is also true that there are many ways to get to God through whichever religion you choose, then God has not told us the truth. He lied in telling us there was only one way when there were many. What sort of God would lie about himself to the very creatures He created? That certainly isn’t a good God. If God was completely good, and knew everything, then in his divine Goodness, He would want to communicate to His creatures about Himself. He would want to tell them how to discover Himself and thus live better their lives. After all, if God is perfectly good, then it must be a good thing to know God. But wait a minute. If God is completely good and knew everything, he would try to make sure that all the ways he revealed himself to people would not be contradictory. A good God would do this because that would be a good thing. However, since the religions of the world are contradictory after all, our only alternative is to conclude that God simply isn’t powerful enough to make them be. He would have wanted to, but He would have just been unable to do so. Also, if God is perfectly good and all powerful, and all religions are true yet contradictory, then God cannot be all knowing. As with the last point, if God was good, and wanted not to lie to us through contradictions in religions, He would have made it so that there were not contradictions. If He was all powerful and all good, then the only explanation is that He indeed wanted to remove those contradictions but simply did not know how.

The point here is that if God were defined as whatever you personally believed about Him, then God cannot be omnipotent, He cannot be all-knowing, and He cannot be completely good. These, of course, are not requirements for God. But I think it is important to realize that you cannot have those qualities if you define God in that way.

What qualities then can we deduce that a god has that manifests himself in different ways to all people and whatever a person chose to believe about god is okay? To illustrate let me put forth a couple of personal beliefs.

Belief 2: “God is an impersonal force that is everywhere”

Belief 3: “God is an alien being that resides on the other side of the galaxy”

Belief 5: “There is no such thing as the supernatural. Science is God”

Belief 6: “The statue in front of the temple is God incarnate”

Belief 7: “Each animal has a separate counterpart who is divine and is God”

What is my point? My point is that sure, you can believe anything you want about God! Can all these beliefs be correct? Of course not, many of them are contradictory. When we view the argument in this light we start to see the true silliness of the concept. I can believe anything I want to believe about anything. I can believe that Elvis Presley was George Washington
reincarnated returning in the power of Zoroaster. I can believe that New York City is located in New Delaware. The fact that I believe that does not change the fact that New York City is not located in New Delaware. There is a right answer to where New York City is and a wrong answer – I can believe what I want – but the key of course it to find the right answer.

That leads us, finally, to a different point. Let us say then that there is, a real objective God. How do Christians know that their God is the correct one? Especially considering that there are tens of thousands of gods to choose from? A skeptic might say that “No one can say beyond a shadow of a doubt who God is. If that is the case, then you would have no right to force your religious views on me.”

This is in fact, one of the more intriguing concepts. I would say that I can know for sure that I believe in the true God. I would concede that I can’t prove to you that I know the true God. I would also step forward and say that I can’t prove to you beyond a shadow of a doubt that this true God exists. That statement may startle some. But I believe it is true. The reason is this – it is at that point that faith steps in. No God, if He were perfectly good, would force you to believe in Him. A perfectly moral God would give you the free choice of either choosing Him or not. But what does this have to do with the question?

I agree with the man that says that I do not have the right to force my religious views on them. No one should have beliefs forced upon them. I should however, if I am a moral human being, share my beliefs with others. Why is this?

I believe most people in the world would wholeheartedly agree that we as a species are not perfect. The God we are referring to, however, is perfect. And with perfection comes perfect Goodness. Seeing then how we as humans are not perfect, it is in our best interests to reach perfection. Because it is there that perfect goodness is – and everyone would agree that good is better than bad. This means, that if you knew the true way to God, you would know the true way to perfection, and thus to perfect goodness. Human beings, being depraved and needing of perfection and perfect goodness, would be in necessity of such things. In not experiencing divine perfect, in not attaining all that I am capable of, I am falling short of my potential, falling short of ultimate goodness that I could experience. If you happened to know the way to God, you would know the way to ultimate goodness. It would only be moral of you to share what you know with everyone else. If you shared what you knew with no one that would be despicable. You would keep ultimate goodness all for yourself. If you didn’t try to tell everyone you knew, that would be despicable also. You would be hoarding ultimate goodness again for yourself and your friends. It would thus only be moral, in fact commendable, if you did share it with everyone.

But what if I didn’t want to know? Well, it would still be immoral if you didn’t at least tell me about the way to ultimate goodness. I might not know what I was missing. Who would not want to tell his friend about a marvelous place he had found to eat in town in fears that his friend might not want to know?

