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Stand to Reason Weekly Podcast
Why Does God Limit Our Opportunity to Repent and Believe to This Lifetime?
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Hello friends. Greg Koukl here for stand around reason. I'm energized at the moment because just got the stats for our wonderful project in the month of August, which we do have been doing for a number of years now. Be one of the 100. I actually think we should call it be one of the 200 because we blow by the 100 new strategic partners every single year that we do this. And sometimes many times we get close to 200. In fact, that program's over. I just wanted to to let you know what our results were because we're thrilled with so many of you and I suspect some of you are even praying for us and I appreciate that. So I wanted to give you the results. We have a total number of new strategic partners, that is those who commit themselves to help us financially with a fixed amount every month, 25, 50, $100, some even more. And that's a month to month to month to month basis. We've got what, over maybe 2,000 of those right now. More than that, that's a foundation for us, people we trust and that's our cadre on the inside. We added 178 more strategic partners to our team this last month. So I just want to say thank you to those 178, which represents, by the way, quite a of that, over 100 of those, this was their very first time they've ever given to stand a reason. Another 22 of those, this was the second time they've given. So this is really great for us. We're so thrilled to know that we're bringing more people on board in this vital way to help us to continue doing what I think we do pretty well. And your giving is evidence of that, your satisfaction with that. So it was great. By the way, six different countries. Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, the uk not counting the usa, that would be seven, I guess the top five states, California, Texas, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio. I mean I got all these stats here, but it all adds up to wow, cool. Good, thanks. So I just wanted to say thank you to all of you who have participated. By the way, it's not too late to become a strategic partner. You can do that anytime. You can join up. There were some special guests that were involved with that program that we had, but that's over with. But we're going to keep giving you good stuff because we have so many of you giving us the help that we need so that we can do it. So thanks so much for that. As long as I'm kind of catching you up on things just right now. The see the numbers for Atlanta and Atlanta is going to be a week from Friday. That's when we do our Atlanta reality. It's the first one of this season. We're pushing very close to 1,000 people being there. That's great for a first launch. We hadn't done Atlanta before. We got 9:54. We know we're going to blow over the top because people sign up the last week and many of you will. That would be September 12th and 13th. And the theme this season is the story of reality. I like that one. And we'll have John Stonestreet, one of our keynote speakers on Friday. I'll be closing out the plenary session on Friday night with my own talk about atheism. J. Warner Wallace will be back. Always great to have him on board. Jason Jimenez back again. Tripp and Megan Allman and the rest of the STR team. We're all going to be doing sessions, plenary sessions, breakout sessions. It's going to be fabulous. If you want more detail about it, just go to realityapologetics.com realityapologetics.com Now, Seattle, Washington, we got 89 seats left. That's like six weeks out. And October 17th and 18th and it's almost completely full. And by the way, those 89 seats are in the overflow area. So our total max is 1500. The main auditorium is sold out. We're pushing a little more than 600 for Minneapolis November 7th and 8th. If you register by midnight on September 12th, you can get the early bird savings, $20 off the full price, just $49 per person. I know I got a bunch of friends in the Minocqua Wood reflective Flambeau area where our places that may be listening to this. Just saying, we'd love to see you there in Minneapolis, there in November. And then of course, in the spring, Dallas, February 20th and 21st, Philadelphia, March 13th and 14th, and then Southern Cal April 24th and 25th. We have a new location. I think it's Calvary Chapel Downey, but we'll give you more detail about that. Again, Everything's available@realityapologetics.com All right. Now I was confronted with a question. Not personally, but I just saw it online and sometimes I watch these things online occasionally. I'm not into that so much, but I will do it occasionally and then hear a challenge or question that's put to another Christian. And it's kind of a unique challenge. And this particular one is in that category and it gives A Christian pause, especially when offered by a non Christian. I've never heard this challenge before now. It's actually just a question. And it is offered as a challenge in the sense that it looks like there's something about Christianity that's just too odd to take seriously. I think that's the spirit in which it was given. And the question was, why is it that God limits our opportunity to repent and believe to this lifetime only? Why not after we die? And that seems kind of arbitrary, or it did to the one raising the question. I think it was a fair question too, that the person was offering. It just seemed arbitrary to him. And if he were to consider Christianity, he's not a Christian, but if he were to consider Christianity as possibly true and the merits, this