Archive for category: General Apologetics

You may be one of those who received an e-mail from the Biblical Archaeology Society today. In case you had ever thought of supporting this group, I hope the following will give you an idea what they are really all about. BTW, this cruise costs more than three times what ours did. I wonder where that extra money is going?

Apostasy abounds in Western culture today. Much of the confusion as to what the Christian faith teaches is due to apostates who refuse to leave the church but instead corrupt it from within. But there are many apostates who have completely abandoned the faith; some simply disappear and go back to their worldly ways. Look at the huge baptism numbers

I was looking over Evan May’s blog this morning when I ran across a link to some comments posted by John Loftus on the “Debunking Christianity” blog. I noted with some humor the presence of Dan Barker as one of the contributors to that blog. I will never forget the radio programs I did with Barker, both by phone and

I noted that my brief commentary on the Comma Johanneum came up on a web board recently. One of the participants commented, So I guess that John Calvin, Theodore Beza, the Westminster Assembly, Francis Turretin, Matthew Poole, the 1689 Baptist Assembly, Matthew Henry, John Gill, John Brown of Haddington, Robert L. Dabney, and Edward F. Hills are all to be

While visiting here in London I got a chance to watch the second of the two Richard Dawkins anti-religion pieces. Richard Dawkins is the classic fundamentalist Darwinist: he can’t see how he is a caricature of the very things he pillories. You can even hear the awe and worship in his voice when he speaks of Darwin and genetics. Just

Jeff Downs is the Internet’s Apologetics Info Guy. If he doesn’t know it, it can’t be known. He has put together the Countercult Apologetics Journal. I would dearly like to have contributed to it, but this little thing about traveling around and doing debates throughout the year really cuts into your article writing time. I have so many articles running

With a little help from MarieP, I’ve put all my Da Vinci blog articles into a single file, accessible here (note it is linked in the ad column as well). Please feel free to print out, format, distribute, memorize, yammer about, etc., freely. I will hopefully find a way to put up my PowerPoint presentation on the same topic in

I intended to have a blog article up on the bankruptcy of Islamic apologetics with reference to John 20:28. However, as I have been chasing down references and URLs I have found some simply fascinating stuff, and with a major article for the CRI Journal due Monday, I may have to provide only the start of the series this weekend

   Just saw Jason Engwer link this: a debate between William Lane Craig and Bart Ehrman on the resurrection. Now this fascinates me. Aside from the textual questions I would expect Ehrman to raise

This past Lord’s Day I once again had the opportunity of speaking to a congregation about The Da Vinci Code. At the end I made a point I want to make here at the end of this series of blog articles. We have two ways in which we can view the advent of Brown’s novel, its deeply anti-Christian rhetoric and

In our last segment we read Brown’s assertions about secret documents that somehow he knows a lot about (but, since they are secret, doesn’t have to prove). His last claim was an inaccurate comment on the Q source. We continue,    “Writings by Christ Himself?”    “Of course,” Teabing said. “Why wouldn’t Jesus have kept a chronicle of His ministry? Most people

We have been examining the biblically relevant claims of Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code. We are currently examining his claims regarding the alleged documents contained in four trunks, hidden together with the sarcophagus of Mary Magdalene, and what they allegedly contain. We are dealing with pure fiction here, of course—despite Brown’s claim that the references to historical documents

We are nearing the end of our examination of the biblically relevant claims of Dan Brown’s best-selling novel, soon to be a major motion picture (here’s the trailer), The Da Vinci Code. We have thus far seen that Brown’s “fiction based upon fact” presentation is purely fiction, even when it pretends to present facts. The number of simple, gross errors

It has taken quite some time to get to the center of Brown’s theory (a theory, of course, propounded by others long before he came along), but finally we have arrived. On page 249 we read, “Behold,” Teabing proclaimed, “the greatest cover-up in human history. Not only was Jesus Christ married, but He was a father. My dear, Mary Magdalene

As Brown develops his fanciful theory that Jesus was married (calling it a historical fact—but we have already learned that Brown calls “fact” what history calls “fiction” with shocking regularity) he throws out what is actually a plausible argument: singleness for Jewish males would be unusual at best, and, if Jesus had been single, “at least one of the Bible’s

Christianity and paganism have always been mortal enemies, mainly because paganism has no interest in truth while Christianity is, by definition, wedded to Him who was and is the very embodiment of it. The use of lies in the service of paganism is nothing new, and The Da Vinci Code is just another example of paganism using falsehoods to promote