Thus in contrast to the comment I introduced with, I think one of the most commendable things a person can do is to share with me his beliefs about God.

In light of all these things, I find it safe to conclude that in order to have a view of God that is makes any logical sense; God must be an objective God. God must be a God that does not depend on human thoughts or ideas for a definition, but exists all on His own; a God that has attributes that do not depend on anything but Himself. Also, it is safe to conclude that in having an objective God, for Christians (and their view of God) it is only expected that one would share (not forcefully) one’s belief with others; in fact to not do so is immoral. It is also safe to conclude that not all religions are right – not all are equal. Some must be right and some must be wrong. Theses are simple conclusions – yet they are the stumbling block of many a man.

Please Note: when I say all religions are not right and equal, I am in no way disrespecting other religions. I can say with certainty that they are not right – however this does not lessen my respect for them one iota. If you believe that California will break off into the ocean tomorrow, I may know you’re wrong, but that does not lessen my respect for you. Some of the best, kindest, humble and sincerest people I’ve met have not been Christians. I long for their salvation yes, but I appreciate them and respect them also for who they are.

What is the issue?

Worldviews – what is a worldview?

A worldview is exactly what is says is it – the way that we view the world. It is how we view the “big picture”, the filter through which see everything. Though is may sound abstract, it is very practical. We use it in our daily lives when we read the news or learn new topics in class. It is the sum of our beliefs about the world around us. Thus, genuine Christianity is a way of seeing and comprehending all reality.

Every worldview must start with something – it must start with how the universe began.

Evolutionary Worldview

Naturalism – naturalism is the philosophy of evolution. It is the assumption that the forces of nature are alone adequate to explain everything that exists. That the universe is all that is, was, and ever will be. Notice though that this not a scientific statement – it cannot be tested. It is a philosophy.

Christian Worldview

Monotheism – the philosophy of Christianity. It assumes that one all powerful Creator or omnipotent God alone is adequate enough to explain everything that exists. As I Corinthians 8:6 says, “yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, though which all things came and through whom we live.”

Evolution and evolution

When dealing with evolution we can distinguish that there is a difference between evolution with a capital ‘E’ and a little ‘e’. Evolution with a little ‘e’ is the scientific theory and model of the origin of life. Evolution with a capital ‘E’ is the philosophy and worldview that includes little evolution as well as naturalism.

What does Scripture Teach?

Big Evolution cannot be repeated or tested. Science cannot prove something that happened in the past. It requires a certain amount of faith. Creationism also is an intelligent faith, a faith based on some cold hard facts, but faith nonetheless. Scripture doesn’t take the time to describe “special creation” (the special act of an omnipotent Creator) – it simply declares it. It is the same with God’s existence – it simply declares it.

Romans 1:20 “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

Nature declares God’s existence. Psalms 14:1 says that the fool says that there is no God. But let us deal with some of the scientific aspects of Evolution. Since the beginning of an Evolutionary worldview is Naturalism, let’s begin by looking at that.

Life in the Beginning – Dealing with Naturalism

The Marks of Design

-         We’ve all sat down on the grass and looked up at the clouds and tried to find faces or shapes in them that seemed familiar. Sometimes we can find rocks that look like certain things like people or animals. Sometimes dorm eggs resemble limestone. We can find things sometimes, like animals in the clouds, in natural processes that aren’t ‘really’ there.

-         By contrast, imagine driving down the road in South Dakota and suddenly you come by this huge mountain. You look hard at it and realize that the mountain bears an unmistakable likeness of four American Presidents. Would you claim that the formation was the product of wind, rain, and glacial erosion? Of course not. You would immediately notice that it was painstakingly chiseled and carved out by the hands of artist.

-         We intuitively know what sorts of things have been designed and what the product of natural forces is.

Mathematician William Debski gives a logical explanation of this:

1)      If the natural phenomena are irregular erratic and unspecified, we conclude that it is a random event.

2)      If the phenomena is regular, predictable, and repeatable, we conclude that it is the result of nature.

3)      If it is unpredictable, yet highly specific, we conclude that it is designed.

The Mt. Rushmore example explains this. It is something that is irregular (we usually don’t see erosion forming faces in stone), and something highly specified (a preselected pattern, very particular).