would be a little bit of a stumbling block. Isn't it odd, because it creates in his mind an unusual circumstance. And that unusual circumstance is. And incidentally, thought experiments, so to speak, like this that I'm going to offer you in a moment are perfectly legitimate. They're speculative, of course, but they're legitimate, it seems to me, because this is the way philosophers try to work through problems all the time. Okay, so the thought experiment was, what if someone is planning to go to church and has been convinced of Christianity enough to think that, well, Sunday's coming up, in a few days I'm going to go to church and I am going to walk forward and become a Christian on that particular day and something happens to them in the meantime and they get killed. Well, they can't make a decision after they get killed. That's the end point. And they didn't make the decision because they got killed before they were able to go to church and come forward with the altar call. And so it seems like this person loses out on eternal life through some kind of accidental circumstance, depriving him of heaven and now he'll be in hell forever. Or to add another twist, which this questioner added, wouldn't it be odd if someone planned to murder that person before he went to church because he wanted that person to go to hell, if indeed Christianity turned out to be true, and he didn't become a Christian because he was planning to do so at church, and so he's getting murdered to secure his place in hell, and now it's the murderer that is the one who's deciding effectively whether that person goes to heaven or to hell. Now, doesn't this just seem weird? Is the way the question was offered and taken at face value and the way the question was asked it seemed a bit compelling. Oh, wow, it does seem weird. Now here's the deal. When you are challenged with a question like that, especially in this case on a podcast and there are tens of thousands of people, maybe millions listening in, when you're offered a challenge like that and you're hit with this imponderable, maybe you don't know how to answer. You never heard of that before. I had never heard that before. And you don't know how to answer. And there's a long pause. Well, in the gamesmanship of those kinds of interactions, that doesn't work well for the Christian because it looks like he's been had. It looks like, oh, there's something he can't answer. And because people watching these things are kind of keeping score after a fashion now, this undermines the audience's confidence in the Christian view. Now this is something I am aware of all the time. I do not mind being confronted with a question I can't answer. There are lots of questions I can answer. There are lots of imponderables, not just in Christianity, but in life, regardless of what worldview you adopt as true. Alright, I don't mind that. What I do mind is being placed in a position where my response is going to make the Christian view look bad. And that I don't want to do. I don't want to look bad, but you know, I'm expendable. The truth of Christianity and God, Jesus, that's much more important than me. And so I don't want the message to look implausible because of the way a clever question is put. And I'm kind of like a deer in the headlights. So a couple of thoughts on this, and this is something you may want to employ yourself when confronted with that kind of thing. When somebody asks you a question and it just stops you cold in your tracks and you don't know how to deal with it, it's best for you to immediately admit that. And that's what I would do here. I'd say, wow, I don't know how I'd answer that. I actually have never thought about it before, so I'd have to think about it now. That's all that's needed, I think, to take the discomfort out of the pause. Okay. I mean, lots of people don't have answers to things they've been hit with right away. It doesn't mean there isn't an answer, but it removes the deer in the headlights element of that moment. Okay. That's the best way to start. Okay. But I might Add something else. And it occurred to me immediately when I heard this, this other item, I'm thinking to myself, what is the significance of this question? This is a question about why God did or didn't do something. All right. Boy, could a Christian ask the same question. I wonder why God says only up until death and not after death. I wonder why I could ask that same question. In other words, believing in Christianity and all the truth of Christianity and God in the Bible and the whole Christian worldview, I still could ask this question. And the question doesn't strike me as one that threatens the truth of the view. Maybe it seems odd to some people, but I don't see how it really. So that would be a question that I might ask next. By the way, let's just call him Fred. Okay, we'll just call the person raising the question Fred. By the way, Fred, as far as you're concerned, I'm just curious what rides on my answer to this question. If I can't answer this question, does that in any way, in your mind undermine the truth of Christianity? Now, I think in this particular case, the questioner would have had to say, well, it does seem odd and seems arbitrary, but I think he wouldn't say that this is a blow to the truth of the Christian worldview if you can't answer why God set the limit at death. All right, so what I'm doing there is I'm just trying to take the teeth out of the objection, by the way. And I think in a fair way, I don't think it matters at all whether you can answer this question. And so what I'm doing is one saying, don't understand, not sure I can. That's a new one for me. I have to think about it. And