Like a true post-modernist, Brown then inserts a discussion about how modern Vatican is made up of “pious men who truly believe these contrary documents (i.e., Nad Hammadi, DSS, noted in the preceding section) could only be false testimony.” But it is Teabing’s response that reveals Brown’s true feelings: “As you can see, our professor has a far softer heart

We have already seen that Brown relies heavily upon a highly doubtful, uncritical, easily challenged view of extra-biblical sources such as the Nag Hammadi Library and various other gnostic-influenced works. Ironically, Brown contradicts himself once again in his statements immediately following the embarrassing “heretic” comment on page 234. Here Brown speaking as Teabing says that “some of the gospels that

After creating, out of whole cloth, the idea that Constantine was busy running about the Roman Empire looking for at least 996 “original” gospels while promoting his edited versions of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Brown decides there is simply too much credibility lingering in this story, so he decides to shoot the last of it dead immediately. Enter the

After insisting that “educated” Christians know all about Constantine’s hi-jacking the faith and inventing the deity of Christ, Teabing tries to say that Jesus was a good guy and did good things. That is very nice: defame the entirety of His own teaching about Himself, tell us that we actually can know abolutely nothing about Him or His teachings (if

“It was all about power,” Teabing continued. “Christ as Messiah was critical to the functioning of Church and state. Many scholars claim that the early Church literally stole Jesus from His original followers, hijacking His human message, shrouding it in an impenetrable cloak of divinity, and using it to expand their own power. I’ve written several books on the topic.”

We have come to the examination of one of the key assertions made by Dan Brown in his attack upon the central elements of the Christian faith (so as to make room for his Magdalene-based conspiracy theory). We read:    “My dear,” Teabing declared, until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet…a great and

I’ve decided I might as well live-blog while I watch this thing. Given that it will feature John Dominic Crossan and Scott Hahn…well, it will have to be interesting. Prediction: Hahn will be one of the most conservative on the program. We can hope, anyway. Remember, he was trained as a Presbyterian. 🙂 00: Ah, there’s ol’ Dr. Crossan, “Get

He was on his way to his death, and he knew it. The story of Ignatius, the great bishop of Antioch, one of the early Christian martyrs, is well known, at least to those with an interest in church history (which limits things a good bit these days). Unwilling to compromise, Ignatius happily, as an aged man, embraced his departure

Yahoo! had a story yesterday on the finding of an ancient Christian church in Israel, one pre-dating Constantine (hat tip SafeHaven). And almost as if on cue, the story contains this paragraph: Two mosaics inside the church — one covered with fish, an ancient Christian symbol that predates the cross — tell the story of a Roman officer and a

Having endowed Constantine with a-historical super-powers and credited him with doing things he never did, would never have had any interest in doing, could never have accomplished, and in fact, would have worked against his actual historical interests, Dan Brown continues the demolition of his historical credibility, but at least for a moment he sounds like so many others who

I apologize for being behind in returning to our Da Vinci Code series. I spoke on the subject at Sovereign Grace Baptist Church this weekend, and will be speaking at various churches in the Phoenix area on it between now and next May. Sadly, in most churches, almost no one is aware of what is coming our way with this

I hope the few folks left in sound evangelical churches who might be tempted to in any way listen to or utilize any materials produced by Paul Owen, will read his latest musings here. Note his consistent use of “expiate” instead of “propitiate,” the sure sign of heterodoxy and a collapse on the central aspects of the faith. Owen’s self-destruction

After mentioning Constantine, Teabing goes on to insist he remained a pagan his entire life. While that could be argued, at least at this point you do have disagreements amongst historians as to the exact state of Constantine’s religion. He then continues, insisting that “Christians and pagans began warring, and the conflict grew to such proportions that it threatened to

Upon announcing his sweeping attack upon the validity of the Bible, Brown continues his work through the dialogue of his characters. Sophie’s in-depth response, “Okay,” then leads to these claims by Teabing: “Jesus Christ was a historical figure of staggering influence, perhaps the most enigmatic and inspirational leader the world has ever seen. As the prophesied Messiah, Jesus toppled kings,

The Da Vinci Code (hereafter TDVC) is not one big long attack upon the Christian faith. In fact, if you fall asleep for about ten minutes in the film…ok, and run to the bathroom a little later for another couple of minutes…you’ll probably miss the main objectionable portions. But more problematic, from an evangelism/apologetics viewpoint is just this: the anti-Christian