If we look throughout the universe, we find that many things don’t have any natural law to explain them (irregular). We also find that things are highly specified.

Examples:

-         If Earth were just a little closer to the sun, the planet would be scorched, all the water would boil and there would be no life. If it was a little farther away, all its water would freeze and the landscapes would be nothing but deserts.

-         The processes of our bodies rely on a small temperature window. The processes necessary for life occur within a narrow temperature range. For these processes to be maintained, the sun must maintain a constant distance from the sun – and in fact we find that the sun has a nearly circular orbit.

-         Water, which makes up 75% of the Earth, has an array of life giving qualities. It’s solid state is lighter than it’s liquid state. This allows ice to form and certain marine life to survive in the winter. Water molecules have something called a ‘hydrophobic effect’ which gives water the unique ability to shape proteins and nucleic acids in DNA.

-         The force of gravity is extremely fine-tuned. If it were slightly stronger the universe would collapse on itself – if it were slightly weaker matter would streak away from each other so fast in cosmic expansion that galaxies would have been unable to form. (Accurate to 1 part in 1^60).

-         The neutron is larger than the proton and has a tendency to decay. When a neutron is free (not in a nucleus) it has the ability to decay into a proton and a particle of light. If the process was reversed, a proton would then decay into neutron and life would be impossible. Why? If the proton decayed, all things made of protons would be unstable and would decay. Hydrogen is made up of a single proton – and 74% of the known universe is composed of hydrogen.

-         The electron and the proton have the same magnitude of electric charge. If they were different, atoms us would either be positively or negatively charged – meaning that the atoms themselves would repel each other because they are like charges, and structure could not exist.

The universe seems designed because it is designed. There’s a large list of preconditions that must be met to support life. If the universe is designed, then a naturalistic worldview is illogical. A creationist worldview would not be.

Now that we’ve dealt with a naturalistic worldview, let’s look at the meat of the theory of evolution.

Did We Evolve – The Problems of Evolution

Where did it start?

Charles Darwin started it all with his theories in his book the Origin of Species. He had the idea, that in observing creatures, if they can change so much in naturally in short periods of time, perhaps nature can do so much more given an indefinite amount of time.

What is our problem with that?

Nobody denies that animals can be bred to exhibit certain features and that microorganisms can adapt to environments. It would be ridiculous to believe otherwise. This is called microevolution. The problem, or ‘beef’, we have is with what we call macroevolution – or one kind of animal evolving into another kind of animal: interspecies evolution.

Why do we have a problem with that?

Consider a pigeon – Darwin breeded pigeons. It has a variety of different forms it can take – it can have feathers like a Chinese fan; it can become a pouter with a huge crop under its beak; it can be a Jacobin with a hood of feathers. Yet despite its diversity, they are all descendants of the common rock pigeon found on every street corner of New York . What is the key idea here? No matter what you do to a pigeon, breeding it or changing its environment, it still remains a pigeon.

He took changes he observed in nature, and extrapolated them back into the past to things he had not observed. If pigeons can be so greatly transformed in the span of a couple generations with a skilled breeder, imagine what nature and time could do given millions of years? Evolution is not stating fact – no one has ever witnessed evolution occurring. It goes beyond observable facts.

When we intermingle animals and breed them, we get different types of animals. But we never get a new animal. Breeding can no more create new a species than shuffling a deck of cards can make a new card. There is no new genetic material added – you simply mix and match genes that already exist. So we see, Darwin ’s basis case doesn’t even hold water.

What about mutation and natural selection and things like that? Well, we can talk about that under the category of the ‘mechanisms of evolution’. Though we see that Darwin ’s basis case is not sound, let’s look still at the mechanisms or ‘ways’ that evolution accomplishes what it is theorized to do. We shall see if it is sound or not.

Mechanisms of Evolution: Mutations

Let’s first look at the concept of probability. Consider this – say you had a coin. If you flipped it, what is the probability that you will get heads? 1 in 2 or 50/50 of course. What if you flipped 3 coins? What would be the probability that you would get heads? It would be 1/8 or 12%. What if you flipped 10 coins? You’d have a one in 1024 chance they’d all be heads. It increases exponentially that more you have: when you have 20 coins the odds come to roughly 1 in 1 million.