by the way, is this really significant if it is, how? Because I don't think it is. And I don't think he's going to be able to offer how it really undermines Christianity. Now, I've just put the entire challenge in an entirely different light. Now I can say, okay, let me think about this. I guess if you're going to set a boundary. Well, before I say that, let me back up and put it this way, because this is something that I've said many times on the air. I say, Fred, one of the difficulties with your question in trying to figure it out, try to give you a good answer, is that most of the questions that start out, why did God? Or why didn't God? Can't be answered because they're in the mind of God, and he hasn't told us. All right, so who knows? But I can offer a couple of thoughts. Here's the first thought. Let's just say God moved the boundary instead of it not being at death. The boundary is like a year after death, or maybe two years after death, or ten years after death. Okay? Let's just say Jesus hasn't come yet and the final White Throne judgment is somewhere in the future. It didn't happen, but now they're there. Okay, Would that be enough for you? Or what about maybe after they're thrown into the lake of fire being judged according to their deeds? What if God would give them another hundred years to make the choice? Would you be satisfied with any of those? Or wouldn't it be the case that you could always ask this question no matter where the deciding point was placed? Now, that's a question, right? And I think it reveals a weakness of the challenge because there's no way of providing a satisfactory answer, even in principle. Because wherever that happened to be, that final point, you could always ask, why is it there and not somewhere else? So at this point, this observation is to make the point that this is not just a trivial kind of curiosity, because it doesn't ultimately matter, is it's not even able to be answered in a way that's going to be satisfying to somebody making the objection. This reminds me of those who say, okay, the problem of evil, the deductor problem isn't going to work. That doesn't really invade effectively against Christian theism. It's not that there's necessarily a contradiction, which I think is true. It's not a contradiction. It can be shown not to be contradictory. The problem of evil and good power for God. But there's just so much of it. There's just so much of seems unlikely that a good God would allow so much evil that doesn't seem to have any good reason behind it. Now that's more akin to what's called the inductive problem of evil, and this is much more popular now. But then the question can be asked, okay, where is the cutoff point? Let's just say there's half as much evil in the world that God ordains, then is right now given half as much evil in the world, suffering whatever, would you be satisfied, or would you not still be able to raise the same question? Because the fact is, the amount of evil that we're experiencing right now that you're unhappy with is actually 1/2 as much as twice the amount of evil that could have taken place had God allowed more. So it's just to point out that some of these complaints don't even in principle have a satisfying answer to them. And so they're not exactly fair questions or challenges to raise. But as I was thinking about this, notice how each of these attempts to try to appropriately minimize the force of this challenge. And what about the arbitrary nature of it? Well, even if it's at death, that's arbit. Well, that's a pretty important juncture, wouldn't you say? And I don't have any reason to believe that God is arbitrary. He's just plucking at, oh well, let's just make it here. No, I think there is something significant about death, all right? And that is if you think about a criminal who goes about his criminal ways in our society, right, Isn't it possible that at any point of his illegal activity he could say, okay, enough is enough, this is my last job, I'm done with this, I'm not going to do anymore. I guess they could do that. And if they haven't gotten caught yet, then maybe they won't get caught. And now they live a straight life, all right? No problem until they get caught. And once they're caught red handed and thrown in jail, now their life of crime is over. We have a terminus to their entire life of crime and that's the end of it, okay? Now sentence will be delivered and they'll have to pay the penalty for their crimes, all right? It seems to me that death is like that. People can live a whole life of debauchery or whatever evil on different levels with the opportunity to be forgiven. And then they get to a point where their life of crime comes to an end, they die and that's it. Now some people might call that arbitrary. It doesn't seem arbitrary to me. Now their fate is fixed and God is going to render judgment. Based on the history there, that strikes me as a reasonable answer. Though one could say, well, he could have done it otherwise he could have changed it. Yeah, but he didn't. Now keep in mind too that this is an important element and this is where other elements of theology do enter into answering this question. That God grants a pardon to anyone is not an obligation that God has. He owes no one forgiveness, okay? Those that he does forgive, it's an act of unmerited favor. It's an act of grace. It is not obligatory. Just like no governor is obliged to offer somebody a pardon before he delivers sentence. A pardon is above and beyond what that person deserves, okay? It's a supererogatory act. It's an act of heroism, not required, but morally commendable if done. And the same thing is true here. Now, I have this suspicion, though, about the person who says, okay, in the illustration, okay, I'm going to become a Christian on Sunday and then get killed in the meantime. When I became a Christian on September 28, 1973, my brother came to my apartment that evening and began telling me more about Jesus. And here's what I recall telling him. I said, mark, you don't need to tell me anything more about Jesus. I've already decided I want to become a Christian. All right? Now, Mark says that I said, I already am a Christian. Okay? But nevertheless, just imagine if I had said what I thought I said, I've already decided I want to become a Christian. Don't you think that when I said that I already was one? If I'm saying I want to become a Christian, it's because I actually believe the things about Christianity are true. I might not have formalized that in a prayer or walking down the aisle to an altar call or something like that, but I'm convinced that I was already regenerated, born again. It certainly would have been the case if I told my brother, I already am a Christian. So going back to the illustration that's offered, if a person says, I'm going to become a Christian on Sunday, I think what they mean is, I already believe what needs to be believed and trusted to be one. But I'm going to formalize it on Sunday by coming forward at the altar call that I know will happen at the end of the service. He's not waiting to get regenerated, not in God's eyes. The faith is evident there beforehand in the sentiment. That's planning. That is reflected in the planning to go to church and go forward. Okay, now that's what I think is the reality of the circumstance. Nevertheless, I've offered some stages of responding to something like that to give you something to work with if you are confronted with issues similar to this. If you don't know how to respond, it's brand new. Don't go deer in the headlights. Go. Hmm. Wow. I never heard that one before. I'm gonna have to think about. Does sound a little odd. Does seem arbitrary, at least at first blush. Let me think. And by the way, is anything writing on this that's really important? See, I can't answer this. Does this somehow undermine the truthfulness of Christianity? In this case, I don't think it does. Notice how I'm trying to reposition the question now. This wasn't done in this conversation I saw online. It was a lot of deer in the headlight stuff and comments that didn't seem to apply to the issue. They deflected the issue, didn't answer the question, or didn't even attempt to answer the question. It seemed to me all that did is made the Christian view or circumstances seem more dire. I don't think the question is a compelling offers a compelling critique of Christianity, but it kind of felt like that a little bit because it wasn't being answered well or dealt with just by jumping in and saying hey, I don't know, I don't think anything's riding on this one, but you don't have to think about that. I'll ask my friends. I wonder that sometimes. You might say I don't know now. After I thought about it for a while, I did think that the death does represent a non arbitrary point because the life of crime is over. That's the way I had it in my own mind. But anyway, maybe this has been something helpful to you as well. Let's take a break and we got some calls coming up here on Standard Reason. Stay with us. Would you like an STR speaker to speak at your event? Greg, Allen, Tim and John are available both in person and online. Simply email bookingstr.org to schedule them today. Our speakers can address a wide range of topics from bioethics, gender issues and science to theology, philosophy and how to respond to other worldviews, all from a Biblical perspective. Whether it's a Sunday sermon conference or online event, we are here to equip Christians to effectively influence the culture for Christ. To explore speaker bios, learn more about the topics we cover, or discover additional options, visit str.org then email bookingstr.org to secure Greg, Alan, Tim or John for your event. Have you seen our brand new website? Stop by str.org and enjoy a fresh, clean layout with all the same great content. The new Stand a Reason website was designed with you in mind. It has an easier than ever navigation and a crisp, simple layout so you can find all the sound analysis and careful commentary that you've covered. Come to expect from us? Browse new features that make finding your favorite resources easier than ever. As always, it's our goal to equip you, our fellow Christians, with the confidence, clear thinking and courage you need for every encounter you have as a Christian ambassador. Our new website is just one way we're fulfilling that goal, allowing you to access the resources you need in a new and improved way. So visit str.org and keep coming back to discover new podcasts, articles, and videos each and every day. Alrighty. There's an act of cruelty that was just committed. I'm doing intermittent fasting, which means I have my bulletproof coffee in the morning and then last till dinner and get into a little keto thing going on during the afternoon. And then they ordered a pizza. Pepperoni. Oh, look at this. Kyle's holding it up. Well, I decided to end my intermittent fasting just to go surely today. And I had some of that Costco pepperoni with hot peppers on it. So now I'm trying to recover, so I can take your call. So let's. Let's go to Tricia in Arkansas. Tricia, welcome to the show. Hi.
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Hi, Greg. How are you?
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I'm doing okay. I'm still trying to choke down the pizza that I purloined from the rest of the crew.