Let’s apply this to the origin of life. Proteins, the building blocks of life, are family of molecules. Here is an example of one:

Proteins come in one or two forms – left-handed and right-handed. Left handed and right handed perform identically in chemical reactions, they merely differ in their 3-dimensional orientation. They are mirror forms of each other. The difference though can be significant – consider glucose.  This sugar that you eat everyday is a right-handed molecule. Humans can only metabolize the natural right-handed sugars. The left-handed form, which is manufactured artificially, is used as a calorie-free sweetener. Among other things, this ‘handed-ness’ determines the function of a protein.

A typical protein is made up of a chain of 445 left-handed amino acids. No protein found in nature contains right handed amino acids. Living organisms – all living organisms – use these left-handed proteins. If our cells come upon a right-handed version of a protein it will simply ignore it. Know one knows why. Intelligent Design anyone?

But now we can apply the laws of probability to this. For an amino acid to be formed it needs to be of this left-handed form – we have 2 choices like the coin toss. The chances of an average protein consisting of 445 amino acids forming by chance are one chance out of 2⁴¹⁰ (35 of the amino acids would be glycine, which is symmetrical).

This is a huge number – let’s give it some scope. Suppose we give a snail moving at the speed of one inch every million years the task of moving the entire earth atom by atom over to the other side of the universe and back.

Then, imagine the length of time it takes light to travel one millimeter, and a million proteins forming in that length of time hoping to form one protein with all left-handed amino acids. Guess what! The snail would win, many millions of times over before even one left-handed protein would be formed!

That’s not even out point. Let’s say that the proteins can come in any configuration, just for kicks. There are 20 basic amino acids that make the building blocks for proteins. They must come in a specific order or they are no longer the same protein – they are either a different one or not a functioning protein. The order is very important – like computer code or a sentence. Change a word and you change the meaning of the sentence. This is the effect of a mutation. Diseases arise when this happens – it is a departure from what was originally intended.

If you have a typing error in a report, you are not likely to improve the report. It’s more likely to make nonsense that better sense. In order for this mechanism of evolution to work, we must hope that a mutation somewhere must be beneficial. And since these mutations must accumulate over time, and beneficial mutations (if there are any) would be the rule instead of the exception. Miracles would become the rule instead of the exception. When the doctor tells the parents that their child has a mutation, they don’t respond with “Oh! Is it a good one?”

Mechanisms of Evolution: Natural Selection

Darwin ’s definition of natural selection was the preservation of favorable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, and the survival of the fittest (Johnson, 1976, p. vii). As one of the most influential evolutionists, Stephen J. Gould (1977, p. 22) explains, its force comes from the following logic:

1. Organisms vary, and these variations are likely inherited by their offspring.
2. Organisms produce more offspring than can possibly survive (many do at least).
3. On the average, offspring that vary strongly in directions favored by the environment will survive and propagate. Favorable variations will therefore accumulate in populations by natural selection.

That’s natural selection in a nutshell. What are the problems with this?

Peppered Moth

You’ve probably all heard of the peppered moth in your biology and zoology classes and the like. In 1953 Bernard Kettlewell released peppered moths, which is normally white with black spots, and another moth of the same type with a mutation that made it black, in a wood where trees were darkened by pollution. He recaptured a much higher percentage of dark moths than light moths, implying natural selection has was work. Two years later, he obtained the opposite result in an unpolluted forest. These seemed to be confirmation of Darwin ’s natural selection. What they don’t tell you is that his experiment was inherently flawed. In the respected journal Nature, it explains this:

“…the most serious problem is that B. betularia probably does not rest on tree trunks — exactly two moths have been seen in such a position in more than 40 years of intensive search. The natural resting spots are, in fact, a mystery. This alone invalidates Kettlewell’s release-recapture experiments, as moths were released by placing them directly onto tree trunks, where they are highly visible to bird predators. (Kettlewell also released his moths during the day, while they normally choose resting places at night.)…the results of Kettlewell’s behavioral experiments were not replicated in later studies: moths have no tendency to choose matching backgrounds…what can one make of all this?…for the time being we must discard Biston as a well-understood example of natural selection in action.”

Irreducible Complexity

Late Christian evangelist Francis Schaeffer offered this argument: what happens if a fish were evolve lungs? Would it move up to the next evolutionary stage? No – It would drown. You can’t change things piecemeal – a new organ here, a limb there. If you begin mutating a fish’s gills into lungs, it would be disaster, not an advantage. The only way to turn the fish into a land-dwelling animal all at once – and then you’d have to change other things at the same time too, like its circulatory system, skeleton, etc. Something that is irreducibly complex is yet cannot evolve in gradual steps.