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Yes. Okay. Well, so I have a question from a student of mine. I teach in a Christian school. I teach English, and I require reading every quarter. They have to present a book, and they get extra credit if they do an apologetics book. But I also have opposite. I call them opposite apologetics books. It's like that other side, but I require parent permission for those. And they are all books I've read myself. So I have a student reading a manual for creating atheists, and I've read myself. And I have to say Peter Bogoshian, whenever. Yes. And when I read that book, I don't think I took much stock in what he was saying. I felt like it was poorly written, so I didn't. You know, I was just. Okay. But she has come across the part. I think I told Amy it was bothering her. I don't know if bothering her is the word, but I did it. She's thinking about it, and I. This is what I want them to do. I want them to think about these questions while they're in high school and in the Christian school environment, and we can help them. And I did tell her, when you come across things that you need help with, ask a parent, your pastor, people here at school, whatever. Well, she did ask her parents. They don't know the answer. And so. And I. She was telling me about it, and I think I've known the answer before, but I don't remember. But it has to do with Genesis, chapter one versus chapter one, verse 11 and 12, and verse 26 and 27 suggest that. That all the things were Made. Specifically, we're talking about trees and vegetation that was all made. And then he makes Adam and Eve. Well, then if you go to chapter two, verses four through nine, and I've got that one pulled up, but just starting with verse seven. So verse seven says, and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sigh and good for food. And then, so it's trying to say, and I think my student might be on the right track, she's thinking that this is only talking about the garden, that there were already trees. But she doesn't know, and I really don't know, but they do. And she knows. She understands that. Yes, this looks maybe contradictory, but we know there has to be an explanation.
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Sure. Okay. Well, I have some thoughts about this. And one of the first thoughts, let me pause for a moment. I'm going to make a reference to a different passage entirely on a different issue. But to make this broader point, so if you go to Matthew, chapter one, do you know how Matthew starts?
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Not right off hand.
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Okay. Genealogy.
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Oh, yes, yes.
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It's a long genealogy right there. If you go to Luke, chapter, what, three or four? Luke has another genealogy, but the genealogies don't match. They both terminate at one point on David, but one goes through the first genealogy, Matthew goes through through David to David through Solomon. And the second genealogy, the one in Luke, goes from Jesus to David through Nathan, a different son. So they're both sons, but they different genealogies. Okay, okay. Now, people raise this all the time and they wonder why there's a contradiction. Why two completely different genealogies for Jesus? All right, now here's the first thing that ought to come to our mind. The people who wrote these things and who read them, I suspect, were reasonably intelligent people. And if this represented a significant problem to the people to whom it was written, why wouldn't they be troubled for the last 2000 years about this world? Radically conflicting genealogy. All different people between these two gospel accounts. Okay. And the reason that they weren't is they didn't see it as a contradiction. They saw it as two separate genealogies, one a genealogy of Joseph and the other a genealogy from Mary showing that both parents had a royal genealogy going back to David. All right, and there's some hints in the way these Genealogies were characterized, or at least in the one in Luke, that might help you to see that, but it's not obvious at first, which is why people raise their hand. Oh, contradiction, contradiction. You think you're the first person who's ever read this? No. These people understood what was going on. Okay? So there's a principle there. And the principle is there are things that look contradictory to our eyes. Thousands of years and cultures removed and linguistically removed from the original readers. Okay. But apparently in the case of the genealogies, this didn't create a problem for the original readers. Why not? Because they understood. And as we look more closely at those things, we see, oh, there is a resolution to this apparent contradiction in the genealogies. Okay. With that thought in mind, let's go back to Genesis 1 and 2. And in Genesis, the problem that people have, I think, when they go back to passages like this is they expect things to be written in the kind of way that we write chronologies or news reporting nowadays. Everything's got to be in the right order, exactly the right order, or the same order that it actually took place, or it's a contradiction. But this is not the way they saw this. Now, I'm not sure if I can parse out every detail here between these two passages. Okay. Because taken it at face value, using a very, I'm just going to say, rigid way of understanding the orders here, there does seem to be like something's out of place. But it's only out of place if what the writers were intending to do was to give you a strict chronology in both cases. And this isn't at all clear to me that that's what was going on. Certainly not in chapter one. I know it says the first day and the second day and the third day and fourth day. Okay, I understand that. And there are many Christians who take that. It's called concordism. In other words, they take those passages to strictly line up with the way things actually took place chronologically in history. All right, and you could be a Concordist and a Young Earther like Ken Ham, or you can be a Concordist and an Old Earther like Hugh Ross. He still takes the same order. But there are other people who don't see this as Concordist. They see this as a characterization of a number of different things that are part of the creative process, but not necessarily describing these events in the order that they took place. All right? And you have a good reason for questioning that. And that is in Genesis 1, you have the sun showing up on the fourth day. Well, I'm trying to think right here in the. Let's see, the vegetation is showing up on the third day in Genesis 1, and then the sun shows up on the fourth day. Now, there are different ways of taking this. And some might say, well, the sun was there, but it wasn't penetrating for visible view of the person standing on the earth. That's Hugh Ross's point. But it's curious, though, because it's saying morning and evening, morning and evening, morning and evening before there's even a sun. Well, you can't have a morning and evening without a sun because morning just is sunrise and evening just as sunset. Now, what this ought to clue us into is that there are literary forms being used here as opposed to strictly literal chronological rendering. Are you with me so far?
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Yes.
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Okay, so I'm not trying to argue for one view. Old earth, young earth. I'm just simply saying these are things that are in the text. And we have to take these things into consideration when we make our assessments. And even in the Gospels, you don't have in certain texts strict chronology, because that wasn't the way writers wrote those things. Then they organized them somewhat thematically as well. But it looks like chronology to us. And so it's easy for us to cry foul. Here's a contradiction. And I think this similar kind of thing is going on in Genesis. We get a kind of gross, I.e. overview, a large, big picture overview of the whole thing coming together in Genesis 1 with the pinnacle of creation being man. And the point here, I think the larger point is that God is the one who made everything out of nothing. This isn't consistent with the older, more ancient cosmologies, including the Egyptian cosmology, which these people had just come out of, remember, 400 years under Egypt. And now you've got Moses writing the Pentateuch, including this and explaining, by the way, the sun is not a person, it's an object. It doesn't have a name, it has a function. The moon is not a person, it's an object. It doesn't have a name, it has a function. That's what we get out of Genesis. So it's a reconstructing an entirely different type of cosmology for those ancient peoples to take it all in a rigid form, I think, is what if it wasn't intended to be taken that way? Creates problems. I think that the chapter two, verse four and following is zooming in on the general picture to something more particular and more specific. And that's the details of the creation of man and the naming of the animals and other things, and then God creating woman, etc, etc, So I think you have a more focused look. And if these are not supposed to be taken, especially Genesis 1, in a strict chronological order, then you don't have a contradiction with Chapter two, which zooms in a little bit and gets more precise. It's like an isolated camera. You watch a football game, you see the big play, and then you have a camera that's isolating some details of the play. And nowadays when they do color for football, they got some guy drawn arrows and there's little circles around players as they're running around. And this gets more sophisticated. But something like this seems to be going on in Genesis 2, so. And I'm interested to hear your response, but what I would say about this is that these writers did not intend to to put everything in strict chronological order. Sometimes they ordered them thematically. And you see that in Genesis 1 you have these three areas being formed, you know, the sky, the earth, and the sea. And then you have these three areas being filled. Okay, not necessarily in chronological order, but then when you get into Chapter two, it seems like you get a little bit more precision about what actually took place. If Genesis 1 was not meant to be understood in strict chronological order, then Genesis 2 and those passages you read don't represent a problem. But a lot has to do with reading the text the way an ancient person would read it, because I guarantee you, Moses was no dummy. And all the scribes and Pharisees, they weren't stupid. But they didn't read these texts and say, oh my gosh, these holy scriptures have a huge contradiction in them right at the beginning. No, I think they understood the way these things were read, and then they read them according to the genre and the style of the writers of that time, and therefore they did not see a conflict. There might have been somebody like Ken Ham or Hugh Ross, from their different perspectives, who are going to try to pick at all these pieces and try to create a harmony with them, and they're welcome to do that. But some of this stuff, I think, is just us imposing upon the text a modern style of writing and reading that was not part of the style of those early authors.
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B
All right, I really like your answer because that is what I tell my students when we read literally anything from any time period. You can't, with your 2025 brain, put that onto something written in 18, whatever.
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Right?
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And so I like how that applies here. And, and what I did tell her before we left. So she brought this up last night, Thursday. And so I told her tonight, the night I can call. And, But I also told her, even if, even if there's a contradiction here, if the resurrection happened, does this contradiction matter? She said no. And that's why I always tell the kids too, because they could talk about problematic Old Testament verses all day long if we, you know, had the time. But. But if the resurrection happens, I knew she would need a more thorough answer than that. But that usually for me, I just. As long as the resurrection happened, then whatever else doesn't matter.