Many living structures are like this. Take the bat – it is supposed to have evolved from a small mouse-like creature. Think about it however. If a mouse-like creature were to start evolving webbing between its toes, what would happen? It would flop around pathetically and become extinct. Consider the eye – it doesn’t work unless all its parts are fully formed and functioning? How can this evolve through slight altercations? In light of this, it is interesting that Darwin himself said, “if it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” (Origin of Species, 6th ed. (1988), p. 154)

Again we see that even the mechanisms of evolution are as shaky as an elephant on a totem pole. Well, if the mechanisms are not solid, maybe at least history will back it up. Perhaps our theories are just a little off and our records of the past will give us irrevocable proof in evolutionary theory.

Let’s take a look.

What about the fossil record though? Doesn’t that support evolution?

The simple fact is that the fossil record does not support gradual evolution and natural selection – there is not substantial support for intermediary organisms. Though I can’t name you which organisms are hypothesized to be transitional animals, I can say that there are a little more than 200 organisms that are in question. Take this number and put it beside the 5 billion species that are estimated to exist. The fossil record speaks for itself.

Some say that the fossil record simply isn’t complete so that is why we have so little evidence for transitional fossils. Consider these quotes:

“Evolutionists have used the excuse that the fossil record is not complete enough to be an accurate representation of the history of life on the Earth. A recent book, The Adequacy of the Fossil Record (Donovan, S.K. and C.R.C. Paul, eds. 1998), examined the fossil record in terms of its completeness, bias (over and under representation of certain species and groups of organisms), and stratigraphic range (its completeness for a species over the entire history of its existence). Their conclusions were that the fossil record is surprisingly complete, with about 10% of all species that have ever lived being represented. There are some biases and stratigraphic incompleteness in the fossil record, but these problems can be estimated mathematically from the available data. There are many examples of stratigraphic gaps in the fossil record, with these gaps being the rule rather than the exception. In the past, it has been assumed that the gaps represent incompleteness of the fossil record. The authors suggest the “heretical” view that stratigraphic data should be used to test the phylogenetic relationships between species rather than assume that the relationships exist and that the fossil record is incomplete.”

“Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn’t changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin ’s time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America , have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information…” (Raup, David M., “Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology,” Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, vol. 50, 1979, p. 25.)

Cambrian Explosion

One of the hardest facts that evolutionists have to deal with is the fossil record. According to the evolutionary timeline, life began 3.5 billion years ago. Yet according to the fossil record, single celled organisms were and the like were the only thing in existence until 650 million years ago. Then a wealth of species burst on the scene fully formed and functional. According to evolution there should be a wealth of transitional species. But there are none. When textbooks say that the fossil record supports evolution, the claim is simply untrue.

We find then upon looking at all the evidence that it is impossible to explain evolutionary theory as it currently stands.

That’s all well in good, but if evolution can’t be entirely explained scientifically, what if God had his hand in it?

Theistic Evolution

Sometimes this view is easy to take and can seem appealing. However, it is fatally flawed. Why?

1)      If God were guiding evolution, he would ensure that each variation was beneficial from the start – God doesn’t do things halfway. If God directed evolution, natural selection would just be irrelevant, or extra. The whole purpose of Darwin ’s theory was to identify a natural process that would mimic design, making design in itself irrelevant.

2)      Psalm 100:3 states that “Know that the Lord is God. It is He who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.” It says clearly that God made us. It also says in Genesis 2:7 that “the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being”. Evolution states that man evolved from life forms that developed in the ‘primordial ooze’. Here it says, God made man from the dust of the ground–not the from ooze.

3)      If evolution is true and the Bible is true then how is the formation of Eve explained? She was created out of one of Adam’s ribs (Gen. 2:22). There is no way to explain this if theistic evolution is true; that is, unless you want to say that Eve wasn’t made from Adam’s side. Then, if you do that, you doubt the very word of God.

4)      Either we must believe the entire Genesis account or not!

So do we believe the Genesis account? As Christians the answer is yes! It is our only logical alternative. Even if it wasn’t, I still trust my Lord enough to stand on His Word and take it as truth. The only question that remains is…do you?