- [43:01]
A
Yeah, that might be a little bit of an overstatement. I think the rest does matter. But your point is really important. Let's stick with the main things are the plain things. And what's the most important thing about a Genesis 1? Not what happened on which days, but who did what to make what remember. The whole thing was written to clarify a genuine true cosmology, what actually took place in contrast to the ancient Near Eastern cosmologies that those people would have been schooled on for 400 years in one way or another, because their history, they didn't have a history. The Jews, they might have had an oral history of some sort, but. But we don't know about that. We don't know those details. It is after they are released that then Moses has an opportunity to reacquaint them with their own history, genetically going back to Abraham and everything else. Because all of Genesis is explaining why these people are there to begin with and what God promises to do with them. And also to correct this cosmology where they're worshiping objects in nature that God is the one creating. They're not gods. God made these things. And that's why I think the point, and I didn't figure this out, I read it somewhere, which is great, that these are objects that don't have names, they have functions. They're not gods, they're things. And this is what's being communicated here. And that God is responsible ex nihilo, out of nothing, making all of these things, taking the chaos and making it in into order. Why? Because he is the true God. The details aren't quite so critical. And sometimes straining at the details will, at least to the modern mind, appear to surface difficulties that weren't there for the original readers. And that's the key. How did the original readers understand it? And I think your point, that at best you have an apparent contradiction, but that doesn't go against the main important things. How many take the resurrection? How many Women were at the tomb. When did they come? How many angels? Two? One? Were they men? Were they angels? What's going on there? To which I respond, I don't know. I don't know. You can have an accident in an intersection with lots of people sitting around, and they all give various details and sometimes conflicting testimonies of what took place, but they all agree there was a crash. And that's kind of the point with the Resurrection. They all agree the Resurrection took place. And by the way, it isn't just like there's that one testimony in the case of the Resurrection. You have all these other testimonies of all these other people, and then you have this incredible explosion of Christianity out of what. And I heard John Lennox say last night as we were watching a thing online, the Oxford mathematician and Christian defender say, if Jesus died and that was it, no one would have ever heard of him. If Jesus died on the cross and that was it, no one would ever have heard of him. It's the Resurrection that launched Jesus into. And the appearances and all that, that launched Jesus into the minds of all these others and started the church. And that's a powerful evidence, in my view, that it happened. So it's a collection of different things, not just one. And you don't have to get them all perfectly accurate to be able to verify or justify that an event like the Resurrection took place. And the same thing here, you know, you got Big Bang, right? A lot of people don't like the Big Bang, but you know what the Big Bang says. In the beginning, something created the heavens and the earth. It just doesn't put God in there. So on both sides of that issue, we all agree, you know, kind of thing. Anyway, something to chew on. And it looks like you're in a good place here to chat with your students. Good for you.
- [47:21]
B
All right, well, thank you very much.
- [47:23]
A
You're welcome. All right, we'll touch base with you maybe later on. Tell me how this works out. Give you another call. Okay.
- [47:30]
B
All right, thank you.
- [47:31]
A
Thanks, Trish. Bye. All right, let's go to Andrew in Houston. Andrew, welcome to the show.
- [47:38]
B
Hey, Greg. Taking these headphones off. Amy said she couldn't hear me. Can you hear me now?
- [47:47]
A
I can now, but you weren't talking before. You're dealing with your headphones. Yeah, I can see you hear. You're fine. Good. What's up?
- [47:54]
B
Okay, so I've got two questions, if there's time, but if not one, if I heard you say recently, our growth happens in this life, but I was just wondering about miscarriages like they never had a chance to grow to or abortions, you know, first Timothy 4, 8. Godliness is profitable for all things, promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come. But they never got a chance. So how does that work?
- [48:28]
A
Well, I think you stated it clearly. They never had a chance. They actually never had a chance to grow a mature physical body either, which means they don't ever get a physical body. Now that doesn't mean, since they never had a chance, that they don't end up being with the Lord. This is another issue, and I've explained my reasons at other times. Ron Nash has written a book called I think It's When a Child Dies or When a Baby Dies, one of the two. And I largely agree with his view. But the upshot is that those who die young, miscarriages, whatever babies, they go to be with the Lord. All right, so the but your point out of first Timothy is a good one, that godliness is developed here in this life. And so therefore, if a person dies young, or how about this, becomes a Christian when they're old. My dad became a Christian about a year and a half before he died. He was 71 when he died. He just turned 72. And so he kind of went into the kingdom naked and smelling of smoke is the way I've put it before, because all that he had to bring with him was wood, hay, stubble, and it all got burned up. But he was saved in virtue of his faith in Christ, but as a spiritual infant. And that's what happens to miscarriages. Those are infants, but also spiritual infants. And if they enter into heaven, they're they don't have this opportunity in this life to grow spiritually. I get that. I understand that. But if the point is sound from your first Timothy 4 passage that this is the life where spiritual growth takes place, not the next life, then the spiritual growth is going to be different for different people, depending on when they became Christians, when they became regenerate. All right? And my dad became regenerate very late in life, so he was a spiritual babe. And children who die through miscarriages are also spiritual babes, and they are both in the same circumstance. Now, some might say, oh, that's too bad. I say, yeah, it is too bad. It's especially too bad for those who spend their whole lives chalking up wood, hay, stubble, and there's nothing there that remains that's worth saving except for them in Christ. So I agree with you in principle on that that's true. I think you're right. I could be mistaken about this, but I think you're right. So you had another question though, right?