Apologetics is giving a defense to the many jabs and challenges that the world throws at Christianity. In universities today, Christianity is viewed much as Bill and Ted are. It can be enjoyable to be around, funny, pretty tolerable, but overall pretty stupid. Modern society says that Christianity’s views do not make sense and most Christians “check their brains in at the doors” to any place that requires them to use their minds to analyze their religion.

It is unfortunate that some Christians do fulfill that stereotype. But that isn’t what God calls us to – God calls us not only to love him with out hearts, but also with our minds (Mk 22:37). Christianity isn’t a completely blind faith – it’s an intelligent faith. So let us use our minds to understand God better. Let’s also use it to defuse some of the world’s myths. Many of the world’s arguments are deceptive and meant to confuse and lead doubting people, who would have otherwise looked into the person of Christ, astray and into empty, fruitless, and ultimately Godless lives. It is our job, as Christians, to expose these lies and prevent unbelievers and believers alike from falling into the enemy’s traps. 

1 Peter 3:15b is the most commonly quoted verse associated with apologetics: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” When one is asked a question regarding the validity of their Christianity, it is the apologist’s work to try to answer that question.

The goal of apologetics is, or at least should be, evangelism. According to Colossians 4:2-6, Paul instructs us in our conversation so that we may know how to “answer everyone”. Why? So that we look smart? No, because Paul would like to “proclaim the mystery of Christ”, and proclaim it clearly. He calls us to make the “most of every opportunity”. Let us always be sensitive to this in our conversation with others.

It is important to one who is studying apologetics to realize to “trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:5) In all cases, we always come under the authority of God and the Word of God – everything that comes under examination is ultimately compared to the Word of God to determine its truth and validity. God’s Word is our authority and our source of truth – anything not in agreement with it will be held as untrue.

In apologetics, sometimes when dealing with common arguments, it’s easy to pre-formulate conversations that you might start with people. Remember Mark 13:11 however: “Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.” There Jesus is talking about the end times and being attuned to the Holy Spirit and speaking what God would have you speak. It is the same when conversing with other people – remain open to God’s leading; sometimes someone might need to hear the gospel instead of a logical argument for the existence of God. That said, it is important for the apologist to be practiced and knowledgeable about what he is talking about. 

I like to call apologetics, “theology in sneakers”. It is information that you actually use when you are talking to others and trying to determine your own position on things. Have you ever went walking while barefoot? You start going, and maybe it’s a really hot day and your walking on asphalt – or you weren’t looking and started walking on rocks – or your feet really stink or something. It’s then that you wish you had your sneakers on. It’s the same with apologetics – When someone asks you a question about God or the Bible, and you have no idea, it makes you really wish you had your sneakers on.  

There are 2 reasons I think apologetics is needed on modern times. They are:

1)      It’s commanded by 1 Peter 3:!5 – “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” It pretty direct here – notice that it says we are to be prepared ‘always’.

2)      The second reason is because of all the false teachings in the world. Let me give you a couple of facts. Mormonism teaches that Jesus and Satan are brothers and that God was once a man on another world and that he took his goddess wife here to earth and populated it with his ‘spirit children’ and that you too can be a god of your own world. Jehovah’s witnesses deny the Trinity, believe Jesus is Michael the Archangel, there is no hell, and only 144,000 people will make it to heaven. Islam teaches that Jesus was not God, that He didn’t rise from the dead, salvation is a combination of works and Allah’s grace and that Mohammed is greater than Jesus. Christian Science teaches that Jesus is not the Messiah, did not die, is not God and that good and evil are not real. The Bahai religion teaches that all the world religions are basically the same and that all religions point toward one God. Atheism teaches that there isn’t even a God! There’s false teachings even within the Christian church. Now is the time, more than ever, to be rooted in the foundation of God’s Word so we aren’t like the seed described in Matt 13:6 “But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched and they withered because they had no root.”

That’s a basic and quick summary of what apologetics is and why we need it. Additionally, we need to realize that in apologetics the Word of God has final authority. All of our opinions are rooted in God’s Word – otherwise, where are we? If you’re on an ice sled and I’m on an ice sled and I’m trying to push you, we’re not going to
go anywhere unless one of us is rooted on a solid foundation: that foundation being God’s wisdom not our own understanding. Also remember that in sharing with other people, we are to be to share our knowledge, testimony, and the gospel like Peter says in the second half of I Peter 3:15 – “do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience.” I Corinthians also says “Knowledge puffs up but love builds up.” So we need to be humble and gentle with others in everything, but apologetics especially.