- [51:18]
B
Where do you land on the origin of the soul? What I see you have two main options. You have transducer that the union of the sperm and egg creates a soul, or you have, I don't know if it's called creationism. God creates a soul.
- [51:35]
A
Yeah.
- [51:36]
B
It may be creation or conception.
- [51:38]
A
Yes.
- [51:38]
B
What are you persuaded on?
- [51:40]
A
Well, one is traducian. That's what you said. T R A D U C I A N and the other one is creationism. And the idea that traducianism is that in reproduction a human reproduces according to his own kind, he reduces. Reproduces a whole human. And a whole human is a body and a soul. All right? There are material, immaterial aspects of it. And this seems to be pretty obvious because experiencing sensations like pain is a soulish thing. There are physical things going on, but the pain is felt in the soul. All right, now it would take a while to develop that, but that's basic dualistic characterization. Okay? J.P. morland has written a lot on that. Now if you're a creationist regarding the soul, then you hold that mom and dad create the body, but God creates the soul and unites it with the body. At some point. It may be at conception, it may be later on, some say at the quickening when the. The physical body begins to move. Here's my difficulty with the creationist view. My difficulty is it's hard to imagine how we account for fallen human souls if God is creating souls ex nihilo. Because if God's going to create the soul ex nihilo out of nothing, it can't be fallen because then he's responsible for the fallen soul.
- [53:21]
B
I never thought of that.
- [53:23]
A
When he unites it with the body, some might say, okay, then it becomes fallen. But why is. Now you have this other odd circumstance where taking a pure soul and uniting it with a material body causes the soul to be corrupted. So now matter is corrupting the soul. And now that sounds a little like Gnosticism. You know, I'm more comfortable with the idea of simply saying that man reproduces after his own kind and when he reproduces a child, the child is a full human being that the body and soul come with it. And what that means then is that your body is unique in that the body you now possess, Andrew, would never be had or possessed by anyone else because they don't have your parents. Providing the genetic material for you. Your parents are the only. You are absolutely unique in that regard. Okay? But it also means that if they are responsible for your soul, then your soul is unique in that regard. Your soul couldn't have been stuck in any other body. It is the product of your mother and your father. Now this. And that makes more sense to me for the reasons I gave you. But it also might help. It has explanatory power. You know Johann Sebastian Bach, right? He is a pretty good musician. So was everyone in his family. All of his kids and all of his cousins and all their kids and their grandkids. There's a bunch of Bach and they were all magnificent, you know. Now, what this seems to suggest. I have no reason to think that musical aptitude is somehow resident in a molecule or a combination of molecules. Now, somebody might take exception with me. I haven't done a deep dive on that. But it strikes me that this is a soulish characteristic, that certain souls have aptitudes capabilities, that it cannot be reduced to molecular formations. All right, now if this is the case, then it wouldn't be surprising that. And this is speculative, so I'm not going to count on this. I'm not betting the farm on this. But if this is the case, then it certainly seems in principle that when a parent passes their physical characteristics on to their children, that they could in a certain fashion, certainly not genetically, because that's physical stuff, but in a certain fashion there could be soulish qualities that are passed on or aptitudes or capabilities to the progeny as well. Then you wouldn't be surprised if when Johan Sebastian has a bunch of kids and he had a passel of them, that these folks are pretty good at music too, and not just because they were hanging around in the Bach home playing on harpsichords or whatever, you know, I think it might be in their souls, something like that. Now, again, speculative. I'm a tradition principally for the reasons that I gave you. But how does the soul get fallen when it's added to the body? It just seems to make more sense that human beings, repeat, reproduce, other human beings. And to be human is to be both body and soul. And then I'm not troubled by that other thing. A person is born from fallen parents and so his soul is going to be fallen too. Okay, some ideas to chew on there, Andrew. I really appreciate your call and I'm glad we got both questions in here. Right at the end. Greg Koukl for Stand a Reason. All right. Give them heaven, friends. Bye bye now.
- [57:48]
B
Sam.